Battledragon (42 page)

By the day's end there were only a hundred or so Bakani left standing, along with a handful of resistant souls among the rest. The men from Cunfshon had succumbed to a man. Even General Baxander had been taken from his tent at last, virtually unconscious. General Steenhur had already fallen.

Left in command was the Count of Felk-Habren. The count called the survivors together in front of him. He spoke in Verio and Demmener. He swore them all to an oath. They would stand and die in defense of their comrades now lying in their tents.

Felk-Habren was a large man with a shock of pale silver hair and big blue eyes that took on a ferocious luster when he spoke of matters concerning honor and war. He impressed all of them with his passionate sincerity. For a moment, morale was high.

Then they drew for the watches, two hours on, two hours off, through the night. Not long after that Relkin found himself on the rampart. The line was thin. They would have to reinforce each other quickly in the event of an emergency.

Relkin and Swane were the only survivors of the 109th. They checked the unit's resources in arrows and divided them between them.

"Eye shots. These damned beasts don't care for those," said Relkin with feeling.

"I hit one yesterday. One of those yellow horrors. Killed it, too."

"Yes, I heard about that. Good work, Swane."

Swane felt that strange sense of pride he always felt when Relkin praised him.

On the rampart they were spaced a hundred feet apart. A couple of Kadein dragonboys were in the watch, but they were situated on the other side of the camp. To Swane's right was a Czardhan knight and to Relkin's left was a Bakani.

The situation was deceptively calm. The forest always fell quiet around dusk. The beasts of the daytime were repairing to their lairs while the night-loving animals awoke, scrubbed the sleep from predatory eyes, and moved out of their dens.

During the day the men had made two sallies to cut up and haul away the stinking carrion lying in front of the ditch. It was the carrion that drew the beasts. Those work details had been very lucky that day. The hyena-like things had refrained from attack, and the huge, two-legged predators were inactive. They had cleared most of the remains, even the large bones, from the ditch and thrown them into the margins of the forest.

As night renewed its grip on the world, they heard things stirring. Harsh screaming cries from the right told of a pack of the formidable, though small, yellow demons. A coughing roar from the left warned of one of the huge, brown-red beasts that had enormous heads and relatively puny upper limbs. Then came booming cries from the south and wails from several other directions. That meant there were the greenish-hued long striders on hand as well.

The carrion had called them, and they had responded.

Soon the woods were filled with snarls and roars and the sounds of terrible conflicts. Bones crunched in great jaws as tasty, rotting carcasses were consumed.

Soon, all too soon, the carrion in the woods was finished. Now the scent of hundreds of oxen and horses, penned up in the camp, became overwhelmingly interesting to the beasts. Now began a night of desperate struggles.

The worst were the packs of yellow demons, as the men called them. These were bipeds about ten feet long from nose to tail tip that stood about shoulder high to a man. They bore enormous sickle claws on the second toe of each hind foot. Their mouths were lined with serrated teeth. They were horribly active animals, and quite capable of squeezing through the stakes to mount the rampart. They were vulnerable to arrows and spears: A thrust in the belly or chest was enough to discourage them; an arrow in the throat or the eye usually killed them. However, they were fast and they were deadly if they got close. Many men had been gutted by the slashing movement of those hind legs bearing the long sickle claws.

Also to be especially feared were the long-legged green "striders" as they called them. These could step over the stakes and lean down with their long necks and snap off a man's head with their formidable jaws.

During several fights on their side of the rampart, Relkin and Swane found themselves working alongside a Bakan soldier, Bakdi of Fute.

Bakdi was a cheerful, round-faced fellow with glistening brown skin and laughing, dark eyes. He was short and full-bellied, but surprisingly agile and a good shot with his curved compound bow of horn and wood.

His arrows slew three yellow demons in succession at one point. This provided enough of a feast for the rest of the demons in that pack that a lull developed while the horrid meal was devoured on the edge of the ditch.

Relkin and Bakdi watched with somber eyes.

"I am' wondering if I will ever see Fute again," said Bakdi.

"Don't wonder. Bad to think about things like that. Have to live for the moment."

