by E. E. Knight
“Show yourself every day,” AuRon told Natasatch. Eyes watching the rebel camp would be sure that Naf remained with his ally dragon. “Fly off to the west in the morning and return in the afternoon. They will think you are communicating with a Hypatian column.”
“Yes, yes, my lord,” she said, with the tone of exaggerated obedience she used to mock him. “Just show myself, and above all don’t start any fights with the big beaknoses. No matter how hungry I get for some fireroasted squab.”
They nuzzled each other, scratching behind the jawline with griff points.
“I suppose it’s no good asking you to be careful,” she said.
“You were the one who wanted to join in this war.”
“To form a bond of friendship that will last until our hatchlings have their wings,” she said.
He glanced around. “Men have short memories. But I would like to see this Queen struck down and Hieba safe with Naf, if she still lives.”
“And let us not forget a hoard this time. Glory and gallantry are all well and good, but our hatchlings need coin. Carry off all you can.”
“Yes, yes, of course. Naf will be generous, if this works.”
When Naf had his band selected and properly oathed to whatever gods men imagined in charge of such affairs, they removed to another camp a little east. From there, scouts set out to explore the trails and passes.
While in camp, they placed all their arms and shields in bags of netting running along AuRon’s sides and he tried a test flight. He could not even get off the ground and managed only a short glide until they relieved him of the burden of everyone’s chain shirts.
“A decent meal of metal for your mate, at least,” Naf laughed.
“Save them,” AuRon said. “The workmanship’s too fine for a dragon belly.”
“The dwarves of the Chartered Company are old friends of ours. They feel the weight of the Queen’s grasping hand and have sent armorers to aid our cause.”
“Then I’m doubly sorry I can’t carry them.”
AuRon tried one more flight and found he could bear the weight creditably. If this was anything like flying with a coat of scale, his mate was ten times the dragon he was, to fly so far so fast under such a burden.
Without any complaints except an occasional groan. He didn’t deserve such a dragon-dame.
Naf’s picked band gathered their shields and spears.
“I’m sorry,” AuRon gasped, his wings aching. “The rest are too heavy to carry.”
“Shields and helms will have to do for a start. We can scavenge from the dead if we must.”
“They’ll laugh themselves to death, seeing loinclothed men attacking with nothing but spears, helms, and shields,” one of the warriors joked.
“Are you ready for your chance in a thousand?”
Naf laughed. “The spirits my men are in, I say it’s a chance in a hundred now. But if I’m to die, it’s best for my people if I do it under the walls of Ghioz. Better for me, too. If I’m to take up residence in the other world, I’d just as soon be near my beloved.”
They made their way into Ghioz in easy stages, taking old smuggling trails between Hypatia and Ghioz. AuRon walked most of the way with the men, though it galled him to crawl along at a foot pace after years of flying.
The borderlands were empty. Even the usual watch stations at the main mountain passes had only a handful of soldiers in them and a single messenger horse.
The scouts found a group of young men hiding in the woods, avoiding the Queen’s service. According to them, every pair of legs who could walk were either raiding in the southlands or aiding the Ironriders in their invasion of Hypatia.
“They’re risking being sold on the auction block by avoiding the Queen’s bondsmen,” Naf told AuRon. “When I rode with the Red Guard, we rounded up a score or two like those every year. They all said the same thing—better service in the fields under a taskmaster than facing arrows and cutthroats in the Queen’s garrison houses.”
They crossed over into Ghioz, and gradually the lands gave onto mountain pastures and terraced fields. The rivers and streams began to run off to the southeast—they’d made it across the flow divide and into Ghioz.
When they could see the lights of the city—amazing that you could see a city at night from a horizon away—they said their goodbyes.
Naf had his men divest themselves of their weapons and arms and rig AuRon’s netting in a tree so he could easily slip into it.
“We will travel faster if we go by road, as a labor levy.”
“We might even beg a meal or two at the Queen’s breadhouses,” one of the scouts, now dressed as a taskmaster, said.
They made arrangements to meet in the Queen’s woods outside the citadel, at moonrise three days hence.
“I feel naked without so much as a dagger on me,” Naf said, shivering in a bare loincloth, sandals, and a blanket wrapped about his shoulders and closed with a bit of twine.
“Let’s hope that the Citadel Guard has been stripped as completely as the border posts,” a captain said.
“See you at moonrise, three nights hence,” AuRon said.
“I hope so,” Naf replied, his usual smile absent. “I don’t care to spend the rest of my years knee-deep in the irrigation ditches or breaking road-gravel.”
After they moved on down the mountain trail through the high fields, AuRon stayed under tree-cover and waited, watching the skies and sniffing the wind and hoping for good weather three nights ahead. He was tempted to raid livestock, but satisfied himself with wild goats that had evidently escaped captivity and learned to live in the mountain forest. They were alert, and it was all he could to catch the old and the sick without using flame to aid his hunting.
Finally, the time came. The weather was cooperating in their endeavor at the moment—bluster but likely to rain. Depending on when the rain arrived it might be a good thing or a bad. He got into his harness of netted weapons and shields, climbed to a steep hill where he’d have a nice drop, and launched into the night air.
