The Dragonswarm

by Aaron Pogue

  "And when I'm done...." I was shaking with excitement and fear at the path unfolding in my head. "When I'm done, we'll face whatever chaos threatens this land. I don't care if it's dragons or rebels or mobs of peasants, we're going to make this nation whole again."

  Energy seemed to crackle through the room, bouncing out in whispers and rebounding in murmurs, in exclamations, in shouts. But Caleb stood one pace away, his eyes on mine and his expression serious. "Where will you take them?" he asked.

  A moment before I hadn't even considered it, but as soon as he asked I smiled a sad smile. I would conquer my brood, and then build my lair. "Palmagnes will stand again." I did not say it loudly, but the words had weight beyond their volume. I heard several people in the room gasp. I nodded with a dreadful certainty. It felt right. "The fortress will stand strong, and I will remake a nation from its ruins."

  Caleb's eyes were wide too. I waited half a heartbeat before I saw just the hint of a nod from him. Madman or hero, he'd said. I stretched a hand out to the hearthfire and called two hot golden flames to dance in the air above my hand. The noisy audience fell silent at that, hushed in terror, and I remembered another common room I had once cowed with flame.

  I had hated myself for that display, but I could not spare such sentiment now. The world would not survive without my fire. Perhaps I had to be the dragon. Perhaps I had to embrace that dark nature. But even as a monster I would bend my power to the good of the world, when wizards and kings could not be bothered to do that much.

  I growled low, and the flickering flames pulsed with my hammering heartbeat. I raised them into the night and set them dancing above my head, a beacon that could not be missed. Then I set my feet on the open road and headed out to defeat an army.

  10. The Army

  "Should we discuss this?" Caleb asked as we passed through the town's rough gates.

  "We should speak," I said. "I'm counting on them finding us, after all."

  "You could have made a better plan."

  "I don't have time for a better plan," I said, and then I stopped. I glared up at Caleb. "I mean this: I cannot afford to stop and think, or I will make the same abominable decision the king has made. And this mayor. And every authority from here to the ruins of Palmagnes."

  That thought sent me thundering down the road again. Caleb had no trouble keeping pace.

  "Your heart does you proud, Daven. The sentiment is noble. But you are too valuable a warrior—"

  "Who were you?" I asked. I did not shout, but the words were enough to cut through his speech. He didn't answer me, and I threw him a look from the corner of my eye before I asked again, "Who were you before the dragonswarm? Before the village?"

  "A deserter from the king's army," he said. The bitterness in his voice told me to leave it there, but I had already seen deeper.

  "You were an officer," I said. "You were a Green Eagle, weren't you?"

  He was silent for some time. Then I heard him swallow. "An unlikely guess," he said. "Not many Bateiyns get that close to the king."

  "But you were an exception," I said.

  "I was an exception." He sighed. "How could you know?"

  "You came here to end this rebellion, and you alone were unsatisfied when the king's commanders decided that was done."

  "Not alone," he said. "But yes. I was unsatisfied."

  "I saw it in your eyes when the mayor was speaking. I saw it in your pain when you failed to save a village from a dragon raid. And I saw it in the sword you wear on your right hip."

  He frowned at that. I caught the motion as he looked down. "What?"

  I smiled to myself. "I once owned a sword like that," I said. "I tried to use it to kill a dragon, and I did something else altogether. I had won it from the Green Eagle Othin."

  "He is a powerful warrior," Caleb said, his tones measured.

  "And I was a fortunate child," I said. "And for that he wants me dead. But I am not curious at all why you deserted that post. I want to know how you were made a Green Eagle at all."

  He shook his head. "I made a name among my own. I caught the right man's attention on the right day. They said I was born to be a leader...." He trailed off. After a moment he cursed, then said, "They were wrong. I am a proud fighter, a fearsome soldier, but I was not meant to lead."

  I turned and faced him. He stopped and only reluctantly looked down to meet my gaze.

  "Anyone with a Green Eagle's training would make a fine leader," I said. "An Islander who rose to that rank? A man would be a fool not to follow you."

