The next edifice we went behind mimicked the last arrangement, except these four buildings looked decrepit and unlived in. To be sure, no sound sprang from any of them. From here Clarissa described part of a dirt path that circled the outer part of town.
“There’s a guardsman… There goes another two.”
“Six guardsmen already?” said Eu-Sook. “Sounds too many for a village this size.”
“She’s right,” said Gerard. “We’ve barely even seen the town proper. Assuming this is indicative of Furubiro’s sentry assignments, it could mean at least fifty soldiers guarding the perimeter alone. That is, if we’re not simply seeing an unusual concentration.”
“Then let’s make certain we’re not,” I said.
To that end, we tried keeping to the perimeter instead of going deeper. It didn’t take long for Clarissa’s inhuman sight to distinguish more armored people patrolling the southern section of town, though that at least made sense due to the partly cobbled road leading in and out of Furubiro.
We retraced our steps and then went north, where we found plenty of guards on patrol. Unless this place faced relentless misfortune from fiends, bandits, or wild animals, watching the northern woods so closely made little sense. It had me thinking these guards were not here to protect people, but to prevent them from escaping. The others shared a similar sentiment.
“It explains why there are no villagers out and about,” said Gerard. “It’s not late enough for it to be so dead. I’d expect to see one farmer or hunter out here, yet there’s no one but the guards.”
“Which means most of the villagers are being forced to stay here,” said Odet. “We need to find a way for them to flee the village before we move in.”
“It might be better for them to stay in their homes.”
“Perhaps if we faced an honorable army, but the Advent will surely use the villagers as shields or hostages. We must guide them out of harm’s way.”
Those in my group glanced at one another, unsure of how to tell Odet that coordinating the evacuation of hundreds of people in secret was not likely going to be possible in one night.
Taking the thankless task upon myself, I said, “Ghevont, tell Odet why her evacuation goal may not be possible.”
“Oh, all right. Well, for one-”
“That will not be necessary, master scholar.” Turning her eye roll into a glare, the princess turned to me and said, “I’m aware of the difficulties. That does not mean we shouldn’t do everything possible to save as many lives as we can.”
“I think we’re already doing a pretty damn lot to save as many lives as we can.”
“And we can do a little more.”
“How? Dig a tunnel under every building?”
“You don’t ne-”
“Shhh!” warned Clarissa, who was squatting and peering around a corner of the old, empty stables we used to conceal ourselves. The hand she held up lowered a few moments later. “Okay, they’re gone. You can whisper-fight again.”
Taking advantage of the pause, I said, “I’m sorry about the mocking comment, but you understand what I’m trying to say, right?”
Also calmer, Odet said, “Yes, I do. I realize any plan we enact will be discovered quickly, but I am still willing to do much to save a single family, a single life.”
“I know you are. There’s still time to take things slow. Let’s first see if we can speak with a villager and learn anything new.”
Our first stop was the wide house that presumably owned the stables. The modest wooden house did not have glass windows, only square openings with shutters. Enough windows were open for us to determine its vacant state. The same could be said for the next domicile. We risked going deeper into Furubiro to inspect a hut of a house. We would have skipped it as a possibility of habitation had it not been for the snoring Gerard overheard coming from inside.
Clarissa used the single window at the back of the hovel to peep in. Putting up two fingers, she said, “Guards. Both sleeping. Front door is open.”
“Shall we?” Odet asked me.
“Let’s. Are we clear, Eu-Sook?”
She took an extra second to peer around the corner. Eu-Sook then turned back and offered me the slightest of nods, though she probably considered it a normal sized one. I unsheathed my blade and turned the corner. Odet and Clarissa followed my dash to the front door. The scouts trailed them next. Being the nosiest of us, Gerard and Ghevont stayed by the window.
I entered a single room space occupied by a little stove, a small table, and two straw mats. Dozing on the mats were the two guards Clarissa mentioned, each wearing the same silver scaled armor no mere village defender had the coin to buy. The sleeping accommodations could not have allowed for a deep sleep, but my group came in quietly enough not to disturb it. On seeing the guards, Eu-Sook muttered something in her tongue.
