“Is there anyone interested in joining me on a little scouting mission?”
Harg glared at him and took a step back. “Not me,” he said darkly. “You can take the others.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Garnuk protested. “The dragon is far away with the Sthan army.”
“We think it is,” Harg growled. “Besides, that fortress was the Usurper’s first.”
“Not when it was built,” Garnuk said stubbornly. “I only saw it from a distance mind you, but it looked to me like it was originally built by men. The squad who found it reported the same.”
“Then it was taken by the Usurper for his purpose. No, Garnuk, I won’t go and I’d rather nobody else did either.”
“That’s not your decision.”
“I know,” Harg sighed. “But the dragon . . . I just have a terrible feeling about it, and anything related to that beast. Something is coming.”
“Perhaps,” Garnuk said. “Or perhaps not. I have a better chance of forestalling whatever tragedy you sense if I have more information.”
“You do,” Harg agreed. “But I still say it’s risky.”
Garnuk laughed. “Everything Shadow Squadron does is risky, my friend.”
Harg grunted in reply and went back to tending the fires. “I’ll send another hunting party out while you’re gone,” he said at last, “Make sure there’s something here to eat when you get back.”
The Exile grunted gratefully, and moved off to talk to other warriors. Soon, he had recruited four vertaga who were obedient, if not willing, warriors. They made their fears and misgivings known, but agreed to accompany their general if he wished them to join him. Trying to shake his own growing sense of trepidation, Garnuk returned to his shelter to check on Tarq and let the captain know where he was going.
Tarq was awake when Garnuk returned, inspecting his knee and poking at it gently. “Feeling better?” Garnuk asked as he entered.
The captain shrugged. “Slowly. Swelling is down some more. Should be good to go in another couple days.”
“Good,” Garnuk said. It would be a relief to have Tarq available for duty again. “I’m taking a few warriors over to the fortress the dragon was being held in. We’ll be back by late afternoon.”
“Are you taking any of the original scout team with you? The group who found the fortress, I mean?”
Garnuk hadn’t considered that. He thought over the rams that had volunteered and nodded. “Yes, one of them has been before. He was hard to convince.”
“Is Harg going?”
“No.”
Tarq frowned. “I would like to have at least one of the two of us go with you.”
“I agree,” Garnuk said, glancing around the camp surreptitiously. “But Harg was adamant.”
Tarq scratched his horns, troubled. “Hmm. Well, be careful. We’ll hold the camp until you return.”
“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Garnuk said over his shoulder as he left. “The snow will keep most anything out.”
He faintly heard Tarq’s answering chuckle as he made his way out through camp to the trench he and Harg had carved the previous day. His four volunteers were waiting there, weapons clenched tightly in their hands.
“Ready?” Garnuk asked them looking around.
They nodded wordlessly, glancing over their shoulders as though expecting to find the dragon had snuck up on them while they weren’t paying attention.
“Relax,” Garnuk told them sternly. “There is nothing to fear. We’re just investigating the fortress. We’ll be back in time to feast with the others again.”
A little tension went out of the four vertaga, and one even managed a weak smile, though it was really more of a strained grimace. Realizing that he was fighting a losing battle, Garnuk turned on his heel and strode quickly and confidently through the trench that led to the ridge.
The journey to the ridge was short, easy even, compared to the laborious digging of the previous day. Once they were outside the vale, Garnuk turned west and led his tiny band of warriors among the foothills of the mountains. The storm and the subsequent warmer weather had done strange things with the snow. In some places, entire canyons were obliterated by the powdery white substance, filled from top to bottom. In other places the land was scoured bare, or the dirt was slushy and dotted with puddles. Some trees had succumbed to the weight of icicles on their many limbs, snapping off halfway up their trunks. Others peacefully dripped near-frozen water, their own burdens shrinking with each passing minute.
More than once, Garnuk had to detour because of natural barricades. Sometimes it was snow or ice, but just as often a downed tree blocked the path they had been following or an avalanche had made the area impassable. The four warriors followed him patiently. If Garnuk had to guess, he would assume they were excited about the delays rather than frustrated. If there were enough detours, maybe the general would give up and try again another day. Preferably with different volunteers to accompany him on this fool’s errand.
At last, a little before midday, the small group came within sight of the fortress walls again. The trees around it were bare and gray, providing excellent cover as Garnuk and the others advanced on the outer defenses. At the wall, the Exile stopped short, swearing under his breath.
“There’s no way in,” one of the others observed. “Does anyone have a rope?”
Garnuk shook his head. “No rope,” he grunted angrily. “Didn’t think about that.”
“Then I guess we try again another day, general . . .” The warrior’s voice trailed off as Garnuk set his strong hands in a crack between blocks and began to climb the wall. Slowly, the Exile hauled himself up and over the barrier. It was no easy task, but he was able to manage as long as he went slowly and carefully.
Garnuk gained the top of the wall, looking around the deserted fortress carefully before glancing back at his warriors on the ground below.
“All clear,” he called quietly.
The four vertaga glanced at each other, then back at Garnuk. One of them started towards the wall and attempted to climb but could not find enough handholds. Garnuk shook his horned head in disgust and turned away.
