The Dragons of Argonath (19 page)

The cost of such a move was enormous. Dragon Leader Cuzo winced.

"Sir, could we not try reasoning with them first? I am sure they can be brought to see the error of their ways. The 109th has an enviable reputation. These are seasoned veterans, most of them."

"Seasoned or not, they're not here and that is what I have to deal with. I will send to Marneri. You will try to find the dragons and talk them into getting back here as soon as possible so I can cancel my request for a huge squad to arrest them."

Cuzo swallowed.

"Yes, sir."

There came a knock at the door. Lieutenant Loran entered. He had a decidedly flustered air as he came to attention and saluted.

"Sir, I have to report that there's an owl, sir."

"A what?"

"An owl, sir."

"An owl. So?"

Lieutenant Loran struggled for a moment.

"It's brought a message, addressed to the commanding officer."

"What are you babbling about? I have a whole dragon squadron gone missing, along with all their dragonboys, and you are wasting my time yammering about owls?"

Commander Geilen began to take on a dangerous countenance.

Lieutenant Loran swallowed heavily.

"Here is the scroll it brought."

Commander Geilen stared at the lieutenant with stony eyes. Then he snatched the little scroll. ■

"I don't know what this is about, but if you jest with me, Lieutenant, you will regret it."

Loran was so glad to get that witch scroll out of his hand that he hardly worried about Geilen's threat.

Geilen examined the seal under the lamp. An elfin rune, the letter "L" and the symbol of the Queen of Birds. Geilen paled.

"An owl, by the gods," he murmured softly, but loud enough for Loran to hear. The lieutenant drew heart from this. The focus of blame would be shifted, at least.

"The sentry claims that the owl brought this scroll in its claw and dropped it. Now it's sitting on the roof of the gatehouse. Hell of a loud owl."

"Mmm." Geilen realized he could no longer put off his sudden impact with the witch-ridden side of the empire. "Well, I'd better look at it whether it was brought by an owl or a band of pixies."

Geilen opened the letter and read it with mounting astonishment. It was written in a fanatically neat and tiny script that was easy to read. The signature was equally clear: "Lessis" was all it said.

But he knew it was the Grey Witch, the semi-mythical Queen of Birds; it could be no other. Commander Geilen had an instinctive queasiness concerning sorcery, and like anyone else in the army, he had heard the legends of the Grey Witch.

But the message was very clear. There was a battle raging in the village of Quosh and he was commanded, in the name of the emperor himself, to take his entire command and march at once to Quosh and attack the enemy force. He was to bring all the dragons he could because there was a new class of troll in the enemy party. He was urged to hurry; the emperor's life was at stake.

"Thank you, Lieutenant, you may go."

Geilen turned back to Cuzo. Astonishment was giving way to relief, strange as that might seem. After all this, it was good to have some idea of what had been happening.

"I don't know what's going on, but all of a sudden I think we have the answer to our mystery dragons. They have gone to Quosh. And now we are summoned to Quosh, so we will go. And perhaps when we get there, these mysteries will be more fully explained."

"Quosh?"

"Everyone, the entire command, now. Now!" Geilen raised his voice as he hadn't done in ten years or more. "We're going to Quosh, and we're going to fight. Tell my orderly to come in when you go. Round up all the dragons left in the fort; we'll need them, it says here."

Within a half hour the various units that had been on relaxed duty at Cross Treys were scrambling out through the gate, still belting on weaponry while their officers and sergeants bellowed at them to get a move on.

The rain was still coming down, but not as steadily. The men marched through near total darkness up toward the hills.

In the ruins of Quosh, the fighting had flared and died down again. The enemy's pressure was repulsed once more. With some of the others, Relkin dragged himself back to the gateway to the inn. His arm was numb, his brain fogged in exhaustion. Once again they had held the enemy and driven them back down Market Street, but the second barricade had irrevocably fallen. They had lost the brewery and were now fighting for the Blue Stone Inn itself, the center of the town. A third barricade had gone up: The delivery drays from the brewery, Wendra Neath's little blue coach, and anything else that could be moved, like the tables from the inn, had been piled up across the market between the Neaths' house and the inn.

