by Chris Bunch
Hal, perhaps a year older than the staff officer, held his temper with difficulty.
"That is one worrisome point," Duke Gwithian agreed. "Certainly, I have the most powerful wizards, ones I cannot believe the Roche can flummox. Correct, Warleggan?"
The mage nodded frostily. He was slim to the point of emaciation, and his clean-shaven face appeared never to have smiled.
"I am hardly the one to agree with you, Duke Gwithian, not being given to vainglory. However, I do think that myself, and my more than competent aides, would certainly have detected signs, traces, of any spell the Roche thaumaturges could be working, and certainly a great spell such as this one would leave vast traces."
There was an uncomfortable silence, broken by Miletus.
"Sir Oubang," he said to the officer who hadn't spoken, "you specialize in analyzing the information from our scouts."
"I do."
"Has nothing been reported by our light cavalry?"
"Well, this is the one thing that troubles me slightly," the small, stout man said. "Actually, over the last two days, our scouting has been most minimal, due to a combination of circumstances.
"We've been shifting our light cavalry to the tip of the salient, expecting an eventual attack by the Roche. Other units have been relocated to the base of the salient, getting ready for… well, for an action of ours that should solve our current problems that I'm not at liberty to discuss the details of.
"So, contrary to what Sir Cotehele said, we really haven't had what I'd call a truly effective scouting screen out beyond the lines for over a week."
"Be that as it may," Cotehele said, a bit of anger in his voice, "I find it utterly impossible that no one, no one except this…" He didn't finish, but his look made it obvious what he thought of dragon fliers in particular, and Hal Kailas in particular. "This man, saw.
"There is, after all, such a thing as logic, is there not?"
"In war?" Miletus' voice dripped incredulity.
"Now, now, gentlemen," Duke Gwithian said soothingly. "Let's not let ourselves get worked up.
"This young man risked his life to make a report. I commend him for it. And we shall take this information under advisement, and assign the correct value to it.
"Sir Lu… and you, Serjeant Kailas, was it? I thank you for doing what you conceived as your duty.
"Be sure to avail yourselves of a good meal before you leave my headquarters.
"A meal…" And he looked at the two fliers' weatherworn garb. "And, if you feel there is time before returning to your—what is it, squadron? No, flight, that's it—making proper ablutions and drawing less shabby uniforms.
"Thank you."
Without waiting for the salute, Duke Gwithian walked out through a side door.
Hal was seething as he followed Miletus out of the hall.
"He didn't believe us, did he, sir?"
"Of course not," Miletus said. "He wouldn't've believed just you if you'd come back with a Roche prince's head on your dragon's headspike."
"So what are we going to do?"
"Eat his godsdamned meal—fast—and get our arses back to the flight," Miletus said grimly. "And get ready for the Roche attack."
Chapter Twelve
Miletus gave his orders to the flight most cagily. He told them to be ready to move with an hour's notice, not saying which direction they might be moving. Of course most of the fliers, having heard Hal's report of the Roche on the move, assumed the worst.
Miletus made sure all the troops had their weaponry sharpened and ready for use, inspecting them in sections.
Nothing happened in the tag end of that day, and the weather stayed bad the next.
"Hard telling," Miletus said at nightfall, "whether the rain's been encouraged by Roche sorcerers or not. It keeps their movement cloaked, but it can't make their progress any easier.
"We'll go to half alert for the night. You fliers, you're exempt. It's not unlikely you'll be needed soon enough."
Hal woke well before dawn, hearing a sound like thunder, but somehow different, more like a series of great drumrolls. It came from the south, from the salient.
Faintly, he heard the sound of a wind roaring.
Few of the flight members needed awakening.
Chook and his assistants readied a hasty breakfast of bacon, fried bread and tea, and Miletus ordered the men and women to the cooktent in shifts.
But nothing happened for a time, no one disturbed their isolated camp. The sun came up, blearily, through haze. No couriers with orders rode down the single road that led away from the front.
