A Sword for a Dragon (27 page)

They laughed together, a discomforting sound, and one of them reached down and pinched his cheek. He snarled at them, and they laughed again. Then they rose, went out of the cell, and left him in the darkness once more.

The questions about his future multiplied feverishly in his mind. Somehow he had to escape and get back to the 109th in time to protect his dragons. Somehow he had to get out of here.

There were no answers. After a while he dozed. In his dream, he was back in the catacombs beneath the city of Tummuz Orgmeen. An army of rats bore him along on their backs through tunnels illuminated by luminescent slime weed. A voice whispered in his ear, encouraging him not to give up hope. He turned to see the speaker and found only a beam of light, like a bright star seen through a fog. Was it the Lady Lessis? He reached out a hand into the light, and it dissolved and with it the dream of Tummuz Orgmeen. He shifted uneasily on a greasy swell on an ocean of leaden aspect beneath storm clouds. Birds of war sailed by.

He was awoken once more by a gentle shove on the shoulder. Someone leaned close over him, a deeper patch of darkness than the rest. He caught a scent of jasmine. There was a flash of light, a match struck. His eyes adjusted, and he found himself staring into the face of Miranswa. Her veil was pulled up over her forehead. She wore garub.

He opened his mouth, but she pressed her hand across his lips.

“Keep quiet!” she hissed in a whisper. Her eyes flickered back to the door.

“If they catch me here, they will kill me, understand? And then there will be no one to help you escape, and you will go under the blade of the goddess, and your blood will spill down the temple on the night of the full moon.”

His eyes widened involuntarily.

“Blade of the goddess?” What in all the hells was this? Since when did the Mother take life?

“Yes,” she said, “you are to be sacrificed. The high priestesses work a great magic, they will sacrifice to the goddess to obtain her support.”

He struggled to stay calm.

“Well,” he whispered, “perhaps you have a key for these manacles?”

She inspected them carefully.

“No. But now I have the number, and I know where the keys are kept, I will see.” The match went out. After a moment she struck another.

“In the meantime, keep silent, do not attract attention.”

“Hold a moment,” he whispered. “Where am I? Why do they want me?”

She leaned forward, looking lovelier than ever he remembered.

“This is the Island of the Goddess, in the center of the river.”

“Why me?”

“It is always better in these matters to shed the blood of foreigners. And the girl you will be sacrificed with is also of your kind.”

“A girl from Argonath?”

“Yes. I saw her today when she was bathed in the Mother’s milk. She is beautiful in a barbaric sort of way. I felt sorry for her. But they will cut her throat and spill her blood down the steps when the moon rises tomorrow. If you are still here, they will mix your blood with hers.”

A horrible thought suddenly crossed his mind.

“This girl, where was she taken from?”

Miranswa shrugged, “I do not know exactly… the city, I think.”

Lagdalen! It could only be she.

“We must rescue her,” he whispered with sudden determination.

“Impossible,” she said. “I risk everything just to save you. She cannot be rescued. She is held in another dungeon below the great temple.”

“Just tell me where she is and leave the rest to me.” he said, although he felt far less confident then he sounded.

“Fool! I can save you only once, in return for what you did for me. You proved yourself to be an honorable person, but if you are taken again, then you will be beyond my help. As it is, I risk my life for you.”

“Yes, of course, I understand.” But if the girl from Argonath was Lagdalen of the Tarcho, how could he not make an effort to save her?

She gave him a look of utter disgust and blew out the light. After a while he heard the doors close behind her, first his cell door and then the outer one. Then there was silence.

The dragon was awoken by hunger. A real genuine famishment that threatened to set flame to his breath. By the old gods of Dragon Home, he swore he hadn’t felt such a need for food in months. His stomach seemed to cleave to his backbone.

The next discovery was even more unpleasant. He was tied up with impressively massive ropes. Indeed, they were close to the size of cables. His arms were pinioned to his body, as were his legs and tail. Even his neck was roped and held down to the floor. No matter how he struggled, he could not break his bonds, although he rolled about on the floor and struck wooden pillars on either side.

