by Victor Milán
It filled her with a warmth she never in all her born days imagined she would ever feel about a dinosaur, much less toward one. It was the sort of rapport she’d had with her adored Meravellosa for years. He’s smarter than I thought a dinosaur could be. Then again, Camellia and Shiraa are quite clever, too, so it needn’t surprise me too much.
“Good boy,” she murmured to him, surreptitiously patting his neck. Then she caused him to careen back across the Patio, still pretending to yank the reins and screaming “I can’t control him!” at the top of her lungs.
“I’ll save you, Princess!” It was the thoroughly odious Baron Steban de Tresgarras, wearing a cuirass like his idol the Duke von Hornberg, whose greatest toady he was. His head, with its odd Alemán-style strip of dark hair on top and full black beard, was bare.
He reached out a leather-gloved hand. To Melodía it was clear he was trying to snatch the rampaging Parasaurolophus’s reins to help bring him under control. But she hoped no one else could see that in the bad light and utter confusion that filled the Courtyard.
“Get your hands off me, you canalla!” she screeched. “How dare you manhandle the Princesa Imperial?”
And she turned Tormento so that he viciously tail-swiped Threeclaws’ green-and-yellow-striped sackbut’s legs right out from under him. As several others had already, he dove out of the saddle, landed on his shoulder, rolled, and popped up gracefully, as a well-trained dinosaur knight should.
In time for Tormento, whom Melodía had kept spinning, to smack him with his broad tail. She had moderated his speed a bit. She had no reason to murder the young Baron, enemy partisan or not. Yet.
The blow did send him flying five meters to land in a sprawl almost on the steps of La Entrada. And at the sandaled feet of a five-man puño of Scarlet Tyrants.
“You dared lay hands on the Imperial Princess, you piece of fatty shit?” the sergeant in charge said to the prostrate and moaning knight. His blond Riquezo beard was split by a smile as he led his detachment in keeping the shit out of the hapless Tresgarras for his presumption.
With the alert out for assassins on the loose in El Corazón Imperial, the Imperial bodyguards were not about to be separated from the Imperial body, even by their principal’s direct command. But Melodía’s breath still caught in her throat at the sight of the man who stood on the steps behind them.
“Daddy?” she said.
* * *
The bridge to the city was clear as Little Nell thundered onto it—except for a single half-armored knight on a Corythosaurus that showed what might be green-brindled grey. The knight wielded a longsword and a silver shield with a wide, jagged-looking green band running across the middle of it—what Rob thought the heralds back home called fess dancetty. Which mattered to him only if a song came out of this fiasco.
Which in turn would require him to survive. He couldn’t tell the rider’s sex, between a corrugated visor on an armet that appeared to be pierced with many holes to allow sight and ventilation and the plain breastplate and back clamped onto the upper torso. That mattered not at all to Rob: this was an enemy, who was set to do him down.
Rob slowed Little Nell, hoping Karyl would slow his own dinosaur in time—and knew, of course, that he would: Karyl was the master, and he and Shiraa were almost one single creature when he was aboard her. Rob pulled Nell’s head up by the reins. She knew what that meant: menace the morion’s lowered face with the tip of her wicked fat horn.
The big duckbill wasn’t even wearing a heavy fabric caparison, much less a chamfron to protect her face. She shied up, carrying her rider out of sword’s reach of Rob and Nell. Rob had the Einiosaurus lower her head and then drive with the boss against the Corythosaurus’s exposed left belly.
Still swinging up, the hadrosaur was easy for Nell to topple over with an expert twist of her head. Squealing an ear-piercing alarm, the monster fell hard against the Bridge’s rail. The stout wood palings held—and held her on her side on the bridge.
The knight was not so lucky. He or she plunged right over the rail into the Moat. The scream that faded downward to the Raging River was high-pitched, but Rob had heard men scream as shrilly.
He set Nell to a trot, swinging wide to the right rail to avoid the helplessly waving legs. He heard Shiraa’s hind feet drum the thick planks behind.