Miletus had the fliers standing by their dragons, ready for anything.
It was mid-morning when a pair of riders bulled through the brush past the pond and through the meadow. Their horses were slathered, panting, and the men were wild-eyed, and had thrown away their arms.
"They're attacking… they've broken through… magic… their damn wizards had an infernal spell… no warning… they're just behind us… ride for your lives!"
Miletus tried to stop them, but they galloped around him, and were gone.
He hesitated, then ordered the unit into motion. "There's but one road away from here, and we'll not be bottled up."
He looked at Hal.
"If I'm wrong, I hope you'll be a character witness at my court martial."
Before Kailas could answer, Miletus ordered all dragons into the air, scouting ahead of the flight's wagons and horses. He had his own beast chained to its wagon, and stayed on the ground with the soldiery.
Slowly, terribly slowly, the flight started moving. They were held back not only by the nearly ruined road, but by the herd of sheep being driven in the middle of the flight, the dragons' rations.
Hal saw a rider galloping hard toward the flight. The rider pulled up in front of Miletus, hands waving for a few moments. Then he wheeled his horse, and splashed back the way he'd come.
Miletus's trumpet blatted, and the fliers circled, landed in an open patch.
"The Roche have broken through our lines," Miletus said. "They're supposedly coming north, toward us. That rider ordered us to scout south, to try and evaluate the damage."
He looked to his non-flying adjutant.
"Eitner, take charge of the formation. Keep them moving as far as the main north-south road, then wait for us to return. If you're threatened, retreat north, and we'll find you somewhere."
"Sir."
"All dragons in the air! Scout separately, don't take any more risks than you must. Reassemble at that crossroads," Miletus ordered, then ran for the wagon with his dragon. His handlers were already unchaining the creature.
In ragged formation, spreading out as they flew, the dragons flapped south, climbing as they went.
First they came on the retreat—mounted men, riding hard for the north and safety. The roads were no better than cart-tracks, and were jammed with fleeing men. After the riders came wagons, then men on foot.
It was ugly. Soldiers weren't supposed to run like civilians. But the Third Army, and its attached units, were in full retreat.
Hal wondered what horror could have panicked an entire army, then saw it.
A thin greenish cloud was spreading slowly north, holding close to the ground, no more than fifty feet in the air.
Again he heard the rolling thunder, and the whistle of wind, even though none blew.
Something told Hal not to get close to the cloud.
He pulled his reins and the dragon climbed.
Hal looked down again, and saw, in the wake of the cloud, bodies of horses, men, oxen, lying motionless.
Behind the ghastly cloud came the Roche army. Flights of dragons, more than Hal could imagine, floated in front of the waves of cavalry, infantry behind them.
He'd seen enough, and turned his dragon back, over the panic, to the road junction Miletus had designated as the assembly point.
Other dragons from his flight were making the same track.
Hal spotted the fligh
t, drawn up near the crossroads, which was a roiling chaos of units, groups of soldiers, single men, all fighting to get on that road north, north to Frechin, Bedarisi, safety.
He landed, and found Eitner. With him were two couriers. He made his report as the other fliers streamed in, all with bad news.
Eitner also had some unpleasantries to pass along, learned from passing officers and one near-hysterical magician.
The Roche wizards had cast more than the great spell that'd masked their soldiers' movement to the lines. They had another spell, the one accompanied by the wind-whine and thunder. Eitner'd talked to men who'd paused in their flight long enough to tell him what it was like: suddenly the air had gone bad, not hard to breath, but as if all the goodness that gave life had gone out of it, even as it hazed into the ghastly green.
The green haze killed anyone and anything that lingered for more than a few minutes.
The fliers looked at each other, hoping she or he didn't look as frightened as the other.
"Be wonders if the spell'd work just on m'lice," Farren joked feebly, and no one bothered to respond.
