The High King's Vengeance

by Steven Poore

“You did. But you would not tell me how old. And what is the price of this help?”

  “Whatever it is, I will pay it,” Cassia said, her voice flattened to end all talk on the subject.

  But this time Rais would not be diverted. He took her hand and pulled her to a halt, and she discovered she could not pull free of his grip. Not without a fight.

  “How? How will you pay it, if you don’t even know what you have agreed to pay? Kolus’s rotten balls, girl, what manner of bargain did you strike?”

  The prince was plainly furious, yet still he did not raise his voice. Cassia twisted herself aside so she did not have to look him in the eye. The drums taunted her.

  “I made no new bargain,” she said. “I held Feyenn and Alcibaber to the agreements they made, long ago, before Lyriss first fell to the North. They should have protected the land; instead they slept and dreamed themselves as gods. Now they have been awoken.”

  Rais blinked. “Feyenn and who? Wait – they were asleep . . . ?”

  “Beneath the mountains. For centuries.” At this moment Cassia did not like herself. Each word she spoke cut wounds into Rais’s intent to protect her. It was as if a part of her wanted to hurt him.

  “Since Lyriss fell . . . since the Age of Talons? Oh great gods above – dragons? And you held them to agreements they made?” Rais stared up into the sky and muttered a Galliarcan prayer under his breath.

  While he was distracted Cassia freed herself from his grip. “That wasn’t part of the plan,” she said. “At least, not at first.”

  “You’re making this up as you go?” Now at last he seemed quite speechless, reduced to shaking his head in disbelief. At last he managed a small, overwhelmed laugh. “Peleanna be praised, I’m glad I am on your side. I would pity any man – or any thing – set against you. But – dragons . . .”

  He turned to continue the walk towards the other commanders, but Cassia touched his sleeve. “Be careful here, Rais. These men are real Hellean soldiers. And . . . and I think Craw may be here too.”

  The smile slipped momentarily. “Then you should be careful too, Cassia. If ever I had to trust my life to a dragon, it would not be that one.”

  Cassia shivered. Then, shaking her own fears away as best she could, she led Rais to meet her commanders.

  The last straggling carts and laden mules arrived at the base of the hillside as the gloom darkened slowly into nightfall. The day itself had never been fully lit, and Cassia found that her sense of time had been disrupted. She suspected her unease and lethargy were shared by the soldiers too, for all they had been cheered by Rais’s reinforcements.

  The drums still beat at the base of her skull, affording her no relief at all. They urged her on into the North, towards her confrontation with the mists and whatever manner of beasts might be hidden behind them. They taunted her with the prospect of failure. No, they told her, failure was not a prospect, but a certainty. It would not matter how many men she brought into the North. Caenthell would devour them all. Their blood would barely begin to slake a thirst born of long, dark centuries of imprisonment. She should not delay in bringing her armies to the slaughter.

  This close to the source of the drumming, it was a great effort to keep those insidious voices at bay. Cassia could not concentrate on the strategies Rais discussed with the other commanders. Instead she found a quiet space between two tents and tried to work through some of the forms she had practiced with Meredith. And, she thought with grim logic, perhaps if she could not hear the talks, then Jedrell and his spirits would not know what was discussed.

  Step, turn, lift and parry. Cover the angles. Protect the flanks. Feint and attack. Step back and begin again. The repetitions were clumsy at first – she had not practiced as much as she should – but after a few minutes she felt her muscles settle back into the rhythms. Feint. Attack. Switch, and cover. The drums began to fade into the background.

  She realised she did not have to dance to Caenthell’s rhythm. She was a storyteller: she could dance to any rhythm she chose. And there were as many rhythms as there were stories.

  She quickened her movements, altered the steps. She changed the length of the strokes she made, switching through several variations until she found a combination that cleared her mind absolutely. The darkness, the dragons, the weight of the North, the long shadow that Baum had cast over her life – Cassia pushed them all away. Even Rais.

  This was, she realised distantly, her last opportunity to take such time for herself before they entered the North itself. This was the point of no return.

