“I don’t know how she retook Balsalom,” Kreth admitted, admiration rising for the doomed queen. “But she hasn’t broken free of his power. A wight attacks her soul. It will soon bind her in the dark lord’s service.”
“What?” the king asked. “Are you sure?” When Kreth nodded, he added, “But perhaps she will fight the wight and win.”
In spite of Collvern’s professed hatred of Balsalom, and the indignity of seeing Balsalom sit atop Syrmarria’s ruins, where Collvern’s ancestors had reigned, Kreth sensed a grudging admiration for the khalifa in his words.
“Unlikely, but suppose that she does fight the wight and win,” Kreth answered. “She carries the dark wizard’s seed, my king.” He shook his head, feeling sorry for the young queen, swept into events beyond her control. “Whether or not the wight takes her soul to the enemy, she will die in childbirth.”
#
Markal denied Nathaliey’s assertion that Chantmer had turned the gurgolet against them. “I don’t believe it. Chantmer is a hard, unyielding man, but he is devoted to the Order. And as long as the Citadel stands, the battle might still be won.”
Nathaliey said, “What then? Do you want to seek for Chantmer?”
“It’s our only choice. You stay and protect the retreat.”
The Veyrians poured across the bridge. Enemy mammoth and giants joined masses of camel and horse cavalry to break the Eriscoban line. Hoffan’s troops rushed into the gap and the battle degenerated into a thousand separate battles, that spread like a wave from the bridge. Arrows cut down many of the enemy troops as they crossed the bridge, but the dragon and the gurgolet put an end to that defense.
The dragon swooped around the tower that guarded the west side of the bridge, while dragon wasps forced the griffins away. It bathed the tower with its fiery breath. Arrows sped to meet it, but they did no damage to the dragon. The gurgolet spewed mud on the archers along the banks, wreaking more havoc.
The sun dipped low on the horizon, and Markal hoped that night might bring a few hours respite to allow Hoffan’s army an orderly retreat to the Citadel. He didn’t know how long the gurgolet would hold its life force, but not indefinitely. And if he could find Chantmer, they could fight the dragon. He was not yet ready to surrender.
Nathaliey found another wizard, a man named Kennett Rogha. The man placed his good hand on Markal’s shoulder. Markal bowed his head and waited, his spine stiffening at the influx of power that came when the man spoke his incantation. It was a simple spell, and Kennett was strong enough that his left hand was only mildly scorched, instead of blackened like his right hand after raising the gurgolet.
The sky dimmed and Markal thought for a moment that one of the cloud castles had passed in front of the sun. But it was Kennett’s spell that dimmed the sky. Through the shade that passed over his eyes, he saw a string of light that extended from his chest and stretched northwest from the hill. Follow the string and it would lead him to Chantmer.
#
The griffins fought an increasingly desperate battle. Three fell on the dragon’s first blast, and half a dozen more sped away badly burned. Dragon wasps attacked from all sides, but Flockheart charged the dragon, knowing that it could obliterate the entire army. Hoffan’s wizards had summoned the other monster that now decimated men on the bridge, let them deal with it.
The dragon burned the tower. Men jumped from windows to the river, clothes burning. It took the dragon some time to stoke its fires; Flockheart took the opportunity to lead a charge. Darik pulled hard on Joffa’s lead, and the griffin followed the others, flying directly at the dragon with a scream.
Dragon wasps closed from all sides, trying to drive them away. One attacked from Darik’s right side and he braced himself with sword outstretched, holding the griffin with his other hand. The dragon kin pulled back on the wasp, but the wasp’s underbelly rammed into Waspcleaver. The wasp screamed and whipped its head around to bite at Darik’s face, while the dragon kin stabbed at him with his spear.
Joffa rolled onto its back and only Darik’s grip kept him from falling loose. He tangled in the tethers. Darik freed his sword and grabbed Joffa with his forearm. Joffa righted himself, the dragon wasp jolted loose. The kin fought to bring its mount for another attack, but the wasp dropped toward the ground with blood streaming from its underbelly. More wasps came from below, but Joffa outran them, joining the others in attack on the dragon. Griffins clawed and bit at the dragon’s flanks.
