Upon the Flight of the Queen

by Howard Andrew Jones

  Vannek slid down from the fear-maddened horse just clear of the inferno, his nose wrinkling from the smell of searing flesh. Then he saw the fire hadn’t finished with him. It had caught in the dry grasses beyond the oil-soaked area and a wave of flames roared toward him.

  He sprinted for the stone wall along the rim. The pressure of the flame was like a huge hand against his back. It felt as though the armor was melting to him.

  He reached the stones and heaved himself up.

  This section of the wall wasn’t intended as a battlement, and was only two feet in width. Beyond was a drop to a dark canal. If Vannek hadn’t known it for water he might have thought it a road at the cliff’s base.

  He looked back toward the tower, and saw figures there outlined against the battlement. They were lifting bows. Some were firing into the flames, presumably at those few targets left alive.

  His anger rose higher than his fear. He would find a way to take down those arrogant Dendressi. Rather than retreating, and taking an arrow to the back, he decided to advance upon the tower, jogging along the wall with its perilous drop on his left. He was an old hand with heights, for he’d often climbed tall trees when he’d been a young girl.

  The first arrow struck against his breastplate. An unpleasant surprise. There was smoke, too, but it was blowing parallel to him, rather than across, and the closer he got to the tower, the less there’d be to conceal him.

  His helm he’d left behind in the council chambers, so he lifted an armored arm to shield his face.

  The next arrow caught him near the wrist. It didn’t penetrate, but the impact slammed his own fist into his cheek. His step faltered and he leaned left … promptly sliding from the wall.

  The instant between falling and registering the impact coming seemed an eternity. The wind rushed up at him and he lifted his legs. He hit the water canted forward, first with his feet, then his arms, then his face, the force nearly stunning him.

  The canal was dark and cool, but proved not especially deep, for he quickly struck its bottom with his booted feet and, panicking, he kicked off, rising to find the surface despite his armor. Rather than fight his way out and expose himself to archery, he let the current push him along, managing to stay above the surface some of the time by holding to the rough stone on the side of the canal. His chest plate and greaves kept trying to drag him under despite constant and vigorous kicking and he soon grew alarmed. How could he possibly hold on to the sides and unbuckle the armor?

  So he pushed himself along, thinking himself already too tired to attempt scaling the canal side.

  Then, by the blessings of the Three, he arrived at a set of stairs cut into the side of the wall, presumably for maintenance.

  Coughing, he started forward, and found himself on his feet halfway up the steps, sodden, and stared apprehensively back toward the tower. No one watched. Smoke laced the red sky. The shouts of men and clash of arms drifted on the night. He heard the whinny of horses, as well.

  Thoroughly soaked, he staggered away from the canal, then, at the sound of hoofbeats, pressed himself flat against a stone wall. The horse clopped closer, accompanied by another peculiar sound, as though something was sliding along behind it.

  His mind alive with images of a great Dendressi serpent, he peered out, only to discover a brown mount, head bent with exhaustion, dragging a dead Naor king whose broken leg was caught in its stirrup. Trelk.

  The Three had blessed him again. One more blessing, then, this night, Vannek thought, and then would come a run of bad luck. For now, though, he would take the horse and rally the city.

  He caught his breath, steeled himself, and started forward.

  24

  The Last Dragon

  The snarling faces were half-lit by bloodred lanterns that stained everything crimson. Sansyra and Iressa pushed across the battlement into the gate tower, and then Sansyra was hurtling down the stairs. She’d dropped the spear and managed with a Naor sword, notched and gore-streaked. The heavy wooden shield she’d snatched up splintered when she smashed a Naor head with it.

  Somehow, though, she reached the lower level and the wheel, and she turned it, ignoring the sound of carnage above. From outside came the thunder of hooves. She didn’t know if they were Naor reinforcements or the Kaneshi cavalry riding out of the darkness until she ran up the stairs to the second level. There, a wounded Iressa sagged against the wall while another squire bound her shoulder. Out on the wall, Virian was waving and grinning, a terrible red gash livid on his cheek, two arrows protruding from his left arm.

