Knighthood of the Dragon

by Chris Bunch

  Hal pulled Storm up, letting the speed of his dive convert into energy, lifting him back up through the formation.

  He had his crossbow reloaded, aimed at another flier, missed.

  Storm lay over on a wing, turning, skidding as a Roche dragon came in on him. Hal tried to aim at the flier, couldn't get a clear shot, sent his bolt into the dragon's throat. It tore at itself, trying to rip the bolt out, spinning, falling, and was gone.

  The two squadrons were a spinning, swirling melee. Storm went after another dragon, rolling almost on his back, Hal swearing, clinging desperately with his knees to the saddle, and there was a Roche dragon almost touching him. Storm's talons ripped at the Roche, and ichor gouted, and the beast fell away.

  Hal had control, was forcing Storm into a climb, and a Roche flier fell past him, silently, mouth opening and closing like a beached fish, and he was gone.

  A Roche dragon, wing torn, was trying to escape. Hal closed on it from behind, shot the flier out of his saddle, forgot about the beast.

  Another dragon, this time one of his, tumbled past him, dying, falling to the ground far below, and then the sky was almost empty.

  Hal blew the recall, and obedient to his own order, turned back toward their own lines.

  As he flew, other fliers assembled on him.

  Hal could hear them shouting, cheering as they flew.

  Hal realized he had a grin as broad and stupid as any other flier.

  * * * *

  They went back before dusk, this time circling around Yasin's base and coming in from the east. Also, Hal forbade the flying of any squadron symbol. He wanted Yasin to think that he was being hit not just by one squadron, but by all the dragon fliers of Sagene and Deraine.

  Hal's fliers had claimed five dragons down in the morning, and six more at dusk, for a loss of three dragons.

  That night, his fliers wanted to celebrate, which Hal allowed, within reason. That meant beer only. No one should fly in the morning with a thick head.

  Hal went back to his tent, tried to sleep, couldn't.

  Muttering to himself, he lit a lantern and decided to leaf through the madman's ravings.

  He wasn't sure what he was looking for, so started near the end:

  Down, away, stumbling, not fall, come after me, abandoned, alone, silent like mousie like they taught me like they left me no squeaking, crying…

  That was enough for that night. Hal decided he'd try again tomorrow or the next day.

  * * * *

  The squadron was stumblingly weary. Not only was the drive against Yasin's squadron nearly constant, but they were constantly called for other duties, in spite of their supposed special status.

  Exhaustion killed.

  Hal now was used to writing letters to Sagene and Deraine, bemoaning the death of a flier, when, in truth, they'd been nothing more than names on the status report.

  With an exception.

  Danikel seemed beyond exhaustion, beyond fear.

  He flew not only his detailed tasks, but whenever he could.

  He and his blue dragon, Hoko, were in the air all the time, always across the lines, in spite of Hal's admonitions.

  Kailas thought of grounding him, didn't know how he could, short of chaining him to his tent post.

  Danikel never seemed to change, never seemed sleepy or tired.

  He was buried under fan letters from Sagene, which he smiled at, but seldom read and never answered.

  With one exception.

  A letter came every day—or when the mails were on time—in a woman's hand, in gray ink, the addressing quite calligraphic.

  He never told anyone who the letters came from, burned them after reading them twice and answering them.

  Hal couldn't decide if they came from the baroness he'd been keeping company with in Fovant.

  Danikel was beyond being the darling of the Sagene taletellers. Now they were referring to him as the very spirit of Sagene, the warrior soul of the country.

  And day by day, his death toll mounted, although Hal never heard him claim a specific number of kills.

  Alcmaen was nearly beside himself, left far behind in the count, but Danikel paid him little attention, treating him kindly, as a not particularly bright younger cousin, which further increased Alcmaen's rage.

  Then, one morning, a clear day, Danikel didn't come back from his predawn patrol.

  He'd told his dragon handler that he thought he'd "nip back of the lines, and see if any of Yasin's people were out this early," nothing more specific.

