The Dragonswarm (19 page)

"We saved a farmer," Caleb growled, like it was no more significant than squashing a bug.

"We killed a dragon," I added, anxious to keep the good will we'd earned in this town.

"A dragon. Hah! Yes. So I've heard!" The mayor chuckled and shook his head. "But you certainly saved our Jake from a bandit raid, and he's a well-liked man in this town. You two made friends here."

"Friends we could use," I said. "More than anything else, we need news."

He seemed surprised. "News? How do you mean?"

"Are you familiar with the land west of here? I need to know what has happened to the town of Teelevon."

He looked back and stared theatrically up at the ceiling, silently mouthing the name Teelevon, then shrugged, "I'll beg your pardon, friend, but I don't know the place. Perhaps you could tell me the general vicinity?"

"It's outside Tirah. Five days' ride to the south, along the King's Road—"

The mayor brightened. "Then you have nothing to fear! The monsters won't go anywhere near that area. Tirah they avoid, and they know better than to strike along the road."

"Are you sure?" I asked.

He nodded. Across the table, Caleb raised a finger as though to interject but then sat back again.

I frowned at both of them, then turned all my attention to the mayor. "How do you know so much about them?"

"Ah, they've been a mighty nuisance for months now. We've had chance to learn much of their ways, more's the pity." He held up a hand and ticked off points as he came to them, "They always strike at night, and in large numbers. They take one man at a time when they can, but the smaller villages have been attacked outright. They kill for fun, but their real goal is to plunder anything of value."

"That's...not quite right," I said. "But it's very close."

The mayor frowned at me, but before he could argue Caleb sat forward. "Anything of value?" he asked. "Even turnips?"

"Of course, you'd know that!" the mayor said, his grin returning briefly. Then he shook his head with a sigh. "They're getting more dangerous as they get hungry. Winter's going to be rough."

I looked across at Caleb, utterly confused. He rolled his eyes. "There people aren't afraid of dragons."

"
Dragons
?" The mayor asked, his voice going shrill. "Not
really
dragons? I mean...I'd heard, but I thought they were rumors the bandits spread."

"The dragonswarm is here," I told him, keeping my voice level. "And it is very real."

Caleb nodded into his beer. "They're still not much on the plains, but give it a couple months and they'll burn this town to the ground."

The mayor looked back and forth between us, and at last the showman's color seemed to drain from his face. He shrank in on himself and stared glumly down at the table. "There's not much left to burn," he said after a while. "The brigands have taken everything already. A little gruesome fire might be better than the long, slow starve." He waved to one of the maids.

"These are the same brigands who attacked farmer Jake?" I asked. The mayor and Caleb both nodded, but something Caleb had mentioned the night before only then struck home. "The old rebels?" I asked, shocked.

The mayor frowned at me. Caleb tilted his head, calculating, and said, "You do know about the rebellion, right?"

"It was months, Caleb, not years. But the rebellion was put down."

Caleb shrugged. "It ended, anyway."

"Not even that," the mayor growled. "It only changed its focus. Instead of robbing and warring with the king, they rob and war with the little villages now."

Caleb nodded. "They've been a problem for a long time. On the plains, they're the bigger threat."

"A bigger threat than the
dragonswarm
?"

Caleb sighed. "You do seem to know a little bit about the rebellion." I nodded, and he nodded. "Do you know about the army Brant raised in the process?"

I had spent a day tracking them through rough country, and another day a prisoner in their camp. And I had put a whole army of them to flight with the help of one dragon. I knew them well.

"Ruffians," I said. "They were just rabble, right, and he trained them up to fight for him?"

"Exactly. Thousands of murderous men, and he taught them to live off the land. To hide among the population. They strike at night, unseen, against their opponents' weaknesses. He made a pretty impressive force of them." The mayor huffed at that, but he didn't contradict the soldier.

Caleb went on. "The king sent an army to put down the rebellion, and they should have been sufficient to wipe out Brant's men in spite of their tactics, but it never happened."

"It did," I said. "The king came in person and took Tirah with barely a fight."

