The Sacred Band a-3

by David Anthony Durham

  Kohl lifted Aliver away from the city that night. The silence and the sound that is wind in motion, the flapping of massive wings, the creak of Kohl’s harness and armor. Far out to his left Thais carried Dram. To the east Ilabo rode Tij. The dragons called to one another every now and then. Their sounds were like chirrups stretched out with bass notes, each call ending with an almost flutelike sweetness of tone. Aliver had never heard anything like it.

  Dragonsong, he thought. I would never have imagined such a thing.

  As he listened to it, the night passed in beauty. The world below them slept beneath a starry sky, farms and villages, rivers and roads and dense patches of woodland. Love it for what it is, Aliver told himself. Love it for being my daughter’s world, my nephew’s future. Love it for what it is and because it will go on after me.

  Many campfires glowed beneath them, often in clusters. His army. A great migration of soldiers heading north. Love them for who they are. For them, I cannot fail.

  This thought became the frame inside which he ordered the rest of his life. Inside which he planned and dreamed and worked through the things to come and how he would face every hurdle he could imagine. He had already begun reaching out to people, urging them off the vintage, speaking to them to keep their minds clear, to fill them with his love of life, with purpose. He would not let them die, or waver. Not while he lived. He had done this before, with the Santoth’s help, and he believed he could do it again without them. He had only to open his mind, to offer himself to all the people of the Known World, to touch their minds and let them touch his.

  As part of his consciousness took root in people’s minds, the sense of connection with them built. Thousands upon thousands of different connections. It was wonderful. Through it, he knew every reason he had to succeed, to end this war, and save all the lives he could. It was not the same as when the Santoth aided him. It was better, the connection his and the peoples’ alone. It was a communion shared, even as it was intimate with each individual. It was not even a strain on him. Rather, it felt as if once the connection was established, each person hosted his voice inside himself or herself, keeping alive Aliver’s words and praise and hopes for them.

  He was still at this at sunrise, when the three dragons left the Eilavan Woodlands and rose over the Methalian Rim. The zigzag path up its heights thronged with his army, climbing. Aliver flew up to the Mein Plateau, skimming low over the great mass of troops already gathered there. He let the army see him and the dragons, and he rejoiced to hear the shouts that rose to greet them. Then he and the other dragon riders pressed on as the climbing sun crept across the land, bringing color to it. And it was later that day, under the brief blaze of the arctic day, that he saw Mena and Elya.

  They were under attack.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  Bad idea, Mena thought. This was a bad idea.

  She clung tight to Elya’s back as she rose and fell, dipped and twirled and undulated with the contours of the broken, icy terrain. Stone and snow, crevice and outcropping snapped by beneath her at speeds Mena had never experienced before. It might have been exhilarating, except that Elya raced before a snarling pack of freketes, all baying for her blood. They were so near. Mena had stopped looking back, but she could hear their jaws snap. Several times she felt one of them had clawed at Elya’s tail.

  Faster, Elya. Come on, girl! Faster!

  An hour earlier, back with the ragged remains of her army, Rialus had pointed out Devoth and his frekete mount, Bitten, as they swooped in for another aerial attack. It had seemed like the right strategic move to single him out, as she had done Howlk and Nawth. If she could kill or lame them, perhaps the Auldek would cease their endless pursuit. For headlong pursuit is exactly what her army had faced since the Auldek’s nighttime attack. Mena’s battered army ran; the Auldek pursued. They rode on their antoks and woolly rhinoceroses and kwedeir. They dropped on them from the air on bellowing freketes. Her soldiers marched day and night, racing between the food and supplies they had cached during their earlier march northward. But they were not fast enough, or strong enough anymore. They could not pull away, and the Auldek had clearly decided to run them into the ground.