He stayed so low on the trip that he sometimes touched treetop on his downstrokes.
A light drizzle set in. He was glad he’d overflown the city in perfect weather and so had some idea of the land Naf selected for their meeting.
The river was in full flood, it being spring, and Naf and his men were waiting on a dry island surrounded by river. They were in a cold camp.
“In happier days Hieba and I walked these woods,” said Naf. “The view of the city and the sculpture on the mountain is incomparable.”
On the other side of the river were many wharves and built-up sections, and a few lights burned through the mist. The citadel itself.
AuRon remembered what Naf had told him of it as the men buckled on their helmets and shields.
Ghihar. The old city of the Ghi men, walled in the days when they had enemies on every border or fought civil wars with the population downriver.
It was a simple enough plan. They’d size the old city’s small garrison, free Hieba from her house—and whatever other hostages the Queen kept who wished to leave the prison that masqueraded as fine homes—and leave before the sun rose, Hieba and her daughter upon AuRon’s back, Naf and his men riding on the fresh horses under the standard of the Citadel Guard, who would have been taken prisoner in their beds and then locked up tight in one of the old towers. AuRon could fly quickly enough that they’d be back in the borderlands by the time the sun rose.
Dirty weather would only slow the roc-riders and make their search difficult. It seemed likely that they’d see some, judging from the wall of clouds coming up from the south.
Of course there was the problem of the dragons the Queen was known to employ.
AuRon would take care of diverting them. And even if he did see them, he could outfly anything scaled.
The first job was to get the men across the river and onto one of the lesser roads leading to the citadel.
He did the swimming. All they had to do
was hang on to his fringe, half in and half out of the water. They showed admirable fortitude in the crossing, sucking air as the cold water struck their loins and puffing like nervous baboons he’d hunted in the jungles.
Four trips later, he and Naf and the men were hurrying up the road toward the citadel, while residents barred their doors and shutters.
A pair of men ran off up the hill toward the citadel, ringing handbells.
Naf made a hissing noise and arrows brought the unfortunate pair down, three in one and two in another, tightly grouped around the upper spine.
“I’m glad your bowmen aren’t shooting at me,” AuRon said.
“Firewatch, I think,” Naf said, lifting their belts and examining the buckles.
The walls of the citadel appeared out of the rain. Water streaked down their sides, running down crevices worn into the masonry over hundreds of years. They were impressive walls for man’s handiwork. AuRon guessed they were wide enough at the top to allow horses to ride upon them or animals to pull siege engines. Dripping fabric sunscreens at the top flapped in the wind.
What had once been a ditch around the walls was now filled with muck and refuse.
“To the gate! Hurry!” Naf called, pointing to a small arch between two towers, like twin legs of some great troll, torn by arrow-slits.
The gate, under a low arch, was a trifling affair of iron bars. He saw lights beyond, an open courtyard of some kind. A horn sounded from the wall at the sight of the soldiers. A glass shattered on the paving stones in front of the gate.
AuRon flung himself against the gate and tore it from its hinges in one solid piece. It landed flat and Naf and his men dashed across it.
“Siegecraft isn’t necessary when you’ve the aid of a dragon,” Naf said.
A man in a twilight-red tunic appeared in the gap to a stairway. AuRon lashed out with a saa, and knocked him back where he had come from, and dragon-dashed out into the courtyard.
Naf’s men paused as they took their bearings, then divided into three disciplined columns, save for a few who stayed behind to care for men blinded by the contents of that smashed glass that had fallen behind him. One file made for a staircase climbing the back of the walls, a second moved toward an angled-in tower, almost a pyramid, at the center of the citadel, and a third, led by Naf, went up a road lined by fine wooden and stone homes with sharp-angled roofs like a row of teeth.
He watched the center column enter the angled-in tower and the other column divide to move around each side of the walls. There was hardly any guard at all atop the walls, and what there was dropped their weapons and ran for the tower doors.
AuRon flew up to the wall and helped the wall-storming party by bashing in a barred tower door with his tail. In another tower a trio of men cranked around a boxlike war-machine. He was tempted to use his flame, but a sudden burst of fire would draw whatever might be riding above in the clouds.
Above all, he must keep the roc-riders busy elsewhere.
He flapped hard in the direction of the face on the mountainside as angry lightning began to flash.
AuRon noticed a strange glow from the top of the face, at the crown of the head. At first he thought it was some reflection of a fire in a chimney, but no fire he’d ever seen burned white.
He suspected he knew the source of the star-like light.
AuRon decided that the easiest way to enter would be through the mouth. The scaffolding blocked the way like wooden bars.
He picked up speed, folded his wings so they angled back as if he were diving into water after tuna. He went through the wood as though it were riverbank reeds.
The scaffolding made a satisfying crashing sound as it fell.
He marked fleeing forms of humans in various states of nightdress.
A pair of guards charged in, spears at the ready. AuRon roared at them, and they charged out with the same enthusiasm as they had entered with.
“What is this insult?” a commanding voice called.
