The Dragons of Argonath (31 page)

Swane guffawed. "That Quoshite!"

"Yeah, well, how many have you got, Swane?"

Swane hemmed and hawed a moment or two. "Three," he admitted after the others hooted at him.

"Well, for an autumn campaign in Aubinas we'll only need one. And we can't hang on to all the blankets we acquired. We're going to have to give them back."

Faces around him reflected the war between good and evil as represented by the urge to keep all the stuff they'd winkled out of stores and the noble concept of giving it back.

Rakama came in the outer doors way down the broad passageway past the entrances to the plunge pool and the refectory. He came at a run.

"Something's up," said Jak.

Rakama skidded to a halt. He was in an excited state: his face was red, and his eyes were filled with a sort of shock, like one to whom the end of the world has been revealed.

"Did you hear yet?" Rakama said.

"No, what is it?"

"Battle in Nellin, they're saying the Fifth Regiment was defeated. General Cerius has been captured."

"Never!" Boys sprang to their feet, eyes wide in shock.

"What else are they saying?" said Relkin.

"Lots of casualties, hundreds."

They looked at each other, suddenly hot-eyed with anger. Up until now the Aubinan revolt had been a distant threat, something they'd only half believed in. Everyone had expected the legions to go in and clean it up in a month or so. Now there was bloodshed, and everything had changed. Now it was civil war.

The shock spread. By the following morning the details were trickling in. After relieving besieged Posila, the Fifth Regiment had pushed out on a punitive mission to Redhill, the capital of Nellin County. On their way to Redhill, the Fifth were ambushed and took casualties. Angered by this, they had gone hard on the town, burning some of it down. The so-called "Sack of Redhill" had ignited the rebellion's tinder. Men who had resisted the call of the rebels thus far had been won over by the thousand. While Cerius stood to in the ruins of Redhill, an army of three and a half thousand gathered nearby. When Cerius pushed out from Redhill to engage the rebels, his force of one thousand was outmatched. In a cleverly staged ambush, Aubinan cavalry was able to break up the legion squares and slaughter many men. Meanwhile the Talion horsemen attached to Cerius's force were outwitted by the backwoods riders from Aubinas, who knew the country like the backs of their hands. In the complex terrain of hills, woodlots, and fields laced by sunken lanes, the Aubinans had set trap after trap for the legionaries and exacted a heavy toll. When it came to the crisis, the Talion horsemen were unable to aid Cerius's hard-pressed foot soldiers.

Now the remains of the Fifth Regiment were back inside the walls of Posila under siege from an army of rebels that was growing every day. All over Aubinas, and elsewhere in the Argonath, there was a wave of anti-Imperial sentiment. This kept the volunteers coming in to the Aubinan camp outside Posila. The rebel force was now more than five thousand strong, and quite a few of those were former legionaries who brought in shields, swords, and spears.

Not that there was much of a shortage of weaponry. Mysterious cases of swords, and other necessary elements, like helmets and shields, had appeared in the camp from early on. The rumor had it that the grain magnates, who had the most to gain from the rebellion if it was successful, had supplied the weapons and that they had plenty more in reserve.

An army of ten to fifteen thousand was now envisaged as possible. And in nearby Arneis, which bordered Aubinas in the south, along the Bel Awl Ridge, there was further rebellion brewing. If both of these powerful, grain-producing provinces rebelled together, they might force the decision against the Empire of the Rose.

Songs about the burning of Redhill were said to be spreading up and down the tradeways. "Imperial home burners," was a phrase said to be gaining in popularity. This despite the fact that the parts of Redhill that were burned were not the houses, but the new wooden palisade and gates that had been erected even before the rebellion was declared.

As the day wore on into evening, Relkin sent hourly messages to Eilsa. The city was in an uproar, and she was sitting tight with her chaperon in her quarters on Foluran Hill. He expected to be sent to Aubinas at any moment, probably in the next day or so.

The dragons were jumpy and ate less than usual. The Purple Green almost got into a fight with Gryf, and this time the wyverns took Gryf's side. Everyone bedded down in an irritable mood.

