by Andre Nolton
And when they found the two dragons who (next to Keman) had most closely aligned themselves with the Wizards, she put the question to them.
They had made themselves real lairs here, which was no great difficulty for a dragon, a creature who could shape rock and earth to its will. The two of them were in Alara's lair, reclining in their natural forms in smooth hollows filled with the soft sand that dragons preferred to rest in. Father Dragon— Kalamadea by actual name—was not at his full size in here, for dragons never really stopped growing as long as they lived, and Father Dragon was very, very old and his size was immense. He would hardly have fit in one of Alara's hollows if he hadn't shifted part of his bulk into the Out first.
Even so, both of them were huge, dwarfing the two half-bloods next to them. Alara's scarlet-scaled torso could have served as a hut if it were hollow.
"I thought what you needed were gemstones and precious metals to trade with," Alara responded to Shana's question, her bobbing head indicating her confusion. "That's what we've all been looking for. That's what you asked us to find."
Shana grimaced. "I know; that was my mistake. I thought so, too—actually, I didn't really think, not even when Shadow told us how nervy the Iron People were getting without any new source of metal for their forges. Two mistakes, then. I suppose, if I had thought about it at all, I just assumed that now that the Iron People were settling, they'd find their own iron. So, can you find it?"
"More or less," Kalamadea rumbled, lifting his head from his foreclaws. "Remember, after all, that we use magic to find things, and since the Rotten Metal interferes with magic, its very presence is going to interfere with locating it. We'll actually have to do some roundabout reckoning on where the interference is strongest to find veins of ore."
"I knew it couldn't be all that easy," Shana muttered to herself, but at least Father Dragon seemed to think that there was a way to work around the problem, and that was more than she had expected.
"We also won't be able to bring it to the surface the way we can the silver and gold," Alara sighed regretfully. "So once we find it, you'll still have to dig for it, and it'll be ore rather than the nice, pure nuggets of other things we can bring up."
"Oh, Ancestors—" Lorryn said in mock dismay. "Think of it—one more reason for able-bodied folks to have to leave the Citadel, which means fewer servants to attend to the whims of the Old Whiners! They might actually have to learn to clean up after themselves once in a while!"
Shana had noticed that Lorryn had, if anything, less patience with Caellach Gwain than she did, although you would never have known it by the way he acted with the old wizard and his cronies. She smiled. "I wouldn't mind taking my turn on the end of a shovel," she volunteered. "Especially if it meant that you would take over dealing with them instead of me."
He groaned and shook his head. "Oh, Shana—all right. I suppose that among the three of us, Parth Agon, Denelor and I can handle them. I've noticed a distinct improvement in Parth's attitude ever since he's seen just what an idiot Caellach is being."
"And Denelor always was a dear," Shana said, speaking fondly of her former teacher and the "master" to her "apprentice."
Kalamadea snorted. "I would not have used that description," he said. "But he certainly is far more willing to adapt, accommodate, and change than any of the other older wizards. Well, I would say that we have something of a plan, then. Alara and one or two of the others should be the ones to go looking for Rotten Metal; when they find some that is not too far beneath the surface, you and a few hardy souls, Shana, can see about digging some up. Meanwhile Lorryn will advise Parth Agon, with the help of Denelor—and me."
Shana almost laughed aloud at that last. If Caellach was afraid of anything, it was of the dragons, and Kalamadea was the most imposing of his kind. Caellach had tried—and nearly succeeded—in undoing all of the reforms of the younger wizards once, when Shana had been away from the Citadel. As it happened, she had been the captive, at the time, of the Iron People, as had Kalamadea and Keman. So there had been no one in place to keep Caellach Gwain in check.
"You or I, Shana, will always have a presence here, and Lorryn, too, I think," Father Dragon rumbled, confirming her thought. "At least, until the day when Caellach Gwain swells up with indignation and explodes."
