The Last Battle

by Chris Bunch

  "And killing off barbs, every time they tried to claim woods back, after we'd rightfully took it with force of arms.

  "That was the key marker on Gran's place—we had iron stakes in the ground, with the heads of any barb that we came across.

  "Made sure they knew where their place was, and that they wouldn't dare mess with any Roche."

  So much, Hal thought, for noble causes. The Roche were grabbing land, the natives fighting for what had been theirs.

  Things like that didn't create heroic ballads, not without time passing and the villainous songwriters victorious, which didn't look like it would happen this time around.

  The next dawn, as the column was forming up, Hal took Storm out, flying back the way they'd come.

  It had stopped snowing during the night, so the bodies of those who'd fallen in the staggering march were still exposed, lying here and there.

  Hal didn't get lower than he had to, not wanting to see how many of them were civilians, women, children.

  He flew on, over the ruins of Trenganu.

  There were still barbarians looking for something to claim in the smoldering city.

  They shouted insults up at Hal, ran to cover when Storm swooped on them.

  He flew back along the line of march. Not many people looked up as Storm screamed; they were too busy concentrating on the next step through the slush.

  Hal put Storm in the air, unridden, and the dragon took charge of the three monsters whose fliers had been killed in Trenganu.

  Hal moved back and forth in the column, chivvying someone here, encouraging an oldster there.

  He passed a tiny cart, drawn by a pair of goats, with two children aboard, perhaps five and six years old.

  Hal started to ask where their parents were, saw their tear-runneled cheeks, thought better of it, went on.

  The natives dogged the line of march, swooping in now and again to take down a straggler who even Sergeant Aescendas couldn't keep on his or her feet.

  They laid ambushes in front of the column, but these were spotted by the experienced settlers, or seen from the air.

  Hal wondered, not without thanks, why the natives were suddenly behaving like raw recruits.

  He guessed maybe their best war leaders had been killed in the initial assault on Trenganu.

  "Naw," Sergeant Aescendas explained while the two were sharing a bowl of barley, crudely ground, cooked with a beef bone and some roadside herbs, "people fight best when they're on their own ground."

  "But this used to be theirs," Hal said.

  "Not for a generation or so," Aescendas said. "Time enough to forget.

  "I've been fighting these bastards most of my life, and got no damned illusions about what they can and can't do.

  "First time I went scouting with some of our peaceful barbs," he said, "we were camped on a hilltop, and I sent one of them out hunting.

  "I watched him go out, zigging here, zagging there.

  "He killed something or other that was potworthy, and I spotted him coming back.

  "He was on the same damned track, ziggety-zaggety, he'd gone out on, even though he could see our hill and could have come home directly.

  "Barbs aren't the stealthy woodsmen city people think they are. They've just got a damned great memory for the terrain.

  "And on this ground, they're as blind as we would have been if we'd gone out beyond Trenganu."

  The wagons were full.

  But the temperature dropped, and people on the wagons died.

  Their bodies were unceremoniously cast into the ditch beside the narrow track, and there was room for more to ride.

  They had jarred or dried rations, enough to let everyone feel hunger pangs, and hay and what could be grazed for the animals.

  Some of those died, too, and fed the dragons.

  Hal tried to remember how many days they'd been on the march—four, five, more?—couldn't.

  Each day started with his morning flight, as much for morale when the Trenganu survivors saw a dragon overhead and felt protected, as anything else.

  Then he landed, and walked.

  There'd be a rest stop somewhere around the middle of the day, and some sort of tasteless food, then they'd go on until almost dusk, make camp, eat, stand guard, sleep, wake, and march on.

  The snow was almost continuous, and twice the column had to retrace its steps to find the narrow dirt road it was following.

  Hal tried not to notice the bodies, frozen in the night, or killed by natives slipping close to the perimeter. This nightmare, he lied to himself, couldn't last forever.

  Hal was treating himself to a whore's bath in a basin full of melted snow, while the column slowly moved past him. He was trying not to think how much he wanted a full-sized bath, and then a day's uninterrupted sleep in a feather mattress piled high with down blankets, when a voice spoke beside him.

  "Sir? We have a problem."

  He turned, saw a small boy and a smaller girl.

  "Yes," he said, trying to sound benevolent, and not snarl at having his daydream interrupted.

  "One of our goats died," the girl said solemnly.

  Then he remembered who they were.

  The boy's face wrinkled, as if he was about to cry. He looked at the girl, put on a stiff upper lip, only slightly marred by a loud snuffle.

  "We don't know what to do," the boy confessed.

  "We tried to make him get up, but he wouldn't," the girl added.

  "We've got to take the wagon with us," the boy said. "That's all that's left after our parents… went away."

  This was absurd. There were perhaps five thousand civilians, and three or four thousand soldiers he'd taken responsibility for on this march.

  He didn't have the time, or the energy, to worry about these two children, other than having someone find room for them on a wagon somewhere in the column.

  But it suddenly became the most important thing in his world.

  He poured the water out, toweled himself dry with his shirt that no longer made him wrinkle his nose at its filth, and went looking.

