The dragon growled, and nodded.
Brynn took a deep breath and headed away, cursing herself silently for her moment of selfishness, when she had hoped the dragon would die.
No, it wouldn’t be that easy. For the sake of To-gai and all her dreams, it couldn’t be.
The timing could not have been better for Brynn and her companions. Dawn broke over the city of Avrou Eesa, bright and clear, and the Behrenese began their charge, their perimeter collapsing inward. And at that same moment, Brynn saw the flashing signal out in the distance beyond the westernmost Behrenese cluster that told her of Pagonel’s arrival.
“Eastern wall!” she cried, and more than half of her warriors ran that way, launching arrows out at the charging Behrenese, though they were still too far away for any effective barrage. As the warriors bent down behind the wall, they propped helmets in place, decoys to make it look as if they intended to hold the wall.
And then they abandoned their posts, running to their waiting mounts, who were assembled in the western courtyard before the gates.
Brynn, meanwhile, went to Agradeleous. She sent the dragon flying away to the east, dropping down to attack the Behrenese advance. As the lines broke apart, the eastern gates of Avrou Eesa were thrown wide and many horses charged out.
Riderless horses. Captured Behrenese horses.
From her post on the western wall, Brynn took hope as she saw the Behrenese lines beginning to veer toward the west. Yatol Bardoh had anticipated a breakout, and following logic and the dragon’s strike, he expected the breakout to be to the east.
But Yatol Bardoh did not know that a second To-gai-ru force, thrice the size of the one he had contained within Avrou Eesa, was just to the west of him.
The city’s western gates flew wide and out came the charge of Brynn and her two thousand warriors, bearing down on the main Behrenese force west of the city.
And then came the battle cries and thunder of the second To-gai-ru force, charging east, bearing down on the same enemy positions.
Caught between the vise, the Behrenese forces scrambled to find some defensive posture.
Brynn drove her charges in hard, her sword all ablaze, Runtly answering her every command and improvising when necessary. The To-gai-ru came through like a swarm of locusts caught on a fast wind, slashing the Behrenese ranks, forcing soldiers to dive aside or be trampled.
They did not stop to engage, though, but continued their charge until they had linked up with the larger force, moving west to east with similar brutal efficiency.
And then they turned, as one, to the north and the open sands, riding hard and outdistancing the surprised and confused Behrenese.
By the time the main numbers of Yatol Bardoh’s warriors had come around to the western line, Brynn and her warriors were a dust cloud on the northern horizon.
They left behind a field of carnage, of many fallen Behrenese and more than a few fallen To-gai-ru, as well. But the breakout had worked—another devastating blow to the Behrenese morale, and a lightning fast battle that claimed the lives of ten times more Behrenese than To-gai-ru.
And then came Agradeleous, just to accentuate Yatol Bardoh’s embarrassment, sweeping past the Behrenese field, accepting the volley of hundreds of arrows and returning a strafing line of killing fire, and even managing to catch up a Behrenese warrior in his tearing claws.
And then the dragon, too, was gone, flying fast to the north.
Coming from his position east of Avrou Eesa, where they had expected the breakout, Chezhou-Lei Shauntil did not arrive on the true battlefield until long after Brynn and her minions, including Agradeleous, had long departed. The warrior found his commander, Yatol Bardoh, leaning on the wreckage of what had been a catapult, staring vacantly to the dust cloud rising in the north, and suddenly looking all of his sixty years of age.
“Yatol,” the warrior greeted, snapping a curt bow.
Yatol Bardoh’s head slowly turned, that he could regard the man, but then swiveled back to the north, his face a mask of blank horror. “Hunt her down and kill her,” he said.
“She is a gnat, Yatol,” Shauntil replied. “She flies about us while we swipe futilely at her, but her stings are not lethal. We have missed thus far, but one hit—”
“Hunt her down and kill her.”
“Yes, Yatol. She is a cunning foe, and she has not erred of yet. But while her perfection of tactics has kept her alive, it has not truly wounded us. When she makes her first error, it will be her last.”
“Hunt her down and kill her.”
