by Jeff Grubb
One lad hesitated; he was one of the young ones, in his first year of studies. “Sir, aren’t we going to fight?” he asked.
Tawnos nodded. “Yes, but we need to protect our knowledge. Get it to safety first.”
“But,” said the youth, sputtering, “we can use the ornithopter to fight, can’t we?”
Tawnos looked down on the young man. “Fight? How? We could drop bombs on them. But they are in our city, and we would be bombing our people. The avengers will buy us time, but probably they can’t defeat the dragon engines by themselves. Do you understand?”
The boy looked at his feet. “I suppose. I would rather fight.”
Tawnos looked at him grimly. “And I would rather win the fight,” he said. “Do you understand the difference?”
Another pause, then, “I suppose so.”
“Good,” said Tawnos. “Because you’re going to fly the ornithopter. If you have to fight, you will. But remember that the important thing is to get the ornithopter, and particularly the books, away to one of the more remote bases farther east. If they have fallen, then head to Korlis, or even Argive. Do you understand?”
The boy nodded, and Tawnos helped the youths load the ornithopter. In the distance there came the sound of explosions and, once or twice, of shouting. Finally the huge ornithopter was loaded, and Tawnos gave the lad the Jalum Tome. As he took it, the boy said, “My brother, he’s another student here. Sanwell.”
Tawnos hesitated. “Do you want me to send him with you?”
“He’s one of the older students,” said the boy.
Tawnos nodded slowly. He had sent the older students with the avengers into battle.
The boy said, “If you see him, tell him I left. And tell him not to worry.”
“Your name is Rendall, right?”
“Rendall,” agreed the boy, setting the great book on his lap.
“I’ll tell him when I see him, Rendall, and the gods speed you,” said Tawnos. And gods help us all, he added to himself as the boy engaged the power stone and the great craft came to life.
The great ornithopter strained at its pulleys and leaped into the sky in a single bounce. It did not make the low, climbing circle common in training flights. Instead it flew arrow-straight to the east. Behind it, there was the screeching of the dragon engine that witnessed its departure. That made Tawnos feel slightly better. If Mishra was going to take Urza’s city, he was not going to take Urza’s knowledge.
He dismissed the rest of the students, telling them to take what they could carry and head east as quickly as possible, regrouping at the caravan town of Hench. And if that had fallen, he said, make for the coast or Korlis. He looked at their faces and knew that a few would go for weapons and join the melee, but enough would have the common sense to let the school survive.
Tawnos took Ashnod’s staff from its holder and left the orniary for the last time, making for the guest wing. The guards were still at their positions outside Ashnod’s door. Tawnos dismissed them, ordering them to help protect the palace.
“Helluva of a party,” said Ashnod as he entered. “Pity we’re missing it.” Her words were light, but her face was drawn and concerned.
“I need your help,” said Tawnos. “We need to get out of the city.”
“We?” asked Ashnod. “Does that include me? I mean, these are my people coming to call.”
“These are the Fallaji!” shouted Tawnos. “Do you think they can tell the difference between you and any other non-Fallaji woman in the middle of the battle?”
“If I have my staff, they will,” replied Ashnod calmly. “Give it to me.”
“Promise to help,” said Tawnos. “Promise to help me get the queen to safety. Or, if we’re captured, guarantee her safety.”
“Why should I help your precious queen?” snapped Ashnod harshly.
“She’s pregnant,” said Tawnos.
“I hope you don’t think you’re appealing to my motherly instincts—” began Ashnod.
“Mishra may be the father,” interrupted Tawnos. “Do you want to tell him his child died in the taking of the city?”
Ashnod sat down. “Whoo,” she said. Outside the window there was an explosion. Too close for Tawnos’s mind. “Never even heard that rumor. Are you sure?”
Tawnos looked at his hands. “No.”
Ashnod shook her head and chuckled. “Well, that’s good enough for me. I promise to help get your precious queen away from here, or if you’re captured to guarantee fair treatment. Can I have my staff now?”
