by Chris Bunch
They were lying in bed, spooned together.
"I do well."
"Do you remember what we were discussing when he did?"
"Uh… yes. Marriage."
"Sir Thom probably thinks it's very romantic that—what I hope, at least—a marriage proposal was interrupted by royalty. Or was I mistaken about your intent?"
"Well… I've never been married," Hal said.
"Neither have I, dummy."
"Well, then, would you like to try it?"
"Gods," Khiri said. "How romantic."
"I'm new at this," Hal tried to explain.
"You're supposed to be on your knees, looking deep in my eyes, clasping my hands in yours and vowing eternal devotion," Khiri said.
"Oh," Hal said. "But that floor's cold."
Khiri didn't say anything.
"All right," Hal said, and got out from under the covers. "I'll do it the way I'm supposed to."
"That's far enough," Khiri said. "I just wanted to see if you'd do me right sooner or later."
Hal gratefully dropped back down into bed, and pulled the heavy comforter over them.
There was silence for a bit, then:
"Well?" Hal asked.
"Well what?"
"Godsdammit, do you want to marry me?"
"Of course," Khiri said, her voice sounding a bit choked. "I thought you'd know."
"I don't know anything."
"You'll make a wonderful husband, then," she said. "Easy to train."
"So when do you want to do it?"
"If it's marriage, then after you get back from playing hero. And then you'll take some leave, and we'll finally do the Grand Tour of your estates.
"But if you're thinking of some other sort of it…" She rolled over onto her back.
"Seize the moment, as they say."
* * * *
Ships were assembled, including the ex-horse transport Galgorm Adventurer, the wallowing tub that had been converted to a dragon carrier.
The story around Paestum was that the two dragon flights were being taken back to Deraine, for rebuilding and further training.
Certainly no one thought they'd be thrown back into combat.
Much the same story was passed around about the three battalions of battered infantry, who were loaded on common ferries, and transported across the Chicor Straits.
But they didn't land in any of the normal ports, but were taken north to a patch of bare ground, near an abandoned village, where nothing waited but rows of tents, fresh uniforms and supplies.
The wiser ones moaned when they saw the twenty new warships anchored, waiting for them.
The dragons were fed, but not offloaded from the Adventurer. Their fliers went ashore, and waited.
The soldiers were landed, escorted to their assigned tents. Enormous vats of hot water and soap waited for them, and, once they were bathed, shaved, and clean, they were formed up in a large open area.
It was an overcast day, almost winter, and a chill wind was blowing off the sea.
Most of the troops knew the two men waiting for them on a crude stand, and now all of them knew they were not coming home for a rest.
They were called to attention, then given "at ease."
Cantabri walked forward. He needed no magical implements for his voice to carry to the rear ranks.
"Good afternoon. I assume you know who I am.
"I'm the one—and this other man, here, the Dragonmaster—who's been lying to you.
"Not to your faces, but it might as well have been."
There was a ripple, half astonishment, half amusement, from the troops. Generals didn't usually talk to common swordsmen like this.
"We pulled you out of the lines, and let you think you were due home leave.
"You'll get it… after one job."
There was an incoherent shout from the ranks. Outraged warrants moved to find the man, and have him skinned. Cantabri held up his hand.
"No. He's right to be doubtful.
"Lord knows people like me've been lying to him, either directly or otherwise, since the war started.
"So I won't add to the bullshit.
"Here's what we're going to do.
"There's a Roche prison somewhere behind their lines.
"Lord Kailas was a prisoner there until six weeks ago. Then he made his escape, swearing to go back and rescue the other prisoners.
"There's at least three hundred of them, some who've been caged up since the war started.
"We're going to set them free.
"Then you'll get your leave… and have a story to tell your children's children."
He stopped. There was silence, except for a forlorn dragon bleat from the Adventurer, and the whisper of the wind.
A soldier stepped out of ranks.
"What are our chances?"
Cantabri nodded to Hal, who came forward.
"If the Roche haven't magicked this secret out, fairly good," Hal said. "Your warrants and officers will be given everything we know, when you board ship again, and you can judge for yourselves."
"I've been in too many fights where everything was a secret," the soldier shouted. "And then the godsdamned Roche were there, waiting for us."
Hal nodded.
"I have, too.
"But think about this. If everything does go wrong," and his voice dropped, so that the soldiers had to lean forward to hear his words, "is there a better reason to die than rescuing your brothers?"
16
Eighteen dragons dove out of a thick fogbank on Castle Mulde. Each was heavy-burdened with three passengers, two unarmored infantrymen, and a flier, sometimes a woman.
Hal Kailas was at the head of the ragged V formation.
It was false dawn, and the Roche guards on the walls goggled at this attack from nowhere.
They goggled, and then died as the fliers pincushioned them with crossbow bolts.
Hal wished he'd had some of Joh Kious's repeating crossbows, but there was no time to have them made, and so the fliers were armed with everything from standard crossbows to short bows.
Hal forced his dragon down, toward an outer battlement. The dragon shied, and he cursed, and kicked it.
