The Dark Glory War (35 page)

Looking at him, now, waiting to fight again, he looked determined. I think he knew the sword had gotten the better of him in the chaos of the ambush. He was set against it doing that again. On his face I read the same sort of resolution I had seen countless times as my father put us through our paces. It felt good to see him wear that expression again.

The Aurolani host came marching down the road with an ease that suggested they were parading through a village, not making their way through hostile territory. I guess it would have been a battalion—eight companies of thirty individuals, with a double-handful of vylaens to lead them and several younger gibberkin bearing the unit banners. Behind them came several makeshift wagons, laden with arms, armor, food, and the other necessities of an army on the road. A final company came in the rear with a shambling hoargoun dragging a massive club behind him.

We’d been assigned our targets beforehand, so when the middle of their column reached us, with each company arrayed five deep in six rows, we stood up at Lord Norrington’s hand signal. With the first blast of a horn we shot, bows twanging, crossbows thrumming. Arrows and bolts hissed through the air, striking targets with wet sucking sounds, hard cracks, or loud clanks. The lead company crumpled as if they were toy soldiers flattened by the swat of an angry child’s hand.

I shot at the middle company and found my elven bow a joy. I could draw it easily and it sped my arrow to its mark. I hit a vylaen, spinning him around before he dropped to the ground. His command baton flew through the air as his hand slackened, then a gibberer shot through the head flopped down over him.

Again I shot and again, sending an arrow into a gut-shot gibberer. I caught another scrambling up the hill toward us and sent an arrow through his paw, pinning it to a tree he was using to help himself up. Two more arrows crossed in his chest, leaving him dangling there for a moment until his weight tore his flesh free.

On the roadway, pandemonium reigned. The horses drawing the carts bolted when arrows stung their flanks. The wagons careened off the roadway and overturned, breaking apart. Armor and provisions crashed and clanked into an avalanche that buried fleeing gibberers. I saw at least one carter leap free of his doomed wagon, though by the time he struck the ground, a half-dozen quivering shafts had transfixed him.

Gibberers poured down over the edge of the road and splashed across the stream to get away from us. On all fours they fled, looking so very bestial in their panic. Because of the trees, they disappeared from my sight quickly, but a trumpet blast from that side of the road split the night, followed by war cries shouted from human throats. Gibberers shrieked and moaned, stumbling back down the hillside clutching split heads. Others ran as if being chased by arms that dangled from shoulders on sinewy cords.

Others came up at us, so Leigh cast aside his crossbow and moved into the thick of them. Temmer burned brightly as Leigh stalked the hillside with a cold, deliberate tread. A gibberer drove at him, lunging with a longknife. Leigh backed half a step, whirled Temmer around in circle that took the sword-arm off at the elbow, then continued up and around and back down to decapitate the creature. Its head bounced its way down to the feet of other gibberers who stared in horror at it and Leigh. My friend feinted with his head, leaning toward them, leering at them, daring them to come against him.

The rearguard, save the hoargoun, fled north, right into the teeth of Augustus’ charge. The infantry broke on the horses’ breasts. The cavalry slashed with their swords, striking down those who sought to run from them. They passed from company to company, blasting through ranks, scattering gibberers and chasing more along the roadway.

The hoargoun leaped from the roadway and began to crash his way up the hill toward us. His free hand battered aside saplings, and his broad feet smashed bushes and dead gibberers. Arrows flew at him, stinging his face, chest, gut, and legs, but on he came as if they were of no consequence. His feet churned the earth and his advance split the gibberers facing Leigh. The hoargoun’s club rose, sweeping through branches, and trembled as he came within striking distance of the man with the golden sword.

Leigh stared up at him, brandishing the blade.

Defiant.

Terrified.

Ready to die.

The giant’s ponderous club started down, but before it could strike, Nay flew from the hilltop and swung his own club in a flat arc. The club slammed into the giant’s left knee from the side, shattering bone, popping sinew. The hoargoun roared with pain and his club pounded the ground, filling the gap between Leigh and Nay. The blow shook the earth, pitching Leigh into a roll across the face of the hill.

