Authors: R.A. Salvatore
“Yes, Yatol.”
Grysh looked at the map, at the valley of the Masur Shinton. If the reports were correct, the Dragon of To-gai would arrive at Dharyan’s gates early that very evening. And there she would die, as Ashwarawu had died.
That thought did bring a twang of regret to Yatol Grysh, for his friend and trusted commander, Wan Atenn, rotting on the sun-baked stones of a far-distant southern wasteland, would not partake of this glorious victory.
But now he had seven Chezhou-Lei at his disposal, he reminded himself, his new advisor and the six who had come in from Jacintha. That would suffice to destroy utterly this pretentious rebel and her followers. Then Grysh would lead the force personally into To-gai, spending the summer moving across the steppes, bringing harsh justice to the upstart Ru. They would accept the rule of Behren, or they would die.
It was as simple as that.
“M
ark the line, left and right,” Brynn instructed as her force of nearly a thousand neared Dharyan. She stretched out her front line, spacing the warriors widely, and squared them up to the city, its dark wall back-lighted by the fires burning within.
Beside her, Pagonel sucked in his breath, as did many others.
Brynn looked to him for support. She had pleaded with him not to come out there, but he had refused to be left behind, and in truth, she was glad that he had. Now that the time was upon her, Brynn did not think that she could get through this difficult beginning without him beside her.
But how much worse would it become if he was felled by an arrow?
Brynn growled that dark thought away. “Strike the torches!” the woman ordered, and the call went along the line, and those few brave volunteers who had agreed to wield the torches brought them up in a blaze.
“Cadence slow!” Brynn cried and the drummers began, beating out a slow pace, the whole of the force walking deliberately toward the distant wall. Those drums would be heard within Dharyan, Brynn knew, and in fact, she was counting on it.
More torches went up along that wall, and a voice called out, “Halt where you are and be recognized!”
“Do you not know me, Yatol Grysh?” Brynn cried back. “Have you not heard of
the Dragon of To-gai?”
A great cheer went up behind her at that proclamation. “Well said,” Pagonel remarked, and it was just the bit of support that Brynn needed at that moment.
“First volley!” she yelled, and a thousand bows bent back and a thousand arrows soared into the dark sky, arcing for Dharyan. They were a long way out, though, and the barrage had little, if any, effect.
Little physical effect, Brynn knew, but this attack was not about that.
Brynn held aloft her sword and set it ablaze. The drums stopped.
“To-gai free!” she cried, and brought her sword sweeping down, and so began the charge, a thousand horses shaking the ground.
A second volley went away, and then a third, with more and more arrows making the wall, even taking down enemies.
Brynn gritted her teeth as they continued their charge, for they were getting close—too close, she feared! When would the response come?
P
erched a few miles away, on the cliff-face of the To-gai plateau, Juraviel, Cazzira, and Agradeleous watched the line of torches snaking across the dark plain.
“They will fight without me again!” the dragon complained bitterly.
“No, this is no fight,” Juraviel explained. “She waits to turn.”
“They grow close,” said Cazzira.
“Brynn awaits the revelation,” Juraviel remarked. “She needs Yatol Grysh to show his strength to chase her away.”
Agradeleous grumbled and shook his head, obviously not catching on to it all.
“She centers the leading line of the charge,” Cazzira noted. “Brave, perhaps, but foolish will she seem if she is cut down.”
“Then she will lead as a martyr,” Juraviel said grimly, but his wince belied his stoic tone.
A
rrows came out at them, as well as a few huge ballista bolts, giant spears creasing the air, close enough so that the charging warriors could hear them whistle past. The Dharyan catapults even fired, though their fiery pitch balls were easily spotted and avoided by the skilled To-gai-ru riders.
They were barely fifty yards from the wall by then, close enough to pick out forms scrambling in the torchlight, and so their volleys proved more deadly, and so the cries of agony began, at the wall, and then among the To-gai-ru ranks.
Brynn grimaced, but held fast her plan, knowing that many of these brave warriors would not ride out of this deadly place. They had all known that grim reality, and yet every man and woman in her army—every single one!—had volunteered to ride with her to the base of the wall. Still, this macabre game of nerves was starting to fray hers. “Commit them,” she whispered, a quiet plea to Yatol Grysh. “Show us our folly.”
