The Dragons of Argonath (18 page)

The dragon's intervention had smashed the attack. Two bewks had been hewed down, and the rest had run from that furious assault with Ecator. The men who'd survived the earlier fight went out to lean against the wall. Other men arrived, including the five older fellows who'd been lurking in the pot room. They had armed themselves with hammers, tongs, pokers, and a long pitchfork.

Bazil came slowly back from the barricade, and the men filtered forward to surround him. More material was being wheeled up for the barricade. A few arrows flew over from the imps, who had advanced to the corner of Brewery Lane from Schoolhouse Street. It was the schoolteacher's house that was burning, although from the glow in the sky beyond the roofs, Lessis knew there were other fires in the village.

Men hastily piled things onto the barricade, while sparks and embers flew up from the schoolteacher's house.

Bazil found a sheltered spot out of bow shot, and lay down with a groan. Relkin was already at work on the worst cuts, a slash on the right shoulder and a deep chop in the left flank. There had been fierce fighting that night, and Bazil had been in the midst of it from the beginning. Relkin thought he'd not seen fiercer fighting, except at Sprian's Ridge.

The wound in the side was bad because it cut through old scar tissue, and the dragon's hide was already weak there. Still, it had not bled that heavily, and Relkin was hopeful that it was still only in the fat and had not gone through to any organs.

He lacked sufficient bandages to bind it up, though, and could do no more than clean it and treat it liberally with Old Sugustus, just like the other cuts and scratches.

Bazil groaned and shuddered from the sting, but was too tired now to grumble.

Lessis came up on them out of the smoke. Bazil saw her first and grunted a welcome. Relkin looked up.

"Lady! You live."

"You didn't expect me to?"

"That imp laid you out with a mace, a pretty clean blow."

Lessis waved a hand at the sky, ignoring the throb in her head that this set up.

"The Mother won't let me finish my term of service," she said.

Relkin nodded to himself, it was the only explanation for someone living through a blow like that. The goddess must have intervened. Relkin knew that this seemingly ordinary older woman was, in fact, a strange, sometimes terrifying sorceress. It was not impossible for one such as she to be on terms with the gods. Relkin had felt the breath of the gods himself, of that he was convinced. He wished he hadn't.

"They said you were not likely to live."

"The way my head feels, it might be better not to." She managed a faint grin. "But tell me, child, what is the situation? If anyone here can tell me, it will be you."

Relkin took the compliment in stride.

"Well, they took the main barricade. We slew them in droves, but they just kept coming. The imps got over and pushed us off the barricade, and we could not hold them. The men lack legion training. Same with the local dragons, and Bazil was just too weary then to make up the difference."

Relkin paused for a breath, and then coughed a moment on the smoke that swirled through the street.

"Then they broke into Bank Yard and then came behind the bank. We were taken in the flank, and we had to fight our way back up this street. We held them here, but they've captured the eastern part of the town."

"And the rest of the village?"

"The temple bell is still ringing. That's about all I can tell you."

"The emperor, child, have you seen him?"

"Not since the barricade fell, but he is not dead, I am sure. He was standing and still held a sword."

Lessis looked around uncertainly in the smoky murk of Market Street.

"When will help get here?"

"I don't think it will. The rider that was sent to Cross Treys did not get through. More riders were sent, but they won't get there until it's too late."

"We must have help."

"I tried," he stopped, unsure of himself and looked down.

"Yes, child?"

"I tried to find the magic way and send a message. It didn't work."

"Ah, well, young man, you are not schooled in it, although you have tasted the power. It takes much training to control it."

"So I have learned, Lady."

Lessis left them and went down the street. Relkin turned back to his work.

The witch found the Emperor in the parlor of the inn. He was lying on a table wrapped in a blood-soaked cloth.

His head was pillowed, and there was a pair of young women on hand to care for him.

"Your Majesty!"

His eyes lit up at the sight of her.

"Lady Storm Crow, how good it is to see you!"

"Your Majesty, where is your wound?"