Caleb's eyes narrowed again, and he hesitated before he went on. "Without a fight at all, in fact. Because they were not there."

"Well, no. They were...well, they were in Teelevon with the wizard Lareth. Staging for a strike. But they were scattered before they could attack."

"Were they?" he asked, and I realized for the first time that the truth of that night might never have reached outside Teelevon. I had carried word to the king's highest officers, but they had not deigned to listen.

And then I understood what the mayor had been saying, what Caleb had meant about the old rebels building up a power base—not scattered groups of deserters banding together, but an army meant to win a rebellion.

My jaw dropped at the thought. "The army still stands?" I started to my feet. "They never tracked them down? They never
ended
it?"

Caleb shook his head. "When Brant was dealt with, the rebellion hardly mattered anymore. His men returned to the lives of crime from which he had summoned them, and likely the king's officers believed local law would eventually see them all in shackles or nooses."

The mayor slammed a tiny fist down on the solid oak table hard enough to set the dishes rattling. "Oh, yes, they became brigands and highwaymen again. Hah! But with the training and organization that Brant had been giving them for years."

"And the equipment they'd plundered from guards and garrisons," Caleb added.

The mayor nodded solemnly. "They began to terrorize us all, and now we didn't even have the duke to call for help. No one could restrain them."

Caleb said, "The king's army made Tirah secure, but he had not brought enough to track a thousand little bands across the whole of the Ardain. Wherever they heard of a force gathering near a major town, the Guard would ride out and drive them off."

"Aye," the mayor said, "They drove 'em right off into the plains. So instead of fighting king's men they're fighting farmers and shepherds out among the wheat. These days the bastards kill whenever they can just for practice, and they rob anyone they meet of anything worth anything. These are the renegades that you know nothing about."

As they told the story, I could only stare at them, unbelieving. When they finished I felt numb. "All that has happened?" They both nodded, grave. "This is what has become of the world? This is what mankind does when faced with destruction? The dragons don't even have to come. We will destroy ourselves!"

Caleb nodded, grim. "Something should have been done, but now it's too late. They are scattered."

I shook my head. I still felt numb. "Dragons fly to kill us all, and an army of deserters and criminals roams unchallenged to prey on the towns of the Ardain." I thought of Teelevon, strangled by the siege, and a king unwilling to send them any aid. I turned to the mayor. "Has anyone faced them?"

The mayor held his palms up, helpless, "Brant took all our fighting men years ago. We have only shepherds and seamstresses now. What are we going to do against them?"

I rounded on Caleb, but his eyes were on the table. Still he answered my silent question. "The king's army is just a show of force, now. They hold Tirah and grant refuge to anyone who asks it there. The wizards, the Green Eagles, and all the regiments hide behind the city walls while Timmon once again secures his power."

"And we are left to die," the mayor said sadly, as though from a long way off.

Caleb looked up at him, grief in his eyes, but I interrupted. "This
will not
continue. Caleb, let's go."

He looked up at me in astonishment, "What? Where?"

Gone was the gentle warmth of comfort and good nourishment I had felt before. Animal fury burned in my heart again. But now I did little to restrain it. I focused the pounding anger, I shaped it in my mind. I began to design a new reality and looked for ways to make it from my rage.

"I need an army to fight my war. Perhaps I cannot ask good men to die for me," I said. "But I would gladly put these rebels to the task."

I was already at the door, bristling with energy. Caleb covered the floor in two long steps and turned me to face him. "You want to take control of the rebels? Are you mad?"

"It's simple," I said. "We'll find this army—we
know
they're not far off—and I will do what I must to tame them."

The mayor jumped up, his eyes cautious. "But...but...you're going to
join
the rebels?"

"No," Caleb answered him without taking his eyes from mine. "No, he means to conquer them. He means to make a weapon of them."

"And when I'm done...." I was shaking with excitement and fear at the path unfolding in my head. "When I'm done, we'll face whatever chaos threatens this land. I don't care if it's dragons or rebels or mobs of peasants, we're going to make this nation whole again."