  Hal checked the hospitals, sent orderlies to see if any of the front line units had reported a falling dragon.

  None did.

  Nor was any body recovered.

  There were no claims from the Roche for a time.

  Little by little it crept out: the soul of Sagene was missing, lost in battle.

  The taletellers wailed like peasants at a village chief's funeral.

  After a few days, word came from the Roche.

  Danikel had been downed, in mortal combat, by one of Ky Yasin's fliers.

  Hal didn't believe it—the claim was made very weakly, with no confirmation or interviews with the black-dragon flier who claimed to have killed him.

  Hal thought it was the Roche taletellers' invention.

  Alcmaen said, three days later, that he'd seen the Roche flier across the lines, and, in a terrible battle witnessed by no one, had killed the man and his dragon.

  Even the Sagene taletellers had trouble with that one.

  The gray-inked letters stopped coming, with never a query from their writer to Hal about the flier's death.

  It was, other than the periodic wails in the broadsheets, as if Danikel, Baron Trochu, had never been.

  * * * *

  The half ring around Carcaor was slowly closing.

  The Sagene blockade of the Ichili River was closed, and almost nothing was coming upriver to Carcaor. Deraine had sealed off the River Pettau and the Zante, and its navy was slowly making its way south toward Carcaor, capturing or isolating each Roche riverine city as they came. Each league they captured meant less foodstuffs and war materials for the beleaguered barons in the capital.

  Yet still the Roche fought on, as if determined to destroy their country if they couldn't win.

  * * * *

  Once again, Hal varied the squadron's tactics. This time, all the fliers had tiny magicked compasses, and flew out by themselves. Again, they held the heights, and waited over Cantabri's battlefield.

  As they waited, Hal saw Roche formations break and fall back. The Sagene and Derainian troops, probably as exhausted as their enemy, stolidly moved forward.

  When Yasin's black dragons flew into sight, the squadron hit them from all directions at once, as if the Roche were magnetized.

  They took out four dragons that morning, Hal having killed three of them. Yasin's squadron fragmented on the first attack and fled.

  Little by little…

  * * * *

  Hal had the squadron stand down for a day. The fliers might have been up for more slaughter, but the dragons were wearying.

  He started to catch up on the always-present paperwork, then stopped.

  If he'd told Limingo he'd go through the madman's ravings, it was to find something that might suggest a way to defeat that demon.

  And the time for confronting that spirit was drawing closer.

  He sighed, pulled the manuscript over, and started reading, this time from the beginning.

  Kailas forced attention, and then, abruptly, the babblings seized him:

  Ruined, ruined, all is ruins, ruined stones, moving, lifting, coming toward me… brown… a bear…jelly…jelly bear… reaching… duck away, duck away, do not take death… spear… thrown… hit… through it… jelly, jelly, jelly run, trying to run… screaming… crying… mother… a boy not wept… clawing at me… nor dashed a thousand kim… attacked… trapped… mother, this place stinks… death… the dagger, dagger, my grandfathers… sharp�
�� a bit of rust on the blade, blade, iron, old iron… tunic flaming… embers… crumbling, reaching bear… and I threw it hard into jelly ness… screaming… stupid so slight a hurt…jelly bear screaming at so slight a hurt… in back and away and chance to run, run from jelly, run from death—

  Hal had it.

  Maybe.

  But it was worth a try.

  Maybe.

  If he could just figure out how to make his idea work.

  41

  Limingo rubbed his eyes wearily.

  "All right," he told Hal. "I concede that your more careful reading—and thinking—seems to have given us a clue. I surely wouldn't have noted that your raider carried an irregular weapon, least of all what it was made of. And certainly cold iron is legendary proof against demons. So we have a bit of knowledge now, thanks to our poor mad friend."

