Blood of the Emperor (32 page)

He carefully leaned back, trying to ease the tip of his elongated head onto the polished stone surrounding the bath.

The doors of the bath banged open.

Startled, Betjarian slammed the back of his head against the stone.

“Praetus!” Tribune Galoch rushed into the room. His face was paler than usual, the veins on his long forehead pulsing nearly to the back of his skull. His mouth kept working but only formed the same word over and over again. “Praetus! Praetus!”

“By the gods!” Betjarian cried out, thrashing about in the water for
a moment before his hands gripped the sides of the pool, steadying him. “I’m here! Have you lost your senses? What could possibly excuse…”

“Praetus! We are under attack!”

“Attack?” Betjarian tried to wipe the water off his face. “What are you blathering about?”

“An army is approaching from the east,” the Tribune said, his words rushed despite his obvious effort to gain control of himself. “They are moving quickly and in formation.”

“How many?” Betjarian asked at once, reaching for his robe at the side of the pool.

“We count ten Legions…”

“TEN Legions???” Betjarian turned and stared with disbelief at the Tribune.

“There are ten Legion divisions in the approaching army,” the Tribune answered, correcting himself. “They appear to be about half strength—or perhaps less. Perhaps forty to fifty thousand total warriors.”

“Could they be Chaenandrians?” Betjarian spoke his thoughts aloud. “Perhaps they’re trying to take advantage of the displacement of the Legions.”

“It’s a mixed force, Praetus,” the Tribune responded. “Manticores in the lead elements but there is also a mixture of chimerians, goblins, and gnomes. There is also a rather large proportion of humans among them as well…”

“The Army of the Prophet!” Betjarian exclaimed in wonder.

“The Drakis Rebels?” Galoch gaped. “How, by all the gods, did they get
here
?”

“It doesn’t matter how they got here!” Betjarian shouted as he wrapped his robe around him, cinching the sash tight. “Muster the warriors, Tribune, and on my order! I want both Legions in the city mounting the city wall and the defenses at once…at once, do you hear?”

“Yes, Praetus!” The Tribune bowed. He started to rush from the bath then stopped suddenly. “Should we sound the city alarm?”

“By all the gods of my House! The Emperor
himself
would have demanded the alarm be sounded before you ever reached my rooms!”
Betjarian screamed as he rushed to gather his uniform. “Go! Do it now!”

“Glodock!” Belag shouted, trying to be heard over the rumbling march of the Legion arrayed before him. He wore Chaenandrian battle armor that had been presented to him by Ethis although where the chimerian got the armor Belag knew better than to ask. It was beautifully made and fit the manticore with near perfection but Belag felt awkward in it. Manticorian armor is handed down from generation to generation and is part of their heritage and their honor. That Belag should go into battle wearing the honor of another clan was unsettling to him.

More than that, it was considered an ill omen.

“Yesss, Grahn Aur!” hissed the goblin as he urged his the wyvern saddled beneath him closer to the manticore.

“Get word to the Jurusta and Elucia Legion commanders to form ranks on either side of Quabet Legion about two thousand yards out from the Northreach Gate,” Belag said as clearly as he could and slightly slower than he normally would. Glodock was a fine and dedicated messenger. He would always guarantee that the message would get through although his understanding of the Imperial language was not good and the message often arrived a bit less clear than it originated. “They are to wait there for my signal to charge the gates. Standard Chaenandrian formation.”

“Chaenandrian…what?” the goblin squawked.

“Manticores in the front, pike and sword warriors advancing after them with archers behind in support,” Belag explained quickly. The walls of Tjarlas were getting closer with every step. “Have them keep the mages with the archers. They are not to use the mages or archers until the charge begins. The signal will be a single bolt of flame cast toward the wall by my mage.”

“But, glorious Grahn Aur,” the goblin stammered, apparently confused. “If the mages are not to cast their fire until the charge begins and the charge can only begin if a mage casts fire…”

An unnerving wail, low in pitch but then rising abruptly split the
air with a piercing clarion call. The manticores all winced, instinctively ducking from the horrible noise that rolled out over the walls of Tjarlas to wash through the air over the steppes. It suddenly was choked off only to begin again…and again…

“I guess they must have seen us,” the goblin chuckled darkly.

“We’re a bit hard to miss,” Belag replied without humor. “Deliver the orders and then…”

Far to the south, a gout of flame leaped into the air, arching toward the city wall. The flame exploded above the city wall in a blinding flash. The report followed three seconds later, a clap of thunder that startled the manticorian ranks at the front of his central Legion.

“Gragrach!” Belag swore. The forward manticores of the central group were already charging toward the wall. “Not yet! It’s too soon!”

Already the manticores of his own Jurusta Legion to the north were charging forward in a ragged line, eager for glory and battle.

