The Dark Glory War (29 page)

Bit by bit, stone by stone, theweirun began to crumble. Behind it, starting at the highest point of the arch, the bridge came apart. Obelisks teetered and toppled, streaking fire as they fell. Whole chunks of the roadbed sank from sight. The crackling thunder of mortar parting and stones splitting filled the air. Faster and faster the collapse came, gobbling up pieces of the roadway. Stones cascaded down into the dark valley below, bouncing and spinning off each other.

Finally the last of it went, taking with it the bodies of the gibberers and the gravel traces that had been theweirun. Even the massive stone footings ripped free of the earth, splashing mud and bits of sod over us. As they tumbled into the gorge, they rebounded from the stone sides and careened into the bridge’s support pillars. The footstones snapped the pillars in half, scattering stones like seed from a farmer’s hand.

Scrainwood snorted. “Well, at least that’s done.”

I stepped past the prince and knelt beside Nay. He clutched the glowing keystone to his chest, seemingly oblivious to the puddle in which he lay. “/.re you hurt?”

“His name, it was, itis Tsamoc.” As Nay spoke the name, the light in the stone dulled a bit. Nay smiled and nodded, as if he could hear words I could not, then his eyes focused on mine. “Bit wet, bit hollow. That’s it.”

I took one arm and Leigh took the other. We tugged him to his feet. I gave him a weak smile. “I understand the hollow bit. Feel hollow myself.”

Prince Augustus came over and laid his right hand on Nay’s shoulder. “Just remember, what you did saved a lot of lives.”

“Whathe did saved lives.” Nay’s nostrils flared. “When this war is all done, you’ll get credit for winning it. Just remember who made the sacrifices to let you win.”

Prince Augustus nodded and began to trudge back to the cove in silence. He wore an expression that told me he’d taken Nay’s words to heart. Behind him came Scrainwood, and though a mask hid most of his face, his grin and the way he hung on to the gibberer’s scalp told me that even (/he’d heard Nay’s words, he didn’t understand them.

Only later would I realize how painful a failing on his part that would be.

The return to our ships was much easier than the journey to the bridge, largely because sliding down ropes is easier than climbing up slippery cliffs. We didn’t say much heading back. I found myself shivering and huddled against the bow wales as we set off. I knew my shivering wasn’t because of the cold or the rain.

I found it very curious that there was no question in my mind we had done the right thing. The Aurolani warriors had to be destroyed. The bridge had to be destroyed. Doing what we had done was the only way we could help save the people in Crozt and Svarskya. Acting when and how we did saved countless lives—lives the Aurolani host would gladly have taken.

Even so, the elation I’d felt in the killing, the sense of power—that was wrong. Certainly, every story I’d ever heard about heroes had them celebrating their triumphs—but that impression came solely from songs and stories created by people who probably never knew the hero whose exploits they … well, exploited. Heroic stories and songs imparted motives and feelings to figures who had becomemore than they ever were in life.

Leigh slumped down against the bulwark next to me sheathed sword held loosely between his knees. The touched the top of his head, the tip pressed against a bi uneven planking. His hands clung to the crossguard. Hisi had again taken on its grey pallor. The only color remaü was little bits of blood that had not yet been washed awa the rain.

“I bet you’ve already composed a poem about the Batt! Radooya Bridge.”

“Did you ever try to find a rhyme for bridge?”

“No.”

“It’s even tougher than the battle.” He rubbed his r hand over his forehead. “Hawkins, there, on the bri< you …”

“Don’t mention it.”

“No, I have to, I have to.” Leigh’s voice trailed off as i had run out of strength. “You saved my life. You nearly < for it.”

I shifted my shoulders. “It aches a little, but my leal saved me.”

“Just listen, Hawkins, please.” He took a deep bre “When you shoved me down, / knew what you had done, part of me didn’t. Part of me saw that as an attack. You r me. You betrayed me. No, wait, let me finish. And when I up, part of me wanted to make you pay. I wanted to pur you. Then the gibberers howled and I saw they were the thr I went for them.”