  "But not much more," Hal said, staring out of the ruined building Limingo had taken over for what Kailas thought of as Magic Headquarters. "If iron hurts that whatever it is, well and good. What we need is a big piece of iron to kill it, I guess, but I don't have the foggiest idea of how to deliver it, point first, into our demon. Maybe cast a big godsdamned spear out of iron, land some raiders who're a lot braver than I am on the rock, and, when and if the demon appears, they charge him and we give medals to the suicidal."

  "Not good," Limingo agreed. "Not to mention the things we don't know, such as whether that demon was brought up by the destruction you wrought in Carcaor, or by your presence the night before in that castle.

  "Plus, we don't know if the barons know about this demon, and if that's why they're being so foolhardy in refusing to surrender. Or if they're just pigheaded Roche like everyone believes."

  "You know," Hal said carefully, "perhaps there is a way to hit that demon—if he appears—with my big spear. Maybe if we cast just the spearhead, and then fletch a wooden shaft like an arrow—maybe fletching that goes all the way up to the head—and then somehow rig it under a dragon, and come in against him—or it or whatever it is—very godsdamned fast, and use the dragon's speed to launch the spear, and… and there's too many godsdamned maybes in this."

  He slumped back, looked out at the icy rain coming down.

  "It's nice to have a roof over my head for the moment," he said. "My squadron and I are still out there with tents."

  "It could be worse," Limingo said.

  "It could," Hal said. "At least we've got tents. I saw a couple of foot soldiers trying to use a tree to rig a pretty small piece of canvas."

  Limingo shook his head.

  "This war's gone on too long."

  "It has," Hal agreed, getting to his feet. "I used to be able to spring up like a goosed lamb. Now I'm a creaky old man."

  He pulled a long waxed coat on, and shivered.

  "But I suppose I'd better get back to my blacksmiths and start figuring out just how damned dumb I am."

  * * * *

  The war had ground almost to a halt as the weather got worse. It took the hardest of officers to get the men out of whatever shelter they'd figured out, into the freezing muck, and stumbling toward the Roche positions. Horses stamped, and refused to come out of their stables, and lashed out at their grooms.

  The dragons, accustomed to cold weather, were a little more cooperative, but not much more.

  The Roche held as best they could, but they couldn't stand firm for long.

  They were out of almost everything—fresh food, dry clothing replacements, and even their fighting supplies were now rationed.

  Out of everything—except raw courage.

  * * * *

  "That's about as cockermaymie a contrapatrapashun as I've ever seen," Farren Mariah said. "And I'm not even mentioning the dropping mechanism. I've seen amateur hangmen come up with better."

  "Thanks for the compliment," Hal said. "Now, go get your dragon out. There's a spear and contrapashun for you, too. And the other squadron commanders."

  "Why me all the time?" Mariah wailed.

  "We all need to have an example set for us," Sir Loren said. "Whether good or bad is immaterial."

  Storm didn't like the setup any more than Mariah did. The spear's head was about a yard wide, and the shaft twelve feet long.

  Hal had come to the measurements by experimentation—dropping models off a nearby rise, and making note of which fell point first most readily. But then he cut the weight out of the head, since the spear would have to be cast from a flying dragon.

  One of Hal's ropemakers came up with a cradle front and rear that was tied to the unhappy dragon. When a rope was pulled by the flier, the cradles came unhooked, and the spear fell free.

  All that remained was to see if the contrivance worked in the air.

  For a while, it appeared as if it didn't at all, generally falling from the dragon and dropping straight down.

  Spears were recovered, and weight was drilled off the head, added to the shaft, and that helped matters.

  But it still required a flier to have his dragon at full speed when he released the spear. Then, if everything went well, the spear would wobble through the air, and hit the earthen bank it was aimed at.

  After two days, everyone in the squadron had taken at least three shots.

  The best shot was Hachir, the former crossbowman, and the second was Farren Mariah.

  But no one knew if the weapon would work against the demon.