"My back, lady, and along my side."

Lessis saw the blood and the crude stitches someone had made.

"You need stitching. Send for the dragonboy."

"We sent for the town doctor, but he was killed at the barricade."

"May the Mother protect us, in all her mercy. I grieve to hear of the loss of the good doctor, but when it comes to stitching wounds, dragonboys are the best."

"Then, send for him."

Thorn came hurrying into the room. His right arm was bandaged, but he seemed little affected.

"Your Majesty, Lady. It is good to see that the reports were wrong."

"Only just, Thorn," she spoke more lightly than she felt.

"Your Majesty. I came to report that we've stabilized the line and thickened the new barricade outside the brewery."

"I can hear the temple bell still ringing."

"Indeed, Your Majesty. They have held out there. In truth, I think the enemy throws all his weight against us; he knows you are here."

"Then, he would have pursued us wherever we went. We made our stand. We have not fallen yet."

"Indeed not, Your Majesty."

"Your Majesty," said Lessis. "Could you accept the need now for retreat? We have fought the enemy, but now you should retire and seek medical attention. We should return to Kadein."

"Lady, we made our stand here, and here we will stay! Until they cut me down and take my head, I stand in Quosh."

Lessis could not help thinking that this was the wrong approach.

"Your Majesty would be of more use to the empire alive, fleeing up the road, than dying here in Quosh."

"I stand here, Lady. I will not move. We will beat them, they have lost twice as many as we have, and they cannot continue such losses. Their force is finite. We can win yet."

"Your Majesty, the battle depends on the might of one battledragon, the great Broketail. Without him it is lost. Thus you stake the Empire of the Rose on the life of a single dragon."

"No finer beast could there be for such an honor! I have seen him fight. It terrifies me, and I'm on his side…"

His eyes caught hers and bored in ferociously.

"And we will stand here in Quosh and defeat our enemy!"

Lessis saw that nothing would move him. But if the enemy could spear the Broketail dragon, then they would soon overwhelm the defenders of Quosh and achieve their aim. Pascal would die a martyr to the cause of the empire, and indeed there would be a political bonus from such an event. But Lessis feared the shadowy moves around the throne of the Asturi. This new enemy was known to be a subtle foe, capable of arousing treacheries within the tightest cabals. What evil might break out, what hidden moves for power might be made by those who would seek the aid of the enemy to further their ambition?

She saw that she would just have to make the best of it.

"Yes, Your Majesty, I see." She stepped back with a bow.

Pascal continued to glare after her with the fire of battle in his eyes. After a life of conducting war at a distance, Pascal Iturgio Densen Asturi was finally an initiate to the life of the warrior. Something had broken and reformed in his heart during the process. Lessis noted the marks of an epiphany of some sort, and though she deprecated the very thought of an epiphany brought on by armed combat, she had to recognize that it might exist.

Thorn came back from the door with more good news.

"They have pulled back; we have had word from the northern end of the village. There was fighting there, but it stopped awhile ago. There are just a few skirmishers in the Schoolhouse Street."

Lessis gnawed her lower lip.

"He has not given up. They must be gathering everything they have left for one final assault."

"Then, we shall meet them!" Pascal growled.

They were interrupted by the arrival of Relkin with his tools and a big bottle of Old Sugustus that had been fetched from the Dragon House. He winced at the sight of the emperor, lying on the table.

He examined the wounds. Three cuts required stitching and further cleaning. There was a two-inch-long stab wound in the thigh, a slicing cut along the bottom of the rib cage, and another shallow stab in the back.

"I think I can close all these wounds. The one I worry about is the thigh, for it went deep. Sometimes we use honey to dry a wound like this before we sew it. If treated with Old Sugustus, a dry wound will generally not infect and corrupt. But we don't have the time for such a treatment. So I'm afraid that I can only do a temporary stitch on that wound. It will have to be treated again once the fighting is over and we have the time to properly clean it."

