The Dinosaur Lords

by Victor Milán

  Tree limbs clattered in mock battle.

  It was the next morning. Rob stood with Karyl by the stream to watch young Lucas fencing a house-archer in Percil’s gold-and-crimson livery. To everyone’s evident surprise—the archer’s only slightly more than the towheaded painter’s—Lucas was able almost to hold his own.

  That didn’t sit well with the soldier. He feinted a thrust for Lucas’s belly. When Lucas swung his branch down to counter, he whipped his own club around one-handed to crack the boy nastily in the forehead.

  Lucas sat down hard. The town lords and their other soldiers laughed. The recruits growled and scowled.

  Lucas jumped up. He laughed too, though his blue eyes were unfocused and he swayed. Blood ran down his broad, fresh face. His opponent jabbed him hard in the belly. Retching, Lucas bent over, clutching himself with his hair falling over his eyes.

  Taking a two-handed grip, the house-archer stepped up, raising his branch high over his head. He swung hard at Lucas’s unprotected nape.

  The limb struck the handle of Rob’s axe. Rob twisted the weapon and pulled it back fast. The beard of its still-cased head caught the stick, as it was designed to do. Stepping between the two men and turning hard with his hips, Rob twisted the tree limb from the soldier’s grasp and sent it spinning into the stream. Its splash made small spotted frogs croak disgust and leap into the water for safety.

  “Now, that’s hardly in the spirit of fair play, is it?” Rob asked pleasantly.

  The archer glared at him. He had a long, dark face that hadn’t seen a razor in several days. His eyes were as dark as lumps of coal.

  “Fucking vagrant!” He spat at Rob’s feet. “What gives you the right to boss us around?”

  “The authority of Voyvod Karyl, captain of this little tea-circle, and himself a notable lord.”

  “He’s nothing but another dirty wanderer,” said the house-archer, whom Rob thought had scant call to be criticizing others’ hygiene. “I’d put you in your place, if you hadn’t disarmed me by treachery.”

  Rob tossed his axe toward Emeric. To his relief, his estimation of the woods-runner proved out. The tall, blond-moustached man caught it handily.

  “Now I’m disarmed as well, by nothing but my own guileless nature. I believe you said something about showing me my place?”

  “Here,” called another of Percil’s men. He drew his sword and threw it to his comrade. “Spit the mad dog!”

  The archer looked away to catch the weapon by the hilt. When he turned back he found Rob had stepped right up to him.

  Before he could react, Rob snapped his knee up between the man’s legs. Impact lifted him onto his toes. He squeaked like a stepped-on mouse, his eyes bugged out, and his face went purple. He bent double, grabbing for his groin.

  Rob stood him right back up by smashing his elbow upward into his face. Blood streamed from the archer’s broken nose. Rob grabbed his head in both hands and dragged him face-first to make the acquaintance of Rob’s rapidly rising knee.

  The archer collapsed into a moaning heap.

  Bending down, Rob plucked the sword from fingers limp as boiled cabbage. Then he straightened and held the point to the side of the archer’s neck.

  He looked to Karyl. Karyl shook his head.

  The archer lay retching and whimpering on his right side. Rob gave him two centimeters of his comrade’s own steel in the side of his left buttock. He squealed.

  Pulling the arming-sword out, Rob tossed it in the air and stepped back. It turned over once and plunged back, point first, a hand’s-breadth into the moist ground.

  Without haste, but with every wide eye on him, Rob walked over and stooped to collect his axe from Emeric. Suddenly the case was off. The oil on Wanda’s head gleamed rainbows in the sun.

  “Playtime’s over, kiddies,” he said, laying the weapon over his shoulder with elaborate casualness. “The next man to fuck with me’s the next man I kill. Any questions?”

  Percil was sputtering like a hot iron thrust into a blacksmith’s bucket. His face glowed red. Such hair as he has should be taking light any moment now, thought Rob. No wonder it’s all so crispy-curly.

  Yannic looked ready to change on the spot the terms Bogardus had obviously rammed down the town lords’ throats. Karyl eyed Percil with a calm intensity that suggested strongly that, should the big-headed grande order his men to make a move, the next thing to happen would be his head parting company from his neck by way of the blade concealed in Karyl’s staff.