It grudgingly grabbed an allure, and the two soldiers behind Kailas leapt onto the wall walk.
Around Castle Mulde, other dragons were being forced to land long enough for their passengers to jump off, or even balk with their wings flared and give the archers time to slide off.
Then the dragons, like gigantic, multicolored crows, dropped down toward the river, and vanished into the fog.
The thirty-six volunteers held to the heights as the alarm was shouted, and half-awake guards stumbled out, buckling on armor.
One of the volunteers was one of Limingo's assistants, who paid no attention to the battle, but busied himself casting a spell.
Most of the Roche warders died before they could fight back.
The prisoners were coming awake, banging at their cell doors.
Then the wizard's spell worked, just as Limingo had guaranteed it to, and doors banged open, and the prisoners streamed out.
In his turret, Ungava screeched disbelief, and tried to cast a counterspell to lock the cells up again.
Then, below, on the river, twenty warships appeared, backing sail, and dropping anchor.
Two were bold enough to close on the tiny jetty, and Derainian soldiers poured off.
It was just a week since the small armada had set sail from Deraine.
The soldiers had been transferred from the secret landing to the warships, and the ships set sail north by northeast, arcing up into the northern sea before turning south for the Zante River.
No one had been allowed to lollygag about.
Hal spent the time taking his two undermanned and -dragoned flights off from the Adventurer, teaching them to fly formation with each other, trying to get the two flights to fly a common track, and then, hardest, making the dragons land within a small space, the barge the Adven
turer towed alongside, touching their talons to the wood, then scrabbling back into the sky.
He also sent them off in foul weather, getting them used to the idea of flying when it was somewhat blind out, using homing spells devised by Limingo, and careful compass reading.
Volunteers were called for, with only a handful standing forth until Cantabri, in some disgust, promised gold and decorations.
"Damned sure wouldn't have had to beg for men back when the war started," he snarled to Hal.
"No," Hal said. "But all those eager young bodies are dead now. Dead, crippled or maybe a few learned better."
Cantabri gave Hal a dirty look.
"Are you sure you're a soldier?"
"I'm damned sure I'm not one," Hal said. "At least, if that means marking time and saying yessir, nossir to every idiot idea that comes along. Lord Bab."
Cantabri had the grace to grin ruefully.
These "volunteers" became dragon riders, such as Hal had used years ago in the battles around Bedarisi, armed with bows or crossbows.
The Adventurer's barge became a target range on clear days, at least until one particularly inept bowman put an arrow in the Adventurer's helmsman's leg. After that, empty wine barrels were cast loose for targets.
The assault troops were also trained as thoroughly as it was possible to do aboard ship—being rousted around the decks by their warrants, singing, exercising to exhaustion.
They'd found a map of the Zante River mouth in the royal archives, used that to make models of the area.
Hal had sketched, growling at his inability as an artist, Castle Mulde. From that, Limingo and three assistants had made five scale models of the castle, which Hal critiqued over and over, and new models were spell-cast. Then they were taken from ship to ship, and every soldier had to memorize his individual and group's mission.
"This," Hal said, "is the way soldiers should fight, not charging blindly ahead at some hilltop or other."
"Here's your special Raiding Squadron again," Cantabri said. "Which is starting to sound like a good idea. I assume you'd like to be put in charge of it."
"Not a chance," Kailas said. "I leave it for one of nature's noblemen—you, for instance—while I flit about above the clouds without a care."
Cantabri growled, and went looking for an erring junior officer to savage.
Certain soldiers, considered by their officers to be more intelligent than the common spear-carriers, were given special training in the handling of prisoners, and then, one wintry day, the coastline of Roche was in sight.
It was too rough for fishermen, which was a blessing for Deraine.
A small pinnace was sent into the river's mouth, to track the changes of the tide.
Three days later, just as the tide began to flood, the ships sailed into the mouth of the Zante.
As they did, Limingo's fog bank roiled up from the surface of the sea, and moved inland.
Limingo had considered his other spells, including the standard fear and confusion incantations. But he decided not to use these, since any combat soldier might recognize the castings, and assume there was an attack in the offing, no matter how far behind the lines the Zante River was.
Instead, he cast a spell of general malaise: the weather was foul, so of course animals wouldn't be out, and, for some unknown reason, the fish probably wouldn't be biting.
It would be exhausting, he told Hal, because it was a piece of "soft" magic, relying on the magicians' forced moods to "color" the spell, and repetitive chanting rather than herbs or forbidden tongues to give it strength.
Hal, remembering his own travails in a tiny boat, admired the skills of the warships' captains and master's mates, especially in the fog, as the ships went upriver in short tacks.
They didn't anchor that night, but pressed on, and, just when the sky began to lighten in a gray sort of way, Hal took his dragons and riders aloft.
He wished he was riding Storm, instead of the rather battered, sour monster he was aboard, whose name he kept forgetting, but that, like bringing the First Squadron up, was a chance he couldn't have taken.
