Dragon's Winter (26 page)

Rogys flinched at that. To Herugin, he said, “Sir, I’m sorry. I couldn’t—I
couldn’t
stay behind.”

Herugin looked coldly at him. Finally he said, “Idiot. If you ever even
think
of doing anything so brainless again, I’ll take the skin off you in inches. Get out to the lines. And don’t run, or you’ll snap an ankle.”

“Sir!” Rogys snapped a crisp salute.

They left the dead, both men and horses, behind. Lorimir suggested butchering the horses. “We could use the fresh meat.”

But Karadur forbid it. “We eat nothing that has been touched by wargs.”

Karadur pushed the army ruthlessly that day. The air was cold, searingly cold, dry and windless, and the sky brilliant, a shimmering iridescent blue. Crusty snow split like glass under the horses’ hooves. The frozen landscape glittered, beautiful, deadly. Midday they stopped, to eat hard bread and cheese, and rest and water the horses. Macallan moved through the troop, checking for frostbite and snow-blindness.

As they made ready to leave, Lorimir ordered that the torches be passed out, one to every other man. Huw said, “I heard the captain and Lieutenant Herugin talking in the cook tent. They said we should reach the mist today.”

Edruyn said, “They say the men who go through it come out mad.” His beardless face was drawn, and not with cold.

Orm said roughly, “Don’t trouble yourself, boy. That’s Dragon’s business. He’ll get us through.”

They saw the mist before they came to it. Ominous and grey, it loomed ahead of them, taller than the tallest oak: a dense wet wall.

Edruyn whispered, “It looks like fog on the ocean.”

Huw scoffed, “When did you ever see the ocean?”

“I never did. But my father’s brother Finn went to Skyeggo, and he told me. He said the fog there rises from the waves at dawn, and retreats before the morning sun, and blows in again at sunset.”

“I suppose he saw sea-serpents, too.”

“If he did, he never said.”

As they neared the mist, Lorimir called, “Form columns.” The men pulled their horses into lines. The officers, and Dragon, rode forward, until they stood only feet from the roiling fog.

Tendrils of damp, like grey mold, snaked over the snow. Voices like the memory of evil dreams called from the ashen reek. The horses shied, snorting, at the foul odor. “Gods, it stinks,” Murgain said morosely.

As if it had heard, the wall of mist churned. Suddenly it tore, and a great yawning fissure, like a monstrous mouth, appeared. At the edge of the mouth flickered rows of sharp tiny teeth. A tongue of mist licked the frigid air. The big black gelding half-reared, and trumpeted defiance.

Lorimir said quietly, “My lord, the men will endure this. But the beasts may not. Fog and fire together—it asks a lot of them.”

Karadur said, “Herugin, what do you think?”

Herugin said, “My lord, they know their riders. I think they will suffer it.”

“We will try,” Karadur said. Turning Smoke to face the company, he pitched his deep voice so all could hear. “Hear me, Atani warriors. We have come to the mist. You’ve heard the hunters’ tales; you know what it is. Within its depths are phantoms, creatures of a vengeful mind. Our enemy intends us to scurry back across the mountains, yelping like whipped dogs.”

An angry growl lifted from the throats of the men. “The hell we will!” someone called.

“We will not. Instead, we will attack. Our enemy loathes and fears fire. So, fire will be our shield and our weapon. Lift your torches!” The riders yelled. Karadur raised his hands, fingers spread. Amber fire, unfueled, uncannily silent, blazed from his open palms and streamed through the air to the torches. Pitch flared; dry wood crackled and spat sparks. Like a bright and deadly river the fire whipped across the snow. The mist humped, and recoiled, shrieking at the fire’s touch. Raudri raised the banner. The golden dragon’s glittering head seemed to arch across the white cloth. The black gelding leaped forward into the fog.

“Follow him! Together! Damn you,” Lorimir shouted, “ride together!”

