Among the wyrmlings, such lies were a way of life.
And if Daylan had wanted to manipulate her, he could easily have promised to take her out of the city and let her go, and then reneged at an opportune moment.
“I will not lie to you,” Daylan said, “because in part I value you. A human is not a tool to be manipulated. To try to make you my tool would be to demean you. And I will not lie to you, in part, because to do so would make me a lesser man than I want to be. My word needs to be trustworthy always. If it is not, then I can never be trusted.
“That said, Princess, I ask that you come with me on my terms. Or, if you like, you may stay where you are, and the deal I have negotiated with your father will be forfeit.”
Kan-hazur crouched in the corner, pondering his words. Daylan had never expected to have to try to convince her to leave. But the wyrm that fed upon her soul was a contrary thing. It shunned reason, trust, and compassion.
He suddenly realized that perhaps he needed to manipulate her in ways that she understood—fear, greed, shame. But to do so would violate every principle of the order that he lived by. Gentleness, loving kindness, gentle persuasion—those were the means that he was allowed to use in such circumstances.
He chose gentle persuasion. “I have a question, princess. You say that the purpose of life is to master humility. But once that is done, what have you gained?”
She glared at him. “Once you realize that the universe is a cold, uncaring bitch, it means that you have only one choice in life—to fight for what you want. It forces you to live by self-determination, and that is the mother of all virtues.”
Daylan nodded. “I, too, value self-determination, and see it as a fertile ground from which virtues may grow. So, I have to wonder: If you are resolved to lead a self-determined life, how is that to be done here in this cell? Are you going to sit here and die where King Urstone’s men have placed you? That doesn’t sound like self-determination to me. It sounds as if you are their pawn. Or would you choose instead to go back and claim your empire, even if it means that you must fight your own father for it?”
She glared at him. At last she climbed to her feet. Daylan offered her his hand, but she rejected it.
“I will not take my empire because you give it to me,” she growled. “I will take it because I can. You have arranged my release for your own reasons, and I will owe you nothing.”
Daylan shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to me which evil wyrmling rules the earth. You’re all much the same.”
Still, she followed him out of the cell.
In the torture chamber, Daylan found a ragged tunic beside a rack. Someone had torn it off a prisoner before flogging him. The tunic was overlarge, but it would have to do.
They climbed the stairs stealthily and found a single guard on duty. He was sitting at a table, snoring loudly. In one hand he clutched a finely gilded wine bottle as if it were a lover. Obviously, the bottle was a gift from the king.
Daylan Hammer and Princess Kan-hazur unlocked the prison door, and were unleashed upon the world.
25
THE HARVEST
A hero is not always brave and strong. More often, he is but a common man who finds the courage and strength to do what he must, while others do not.
—Fallion the Bold
They’re going to kill you, Alun thought as he ran in the dawn light. Watch your back in this battle.
Alun raced along the uneven highway to Cantular, hulking warriors both ahead and behind. The road had become a ruin since the change. The once-smooth highway, paved with stones four feet thick, was now broken and uneven. The roots of great oaks had thrust up through the stone, and old streambeds cut through it.
So Alun watched his feet as he jogged. There was little else to see. A summer’s fog left the vale gauzed in white. Trees came out of the mist as he passed.
There was only the heavy pad of the warrior’s feet, the clink of bone armor, and the wheezing of breath.
Alun’s legs still ached from yesterday’s run. But he covered the uneven ground well enough. Only so often would someone shove him from behind, shouting, “Move along, maggot!” or some other such insult.
He could not hear well with his helm. It was made for a bigger man, and fit him ill. As a child, Alun had played soldier and worn wooden buckets on his head that fit him better. The armorer had passed the bone mail and weapons out at dawn. The armor had been brought here ahead of the war party, secreted in a cave. The bone armor that Alun wore was carved from a world wyrm. The older it got, the lighter it became, but it was supposed to be tougher than a bear’s hide.
