Dragon Ultimate (16 page)

The tendrils of death reached out into the city.

The flower seller, feeling poorly, stopped by at a soup shop and ate a small bowl of bean soup and some bread. He thought about stopping in at his favorite alehouse, the Fish's Head, on Dock Street but he felt too ill and turned instead for his crib in Mrs. Diggins's boardinghouse.

By a fluke he met neither Mrs. Diggins nor any of the other inhabitants of her crowded tenement building on Eastern Alley. He took to his cot and soon began to shiver as the fever took hold. In this case the fever was quick, perhaps mercifully so, and he died in the night. Mrs. Diggins had the good sense to call the watch as soon as she realized he was dead. She kept the door to his room locked. The plague did not spread through Mrs. Diggin's house.

However, the two young women who ran the soup shop, Elen and Virimi, both caught it and went home to their families on Peach Alley, all of whom subsequently caught it too.

Porteous Glaves finally passed away, gurgling for breath, drowning with the pink froth on his lips, in the first hour after dawn.

On Lessis's orders, no one was allowed near the quarantined victims. The men who shepherded them to the tower wore thick pads of cotton over their mouths and noses and took hot baths when their task was completed.

The sick and the quarantined were left to survive or not on their own. There could be no contact between them and the rest of the city. Those who succumbed and died were let be for a full day before their bodies were taken up for swift burial in a mass grave hurriedly dug in Lost Buck Woods, not far from the other mass graves due for the victims of the bubonic plague.

But Porteous Glaves was not the only deadly missile flung at the Argonath that night. Other men, their eyes staring from the fever, were delivered to the gates of cities and towns. All across the Argonath the authorities roused themselves to heroic efforts to prevent this new contagion from catching fire.

Kadein, the great city of the Argonath, had been struck hard by the bubonic plague. This time it escaped virtually untouched. The fever plague was contained within the Great Gate where the initial victim appeared. The gate was sealed off from the rest of the city and no further penetration took place.

On the other hand, in the small city of Ryotwa, which had survived the bubonic plague so well because of the efforts of an army of feline ratkillers, the new plague escaped and took hold in the general population.

In Pennar the plague virtually wiped out the city. In Bea it was contained and suppressed with small loss because the infectious agent was late in arriving and was a well-known local criminal who was executed soon after being taken into custody.

In the northern cities it went badly. Talion saw the plague get out of control and sweep across half of the city. The southern half of Talion was spared because the bridges were blocked by archers when the word of the outbreak spread.

Vo was almost wiped out and Vusk, too, losing perhaps half its population. The rest scattered into the surrounding countryside where few pockets of the plague erupted, then subsided.

In Kenor the fever hit Dalhousie and the other main Legion camps and towns with hammerblows. The death toll was heavy.

In the white city on the Long Sound the fuse burned on, fitful, sometimes seeming to go out entirely, but reigniting again soon afterward and dashing their hopes.

From Peach Alley to Corner Row it hopped. Then it slid west onto Randol's Court. Suppressed there, it popped up again two blocks north on Linden Street, almost to Broad Street now. Enormous efforts were made to contain it at every eruption. The rules of the quarantine were merciless. No exceptions were allowed, on pain of death. Anyone emerging onto the streets was to be shot down by the archers stationed on the corners, the only human beings allowed out. The sick were simply to be left to themselves as they died. Because it killed so quickly, it burned out of a neighborhood very quickly as well. The rate of survival was no better than one in three in crowded areas. In Ryotwa it had fallen to one in five in the worst areas.

The tension on the streets of the city intensified as the wailing of mourners began to ring out in the poorer quarters. Then from Temple Street there came an alarm. Another customer of the soup shop had come down with the plague. His extensive family had been infected, and they had passed it on widely.

Once more the witches and the Legion made frantic efforts to contain the widening pool of infection. The city had already been cordoned off into sections, with troops at the corners and barricades on the streets. Now the whole dockside area, everything from Broad Street to the bay, was cordoned off and effectively quarantined.

The harbor had long since emptied of shipping. All business activity had ceased; everything was committed to halting the spread of the new plague.

Relkin, along with just about every dragonboy in the house, had been drafted into the containment effort. The result was that he was placed on the corner of Lower Templeside and Broad Street with a full quiver and his Cunfshon bow.

On the opposite corner was a tall, brown-suited archer from the Pioneers, the crack archery unit. He recognized Silas of Lucule, the champion archer with the longbow a few years before.

It was a neighborhood of hatmakers, clothiers, and buttoneers. Relkin could look up Templeside past their shopfronts to the corner with Foluran Hill, and sent off another prayer that Eilsa be spared from this plague.

The bow rested in his hands in its familiar way. He fervently hoped he didn't have to kill anyone. The quiet in the street was uncanny. Not a soul abroad in the middle of the day. Silas had moved to the middle of the street and continued to keep a careful watch up Templeside.

"I don't know why they'd put a dragonboy out here with a bow," he said suddenly, without a hint of a smile.

Relkin was more amused than angered by the condescension from great Silas. "Oh, I guess they ran out of better bowmen."

Silas gave him a long steady look. "Damnable work, to kill civilians if they step outside. I don't like it."

"Me too, but there isn't much choice. You heard what happened in Ryotwa?"

Silas of Lucule looked off along Broad Street. At the corner down by Tower Street they could see other men with bows.

"In Ryotwa," said Relkin. "There's hardly anyone left."

"Don't need to be reminded of my duty by a dragonboy."

"If you say so." Relkin looked up the street toward Foluran Hill. It was empty, not a soul was abroad. He looked both ways on Broad Street, equally deserted, except for bowmen. Over the temple's great dome he watched pigeons circle in the sunlight. There was an unnatural quiet, broken only by distant wails of mourning from somewhere south of Broad Street.