“Release the charge!” bellowed Belag. His command of the army was coming apart, slipping out of his hands and dissolving into the bloodlust of the warriors’ charge. More arching balls of fire trailing heat and flame took flight behind him from his own mages. One landed short of the wall, exploding in a blossom of flame and dirt thirty feet into the air. The second was long, plunging down beyond the wall. This vanished for a moment before erupting in a cloud of fire and smoke. The fire continued to burn beyond the wall, its dark, greasy smoke roiling up among the avatria towers of the city and blemishing the achingly blue sky.

“Charge! Charge!” Belag cried as he ran forward, following the manticores as they gripped their blades in their teeth, clawing across the ground on all fours with tremendous speed.

Still, the Grahn Aur glanced to the skies.

Where is Drakis? Where are the dragons?

The muffled whooping cry of the city alarm penetrated the deepest rooms of the avatria in Serenity House.

K’yeran bolted from the lounge, instinctively snatching up her Matei staff as she went. She had been halfheartedly reading a
book—a rarity in itself—from the archives of Serenity House with little interest. It had been an exercise in passing the time only until she could approach the Occuran Foldmaster at the Emperor’s Gate fold and, at last, start making her way south with her prize. Now the book was discarded and forgotten as she ran with long strides through the library doors and down the short, curving hallway. She threw open the doors to the balcony and stepped outside, the alarm suddenly blaring as it echoed between the towers and through the street below.

K’yeran gaped at the vista before her as she leaned against the ornate railing of the balcony. The avatria of Serenity House floated, by design, high enough so as to present an unobstructed view of much of the southern part of the city below and, more especially, the plains to the east and south.

The streets below were filled with panicked elven citizens of the Second, Third and Fourth Estates. Their slaves followed them as best they could but there was nowhere for any of them to go. The city gates were locked and barred and the Occuran Foldmasters had sealed the folds into and out of the walled city.

But it was the sight beyond the city walls that drew her breath in through clenched teeth.

“By Anjei’s Eyes!” Jak’ra swallowed in wonder. “Is that…? Could that be…?”

“Yes,” K’yeran said, her anger barely held in check as she spoke. “The Army of the Prophet is paying us a call and it looks as though they mean to stay whether they were invited or not.”

“Mistress, Inquisitor,” Indexia Chik’dai called, rushing to join them on the small balcony. “Look to the east!”

“Where?”

“There, moving just south of the sun,” Chik’dai said, pointing with her right hand as she held her left up to shade her eyes. “Flying just a finger’s width above the horizon.”

K’yeran held her own hand up, peering into the distance. At first she could only make out the dark shapes moving across the sky and thought for a moment it might be just a trick of the light.

She suddenly dropped her hand, taking a step back from the balcony. “Are those…?”

“Dragons, yes, Inquisitor, I believe they are,” Chik’dai answered. “How do we fight dragons?”

K’yeran rocked back and forth, her head shaking in thought. Suddenly she screamed in rage, the sound cutting above the shrill alarm as she brought both her fists down in frustration against the railing.

She spun around, facing the Indexia.

“What do we do, Inquisitor?” Jak’ra asked, his words sounding more like a plea.

“We do what we have to do,” K’yeran said. “How charged are the Matei staffs?”

“The Matei staffs are all fully charged,” Chik’dai responded. “We were prepared to leave for Rhonas at your word.”

“Then have each member of the Quorum collect their Matei staff and come up here at once,” K’yeran ordered. “We are hunting dragons this dawn.”

Siege

D
RAKIS LEANED FORWARD on the back of the dragon Marush, trying to see what was happening below. The beating of the enormous wings straining forward to scoop the air regularly prevented a view of the ground but what he did see during the interval when the wings swept down and back had him worried.

The forward lines of the Army of the Prophet, so clearly and neatly drawn the night before on the map had dissolved in the chaos of battle. Drakis could see that the manticores in the center and northern forces were already charging toward the wall yet the southern group had not begun their run. Worse, the charging manticores were suffering under a withering bombardment of spells of every kind cast down upon them from the city wall—a wall that looked to be manned shoulder to shoulder with defending warriors, Impress Warriors and Proxi mages. Eruptions of flame and smoke, lightning flashes and cyclone winds cut across the approaches to the city, obscuring the devastation they were certainly wreaking all along the still charging manticore line. Counter spells from the few mages of Group North flashed toward the city. Those spells were powerful but inaccurate, often falling short enough to endanger their own advancing warriors and more often still arching beyond the city wall and bursting within the city. Smoke from several fires inside the city, especially
one large conflagration on the northern side of the central city, billowed upward, marring the clear sky and filling the interior of the city with a hazy pall.

He glanced back. Urulani was there off to his left riding her dragon, Kyranish. Seated behind her was Braun, clinging tightly to the harness. To his right, perhaps two wingspans away, flew Jugar on the back of Pyrash followed closely by Ethis astride Wanrah.

Already, Drakis could see the flash and crackle of folds opening up behind the lines of Group North. The Rhonas warriors were emerging there, moving against the rear of his army’s formations.