Dragon Prince 01 - Dragon Prince (64 page)

Tears slid slowly down her cheeks. He caught one on his fingertip, stared at it for a moment. When he met her gaze, his eyes had kindled with anguish.

“I’m not worth this,” he whispered. “Oh, Sioned. What have I done?”

P
rince Jastri got the battle he so ardently desired on the morning after Princess Pandsala’s arrival. The High Prince’s troops engaged Lord Chaynal’s just after dawn, having crossed the river during the night at one bridge on the main road to the north and a second bridge hastily constructed much closer to the encamped armies. Chay, alerted before daybreak, nodded his satisfaction at the prospect of a fight, ordered his troops to ready themselves as silently as possible, and was waiting for the attack. His captains were frantic to assault and burn the bridges, but Chay had his own plans for them.

Prince Jastri’s horse forded the river to the south, and came north in a flanking maneuver designed to distract from Roelstra’s main thrust. Design and execution were two entirely different things. Jastri and his unseasoned troop of young highborns proved unequal to the hail of arrows and spears that greeted them a full measure before they had expected to encounter resistance. Shocked and furious, the young prince was forced into a confused retreat. He lost thirty-nine of his one hundred horse to Desert archers and the river. Lord Davvi, to whom Chay had entrusted the ambush, returned from it with only slight losses and in good time to give support to the main defenses.

But by late afternoon Roelstra’s troops had gained a swath of shoreline to which they clung ferociously. Chay withdrew, willing to let them have their landhold for now, unwilling to spend any more lives trying to retake it. He left enough archers behind to discourage further advances, and repaired to his tent with his captains, his son, and Lord Davvi.

“Losses of eighteen horse, thirty-seven foot, and fourteen archers,” he summarized after they had given their reports. “Scouts estimate enemy casualties of about twice that, but they have twice our numbers to begin with. I’m not interested in a war of attrition.” He toyed with a jeweled eating knife that had been a present from Tobin, watching the candlelight play off its rubies and steel. “But we have an advantage now.”

Lord Davvi expressed the surprise of the others in a single word. “How?”

Chay smiled tightly. “I make their numbers at upward of seven hundred, and by tomorrow morning about half that should be on this side of the river. I want regular reports on the numbers of men and horses and supplies brought over during the night.”

“What we ought to do is fire those bridges, my lord.”

“No, Gryden,” he told Radzyn’s guard commander. “Not yet. When half their forces are here within our grasp,
then
we will burn their bridges behind them.” He drew a line on the parchment map with his knife, making a deep scar. “I want to show Roelstra something really spectacular.”

“Why not now, when there are fewer of them to rise against us?” Davvi asked.

“Because I’m going to crush the High Prince in two battles. Two are all we can afford. Once we’ve butchered half his army, we’ll cross the Faolain and do the same to the other half.”

“But if the bridges are burned—”

“I have my ideas on that as well. No, Gryden, you will
not
call a meeting of the engineers and start tearing down trees. Our bridges will be quite different from Roelstra’s. Questions?” He eyed each in turn, noting they were puzzled, exactly as he had intended. Zehava had taught him long ago to keep his battle plans secret as long as possible; it had nothing to do with trust, only prudence. “Very well. Dismissed.”

Maarken stayed, taking up his father’s battle gear for cleaning. Chay watched the boy seat himself on the carpet near a lamp encased in clear glass. The careful fingers began their work, rubbing at the dull film of dirt on steel.

“You should be in bed,” he said.

“A squire doesn’t sleep until his lord does—or
unless
,” Maarken responded.

Chay smiled. “Nice try. Now you can tell me what’s really bothering you.”

The boy glanced up, then back down at his work. “Father, you don’t need archers and arrows to fire the bridges. You have
me.
”

His mind spun. He had never paid much attention to the various levels of
faradhi
training, not until Sioned had begun tutoring his wife. Ten rings for a Lord or Lady of Goddess Keep, seven for Master Sunrunners—

“My kind of Fire won’t damage the bridges as much if I’m careful, because I can put it out with a thought.”

—five for a trained Sunrunner, three for an apprentice—

“I don’t even have to be that close, just so I can see where you want me to place the Fire.”

—and one for the ability to call Fire. Chay stared at his son’s ringless hands that still rubbed assiduously at an imagined stain on the sword.

“No one will be in danger, Father. Roelstra won’t be alerted by any movement of troops. I can do it.”

“When those bridges go, there’ll be people on them. People who will die.” He waited until Maarken glanced up, held the bright blue gaze with his own. “I won’t have you responsible for that.”

“Andrade has sided with the Desert against Roelstra,” Maarken reminded him.

“But not to kill.”

“
You
have,” was the flat reply. “Your weapon is this.” He lifted the sword. “Mine, for now, can be Fire.”

“No!” he shouted at his son, afraid. “If you don’t see the difference, then you’ll never use either while I’m around to stop you! I want you to grow up to be Radzyn’s lord someday, not an outlaw condemned for misuse of
faradhi
powers you shouldn’t have in the first place!”

The sword slipped from Maarken’s fingers and brushed a silvery note from the shield on its way to the carpet. “Do you feel that way?” he whispered, his cheeks white. “Do you?”

“Yes. And it took this to make me realize it.” He shook his head wearily. “Do you have any idea what Andrade did by marrying her sister to your grandfather?”

“I’ve thought about it. Meath and Eolie and Prince Lleyn make sure I think about it. I was born as I am, and I couldn’t change it even if I wanted to. But it’s not just me, is it? It’s Sioned’s children, when she has them. Prince and Sunrunner both. How do you think we’ll all turn out, Father? Power-mad and ready to slaughter everyone who gets in our way? Is that what you think?” he accused bitterly.