They all laughed so hard at the images conjured up by that statement that a sleepy older wizard padded grumbling into the lair to lodge a protest at having her sleep disturbed, and went away muttering under her breath.
19
Kyrtian sat uneasily on his horse in the chill darkness just before dawn. He had brought in his troops just after midnight, positioning them as if this was going to be a real fight and not the sham thing that he and Moth had arranged. After all, the only people that knew it was a sham were his own people on both sides of the coming battle, all of Moth's people, and he and Gel. It was a given that some of his commanders (if not all of them) were reporting to one or more of the Great Lords. Kyrtian wanted them to report the most impressive victory yet—and the most decisive.
This would be enjoyable only if he was down there with his troops; he would have given a great deal to be able to leap out of his saddle and head up the men he knew so well. Well, the only reason it would be enjoyable is because I know how much of this attack is sham.
Ancestors, but it was cold! Armor and padded gambeson weren't doing a lot against the dankness, which penetrated everything. In fact, the armor was only making things worse; it sucked heat away from him instead of holding it in.
And—was there actually dew condensing on it?
A cold droplet sparkled for a moment just before his eyes, then dropped off the tip of his helm to splash onto his nose.
There was. He shivered and tried to stop himself; it only made his ridiculous, useless, over-ornamented armor rattle.
Not possible for him to join his men where they waited for the signal to attack, of course. The Great Lords who were his ultimate masters here would, one and all, have had him hauled up in front of them for recklessness and blatant disregard for his position.
So he had to sit on a horse on a hill—making an excellent target, incidentally, had his magic not been so strong—and direct his fighters from afar. Never once dirtying his hands with actual combat, oh, no. That was beneath his dignity as a commander, and damaging to the authority of Elves in general and the Great Council in the person of its designated commander in particular.
At least this time he would have something to do besides sit and watch and issue an occasional order. Moth's young rebels were going to be very visibly in the field today; they were also going to be wearing some of that bizarre jewelry she'd told him about. They couldn't work any magic while wearing it, but that didn't matter, since most of them didn't have that much in the first place. It would protect them from his levin-bolts; they wanted to demonstrate in the most public forum possible that their fathers could no longer threaten to strike them down in that particular fashion.
I cannot imagine that. I just can't. I know intellectually that there are men out there who think of their sons as possessions, and are perfectly willing to destroy them and try begetting a son again if their "possessions" offend them, but I still cannot fathom it in my heart.
Since their fathers didn't know it was only sets of gold-plated cuffs and torques that protected the rebellious Young Lords, and not some new sort of magic, this demonstration was going to set the Council rather well aback.
The rebels aren 't just Young Lords either, though most of them here are. Moth had given him a brief summary of the rebellion—and to say that he'd been shocked was an understatement. There's a considerable number of the ones who are Lords only because they aren't human, the scornfully disregarded Elvenlords no one talks about—the ones with little magic. Moth had introduced him to two of those bitter rebels, men Lord Kyndreth's age if not older. I wonder if the Great Lords have any idea how cordially they are hated by so many of their "inferiors " ?
Mind, t
his invulnerability to levin-bolts wasn't going to do the rebels any practical good, in the planned scenario. Kyrtian's army was too large and well-organized, and when the rebels fled, their army would fall apart. Kyrtian's men had orders to take anyone who surrendered as a prisoner; the rebels had no illusions about the loyalty of their slave-fighters. When they fled, their army would drop weapons and capitulate. Kyrtian's victory was a certainty—as finely scripted as a Court dance and as predictable.
It was definitely getting lighter. When he'd first brought his reluctant mount up here beneath these trees, it had been too dark to see. Now the horizon had lightened, and he could make out the dark shapes of trees and undergrowth beneath him, and in the distance, the square and rectangular bulks of the buildings where their quarry waited—supposedly asleep and unaware of the army about to descend on them.
