The Dragons of Argonath (21 page)

A few hours later under sullen grey skies, Commander Geilen and his command marched into the smoldering ruins of Quosh and found a massive effort underway to care for the wounded, prepare the dead for burial, and begin work on clearing the ruins prior to rebuilding.

The dragons of the 109th were not there, having gone with a large party of men from Brennans, who had shown up about an hour after dawn, in pursuit of the enemy. A message had been sent back to say that a few of the new-style trolls had been captured in Brumble Woods, apparently abandoned by their masters. They were said to be quite tractable, now that the black drink had worn off.

The Emperor of the Rose was in Quosh, wrapped in bandages, but still hale enough to sit in a chair and receive such as Commander Geilen on the pavement outside the Blue Stone Inn. A heavily bandaged guard stood by the emperor's side. Geilen thanked his lucky stars that he had obeyed the message brought by that owl.

"Your Majesty, we came as quickly as we could after receiving the message. Even though it was a little unusual."

The emperor chuckled.

"I know, I know, sometimes these magical things are necessary, no? But it's a damn good thing you came as you did. I want you to take your men and head straight up into the hills. There were still a couple hundred imps alive and some of these new creatures called bewks. The dragons are chasing them now."

"Of course, Your Majesty. Just a few minutes to water the horses, and we'll be on our way."

"You must move the men along at their best pace. I know they are tired, but there are lives at risk here. We don't want small bands of imps getting loose into the hills."

Geilen nodded. It was true. Imps were naturally vicious, of weak dispositions, easily addicted to the black drink and prone to kill under its influence. He stepped back and bowed. The emperor clearly didn't want any sympathies wasted on his Imperial person. Wounds were not to be considered.

"This must have been a hell of a fight," he said as he straightened up and surveyed the charred ruins along Market Street, which were still sending smoke skyward. Steam and smoke still eddied through the streets, along with groups of people carrying stretchers. In the inn's courtyard they were laying out the bodies. At least eighty men were lying there, along with more than a dozen women and fourteen children, the youngest being Inky Peltwine, six.

"It was exactly that, Commander. And the people of this village have earned the undying respect of all their fellows in the lands of the Empire of the Rose. Such courage and gallantry has been shown here this past night as will live forever in song and saga."

"May I offer my congratulations, Your Majesty, on your victory. This fight will always be remembered by men who love freedom under a just law."

"Thorn here will get some food for your men. I expect they're taking a drink about now."

Geilen's men were indeed busy at the pump house slaking their thirsts. They had marched for fourteen miles at a rapid pace, most of them ducked their heads in the pond, filled the helmets with water and sloshed it over themselves. The horses were obviously nervous. They drank, but the smell of blood and dragons unsettled them.

Shortly they were gathered in the marketplace eating stirabout out of communal tubs brought out from the inn.

Geilen took a mug of hot kalut and toasted the emperor. The men roared out their allegiance. Then Geilen toasted the village of Quosh. The emperor was plainly pleased by that. He called out in a loud voice, and his guard helped him to his feet. The men roared their approval at the sight.

The noise finally brought a woman out of the inn. The moment Geilen clapped eyes on that slender figure in grey cloth, he knew she was the witch. Fascinated, he couldn't help staring. This was the creature that had sent the owl, this was that legendary witch who sat behind the Imperial Throne and advised emperors.

Lessis felt the interest in Geilen's eyes. She knew the look of one who was captivated by the magic world. She caught his glance and charmed him with a smile and a simple spell, then bowed to the emperor and inquired calmly as to how he was feeling.

Pascal had actually sat down again. Standing was too much. There was a pain that could be fairly called searing from that wound above his hip.

"I guess I'm about well enough to sit up," he said.

"The dragonboy commended your fortitude, Your Majesty."

"A very deft hand on that boy, I have been wondering if there oughtn't to be a scholarship for dragonboys who complete their terms of legion service. They ought to be inducted into the college of surgeons."

