The Dark Glory War (13 page)

Whatever he was going to say was cut off by one of the outriders from our northern flank reining up before us. “My lord, we’ve cut across signs of travelers in the woods.”

“Human?”

“Gibberkin, I think. Day-old sign.” The man shook his head. “At least a dozen, running parallel to us.”

Lord Norrington’s eyes tightened. “The road is fairly open, so it would have to be a night attack, and they wouldn’t have delayed that sort of thing if they were just raiding.”

Heslin came riding up. “Trouble?”

“The outriders have come across gibberkin sign. They’ve been tracking us.”

The mage nodded. “That assumes they know who we are and have watched us from Valsina. Do you think one of the gibberkin escaped us in Westwood?”

“It works as an explanation. The sign also suggests there were more parties working in Oriosa, and they may have been tracking us until they found the strength or place to ambush us.” Leigh’s father stood in his stirrups and looked around the broad valley through which we rode. “No cover, no real defensible position. The forests could be full of Aurolani creatures.”

Heslin pointed south across the low hills bordering the valley. “The ruins of Atval are perhaps a dozen miles ahead.”

“Atval?” Lord Norrington shook his head. “We would have to be insane to chance it.”

“Or desperate.” The old mage smiled. “If they know of Atval, they won’t have cut the path off to it, since they won’t expect us to go for it. If we do, we might be able to fight them off. And even if the doom that came to Atval visits it again, chances are the Aurolani force will be destroyed, too.”

“It’s better than dying in a meadow.” Lord Norrington looked at the outrider. “Cooper, bring everyone in. We’re riding for Atval. Spread the word, armor up, change to fresh horses. We’ll be riding hard to make it by nightfall.”

“As you wish, my lord.”

Norrington looked at Heslin again. “Are you certain about this?”

“If one has to die, why not go out in a blaze of glory, eh?” The mage cackled dryly, then reined his horse around and rode back toward his apprentices.

I felt my mouth grow dry. “What did he mean?”

“Blaze of glory? It’s a joke, and a bad one.”

“No, what did he mean when he mentioned ‘the doom that came to Atval’? He said it would get us, too. That’s not possible, is it?”

“Oh, it is, Hawkins, very possible.” Lord Norrington sighed heavily. “After all, the doom that came to Atval was dragons. They laid waste to the city and declared that no man shall ever live there again. If we take shelter there, we might survive the gibberkin, but if the dragons come enforce their decree …”

I nodded. “Our Moon Month will be eclipsed.”

“Totally and completely, Tarrant.” rn he Black City of Atval hung like a cloud on the horizon. I Because it was built on a rise in the landscape, we were able 1 to see it once we crested the hills. As we rode toward it, I waited for details to sharpen, but they never did. The whole city seemed liquid shadow, though the sun’s death did splash bloody red highlights over the western surfaces.

Established well before the Great Revolt, Atval had been a simple settlement in the middle of plains that had served dragons for years as prime hunting grounds, but the leaders of the city struck a bargain with the dragons. They managed the bison herds, providing the dragons with thousands of the beasts each year without fail. The city prospered and walls that had once been wooden became made of stone. Massive battlements were raised and men decided their city had become formidable enough that they no longer need fear dragons.

A leader rose among them and led the people in a revolt against the dragons. They withheld their tribute and attacked the dragons sent to collect it. Legend says at least one dragon died—and stories hint at something that was more murder than a killing. For a short time, the people celebrated their grand victory and the leader who had won it for them.

As we drew close, the folly of their decision could not have been made more clear. The city itself remained recognizable in general shape, with huge walls and open gates, wide streets, monuments raised in central squares, buildings high and low spread out in an orderly fashion. What remained terrifyingly remarkable about it all was that the city might well have been fashioned of black wax, then placed too close to a fire. All hard edges had been softened, the crenelations on the walls melted down so the trails of molten stone could be seen. Roof tiles had run like water and frozen into stone daggers hanging like icicles from eaves. Square windows had been reduced to sloppy, sag-sided boxes, and proud archways had been softened into defeated holes.

As we rode into the city, Leigh pointed at what appeared to be rafters that somehow had survived the dragons’ assault. “How is it possible the wood survived?”

