Master of Dragons (33 page)

“No tambours and
lutes playing when you speak her name, as the poets say?” Edward asked wryly.

“Everything is so
uncertain now,” Marcus said in apology. “I can’t really think about marriage.”

“Bad
timing—despite what your mother and the holy book say.” Edward paused, then
added, “Love will come, Marcus. It may not be the love the poets sing about,
but it’s much more comfortable.” Another pause, then he added quietly, “Your
mother had a talk with Mistress Evelina yesterday evening.”

Marcus’s skin
burned so that the rainwater running down his cheeks seemed to sizzle.

“Your mother
explained to her that marriage was out of the question and promised her that
she and her child—if she is truly pregnant—will be provided for.”

“How did Evelina .
. . what did . . . did she say anything—”

“The girl took it
well enough, according to your mother. She was upset, of course, but your
mother is of the opinion that she will come around, especially once she
understands that any type of relationship with you is hopeless. Your mother
told her about your engagement. That should end the matter.”

It should, but
Marcus had the feeling that it wouldn’t. His thoughts in regard to Evelina were
all mixed up; a tangle of desire and revulsion that he couldn’t understand. He
saw her lying naked beside him on the bed, and he ached and throbbed, and he
saw her somewhere else, doing something else—he couldn’t remember what or
where—but when that vague memory tugged at his sleeve, the throbbing turned into
a sickening feeling that churned his stomach and left a sour taste in his
mouth.

He said nothing,
however, and his father, thinking he understood, gave his son a sympathetic
glance and rode on ahead, leaving Marcus to his thoughts, which immediately left
wedding and/or bedding and went back to what—if anything—lay ahead.

They rode swiftly
that day and made a cold and cheerless camp late in the evening. The rain
ceased, but the trees dripped incessantly all night long. The ground was wet
and soggy. The fires smoked and gave forth only sullen, grudging warmth. Marcus
was stiff and sore from the long ride, and a night spent sleeping on the ground
didn’t help. They were up and in the saddle as soon as there was light enough
for men and horses to see where they were going. They rode all that day, slept
on soggy ground that night, and were up yet again with another gray dawn.

The clouds passed
that morning, leaving a clean-washed blue sky and glaring sun that, by the time
they reached Aston Castle, was high above the trees. Prince Wilhelm was not
there to meet them. He’d ridden out with his troops. He had left orders for the
care of his father and brother and their retinue, orders that his lady-wife
carried out in an exemplary manner. Grooms stabled the horses, which were glad
to rest after their wearying journey. The knights enjoyed a hearty repast, and
the king enjoyed meeting with his daughter-in-law and playing with his
grandchildren. There was an air of tension, however, and when a messenger
arrived, riding a steaming horse into the courtyard, half the castle turned out
to meet him.

“What news?” the
king asked, holding the horse’s bridle himself.

“Prince Wilhelm
bids me to give you this message, Your Majesty,” said the knight. “My lord
says: ‘The sun shines. The river flows. The birds sing. Our archers snore
beneath the trees and our men-at-arms lose the money you are paying them to
each other at dice.’ “

Edward was careful
not to look at Marcus. Those knights who had been lingering nearby glanced at
each other, rolled their eyes, shook their heads, and walked off. The king told
the messenger to come inside. Marcus followed more slowly and, when he arrived,
he found the messenger and the king bent over a map.

“His Highness
chose this position, Your Majesty. If enemy troops were to cross the river, we
deemed this to be the likeliest place. He sent scouts across the river to
search for some sign of an enemy, and we found nothing. We went upstream and
down and I swear on my father’s beard, Your Majesty, that there is no city
there. There is no army threatening to attack us. There is naught but trees and
brush and deer coming to the water to drink.”

Marcus sat in a
chair in a corner. His father glanced at him from time to time, as if inviting
him to speak, but Marcus kept silent. He knew quite well what the scouts had
seen, for he’d seen it, too—until Grald had lifted the magical veil of
enchantment.

Edward said that
he would like to see for himself the lay of the land and how the troops were
deployed. The messenger offered to escort him in the morning.

