Knighthood of the Dragon

by Chris Bunch

  The field of war justified the comparison. Bodies were piled, stacked, up the rise, a darkening crimson carpet.

  But the carpet climbed steadily upward.

  Hal was about to turn back for more darts, when a cacophony of trumpets came.

  He saw, on the Roche right flank, Cantabri's raiders sweeping over the top of the bluff, and lines of Roche falling back and back.

  A roar of pain, rage, he didn't know which, came from below him, and the Deraine and Sagene infantry that had fought their slow way up the bluff came to their feet and charged.

  The Roche line broke in two, three, a dozen places, and then they were running over the crest, back and away.

  Egibi had won his great victory.

  But all that came to Hal, as he looked down at the carnage, was a dull wonderment at how men could stand such pain and, worse, bring it on others.

  Storm's honk seemed just as dismal as Hal's thoughts.

  23

  The butcher's bill for the Battle of the Bluffs was high.

  Very high.

  84,000 Deraine and Sagene soldiers had died in just the final battle, and an estimated 75,000 Roche. Counting the earlier engagements, a million soldiers were killed, wounded, missing.

  The armies of Sagene and Deraine had lost numberless experienced warrants and officers, men who it would take a year or more to train and replace.

  Among them was Lord Egibi.

  He'd gone forward, to watch his siege engines fire boulders up the slope.

  A catapult's beam had snapped, scattering boulders from its net every which way. One took Egibi in the back, and killed him instantly.

  Lord Bab Cantabri was named to take over the First Army.

  Some of his staff officers tried to throw a celebration, but Cantabri refused to allow it.

  "Too many are dead for any of us to feel any mirth," he said. "There'll be time enough for parties when we take Carcaor and end the war."

  He took the Raiding Squadron with him to headquarters, to ensure it would never again be misused as it had during the battle.

  Cantabri sent for replacements from Sagene and Deraine, and, as they trickled in, moved on, deeper into Roche territory.

  The Roche would take a position, hold it, and fight fiercely, sometimes to the death.

  They, too, were bringing up replacements.

  Hal thought that if the war continued at this rate, he'd best be having children with Lady Khiri, getting them ready to fight on in this war that promised to last forever.

  But at least they were moving, instead of crouched below those damned hills they'd been holding on so long.

  It took a while for the squadron to adjust to the change—many of the fliers, and, more importantly, the ground crew, had known nothing but static warfare, having joined after the lines firmed.

  They generally moved every fourth or fifth day. The fliers would scout for a new base, looking for a clear field, hopefully on a height, since it was easier for a dragon to take to the air with a bit of an advantage. Then the tents would be struck, and the wagons loaded, and the squadron would lurch forward, in the wake of the front line soldiers.

  At the new location, everyone worked, first pitching the dragon shelters, then putting up the work tents for the support elements, finally the fliers and ground staff pitching their own tents.

  Hal, in spite of his still-healing wound and rank, worked with the rest.

  An advantage of the change that quickly became clear was the increase in looting opportunities. The dragons would fly just in front of the advancing troops, and when they spotted a farmhouse or, better, a village being abandoned, a flier or two would land and ransack the huts, even before the infantry could claim its proper share.

  Twice they were a bit too quick, and men were wounded by Roche soldiers, who hadn't retreated as far as it appeared.

  But the diet of fresh meat and vegetables instead of the spell-preserved issue rations were more than enough for the danger to be ignored.

  There wasn't much fighting in the air. Hal kept his formations strong, and the few Roche dragons they saw generally fled to safety. But there were those who stood and fought. Hal lost three dragons in the rolling advance.

  He downed one Roche, as did Farren Mariah and Sir Loren. One-eyed Pisidia had caught two, just at dawn, and slashed them out of the skies. Danikel scored once, but Alcmaen was unlucky, to his increasing fury and the rest of the squadron's increasing amusement.

