Authors: R.A. Salvatore
B
RYNN REVIEWED THE ASSEMBLED
T
O-GAI-RU RIDERS ARRAYED BEHIND
T
ANALK
Grenk: several hundred in number. He had brought them out of Dharyan-Dharielle and along the road to support their beloved leader, the Dragon of To-gai.
The woman gave a doubtful look over at Pagonel and Agradeleous, the dragon in his bipedal lizardman form. They were back in the west now, closer to Dharyan-Dharielle than to Jacintha, after a swift flight that had added the emissary Paroud to the group of riders.
“They number not nearly as many as I would have hoped,” Paroud said curtly. “But they are Ru … To-gai-ru warriors, after all, and renowned for their ferocity.”
“Many more are moving toward Dharyan-Dharielle as we speak,” Tanalk Grenk answered him. “Doubt you the might of To-gai after the defeat of your own kingdom?”
Paroud started to answer, but Brynn cut him off with a simple, “Enough!”
She looked again to Pagonel, silently pleading for his help. What was she to do? Send this army charging to the aid of Jacintha and reinforce the Behrenese secured there with more and more To-gai-ru as they rode out of To-gai to her call? The exchange she had just witnessed between Grenk and Paroud was a telling reminder of the enmity between the peoples, a basic distrust that went back many hundreds of years. Given that, was it right for Brynn to ask her fellow To-gai-ru to die for the cause of Behren, for the security of a Yatol priest who had gladly served the previous, imperialistic Chezru Chieftain? Had Yatol Mado Wadon even questioned the decision by Chezru Douan to invade To-gai and conquer Brynn’s people?
And yet, she could not deny that the other player in the drama that was now Behren was a man she hated even more profoundly. Yatol Bardoh had been the executor of the invasion, a brutal and unmerciful man who had murdered To-gai-ru without the slightest hesitation.
Including Brynn’s own parents.
She closed her eyes and tried to calm herself. Personally, she wanted revenge on Bardoh, but would that justify throwing To-gai into the middle of the Behrenese civil war?
She opened her eyes when she felt a light touch on her arm. Pagonel motioned her to follow him to the side, where they could privately discuss the matter.
“To engage Yatol Bardoh’s forces within the city of Jacintha, should they breach the wall, would be foolhardy,” the mystic cautioned. “Your warriors are better suited to the open desert and roads. Use them to nibble at the perimeters of Yatol Bardoh’s force.” He paused there and spent a long moment studying Brynn’s doubting—scowling, even—look. “If you choose to use them at all,” he added.
“Can I?”
“They look to you as their leader,” Pagonel replied. “If you instruct them to go to war, they will go to war.”
“And can I, in good conscience and with the benefit of To-gai in mind, ask that of them?” Brynn clarified.
“Would To-gai see a benefit if Yatol Bardoh assumes the leadership of Behren?” Pagonel answered. “He has made no secret of his continuing designs on your homeland.”
It was true enough, and there lay Brynn’s dilemma. If she let this civil war continue and Tohen Bardoh proved victorious, then To-gai would likely know war soon enough. And certainly, Bardoh’s first move would be to try to reclaim Dharyan-Dharielle for Behren.
Of course, Brynn understood her limitations quite clearly. She looked back at the small force of riders. Would throwing her warriors and herself into the middle of the conflict even make a difference in the outcome?
There was the rub, and the weight that tipped the scales within Brynn’s thoughts. She looked at Pagonel and nodded appreciatively, then moved back to the others on the road. For the last two weeks, she had tried to avoid this moment of decision. All along the way to Agradeleous’ cave and back again, Brynn had hoped that Mado Wadon would crush Tohen Bardoh and be done with it before she ever had to declare openly whether or not she would engage To-gai in the fight.
Now she had run out of time.
“Go back to Dharyan-Dharielle and organize all of those coming in,” she instructed Tanalk Grenk.
“You must be quick, then!” Paroud advised. “If you are to assemble a larger force, then do so at once, or it may prove too late for Yatol Wadon!”
Brynn shot him a brief look, but turned back to her trusted commander. “Organize the defense of Dharyan-Dharielle, and of all the paths leading into To-gai,” she ordered. “If Yatol Bardoh proves victorious, he will turn against us, I do not doubt. And we will be ready for him.”
“We will,” Tanalk Grenk promised.
“What foolishness is this?” Paroud demanded, the weight of it all sinking in. “You will forsake us in our hour of need?”
