The Dragons of Argonath (15 page)

"We held them!" said Thorn with a note of triumph in his voice. He had not seen actual combat in a long time, and his confidence was renewed.

There was a crash from the corner where part of the Bull and Bush had fallen in, and the flames burned up even brighter.

"Yes," said Relkin, "but they'll be back."

Relkin noticed the emperor standing there, face blackened by soot, clutching a bloody sword in his hand and looking a little dazed. And there was Farmer Pigget, leaning exhausted on a spear. He too had the shocked expression that Relkin had seen on many a battlefield.

Thorn put a hand on Relkin's shoulder.

"We beat them, thanks to you, young man. You and your dragon made the difference."

"It's not over yet," insisted Relkin.

The ambassador was lying against the side of a house, blood seeping from a slash wound across the side of his head. Lessis knelt beside him, trying to staunch the bleeding.

Thorn stared across the barricade, which had suffered considerable damage. The wagons were listing, barrels smashed to staves.

"I know, lad. They haven't given up, they intend to kill the emperor. They've put too much into this to give up now."

Relkin pointed past the burning Bull and Bush.

"They'll go through the houses next."

"You're right, lad, good thinking." Thorn spun away to organize resistance. Calling to the men huddled in Schoolhouse Street, he moved to the door of the nearest house.

They had to huddle down by the barricade, or retreat into the doorways along Market Street, for arrows were still flying in from the imps. The collapse of the Bull and Bush and the intense heat from the fire made that side of the barricade impossible to man. The wagons were all right, but some of the rubbish at that end had caught fire too. Meanwhile the houses along Brennans Road blazed furiously.

The emperor lurched across to squat down beside Ambassador Koring. The ambassador was purple in the face from coughing against the harsh smoke, and the wound on his head was still bleeding despite Lessis's efforts.

"They'll see this smoke in Brennans, help will come."

"Your Majesty, you fought well. It was an honor to stand here today."

Pascal threw back his head and laughed.

"Well, I thank you, Master Koring, and I would beg to return the compliment. I saw the way you spitted that damned imp that was going for the dragon's back. Damned fine stroke, that."

"We held them."

"We did, we did, though to be honest we couldn't have done it without the dragons. And there, I'm afraid, we've paid a price already."

Indeed poor Zambus, dragged out of harm's way into Schoolhouse Street, was dying, and Fury's head was stuck on a pike out there on the common.

"We are not out of this thing yet either," said Lessis quietly.

"Indeed, Lady, we are not." Pascal sounded resigned but resolute.

And then there came a savage clamor from the back of the houses on Market Street. There was fighting going on in the backyards, where Thorn and his men had met imps and a couple of bewks. The sound of steel, the screams and roars of combat soon escalated to a new level of commotion. When Relkin ran back the short distance to Schoolhouse Street corner, he found a mob of people running down the street wide-eyed in terror. One of the strange creatures was smashing its way out of the front door of one of the houses in the street.

"Quick!" he called to Bazil.

Another door burst open, and imps came tumbling out. One of them caught a little boy by the back of his head and thrust home with a long knife. The child's scream was high and piercing. Then a bewk burst out behind him and took the shutters right off a window as it came. Relkin watched the little boy fall, blond hair in the gutter.

Women and children were running for their lives up the street in the distance. They'd stayed far too long in their houses, not dreaming that the tide of war could ever invade the kitchens of Quosh. Now they ran from the nightmarish sight of imp warriors running loose in Schoolhouse Street.

Relkin and Bazil called the other dragons from the barricade and turned up Schoolhouse Street, swords in hand. Bazil's roar-scream brought the enemy's heads up. The bewks rushed to engage, but Bazil's blood was boiling. No pair of enemies, whether troll, monster, or even the terrible mud men of Dzu, could have withstood his fury then. Ecator sang, and there was just room enough in the street for Bazil to wield the blade freely. The enemy made play with their swords, but Ecator was the quicker and the deadlier blade.

Relkin kicked an oncoming imp in the chest and bowled him over. The next he met sword to sword, and he caught the imp's knife thrust and kneed the imp hard in the crotch. It doubled over, he cut down with the sword, and it fell.