  At last her muscles ached, and her arms were too heavy to lift the sword any longer. She eased herself down onto the cold ground and sat in silence for a while. The camp moved on around her; soldiers passed by, talking, singing, or grumbling, oblivious to her presence between the lines of tents. This was the point where the heroes of her father’s stories would struggle with their own doubts, wondering if the rest of their journey was really worth all the pain yet to come. Of course, they would always decide to carry on – these were stories, after all, they had no choice in the matter. But sometimes they would get help or support from unexpected quarters. Perhaps a sympathetic god would choose to favour them in some fashion. Cassia had always envied the likes of Gelis and Pelicos, whose lives had been starred by the gods.

  She prayed silently to all the gods she could name. Meteon and Saihri, Movalli and Ceresel; the winter gods of ice and the hearth, and the distant Ostoris who saw all from high above. She prayed to Peleanna too, Malessar’s patron, because surely if any god had reason to intercede here it was Peleanna, on the warlock’s behalf. After she had exhausted her list of names she closed her eyes and let the weight of the North settle upon her shoulders once more.

  It was a suspicion more than a sensation: she was no longer alone. There was a tickling – a kind of crawling – across her skin. For a moment she thought of Vescar Almoul, but he was dead, his body burned in reclaimed honour. The hilt of the sword was still snug in her hand, the blade flat across her lap, and she could envision herself spinning around and lashing out to cut away the shins of whoever had decided to creep up on her.

  But there was a burned, metallic tang in the air, and the camp had fallen unnaturally silent. Cassia forced herself to stillness, and kept the blade where it was.

  “Craw,” she said.

  She felt the presence shift.

  “They will not answer you,” the dragon said. As ever, he sounded faintly amused by a joke that none but he understood.

  “But they will have heard me.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Craw’s tread was soundless, but Cassia sensed him moving again, circling her. That metallic tang burned the back of her throat, just as it had done before. That the dragon had appeared now was no coincidence, she was certain. But what did he want? Did Craw want her to win, or to lose? Did he care either way?

  “Pyraete answered Baum,” she pointed out.

  “Indeed.”

  Given half a chance Cassia would have dived from between the tents and away down the hillside as fast as her feet could carry her. She needed the pulsing of the war drums in her head to calm her and keep her there, on the damp ground, the subject of the dragon’s scrutiny. She pushed down the questions that bubbled up. None of them needed to be asked; she surely could not afford the price. Craw wanted her to fill the silence with questions, but she was not the same girl the dragon had first encountered on a Galliarcan rooftop. She wondered if Craw would even understand how much she had changed in such a short space of time – dragons were not human, they were near-immortal beasts.

  “Peleanna answered Malessar,” she said.

  “Indeed.”

  With her eyes still closed she could not see for certain, but she thought Craw sounded less amused this time. Perhaps baiting him this way was not a good idea. Cassia decided not to mention the way the gods had appeared to Gelis just before the hour of her greatest trial. Instead she remained seated and waited. Craw had to be
here for a reason, even if he would not tell her what that was. Sooner or later he would have to break the silence.

  She felt the dragon move around her again. Only the slightest whisper of that movement disturbed the otherwise-stilled air. It was as if nothing at all existed beyond this small space. The camp and the hundreds of men inside it might as well have been fleeting dreams.

  “The gods still count Pyraete amongst their number,” Craw said at last. “They will not act against him unless they truly must. Unless there is no other choice.”

  Cassia let the silence stretch out, counting under her breath, before she replied. “Then I will act for them.”

  “Will you?” Craw’s question was sharp. “With only shieldmen and Guhl’s Company behind you? Against the God of the North?”

  Cassia saw, suddenly, the reason for Craw’s presence here. The dragon was testing her. Testing her strength, comparing it against that of Caenthell itself, to see if the balance tipped in either direction. He was as uncertain of the outcome as Cassia herself.

  That was a revelation. She opened her eyes and focused upon the grass she had crushed during her practice. In some places it had already sprung back up, but for the most part it remained matted and muddied, all colour bleached away so that it lay quite lifeless.