They had been asleep for perhaps two hours when the Dragon House was awoken by the battle gong. Men were running in the streets, and there was a fire beacon lit on the Tower of Guard.

Cuzo came running out of his room. Everyone, every unit in the city was to be out and on the road for Lucule at once. Posila had fallen through treachery. The survivors of the Fifth Regiment had been captured, and the Aubinan army was marching for Marneri.

So hurried was their departure that Relkin couldn't even pen a message to Eilsa.

Rain clouds had returned and formed a dull gray ceiling over the city. The streets were running with streams of water, and in the harbor great trading ships rode at anchor, sails furled. Smaller vessels bobbed on the waves. On Tower Street the sidewalks were virtually empty, even at the corner with Foluran Hill, normally one of the busiest places in the city.

There were just a few souls abroad, hurrying along through the tempest. Behind shuttered windows, candles burned as the city of Marneri tried to come to grips with the incredible news from Aubinas.

The white city on the sound had faced many perils. Armies of the Demon Lord Mach Ingbok had besieged it and burned the hills for twenty miles in all directions, but it had never faced a siege by rebels from within the city-state. The rule of Marneri over its provinces had heretofore always been regarded as just. Taxation was raised even-handedly across the provinces. None were favored over the others, though more in taxes was expected from Aubinas and Seinster than from hilly places like Blue Stone and Seant simply because they produced far more wheat and barley, the so-called "gold" of the Argonath.

Now the city faced the prospect of civil war and of a rebel army ravaging the countryside around the walls. It was a disheartening prospect.

A slightly built woman, hidden within a gray cloak and rain bonnet, slipped out of the Tower of Guard and made her way across the open plaza of the parade ground. She headed south down Water Street, which zigzagged back and forth down the steep southwest slope of the hill below the Tower of Guard. Behind her, unobtrusively, came a pair of silent men, clad in equally colorless clothing, one in a brown cloak and leggings, the other in a dark grey cloak and hat. They followed the woman at a respectful one hundred paces, as steady as shadows.

Way down the hill in the Old Square section, the woman knocked at the door of a building with lights visible at several windows. The door opened, and the woman went inside. The men who were shadowing her went on quietly down the street, then turned and hid themselves while expertly scanning the street above to see if anyone had been following them. From their hiding places they exchanged a signal and then slipped back up the street to an alley set opposite the building that had received the woman.

"Nothing on our trail," said one of the men, whose face was flat and grim under black eyes that were hard and cold.

"Nothing we could see, but I feel something." The other man was thinner in the face, almost gaunt, and younger with piercing blue eyes and thin lips.

"So you said."

"Something has changed in this city. It wasn't here on our last visit, and it certainly wasn't following her. Now it is."

The first speaker grunted and looked up and down the street again. He was not a psychic sensitive, he was Mirk, and he was a killer. He was one of the most effective killers the Office of Unusual Insight had ever had, with one hundred assassinations to his name by the age of thirty-five. He was also one of the greatest bodyguards ever produced for the Office of Insight, possessing an uncanny ability to detect assassination attempts. Oddly enough, for this violent trade, he was a native of Defwode, the ultraconservative province of Cunfshon. Most of his kills had been of enemy agents, too sensitively entrenched within society in the Argonath and Cunfshon to be taken up for trial. Such men, and a few women, had to be dispatched with silence and stealth. That was Mirk's specialty.

Mirk scanned along the rooftops with his flat black eyes. At his left hip rested two throwing knives, nested together. On his right was a razor-sharp stabbing blade and a short sword.

He could see nothing. No one was following them on the street, or even on the roofs. But Wespern was there beside him because he was sensitive to such things. He had some sixth or seventh sense that detected hidden watchers, even when they were protected by magic screens. So despite the evidence of his own eyes, Mirk accepted that something was tailing them.

Mirk kept his eyes on the street. If it couldn't be killed, then it wasn't his affair. He could only kill what he could see. Besides, he thought with calm calculation, Wespern was sensitive in these things, but the person that they guarded was the Lady herself, and she had sensitivities beyond their understanding of such things. On those planes she could most surely look after herself.