Shouting like vengeful demons, the soldiers thundered into the mist. Knee to knee, like cavalrymen charging a line of swordsmen, they galloped through the fog, brandishing their torches; nightmare voices yammered in rage, and then fell silent, as the mist boiled to nothingness at the assault of flame. As they swept from shadow into sunshine, they saw the dark-cloaked figure waiting on his horse. They surrounded him, exultant, cheering.

Finally the captains quieted them. “Form ranks,” Lorimir snapped. They drew the lines into formation.

Ahead of them, the land sloped upward into a snowy ridge. “Sound the Advance!”

Raudri blew the horn. They rode over the ridge, and stopped.

Before them, as far as human eye could see, stretched a lifeless waste of ice. And in the middle of it rose a massive ebony-walled fortress: the Black Citadel.

16

The fortress dominated the ivory-white plain. A massive edifice of unassailable walls, soaring spires, great smoking chimneys, vast dungeons beneath layers of impenetrable stone, it seemed improbably close, perhaps a mile away, less.

“Heart of the gods,” Murgain said softly, “it must be big as a mountain!”

“No,” Karadur said. “This is wizardry. The castle is still three days from us, and when we reach it we will find it neither so big nor so fearsome as it appears.”

From the ridge the land seemed a featureless waste. But under the smooth deceptive snow drifts, the ground was rucked and rutted. Lorimir sent out double the usual number of scouts. “With
that
on the horizon,” he said quietly to the dragon-lord, “the men will find it hard to keep their attention on the ice. I want no accidents, and no surprises.”

The riders moved in loose formation, north and east. After an hour’s steady progress, one of the scouts came riding back to report an abandoned village ahead of them. Black spars rose like grave markers, mute witness to human cruelty, and human endurance. Just beyond it, a cluster of five elk nosed weakly at the snow. They were mostly bone, and so famished that they did not run or scatter, as normal beasts would, but simply froze, staring with blank hopelessness at the war band.

Lorimir said, “My lord. Fresh meat.”

“No,” Karadur said, after a moment. “Let them live.”

They passed two more burned and gutted villages. In one, the scouts found a mummified body in the snow. The eyeless, desiccated face bared its teeth in a desperate rictus of pain. Four stakes had been driven into the ground. Wind-torn rope showed that the man had been fastened to them, spread-eagled and tied... There were rocks all about him.

“He was stoned,” Macallan said. He parted the layers of cloth with the tip of his dagger. “See here, and here. His legs were broken, and these three ribs are crushed. There was evidently no one left alive to free him. If the stoning didn’t kill him outright, exposure did.”

“I wonder what they wanted from him,” Herugin said, with distaste. He glanced at the tiny cluster of what had been huts. “It can’t have been gold. These are hovels.”

“Information?” guessed Murgain.

“Entertainment,” said Azil quietly. “Amusement.”

Here and there, a great rock jutted like the blade of a knife from the snowy ground. On many of them, a human hand had chipped out a spiral. The men filed through them silently.

Suddenly, from within the moving files of men, a terrible, inhuman scream pierced the white silence of the ice. The horsemen seized spears and bows and moved swiftly, automatically, to battle stations. Then the screaming stopped. A mule had tumbled into an ice crevasse and broken a leg. Someone had shot it.

“Can we get it out?” Karadur asked.

“We think so, my lord.”

“Good. Lorimir, call a rest. Tell the men to drag that mule up and butcher it.”

They halted where they stood. Chance, or some minor god’s mercy, had stopped them on the side of a gentle slope. The contour of the land effectively rendered the Citadel invisible. Without that inimical, forbidding structure squatting on the horizon, the soldiers’ spirits and voices lifted. The horses, grateful for the rest, stood stolidly, while the dead mule was roped and hauled from its hole. A corps of enthusiastic butchers, under Macallan’s caustic supervision, skinned the beast, scraped the hide, quartered, disjointed, and packed the carcass. Those not lured by carnage slept, or took advantage of the halt to make the necessary, time-wasting repairs to weapons, harnesses, cloaks, boots, and cooking pots that are the bane of all armies. Sentries sat their horses, hands on their bows, eyes watchful.