  “Here, now, gentlemen,” said Melchor in a soothing voice. He stepped between his peers and the mercenary captain, beaming as if this were his own surprise party. “Tempers flare even when fighting’s merely practice. We all have a job to do. Let’s all take a deep breath and get on with it, like civilized men.”

  Karyl smiled thinly, but said nothing. Fearing the fat noble would misinterpret Karyl’s silence as uncertainty and change his mind about trying to keep the peace, Rob said, “Wise words, my lord.” Though his own words rasped his throat.

  “Bravo,” a voice called from the road.

  Chapter 35

  Caracorno Spinoso, Spike-frill—Styracosaurus albertensis. Ovdan hornface (ceratopsian dinosaur), quadrupedal herbivore with a large nasal horn and four to six large horns protruding from its neck-frill; 5.5 meters long, 1.8 meters tall, 3 tonnes. Mostly shades of yellow and brown in arresting patterns. Favored war-mount for heavy Turano and Parso riders

  —THE BOOK OF TRUE NAMES

  Stunned and disoriented by the mass terremoto, Ironstar’s dinosaur knights stood no chance. His lead duckbills were still rearing and shrilling in panic when the Terrarojanos hit them. They slammed stunned dinosaurs to the ground with impacts Jaume could almost feel from half a kilometer away. Riders were crushed by their falling mounts or trampled by enemy monsters.

  The lucky ones died at once.

  Despite himself Jaume was impressed. Don Leopoldo’s using actual tactics, he thought. He put Camellia into a two-legged trot. Behind him his Companions did likewise. The jarring did his ribs no favors. But fortunately his mind was contracting to a point, focusing on battle.

  Compared to the knowledge that what he was doing would lead inevitably to great suffering and death for beasts and humans, likely even for his friends, or for himself, overlooking physical pain was a trifle.

  Apparently life as a bandit lord sharpened the wits. The Count of the Redlands had not heretofore been famed for his keen mental edge. Military custom, which most of his peers followed like so many vexer hatchlings following their mother, called for heavy mounts, horses or hadrosaurs, to charge several ranks deep for mass. Students of the military arts like Jaume and his Companions knew that advantage was mostly illusion.

  Instead, Terraroja had arranged his dinosaur knights in a formation much wider than it was deep, giving it more than twice the frontage of Ironstar’s force. That enabled the greatest number of his duckbills to utter their subterranean war-bellows without blasting their fellows in front of them.

  It also allowed them to wrap around both Imperial flanks. As the two masses of cavalry came together between monsters and infantry, Ironstar’s dinosaurry shattered like a crystal goblet struck by a morning star.

  Jaume’s gut wound tighter. The Companions now rode at a gallop. He ached to go faster still, to stanch the disaster erupting before his eyes. But if I push our beasts any faster, they’ll be knackered before they reach the enemy. And Terraroja outnumbers us so brutally already.…

  Baron Sándoval and his heavy horse were holding their own against the greater mass of Redlander men-at-arms. Jaume caught a glimpse of the Baron himself through the gorgeous scrum of knights and coursers. He was unmistakable, literally by design: unlike most, who settled for simply painting their arms on breastplate and shield, Sándoval did up his armor in his striking gold and black lozenge pattern. Jaume found that in doubtful taste. But in terms of allowing Sándoval’s men to see him even in the maelstrom of combat, it worked.
/>
  From away to his right, Jaume heard a hoarse, triumphant shout of “¡Ajúa!” Though he couldn’t see them now for the intervening mass of Imperial peasants with their long sticks, he knew the Nodosaurs had just met the enemy center. He had no doubt they would roll over the hapless Redlands levies like a thunder-titan blundering through a village’s thorn fence.

  He hoped their efforts weren’t wasted.

  “They’re running!” he heard Owain shout from behind him. Ironstar’s survivors had broken. Their dinosaurs turned tails toward the foe and raced south on two legs. Jaume frowned to see Estrella del Hierro’s grey-and-orange sackbut among them, with rider in place.

  Am I disappointed that he survived because he failed, Jaume wondered. Or, ugly thought, because at least I’d be spared his nonsense if he fell?

  But that was one good thing about rushing into battle: such thoughts flew by like falling stars streaking down the night sky.

