The Dark Glory War (43 page)

The blast also deprived her of the powder that made the dragonel work. We didn’t realize she had no extra at the time, of course, but the cessation of dragonel shots was a welcome relief in and of itself. We braced for their resumption at any time, but as none came our confidence in the fortress’ strength increased.

The loss of the dragonel as a weapon did force Chytrine to do something I think she would have preferred not to do. Our first inkling that she had acted came when a winged form momentarily blotted out the moon. I’d not seen it, but others started howling about having seen a dragon. Cavarre immediately isolated and interrogated those who had seen it, but the rumor spread and even the elves and urZrethi seemed unsettled by it. I knew of dragons from legend, but it is hard to invest a lot of fear in a creature you think of as all but mythical.

Reflecting back on what I had seen at Atval, I really should have been out of my mind with fear. I’d seen what dragons were capable of doing to a city and really should have seen how easily one would devastate the fortress. Still, it was not until dawn, when this massive creature unfurled bat-wings and hurled itself into the air, that I began to quake.

The legends and bard’s tales that describe dragons as huge, scaled beasts with horns and spiked tails, claws and wings and breath of fire are not wrong. What they miss falls into two areas, one of which is the graceful ease with which a dragon moves. I would never describe a dragon as being playful, but the way the tail curled around in flight, the way it ducked its head left and right when flying over the fortress, mirrored the curiosity of cats or dogs, or the suppleness of a marten.

The other thing the legends do not address is the intelligence in a dragon’s eyes. As it landed before the inner fortress’ gate, its claws digging up cobblestones and its body crushing the smoldering ruins of houses, the dragon swept its gaze over us. Gold flecked its luminously green eyes, a pattern that was reversed on its scales. It watched us, and as those massive eyes met mine, I knew it could read me and through me my parents and their parents and so on, back to the dawn of time. I saw no sympathy there, or compassion. Merely curiosity and, perhaps, a hint of intellectual satisfaction at seeing how some lines had bred down through the ages.

Then its eyes dulled and its chest expanded. Standing on the battlements well north of the gate, I could feel air rushing past as the dragon breathed in. Then the breeze stopped, much as the air stills before a storm. Only the panicked screams of men running from the battlements near the gate split the silence.

Then the dragon breathed out.

A blast of heat hit me, just like stepping into a warm house on a cold winter night, only much hotter and much harder. My eyes watered and narrowed as a brilliant jet of flame shot from the beast’s mouth. The iron binding the oak beams in the gate went from black to red, then boiled away in an eyeblink. The beams resisted for a moment, still held in place against the massive beam holding the gates shut. Then they combusted, and a second later the beam did too. I heard it snap and burning chunks of oak scattered themselves through the courtyard as if someone had carelessly kicked embers from a campfire across it.

Men who had been slow to run were blown off the battlements, but burned to ash before their bodies ever hit the ground. More peculiarly—and faintly reminiscent of Atval— the stones near the gate began to melt and then froze in place. The gate looked as if a stone wave had been splashed against it, but before the stone could flow away, it had been solidified. These new crenelations gave a look of surprise to the gate, as if it could not believe what would be passing through it.

The dragon launched itself into the air, screamed once defiantly, then circled the fortress and flew back to Chytrine’s camp. It settled there, behind her pavilion, and roared exultantly.

Seethe slipped into my arms and shivered. Lord Norrington appeared next to me on the wall. “The piece of the DragonCrown that she got from Okrannel allows her to control that dragon. If she gets the pieces stored here, her power will be multiplied. Instead of controlling one dragon, she will control a legion of them.”

I nodded. “We can’t let that happen.”

“No, we can’t.”

As if to mock our resolve, war drums began pounding in the Aurolani camp, and her legions began their advance.

Seethe, Lord Norrington, and I rushed down the steps to where Cavarre and Prince Kirill were ordering men to swing ballistae into place to defend the open gateway. Elsewhere Nay, Leigh, Augustus, and even Scrainwood helped people situate barricades. Wagons were rolled into place and overturned, log spindles with spikes on all sides were laid out—men even kicked and poked burning remnants of the gate into place to hold back the armies that were coming in. Down on the ground we couldn’t see the line of Aurolani forces snaking its way through the city, but the action of catapults and fire-towers told us when they began to draw near. Stones arced through the sky, clouds of calthrops flew, and streams of fire poured out. We heard screams in the distance and saw greasy black smoke curl up, but theboom, boom, boom of the drums never ceased.

