The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King (12 page)

Bult had made other marks on his precious maps: blue curls for sweet streams that flowed year
around, three black lines with a triangle below them to mark where we'd buried our dead. Those black
lines surprised me: I hadn't thought he'd noticed. The last five years of my life were written on those
vellum scraps.

Another scrap held the names of the veterans in his band. I laughed when I read the words he'd
written about me: "Bigmouthed farm boy. Talks too much. Thinks too much. Dangerous. Squash him
when Jikkana lets him go." A man who has to write such things down in order to remember them is a
fool, but I read his entries carefully, committing them, too, to my memory before I burnt the vellum. After
all, he'd been right about me; he just hadn't moved fast enough.

There were intact sheets of vellum in the case. Each bore the seal of a higher officer. The words
were unfamiliar to me, even when I sounded them out. A code, I decided, but aren't all languages codes,
symbols for words, words for things, motions, and ideas? I'd cracked the troll code before I knew that
humanity had a code of its own. I had no doubt that I could crack any code Bult had devised.

Of course, Bult hadn't devised the code. It was Myron of Yoram's code: the orders he—or
someone he trusted—had sent to bands like ours. On each folded sheet, the officers whose paths
crossed ours had written their thoughts about us. As we rarely saw the same officer twice running, the
sheets were a sort of conversation among our superiors.

Pouring over them, I easily pictured Bult doing the same. The image inspired me. I cracked the
Troll-Scorcher's code three nights later. It was a simple code: one symbol displacing another without
variation from one officer to the next. The Troll-Scorcher's officers weren't much cleverer than Bult had
been, but their secrets had been safe from our yellow-haired leader. He would never have carried those
closely written sheets around for all those years if he'd known how Yoram's officers belittled him.

But there were more than insults coded on those sheets. Word by word, I pieced together the
Troll-Scorcher's strategy. He herded the trolls as if they were no more, no less, than kanks. He culled his
bugs and kept them moving, lest they overgraze the pasturage: human farms, human villages, human lives.

We— Bult's band and the other bands that mustered each year on the plains—weren't fighting a
war; we were shepherds, destined to tend Myron of Yoram's flocks forever.

I read my translations to my veterans the next night. Honest rage choked my throat as I described
the Troll-Scorcher's intentions; I couldn't finish. A one-eyed man-one of Bult's confidants and, I'd
assumed, no friend of mine—took up after me. He was a halting reader; my ears ached listening to him,
but he held the band's attention, which gave me the chance to study my men and women unobserved.

They were mostly the children of veterans. They'd been raised in the sprawling camp in the plains
where the whole army mustered once a year until they were old enough to join a band. Their lives had
been completely shaped by Myron of Yoram's war against the trolls. When One-Eye finished, they sat
mute, staring at the flames with unreadable expressions. For a moment I was flummoxed. Then I realized
that their sense of betrayal went deeper than mine. Their very reason for living—the reasons that had
sustained their parents and grandparents—was a fraud perpetrated by the very man they called their lord
and master: Myron Troll-Scorcher.

It was no longer enough that I lead them from one village to the next, looking for trolls who
had—as they did from time to time—vanished overnight from the heartland. If I wanted my veterans to
follow me further, I'd have to replace the Troll-Scorcher in their minds.

I'd come to another corner in my life, hard after the last one. I could have sat with them, staring at
the flames until the wood was ash and the sun rose. With neither leader nor purpose, we would have
drifted apart or fallen prey to trolls, other men, or barrens-beasts, which were, even then, both numerous
and deadly. But destiny had already named me Hamanu; I couldn't let the moment pass.

This time there were cheers. Men took my hand; women kissed my cheek. Guide us, Hamanu,
they said. We put our lives in your hands. You see light where we see shadows. Guide us. Give us
victory. Give us pride, Hamanu.

I heard their pleas, accepted their challenge. I led them toward the light.

After studying Bull's maps, I found a pattern to our wanderings. More, I studied the vast, empty
areas where we never wandered and where, I hoped, trolls might go when they vanished from their usual
haunts.