  Unfortunately, rout was contagious. Sándoval’s knights saw their bigger comrades running away as fast as their huge hind legs could pump. Badly outmanned, they saw no choice but to turn and race the hadrosaurs away from the lost field.

  As he neared the panic flight, Jaume didn’t glance back. He knew his sixteen Companions formed a tight wedge behind him. Canny Coronel Alma, the silver-bearded mercenary who had commanded the Ordinary hombres armaos since their inception, would follow the dinosaur knights until they could break off to intercept the pursuing Redlander horse.

  Bleating duckbills, terrified beyond their riders’ control, streamed across the Companions’ path. Soon they’d start dropping from sheer exhaustion, dooming their riders no less certainly than if they hit the ground in the midst of a melee.

  Jaume wasted no concern on that. It lay beyond his control. What did worry him was whether his men could avoid trampling the Imperial cavalry. Companion duckbills would squash the chargers like so many four-footed grapes, notwithstanding their fine barding of chain or plate. The knights who rode them would fare no better.

  Worse from a tactical perspective was that riding down their own cavalry would disorder Jaume’s small band. Few as they were, the Companions depended on cohesion for effect even more than other dinosaur knights.

  With a light pressure on the reins, he angled Camellia a hair to his right. To his relief the Imperial horse thundered by to the west, eyes rolling and froth streaming from wide nostrils. But there was no way to miss the pursuing Terrarojano horse as well. While Jaume would feel far less bad about smashing them, it would still fatally disorder his charge.

  Against an enemy who had begun the day outnumbering his Companions by better than five to one.

  * * *

  Karyl snarled a Slavo curse under his breath. “The sentries I posted to watch the road must be asleep.”

  Rob spun with his axe, Wanda, still across his shoulder. The sentries in question, a pair of ’prentice lads from Providence town, stood grinning and waving from beside an extravagant apparition. A young man clad in a green feather yoke, brown breechclout, and green boots sat astride the most flamboyant-looking hornface Rob had ever seen.

  “Easy, then,” he told Karyl. “I’m guessing the lads know this one.” His companion still scowled. But his expression was starting to soften.

  The beast was about Little Nell’s size, if a bit chunkier. Its nasal horn was longer and slimmer than Nell’s, with a marked upward curve. Dinosaur master Rob saw how lethal it could be hooked up into the vulnerable belly of matador or war-duckbill alike. More than sufficient to let the air out of even one of the town lords’ mailed bravos. Like Nell’s, its frill was surmounted by a pair of spikes. These were stronger-looking, sharper, longer, wicked in effect instead of comical. Smaller spines jutted around the frill’s rim.

  The big-beaked face showed stark yellow-on-brown lines. The body behind the frill was brown on top, shading to mustard below. Rob didn’t know whether the facial coloring was natural, painted, or carefully bred, like the extravagant hues of a Nuevaropan morion or sackbut.

  “Handsome beast,” Rob called to the rider. “A Styracosaurus, if I know my Book of True Names. And I do. What d’you call him?”

  “Thank you, friend,” the rider called back. “He’s named Zhubin. Or if you meant his breed, we call that ‘spike-frill.’ They run wild in Ovda, and are also bred for war. I’m Gaétan, by the way. My father is Master Évrard, a merchant dealing in spices and fine cloths.”

  “Zhubin,” Karyl said. “That’s Parso for ‘spear.’”

  The newcomer regarded him a moment, then swung a leg over the bow of his saddle on the hornface’s tall back and dropped to the road. He was a burly lad, not over-tall, with green-hazel eyes and unruly brown hair that fell onto his square, tanned face. He said something to Karyl in a language that sounded to Rob both guttural and liquid, somehow. Karyl answered in the same tongue.

  “So it’s true,” Gaétan said. “You really are the Voyvod Karyl, famous from song and story.”

  “I was,” Karyl said. “Welcome, Gaétan. Have you come to join us?”

  “If you’ll have me.” He walked forward to clasp forearms with Karyl.

  “Gladly,” Karyl said. “This is my lieutenant, Rob Korrigan. He’s a dinosaur master by trade.”

  “Ah. That explains why he asked about my mount before me.”

  “You brought weapons, I see,” Rob said, nodding to the sword, round shield, and suggestively waterproof sea monster–hide case that hung from the spiky dinosaur’s saddle. The case might have fit a bardic-style harp. Somehow Rob doubted it did. “Can you use them?”

