Fortress Draconis (82 page)

“The refugees went out under her command. They are bound for Oriosa, so we might eventually hear if they make it.” Adrogans scratched at his unshaven throat. “They’re looking at a trek of over four hundred miles, over a hundred to Sebcia.”

Phfas shrugged his bony shoulders beneath a threadbare cloak. “They will not be wanting for supplies. Their journey is as nothing.”

His disgusted tone prompted a surprised chuckle from Adrogans. “Uncle, our journey is difficult, but do not minimize theirs.”

All around them, the refugees from Svoin began to stir as the sky brightened. Men and women—with far too few children—looking all stick-and-sinew thin crawled from beneath blankets thicker than their skin. Some people stumbled down to the river to drink or bathe—and far too few of them bathed, having long since become used to the colonies of body lice that infested them. Others just sat in one place, dazed, disoriented, hovering between life and death.

Adrogans had been given no real choice. Svoin was a dying place, a fetid pit of misery. It would never and could never allow the people there to heal. As quickly as they could, his troops had gathered up all the supplies available and started herding refugees toward the north, where they harvested what they could from the hills. Beginning in the southeast quarter of the city they set fire to it, burning everything. They saved the docks for last, allowing the arson teams to escape onto the lake and sail up the river to join the refugee caravan at the Svoin River ford.

The two possible places to take the refugees were the Zhusk plateau or the Guranin highlands. While the land of the Zhusk was closer, the housing and supplies available there could never have supported five thousand sick and malnourished people. The highlands, by way of contrast, had actual cities. The various clans had their own towns and villages and had already begun to compete with their rivals in shows of generosity concerning the refugees.

Guraskya lay a hundred miles from Svoin by conventional routes. Adrogans’ troops could have made the journey in a week, or even half that, if he’d wanted to push them hard. The refugees, on the other hand, were hard put to go five miles in a day. Sometimes the last of them had not even started to move before the head of the column stopped and began to make camp.

And the bodies of the dead marked the roads all along the route.

The Aurolani forces made no serious attempt to harass the refugees. Caro led the Alcidese cavalry and deployed them as a screening force. They’d caught and killed small knots of Aurolani scouts, as well as rounded up and moved into the refugee train crofters scattered through the Svoin basin. The soldiery carted off all the grain and livestock they could find, then burned the farms to deny them to the Aurolani.

Beal mot Tsuvo regained some of her composure. “We have made it to the most critical point in our journey. Once we put the Gurakovo between us and the Aurolani, their ability to strike at us is gone. Already the people of the highlands are preparing to help these people.”

“I think you’re right, Beal, and I hope you are right even more.” Markus Adrogans sighed heavily. “It will be a long winter. Assuming we survive it, we’ll have to make the best of every free moment. We’ll be planning what we’ll sow when comes the spring.”

“What we’ll sow”—Beal smiled— “and what we’ll harvest.”

“Indeed.” Adrogans nodded solemnly. “And perhaps even figure out how we’ll be able to bring it all to market in Svarskya.”

Thesullanciri Ferxigo shifted her form so she had knees to bend in obeisance to her Mistress. She lowered her gaze as Chytrine moved along the narrow corridor. Gibberers shrank back against the walls as if the touch of a stray strand of Chytrine’s hair would be a whiplash. Their eyes darted to the glowing, silver-white form of Myrall’mara drifting in Chytrine’s wake, knowing well she would kill them at her Mistress’ whim, then find any number of ways to employ their remains.

Chytrine swept into the small room carved into the bedrock upon which Fortress Draconis had been built. The featureless room would have been pitch-dark save for Myrall’mara’s glow, and the scintillating light of the gold-bound yellow gem resting in the top of the stone throne at the room’s heart. The DragonCrown fragment had been set in a small recess there, well above the head of the chair’s occupant.

The Aurolani Empress walked to the throne and reached a hand out to grasp the man’s chin. She turned his face to the right, then the left. She released it, letting his head loll onto a shoulder, then turned toward Ferxigo. “This was Dothan Cavarre?”

“This is what is believed, Mistress.”

“He is dead, but not a mark on him. How did he die?” Chytrine held her right index finger up and it quickly lengthened into a slender hornlike needle. “Did you pierce his vitals and I’ve missed the sign?”

