The Dragons of Argonath (35 page)

The dragons drew sword at the whispered command. Great blades appeared from their scabbards and long, pale gleams of deadly steel shone in the dawning light. Dragonboys pressed up behind the wyverns, checked equipment, and whispered encouragement to each other.

"Good luck, Relkin," said young Howt, who was visibly nervous. These were his first battles. His dragon had done well, but the adrenaline and terror of battle were at work on him. His voice sounded tight.

"Let Caymo throw the dice," muttered Relkin as he clasped hands with the younger boy.

Bazil gave him a sardonic glance. Ecator rested on the wyvern's shoulder for a moment longer.

The cornet blast shattered the quiet. A high shrill shriek presaging slaughter. The legion force moved out and swept down into the tents and shelters. Caught in the drowsy moments of early dawn, the men were easily panicked. Here and there some made an attempt at resistance. A bunch of thirty or forty would make a stand against the general rout, but the legionaries would back off, move around them, and continue to press the ones who were running, leaving the standing groups to the dragons, who made short work of them.

The Purple Green was particularly effective. He used his shield to sweep aside spears and lances and then hacked at the men with his ugly legion issue sword. It lacked soul, but it was still a huge piece of deadly steel, and men were sundered and cut into fragments whenever they placed themselves within range.

Bazil, Alsebra, and some of the others were less eager to kill men. The sacred bond between dragons and men was strong in wyverns raised among people and tended all their lives by dragonboys. The Purple Green's cheerful lust for slaughter was absent from their hearts in this fight.

Still, grim work was done on those fields, and by the time it was over, several hundred Aubinan men were left slain among the grain stubble. The rest were in headlong flight, heading north and west, running for the Wheat Road and the quickest way to Posila.

The dragons were not used for pursuit once the panic really got underway. They were kept back and grouped with two hundred men to form a force to keep the Aubinan cavalry at bay when it finally put in an appearance. Urmin judged that the Aubinan foot would not reform before reaching Posila. These were only partially trained troops, and their disorganization was almost total.

Over in the woods to the north and east, Caleb Neth finally understood what was going on at about the time that the fight in Avery Woods ended. He sent his force hard for the Old Turnpike, and they finally drove the Talion troops into flight and began to push up the road. Neth urged haste, deadly afraid of what might have happened in the first light of morning.

But Neth was not sure where the Aubinan foot had camped. They'd retreated in disorder the previous day and communications in the night had been poor. He came into the margins of Avery Woods at last, and the dragons, with an hour of rest under their belts emerged into the open to oppose. There were quite a few legionaries too, though their numbers were disguised because they hid in the woods and scrub. The Talion troopers were also ready to engage in combat once again.

Neth studied the situation. The Old Turnpike passed through Avery Woods. To go around the woods would take him a couple of miles south, which would waste precious time. To go through on the road meant charging the dragons.

Caleb Neth was a wheat-farming horseman from the heart of Nellin. He had a prejudice against dragons, who ate way too much out of the public purse and kept the cavalry arm of the legions from becoming dominant. He accepted the challenge.

The men of Nellin surged up to form the vanguard of the attack, dropping their lances and heavy spears into place.

The order was given with a shriek, and they went away with a thundering roll of hooves, galloping up the road straight toward the line of wyverns, which was backed by a double line of infantry. As the horsemen came in, they aimed their lances at the dragons, but they were met by those massive shields and the lance heads were turned away or snapped clean off the shaft. By then it didn't matter anyway, since the dragonsword would have swung around in a gleaming arc and taken the rider. There were close moments, especially for slower wyverns like old Chektor, but not a single Aubinan lance head went home. Dragonswords flashed like razors over the corn, and heads were lopped all around them.

The horsemen staggered to a stop, and when their impetus was gone, the legionaries surged forward through the gaps between the dragons, and attacked the now milling horsemen. Horses were hamstrung and brought down, and spearmen finished off those men who resisted further. When the Aubinan cavalry finally managed to lurch away from the contact, hundreds of men were down, and half of those were dead.