"All right," Miletus ordered. "You, courier. Take the word back to your headquarters. You, stay with us. No. Get your ass out to the road, and grab anyone who's got a good mount and isn't completely crazy, and tell them they're drafted to carry messages for me.
"You fliers, get back in the air. Keep scouting the Roche progress."
"What about that cloud?"
"Just hope to hells our magicians come up with a counter-spell, and keep away from it.
"I'll stay with the flight down here," he said. "I don't have any orders, but we'll do no one any good fighting as a rear guard. We'll try to bash our way into this column, and move north.
"I'll have men paint arrows on the wagon tops so you'll be able to find us. Stay up no more than an hour at a time. Scout away from the roads for abandoned animals, for your dragons, and make sure they're watered.
"Rest them before you take off again, and reassemble before dark."
He stopped, realizing he was caught up by the panic a bit himself if he was telling the fliers what every stablehand knew.
"Get gone," he said.
They flew back and forth all that long day, giving the reports of disaster, of broken, wiped out, decimated units, and the seemingly unstoppable Roche offensive to Miletus, who scrounged riders here and there, gave them dispatches for army headquarters. They rode off, and no one ever knew if they obeyed orders, or just continued their flight.
The Deraine and Sagene forces lost their blind panic, but continued retreating, and the Roche army kept after them.
The sodden roads, further torn by the retreating soldiers, slowed them some.
There were rumors to fuel the flight—this attack was personally led by Duke Garcao Yasin, that Queen Norcia was with her retinue with his headquarters.
That may have frightened some, but Kailas remembered Yasin's failure once before. He wondered if Yasin's brother was on the battlefield with some dragons, vaguely wanted to find him. But without any weapons, other than the instinctual ones of his beast, any encounter was more likely to result in Hal's destruction than anything else.
Eventually the day ended, and Hal found the flight, hasty-camped near the road, still filled with soldiers tramping steadily toward Frechin.
* * *
The next day, they retreated through Frechin. By now, the city was almost deserted, most of its inhabitants having fled before the rumored horrors of the Roche cavalry and their dragons.
On the other side of the city, Hal, flying very high, high enough to feel a bit dizzy in the thin air, looked back and down, saw Roche dragons swarming in the air as their army continued its advance.
"I think," Aimard Quesney said, tugging at his mustache, "our Rochey friends have stepped upon their fundament."
"Right," Mariah said. "They're comin' on, we're haulin' ass. Surefire screw-up there."
Half of the fliers were crouched around a dying fire, too worked up, too tired, for sleep.
"Shut up, Farren," Saslic said. "Make me feel better, Aimard."
"Well, this probably won't make you—or any of the rest of us—feel better."
"I do love your abstract wisdom," Sir Loren said wryly.
"Any wisdom these days is better'n none," Mynta Gart said.
"Would you people shut up and let him explain," Hal said. "I, for one, could use anything cheery, whether it's about me or the King of Deraine."
"Thank you, Serjeant Kailas. The Roche have come a cropper, as I was saying," Quesney said. "Now, this offensive of theirs is intended to win the war, correct?"
"An' here I went an' thought it were just a spring fancy," Farren said.
"The best way to do serious damage would be to make for Fovant. Once Sagene's capital falls, what're the odds their Council of Barons wouldn't sue for peace, together or separately?"
"No kidding," Saslic said. "That's what we were told is why they invaded Sagene in the first place, which brought all us down here."
"Oh," Hal said. "Of course. I got it."
"There's one other great mind among us besides myself," Quesney said smugly. "You may finish my thought, Serjeant."
"If they began the battle, opening the salient," Hal said slowly, "then they were going for Fovant. But then, with this new attack, their warlord—Yasin, or whoever it is—has lost sight of what he started out to do, and is chasing us around the country, instead of heading east like he should."
"Precisely," Quesney said. "Perhaps he's lost his head with all the destruction… Or, more likely, his queen changed orders on him.