  He smiled down at me. "Just a warrior. An officer, perhaps. But I can't command unless I have men given to me. I can only act by borrowed authority. As soon as he tightened my leash, I was no leader at all."

  "Is there any other way?"

  He laughed, and I remembered how Vechernyvetr had laughed at the same question. "There's officers, and then there's kings. Kings get to act on will alone. And you," he said. "You could be a king."

  I shook my head, but he jabbed a finger at me. "For three years I was the king's personal bodyguard," he said. "For three years I was never more than twenty paces from his side, and he was a great man. Greater than most give him credit for, I would say, but not as great as you. You fight like a warrior, think like a wizard, and speak like a king."

  "No, Caleb." I spread my hands in total honesty. "I have power, and that is all. I cannot build another relationship on an imagined past. I was born a peasant, and I have been despised by all manner of men. I am a failed wizard, a wanted criminal, and a hated hero. The best I can boast is this: I am a survivor desperate for a home. That is all."

  He shrugged. "Believe what you will, but to me you are a lord." He drew the sword that hung on his right hip and fell to his knees, holding it with the tip grounded before him. "I pledge to be your man, Daven of Teelevon, to serve you with my heart, my soul, my mind, and my strength, as long as you have need of me. I bind my honor to your honor. I bind my life to your life. I bind my sword to your sword. I live for you and take you as my lord."

  I stood frozen, unable to respond. When he had finished the short pledge he slowly rose, staring into my eyes. I opened my mouth to object, to refuse his oath, but he spoke first. "I told you before that I'm your man. Maybe this will make you understand."

  I wanted to answer him. To call him mad. To reject the offer. But I could not speak. I had never meant to take on the wizard's sight, but still I could see the power pooled around him, hard-edged and unbreakable, strong enough to shatter stone. It wasn't the inky black of pure Chaos, it was the vibrant fire of lifeblood, but still some measure of it washed from him to me, as it had when I'd slain the dragon, and I felt the pounding of new power thundering in my veins.

  Still Caleb was speaking. "If you are right, the dragonswarm you describe will break our nations. Perhaps one day Timmon shall be my king again. If you win your war, perhaps he will have a kingdom to rule. But here and now, and in this world, you are the only king I know."

  I looked at him, incredulous. I gasped for breath enough to say, "You are mad."

  He nodded. "I am. Mad enough to follow you into the night, looking for an army of renegades and thieves. Mad enough to follow you against the whole nightmare swarm of dragons. As I said from the first: I am your man."

  The song of Chaos still blazing in my spirit, the wizard's sight bright in my inner vision, I closed my eyes and extended my awareness. In an instant I could see for miles, and I skimmed the world for lifeblood. The lives of men were startlingly bright, deliberate, compared with the lifeblood of other living things, and it was easy to find farms and villages, towns and even the hint of a city far to the west. But those were always surrounded by the careful, manufactured structures of their dwelling places.

  Night had fallen, and the times were hard. In all the vast plains I saw few souls outside the safety of their thresholds. Just Caleb and me. A hurrying shape in a distant village. Four men together in the town behind us, and those perhaps the gate guards.
And there ahead, gathered in empty fields as though they were a vibrant city, I saw a throng of men without a home among them.

  They were not hunting for us. Not now. Perhaps, if the timing had been right, we might have stumbled across that raiding party of seven, but if not for that we would have passed the army by. My breath escaped me as I looked on the blazing fire of so many men gathered together. My anger escaped me, eclipsed by fear, and the vision slipped away.

  But still I knew. I knew without a doubt. I turned in place and looked across black night toward their camp, and I could feel them waiting for me. "There," I said. I pointed for Caleb. "Perhaps three hundred of them. Perhaps five. Two miles to their outskirts."

  "And how do you mean to move among them?" Caleb asked.

  I let my breath out slowly, deliberately, and gathered my will as though I were still a new student. I focused my attention, then reached into my core and borrowed Chaos as I had learned to do in Vechernyvetr's lair.

