by Chris Bunch
His life, and those fliers he chose to take with him, would be extended for at least another month.
And that was a royal favor greater than any medal.
29
A day later, Hal and his dragon fliers moved off with the king's entourage, to Lord Cantabri's headquarters and the front.
Hal, paring detachment requirements to the bone, took a full fifteen fliers—a dragon flight—plus each dragon's pair of handlers, Tupilco the veterinarian, and a handful of orderlies and clerks. He would mess on the king, and the cavalry's smith, armorer, and such could handle the other needs.
The fliers chosen were the llth's original survivors, Gart as second in command and Chincha. The rest were Sagene, including Alcmaen and Danikel. He left Cabet in charge of the squadron.
Those fifty he'd chosen barely counted among the king's company—Asir had at least six hundred retainers with him.
Khiri told Hal that the king was, in fact, traveling very light.
After the king and his retainers reached Cantabri and his generals, Hal made sure he stayed in the air and in the background, wanting as little as possible to do with the high-rankers.
That night, there was an alarum as the guard was turned out. Four men, armored and armed, had tried to break through the cordon around the king. They got as far as the king's tent stables before being seen. One was killed; the others fled, seemingly without doing any damage other than murdering a sentry while getting into the perimeter.
Cantabri, outraged, put his entire Raiding Squadron around the royal household as guards.
The second day was spent resting, and then, for the third, King Asir said he wanted to go forward, into the front lines.
Hal swore the collective gasp from the staffers could have sucked a black dragon down from a thousand feet.
Everyone protested that it wasn't safe, and darted about, gurgling about what would result if something happened.
The worriers were already half apoplectic about the king's habit of riding out just after dawn, with no more than two escorts accompanying him.
Asir didn't listen to either set of objections, and so, early the next morning, Asir, Cantabri, four aides and six escorts crept out toward the lines.
All of them wore drab garments, and were heavily armed. However, the king couldn't let go of being a king, and so a golden, gem-crusted circlet was on his head.
Hal thought that was amusing, hoped that nothing would happen.
He had all his dragons in the air to make sure, at least from his side, nothing would.
Five dragons went high, including Hal. The others orbited the royal group below, in circles as wide as possible not to pinpoint the greatest target the war had seen.
The second line of defense was the rest of Hal's squadron, since they were still within its operating area, and four other flights were on standby.
Hal was watching the lines closely, figuring that the most likely threat would be from a cavalry patrol who happened to see what was clearly an officers' group—all of the men mounted, not riding in any sort of formation or dispersement—and attack.
There would be enough infantry below to drive back any sort of foot soldiery mischief.
Instead, Farren Mariah, below on the close security, blew an alarm on his trumpet.
Hal saw a great wedge of black dragons driving toward the lines.
He counted thirty of them.
The sky was alive with trumpeted warnings, and the Derainian and Sagene fliers climbed for altitude.
The low element was level with the onrushing Roche, and Hal thought he could see Ky Yasin's banner on the leading monster. He wasn't close enough to tell if there was gold trim on the banner, which would denote he had a chance at Yasin himself.
He pointed at the oncoming Roche, blew the attack, and his five dove for the point of the wedge.
Hal hoped it would be Yasin, then decided it didn't matter so long as the attack was broken up.
Rather than hit the lead, dive through and climb back up for another target, Hal brought Storm out of his dive just feet above the Roche formation.
The lead monster was rushing toward him.
Hal loosed a crossbow bolt, missed, reloaded, sent Storm into a skidding half-turn with his knees as the lead Roche dove away.
In the back of his mind, Hal decided that Roche couldn't be Yasin, who'd never been known to avoid a fight.
He came in on the wing of the second dragon, fired. His bolt hit that dragon in the neck, and it scrawked, rolled away, as Hal shot the third through the wing, doing little damage, but annoying the big black.
He reared in the sky, and Storm's neck darted, got that dragon just above the breastbone, and ichor gouted.
Storm let go before the Roche dragon could get him in its death flurry, rolled away and down.
Hal let Storm go inverted through a loop, then climbed back up toward the belly of the Roche flight pattern.
Two fliers, flying close together, smashed into the scattering formation, Alcmaen and another Sagene.
A Roche dragon flopped limply, fell, and his mate went after him.
Alcmaen let that one go, hit another one, and a third.
His aim was very true, hitting one dragon in the guts, the second in its eye. Both went down, screaming.
The bastard may have been a bastard, but he was also a most competent killer.
Hal looked for another Roche.
The formation was scattered, diving away.
He started down after a fleeing dragon, recollected his duty, blew the recall.
Slowly his flight regrouped, assembled, as two other Deraine flights hurtled in, just a little late, to support.
Below, over the king's group, Alcmaen was doing slow rolls, to celebrate his triple victory.
* * * *
"Congratulations," King Asir. "You made quite a show today."
"Thank you, sire," Hal said. "1 would just like to know what made you such a target."
"So would I," Asir said. "I can't believe anyone has eyes keen enough to have noted my crown. They must have just been lucky."
