Dragon Blade

by J. D. Hallowell

  “As do I,” said a man who had just entered.

  The man quickly introduced himself to Delno and Rita as Jerome Morran, master healer and physician to the king.

  “I not only know the half-elf physician they brought along, I’ve wanted to study under the man for many years. He is quite simply the best herbalist to be found outside the Elven lands. Our people could be in no better hands: I’ve told all of the local physicians that they are to follow his orders to the letter or they will be permanently banned from practicing in Corice.”

  “That’s all well and good for you, Healer,” the man with the black eye replied, “but we have no intention of waiting until the desires of these elves and wizards change and they turn on us.” He turned to the king and asked, “Have you stopped to consider that they could be working with the very army they say they are here to defeat?”

  “Yes, I have considered it,” Dorian responded, “and rejected the idea. If these Riders were in league with our enemies, why would they even bother with this pretense? By the time they arrived, the military leaders and I were already considering asking for terms of surrender. Our people are dying from plague within the walls, and death awaits us on the field outside; we were completely demoralized when those dragons swooped down and made that impressive display this afternoon.” He paused for a moment and then added, “So you see, it is either trust that these Riders can help, or surrender and hope that our enemies are merciful.”

  Everyone was silent for several moments, and then the king continued. “Of course, if you, as the ruling council, decide that you are so terrified of the dragons that you would prefer surrender, I, by law, have to consider your request. Surrender will mean that I will most likely be taken to the King of Bourne in chains. I can’t imagine that they will leave the city council intact, but you can always take your chances. Of course, the Bournese have killed the leaders of the cities they have overrun in the past.” He paused for effect before saying, “Talk amongst yourselves for a while and let me know what you decide. Just in case, though, I will go over defense plans with the Riders and my military leaders.”

  Saying that, the king turned, and, offering his arm to Rita and taking Delno by the elbow, led them off to one side of the room. Once he had put as much distance as possible between himself and the city council he said, “They are fine when it comes to the normal business of state, but they simply hamper the operation when it comes to war. That is why I don’t have to listen to them unless they directly call for surrender.”

  There was silence for a few moments and then the king asked, “How long have you known that you were Corolan’s grandson, Delno?”

  Delno was a bit taken aback by the question; he had expected to be asked about the coming war. “I didn’t actually know until several months after I left Corice.”

  “Tell me, what of your grandmother? Is she alive?” the king looked pained as he asked the question.

  Delno shook his head. “I’m afraid she died in childbirth. My mother, newborn and needing a wet-nurse, was given over to my grandfather’s relatives. She was raised with the caravans and then settled in Larimar when she was old enough to make her own decisions.”

  “I knew the answer to that, though I didn’t want to admit it,” the king replied sadly. “Your grandmother and I were twins. I was the elder by nearly an hour. Our mother also died in childbirth, and we nearly died as babes because we were born premature. Much later, when we were twenty-three, my sister introduced me to a man she had fallen in love with. He was older, and I disapproved. When I found out he was a Dragon Rider, I wanted nothing more to do with him. I begged her to reconsider and go through with a marriage that had been prearranged. She and I fought about it, and she left without saying good-bye. I wish I had kept my disapproval to myself for her sake. At least then I wouldn’t have gone all these years waiting for the news I knew I didn’t want to hear.”

  Dorian was slouching and looked as though he had aged visibly in the last few moments. Delno put his hand on his uncle’s shoulder. Finally, the man regained his composure and straightened. Then he smiled at Delno and said, “And here my great-nephew has lived in the same city as I have all of his life. Has served in my army and been decorated by me personally, and I never knew. I wish I had not been such an ass to your grandparents: then you would have grown up knowing your heritage. Can you forgive me, Nephew?”

  “My father has always said to me, before you berate a man for making a mistake, make sure you have made none of your own,” Delno replied. “There is nothing to forgive, Uncle.”

  Dorian quickly embraced his great-nephew and then said, “Now then, tell these guards who they are looking for, and they will make sure your family sees the healers. Then, as soon as it can be arranged, your loved ones will be brought to the palace for a reunion.”

  Delno provided the men with the information. The men seemed reluctant to leave the king, but Dorian said, “Be about the task I have set for you. If I am not safe in my own halls, in the company of two Dragon Riders and two of my finest military officers, then having two more soldiers won’t make a bit of difference.”

  Delno turned to his great uncle and asked, “Shouldn’t we begin planning our defenses?”

  “Not on your life,” the king replied. “The last war we fought against Bourne was won because I had the good sense not to interfere with my military commanders. My job is to wait here and review what you request and then see how much more I can squeeze out of the bean counters to give it to you. You and Colonel, excuse me, General Dreighton have proven yourselves in the past, I’m sure you both will do what needs to be done. I brought you over here away from the council members so that we could discuss family matters. Now, if you and the general will excuse me, I will go and play politics while you and he discuss military strategies.”

  Both Delno and General Dreighton exchanged glances and smiled as the king walked away.