  Kaneshi riders, distinctive in their cloaks and pointed, burnished helms, surged through the gate and hurried into the city.

  “We did it!” Virian shouted, exultant.

  Somehow, in fact, they had achieved the objective, no matter that their deception had failed against the most important of the two gate towers. The Naor guards had slammed home the barrier and their group had to fight their way up the right tower, along the battlement over the gate, and on across and down to the wheel that withdrew the gate bar.

  Now, like a good commander, she considered her forces. A quick count told her that four from her attack team were dead and another three wounded. So might it go throughout the assault.

  Varama had assured her that it wasn’t about numbers, but control, and that they would win a series of smaller battles if they controlled the ground and the momentum. All that was likely true, but in the capital buildings of Alantris Varama might even now be breathing her last. The alten had struck at the heart of the enemy command, daring a close approach so she could use sorcery to guide her amazing flying weapons toward the best targets. She’d split the rest of the troops out to open the gate and liberate the two largest groups of prisoners herself.

  Varama had worried that the civilians could be burned up as fires spread, and Sansyra now saw her concerns had been justified, for flame roared all along the second rim and points of the third. Buildings were silhouetted by the writhing red blossoms of fire, and the scent of burning wood and smoke filled her nostrils. In saving the people of Alantris, she saw with sober consideration, they might well have delivered the city itself a mortal wound.

  Sansyra appointed her soldiers to sentry points, lest the Naor try to attack along the battlement, then listened to the thunder of the horse troops advancing below.

  That was when she spotted the dragon.

  She knew it was her favorite. The other had been artfully slain in the recent battle when N’lahr offered a tempting group of spearmen upon a ridge. Camouflaged spear catapults had killed one sent from the Naor sorcerer, and crippled the other, which Alten Gyldara had finished almost single-handedly.

  Only the smaller one with the shining wings remained. Though it had imbibed some of the poisons, the Naor had painstakingly saved it, and tonight it was in the air, circling over the second ring, and the tower from where Alten Varama had launched her assault.

  The dragon was searching, and with chill foreboding Sansyra thought she knew what it was after. Varama. She hurried to Iressa, whose features were streaked with dirt and someone else’s blood. The third ranker watched from the battlement with grim satisfaction as their horse soldiers continued streaming into the city.

  “The gate is ours,” Sansyra said. “See that it holds. Foot troops are supposed to reinforce us after the cavalry gets through.”

  Iressa’s slim, arched brows climbed her forehead. “Where are you going?”

  “Dragon hunting,” she said.

  Iressa raised a cry of indignation, but Sansyra was already turning down the stairs and soon hurried from the tower. In the adjacent stables she found a half dozen sturdy Naor ponies, and a beautiful spirited gray. She worked quickly to saddle him while the hoofbeats shook the ground outside.

  She heard a hoarse masculine voice shouting orders and the tramp of feet, and wondered if that was N’lahr, commanding foot troops. She was curious to meet him in person and ordinarily would have been fascinated by the idea,
but now had only thoughts for Varama. The longer her preparations took, the more danger the alten faced from that dragon. And so she chafed when she had to adjust the bit, and cursed aloud when she discovered there was only one spear on hand and that it was a little short.

  She would have to make that spear count, then. Just as she’d learned Gyldara had done with a single axe.

  She emerged into a crowd of hundreds of Vedessi foot soldiers, and some shouted in alarm as they saw a mounted figure enter their midst from the darkness. She paused so that they might register her as a squire and not a threat, and maneuvered around a band of pikemen.

  She debated calling for them to follow, and then heard someone shouting at her.

  “Squire!”

  The call came from behind, and she knew it was directed at her, but she moved on as though she hadn’t heard, and soon she was past and guiding her animal swiftly around other troops.

  Before long she had a clear view down a wide lane that led south, where she saw a knot of Naor swordsmen tussling with a unit of pikemen. A second group of Vedessi hurried forward to reinforce the first.