"We held them, Baz, we held them again."

The dragon was too puffed to talk, but he nodded a vast slow nod as he laid his weary bones down inside the gate.

Relkin noted the exhaustion of the other men around him, including Ham Pawler. They were hollow-eyed, slumped over with exhaustion. They had been plucked from normal life and thrown into this horror. They were not in the physical condition of soldiers, and the hours of battle had exhausted them. They were close to collapse.

Relkin sagged back against the wall beside the dragon. Bazil had been magnificent, but even his great heart was wearing down now. They could not go on much longer, and the enemy was gaining heart, you could feel it. The imps knew it was only a matter of time now.

When the brewery was lost, most of the patients had been moved, but a few badly wounded men fell to the imps, who dragged them away to roast slowly over fires. Their agonized screams floated in now from the dark, a dreadful howling that tore at the men's nerves while the imps beat their drums and roared their war chants.

Relkin swore to kill himself before falling into the hands of the imps. They could eat his body if they liked, but his spirit would have gone to Gongo in the shadow land, and he'd be spared their torments. They'd get no pleasure from tearing out his tongue and eyeballs.

He saw Thorn go by. He was still at work, in between bouts of combat and organizing the defense. Relkin's admiration for him had grown through the hours. Thorn was extremely steady, and Relkin respected that in a battle situation, where many men became panicky. Thorn stopped at the sight of the dragon and came to squat beside Relkin. He might be the emperor's top guard, but he didn't stand on ceremony, not in the least.

"How are you, Dragoneer?" Thorn's arm had been rebandaged before the last fight, but it was a mess again, and he had some fresh scrapes on his forehead. There had been some difficult moments with the bewks at the barricade.

"We held them, Thorn, that's all I can say."

"We will hold! Twenty men came in from Cailonne just now, they rode up as soon as they got the news. More are coming. Help will come from Cross Treys."

Relkin nodded somberly. Help would come, but never in time.

"The emperor?"

"Is holding steady. That was beautiful work you did. The emperor was most impressed."

"He was a good patient, hardly moved, though I know it hurt."

"How is the dragon?"

"He's tiring. Needs food."

Thorn nodded. "I'll see what I can do about that." Thorn rose and slipped away.

Relkin got a second wind and started up to see if he could find some water, or better yet, some beer for the dragon.

A figure stepped in beside him.

"Relkin!"

That voice, so soft and quiet, yet penetrating, it was unmistakable.

"Lady. How are you?" he motioned to her head.

She slipped off her customary grey cowl to reveal that they had shaved her head and redressed the wound with a relatively clean bandage.

"Did they use Old Sugustus?"

"The stuff that stings like fury?"

"Yes. That's how you can tell it's doing the job."

"They did, and it stung all right. I appear to be surviving. And I'm glad to see both of you are still able to fight. You held them at the barricade."

"Bazil killed three of the new beasts."

Lessis shook her head slowly with that sense of terrible wonder. War was a fearsome thing, but she had seen the ghastly beauty in the way of the battledragons. Their energy and zest for combat was an awesome thing to behold.

"We have been drawn together again, child. There must be a purpose in this, but I do not perceive it. The stitches of Her Hem are beyond my reckoning."

"Many things have happened, Lady. Not just this fight, but others…"

"Yes, I can see that. You have grown, Relkin. Indeed you are no longer a child at all, and I shall not address you as such."

They fell silent, then Relkin spoke again.

"I have seen things, things that were terrible."

"You were in Mirchaz," she said. "What did they do to you, young man, those tired old creatures, wizened in their evil ways?"

"I was taken to the elf lords. I learned much, Lady. I learned of the ancient sorcery. I saw the Great One arise, the New Being, that which was the slave of the Game Lords. Ten thousand of them, welded together like bees in a hive, Lady. And now they are one. I felt its power within me, I have not been able to forget that feeling, Lady, even though I have tried. I have prayed to be forgotten and to forget. But I cannot forget, no matter how hard I try."

