The Dragons of Argonath (17 page)

Alsebra twitched and moaned in her sleep. She rolled over and hissed and shrugged, and turned over again and again and then finally she woke up and sat up straight.

Jak had woken by then, disturbed by her agitation. Blurry-eyed, he stared at her.

"What is it?"

"Dream. Strange dream. I saw Relkin. He said things, but this dragon could not understand." Alsebra had the strangest look in her eyes.

"Weird." Jak was fully awake now. He got up, lit the lantern, and gave Alsebra a cursory examination. The look was gone. She stared back at him with huge, haughty black eyes.

"Do you feel hot, or cold?"

"Neither. It was just a dream, but it seemed more than a dream too. This dragon does not understand."

Jak blew out the light and got back into his cot.

"Better we get back to sleep; be morning all too soon."

The dragon curled up, he turned over, and they sent themselves back into the arms of sleep.

But it was not to be. A few moments after they'd both dropped off, the curtain twitched aside and in came Curf carrying a small lamp. He went to the crib and shook Jak awake.

"What the hell!" said Jak, groping for a knife as he came up out of a deep sleep for the second time.

"It's me, Curf."

It took a few seconds for this to sink in.

"Curf? What you want, Curf? Isn't it a little late, Curf?" Getting woken twice like this was getting to be annoying.

"Listen, Jak, do you know anything about dreams?"

"Huh?"

"I just had the strangest dream I ever had. Relkin was talking, and I could only just hear him. It was like he was far away, and his voice was very weak."

Jak was sitting up by that point.

"What is going on?'

Alsebra had woken up at the sound of voices in the stall. One huge eye contemplated them from over her tail.

"Relkin said that he needs help." Curf gestured with the lamp. "He needs us all, in Quosh. There's a fight going on there. Desperate fight."

"You heard Relkin say that in dream?" said Alsebra.

"Yes."

"I have same dream, but I not able to hear the boy's words."

Curf's eyes got wider, and his eyebrows vanished under his hair.

"You had the same dream?"

She nodded.

"Then, it must mean that it's true. If two of us had the same dream, me and a dragon!"

"We better tell Manuel."

A few minutes later a dazed Manuel was listening to the story. He quickly cleared sleep from his brain when it all fell into place, and he saw the picture.

Then came the capper. The Purple Green himself arose from straw, seeming to fill the space.

"I had dream too. I saw dragonboy, he rode on a horse that I wanted to eat. I flew above and wanted to make the kill, but the boy was on the horse. Then he said something, but I could not hear him."

Manuel was convinced.

"Magic, some kind of magic. Relkin's involved in something, and he needs our help."

"We've got to tell Cuzo!"

Manuel shook his head after a moment of sober reflection. "No. That won't work. He'll never understand. We just have to go. And trust that Relkin really is in trouble."

"Won't that be mutiny?"

"Yes, but if it's enough of an emergency to get Relkin involved in some kind of heavy magic, then it's serious enough to risk it. If we get there and we're wrong, then we'll face some kind of aggravation, but at least we won't be risking not going and finding out that Relkin and the Broketail were killed because we didn't go."

Curf and Jak needed no further encouragement. In a matter of minutes they had woken everyone in the unit, except Cuzo, who slept in his own private room at the end of the Dragon House.

When the story went around the Dragon House, it received confirmation from some of the other wyverns who had also seen Relkin in a strange dream. All the dreams were different, all had been vivid, and in them the common thread was that the wyverns could see the dream Relkin, but they could not hear him.

The only dragonboy who had had such a dream was Curf, and he had heard the message clearly though distantly. To the dragonboys this was just evidence of the difference between the dragon mind and the human mind. Equally they understood that Curf was the one who had the dream because he was a rare daft fellow, more into his music than the real world. So naturally it was Curf who was sensitive to this weird magic. And, of course, all were aware that Relkin had been unwillingly involved in magic over the years. He was a friend of some of the weirdest witches alive, even the Queen of Mice. So with Relkin anything was possible, or so they thought.

