Dragon Ultimate (14 page)

"Have you heard anything from Aubinas lately? We don't get all the news up at Dashwood."

"Well there are small groups of rebels in the Running Deer valley. Porteous Glaves is loose and appears to be a leader of sorts, but for the most part Aubinas is at peace. Outside of Nellin there wasn't that much support."

"Do they campaign to have Wexenne pardoned?"

"No, they don't. Many of them realize they've been spared a terrible tyranny under the dread one that Wexenne awoke. There has been little concern expressed about Wexenne's sentence on the Guano Isles."

"For life?" said Eilsa.

"No hope of parole. Many wanted to see him hanged."

"Perhaps the emperor will pardon him someday."

"Perhaps, when he is very old. A great many lost their lives as a result of his foolishness."

"A foolish man, indeed," murmured Eilsa as she relived for a moment that terrible time during the rebellion.

"No man would willingly subject himself to Waakzaam except a fool."

Her listeners could only agree. They had not suffered directly as she had, but they had witnessed the cold malice of the Dominator. They had seen the rooms filled with tortured children, whom he used as laboratory animals. They understood what he would do to the world were he to gain possession of it.

On the road to Marneri's great Tower Gate a lean figure on a tall dark horse rode beside a black coach. A pair of drivers rode atop the coach, while the windows were shuttered and the doors were locked. The horseman had a thin face, dominated by a long, straight nose that reached down past his upper lip.

The rider was Higul, called the Lame since childhood. His limp was the result of a terrible beating from a cruel master. Two years later Higul slew that master in his barn, with his own pitchfork. Higul's early life lamed his spirit as well as his body, but spared his intelligence. He applied himself to crime with a cruel industry of purpose and by an early age had established himself in the criminal underworld of Kadein. Known for dealing out vicious beatings and causing people to "disappear," no trace of his victims was ever seen. The witches were said to be increasingly interested in him, which, of course, was not healthy in his line of work.

Then, one day, he was recruited to the service of the Master. A line was drawn across his life at that point. He had adjusted well to the loss of independence and dutifully educated himself in the nature of service to the great power. He was still free to indulge his hedonistic streak, but when called to serve he put himself completely into his work.

What the Master insisted on was absolute efficiency. Mistakes were unacceptable. Higul had seen others of his guild, for there were usually four or five of them, disappear suddenly. No questions were asked, and the Master never mentioned them again. Higul understood the rules.

This particular mission was extremely important, and Higul had taken great pains, traveling on back roads, often by night. Now with the walls in sight and guards at the gate, the city's formal defense systems were all that had to be dealt with, and that would be easy enough. The hook would soon be baited.

They were about a mile from the gate when Higul lifted his hand. The walls were visible in the distance, straight down the road. No buildings were allowed any closer to the city than this to maintain a clear field of fire for the catapults on the towers.

"All right, that's far enough." The coach came to a halt. Higul reined in his mount and scanned the road. No one was coming, though this close to the city that would not be the case for long.

The drivers got down and unlocked one of the doors, to the sounds of whimpering and a scrabbling at the wood. The door opened and a large, almost naked man, chained at the neck, clambered out, blinking in the light of the sun.

The drivers stood back, well clear.

Porteous Glaves stood there, the cords standing out in his neck, his eyeballs bulging, his mouth contorted but making no sound. Higul pointed to the long chain that hung from the collar around Glaves's neck, and one of the drivers picked it up and handed its end to the mounted man. Higul made a mental note to throw away his gloves when this task was completed.

"Do you want us to wait for you?" muttered the driver.

"No. Leave the coach. Take the horses and get out of here."

"Leave the coach? What for? It's worth money."

"Believe me, you won't want it. You won't want to have anything to do with it. It probably should be burned now."

The drivers had gone pale. "Plague?"

"I'd not say that again if I were you," said Higul. The Great One was capable of the most extraordinary feats of "farsightedness" as he called it. Higul had seen things since he'd undertaken the service of the Master that had challenged forever his concept of what was possible or not. And he'd seen men die for opening their mouths unwisely.

The drivers looked at each other for a moment, then began hurriedly releasing the horses from the stays.

Higul took a good grip on the long chain and spurred his mount forward toward the city. Glaves responded by breaking into a shambling run. The fool had to be delivered, and Higul wanted to make absolutely certain that he was. Failure was not acceptable.

As his horse trotted toward the city, he was careful to keep a good fifteen feet clear of Glaves. Security around Marneri's gates was fairly impressive, he noted. The spyglass teams scanned the road every so often, looking for signs of trouble. If they happened to be watching him at that moment, then they'd have picked up that he was hauling someone along on a chain. That was sure to draw their interest. So he was gambling that he could cross this last mile to the gates, riding alongside a fair amount of wagon traffic that would provide a little cover, without drawing a patrol.

Glaves stumbled and staggered along, and Higul was careful to keep his horse well clear of him.

Death to breathe his breath, was what they'd said. Death.

The minutes ticked by, and there was no sudden activity at the great gates up ahead. So far, so good. It appeared the men with the spyglass were not watching.

Near the city the road filled with traffic, drays and wagons for the most part. Higul tugged Glaves to the side of the road and trotted by on the grassed margin, bypassing the traffic. A few oaths and catcalls followed them from the wagons.

When he got close to the gate, the guards watched his approach with slit-eyed intensity. What they saw was not a normal sight in Marneri, where such aspects of slavery were illegal. They had already called for a couple of mounts to be sent up. Troopers had been summoned.

Higul rode right up to the guards. "Behold, I bring you the notorious Porteous Glaves."

Higul pulled on the chain, and the witless figure of Glaves danced forward, red-faced from the exertion of running a mile.