Energy seemed to crackle through the room, bouncing out in whispers and rebounding in murmurs, in exclamations, in shouts. But Caleb stood one pace away, his eyes on mine and his expression serious. "Where will you take them?" he asked.

A moment before I hadn't even considered it, but as soon as he asked I smiled a sad smile. I would conquer my brood, and then build my lair. "Palmagnes will stand again." I did not say it loudly, but the words had weight beyond their volume. I heard several people in the room gasp. I nodded with a dreadful certainty. It felt right. "The fortress will stand strong, and I will remake a nation from its ruins."

Caleb's eyes were wide too. I waited half a heartbeat before I saw just the hint of a nod from him. Madman or hero, he'd said. I stretched a hand out to the hearthfire and called two hot golden flames to dance in the air above my hand. The noisy audience fell silent at that, hushed in terror, and I remembered another common room I had once cowed with flame.

I had hated myself for that display, but I could not spare such sentiment now. The world would not survive without my fire. Perhaps I had to be the dragon. Perhaps I had to embrace that dark nature. But even as a monster I would bend my power to the good of the world, when wizards and kings could not be bothered to do that much.

I growled low, and the flickering flames pulsed with my hammering heartbeat. I raised them into the night and set them dancing above my head, a beacon that could not be missed. Then I set my feet on the open road and headed out to defeat an army.

"Should we discuss this?" Caleb asked as we passed through the town's rough gates.

"We should speak," I said. "I'm counting on them finding us, after all."

"You could have made a better plan."

"I don't have time for a better plan," I said, and then I stopped. I glared up at Caleb. "I mean this: I cannot
afford
to stop and think, or I will make the same abominable decision the king has made. And this mayor. And every authority from here to the ruins of Palmagnes."

That thought sent me thundering down the road again. Caleb had no trouble keeping pace.

"Your heart does you proud, Daven. The sentiment is noble. But you are too valuable a warrior—"

"Who were you?" I asked. I did not shout, but the words were enough to cut through his speech. He didn't answer me, and I threw him a look from the corner of my eye before I asked again, "Who were you before the dragonswarm? Before the village?"

"A deserter from the king's army," he said. The bitterness in his voice told me to leave it there, but I had already seen deeper.

"You were an officer," I said. "You were a Green Eagle, weren't you?"

He was silent for some time. Then I heard him swallow. "An unlikely guess," he said. "Not many Bateiyns get that close to the king."

"But you were an exception," I said.

"I was an exception." He sighed. "How could you know?"

"You came here to end this rebellion, and you alone were unsatisfied when the king's commanders decided that was done."

"Not alone," he said. "But yes. I was unsatisfied."

"I saw it in your eyes when the mayor was speaking. I saw it in your pain when you failed to save a village from a dragon raid. And I saw it in the sword you wear on your right hip."

He frowned at that. I caught the motion as he looked down. "What?"

I smiled to myself. "I once owned a sword like that," I said. "I tried to use it to kill a dragon, and I did something else altogether. I had won it from the Green Eagle Othin."

"He is a powerful warrior," Caleb said, his tones measured.

"And I was a fortunate child," I said. "And for that he wants me dead. But I am not curious at all why you deserted that post. I want to know how you were made a Green Eagle at all."

He shook his head. "I made a name among my own. I caught the right man's attention on the right day. They said I was born to be a leader...." He trailed off. After a moment he cursed, then said, "They were wrong. I am a proud fighter, a fearsome soldier, but I was not meant to lead."

I turned and faced him. He stopped and only reluctantly looked down to meet my gaze.

"Anyone with a Green Eagle's training would make a fine leader," I said. "An Islander who rose to that rank? A man would be a fool not to follow you."

He smiled down at me. "Just a warrior. An officer, perhaps. But I can't command unless I have men given to me. I can only act by borrowed authority. As soon as he tightened my leash, I was no leader at all."

"Is there any other way?"

He laughed, and I remembered how Vechernyvetr had laughed at the same question. "There's officers, and then there's kings. Kings get to act on will alone. And
you
," he said. "You could be a king."