No one, not even Swane, mentioned doing anything other than just getting up, taking down their swords and shields, grabbing helmets and chain mail, and moving out to form up outside in the parade ground.

The dragonboys studied the situation at the gate. Cross Treys was a quiet post, the night guard was rarely more than two men: one at the main gate, and one on the south tower. Another ten men slept in cots inside the gatehouse, but nothing had happened in this part of Blue Stone province in so long that the watch was not well kept. It was no secret that Captain Bandar, who ran the night watch at the gate, was too fond of whiskey. Sometimes the men took advantage of this.

Alas it was not to be so easy. Bandar was drinking all right, with a couple of cronies in his office in the gatehouse. But on guard was Jasben Darthold, a relatively wakeful member of Bandar's detail.

It was important to steal away and not arouse a fuss. Pursuit would come in the morning, but by then they'd be close to Quosh. Darthold had to be neutralized. Swane and Rakama teamed up to do the job.

Jak went down to the gate, ostensibly to check the tally sheet for the next day's expected deliveries. While there, he engaged Darthold in a conversation about the weather, which was awful, with the rain still coming down hard.

The sound of the rain drumming on the roof of the gatehouse also helped to muffle Swane and Rakama's approach. Darthold didn't realize something was wrong until Rakama grabbed him around the chest, pinning his arms as Swane pulled a sack over his head and jerked it down. He struggled, but Rakama held him and they worked the sack down to his waist. The struggle got quite intense for a while, and Swane was forced to whack Darthold over the head with a spear to quieten him.

Breathlessly they waited. Would Captain Bandar investigate the noise?

Bandar opened his door and shouted something unintelligible in query.

Swane bit his lip and then shouted something back that was also unintelligible, but soothing.

They waited another tense second, then Bandar's door closed, and the voices in his office went back to their normal drinking chatter.

"You're coolheaded for an orphan, Swane," murmured Rakama.

"Let's go."

They trussed and gagged the unconscious Darthold, stashed him in the back of the hay storage at the barracks stables. No one would find him there until dawn at the earliest.

The gates swung open, and the 109th Dragons slipped out, moving as quietly as wyverns can. The gates swung shut again, and they moved quickly down the curving road that lead from the fort to the crossroads and the ford over the Killjoy Stream. Not until they reached the ford would they be out of sight of the gate tower.

It was a long two minutes as the dragons trotted down the curving gravel road, but no call came from the camp, and when they reached the ford, they broke into murmurs of victory.

They splashed across the stream and went on up the narrow road into the Rack Hills. It was night, and the moon was hidden. The rain came down in gusts, but they marched and made good speed, keeping in two files, marching at a steady rate.

They knew the road, which they had used for a dozen or more training marches. They had been over the Rack to Felli and back too many times, in fact. They hadn't done it in pitch-darkness before, but they could sense the mass of Baldy on their right, and the slightly smaller hill of Little Baldy on their left. Rakama, Jak, and Swane carried lanterns to light the road ahead, and that was enough.

Once they got to Felli, they would turn to the left, get onto the bigger road that ran down the valley from Borgan. If they marched hard, they could be in Quosh well before sunup. And if there was trouble there, they'd deal with it. Whoever was causing it would have to face the fighting 109th of Marneri.

Lessis awoke to a deepening nightmare. She found herself in a room filled with the groans of the wounded. When she moved, she thought her head would split in two. She put her hand up to her head, and found a bandage swathing her face and crudely tied below the jaw. There was crusted blood on her hair. The wound had been treated superficially and would need more work later. The important thing was that she had survived it.

She didn't even remember how it had happened. AH she remembered was the desperate fighting at the barricade, then imps almost breaking through and a momentary melee in the whole street. And then she was here.

Lucky to be alive, she concluded.

She pulled herself up and took a good look around. A dark place, smelling of horses and sour beer.