Good thing we aren't going to have to besiege this place; we'd be here for months. Before battles, or even the practices he and Gel had held on the estate, he usually got a tightening in his stomach, a dry mouth, and his skin felt hypersensitive. Not today; in fact, if anything, he was bored and he wanted it over with. The conclusion here was foregone; the only question was whether or not any of Moth's people would be injured before they could surrender.
The Young Lords had actually chosen their supposed stronghold well—although there wasn't a man on the Great Council who would have valued it properly. For the last couple of centuries it had been the very minor holding of a very minor El-venlord who had not been swallowed up by some greater Lord only because he never quarreled with anyone, never gave offense to anyone, and raised nothing more desirable than herbs and spices. This was finicky work, far more than any Great Lord had any interest in undertaking, so V'trayn Ildren Lord Je-remin and his wife, daughter and slaves had been left in peace. Until the rebellion, that is. At the moment, Lord Ildren and his household were safely waiting out the conflict in their cara-vanserie in one of the cities.
So much for him; what was of interest was his manor, which in the far past had been one of the original fortified manors of this region, built back when humans had armies and were considered at least a threat to Elvenkind. It had been further fortified at the beginning of the first Wizard War, making it quite a snug little retreat. It was Kyrtian's opinion that its former owner would have done better to remain buttoned up inside it rather than fleeing to the city and the cramped discomfort of his tiny caravanserie.
But he hadn't, and the rebels had appropriated it as a place to house and train their human fighters.
It had been, therefore, of minor strategic importance until this moment. But he and Moth had decided that for today's purpose it would play the role of the rebel's headquarters, so that when the Young Lords all went to ground on Moth's estate after a spectacular rout, no one would be looking for them there.
It was a given that no one on the Council would wonder why people who had been clever enough to choose a defensible structure like this one as their headquarters would also leave it for a pitched battle outside the walls of the structure. Analyzing the enemy's strategy was not a skill that the Great Lords of the Council exercised. So long as things went their way, they were not inclined to ask why or look the situation over very closely.
Which is why they are in this particular quandary in the first place.
Birds twittered softly and sleepily overhead. They had begun to wake; it wouldn't be much longer before the attack.
Light seeped into the landscape, revealing it in shades of blue-grey. Rounded shapes were bushes, trees. Pointed ones, rocky outcrops. And in the far distance, leagues below his hill, the squares and rectangles were the fortified manor.
The light strengthened, although the only sign of the sunrise to come was the steady brightening in the east. A single figure stood sentry on the walls below; those of the Great Lords observing this in their telesons must be laughing now. One sentry! And the gates wide open!
The gates were wide open so that the army within could boil out easily—which, in a moment, when the sentry "spotted" the first of his troops attempting to approach by stealth and sounded the "alert", they would.
The distant figure suddenly moved, and the thin wail of a trumpet carried up to Kyrtian's ears, and the peace of the morning shattered like brittle glass as fighters erupted from every gate, shouting, their voices rising to Kyrtian in a confused babble.
Time to give the signal.
Kyrtian stood up in his stirrups, pointed his right hand skyward, and launched a bolt of magic up to the deep blue-grey bowl of the pre-dawn sky: not a levin-bolt, but one of the harmless illusion-bolts often used to enliven evening entertainments, a soundless shower of colored sparks of light high in the air. And now it was the turn of his army to emerge from the places where the men had lain hidden half the night, not shouting, but eerily silent, like an army of spirits....
But they didn't stay silent for long; that was too much to expect of flesh and blood. Halfway down the hill their nerves or their excitement got the better of them, and their own throats opened with a collective roar. Beneath his horse's hooves, the ground shook, and the terrified birds burst out of the tree above him.
At that moment, before the two armies had even met, Kyrtian spotted the Young Lords coming out of the gates of their fortress. He knew them by their colorful armor, riding out through the flood of their own fighters, their horses carried along like flotsam in a stream.
Ha!
