Dragon Venom (Obsidian Chronicles Book 3) (2 page)

Of course, often there were no survivors. There had been no survivors in Beggar's Oak.

Arlian waved the torch gently overhead and considered the dead beasts. If there had been six dragons in that long-ago attack, it was possible there might be another cave somewhere in the vicinity, one that his sorcerers and soldiers had not yet located—but after ail these years of experience, his people had learned their job well. The vaguest accounts would usually be enough to locate the right vicinity, and a little simple sorcery could then find any nearby cave mouth. His hired sorcerers said it grew easier every time.

They had only found one entrance here.

Besides, Arlian had never yet encountered a confirmed report of an isolated attack, like the one on Beggar's Oak, that involved more than one lair of dragons. The great battles of the Man-Dragon Wars had sometimes involved multiple lairs, but all that had ended seven hundred years ago.

For all Arlian knew, two of the six reported dragons could have died of old age in the intervening years—but while dragons definitely aged, he had never found any solid evidence that they ever died merely from the passage of time, and five centuries was nothing by draconic standards.

Perhaps two of the dragons had died, not of old age, but in attacking the wrong target; many of the important towns of the Lands of Man were now defended with the gigantic spear-throwing catapults Arlian had invented, and he knew of at least six instances in which those machines had brought down or driven away attacking dragons. Only two of those had resulted in confirmed kills—but perhaps both of those had come from this nest.

Or perhaps there had been six in the cave today after all. There might be more to this cavern than the entry tunnel and the single vast chamber where these four had slept. Those other two dragons might well be sleeping—or waiting in ambush—just out of sight. The torchlight did not penetrate everywhere in the miasmal gloom even in the main chamber; the orange light illuminated large areas of bare stone, but shadows and darkness extended still farther.

"Does anyone see further openings?" he called. "Anywhere there might be more?"

Armor jingled, weapons rattled, and other torches flared in the cool, foul air as his dozen men peered around at the cavern walls, at the flow-stone formations and shadows thrown by the stalactites overhead.

"Not here, my lord," someone replied; Arlian recognized the voice of his junior lieutenant, a man universally known by the nickname Stabber. He had earned his name today; it had been he who thrust a ten-foot spear into the hearts of two of the four dragons, three of his men helping him to drive the point home.

"Nor here," answered Quickhand, the senior lieutenant. He and his men had disposed of a dragon, as well; Arlian himself, with help from others, had slain the fourth.

"Let us take our time, and look carefully," Arlian said. "I do not care in the least for the possibility that a dragon might come up on our heels as we leave."

He could almost hear the shudder his words evoked.

"Come on, you two," Stabber called, gesturing to his nearest companions. "We'll do this right, walk along the wall and inspect it inch by inch."

"A dragon needs more than a few inches to squeeze through, sir!"

one of the others protested.

"And there might be an opening up above, among those stone spikes, where we wouldn't see it."

"Do as he says," Arlian ordered. "We do what we can, as best we can. And a dragon can fit through a smaller opening than you might think; their hide and bone is tough, but their flesh is far less solid than our own." He gestured at the gigantic rotting carcasses to illustrate his point.

"Yes, my lord."

"Stabber, you take your two around to the right, and Quickhand, you take two men to the left. Burn off any smears of venom you find—

no sense in leaving it for scavengers. The rest of you, spread out across the floor—there could be pits below, or shafts above. Torches high!" He waved his own torch to demonstrate, and the flame roared and crackled; the air was still thick with flammable venom.

The venom fumes were why they carried torches, rather than

lanterns; a lantern might be shattered by a flare, or smoked into uselessness. Torches were clumsier and did not last as well, but were far more suited to the environment of a dragon's lair.

The men obeyed, the two parties moving along the walls while half a dozen others scattered.

The man in the green coat, however, stepped down from the

entrance, came up behind Arlian's shoulder, and said quietly, "My lord?"

Arlian turned his head slightly. "Yes?"