  “Well,” Delno said, “at least I can congratulate you on your promotion, General.”

  The general shook Delno’s hand. The two men discussed integrating the dragons into the defenses of the city while they walked back to the walls.

  Later, back outside, Geneva said, “You are pensive, Love; what is bothering you?”

  “I have been thinking about my heritage quite a bit. I have come to realize that fate has played a strong hand in deciding which direction I am to be pointed, but I still marvel at the number of things that could have changed all of that.” Then he leaned against her and wrapped his arms as far around her neck as he could. “I am simply glad that everything has worked out in such a way that we are together, Dear Heart, but there is a question that I would like to ask you about your heritage.”

  “Of course, Dear One. Ask; I will answer.”

  “Very well. Corolan saved your grandmother and her Partner and was rewarded by bonding with your mother and being given a Dragon Blade, correct?”

  “Yes, as I understand it, though my lineage lore doesn’t include specifics about that.”

  “I know that your mother knew she would die and passed on her lineage to you, but how did your grandmother know and pass on the lineage to your mother? I haven’t heard that she was mortally wounded in that battle.”

  “She wasn’t mortally wounded, but she was very old. She knew that my mother would be her last daughter, and so she passed on the lineage before my mother hatched. My grandmother lived for nearly five years after my mother was born. Until my grandmother died, my mother was what you would call the Heir Apparent.”

  “That clears it up nicely. I had wondered how that all worked, Love,” Delno replied.

  “I’m glad I could put your mind at ease, Dear One,” Geneva responded. She paused for a moment and then added, “There is bad weather moving in. We will have a storm by morning. You had better sleep while you can.”

  ”I think I’ll sleep here on the wall with you,” he said. He sat down in a semi-reclined position using her front leg for a sleeping couch. Rit
a came over from where she had been speaking with Fahwn and kissed him.

  “Since we haven’t been given proper quarters yet, I think I’ll take your example and sleep with my draconic Partner instead of my human one,” she said to him.

  Usually when they spoke of their relationship they were either very playful or simply businesslike. To have Rita speak of them as Partners was as close to using the word love as either of them had yet gotten. He smiled and held onto her hand for a moment before he let her go so that she could walk back to Fahwn.

  “Good night, Rita, if you need me for anything tonight I’ll be right here. Just call out, I’ll hear you.”

  She walked away toward Fahwn but it was almost as if the connection remained unbroken.

  Chapter 10

  Geneva had been right; when dawn came the next day, it was so dark and gloomy that it was difficult to tell when night ended and day began. The clouds that had been building all night now threatened a deluge, and the winds were so strong and chaotic that the dragons were unable to take flight.

  Delno watched the Bournese army continue their preparations for the coming assault on the city as lightning began to flash. Finally, the rain began to fall as if the clouds had actually burst. The rain alternately fell in sheets and was driven sideways by the near gale. The dragons huddled on the walls with their wings held tightly to their backs to avoid having them wrenched around like sails in the wind.

  As Delno and Geneva watched, they realized that the Bournese were using the cover of the storm to maneuver their siege engines into range. It was slow going for them because the rain, even after only such a short time, had turned the field into a quagmire. Still, they made slow, steady progress. Every time the lightning flashed he could see that they had inched forward. He couldn’t help but hold a grudging respect for their persistence.

  It took nearly an hour for the first siege engine to be coaxed into position. It sat there nearly three hundred yards away from the wall, about fifty yards beyond the range of the strongest bows. He might be able to hit the target, but one bow against a large trebuchet would not make any difference. The lightning flashed again and he could see the weighted arm of the machine swing down as it threw a nearly three hundred pound stone. The stone fell inside the wall. It was dangerous, but the real danger was when they finally got the range and actually knocked a hole in the stone fortification itself. He wished for thousandth time that the winds didn’t have the dragons grounded.

  The lightning flashed again and he could see that they were drawing the arm of the trebuchet around for another shot and that the other two were nearly in position.

  The young lieutenant on the wall near him said, “I wish that lightning would strike that thing instead of the ground.”

  Suddenly Delno smacked the heel of his hand against his forehead and shouted above the roar of wind and rain to the young officer, “Why didn’t I think of that sooner? You are a genius, and I am a fool.”

  The Corisian archers manning the walls near him looked at Delno as if he had suddenly taken leave of his senses as he began chanting. Just before the second stone could be launched from the big war machine, lighting struck it, shattering the throwing arm and electrocuting the entire crew of seven who were manning the machine.

  Delno looked at the young lieutenant in command of his section of wall and said, “I’m not good enough to create lightning on my own, but when it is already provided by the storm, I am capable of directing where it strikes.”

  Some of the men looked mortified that they were in this close proximity of someone who could perform such a feat of magic. The rest of the men simply cheered. Delno didn’t notice either reaction: he was busy chanting and calling on the magic. A bolt of lightning hit the next closest siege engine with the same result as the first: wood splintered and the crew died in the electrical discharge.