Tawnos hesitated for a moment and then gave her the staff. She ran her fingers over it and said, “I expected you to dismantle it.”
“I did,” said Tawnos, heading for the door. “And I rebuilt it. Let’s go.”
The hallways were empty now, and through the windows of the promenade Tawnos and Ashnod could see the rising plumes of smoke. Through it, far off in the city, Tawnos saw a dragon engine.
“There was more than one,” he said bitterly.
“Yep,” said Ashnod. “I told you, but you weren’t paying enough attention.”
“Maybe I should have given you to the priests,” snarled Tawnos.
“Then who would help you now?”
They ran into the queen and the seneschal at the entrance to the royal quarters. The seneshal was carrying a large carpetbag filled with the queen’s personal effects.
Ashnod looked at the queen’s swelling belly. “You have let yourself go!” she said.
Tawnos asked, “Status?”
The seneschal stammered and said, “B-bad. The avengers slowed the lead dragon engine, b-but it just pulled back and let tribesmen overwhelm the avengers and their operators. Some people think the queen has already left the city in an ornithopter.”
Tawnos mentally kicked himself. It had not occurred him to use the ornithopter to rescue the queen and not Urza’s notes. Or himself, for that matter.
“We need to make haste,” said the seneschal. “The engines will be here any moment.”
The earth shook, and a deep, fiery roar proved the seneschal wrong. The dragon engines had already arrived at the palace of Kroog and were slamming their great shovel-like muzzles as battering rams against the walls.
The hallway rocked, and half of it slid away, breaking apart under the assault of the engine. Stonework and furnishings suddenly collapsed as if a great blade had cut through the palace itself. In the wake of the cave-in, more of the hallway slid into a churning dust cloud.
Tawnos grabbed Kayla and pulled her close to him onto more solid ground. The seneschal was not so fortunate. The ground beneath him broke like brittle ice in the spring, and with a scream he toppled forward into the abyss. Kayla shouted as the seneschal vanished in the churning debris, still clutching Kayla’s carpetbag.
Ashnod lashed out an arm and grabbed Tawnos’s shoulder. “Let’s go. Her Majesty can get new luggage later.”
Tawnos’s brows furrowed in anger, but there was no time for argument. The entire royal wing was slowly coming apart beneath the treads of the dragon engine. The beast screeched again, and the three, Ashnod, Tawnos, and Kayla, fled down the hallway, away from the assault.
They made it to the main entranceway before they ran into Fallaji troops. An honor guard, noted Tawnos briefly, from the look of their hats and carved gold epaulets. The three refugees were descending the main staircase when the desert tribesmen spilled into the hall beneath them.
For a moment both parties froze. Then Ashnod took a step forward down the stairs and shouted, “These people are under my protection!”
A large figure separated from the rest of the Fallaji. This one was dressed in resplendent armor of tooled leather and was fat to the point of obesity.
“You are a woman. You cannot offer such protection.”
Ashnod stiffened, and Tawnos realized that the two knew each other. “I am the apprentice of your raki, O powerful one,” she said, venom in her voice. “I can do as I please.”
“A p
ity,” said the fat Fallaji, “since in all the confusion of the battle, my men killed you before we knew who you were. I am afraid Mishra will have to understand, later.”
Ashnod looked shocked. “Why are you doing this?”
The fat one smiled. “Mishra depends you, as a man leans on a crutch. My father once said that it is a bad thing for a man to have a crutch. I do this to make Mishra stronger.” To his men he said, “Kill them all.”
Tawnos shouted and pulled his blade, pushing Kayla behind him. Ashnod screamed an obscenity and brought up her staff. The golden-wired skull hummed and spat sparks.
The Fallaji soldiers did not make it farther than the bottom two steps. They went down, clutching their necks and bellies from the painful force of Ashnod’s attack. Even behind her, Tawnos could feel the intensity of the assault. Kayla huddled against him. The queen was muttering to herself, and Tawnos realized that the words were prayers to one god after another.