Across the street, in Lagdalen's warm office, Lessis took off her cloak and hat and composed her thoughts. The room had a desk and a table, both covered in scrolls and books. Shelves lined one wall, and the carpeting was wearing out. It seemed typical of Lagdalen's crowded, busy life. She went to the window for a quick look at the view of the lower city and the harbor spread out to the west. Rain beat down endlessly over everything. It was raining beyond the Mother's patience. This was a record year for rainfall in the Argonath. It was already lowering harvests. She noted the two grey shapes in the alley opposite.

Mirk was there. She supposed that was a comfort, except that she always felt a chill from Mirk's presence. She had never met a colder man, and yet he worshiped at the Mother's knee and was a native of Defwode. Normally one thought of the men of Defwode for their weaving and their legendary subservience to their wives. Mirk was an exception to prove the rule, she supposed. No woman would marry him, not with the blood that was on his hands.

But whatever it was that shadowed her, and she could sense something out there, it wasn't corporeal enough for Mirk's weapons. But weapons could bite, even the greatest of witches could be bitten by them. She had only to recall the assassin that had struck her down in the gardens by the temple in this city, only a few short years before. She had almost died that time. She understood there had to be precautions. Mirk was necessary. So was Wespern.

The door opened, and Lagdalen tumbled in, with Eilsa Ranardaughter behind her. The two had been meeting privately before Lessis's unexpected arrival. They seemed a little breathless, their faces fresh with the bloom of youth.

At the sight of Lagdalen, now grown to womanhood, a mother and an advocate for the crown, Lessis felt an almost maternal sense of pride. At the same time she reflected that she had risked this girl's life a dozen times and so should really be thinking thoughts of the miraculous and of repentance.

We must serve with what we have
…

"Lady, how wonderful to see you," gushed Lagdalen.

Lessis embraced both of them and held Eilsa by the arms while she took a long, careful look. The girl was beautiful, with that long jaw and distinctive cheekbone, a prize for young Relkin.

"It is good to meet you again, Eilsa of Wattel. My memories of Sprian's Ridge will always be dominated by the work in the hospitals afterward. You were a stalwart in both aspects of the battle."

"I thank you, Lady, these are kind words. Those were grim days, and will never be forgotten in Clan Wattel."

"Troubled times, it is our fate to have to live through them. We are in the middle of a long war. Our enemy is pitiless and very strong. They have recently been reinforced and reinvigorated."

The young women met her gaze. She sensed their concern.

"I have just returned to the city. I heard the news just a few minutes ago."

"We have never had such a thing before, rebels rising against the city, defying the empire and killing legion soldiers." Lagdalen's anger was sharp…

"Ah, yes," Lessis pressed her hands together and rested her chin on the tips of her fingers. "Even worse, Relkin of Quosh has been sent off to what may be a nasty battle. That child is much too valuable to be risked like this ever again."

Both younger women's eyebrows rose. Lessis realized she must choose her words very carefully.

"This is information that must not go beyond these walls, you understand, but I know I can trust both of you. And, indeed, you both should be privy to this knowledge for it concerns our mutual friend Relkin." Their concern grew. "We tested Relkin, and we found that he has been changed by his experiences during the last two years. In his long sojourn in Eigo, he was introduced to power far beyond his own experience. Unexpectedly these influences have opened something in him. He is no longer just a dragonboy."

"Oh, my Lady, how, how was he tested?" said Eilsa.

Lessis heard the sudden fear in the girl's voice and thought, She loves him, there can be no doubt about it. If he lives, he may end up a very lucky man.

"He was not harmed. All I did was to hold a small object in a box. Relkin sat in the same room. He was asked to tell me what the hidden object was. He did so."

"But how?"

"That we do not know. Suddenly he saw an image, and that image told him what was in the box."

"Oh, my," Lagdalen put a hand to her mouth. "By the Hand, poor Relkin." Lessis caught the implication of Lagdalen's concern. They would never leave Relkin alone now, not until they had understood what it was that allowed him to perform this way.

"Indeed, Lady, this is news I wished I had not heard," said Eilsa, reaching the same conclusion.