“Go to the gate,” he called as he descended the steps to ground level. “I’ll open it for you and meet you there.”
He did not wait for an answer from the others, proceeding quickly to the large portal in the wall. It was secured with only a simple locking beam, which he lifted out of the support brackets easily. The Exile pushed one half of the gate outwards and stepped out into the forest, looking for his warriors.
They were not long in coming, though they could have been much faster. The warriors were traveling as stealthily as possible, moving in a crouch along the base of the wall, inching their way towards the gate. Garnuk sighed impatiently and folded his arms over his chest. The four vertaga did not notice the warning and continued as they were, creeping along as slowly as possible in an effort to avoid dragon fire and arrows that were not there, and had not been for some time judging by the dilapidated state of the fortress.
When at last they reached the gate, Garnuk turned abruptly and led them back inside, scanning the courtyard. The others followed cautiously, weapons out and ready for use. The Exile did not even draw his sword, hoping to instill a small amount of confidence in the others. His efforts were to no avail though. They remained in a frightened, tight group, shields and weapons pointed outwards, unconsciously forming a loose circle so that none of their backs were exposed.
As Garnuk crossed the courtyard, he noticed only one corpse, with an arrow through it. There were no signs of the dragon here, no clues as to what had happened. The courtyard itself was overgrown, the paving stones broken and cracked, vegetation forcing its way through the gaps. The stones on the ground and on the walls were all stained too, not with the soot and ash of dragon fire, but darkened with the inevitable passing of time. Snow covered some of the grime, but in other places it had melted and merged with the filth to form a slush
y brown-black mud.
Garnuk turned his attention to the central building and saw that its doors hung open, swinging back and forth slightly in the light breeze. He could not see into the darkened room beyond, but as the Exile drew closer to the fortress he noticed a terrible smell, the stench of death and decay.
“General,” one of the warriors murmured. “We should not be here. This is a place of death.”
“Old death,” Garnuk countered. “The violence has already happened. Now, it is a place of answers.”
“Answers?”
“Yes,” Garnuk replied. “Answers to the questions we must know if we are to win this war.”
“Win it?” one of the others asked. “General, the Sthan army is massive!”
“And unused to fighting in the mountains,” Garnuk explained. “They will be hampered by their size, strung out, vulnerable. If the Usurper is intelligent, he will begin hitting the Sthan with sizeable raids as soon as they enter the mountains, whittling down their forces until they grow tired of traipsing all over the Fells trying to find us and go home.”
“What if he isn’t smart enough?”
Garnuk snorted derisively. “Then he will sit in Dun Carryl and wait for the Sthan to find him and finish what he started. The war will be lost.”
They had reached the doors now, and Garnuk could see a little ways into the room beyond. The smell of death was stronger here, along with a smell of old fire, soot, and ash.
Garnuk stepped through the entrance quickly and slid to the side, back against the wall, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. The others followed him quickly, not wanting to be left behind, at the mercy of the fictitious horrors they had conjured in their minds.
They were standing in a large hall, an empty shell of a room with no remaining decoration or life to it. Brackets on the walls held burnt out torches and extinguished lanterns, and the hearth at the far end was cold and filled with ash. What drew Garnuk’s attention though were the bodies scattered on the stone floor.
Several vertaga had fallen here, powerful warriors all. The symbol of Dun Carryl was on the shields strewn across the floor of the hall, marking these as the Usurper’s servants. Garnuk had expected as much, but he had not anticipated the corpses would be so badly destroyed. Some of the damage was no doubt due to decay, but there were a few bodies that had been burned severely, and at least one had been ripped limb from limb. Bits of the warriors were scattered everywhere it seemed, and dark blood stains coated the floor.
“Even the enemy did not deserve this,” one of Garnuk’s warriors murmured. “The dragon took no chances on any of them surviving.”
“No,” Garnuk agreed. “I think it is safe to assume we are the only living things in this building.” He stepped further into the hall, kneeling to examine a corpse more closely, ignoring the stench as best he could.
“We need to find where the dragon was being held,” he decided. “That place will have some clues, surely. And the quarters of the warriors tasked with subduing it. If there are records of their progress with the dragon, or their observations, we must have them.”
“I’ll search the rooms on this level,” one of Garnuk’s volunteers said immediately.
The others spoke up quickly as well, each clambering to stay on the main level or check the rooms in the upper levels. Garnuk shook his head in disgust and dismissed them to the rest of the fortress. He had known from the moment he saw their aversion to the place that he would have to go to the place where the dragon had been held alone.
It was not hard to find the stairwell that led to the underground levels. The walls and floor were scraped and scoured in long streaks, marks likely made by the dragon during its escape. Escape, Garnuk wondered idly, or set free? Maybe the dungeon would hold answers.
Garnuk reached the bottom of the stairs and covered his mouth and nose with one large hand against the smell. There were more bodies here, burned beyond recognition, trampled and broken, smashed against the walls. Some of the cell doors were wrecked as well, and the floors and walls were smeared with ash and soot.