Lessis imagined how upset the college of surgeons would be when they heard this proposal come down from Andiquant. They spent many years in pursuit of the right to practice. How would they take to dragonboys coming off the battlefields to work among them? Not well, she judged. She changed tack.

"Your Majesty has been informed that we have captured some of these new creatures?"

"Yes."

"We shall have to investigate them carefully. They must not be slain if it can be helped."

"It is hard, considering the carnage they have wreaked here, but they will be kept alive, as will the men we took prisoner. They will get their trials, and then I expect they will hang." The emperor gave her a sharp look, as if daring her to disagree.

"They will be interrogated thoroughly first, I trust" was all she said. "There is always intelligence to be obtained from such men. They have seen more deeply into the belly of our enemy than we can ever hope to."

"Of course. And then they will hang. The people will not accept any other sentence."

Lessis shrugged. "I would not expect any. Such men have turned their backs on the rest of human folk. They cannot expect mercy in return."

"Well, Lady, we did it!" said Pascal with sudden fierceness. He wanted his due.

"Yes, Your Majesty. We did." She bowed deeply.

Geilen continued to stare at her, drinking in the presence of a legend and wondering at the slightly fierce nature of the emperor's voice.

"Well done, Commander," she said. "You came quickly once he found you."

"He?" Geilen was startled to be addressed. "You mean the bird, the owl?"

"Of course. Who else?"

Geilen swallowed heavily. "Yes, of course."

"I thank you for coming so quickly, despite such a strange message bearer. Fierce wasn't he?"

"Would that we could have come more quickly and been here before the battle ended."

"The dragons came in time. They had a strange dream and responded to it."

Geilen pursed his lips. A dream? Geilen hadn't even known that wyverns dreamed at all. All along the way down the valley from Felli, they had heard tales of the passage of the 109th Marneri Dragons before them. At the time Geilen had been relieved, he'd guessed right about the dragons' destination. He'd ordered his men to pick up the pace. They started to smell smoke before they got to Barley Mow. Then they'd really cracked on, and Geilen knew that he'd done the right thing to obey that message from the owl.

"The first we'd known of all this in the camp was when those dragons just upped and vanished. Had us all worried sick when we found out."

"It has been a very strange couple of nights for all of us. A relatively enormous enemy force has been active in the Ersoi for days, but no word of it leaked out."

"Ah." Geilen was suddenly able to imagine the scope of the inquiry that would inevitably descend upon him. As commander in Cross Treys, he had some sort of responsibility for the Ersoi Hills.

"We had no news of it in Cross Treys, I can assure you. If we had heard of it, we would have been out of camp in a moment and after them. There's little enough to do at Cross Treys, you know."

"I am sure you would have," she said.

He had finished his kalut. It was time to be off.

He bowed, strode out to the middle of the market, and mounted his horse, leading the men and dragons down Market Street into the clouds of steam and smoke. Geilen hated to admit it, but he felt shivery inside. He had met both the emperor and his tame witch! He, poor old Jod Geilen, who was in the twilight of his career and would never rise above the rank of commander. He had exchanged words with the emperor and then with that strange witch. She looked so plain, so ordinary, like a pale, worn woman who might have been a laundress. Not a scrap of color on her, just a single ring on her finger. By the Hand, she looked no more than fifty, but they said she was hundreds of years old. Geilen shivered again.

He looked up sharply when huge shapes loomed out of the smoke. Two dragons were shepherding a group of five strange creatures. They were bizarre-looking beasts, these trolls, with shaggy bearlike bodies and huge heads with piggish faces. They were disarmed, and their wrists were bound behind them. Geilen stared after them, wondering what they were and how they'd been produced.

The marching men from Cross Treys made room for the oncoming dragons and their captives. There was considerable chatter among the men about these new monsters. The dragons from Cross Treys hissed greetings to the duo herding the bewks—Churn a young brass and Gryf the green.

Then the men passed the smoking ruins of the houses on Brennans Road and were marching onto the common, heading up to Brumble Woods.