  “I have more than that,” she said, trying not to smile openly. If Craw did not know what she had done in Lyriss, then she would not tell him. Not so quickly.

  She had no way to judge the change in Craw’s attitude towards her, but she was certain that it had changed. Perhaps he had not expected her to have made such progress, or to have been able to parry his questions so effectively. As long as she refused to meet his gaze, she thought, hoped, he could not pluck her intentions from her mind. All the stories agreed that was how the dragons manipulated kings and heroes. Pelicos had bound his eyes when he faced the black-scaled Skarn – Cassia had forgotten that until now – and perhaps only the blind king Gneiss, who had deliberately put out his own eyes beforehand, had ever gained any advantage over a dragon.

  “What have you done, girl?” Craw said, but Cassia thought he addressed the question to the air. She heard him pace around her again, sniffing the air as though the answer would be brought upon the wind.

  It was increasingly difficult for Cassia to hide her smile. Did Craw realise what he had done?

  “I have awoken Feyenn and Alibaber, and they will hold the Antiachas against Caenthell.”

  “You awoke . . .” Craw’s voice trailed away for a moment and then he seemed to recover his poise. “I congratulate you on that achievement. The blade you carry is well-deserved. You are a worthy Heir to the North.”

  “Then you will support our drive into the mountains.” She made certain it was not a question.

  There was another quiet moment before the dragon replied. “Yes.”

  “And you will owe me the answer to a question.”

  This time Craw’s voice was sharp enough to cut the air itself. “Yes.”

  The bitter tang that Craw’s presence left thickened as Cassia felt him move closer to her. She closed her eyes and focused on the solidity of the damp ground beneath her.

  “We shall speak again, Cassia,” the dragon said in her ear. “There is business as yet unaccounted between us.”

  After that, silence. The burned taste faded, and Cassia knew he was gone. She remained on the ground, as though still in prayer, until the camp returned to life around her.

  20

  The town was lifeless – no, it was both more and less than lifeless at the same time, Cassia decided after a moment of reflection. Any other abandoned buildings, in ordinary days, would have begun to decay and settle back into the land, timbers, slates and stones left to the mercies of the weather and the weeds. She had seen such places on the borders of Lyriss and in the western part of Hellea. They had been picked apart, their useful scraps carried away so that the corners of the buildings seemed like the ribs of a massive skeleton. The houses before her now bore no resemblance to her memories.

  Devrilinum sat darkened and quiet. The walls and roofs were shaded to grey by the dull murk that now covered the sky. This close, Cassia should have been able to smell woodsmoke from the hearths, or hear the rhythmic hammering of smiths, see movement in the street and yards that adjoined the gates. But there was not even the sound of barking dogs to warn the townsfolk of the army marching upon the town from the south. Devrilinum was emptier than even Lyriss had been.

  Less than lifeless, yet still more.

  “I do not like it,” Rais said. It seemed he felt the discomfort as keenly as Cassia herself, for the mask of a carefree prince was gone, and he had lowered his voice to a whisper, though there could be nobody else within earshot.

  “They must have all fled to the hills,” Teon said from the prince’s other shoulder. The young man was Rais’s shadow these days. His presence usually brought out Rais’s brash, arrogant side, the side that Cassia thought he had lost on the slow journey into the North. She disliked Teon for it, but she also recognised that Rais needed that support, just as much as she needed his.

  Rais shook his head. “I have seen abandoned places,” he said. “I campaigned with my brothers one summer. Where are the tracks? The broken and useless things left at the side of the road? Where are the dogs?”

  “Perhaps they left by the other gates,” Teon said.

  From Rais’s look it was plain he thought Teon a fool, but his words were delivered in the same tone as before. “If I lived here I would not see any escape in the North,” he pointed out. “Besides, we already know there are virtually no men from this place in Havinal’s ranks. So where have they gone?”