Cursing in dragon speech, he craned his head about. The light was very dim, but his nostrils told him immediately that he was in a stables and that he was lying on a flagstone floor. Dragon sight is more acute than that of humans, and despite the dimness of the light, he was soon able to make out certain details of the place. There was a wide entrance at the far end, a door of wood. Light came through the door through tiny chinks around its edge. He redoubled his examination of his bonds.

They were disappointingly thorough. He tried to angle his lower jaw to come at one of the ropes with his teeth, but the rope around his throat was particularly tight and his efforts to bend his long neck cut off his air in no time. He desisted with a gasp and then more curses.

He bellowed for food a few times on the off chance that his captors were waiting to hear from him and would now rush in with some hot bread, some cheese, perhaps some grilled lamb. By the gods, he thought, even legion noodles with plenty of akh would be fine.

At the fifth bellow, the doors opened and men with spears pushed in. Behind them came women clad in the garub of Ourdh. Cautiously they approached and examined him. They brought no food, not even the scent of any food.

Furious, he roared questions at them in Verio.

One of them, the only one who spoke Verio, fainted when she realized that this huge, muscular animal was actually talking to her. She hadn’t been fully prepared for that. On an intellectual level perhaps she had known this, but somehow the legend of the intelligent wyverns of Argonath was not the same thing as the reality. The other priestesses shrank back, cringing away from the sheer size and obvious ferocity of the monster.

He was obviously not about to break his bonds, although he heaved about on the floor, he could not loose his limbs or his tail. Nevertheless the men jabbed at him with their spears, from a general sense of wanting to do something to take control of the situation. As they jabbed, they shouted in loud voices. Like the priestesses, they were rendered highly nervous by the prospect of intelligent language coming from an enormous animal of ferocious aspect and legend.

Bazil cursed them, spat at them, and wished, longed, for the fiery powers of the ancient drakes. One roar from old Glabadza and all these impious humans would be crisped and blackened.

Alas, the modern-day descendants of those mighty dragons had no fire glands, no oil to flame. Bazil came up with nothing but a mighty belch.

He informed them that if they were going to poke him like that, they might as well go ahead and kill him then and there. He wasn’t going to survive much longer without something to eat anyway.

They stood back at a sharp word from one of the women. Bazil craned his head around and did his best to be winning. Perhaps they could see their way to sending him some soup, some broth, even some gruel, if that was all they had.

The women stared at him stony-faced and then turned away. His voice rose. At the very least, they could give him some gruel. Even the miserable oats that they gave the horses, anything would do.

But then his visitors retreated, closing the doors and extinguishing the light without any glimmer of understanding of the hunger of a dragon.

Hopelessly he roared after them in a passionate rage, but to no result. He was left to the darkness and the many questions he could not possibly come up with answers for. Such as where was this place? And who were his captors? and what did they want with him?

By the roar of the old gods, this was a fine situation for a dragon to be in, trussed up like some doomed fowl ready to be roasted on a spit. How in the names of all the clouds had he ended up here?

Sadly, he wondered where the boy Relkin was. After a moment, he concluded that the boy was either dead or taken, too. Although, why they’d want him was a mystery. If they were intent on cooking a dragon for their supper, why would they want to throw in a scrawny boy? They’d probably knocked him on the head and tossed him aside.

While the broketail dragon pondered these things, great events were in motion all around him. On the great ziggurat of the goddess, beneath which he was imprisoned, the preparations were underway for the great magical work that was to be done when the moon rose to the zenith. Thousands of priestesses, artisans, and slaves were at work. Galleys bearing the elite of the cult of Gingo-La as the death goddess had docked in the little port on the northern end of the island. The work of the coming night would see the destruction of the demonic enemy in Dzu and afterward the glory of the goddess would be shown to the land. This was to be the time when the goddess would rise to the ascendant, and the heretics who worshiped Auros would be overthrown.