  I had not done it so carefully since the power had failed me before. I hadn't dared to try. But now it answered as I had hoped it might. I felt the full, raw power available to me. It was not the vast store the dragon had acquired, but it was more than I'd dared to hope.

  Threads of air spun out easily around Caleb and me, and I threw us into the air as I had done above the dragon's mountain. I heard the warrior curse in the darkness, and then he screamed bloodfury at the thrill of flight. We crossed the miles in mere moments, and he fell silent as the fires appeared below us.

  Not the lifeblood fires of the wizard's sight, but a hundred campfires, two hundred torches. This was not a casual gathering but a military camp, and I heard a note of caution in Caleb's voice when he said, "Daven."

  "I know," I said. I held us high above the camp, suspended and still. There was steel among them. I could feel it. I could almost taste it in the air. Far more than I'd expected. Not just rotting leather armor and hunting bows, but swords and shields and heavy chain.

  "Daven," Caleb said again, and I glanced over my shoulder at him.

  "They are better appointed than you'd expected," I said, speaking for him.

  He nodded. "Yes, but that was not my point." He gestured up above us. "I think you would do well to hide your lights."

  The flames I'd borrowed from the common room's hearth still danced above my head. And then, before I could release them, I watched the first wink out. The second followed a moment later.

  "Wind and rain," I said. Panic hammered at my ribcage, but the words came out almost thoughtful. Caleb looked to me, and I sighed. "They have another wizard."

  Then we began to fall.

  It was nothing like the sickening, bottomless drop when I'd lost the power from Vechernyvetr's lair. This time it was a violent tug. We dropped three paces then stopped. I had just time to catch my breath—Caleb had just time to curse—then it happened again. The next time we were hurled sideways instead of downward, but it was just as jarring.

  "What's happening?" Caleb shouted.

  I tore my eyes from the ground, still forty paces beneath us. "It's just air," I said.

  "What?"

  "The power that's holding us." I scanned the earth rapidly, but it was tiny figures and flickering flames and far too much shadow. "It's just air. I made it—wizards can't make it—but now that it's there, he's working it around us."

  Another tug, and we plummeted ten paces before the threads of air caught us up. Caleb cursed again, but my attention was all on the ground.

  "Why don't you fight him?" Caleb growled.

  "I never learned how." I fell to my hands and knees within my airy cage and looked closer, but before I could make a plan he was there again.

  I saw the effects without knowing the method. My shimmering skein of neat blue threads of air twisted itself into a rope, a blast of air instead of a bed. I did as I'd done before and released the threads from my will. Borrowed Chaos vanished, and whatever magic the wizard had worked vanished with it. But so too vanished the energy that had held us up.

  We fell perhaps a pace this time before I could get the new threads in place, and while Caleb was still grumbling I let those go, too, and summoned more another pace down. It bought me a moment, the rebel wizard's will still focused on energies that were already dissolving.

  It gave me long enough to breathe, and in that time I looked down through the wizard's sight. Once again I saw the vast sea of lifeblood, but now that I knew to look it was a simple matter to find the glowing sheen of wizardry at work in their midst. A hundred paces off across the face of a hill, just below a massive spreading oak. I stretched out a hand, touched the darkness in my heart, and shaped raw power into a ball of earth twice the size of a slingstone but moving just as fast.

  That gave him time enough to work against my web, and this time instead of pulling it away, he sent it gusting down. I gulped and cried a wordless warning to Caleb as we slammed toward the earth, then summoned just enough of air to stop the fall from killing us. Still I hit the ground hard enough that lights flashed in my head and the breath was knocked out of me.

  Caleb landed just as hard, but he nearly seemed to bounce. In an instant he was up, swords in both hands, and not a heartbeat later steel rang on steel as he deflected a powerful blow. I groaned and rolled aside and heaved myself upright, then threw another look.

  Surrounded. Warriors for miles, and closing on us fast. I sought briefly for the telltale shine of the wizard's working, but I had no time to find it. A human shadow sprang up before me, both arms raised around the hilt of a reversed dagger and bloodlust burning in his eyes.