  He found a pair of very bedraggled donkeys, and paid an absurd amount out of his own pocket for the beasts. The animals' owner swore this was costing him his dinner for the evening.

  Hal almost took the beasts at swordpoint, but kept his self-control.

  The donkeys were hitched to the wagon, the surviving goat tied to the back, and Hal handed the reins to the boy.

  The girl looked at the angle the cart's deck now sat at, considered the donkeys, started to say something.

  The boy shook his head.

  "Thank you, sir," the girl said, instead of complaining.

  "You are very welcome."

  From then on, the boy and girl became a talisman for Hal. They had to live to reach the Roche positions.

  And if they didn't?

  He didn't know.

  The column staggered into open country that had been cut, settled, and planted.

  But the farmhouses were burnt, the barns ruined, and the winter fields barren.

  Men and women went out and scavenged the ruins, their need greater than the farmers who'd abandoned the holdings.

  The sight of what had once been civilization sparked the column to a slightly faster pace, and for once, the natives didn't harry them.

  Until late that afternoon, when they crested a rise.

  Spread out in the small valley in front of them was rank after rank of the barbarians, waiting for the final battle to be joined.

  Someone behind Hal screamed, and a harsh voice reproved her.

  The response seemed perfectly reasonable to Hal.

  He wished he were braver—if he were, he could just leap on Storm's back, gather the other three Derainians and leave these damned Roche exploiters to their doom.

  But he couldn't.

  And he wasn't exactly a general who might look at these serried ranks of barbarians, deduce a battle plan, and sweep the field.

  The refugees took some
kind of formation automatically, with fighters in the front and flanks, and the civilians in the middle.

  Everyone was looking to Hal for an idea.

  Then shouting came, and a man strode out of the native ranks across the valley. He was very big, very muscled, and wore his hair long, braided behind him.

  Behind him came a man with a shield, and a very short, very stout barbarian wearing furry robes.

  A wizard?

  The big man shouted something.

  A challenge.

  Maybe.

  The man waited for a short time, then shouted again.

  It might have been a call to surrender.

  The man waved a captured long two-handled sword, and laughed, sneeringly.

  A definite challenge.

  Or so Hal guessed.

  He wished he could jump on Storm's back, take off, and murder the bastard.

  But he'd probably dart back into the native ranks the minute he saw the dragon lumber forward.

  Hal sighed, walked back to Storm, and took his crossbow and a magazine of bolts from where they were tied to the dragon's carapace.

  Keeping the crossbow at his side, he walked out in front of the ragged formation of Roche, and drew his sword.

  The great native warrior shouted something, laughed again.

  Holding his sword in front of him, as a challenge, Hal walked forward.

  "You need some backup?" It was Farren.

  "No," Hal said, not turning. "Or, rather, yes. But you don't look like a division of the king's guards.

  "Get ready to get the dragons in the air. You'll know when, and what to do."

  Operating on the assumption that the man in furs was a magician, Hal advanced on the three natives, forcing his mind into thoughts of swordplay. Wizards couldn't read minds. Or so they claimed piously.

  The warrior waiting for him was offered the shield, but disdained it, since Hal wasn't carrying one.

  There was about forty feet between the two men.

  Hal decided that was far enough.

  Moving faster than he thought he ever had in his life, he tossed his sword aside, brought up the crossbow, slid the grip back then forward, dropped a bolt into the track and knelt.

  This close, it was a sure shot.

  Hal put the bolt into the throat of the magician, who screamed, spun, and died.

  The warrior shouted, most likely something about Hal's dishonesty, and ran forward, lifting his sword.

  He'd never seen a repeating crossbow, and, when planning his great gesture, no doubt figured he'd have more than enough time to cut down any archer, any crossbow-man.

  Hal slid the grip back, forward, put his second bolt into the warrior's stomach.

  He half turned, dropped to his knees, pulling uselessly at the bolt, which was buried to the fletching.

  There was a great cry of outrage from the barbarian ranks.

  Hal paid no attention as he reloaded, and shot the shield-bearer in the face.

  Another bolt went into the warrior's chest, and he flopped back, dead.

  Hal was running back toward his own ranks. He heard the shout of natives behind him, the crack of leathery wings ahead, and Farren Mariah and the other dragon fliers rose from the knot of Roche and soared toward him, just off the ground.

  Third back was Storm, and Farren was shouting at the dragon.

  Storm flared his wings, touched down in the muck for an instant, and Hal swung up into the saddle.

  Storm took off, and the flight of dragons attacked the natives head-on.

  Crossbow bolts spat out, and the dragon claws were reaching.

  Arrows came at them, bounced off the carapaces or the dragons' armored faces, and then the beasts struck the barbarian formation, claws rending, tails lashing.

  The surprise of their champion's death and the attack by the monsters was too much.

  The center of the native formation crumbled, and men were running.

  Hal brought Storm up and around, saw the Roche were attacking, and then, once more, the refugees were stumbling forward, a dirty, freezing, unstoppable mass.

  The next day, they were in still-inhabited land, and armed farmers began joining them, and behind them came servants and women carrying an endless amount of food.