  She continued east where she could see the whole of the arena upon the cliffside, outlined in flickering red and orange. Second-story buildings were so well illuminated she could pick out individual bricks, though lower levels were but dull shapes wrapped in shadow.

  She came upon a large lane slanting up to a gated wall around the second level. Kaneshi cavalry charged it, undeterred by fierce resistance from Naor on the walls, flinging spears and casting arrows. The Kaneshi archers sat well back, launching arrow after arrow against the ramparts while spearmen galloped forward, the tails of their long protective coats flying behind them. They aimed low, rather than high, thrusting their spears into the great double doors. Three separate parties of them rode and cast spears, losing three or four soldiers with every charge.

  On the fourth attack she recognized Enada herself leading a dozen to the doors. The cover fire from the Kaneshi bowmen seemed to treble.

  Rather than casting spears like those before her, Enada leapt nimbly from her horse, caught an embedded spear, and pulled herself up. Other riders followed behind her, leaping to the spears and clambering up like the weapons were irregular ladder rungs.

  Enada took the lead, not climbing so much as hopping from one to the other, quickly ascending. The bowmen lessened their cover fire as she drew within a few feet of the top, and then she leapt the merlon, three of her soldiers coming almost immediately after.

  Awestruck, Sansyra watched the figures dashing along the battlement height, wondering if she herself might ever be so competent. It dawned on her then that there was no good way through to the tower, nor that she could reach it in any kind of timely manner. By the time she got there, Varama would likely be gone.

  She had acted rashly, and now she sat ahorse alone in an occupied city when at the very least she should be holding her post. Smarter would have been to insert herself into the command structure and lead some of the troops to battle. She knew the city far better than the Vedessi and could help guide them. She looked down at her single short spear and sneered at herself. Certainly a brave alten might fight a dragon, but Gyldara, she knew, had faced an injured animal and had an army behind her.

  She frowned at her own foolishness, and wondered if it was adrenaline that had sent her hither, or some kind of unconscious craving for glory. At some level, she realized she still wanted to be a hero, childish as that notion seemed. It was heroic enough to have taken that gate. With that way open, the allied forces were advancing through a city bereft of leaders and overwhelmed by multiple distractions. Varama’s plan was bringing victory, just as she’d told Denalia.

  Wherever Varama was now, she would doubtless tell Sansyra to retreat to the lines. She was turning to do so when she heard the drum of hoofbeats.

  She spotted a figure on a horse between two lanes and wondered if it was fate that had delivered her here. For something about the way the rider carried himself reminded her of the Naor general. The woman, Vannek.

  She swung the little gray around and kicked into pursuit.

  Following onto the wide Avenue of White, she caught a glimpse of the rider in silhouette as she looked over her shoulder. Even in that poor lighting Sansyra recognized her beardless quarry.

  Sansyra spurred her mount harder, and galloped after. Vannek, too, kicked her beast into gallop, but the animal struggled. In the shadow of a great fountain, Vannek’s horse stumbled and pitched its rider out of the saddle.

  Sansyra grinned fiercely. Only a few hundred yards lay between them, and she thought for a moment the Naor might be dead, but Vannek pushed herself to her feet, looked over her shoulder, and stumbled into a run toward the great oval pool around Alvor’s Oak.

  Somehow the little park was still mostly unscathed. The beautiful tree that Alvor himself was said to have planted soared up from its platform in the midst of the pool. Incongruously, no matter the distant screams and the red fire reflected from dark clouds, stone animals hidden about the tree still spouted water into the basin that circled at their feet. The Naor, who lived in drab lands, might have appreciated the simple, natural elegance of this garden. Or it might be that they simply hadn’t gotten around to destroying it yet.

  As Asrahn had taught her, Sansyra considered the land over which she was about to fight for advantageous positions. And as Varama had taught her she calculated how best to use the resources at hand. She had a horse she didn’t know well. Her sword. A short spear. A knife.

