A Sword for a Dragon (25 page)

“Good morning, sir.” Hatlin gave a crisp enough salute. Glaves replied much less crisply and took the dragoneer by the elbow.

“This morning I have arranged a woodcutting party. The cooks require some logs, and there is a request from the engineers for some eight-foot beams. A woodlot has been purchased about eight miles south of here.”

“Right, sir, how many are required?”

“We’ll need three dragons, I think, and their boys of course. I want the dragons Vlok, Chektor, and the broketail.”

Dragoneer Hatlin raised an eyebrow. This was the first indication he’d ever had that the commander even knew the names of the dragons in the one hundred and ninth.

“Yes, sir, those specific dragons?”

“Yes, Dragoneer.”

Hatlin was puzzled. “They done something wrong then, sir? Something I don’t know about?”

“No, Dragoneer, nothing like that. Send the dragons as named. They will be back this evening.”

“Yes, sir. Though I’d like to send Cham instead of Chektor. Old Chek’s feet are still pretty sore, he needs all the rest he can get, in case we got a long march ahead of us.”

Commander Glaves considered this and then agreed.

“Good thinking, Dragoneer, good thinking. We’ll send Cham with the broketail and Vlok. See to it. They’re to report to the quartermaster within half an hour.”

Hatlin did as he was bid. The dragons were promised beer and extra rations at dinner that night. They grumbled awhile but eventually rose to their feet and marched out. With them went five men on punishment detail who were to split the logs that the dragons would hew.

They marched eight miles to a woodland set at the edges of the city. Here, an Ourdhi contractor showed them the section that had been purchased by the legion.

Immense axes, troll axes, taken by the legion long ago for a more useful task, were handed out to the three dragons, Bazil of Quosh, Vlok, and Cham.

The dragonboys were there to assist their charges and make themselves useful. For the most part, this meant staying out of the way.

The trees they were cutting for the most part were white ash and little more than a foot in diameter. The dragons cut down trees like these with just a few strokes.

Relkin and Swane had hardly spoken since their night out at Kwa. Swane and Tomas still had large bruises on their faces. Tomas was lacking his two upper front teeth now as well and was too depressed to talk to anyone.

Relkin had finally got the whole story out of Mono, though it hadn’t been easy. Mono had huge black eyes, a torn right ear, and a badly bruised self-image.

The man they’d thought was a pimp had made them wait in a courtyard outside the beer hall. They’d assumed that girls would be sent in to them there, and they were standing around joking and laughing while they waited. Suddenly a gang of a dozen men armed with staves burst in and beat them black-and-blue. What with the surprise and being outnumbered so badly, they’d had no chance.

Fortunately for everyone, Relkin’s own adventures had been too unsettling for even Relkin to boast about. Sometimes he thought wistfully about Miranswa and wondered where she was. Back inside a palace somewhere, he concluded. It seemed to be his fate to be thrown together with beautiful girls who were outside of his social class. He knew he was just an orphan boy, a starveling from Quosh, not the sort of material from which princes are made. For some reason, he felt no urge to boast to the others about Miranswa.

And so it was a quiet group of dragonboys that morning, a fact much remarked on by the three dragons as they marched. When they reached the woodlot and the dragons got down to work, the boys stood well apart from each other and worked with their dragons with little conversation.

The trees fell steadily, and the men on work detail sawed, split, and stacked the logs. As the sun rose, it became warm work and everyone stripped to their waists. But they did not slacken because they were well aware that they would get no rest until all the selected wood was cut, chopped, and shipped.

They filled one wagon and then another and were halfway into a third when a small cart rolled up with four firkins of beer sent down for the woodcutting party.

With a roar of approval, the men downed their tools and broke open the barrels. The dragons took up theirs and gave a measure to each of the dragonboys.

They drank, and ate some bread and cheese and pickles for their lunch. The dragons had akh on their bread, and they ate a dozen loaves apiece.

They finished the beer and quickly became very sleepy. One by one the men, the boys, and the dragons lay down and went to sleep. Snores resounded under what remained of the stand of white ash and carpenter pine.

