The Prince of Shadow (60 page)

Shokar pulled off his healer's robe and handed it to Adar. Beneath the robe, he wore his own sword belted to his waist, and he loosened it in its scabbard. “Would you mind if I joined you, then?” he asked, with a bow to General Shou.

“Be my guest,” the general invited him with a tight smile.

They had begun to move, following the priest to the back of the temple, when the first priest returned bearing a slim burden in his hands.

“This was delivered for you, young master.” The priest bowed and unwrapped the oiled cloths that protected the short spear contained within.

Llesho shuddered.

“Is that what I think it is?” Adar asked, his voice grown husky with awe.

“I don't know what it is, except that her ladyship has bid me carry it, and that I feel my own death clinging to it like a cobra waiting to strike.” He thrust the weapon into his brother's hands.

Pain crossed Adar's face, but he did not let the spear fall, even when it blistered his palm.

“Why is it doing that?” Horrified, Llesho snatched it back, too late to save his brother from the hurt that bubbled on his hand.

“Because it belongs to you.” Adar smiled, though his hand must still hurt.

Llesho didn't want to understand, but they had run out of time, and Carina was leading his brother away with words soothing as the burble of a dove: “My mother has taught me much of her herb lore, and the tending of wounds.”

Torn between protecting his brother and his own duty to the battle's wounded soon to come, Adar hesitated.

“Go,” Llesho said. “If we win, there will be time to talk later. If we lose, we already know what we needed to say.”

“Go with the goddess,” Adar whispered his farewell like a prayer.

Still as stone, General Shou waited until Carina had taken the wounded healer away.

“It's time,” he said, and led their small force out of the temple.

Chapter Thirty-five

IN the market square Harnish raiders had drawn their short, thick swords. The soldiers who had marched from Farshore with Master Markko brandished the more familiar weapons they had kept hidden under their disguises until the signal ordered them into action. Llesho figured they had expected only the weak opposition of shopkeepers and their customers in the square.

But General Shou had laid his plans carefully, and the invaders found themselves confronting grim-faced Imperial Guardsmen who threw off their own disguises and fought to defend their homes and their families. The very auction block at the center of the marketplace served as a reminder of Harn's treatment of its conquests, and civilians fought alongside the emperor's guards with any implement they could find.

Stalls overturned in the fray spilled food and trinkets and pots and pans onto the square. Wares scattered underfoot as raiders hacked at the proprietors with their swords. Llesho saw the food vendor Darit hit a Harnish raider over the head with a heavy copper platter and then swing her makeshift weapon in the face of another soldier.

Finally she whirled it like a discus at a Harnishman who directed the action of his raiders from the auction block. He went down, spilling blood from a deep gash in his brow and Darit was over her counter, with a chopping knife in one hand and a bone cleaver in the other. He lost sight of her when Markko's troops rushed his own position on the steps of the temple.

“Can you fight?” he asked Shokar, who stood at his shoulder.

“For you, I can fight,” Shokar answered, and drew his own Thebin knife. He took the two-handed defensive stance of the Thebin fighter, sword raised, knife extended, and soon proved his worth. A band of soldiers in the uniform of Lord Yueh's guards rushed their position, laying about them with bloodied swords. From the determined savagery of their attack, Llesho knew they had but one objective: to bring down Master Markko's chosen prey at all costs.

Llesho slashed with his knife, jumped out of range of a swinging sword, and jabbed with his own long blade. He heard his brother grunt with the exertion of wielding his weapons. Shokar did not move with Llesho's practiced ease, but he had not forgotten all he had learned as a young man in Thebin.

Bixei fought at his right side, his battle cry a low growl in his throat. Kaydu screeched like the spirits of the thirsty dead as she cleared the steps on his right. Llesho whipped around to take on the next assault, and discovered that for the moment they had driven back their attackers.

Trying to catch his breath and his senses at the same time, Llesho looked about him in dismay. General Shou had placed cadres of Imperial Guardsmen in disguise throughout the square, but they were seriously outnumbered. Though the emperor's men strove valiantly to contain the attack, the Harnish raiders pressed outward, unstoppable in their attempt to escape the square and join up with reinforcements flooding into the square from the streets of the city.

Already two of the Harnish bands had drawn off from the fighting, making for the eastern corner of the square, from which a tangle of paths and roads led to the palace. In the chaos of the fighting, he had no intelligence about how many Harnish reinforcements lurked in the city, or if they waged their battle against the palace as well as in the market square. It must have been like this on the streets of Kungol, he thought, except that the Thebin palace had no high walls to protect it, nor a standing army to defend it.

Even in Shan, however, too much lay vulnerable to attack. The thought of the Imperial Water Garden trampled in battle burned in his chest. His own imagination would have paralyzed him then, but General Shou shook him out of his thoughts. “Hold fast, if you can,” Shou directed Llesho's little band. “Don't let the Harn join their forces in the city.” Then he disappeared into the fray.