“No, Mistress.” Ferxigo pressed her hand to the ground, wishing she could melt her feathered form into it. “Your desire was for him to be taken alive. He is as he was found.”

Chytrine slowly nodded. The dragon’s thrashing tail had scattered the Crown Tower’s DragonCrown fragments. Her soldiers and Dark Lancers had labored hard to recover them. Upon examination she determined they were counterfeits. The magick on them, which had caused the dragon to believe they were in the Crown Tower, had been a sophisticated spell of great strength, but could only function over a relatively short distance. The fakes were linked to the originals by this magick, drawing their magickal identity from the originals, so her hunters were able to employ the counterfeits and use that link to locate the originals. After days of searching, this was the first they had recovered.

That they still remained in Fortress Draconis did not surprise Chytrine. Just as the Draconis Baron would not entrust dragonel technology to anyone in the south, she had known he would not disperse the crown fragments. Cavarre had seen his duty to protect them as being sacred and his very presence here, protecting one with his life, clearly indicated his depth of commitment to his duty.

Extending her arm, reshaping it to add several feet to its length, she plucked the DragonCrown fragment from its perch. The stone’s warmth was as expected, for the fragment she wore between her breasts felt similar. She looked at the setting, at the tabs and notches, the Aurolani script incised into it, and knew the two pieces she had would not fit together. One of the two others hidden in Fortress Draconis would bridge the gap between these two stones, and she could forge links to bring the fourth into concert with them.

That would be for the future, however. For the moment she stroked the yellow stone’s surface and focused on it. She projected her mind into it and there, deep in its depths, she sensed a distant presence. It was ancient-and unknowable, and a bit surprised at the intrusion. Anger began to gather, so she pulled back and her awareness returned to the room.

Chytrine pointed at Cavarre’s body. “You will take it to what is left of the tower and have it bound to the forehead of the dragon skull there. It will remain until the birds have picked it apart and the bleached bones fall to ruin along with the rest of this place.”

Ferxigo glanced up as her Mistress spoke, then bowed her head once. “It shall be as you desire.”

“Very good.” Chytrine glanced at the Vorquelfsullan-ciri. “And you, my pet, will arrange for guards to haunt the tower. Cavarre’s people will emerge from their warrens to rescue him. You will make them pay dearly for their defiance. They do not realize that they stand naked before the might of a fierce north wind. You will teach them why this is folly. They will learn this lesson well, and then so shall their brethren to the south.”

Erlestoke cupped his hand around the end of the slow-match and blew on it until the ember glowed golden red. Across the street, barely visible against a pile of rubble, ameckanshü pointed south twice. The Oriosan repeated the gesture twice, counted to two, then stood, shouldered his draconette, and fired.

A puff of smoke obscured his first target, but a gibberer’s guttural scream told him he’d hit. Bringing his right hand off the trigger, he cranked the lever from alongside the foregrip up and back to the stock, then returned it forward. The lever pushed other levers and turned gears that rotated and locked into position the next of the draconette’s four barrels, as well as cocked back the match hammer. He brought a powder horn up from his right hip, primed the weapon again, sighted, and fired.

A second gibberer went down, this one clutching a ruined belly. Across the street themeckanshü also shot, dropping her second target. The Aurolani squad had begun running at them with the first two shots, and kept coming despite the second shot coming so quickly.

Erlestoke worked the lever again, primed, and shot, getting off his third shot inside a minute. This one spun a gibberer around and set his longknife clattering off a wall before he hit the street. Themeckanshü missed with her third shot, but only by dint of a gibberer tripping in his haste and going down.

Other warriors—meckanshüand iull-fleshed men, elves, and one urZrethi—emerged from the shadowed ruins behind and beside the remaining gibberers. The Aurolani troops realized, belatedly, that they’d been lured into a trap. Their process of enlightenment ended prematurely and painfully. The ambushers dragged the dead bodies from the street—dispatching those who were not yet dead before making their bodies disappear.

Erlestoke and themeckanshü watched the street, then retreated down into the warrens below Fortress Draconis. Hidden stone doors slid into walls, permitting them passage, then sealed the way behind them. They’d found ample evidence that Aurolani searchers had trailed after them in the past, but their secret paths remained undiscovered.