No one was awake to see the wagon lurch into the clearing a few minutes later. A dozen men scrambled out and rushed to inspect the dragons and the dragonboys.

Relkin was identified by the lack of bruises on his face. He was seized, bound, and placed in the wagon. Then the men struggled to wrap leather bands around the torso of the dragon with the broken-looking tail. Ropes were attached to the leather and wound around a block and tackle in the wagon. Soon, with ten men hauling on the rope, they winched the dragon up and into the wagon.

With a crack of the whip, the wagon sped away the men pausing only to rob the sleeping Marneri men of their purses and knives.

Lagdalen of the Tarcho awoke to the sound of creaking ropes and the smell of the river. She was blindfolded, bound hand and foot, and lying on a hard surface with a lot of lumps in it. She could hear the slap of water against the bow, and feel the boat move so she knew it was a small boat.

At first she could not recall how she had come to be here. She had been standing by while the Lady Ribela worked great magic in the room at the top of the house of the Merchant Irhan. The mice had been running, and she was supposed to feed them when they tired.

And then, nothing, her thoughts came up against a blank wall. Try as she might, she remembered nothing that would explain her presence here in the boat.

For a while, she lay there and tried her bonds. They were expertly done, and she could barely move a muscle. The boat continued to slap through small waves, and occasionally she heard other sounds, grunts of effort and the whine of rope running through a block.

And then quite suddenly, it came back to her. There had been a sound at the door. She had turned and there had been men, silent men with dark eyes and terrible strength. They had held her down and one of them had pressed a cloth smelling of ether to her face, and she had lost consciousness at once. And now she was in a boat, bound and blindfolded. She had been abducted; it was the only possible conclusion.

Her heart sank. She presumed she was being taken to the enemy in Dzu. It seemed she would never see baby Laminna again. That thought had always been there since the beginning of this mission to Ourdh, hovering like a faraway dark cloud. Lagdalen had faced death before, and she knew how real it could be. Now the thought that she might die was by no means unimaginable. Poor baby Laminna! Poor Lagdalen.

The boat docked, and someone picked her up and heaved her up to someone else on a dock. Unceremoniously, she was dumped onto another hard surface. A whip cracked and she felt movement. Transferred to a cart.

The cart made a short journey, perhaps a mile, perhaps two. She heard gates open and close behind her. She was lifted onto a stretcher. Women’s voices in an Ourdhi tongue that was like Uld, but different enough to be unintelligible to her were chattering all around her. Then she was carried into a place of echoes where it grew noticeably cool and quiet. She was taken off the stretcher and laid on some straw. The smell of the straw and a powerful perfume of jasmine filled her nostrils. A voice sighed, and a hand caressed her face and then her body. There came another sigh, and she heard the sound of a door opening and closing. She was left with the silence, lying on her side, on deep straw inside a massive structure.

She could hear absolutely nothing, so she tried to shift the blindfold and perhaps get a peek. Drawing her knees up to her face, she started to work it up. It was tied very tight and it took a long time, but eventually she was able to see from her left eye if she held her head way back.

The results were disappointing, but there was a very faint illumination. Most of it came from an image of the goddess Gingo-La in her most terrible manifestation. Here she was red like fire and possessed seven arms all holding knives or severed heads. Her face, however, was still pale brown and beautiful, the eyes placid, dreaming only of the higher plane of heaven. The illumination came from phosphorescent paint used for the terrible knives she wielded and for the sun and moon and stars above. Lagdalen had never seen such an image, and she was disturbed. There were no images of the Mother in the Argonath.

By the light of the knives of Gingo-La, she made out a few objects in the room, which was of a good size. There was a table, two chairs, a dark mass that might have been a chest.

Once again she tried her bonds and soon realized she was never going to get free by herself. After a while, she lay back on the bed and tried not to imagine the fate that lay in store. There was nothing she could do but wait until they came for her again.

When the news that the emperor had refused to allow the legions to enter the city reached the Queen of Mice, she surrendered to her temper at last. She rose with an oath and went straight to General Paxion. Shortly afterward she went to the palace again, this time with Hollein Kesepton at her side and six Talion cavalry troopers behind.

