Authors: R.A. Salvatore
Again, the man seemed as if he might just fall over.
“We will go to the south,” Brynn decided. “If I know Tohen Bardoh, that is where he will be found, hiding behind his lines until victory is assured.” She looked to Pagonel as she finished, and the mystic nodded his approval.
When darkness fell the dragon was off again, swinging back to the west, then banking south, only gradually making his way back to the east to complete the circuit behind the rear position of Bardoh’s lines.
From on high, Brynn marked the campfires well.
“Y
ou would make me come out here personally?” Yatol Wadon said, trembling with anger. For not only had he been forced to climb into a small boat and travel all the way out to
Rontlemore’s Dream
to meet the abbot of St. Bondabruce, the man would not give him a private audience. Duke Bretherford and Master Mackaront were on hand, sitting at either side of Abbot Olin, while Wadon had only been allowed to enter the cabin alone.
“Consider yourself fortunate that there is a ‘here’ to come out to,” replied Abbot Olin, wearing a superior grin as he glanced left and right at his two underlings.
A frustrated and frightened Wadon turned his eye on Mackaront. “You told me that the provisions were already being made! You told me that Abbot Olin was already aiding Jacintha. Where are the soldiers, Master Mackaront? Where is the help we need when Yatol Bardoh’s army is within a day’s march of Jacintha’s southern gate?”
Mackaront, wearing a grin to match Olin’s, turned deferentially to his abbot.
“Our reach is greater than you understand, my friend,” Olin explained. “But why would I place Honce-the-Bear soldiers into battle on behalf of Jacintha, without even knowing if Jacintha truly desired our help? I do not so willingly send my countrymen to die, nor am I thrilled at the prospect of telling good King Aydrian of his losses after the war—the war to which we have not yet been invited.”
All energy seemed to flow out of Yatol Mado Wadon at that moment, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “Would you have me beg?” he asked somberly.
Abbot Olin scoffed at him. “Your begging is of no practical use to me.”
“Then what, Abbot Olin?” Yatol Wadon asked. “What am I to offer in exchange for your aid? Surely you understand that your position will be stronger if I rule in Jacintha than if Yatol Bardoh conquers the place.”
“Truthfully, Yatol, I know of no such thing,” Olin replied. “I have known Yatol Bardoh for years, and ever have we held a fondness for each other. He was much more tolerant of Chezru Douan’s arrangement with Entel than many in Douan’s
own palace of Chom Deiru.”
Yatol Wadon couldn’t help but wince at that last remark, for the reference was true enough concerning him specifically.
“But still you are here, and I have Master Mackaront’s words as a guide,” the desperate Yatol reasoned. “You are prepared to step in against Yatol Bardoh—you have said as much. So please spare me the cryptic games, Abbot, and speak that which you desire.”
Abbot Olin came forward suddenly. “I will fend Bardoh’s forces and save Jacintha for you,” he said bluntly. “And as a reward, I will be seated in Chom Deiru beside you.”
“There is always a spare room …”
“Not as your guest, Yatol,” Abbot Olin clarified. “But as your equal!”
Yatol Mado Wadon blanched and blinked repeatedly.
“Together we will forge a relationship between Abellican and Chezru,” Abbot Olin explained. “You and I will seek the common ground of our respective religions and we will use that ground to build a new religion.”
“You wish to bring the Abellican Church to Behren!” Yatol Wadon accused, seeing the coy words for what they were.
Abbot Olin slipped back in his seat into a comfortable position and looked again to his two commanders. “I offer you a place beside me,” he said. “One of luxury and comfort.”
“A place for a stooge to give you credibility, you mean!”
“And if I do mean exactly that?” Abbot Olin retorted. “Your religion is in shambles, and you know it. All the pretense of Chezru died with the revelations of Yakim Douan’s deceptions. You scorn the sacred gemstones of the Abellican Church openly, and yet your leader, your God-Voice, used those very stones to seek immortality. Do you really believe that the religion of Chezru will survive this?
“And so I offer you an alternative,” Abbot Olin went on. “Together we might rebuild the trust of the Behrenese people. Consider your options before you so readily dismiss my offer, Yatol. If I defeat Bardoh for you, Jacintha will survive. If I remain out here … well, I wonder how high the flames will leap over Jacintha.”