Chay bit his lip, then said, “I think that I have a son I’m proud to call mine. Maarken, the world is changing and people like you will change it further. Born to one kind of power—but born
with
quite another.”

“We’re not one thing or another, Andry and I. Will we grow up to rule the lands you give us, or will we be ruled by Andrade?” His eyes were haunted now. “What am I to be, Father?”

Rohan would understand, Chay thought suddenly. He loved dragons and had been forced to kill one; he wanted desperately to live by rule of law, not by the sword. Rohan would understand the division in Maarken’s soul. But Sioned would understand even better, for it was the choice she lived with every day of her life.

Chay could and did take that choice from his son now. “I’m your father and your commander, and you’re doubly bound to obey me. You will not call Fire, Maarken. I forbid it.”

Rebellion and relief warred on the boy’s face for a moment. But he bent his head in submission. “Yes, my lord.”

Yet they both knew this was only a postponement of the inevitable choices Maarken would one day have to make on his own.

“Come,” Chay said, “time for bed, whether we sleep or not. One of the first rules of war is that the commander must always
appear
to be resting easily in his tent at night.”

The Flametower at Stronghold was an excellent vantage from which to observe the arrival of the Merida host. Tobin and Maeta stood at the windows, watching the hundred armed soldiers on horseback, their battle harness gleaming in the last evening light. The two women exchanged a glance.

“Will they try tonight or wait for morning?” Tobin asked.

“First light,” the warrior replied. “Look at them down there, setting up camp right in the shadow of Stronghold! Arrogant idiots. They act as if we’re already beneath their swords.” Her smile turned feral. “I’ll enjoy this.”

They started downstairs and Tobin said, “Chay would, too. As it happens, Maeta, I’m not a bad shot myself. And there’s a nice little niche left of the gates that would fit me like a glove.”

“I’m not afraid of your great roaring stallion of a husband, if that’s what you’re hinting. He can shout all he wants at me for putting you into the fight. The place is yours, along with as many Merida as you care to bring down.” She chuckled. “I remember when my mother gave you archery lessons.”

Instruction by Myrdal herself was recommendation enough, it seemed. “I’ll find a bow of the right weight, then, and be ready before dawn.”

“What about your boys? Locking them in their rooms won’t work, you know. Would you permit them to run arrows for us? If I give them the first section of the relay, they’ll be safe in the inner court the whole time.”

“Thank you. I really had no idea how to keep them out of this, and your way, they’ll be useful without being in danger.”

Well before dawn, Stronghold was ready—and absolutely silent. Tobin, dressed in riding clothes that blended with the stones around her, wedged herself into a narrow stone shelf cut exactly for this purpose in the outer walls of the gatehouse. Slung at her back and in a second quiver at her feet were arrows she had spent the night repainting in her husband’s red and white. There was nothing to be done about the blue fletching, but she wanted the Merida to know that Radzyn was represented here. When her fifty ran out, she would use those stockpiled in Rohan’s armory. But with a hundred Merida out there and twenty archers trained by Myrdal defending Stronghold, Tobin had the feeling she would run out of targets long before she ran out of red-and-white arrows.

It began when a helmeted Merida rode up the canyon toward the tunnel’s mouth. He reined in and lifted a hand in a pompous gesture that made Tobin want to giggle. The desire increased as he shouted in a ringing voice that had undoubtedly procured him this mission:

“Usurpers of Stronghold! Surrender to us now, and live! You cannot hope to survive against us, and there is no hope from north or south! Open the gates to the rightful rulers of the Desert!”

Because she was listening for it, Tobin heard the soft hiss of an arrow and was able to follow its flight. It sank into the man’s saddle a finger’s breadth from his thigh, and trembled there delicately. To his credit, he did not flinch. But he did ride back down with something akin to haste.

There followed a short wait while the sun climbed the eastern sky over the Long Sand and the shadows shifted, grew sharper. Tobin began to wish for the cool sea breezes of Radzyn. The sound of horses up the road made her forget the sweat that stuck her tunic to her skin, and she readied herself to draw her bowstring.

Unhappily, the Merida were not the fools Maeta had hoped. Not only the soldiers but their mounts were well protected by leather harness studded with bronze. Donning it had caused the delay. Tobin reflected sourly that this was unquestionably where Rohan’s gold had gone, and the artisans of Cunaxa had been hard at work to their great profit. She promised herself the Merida would not profit today.

She counted six rows of six each, horses riding shoulder-to-shoulder from one wall of the canyon to the other. When the first went down, close quarters would confuse and hamper the rest. Yet the signal for the first flight did not come, and Tobin began to fret. The riders were within range. She could almost discern eye-color behind the helmets with their long nose-pieces and cheek-guards.

At last a long, thin wail split the heat, a horn made of dragon bone, the ascending notes startling the horses below. Arrows spewed from the canyon and the gatehouse. It was all as Maeta had planned—the high shrieks of pain from the horses as they bucked and reared to escape the arrows pricking their flesh, the shouts and curses from the riders as steel found its way between and through leather. Tobin nocked, pulled and let fly with cool regularity, and twenty others just like her did the same.

Eight down, nine, ten—she saw why Maeta had waited until the last row of horses was in range, for the injured at the back pushed the others forward, and fallen horses would block part of the road if the Merida decided to retreat.

But they did not retreat, and all at once a tan-clad body fell screaming from Stronghold’s gatehouse and thudded to the hard-packed sand below. Above and opposite Tobin were a dozen archers, perched precariously on a ledge rising above the canyon. She had no time to wonder how they had gotten there, for she heard the hissing of an arrow and the clink of its steel head in the rock at her shoulder. She changed her stance and let fly, hearing Maeta shout orders that all on Tobin’s side of the gate do the same. The others were not in position to respond to this new attack.