“It will be done, Yatol,” Shauntil assured him. “We learn more of her with each movement. It is her dragon that allows her army to run about the open desert, supplying her forces, perhaps even flying them at times, as surely it must to have escaped our vise at the plateau divide. But we are seeing the limitations of the beast—it was almost brought down this very day, and every city will become more prepared to deal with it, should it arrive. Once it is gone, this woman and her armies will be no more.”
Yatol Bardoh’s head swiveled about again and he fixed Chezhou-Lei Shauntil with the coldest and most determined stare the warrior had ever seen from the man—from the man who had murdered hundreds in his years of terror in To-gai, the man who had lined the plateau divide overlooking this very region with the crucified bodies of a hundred To-gai-ru women.
Yatol Bardoh said slowly, without emotion, “Hunt her down and kill her.”
Chapter 34
Sacrilege Revealed
“THEY ARE HOT AND THIRSTY,” CHEZHOU-LEI SHAUNTIL REPORTED TO YATOL BARDOH, as the two of them, along with many others, looked over the destroyed remains of a supply caravan. For a month since the recapture of Avrou Eesa, they had been chasing Brynn across the desert. They knew that they could not outpace her, and so they had continued to try to outguess her.
She had doubled back behind them, somehow, and had flattened the closest supply caravan.
For the second time this week.
“She must have a smaller force operating in the area,” Yatol Bardoh announced, nodding with every word. “She uses her main force to keep us moving in one direction, and has splinters hidden among the dunes to interrupt the supply line.”
“The caravans are well-armed and guarded,” Shauntil dared to reply, drawing a scowl from his frustrated master.
“Against the likes of a dragon?” Yatol Bardoh snapped back, and the Chezhou-Lei bowed apologetically for his obviously errant thinking.
“We must stretch our line longer as we pursue,” Bardoh remarked, and it seemed to Shauntil that he was more thinking out loud than addressing the warrior. “Yes, we will spearhead long points whenever we think we are near her, and sweep our forces in behind, a left or right flank. Or split to flank both ways, encircling her as we did in Avrou Eesa, but with no walls between us!” As he finished, he looked to Shauntil for confirmation, but the Chezhou-Lei was shaking his head, not nodding.
The warrior stopped, though, and stood at attention, not about to question unless the Yatol called for his opinion.
“A bold maneuver,” Bardoh insisted, but Shauntil, despite his discipline, wore an expression of disagreement.
“Speak your mind!” the Yatol scolded.
“I fear any bold movements against one who has been as cunning and as lucky as the Dragon of To-gai,” the warrior admitted. “We must be dogged and patient in our pursuit. We must arm and train any city we pass by. If we lose a thousand men to attrition and by moving them into city positions, then it is not so devastating to our great army, and surely we can replace them many times over if necessary. But every loss must weigh heavily on the Dragon of To-gai, for in this land that is not her home, she will find replacements difficult to come by.”
“Her army has swelled with freed slaves,” Yatol Bardoh reminded him. “How clearly we saw that as they burst free from my city.”
“Yes, but that was in the beginning, and in Dharyan and Pruda, the two cities, other than Jacintha, w
ith the most slaves. And even those former slaves must be second-guessing their decision to join the woman, as they spend the days wandering through the desert heat. Surely their existence under Behrenese control was more comfortable than that which they now endure, even with this dragon apparently delivering supplies.”
“Do you ask that the whole of Behren cower behind city walls, that this barbarian witch can run free all about our lands?” the Yatol asked with obvious skepticism and anger.
Shauntil straightened his shoulders as if he had been slapped. “No, Yatol!” he answered with obedient enthusiasm. “Never that. I wish only to ensure that we do not err and allow the Dragon of To-gai to win any more impressive victories. Time is on our side, I believe. We have erred in underestimating her, and she has made not a single error to date. But she will.”
“And one error will be her last,” Yatol Bardoh added immediately. “But only if we are close by and prepared to seize upon her moment of vulnerability. I will see Behren free of her, Shauntil, and I intend to be the one who personally executes her in front of a grateful populace. And you are the one who will deliver her to me, whatever it takes. Do we have an understanding?”