Eighty feet long including tail, the dragon presented the hard, leathery skin on its back and lashed its tail to drive away the griffins. Darik stabbed its neck as he passed. His sword bounced off harmlessly. The dragon turned its massive head to bite at Darik and Joffa. Its eyes glowed like embers and its breath stank of hot ash. Darik saw fires in its belly, light rising from its blackened mouth and down its neck. Joffa lurched away just in time.
Another griffin and rider weren’t so lucky. Distracted by wasps, the griffin got too close to the dragon’s mouth. The dragon grabbed the griffin in its mouth by one wing and a forelimb. The rider screamed, her ankle also caught in its mouth. The griffin pecked and scratched at the hardened scales around the dragon’s mouth while the monster shook its head back and forth like a dog worrying a bone. The woman tried desperately to pry her leg free with her sword.
Darik sped to help but the dragon finished before he got close, opening its mouth to let its victims fall. The griffin dropped straight to the ground, two hundred feet below. The griffin was dead before it hit, but its rider, leg mangled, was not.
The dragon belched more fire, and caught two griffins, which fell burning toward the river. The wizards’ monster savaged Sleptstock with hot mud, but the griffins had turned the dragon long enough for Hoffan to form a defensive perimeter about the town. A well-shot arrow caught the dragon in the wing and it roared and turned away. Just below Darik a griffin fell with two spears in its side. Its rider was nowhere to be seen.
Some griffins fled, pursued by wasps. Others pulled out of range of the dragon. Darik found himself surrounded by half a dozen wasps. He pulled hard on the tether, climbing Joffa higher. One of the cloud castles loomed overhead and, remembering how he’d escaped with Daria at Balsalom, Darik climbed higher. The wasps broke off pursuit as he drew close. But he had no time to find Collvern and plead with the king to help the Free Kingdoms. He dropped toward the village to look for Daria.
Griffins scattered from the battle, leaving the skies to wasps, the dragon, and the wizard’s monster. And as it grew dark, Darik found it harder to look for Daria. He returned to the battle, staying over friendly forces.
The Free Kingdoms had lost the bridge Hoffan hoped to hold for an entire week. Dead men and horses lay everywhere, far too many from the Free Kingdoms. Veyrians poured across the bridge by the thousands, pushing the Eriscobans from Sleptstock.
A massive caravan pushed its way through the enemy army from the east, an oversized cart pulled by teams of oxen. Darik looked at the cargo and recognized the rounded iron surface of the bombast at once. Cragyn’s Hammer, all the way through the mountains and approaching the Citadel. Fresh despair washed over him.
Dusk came at last, and with it a small respite. The wizards’ monster sank quietly from sight. Perhaps worried about ambush, the enemy stopped its advance, allowing Hoffan’s men a retreat toward the Citadel, fifteen miles distant. But as they retreated, the dragon flew along the Tothian Way, burning wagon-trains and killing dozens.
So much lost, Darik thought as he dropped his exhausted mount on a deserted hilltop a few miles northwest of the river. And they hadn’t even seen the dark wizard yet. Toth. What magic would he wield when he finally presented himself? In the distance, he heard the Harvester’s horn, and baying hounds. Hunting aplenty tonight.
Joffa screamed at a dark shape that dropped to the hill: another griffin.
“Did Flockheart send you here?” the rider asked, stumbling from his mount. He had a gash on his arm, but it was the exhaustion and def
eat written on his face that struck Darik more than anything.
“No,” Darik admitted. “I just had to stop. Joffa couldn’t fly any farther.”
A second griffin wheeled overhead, then a third. Within a few minutes half a dozen griffins gathered on the hillside. Other survivors came during the next few hours, drawn by the screams and the campfire someone lit, together with the enticing aroma of roasting sheep. Darik counted sixty. One of these was Flockheart.
He sought out Darik immediately. “Daria?” he asked. “Where is she?”
Darik shook his head. “I’d hoped to find her with you.”
Flockheart let out a small groan. “No. I flew several times over the Veyrians before wasps drove me off.”
“And I looked over Sleptstock. Could she be hiding along the river? I saw some griffins fighting wasps over the marshes north of town.”
