A Birthright of Blood (The Dragon War, Book 2) (6 page)

The ruins of Castra Luna.

"Maggoty fish guts,"
Erry whispered, and her throat constricted. She had promised herself
she wouldn't cry—she had shed enough tears during the lonely nights
these past few moons—but her eyes stung anew.

Serving in a northern fortress,
Erry had heard news of her old training outpost. They said that
after conquering Luna, the Resistance had ravaged and abandoned the
fort, knowing they could never defend it. Erry had imagined ruins
like those from the Griffin War a thousand years ago—orphaned
archways, crumbling towers, walls pocked with holes, a fortress that
could be patched up with good masonry and elbow grease. Yet Castra
Luna… for a moment, Erry wasn't sure she even flew to the right
place. Nothing remained here. Not walls, not the shells of towers,
nothing but bricks and ash strewn across a clearing.

"The Resistance took apart
every damn brick," she said to herself. "Nothing is left.
Nothing. Oh stars, Mae."

When she flew closer, she saw
that hundreds of soldiers were bustling across the ruins like ants
over a smashed hive. Dragons were tugging carts full of crumbled
bricks, digging foundations, and clearing rubble. Men were building
scaffolding of wood and rope. Outside the ruins, a thousand troops
or more drilled in a forest clearing, marching between tents.

Erry swallowed a lump in her
throat.

Castra
Luna. The fort where she had trained for three moons. The fort
where she had met her two best—her two
only
friends: Tilla Roper and Mae Baker.

"I miss you."

Growing up in Cadport, Erry had
never had friends. How could she? She was the bastard of a foreign
sailor from Tiranor and a Vir Requis prostitute. Her father had
never returned to Requiem. Her mother had died many years ago.

The other children of Cadport
had grown up in homes, sheltered, warm, and protected. Erry had
survived alone on the docks. She lived with feral cats and stray
dogs. She ate whatever washed up onto the shore and whatever she
could steal. She shivered at night in abandoned hovels. She begged,
she stole, and sometimes—she cursed to remember it—she bedded men
for a warm meal or a roof on a stormy night. Her only friends were
the animals she shared the docks with. She often went moons without
talking, only growling and barking and hissing among the strays.

And then… then the blessed day
came.

Then she turned eighteen, and
she was drafted into the Legions.

They had given her boots—real
boots of leather! After years of wandering the boardwalk barefoot,
the boots felt like slippers for a princess. And they gave her
food—real food! The other recruits would complain about the stale
wafers and dried meat, but to Erry—whose meals had often been
scavenged from trash—it tasted like a feast.

And
best of all… I had friends.

Flying
toward the ruins, Erry blinked tears from her eyes. For three moons,
she had shared a tent with Tilla, Mae, and many other girls. For the
first time, Erry had felt like she belonged. In the Legions, she was
no half-breed dock rat. She was a soldier, same as the others. She
did not sleep among stray cats and dogs on the beach, but beside
friends. Beside Tilla and Mae.

"And now you're gone, Mae,"
she whispered. "But I will find you, Tilla. And I will serve
with you again."

She looked down, blinking her
damp eyes, and a gasp fled her maw. She squinted and flew lower.

Could it be…?

Yes. Erry felt her throat
tighten. Just north of the ruins, a cemetery sprawled between the
trees. At first she had thought that thousands of bricks lay strewn
through the forest, cast from the ruined fort. Then she realized
these were craggy tombstones.

Erry pulled her wings close and
dived down.

She crashed through the
treetops, landed on the forest floor, and shifted into human form.

"Oh bloody stars," she
whispered.

The tombstones rolled around
her, carved from the old bricks of Castra Luna. Thousands spread
between the trees. Those trees creaked in the wind, and their leaves
rustled, a whisper of ghosts. Erry shivered and hugged herself.
Even in steel armor, a sword at her side, she felt as fragile and
afraid as she had upon the docks.

She began walking between the
graves, her boots crunching fallen leaves. Most tombstones bore no
names; they were simply engraved with a single birch leaf, an ancient
symbol of Requiem.

Erry tilted her head.