He had been told not to hold back, and he didn't. As soon as the foremost of the riders got free of the human sea about him, Kyrtian aimed—gathered his power from the depths of his soul—clasped both hands above his head, and let loose a levin-bolt at the nearest.
The levin-bolt streaked from his clasped hands across the space between them, a fire-streaming comet, and those who saw it and had the time to react flung themselves screaming out of its path. Anyone with any experience of levin-bolts would see that this one was deadly—and strong.
It hit—it hit! Kyrtian's throat closed for a moment—what if Moth was wrong? But in the same moment, he knew, he knew that Moth had not been wrong, for his fatal levin-bolt in the moment of striking fragmented into a thousand shards of light, blinding his view of his target for just a moment. In the next moment, there was his target, unharmed—though the poor horse was frozen in place, all four hooves planted.
Yes! It works! Now sure that he would not kill someone, Kyrtian didn't hesitate, and at last he had a little of the thrill of battle, the exultation of success; bolt after bolt flew down the hill and into the chests of the Young Lords; bolt after bolt shattered on their defenses just as the first had.
By now the fighters of both sides had cleared out of the way of the bolts, which meant that aside from a few scattered pairs locked in combat, the main body of troops weren't actually fighting anyone. That, too, was part of the plan.
But instead of taking heart from the failure of his levin-bolts to kill—as any sane commander would have—the Young Lords apparently "panicked" when confronted by a mage of superior power.
They turned tail and fled; not in a body, but breaking from their army, sending fighters tumbling out of the way of the hooves of their bolting steeds, and scattering in every possible direction except towards the enemy, whipping their horses in a frenzy of feigned fear. And at the sight of their leaders in a rout (which was, of course, the signal to certain of the human fighters to move into the next phase of the plan), the rebel army itself suddenly broke off combat before it had even begun. Leaderless, it was every man for himself, and the humans were under no obligation to carry out the orders of masters who had abandoned them. Most surrendered or fled within moments. The lion's share of the ones who fled were Kyrtian's—brought to augment the Young Lords' troops and make the army look formidable enough to have been a real threat. Kyrtian's men, throwing down their weapons the better to flee unencumbered, were heading for a Gate that would take them home.
The rest dropped their weapons as well, but thr
ew themselves on their faces to surrender—Kyrtian had counted on that, and he had the satisfaction of seeing that the surrendering fighters managed to impede those who might have followed the ones who fled.
Now there was some pleasure, the thrill of seeing a plan unfold perfectly, though there was and would not be any of the excitement and triumph of a real victory.
The Great Lords' fighters pursued—but the vanguard was composed of more of his own men, and they managed to obstruct the passage of the men behind them by getting tangled up with those who were surrendering. This managed to impede the rest of the fighters, slowing them and permitting the vanquished to get a head start. By the time real pursuit got underway, the enemy was already too far ahead to pursue effectively afoot. So, given that Kyrtian gave no orders to urge them on from his hilltop command-post, they began the easier task of taking charge of those who surrendered. Moth and Lady Viridina had taken the precaution of tampering with every slave-collar to make it seem that the Young Lords had found a way to override the rightful owners' compulsions. Gladiatorial slaves—the only ones that were reasonable candidates for combat—weren't so plentiful these days that anyone would even consider killing or punishing these men for something they could not help; if their original owners couldn't be determined, they'd probably be allotted among the Great Lords as booty.
Further enrichening the coffers of those who don't need it. Kyrtian felt almost depressed, as he watched the chaos of the battlefield sort itself into tidy groups of prisoners and captors. There didn't seem to be many dead or seriously wounded; there were a few distant figures still on the ground, but they were moving in a way that suggested injury but not serious trauma.
I should be glad of that. And he was—but he also felt as if he'd been cheated, somehow; all of the preparation for a battle—more, far more, in the way of planning and organization— but none of the excitement. The most he felt was gratitude that it was done with and there were so few casualties.