“You might be right.”
Darik looked back toward the campfire, where the lamb was almost done. There would be time enough for eating later. “Let’s go look for her.”
Brasson was too tired to fly any further, but Flockheart found a riderless griffin and took it. Darik roused Joffa from a sleep and the griffin lifted its head from beneath a wing, squawking a protest. Darik tried to climb on its back, but it snapped irritably at his hand.
“Come on, boy,” Darik urged, jerking his hand back in a hurry. “Daria is in trouble. And Averial, too. We’ve got to help.”
He didn’t know if the griffin understood, or if the reasonable tone in his voice soothed the beast, but it turned its head to the side and let him climb on its back. Darik and Joffa rose into the sky, following Flockheart.
The night was dark, with only a hint of moon in the sky, and Darik strained to pick out Flockheart and his mount. The other griffin keened softly, and Joffa followed the sound. They flew low over the hills. Sleptstock still burned, sending columns of fire into the sky. Darik heard shouts, singing, and the screams of a woman, so anguished that it turned his blood cold.
They swooped low over the marshes, Flockheart’s griffin keening softly. Darik thought he heard an answering cry, then something massive and black flew by with a rush of wind. Joffa tensed suddenly and wheeled away. Fire blazed in the sky.
The dragon.
But it didn’t hunt them. It flew along the river bank, blasting fire down into the marshes, crisping them and sending smoke and steam into the air. In the light Darik could see large charred patches. He heard a griffin cry out from below.
“Find her,” Flockheart said, just over Darik’s shoulder. “The dragon has poor eyesight.” He rushed by on his mount.
“You!” Flockheart cried from Darik’s left and his griffin screamed a challenge to the dragon. “I have killed all of your spawn!” he shouted. “Cut them down like maggots. And now I will kill you!”
“Hahahaha,” the dragon laughed as it turned slowly, in a deep voice that frightened Darik worse than its roar. “Come here little sparrow. I am hungry.”
Darik and Joffa dove toward the ground as the dragon flew overhead, searching for Flockheart, who sped west, shouting taunts. “Daria!” he cried. “Where are you?”
He heard the griffin scream again, closer and he brought Joffa to the ground in a copse of trees. The griffin cry sounded again, closer.
“Daria?”
“Darik!” she answered and relief flooded him. “Over here.”
“Where are you?” he asked, turning in the direction from which he thought he’d heard her voice. Joffa waddled forward.
“Don’t let Joffa see us,” she said, the urgency so strong in her voice that he stopped immediately. He dismounted from Joffa and tied the tether around a tree branch.
He stepped through the trees, searching through the darkness for movement and stumbling once at a root that reached up to trip him. “Where are you? We don’t have much time.”
Griffin and rider sat in a clearing in the trees, branches torn all around them. A dead dragon wasp lay a few feet away. Daria rose from Averial’s side and he felt a fresh surge of relief. “Thank the brothers that you’re alive,” he said.
“Darik,” she said, gesturing for him to come closer. He obeyed.
Darik took one look at Averial and knew she was finished. One wing was torn almost completely away and a huge gash opened her underbelly wide, exposing intestines and stomach. She flapped the other wing feebly, while Daria tried to settle her down. Darik felt sick.
“Daria,” he said, meaning to urge her to hurry, but he couldn’t. “Oh, Daria. I’m so sorry.” He took her in his arms.
Daria wrapped her arms around his neck and wept. “I can’t leave her here. Alone with that thing hunting her. No, I can’t.”
Darik imagined the dragon settling onto the terrified griffin to tear it apart and nodded. “You’re right. But what can we do to help?” he asked, even as the answer came to him. “Oh, there really is only one thing, isn’t there?”
“Would you, would you do it, Darik?” she asked in a voice that was barely a whisper as she pulled away from him. “I don’t think I could.”
Darik swallowed to force down the huge lump rising in his throat. He nodded. “Yes, I’ll do it.”
He pulled out Waspcleaver. The blade gleamed in the dim light, still stained with the blackened blood of wasp and rider. He wiped it on the grass and took a tentative step toward Averial. Wounded as she was, the griffin could still tear his arm from its socket or open his belly with a claw.