  This time, all of the men on the wall cheered as Delno began to focus on the third trebuchet that was still being manhandled into position. The storm had covered the blast and the dying screams of the first two crews, so the men pushing and pulling the third machine into range had no idea of their fate until it was upon them. The lightning hit and the machine splintered and the resulting blast from the bolt sent several men flying like a child’s toys, while many of rest did a kind of strange dance and then fell dead. There had been nearly forty men pushing the war engine into position.

  One shot had been fired from the enemy’s siege weapons and now all three trebuchets were in ruins and nearly fifty of their men were dead. The few who weren’t killed by the lightning retreated back to their lines. There was no more movement toward the walls within the enemy camp. Though the men couldn’t see through the rain, Geneva reported that it appeared that those who had been preparing to charge once the siege engines had battered holes in the city walls had left their lines and sought shelter from the storm.

  Delno briefly considered calling the lightning down into the enemy camp and then rejected the idea. He wanted to send them home with as little loss of life on both sides as possible. The storm had turned the dry field into a huge mud basin. With no clear way to get inside the walls and ankle deep mud to wade through, a charge would be suicide. The enemy would at least wait until the weather cleared before they tried anything else. At that point, he would attempt once again to persuade them to go home. If they didn’t, the dragons would convince them.

  The rain lasted until late afternoon, then stopped as quickly as if someone had simply turned a valve. The late summer storms in the mountains could appear quickly and do terrific damage and then disappear as fast as they had come. If it weren’t for the mud and the three small patches of devastation on the field, there would be no evidence there had been a storm, or that anything out of the ordinary had happened.

  The trebuchets, which had been hauled in in pieces and still taken several days to assemble, would take weeks to replace, even if the Bournese could find suitable materials for their construction locally. If not, they would have to send to Bourne for replacements. The loss would leave them three options. They would either have to make a huge ram to batter down the gates of the city, which they would have to do under fire from the walls, or they would have to build scaling ladders and get over the ramparts themselves, which would be at least equally costly in lives. The third option would be to dig in and besiege the city until hunger drove the inhabitants to surrender. Of course, once Nat cured the plague victims and eliminated that danger, the king would allow commerce to resume on the river, and the docks were quite easily defended from the safety of the city walls. And, there were always the dragons, as well.

  There was no activity in the enemy camp for the remainder of the day. The dragons and men on the walls watched carefully through the darkness, but there was nothing significant to report by night’s end. Delno hoped that the destruction of the siege engines had discouraged them to the point of being reasonable.

  After talking with General Dreighton the next morning, Delno hung the huge white flag of parlay where it could be seen by the spotters in the enemy camp. There was no immediate reply. It wasn’t until mid-morning that a group of men—Geneva was able to identify the Bournese commander among them—came toward the city carrying a white flag. Delno chose to ride out to meet them on horseback rather than have Geneva upset them. The dragons all stayed on the walls, but they remained in plain sight to deter any treachery.

  As they reached a point halfway between the city and the encamped army, both sides dismounted and met on foot. The general from Bourne was the first to speak and the destruction of his siege engines hadn’t lessened his audacity. “You have flown the white flag and asked for parlay; do you seek terms for surrender?”

  “That isn’t what we had in mind, but we will accept your surrender if you wish to do so.” Delno deliberately misinterpreted the man’s words.

  “You know very well that I was seeking your admission of defeat,” the Bournese general replied.

  “Why would we admit
to such utter nonsense?” General Dreighton responded. “So far you have fired one shot from your siege engines before we destroyed them and left you with no alternatives.”

  “Ah, so now the men of Corice take credit for random acts of nature,” one of the other officers from Bourne said mockingly.

  “The lightning may have been random, but where it struck was under the control of my magic,” Delno responded.

  The resulting shocked look from the Northern men was expected. They had the same prejudice against magic in Bourne as the Corisians did. To have someone lay claim to such an act would put them on edge, and once they returned to camp the rumor would spread through their ranks faster than wildfire through a forest. If the Army of Bourne didn’t leave soon, anything bad that happened to them, from acts such as those that had destroyed the trebuchets to simple accidents, would all be attributed to the magic users of Larimar, even without the dragons to further demoralize the besiegers. If they waited to build new siege engines, by the time they were ready to make another move against the city, desertion would reduce their ranks by at least a quarter.

  “All right, Gentlemen,” Delno said, “let us get down to business. I have destroyed three war machines that you cannot replace. The plague that you expect to weaken us to the point of surrender is being brought under control as we speak. You cannot starve the city because Corice still controls the river and supplies are once again moving along it. The only reason I didn’t call some of that lightning down amongst your camp yesterday was that I hope to end this conflict with as little bloodshed as possible.”

  He paused while the Bournese officers exchanged glances and thought about his words, then he continued. “If you are foolish enough to try and storm the city without your siege engines, we will use the dragons’ fire and my magic to slaughter your troops. I would like to send you packing without killing any more of your men. However, if it comes down to a choice between your army or the people of my country, I will kill every Bournese on Corisian soil.”