Thorn stumbled by, bleeding from a head wound, clutching his hand, with blood running down the fingers.

"Too many for us, I'm afraid."

"We have to clear them back, build more barricades."

"You're right."

Thorn was in a slight state of shock. Relkin could see him struggling to clear his thoughts and concentrate.

Meanwhile the fighting raged. Bazil slipped the guard of one of the creatures, and a moment later he clove it to the waist. The other hewed at him, but Weft was there to engage from behind the Broketail and the stroke never landed. The bewk was shoved back, smashed into the wall, and almost beheaded instead.

Relkin tried to stay out of the way of dragonsword on the back strokes, not to mention the dragon tails, which moved violently from side to side as the great beasts balanced themselves.

The emperor appeared at his side. Relkin pulled him down a foot with an urgent tug on his elbow, and Weft's sword hummed over their heads.

"Duck the tail!" Relkin shouted. The emperor saw it coming from the corner of his eye and joined Relkin in bobbing underneath it.

"What do we need to do?" he asked Relkin from a half crouch, acknowledging frankly that in warfare the youth was the one with the greatest experience.

"Need to pull the barricade back to this corner, block off Market Street here, and put defenses in the houses up Schoolhouse Street."

The emperor scrambled away to try and organize things. The fires along Brennans Road had consumed much of the houses there, but clouds of thick acrid smoke still rose into the twilit sky.

More men came up, having ridden from Felli and Barley Mow. They immediately went to the fight in Schoolhouse Street, joining the dragons in stemming the imps and then forcing them up the street. With the bewks beaten back, the men could shift forward of the dragons and confront the imps. The dragons could cut at the imps from over the heads of the men in front of them. This forced the imps to give ground.

Macumber was working with the female dragons, and they dragged what was left of the wagon barricade up the street. The pile of debris seemed skimpy in the new location. Then somebody opened up the gate to the undertaker's yard, and they hauled out the big hearse. That completed the span. More stuff was piling up fast as people hurried down with barrels, chairs, bits and pieces of wood dredged from their homes. Soon the barricade stretched high across Market Street at the corner with Schoolhouse Street. The defenders crouched behind the new barrier, and waited, while the dragons and the new arrivals drove the remaining imps out of Schoolhouse Street and back into the houses and backyards on the eastern side.

The dragons could hardly push through human-scaled houses, so they could do no more. Thorn and the emperor judged they'd done enough.

Schoolhouse Street connected Market Street and Temple Lane. On its eastern side it was a row of houses. On the west there was the big mass of the bank at the southern end, then came the opening to Bank Yard, an alley that ran all the way to Pump Street between the buildings at the back.

Thorn and Avil Bernarbo put together a force of twelve men, and sent them to hold the passage into Bank Yard. Another ten fellows, some of whom had just arrived from Barley Mow, were sent to hold the northern block, where Schoolhouse met Temple Lane. There were six houses on that block, and these families were now fleeing down the lane into the northern part of the village. Between these houses and the southern block lay Bank Yard.

The bank had no entrance in Schoolhouse Street, which helped fortify the street. If they could keep the enemy out of Bank Yard, they could hold that flank of the barricade.

To the south of Market Street, Schoolhouse was lined on the west by outbuildings of the Blue Stone Inn, with the inn's big courtyard within. This position would be held by Bernarbo and his men, with the addition of an old dragon, Chutz. Weft went up to the barricade built across Bank Yard. The last six houses at the top would have to be defended from within. Men started fortifying their doors and windows as best they might.

Communications had now been lost with the men under Farmer Birch, who were trapped around the temple. But the temple bell was still ringing furiously, so they knew that it had not been captured by the enemy!

The evening light was failing now, and Lessis climbed to the roof of the inn, where she communed with a pair of blackbirds. The birds had flown quick sorties over the enemy positions and brought back their impressions.