With bitter curses streaming from his lips, Caleb Neth pulled his force back and drove farther south, aiming to get around Avery Wood. The Talions then charged from the cover of the woods and fought a fierce fight in Miller's field. They were too heavily outnumbered, however, to prevent Neth's movement, and the decimated Aubinan horsemen eventually rounded the wood and moved south to regain the Old Turnpike and place itself between Urmin's small army and Posila.

The battle at Avery Woods was over. The Aubinan invasion had been stopped cold. Commander Urmin had bought time for the Empire of the Rose to concentrate forces to combat the rebellion.

In the heart of Aubinas ran the Running Deer River, and on its green bank stood the splendid mansion known as Deer Lodge. Crowned with green roof tiles, the house was equipped at each corner with a tower surmounted by false machicolations. Long lawns ran away into lush shrubberies on all sides. Above, on the far side of the river, loomed the Sunberg, the chisel-shaped mountain famous in song and legend for centuries.

Deer Lodge was the primary residence of Faltus Wexenne of Champery, the greatest of the grain magnates of Aubinas. In this splendid house had been hatched most of the plots that had shaken Aubinas into rebellion over the past five years.

The picturesque valley, the forest of Nellin, the distant Sunberg, these places were the heart and soul of the rebellion, at least to hear Wexenne tell it. On this particular evening the house seemed to brood beneath its dark roof. Clouds had obscured the Sunberg all day. It had already been a very wet season, and now it threatened to rain again.

In the dining hall there was a celebratory dinner in progress. A dozen magnates were gathered to mark the release of Porteous Glaves. However, a strange field of tension overlay the celebrants, like the shadow of the darkling Sunberg across the valley. The early news from Posila had been most encouraging. The army of free Aubinas had moved on past Posila and directly into Lucule on the Wheat Road. The legion commanders in Marneri had scraped up a small army and set it to bar their path. General Neth had maneuvered his cavalry with his accustomed skill and was getting into a position from which to do fatal damage to the legion force. After that, Marneri itself would be open. Then the news had stopped. There had been no word all day, and the celebrants were increasingly uneasy as a result.

At the table they talked of nothing but the war, which in their minds had already become a cause for the entire world to take up: The struggle of a small oppressed people rising against the greatest power in the world and fighting for freedom.

"We shall light a torch for freedom that all men shall hail!" said Faltus Wexenne. For the occasion he wore a suit of dark red velvet. His shoes, fashioned from fine Kadein leather, bore fat golden buckles shaped like hunting dogs. With his height and mass, he made an imposing sight.

"Let me second that proud thought!" bellowed Porteous Glaves, rising to his feet and lifting his mug. Porteous had been seconding things for a while now, ever since the third pot of ale, so only a handful of his cronies cheered and raised their mugs.

Faltus Wexenne ostentatiously applauded Glaves.

"I give you, sirs, our hero, Porteous Glaves!"

Another slightly more enthusiastic round of applause.

Glaves held forth in a drunken discourse that consisted of little more than slogans pasted together with imprecations against Marneri and the Imperial system of regulations.

Paying no attention were Melkert Vanler and Darnay Degault, two powerful men from Belland, across the river.

"Damned fool," muttered Melkert. Darnay nodded.

"Doesn't signify. He served as the figurehead for the cause."

"Ah, yes, the cause!" Melkert's cynicism dripped from his words.

Darnay chuckled mirthlessly. "It serves its purpose."

"Yes, but what about the other purposes here? We both know that there is more going on here in this house than Wexenne will admit."

"We've heard all sorts of stories. Something's in the cellar here, right?"

"A demon, I've heard. A floating demiurge." Melkert fluttered his fingers by his goblet.

"Well, whatever it is, it's unholy, and Wexenne is keeping quiet about it."

"Doesn't want the witches to find out. They have an uncanny knack for finding and killing demons."

"Damned witches, damn them and the entire army of women in this land. Nothing but trouble with their rights and their property!" Darnay voiced a common sentiment among the powerful men of Nellin.

"Onward our glorious warriors for a free Aubinas!" said Melkert loudly, breaking into Glaves's droning on about the wickedness of Marneri. Heads inclined toward him and then followed with a polite round of applause for his patriotic spirit. Mostly they did it to try and keep their own spirits up.

