A Sword for a Dragon (11 page)

“Stand straight chicken-hearted dog that serves women. Now you will feel the rod of Fish Eye.”

Everyone was watching, even the general. His disgrace, his destruction was in full view.

Fish Eye stood closer and swung the rod in long whistling passes that made the hair stand out on Porteous Glaves’s neck. Porteous started to tremble, he could not stand this. He was about to break and run, losing all respect forever.

He became aware that the crowd had quietened behind him. He looked back.

A huge form had shouldered through the throng and stood very close. Someone whistled.

He glanced up. A dragonboy was perched on a great dragon’s shoulders, the boy’s face was expressionless. Then, at last, as if in a dream Glaves saw the dragon’s face, saw those immense eyes focused on him. His mouth was dry, the Teetol rod was whistling, he wanted to run, to hide, to go anywhere in the world but this terrible place, but the dragon eyes were on him and he froze in place unable to move, unable to even blink.

Fish Eye gave a little grunt, his rod flashed, and Glaves felt a thunderbolt strike across his upper chest.

For a moment he was numb, then his chest seemed to explode. He was conscious only of his feet leaving the ground. Helplessly he lay in the snow, struggling to breathe.

The watching Teetol, however, now gave up whistles of praise, for the fat Argonathi had taken the blow well, without flinching or blinking.

Fish Eye was disappointed, he had clearly hoped for a more humiliating finish to the bout. For if Glaves had flinched and then been knocked to the ground, then Fish Eye, the victor, would have been allowed to strike him once more, on any part of the anatomy he could reach.

Loudly he protested that he was certain the fat useless ass from Argonath had flinched. But the Teetol had been watching most carefully as was the custom, and they knew that Glaves had not even looked at Fish Eye as the blow was struck and flinched not an iota. In these things the Teetol were an honest people. Now they whistled their refusal.

Fish Eye swung his rod, shrieking through the air, but the Teetol whistled back their disapproval even louder.

“That’s enough,” said General Paxion. The men might enjoy the sight of Glaves being humbled, but to go further would be to humiliate the legion, and they would not stand for that.

Fish Eye was about to strike Glaves anyway when a great shadow fell over the scene, and the broketail dragon moved around the fallen commander and picked up the rod he’d dropped. The dragon examined the rod, then examined Fish Eye, and then swung the rod experimentally in the air.

He swung it again, and it blurred back and forth.

The Teetol all stepped back with a sigh and then a laugh. Fish Eye scowled briefly at being denied his prey, but then decided to make the best of it and pantomimed running back in great fear of the dragon.

Everyone roared at the joke, and while they were still roaring, Relkin and Bazil carried Glaves back to his tent and set him on his bed.

Glaves feigned unconsciousness and lolled back with his eyes closed and his mouth open breathing loudly. His chest was on fire. He’d probably broken half his ribs!

By the wicked old gods of Veronath, he vowed to someday get his hands around the neck of Ruwat, who’d suggested this mad idea in the first place.

He felt the dragonboy press a finger to his carotid artery and take his pulse. His face was wiped with a cool cloth and then his shirt was opened.

Glaves kept very still. The damned boy wanted to rob him! He would discover his mistake in just a moment. Glaves felt surreptitiously for his knife.

But Relkin merely wanted to check the commander for injuries. Carefully he felt for broken ribs.

There was a huge red welt right across the pectoral region. The Commander was going to have a painful bruise for a long time, but Relkin’s sensitive fingers could detect no broken bones.

Glaves remained still, puzzled somewhat. The scurvy dragonboy must be too stupid to even notice the purse of gold he kept on a leather belt inside his shirt. But no, he felt the boy find the belt and touch the purse.

He gripped his knife.

But Relkin did not remove the little bag of coins. It never occurred to him to even try. He had no wish to get a flogging, and stealing the commander’s purse in this situation would guarantee it.

Glaves relaxed, even more surprised. The boy must be incredibly stupid. He was the same one that had been awarded a Legion Star. So this was the best the legion could offer. This is what it took to win the highest awards in the military. Glaves sighed with pity for the poor dolts.