Yatol Wadon glanced all around, seeming like a cornered animal. But again, he suddenly seemed to deflate, as if all the fight had been taken from him. “Stop him,” he begged Olin, his voice no more than a whisper.
Abbot Olin’s smile widened nearly to take in his ears. “I am fighting for a seat in Chom Deiru,” he explained to the Yatol. “I fight well when the rewards are so great.”
Abbot Olin turned to Bretherford and nodded, and the duke rose and left the room. He paused at the door and glanced back at the abbot, his expression ambiguous, as it had been since the rise of Aydrian, and all along this wild and unexpected journey.
“Go back to your … to our, city, Yatol Wadon, and instruct your archers to hold their shots as the warriors of Honce-the-Bear cross along your western wall,”
Abbot Olin explained. “Muster your own forces along the city’s south wall alone.”
“The south wall and the docks,” Yatol Wadon replied. “We have information that Yatol Peridan has assembled a great fleet.”
Abbot Olin and Master Mackaront both began to laugh. “Along the south wall alone, Yatol,” he reiterated. “Your docks will not see battle.”
Yatol Wadon stared at the man hard, not understanding.
But Abbot Olin merely laughed again, not explaining.
S
creams erupted among the ramshackle buildings just outside Jacintha’s southern wall, and flames quickly followed.
Yatol Mado Wadon and his assistants watched the beginning slaughter from the bell tower of Chom Deiru. The legions of Bardoh and Peridan—many of them wearing the colors of the Jacintha garrison!—marched among the buildings, wantonly slaughtering the dirty peasants as they tried to scramble out of the way.
A huge host of frightened commoners, peasant and refugee alike, swarmed the city proper’s southern wall, beating their hands against the soft stone and pressing hard against the gate, so hard that several fell dead, crushed by the weight of the terrified, frenzied crowd.
“Tell them to fight back!” Yatol Mado Wadon yelled at those around him. “Prod them on! Pour burning oil on them from the walls if you must to turn them back into the fight against Bardoh’s dogs!”
“Yatol, they have no weapons to use against the soldiers,” one of the attendants tried to explain, but old and angry Wadon slapped him across the face to silence him, then said through gritted teeth, “Tell them to fight back.”
The screams grew louder, as did the press on the wall, which was exactly what the enemies of Jacintha desired, Yatol Wadon knew. Bardoh the merciless was using the peasants as fodder, forcing the Jacintha soldiers to waste arrows on their worthless hides, or to pour oil on them. Using their fear, Bardoh had turned the hundreds into a human battering ram.
Yatol Wadon turned to gaze out to sea, where a fleet of warships was gliding into clear view. These were not the low-running sleek pirate boats that Peridan had reportedly used, but the greater warships of Honce-the-Bear. From his high vantage point, Wadon could see signalmen on the prows of those approaching craft, waving large red flags.
The Yatol glanced back to the north, to the mountains. “Hurry up, Abbot Olin,” he muttered under his breath.
South of the city proper, the screams began to diminish, and Yatol Wadon heard the call of his parapet battle commanders. In seconds, the fight was on in full, with the city defenders firing their bows over the wall and artillerymen launching their catapults, sending huge balls of burning pitch soaring out to the south. But Bardoh and Peridan had not come unprepared, and the returning fire, including a barrage from a high dune far away that almost took down large sections of the wall in a single volley, was no less devastating.
Yatol Wadon cupped his hand across his brow to shield the glare and peered out to the southwest, to that high dune, to a line of catapults that had been dragged into position.
The second volley was soon airborne, a combination of boulders and flaming brands, and in seconds, several structures about Jacintha’s southern wall went up in flames.
“T
he advance begins in full!” proclaimed Abu Das Abu, the undercommander for Yatol Peridan’s waterborne legions. The obese man sat on a huge padded chair specially constructed to hold his girth. Once a great warrior, considered a match for even a Chezhou-Lei, Abu Das Abu had been sorely wounded in a tragic wagon accident many years before and had lost all strength and feeling in his lower torso. Normally in the harsh Behrenese society, such a debilitating injury would have meant a death sentence, but so valuable was Abu Das Abu’s battle cunning that Yatol Peridan had kept him on all these years. It was Abu Das Abu who had led Peridan to the pirate leader Maisha Darou in the early days of his conflict with Yatol De Hamman, and that alliance had given Peridan a decided edge over the Yatol to the north.