“How is it possible any of this survived?” Heslin reined up short. “Dragonfire is tinged with magic. It can destroy, as it has done, or can be used to reshape stone—as they do when they form their halls in the mountains. Here they drove the people out, then reshaped the city as a warning. No man, no creature that walks on two legs, will ever be permitted to take up residence here ever again. Dragons, who trust occasionally, never forgive betrayal.”

Leigh sighed. “But we didn’t do anything to any dragons.”

Heslin laughed. “And you would distinguish among dragons and their clans when you hear stories of raids?”

“Ah, no.”

“Neither do they, at least, not when it comes to Atval. A dragon was murdered here. Those who did it thought the dragon’s death would discourage other dragons.” The old mage waved a hand toward the city. “They were wrong. The place reeks of dragon magic. They will know we are here, but how swiftly they will respond, I do not know.”

Cooper, the outrider who had located the gibberkin sign, pointed along our backtrail. “They’re coming in. Looks like multiple groups coming together. Gibberkin and temeryces, probably vylaens, too.”

Leigh’s father rode back to the gate and peered out. “No drearbeasts or hoargouns, but there must be a hundred of them at least. We need to find a building we can defend.”

“Temple to Kedyn?” Nay pointed toward the center of the city. “If fighting there does get us help, the gods might at least be amused.”

“As good a choice as any. Cooper, keep Alder and Darby here with you. Sign is moon, countersign is sun. Get us a count on them and then join us at the temple—and don’t wait to come until they’re right on your heels. I’d rather error in your count than not getting it at all.”

We took the outriders’ spare horses and rode with them into the city and up the broad steps of Kedyn’s temple. Riding into the building, which was not quite as large as the temple in Valsina, we got our first indication of how complete the dragons’ destruction of the city had been. The building itself showed the ravages of their fire, but inside the furnishings had also been affected. Tables and chairs were half-melted, but now made of stone. The statues of Kedyn, Fesyin, and Gesric had flowed down over their pedestals as if they were sand-castles overwashed by waves on a lakeshore. That the destruction had been so precise, leaving the structure sound while obliterating those things that defined its purpose, spoke very loudly to the dragons’ contempt for all things human.

Once inside we gathered the horses down in the worship bowl and set about erecting barricades at the doors. Lord Norrington dispatched scouts, including Leigh, to seek out all entrances to the building. While the stone furnishings were heavy and hard to move, once we got them into position, we knew the Aurolani forces would have a hard time getting past them. I was sent up a stairway with four other archers to the second-story priest’s-walk. There, I would be able to shoot out through the windows or down into the nave if the Aurolani broke in through the front.

Down below, Heslin and his apprentices managed to magickally rekindle some of the votive fires that once would have briehtened the whnl<=nf thp tpmnls Wolf-molt^~r.A misshapen as the sconces were, the ones that did work guttered with low flame and twisted shadows slithered throughout the temple. While they did dispel the gloom, they really gave us little more light than I would have expected of the sun a half-hour before it rose.

While Lord Norrington had been in charge of the hunt for the temeryces in Westwood, this was the first I saw him in a purely military situation. He made decisions quickly and definitively, though he sought advice from others and modified plans based on what they told him. The choices he made seemed most sensible to me, and the fact that he’d arranged for signs and countersigns and fallback positions made me feel as if the whole situation were under control. I knew we would be in a desperate fight, but I never had the feeling we were staging a defense in which we would all die.

That opinion underwent some revision when the gibberkin arrived—Cooper and the others reported having seen at least two hundred. I’d seen gibberers before, in Westwood, but they’d been dead. Their bulk had been easy to dismiss as fat, but the gibberkin stalking down the streets had muscles rippling beneath their mottled and matted fur. Their tall, black-tufted ears flicked this way and that, and they raised their broad muzzles to sniff the air. The gibberkin growled and snapped at each other, one or another giving voice to a blood-curdling noise that married a wolf’s-howl with lunatic laughter. Most went unarmored, but all carried short spears and murderously long knives. A few had bows, and my companions and I silently agreed they would die first.