Forty yards.
“Sweep left and right!” she ordered her band, though she understood that such
a turn might actually leave more of them exposed.
Immediately, the well-drilled To-gai-ru line split down the middle, going left and right. For the skilled horsemen, who hunted the wild steppes while riding, the turn did nothing to deter their attack, and their arrows continued to skim the top of the wall.
But then came a cry from that wall, a familiar voice, speaking in the language of the To-gai-ru.
“A trap! A trap!” Ya Ya Deng, Ashwarawu’s informant, cried out, and then her words became a groan, and all who heard it understood that she had been silenced by a sword.
“Hold! Hold and center!” Brynn cried immediately, and how grateful she was for that unexpected assistance, for the excuse to keep her soldiers back a bit farther from the wall.
And not a moment too soon, for even as the split forces began re-forming at the center, and back out to more than fifty yards, the horns began to blow wildly within Dharyan and the top of the wall seemed to grow, as hundreds of soldiers stood up, bows in hand, letting loose a volley that would have surely devastated the force had they been closer. Even as it was, many warriors fell in that devastating volley, stuck with arrows or with their prized horses shot out from under them.
“A trap! A trap!” went the cry along the To-gai-ru line, on cue. “Run away! Run away!”
They milled about in seeming confusion, though in truth, the skilled horsemen knew exactly their course. They scooped up comrades, grabbed horses wandering riderless, and suffered the storm of another arrow volley.
And then they turned and fled, crying out in seeming despair.
A
ll along the Dharyan wall, a cry of victory erupted, with soldiers throwing their arms into the air and yelling out for Yatol Grysh. In the courtyard behind them, the Yatol stood with his seven Chezhou-Lei commanders.
“The Dragon of To-gai!” one spat. “She turns and flees at the first resistance! Coward Ru!”
The others murmured their agreement with the assessment.
“They have ridden all the day,” the supremely confident Yatol Grysh told his commanders. “Take your men and their horses, hunt them down, and kill them.”
It was an order eagerly received. Within only a few minutes, Dharyan’s western gate swung wide and the ground shook under the hoofbeats of nearly fifteen hundred cavalry, the Jacintha warriors and a good portion of the Dharyan garrison beside them.
They came out strong, barely taking the time to form into any coherent groupings, and swung to the south, thundering away in full gallop.
Soon after, the fleeing To-gai-ru force was spotted, still running south, paralleling the plateau. Thinking their prey tiring, the Chezhou-Lei spurred their forces on even harder, gaining ground.
They came into the northern end of one narrow vale, split by a wide and shallow river, and saw the torches of the fleeing To-gai-ru streaming out the southern end, only a quarter of a mile ahead.
Up went the war cries, the leaders and their soldiers bending low over their mounts, thinking their victory, over a tired and battered foe, at hand.
And then their world changed, so abruptly, so stunningly, as both hills, left and right, came alive with swarms of To-gai-ru warriors, as the Dragon of To-gai’s three thousand hidden warriors sprang up, raining death from on high.
At the south end of the valley, Brynn called for a halt and turn, re-forming her line. She didn’t turn them loose immediately, but let the rain of death continue, let the Behrenese ranks break apart with terror and confusion, let them thin as soldier after soldier was plucked from his horse.
Then came the charge, left and right, the To-gai-ru forces closing like the jaws of death, angling to seal off any retreat.
And then came Brynn’s charge, in a long and thin line, bows humming and then swords clashing.
The Behrenese had nowhere to flee, and no time to regroup into any semblance of a defensive formation. Nor could the Behrenese shoot from horseback with anywhere near the speed and accuracy of the skilled To-gai-ru hunters. Brynn had shaped the battlefield perfectly to fit her forces, and had used the overconfidence of Yatol Grysh to coax his soldiers from behind their defensive walls, out into the open, where they were no match for the fierce To-gai-ru riders.
And she eagerly led the way in for close combat when the time was upon them, her fiery sword flashing death to any Behrenese who wandered too close.
In truth, most were merely trying to flee. That only heightened the slaughter.
