Fortress Draconis (73 page)

“Yes, it was something like that.” Alyx scowled. “Or, could have been my courage failed me.”

“Better it fails you in this than in battle, Highness.” Resolute stood and stretched. “I pledge this, however. When Vorquellyn is liberated, we will not forget the role of the Gyrkyme in its restoration. There will be one homeland in which the Gyrkyme are not only welcome, but revered.”

rjihe ships left Rellaence just after midnight, with a blazing I rope of stars twisting through the clear sky, pointing the X way toward their eventual goal. Four ships made up the flotilla, with one war-galley bearing each of the elven legions, one for the companions, and the last—a bulky transport that looked more like a whale than a shark—for the Iron Horse’s horses. All four ships moved at the transport’s pace, but it made enough speed for their trip to take them no more than a half a week.

While their hosts were quite pleasant and even helpful, Alexia found them to be reserved as well. She assumed part of that was because of Peri’s presence, even though she could detect no slights, deliberate or otherwise, in how the crew treated her. All meals were communally served in the cabin where they hung their hammocks to sleep, and the sailors serving them were cordial.

Alyx felt an unease growing in her as the ships rounded the Loquellyn headland and started the long run up toward Fortress Draconis. She tried to dismiss it as the chill bite of the winds, but the dread bubbling in her throat told her otherwise.

She stood at the bow of the boat, with misty spray dappling her skin, staring off far to the northeast. The sun was dying behind her, casting the mast’s long shadow out like a lance.A dark lance. She shivered and hugged her arms around herself.

“If you will permit me, Highness.” Crow draped an oilskin cloak over her shoulders. “With night coming on, it will get cold.”

She reached up and pulled the cloak tightly around her body. “Thank you, but it will be for naught. It’s not the cold that’s making me shiver.”

Crow nodded, leaning forward on the rail, letting the air brush his white hair back. “Fortress Draconis is a fell place. It’s changed over the years, grown darker, nastier.”

“My father died there.”

“I know. I was there. I saw. I mourned.” Crow fell silent and stared toward the far horizon. Tears gathered in his eyes, and Alexia knew they were not from windwear. “A quarter century ago Fortress Draconis determined the fate of the world. It broke Chytrine’s army. If it does so again we will have to finish the job this time.”

Alyx glanced back at the few folks gathered on deck, knowing the others slumbered below. “Lord Norrington had a group of heroes to help him, and he failed. We have you and Resolute, and half-grown children, myself included. A fresh crop ofsullanciri just waiting to be harvested.”

Crow swiped at his face, then glanced over at her. “You don’t believe that, do you? You don’t believe you would become one of Chytrine’s creatures, do you?”

“No.” She frowned. “At least, I hope not, but then I think of Vionna and her pragmatic assessment of our situation. We place limits on what we do, what we are willing to do to win, and our foe does not. When I think of Lord Norrington or his son, heading forth full of righteous indignation and burning with the desire for justice, then see how they were turned, I have to wonder. Am I—are we—foolish in thinking that our sense of justice can armor our minds, that our desire to make people safe can ward our hearts? Chytrine has murdered children—happily, perhaps gleefully—and yet when we look at the bodies, we’re the ones who feel the pain. We’re the ones it drains.”

Alyx pointed off to the northeast. “I’m certain my father shared Lord Norrington’s convictions. They traveled together, they planned together. Would my father have been with him on that last expedition? Undoubtedly. My father could be one of thesullanciri.”

Crow raised an eyebrow. “So you think you could have been one as well? You think you might become one?”

Alyx nodded, feeling a small worm crawl through her guts. “It’s not having Malarkex’s sword or anything like that. All my life I’ve been disciplined and fighting hard. Fighting to succeed in an alien culture, then fighting to live up to a reputation. I’ve fought to be worthy of my father’s heritage.”

She smiled. “It’s here, with you, with Resolute and everyone else that I feel a freedom I’ve not known before. Your expectations for me are the same as the ones you have for yourself: that we will work together, do everything we can to stop Chytrine. We’re the arbiters of our own destiny, but bound to the goal of stopping her.

“Being given complete freedom, though … It seems so seductive.”