“What is it?” I asked her.
She pointed at the forearm of the snoring man, which wore a scaled vambrace, though colored gold instead of the silver encasing everything else. “Teng’s men.”
“Who?”
“General Teng. Commander of Jegeru’s northern ar-”
The snoring stopped. Not taking any chances, I pressed the blade under the slender man’s chin, stopping any word from coming out. He did squeak out a garbled sound, but he quickly surmised his disadvantage. Imitating my example, Eu-Sook’s two scouts used their short katanas in the same manner on the younger, fatter soldier. They used their hands to gag anything his throat created.
To the man under my power, I said, “Do you speak the shared tongue?” Only his thick, furrowed eyebrows answered me. “Talk to him, Eu-Sook. Find out what he’s doing here.”
Eu-Sook did as requested by squatting next to the soldier’s head. I relieved the pressure on the soldier’s chin to allow him to move his jaw, resting the blade’s tip on the throat itself. A harsh but hushed foreign conversation transpired for a minute, during which time I noticed how crowded the hut felt. What’s the saying? Something about not being able to swing a dead cat? Anyway, the door was closed most of the way, with Clarissa using the crack to keep an eye out.
Not looking away from our prisoner, Eu-Sook said, “He says the general has captured Furubiro because they have betrayed Jegeru. They have gathered most of the villagers at the center of town. They keep them there to be punished.”
“How?”
My question was translated. The answer was, “He doesn’t know exactly how. Says villagers are always weak. They get strong for a while, but then get weak again. Other villagers are free to move, but only to work, to cook and clean for everyone.”
“Horrible,” said Odet. “They really believe everyone here is a traitor? Every farmer and hunter? Every woman and child? Where is the general now?”
The question necessitated another minute long conversation. Afterward, Eu-Sook replied, “I have to try and argue that the general could be the real traitor. That you find enemy here and he’s helping the enemy get stronger by sacrificing our people. I tell him you are dragon knight and to believe our words, but he is not sure what to believe now.”
“I understand it’s a lot to take in, bu-”
“Uh-oh,” said Clarissa. “We have two soldiers heading this way. They have crossbows.”
“Shit,” I said. “How far?”
“They came out from behind that old barn, so, what, thirty yards away? Damn, what do we-”
My soldier shouted a foreign word. I almost cut his throat on instinct, but Odet’s presence had me swinging my boot instead. I kicked his face and knocked him out, so he couldn’t respond to the hollering soldiers outside attempting to get more answers.
Since they heard none, Clarissa said, “Uh, they’re calling over more soldiers.”
“Eu-Sook,” I said, going up to the second solider. “Send your scouts to the captain, and tell him to head for the center of town. It looks like we’ll have to fight your own people.”
“No,” said Odet. “There’s s
till be a chance to convince the soldiers they’re being lied to. Summon Aranath. They’ll listen to a dragon knight.”
“Maybe, but the Advent won’t. If they’re here and guarding the villagers, then seeing a dragon might have them panicking.” The scouts removed the threat of their weapons from the soldier, opening him up for my sword’s propelled pommel to knockout his waking awareness. “But if they believe their pawns can stop a few trespassers, then they have no reason to kill the villagers. Either way, we need the help.”
With Odet’s ward cast, we stepped outside to see organizing soldiers lining up less than forty yards away. Our two scouts summoned their griffins and jumped on their backs. The beasts trotted like horses before unfolding their wings and pushing off the ground.
Rejoining us, Gerard asked, “Now what?”
“We have to try convincing them they’re being lied to,” said Odet.
“Let’s at least stall them,” I said, sheathing my sword.
Odet’s shield expanded in front of us as we stood idle in a line, waiting to respond to whatever happened next. Clarissa’s overworked head constantly twirled to catch anyone or anything that tried to flank us. For the moment, however, the dozen soldiers stayed in front of our vision, even as the number doubled seconds later. They formed their own line and began marching up to the intruders, many aiming their bows and crossbows at us. Others had their katanas drawn.