Back in the yard of the Blue Stone Brewery, Bazil hissed loudly as Relkin tended to his wounds. There was an arrow lodged in his left wingstub, and it hurt like the devil to have it cut out. The wingstub was a massive knot of muscle, redundant muscles in a wyvern, located in a girdle below the shoulder blade, and it was a tender area.

The gates suddenly filled with dragons, and then with the bewks. Bazil snarled, and reached for his sword.

"Hey!" Relkin jumped back, almost losing his balance.

Bazil was getting to his feet, on the point of unsheathing Ecator, when Relkin climbed up to his shoulder.

"Baz, they're prisoners. You can't kill them."

"Prisoners," hissed the dragon.

Gryf and Churn loomed up. Rakama and Howt were behind them.

"We have captured some of these things. The witch wants them," said Gryf.

Bazil snorted. "For what?"

"I do not know," said Churn. "I would prefer to kill them."

Bazil suddenly chuckled.

"What is funny?" said Gryf sharply. Gryf was still a little sensitive around the Broketail dragon.

"The Purple Green will want to eat at least one of them."

Even Gryf found this thought amusing.

By the time the 109th Marneri had marched back to Cross Treys, they had developed a clearer picture of the ambush and subsequent Battle of Quosh. The enemy force had indeed landed on the Ersoi shore. A shepherd was found, a solitary fellow who lived in the southernmost hills, who had seen boats landing from two ships that heaved up beyond the breakers.

Those ships were already the focus of a gathering search by the Imperial fleet. Message birds were winging their way to and fro about the Empire of the Rose bearing this news. Frigates and sloops from every port in the Argonath were already putting to sea to hunt down these intruders.

Most of the raiding party had been accounted for, although there were some tracks leading from Capbern's Gap up into the Ersoi that were followed for a while and then lost by the Pawler brothers and their dogs. A watch was put on the hills and warnings posted out to all the shepherds and woodcutters and anyone else who would be working in out-of-the-way places.

The dead and captured bewks were in the process of being examined, dissected, and described scientifically by a team of surgeons summoned up from Kadein. They worked under Lessis's keen eye, while a pair of scribes and an artist from the Office of Insight took down commentaries and made drawings.

The Purple Green's inevitable request for one of the things to roast and eat was reluctantly denied by the witch, who said they had all to be interrogated and then investigated scientifically. It was necessary to ascertain just how strong, how fast, how intelligent the brutes were so that adequate countermeasures could be taken. She regretted being unable to donate one to the cause of dragon gastronomy and promised to come up with some other reward in that line.

The captured men, eleven in all, were taken under guard to Marneri for detailed interrogation. Lessis sent birds to Marneri with messages that were to be sent on to Andiquant. She ordered Bell and Selera, witches of the Office of Unusual Insight, to travel to Marneri at once and there to take over interrogation of these men. They were to peel them down to the bone. Then they would go to trial.

Lessis had some specific questions for these men too, such as what had caused that extremely bright light that had shone down on the ambush scene and blinded the emperor's guards. There was a power exposed there that she had not seen on Ryetelth before.

And if, as she suspected, this was the new enemy, then he had struck with considerable skill. This had been a swift, well-conceived attempt to decapitate the Empire of the Rose, and it had come very close, much closer than Lessis liked to contemplate. It had only foundered through their good luck in meeting with a battledragon and his boy. And if the enemy had succeeded, what then? The empire would be shaken by the resulting struggles. The succession was still a matter of debate. There was no good candidate within the Asturi clan at this juncture. There was a cousin, Keffad, who showed promise, but he was only nine. Too young for an effective emperor. There was also the problematic Furnido, half brother of Pascal, who had groused for years that he had been unfairly passed over for the Imperial Throne. Around Furnido swirled a motley band of malcontents and would-be intriguers.

Lessis wondered what maneuvers might have begun already back in Cunfshon and Andiquant. The fact that Pascal had survived would have squelched them at once, of course. However, it was possible that this whole ghastly thing could have a beneficial consequence if it exposed any movements within the Asturi or their related clans.