  The refugees of the Trenganu massacre gobbled the food, poured home-brewed beer down their throats, and listened to the chatter of victory.

  But few of them could smile, and no one loosened his tight grip on his weapon, nor did their eyes stop sweeping the woods around them for an ambush.

  Hal sat on Storm, who lay contentedly in the middle of the swarming mass. The triumphant shouting was very dim in his ears.

  A few yards away, a small boy, with an even smaller girl, in a cart being pulled by two ragged donkeys with a goat behind it looked at him, then solemnly, not smiling, lifted a fist, with its thumb pointed up.

  12

  There was a great banquet in Lanzi to celebrate the march west, as it was called, rather than a retreat, with capital letters only a tale-teller or two away.

  The survival of less than half of the residents of Trenganu, and a few more from the expeditionary force, was being regarded as some kind of victory.

  But not by the soldiers or by the Dragonmaster.

  One grizzled sergeant spat, "I claim we got our asses beaten like drums, and I don't like it."

  The banquet's guest of honor was supposed to have been Lord Kailas of Kalabas, the Dragonmaster, for his brilliance serving a country not his own.

  But he wasn't there for the party, nor were the other three Derainians. Those three, with whatever loot they'd been able to acquire, were flying west, planning to make a stop at Paestum, then across the Chicor Straits to home.

  Except for Hal Kailas.

  He, Storm beside him, sat on a low mountain to the southeast of Lanzi.

  It was cold, clear, windy, and both moons were out.

  Hal was considering what he should now do with his life.

  He decided that not only would he not be flying for the Roche, with their still-grandiose dreams of conquest, but he had no interest in freelance military work.

  It occurred to him that good causes—if, in fact, there were any—seldom came to mercenaries.

  They were generally stuck with wars that were probably not that honorable, since there were always enough true believers around for the good battles.

  He could, he thought for a short flash, possibly go back into the peacetime army of Deraine.

  That brought a rather derisive laugh.

  Storm stirred and honked what Hal thought might be an echo.

  Being quite rich meant he could become a roue in Rozen. But that didn't sit well… he'd seen enough parties and partygoers on the flight north to Trenganu and, before that, in ruined Carcaor to make his liver tremble for years.

  Hal ruefully realized he didn't make much of a decadent.

  He considered.

  At one time, his dream would have been to be a dragon flier, with his own traveling spectacle.

  But he doubted there'd be much interest these days, since most people associated dragons with war and death.

  Besides, remembering the realities of a dragon show, the catering to stupid people with stupid questions, and giggling schoolgirls, that didn't draw him anymore.

  He thought, hardly for the first time, that the young wanderer caught up by the war was truly dead.

  So the only option left, he thought, was to vegetate on his estates.

  Perhaps he should think about drinking himself to death while boring everyone within a day's flight with war stories.

  He remembered the words of his first great love: "There won't be any after-the-war for a dragon flier."

  It seemed that he was finding a new illustration of that truth, if not the one that Saslic had meant.

  "Oh well," Hal said aloud. "At least I'll never starve."

  Storm looked at him, and let go a long burble.

  "My friend," Kailas said, "you'
re going to have to learn people-speak, since nobody's mastered dragon-talk."

  Storm made a noncommittal noise.

  Hal realized the sky had clouded over, just as a spatter of rain hit him in the face.

  Storm unfurled one wing, brought it like a tent over Hal.

  "Well," Hal said, "at least I've got one friend in the world."

  Somehow comforted, he got up, and climbed into the saddle. He pulled a slicker over his shoulders, and tapped Storm with his reins.

  The dragon thudded down the slope, wings outspread, and took to the air.

  Hal let Storm find his own altitude, then set a course of east-northeast as the storm broke about his shoulders.

  Strangely, not at all unhappy, the lone rider flew on through the driving tempest.

  13

  A month later, Hal sat in one of the drawing rooms of his castle, staring out at the drifting snow.

  Beyond that was the long, sloping beach that led to the sea, and which was dotted with small ice growlers.

  It was a bleak winter, well suited to brooding hopelessly about the future.

  Kailas had returned to Deraine, found nothing for him in the capital, as he'd expected, and flown on north to his lands.

  There seemed to be nothing here either, but at least life was quiet, and there were no intrusions, other than the minor noblemen who discovered Lord Kailas was single once more, and threw parties to "get him out of his gloom."

  Actually, of course, these parties were intended to introduce said noblemen's excessively eligible daughters.

  At the moment, Hal wanted nothing emotional and no one in his life, such as it was, until he figured out what the hells he was going to do next.

  At least he hadn't given in to either the joys of the bottle or, worse, fallen into some sort of disastrous love affair.

  Yet.

  He ate, exercised, slept, rode Storm out over the ocean each day, and read many books—the castle's previous tenant had been much of a reader.

  He'd sent to Rozen for more volumes, and read indiscriminately—romances, epic verse, history. The only thing he cared little about was writings about the war.

  The storm had isolated the castle, which suited Hal quite well. He didn't want or need company, there were enough supplies to last for years, and there was nothing he felt terribly like doing.