Melkert caught Wexenne's eye across the table. Faltus smiled, nodded to him politely, and then returned his attention to Baron Hurd, who sat beside him.

Wexenne could sense the growing wariness in the hall. His colleagues were ridden by their fears. He, Wexenne, was not. He had mastered fear. Victory was theirs for the taking, and the fools were worrying themselves to a tatter. He ordered another round of ale to be served at once. Clearly it was necessary to keep their spirits afloat!

"What can be happening?" said Baron Hurd, a tall, angular man with singularly pale skin and dark beard, neatly clipped and pointed.

"War has its uncertainties," Wexenne replied.

"But we have had no news for a long time now, what can it be?"

"I have no idea," sniffed Wexenne, "but I'm sure that General Neth has done his job and cleared the way to Marneri. To believe anything else is to deny the reality of our success."

"Indeed," said Salva Gann, across the table from Hurd. Gann at least was still in control of himself, Wexenne noted with relief. They weren't all turning into frightened rabbits!

"Yes, yes," said the baron. "But think, man, what can have kept the messengers?"

Faltus Wexenne glowered down at the pot of ale in his hand.

"Anything can happen to a rider. He might have fallen off his horse, for all I know. There'll be word, but we'll just have to wait."

Hurd grunted unhappily and sat back.

Gann leaned forward, filling the space. "The way I see it, once Neth has crushed this last legion force, there's nothing to stop us rolling all the way to Pennar."

"We must take Marneri," said Wexenne.

"We will waste our impetus trying to take the white city. We can roll all the way to the ocean. Take Bea and Pennar, those are far less well defended than Marneri."

Faltus Wexenne shook his head and stabbed his finger into the tabletop. "Marneri will give us a crushing victory. It might be enough to end the war in a single stroke."

"But we will have to take the city. Not even Mach Ingbok and his demon hordes could do that!"

"Mach Ingbok did not have good men inside the walls who were ready to rise and deliver the city to him! We do."

Baron Hurd grunted.

Just then there came a sound of voices in the courtyard. One voice over all could be heard bellowing, "Make way for the messenger."

Shortly afterward a man, disheveled and begrimed from a long ride in the saddle, was ushered into the dining hall. He stepped up to the head of the table.

"Sirs, I bring word from the field, from General Neth."

Every eye in the room was fixed on him.

"Victory, I take it," said Wexenne.

"Ah, no, lord. Not really."

"Not?" Wexenne's puzzlement was genuine and strong. He stared at the messenger while his knuckles whitened around his goblet.

"Out with it, man."

Gann had a look of horrified amazement on his face. The messenger came to attention, and gave them the rest.

"General Neth says to tell you that despite some hard fighting, the enemy has failed to destroy our glorious army of free Aubinas. Following two inconclusive engagements, our infantry forces have regrouped at Posila."

"Posila!" exclaimed Baron Hurd. "But that's far behind our positions; how can this be?"

"If these engagements were inconclusive, then why are we so far back from our starting position?"

"General Neth believes that these maneuvers will soon enable him to take complete control of the area around Posila."

"But we don't want Posila!" snarled Gann. "Onward, man, onward to the sea!" Gann was staggering onto his feet and waving an imaginary sword.

"What you're saying is we've been defeated!" said a voice.

Bedlam broke out.

"What?"

"Defeated!"

A dozen voices spoke at once.

"The legionaries will be here in a matter of hours then. We're doomed."

"My horse!"

"Mine too. We can reach the gap by morning if we move quickly."

There was a stir. Men were on their feet, eyes wild with sudden apprehension.

"Hold!" roared Wexenne. "Are ye mice or men? Hold, damn you all! Hold! This is the time when we must prove ourselves. There has been a check; it may be serious, but it cannot yet be a deathblow. We still have their measure. Now, hold on, get a grip on yourselves. We have work to do!"

They moved uneasily. A few argued. Baron Voss actually did leave, but when he saw that nobody else was following, he came back and was welcomed with loud acclamation. They pounded on the table and roared.