A figure loomed in the smoke, all tall and unsteady, moping along with a heavy club dragged behind it. As it drew closer, smoke clung to it and reluctantly drifted off. The creature’s flesh matched the smoke, while rents in its skin revealed blackened muscles. When it clumsily sagged against a building, its shoulder catching and breaking the frame of a second-story window, I realized how big it was. It was a hoargoun, and as the stench of it finally reached me I realized it really was undead, a revived corpse, and asullanciri.

Two things happened as it hove into view. The first felt akin to the sensation I had after that first dragonel shot. This time, though, the wall that slammed into me hit on an intangible level. I couldn’t feel it physically. It didn’t shake me, but I know it went through me. I shivered in its wake, then I felt pain.

Down in my right leg, where it had been wounded. Where it had been healed.

I could see through the cut in my breeches that the wound had reopened. All around me—on the walls, in the courtyard—men crumpled. Blood began pouring from wounds magick had closed. Leigh collapsed, clutching his arms around his middle.

Lord Norrington’s eyes narrowed. “Chytrine managed to dispel all the healing magick. Evacuate the wounded. Get them off the walls and into the tower. Move them, now!”

I glanced over at Leigh. Nay helped him to his feet and another man already had Leigh’s left arm over his shoulders and was hustling him away. It took me a half-second to figure out who was helping Leigh, then I bristled.Scrainwood! The coward was using Leigh as an excuse to get himself off the battlefield.

I started after them, vaulting a wagon, then leaping above burning logs when the second thing hit me. Fear poured off thesullanciri in waves, like echoes in a hall. People all around me got a wild expression in their eyes. Some dropped their weapons and covered their faces in their hands, too afraid to look at what was coming. Others spun and vomited while yet others began to scream.

I could feel thesullanciri ‘s magick pick at me, trying to find some sort of fear that would resonate within me. Any fear would do, big or small—it needed something to open a wound in my soul. From there it could expand, carrying me over into panic. I’d lose my mind and become a helpless victim of the Aurolani host.

I flashed past a ballistae as Prince Kirill pulled the lanyard and sent a score of yard-and-a-half-long spears hurtling out at the shambling giant. Many hit, skewering its thighs and arms, piercing its belly and chest. One passed through its throat. Thesullanciri did stumble back under the force of the assault and crashed into a chimney. It fell apart beneath thesullanciri, but the creature slowly gathered itself to stand again.

My run carried me out of sight of the creature, though fear still assaulted me. I think I did not go mad right then and there because I was more concerned for Leigh than I was myself. So, I guess, in some way I was affected by the magick, but its bidding and mine were the same, so little harm was done.

I almost missed them because Scrainwood had dragged Leigh down an alley and deposited him against a wall. The Prince squatted beside him with both hands on Temmer’s scabbarded length. Leigh clung to the sword’s hilt with one hand and weakly tried to push Scrainwood away with the other.

My backhand slap caught Scrainwood across the face and spun him deeper into the alley. He came to rest on his ass, with his knees drawn up to his chest. I’d split his lip. The pink tip of his tongue came out and tasted blood, then retreated as if the wound were a nettle and it had been stung.

I dropped to a knee beside Leigh and rested my hands on his shoulders. “Leigh,Leighl You have to get up. You have to kill thesullanciri.”

He shook his head wildly, looking at me and past me. “No, no, no!”

“Leigh!” I raised my hand to strike him.

He snarled at me and made as if to draw his sword, but then he coughed and pain wracked him. It also brought him to his senses. “I can’t, Hawkins.”

“You must. You have Temmer. You can kill it.”

“I can’t, Hawkins.” Leigh clutched at my mail surcoat. “Don’t you see, the sword didn’t protect me from magick. It never has. If I … thesullanciri … Hawkins, I can’t do it. I’ll die. The curse will be true.”

“If you don’t draw it, your friends and your father will die!” I shook him, not too hard, but firmly nonetheless. “You have to do it, Leigh.”

“Ican’t !”

Scrainwood crawled forward on his hands and knees. “He can’t do it, Hawkins, you can see that. Leigh, give the sword to me. I’ll do it.”