  Her soldiers died one by one, trampled or cut down, snatched into the air or impaled. Some simply fell and gave up, the exhaustion and cold too much for them to carry on fighting. Even her officers died. Bledas got trampled by an antok. Perceven won himself honor-and a bloody death-defending a sled packed with the wounded. A group of the divine children ran them down. A man with a lion’s mane of white hair cut him with two strokes so fast that Perceven was legless before he even began to topple, and headless by the time his body hit the ground.

  Mena watched from a distance, but could do nothing, not even avenge him or the injured, who followed him to the afterdeath just moments later. If she let this go on, she would not have an army anymore. She was not sure what effect she had expected Calrach’s death or the destruction of the Auldek histories to have, but so far all the small victories they had won only seemed to fuel the intensity of the Auldek’s rage.

  That was why Mena had wanted so badly to buy them a reprieve. She and Elya had flown within shouting distance of the freketes. Instead of listening to anything she had to say, the beasts converged on her. No talking. No taunting. None of the curious, arrogant bravado of their earlier encounters. They just roared toward her. She had given Elya free rein to flee. Mena simply held on. At least they led the freketes away from the army. That was something.

  The beasts took turns pressing the pursuit. Two or three of them clawed the air behind Elya, as the others flew, resting themselves. Elya performed with agility and speed Mena had not known her capable of. But Elya could not go on much longer. Before them stretched a hilly landscape of dips and rises. Mena glanced back. The frekete that had been behind them had just pulled away. Devoth and Bitten pressed the attack now, coming on with a fresh surge of energy.

  Let’s get them, Mena thought to Elya. She shaped the thought with anger and defiance, but she knew they had no choice. Any moment now one of those grasping claws would get a firm grip on Elya and pull her from the sky. They had to act first.

  They did not get that chance.

  While Mena still looked behind, Elya broke her speed and cut to one side. The motion whipped Mena’s neck around savagely. A frekete that had lain in hiding for them surged up from a hollow, right in front of them. It raked one of its claws through Elya’s thin wing membrane and then down her side. Blood erupted from the wound. The beast’s claws cut through the saddle straps. Mena felt her harness go loose and cant off to one side. She barely managed to say atop Elya by clinging to her neck.

  Elya skimmed away, so near to the earth that her feet touched down briefly as each hill rose beneath her. That did not last long either. Another frekete and rider dropped from the sky in front of them. Elya snapped her wings in and twisted past them, sleek as a spear. The Auldek’s sword sung by Mena’s ear, so close. Elya reached another rise, but her feet twisted beneath her. She crashed down on the other side, grinding and rolling, Mena with her in a tangle of harness and webbing and wings. Mena felt the familiar, breath-stealing pain of her shoulder being dislocated, her arm flopping limply.

  The frekete and its rider swooped over the rise. Mena tried to grab for her sword hilt with her good arm, but the scabbard had twisted around beneath her and the pain in her shoulder made it hard to control her movements. The frekete touched the ground in a flying run. Mena knew it would reach her before she could draw her weapon. She was still struggling to get the King’s Trust free when Elya twisted away from her, found her feet.

  Elya leaped over the frekete. He slashed at her, but passed just underneath her-and just above Mena. One of its feet swept so close to the princess that it splattered her face with bits of ripped-up turf. Elya’s wings beat the air as she lifted higher, flying backward, tail slapping about, tauntingly close to the frekete’s grasping claws. From below, Mena watched the Auldek twist
around in his harness, looking at her. He yanked back on his reins with his full body weight, trying to turn the frekete back toward her. The cords pulled taut against the frekete’s shoulders, but the creature strained against them. It did not care about following its rider’s commands anymore or about Mena. It wanted Elya. The three of them disappeared over the hillcrest, leaving Mena crumpled on the ground, tangled in her harness rigging.

  Mena screamed Elya’s name, both in her mind and with all her voice. She writhed up and out of the harness and kicked free of it. With her good hand, she gripped the bicep of her dangling arm. She inhaled, clenched her teeth, and then pushed the arm back into place. The pain was dizzying. It took several attempts before she felt the ball of her arm bone slip back into its socket. Once it had, she drew the King’s Trust and ran as fast as she could up the slope over which the others had disappeared.

