Dragons of War (32 page)

Behind the girls, however, loomed their homes, and on the porches sat their fathers and brothers, heavyset men for the most part with truculent expressions.

Relkin wandered onto a path that wound through groves of moon-dappled trees, eventually bringing him to a clearing with a small temple built of white stone. It was sixty feet long and perhaps half that wide, and at the front stood four pillars of exquisite size and balance. Worn steps, made of marble that glowed whitely in the moonlight, led up to the fane.

He took the steps easily, drawn by the beauty of the place, but then stood, hesitant, at the entrance. The doors were thrown open, and inside were lit a few candles and a lamp in the center of the ceiling. By their light he saw a single room, a floor of polished white marble and walls of light grey sandstone on which the classic short prayers to the Great Mother had been carved. There was a simple altar, a dark stone on which to burn offerings. Relkin thought he had never seen such a bare temple, with so little in the way of decoration or comforts.

Overcoming his uneasiness, he slipped in and slunk along one wall, his fingers pressing against the carvings as he went. It had been a long time since he'd attended a service in a temple. He recalled the many long evenings he'd spent in the temple in Quosh.

He sensed someone watching him and looked back to find a young woman, clad in an austere smock of plain grey homespun and soft doeskin slippers, standing by the entrance. She came closer. He knew at once that she was a witch, probably the guardian of the place. Relkin had seen enough witches in his young life to know one instantly. They were always surrounded by an aura, a field of expectancy and energy.

"If I can help you at all, I will," she said in ritual greeting, and put her palms together and bowed.

"Thank you, Sister." He hesitated. She looked as if she was but twenty-five or thirty years, but she might as easily be ten times that. He knew the Lady Lessis, for instance, to be older than the very cities of Argonath.

For once he was tongue-tied, uncertain about everything. There were so many things he wanted to say. But was this the right place to say them? If there was a Great Mother who watched over them all, then he was sure he had offended her mightily with his prayers to the old gods. How was he to say what he needed to say without offending this witch?

He felt that great events were in motion, and that they somehow concerned him, but they were all taking place on a plane beyond his understanding. It was as if he heard voices, distorted by distance, and was sure they were talking about him, but he could not understand them no matter how he tried.

"I sense a troubled spirit within the fane," said the witch. She wore her pale gold hair in braids, with a silver headband across her brow. She was of stocky build with fleshy arms and a round, cheerful face.

"Let me help you," she said.

"I don't know how anyone can help, lady. I thought that if I wrote the Grey Lady Lessis that she might be able to sort it out for me, but who knows if I'll ever get an answer from her before I peg out in the next big fight."

The witch Dassney blinked and stared hard at the youth. He did say the Grey Lady Lessis? Who was this boy who so casually tossed that name around?

"No one can help unless you want them to."

"It's like this," he shrugged. "How do I find out if the Mother is angry with me, so angry that I can never win her favor in this life again? I feel accursed. Amend that. I am accursed. Everything has gone wrong for me for months."

"Have you taken a life?"

"Well, yes, of course."

The young witch's eyebrows rose involuntarily.

"Did this happen recently?"

"Yes."

"Has it happened before?"

"Yes."

The young witch shook her head and looked sharply at him. He wore a uniform, red and blue cap, jacket, breeches and boots, he wore a sword and a long knife. He was in the legion. She breathed a little more easily.

"How did you come to take this life?"

"In battle, with the Cralls on Black Fell. They attacked, and we killed them."

"In battle? But you are so young."

"I am a dragonboy."

"Ah, of course. How obtuse of me. And so you have been in battle, and you killed a man. You think that because the Mother does not countenance killing, she will no longer give you her favor."

"No, not at all."

"No?" Witch Dassney's forehead creased in surprise.

"Well," he said, gesturing, "we fight for the peace of the Great Mother, don't we? I've always been taught that. I've seen fighting all up and down the land, and I've killed more men and things that ain't men but can fight like 'em, than I can remember. And I've nearly been killed by them on a few occasions. I could say that I've seen all the killing I ever want to see. But it's all been done for the Argonath. Well"—he checked himself—"all but for Trader Dook, but that was different."