There were twenty-three of us left in what had been Bull's band, what had become Hamanu's.
We were nowhere near enough warriors to confront trolls in lands that they knew better than we did. So
we wandered before heading into the unknown, visiting map-marked villages. By firelight and the blazing
midday sun, I told our tale to anyone who'd stand still long enough. Our message was simple: humanity
suffers because the army sworn to protect it pursues the unfathomable goals of the Troll-Scorcher
instead.

"Turn away from the Troll-Scorcher and the trolls. Take your destinies into your own hands," I
said at the end of every telling. "Choose to pay the price of victory now, or resign yourself to defeat
forever."

Instinct told me how to hold another human's attention with pitch, rhythm, and gesture, but only
practice could teach me the words that would bind a man's heart to my ideas. I learned quickly, but not
always quickly enough. At times, my words went wrong, and we left a village with dirt and dung
clattering against our heels. But even then, there'd be a few more of us leaving than there'd been when we
arrived.

From twenty, we grew to forty; from forty to sixty.

Our reputation—my reputation—spread. Renegade bands whose disillusionment with the
Troll-Scorcher's army was older than ours met us on the open plains. Alliances were proposed. My band
should fall in step, they advised, and I, being younger in both years and experience, should accept
another leader's authority. Duels were fought: I was young, and I was still learning, but I was already
Hamanu, and it was my destiny—not theirs—to forge victory.

Bull's metal sword carved the guts of four renegade leaders who couldn't perceive, that truth.
After each duel, I invited their veterans to join me. A few did, but loyalty runs deep in the human spirit,
and mostly, duels left me with a cloud of enemies who wouldn't join my growing band and couldn't return
to the Troll-Scorcher's army. Cut off at the neck, without leaders, and at the knees, with nowhere to go,
they were of little consequence.

I had no greater concern for the Troll-Scorcher's loyal bands, which dogged us from village to
village. They threatened the villagers who aided us, then melted away, and got in the way of trolls when I
tried to pursue them. My trackers guessed that there were, perhaps, three loyalist bands shadowing our
movements and intimidating the villages we depended upon for food and water, now that our number I
had grown too large for easy forage. Thirty men and women, they said, forty at most, and not an officer
among them.

I believed my trackers.

I was stunned speechless one cool morning when the dawn patrol reported dust on the eastern
horizon: something coming our way. Something large, with many, many feet.

We'd made a hilltop camp the previous evening. The camp Bult would have made on the ground
he would have chosen: the Troll-Scorcher's loyal veterans didn't care if the trolls saw fire against the
nighttime sky. They'd choose defense over concealment every time. But the morning's dust cloud didn't
rise from the feet of trolls.

"How many?" I demanded of the trackers who'd failed me.
Shielding their eyes from the risen sun, they grimaced and squinted with eyes no sharper than my
own.

Her companions agreed.

"Are they human?" I asked, already knowing the answer. There were humans in the vicinity, but
we hadn't seen troll sign since the day Bult died.

By then the whole camp was awake. The ones who weren't staring at the sun were staring at me.
No tracker would meet my eyes.

"How many?" I cocked my wrist at my shoulder, ready to backhand the woman if she failed to
answer.

"A hundred," she whispered; the count spread through the camp like fire. "Maybe more, maybe
less. More'n us, for certain."

Veterans had at least a hundred curses for an incompetent leader, and I heard them all as the
cloud broadened before us. They were getting closer—spreading out to encircle us. There were a whole
lot more than a hundred. Sure as sunrise, there was an officer among them, and where there was a loyal
officer, there was the Troll-Scorcher's magic, or so the older veterans promised. I'd never seen magic
used before—except at the muster, when Myron of Yoram fried a few trolls, or the piddling displays Bult
made when we'd held hands and shouted the Troll-Scorcher's name at the moon. We couldn't stand
against the one and needn't fear the other.

"What now, Hamanu?" someone finally asked. "What do we do now?"

"It's all up," another man answered for me. "There's too many to outrun. We're meat for sure."

I backhanded him and drew the sword that was at my side, night and day. "We never run; we
attack! If Myron of Yoram has sent his army against us instead of trolls, then let his army pay the price."

"Attack how, Hamanu? Attack where?" One-Eye chided me softly.