But ahead he saw bad news. At least a score of the town watch, Majesty’s Guards, had formed a phalanx of spears and shields across the great open Plaza on the Majestad side of the Moat and were advancing to block their exit from the Bridge. He uncased the head of his axe and hefted her in his right hand.
“Looks as if we’ve a job of work to do, you and I, Wanda,” he said.
* * *
“What are you fools doing, standing around gawping?” Emperor Felipe roared. He had a surprisingly good roar for such a generally mild-mannered man. The footmen and women who filled the Courtyard—who had been far too busy hopping and darting about to avoid being smashed to rags by giant monsters to stand, much less gawp, stepped forward to the Princesa’s aid. If a bit hesitantly.
Miraculously, the wild-acting Tormento calmed right down, even as the soldiers and servants took their first, desperately reluctant steps forward in obedience to the Imperial command. “Good boy,” she told him under her breath.
He suffered his reins to be grabbed, and was even meekly compliant as many hands guided him back through the Courtyard and out of everybody else’s way.
Others reached up—cautiously—toward Melodía. “Oh, thank you so much,” she called, more loudly than was strictly necessary to be heard. She let them help her down without stopping her sackbut, much less lowering his belly to the ground. Which caused a final moment of low comedy as two male servants and somebody’s female House-shield, badly underestimating how much a 176-centimeter-tall Princess who was exceedingly well if leanly muscled might weigh, collapsed beneath her.
“Thank you so much,” she told them again, making a mental notation to see that all three got a financial reward later for cushioning her fall with their bodies. She knew as well as they did what a conspicuously bad idea it would be to just drop the Princesa Imperial on her ass on the bare stone of El Porche under the Emperor’s own slightly protuberant pale-green eyes. But she still appreciated the gesture. And also not being dropped on her ass.
Her first thought was to go to her father, although with a swarm of a dozen Scarlet Tyrants surrounding him he was clearly in no real danger. To say nothing of the tall, dear form, equipped only with a loincloth and a longsword, who stood at the Emperor’s shoulder. She really wanted to run to him, but she heard a throat cleared from close at hand, and looked quickly around.
A compact female shape stood in the shadow of a narrow alley between a fancy stone apartment building and a scarcely less pretentious warehouse. Feeling guilty, Melodía walked to her.
“Did I disgrace you with that display, Maestra?” she asked softly, waving away the servants who tried to usher her back to her father and the Imperial Champion.
“That question might, Alteza.” Melodía’s cheeks burned at the words as if the smaller woman had slapped her. “Do you really think I’m not enough of a dinosaur master to recognize what you were doing?”
“I beg your pardon,” Melodía said. She might be of the highest rank, and Auriana a mere landless knight, but she meant it. She had come to respect her teacher as she did few others.
Auriana shook her dark-blond head. “That was a masterful display. You were a remarkable pupil. I suspect you have a natural aptitude for riding beasts of all descriptions, not just horses. You picked up in weeks what it takes most months to learn.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I thought I was terribly slow.”
“I didn’t want to swell your head enough to shut your ears.”
“So I don’t have any more to learn?” Now she felt giddy. She realized part of it was reaction to the charge of excitement that had coursed through her veins during her performance on Tormento.
With Tormento.
Auriana scoffed. “Have you learned all there is to know about horseback riding?”
“What? No, of course not. The more I learn, the more I see I need to—oh.”
“Yes.”
“Will you tell my father?”
“I’ll tell my employer. Duty binds me to that.”
“So you will?”
“I don’t work for your father, child. Remember?”
“Oh,” she said again. The woman has a talent for making me feel younger than Montse, she thought. And half as apt, though I suspect I’m that anyway.
Auriana gave Melodía a quick squeeze on the biceps. “Go to your father. Hurry up; he’s getting impatient. And don’t think this gives you permission to be a second late for tomorrow’s lesson, chiquita!”
With a somewhat wan smile—since she had a horrible premonition her teacher would now go much harder on her, instead of easing up—she turned back to her father.
“They’re getting away!” she heard a familiar and hated voice roar. “What’re you idiots doing? Mount up and get them!”
The words came out slurred and just on the edge of comprehensibility, though. Her attacker was still bleeding from the mouth, though he’d gotten his pet monster to calm down. The other dinosaur knights were mostly still trying to get their own agitated duckbills under control.