"Such taking of life can be defended as necessary to preserving the peace of the Mother in Kenor. You can be sure of the Mother's forgiveness. You fought in Her service, after all."

She stared at him with a peculiarly penetrating gaze, and again he was reminded of the Great Witches.

"But you may have unjust and unnecessary life taking on your conscience. For that you may have to pray for forgiveness, and it may be withheld."

His lip curled. Who was to say what was unjust? When you parried an imp's sword and ripped his guts with your dirk in the hot press while steel rang all around you, where were such concepts as justice and injustice? Things moved too quickly at such moments. One slew or was slain.

"But it was necessary, Sister. But that's not why She doesn't care for me. It's because of the old gods. See, I think they still live on, although they're not as strong as they used to be."

Dassney shook her head in wonderment. The old gods was it? A worshiper of the older deities of the Vero peoples? This youth with so many lives taken by his sword was worried about the old gods?

"What is your name, Dragoneer?"

"Relkin of Quosh, Dragoneer First Class, 109th Marneri Dragons. Attached to the Eighth Regiment, Second Marneri Legion."

"And so, why do you think the Mother has withdrawn her favor from you?"

"I don't know if I believe in her. The old gods feel more real because they belong to the world. They breathe and eat and make love and fight one another. Old Caymo with his wine and dice. And Asgah of the sword, I think he watches over my dragon. There was a time when we were hard-pressed on Mt. Red Oak. Asgah heard our plea and came to our aid. He rolled the stone on the trolls."

Sister Dassney took a breath.

"The Mother is simpler than any god or goddess, child. Her word is kindness."

"I know, I fight for Her peace. An end to unjust violence and unchecked greed. I learned all that in school. But since I left my village, I've seen nothing but chaos and a lot of killing. I'm not eighteen years, and I've seen battles, sieges, everything. How can there be a Great Mother and so much killing and horror in the world?"

The young witch smiled and came close to him.

"Perhaps it is a long and arduous job, purging the world of its horrors. There are a great many of them, and they've been going on for a long time. The Great Mother's work is scarcely begun."

"But we're told the world was made by the Great Mother. If She made the world, then why didn't she make it without the horror and the killing? Why does it have to be so cruel?"

"Do you ask this question of the old gods?"

"Well, no, the old gods, they're sort of like ordinary folk. They're capricious. Sometimes they're cruel. Caymo carries that knife to cut your throat if you gamble away your inheritance. They're part of the world, that's why I understand them. They're not sitting apart from it, criticizing it and setting an impossible standard for everyone."

"Well, Dragoneer Relkin, you can be sure that unless you take life unnecessarily in their name, the Great Mother will not frown upon you. She accepts the need for the old gods. They bring some dash and color to the world that believes in them. But as you said, the Great Mother holds to a higher standard than they do. She carries no knife to sever the hopeless gambler's life. She embodies the infinite and the eternal."

Relkin heard but struggled with acceptance.

"It's hard," he said quietly.

"I know, but that is the way of the good things in the world. The evil comes easily, the truly worthwhile is hard."

Relkin shrugged. "I suppose so."

And with that she excused herself and left him. Once again the fane was empty but for himself. He sighed. The fane was very beautiful like this, so simple and undecorated. It was just unfortunate. There were no easy answers.

He left the temple and made his way back on the moonlit path to the camp. His dragon was sitting on his haunches watching the sky. The dragon star, red Razulgeb, rode high in the zenith.

"Welcome back," said Bazil.

"I didn't think you'd still be awake."

"Red star is high. We are all awake."

Relkin glanced around himself. It was true. The other dragons were all sitting up, their eyes fixed on the heavens.

"So did dragonboy learn anything at the temple?"

"Yes," he said, and slipped into his blankets. Already the fatigue in his bones was willing him to sleep.

"What was that?"

"There are no answers, Bazil, that's what."

