Bazil Broketail (31 page)

A cornet blew. Sergeant Duxe was running through the position calling the men to arms once more. She saw Kesepton with his sword out and his arm waving.

“More of them. They’re coming!”

Lessis got to her feet with a groan. The wounded man was dead now. She drew her short sword; it was crusted with blood. Would this day never end?

“Form hedgehogs!” came the cry.

“Dragons to the front!”

Now the enemy horns were blaring and once more the foe stormed out of the forest and came up the slopes, and everything dissolved into a flurry of slamming blows, fragments of shield and helm whining off the giants in the midst of the struggle.

Bazil and Kepabar fought side by side now while Nesessitas guarded the right flank and Vander and Chektor held the other. Dragonboys danced around behind their great charges, their bows snapping as they sent their arrows flicking into the enemy.

Once again the tide of imps rose around them and the clash of steel reverberated amid screams and roars of rage. But there were fewer trolls now, and with all five dragons grouped together the enemy could make no impression on the center. The hedgehogs held and the elves poured their remaining arrows into the imps from the side.

The remaining trolls were disheartened, however. They pressed their attack with much less fervor, and after one of them was chopped down by Kepabar the others turned once more and moved back down the slope.

Seeing how things went, the men in the black of Tummuz Orgmeen blew their horns and swung their whips, but to no avail; the imps continued to give ground.

Now the men of Marneri set up a shout and pushed harder, driving into the retreating mass of the enemy with the dragons to the fore. Bazil and Kepabar shoved forward, knocking the trolls back, and now it seemed that the enemy would be broken and sent hurtling away in flight.

And then, just as the imp formations were dissolving, Bazil looked up and saw a line of men on horseback charging out of the woods towards them. In a desperate bid to stave off a rout, the enemy troopers were engaging.

“Look up, Kepabar!” he called. There were dragon lances on those horses, but Kepabar was too busy with the trolls to notice.

With a heavy shock the horsemen drove into the hedgehogs and halted them. The mass of men, imps, trolls, horses and dragons was squeezed too tight to fight for a moment. And now the horsemen at the rear lowered dragon lances, couched them and spurred their mounts forward.

Bazil caught the first lance head with his shield and turned it aside and flailed ineffectively with Piocar at the rider. Nesessitas stopped another lance and broke its haft and threw the rider to the ground. But old Kepabar was unlucky. His shield was pinned between his belly and the men of the hedgehog; he could not free it in time and could only attempt to knock the lance upwards with his sword.

The blade caught the lance a slight blow but did not deflect it sufficiently. Instead it ran smoothly into Kepabar’s throat and pierced it through and through.

The great brass hide dragon emitted a squawk of dismay and slowly toppled, still skewered on the lance. The lance was pulled from the horseman’s grip, but it was impossible for Kepabar to dislodge it.

Before Bazil’s horrified gaze, Kepabar thrashed and died while red dragon’s blood poured onto the ground. The Broketail gave a great cry of rage and grief and shook himself free from man and beast.

A horseman spun past him and he took the man from the saddle with a vicious cut from his sword that spread the fellow far and wide. The horse plunged and bolted, kicking a pair of imps onto their heels as it charged into the trees.

A troll staggered into him and was caught the next instant as dragon’s teeth snapped shut across its face. Piocar pulled back and drove home and the troll was down, and Bazil had broken through and was moving on in a red-hued frenzy, killing anything that came his way.

At the sight of him the imps broke and ran like rabbits and he pursued them into the forest with the men of Marneri, the other dragons and the elves at his back all yelling at the top of their lungs and hewing down the defeated enemy.

So caught up in this slaughter was he that he missed the notes of the cornet blowing recall and went on, pursuing a large group of imps that ran from him all the way to the banks of a wide stream.

The imps forded the stream, throwing away their weapons in their panic. Bazil plunged in after them; they would not get away! They would all die for poor Kepabar!

On the other side they scattered, and he raved through the forest behind them until at last, lungs heaving, he noticed that he was alone—the men and the dragonboys had fallen behind the dragon! Still he did not slow his steps; as they said, there was a first time for everything!