The soldiers collapsed in gasping piles, but Ashnod did not let up her attack. Instead she turned her staff on the fat one who had threatened her. The staff’s tip glowed a brighter shade, and the wires incandesced, glowing from their own heat. The fat one clutched at his throat and spun around in place like a puppet, but Ashnod did not relent. Tawnos could see blood spurting from the man’s ears, nose, and eyes. When Ashnod finally lowered her staff, the fat one collapsed in a heap, dead among his unconscious soldiers, a puppet with his strings cut.
Ashnod slumped as well, and Tawnos reached out to steady her. She was bathed in cold sweat, and a thin trickle of blood streamed from her nose.
“I really,” she said, rubbing the blood off on her sleeve, “I really have to fix the glitch in this staff’s design.”
Tawnos helped both women down the stairs, past the dead and unconscious men. He paused only slightly at the fat one, lying with his ruined face oozing blood. “You knew this one?”
Ashnod looked at the face of the dead qadir of the Fallaji. “Some desert nobody,” she said bitterly. “Mishra is better off with him gone.”
Kayla wanted to head east, joining the refugees fleeing the city, but Ashnod took them westward instead, toward the docks. They were stopped by two Fallaji patrols, but each time these soldiers recognized Ashnod’s claim that the two Yotians were under her protection. That was fortunate, thought Tawnos, for Ashnod was nearly dead on her feet from the first battle and could not sustain another.
They had passed through the front of the fighting now, and all that was left behind the advancing army was blackened devastation. What houses were not crushed by the engines had been set alight, and flames guttered at every window. There was no one in the streets but the dead. Tawnos found one of the avengers, its legs removed by the Fallaji, still flailing around in circles in the middle of one of the plazas. Taking a moment, Tawnos deactivated it and removed the power stone. There was no sign of the device’s operator.
At last they reached the docks. The quays were abandoned, like the rest of the city. Ashnod chose one of the smaller of the attacking boats, still moored at a wharf. “Here,” she said. “Get in.”
“We should go east,” said Kayla weakly.
Ashnod shook her head. “Mishra’s troops are going to be chasing refugees east for the next two weeks looking for you,” she said to Kayla, and turned to Tawnos. “And you. And anyone else connected with Urza. Head south to the coast, then go east from there.”
Tawnos helped Kayla over the gunwales of the rowboat. The Queen of Kroog fled to the far end of the vessel and pulled her cape tightly around her. Tawnos turned to Ashnod.
“You knew this attack was coming?” he asked. “I mean, now?”
Ashnod shook her head. “If I did know, and if I had told you, would you have believed me? I’ve given you what you want. I’m going now.” She clutched her staff as if Tawnos might try to take it from her.
“They might still kill you,” the apprentice said.
“Less of a danger now. Trust me on that one,” she said. “If I find Mishra, everything will be fine. You take care of Her Majesty. You really think she’s carrying Mishra’s whelp?”
“I don’t know,” said Tawnos softly. “I’m not sure she knows either.”
Ashnod shook her head. “Still playing the baby duck, even when the mommy ducks are heading for the abattoir. Your loyalty will put you in a spot someday where even I can’t help you. Best of luck, Duck!”
She kissed him quickly, but long enough for Kayla to observe. Then, with a wink and a wave, the scarlet-haired woman disappeared back into the burning city.
Tawnos watched until Ashnod vanished among the smoke and burning ash. Then he took the long pole and pushed the boat away from the docks, into the main current of the river.
The apprentice and the queen watched the city burn as they floated away from it and watched the smoke that marked its pyre long after the flanking hills hid the devastation from direct view. The rest of the journey for that day, and for the next few days, was in silence, as they moved sluggishly down the river. The sense of loss, and their responsibility for it, weighed heavily on the occupants of the tiny craft.
It had taken Urza nearly a month to return to the wreckage of Kroog, first walking out of the desert with the wounded Lieutenant Sharaman, then regrouping the embattled Yotian forces in the Sword Marches and organizing an orderly retreat south. The Sword Marches fell behind them, and most of northern Yotia as well. But there was nothing left there to fight for and nothing to sustain an army.