  Cresting it, she saw them. Below her in the next depression the frekete fought a snarling duel with Elya. The beast punched and grappled her, landing brutal blows. It was all brawny muscle and weight, sharp claws and bared teeth. Elya writhed with serpentine speed, a hissing tangle of motion. She fought more fiercely than Mena would have thought possible, but she was not made for it, her body too slim and delicate. Her wings hung in useless tatters, her side black with blood. She tried several times to leap away, but the frekete yanked her back down each time.

  The Auldek had dismounted to let the beast have its fun. He had started up the rise toward Mena, his sword in hand, but had paused, obviously amused by the fight. He shouted something to the animal. It bellowed in return. It slammed a fist across Elya’s jaw. She reeled away, but it grabbed her and pulled her back. It bit down on the long curve of her neck.

  “No!”

  Mena rushed down the slope, her sword raised, all pain forgotten. The Auldek snapped around. He moved to intercept her. They crashed together, Mena savage in her attack; the Auldek just as furious in repelling it. They went around, the Auldek moving so that she could not see what the frekete was doing to Elya. This drove Mena into a fury of slashing, hacking, thrusting motion faster than any attack she had managed before. The Auldek backed. Mena wanted him dead. Fast. Now!

  When a roar ripped through the air behind her she feared it was the frekete announcing its kill. The Auldek heard it, too. He looked past her and saw something that surprised him. His eyes left Mena only for a moment. That’s all she needed. She hacked his sword hand off at the wrist. As the sword and severed hand dropped, she reached over them and sliced a cut through the Auldek’s face. He survived it only by snapping his head back, turning, and running.

  A second roar hit Mena’s back, this one different from the first, higher and more shrill.

  Mena wanted to turn, but she also feared to. She ran after the fleeing Auldek as if blasted forward by a third roar, a low bass note that made the ground tremble.

  The Auldek stumbled once. Again, that moment was all Mena needed. She was Maeben now, dropping from the sky, nothing but a screech of mindless rage. At full sprint, she brought the King’s Trust up horizontally, her shoulder cocked high. She slammed her foot down on the Auldek’s heel. As his step hitched, she dove forward, driving the sword with all her weight and speed. The point of the blade slipped in at the base of the Auldek’s skull, cut through, and jutted through his face. Mena nearly ran up the man’s back. She kicked off him, yanking the cutting edge up as she did so. His head split in two.

  She did not pause to watch him fall. She turned in the air and landed, ready to run back toward Elya. Only then did she see what had so frightened the Auldek.

  The sky was alive with dragons.

  A brown one hurtled toward the approaching freketes. The other-nearly as blue as the sky behind it-swept around to attack them from the other side. The brown one roared first, and then the blue one did the same.

  All the freketes heard them. They pulled up, hesitating, as their eyes took in the shapes approaching them. Mena saw the dragons cut into the airborne freketes, scattering them. That was all she saw, for now there was a third dragon. This one became a searing black arrow that shot straight toward Elya and the frekete that held her limp body. The creature-larger than any frekete, dwarfing Elya, with a massive, big-jawed head that was so crimson it could have been on fire-rode in on that rumbling wave of sound, the greatest of the roars.

  The frekete holding Elya tossed her down and leaped into flight. The dragon met the frekete that way. At the last moment, the dragon pulled its head back and tossed its claws forward, grabbing and scratching at the very moment of impact. A man leaped from the monster’s back. Mena had not even noticed the rider. He slid across a slick stretch of wing membrane and then hit the ground in a jarring roll. The two beasts were carried forward by the dragon’s weight and momentum. A writhing ball of wings and tails, teeth and fists, screaming, fighting fury, they disappeared over the hillock.

