A Sword for a Dragon (36 page)

“Ah, of course, I should have known. And you seem no worse the wear for it all, I do so hope that that is true.”

“I will fight again, we will stop them.”

She felt again the cold shiver of fear. Relkin sounded uncertain despite his brave words. The enemy would keep on attacking until it won its way in.

“I have heard that we will be reinforced within a week.”

“Six white ships, and a legion from Cunfshon.”

They would hold them. They had to hold them.

“We will all be on the wall there if we are called,” she said.

“And Lagdalen of the Tarcho can wield a sword, I have seen her.”

Lagdalen smiled. She had learned many things in the past year, things that would have been unimaginable before.

“If I have to, I will.”

“You have been working here a long time, I think,” he said. “You should sleep, Lagdalen dragon friend.”

“Ah, sleep, I remember it well. Actually I’m going to my bed as soon as they come and collect General Hektor. He’s being sent home on the cutter that put in yesterday.”

Relkin had seen the ship, with her white hull and beautiful lines, a three-masted brig built for speed and maneuverability in shallow waters, ideal for getting through the river pirates of the lower Oon.

“I have heard that the general will never awake.”

“I don’t know Relkin, he may. If his condition can be changed anywhere, it is in Cunfshon.”

Lagdalen removed Relkin’s bandage and changed the dressing. The wound was healing well. While she worked, he told her about the walls and the spirit of the 109th. The dragons were tired but their morale was still high, in part because they’d won such a victory in the mine the other night. The dragonboys were battered, but game, and they were ready for whatever might come.

And there was a lot to come.

When she’d finished, he stayed to help sort the bandages, long ones for bindings and short ones for dressings. They finished just before the men from the cutter arrived. The surgeons came out of their operating room to give the general a final examination.

Relkin saw that the great Hektor was now the color of wax and his face was sunken. It was hard to reconcile the man on the stretcher with the great general he had seen riding before the legions only a few weeks before.

Then Hektor was gone, borne swiftly through the streets to the white cutter and the voyage to Cunfshon.

The man known as Euxus of Fozad slipped quickly along the secret passage beneath the walls of Ourdh. The passage exited in the cellar of a suburban villa that had once been owned by the real Euxus of Fozad, an unfortunate who had already made the grim pilgrimage to Dzu.

The villa had been largely demolished, and its beams removed for the giant siege tower that had been built nearby. The man, who was actually the Magician Thrembode the New, stepped out of the ruins and headed for the headquarters of the Sephisti army on the East Gate road. As he went, he smiled, noting that the siege towers were completed. The new generals were keeping their men up to a very exacting pace. But it was all quite unnecessary. He, Thrembode, had the key to a far easier victory.

He hurried to his meeting.

In the operations tent of General Klend, he found the high priest Odirak and two other priests that he had not met before, tall, pale men of dour expression who barely returned his greeting.

Abruptly he became aware of another being. The tent flap opened and a man-size entity strode in and positioned itself in front of him. It wore a floor-length black cloak with a heavy hood, and the hood covered its face with darkness, but he saw the glint of horn reflected from that dark. And suddenly he saw the eyes, as if small fires had been ignited in nothingness, they flickered like little flames.

A Master? He shuddered inwardly. One of the high and mighty themselves had come all this way? It seemed incredible.

Then the hood fell back, and he saw revealed a Mesomaster. The metamorphosis had taken place on the lower part of the face. There were no lips, no teeth, only the gleaming beak and the frills of horn around it. The eyes, too, were inhuman, but the upperparts of the head remained recognizably human still, there was even a patch of lank grey hair, pulled back and tied in a knot.

So, a Mesomaster, halfway to the strange physiology of the Masters themselves. The power radiating from the figure was overwhelming to those who could sense it. Thrembode felt it clearly on many planes and knew that he was being examined by a mighty intelligence. Not since he had last faced the Blunt Doom of Tummuz Orgmeen had he felt such a gaze.