“Forsake you?” Brynn asked incredulously.
“You feign friendship with Yatol Wadon to get that which you desire, but when that friendship is tested—”
“Friendship?” Brynn interrupted. “I have never feigned friendship, nor claimed friendship, with Yatol Wadon.”
Paroud stammered and nearly fell over himself, gesturing protests wildly. “When Yatol Bardoh was at your gates … when you were in need … was it not Yatol Mado Wadon …”
“Who recalled the Jacintha garrison and stood down the army because he dared not risk another costly fight?” Brynn finished for him. “Understand me in this. I
am no enemy of your Yatol Wadon. But I understand, as do you, that his decision to forgo the battle at Dharyan-Dharielle was for his benefit and the benefit of Behren.”
“He let you keep the city!” Paroud screamed at her. “A Behrenese city!”
“Because his choice was either me or Yatol Bardoh, who he knew would soon enough attack him,” Brynn replied. “No, my decision is made, and it is for the good of To-gai.” She looked to Tanalk Grenk and nodded for him to go, and he gave a deferential nod of his chin and swung his pinto pony about, organizing the warriors for the ride home.
Paroud started to protest again, but Brynn walked right up to him, eyeing him coldly.
“I will not ask the To-gai-ru to shed blood for the sake of the Behrenese,” she said with complete calm. “Not when the memories of Behrenese cruelty remain so keen in their minds. If Yatol Wadon desires a true alliance between our peoples, even a friendship, perhaps, then it is his responsibility to foster that friendship.”
Paroud stood very still for a long while, digesting her blunt retort. “It will be a difficult course for Yatol Wadon to take if he is dead.”
“That would be most unfortunate,” Brynn replied. “And I will try to help prevent that where I might.”
Paroud’s look went to one of confusion. “You just said …”
“That I would not ask my kinfolk to bleed for Behren,” the woman explained. “For me, this feud with Yatol Bardoh runs much deeper.”
“One woman?” Pechter Dan Turk dared to say with obvious skepticism. “A warrior, to be sure, but hardly an army.”
“One woman and one Jhesta Tu,” Brynn replied, looking to Pagonel, who nodded grimly.
Off to the side, Agradeleous gave a roar.
“And let us not forget,” Pagonel added.
I
t started as a trickle of fleeing refugees, desperate and desolate, wandering up the road from the south. Soon it built to a flood, filtering about the ramshackle buildings of the slum outside of Jacintha proper and marching to the wall. These were the people of Avrou Das and Paerith, the main cities of Yatol De Hamman’s domain. Before the questioning of those on the leading edge of the refugee line had even begun, Yatol Mado Wadon understood the implications.
De Hamman’s province had been overrun by the combined forces of Bardoh and Peridan. Now there remained nothing between that joined army and the walls of Jacintha.
The refugees poured in all through the day and night, in a line that showed no signs of ending. Finally, Yatol Wadon ordered the gates closed. But still they came, wandering to Jacintha because they had nowhere else in all the world to go. Thousands milled about the brown fields beyond the city and the shanties beyond Jacintha’s strong walls. They were desperate people with little to eat and drink, and
with no hope left in their dull eyes.
On the second night after the grim procession began, scouts returned to the city with word that there was a distinctive and bright glow in the sky to the south, and Mado Wadon understood that Avrou Das was burning.
Soon after, one of the refugees was brought to see the Yatol of Jacintha, and so battered and dirty was the man that Yatol Mado Wadon at first did not recognize him—not until he spoke.
“I expected the loyalty of Jacintha,” he said, his voice heavy with grief and pain and simple weariness.
“Yatol De Hamman,” Mado Wadon said, and he moved near to the man and reached up and placed his hand on De Hamman’s dirty cheek. “We did not know.”
“You knew that Tohen Bardoh had assembled a great force, and knew that he had turned south,” De Hamman argued.
“But to what purpose?”
“Is that not obvious?” De Hamman countered. “My land is in ruin, my cities burning. So many of my warriors were already weary from their long struggle with Peridan, and so many more were siphoned off from Avrou Das to aid in Chezru Douan’s foolish war in the west.”