"My lord, if any more dragons remain alive in this place, surely they must be awake by now, and lurking in concealment, awaiting an appropriate moment to strike."

Arlian shifted his grip on his spear. "You may well be right," he said.

"My lord, killing four dragons as they slept was a task within our capabilities, but fighting a waking dragon? I think we might do better to withdraw into the tunnel and await events."

"I think not," Arlian said, studying the cavern ceiling for openings.

"I have fought dragons before. They are fierce and mighty, but hardly indestructible."

The other grimaced—Arlian could see the expression from the corner of his eye. "Our ancestors thought otherwise for centuries," he said.

"And we have repeatedly proven them wrong. Obsidian can pierce the dragons' hides, and a blow to the heart can kill. You saw as much not ten minutes ago."

"Indeed. But any other dragons would be awake. And here, in these confined spaces, in foul-smelling darkness, can we hope to strike quickly to a moving beast's heart?"

"Quickly enough. I have done this before, my lord, more than once."

"We could lose several of our men to a draconic ambush, my lord."

"So we could. I have lost men several times in the past; some of those who accompany us today were present on such occasions, as you were not, and yet they have come here willingly, and they understand the risks. They know they might die today—but if we do not seek the dragons out and destroy them, Lord Rolinor, how many innocents will those dragons eventually slay?"

"Perhaps many, perhaps none. My lord Obsidian, we cannot accept the responsibility for every innocent life in the Lands of Man! We . . . "

"On the contrary," Arlian interrupted. "I have done exactly that in accepting the Duke's commission as warlord. It is my duty, my responsibility, to protect every innocent from the dragons, insofar as I am able, even if it cost my own life, or the lives of my men. It pains me that hundreds of innocents, perhaps thousands, have died beneath the claws and flame of the dragons in recent years, not only because any death is a loss, but because those lost lives were my responsibility. I have sworn to exterminate the dragons if I live long enough, and I mean to do so. We are all volunteers here, Rolinor—have you forgotten what we volunteered for?"

"I volunteered to slay dragons in the Duke's service, my lord, not to die!" Rolinor's voice was not entirely steady, his sibilants slightly slurred; Arlian wondered if the venomous atmosphere was affecting him.

"Then let us slay dragons, my lord, and try our very best not to die in the process." With that he turned away and raised his torch again, staring out into the cavern.

His two lieutenants were moving along the walls, long spears held ready, spreading torchlight into the depths of the cave, each with two companions following close behind with their own torches and shorter spears. Every so often one of the men thrust a speartip into a crevice to test its dimensions, or put a torch to a glistening streak of poison, sending a vivid flare roaring up the stone as venom ignited.

Each such flare destroyed hundreds of ducats' worth of venom, venom that the lords of the Dragon Society could perhaps have used to add to their numbers and buy the loyalty of more troops; Arlian was pleased to see that his men did not hesitate to burn the foul stuff.

Elsewhere in the cavern, away from the walls, the other soldiers were scattered, moving more or less randomly down the vast chamber, each with a torch, two with the long killing spears and the rest with shorter defensive weapons.

"You in the center, form a line!" Arlian called. "You might miss an opening if you just wander about like dazed sheep!"

Some of the men glanced back at him; one called, "Yes, my lord!"

Then they wandered on as they had before.

Arlian sighed. These were good men, for the most part, strong and brave and obedient; except for young Lord Rolinor they had all been with him for at least two or three years now, and he knew them and was proud to lead them. Still, they were not as disciplined and thoughtful as he might have wished.

He considered sending Rolinor down to direct them into a better line, but then rejected the idea; Rolinor was no more disciplined than the others, and a good bit less dedicated and eager.

Lord Rolinor was, in fact, the only one in the party who had not really volunteered. Oh, he had made a show of enthusiasm when he first arrived a week before, made a little speech about how pleased he was to join the great Lord Obsidian in his crusade against the dragons, but Arlian and Rolinor both knew it was all for show. Rolinor was here because he was trying to impress the Duke in order to establish himself in the government, and slaying dragons in their lairs was more impressive than overseeing fortifications or financing caravans—and probably safer than attacking the Dragon Society's strongholds, tracking down the Society's assassins, or attempting to capture the dragonhearts themselves.