He darted a glance to Odirak. The high priest had hinted of this, that there was a greater power than even that of the demon in Dzu at work here. A Mesomaster, by the old gods this was a turn of the black pages!

“And so our Magician Thrembode returns from enemy territory,” said the thing suddenly in its weird rasping voice. “What news does the magician bring me of his band of traitors?”

“They are still debating our terms, master.”

“Still? Do they not realize their position? We attack in a matter of hours. If your plan is to work, it must work now. Or else we attack and to hell with them.”

“Ah, well, I hesitate to thrust myself into situations beyond my competence, but surely we can hold up the attack for a day or so. The Argonathi are weakening. Soon I believe they will give in to the logic of the situation, and then they will march out and the city will be ours without loss.”

“We cannot wait long. We must have the population of the city to renew the myrmidon force.”

Thrembode felt his hair rising. The stories he’d heard about what was going on in Dzu were utterly bizarre.

Odirak leaned forward to interject.

“And if the Argonathi do accept our terms, they will be taken in the open field. None may be allowed to return home alive. The god demands this.”

Thrembode was appalled, this would he a terrible waste.

“Surely not the officers, wouldn’t we want to reward our traitors and to send them home where they could work for us?”

The Mesomaster made a strange sound, like the buzzing of several bees.

“Heh, heh, our magician is a sly fellow with a cunning wit. But he forgets our purpose. We fight to instill terror in our enemies. Only an enemy that is utterly terrified of us can be crushed quickly enough for the schedule that has been decided on by the High Command. We must adhere to the schedule.”

Ah, the schedule! Thrembode gave a mental shrug and abandoned the traitors he’d summoned up from the enemy camp. The schedule of the High Command was vastly more important. How foolish of him to even question it.

“And so if no one lives to tell the tale, the terror will be the greater,” he said.

The Mesomaster buzzed again briefly.

“Exactly. Two entire legions shall vanish. The Argonathi will never know what happened. They will lose all contact with Ourdh, and we shall be able to produce the largest army the world has ever known. With that we shall crush the Argonath and go on and finally destroy the isles themselves and end the foul perpetrations of the witch cult.”

Thrembode rocked on his heels and kept his mouth shut. So did Odirak. No other response was wise or even permissible. This was high policy. The Mesomaster turned to General Klend, who had so far remained completely silent.

“Klend, we attack at noon.”

Thrembode saw it looking at him next.

“Magician, go back and tell your traitors they have only a few hours in which to make themselves useful to us. After that, their moment will be gone and they will die with the rest.”

“At once, master.” Thrembode bowed and saluted with the clenched fist to his chest.

Thrembode the New was not the only person caught up in the gathering storm who felt disappointment with the direction things were heading.

Away across the city, in the Imperial Palace the Emperor Banwi himself wept on his pillow. It was a very fine pillow, with a silken casing from the Quuf dynasty, and this was not the first time Banwi Shogemessar had wept into it. It was a good pillow for weeping into, quite absorbent, in fact.

The little emperor wept because he had never felt so alone and so bereft in his entire life. How had he ended up in this terrible position? He could still only barely believe it possible.

All day he sat the uncomfortable throne and dealt with the business of the empire. Out in the vastness of Bogra, a fresh Imperial Army was being raised. Almost fifty thousand strong now, this force would join the army of the southern monstekirs, the dukes of Canfalon and the stekirs of Ralezwar. Together they would have more than one hundred thousand men, enough to attempt to raise the siege and drive off the Sephisti horde. But all this seemed to require a thousand political decisions every day. Banwi hated making these decisions, but they had to be made and he had to make them.

Worst of all, the damned witch watched him the entire time like a hawk. Banwi had almost forgotten what it was to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh. It had been weeks since he had drunk more than a single mug of ale. If it wasn’t the constant audiences with generals and monstekirs and representatives of other monstekirs, it was the special meetings with the witch herself and the Argonathi generals. There wasn’t an hour of leisure in his entire day. The woman was inhuman in her demands.