“Of course it does, but you won’t succumb to it.” Crow’s voice came low and rich. “You know that no matter what she promised you, she would demand a price. So in offering to strike the chains from your spirit, she’d just fit you for new chains. Freedom, which is what you desire, is illusory as long as she lives. The only way youcan succeed is through her destruction.”

Alyx slowly nodded, then reached out and rested a hand on Crow’s shoulder. “I believe you’re right, Crow, but in case you’re not, in case I suffer a moment of weakness … You’re capable of killing asullanciri. Don’t let me …”

A jolt ran through Crow. “You’re asking more than you know. I can’t agree, and not because I want you to suffer that fate. If I agree, then you lose that last bit of impetus to resist. You have me in reserve, as your final check.”

“You wouldn’t let me, though….”

Crow straightened up and took her hands in his, brushing his thumbs over her knuckles. “You’ll never be asullanciri, Highness. Of this, I have no fear. Chytrine will think that you, like all the others, can be broken, but I know you can’t. That gives you the advantage of her, and in the end, her underestimation of your resolve will be her undoing.”

Once again dressed in the multiple layers of a pirate, Kerrigan came on deck an hour after the cry had been given that Fortress Draconis had been spotted. Their speed still gave them a couple of hours before they would reach it, and to the north, paralleling their course, a couple of Aurolani war-galleys paced them. Though Kerrigan knew little of sailing—most of his knowledge had been picked up on this voyage—with the prevailing wind coming from the west, it should have been easy for the Aurolani galleys to come down and engage them.

Why they didn’t, he didn’t know, but he’d stationed himself near the port bow in case they decided to make a run. In his mind he went over the spells he would cast: shearing off oars, snapping the mast, or, better yet, destroying the rudder. While he could easily hole the hull, he also knew that if the ship had any magickers aboard, they would be defending against just that sort of attack.

He knew he likely could overwhelm any sort of defense they might offer, but the vision of how Wheele had turned his spell into an advantage haunted him. Battering past defenses would be useful, but only if he knew the nature of those defenses. Much easier was attacking in ways the enemy was not prepared to handle. Even a minimal effort would work in that situation, and easily, whereas bashing away against a foe who has anticipated your attack would be disaster.

The reluctance of the Aurolani galleys to close allowed him to shift his attention to Fortress Draconis and he discovered, to his surprise, that they were closer to it than he imagined. The morning fog had hidden the horizon, and since the fortress was known for the Crown Tower, he had assumed the distant structure was far taller than it appeared to be. In fact, as the rising sun burned the fog off and details became sharper, Kerrigan discovered that the tall, elegant fortress of a generation ago had been replaced with a squat, brutish, brooding structure that looked akin to a thorn-ridden granite horn that had erupted from the earth, then had been snapped off all ragged and raw.

The Aurolani galleys still made no attempt to stop the elven ships as they sailed into the harbor on the fortress’ northwest quarter. Instead, they took up stations meant to keep the ships from fleeing, which would have seemed utterly useless save for the ill omen their action represented.If they want to stop us from running, it means they think there is something we will want to run from.

The fortress showed no signs of distress. The elven ships hoisted a series of flags in a pattern that had been sent to them byarcanslata before they left Rellaence, then sailed unmolested into the harbor, past the hulking slab-sided little fort that capped the causeway and shielded the harbor. Sharpened spikes stabbed out from the walls, and from the various slits and ports jutted the brass muzzles of dragonels. Though Kerrigan had never witnessed their power, what he knew of them left no question in his mind as to why the Aurolani galleys had remained beyond their range.

The little harbor fort, hexagonal in shape, had thick, stout walls that sloped toward the sky at a gentle angle. The thickness at the bottom would make them very tough to undermine, which would prevent them from coming down easily. Kerrigan saw none of the crenellations of other fortress walls—lookouts just paced on a recessed walkway, exposing only their heads and shoulders to the enemy. While passing close to the fortress meant the guards could not see the ship, there was no way any ship would have gotten that close to the fortress were the dragonels operating.

The ship came to a pier and tied up smartly enough. The elves rigged a gangplank and Kerrigan followed Lombo off, then joined Alexia and the others in the company of a tall man with brown hair and hazel eyes that could barely be seen beneath his green mask. His steel-grey uniform had a rampant dragon embroidered in dark green on the left breast and a crown on the right. Given the green of the mask, Kerrigan assumed he was from Oriosa.

