The Dragonfall

The Dragonfall was the first dragon ever killed by mortal hands on Callidore in living memory. It was fought at Castle Cambrian, an old Gilmoran baronial castle on the Great Cotton Road, where Terleman had set up the regional command of the Penumbra war. The popular name of the event — the Dragonfall at Barrowbell — comes from the celebration that followed at Barrowbell sixty miles south, not the field where the dragon actually died.

The siege of Cambrian

Cambrian was no proper fortress — more of a stately old residence with toll-gate ambitions, picked by Terleman as a defensible point along the Cotton Road. Terleman had over five thousand troops there with adequate supply. When Count Margeaf's mercenary column was set upon by a gurvani host five times its number, Terleman ordered a withdrawal into Cambrian. Several gurvani bands then converged on the castle and ringed it, with twelve thousand goblins under the walls and more arriving by the hour.

Sheruel committed a dragon to the siege.

The arrival of a dragon at Cambrian made the situation desperate. Twelve thousand goblins outside the walls and a five-thousand-troop garrison inside were both dragonbait — the kind of concentrated target the Dead God's wyrm-stock had been bred for.

The relief column

Minalan put together an emergency relief column at Sevendor and rode hard for Gilmora. The composition mattered:

• Sevendori warmagi: Tyndal, Rondal, Mavone, Taren, Planus, Jendaran the Trusty, Sarakeem the Merwini archer with his new Alka bow, and Delman.
• Sevendori knights and Bovali militia under Sir Cei, riding in his snowflake pendant of snowstone.
• Lady Dara of Westwood, then about fourteen, riding her own pony with her hawk Frightful on the saddle and a wooden box in her satchel containing the Thoughtful Knife — an Alka Alon enchanted weapon Lady Varen had taught her to fly with thought alone.
• Riverlords cavalry under Baron Arathanial of Sendaria, riding in support.
• Pentandra, who would coordinate the magical attack from the rear of the column with Planus.

The rain, the dragon, and Minalan unconscious

The relief column arrived at Cambrian under heavy rain. The dragon was already in the bailey, having forced the gate, and was hunting through the wreckage of the castle for survivors. The first cavalry charge was a near-disaster: the dragon's tail-sweep killed Minalan's horse Traveler, killed Delman, wounded Mavone in the thigh, and knocked Minalan unconscious. Tyndal pulled an infantry shield over Delman's body and emptied his entire stock of warwands at the dragon. Jendaran threw protective spells around himself in the open with his armour smoking from raindrop-on-dragonfire.

Minalan came awake to a voice in his head, a compelling restorative pulse from the Magolith-precursor enchantments around his sphere, and got back on his feet:

By Briga's toasty tootsies, I felt like I could actually fight a dragon.

— Minalan, recovering consciousness

The lightning, hooked through snowstone

Pentandra, working at the back of the column, had a problem: every magical attack that touched the dragon failed. The beast's natural etheric resistance was too high for any spell to hook. The team needed a way to lower its resistance. Pentandra had been collaborating with a strange ally she had picked up that morning: a hedgemage from the village of Brunaron, an old man called something like Alfis or Aldis — Pentandra wasn't sure of the name — whose specialism was weather-magic and who had pointed out that the rainstorm overhead was wasted thaumaturgical potential.

Pentandra and the Brunaron hedgemage built the spell. Minalan, on the field, plucked his snowstone snowflake pendant from his chest, broke the leather thong, and threaded the shaft of one of Sarakeem's arrows through the small hole at its centre. The arrow now carried a five-centimetre disc of snowstone three inches behind the bodkin point.

It's the resistance. And I think I have an answer. Give me an arrow.

— Minalan, threading his pendant onto Sarakeem's shaft

Sarakeem put the arrow through the dragon's upper jaw and held the shot. The snowstone hooked. Pentandra and the Brunaron hedgemage discharged the storm into the dragon's spine. The lightning bolt knocked the dragon unconscious and threw it through the southern wall of the bailey. The fall killed seven hundred Gilmoran men-at-arms in the rear of the gurvani line.

The killing blow

The dragon was unconscious but breathing. The team scrambled. Every man on the field with a piece of snowstone in his pocket threw it onto the dragon's body, lowering its resistance further. Sarakeem affixed six of his snowstone-laden arrows in a moustache across the dragon's upper lip. The Thoughtful Knife was loosed from inside the dragon's mouth.

The killing strike was a coordinated one, planned by Pentandra and Terleman:

• Inside the dragon's mouth, Dara drove the Thoughtful Knife into the soft tissue of the throat, slicing forward toward the brainstem with the speed of pure thought.
• Outside, Sir Cei — the only knight in the relief column the others trusted with a one-shot lance run at a dragon's throat — couched a heavy lance specially loaded with snowstone fragments and charged. The first duty of any knight is always to die gloriously in battle, and Cei accepted the run with the set of jaw of a man who knew it was probably a suicide errand.

The lance struck. The Thoughtful Knife was already cutting from inside. The dragon's neck was torn half-asunder from the body, leaving a great charred hole smoking in the rain. The dragon was dead.

Sir Cei was found unconscious near the wreckage. He had survived the run by what Minalan called some unaccountable margin of luck and Briga's grace. He remained unconscious through the night and into the next morning before he came to.

Barrowbell and the celebration

The siege of Cambrian was lifted. The gurvani horde, demoralised by the dragon's death and pinned between Terleman's sortie from the castle and Arathanial's cavalry, broke. Five days later Minalan made the formal entry into Barrowbell, the great Gilmoran cotton city, where the celebration of the Dragonfall was held.

By Pentandra's account, the Spellmonger arranged the political optics deliberately. The crowd was chanting Spellmonger when he entered the ceremony; he made certain they were chanting different names when he left:

Not that Cei and Dara weren't deserved of honors, but the people were chanting "Spellmonger" when he entered the ceremony, and chanting "Dragonslayer! Hawkmaid!" on the way out. Hardly anyone even remembers the poor Spellmonger, now. He has given them more colorful heroes.

— Pentandra, on the political optics

Lady Dara of Westwood was ennobled by King Rard, given a hundred Roses, and acclaimed the Hawkmaiden for the rest of her life. Sir Cei was given the title Dragonslayer, a magnificent black charger the colour of the inside of night, a new set of armour, and a thousand gold Roses. He retained the epithet for the rest of his career.

What the Dragonfall established

Two facts entered the lore of the Five Duchies after Cambrian:

• Dragons can be killed by mortal magi. They are not invulnerable. The combination required is Alka-grade weapons + snowstone resistance-reduction + coordinated penetration through eye, mouth, or throat.
• Snowstone is a strategic weapon, not a curiosity. Its capacity to lower local etheric resistance turned out to be the unlocking key for every spell the Magical Corps had tried against draconic hide. Demand for snowstone, already high after the Snowstone Event, became unbearable. The Vundel snowstone trade and the Magical Fair's prominence both date from this discovery.

Sheruel responded by accelerating his dragon-breeding programme. The Dragonfall was the first kill, not the last; the Wars of Dragons that haunted the next several volumes are an unbroken thread from Cambrian forward.