She hurried back to rejoin Thorn and the emperor, who were sheltering behind an overturned wood skip outside number seven Market Street, which had been in the process of renovation prior to the battle. Thorn wore a bandage on his right arm and carried his sword in his left hand. He had trained for such a situation, of course, though he would never be as skillful with the left as he was with the right.

"The enemy has massed another force on the common."

"Ah, you are so good at bringing that kind of news, Lady." The emperor looked over the top of the skip toward the barricade, and the men hunched below its shelter.

"I wish I didn't have to, Your Majesty."

"Where can we retreat to?" said Thorn, who was thinking on the same lines as Lessis. Their job was to keep the Emperor of the Rose alive at all costs.

"The roads south and west are watched. The road north goes to some little places in the valley until you reach Borgan. The enemy will harry us all the way if we go down that road."

"We will stay here and make our stand," said Pascal Iturgio Densen in a firm voice.

"I was afraid you might say that," muttered Lessis.

"We will hold Quosh to the last." The emperor sounded immovable.

Lessis had to admit to a degree of vexation. Good sense dictated a swift flight northward on the best horses in Avil Bernarbo's stable. Getting the emperor to safety in Borgan or over the Roan Hills to Querc was the highest priority. Her gaze met his, and she knew he would not retreat.

"How long until they get the news at Cross Treys?"

"Not long now. Our message went hours ago. We have to hold them through the night."

A man nearby gave a gasp of horror. "They're burning Pigget's farm!" he said.

Farmer Pigget lurched up from his place by the barricade.

"The farm!" he cried in grief, for it was true, flames were rising from the roofs of the farm on the hill.

And then the enemy's horns blew, and there was no time for grief, for the far end of Market Street had suddenly filled with the enemy.

"Too late!" cried Lessis. "They are coming."

They held the enemy once more, but only after a hard struggle during which the barricade was pierced and almost captured, while Schoolhouse was the scene of desperate fighting, and the men in the northernmost houses were slain and those houses were set ablaze. This left the defenders without any effective control of Temple Lane.

They held, but the casualties were high. Brezza, a big old grandmother dragon was killed by a spear thrust to the eye. Luther Pigget, nephew of the farmer, was cut down by the imps, but so were a dozen or more men at the barricade and many more than that on Schoolhouse Street. High or low in birth, it meant nothing on the point of an imp's sword.

Wendra Neath was weeping over the body of her husband Pedo. The town's potbellied greengrocer was dying, run through by a spear. Not far from where Pedo lay was the small form of little Ianno, Fury's dragonboy, who had been slain in the last moments of the fighting.

Night had fallen before the enemy finally withdrew, the fire from the black drink subsiding in their veins. In the square they left a drift of dead imps, bewks, and men. Further down the street the Bull and Bush had collapsed in on itself in the inferno. The wind tore at the pillar of smoke, acrid eddies drifted through the streets. Men and dragons' faces were blackened, their eyes and mouths forming pale dots and lines against the soot. The darkening eve was reddened by the flames, which were rising high at the northern end of Schoolhouse Street, where the entire block was ablaze. A few imps were visible up there, holding part of the street and firing arrows into the houses on the opposite side.

An exhausted Thorn sought out the emperor, who was lying in the portico to the Neath home on Market Street, number three. Pascal had received a cut on the thigh, which required a field dressing. He submitted to the ministrations of old Macumber, who still wrapped the best dressings in Marneri, after twenty years of training dragonboys in the art. The emperor was exhausted, but he still rode the dreadful energy that came with battle. As Thorn came up, Pascal raised himself in his seat to clasp hands and embrace his bodyguard. They had fought together at the barricade, side by side, and each had saved the other. Indeed all the men had fought bravely and well, even those who had fallen at the barricade.

"Well met, old friend, but I see you took a wound or two as well."

Indeed Thorn had his right arm bandaged, and there was another bandage wrapped about his head.

"In the melee, Your Majesty, anything can happen."

Thorn wished fervently that he could persuade the emperor to leave the fighting and seek safety in the rear. Pascal was not having it.

"Not while we have dragons like the Broketail fighting for us. It's no wonder the imps reek of the black drink. How else could they nerve themselves to attack?"