Alun bore an ax into battle. Once again, it was too large to feel right in his hand. But it had a big spike on one side, and another at the end, and he imagined that he could pound a spike into a wyrmling’s knee if he had to.
Alun peered ahead and behind, searching for Connor or Drewish. They were the ones who would most likely put a spear in his back. But he caught no sight of them.
So he ran, grateful that he only had to run. The troops had been cut into two divisions. Three hundred men had set out upriver at the crack of dawn to swim across the flood. They would take the fortress on the far side.
Six hundred ran with him now, hearts pumping, each of the warriors seemingly lost in private thoughts.
“Don’t look so down,” a soldier said at Alun’s left.
He glanced over, saw a large soldier, an older man, perhaps in his forties. Alun recognized him. He’d come to the kennels at times to bring the dogs in after a hunt. Alun couldn’t recall his name.
“First battle?” the soldier asked.
“Yeah,” Alun said. He’d wanted to nod, but he didn’t want to look all out of breath.
“Just remember, they’re more afraid of you than you are of them.”
“Really?” Alun said. He couldn’t imagine it.
“Nah,” another soldier behind them laughed. “He’s having you on. They’re wyrmlings, damn it, and you’re just the scrapings on their boots.”
Greeves—that was the man’s name. Greeves laughed too, and Alun found himself laughing just a bit. It felt good to laugh, knowing that you might die.
“Just remember, keep yourself hunched low,” Greeves said. “Don’t come at the enemy head-on. Veer to the right or the left. And when you lunge in for a stab, don’t aim high. Pick a low target—a kidney or their knees. Then leap back. Got it?”
They raced on through the thick fog.
There was sudden shouting up ahead, troops jostling. Alun was in the rearmost third of the division. Suddenly he saw the High King and a dozen warlords off to the side of the road, peering ahead. Connor and Drewish stood at the king’s back, and Alun peered at them fearfully, afraid that they would follow him, that they would slide a blade between his ribs in the heat of the battle.
He stumbled, tripping on the heel of one of the soldiers in front, and then he realized that a gray shadow loomed above them all. They had reached the fortress. They had seemingly reached it in an instant.
The ring of metal, the cries of dying men suddenly came loud, echoing down from the stone walls. Alun was startled to find the battlefront so close ahead. He pounded along the road, and the soldiers beside him broke into song:
What shall they say when the day is done
Of battles fought and glory won?
I was first into battle,
I struck fear in my foe,
I was first to land a bloody blow!
Suddenly they were in a seeming canyon, walls rearing high above them on either side—the fortress. A heavy war dart came hurtling from the tower above, clanked against a man’s helmet, and bounced away. Alun glanced up at the crenellated tower, tried to see the wyrmling that had thrown it, but archers along the street sent up a rain of arrows and the wyrmling dove for cover.
And then he saw his first bodies, human bodies, men of the Warrior Clan littering the roadside—spears and arrows in them. And then he was rushing beneath an arch, a
nd there were huge doors that had been battered down, and Alun raced into a courtyard.
Everyone but him seemed to know where to go. Soldiers to the left fanned out to the left, those to the right went right. Alun couldn’t see any sign of battle, but he heard cries in the mist all around him.
He hesitated.
“Out of the way!” a soldier shouted, shoving him aside.
A black arrow whizzed out of the fog, plunked into the neck of a fellow behind. Alun whirled, saw the man stagger back in shock, pull the arrow free. Blood gushed from the wound, but it wasn’t much, and he looked at Alun and laughed, “I’ll be all right.” A second arrow plunged into the man’s chest.
Alun decided that it was safer to be anywhere but here.
A huge warrior went charging past him, shouting a battle cry and bearing an ax in either hand, and Alun decided: I want to be behind that monster!