"In either event," he said, stretching and yawning, "we'll most likely get obliterated. But Roche just lost the chance to win the war."
He disappeared toward his bedroll.
"What a cheerful man he is," Mynta Gart said sarcastically. "He'll make my dreams this night ever so lovely."
"I'll make them worse," Sir Loren said. "The Roche have learned something we haven't. When this war started, it was wham, a battle, then people regrouped, reformed, looked around, and then wham, another battle.
"Now they're keeping up the offensive, never really letting up.
"We'd better learn to do the same, pretty damned quickly."
Now the Roche unleashed yet another weapon.
Small groups of Roche infantry suddenly materialized here and there in the rear. There were mutters of magic, then Hal saw two dragons, flying close together, with something hanging between them.
He remembered the Roche flying show, before the war, in Bedarisi, and their stunting with soldiers, riding in baskets strung between two dragons, then giving rides.
An idea came, and he flew back to the flight, in the middle of the ponderous retreat.
He landed, found Miletus, told him.
"Damn, but I wish I had more rank," Miletus said. "I'd grab some smithy unit, and set them to fabricating… But I don't, so I can't. But I'll send men back to that village we just passed through. That temple had iron gates on it, that should work. Our smiths can shape the metal this night, and we'll give your idea a try on the morrow."
By sunrise, all fifteen dragons were equipped. The wrought-iron gates had been cut into pieces, and each section bent into a hook. Three hooks were brazed together into a grapnel. Ropes were requisitioned from a retreating quartermaster unit, and harnesses improvised. Slings hung from each dragon's neck and hindquarters, the hook at their bottom, hanging about twenty feet below each beast.
The dragons didn't object too much to this latest weirdness from their masters, snorting and hissing no more angrily than usual in the dawn grayness.
Miletus gave the flight its orders, told them he'd give the word for takeoff when he sighted some of the Roche dragon-transports, and took off.
Vad Feccia came to Hal, said his dragon wasn't behaving properly, and perhaps he ought to stand down.
Hal told him to get back to his mount.
Asser looked at h
im with a wry face, quickly looked away.
They ate buttered bread and cheese, cut from a great wheel Chook had liberated, waited. An hour after sunrise, Miletus flew overhead, trumpet blasting.
They mounted their beasts, kicked them into a stumbling run, and were in the air, following Sir Lu back toward Frechin, hooks cradled behind them.
They'd only flown a few minutes when they sighted pairs of dragons, twenty of them, soldier-carrying baskets between them.
Hal forgot the others, tossed his grapnel overside and steered his dragon toward one pair. His monster honked protest for an instant, then screeched a challenge as his courage grew.
Hal closed fast on the pair. One beast was looking up at Hal, head whipping, the other was looking down, ready to flee. Their riders were shouting, kicking their mounts, and Hal steered his dragon just over their heads, going in the opposite direction.
His dragon jerked as the grapnel caught on one of the basket's support lines and tore it away.
The paired dragons banked away from each other, terrified, and the basket spilled soldiery, falling, flailing, to the ground 500 feet below.
Hal came back, tore at another dragon pair. These two held together, diving for the ground, and he let them go, climbing back for another target.
He ripped at a third, and this time his rope broke and he lost his grapnel as the Roche basket broke away from its dragons, and plummeted down.
Saslic's dragon, Nont, flashed past him, and he heard her yelling, face fierce in anger. Behind her came Sir Loren, his grapnel half awry, but still after the Roche beasts.
Hal forced his dragon up, reaching for height above the shattered Roche formation. He saw, in the distance, on-rushing dragons in threes, which could only be Roche.
He turned to meet them, hoping, without a grapnel, to give the others a chance to wreak further damage.
Then they were on him, shouting, dragons hissing, each trying to terrify the other, and the air was a swirling mass of monsters.
There was a dragon turning, just above him, its head darting. He leaned away, and it missed, tried to grab his mount's neck in its fangs, talons ripping at the air, reaching for Hal.