The prince patted Colonel Jancis Ironside on the shoulder. “You shot well.”

“As did you, Highness.” The Murosan smiled beneath her mask. “Keep shooting that well and we will be even, soon.”

He laughed and followed her down a set of spiral stairs that opened into a long, narrow room. In it their squad had gathered—twelve veterans from throughout the world, united in contesting Chytrine’s ownership of Fortress Draconis.

In this mission they had fared well, and they knew there were other groups, some larger, some smaller, who were doing likewise. The Aurolani troops had succeeded in breaching the main gate and occupying the eastern quarter of the city. They’d also taken the Crown Tower. The southwest quarter had been fighting hard and the entire northern arc had resisted Aurolani penetration. The Aurolani had brought dragonels into the Maze and used them to blast buildings apart to root out opposition, but the troopers made them pay dearly for every block they cleared.

Erlestoke remembered nothing of the two days following the point when the thunderball exploded in front of him, but Castleton, the only survivor of his fireteam, had filled in the gaps. The prince had been severely wounded, but Jilandessa, a Harquelf healer who had been at Fortress Draconis for decades, had repaired the damage. By the time he was ready to resume fighting, however, organized resistance had broken down. Soldiers fled to the sewers and into a network of warrens few admitted having known existed.

The prince handed his draconette to an oldmeckanshü who functioned as the group’s armorer. “Perfect match of load to shot. The aim remained true at all ranges.”

The old man smiled, revealing a mouth only half full of teeth. “And you saved one shot?”

Erlestoke nodded. They had a limited number of the quadnels. The shooters encrusted with them only used three shots, saving one for emergencies as they pulled back. “It’s the one ready to fire now, so draw it carefully.”

“Sure, Highness, and next you’ll be telling your grandmother how to suck eggs.” The man pinched the slow-match out with a mechanical hand. “Glad to have you back.”

“Good to be back.” The Oriosan turned away from him and crossed to the table in the center of trie room. Two of the people who had done the close work had taken a pouch from one of the dead gibberers and were unfolding a map they’d found in it. Crudely drawn, it showed the fortress, with a heavy charcoal line around what, apparently, the enemy felt were fairly secure areas.

The Loquelf, one of the Steelfeathers, looked up as he tapped the map with a finger. “They may think they own this area right here, but they don’t move through it during daylight hours. It’s ours if we want it.”

“I know, but you know we don’t want it.” Erlestoke smiled. “They can have it for as long as they want to pay the rent in blood.”

“I know, Highness, I just want us to raise the rent.”

“In good time, Ryswin, in good time.” The prince shook his head, marveling at the absurdity of his having to suggest patience to an elf. “Remember, as long as we are trapped here, so some of her troops will be trapped here. Fortress Draconis might not have caught in her throat and choked her the way we wanted, but now it’s a hungry maw nibbling away at her troops. She wanted it, she’s taken part of it, and we’ll keep gnawing away until it drives her insane.”

“Or,” piped a youthful soldier from Savarre, “until the armies of the south come up and smash her.”

Erlestoke gave the youth a quick nod. “Or until then, yes. That won’t be until the spring, however. We’ll see, by then, just how much sanity Chytrine has left.”

All the aches and pains, all the fatigue Kerrigan had been feeling, vanished as the road south straightened and the border posts marking the line between Muroso and Oriosa came into view. Their journey was finally at an end, and they’d actually survived.

After the grand battle they’d faced some harassment by the remnants of the force Chytrine had sent after them. Alexia had managed to organize their troops so that they punished the ambushers rather severely. Sebcian troops also came north and caught the Aurolani in a trap of their own, scattering them and shepherding the refugees into Sebcia.

Once in Sebcia, Alexia, Ryhope, and their companions had been given fresh horses and passes that allowed them to speed south. Sallitt Hawkins led the way despite his mangled arm, and Ryhope had insisted some woman and her infant child be brought along as well, for reasons Kerrigan didn’t understand. He likely could have discovered who she was, but he’d kept himself apart from the others during the journey. He’d had lots of practice driving his mentors off by being pricklish and sulky.