Leigh’s eyes widened and terror shot through his voice. “No, no, no, no!” He held the sword tightly. “No, no, no!”

“Leigh!” I clapped my hands on his head and forced him to look at me. “You must come fight.”

His eyes never focused. “No, no, no, no …”

“He’s not going to do it, Hawkins. Give the sword to me.”

I snorted and slapped Scrainwood again. “You’re a fool.”

He’d fallen back on his right haunch and held his left hand to his face. “A fool, me? Without that sword …”

“Yes, I know.” I looked down at my friend cringing there. He clung to the sword like ivy, like a babe to his mother. I remembered Leigh laughing, rhyming, making an entrance at the gala, gallantly accepting Ryhope’s scarf as a prize.

That Leigh was as close to me as any of my brothers.

The man curled around the sword at my feet was not that Leigh.

“I’m sorry, so sorry.” I rapped my right hand hard against Leigh’s ribs, wringing a howl from him. The pain drained all the strength from his body, making it easy for me to rip Temmer from his grasp.

I snarled and brandished Temmer at the Oriosan Prince. “You’re a fool because youasked for the sword, Scrainwood. A sword like this can only betaken.”

I drew Temmer and caught my reflection in its golden length. My heart ached for Leigh because suddenly I comprehended all of what he’d been living with. Temmer was at once wonderful and terrible, a best friend and a vile enemy. I lusted after it, I hated it, and I was awed by it.

With that hilt in my hand, the golden blade bared, the world shifted in my sight. I could suddenly see a rainbow of colors that had not existed before. Fear and pain tinted Leigh, while hatred burned brightly from Scrainwood’s exposed flesh. In an instant I saw him as an enemy and knew killing him would be justified, but I also felt there was bigger prey in the area and Temmer demanded I seek it out.

I stripped off my old sword, casting it aside. I had Temmer, I had no need of another sword. It could only slow me, trip me, and steal from me the glory I would win with Temmer.

I ran from the alley and stemmed the tide of fleeing warriors. As I turned the corner and entered the courtyard, thesullanciri ducked its head and passed through the gate. A few arrows, mostly elven, shot at it. Shafts bristled from the giant, but its slack-jawed, empty-eyed face gave no sign if it felt pain or not.

As it came closer, with each ponderous step loosening the cobbles beneath its feet, the miasma of fear became more powerful. The assaults increased in speed and intensity, searching minds for any possible fear it could exploit. I relived countless fearful situations in a heartbeat and might have succumbed to any of them, save for having Temmer in my right hand.

/have Temmer. What have I to fear?

Aman leaped over a barricade and dashed forward with a sword in hand. It was Kirill and I knew that, but Temmer overlaid him with new colors. Courage boiled off him like steam on a lake, and fury seemed to be the fire in his heart. His sword cut left and right, slicing muscle, hewing bone as he dashed beneath the swung club and slashed the hoargoun’s legs. He got behind the giant and gashed the creature in the back of a leg, hoping to hobble it. His effort might have worked, too, had the hoargoun simply been a creature of flesh and blood.

It wasn’t. It was asullanciri and its most insidious weapon finally found its mark.

Fear. Fear for his daughter. Fear for what would happen to her if he failed. It curled up in his belly and struck like a snake.Kirill hesitated, didn’t move. I could see the fear of never seeing his daughter again well up in him, paralyzing him just for a moment.

For a moment too long.

The Dark Lancer’s cudgel came around and smashed Kirill against the inside of the fortress wall. His legs thrashed on the ground. The rest of him dripped out of the crater the club’s impact had left in the wall.

As I sprinted within striking range, Temmer displayed its full powers to me. Thesullanciri seemed to move more slowly and I could see flows of motion around it, indicating where it was going to go, where the club would be. Dodging to one side was simple. I ducked beneath the club strike and was in between the creature’s legs.

I swept the blade up and around in a two-handed strike at the Dark Lancer’s left knee. As the edge bit into the creature’s flesh the skin and muscle became almost transparent to my eyes. I could see the blade cutting through sinew and with a wiggle here or a twist there, I guided it through the kneejoint without burying the blade in bone. Temmer came out the other side, spraying the fetid fluid that served as the Dark Lancer’s blood over the wall.