AuRon saw the Red Queen standing in a stairway. She wore a mask that looked as though it was made of carefully pressed paper.
“You owe me a ransom of gold,” AuRon said. “I am here to collect.”
“You did a poor job of delivering my message. We keep our bargains. We will give you a quantity of silver, and we may part in peace.”
“Give me what I have earned, or die.”
“That is an easy choice. Kill me. It will save us a chest full of coin, that we may then find a better use for.”
“I do not desire your gold,” AuRon said. “You may satisfy my demand by paying me in flesh.”
“Naf and his men have failed, you know. All your clever planning simply put him and those men of his in our hands with less trouble than it would have taken to hunt him out of those mountains.”
AuRon bristled.
“What did you want in the citadel, I wonder?” the Red Queen said, walking out into the center of the nexus of stairs.
“If you give up Hieba and her child, I will forget your betrayal,” AuRon said, listening to cries and arguments of the servants.
“Is this some exotic appetite of dragons? We have heard rumors of such compulsions.”
“Let us go in peace.”
“So you can return them to that—traitor? Young Desthenae is being raised to lead her people under the title of governor. She promises to be beautiful enough to keep poets and songwriters inspired for generations to come. We would not like to let such grooming go to waste.”
“Then pay me the ransom promised or die.”
AuRon loosed his flame and the Red Queen vanished in a brief scream. Was she insane?
A burst of bluish light darted from the conflagration. It danced before his eyes like a lost firefly. Then it whirled up the stairs.
AuRon followed it, up and around turns, through the palace. Servants stared, not at the jumping light but at AuRon pounding up behind. Even as he panted from the chase, AuRon suspected that, like some hues of cave moss glow, the light could not be seen by human eyes.
They burst through the double doors at the back of the mountain’s head. The light raced up the ridge of the mountain to the tiny temple high on the mountainside.
He took off, circled the giant sculpture and looked down into the city. Perhaps he imagined it, or it was some trick of rain and wind, but it seemed that wings glided over the citadel.
He raced to the temple, burning its image into his eyes as the light faded.
Upon alighting, he listened, but only the mountain wind entered his ears.
He descended through graceful elvish sculpture built on stout dwarvish foundations, went down a wide, curving stair, and then squeezed through a crude blighter passage.
And so he came to the chamber.
The roots of the world itself held up its ceiling, or so it seemed.
AuRon had the strange feeling the mountain had grown up around this place. The rocks felt old, as if even they were tired and worn down by the ages.
A tree stood at the center, though it was an odd sort of tree, like two sets of roots joined at the trunk. One set of roots gripped the ceiling, the other the ground.
In places the roots bulged like diseased skin. Some of the perturbations were small, red, apple-like, others were as swollen as a bloated pig.
One of the swollen nodes moved, pulsing as though it were taking breaths. AuRon bent his head close. Its skin was stretched tight, reminding him of his own back before his wings broke through.
A face looked back at him.
The face of the Red Queen.
He recoiled in shock.
He had his flame. Would it be enough? He scored the trunk of the tree, and the pulpy wood gave way in sheets more in the manner of flesh than bark.
A hand punched out of the egg-node. Red webbing hung about it like a long veil.
The flame came out of fright. He spread it, concentrating on the tree. The bark hissed rather than burned as the flame lashed across it, like dragonflame vomited u
pon seawater.
He paid special attention to the nodes. They steamed, swelled, and exploded.
The air boiled with smoke, but he had to complete the destruction. He lashed out right and left, breaking and smashing the nodes. Not fast enough. He rolled, burning himself, smearing freshly grown blood all over himself.
Out out out! Out of air, out of hide, out of time.
He fled up the stairs, dragging flame behind, and out into the clean mountain air.
Horror awaited him in the citadel. Naf’s men hung from the walls, already being pecked by crows, with bloated vultures waiting beneath, evidently experienced enough in the ways of the Ghioz citadel to know that the bodies would fall eventually.
There was fighting outside the sloping tower at the center of the citadel. Those within the tower exchanged arrows with rocks fired by war-machines outside.
A green dragon, long and light-framed, circled above the tower, and above the green dragon two roc-riders circled higher.
Had he been thinking rationally, given time to plan, he would have glided high above the roc-riders, then dove on them from straight up. He could strike at one and drop flame on the other without much loss of speed, and fall on the dragon jarring the tower with strikes of her tail.
But like a fool, all he could think of was Naf, and possibly his men, on the inside of that tower as its walls were battered and opened by the war-machines.
He dropped fire on them. The rocs dove, talons out, rending and tearing out chunks of wing. He crashed to the ground, rolling and scattering soldiers and their horses and oxen.
He dragon-dashed for the ruins of the door. Arrows struck him along the sides but did not slow him. He snapped off feathers as he squeezed through the door.
It was a vast, square room with four fat columns running from floor to ceiling, stairs running up each side and what seemed to be old horse stalls filled with crates and chests and bundles.
Naf’s men, dressed in a mixture of their own armory and Ghioz breastplates and chain, were lighting flaming arrows to fire at the war-machines as other bowmen covered them.