"Get him behind bars where he belongs!" hissed Higul as he tossed the chain to the nearest guard. The others had come forward with suspicious eyes, spears ready.

Porteous stared at them with an empty face, as devoid of intelligence as a sheep.

Higul turned his horse and spurred away, passing curious-eyed drovers and coach passengers, cantering at first and then pushing his horse for full speed. He galloped up the road, passed the coach, and carried on up the rise. He had a fresh horse waiting in Rinz, knowing that there was bound to be pursuit.

Behind him the guards had hustled Porteous into the guardhouse and sent for orders. He was then taken to the cells, processed, and put in solitary confinement in the tower.

Eventually a pair of troopers set out in pursuit of the rider who had brought in Porteous Glaves. There were questions for that gentleman that needed to be answered. The troopers pursued him vigorously, but they missed him at Rinz, and he lost them on a lane outside the town.

In the city the word that Porteous Glaves had been captured spread swiftly. Glaves had escaped the city at the beginning of the Aubinan rebellion, aided by traitors within the Legion. Since then he'd become one of the most wanted men in the Argonath.

On that day General Hanth was in command of the tower. He was notified within minutes of Glaves's arrest. He notified the legal officer to request a court hearing at once. In the meantime Hanth ordered the prisoner to be cleaned up, examined and fed, then read his rights under the Common Weal of Cunfshon, the basis for the rule of the law in the Empire of the Argonath. He was also to be allowed to consult with an advocate of his choosing.

Hanth almost went down to take a look himself, but family matters diverted him. His wife's aged parents were visiting that day from their country home. General Hanth was due to make an appearance for tea and scones. Hanth did not enjoy such occasions, but he endured them for the sake of family life.

On his way out, he paused for a moment, nagged by something that he'd forgotten to do. Then remembered the message from the Office of Unusual Insight that had come several weeks earlier. He scratched his chin, whirled back into his office, and quickly wrote out a message scroll and rang for an orderly.

"Take this to the Reverend Mother at the temple. Top priority. See that she has it in her hand within half an hour."

The orderly disappeared and Hanth set down his pen and gathered himself to face the ordeal of tea with Uril and Yaena.

While General Hanth was sitting down to a pot of tea with his parents-in-law, another drama was playing itself out in the bailey yard behind the stables.

A dragonboy was running from three men armed with rods and flails. He carried a guitar, which slowed him down a little. When he reached the end of the yard and turned for the gate, he was met by another man of hulking aspect who stepped around the corner and brought him down with a solid blow to the midriff.

Curf was doubled up and dumped on the ground. A second blow drove him onto his side. His guitar fell beside him. The other three men came up and took turns smashing the guitar over his body until it was in fragments. Then they kicked him for a while until he was thoroughly bloody and covered in mud.

"Remember this, you little bastard, you stay away from Emelia of the Radusa." The speaker was Rogo Radusa, a dark-faced, haughty young buck of the aristocracy and, at twenty-five, the oldest of the Radusa boys.

"Yeah, we catch you near our sister again, and we really will break your legs," said his cousin Evic, the second-in-command.

A watchman gave a shout from the far end of the yard.

"Uh, oh, here comes the watch," muttered Evic. "Better get out of here."

The young men were arrogant, but they knew better than to be apprehended by the watch. They ran through the gate and on into the long alley that lay between the northern wall of the dragonhouse and the south wall of the stables. The Radusans, Rogo, Evic, Big John, and Kale, the biggest of them all, sprinted for the doors set in that wall. Once there they would mount their horses and soon be back on Foluran Hill.

Taking the alley proved to be a mistake, however for the stable lads had passed the word to the dragonhouse. The young men in the stable were not fond of the young aristocrats from the House of Radusa.

The reception committee was waiting by the time the Radusa boys reached them. In the middle were Swane and Rakama, the biggest boys in the 109th Marneri. With them were most of the unit, excepting Relkin and Manuel, who would probably have disapproved of the whole thing. Swane didn't want to risk telling either of them.

"And where would you fellows be going with clubs and flails in your hands?" said Swane in an innocent voice as he planted himself in their way.

"Get out of my way, you damned orphan bastards!" snarled Kale.

"Oh, and aren't we the haughty men!" said Rakama with a slight smile.

"They think they can beat up a dragonboy from the 109th, and we're not gonna do anything about it," said Jak.

"You'll get yourself seriously hurt if you involve yourself in our affairs," warned Rogo.

"Now, now, don't come all high-and-mighty with us. You just dusted up our friend Curf. You can lower yourself to that, you can lower yourself to this."

Kale suddenly made play with his flail, a rod with iron chain. Swane and the others drew swords and dirks with a clatter of steel.

At the sight of steel in the hands of eight dragonboys, the Radusa boys hesitated.

"Yeah," said Swane. "You don't like that thought, do you?"

"You would hang."

"You wouldn't be there to see it."

The Radusa boys drew back a step. Dragonboys knew how to fight with edged weapons and they had no intention of getting gutted by these orphan bastards.

"That's right, you think about it. And then think about this. One of you has to fight one of us. Bare-handed. That's all."

Kale looked to Rogo and Big John. Their cousin Evic grinned. "One of you to fight Kale, eh?"

Kale was two inches taller than any of them and fifty pounds heavier.

"Who's it to be then?" he said, grinning evilly.

"Me," said Rakama, moving to the fore Swane let him go without a word of comment Though Swane had beaten Rakama in the one real fight between them, he had come to accept that in a fistfight, Rakama was the top boy in the unit Rakama had also been the champion light-heavyweight boxer in the First Legion at the last Legion Games.