Between Kenor and the lands of the Argonath there were but two routes through the long chain of the Malgun Mountains. One was the break occupied by the river Argo, which ran between Mt. Red Oak and Mt. Ulmo. The other lay to the south and was known as the High Pass.

Here was a gap less than a mile wide and more than a mile high, bending between Mt. Livol and mighty Mt. Malgun to the south. Grey rock lay bare to the sky. Only a few goats survived in the mists. To the human eye, the strongest impression was of sheer desolation. The wind keened over the bare rocks and whistled through the gulleys.

The Empire of the Rose had built a level road, forty feet wide, to traverse the pass. It was interrupted solely by the gates of Fort Roland. The rectangular fort cut the pass in two with its fortifications facing west.

In the cool light of morning, Captain Hollein Kesepton stood on the battlements above the gate. To the west the view was blocked by low clouds, which turned the pass into a funnel running into a wall of mist.

Out of the mist, packed on the road, came an endless procession of refugees, thousands upon thousands of women, children, the elderly, the lame, and the frightened. There were herds of cattle and sheep, teams of horses, wagons by the hundred, and even a few luxurious coaches pulled by teams of six or even eight fine horses. All were driven by the same overpowering urge, to pass through the great gate of Roland and reach the safety of the lands of the Argonath. But Hollein knew that that safety was illusory, for what came behind the refugees was a great devouring beast that was treading up the Lis Valley and would go over the mountains and devour the cities of the 'trgonath unless it could be stopped right here. And to stop that monstrous threat, there were but a few hundred men including himself.

He turned at the sound of someone climbing the stairs in the turret and saw a familiar, grim visage emerge from the pool of darkness. Lieutenant Liepol Duxe came to attention and saluted.

"At ease, Lieutenant," said Hollein. Duxe had taken promotion at last, making the jump between the ranks and the officer class.

"I didn't think I'd see you again so soon, Captain." Duxe showed that familiar wintry smile.

" Tis our fate it seems. I search for some pattern, some sign of the Mother's hand in all this."

"You will not find it. This war is the mark of more vigorous players. Our enemy grows mightier each time we cut him down."

"You were not a defeatist, before, I doubt that you are now." Liepol Duxe grinned. He was tall, sandy-haired where Kesepton was dark, and wore his beard at medium length but clipped neat and square. Older than Kesepton, he had risen from the ranks and carried a hefty chip on his shoulder toward officers. He had served with distinction in the campaign against the Doom of Tummuz Orgmeen.

"You are correct, Captain."

"Can we do it?"

"Can we get rid of him? Yes, sir."

"No, can we hold them? Long enough for reinforcements to reach us."

Duxe looked along the walls. They were well built and well sited. With a few hundred men you could hold off an army. But what was coming against them was, by all accounts, a host of legendary proportions.

"I honestly doubt it, sir. But we will try. Every man here, except one."

Kesepton looked away, down to the road. A wagon loaded with children, dozens of them packed in tight, went rumbling into the gate. The children started singing the Kenor song, their voices high and shrill. The men inside the gate roared with laughter and joined in on the chorus.

"You know we heard from Fort Redor. The enemy was five days just marching his columns past the fort."

"Redor will fall, Captain." Duxe expressed this with gloomy certainty. "But Teot will not fall. I served three years in Teot. 'Tis the strongest fort in Kenor and has the deepest well."

"You're right, Lieutenant. Unless they can breach the walls, which I doubt, Teot will stand to the very last. They have a spell of adamant wrought deep upon those walls by the witches."

Duxe shrugged. "As to spells, don't ask Liepol Duxe about that! But the enemy will have spellsayers, too. Yet Teot's walls are hard to come to since they stand on the bluff. You can only come against the place by going straight up at the gates, and they are very strong."

"The approach to the gates is a death trap. No, I think the enemy will not waste his resources trying to take Teot. But the men and dragons inside Redor are doomed, I fear."

"I wish we had them here. It seems such a terrible waste."

"And we have no dragons. Nothing to put against their trolls."

"Trolls are poor climbers."

"That is our only consolation. But they will surely bring a ram and break the gate."