Rolinor's family had sent him to court to carry on their long tradition of service to the Dukes of Manfort, and Rolinor was doing his best to cooperate, but his heart was not in it. Court intrigue suited him well enough, and he had no trouble playing the sycophant, but fighting dragons was clearly not something that held any appeal for him. He had not asked for a killing spear, and appeared to have lost even his short spear; he had not approached any of the dragons closely until after they were dead. He was here to advance his career, not because he hated the dragons.

Rolinor had not lost family or friends to dragons, as Arlian had. He had not twice seen his home destroyed by dragonfire. He had not conversed with dragons and felt their scorn and hatred. He had not seen a newborn dragon tear its way from a man's chest. While Arlian knew that another such monster was growing in his own tainted blood, Rolinor had never been thus polluted, never lived in dread of such a death.

To Rolinor vengeance was only a word, an abstract concept.

To Arlian, vengeance upon the dragons was everything. Vengeance was why he lived, why he fought, the entire reason he had sought wealth and power, his purpose as warlord to the Duke of Manfort. Destroying the dragons and their human allies, protecting innocents from them, was far more important to him than his own survival.

"My lord!" One of the soldiers was bending down, waving his torch.

He had found an opening in the cavern floor, and thrust his spear into it without striking bottom.

"I see it," Arlian called, starting forward down the sloping stone surface. "Stand clear! Spears ready!"

2

The Warlord's Mercy

The Warlord's Mercy

Arlian knelt beside the hole, his torch high, peering down into the darkness beneath. The soldiers formed a ring around him, and he was vaguely aware that young Lord Rolinor was not among them.

"Surely, that's not big enough for a dragon!" one man said—one of the newer recruits, a fellow the others called Leather.

He had a point; the hole in the stone was no more than four feet across at its widest, perhaps six feet from end to end.

"Not for a large dragon, certainly," Arlian conceded.

"Are any so small as that?" Stabber asked.

"They can compress themselves most amazingly; remember that a newborn dragon rises from within a man's chest," Quickhand replied. "I have seen the smallest in one lair squeeze through an opening not so very much larger than this."

Arlian glanced at Quickhand. For centuries the knowledge that dragons spawned their young in human hosts had been the deepest and darkest of secrets, known only to one living man, but then Arlian had learned it, and had been far less adept at secrecy than the late Lord Enziet. Now it was common knowledge among the Duke of Manfort's soldiers, and throughout much of the Lands of Man.

Quickhand had never seen a dragon's birth, as Arlian had, but he had obviously heard the stories.

Quickhand met Arlian's gaze for an instant, and then both men returned their attention to the task at hand. Arlian lowered his torch down into the hole, as far as he could reach; the orange light shone only on bare stone and blackness. He could see no sign of a dragon, nor any indication that a dragon had ever dwelt therein—but he could not see the full extent of the chamber below.

"Stand ready," he said.

Around him the men stepped back, adjusting their black-tipped weapons; then Arlian dropped his torch.

He watched it fall for a second, strike a jagged chunk of rock and tumble down a slope—and at the last instant he saw the gleaming fluid and snatched his head back, away from the opening.

The pool of venom in the bottom of the pit ignited, and a swirling cloud of yellow flame filled the entire lower chamber, bursting up through the opening in a coil of light, heat, and smoke. Arlian could feel his hair and eyebrows singeing as he tumbled backward, away from the blinding, searing blaze. Around him his men cursed and mumbled and coughed.

And then the dragonfire was gone, almost as swiftly as it had erupted, and Arlian blinked at the darkness, his eyes struggling to read-just to the restored gloom. The stench of venom smoke and burned hair filled his nostrils, and sweat crawled on his brow and under his shirt.

The weight of his mail suddenly seemed greater.

He coughed once, wiped soot from his eyes, then leaned forward to peer down into the hole.