Relkin refastened the commander’s shirt and laid a blanket over him. Then he joined Baz who was leaning on his sword and conversing with a pair of legionaries. Together they strolled back to their tent.

On into the southlands went the legion fleet as the great river snaked back and forth in huge arcs across an increasingly flat, low-lying marshland. Occasionally they would see boats of Teetol make or the smokes of Teetol villages, but, in general, the land seemed as empty of human beings as it was full of wildfowl. Thousands upon thousands of ducks, geese, swans, and cranes filled the waters and the air. Occasionally they glimpsed herds of animals, wild auroch, water beast, black antelope. Once they saw a large hunting party of Teetol braves, in big twenty-man canoes with totems carved into the prows.

The Teetol saw them and stayed well clear, heading for the western side of the river.

For days it went thus, and then in a matter hours they crossed the boundary between the world of the Teetol and the ancient Empire of Ourdh.

First there were scattered villages, trading posts, rickety docks poking out into the river, and then quite abruptly huge watchtowers built of sun-dried-mud brick rose up against the sky. These great square towers, with battlements at the top, became a brooding presence over the river.

The landscape became a monotony of irrigation channels surrounding the sinuous windings of the river. Houses and farm buildings all made of mud brick began to appear and soon to crowd the riverside.

Everywhere they looked they saw the peasant masses, the fedd, bent over their labors. On the backs of these masses, bound to the land by ancient laws of tenure, the dynasties of Ourdh had come and gone for thousands of years.

Here and there, prosperous towns and villages were painted white. Elsewhere they were in poor condition, with walls tumbling and weeds growing on them.

On the river there were small craft of many kinds. Later they began to see larger vessels, two- and three-masted ships, even deep-sea ships from faraway lands.

They passed their first Ourdhi city, ancient Forkono, a large place with many three-story buildings in the central district. Here as everywhere the dominant style was for mud brick with white-painted stucco.

And so it continued, through the great province of Usono and on into Sagala and eventually to Shekawat their first really large city. Here they saw the great temple pyramid, the Shekawata Puchin, which towered three hundred feet into the air and dominated the whole area.

Here they also saw a few deep-sea vessels, including a trader from Kadein, come to Shekawat to sell Kadein wine and take home sesame oil, hot peppers, dates, honey, and raisins.

The trader spoke of river pirates on the reaches to the south of them. “They’re thick on the water like mosquitoes on a bog. Watch out for fireboats and sneak attacks at night.”

At Shekawat, General Paxion found more messages from General Hektor bidding him to hurry. A huge battle loomed and the Second Legion was needed desperately.

The legion upped anchors once more and went on, leaving most of the men frustrated. They’d all been waiting for their first chance to take liberty in one of Ourdh’s great cities. Shekawat was easily the size of Kadein itself.

But the men drew solace from the knowledge that much greater cities lay ahead of them. In Ourdh, there were four truly great cities, each with more than a million people. Dzebei, Kwa, Patwa, and Ourdh itself. Their names were synonymous around the world for sophisticated vice and decadent indulgence.

However, the fleet made no more stops, although it did slow occasionally to pick up fresh water. They passed city after city, from the beautiful lacy towers and jade walls of Jumzu to the vast embankments of Zudein. The men could only stare at them and imagine the delights of the fabled fleshpots therein.

In between the cities, they saw vast ruins, major places of ceremonial built for forgotten gods now left desolate. Some appeared to be little more than eroded hills, the only eruptions on the otherwise flat landscape of the floodplain.

After they passed Zudein, they entered the heartland of the worship of Auros, the ruling god of Ourdh. Now each of the man-built hills was topped with a temple, dominated by a vast statue of Auros. Normally these were of the beneficent god of the harvest, a smiling, fat-bellied man who held calipers in one hand and a sickle in the other. These statues were laminated in gold leaf and glowed so in the sun that they were visible for many miles across the irrigated world of the Fedd.

Meanwhile the weather had become much warmer. In coming from northern Kenor, they had sliced spring to a week, for in Ourdh it was early summer and quite torrid during the days.