“Yes, Yatol.”
Bardoh nodded and looked one last time at the destroyed caravan, then waved his hand in disgust and walked away.
Shauntil relaxed immediately and blew a frustrated sigh. Bardoh was playing right into the Dragon of To-gai’s hands, he knew.
But he was Chezhou-Lei, and sworn to follow the orders of the Yatols.
The Yatol and the warrior repeated the scene and the discussion while looking over the remains of yet another destroyed caravan three weeks later in the desert region east of Pruda.
Yakim Douan dropped his head into his hands and clutched tightly at his thinning hair. It took all of the discipline he could muster to not scream aloud!
Avrou Eesa. The Dragon of To-gai had taken Avrou Eesa, and had then escaped right through Yatol Bardoh’s encircling line!
And now Bardoh and Shauntil were wandering the open desert with more than twenty-five thousand soldiers, trying to catch this woman, who remained as elusive as a ghost. The Behrenese legions were taxing the stores of every city and every oasis they neared, hauling out supplies by the wagonload.
Douan understood the dangers of this game. For the To-gai-ru, every day spent ahead of the pursuit pleased them and made them bolder, while each passing day in the brutal heat no doubt wore at the resolve of his great army.
“I will send them all back into To-gai, to scorch the land as they pass,” he said aloud, addressing his newest attendant, the eleventh since the departure of Merwan Ma. The thin young man didn’t nod and didn’t say anything, as he had been instructed. He was there to listen and nothing more! “Yes, that will force the Dragon of To-gai back onto the steppes in a desperate attempt to salvage some homeland to free!”
Even as he finished, the Chezru Chieftain shook his head and growled. He had already tried that with Shauntil, and the man had found very little to burn, and very few To-gai-ru to punish.
“Yatol damn it!” he swore, standing up fast, and his attendant, eyes wide, backpedaled. Douan looked at him with obvious disgust and said, “Get out, you idiot,” and waved him away, and the young man nearly fell over himself with his repeated bows as he exited.
He returned shortly afterward, though, with a group of emissaries from various Behrenese districts, mostly the south and the west. One from Yatol De Hamman complained of increasing pirate activities, and pointedly blamed Yatol Peridan for tolerating the criminals. One from Peridan spoke of mercenaries raiding his smaller outlying towns—mercenaries hired by the Dragon of To-gai, and possibly supported, his message hinted, by Yatol De Hamman.
Yakim Douan understood the significance of having all of these emissaries come in together; this was akin to a unified protest, one on the border of revolt and one struggling against itself, from the outlying and vulnerable provinces.
“All of you return to your Yatols, and at once,” he bade them after hearing them out in full. “Bid your Yatols to travel with all speed to Jacintha, that I might tell them of my plans to be rid of the Dragon of To-gai. Assure them that I have heard their words and fears completely, and that when we turn the tide against the To-gai-ru—an imminent event, I assure you—they will get their revenge on all who wronged them. And you two,” he warned the emissaries of De Hamman and Peridan, “advise your masters that their words do not please me, and do not please Yatol. If we are to fight among ourselves, then the Dragon of To-gai becomes a greater foe by far!”
As all of the emissaries filed out, talking excitedly among themselves, it occurred to Yakim Douan that he had better come up with the promised plan to be rid of the Dragon of To-gai rather quickly.
With reverence and fear, trembling fingers and dry lips, Yakim Douan lifted the sacred chalice in the ceremonial room in Chom Deiru. He looked around many times, remembering the unfortunate discovery that had cost him his valuable servant and friend, Merwan Ma.
After the emissaries of the various Yatols had departed the city, Douan had spent many days sitting in the dark, meditating upon the great problem that was the Dragon of To-gai. He held little fear that she would overrun Behren, or even Jacintha. Yatol Bardoh’s reports put her army at around ten thousand, at the most; in a crisis, Jacintha alone could muster five times that number. But this rebel had indeed become a great concern to the Chezru Chieftain. Her antics were fraying the always fragile alliances between Douan’s Yatols, and in conquering three Behrenese cities, the woman had put tens of thousands of refugees on the road.
