Dragon Queen
Authors: Stephen Deas
Also by Stephen Deas from Gollancz:
The Adamantine Palace
The King of the Crags
The Order of the Scales
The Black Mausoleum
The Thief-Taker's Apprentice
The Warlock's Shadow
The King's Assassin
Dragon Queen
Stephen Deas
GOLLANCZ
LONDON
My mother was an enchantress and my father was an alchemist.
They taught me the magic of this world and of many others.
They forged me as I am, and for that I am grateful.
Note: This story contains a scene of a violent sexual nature
No fear for consequence remains
Contents
Also by Stephen Deas from Gollancz
1 The Bloody Judge
2 An Unexpected Departure
3 Tuuran
4 The Storm-Dark
5 The Enchantress
6 The Palace of Leaves
7 The Elemental Man
8 Skyrie
9 The Empty Sands
10 Someone Else's Skin
11 Over Her Heart
12 The Queen's Road
13 The Grey Dead
14 The Dragon Slave
15 Crazy Mad
16 Priests of the Vul Storna
17 The Speaker and Her Spear
18 The Naked Dragon
19 Fickle Fortune
20 Silence
21 Dragon-queen
22 The T'Varr
23 The Kwen
24 An Understanding
25 That Which a Dragon May Not Have
26 The Palace of Leaves
27 The System of the World
28 Knives
29 Knowledge
30 The Desert
31 Harsh as a Desert Heart
32 Regrettable
33 Yena
34 The Layers of a Man
35 The Day the Dragons Came
36 In the Realm of the Dying Sun
37 Feeding Time
38 Khalishtor
39 The Council of the Sea
40 Dragon-rider
41 Unnatural Selection
42 A Dragon's Touch
43 The Sea Lord's Granddaughter
44 Hatchling Blood
45 The Hsian
46 Slaves and Executioners
47 The Walking Man
48 The Lord of Silver
49 Men of Stone
50 Damage
51 Lessons in Diplomacy
52 The Touch of the Wind
53 Stiff Around the Edges
54 The Devourers
55 Need
56 Dhar Thosis
57 Shades of Entanglement
58 Never Forgotten
59 All Debts Paid
60 An Orphan Boy from Shipwrights’
61 The Point of Balance
62 The Void
63 Hatchling Disease
64 The Diamond Isles
65 Beneath the Skin
66 Fireships, Golems and Dragons
67 Purpose
68 Sail, Fight, Freedom
69 Desert Twilight
70 Death From Above
71 Snake Dance
72 Fire
73 Lightning
74 The Titans
75 Vul Tara
76 The Bridge of Eternity
77 Men of Stone
78 Shields of Glass and Gold
79 Burn
80 The Man in Grey
81 Who Am I?
82 Who I Am
83 Blood
84 A Crack of Light
There was a peace to killing.
Men pressed him from all sides, crushed together. His own soldiers pushed against his back and to either side. Ahead, the enemy were forced before him by their own sheer numbers. He met them with remorseless savagery, slashing and stabbing, reaching for any inch of unguarded flesh. The black moonsteel edge of his sword glittered in the sunlight. Dark as night and sharp as broken glass, it shattered steel and splintered bone with a hunger all of its own. Spears and swords broke. Armour ripped open like skin beneath a tiger's claw. Entrails spilled across the ground to join the bloody mess of severed heads and arms. His feet slipped and slid beneath him. Sweat stung his eyes. The air stank of iron and death. Blood ran down his blade and over his gauntlets. He could feel it finding its way through the cracks and joints and seams, oozing down his arm underneath the leather and the metal scales. A part of him forgot his name, forgot why he was there, forgot everything and gave itself over to the savage he kept inside, letting it fill up every pore, every hair, every thought. The rest looked on as if looking down on the battle from above, ready to tell the madman when to stop. Yes, there was a peace to killing. He'd always found it so.
A spear glanced off the scales covering his ribs. A bone cracked but he barely felt it; an instant later he split the spearman with a thunderous blow. The pain shot up and down his side with every breath. He screwed up his face and howled. Tasted blood in his mouth as he stepped over the fallen body and sheared an arm from the soldier behind him. Damned sword was a horror of its own. It would cut through anything.
The Tethis soldiers broke and ran. He held his sword high, signalling his men to hold and not to pursue. He was breathing hard, and still each breath came with a wave of pain. Under the sun he
was drenched in sweat. There was a breeze across the battlefield – he could feel it now he had some space in front of him. He wanted to take off his helm and let the wind cool his head, but he didn't. He'd been in too many battles for that.