"I suppose you do know how to use that bow," said Silas after a minute.

"I've had some practice."

"Think you could hit a man as far as the corner up there." Silas pointed up Templeside, past the shop signs.

Relkin squinted for a moment.

"Yes. Probably."

"You'd be lucky. By the hand, you dragonboys are natural braggarts, ain't you? That's a good pull with the longbow, so you can forget your little windup bow."

"I'll be happy to leave the long-distance shooting to you, then."

"Damn you, I don't want to shoot anyone."

Relkin shrugged. What choice did they have? The quarantine was the only effective thing that stopped this fever. And if they didn't stop the fever, then they were all dead and done for. He glanced up Templeside again. What was Eilsa doing now? Was she safe? Please, keep her safe, gods, please keep her safe.

The streets were empty until a gray tabby cat appeared out of an alley up Templeside. It came out and sat on the middle of the road and looked up and down as if astonished by the sudden peace in the busy city. Cats, for whatever reason, didn't catch this plague. Then it scratched itself and shifted and crossed the street and vanished into another narrow side alley.

Eventually Silas came to regret his initial haughtiness. It was tiresome to simply stand there in silence looking up and down the street for potential targets. He looked over at the dragonboy with the Cunfshon bow. Good enough weapons for close-in work. Silas had tried one, and he'd learned to respect it. Of course it wasn't like a longbow, but then what was?

"Name's Silas, out of Lucule," he said when the dragonboy looked his way.

"I know."

Silas stiffened.

"I saw you win the longbow competition at Dalhousie."

Silas's brow furrowed. "You've served a while in the Legions then?"

"Aye, we have."

"Then you know how to use that Cunfshon bow."

"I reckon."

Silas looked up and down Templeside; not a soul stirred. "So what did you do in the first plague?"

"I lit fires and put up smoke. You?"

"Dug pits, moved bodies. Hard work, that was."

"The dragons dug in the pits."

"Thanks be to the Mother for the wyverns, friends-of-man. I salute them."

"They'd be glad to know that, Silas, dead-eye of Lucule."

Silas was beginning, just ever so slightly, to change his opinion of dragonboy's.

There was a loud noise from a house just a little way up Templeside. Someone was screaming inside the house. There were smashing noises, then the door flew open and a man tumbled out. He fell to his knees with his hands on his head.

Windows were opening up and down the street. Relkin and Silas spread out and drew their bows.

"Lucy!" cried the man. "My Lucy, dead. My Lucy!"

The man was on his feet. A child's face appeared in the doorway behind him.

"Father," cried the child.

"Lucy!" screamed the man, getting to his feet and staggering toward Relkin and Silas.

"She's dead, she's dead, she's dead," he mumbled. He went to his knees again, then rose back up. His shirt was torn open, his mouth gaped wide as he screamed inarticulately.

"Get back!" said Relkin.

Silas had drawn an arrow, but had not yet released. "I cannot kill a helpless man like this," he muttered.

The man kept coming. Relkin looked over to Silas and saw him talking to himself.

The man kept screaming, his eyes those of a maniac. The windows above their heads opened, someone up there screamed a name.

The man kept coming, arms windmilling, mouth open, eyes crazed from the fever.

Silas had frozen. There was nothing left to be done.

Relkin's arrow took the man in the right eye. He was dead long before his head slapped the cobbles.

The High Gan stretched away under the light of the moon. A desolate region, ruled by the cruel nomadic tribes of the Baguti federation. On a stark hilltop, the only eminence in miles, a great fire blazed.

The sky filled with giant wings, and the air above the hilltop became alive with the sound of great batrukhs coming in to land. Waiting for them were a column of guards, backed by a second column of imps. Great drums beat out a sullen, insistent rhythm. Torches blazed, held aloft by albino trolls nine feet tall. Waiting by the log fire stood a tall figure, that of a mighty lord of elven kingdoms, fair in feature and form. Behind him stood a handful of men.

Dismounting from the batrukhs they came, the Four Doom Masters of Padmasa, in person. Long had the Masters remained in their cold vaults in the deeps below their vast fortress. Yet here they were, come to meet the one who promised to complete their original configuration as the Five. He promised a powerful alliance that would rebuild their great pattern, which had been ruined by the fall of Heruta in the uttermost south, lost in great violence in the heart of a tropical volcano.

Without Heruta they had become fractured, at loggerheads, and eventually indecisive. On all fronts they faced disturbing challenges. Something had gone very wrong in the southeast, where the mighty fortress of Axoxo had fallen. Now both defensive bastions in the east of Ianta were in the hands of the witch-ridden Empire of the Rose. Meanwhile, the Czardhan knights had defeated the army of General Haxus at Gestimodden. The western frontier was looking fragile. And in the south, what was going on in Kassim? Was the Great King daring to raise his head once more? They could soon be beset on all three frontiers at once.

The Masters had become desperate. Any more defeats like Gestimodden, and the armies of the east and west might march in simultaneously and meet at Padmasa. Only fear like this had the power to bring the Four to degrade themselves by leaving their fortress to meet this stranger on this remote ground. Only fear and the lure of the Lord Lapsor, the lightning master, the Dominator of the Twelve Worlds, Waakzaam the Great.

They came, therefore, as if at his summons, to this naked rock in the middle of the hostile steppe.

Defeat and near despair may have driven them to this humiliating exercise, but they were still determined to make a powerful impression. They were all Enthraans of their Magic and they used their power to levitate a few inches above the ground and float slowly toward the tall figure by the fire. Occasionally they touched down with a foot to change direction, but otherwise they had no contact with the ground as they floated along.