  There was, as yet, no sign of Ky Yasin and his dreaded banner. Some of the fliers suggested he'd been promoted to a staff position, out of the field, under his brother, Duke Garcao Yasin, one of Queen Norcia's favorites.

  Kailas knew better—not only hadn't they encountered Yasin, but had seen nothing of his Guards Squadron, either, since the Battle of the Bluffs, and then only in limited commitment.

  He kept after his men never to relax, reminding them that the war was not over, or even half over, and sooner or later the Roche would come back in strength and there would be blood in the skies.

  Hal woke one night with the idea for a new weapon very clear in his mind. Kailas knew that most darkling ideas are worthless and forgotten by the time the dreamer's fully awake, but he'd trained himself, on the off chance that one might prove fruitful, to bring himself awake very slowly, concentrating on the thought.

  When he was fully alert he examined what he'd come up with, and decided, with mounting excitement, that it was still good.

  The next morning he turned the squadron over to Gart, told her to follow standing orders, and keep patrolling, and he flew back to Paestum.

  He met with Joh Kious, made sure his crossbows were being produced without problems, then went to army headquarters, which functioned as the overseas command for all four Derainian armies.

  He wanted a magician, and was pleased that one of Limingo's assistants was available. The man's name was Bodrugan, and, like all of Limingo's people that Hal had met, he was slender, good-looking and, in Hal's mind, a bit effete.

  "I'm hardly a wizard," Hal said. "But I understand one of the primary rules of wizardry is that the part remains potentially the whole."

  "That is so."

  "What is wrong with the idea that if we took a boulder, smashed it into fragments about the size of my hand, and put a spell on it so that anyone, magician or not, could recite to make those chunks suddenly as big as the boulder was?"

  Bodrugan thought.

  "Why… nothing at all. A fairly simple incantation."

  "Would you be interested in preparing such a spell?"

  Hal told him what he intended to use those fragments for. Bodrugan grinned. "I like that. I'm just surprised that nobody else, such as a catapult hurler, came up with it."

  "I am, as well," Hal agreed. He set Bodrugan to work, told him to bring the spell, when he had it, to the First Army's headquarters, where they'd know where to find the First Squadron, and thanked him.

  Then he went to the provost's office, and arranged for a work crew of Roche prisoners to start reducing a granite boulder Hal had found to rubble. He arranged for the broken-up rock to be brought forward, assigned the highest, most secret priority, to First Army headquarters in the field.

  * * * *

  Then the war changed.

  Ky Yasin's First Guards Squadron, at full strength, returned to the war.

  They hit a dragon flight, not, thankfully, one of Hal's, on noon patrol, smashed all six of the fliers out of the air.

  Panic-stricken riders had alerted Hal's squadron, and Gart ordered the flight commanders to split their flights in half, and put them aloft.

  When anyone encountered Yasin's blacks, they were to return to the squadron base, and other fliers would go out to alert the other flights.

  There'd been a swirling fight in midafternoon that had cost Kailas's squadron three fliers, with three victories.

  The flights were just now coming back to feed and rest the dragons.

  Hal considered the weather, a bit
windy with scattered clouds but fair, and made a hasty plan.

  Hal ordered the commanders up, issued fresh orders.

  He told Cabet to take his 18th Flight out, in two waves, scattered and not within easy support range of each other, with orders to patrol north-south just over the Roche lines.

  "If you're hit," Hal said, "go high, and we'll be coming down to help."

  "I'm quite entranced with being bait," Cabet said.

  "You understand perfectly," Hal said. "And I may need you to do it again, so don't do anything rash like getting killed."

  Cabet smiled, without much humor, ran back to his flight.

  Within a few minutes, hastily watered and fed, Cabet's dragons were in the air again.

  Hal called for Richia and Pisidia, gave them orders, and the rest of the First Squadron was airborne.

  Kailas took his three flights up, made the dragons climb steeply, up into and through the clouds, east, into the setting sun, then turned back.

  Below and west of him, he saw Cabet's flight, flying slowly, as ordered, to the east.

