Fortress Draconis (62 page)

All the others made suitable pirates—even Will, as small as he was. He’d almost been left behind at Svoin because of his size, then it was pointed out that he might be able to talk the Azure Spider into turning the DragonCrown fragment over to them. No one, including Will, thought that was very likely, but it was a chance they could not pass up. And, if he couldn’t talk the Azure Spider into giving it up willingly, Will could always steal it.

It felt good to Kerrigan to be out of a saddle and sitting still for a bit. He wasn’t looking forward to getting back out on the sea, especially since just thinking about his previous journey had him breaking out in a sweat. More annoying, however, was the flat prohibition against his writing things down in his journal. During the trip he’d had no chance to record any observations, and in port Orla had warned that his writing would be viewed with suspicion. While he didn’t want to believe her, he did note that she didn’t carry around her staff, to look even less like a wizard.

The difficulty of wanting to appear to be a sailor exacerbated a problem stemming from the battle before Svoin. He had seen a lot and found it overwhelming. He wanted to discuss it with others, but on the road no one had enough energy for such a discussion. And while hiding in the guise of sailors, such discussions would be grossly out of character.

And that’s if anyone would want to indulge me.

Because of the loss of the boat he’d been on, Svoin was not really the first combat he’d ever seen, but it certainly was the first between armies. The histories he’d read had all been dispassionate and judgmental, assessing the mistakes made by this commander or that, including lists of casualties and the like. He’d read them more as stories than anything else, and thought himself prepared for Svoin.

He found it had been difficult to remain dispassionate when screaming men begged like children for help or death. The one elven unit, a battalion of archers, had two magickers with them. He and the two of them were the only magickers capable of actually healing people, but there were some wounds no magick could repair. They could assure that a man who’d had an arm or leg struck off, or his genitals or half his face bitten away, would live, but those they saved didn’t always see that as a blessing by any means-.

Several of the men he worked on begged him to write letters for them, and he assured them he would, as he had in the past. What he remembered, however, were not the ones who asked, but the ones who were beyond asking.Dead before their letters reached their homes.

The sheer carnage, the way the muddy earth had been churned with the violence of charge and countercharge, the way some weapons had bitten so deeply into bone that they could not be dislodged; these things all exploded past the safe boundaries in which he had confined his concept of warfare. The majority of bodies he saw had grievous leg wounds and defense wounds on arms as well as the death blows that had rained down on head and chest. In short, the deaths were not clean, one-stroke affairs, but acts of butchery in which a man was crippled with a leg blow, in which he cowered and fended off blows with his hands until his efforts ebbed and he was dispatched. Multiple killing wounds to head and chest bespoke the fury of the attackers.

He didn’t take such evidence as an indictment of warfare. A philosophical debate over the evils of war always ended up with two conclusions. The first was that war was evil. The second was that there were times when war was inescapable because some individuals desired the subordination of others to their will. Defending freedom was not evil, and blood spilled in defense did not stain as deeply as that spilled in aggression.

What the signs of violence did was to redefine the world. On Vilwan his existence had been simple and peaceful, idyllic even, despite the difficulties he’d had. The slaughter on the sea, or the beating he’d taken in Yslin, these could all be explained as aberrations, the acts of evil people. That preserved his basically safe sense of the world. Svoin, however, showed him that even good people were capable of savagery.

Am I?He couldn’t deny that he’d killed the pirates in the ship he’d smashed, but he’d really visited the violence on their ship.If I had stopped to consider that I was doing it to people … He shook his head and glanced at Orla. She’d attacked pirates more directly and hurt them, but it did not make her evil.

Could I do that? Could I kill if I thought about it?Kerrigan shivered.Do I really want to know the answer?

Will wasn’t certain if he was happy or not, and this annoyed him. He skulked his way through the darkened streets of

Ooriz, heading for the Broken Keel tavern to collect the others. Lombo and Alexia had struck a deal for passage on a small ketch, supposedly used for fishing but not outfitted for the same and undoubtedly a smuggling vessel. Trade with Wruona could be highly profitable, especially in the area of basic goods like grain and beer—the kinds of things that were vital for life but seldom part of prizes taken at sea.