The dark color of his mask contrasted sharply with bright blue of his eyes. “Temmer, it lets me do things. It ma me faster. It makes me more sure. It makes me into a hei I bumped him with my left shoulder. ”You were a h before that, Leigh. You got help for us in Westwood. You fa down a temeryx and saved Nay’s life.“

“I hear what you’re saying, but I never felt like a hero my heart. I was willing to run to get help because I was afr to stay. And I ran to help Nay because I was afraid w people would say if he died there and I didn’t help hir Leigh leaned his head back against the wooden wales.

wasn’t about me being brave, it was about me being afraid. With Temmer, that goes away. Mostly.“

“What do you mean mostly?”

Leigh patted Temmer. “Don’t you remember? I’ll be broken in my last battle.”

“Sure, but that last battle will be when you’re old and your great-grandchildren are fighting over who gets to sit in your lap for a story.”

Leigh laughed, but perhaps more than he should have. “Would that such a thing would happen, Hawkins, but it won’t. The blade, you see, my good man, it gets into my head. It eats away at me. In Atval I saved everyone, but now, now it makes me wonder. At Atval I slew ten gibberers, but I wonder if a true hero would slay a dozen or even more. Will I eclipse my father or the heroes of the Great Revolt? It pushes me onward, makes me more daring. Makes me more reckless.”

I turned toward him. “Then throw it away.”

“No, can’t do that.”

“Yes, you can.”

“No!” His eyes narrowed and he caressed the blade’s hilt. “Without it I would be nothing.”

“You’d still be my friend.”

Leigh’s expression eased. “Well, that would besomething, anyway. But there is a more practical matter at stake here, too, Hawkins. If I pitch the sword away now, someone else will end up with it. If that person is an ally, he will be destroyed.”

“You could give it to Scrainwood, but I don’t think he’d draw it.”

“Oh, very astute and nasty. I like it.” Leigh laughed again, this time with more life. “If one of Chytrine’s creatures gets it, another of thesullanciri, for example, we’re all dead.”

“There has to be a way to get you out of this trap, Leigh. You didn’t know what you were doing when you took the sword.”

“Maybe I did, Hawkins, maybe I did.” He sighed. “The only thing of value left in a dragon-melted city, where merely trespassing invited death? I knew it was special and powerful and probably dangerous, to judge by the guardians set over it.

But then, if dragons feared its being in someone’s hands, well, just the thing for me, eh?“

“Just like you dancing with Nolda—always overreaching yourself.”

“True.” His eyes twinkled for a moment. “But Nolda is a memory. How do you think Ryhope would look on my arm?”

The note of hope in his voice gave birth to my lie. “Only a hero like you could win a princess like her.”

Leigh clapped me on the right shoulder and closed his eyes. “Let’s hope she thinks the same. If she does, Hawkins, I promise you this. In all the tales of Leigh Norrington, hero, I will make sure it is well known that you, Tarrant Hawkins, were always the best friend a man could ever have.”

We met up with the rest of the fleet an hour after dawn. We knew it was dawn because the storm had moved south, allowing us to actually see the sun. Part of the fleet, hauling refugees, fled south, while the rest sailed up to meet us. A flagman communicated to theInvictus details of our victory and Lord Norrington sent back his congratulations.

As good as that should have made us feel, the black stain in the sky rising from where Crozt should have been shrank our hearts. I’d not seen Crozt before, but from the fire-blackened ruins I could tell it had been a marvelous city. Tall towers, now shattered or belching smoke and flame, dominated the landscape. Some of the arched walkways linking them yet remained, while others reached toward each other across a gulf they could never narrow. White walls had tumbled down at points, and warehouses burned at the docks.

Even under the harsh glare of the noon sun, the city had a taint of night about it—and seemed to radiate cold. We did not make landfall there, skirting the harbor by a wide margin despite its being empty. All I could see on shore were slinking curs and ravens looking for carrion. Judging from the size of the flocks and the packs roaming the city, the search for food must not have been difficult.

We sailed into the Svarskya Gulf and headed southwest toward Okrannel’s capital. As dusk fell, we came across debris from what must have been a hideous sea battle. I could out bits and pieces of burned hulks amid which floated the bodies of gibberers and men alike. Small fish nibbled at them while some larger fish—sharks and others—went at them with abandon. A corpse would bob for a moment, then sink from sight. Water would froth where it had been, then it would pop back to the surface again. An arm or a leg would be gone, or sometimes the head. Or just a big bite out of the middle, leaving it to trail intestines behind as if it were the thread needed to sew the wound shut again.