  “Do you think it’s safe to enter?” Cassia asked. Havinal had said earlier that he did not wish to leave an unsecured town at his back. And there were other concerns too. Rais’s half of the army had brought some supplies with them from the grasslands below the Antiachas, but nowhere near as much as was needed to feed everyone for more than a couple of days. The remnants of Havinal’s legion were undernourished and their equipment was patched and poor. The quartermaster wanted to strip Devrilinum of anything he could use to improve the efficacy of his soldiers. And if the town was still, in fact, intact then he had proposed using it as an advanced base, noting that the walls made it a far more defensible proposition than any makeshift camp.

  “Undoubtedly,” Rais said immediately, and when Cassia looked at him in surprise he smiled. “A more sensible question would be whether it is safe to remain there. Unfortunately there is no way to tell without first stepping through those gates. And your grey general is correct, Cassia. No officer worth his rank would leave such a place unscouted.”

  “A foray then!” Teon said with a smile. He appeared thrilled by the prospect. “Mounted, or afoot?”

  Cassia heard Rais issue orders, but she was not concentrating on what he said. Instead she stared down the hillside to the patchwork strips of land outside Devrilinum’s walls, picking out the March as it curved out from the gates and into the valley below. The earth was dark in some fields, blotchy and grey in others. Borders and bushes alike were shrivelled, the life drawn from them as though they had been frozen and then left to rot. The same sickly shades infected the town itself. The more she looked, the more she was convinced that nothing at all lived there. Yet as she watched the town, she felt it looking back at her. Examining, sizing, judging and waiting.

  “Take a troop of the shieldmen,” she said aloud.

  Rais paused and frowned. “With all respect, Cassia, they are hardly built for speedy reconnaissance. I think half a dozen men will quarter this village before a shieldman even marches through the gates. If there is some danger lurking behind those walls, Teon will outrun it.”

  She shook her head. “Put your horsemen beyond Devrilinum to watch the road. Send a patrol mounted to the gates, along with a troop of shieldmen, and leave the horses there under guard.”

  Rais looked like he was going to argu
e the point with her: what could a mere girl know of tactics anyway? But to Cassia the reasoning was self-evident. Something like it had worked before, in a tale she had heard, and that tale had come from a soldier. And as Pelicos himself had once discovered, a man could be pulled out from any danger . . . just so long as he had a bloody strong rope and a reliable companion at the other end of it. Cassia folded her arms and waited for Rais to see sense.

  The prince muttered an angry curse in his own tongue, his horse responding to the manner in which he jerked at his reins. “Cassia, stop thinking me stupid. Who will command the shieldmen, eh? Who will they obey most quickly? You cannot place yourself in such danger. That is not how any commander leads his forces!”

  “We are all in mortal danger anyway,” Cassia pointed out. “And if there is danger, then I think I will know of it first.”

  The rising of Caenthell’s spirits at Karakhel, the first inkling she’d had of the sheer strength of the High King, was still fresh enough in her mind that she could taste the bitterness of the mountain air. The drums that beat at the borders of her conscious were ever present but, for the moment, quiescent. If the High King planned any kind of attack here then she believed she would be forewarned. And sooner or later she would have to confront the spirits of the North. If not now, then at Keskor. Or at Karakhel once more. And then – finally – at the ancient wreck of Caenthell itself. She thought she might as well begin here.

  The discussion was concluded sooner than she had imagined. Rais and Teon themselves accompanied her along the road to Devrilinum’s walls, ahead of a full score of shieldmen and the same number again of volunteers from the ranks of the mounted men Teon commanded. The horses were skittish in the company of the stone soldiers, and a couple had balked at being led towards the small town. The two components of her force were thus separated by a good few yards, the shieldmen at the rear to prevent the horses from being spooked any further.

  Every man carried a pair of unlit oil-soaked brands. Even the shieldmen carried these, in place of their spears, after Cassia had requested them supplied. She already knew, just as well as did the legion itself, that edged or pointed weapons would stand them no good against any enemy that Caenthell might have installed in the town. Rais watched the brands distributed, his brow furrowed, but he left the question unspoken and she decided not to offer any explanation. If he did not know the story then she would not tell it now. Later, perhaps.