I'd kept Bult's one-time friend close since he'd taken up my cause. He was twice my age and
knew things I couldn't imagine. When he'd been a boy, he'd listened to veterans who'd made the
victorious sweep through the Kreegills. I gave One-Eye leave to speak his mind and listened carefully to
what he said.

"If we run now," One-Eye continued. "If we scatter in all directions before the noose is closed,
leaving everything behind, a few will get away clean. If we stand, we're trapped, Hamanu. Say, they don't
have enough punch to charge the hill, they can set the grass afire. There's a time for running, Hamanu."

"We attack," I insisted, fighting my own temper.

My sword hand twitched, eager to slay any man or woman who cast a shadow across my
ambitions. The veterans around me saw my inner conflict. Four times—five counting Bult—I'd proven
that I could kill anyone who stood in my way. One-Eye presented a greater challenge. His wisdom alone
could defeat me, and gutting him would be a hollow victory.

The dust cloud was growing, spreading north and south. We heard drums, keeping the veterans
in step and relaying orders from one end of the curving line to the other. My heart beat to their tempo.
Fear grew beneath my ribs and in the breasts of all my veterans. There was panic brewing on my hilltop.
When I looked at the dusty horizon, my mind was blank, my thoughts were bound in defeat. I wanted to
attack, but I had no answer to One-Eye's questions: how? and where?

"You can't hold them," One-Eye warned. "They're going to run. Give the order, Hamanu. Run
with them, ahead of them. It's our only chance."

Hearing him, not me, a few men lit out for the west, and a great many more were poised to
follow. My sword sang in the warming air and came up short, a hair's breadth from One-Eye's neck. I
had my veterans' attention, and a heartbeat to make use of it.

"We'll run, One-Eye," I conceded. Then my destiny burst free. Visions and possibilities flooded
my mind. "Aye, we'll run—we'll run and we'll attack! All of us, together. We'll wait until their line is thin
around us, then, just when they think they've got us, we'll shape ourselves, shoulder-to-shoulder, into a
mighty spear and thrust through them. Let them be the ones who run... from us!"
In my mind I saw myself at the spear's tip, my sword Bashing a bloody red as my veterans held
fast around me and my enemies fell at my feet. But, what I saw in my mind wasn't enough: I watched
One-Eye closely for his reaction.

My fist struck the air above my head—the one and only time that I, Hamanu, saluted another
man's wisdom. The orders to stand fast, then charge as a tight-formed group, radiated around the hilltop.
Not everyone greeted them with enthusiasm or obedience, but I ran down the first veteran who bolted,
hamstringing him before I slashed his throat. After that, they realized it was better to be behind me than to
have me behind them.

I held my veterans on the hilltop until the encroaching circle was complete. Grim bravado
replaced any lingering thoughts of panic or fear once the circle began to shrink: either we would win
through and roll up our enemies' line, or we'd all be dead. At least we hoped we'd be dead. That's what
gave my veterans their courage as we started down the hill. Any battlefield death was preferable to the
eyes of fire.

How can I describe the exhilaration of that moment? Sixty shrieking humans raced behind me,
and the faces of men and women before us turned as pale as the silver Ral when he was alone in the
nighttime sky. I'd never led a charge before, never imagined the awesome energy of humanity intent on
death.

Every aspect of battle was new to me, and dazzling. We ran so fast; I remember the wind against
my face. Yet I also remember realizing that if I continued to hold my sword level in front of me, I'd
skewer my first enemy and be helpless before the second, with a man's full weight wedged against the
hilt.

There was time to change my grip, to raise my weapon arm high across my off-weapon shoulder,
and deliver a sweeping sword stroke as we met their line. A man went down, his head severed. Beside
me, One-Eye swung a stone-headed mallet at a woman. I'll never forget the sound of her ribs shattering,
or the sight of blood spurting an arm's full length from her open mouth.

A glorious rout had begun. Destiny had pointed our spear at the handful of humanity who could
have opposed us: the life-sucking mages who marched with Yoram's army. Their spells were their own,
independent of the Troll-Scorcher. But spellcasting requires calm and concentration, neither of which
existed for long on that battlefield.