"It is a hard thing, Relkin, when a mind is exposed to the great power of high sorcerous magic and is not prepared for the experience. Without the training and discipline of years of work, the power cannot be controlled, nor can it be summoned at will except through extraordinary means. The young mind can be damaged, even destroyed by such powers."

"Lady, I can readily believe you. And you are right. I cannot use the power, I cannot even summon it up. I tried to do that tonight. I wanted to try and reach out to the thoughts of the men in Cross Treys. I thought perhaps I could speak to them in their thoughts in the way that you have spoken to me in mine."

"It was always easy to reach you, Relkin. I know the high ones must have marked your path."

"But, Lady, I cannot use the power. I could not make it do the thing I wanted."

"Without training in these arts, you can do nothing."

"But I have felt the power and seen things, seen such fantastic things that you might go mad at the thought of them. I saw worlds, whole worlds, created for the pleasure of the Game Lords. I dwelled in one and was seduced by its spirit."

Relkin paused for a moment, his thoughts whirled whenever he remembered fair Ferla in the grotto of Mot Pulk. But all that was gone, lost in tears of long ago.

"I feel the lure of it, Lady, and I fear it. I have seen too much, and I cannot forget."

"You have endured much, young man."

Indeed, she thought, his whole life had been spent at war or preparing for war, and he was only now grown to manhood. What more might he be called on to do? Like it or not, he had been recruited into the high struggle that went on across the very sphere board of destiny.

"But, Lady, I felt the power of the New Being in me. I, Relkin, orphan, nobody but a dragoneer. Then suddenly it was as if I was a god. I went to the great gates of the city, and I put up my hand and smote them. They were blasted asunder and laid open and thus the city fell to the slaves."

"Mirchaz is no more." The world had changed, their evil game was ended, for which Lessis was thankful.

"It is a new thing, Lady, the giant that was born there, and we will meet it again, I am certain."

Lessis sighed. Ribela had confirmed that something strange and awesome had taken place in Mirchaz when it fell, but beyond that had said little. Lessis thought that she was hiding something. Ribela had her pride.

"I hope we can learn from it."

"Lady, there are gods and then there are other gods, false gods. You told me of the Sinni, and I saw the elf lords. They were not gods, but they wished to be. They were corrupt and cruel. I was the Iudo Faex. I was…" He put a hand up to his forehead and leaned back against the wall, too exhausted to speak suddenly.

The dragon watched them with huge black and yellow eyes. Bazil was lost in a cloud of fatigue. He labored, just sucking in air and expelling it from his huge lungs. He had no energy left for contemplating the strange things that had happened in Mirchaz.

"Relkin, put your trust in the Mother, she will hold you up."

"I will try, Lady. But the world is not the place I thought it was. It's like a stage set with another world set up behind it, and our actions are not entirely ours to control. There are other powers pulling the strings, and we are but puppets. These gods and demigods confuse me, Lady, and I wish I had not been chosen to endure all this."

"You are a survivor, Relkin, that is the truth of it. You survived the volcano—"

"I survived the new god, the one that was born there in Mirchaz."

"By the Hand, Relkin, we should not speak so lightly of the gods. It was not a god, and the Sinni are not gods either."

"The Sinni, they are friends?"

"They are, but like us they are in the Mother's Hand, for we are all Her children. Sinni, elves of olden days, even the horrible old wizards of the Red Aeon, all descend from the primordial force in the world, all were nurtured by mothers. In this we all share, all that live."

"We had fathers too!" Relkin murmured, protesting as he had since he was about nine and started not to believe the stories they read to the children at school.

"Indeed, but the paternal interest is not always as strong as the maternal interest. Sometimes it is strong, sometimes it is weak. It is all the way of nature, and in this we can see the Hand."

And in your case, child, isn't it obvious? Orphaned in a village like this one.

"Trust in the Mother, Relkin. We shall talk of this again. You should receive the training if you so desire. These talents are precious and rare."

"Lady, I fear these things, these sorcerous powers that I can feel. They hover in my mind sometimes like ghosts. I wish I were just a dragonboy again,."

"That wish has not been granted you, Relkin."