The Fallaji harried their flanks but left them alone. Urza’s forces got within two days’ flight of Kroog, which was still in enemy territory. The Prince Consort (and de facto ruler, in the continued absence of the queen) took a trio of ornithopters to the wreckage.
Mishra, now known to Yotians as the Butcher of Kroog, had abandoned the city, and his dragon engines left little standing. The massive walls themselves had been left untouched, though their mighty gates had been worked from their hinges and splintered. Everything within the walls had been burned, and that which resisted burning had been crushed beneath the dragon engines’ treads. A gray rain of ashes and dust fell on the city for three days after the razing. There was little looting afterward because there was little to loot. All that was left were the walls and a slope of gray rubble leading down to the Mardun River, and beyond the walls a scattering of lean-tos belonging to refugees too stubborn or stupid to move elsewhere.
Three ornithopters alighted on the low hillock where the palace would have been. Urza and Sharaman climbed from their machines, but the third pilot remained with his craft, ready to take off at the first sign of trouble.
There was nothing to do except watch and nothing to see except the ash-covered rubble. Urza stood in one spot, then moved a few feet over, then moved to a third location. Occasionally he picked up a bit of rock or let a handful of soot sift between his fingers. It seemed to Sharaman that the ruler was trying to imagine what building stood there and where he would be within that building.
There was a great pile of rubble that had been burned, blasted, and then cleared. At first Sharaman thought it had been a great court, but he soon realized that it was the site of Urza’s orniary and that it had been scraped down to bedrock. Urza stood in the dead center of the cleared circle and knelt down, putting his hands over his eyes. There was not even any rubble left for him to touch.
People began to drift in from the gates. Sharaman tensed for a moment, but he realized these were little more than Yotian refugees from the camps outside. Leaving Urza to his revelry, Sharaman went to meet them.
Sharaman had been in Kroog a handful of times, the first when he received his flight training. It had been an amazing city to a boy from the eastern provinces, a boy who had been given a ride in an ornithopter when Urza flew to Korlinda. Now that was a lifetime ago, and mighty Kroog was a dead ruin.
Sharaman went and talked to the refugees, then returned to where Urza stood, a young boy in tow.
“Sire,” he
said gently.
“And I always accused my brother of not finishing anything,” said Urza softly. Then his eyes focused and he turned to Sharaman, once more the Chief Artificer. “What?”
“There are people here,” said Sharaman. “They want to know what to do.”
“Do?” said Urza, his voice sounding strangled. “What can they do? Tell them to head south, or east, or west, or wherever they think they can find safety. Tell them that there is nothing for them here.”
“Perhaps it would be better if they heard it from you,” said Sharaman.
Urza looked at Sharaman. “And say what? That I’m sorry I failed them? That I’m sorry that I wasn’t here for them? That I’m sorry that my brother fooled me? That I’m sorry that my wife and my apprentice and my work are all gone?”
Urza’s voice rose as he spoke, and Sharaman wondered if the Chief Artificer would weep. Instead the older man shook his head and said, “No, I have failed them. They should go find someone who has not failed and follow him.” For the first time he noticed the youth. “And this is?”
“He says he’s one of your students,” said Sharaman.
Urza peered at the youth. “Perhaps. Your name is . . Rendall?”
“Sanwell, Sire,” said the youth. “Rendall is my younger brother. He’s the one Master Tawnos chose to fly the ornithopter away.”
Urza looked at Sharaman, and there was a new light in his eyes. “Ornithopter? Then someone escaped this with an ornithopter?”
Slowly, Sanwell told the story, which he had heard from another student after the battle. His younger brother had taken most of the important papers and designs and flew them east. No, no one else went with him. Yes, with orders to go to Argive if need be to escape the Fallaji. No, he didn’t know what had happened to Master Tawnos and the queen. Sanwell’s avenger had been overwhelmed by a number of desert fighters. It had taken out a number of them, but there were too many of them.