None of the cells looked as though they would hold a dragon, but at the far end of the hall Garnuk came to a larger enclosure with massive chains anchored in the floor. Chains which could have secured a dragon. Garnuk stepped over more corpses and entered the larger space, pacing around the chains. He quickly found broken and smashed ends to the chains that were anchored in the floor, and identified several pieces that were no longer attached to anything. Garnuk puzzled over his findings, pacing around the cell until the answer came to him.
“The Sthan,” he snarled under his breath. It had to be them. The vertaga guarding the dragon would have no reason to smash the chains. They simply would have unlocked the locks that secured the chains to the floor if they had wanted to release it. Someone else had snuck into the fortress and destroyed the chains, turning loose the wrath of the dragon.
The Sthan had given the dragon freedom, Garnuk realized. No wonder it was fighting for them against the vertaga. All that his people had done was enslave it, chain it in a dark and cramped space where it could not fly. What foolishness had possessed them to do that? The dragon should have been befriended, or perhaps beaten into obedience. It could not have always been so large and powerful as it was now.
Garnuk searched the cells for other clues, but found none. Eventually, he retreated back to the main hall, where the others were waiting.
“Anything to report?” he grunted.
The warriors shook their heads. “It looks like the Usurper must have sent someone to clean up anything important,” one offered. “The tables and desks had all been emptied, and every drawer and cabinet was opened.”
The Exile sighed, frustrated. “Well, I know for sure how the Sthan control the dragon now. They freed it from this place, snuck past the guards and let the dragon out of the cell where it was held.”
“That’s suicidal,” one of his warriors grunted. “And impressive.”
Garnuk nodded agreement. “It’s bold, that is certain. I wonder how they found this place before we did?”
“It is practically in their territory,” one of the others pointed out. “Could their scouts have stumbled on it accidentally and sent a raiding party to investigate?”
“There would be more of our kin slain by conventional means if that were the case,” Garnuk mused. “It is still a mystery for now. And we know little more than we did before, other than that the dragon is not likely to be turned.”
“Turned? It must be destroyed!”
Garnuk turned on the speaker curiously. “And you are volunteering to destroy the dragon?”
“No!” the warrior replied, aghast. “It’s just . . . such a powerful beast cannot be allowed to roam unchecked. Even if we achieve peace and isolate ourselves, it could still find us. Our people would live in fear, watching the skies forever.”
The Exile nodded soberly. “Yes,” he agreed. “Yes, they would. It must be destroyed. But how? How to kill a beast which is larger than most dwellings, can breathe fire at will, and has the strength, speed, and cunning of a dozen varloug prans?”
“A score of varloug prans,” one of the others said, shuddering.
Garnuk shrugged. “Have it your way. Regardless, it is no small task.”
He continued to ponder the problem there amongst the ruins of the fortress, surrounded by the slain who were mute testimony to the dragon’s destructive power.
“General?” one of his followers asked hesitantly. “Should we be returning to camp?”
Garnuk shook himself, blinking a few times. “Yes,” he said distractedly. “Back to camp. We have learned all we can from this place.”
As they hiked back to the nearby vale where the others were waiting, Garnuk continued thinking. He could find no way to kill the dragon with vertaga that was not likely to end in disaster. But there was one possibility he had come up with.
It was possible, just maybe, that the Sthan dragon could be killed wi
th another dragon under the control of the vertaga. But were there any more? And where had the Usurper found this one?
Chapter 52:
Invasion
When they returned to camp that evening, Tarq and Harg had nothing to report. Garnuk had expected as much, since their position was isolated and the recent storms would have driven most everyone into shelter, but it never hurt to be careful. Therefore, he deployed a dozen scouts along and around the pass the Sthan were aiming for to watch for their arrival and report back.
The Exile considered moving his camp closer to Dun Carryl so that Shadow Squadron would be ready to join the fight at a moment’s notice, but he refrained from doing so. Moving so close to the Usurper, who still had a price on the head of every one of Garnuk’s warriors, was risky. In addition, the vale was isolated and yet ideally situated. It was roughly equidistant from the pass and Dun Carryl, hidden just inside the border of the mountains. So, Garnuk decided to stay until the situation changed for better or for worse.
Over the next few days, Tarq continued his slow recovery. A week after Garnuk had ventured to the fortress, the captain was walking around the camp gingerly, with the aid of a rough crutch he had carved from a fallen branch. In the center of the camp, Garnuk had set up a new command pavilion, and he and Tarq spent most of the day there, reviewing maps and information as it became available.
“I estimate the Sthan to be about . . . here,” Garnuk said, jabbing at the map with a clawed finger.
Tarq leaned forward, then nodded. “That would seem approximately correct,” he agreed. “A couple weeks out still.”
“Yes,” Garnuk agreed. “We still have time.”
“For what?” Tarq grunted. “I am unable to travel, and we are too few to lay an ambush. Although,” he added tentatively, drawing a thin sheet of parchment from the pile, “We did receive an offer from the Council of Masks. Our ram has stayed in touch with their informer by setting up a drop spot for messages, and he found this.” The captain let the parchment drop to the table. “An offer of reward, for the death of the boy king.”
The Ramshuk (Heirs of Legacy Book 3) Page 52