Nay kept his feet and danced to his right, whirling his club in an upward stroke. It caught the giant’s left elbow, shattering it with the sound of a ship’s mast snapping. As the giant tried to catch himself on his left hand, he crashed to the ground. His chin dug a furrow in the leafy loam, and a stout oak’s trunk stopped the giant’s roll to the left.

Nay’s last blow landed hard on the giant’s right temple. A wet sound dulled the sharp crack of bone, but there was no mistaking the dent he left in the hoargoun’s head. The giant’s body shook and his last shuddered breath blew a blanket of leaves over Leigh.

More arrows flew, more gibberers screamed, and more blood flowed, but within minutes we had wiped out an Aurolani battalion. Our ambush had been swift and deadly. We suffered a few casualties, but nothing splints and thread would not cure. In less than a quarter of an hour we’d slaughtered an enemy force. We rejoiced in what we had done yet all of us knew this was only the beginning.

What we did next has been said to have taken the heart out of Chytrine’s army. I’m not certain that her force ever had a heart to start with. It certainlydid show her and us the depths to which we could and would go in our war. Somehow I had never doubted we would do what must be done, but being shown so graphically that which we were capable of, it was the sort of thing that still fuels nightmares.

Prince Scrainwood engineered the whole thing. Orchestrated would be a better word. At Scrainwood’s direction we moved the hoargoun around and propped him up against some trees, as if he had just stepped off the road and seated himself for a time. His club rested across his knees and his arms were folded over it. His head lolled against a tree, hiding the crushed portion of his skull, making him appear as if he had just fallen asleep.

Of course, chances are that no one who looked at the tableau below him could ever sleep, then or ever.

We hacked the heads from each and every one of the gibberers and vylaens, then placed them, row upon row, back in the formations they’d had as they marched along. The units’ banners were dug in, so each company could easily be identified. We salvaged two of their wagons and filled them with arms and armor and other relics. Scrainwood insisted that we tear strips of gibberer hide from the bodies: one for each of us and some left over for the kings and queens who ruled over us. The bodies were then hauled away to a ravine and dumped.

As we marched away, with dusk slowly stealing through the trees, I looked back at what we had done. With distance and fading light, it almost looked as if the Aurolani host had somehow sunk to their necks in mud. The scene looked terribly peaceful, which I knew wasn’t right.

Then again, at the time, I couldn’t think what was wrong with it.

Seethe reached out and took my left hand in her right, tugging me along. “It’s best to be away from here.”

“Afraid of ghosts, Seethe?”

“No, Tarrant, not afraid of ghosts.” She looked back at the ranks of heads and I felt a tremble run through her. “Just afraid of being haunted.”

Tt took us a day and a half to reach Fortress Draconis. We I moved down the river road, making good time. Prince Au-Igustus’ cavalry forded the river about a mile north of where the infantry would cross a bridge. When Gyrkyme scouts returned to tell us they were in position, we moved in, hitting the ford garrison from both east and west. They died quickly enough, and after we got ourselves across, we destroyed the bridge.

Being less than a century old, it had noweirun and came apart easily as magicks eroded the mortar.

The day remained cool and low fog lingered on the land until noon, which was when we reached the mile-long stretch of rolling plains that separated the upland forests from the peninsula at the western shore. To the east the plains broadened in a wide semicircle, covering the land from northwest to southeast, completely cutting the Draconis Peninsula off. Encamped there, from the edges of the forest down to the lowlands nearest the fortress, Aurolani hordes stretched as far as I could see. Their tents dotted the landscape like fungus, and knots of gibberers moved between them like ants, scurrying from home to food and back.

Between the enemy camps and the low walls of Fortress Draconis’ outer city lay a series of trenches. The Aurolani trenches paralleled the walls, with offshoots moving closer. Their aim was to move their siege machinery close enough to shoot at the fortress’s walls, and to get their sappers close enough to tunnel beneath them, to undermine them and pull them down. The trenches nearest the fortress worked out toward the Aurolani trenches, both to break up any avenue that would allow a charge and to letour sappers locate enemy tunnels and collapse them.