We did find a couple of survivors clinging to debris. Both men were in wretched shape. Their lips were cracked, their skin blistered, and they were half blind. After we got some water into them, they told a story of how the Okrans fleet sailed out from Svarskya and defeated the ships coming from the sack of Crozt. While an Aurolani army had successfully laid siege to the city from the landward side, the harbor remained in Okrans hands. Both men said the southern and western gates had not yet been breached, but they weren’t certain that would be the case when we reached the city.

That night, looking southwest, we could see a distant glow. We knew at least part of the city was burning, and around midnight we came across a convoy of ships fleeing from the city itself. We arranged the transfer of a couple of harbor pilots to our boats, to enable us to travel into Svarskya’s harbor safely. That these men and women were willing to go back with us spoke well of the nobility of the Okrans people.

The pilots were willing to return in no small part due to Prince Kmll’s leadership, and the bravery of his family. When he had ordered the evacuation, he sent his entire family away, save his infant daughter Alexia. As the story went, Prince Kirill said to his Gyrkyme companion, Preyknosery, “I’ll have no daughter of mine die in this city.”

The Gyrkyme was said to reply, “My pledge she will not. Still, she is your daughter. She will remain here, to love this city as you do. She will weep as you do. Someday she will return and make it free again.”

The prince accepted this statement and the defenders pledged themselves to buy the young princess every moment in the city that they could. Though the outer walls had been breached, the inner walls still held, and the defenders were forcing Chytrine to pay a fearful price for her aggression.

We arrived in Svarskya in the wee hours of the morning, just as the sun began to peek over the Crozt headland. In the inner reaches of Svarskya we could still see the tall, proud towers that marked Okrans architecture. What struck me as special about them were the bright colors they were painted, and the way tiles had been inset around windows and doors. The ornate carvings I had seen in Yslin had given way to something more subtle, and something less likely to weather in the brutal northern winters. Here the covered walkways linking buildings made perfect sense and would allow people to move about even if a blizzard blanketed them with deep snow.

The city’s defenders greeted us loudly and warmly. We rotated the galleys through berthing and off-loaded our troops as quickly as we could. Leigh, Nay, and I rejoined Lord Norrington and, along with the two princes, Seethe and Faryaah-Tse Kimp, wended our way through debris-strewn streets to find Prince Kirill. Garrison forces rested in a variety of buildings and pointed us further and further into the city.

As we worked our way from the harbor to the inner city walls, it became apparent to me that the debris had been laid out specifically to hamper Aurolani forces when they broke through. If the harbor was the hub of a wheel, the streets shot out like spokes from it. Cross streets linked the spokes, making the roadway layout something akin to a cobweb. The streets had been offset so no spoke ran directly from the inner city gates directly out to the outer gates, which meant the sieging force had to use roads that paralleled the walls, letting the defenders abuse them mightily before they could reach the gates.

We found Prince Kirill easily enough and I took an instant liking to him. He stood tall and smiled broadly. His curly black hair was complemented by his moustache and goatee, and his eyes were that deep green color of pine needles. He wore a black surcoat over a full suit of mail; a winged horse rampant in white decorated the surcoat’s breast, though blood did color it. That same crest graced every flag flying over the inner city’s towers.

He greeted Lord Norrington as if he were a long-lost comrade. “Welcome to my city, Lord Norrington. Your arrival is much anticipated. I regret not holding more of Svarskya for you.”

“You’ve done well to hold what you have.”

Just looking out over the ramparts made it easy to tell Lord Norrington was not lying. As much as the inner city was still brightly colored and strong, the outer ring looked as if a blight had settled on it. Red-tiled roofs were holed, revealing charred rafters. Towers were stained with blood and many had the former inhabitants—or portions of them—hanging from windows or mounted on spikes on balconies or rooftops. Shadows seemed deeper down there, and gibberers and vylaens and other things moved through alleys and along roadways choked with carcasses of everything from horses and dogs to small children.

Beyond all that flew Aurolani flags. Whereas the civilized world tends toward standards that have noble creatures and other uplifting representations on them, the northern host chooses other sources of inspiration. I saw a nine-skull banner flying from one tower, and a green flag with a red quartered body on it at another. One banner was nothing more than red silk that had been slashed by a temeryx; another had been raised on a pole decorated with scalps.