"The Regime engraves the
spiral upon its graves," she whispered. "The birch leaf is
an older symbol. The Resistance dug these graves."

She had not imagined the
Resistance would bury the dead. She had always heard that they
merely burned corpses, left them to rot, or even ate them. Yet
somebody had dug these graves here, raised these tombstones, and
engraved each one with a symbol of Old Requiem.

As she kept wandering through
the forest, Erry saw that several scattered tombstones did bear
names. She recognized some; here lay the fallen youths of Cadport.

Rune
must have buried them,
Erry realized.
He's
from Cadport too. He'd know some of those he slew.

She
sighed and lowered her head. Back at Cadport, Rune Brewer had always
been kind to her. He would bring her food to the beach sometimes.
Once he even let her sleep in his tavern during a storm. Yet now the
boy had become a resistor. Now he had slain hundreds; burying those
he slew could not atone for that.

"In only a year, so much
changed," Erry whispered. "Two kids from the boardwalk,
one now a soldier, one a resistor. And so many dead."

She kept wandering, reading the
names of the fallen, until she saw a tall tombstone upon a knoll.

Erry froze and stared.

A ray of light fell between the
trees, lighting the tombstone. Ivy crawled over its craggy white
surface, and cyclamens circled its base. The trees rustled,
whispering to her. This grave seemed to beckon, and Erry approached
it gingerly, holding her breath.

When she saw the name upon the
tombstone, she lowered her head, and a tear flowed down her cheek.

"Mae Baker," she
whispered.

She looked at her friend's grave
and clenched her fists.

"Oh
damn it, Wobble Lips!" she blurted out. "Why did you have
to go and get killed, damn you? I
told
you to fly near me." Her fists shook, and she wanted to punch
the tombstone. "I told you a million times—in assault
formation, look
ahead
and blow fire, not at enemies beside you." She kicked the
earth, sending leaves flying onto the grave. "Now look at you.
Now look at you, Wobble Lips! At least I'm spared seeing your damn
lips wobble so much. At least you won't bug me again with all your
wailing and tears."

She closed her burning eyes and
stood for long moments, fists clenched. Finally she sighed, opened
her eyes, and touched the tombstone.

"Wherever you are now,
Wobble Lips, just… don't get into any more trouble, all right? Not
until I see you again. And for stars' sake, don't cry so much, okay?
Be strong. We all have to be strong." Her knees trembled and
she knuckled her eyes. "We're going to be so damn strong, Mae,
you won't believe it." She patted the tombstone. "Goodbye,
Wobble Lips. Goodbye."

She turned and left.

She walked through the forest,
head low.

Soon she found a gravelly road.
As she walked between the trees, heading toward the ruins of Castra
Luna, she unrolled the scroll she had carried all the way from her
northern fort. She clutched it like a treasure.

It had taken her moons to
convince her officer to write this scroll, reassigning her here. At
first, Erry had agreed to do anything for reassignment. And so she
had spent a moon serving her officer as a slave—scrubbing his boots,
sweeping his floor, oiling his sword, polishing his armor, and
begging again and again for naught. She had then changed her
approach. She spent the next moon wreaking havoc in her
phalanx—knocking over pots, breaking three swords, crashing into
other dragons in flight, and being the worst soldier she could be.
She had suffered many punisher burns during that moon, but it was
worth it. Finally, after Erry had lost yet another helmet, her
commander agreed to send her south.

"Remember," Erry had
said, rubbing the bruises of his punisher, "I want to serve in
Castra Luna, and I want to serve under Lanse Tilla. Remember
that—it has to be Lanse Tilla."

Her officer had scowled,
cursed… and written the scroll.

"Soon I'll see you again,
Tilla," Erry whispered as she walked down the gravel road.

All
my life,
she thought,
I've
had only two real friends. One now lies buried. The other is an
officer leading her own phalanx.
Erry took a deep breath.
I
might still be a lowly periva and Tilla a lofty lanse. And I might
have to serve under her command, rather than fight at her side. But
I can be near her again. I can be with my friend.

She knuckled her eyes, kept
walking down the road, and soon reached the ruins of Castra Luna.