  Hal was as high as was safe. The air was thin, and Storm hissed unhappiness.

  Then he saw the Roche.

  They came around a great cloud, rising like a mountain, in a formation of threes, each wingman supporting the lead dragon.

  A nice, tight formation. Hal approved. The fliers would be paying more attention to not colliding with another dragon than anything else, except that nice, fat collection of Derainian idiots about a thousand feet below.

  Hal blasted once on his trumpet, gigged Storm into a dive, out of the sun toward the Roche.

  He had not needed to issue the command.

  His three flights were already nosing down, spreading out in a loose formation, each flier picking a target below.

  Hal ratcheted the loading lever on his crossbow back, chose a target, the leader in the third in the string of Vs.

  The flier looked up when Hal was about fifty feet above, as Storm screamed a challenge.

  Then Hal was on him, fired once, and killed the man, Storm ripping at the other dragon's neck as they closed.

  He let Storm dive through the Roche formation, then brought him back up, toward the underside of the Roche dragons. He slammed the loading lever back, forward, shot at another dragon's stomach, didn't see a hit, was up above the flight.

  The sky was a swirling mass of dragons, trying to get close enough to rip a wing, or tear a flier out of his saddle.

  Hal almost collided with one of his dragons, who didn't seem to see him, banked over, and saw, turning, a flier on a huge black, a pennant flying from the dragon's carapace.

  It had to be Yasin.

  Hal kicked Storm into a bank, was closing on Yasin, the smaller dragon turning inside him, when another black, a Derainian, cut past him, its rider shouting something.

  It was Alcmaen, grinning broadly.

  Hal's attack was broken.

  Yasin rolled his dragon on one wing, dove away before Alcmaen could fire at him.

  Hal recovered, saw a Derainian dragon with two Roche dragons on its tail, thought the rider was Hachir.

  He had a slight height advantage, used it to close on the rearmost Roche, shot the rider in his thigh.

  The man screeched, almost fell, and his dragon pinwheeled away.

  Hal forgot about him, came in on the foremost dragon flier, who had forgotten to always watch your rear until the last minute.

  The Roche looked over his shoulder, saw the onrushing Storm, and pulled up sharply, almost colliding with Hal.

  As he went past, almost within reach, Hal put a crossbow bolt into the man's side.

  The man fell, just as Storm's head snaked out, and tore the dragon's throat out.

  Blood sprayed, and Hal was blinded for a second, then rubbed his eyes clear.

  Just below him a blue-black dragon, Danikel's, was diving behind a wounded Roche monster. Danikel was methodically snapping bolts into the beast's stomach as he fell.

  There was another dragon, about five hundred feet below, trying to flee.

  Hal sent Storm down on him, pulled out just before they collided.

  Storm's talons tore the other rider out of his saddle, and Hal turned his dragon into a bank, climbing up and away.

  Storm wanted to go back and finish the Roche beast, but Hal wouldn't let him.

  The sky, so tumultuous with killing a moment before, was empty.

  Hal climbed for height, made for his own lines.

  He landed, counted the others as they came in.

  There were a few wounded men, more wounded dragons. The black dragons were deadly.

  There were four missing, including Sir Loren Damian.

  But they'd brought down at least seven Roche.

  Sir Loren was reported safe in hospital with a broken leg by nightfall.

  No word ever came about the other three.

  * * * *

  Hal allowed himself one brandy, was leaving the mess tent to write letters to relatives of the missing men as Rer Alcmaen approached.

  He saw Hal, grinned most unpleasantly, said, "Sorry, sir. But I thought I had a better chance than you did at that man."

  Hal took a deep breath, then stripped off his coat.

  "Here now," Alcmaen said. "You can't go and—"

  Hal hit him, quite hard, in the gut. Alcmaen whoofed, caved in.

  Hal let him drop, bent to pick up his coat, and Farren Mariah was there, holding it.