The forest on the far side of the stream changed character quickly, and Bazil soon found himself in a stygian gloom beneath a mature forest of hemlock and spruce.

He came upon an exhausted imp, lying sprawled on the mat of needles that covered the forest floor. Bazil stood over it, sword poised, when a gleam to his right startled him and he dodged, slamming his head into a massive tree trunk as he did so. He heard a heavy thud and saw a dragon lance bury itself in the side of the same tree. By the Ancient Drakes, that was a close call!

A pair of imps and a man on foot in the black uniform of Tummuz Orgmeen sprang at him. Freeing himself from the tree Bazil rasped at them, “Much better you stand and die rather than make me chase you all day!”

Piocar swung like a great scythe; one of the imps was slow in leaping away and was cut in half in a spray of blood and a shriek that cut off in an instant. That ended the others’ resistance, and they scattered and ran in different directions.

Bazil gave chase to the man who’d thrown the lance but lost him in a maze of deer trails through the hemlocks. For a while he ran on, venting his rage on the trees around him, Piocar leaving huge slashes in the hemlock and spruce.

At length he stopped, suddenly unsure. He listened carefully but heard nothing except the wind in the hemlocks. He was alone and he had definitely lost his quarry.

The red rage cooled a degree or two and allowed more rational thought.

Where was everyone? For that matter where was he?

Under the dense mat of hemlock branches the light was dim—it was impossible to even work out the sun’s position in the sky. He turned about. Which way would lead him back to the battlefield and the rest of the unit?

After careful consideration he set out in what he thought was the right direction. Shortly he came to a stream, but it was not as wide as the stream he had crossed earlier. Did that mean it was a different stream, or was he further upstream from where he had crossed before?

After agonizing for a while he shrugged, crossed over, and went on into the trees on the other side.

The hemlocks gave way to a birch forest, then to pines and oaks, and then quite suddenly Bazil realized he had climbed a considerable distance and the way was getting steeper.

The trees were less dense now, the blue sky was visible and with it the sun, which was far down in its course and close to the western horizon.

A few moments later he emerged from the trees onto an upland meadow, not that different from the one on Mt. Red Oak that had become a battlefield two days before.

Bazil looked around himself with wild eyes. Where was he? And where was everybody else?

He saw Mt. Ulmo’s great snow-covered dome behind him with late afternoon sunlight striking on the nearest face. Immediately he realized he had come a long way and that he was hopelessly lost.

In front of him was spread a narrow valley that widened out towards a bright blue lake fringed with trees. Beyond the lake stood another, smaller mountain, with trees marching right up to the crown.

Towards the sun the land seemed dreary and flat, and he knew that he gazed upon the endless expanse of the Gan. In the other direction the view was cut off by an outlying ridge of Ulmo.

Somewhere back there, in that vast expanse of forest, was Relkin and all the others. How was he ever going to find them? It seemed impossible. He pushed it out of his thoughts.

He had a more immediate problem: his feet were sore.

He cast about and found a likely boulder and sat down on it, planted Piocar’s scabbard into the ground in front and sat there, resting his arms on the sword’s pommel.

He took some deep breaths. He was weary enough for three days sleep and his hind legs ached. Two solid days of marching and fighting, coming on top of twenty days travel up the river, and Bazil was ready for a good long rest.

On the other hand he noted how tight and smooth his body had become. The winter campaign, and now this Argo fighting, all had transformed the slightly plump leatherback that had entered the legion last autumn into a lean fighting machine with hard muscles and a tight belly. He slapped his midriff and was rewarded with a drumsnap.

He was a battle-hardened dragon, alright. Even the ancient drakes would be proud of this dragon!

Memories of the battles came rushing up, and with them came the grief for old Kepabar. Old Kep was gone forever, along with Sorik. They’d never hear one of Kepabar’s funny monologues again, never hear his jokes. And without Kep’s sense of humor the squadron was going to be a grim one—both Nesessitas and Vander were inclined to dragonish dourness. Baz was going to miss old Kep, no doubt about that.