Will did know he liked being away from the army and back in a town. Camp life had not suited him particularly well—especially because everyone knew who he was. Having been raised to cultivate anonymity, even the most benign of attention grated on him.

He also had chafed beneath the story of his having fainted because of the slaughter in the Svoin battle. He couldn’t remember much beyond heading up toward Adrogans’ tent, which meant he had to contend with a sense that something important was missing from his memory. When he’d awakened they told him the battle had been won and that he was fine, but his ribs had ached and felt as if he’d been wrestling with Lombo.

And Will was pretty sure that fainting shouldn’t have made his ribs ache.

There was one thing he regretted about leaving the camp, and that was his inability to participate in the rescue of the hostages. Adrogans had been able to locate a handful of men who had criminal backgrounds in his army— armies in general had more such folks, but the Okrans campaign had included fairly elite units, which cut down on the underclass population. These men, including Will, had been assigned to the various squads who would go in and rescue hostages, because they could open locks or shackles or anything else needed to free the people.

It surprised Will that he didn’t want to be there to garner praise for his hand in planning the rescues. Nor was he craving the action of the rescues, because he knew—just as with a well-planned theft—there would be little or no action if things occurred as hoped. Instead, and this really astounded Will, he wanted to be there to help because he felt some responsibility for getting the hostages to safety.

Will eyed responsibility as he might a strange and growling cur. Through his life he’d been responsible for himself. The prophecy made him responsible for a lot more, but that all seemed vague. He’d been able to define his enemy as Chytrine, which helped him focus, but that also narrowed the conflict to him versus her. The hostages had become involved without his really being aware of it.

But as long as he was going along on the rescue mission, his own sense of invulnerability had held they would succeed. Now, in the back of his mind, he could see hostages being hurt or killed in the attempt, and every drop of blood that leaked from them was accounted to him.Because if I were there, they would all be saved.

Part of him knew that was nonsense, but he couldn’t get past it. And not getting past it surprised him. In the past he would have just walked away from such responsibility—as I did with Kerrigan there in Yslin.Not being able to do that—and not wanting to do that—burrowed into his mind and festered.

It would have driven him utterly and completely mad save for the nature of the mission that called them away. Despite the prophecy and all the training he’d been given, he really knew very little about the DragonCrown and its pieces. He accepted that for a fragment to be out of the hands of responsible folks was bad, and much worse for Chytrine to get her hands on it. Seeing what a dragon under its influence could do at Yslin was more than enough to convince him of that latter point.

He agreed that they had to get it back, which pretty much meant he had tosteal it back. That meant he’d be going up against the Azure Spider. The very idea of that sent a thrill through him, and a lot of fear came in its wake. The Azure Spider was sung of from shore to shore and lauded as a swordsman, lover, and thief. Will had always hoped, as the King of the Dimandowns, to surpass him; but stealing something from his own stronghold had never been part of the plan.

Will had wracked his brain to try to remember all the details about the Azure Spider that he’d heard Marcus mention. He wished there had been some simple flaw to the Spider, like his having pledged always to honor an orphan’s request, or vulnerability to some complex fencing move. About the only thing he did recall was Marcus contemptuously suggesting that the Spider never hung on to a prize for long because once the thrill of stealing it was over, the man lost interest. Will wanted to count on that as being a help, but he’d learned enough in planning the hostage rescue to avoid relying on the stupidity of the enemy.

The thief entered the Broken Keel and threaded his way to the table where his companions sat. Kerrigan looked more of a clown than sailor, but it easily disguised who he was. Dranae and Orla looked their parts. They finished their ales before rising, which Kerrigan did not do. Will took the young mage’s mug and quaffed the last of it.

Will gave them all a nod. “Tide runs in an hour. We’re going on thePumilio‘’

Dranae rested his hands on Kerrigan’s shoulders and steered him through the crowd. “No trouble?”