  I moved by old instinct, left foot sliding back, right foot twitching forward, arm outstretched to meet the lunge. And new instinct tapped the inky Chaos in my heart and built a perfect blade within my grip. Between one heartbeat and the next I gained a sword, and my astonished attacker fell full upon it. He skewered himself up to the guard. Blood washed warm over my hand. His mouth made an O of shock and confusion and then the life went from him.

  My stomach twisted in revulsion. A scream bubbled up behind my breastbone but I couldn't find enough breath to let it out. I released the Chaos blade, and the dead man slumped to the earth. Another soldier who had been on his heel turned and fled, but I could feel the wash of men around me. I could hear the thudding footsteps, smell the stink of fear and fury, hear the hiss of arrows in the air.

  That snapped me from my stupor. Something animal surged up in answer, unfazed by the guilty horror at what I'd just done. It turned my head and tapped my powers. It narrowed my eyes, spoke a word, and forge-hot fire blossomed into a ball no more than a foot across—just large enough to swallow the arrow mid-flight.

  Just bright enough to reveal the archer, terror in his eyes. And then it was gone.

  The next ball of fire blossomed inside the man's midsection and vanished to leave him empty. He fell to the earth with a sick wet sound.

  I wanted to shout, "No!" but the word wouldn't come. The horror couldn't either. It cowered in the back of my head, in the tiny corner I reserved for monsters. My humanity hid in the shadows, and the dragon power answered the threat around me.

  The power was stronger, too. I'd felt it as the rebel spilled his life across my hand, and I'd felt it again as I burned the heart from the archer. Crackling, sparking pops like a wet log on a blazing fire, as new power flowed into me. I caught motion from the corner of my eye and spun, summoning a new Chaos blade as I went, and it took the head from a man in shining chain.

  Pop.

  He had two companions with him. One charged me, a pike stretched out before him, but I glanced to the earth at his feet and it swallowed him like water. Pop. The other turned to run and I gave him a good head start. Then I snapped a hand and raw air curled out toward him like a whip. It lashed around his throat. I jerked it back. The man's own momentum ripped his feet from under him and slammed his weight against the invisible noose.

  Pop.

  The monster within me laughed, a
nd the sound rang out eerily loud even in the noisy night. I closed my eyes and looked with my other sight, trying to count the scurrying glows of the rebels, trying to separate them from the wavering threads of fire all around the camp. Then something out of Chaos whispered a suggestion to my rational mind, and my mouth curled in a smile.

  Fire. Living fire, raw fire, not borrowed power but still at my command, and it was everywhere. I took a breath, and for a mile around me in all directions, the fire winked out. The threads of flame flew to me like prize falcons, invisible power, and for a moment I stood in the utter darkness and savored the taste of terror in the wails of terrible men.

  To that sweet accompaniment I sculpted the fire's power. I shaped a hundred cooking fires and the light of twice as many torches into a single piece, a pillar five paces across and thirty paces tall. Invisible. Unreal. Potential. I built it like a tower around me, grinning all the while. In the darkness someone shouted, "The wizard! Where is the wizard? Get the wizard!"

  Then I exhaled, and in the same moment I unleashed the power of the flames. The pillar of fire exploded into reality all around me, blazing hot as a mountain's heart and roaring like an elder dragon. I took one long step forward, and the pillar moved forward with me. I gloried in the screams.

  In my wizard's sight I could see them running, tumbling over one another, fighting desperately to get away. And I could see a direction in their flight, a rough shape to it, as everyone before me bent their paths toward a particular hillside. As I looked now I could see the slow pulse of earth and life at the top of it—the spreading oak.

  Aha. The wizard. "Get the wizard," they'd said. I followed, unafraid. Grass and earth and stone scorched black where I walked, and men fled like terrified cattle before me, and all the while the thunder in my veins and the roaring of the flames went on and on like some mad harmony. I broke into a run, hungry to obliterate their only hope within this mess, and now the fire's song gained words, pounding along with my leaping stride.

  Destroy the world!