The emperor smiled at the solemn tone of Relkin's voice. A proper doctor of physic he sounded, and yet he was just a dragonboy. No one noticed that the witch had slipped away, as quietly as a bird leaving its nest.

The wound above the waist was in almost the same place, relatively speaking, as the deep chop into Bazil's side. Relkin remarked to himself on this similarity as he strung clean gut on his needle and ran it through his fingers soaked in Old Sugustus. The needle was clean and very sharp; it was his smallest and was used for tidying up dragon cuts.

"Your Majesty, just to reassure you, if it will, I have sewn up wounds on men many times, not just dragons, and the needle is small and very sharp."

"I thank you, Dragoneer."

"Your Majesty, this will hurt a great deal. I will work very quickly, but it will still be painful. Many men prefer restraints, would you?"

"I shall not take restraints, but I thank you for your consideration, Dragoneer."

"First the wounds must be cleaned again and treated with Old Sugustus. It will sting."

Pascal Iturgio Densen Asturi nerved himself.

"Begin."

At the western edge of the village stood Tumblejack Woods. There stood Lessis, calling to the owls. She relaxed into open bird sensation, drinking in the sounds and smell of the wood. Among the trees, in holes at the base or in nests here and there, she sensed the living animals. She called again.

And soon she had one, a great grey owl. He flew in with soft beats of enormous wings coated in tawny down, and landed in a young tree by her head. She spoke to him in the language of owls, which is a variant on the language of the raptorial birds. Then she put a message scroll out for him to grasp in one mighty foot.

"You know the place."

The square thing, man thing.

"Do not drop the scroll."

Not drop the thing he grasped in one talon. It was smaller than a rat, harder than a mouse. Not to be dropped.

"Go!"

His wings opened, and he was away.

The commanding officer of Cross Treys camp was Commander Geilen, an older officer who had been seconded from the Third Regiment, First Legion of Marneri, to run Cross Treys for the last few years of his military career.

Geilen had succeeded in making his tenure at Cross Treys one of unsurpassed quiet and efficiency. What bandits there were had been apprehended and sent to Marneri for justice. Wood was cut and cured and shipped out to the contracting customers. Units came down from Marneri for a restful period at Cross Treys with calm regularity, and returned there equally peacefully.

Until this night. This night all hell had broken loose at Cross Treys camp. Specifically sometime before the midnight hour, the entire 109th Marneri Dragons, a famous unit that had enjoyed a good long rest up to this point, had suddenly absconded into the night. At the change of watch their absence was discovered, and the alarm raised. At least eight battledragons and their dragonboys had marched out of the camp without anyone being the wiser.

Commander Geilen thought of the humiliation his name would receive as he became the camp commander that lost a dragon squadron. Then his face went pink, and he renewed his frantic efforts to locate the missing dragons. Every lamp was lit, and every man awoken and set to searching.

Patrols went out at once in every direction. When they returned, they were grilled by the commander personally.

It soon became apparent that the missing squadron had marched out in proper formation and gone straight up the narrow road running into the Rack Hills.

"So they've literally run off into the hills?"

Dragon Leader Cuzo merely stiffened where he stood.

"I take a very dim view of this, Dragon Leader. I have commanded units of every size during my career in the legion, and I have never encountered such a debacle. Your entire squadron is absent without leave. Steps will have to be taken."

"Sir?"

"What is it, Dragon Leader?"

"I had given one dragon, the Broketail dragon, leave to visit his home village, which lies just over the hills in the valley. A three-day pass, enough time for them to go home, visit, and come back. The dragon and his dragoneer failed to return on time. As you know, sir, the other dragons have an enormous respect for the Broketail, and they were obviously concerned for him. I think that something must have happened, something which we men cannot comprehend, that would have disturbed them enough to do this."

"We cannot have entire dragon squadrons absenting themselves from their commands without leave. You know this, I know this, and we both know that we will have to arrest these dragons."

"You will send to Marneri?"

"I will send for two squadrons of dragons to be sent down here to capture the fugitives."