  "Damn shame," he said guilelessly. "Poor bastid went and trippy-tripped over his own flattie footies.

  "You best be on your way, sir. I'll help the poor ox to his tent and tuck him in cuddly and put a little kiss on his forehead."

  The next morning, Hal waited for repercussions from Alcmaen. It was, indeed, seriously against regulations for a commander to strike any of his men or women.

  Not that Hal regretted punching the man for an instant.

  But Alcmaen said nothing, then or later.

  Hal did notice that the man had quite a few additional bruises on his face, and walked very carefully.

  He must have fallen down several more times on his way back to his tent.

  24

  Evidently, Ky Yasin had expected to knock Hal's squadron out of the war immediately for, after the first battle, his black dragons were far more circumspect about looking for a fight.

  They patrolled their side of the lines vigorously, and occasionally ventured over the Deraine lines, but only when they had clear superiority and skies.

  Cantabri wanted constant reconnaissance flights, preferring Hal's squadron, since he could trust what the First reported.

  Hal managed to convince Cantabri he was pounding a square peg into a round hole, that there were other flights not intended for pure combat as his was.

  Put up the recon dragons, he suggested, preferably in pairs, and put half a flight from the First with them on the same level. The other half would fly high above, waiting for Yasin or the other Roche units to go after the other dragons. The recon flights were slower, since they generally carried a second man, the expert at deciphering what was going on below them on the ground.

  The slow advance continued.

  The general battle plan was that the infantry would be sent forward, against the Roche, who wouldn't have had time after their previous retreat to do more than dig scrapes.

  The light cavalry would try to drive in the Roche flanks, and the heavy cavalry would wait to exploit the advantage.

  Once in a while, there'd be a break, and the Deraine and Sagene forces would make as much as a mile.

  But the Roche became experts at counterattack, and all too often the big breakthroughs would be driven back, sometimes almost to their start line.

  All very traditional, very expected.

  The real battles were going on far behind the lines, as Hal learned when Cantabri called him back for a very private briefing.

  "And how goes the war?" Hal asked.

  "The war,
" Cantabri said carefully, "goes as well as it should. But there are problems which you should be aware of, not just because you're my friend.

  "The biggest problem is we're having trouble getting recruits. People are feeling, not without reason, that we're pouring men and women down a rathole, and the war is unwinnable.

  "Our spies on the other side report the same feeling. At least the Roche have got the big advantage of having heavy-handed goons with truncheons to chivy people into the ranks, although I suppose I'm not supposed to think that way.

  "Also, just to dispose of our enemies, Queen Norcia is supposedly carrying on like a harridan, saying that she never dreamed there'd be a day with Sagene soldiers on her soil, let alone the accursed Deraine.

  "There's word that she's relieved half a dozen generals, with more promised, if someone can't come up with a way to reverse what's going on."

  "That's not too bad," Hal offered. "Maybe there'll be a revolution, and she'll be overthrown for somebody who wants to put a flower in their teeth and dance around the maypole instead of killing folks."

  "Right," Cantabri said. "Those sorts are ever so common these days.

  "Anyway, back to our side.

  "There's talk, and of course you must not mention any of this to anyone, that King Asir may institute some sort of draft."

  Hal whistled. "That'll not go well with anyone."

  "But if that's the only way to feed bodies into the army… I don't know," Cantabri said, shaking his head. "Oh yes. Another piece of wonderful news is that the Sagene Council of Barons is restive."

  "That's the sort of thing I'd expect," Hal said. "I wasn't very impressed with the way anyone in Sagene ruled, when I was over here before the war. Of course, I was just a kid."

  Cantabri made a face.

  "I had the misfortune of falling madly in love back then… mind you, this was before I met my wife. The woman was Sagene and noble. So in my mad pursuit, which never went much of anywhere, I spent a fair amount of time over here, traveling around and meeting the nobility.

  "Like you, I wasn't much taken," Cantabri said. "Of course," he went on quietly, "I've never been much impressed by a lot of people with titles.