It was almost dawn when the riders finally reached the lone figure. It would seem that no unarmed man could face a dozen riders alone, but this was no ordinary man. This was Balinor, the Last Dragonlord, and he fought with the anguish and desperation of a man, who only days ago left behind the woman he loved.
Preternatural senses allowed him to detect the riders before they found him, but there was nowhere to hide in an open plain. Anyway, he was tired of hiding, tired of running. He wasn't going to do so anymore and if it is his destiny to die on this plain, than he will do so with pride.
As the riders surrounded him, it was the dragonlord who made the first move. A jump, propelled by incredible strength gifted to all dragonlords, allowed him to fell a man right of the horse and break his neck upon intact with the earth. Grabbing the man's dagger, Balinor swiftly moved to his right, escaping a volley of crossbow bolts and cut open a horse's throat. "Sorry, innocent one, but I am fighting for my life," he mentally apologized as the horse fell down, trapping its rider under it.
The men tried to surround him, but Balinor easily escaped them, dispatching two of his pursuers in the chaos. His enemies tried to fight him as they were used to, but so many men interfered with each other in close quarters and he didn't hesitate to take advantage of it. As it became more and more obvious that, as absurd as it sounded, the man was winning, the riders tried to dismount to fight him better. Only three of them survived by the time.
The three were cautious, having already seen what the man was capable of.
-I have no quarrel with you. - Balinor tried to reason.
-We have orders. - Replied the older of the three and lunged. The dragonlord danced aside, but the other pair also joined the fight. The fight was quick and fierce. Dragonlord's superior strength and skill with a knife against three man trained to fight and using weaponry with better range. In the end it was their inability to work with each other that left the dragonlord the last one standing. Bloodied, bruised, but alive.
Perhaps, it was this relief of being alive that made him hear the twinge of a crossbow just a second too late. Balinor turned his head in disbelief, looking at the bolt in his back.
-You killed me. - He told the rider who's horse's throat he cut, the last man alive on the field, and dropped dead.
-To hell with Uther, to hell with his orders. - The rider muttered, climbing from the horse and barely holding in a scream of pain. - I am not coming back if this is what he sends us out to hunt. Whoa, whoa...
Knowing he couldn't walk with a broken leg, the man tried to calm down one of his companions' uninjured horses. As the horse took a step toward him, it accidentally stepped on one of the dead man and slipped. Trying to hold its balance the horse reared up and one of its hooves cleaved straight through the man's scull.
As the marauders took everything valuable and scavengers took care of the corpses, there soon was nothing to show for a battle happening here. With nobody to report otherwise, Uther Pendragon continued believing that the last dragonlord lived and sending out search parties for him, but never again did he find another trail of Balinor. It was as if the man just disappeared.
All in all, it would have been an unremarkable fight, if it wasn't for a certain something that left Balinor upon his death. A certain something that traveled, unfaltering, right into the womb of a woman still unaware of her pregnancy.
The mantle of the dragonlord was heavy, heavy enough to smother the flame of magic being born into a few embers. Heavy enough to change the destiny of a young boy. A boy that will, in time, father a legend. His name: Merlin.