Banwi pined for the Princess Zettila. But she had been lost in the wreck of the cult of Gingo-La. No longer could she advise him on the struggle with his mother and her favorites. Instead, he spent every waking minute on the business of the empire. Had she been able to witness this change in her cousin, Zettila would have marveled.

However, Banwi Shogemessar did not love the witch for achieving this transformation. He hated her, and he also feared her. And worst of all, he could feel a slow-growing nugget of respect for the witch in his heart. Even his hate would be tinged with respect! It was absolutely too horrible to be borne!.

But he had to admit to himself that his mother’s machinations had abruptly come to an end after Ribela had done something unguessable in the dark on a moonless night. His mother was reported to have fled far up-country, to the Patwa valley estates.

Instead of having his mother to terrify him, he had the ugly old witch with her demands and haughty eyes and her ghastly descriptions of what was happening in Dzu, and what would happen to him and all his subjects if he did not obey her and fight to save the empire.

And when he slept, there would be the dreams. Terrible dreams in which a-voice told him over and over again that he would be taken by the monster and slowly devoured.

He heard a swish, and the curtain was drawn back.

“Go away, I want to be alone,” he said.

But the intruder did not go away.

“I said I wanted to be alone.” Surely the witch would not dare to bother him again that day. He’d done enough by the holy breath of Auros. His ass was aching from sitting on that throne for nine hours straight.

But it was not the witch; instead his aunt Haruma stood there like a dumpy pudding clothed in black silk.

Haruma!

“How dare you come to me like this,” he began.

It was all Haruma’s fault. Haruma had told him to trust the Argonathi. Haruma had told him to offer battle to the enemy. Haruma had opened the door to all this horror.

“Go away. It is all your fault.”

Harum came forward, knelt, and pressed her forehead to the floor. It was as she’d feared. The Fedafer had gone to pieces in the last few days. His face was red from weeping.

“My lord, my Fedafer, your humble servant begs you not to say such things. Your humble servant seeks only to assist you in overcoming the evils that threaten the ancient well-watered land.”

“You advised me to accept the Argonathi offer of help. I did this and what happened? The foreign devils occupy the city and have seized control of the granaries. I am eating porridge, three meals a day of porridge! It is abominable.”

“My lord, my Fedafer, your humble servant begs forgiveness, but would point out that the Argonathi are also holding the walls of the city against the enemy.”

“But porridge? I hate porridge, I want duck and roasted kid and some wine and some time in the harem. I have tasted no honeyed lips in ten days!”

“My lord, my Fedafer, your humble servant begs to remind you that this is a time of war; all your subjects are subject to privations and discomfort. They are united in their love for you, and their morale is the greater in knowing that you share in their privations because you must direct the defense of the city and of their lives.”

“Oh, bah! I am not directing the defense of the city. I do not care about the defense of the city. That is something for generals to do. I want roast duck with crackly skin and sweet-sour coconut dressing, do you hear?”

Banwi turned his back on her and sulked on his pillow.

Aunt Haruma came close and knelt beside him.

“My lord and master, darling Banwi, allow me to help you. I know you are exhausted by your labors. I know that the foreign witch is not easy to deal with.”

“Easy? She is a torment. A slave driver, a monster in human form. She has forbidden me the use of my own harem.”

“My poor nephew, my Fedafer, my master.”

“It is absolutely terrible, Aunt. I’m living like some damned military officer or something. And the witch wants me to constantly think about the enemy, and I cannot bear to think of the enemy. They are waiting for me. I see them in Dzu waiting for me with smiles of malice. I cannot sleep, the dreams are too terrible.”

He broke down into sobs, and plump, comfortable Haruma did as she had done many times and took the little emperor to her bosom, comforted him, and rocked him gradually to sleep. She reflected that poor Banwi had never been suited to becoming an emperor in the first place. It was just his bad luck that in his time as Fedafer, this terrible rebellion would burst forth from ancient Dzu.

“Go to sleep, my Fedafer,” she sang softly to him.

Outside the nightingales were singing and the moon was rising, now a thick crescent, sharp and bright in the east.