  The man found his feet and spotted Mena. Meeting his gaze, Mena felt her vision blur. She stood swaying, staring, the King’s Trust forgotten in her hand. Her eyes followed the man as he rushed toward her. She heard his feet crunching on the snow. She saw the plumes of vapor when he breathed. She knew his face and recognized the joy and concern written in his features. She knew him. She knew him.

  “Mena,” Aliver said, reaching her in time to catch her before she fell from consciousness, “it’s all right. I’m with you.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  Nualo was the first to appear, called by Corinn’s reading from The Song. Circling high above the ruined valley of Calfa Ven, she saw the moving tumult of his passage. It began as a disturbance to the east, like a small, dense storm roiling on the horizon and moving at an unnatural speed. She did not know why she knew it was he, except perhaps that his hunger was greater than any of the others’, his evil more pronounced.

  “How close do we let them get?” Hanish asked.

  Close enough, but not too close.

  “That could be hard to measure,” Hanish said. “There’s no ruler for such a thing.”

  When Nualo was near enough that Corinn could see his tall, elongated form striding up and down the mountains, she turned Po and headed north. They left behind the devastation of Calfa Ven, but there were signs of the Santoth’s wandering destruction written across the hills and valleys beneath them. In places it looked like giant versions of the worms that had eaten her mouth had chewed up the earth and then vomited it back in twisted, sickening piles of soil and vegetation and rock. Would the Santoth do this to the entire world? Would studying The Song move them away from this rage and hunger for destruction, or would it just make them more horrific versions of what they already were? She knew the answers to these questions. The world below her both prompted and confirmed them, over and over again. Whatever had twisted the Santoth had taken them to a state they could not come back from. She hoped the same was not true of herself.

  Looking back at Nualo, seeing him shoulder through great pine trees as if they were shrubs, Corinn did not notice how close they flew to another Santoth. Po barked an alarm. The figure climbed up over a buttress of rock on the mountain below them. As soon as he stood with his feet planted, he threw up his arms and bellowed out his garbled version of the song. The notes rushed upward in the form of long, deformed black birds, with eyeless heads stretched eagerly forward from their bodies. They flew without so much as flapping their wings, like darts with only the force of the sorcerer’s voice to propel them.

  Po twisted and turned as they reached him. He contorted his body as the bird-shaped missiles zipped by. Each of them cried out as it missed, leaving in its wake a scorching burn that fouled the air. The stench of malevolence was so thick Corinn began coughing; a painful, useless gesture that wracked her chest with pain.

  “Don’t breathe it,” Hanish said. “Don’t breathe.”

  Hanish’s hands reached around and grasped hers, steadying her. Through her, he pulled the reins to direct Po into a sliding dive away from the sorcerer. The
missiles continued to fly past them, but Po kept at his maneuvers even as he banked away, wings pulled tight to edge their speed forward.

  One of the birds punched through Po’s left wing. It expanded on impact. Its legs and wings and beak all became hooks that tore through the thick membrane. Blood and tissue sprayed from the ragged hole. The barbed bird then sank away beneath them. Po screamed. He yanked the wing in, sending them into a corkscrew dive. Hanish fought to get control, still using Corinn’s hands. The spin was too chaotic.

  “Corinn!” Hanish called. “I can’t…”

  Corinn reached for the creature’s mind. She found it a cauldron overflowing with pain and anger and fear. The wound was worse even than it looked. The touch of the bird’s hooks carried the poison of tainted sorcery with it. It ate at Po, burning his wing like flaming oil. The agony of it was driving him mad.

  Corinn grasped for the song. She built it inside her head. She conjured the spell she would have used to heal him and shared it with Po. It could not do so, not as she would have liked, but just hearing it in his mind soothed him. She reminded him of who he was, how strong and wonderful. He stretched the wing again, pulling them out of the descent, and flew. The ragged hole remained, loose skin flapping horribly in the wind, but Corinn could feel that he was fighting the poisoned magic, deadening it. And he was beating his wings anyway.