When the man had
been dismissed, Edward turned to Marcus.

“I know you are
tired from the long journey, my son, especially after everything you’ve gone
through. Perhaps you would like to remain here and rest.”

His offer was well
intentioned and kindly meant, and it fell on Marcus with the force of an iron
anvil dropped off the top of the castle wall.

“I will come with
you, Father,” he said coldly, and he turned his back and walked off before
Edward could say a word.

“DEATH AHEAD OF
YOU. DEATH BEHIND YOU. DEATH ABOVE YOU and death below. No escape, King’s Son.
There is no escape.”

Crouched on his
little stool, in his own little room, Marcus spent the night listening to the
dragon’s voice hissing through the keyhole. Over and over.
Death ahead of
you. Death behind you. Death above and death below. No escape, King’s Son.

The tone was
harsh, meant to frighten and weaken. And it succeeded.

Marcus rose from
his bed with the dull, stupid feeling that comes from fatigue. He looked out of
the castle’s slit windows to see the east reddening with the dawn. The castle’s
other inhabitants were already awake, for the king had ordered them to ride at
first light. The voice of the dragon lingered. Marcus closed his eyes and
pressed his throbbing head against the chill stone wall.

The words “death
ahead, death behind, death above, death below” had been laid in his brain like
some sort of evil eggs, and now, hatching, the dread portent of the warning
squirmed and crawled around inside him.

The dragon army
lay ahead of them. The dragon was above them. Death behind and death below. Did
the enemy have them surrounded? Were they cut off from the castle and the
cannons that were to save them? Was this warning even true, or was this the
dragon’s way of defeating them before they’d started?

The summons came
to ride. Accoutered in his heavy armor— plate over chain—Marcus clanked into
the courtyard in time to hear a messenger from his brother reporting to the
king that the night had passed with no alarms.

None of the
knights that comprised the Prince’s Own looked at Marcus this morning as they
mounted and made ready to ride. No one spoke to him either, except his father,
to wish him a good day. And Edward’s voice sounded strained.

Marcus mounted his
war horse and rode in silence, the words writhing about inside his brain.

Death ahead.
Death behind.

Death above.
Death below.

No escape.

The king’s
messenger had galloped on ahead to apprise Prince Wilhelm of their coming, and
he was on hand to greet them as they dismounted, giving his father an
affectionate embrace and his little brother a cool nod. Prince Wilhelm was
about eight years Marcus’s senior. The difference in their ages alone would
have likely prevented the two from being close. Add to this the fact that
Marcus had been a very strange child, given to visions and fancies and finally
going insane, and the result was that the half-brothers scarcely knew each
other.

To give Wilhelm
his due, he had never resented the bastard son or feared him or distrusted him,
as often happened in other royal households. Wilhelm had defended and protected
his little brother, mostly with words, sometimes with fists. Marcus never knew
this, or if he did, it was lost in the dazzling, lunatic swirl of dragon-dreams
that had comprised his childhood.

A goodly blend of
both father and mother, Wilhelm had fair hair, his father’s hazel eyes, and a
tendency to his mother’s plumpness that he worked hard to avoid. His nature had
always been of a serious bent, and he took his duties as crown prince in
earnest. When the king and his retinue came upon the prince, he was hot, tired,
and in a bad humor. Marcus could not particularly blame his brother. The most
vicious foes Wilhelm faced at the moment were fleas, ticks, gnats, grasshoppers,
and clouds of ferocious mosquitoes.

As the morning sun
sparkled on the distant river, Wilhelm sat his horse atop the ridge, the visor
of his helm raised, trying to ignore the itching of the many bug bites that he
was unable to scratch beneath his armor. He made no attempt to keep the
annoyance out of his voice as he indicated to his father and the assembled
officers how he had deployed his troops.

“Skirmish line out
front comprised of light infantry, small numbers. They will meet the first
assault, fall back, drawing the enemy with them. The archers form the next line
of defense.”