Hawk cleaned and oiled her weapons. Then, sitting in the shelter of one of the tall rocks, she rested her head in her hands and called across the miles to Bear. The silence made a faint roaring sound in her mind, like the turmoil of a far-off sea. Suddenly she sensed him...
Bear!
she called. But swiftly as the sensation of contact had come, it vanished.

She looked up, discouraged and with a headache. Karadur Atani was sitting on a scrap of hide, watching her. She had not felt him, which surprised her. She
should
have felt him; they were only feet apart. Then she felt his effort, and realized that he was shielding her, crudely, but effectively, from his own power.

He said, “What were you doing?”

“Listening.” She pulled her cloak more closely around her stiff shoulders. The dragon-lord sat at ease, with only a light cloak thrown across his back. His face, as ever, was unreadable. She wondered where he had learned that impassivity, and at what price.

“For what do you listen?”

“Other minds,” she said.

“Animals?”

“Animals, yes. And changelings, and men.”

“Are you a physician, as well as a tracker?”

“My knowledge of healing is minimal, my lord.”

“Yet you were able to help Rogys. Macallan told me. You were taught these skills?”

“Yes. My mother taught them to me, as she learned them from her mother.”

“Do all changeling folk have such faculties?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Power differs from species to species, as well as mind to mind. Hawk and Cat have strong clear abilities. Wolf has some. Bear and Shark have almost none. Whale and Serpent have numerous abilities, but strange ones, I was told.”

“And Dragon?”

“Your power is enormous, my lord. You must know that.”

“I do know it,” he said, with an uncharacteristic diffidence. “I can see in the dark. I can call fire out of the air. I can find a lie in a man’s mind. But I am untrained.” The wind stirred his hair. “It was not my intention to injure Rogys.”

“The dragon temper,” she said.

“Yes. I have so much more to learn.”

The admission made her realize, for the first time, how young he truly was. The Black Dragon had died twenty years ago. But changelings, as she well knew, came early to their strengths. She herself had been full-grown at fourteen.

“Surely one of your kinsfolk, my lord, can instruct you in the use of your powers.”

His hard still face did not change, but his eyes did. She looked away from him.
Dear Mother, what did I say... ?
But when she faced him again, that appalling blaze of anguish had vanished behind his potent self-control.

They rode on. In the illusive distance, the Black Citadel gleamed evilly. Just past noon they encountered a second, more brutal reminder of their adversary’s savagery: the mummified corpses of three children. They sprawled half on top of each other, as if even in the last moments of life they had tried to help or defend each other, or at least to stay together. The smallest, a little girl, was very small indeed, no more than three or four years old.

Azil said, “They were hunted. Forced to run, and slowly chased, until they dropped from exhaustion. Probably the parents were made to watch, before they too were killed or enslaved. There will be a village nearby, and other bodies.”

Herugin, voice grating as if his throat hurt, said, “How do you know?”

Azil answered tonelessly, “I watched it.”

Just before sunset, Hawk felt the pressure against her mind.

Elated and relieved, she reined Sunflower to a stop.
Cousin, where are you?
... She heard no response. She tried again, and heard nothing, or perhaps something, a teasing echo...
Bear!

Cousin
, the whisper came,
you called me
... ? Evil laughter scraped her thought. Her vision swam with sickness. The mind behind the laughter was savage, foul as an opened grave.

“Hoy,” said Finle at her elbow, “are you all right?”

“No,” she snarled at him. She wheeled her horse and cantered back to the line. “My lord,” she said, guiding Sunflower alongside the black gelding, “you had best halt the advance. Something is out there.”

Raudri had the horn against his lips before she had finished speaking. The scouts pulled in. Karadur said, “What sort of something, my hunter?”

She shook her head. She did not want to approach it further. “A mind,” she said. “An evil mind.”