The two dragon flights followed the river to the heights that marked Castle Mulde, struck hard, dropped off the troops, then flew back to the Adventurer, landing and taking off in rapid succession. When a dragon landed, a bundle of swords was slung over his carapace, and the monster was back in the air.
There was a collision, dragons crashing into each other just above the barge, spitting, striking with their snaky necks, and rolling into the river.
But they recovered, splashing about angrily, and neither rider drowned. After the rest of the flights were gone, they were derricked aboard the Adventurer, and sent off again.
Again, the dragons came on the castle, and dove low, letting the bundled weapons thud down into the courtyard.
Even a hundred feet in the air, Hal could hear the shouts of glee as the prisoners armed themselves.
An arrow screeked off his dragon's carapace, barely missing him, and he quit mooning about, and climbed for altitude.
A handful of dragon volunteers fought their way down to the courtyard, armed prisoners joining the fray, and they made the main gate.
Half of them were down, and there was a hacking melee around the gate tower; then, with a great crash, the gate slammed open.
There were Roche guards on the wall walks, firing down at the Derainian soldiers making their way up the winding track to the main gate.
Hal blasted a command on his trumpet, and his dragon fliers sent their mounts spiraling down, shooting as they went.
They weren't very accurate, but the very idea of being shot at from the skies sent many of the guards pelting for the stairs and cover.
There were Derainian troops running hard, through the gate, into the castle, and boats were landing reinforcements.
That was enough for Hal.
He sent his dragon skittering down toward a wall walk, sliding out of his saddle as the beast closed on the castle.
It was against his orders, but Hal cared not a whit.
He jumped, landed hard, rolled, and his dragon flapped upward, to go wherever he wished.
Hal had a crossbow in hand, and a man was running toward him, waving a spear.
Hal sent the bolt into the man's abdomen. He screamed, clutched himself, fell. Hal tossed the crossbow away, drew sword and dagger, found a stairway, went down into the battle.
He saw the diminutive Wolda, screaming joyfully at the top of his lungs as he hammered Ungava's corpse with a balk of wood, ran on.
He went up other stairs, into the heart of the castle. Here was a knot of guards, holding the doorway to the central keep.
Then arrows whistled, and the way was clear as the Roche fell.
Hal was the first through the door, went down a familiar corridor, and smashed into a closing door.
There were two men in the room—one of the guard warrants, and Baron Patiala.
The warrant had a halberd, swung it at Hal.
Kailas had no time for such nonsense, lopped the halberd's head off, and smashed the warrant's face in with the butt of his dagger.
Patiala had an old-fashioned broadsword out and, recognizing Kailas with a start, jumped toward him, swinging the blade.
Hal parried, struck back, missed.
Neither man spoke, intent on the other's death.
Patiala lunged, and Hal kicked him in the forearm.
The Roche shouted in pain, and the sword spun away.
Hal slashed the man's throat open with his dagger, let him fall.
That was one payment made.
He heard shouting, went back into the corridor, saw a man in an ornate uniform running.
An archer slammed Hal out of the way, and sent a long shaft into the running man's back.
He screamed, contorted, went down, and rolled over.
Hal went to him, and saw, with near infinite glee, it was Sir Suiyan Tutuila, the "Respecter of Prisoners," and Hal's would-be hangman. He m
ust've chosen to visit Mulde at precisely the wrong time.
Now the screaming and shouting were dying away. Guards were either surrendering, the surrender sometimes accepted, lying in their blood, or scrambling down the rocky sides of the island and diving into the water.
Hal doubted if the local hunters would have any objection to them as prey, even if there wasn't a bounty.
Hal saw a jovial Treffry, a bloodstained sword in hand. Flanking him was Sir Alt Hofei, beaming as if it were his birthday.
Warrants and officers were shouting for order, and slowly the blood rage died.
Some of the prisoners were ecstatic, others were in complete shock.
This had been allowed for.
The trained men escorted them out of the castle, not listening to their pleas to go back to their cells for anything, not letting them retreat into numbness.
Within two hours, the castle was empty. Even the madmen were taken, with infinite care and pity, to boats, secured against themselves and taken to the warships.
The raiders returned to their ships.
They'd lost only thirty men killed, twice that wounded, a more than acceptable price.
Castle Mulde's gates hung open, ripe for the looting.
Carrion kites were already circling overhead, under the dragons' constantly circling umbrella.
One of the riders swooped low, where Hal had been signaling from the boat landing.
Hal pulled himself up behind the rider, and the dragon's wings beat, beat, and they were climbing as the sorcerous fog lifted.
"What happened, sir? Did your dragon get hit?"
"I had some business to take care of," Hal said.
He looked back at the gray stone nightmare that had been his prison, wishing that stone could be burnt.
Then he forgot about Castle Mulde, and started considering what would be the most spectacular wedding in the history of Deraine.
17
It had begun snowing gently just after dawn. But the weather was warm, and so the snow melted as it struck the ground.
The king had proclaimed the wedding day a royal holiday, and cheery crowds packed the streets along the route the broadsheets had announced.
They were held back from the great square the great temple stood in by dress-uniformed cavalry.