The man’s voice came a bit stiffly, as if he were straining to be proper. He addressed himself to Princess Alexia. “Highness, the Draconis Baron sincerely apologizes for not being able to greet you himself, but he has pressing business. He will brief you, later, but asked that I conduct you on a tour and answer your questions. Your baggage will be taken to your rooms. You will be housed here, in the Crown Tower.”

Will cocked his head. “Not much of a tower.”

Their guide’s head came up, with a touch of shock quickly melting into bemusement. “I shall explain as we go, if that is to your liking. I’m Erlestoke. Like you, of Oriosa. You must be the Norrington.”

The thief nodded. “And you look much more like a prince than your brother.”

That remark tightened Erlestoke’s smile. “So I have been told. This way, please.” He led them up around to a long ramp that was broken at several points by a sharp downslope to a narrow trench. “You will find these trenches in various places around the fortress. Men waiting herein can easily defend the stretch of ramp below, and in the unlikely event a ship were to get into the harbor and unload a ram or some other siege weapon, this would catch it up.”

Continuing on up, he slapped a hand against the sloped face of the fortress wall. “You’ve not seen this sloping type of wall elsewhere, I will warrant. The Draconis Baron, in conducting experiments with dragonels, discovered they are very effective at bringing walls down because they can concentrate their missiles on a specific point. They become a long-range ram in that way. Low, thick, sloping walls deflect the projectiles, minimizing damage.”

“Unless you happen to be under them when they hit.” Will tried to scramble up the wall, got a few yards up, then slowly slid back. “Pretty effective against attackers, too.”

“More so, even, when boiling oil washes down them.” The prince pointed at the spikes. “Grabbing those won’t help. Most are sharp, many are poisoned, some break away, and others hide surprises.”

Reaching the top of the ramp, the company cut back and forth between two small walls that acted as a baffle to slow attackers. “These walls likely won’t last long against a determined enemy, but long enough for us to get a battery targeted to deal with them.”

Kerrigan felt a shiver run down his spine. Erlestoke spoke simply and easily about things, but the mage’s racing mind filled in all the details. Back down the ramp he could imagine seeing a ram caught in one of the trenches. He saw sheets of boiling oil coursing down the walls, splashing over attackers swarming up the ramp. He saw gallant defenders holding the narrow baffles, could hear a trumpet calling them back.

And then the enemy pours through.

As Kerrigan emerged from the baffle he found himself staring down the black maw of one of the dragonels. Cast of brass, this one had a muzzle that looked like a wolf snarling. He quickly cut to the side, slamming into Dranae. Kerrigan bounced off and fell to his knees, fully at the metal wolf’s mercy.

Erlestoke smiled as he ascended the last bit of ramp and parted the dragonel on the head. “Please, forgive me that trick. It is a tradition here, to show our visitors what an enemy will see. Some of our dragonels have names—this is Thunderfang and was one of the first dragonels the Draconis Baron cast. Chytrine’s dragonel had a dragon design to it, but Dothan Cavarre found that wolves, bears, cats, serpents, frostclaws, and eagles worked just as well. Now, to save metal, our dragonels are not all so fanciful, though we do have at least one monster per battery.”

The magicker struggled to his feet, then brushed his knees off. He struggled up that last bit of slope, then followed along the top of the fortress’ western wall. The joint of two sloping walls created a point upon which a dozen of the dragonels had been positioned about six feet beneath the top of the wall. Their muzzles pointed out through tall, slender ports that allowed for them to shift the aim left and right through a ninety-degree arc. This overlapped their shots with those of the harbor fortress and allowed coverage of the ramp on the northwest face.

Erlestoke invited them to get close to the big brass cylinder on a wheeled truck. The dragonel crew—meckanshüall—used ropes and blocks to pull the weapons into place, then levers to shift the point of aim. Likewise levers raised the cylinder so shims could depress the aim and shoot at ships close below.

“These are what everyone wants to see. These are dragonels. They’re fed a diet of firedirt, which is packed in tight, then a projectile. We’ve been using iron balls to great effect—one big one for ships and many small ones for crews. It really doesn’t matter what you load on top of the firedirt, it gets vomited out very fast. Provided it survives the blast, it will go through almost anything it hits at a fair range.”