Bakdi pursed his lips. "I think Argonath boy have wisdom, yes? Better not to think about it. Anyway, I came on this mission because I wanted to, so no complain, yes?"

Bakdi's Verio was slow and oddly accented, but still comprehensible.

"Better not to."

"It is good. I am a maker of carpets. I finish a good carpet, oh, but it was my best! So I think, I take a rest from carpets. Go on expedition."

"You wanted some excitement."

"Oh, yes." He sighed. "Excitement. Foolish Bakdi."

Ferocious growls broke out in the nearby thickets.

Long-legged striders appeared. They stepped to the ditch. Swane released. His arrow stuck in a shoulder. Relkin fired, and his arrow bounced off tough strider neck and ricocheted into the dark. Bakdi released, and his arrow sank deep into the leading beast's side.

It gave a wild shriek of rage and pain and tried to leap the stakes. Fortunately it could not leap that far and impaled itself instead. It screamed in further agony and bit at itself.

Its fellows then turned on it and tore it to pieces in the ditch.

Relkin and Swane put up their arrows.

"No need to waste a shaft," said Relkin.

"Right."

"As long as they eat each other we leave them alone," said Bakdi.

"I wish they'd just eat each other up and get it over with. How many of these things can there be out there?"

Neither Relkin nor Bakdi had an answer to that, and they turned back to watch the dimly outlined forest. The green striders growled and crunched their way through their former companion just a few feet below.

When the watch finally ended, Relkin stumbled to his tent and checked on the dragon. Baz was still asleep, but the heat in his wing nubs had lessened. Relkin lifted a big dragon eyelid. By lamplight it was hard to be sure, but it seemed that the eyeball was less yellow and inflamed. He felt the pulse, steady and strong, but then it had never really faded. The great hulk seemed less feverish. It was no longer trembling in the slightest. Just the rhythmic, easy breathing, great lungs lifting the rib cage and then deflating with a sigh.

Was it possible? Could the dragon be making a recovery? Relkin laid himself down and prayed to the old gods and then to the Great Mother for his dragon's recovery. Praying had never been one of Relkin's strong points, and he fumbled the words of most of them, but at length he satisfied himself that he'd asked all the deities he knew of for their help. He wondered if it was worth praying to the Sinni, except that he didn't think they were actually gods—at least that was the impression he'd received from the Great Witch Ribela.

He fell asleep, almost immediately, and dreamed he saw the white stone city of Marneri, as if from a ship. The white walls seemed to float above the dark water of the Long Sound.

Then he was in the city, moving among the crowds. A parade was coming down Tower Hill, people thronged the sidewalks. He watched Lagdalen go by in the parade, marching with a group of senior witches, all wearing the quiet grey robes of their order.

Abruptly there was a loud noise in his ears. Someone was shaking him roughly.

He awoke. Uproar. There was a terrible screaming of horses.

A man yelled something in his face. Relkin could smell the fear on the fellow. Then he ran out of the tent. Relkin pulled his wits together and stumbled to his feet. His hands strapped on his sword belt. He picked up spear and shield.

A small four-legged shape came hurtling through the door and almost cannoned into him. It was Stripey. The little elephant gave a violent trumpet of terror and hid behind Bazil's recumbent form. Relkin pushed through the flap.

The screaming in the horse corral was accompanied now by a ghastly reptilian shrieking.

He staggered outside the tent, still fogged by sleep. He was back in hell.

In the horse corral were two of the terrible striders. They had killed several horses already. The rest were at the far end of the corral, desperately trying to get out. The oxen in the farther pen were also panicked. Men were running to the side of the pen to hold back the oxen. Other men were pumping arrows into the green striders, so far with no effect.

Then there was a human scream of terror from behind him. Relkin whirled around and saw a huge form, one of the brownish red beasts, standing on the rampart. It tossed its head and part of a man's body flew away to land among the tents. Two more men with spears were thrusting at its legs and belly, but it took no notice of them and stepped down inside the camp and made for the oxen. As it went it gave out its distinctive coughing roar.

The oxen went mad. The fencing gave way, and the terrified beasts jammed in a gap where it had gone down. Men leapt for safety to either side.