“M
y night has just begun,” Brynn said to Pagonel when the battle had ended. She found the mystic hard at work tending the wounded, though he had not escaped unharmed, and showed a bright line of blood across his upper arm where an arrow had creased his skin.
The mystic nodded. “You understand the power you now unleash?” he asked.
“I understand that Dharyan will fall in the morning,” Brynn grimly replied. “Whatever the cost.”
The mystic nodded and Brynn turned Runtly and galloped away to the west, to the base of the plateau divide.
Her friends were waiting for her, Juraviel and Cazzira already sitting astride the great dragon, who was back in his more natural, and more imposing, winged form.
“I feared that we would have to leave without you,” Juraviel remarked, obviously greatly relieved to see the woman still alive and unharmed.
“This is not a fight I wish to miss,” Brynn replied, climbing up atop the dragon’s lowered neck.
“We marked well the ballista emplacements,” Cazzira informed her.
Brynn nodded. “A few, perhaps,” she agreed. “But the prize I seek is greater.”
“Their great spears are the only weapons which can prevent me from razing the city wholly,” the dragon argued.
“We will break their heart and their will, and so Dharyan will fall,” was all that Brynn would offer at that moment.
Up they went, high into the dark sky, and in moments, the lights of Dharyan were in clear sight.
How much brighter they would soon burn!
Brynn brought the dragon around to the north and then to the east, knowing full well that all of Dharyan’s eyes were straining south and west.
Agradeleous climbed high into the dark sky, then he turned and held for just a moment, and then he plummeted, gaining speed. With a tremendous rush, his wind alone blasting surprised guards from the northeastern wall, the dragon crossed over the city. Despite Brynn’s instructions, he did veer to cross right above one ballista emplacement, his raking claws and sweeping tail destroying it and its crew as he rushed past. And then he turned for his primary target, and it was not difficult to spot, for the temple of Dharyan was easily the largest structure in the city.
He pulled up before it and loosed his fiery breath, blowing out the eastern windows, lighting the wooden supports.
He shifted up higher and breathed again, and then a third time, his breath igniting fires all about the structure.
Below on the streets, the people cried and rushed for cover, and Agradeleous dropped upon them, strafing a line of fire along one avenue, starting fires along the rows of houses and storefronts.
Behind Brynn, Juraviel and Cazzira worked their bows wildly, sending lines of stinging arrows out at any soldiers they could spot.
“Enough, Agradeleous!” Brynn cried repeatedly, but the dragon wasn’t hearing her, or wasn’t paying her any heed if he was! He swept along above the streets, his tail thrashing destruction, his claws snapping down at any soldiers he caught in the open, his breath sweeping out to immolate any who were not fast enough or cunning enough to get out of the way.
Soldiers died in that rush, but many more civilians fell to Agradeleous. Women died and children died, and Brynn had to fight back the bile in her throat.
Gradually, the defense began to organize, and arrows whizzed up about the riders, many striking the dragon, bouncing harmlessly off his scales or scoring hits upon his leathery wings.
And Brynn continued to scream at the beast, commanding him to fly away, as they had planned.
And Agradeleous continued to rain death and destruction, all the way to the front gates of the great city, which he leveled with a single blast of his fiery breath.
Finally, the dragon flew off, back into the darkness of night, leaving the screams and the rumble of great fires, behind him. He reached the cliff-facing, but did not
land and let his riders down. No, he went up higher, searching among the heights until he found a loose boulder that he could scoop up with his great clawed feet. Then he turned and swept back for Dharyan, flying high above the city, too high for the archers or the ballistae to reach him.
He dropped the boulder, aiming perfectly for the largest fire in the city, and the huge stone smashed through the roof of the Dharyan’s temple.
“I can do this all night!” the dragon boasted.
Brynn just wanted to be put back down, and so she ordered the dragon to take her back to where she had left Runtly.
And Agradeleous did so, then he flew off with the two elves, up the cliff-facing to find more boulders and then back over Dharyan to randomly bomb the place.
B
rynn came back into the To-gai-ru encampment with a heart heavy from the destruction she had witnessed on the field and especially in the city. One scene in particular, a group of women immolated by dragon fire while they ran along a street, hung thick in her thoughts.