“Gerard,” I said. “Bring the unconscious soldiers here. Eu-Sook, tell them who you are, who we are. Tell them we did not kill their men and do not want to fight them. We want to fight the Advent, the Drorazen Order. Whatever they call them.”
With no time to waste, the head scout stepped up and her small frame bellowed my statements as loudly as she could. Gerard was quick to drag both insensible soldiers to our position. Combining Eu-Sook’s words with the visual of their comrades slowed the marching line, but they still closed the distance step by step.
Translating a soldier’s response, Eu-Sook said, “They want us to surrender our weapons and lay on the ground.”
“That’s going to be a problem,” I said. Their line spread out to the point its ends started to flank us. I wanted to draw my sword and threaten the lives of the unconscious soldiers to see if that induced them to stop, but I had an inkling these fooled soldiers would not heed the bluff. I drew my sword. “No choice now.”
The line stopped when the roar of a dragon trembled the world from overhead. An instant later and the world did more than shudder. A burst of heavy green light erupted from the ground all around us. Its intensity poked my eyes as solidly as a callused finger, and though it subsided as suddenly as it flashed, a dull green afterglow continued to illuminate the lower half of buildings and people. Before I blinked twice, my link with Aranath slackened to the point I needed to expend thrice as much prana to keep him around.
Rubbing her eyes, Clarissa said, “Ahh! What’s going on?!”
“I believe our prana is being drained,” said Ghevont, one of his eyes shut tight. “There must be absorption runes buried throughout the town.”
“Mercer!” said Gerard.
The green knight was gawking behind us. Looking where his sight marked, I saw an immense nismerdon barrier rising a hundred feet away. Its dark wine-colored wall slanted upwards and inwards for hundreds of feet, melding with other expanding barriers in the distance to create a single pyramid-shaped ward that encompassed most of Furubiro and eclipsed the moon’s light. If it hadn’t been for the rune lights, absolute darkness would have taken over. This was not a barrier cast by mere humans.
Brightening the world again, Aranath spewed an avalanche of fire between us and the soldiers. The green light under us faded, the draining effect diminishing somewhat when the spell light around us disappeared altogether.
“Aranath! Break the barrier!”
The dragon banked toward the magical wall, releasing a long stream of flames that dissolved any part of the barrier it grazed. The huge laceration tried to reform, but the next fiery pass from the inflamed beast scorched the base of the barrier, arresting the healing process. The remaining ward twitched as much as my nerves did after a summon. Parts of it even retreated. A small victory that cost more prana than I would have liked.
Meanwhile, I ran into the middle of the dying flames to get a look at what the soldiers were doing. As expected, their expressions expressed both confusion about their prana being drained and alarm at seeing a dragon in the flesh.
Guessing or hoping enough of them understood me, I said, “Do you feel your prana leaving you?! It’s being stolen by your true enemy! They will sacrifice your lives to-”
As a direct validation to my unfinished allegation, the glow of the town gained strength. It felt like the air was slowly being drawn out from my lungs. My ears suffered next when a pained, angry howl came from Aranath. The hippo-sized chunk of rock that struck him crashed through the roof of a house as the dragon swerved to avoid the next flung boulder.
I couldn’t see the origin of the attack, but Aranath, through the sword’s link, said, “Someone has summoned stone sprites! They’re defending a smaller nismerdon barrier at the center of the village.”
“Come pick us up!”
“There!” said Clarissa, pointing at the group of soldiers.
The group of soldiers split down the middle to allow a large chestnut horse and its rider to gallop through. The rider was a heavily bearded man donning scaled armor of a white hue and a flowing red mantle. A great curved sword jutted forward as he yelled something in his ancestral tongue. Whatever impact I had with the soldiers vanished with this man’s charge.
Feeding the special element around me, I rose a wall of dragon flames to force his horse to rear up. The counter must have been a strong wave of water colliding with the heat, for a cloud of steam overtook me. I backed away, overhearing the screeches of war griffins originating behind us. Eu-Sook’s griffin joined in on the thrilled shrieks after she summoned it. In what I assumed to be the horseman’s voice, an order was given that resulted in a gale of amassed wind being heaved at my group. Odet had her shield up, but it was Aranath’s flung fireball that repulsed the worst of it.