"I suppose so," Hal said, unconvinced. The king didn't realize how hard it was to launch any kind of dragon strike without notice, let alone one the size of that day's attack.
"I particularly noted one flier," Asir said. "I thought I saw him down three dragons by himself. He was the one flying close attendance on me after the battle."
"Yessir," Hal said, trying to sound neutral. "That would be the Sagene flier, Alcmaen."
"Sagene, eh?" Asir said. "I think I might have heard of him."
"He's a favorite of the Sagene taletellers," Hal said.
"I think it might be politic—in the true sense of the word—to make much of him," Asir said. "I'll make him a Defender of the Throne, which he certainly was."
"Thank you, your Highness," Hal said. "He'll be quite pleased with your having noticed him."
He hoped his voice wasn't as sour as his thoughts.
* * * *
The king spent three more days visiting the lines. Each day, there were black dragons in the air, but they didn't attempt the attack, since Hal had the First Squadron in close attendance.
Asir announced Alcmaen's award, said it would be formally given in time, which meant when they reached Fovant.
Medals given to the ground troops, weighty nods of approval made, the flag correctly waved, the royal column packed, and began its slow journey west, toward Fovant.
Four black dragons flew toward the formation, and were chased away by Hal's fliers. He decided the four had just been reconnoitering a large formation, not knowing what it was.
For the next three days, Roche dragons scouted the formation but never chanced an attack.
* * * *
Days later, they reached the Bluffs, where the great breakthrough had been made, and continued on.
Still later, they crossed the border into Sagene, and kept on to the west.
As time passed, the countryside grew l
ess barren, not having been fought over since the first days of the war; then they moved deeper into Sagene, where there'd been no battles at all.
The land on either side of them, though, was still picked bare, villages looted, farmland stripped, forests denuded, just by the passage of the Sagene forces toward the front.
Hal barely noticed, being used to the desolation, but the countryside depressed Khiri and other civilians who'd never seen such ruination.
She importuned the king, and he agreed to turn aside, to take smaller, country windings untouched by soldiery, and within a few miles they entered a dreaming land unknown to the sword.
Hal couldn't decide which was the greater pleasure—to fly the high station, drifting through the late summer day, hot and still, baking, the last of the fogs of the Roche northland out of him; or to swerve about down low, Storm chasing birds, not very sure what he'd do with one if he caught the mouthful of feathers.
In either event, he was reminded of the days before the war, when he was advance man for poor damned Athelny of the Dragons, with posters and a small bag of copper and silver, and no one to look over his shoulder.
A long, long time ago, he thought, a bit wistfully, and wondered if, when peace came and if he still lived, he could find such a peaceful life.
He shook his head at the idea: even if he lived through the damned war, he was now Lord Kailas, with estates and tenant farmers and fishermen to worry about and care for.
Hal thought he'd almost like to go back to those days when his stomach couldn't keep his spine and navel from being the closest of friends.
Kailas sighed, put the past out of his mind.
He wished he could ask Khiri to get on behind him, and share this lazy pleasure, a moment of peace in the midst of ruination.
But there was still the army, and its rules, below him, with jealous courtiers watching him closely, wishing him to do something that might usurp his standing with the king, so they might move a bit closer to the throne.
At least he and Khiri had each night together, in Hal's small tent.
And that made up for much as they made love fiercely, as if trying to affirm life and deny the death behind them.
* * * *
Fovant had been built in a valley, with steep, defensible hills around it, and a river running through its middle, where the great farming region spread out to the west and north.
Rozen, too, had a river. But that was wide, and unfriendly, better for ship and boat passage than for the scenery. Fovant's river had also been navigable, but steep-banked, narrow and deep. The city's builders had concreted its banks and later its bottom, so their river was most civilized, save every century or so when it rose over the banks and the boulevards that wound along it.
The city had been walled for defense from hill to hill, and, for a change, the city builders had allowed for growth, so it was only now that growth had spilled beyond the wide walls.
The city had grown up more than out, and its streets were either broad, suitable for many horsemen, or narrow, twisting, close enough to give a pony pause.
There were many parks dotted through Fovant, from the great one beside the river to tiny vest-pocket patches of green, with no more than a dozen trees.
The houses were mostly stone to the first floor, half-timbered and plaster above that for the most part. Businesses and government buildings were stone, but not hard, cold gray, but in cheerful shades of red.
Hal and Khiri saw it first at sunset, Hal from a greater height, and it gleamed like a city of dreams.
Both of them fell in love with Fovant on sight.
It was not just that Fovant's people thought themselves more beautiful, more handsome, wittier and more cultured than anyone, including their fellow Sagene. It was that, in many areas, Hal and Khiri thought they might be right.
Their opinion wasn't hurt by the Fovant priding themselves on their skills at cookery. Hal and Khiri couldn't remember having a bad meal, from the most expensive banquets to meat and vegetable sticks grabbed on the run from a street vendor.
Sagene's Council of Barons had arranged for King Asir and his party to be housed in a disused palace, just short of the outer walls.
The palace was big enough to hold all of the Derainians, plus the considerable staff the barons had given Asir for his stay.