The Legions had built a palisade
of sharpened logs around the debris, and Erry approached an opening
where two guards stood. When she reached them, they frowned down at
her, two beefy men in black steel. They moved to block the palisade
gateway.

"Move it!" Erry said,
craning her head up to glare at them. She stood five feet tall only
on tiptoes, and these brutes towered above her, but she had fought
men this size before on the docks. "I'm reassigned to this
fort. Let me in, mules."

The guards wore a single red
star upon their armbands. They were perivas, the same lowly rank as
her. They snorted.

"You got to be eighteen to
join the Legions, shrimp," one said and snorted. "You look
about three years old. Get lost."

Erry
rolled her eyes. "And you got to have a brain to join too, and
I've seen logs with bigger brains than yours." She brandished
her scroll at them. "Can you even read? This is my new fort.
Move!
"

With a great shove, she pushed
between them and entered the camp.

Chaos awaited her.

Dragons trundled about, snorting
smoke and dragging wagons of bricks and wood. Masons cursed and
yelled at one another, jabbing fingers at building plans. Workers
swung hammers, erecting scaffolding. Other dragons grunted as they
dug ditches. Between these workers, hundreds of troops marched in
clanking armor, trained with swords, and flew overhead as dragons. A
thousand legionaries must have bustled here, engineers and fighters
alike.

"I'm looking for Lanse
Tilla Siren," Erry said to one mason, speaking Tilla's new,
noble surname. "She commands the Sea Cannons phalanx. Where do
I go?"

The mason ignored her, rushed
toward a worker, and began admonishing the man for using the wrong
chisel.

Erry grumbled, spat, and moved
on. She had to ask a dragon tugging a cart, three soldiers sorting
through rubble, and another guard.

Finally the last man scratched
his chin, sucked his cheek, and said, "Lanse Tilla Siren? Tall
woman, sort of looks like a statue?"

Erry nodded. "That's her
all right."

The legionary snorted. "You
asked to serve under Lanse Siren? The Cadport Cannon?" He
whistled. "You crazy or what?"

She growled at him. "You
stupid or just an idiot?" She waved the scroll at him. "Yes,
Tilla Bloody Siren, says so right here. Where is she?"

The soldier raised his hands in
defense, and his eyebrows rose just as high.

"All right, little one,
don't have a fit. It's just that, well…" He snickered.
"Siren's got a bit of a reputation around here. Say she not
only looks like a statue, but got a heart of stone too. Loves her
punisher, that one does. But well… if you're a glutton for pain,
you might like her." He gestured his chin to a gateway behind
him. "Step out the palisade, down the road for two hundred
yards, and look for a tent with a cannon banner. You'll find her
there."

"Yeah, well, you're a
glutton for… dumbness!" Erry said and marched away, fuming.

So what if people badmouthed
Tilla? Erry had heard others say the same about her friend, even
back in Cadport, calling her cold and haughty. But Erry had seen a
different side to her. Erry had seen a kind, sensitive woman beneath
the icy exterior. She had seen a friend.

I
myself was always an outcast,
Erry thought.
I
myself was always called names. They called me a dock rat, a harlot,
and a diseased stray.
She knuckled her eyes.
But
I'm not. And Tilla isn't cruel. We're two outcasts, two lost souls
from Cadport… and we'll get through these damn Legions together.

She stepped through the palisade
gates, walked down a dirt road, and saw a clearing between the trees.
A hundred tents rose here, their black cloth emblazoned with red
spirals. Troops marched between them, and several dragons flew above
in patrol. If the ruins bustled with workers, here there were only
fighters. These men did not wield hammers and chisels, but swords
and shields.

Frey
is mustering a new army here,
Erry thought.
Green
recruits used to train in this forest clearing. Now Castra Luna will
house seasoned warriors to fight the Resistance.
She gripped her sword.
And
I will fight with them.

The
tents displayed the banners of their phalanxes. Erry saw sigils of
wolves, lions, dragons, swords, and many others. Each phalanx had
two tents to its name: one large tent for the common soldiers, one
smaller one for its commanding officer. After walking through the
camp for several moments, Erry saw two tents bearing Tilla's
banners—a cannon overlooking the sea.