And now, with the greater promise of Jacintha itself, and indeed, all of Behren, that alliance had seemingly paid dividends once again, for Maisha Darou had responded to Peridan’s plea with a tremendous fleet of ships.
Abu Das Abu had more than five thousand warriors on those ships, sailing fast to the north, paralleling the charge of the infantry as it neared Jacintha’s southern district and wall.
“We will let the fighting begin in earnest, then sweep into the docks,” Abu Das Abu directed Maisha Darou. “Yatols Peridan and Bardoh will pressure the city’s defenses. Jacintha will need every warrior to hold the wall, and so the docks will be ours!”
Maisha Darou reflected the obese man’s wicked smile. “We will find a favorable tide coming in from the north,” he explained. “We must tack deeper out to sea so that we are not seen by the watchers on the docks. They will expect an attack from the sea, but from the south and not the north.”
Abu Das Abu looked at the man suspiciously for some time, weighing every word. Darou’s course change was not in the original plan, and while Abu Das Abu wanted the infantry to reach the city first, the fleet could not lag too far behind.
“I know these waters,” the pirate said, clapping the big man on the shoulder. “Once we get out past the southern coastal current, our speed will amaze you. And there is a swirl out there and a back tide that will rush us in to Jacintha’s docks faster than a To-gai pony.”
“Back tide?” Abu Das Abu asked doubtfully. “I have never heard of such a thing.”
But all that Maisha Darou would reply was, “You will see,” and the pirate walked away, motioning to his pilot to tack hard right, turning the ships out to the deeper waters of the great Mirianic.
Just as Duke Bretherford had instructed.
“Y
ou see, Yatol Peridan, it is all in the execution,” Yatol Bardoh said smugly, watching the pounding at the southern wall of Jacintha from a position on the high ridge, beside his formidable battery of catapults and great, spear-throwing ballistae. “Now, as soon as your Abu Das Abu takes his force onto the docks, all pretense of Jacintha’s defense will shatter, and we will have the city.”
Peridan started to respond, but reflexively ducked as another great volley went out from the artillery beside them. He shook his head in absolute amazement at the effectiveness of those batteries. These were Yatol Bardoh’s trump card, as Abu Das Abu’s force was Peridan’s. Bardoh had spent weeks with his forces doing nothing but building these great war engines. Their power would bring down Jacintha in short order, he had promised Peridan, and—and this was the real prize in Bardoh’s eyes, Peridan knew—would evict the troublesome Dragon of To-gai from the Behrenese city of Dharyan.
And it all seemed to be going extremely well. Even from this great distance, Peridan could see that the city’s defenders were sorely pressed. Sections of wall were down, and large fires had begun to rage. And all the ground before the wall was strewn with the dead peasants and the pitiful refugees who had swarmed north from De Hamman’s towns before the charge of Peridan and Bardoh. Now, if only Abu Das Abu would reach the docks …
And he should be there, Peridan knew, but there were no indications of any action along the city’s eastern side, though in truth, he couldn’t see it well enough from his vantage point to gauge properly.
His relief was palpable when an aide came riding hard toward the ridgeline, crying out that there were ships in the harbor.
“Abu Das Abu,” Peridan announced to Bardoh, and the Yatol of Avrou Eesa grinned wickedly and nodded his approval.
“Ships in the harbor!” the messenger cried again, his horse struggling up the ridge. “Great warships! Flying the pennant of the bear and tiger!”
In the blink of an eye, the smiles disappeared from the faces of the two Yatols.
“Honce-the-Bear?” Yatol Bardoh said to the man, who dismounted and began scrambling toward the great leader.
“Yes, Yatol,” the messenger replied. “They are Bearmen, no doubt. There are whispers that Abbot Olin is among them!”
“Where is our fleet?” Yatol Bardoh demanded of the messenger, and he turned as he spoke, throwing the question at Yatol Peridan, as well.
“I do not know!” the messenger shrieked.
In his rage, Yatol Bardoh turned and motioned to Ung Lik Dy, his personal Chezhou-Lei bodyguard, and the muscular man stepped forward immediately and with a sudden movement, whipped the delicately curving sword from its sheath across his back and in a single fluid motion, took the head from the messenger’s body—so quickly that the man didn’t even have the time to cry out.
The head rolled across the dirt and wound up staring back at the headless body, which was only then beginning to sway and topple, and the messenger’s eyes and mouth widened in unison, as if in that moment of his death, he had suddenly realized what had just happened.