There was even enough room for the dragons, although dragon tents from the Sagene fliers had to be set up inside the grounds.
A peculiarity of this palace, and one which gave it its name, was that the rulers of Sagene had stocked the grounds with deer. The animals were most tame, and it was common for a soldier to be working at a task and realize three or four deer were peering, as curious as cats, over his shoulder, about to offer advice.
The barons invited the Derainians to hunt the deer as they pleased.
Asir put the word around that killing one of them would be like killing a pet, and he would prefer anyone in his retinue not do that.
Most of the Derainians agreed with him, or felt it improper to go against the king's wishes.
Others didn't.
Hal wasn't surprised to see that Alcmaen was one of the dissenters, and, every couple of days, would lug in a carcass across his horse's withers, as proud as if he'd hunted down a forest bear with a spear.
He'd wanted to hunt the tame animals from the air, from dragonback, which Hal was able to forbid, since it didn't contribute anything to the war effort.
None of this did anything to increase Alcmaen's popularity on the squadron.
Khiri, Hal decided, had put it well, when she said, "That man reminds me of a boy I knew, growing up, the son of one of my father's head servants. He wasn't that ugly or stupid, but no one much liked him. He desperately wanted to be popular, but everything he tried seemed to produce the exact opposite."
"What happened to him?" Hal asked.
"He left a letter, saying he was running away to sea." Khiri shook her head. "We all expected to get boastful letters, lies about how he was becoming a famous ship's captain. But no one, including his parents, heard anything ever.
"I suppose, if he actually did become a sailor, he must have been drowned."
"Or," Hal said, "just as likely tossed overboard by a shipmate whose tolerance he'd pushed beyond the limit." He thought about it a minute. "I guess children can do things like that, not realizing they're making the absolutely wrong impression. But why an adult?"
"Did you ever think," Khiri said quietly, "that there's many of us who never grow up?"
"Like dragon fliers?"
Khiri smiled.
"Some of you."
"Me?"
"I'll never tell."
* * * *
The first two days were spent in banquets and mutual celebration of the everlasting bond between Sagene and Deraine.
The Deer Park's gates were open to the public, and any suggestion that better security might be in order was met with raised eyebrows and, sometimes, the hint that Fovant was five hundred leagues or more behind the lines.
Hal thought of the distance Carcaor was behind the lines, and how that hadn't kept the city safe, but didn't say anything.
The best he could do was have the attached raiders outfitted in mufti, and wander about the palace grounds, trying to look innocent and civilian. It didn't work—if hidden dagger bulges didn't give them away, their close-cropped hair and military boots did. But it was better than nothing, he supposed.
The king insisted on going out for his morning rides, and everyone worried.
The king snorted at them, and, probably to show his independence, went farther beyond Fovant each day.
Kailas overheard the officer in charge of the raiders muttering, "It isn't enough that our royal shithead has got to dress himself up in king gear, but he sits his damned horse so well that he really doesn't need the bangles and fripperies. Hell, if I were a Roche sympathizer I'd try to pot the bastard merely for looking noble. But that damned horse blanket of his is better than a godsdamned her
ald riding in front with a godsdamned trumpet."
The blanket in question was imperial red, with yellow fringes and yellow embroidery with the king's initials.
But Asir was Asir, and most set in his ways.
* * * *
Hal got used to hordes of children following him around, in awe at being in the presence of the Dragonmaster.
Other hordes, Sagene taletellers, followed Alcmaen and especially Danikel about.
The slender, withdrawn, almost-beautiful young man was becoming a legend in his country, to the barely hidden fury of Alcmaen.
Danikel was credited with a dozen, no, two dozen, no, a brace of dozens of kills. He smiled when asked the precise number, and would only say, "Not nearly enough, since the war still continues."
He got letters by the bale, proposals, indecent and decent, by the cartload.
The fliers were wondering if, perhaps, Danikel preferred men, or perhaps had no sex at all.
He began keeping company with a most beautiful baroness, five years older than he was, with a regal bearing and hair that appeared to have been silver from birth.
But Danikel's life seemed completely focused on his dragons and the war.
* * * *
The conference began, sealed to all.
But even kings and barons have to talk to somebody.
In Asir's case, it was to Sir Thom Lowess, who, in turn, let little bits drop to Hal.
Everything was going most wonderfully, amicability oozing on both sides.
The only stumbling block was the city of Paestum, long a sore point, being Derainian, on Sagene land. Battles had been fought and lost centuries earlier, but Sagene still thought Paestum rightfully theirs.
Too much Derainian blood had been shed in its defense to ever consider handing it back to Sagene, though.
Asir broke that stumbling block by suggesting that Paestum become, after the war, an open city, belonging to no one and everyone.
There were grumbles from the Sagene, but then cheerfulness came back.
Lowess suggested cynically that the barons took the open city proposal as a prybar in the door that could be used, in the years to come, to make Paestum Sagene once more.
Hal didn't give a damn either way, remembering the coldness he'd encountered as a broke, stranded wanderer before the war.