‘Shield line!’ he roared. The ground right ahead was churned to mud, littered with spears and shields tossed aside by the fleeing soldiers. Bright sun glinted off discarded helms. He watched the Tethis soldiers go, scattering into the long grass, racing for the line of trees ahead. On another battlefield cavalry would have charged them down and made the slaughter complete, but Queen Gelisya had chosen her field well, edged with hummocks and holes and hidden ditches, and so he made himself be still and watch them go. The savage inside wanted their blood but the savage was always on a leash – always except in the thick of battle.
He looked up and down the line of his men, the shield wall packed hard again.
Berren
.
My name is Berren. Berren the Bloody Judge. Berren the Crowntaker
. Berren who'd once been a thief-taker's boy. He'd killed a king. Queen Gelisya's father.
Ten years of hell and misery and now I will end it
. He still tasted salt and iron. Blood. His or someone else's? He didn't know and he didn't care. His men raised their swords and their spears and banged them together and roared. One tight line of them. A wall of shields and deadly steel.
‘On!’ He lowered the moonsteel sword, pointed to the trees and snarled at the pain from his side. His hands felt sticky inside his gauntlets. A steady march. No reckless charge at the wood. If there was a trap then he'd not fall into it. They'd come at the enemy one last time, if there were any of them left. He'd smash them before the Dark Queen could rally. Ten years and she'd cost him every drop of blood she could take from him, her and her vicious coven. Their feud had defined them both.
A knot of the enemy emerged from the trees, half a dozen swordsmen packed tight. They ran straight at him, one mad suicidal charge. Pressed around by his own men in the wall of shields he had nowhere to go. He bared his teeth. The men either side of him readied their steel, and then Berren saw the seventh man, hidden between the screaming swords, and a flood of rage swept through him. A man in the colour of death – grey robes, grey cowl
– and at the sight bloodlust clamped his head in a vice and roared, all else forgotten. As the swordsmen reached him, crazy-eyed and wild, he bashed and battered their swings aside with his shield. The men either side of him lunged and slashed. One of the swords-men barged into him, staggering him back, but the press kept him on his feet and he drove the moonsteel blade straight through the man's mail and into his heart. Blood sprayed over him as he snapped the sword away and the man fell, already dead. Another struck at him but his armour took the blow and turned it aside, and then the grey sorcerer was in front of him and it was the easiest thing in the world to drive his moonsteel through the heavy robes, through flesh and blood and bone until the point emerged from the man's spine and only its hilt stopped Berren's hand from reaching inside to pull out the warlock's entrails. The surviving swordsmen turned and ran, four of them still on their feet. Madness.
‘For Talon and Syannis!’ he hissed. Vicious triumph coursed through him, blood pumping hard and full of victory. He stared at the warlock, at the pale pasty skin of the sorcerer's face, the lines, the wrinkles, the sheen of sweat, the tattooed sigils, the dark flecks of blood, the dying gleam in the eyes, then snapped back his sword. ‘One less of you.’
The warlock's lips drew back. ‘For Saffran,’ he whispered. The sorcerer's hand emerged from the sleeve of his robe and pressed a strip of paper covered in sigils to Berren's breastplate. Berren lurched back but there was nowhere to go in the crush. With a finger from his other hand, the warlock slashed one last bloody mark onto the paper.
Berren reached for the warlock and grabbed him. ‘What have you done? What is this?’
The warlock was laughing. Blood ran out of his mouth and down his robes. He clutched at himself and clawed handfuls of it and threw it at Berren's face, then crumpled and fell, lips drawn back across his teeth, grinning blankly at the clear blue sky. Berren felt dizzy. For a moment his vision blurred.
Madness? They'd come at him to do this. They'd been ready to die. The warlock had given his life.
The sigil clung to him, fluttering in the wind. Cold fear spread across his skin. He tore at the strip of paper with his gauntlet but
the metal fingers were too clumsy. It seemed stuck. He plucked at the strip of paper again but it wouldn't come free. Stuck fast. His heart was pounding now, harder even than in the thick of the battle. Sweat ran into his eyes. He tore off his helm and lifted his sword. ‘Stop! Stop!’ Then the sword fell out of hands. He was shaking so badly he could barely stand any more. He threw off his gauntlet and tore at the paper with his fingers, but when they touched it they tingled and went numb. The numbness spread up his arm. He pawed at the thick leather straps of his breastplate but his fingers had lost all feeling. They seemed to belong to someone else.