But Averial didn’t move as he drew closer. Her cries grew louder and sounded frightened. Joffa screamed an answer from the trees further back and Darik feared he would tear the flimsy tether to shreds and come over to attack him. Daria hurried in to comfort Averial, wrapping her arms around the griffin’s shoulders.
“Stay to the back,” he told Daria, his voice trembling almost as much as his hands. “I don’t trust myself to swing true.”
She nodded and backed up, resting her head against Averial’s haunches and closing her eyes. “Hurry, Darik. Hurry, before I lose my will.”
Darik stepped forward and lifted the sword overhead, hoping for Whelan’s strength to end it in a single blow. He brought the sword down as hard as he could, while Averial screamed in pain and Daria sobbed.
Alas, he was so damnably weak and clumsy. It took five gashes with Waspcleaver to finish the terrible deed.
#
The thread of light didn’t progress in a straight line. First it led Markal west along the Way, then departed from the road a few miles from Sleptstock, when the sounds of battle faded in the distance. The farms this side of the Citadel grew lush and green, still a few weeks from the first frost. Bees buzzed among flowering vines that grew in the hedgerows. A few sheep, ungathered stragglers, he guessed, grazed peacefully in a field, watching him with that stupored look of indifference that sheep mastered better than any other animal. He told them to run or be killed, but they ignored him, lured into complacency by the quiet in the air.
But Markal knew better. He couldn’t shake the bloodshed at Sleptstock. It returned him to the worst battles of the Tothian War. He spurred his horse past the sheep, following the thread of seeking.
By late afternoon, someone followed him. It started as a whisper in his mind, and soon he heard murmuring voices. He rode along a stream bank as it flowed through sheep pastures, when the air filled with the smell of sulfur. His horse shivered nervously, itching to run. Blue lights appeared on the hillside that rose above the stream on his left, and Markal gave the horse his lead. It danced through the stream and raced across the pasture through the darkness. The horse stumbled, and Markal feared it would break a leg. At last, the horse stopped, head hanging in exhaustion, but they had outrun the wights.
Markal reached the Citadel shortly, surprised that the thread hadn’t simply followed the Tothian Way into the city. He’d supposed at first that Chantmer was on the move all afternoon, but he wasn’t sure by the time he reached Eastgate.
Torches lit every win
dow in the Golden Tower, making its surface glow like a beacon over the lands that surrounded the city. It would be the chief prize in the looting. No doubt Toth’s soldiers dreamt of gold tonight.
Markal was challenged as he approached Eastgate. A man with a crossbow shouted, “Who are you and what business have you in the Citadel?” Other men stood on the towers, armored and armed.
Markal swept back his hood and raised his blackened right hand. “Markal of the Order.”
The man nodded grimly and signaled to someone behind him. “Do you have news of Sleptstock?”
By now, advance riders would have galloped west to prepare the city for the retreating army and brace the Citadel for assault. And they could smell the smoke of Sleptstock burning as well as he could.
“No more than you already have,” he answered.
The gates creaked open on their hinges. He dropped from the horse, now mumbling to itself in exhaustion, and led it through the gates, patting the beast’s neck in thanks for carrying him so swiftly. Through the gates, a series of iron portcullises raised ahead of him with the clank and grind of chains and gears. They were designed to drop should the enemy breach the gates, but had been lowered for extra caution.
Eastgate led him right into the Citadel, divided by the Way as it entered Arvada. He stood and let its familiar comfort wash over him. Sanctuary.
It was still early evening, and the Citadel bustled with activity as the city prepared itself for war. Unlike last time he’d entered the city, its barracks and stables filled with armies arriving from the far reaches of Eriscoba. As he climbed the Golden Tower, the city bustled below him. Daniel gathered all remaining forces for one battle. Should they lose, should Toth destroy their armies, there would be nothing left to oppose him.
To Markal’s surprise, the thread of light led him up the stairs, past Chantmer’s apartments, toward the Thorne Chamber itself. Nobody was up this high. Doors to rooms hung open, torches burning in windows, but the sentinels at those windows had deserted their posts. It worried him.
The Free Kingdoms (Book 2) Page 16