“But I had no way of knowing Tohen Bardoh’s plans,” Yatol Wadon protested. “He could have just as easily thrown in with De Hamman as with Peridan.” If not an outright lie, the Yatol’s reasoning was certainly porous and suspect—and obviously so to everyone in the room. Yatol Bardoh had made his designs on Jacintha quite public from the beginning of the insurrection, and given that, turning his forces southward would have obviously prompted an alliance with Peridan, who was fighting Jacintha-backed De Hamman.
Still, for whatever reason, the desperate Yatol De Hamman did not press the point any further.
“We could not resist them,” the defeated man remarked. “They arrived unexpectedly on the field south of Paerith, and with the reinforcements of Yatol Bardoh, Yatol Peridan’s line was five times that of my warriors. Many broke ranks and fled, and those who remained were slaughtered to a man. Paerith was in flames that same day. I tried to organize some defense of Avrou Das, but …” He just shook his head helplessly, then closed his eyes and cried, his shoulders bobbing.
“We will stop them,” Yatol Wadon promised. “We will turn them back and pay them back for this atrocity committed against you and your flock. And I will help you to rebuild your cities, my old friend. On my word!”
That seemed to comfort Yatol De Hamman somewhat. He sniffled away the tears, looked at Mado Wadon, and offered a hopeful nod.
The Yatol of Jacintha motioned to his attendants then, to take Yatol De Hamman to a private room where he might clean up and find some rest. Then Wadon himself went to his bedroom, followed by images of battle and Jacintha burning.
He slept not at all.
And the next morning, when the scouts returned with a better assessment of
the disaster just south of the city, Yatol Wadon realized that he might not be sleeping well for a long, long time.
“Avrou Eesa, Pruda, Alzuth, Teramen,” Rabia Awou recited, the list of towns—nearly all of the major cities of western Behren—that had thrown in with Yatol Bardoh in his march against Jacintha.
Yatol Wadon closed his eyes as the recital continued, including the southeastern stretches of the kingdom, Yatol Peridan’s domain of Cosinnida. Given the source of this information, Rabia Awou, Wadon couldn’t dismiss it at all. Rabia Awou was the best scout of Jacintha, a man of disguise and intelligence, who could transform not only his appearance, but his demeanor, as well, and infiltrate the most secretive of societies. Once long ago, Chezru Douan had used him to infiltrate a ring of thieves working the docks of Jacintha, and the small, slender, brown-skinned man’s work had been nothing short of brilliant, and his information nothing short of perfect.
“Pruda?” he did ask doubtfully, for Pruda, the former center of learning in Behren, had always remained neutral in the ways of war.
“The folk of Pruda resent the fact that you allowed Brynn Dharielle to keep the contents of the library she stole from their beloved city,” Rabia explained.
Yatol Wadon looked at him incredulously. “How was I to get them back?” he asked. “Would the good people of Pruda like to lead the march into Dharyan-Dharielle against the Dragon of To-gai?”
Rabia Awou just shrugged, as if it did not matter to him. And of course, it did not. “They seek one to blame for their great loss,” he explained. “They blame you.”
“Yatol De Hamman said that the combined army that took the field against him was five times his number—”
“Then that was less than half of Bardoh’s army,” Rabia Awou said grimly, and the weight of that statement nearly knocked Yatol Wadon over.
He knew at once that Jacintha was surely doomed.
Hardly thinking, the man turned to the side, to the room’s eastern window, and gazed out across the bay at the tiny specks on the horizon.
I
n the early-evening twilight, Brynn and her companions could see clearly where the line of refugees ended and the wave of pursuing warriors began. Agradeleous put the woman and her three companions down on a high dune overlooking the north–south coastal road. The flames of Avrou Das were clearly visible in the south, and even more poignant than that tragedy were the screams of terror rolling over the flat sands.
“Take your beast and go to them!” Paroud insisted to Brynn. “Are you to stand here and watch while people die? Have you no conscience or concern?”
From behind the man, Agradeleous gave a low, rumbling growl, and Paroud slowly turned about to regard the dragon.
“If you call me a beast again, I will eat you,” the dragon promised, and the ambassador from Jacintha seemed as if he would faint dead away.
“Tohen Bardoh knows how to fight Agradeleous,” Brynn replied, and she was speaking as much to clarify her own thoughts as to explain her actions to the others. “I dare not reveal the dragon before his forces are fully engaged.”
“I will eat them all,” Agradeleous declared, and when Paroud pointed to the dragon and looked back at Brynn, as if to acknowledge the dragon’s agreement with his logic, the dragon added, “Starting with Paroud.”