Secondly, there were the banks of the rivers, where great armies were on the move.

On the eastern bank, a vast horde had now invested the city of Ourdh. More than one hundred thousand Sephisti fanatics were encamped outside the city’s walls. In the suburbs, there was mass looting and destruction as the Sephisti soldiers, simple fedd for the most part, discharged their inborn hatred of the well-off townsfolk and their sophisticated way of life.

While the fedd were thus preoccupied, the Sephisti engineers were hard at work. Siege engines were under construction at a dozen sites. To get the necessary timbers, the Sephisti simply pulled down nearby buildings and looted them of their beams.

Watching all this from the walls were the men of Argonath and a remnant of the Imperial Army, which had remained with the emperor in the city. These were the best troops from the Imperial Army, and the only ones with any real stomach for the coming fight.

The emperor would have fled, of course, but Ribela of Defwode was now permanently at his side, and she would not allow it. The emperor and his court were going to stay in the city and provide the citizens with heart for the siege.

Messages had gone back to the Argonath, describing the situation and calling for supply from the sea.

The great ships of Cunfshon, massive three-decker ships of oceanic trade would have to be diverted to assist this effort. The river would have to be cleansed of pirates. A fleet of warships was essential.

Meanwhile, the engineers of both the legion and the Imperial Guards division worked together to repair the walls and prepare their defense.

The dragons were a key resource. Their skills at toppling towers would be invaluable. In addition, stations for boiling oil on the ramparts were set up. When oil ran low, they would switch to water. An army of servant women was conscripted and set to carrying and stacking firewood and laying up jars of oil.

In the legion forts, the archers from Kenor were all at fletcher while the legion smiths were busily transforming scrap metal, ornaments, even kitchen utensils into arrowheads by the thousand. Elsewhere the engineers constructed catapults and trebuchets, and gathered rocks for them to hurl over the walls at the enemy.

General Paxion had risen to the challenge. This was the kind of battle he could really comprehend, a battle of supply. He drove himself and he drove everyone else to a maximum effort. Some of the Kadeini, and to his shame some of the Marneri officers, were still promoting the dream of escaping by ship. There were not enough ships to lift off one legion, let alone two. Paxion drove the Kadeini to make greater efforts. He ordered Pekel to set aside all illusions of immediate escape. Long before a fleet big enough to do that could be assembled, they were going to be fighting for their lives here. The Kadeini were vital to the defense of the walls; without them the defense would be impossible. There were upwards of twelve miles of wall, thirteen major forts including the massive Barracks on the north end and the Port Tower at the southernmost extremity. The two legions between them were now responsible for four forts and the Fatan gate. There were more than three miles of walls on their front, and there were many weaknesses along the walls, particularly to the south of the Fatan Gate where the ground was friable and the walls had cracked. The engineers were busy all along this stretch rigging weapons to defend the places where the walls were dilapidated.

With the Queen of Mice solidly ensconced at the emperor’s elbow, Paxion had little trouble in satisfying the most outrageous demands from the engineers. He worked until he dropped, and he slept a few hours and rose and worked on. Paxion was no general for the open field, where dash and aggression often meant everything, but in this kind of contest he felt he could compete with the best of them.

So far there had been little contact with the enemy and not a single casualty. In fact, the Sephisti had hardly done more than fire a few arrows for ranging purposes, and close off the roads outside the big gates. There was a nasty methodicalness to it all. The great army of Sephis would take the city when it was ready and not before.

While the east bank of the great river saw the preparations for war mounting steadily, the west bank was not quiet by any means. Closer to the Island of the Goddess than the east bank, the west bank was also only twenty miles south of the city of Dzu. During the afternoon, a large body of Sephisti soldiers approached the river there.

From the shore, they could easily see the great ziggurat of the goddess. The commanders surveyed the situation briefly and then ordered work crews to tear apart the nearest villages, pulling the houses down and separating out all the usable timber. On the riverbank, other crews prepared to build rafts.