The dragon landed next to us and breathed more fire between us and the withdrawing soldiers. None of us needed more than a single jump to grab the straps dangling off the saddle. Once we had pulled ourselves up, Aranath pulled himself up to the sky. My link with Aranath felt stronger being in actual contact with him, but even in the sky the prana absorbing runes stole a large slice of our spell’s power.
From the air I noticed how the barrier around Furubiro had almost dimmed to full transparency. The waning perimeter barrier allowed the flock of ally griffins to invade the town from every side. Except for the group of soldiers we just left, most of the enemy looked to be concentrating around the brightest runes in the center of town. Reflecting the rune light and turning it a sickly green color was the nismerdon barrier pyramid Aranath mentioned. It stood thirty feet tall and covered an area the size of a large courtyard.
Fifteen or so stone sprites encircling the bright center caught sight of Aranath again and hurled hardened fragments of the ground at him. Rather than dodging, the dragon pelted successive volleys of fireballs to rive the projectiles. He chose this head-on strategy so he didn’t have to change course, for Aranath wanted to land on a spacious path that did not have him trampling a building in the act. He could also burn the enemy rune without the flames spreading to the buildings that possibly held the captive villagers.
On landing, his flames scattered the nearby humans, but a stone sprite refused to budge, raising a thick dirt wall to block the boulder-melting fervor. Aranath, refusing to be challenged by a living rock, added prana and breath to blast away its creation. The sprite itself was swaddled in dragon flame, likely experiencing a burn for the first time in its existence. I was glad stone sprites could not scream. A couple of seconds later found the sprite as nothing more than a loose pile of white hot rocks.<
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The other sprites and soldiers would have had a large target to aim for as the human passengers climbed down the dragon, but the emerging griffin riders forced them to defend their flanks. Aranath crawled forward, charring the ground to decrease the absorption power of the runes. I stayed close to Aranath to save prana while the others moved wherever soldier or sprite challenged us.
Odet, on the lookout for anything resembling a prison for captured villagers, hurried toward a three level pagoda right in the middle of a large rune. She lifted the iron rod keeping the double doors locked and went inside with Gerard following.
My destination rested no more than twenty yards ahead, near a roofed well. This near the barrier, I made out a bulbous profile that reminded me of the shut “flower bud” back in Dulcet, though this one appeared to be made from smoother root-like tendrils and rose twice as tall. Since we didn’t spot this in the air when we first came, I assumed it must have been buried or hidden with an illusion spell before now. The crystal on Ghevont’s staff hummed and flickered being this close to its prehistoric progenitor.
“Burn it down,” I demanded of my dragon.
At the same moment Aranath lowered his head next to me, I invoked all of my dragon fire training and focused it on my extended left hand. When Aranath released his torrent, I sent my will to the end of his precious ability, doing my utmost to foster its fervid wrath.
Ten yards away, the south facing side of the barrier was entirely engulfed in fire only the gods could endure, if not comfortably. Unlike the less concentrated barrier enclosing the village, this ward resisted much longer than an instant. Also in contrast, the untouched barrier did not pull away in defeat, it exploded outward in a strange pulse that smelled like frozen meat. Ghevont’s ward and Clarissa’s water spell protected us from the brunt of its trauma.
Breaching the ward was not our only goal, of course. The unbroken blaze immersed the giant bud almost immediately. Over the gushing of fire, the bud sizzled, splintered, and cracked. That soon stopped as the shell melted into a mush that bubbled and splattered. Then my brain recognized an unrecognizable sound no human had ever heard in Orda’s history. The rasping, harsh, steel-grating-on-steel moan violating the air sounded too deep, too otherworldly to even be perceptible, but perceptible it was. Despite the exotic nature to the racket, its cause was universal—pain.
The Dragon Knight's Soul Page 28