Without seeming to move, Relkin found himself alongside several Bakani, all with spears, thrusting at the monster's back. One man thrust home, his spear sinking in near the base of the tail.

The beast swung around with terrible rapidity. Its head darted down and clamped on the man's shield. It lifted him off the ground and shook its head and sent him flying twenty feet. As it did so, Relkin ran in from the side and thrust home into the thing's thigh.

Again the head whipped down and the jaws snapped shut. Relkin had anticipated them and darted sideways, heaving his spear free with a jerk. Blood fountained from the wound.

A Czardhan knight came running forward, screaming his war cry, holding a shortened lance in front of him aimed directly at the beast's belly.

The giant beast adroitly stepped out of the man's way. The huge head bobbed down, and the jaws seized the Czardhan and lifted him off his feet. His final scream cut off as the jaws champed and severed his head and legs.

The helmeted head bounced in front of Relkin's eyes. By then Relkin had picked up the cut-down lance. It was much heavier than his spear, but longer and far more deadly. He cradled it and drove at the monster. Again it avoided him with a move practiced against generations of the huge horned beasts on which it preyed. Relkin's forward lunge carried him into fatal range. Fortunately, Bakdi darted in at that moment and put an arrow into the hulking beast's throat. It gave a scream of pain and lunged after Bakdi, who spun backward until his foot struck the severed head of the Czardhan knight. He stumbled and fell, and the thing was on him in a moment. With a roar of fury, Relkin drove the lance at its head and at the last moment it jerked aside, distracted from Bakdi.

Instead the huge jaws snapped shut on the end of the lance. Relkin felt himself heaved off his feet before he could let go. He fell back and turned to run. The lance was tossed aside. The ground shook as the red-brown beast pounced after him. On instinct, Relkin flung himself sideways. He heard the immense jaws snap in the air where he'd been. He cut around an overturned wagon, feet scrabbling for purchase, and then he slid to a stop with his mouth open.

Standing there, head nodding a little from fatigue, was a leatherback battledragon, holding dragonsword in both hands.

The monster behind him had come to a halt as well. He heard its heavy hiss of surprise. Now it took a sideways pace and snarled to itself as it took in this new development. A smaller beast, like itself in some ways, except that there was a long sliver of bright metal in its forehands.

"Boy, get out of way," rasped Bazil.

Then the red-brown giant attacked, leaping forward, head plunging down and jaws snapping.

There was no time for gauging things, no time for thought. Bazil took the beast's measure quite instinctively, as if it were simply some oversize troll and hewed into its neck with Ecator. There was a moment of equipoise, then the shock struck home. The beast pulled sideways in a fountain of its own blood and gave a death shriek. Bazil plunged after it and ran Ecator through its belly with a tremendous thrust.

The monster collapsed and shook the ground with its falling. Relkin ran to his dragon and leaped to his shoulder with a triumphant yell.

Slowly the camp recovered from the plague. The dragons awoke, weak and shaking and staggered out of the tents. Relkin and the other dragonboys worked furiously in the cook pits putting out an enormous quantity of stir about. To flavor it, they rifled the stocks of akh. Dragons ate quietly and took up swords when necessary to subdue invasions from the forest.

The recovery was patchy at first, although there was little mortality among the dragons. Only two, both brasshides from Kadein, failed to awake. There was greater loss among the men. In the legions there were sixty dead and another fifty permanently damaged by the fever. Some twenty Czardhans were buried along with a dozen Kassimi and a handful of men from the Bakan states.

The dragons were burned in the usual manner, the men were buried according to the various rites of their religions. For several days the survivors struggled around as their strength slowly returned.

During this time the wild beasts continued to investigate and at times to besiege the camp, but the sight of dragons armed with swords atop the rampart seemed to deter most attacks. On occasion, however, hunger drove the flat-headed monsters to burst the stakes and mount the rampart, whereupon dragonswords flashed and great beasts expired.

Lessis of Valmes awoke from her own bout of the fever to find the situation teetering back from disaster. There were other losses, however, most grievous to her being the loss of the batrukh, Ridge eyes, who had flown away when she lost consciousness and her spell on him was broken.