  And the semblance stone. Now, she thought, was the time, and she tapped it to reach out for energy with tendrils of her magic. As Vannek turned to launch a spear Sansyra touched the threads of its trajectory and sent it twirling off course.

  She pitched her own spear, using her magics to propel it to increased speed. Vannek spun away, but the cast caught her in the back and she plunged into the fountain. Whether or not the weapon had pierced she couldn’t see, not amid the splash of Vannek’s fall.

  Sansyra drew her blade and guided the gray on. It hesitated at the lip of the pool before gamely leaping the verge and splashing into the fountain.

  Vannek rose with sword in hand. Sansyra leaned out to slash, but the Naor general dived beneath the blow. Sansyra kept on, putting the tree between her and her foe. She kicked the gray into a canter then grabbed a low hanging branch to lift her off out of the Naor’s sight.

  As the horse continued its noisy progress, Sansyra swung hand over hand to the raised middle of the pool and the stone path that circled the oak, then dropped silently beside the life-sized wolf spitting water from its maw. She ran along the inner curve of the poolstones as the horse continued splashing around.

  The distraction got her very close to Vannek. The Naor stood with her back exposed. She wore complicated armor of interworked metal plates, and there was no sign of the wound Sansyra had hoped for. The javelin point wouldn’t have easily pierced armor so fine.

  She must have given herself away. Vannek whirled. Sansyra saw the gleam of her teeth. The Naor general’s hand whipped up and Sansyra felt something thud into her armor near her collar. A gleaming object plunged into the water nearby and she understood that the Naor had thrown a second knife. A few finger spans higher and it would have caught her throat.

  Sansyra flung herself forward.

  Vannek met her blade a fraction of a moment too slow, but blocked the blow. Sansyra could tell by the way she parried that Vannek was already winded. She looked half spent.Yet the Naor met each strike with determination. Soon both warriors breathed heavily, and Vannek forced Sansyra back. Their feet kicked up shining beads of water.

  Vannek seemed to find her second wind and advanced with a vengeance. The squire’s arms ached, and one of her calves cramped. She’d had only a brief respite after the battle for the gate. Her breath came in great gasps and her head pounded. Sweat streamed from the line of her helm and into her eyes, stinging them.

  Afraid that if s
he didn’t act now she was done for, she tapped the semblance stone. She felt its energy drizzle as she stole the last of its power, waited for Vannek to swing, leaned back, then plunged in, willing speed into her motion.

  Time seemed slowed. Vannek’s eyes widened as with the last of her magical power Sansyra came in with astonishing speed, aiming a vital blow.

  Vannek lowered her head instinctually, trying to shield her neck and twisting away, so the strike that would have taken her in the throat slid along the side of her lowering head and tore into her ear, sending a large bloody flap flying.

  The Naor gasped, tried to steady herself with a backward step, and lost balance to crash to her knees. Her sword dropped into the water.

  Sansyra was quick to follow, her sword point low. “Yield!”

  Vannek’s pain-wracked face turned and met her eyes even as the woman reached sideways into the water for her blade. Blood flowed down the left side of her face.

  “Yield!” Sansyra was astonished by the way her voice rang off the stone, how dry it was, how hoarse she sounded, how it hurt a little to speak at such volume.

  From behind came a rush of wind. Little wavelets rose in the water. And Vannek’s expression brightened as she caught sight of something to Sansyra’s rear.

  Every instinct told Sansyra she needed to move, now, that she had to get out of the way, that she was wide open for whatever was happening at her back. She stepped right, so that the tree was behind her, and Vannek lay at her left hand.

  She stole a glance away and found the dragon with the shining wings. It carried two riders, and its fanged mouth was open. One of the two men riding it cried out in a hoarse voice to get down.

  She knew the warning was meant for Vannek, but Sansyra threw herself into the basin beyond the tree.

  The sound was but mildly dulled by the water, and she felt it strike not just her ears but set her chest vibrating, and her limbs shook. It felt as though every bone in her body had been struck at once.