He gave chase, and soon he saw the warrior, tearing through a dark doorway ahead, his arms swinging like mad. A pair of wyrmlings blocked his way. They were larger than the human warrior, but they fell back before the onslaught, and Alun went racing into the building.
His warrior was ahead, across the room, doing battle at another doorway.
The dead littered the floor all around, both human and wyrmling. Apparently the wyrmlings had fought to secure the doorway, and the battle had gone back and forth. Alun glanced behind him, afraid that Connor or Drewish might have followed.
Someone cried, “Help!” and Alun peered into the shadows. A man was down, blood gushing from a wound to his chest. Alun moved to give aid.
He heard a growl, saw a wyrmling commander trying groggily to rise up from the heap on hands and knees, his black armor slick with blood. He was reaching for a small pouch tied to his war belt. His helm was cracked, and he had a deep wound to the scalp.
Not deep enough, Alun thought, and buried the pick end of his ax in it.
The wyrmling collapsed, still clutching his pouch.
Curious, Alun reached down, drew the pouch from the wyrmling’s dead hand.
Perhaps there is some treasure here, he thought, imagining golden rings or amulets.
But when he opened the pouch, he saw only three crude iron spikes, rusty and bent, each about four inches in length.
Alun stared at them in wonder, for they were a treasure greater than gold. They were harvester’s spikes—iron nails encrusted with glandular extracts drawn from those that the wyrmlings had killed. The extracts granted a man tremendous strength and threw him into a bloodlust, at least for awhile.
A warrior came rushing in behind. He must have seen Alun finish off the wyrmling, for he shouted to Alun, “That’s the way lad!” then stopped and peered at the spikes. “A harvester! You killed yourself a harvester. Use ’em up, lad. Good men died to make those.”
The fellow snatched one of the spikes from Alun’s hand, and Alun thought that he was stealing it. He protested, “Hey!” and turned to confront the fellow, just as the man shoved the spike into Alun’s neck, piercing the carotid artery.
And the dried fruit of the harvested glands surged through Alun’s veins.
His first reaction was that his heart began to pump so violently that he feared it would burst. Then his mouth went dry and he felt nauseous as blood was diverted from his stomach to his extremities.
And then the rage came, a rage so hot that it drove all thoughts from his mind. Blood pounded in his ears like the surging of the sea.
He let out a blood-curdling cry, grabbed an extra ax from a fallen comrade, and suddenly found himself charging through a mist of red, leaping over fallen foes, lunging past warriors of the clan.
A wyrmling suddenly appeared before him in a doorway, a huge creature with an ax, his face covered with beastly tattoos, his oversized canines hanging out like fangs. He wore thick armor and wielded a battle-ax and a shield. Alun felt no fear.
Somehow, in the haze of war, Alun saw a flash, and for an instant it was Drewish that stood before him.
Alun went mad with blood rage.
I am immortal and invincible, Alun thought in a haze, and he leapt high in the air. The wyrmling raised its shield defensively, but the harvester’s spike in Alun’s neck had given him super-human strength. He swung an ax, cleaving the shield in two, striking through, and burying his ax into the wyrmling’s skull.
As Alun’s weight hit the falling monster, Alun saw three more wyrmlings in the shadows behind it.
Good, there are more! he thought, laughing in glee.
And so he fought in a haze of red. The battle was like a dance, him leaping and twisting in the air, swinging his ax.
Some conscious part of his mind warned: Watch your back. They still want you dead!
But that was the last conscious thought that he had.
Sometime later, an hour, two perhaps, he came out of the haze. He was in a room, a barracks, where only the tiniest crack of light shone through a single door.
He still had one ax, though the head had broken off of the other and he held its haft in his hand. He was swinging his good ax into the corpse of a wyrmling, screaming, “Die you cur! Die, you damned pig!”
There were a dozen wyrmlings sprawled on the floor, each of them hacked to pieces.
Several human soldiers were standing in a doorway, peering at him and laughing.