“None yet.”

“That’s good.”

“For now anyway.” Will dropped in behind the large man and sighed. “I just hope we’re not saving it all up for later.”

Alexia waited on the dock while Lombo stood on the wheeldeck with the helmsman. She shifted her shoulders uneasily. She did not like feeling hostility and menace just over the horizon without the familiar weight of ringmail on her body. She did acknowledge that the lighter weight of the clothing she wore would give her added speed in fighting, and that this would balance out.

Another source of anxiety came from the blade she wore on her belt. After the battle she had recovered her own saber, but the fight with Malarkex had left the metal brittle and the blade well notched. Adrogans had insisted that because she’d killed Malarkex, she’d earned the right to thesullanciris sword. Aside from being a suitable reward for her valor, it had the added benefit of being magickal in nature. This gave her a weapon to use against othersullanciri.

The idea that she would face more of them did trickle some dread into her belly. Crow had warned her not to expect too much of the blade when it came to dealing with Chytrine, since any weapon she had a hand in creating certainly would not do her harm. He did agree with Resolute, however, that the blade would be most effective against Chytrine’s creatures.

Alexia had taken some time to try it out, dueling with Crow. Because Malarkex’s sword was a saber, it wasn’t entirely suited to fencing, but the weapon’s balance and weight did let her put considerable power into speedy slashes. She found Crow a skillful foe and was able to really test some of the weapon’s limitations, but always held herself back despite Crow’s ability to defend himself.

The aspect of the blade she hated was how it made her feel about fighting. With the heat and flow of the duel came a dispassionate and cold distancing of herself from it. There came a point where all affection for Crow bled away, quickly followed by any sense of humanity he possessed. She began to see him as lines of force, as muscles to be severed, organs to be skewered, bones to be shattered, and joints to be dissected. The blade took the science of anatomy and dueling and overlaid it on the fight. In killing him or anything else she would be doing nothing of any more consequence than solving sums or calculating positions by the stars.

What dismayed her is that part of her hungered for that detachment. Warfare, she knew, could largely be reduced to numbers and position, angles, vectors, and timing; quantitative factors that dealt with qualitative elements like morale and tradition as fractional variables one did one’s best to eliminate entirely. Warfare as science completely discounted pain and suffering. The motives behind why any engagement had been fought became immaterial, and the casualty lists just more statistics to factor into computations for the next battle.

Alexia allowed her mind to wander that far before she reined it back in. Having a leader of such a disposition was valuable to Chytrine because it promoted the infliction of hideous casualties on the enemy without a second thought. Were Alexia losing a battle, she would withdraw to preserve her forces for a later conflict, but Malarkex would have been willing to commit everything to hurt the enemy as much as possible. Overwhelming casualties would sap the will of the southlands to fight, and that was the victory Chytrine desired.

But Chytrine had not reckoned with the sorts of sacrifices men like Adrogans would be willing to make to stop her. Chytrine viewed the efforts of individual warriors as immaterial, for even the most successful campaign depended upon the supplies flowing from the south. A vote in some distant Council would stop Adrogans cold. Adrogans’ effort had won such a victory that likely Svoin was lost, but political maneuvering could result in the city’s abandonment and a cessation of the campaign.

Alexia wished Adrogans luck, since she had no desire to see him or her cousin or anyone else in that campaign dead. She had the most dread for the fate of Beal mot Tsuvo’s people, but a great deal of hope for them, too. The hostages would be rescued—most of them, anyway.

While she had wished Adrogans luck, she’d not wished himall luck. She had little doubt they’d be able to get into Port Gold. She felt pretty certain they would be able to locate the fragment of the DragonCrown, and she even had a glimmer of hope that they could steal it back. Getting it off the island and in safe hands, however, she gave a small chance, and of their getting away without casualties she held no hope. Still, leaving a DragonCrown fragment available for Chytrine was not an option: and getting it back was worth any risk—including the Norrington’s possible death. His skills as a thief made him invaluable to the raid.