He sat disconsolate for a little while, and then his nostrils caught a trace of a fragrance that raised his eyebrows in an involuntary snap.

His head rose, he sniffed the air again. There it was, a sweet, musky perfume, very faint but definitely wafting to him on the wind from higher up the mountain.

A few moments later he was on his feet without having made a conscious decision, and he started on, heading upslope and into the breeze. His feet were killing him, but he ignored them.

The woods thickened into a scrub oak jungle, but he forced his way through. A patch of thick brambles blocked his way, but he drew Piocar and carved a path through them. A stream-fed bog lay on the other side and he waded through it with mud up to his belly.

And then he came upon the clearing, in a patch of pines on sandy soil. In the clearing a great mound of branches had been woven into a nest. As he watched, the nest moved. Something large lurked within. A curious rhythmic hissing sound came from the midst of the movements.

Bazil crept closer until at last he could peer over the edge of the wall of branches. A lively, dark green dragoness was at work weaving the branches together. Bazil felt his eyes widen.

She was simply gorgeous. Her skin was a glittering green on top and her movements were precise and graceful. He watched with total absorption as she wove boughs of pine into the walls of oak and alder. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Her skin was one shade or other of dark green everywhere except along her folded wings which were as black as soot. Her underside was a lighter shade and the scales there were small and tight. Down her spine she wore a crest of larger scales, and these were darkened almost to black. Her talons both fore and aft were a lustrous dark grey and longer than those of battledragons, who let their boys clip their talons to make it easier for them to wield a sword.

“Greetings!” he said at last in the gutturals and hissings of the wyvern tongue.

The green female, who was almost as large as Bazil himself, jumped at the sound of his voice. Then her head snapped around and her huge yellow eyes focused on him. All living things, except perhaps for particularly large bears, would promptly have run for their lives. Bazil remained where he was, his right forepaw resting on the hilt of Piocar.

“By the blood, who, or what, are you?” she said suddenly.

Her accent was like that of the oldest dragons, with long vowels and heavy sibilance. Bazil wondered briefly if this was a dream he was having about the ancestors, and then decided that if it was it was a damn fine one and he would just go on with it.

“My name is Bazil,” he replied.

She rounded on him; she had immense wings, like all wild dragons, and now they unfolded and seemed to fill the sky. She seemed to bore into him with those brilliant yellow eyes and dilated red pupils. Her teeth flashed, long rows of saber-sharp white curves.

Bazil felt a thunderbolt of dragon love.

“Bazil!” she mocked. “A slave name for a slave dragon. You are one of them! One of those crawling, ground-bound worms that fights for the humans.”

“And you are a most beautiful sight, the most beautiful I have ever seen,” he said humbly.

“What?” The eyes flashed. “Did you not hear me scorn you?”

“When you are angry, your eyes get very big. Did you know that? It is lovely to watch.”

“I—” She stopped. She blinked; he was ground-bound, he had no wings, but he was impressive in a large, heavyset way. These human things, the helmet and the immense steel shield, they gave even more bulk to him.

And he did seem to know how to charm one. It was quite remarkable, this creature actually had some manners!

But he was wingless! There were just some disgusting nubs on his back and shoulders to suggest where wings should be. She knew she could never love a male who had no wings. She drew herself up to her full height, and noted that she was definitely half a head shorter than he and certainly less massive. This was quite disconcerting.

“What, in the name of the ancestors, is a freakish mutant like you doing way up here? This is the time for the calling for drakes, not mutants!”

Bazil did not understand her term for mutant, but he knew she scorned him and he cared not.

“There was a female in my village with whom I would have mated if I had stayed. But she was not as beautiful as you.”

“Dragons in a village! What perversity is this?”

“None at all, it works very well. Everyone eats plenty.”

“Ah yes.” She inspected his leatherback girth again. “I can see that you’re used to that. But what else would I expect from a slave! You’re a kept animal, fed and watered and told what to do.”