Alun’s heart still raced as if it would explode, and his arm felt so tired that he did not think it would heal in a week. He had a bad gash on his forehead, and blood was flowing down over his eyes. And the other soldiers were laughing at him.
“Here now,” a commanding voice said, “that’s enough of that, lad. You killed ’em already.” The soldiers guffawed.
Alun peered up in shock. It was a captain.
“I killed them?” Alun asked, not believing his ears. But the memories rushed through his mind, ghoulish apparitions.
The captain walked up, pulled the spike from Alun’s neck, and gave him a bandage to staunch the wound.
“You’re lucky—” the captain said, “a little fellow like you, fighting like a harvester.” He held up the bloody spike. “It gives you strength and speed and murderer’s instinct, but it was made for a wyrmling that stands eight feet tall and weighs five hundred pounds. You took a monster’s dose. You’re lucky that your heart didn’t explode.”
Alun suddenly felt weak. The glandular extracts were leaving his body, and it was all that he could do to stand up. He was breathing hard, gasping for breath, and cold sweat dimpled his forehead.
The captain shouted orders to the men, “Clean this place out! Leave no door unopened, no cubby-hole unchecked. Be sure of every enemy. The king wants the heads off of them. Bring them out into the light of day, and throw them in the courtyard.”
So the grisly work began. Alun spent the next fifteen minutes feeling sick, staunching the flow of blood from the gouge in his forehead, wrapping his head up in a bloody bandage, and hacking the head off of a dead wyrmling and lugging it out of doors.
He tried to remember how he had gotten the wound, but could not account for it. He tried to remember where his helmet had come off, but never could find it.
He discovered that the troops had entered a barracks, had caught the wyrmlings sleeping. Many of them did not even have their armor on.
When he was finished, he was a bloody mess, and the captains came through and counted every body, then went out and counted every head.
The king and the warlords came now, admiring the heads stacked in a pile. Connor and Drewish were still there, at the king’s back. Neither of them had bloodied themselves in battle.
Drewish leered at Alun, seeming to enjoy the spectacle of him wounded.
Imagine how he would laugh to see you dead, a little voice whispered in Alun’s mind.
“Two hundred and fifty,” the captain reported to the warlords. “That would be five squadrons, even.”
“And of our own dead?” King Urstone asked.
“Fifty and four.”
“Not bad,” someone whispered in the line beside Alun, but he saw the king’s face, saw him mourn. He had too few warriors as it was. He regretted losing even one man.
“And what of the Knights Eternal?” the king asked.
“No one saw any sign of them,” the captain confirmed.
King Urstone nodded, looked worried, and then the troops headed across the bridge.
By then the fog was lifting, and Alun found that he was unaccountably hungry. The long run of the day before, a sleepless night, the hot work—all combined to build his appetite.
So they raced across the bridge, and Alun was surprised to see the water so high, the trees and wreckage floating down the muddy river.
They reached the far shore, found the drawbridge down. Their own men cheered their entry, and Alun realized, We’ve taken it! We’ve taken Cantular!
It was the first real victory for mankind in many years, and the cheers were bounteous, over-excited.
Like boys who have bloodied the nose of a bully, Alun thought, not knowing that the fight has just begun.
“Search every building!” the king shouted. “Look in every house, every market stall. I want word of the Knights Eternal, and of their prisoners.”
The king and his counselors went striding down the street, heading toward the east end of town. The men began to fan out, searching in every direction. Alun just followed the king, following along in his wake. He was afraid that someone would stop him, make him go and do some real work, but no one did.
They reached the markets, found the stall where the battle had taken place. It wasn’t hard to find. The walls of the home here had peeled back, and the roof had been thrown off. There were scorch marks on the wooden platform where the battle had been fought.
The king and the warlords climbed the platform, looking around. Alun didn’t feel comfortable following them up there, and so he went to the side of the house. There were some rags draped over a bush, and he stood by them for a second.
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