  The young man shrugged. “I can take care of myself. I’ve traveled with my father’s caravans since I was a toddler. I’ve had to fight a time or two.”

  “Is that a hornbow?” Karyl asked.

  Rob raised a brow. He actually sounds eager.

  “It is indeed.” Gaétan took down the case, opened it, drew out an object shaped like a huge letter C. Karyl said nothing, but his eyes lit.

  Gaétan slipped a looped string over one end of the bow. Taking the other in his left hand and the string’s free end in the right, he swung the C around behind his left leg. Stepping through between string and stave, he braced the bow against the back of his right knee and straightened, grunting, forcing the C back against itself. When it was bent far enough, he slipped the other loop of the bowstring on, completing its transformation to a capital D. Then he stepped out of the bow and raised it.

  By now he’d acquired a large and wide-eyed audience, Rob among them. The closest he’d ever come to one of the legendary recurved bows of the Turano and Parso nomads was watching Karyl’s mobile flesh-forts advance through the river mists beneath Gunters Moll, and the terrible whispering death launched in clouds from the fighting-castles on their backs.

  Gaétan drew the bow. Muscles rippled in his thick, bare arms. He eased off on the string and turned to Karyl.

  “Would you care to heft it, Seigneur?” he asked.

  “Please. If you’d be so kind. And if you feel a need to call me by a title, ‘Captain’ will serve.”

  Rob was mildly startled. Even though he had first laid eyes on the man as a one-handed beggar, playing mute in a village square, it was the first time he’d heard Karyl sound humble.

  Karyl turned the bow over in his hands, seeming more to be savoring than inspecting. “They make these of sinew and horn glued together, layer by thin layer,” he explained to Rob.

  “Now, here’s a lad who seems to have some substance to him,” Rob heard Guat say from behind. The chunky farmer had been a thorn from the outset. Having his liege Yannic on hand hadn’t made him less of a prick.

  “And what might that mean?” Rob asked.

  “Merchant lad comes with weapons. And he can use ’em. Can you and your outlander friend say that?”

  Rob laughed incredulously. “Have you never seen the inside of a tavern, these last ten years? All they sing of are the exploits of the great Voyvod Karyl.”
/>   The ones that didn’t sing about Jaume dels Flors, anyway. He thought that unnecessary to mention.

  “Tavern songs,” scoffed Reyn. The townsman carpenter and Percil employee was another problem child. “Fancy fables, nothing more. Oh, this Karyl’s noble-born. Fine. We bend the knee to him ’cause that’s the Law. The Creators made the world with the high above the low, so the base would be wider than the top and things’d stand firm. But can he fight? All he’s done since he came here is talk. And order us around.”

  Others began to echo the pair’s words. Rob’s brows had squeezed down over his eyes until he could barely see through them. I hear the heavy hands of town lords pushing this talk to the fore, he thought. Right treacherous bastards, the lot of them. Although Melchor at least seemed willing to give the foreigners an honest chance to prove themselves.

  Emeric said nothing in Karyl’s defense. But he had little to say at the best of times, especially around townsmen and peasants, whom he referred to as “sitting-folk.” Only Lucas raised his voice in support, and that so high it cracked, which did his case little good.

  No one questioned Rob’s prowess, he noted. He was almost sorry.

  How will himself respond? he wondered.

  “Might I use your bow, Master Gaétan?” Karyl asked mildly.

  Gaétan grinned. “I’m master of no one and nothing except myself. Plain ‘Gaétan’ is fine. And sure, be my guest.”

  He turned back toward his spike-frill, which was pulling up a beakful of yellow daisies. He unslung a quiver of fine-grained dinosaur hide, springer or even bouncer. The arrows were fletched with black and yellow feathers.

  “I’ll need just four,” Karyl said. Gaétan held out the quiver. Karyl drew the arrows out one at a time by the notch end and clipped them against the bow with the first two fingers of his right hand.

  “Do you want me to set up a butt for you, Captain?” Lucas asked, seeming more eager than ever to make himself useful with Gaétan on the scene. “A bale of hay, maybe?”

  “No need.” Karyl nocked an arrow. Drawing the string smoothly to his ear he tipped back and loosed upward, just a hair off straight upward.