“Arbalesters,” a second voice shouted from above. It was female, though scarcely less familiar or hated. Melodía turned and looked up to see Margrethe leaning out the window of her apartment in the Crack, on the floor below Melodía and her father’s penthouse. “Shoot them down!”
Looking left and right, she saw Defensores del Corazón emerging from the doors that gave onto the top of the Wall where it met the cliff face at either end of the Porch. They carried heavy crossbows. Looking down the Via Imperial, she could see others already bringing the arbalests to bear from the ramparts to either side of the Welcome Gate.
But her father roared, “Everyone, stand down!” almost as loud as the Duchess’s son had shouted.
Yet another voice screamed, “Fire!” What seemed like dozens of small but bright green glows glared alight atop the Wall.
Chapter 49
Blindaje, Armor.…—While many forms of armor are found in Nuevaropa, full plate armor is preferred by dinosaur knights, the lords and ladies of the modern battlefield. Its parts are as follows: the helmet protects the head; gorget the neck; pauldrons the shoulders; a breastplate and back, together often called a cuirass, the body; vambraces the forearm; steel gloves or gauntlets the hands; tassets the upper leg; poleyns the knees; greaves the lower legs, and the feet are encased in sabatons, which are armor shoes. The helmet usually has a visor to protect the face, which can be opened, and sometimes a bevor, which protects the lower face and also replaces the gorget. An average suit of war armor weighs around 20 kg and if properly made doesn’t encumber the wearer, although it does limit his or her range of motion. Specialized jousting armor can weigh as much as 30 kg and does restrict movement, in the interests of safety. A complete suit of armor is also called a “harness.”
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
Holding up his hand to signal Karyl to stay back on Shiraa, Rob slowed Little Nell to a deliberate trot toward the Guardias de la Majestad, who had now closed off the end of the Bridge, two ranks deep. Heavy infantry with polearms were anathema to mounted troops. Horses and dinosaurs alike tended to refuse to impale themselves on masses of long, sharp sticks. Pikes scared them worse than a spear-and-shield bloc.
For Rob and Little Nell, though, a pike formation would have been nearly ideal. But the two of them could make do with Majesty’s Guards as well.
He slowed Little Nell to a trot that was barely faster than his own short-legged fast walk. But it did make her feet thump the bridge’s planking more authoritatively. He saw a certain shiftiness in the dark eyes peering at him from between steel-hat brims and brown round shields with a stylized picture of the city on its mesa painted on them in gold. He thought he saw the spear points begin to twitch.
He stopped with the tip of Nell’s beaked snout a hand span from spear points that glittered yellow in the light from the pair of wind-blown torches at the Bridge’s Majestad end. Before any bright lad or lass could get the idea of poking her with one, he urged her forward a tiny step.
She lowered her head and pushed her fat, forward-hooking horn right between the points. At a cluck from her master, she swung her head hard left, then right.
The spears, naturally, flew wide. Without needing his boot heels to thump her belly, the tubby dinosaur gathered herself and launched her 1500 kilograms of mass straight ahead.
The horn struck one shield dead center and knocked its wielder on his tailbone. That was unlucky for him. One of her forefeet came down on his shield, twisting it down to crush his gullet with its upper rim before her weight caved in his rib cage with a loud, multiple crackling. Rob judged that stopped his heart, because he stopped screeching as suddenly as he’d begun.
The man and woman to his left and right went flying in opposite directions as Nell’s shoulders churned into them.
The Guards directly ahead of Nell in the rear rank promptly turned and ran away. They all had sense enough to wing off to the side. When she had her full speed built up, which she could do quite quickly, the hook-horn ran faster than they did.
Some of the others tried to jab dinosaur or rider with their spears. Rob knocked them away, laying about left and right with Wanda while frantically signaling Karyl to charge with his left hand.
He heard a happy “Shiraa!” from behind him. Then screams. And wet, crunching sounds.