A room in the brewery, then. She nodded, they must have won the melee too, or she wouldn't have been dragged up here. Slowly she hauled herself to her feet. Things went woozy for a moment, and she had to grab a timber for support. Then the dizzy sensation passed, and her head began to clear.

She became aware that the background din was very loud, sounding almost as if it came from just outside the building. She stumbled through a low-slung door and came out into another, better lit room. A couple of women were standing by the window. Lessis could see that they were terrified. Steps down to the floor below opened out at the farther end of the room.

There was a sudden loud scream of agony just outside, and a tremendous smashing noise. More screams followed, and then came a weird, piercing bugling roar.

The women turned to her with ashen faces.

"Old mother, you did wake up," said one of them.

"I did. What is happening?"

"The end of the world," said the other woman.

Lessis looked out the window. The noise below was horrifying and very loud. She saw that she was on the second floor of the building and that several of the monstrous creatures with hoglike heads were fighting in the street with a dozen desperate men. Imps were waiting at the heels of their allies for the opportunity to get in among the men as soon as they were softened up enough.

There were flames across the way, and smoke billowing up from them. The battle had clearly moved on past the barricade. The men were taking a beating. Two men were down, cut to pieces by the huge bewk swords. The imps were yelling insanely and blowing their dreary horns.

The men fought from behind a makeshift barricade, just a few benches and barrels dragged out into the street. It was clear that they would not be able to hold this for long against these huge brutes with their heavy swords. By the sound of it, the enemy might capture the brewery at any moment. Lessis thought of all the wounded lying in the room behind her. If these imps got in among them… They had to be moved. If the roof was set afire, they'd all be burned to death where they lay. Which might be preferable to what would happen if the imps got in among them.

Lessis took a deep breath.

"We have work to do, sisters," she said while she wove a quick spell that boosted their spirits and brought a martial feeling to their matronly hearts. A fire came into their eyes, and their backs straightened.

Lessis set the women to sorting out the wounded and getting the ambulatory ones moving toward safety. They had to get out of this building and go much farther back, possibly out of the village altogether. The women leapt to the task as if transformed.

Then Lessis darted down the steps and came out into the wort room. Mash tuns and tubs were set across the space. Spent grains were spilled into an enormous heap at one end.

Imps were smashing at the gate at that end. Lessis felt her heart sink. It seemed the battle was lost.

Then she heard another sound, one that to Lessis had become instantly identifiable, the terrifying roar-scream of a battledragon. She hobbled as quickly as she could push her ancient body across the courtyard. At the gate there was a fight raging between a handful of men and a dozen imps. Swords and spears clattered off shields and helms, the men were holding the imps off. Then over their heads she glimpsed a dragon, with fragments of leather armor hanging off his huge body, go surging past and pitch into the bewks at the flimsy barricade.

There was a great growling and an almighty crunch, then screams and roars and the ringing of enormous steel blades upon one another. She saw men come staggering back, bent as low as possible. Some crawled on their hands and knees, and she glimpsed a flash of white fire as the dragonsword whirled over them. To Lessis, that fire was a gleam of hope.

She ducked into the next building. There were several women there, with a group of children. Ah, poor lambs! Lessis was stricken to see such little ones caught up in this horror. They were all too terrified to move. She summoned familiar verses from the Birrak and set to lifting their spirits.

It was the work of a moment. Their eyes came alight, even the littlest ones were changed.

"Arm yourselves," she bade them. "Go to the kitchen for knives, cleavers, pokers. Whatever you can find. We are going to fight for our lives."

The women and children ran for the kitchen.

Lessis opened the doors to the next room and was astounded to find a group of older men, lurking by the window. From their clothes she took them for wealthy fellows, and by their guilty air, she had caught them hiding from the struggle. Lessis roused them up with a spell, and sent them to the task of defending the village. With looks of bewilderment the men, who'd been looking to sit out the battle, left the room and ran down to the blacksmith's in search of weapons.

Lessis reached the street entrance, the gates were open, a crowd of men were bunched there. She joined them and got a glimpse out into the street.