The men rolled up their freecoats and stowed away their winter leathers, switching to lighter linens and cottons. At night, the flames of sacred fires atop the ziggurats were visible over great distances. These lights could be seen in all directions, one after the other stretching away into the haze.

Sometimes at night they glimpsed the lean shapes of river pirate galleys stealing softly toward them with muffled oars.

Paxion had ordered maximum vigilance, and at each such sighting his more maneuverable cutters turned and intercepted the marauders, driving them off with fire arrows and bolts from the big catapults.

By day, they saw craft by the hundreds, of all shapes and sizes, plying the water.

They passed mighty Fozad in the night, and for an hour the lights went on as they passed the suburbs stretched out to the south and east.

Then shortly after dawn, they rounded another great hooked sandbar crowned with scrub vegetation and found a party of officers from the Kadein First Legion awaiting them on the shore under a legion flag.

It was a place like any other here on the floodplain, where palm trees fringed the bank of the river. Beyond the trees stood villages and fields of irrigated wheat and barley. Donkeys could be seen in motion here and there among the working fedd.

The senior Kadeini officer approached in a small boat.

“Sub-Commander Vanute, First Kadein Regiment reporting.”

Paxion returned the man’s salute and received a letter from Hektor and an oral aside.

“Begging your pardon, sir, but the general, he gave me an extra message, just for your ear, sir, if you know what I mean.”

Paxion drew the man aside.

“What is it, man?”

“Sir, the general said that if you don’t get to him in time, he fears the whole thing will be lost and we’ll be a bunch of silly buggers sitting out here completely surrounded by a hostile horde that will cook us over slow fires and feed our flesh to dogs. The war here is unbelievably fierce.”

Paxion felt his mouth go dry. The worst nightmare was coming true. This was exactly what he’d feared since the beginning of this whole mad venture.

He glanced at the letter quickly. He was instructed to head west at once, to meet with Hektor and the Imperial Army somewhere about fifty miles from the river. A vast horde of the enemy was striking eastwards, aiming to cut the Imperial Army off from its communications to the south. The emperor would be trapped on the west bank of the river, the Imperial Army would disintegrate and flee, all else would collapse.

“Sir?” the sub-commander was waiting for his response. He pulled himself back to reality, forcing the words out.

“Tell the general that we will be there, I don’t know how, but we’ll be there.”

“Yes, sir. If you make a landing here and march directly west, sir, you will find him at a place called Salpalangum. A small city, very old. There’s a ziggurat there that is said to be especially beautiful.”

“At once then.” Paxion gave the orders and the fleet put in to the shore. The men disembarked along with the cavalry and the dragon squadrons.

There was a great potential for chaos in such an operation, but the men of the Second Marneri were seasoned veterans now, and they did the thing quickly and efficiently. Within two hours the entire legion was ashore and marching inland. Paxion felt a certain degree of pride at the sight. He’d had this legion at Dalhousie for less than a year, but they’d absorbed the essential lesson of discipline in a military formation. With discipline and energy, a unit the size of a legion could maneuver as quickly as a unit one-tenth its size. With discipline and training, the legions of Argonath were worth ten times their weight in enemies, and they’d proved this again and again on the battlefield.

With a steady stride they went, heading down a straight road to a certain battle and an unknown destiny. Five thousand men, six hundred cavalry, and one hundred and fifty dragons, a sight that brought a lump to General Paxion’s throat and a crushing fear of failure to his heart.

He became obsessed with the need to show an example, and ran his staff ragged by riding up and down the columns every hour, letting everyone see the commanding officer. He kept up a constant flow of encouragement, praising the men’s marching to their officers, and all the while pushing for everyone to hurry. Staff officers, scouts, and messengers were constantly riding back and forth, enhancing the atmosphere of haste.

The Eighth Regiment was nominally the last in line, but this was not a parade, and they had been one of the first to get ashore and so they were just behind the First Regiment at the front of the column.

The men were suffering in the hated neck collars, which chafed and rubbed the skin raw under the chin and beneath the ears. They were hideously hot to wear in these conditions, the tight leather seemed to constrict the throat.