I nocked an arrow and drew it back to my chin. The bowstring pressed against my lower lip. I sighted in on a stout gibberkin who pumped his bow in the air and gave voice to one of the hideous screams. I loosed my arrow and cut the scream off. The arrow ripped into and out of his neck, spraying black blood over his compatriots and sticking another gibberer in the thigh.

Other arrows struck down gibberers, then the horde surged forward and up the steps in a seething mass. I shot arrow after arrow into it, never really having time to pick a target, but knowing I could not miss. The mob stopped for a moment and, from the shouts from below, I assumed the front line had hit our barricade. Shouts turned to screams and bestial yelps. Husky laughter from below and the dragging of thrashing gibberkin to the rear ranks of their formation told me we’d held and my friends were inflicting serious wounds below.

Again and again the gibberkin horde flowed up the stairs. Shrieking and yowling as if the sound alone would kill us, they rushed the barricade. They hurled rocks and arrows, axes and spears to drive our men back. The archers and I continued to feather them, doing our best to pick off vylaens or the few temeryces we saw.

Shouts from down below brought me around. From off on the left I saw a bright flash, then a burning temeryx sprinted into the nave. Its claws scrabbled against the stone floor, and as the fire consumed it, the creature slipped and fell. Acrid black smoke rose from it, then two more temeryces appeared and ran at our barricade from behind. In their wake I saw one of Heslin’s apprentices face down in a growing pool of blood. The other supported the old man with one arm, touching a simple staff to another temeryx and causing it to burst into flame.

I loosed an arrow at one of the temeryces and split its breastbone. It flopped to the ground, spending its momentum by sliding into and undercutting one of the outriders. Another man whirled and beheaded the dying beast with a single sword stroke. He died moments later as the other temeryx leaped and slashed his chest and belly open.

Soldiers turned from the barricade to deal with the attack from our rear. Vylaens outside shouted new orders in a foul, harsh tongue. The gibberkin snarled savagely and assaulted our line one more time. They slowed for a moment, letting me pin one’s breastbone to its spine with an arrow, then the gibberkin surged forward again. They didn’t stop and I knew our barricade had been breached.

I turned and directed my shots into the temple’s nave. My first shot split the spine of one gibberer, dropping him at Lord Norrington’s feet. Leigh’s father ducked the mighty crosscut aimed at his head by one, then slashed his sword through its legs. The blade then came up in an arc and down to split another gibberkin’s skull. He danced back from the two he had killed, helped one of our warriors back to his feet, then opened another gibberer’s belly with a forehand slash.

Nay was no less magnificent. He caught a leaping gibberkin on his maul’s spike, then dumped the belly-stuck creature onto two of its own kind as if a farmer pitchforking hay from one pile to the next. He parried a swordcut with his weapon’s haft, then drove the steel butt-cap into a muzzle. An overhand blow crushed the gibberer’s skull, then a sidelong slashing attack shattered ribs on another.

Of Leigh I could see nothing, but the nave had become a sea of chaos accompanied by a hellish chorus of screams and howls, bold laughter and hissed curses. I saw a knot of gibberkin break out to the right and feathered one before they disappeared beneath the priest’s-walk. I realized they were headed for the stairs that I’d used to get up to the walk, so I drew my sword and ran to the archway.

I reached it a heartbeat before the first of many gibberers. A two-handed slash sent him reeling back, clutching his ruined face. Those following him battered him out of the way and came rushing out full on, longknives and clawed hands reaching for me.

I ducked back, letting one fly past. He sailed across the priest’s-walk and caught the melted balustrade just below his knees. He somersaulted over it and lazily spun toward the floor below.

More came, howling, slashing at me with their weapons. I hacked at them, catching limbs, my blade sparking off longknives raised to parry. I caught one with a solid blow across the neck. He spun away, but not before a hot jet of blood spurted back into my face, blinding me. I inhaled some of it and started choking. I backed quickly, my feet finding minimal purchase on the blood-slicked floor.

I blinked my eyes to clear them and was rewarded with the vision of a wall of gibberers coming for me. I lashed out half-blind, stabbing here, cutting there. My armor turned strokes I never saw. My shoulders began to ache and one sharp blow to my left arm numbed it from the elbow down.