He pointed to
where the archers could be seen snoozing in the grass, their arrows stuck into
the ground around them for easy access, or stuffed in cloth bags lying beside them.
Behind the archers was bivouacked the majority of the infantry, a few of whom
were moving in a desultory manner about their camp, heading for the trenches
that were the privies or munching on whatever food they had for breakfast. The
archers, if hard-pressed, could flow back through the infantry, where they
could then halt to make a stand.

“My knights and
heavy cavalry will be arrayed here and here,” continued Wilhelm, gesturing, “prepared
to flank the enemy. All the men are ready to fight.
If
we have an enemy.
One that is
not
composed of moonbeams and fairy dust.”

He cast a dark and
baleful glance at Marcus, who saw the look and heard the words, but only as a
low murmur beneath the constant hissing of the dragon. His brother and father
and the commanders continued to talk. Marcus gazed out across the grasslands
spreading before him, and he watched a ripple pass through the tall stands of
grass like a wave rising from the river to wash over the land, setting the
heads of the grass shivering and dipping low, then rising up and rolling on.
The ripple traveled swiftly, spreading across the miles of empty land until it
sank away to nothing not far from the ridgeline on which they stood.

Marcus thought at
first it was the wind. Then he realized that the air was still, one reason for
the mosquitoes. What, then, had caused that odd motion in the grass? He
refocused his eyes and stared hard.

Nothing. No
movement. No sound.

They’re out
there.
He knew they were out there.

He saw his father’s
mouth move. He heard, in his head, the fell words “death ahead, death behind .
. .”

Marcus urged his
horse close to his father’s. Breaking into the conversation, he said in a low
voice, “You must sound the call to arms, Father. The enemy is almost on top of
us!”

His father regarded
him in consternation and exchanged glances with Wilhelm, who shook his head and
looked away. Edward sighed deeply and rested his hand on Marcus’s hand.

“My son, there’s
nothing out there. You’re imagining things. That’s understandable. This is your
first battle. You’re excited, eager—”

Marcus ceased to
listen.

All you can see
is the grass waving gently in the morning breeze and the river in the distance,
sparkling and murmuring to itself in the sunshine.

That is all you
can see, but not all I can see. You have to listen to me! Death ahead. Death
above . . .

“Sound the call,
Wilhelm,” Marcus urged. “Before it’s too late!”

“Barking mad,”
stated Sir Troeven, commander of the knights of the Prince’s Own, and he did
not bother to keep his voice down.

Those words, cruel
words, heard from his childhood on, were a fiery sword. Anger, hot and
refining, cleansed Marcus’s soul, burning away fear and doubt.

Marcus came to
himself and saw that his father, his brother, their knights on their horses
gathered around him, looked ill-at-ease, embarrassed.

“Marcus, my son,”
the king was saying, “you have to calm yourself ...”

Marcus backed his
horse, backed away from their anguished attempts to assuage the madman, backed
away from their pity.
He
regarded them—poor blind humans—with pity.

“You can’t see
them, but they are there,” he said. “And I will show you.”

Marcus took firm
grip on the reins and touched his spurs into the horse’s flanks. The horse
leapt forward. The knights and his father and his brother sat there like lumps
and watched him.

It wasn’t until
Marcus began to ride his horse down the ridge that his father finally realized
what his son intended. The king gave a shout that jolted men to action. Bearded
faces beneath steel helms loomed up in Marcus’s path. Gloved hands tried to
grasp hold of the reins and drag him to a stop. He kicked at them and kicked at
his horse, urging it on, and men fell back or risked being trampled.

The animal plunged
down the steep ridge, sliding and slipping and almost foundering. Marcus hung
on with fixed determination, and the horse managed to regain its footing and
continued on at a gallop, heading straight for the grassy plains. The empty
grassy plains.

Horse and rider
rode through the camp, overturning cooking pots and knocking down tent posts.
Men, half-awake, had to jump for their lives as Marcus thundered past. The king
shouted for someone to stop the prince, but no one wanted to risk death beneath
the horse’s hooves, and Marcus rode, unimpeded, for the plains of quivering
grass.