He glanced back to see the Allosaurus swinging a Guardsman, the brim of whose steel hat the Allosaurus’s jaws had crushed to his temples, by the head to bludgeon away the spear wielders to her left. She seems to think the human head’s just a convenient sort of handle, Rob thought, as the rest of the knot of Guardias fled shrieking. Curious beasts that way, slayers.
What he saw when he looked ahead of him again made him slow Nell once more. The plaza had the shape of a hundred-meter-wide semicircle straddling the Via Imperial. From streets and alleys on both sides converged dozens more of the Majesty’s Guards, most with spear and shield, some carrying halberds.
But not from the Way itself. From straight ahead approached a knot of knights riding hadrosaurs. At least six of the blighters.
“What now?” asked Rob, as Karyl pulled Shiraa up alongside Nell’s left side.
“What do you prefer?”
Rob looked up at the man he still thought of as a friend, even though he himself had forfeited claim to even think the word. He brandished Wanda. “I’d rather die swinging free than chained.”
Karyl had his sword tipped back over his shoulder, a gesture Rob had seen from Ovdan riders with their talwars, also single-edged, before.
“I do too,” he said, and charged. Rob sent Nell following a heartbeat after.
The fight was as short and savage as it was doomed.
Rob saw Shiraa snap her jaws shut on the throat of a female Parasaurolophus who shied her head up away from the onrushing predator. The matadora jerked her head left, tearing away a great chunk of flesh and unleashing a flood of dark blood. The man astride the stricken animal tried to cut at her. Shiraa spat out the meat and grabbed his sword hand with her teeth instead. Rob saw her blood spurt as the sword edge dug into a corner of her mouth.
Meanwhile, Karyl ducked a sword stroke from a woman riding a morion on his left and severed her sword arm with his counter-cut. An eye blink later, Shiraa threw the rider of the duckbill whose throat she’d torn out clean over the tail of the Corythosaurus on her left.
Following as close as she could without getting whipped across the face by Shiraa’s long tail, Little Nell rammed the morion with her left shoulder and sent him toppling to his right. Rob saw his knight jump from the saddle. A moment later, she s
creamed. The cry was cut short, and Rob could only imagine she’d jumped free of her falling mount only to get stepped on and crushed by another duckbill.
Ahead of him, Rob saw Karyl trading cuts with two more dinosaur knights, one on a sackbut directly in front of him, a morion rider to his right. Shiraa managed to rake the sackbut’s face with her teeth. It fluted dismay and ran away.
A big dark Parasaurolophus rammed her from the left, throwing her hard down on her right side. Karyl was caught by surprise. With his cat’s reflexes, he managed to avoid getting his leg caught and crushed beneath Shiraa. But he was slammed down and clearly had the breath knocked out of him, though he kept his grip on his sword.
Rob steered Nell right, hoping to interpose her between the Corythosaurus and his fallen friends. “Alive! They’ve got to be taken alive!” bellowed the knight who’d slammed Shiraa and Karyl down.
The morion rider turned away from Karyl and charged with bounds of the duckbill’s big back legs at Nell. She raked her horn down his shoulder and flank, but he tucked in his forepaws and turned to plow into her with his breastbone. Bawling in fury, the Einiosaurus was slammed down on her left side,.
As she fell Rob put his left hand down and vaulted himself straight back. Fortunately, his own saddle cantle was low. He cleared it, landed straddling Nell’s tail, then danced farther back to where she didn’t break his legs as she thrashed it.
Majesty’s Guards surrounded him. He split one man’s steel hat with Wanda’s blade, wrenched her free, and thrust the spike that tipped her haft into the face of a woman swinging a halberd at him.
He felt an impact and a stinging pain in his left shoulder. Spear-thrust! he thought. He tried to turn, and someone shield-bashed his right arm, striking the funny bone and momentarily paralyzing his arm.
Mouth streaming blood, Shiraa tried to get up. The bearded knight whose mount had knocked her down wheeled his sackbut to tail-whip her and put her down hard on her side again. She lay stunned.
Fists and spear-butts slammed Rob’s head and ribs. He saw Karyl recover his wits enough to slash the legs from beneath a Guardia, but then he was swarmed and pinned to the ground.