The only area where no trenches existed was the area we were coming through. The Aurolani troops had not spread themselves to cover this approach yet, and with good reason. If Dothan Cavarre decided to evacuate the fortress, they’d only allow him to go north, which would not help him at all. The Aurolani forces had concentrated themselves to the south and east, preventing escape and cutting off landward reinforcement. When more of their forces arrived, they could complete their encirclement of the fortress and the siege could begin in earnest.

The siege would not be easy—just a glance at Fortress Draconis would tell anyone that. I apologize for not describing it first, since it was definitely the dominant feature on the plain, but to present its majesty first would make it seem impossible that the Aurolani forces presented any threat to it at all. When I looked at it I felt my spirits soar—and even Leigh, as lethargic as he had been since his close brush with death, mustered a smile. Had we not been ordered to keep silent, a cry would have risen from our company.

Fortress Draconis had been started seven centuries before and constantly expanded since then. The fortress sat astride a peninsula that jutted into the Crescent Sea and rose to a height of a hundred yards above sea level at the highest point. The northwest side had a natural harbor to which had been added a causeway that served as a breakwater. At its western end rose a massive tower which commanded the approach to the harbor.

A low, thick wall with towers every two hundred yards along it sealed the landward end of the peninsula. The rocky nature of the peninsula itself served as walls on the seaward sides, but towers had been raised along the shore to allow defenders to repel attackers. Elevated causeways linked these towers and made the open spaces between them seem inviting. Anyone scaling the cliffs, as we had done to get at the bridge, would find attackers on the arched walkways pouring molten lead or arrows or burning oil on them, which could be most effective in discouraging an attack.

A second, higher wall all but circled the peninsula’s heart. The only gap in it opened at the harbor. Between the shore and this second wall lay Draconis township. It served as home to the masons, armorers, fletchers, bowyers, clerics, merchants, tavernkeepers, and prostitutes—all the support personnel that made life in such a place possible. The township itself looked fairly unremarkable save that its roadways made little or no sense, since they curled around and cut off at odd angles—a carter’s nightmare if ever I’d seen one. It would only occur to me later that this tangle of streets meant that collapsing a house or raising a barricade would make progress of an attacking army quite difficult.

In the area between the second wall and the wall of the original fortress lay the garrison town. Here were the barracks for troops, warehouses for weapons and armor, a temple to Kedyn, and storehouses full of food, wine, oil, and other necessities for withstanding a siege. In this section of town the architecture changed, with each building having a heavy, blocky profile. Windows were arrowslits, doors were iron and deep set, allowing defenders to use murderholes cut above them to discourage attackers. Each one of the buildings, constructed of grey granite blocks, was a fortress unto itself. As I would find out later, a regular warren of tunnels linked the warehouses and storehouses with the tower, allowing the shifting of troops and materiels as needed.

The tower complex, strong and dark and ancient in its majesty, rivaled the architecture of Svarskya and Yslin. Whereas they had an artistry about them, the sheer power of the buttressed monstrosity thrusting up into the sky allowed it to dominate the landscape. Balconies ringed it. At the top, a conical leaded roof ended in a spike upon which flew a blue flag with a dragon rampant emblazoned on it.

A taller, thicker wall surrounded the base of the tower, with enough space between the tower’s base and the wall to allow for several city streets and normal buildings, though I imagined they would all have the heavy construction I’d seen in the garrison town. Eight smaller towers split the walls at the cardinal points, providing a command of the surrounding area.

If Fortress Draconis had aweirun, I would have expected it to be a martial spirit Kedyn would be happy to claim as a son.

The Croquelf leading Cavarre’s scouts pointed out a path across the dike holding the sea back. “We will move along there and enter through the harbor.”

Lord Norrington frowned. “The outer wall has water lapping at the edge of it. An Aurolani charge could drive us off the dike and into the sea. In armor we’re not going to swim well.”

The Croquelf laughed. “Fear not, the Snow Fox thinks of everything.”