And she had cost him Merwan Ma, and Yatol Grysh, and the Kaliit of the Chezhou-Lei, and many of his warriors.
It was bad enough that Yakim Douan could not even begin to consider Transcendence any longer, but now he was beginning to see real reason to fear a general revolt among his own subjects!
He looked at the chalice as he considered that awful thought, for he knew that he was taking a great chance here. For months he had been using the hematite to help keep his aged body strong, and even those minor trances brought him fear of discovery. This scheme absolutely terrified him.
But Master Mackaront had arrived from Entel that day, and had confirmed what Yakim Douan had suspected: that Abellican monks had sometimes used hematite, the soul stone, to fly free of their bodies and traverse great distances with their disembodied spirits. Father Abbot Markwart had been especially deft at such tactics, Mackaront had said.
Of course Douan knew of spirit-walking. He had used it against his enemies within Jacintha and to spy upon visiting Yatols on occasion. He had used it to trick Yatol Thei’a’hu into betraying Yatol Bohl. But this was something beyond that.
That night, he intended to fly far, far from Jacintha, out into the open desert where he might locate the Dragon of To-gai and her elusive army. He had already ordered his newest attendant—he could never remember the man’s name!—to set up a line of signalers to Yatol Bardoh and Shauntil, explaining that he would seek divine guidance to help them with their quest.
Now all he had to do was find the Dragon of To-gai.
In his private room, the door securely bolted, Yakim Douan took his first tentative steps into the swirling depths of the hematite gemstone, using the magic within to separate his spirit from his body. His incorporeal spirit went out across the city easily, moving to the western gates.
And there he paused. Never before had he gone out from Jacintha in this form.
Before he could second-guess himself, the Chezru Chieftain sailed out across the open desert, his spirit flying free and fast. He sped to the west, past Dahdah Oasis, then turned south, for the latest reports from Yatol Bardoh had the Dragon of To-gai somewhere to the east of Pruda.
He could not believe the amount of ground he covered that night, running a line from Dallabad to Pruda, and then back to the northeast, back to Jacintha. But he saw no sign of the woman and her army. His relief was profound when h
e returned to his own body to discover that nothing was amiss, that none in Chom Deiru apparently had any idea that anything unsavory had occurred that night.
And so he went out again the next night, this time moving more to the south and less to the west.
He knew at first, distant sight, that the encampment he spotted was that of the To-gai-ru and not of Yatol Bardoh.
“Pruda has been garrisoned once more, and no doubt with many spear-throwing ballistae in case our dragon should make an appearance,” a scout reported to Brynn that same night.
The woman nodded, hardly surprised. The pursuing Behrenese were having little luck in catching her, but Yatol Bardoh was doing well to outfit every nearby city against possible attacks.
“No doubt they have been told of our typical tactics, as well,” Pagonel said to her when the scout left them alone. “What new tricks will we find to shape the upcoming battlefields to our liking?”
Brynn shrugged, having few answers. “Agradeleous grows impatient once again,” she noted, for she had been speaking with the dragon nearly every night. “How many weeks has it been since he has seen any large battles?”
“You give him free rein to destroy the caravans.”
“But that is hardly the adventure he so craves.”
Pagonel looked at her intently. “Hold the course,” he advised. “As miserable and hot as we are, our pursuers are even more so. Let us run Yatol Bardoh all across the hot sands of Behren, finding opportunity to sting where we may.”
It was true enough, Brynn realized. There was no way they could turn about and do battle with the pursuing Behrenese army, even with a dragon at their disposal. Agradeleous had been fairly injured at the escape from Bardoh, and to Brynn’s surprise, she had learned that dragon wounds were cumulative, that they really didn’t heal very quickly. As much as the dragon desired battle, Brynn knew that she had to take great care, using him only when he was most needed.
“Your guidance keeps me strong,” she said to Pagonel, stroking the side of his head and neck gently. “We will hold our course and run Yatol Bardoh into the hot sands. And when winter comes, we will return to the steppes, quietly, and next spring wage war against every outposter settlement.”
DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) Page 169