At the gate, the guards and troopers bristled at each other, and she beguiled the guards with a charm, and they let the Argonathi pass without more ado.

Distantly, Ribela heard Lessis’s voice telling her to be sparing in the use of her strength when working in the field. But Ribela was no longer prepared to tolerate the insolence of the Ourdhi. They were male, they were deceitful, and they were treacherous and ungrateful. She had had her fill of them.

Inside the palace, they were met once again by the wall of silence. A dozen eunuchs in scarlet robes with earplugs jammed in place stood between them and the imperial apartments. They would communicate only by writing on a slate with chalk. They would write only in Uld.

Ribela nodded to Captain Kesepton. He reached out and ripped away the earplugs from the highest-ranked eunuch.

Ribela spoke a few syllables of power and then a declension. A small spell gripped the fellow, and she was able to look into his eyes.

Soon after that, she and the captain were marching through the Imperial apartments lead by the high-ranking eunuch. They reached a set of double doors with a pair of guards outside.

These were deaf mutes, but at the sight of the instructions written for them by the ranking eunuch, they opened the door.

Inside stormed Ribela.

The emperor and his court were stunned at the intrusion. Ribela gave them no chance to recover. She immediately launched into a vehement denunciation of them, their policies, and their general faintheartedness. She compared them to capons, she insulted their courage, and simultaneously worked an enchantment upon them.

Banwi wanted to scream orders for the immediate execution of the woman in her black robes with silver mouse skulls, but he could not once those terrible eyes locked onto his own. He could only sit there and listen to the tirade. After a while, she turned to him personally and bent close to his face to describe in horrifying detail the evil fate that would await him once the enemy triumphed and dragged him back to Dzu as a captive.

He had blotted it all out for a few hours, but she brought it all back. It was just as the rooster’s head had foretold. He would be eaten slowly, like a bonbon, by this demon in Dzu. Banwi screamed, fell from the throne, and thrashed on the rug foaming at the mouth.

A portly monstekir, Bomok of the Chaji, interposed himself.

“Begone, witch, you have done your damage now. The emperor is having a fit.”

It was quite true. The little emperor was roaring in rage and chewing the carpet at the same time. Ribela expressed a rapid fire declension and broke the fit. Banwi went limp.

Another monstekir thrust himself forward. He wore an elaborate costume of yellow and green silks, with white hose and enormous puffed shoulders.

“Lady witch of the Isle, may I recommend that we put the emperor to bed now.”

“No!” snapped Ribela. “He must give orders to let the Argonathi into the city at once.”

The monstekirs, the stekirs, the grand vizier all jerked back with a hiss. Ribela fought to keep her temper under control.

“You cannot leave them outside. They are your only hope of withstanding the coming siege of this city.”

There was a nervous licking of lips. The situation was getting out of control. They had all heard that the Sephisti were halfway to Ourdh. Within hours, their advance scouts would be in the suburbs of the city.

Banwi was whimpering.

“Stop that stupid noise!” Ribela went to Banwi, crouched beside him, and looked into his eyes once more.

Banwi got to his feet. The color had drained from his features. In a voice like a husk of itself, he called for writing materials. Orders were to go out to the gates to allow the Argonathi in.

Paxion immediately began the process of moving his troops into the city.

The great city walls had just five enormous gates. Each was the center of a small fortress. Each was supposed to be held by two thousand men. There were seven other bastions, each one half the size of the gate forts and each meant to have a strength of one thousand men. There were seventeen miles of walls, and they were forty feet high throughout with fifty-foot turrets every two hundred yards. A small force, as little as fifteen thousand strong, could in theory hold these walls.

Paxion met with the general of the city guard whose responsibility the walls were. The general was the monstekir of Bogra, an obese man named Sosinaga Vokosong. Lord Vokosong was an exception to the rule among his class. He was a seasoned warrior, and he welcomed the presence of the Argonathi troops. Paxion and he agreed that the Argonathi should take over a section of wall to either side of the Fatan Gate, on the northeast of the city. They should also take over the defense of the great Fatan Gate. Only the regular gate-operating crew and attendant engineer would be left. This would give Lord Vokosong another two thousand Imperial troops that he could add to the depleted forces in other gates.