  * * * *

  "Since we know somewhat less than nothing about our demon," Limingo said, "and since the time for his appearance looms near, I've set my young man, Bodrugan, to watch the mountain. With Lord Cantabri's approval, he, and half a dozen raiders and equipment, have been flown to another mountaintop to watch.

  "I have dragons from another flight—sorry, Hal, but you appeared busy with other things—making unobtrusive flypasts morning and night to receive their flag signals.

  "So far, everything on the mountain appears quiet. One strange thing—the ruins of that castle you reported the demon came from, further destroying the ruins, now appear undisturbed."

  "I like that but little," Hal said.

  "I imagine," Limingo said dryly, "our Bodrugan likes it even less."

  * * * *

  Hal continued harrying Yasin when his squadron came out. But the war in the air was almost at a standstill as winter's first storms raged.

  * * * *

  In spite of the weather, Cantabri lashed the armies back into motion.

  Hal's squadron was detailed for another special duty—they landed teams of raiders to the east and south of Carcaor, with orders to hold their positions and stop any movement past them.

  Other, stronger teams were told off to support these teams if they were attacked. Dragon flights were moved in to fly in these backup teams, and supplies for the teams.

  Then, one gloomy day, Hal landed a team on a plateau, happened to look southwest, and saw the flurry of a cavalry patrol moving through the freshly fallen snow.

  He glassed the patrol, and saw they were Sagene.

  Carcaor was surrounded.

  42

  The armies of Sagene and Deraine occupied Carcaor's suburbs on the west bank of the Ichili River. Reinforcements were rushed forward, and troops were fed and resupplied, getting ready for the final assault.

  Perhaps Cantabri shouldn't have allowed the pause, for it gave time for old soldiers to talk about the horrors of the Comtal River crossing years earlier that led to the siege of Aude. And somehow there were stories—no one knew how they got out—about some horrid wizardly weapon the Roche had.

  Everyone who knew of the demon swore they'd said nothing, but someone had.

  Balancing those stories were the terrible ones of what it was like in the encircled capitai. There were whispers that bodies had been found with steaks carved from their buttocks or thighs. The soldiers were on the scantiest of rations, no more than half-ground grain baked into flat breads. Civilians were simply starving while the barons continued to dine on their hidden luxurie
s.

  Then flat-bottomed boats started arriving from the north and south, and were readied for the assault on Carcaor.

  Roche wizards sent firespells and storms against the boats, but the spells were largely quashed by the Sagene and Derainian magicians.

  Hal moved his squadron up to the river, made himself ready to support the crossing.

  Cantabri summoned him one day.

  "We'll be forcing the river in two days," he said without preamble. "And I want my soldiers to keep crossing and not get stranded on the other side without any backup. That means your task is first to cover the river against any dragon attacks. Your second task will be to take on the demon… If he appears, which I assume he will.

  "Any questions?"

  "No, sir," Hal said.

  "Then I'll see you in the victory parade."

  * * * *

  Hal was making last-minute adjustments to Storm's harness, and making sure he had enough bolts and firedarts ready when Farren Mariah came up, looking carefully from side to side.

  "What now, Lieutenant?" Hal asked.

  "We don't have to worry our little nogs about what happens today," Farren said. "At least, not you and me."

  "Oh?"

  "I set a small spell up at dawn," he said. "And it said for sure and certain you and I and Chincha would live through the day. Barring certain things."

  "How damnably reassuring. What sort of certain things?"

  "Well, it got confused, but we're safe as long as we fight well, and stay clear of magic."

  "Gods," Hal said, dripping sarcasm. "Now I can truly relax. You're sure of your magic."

  "Sure as cert," Mariah said. "I cast that spell three times."

  "What happened the other two?"

  "Aaarh, you don't want to know, boss."

  * * * *

  The soldiers had been formed up by boatloads, hidden from view across the river.

  Hal, flying overhead with his squadron, diving in and out of the intermittent cloud cover, heard the shout of orders and the blast of trumpets, and lines of soldiers debouched from shelter to the boats waiting at the river's edge.