Llesho took a quick survey of their position. The temple stood at one corner of the market square. They had themselves come out a side door and down a small alley, which the priests had cluttered after them with baskets and old cooking pots to delay the enemy. A wide avenue on the far side of the building would be much harder to secure, however. With the point of his sword, he directed Bixei and Kaydu to the more open position. He would have sent Shokar with them, but his brother read his mind and gave him a baleful glare.

“Harry them and fall back,” he told his two guards. “We cannot hope to hold for long, but we can make them pay in blood for every step they win.”

General Shou had gathered to himself a small troop of Imperial Guards, still dressed as peasant farmers come to sell their wares. These farmers, however, wielded swords instead of plowshares, and they followed the general, defending the roads that led to the palace. If the city fell, Llesho knew, all of the Shan Empire fell with it, and all hope that they might free Thebin as well. Though his arm had grown heavy, he raised his sword in fighting position again, his Thebin knife held poised for the next attack. He would stop Master Markko and his allies or die in the attempt.

Although the Thebin princes were badly outnumbered, no enemy could touch them. Pressed on all sides, Llesho moved without thought, one with his blades and the rhythm of his deadly dance. Blood slicked the paving stones and he slipped, righted himself before he fell, and plunged his knife to the hilt into the throat of a soldier. The man opened his mouth to scream, but only blood spewed forth, and a death rattle as he strove to draw breath while drowning in his own blood.

The knife had caught on bone, and Llesho could not pull it free. For an almost fatal second he held on, while the falling man dragged Llesho's arm down with it, leaving the heart in his breast an open target. A spear came toward him out of the melee, was knocked away by his brother's sword but not before the tip had drawn blood. Shocked at how close he had come to losing his life, Llesho abandoned the knife along with the body of the Harnish raider and turned to the next attacker, then the next, until he and Shokar were surrounded by a ring of wary soldiers held at bay by the swords of their prey.

For a moment the battle seemed to pause, as if the world held its breath, and Llesho became aware of the bodies, and the gore, and his own hands, slick with blood up to the elbow, gripping the hilt of his sword between them. On one knee, his brother gasped for breath, and Llesho felt his own blood trickle down his cheek, though he did not remember the strike that had cut him. Stealing a glance toward his companions who struggled to hold the wide boulevard, he raised his head, a triumphant grimace turning his blood-smeared face into a death mask. Habiba's troops had arrived, orderly columns of them passing into the square from the main road at each of the four corners.

“Surrender!” Llesho demanded. His attackers followed Llesho's gloating stare, and struck again with a fervor fueled by their desperation. It was now or never, he realized. Of the two choices that confronted them, most of the enemy soldiers would rather face death at Llesho's hand than the slow, lingering torment they would suffer from Master Markko if they failed.

Shokar struggled to his feet, but his sword dragged heavily at an arm leaden with fatigue. Llesho shifted closer to his brother. He didn't have to win, he told himself, he needed only to hold off the attack until Habiba's men had secured the road. He would have reinforcements, if he could just keep his brother alive for a few minutes more. A sword slipped past his guard and cut him under the arm, but he rallied and knocked it away before it could do more than scratch the skin. He heard Kaydu's voice urging him to hold, but her words were cut off by the sudden cry of a great bird.

The creature swooped from the sky with talons stretched; Master Markko's own men dropped to their faces in terror as the beast flew at his prey. Llesho raised his sword over his head to stop the beast, which opened its beak to cry its scorn and defiance. With one powerful foot it swept aside Llesho's sword, and with the other it tore past his shoulder, talons gouging deep gashes from Llesho's throat to his hip.

Llesho grunted and fell, at the mercy of the bird, his sight blurring as the curved beak drew closer.

Though the bird could not speak, Llesho heard the words in his mind.
So this is dying,
he answered, and heard again Master Markko's answer in his mind:
Among cowards and weaklings, yes; this is dying.

He felt the piercing pain as the beak cut into the flesh over his heart, and then he heard a growl behind him.

“Lleeee-shhhoooo!”

Lleck! The bear raised up on his hind legs and howled over his fallen charge, the spittle flying from his long, sharp fangs. With his claws extended like curved knives, he swatted at the bird, raking long streaks of blood across its feathered breast. It seemed then that he was cradling the bird, for both huge arms wrapped about its wings, pressing it down, until the full weight of bird and bear crashed to the paving stones at Llesho's feet.

The bird redirected its attack, raking Lleck's thick pelt with claw and beak. Lleck cried out and lowered his head over the neck of the magician, who changed himself into smoke as the bear's teeth clamped together. Taking solid form again, the invincible bird of prey that Master Markko had become transformed again, growing the head of a lion and the long, spiked tail of a serpent held aloft by the feathered wings of the bird. The creature fell upon the bear and locked its teeth into the back of his head.

The lion jaws tightened. Bone crunched. Lleck bellowed one last anguished cry and the light went out of his eyes.

“No!” Llesho cried, while Markko's insane laughter filled his head.

He had lost his sword and a good deal of blood. Llesho stood and faced the creature of his nightmares with no hope of victory, only a determination to take the evil creature before him into hell. As his bloody end drew near, however, Llesho saw a woman standing just above him on the temple steps. Carina, the young healer, defied the monster with calm, sure eyes. Unarmed, she raised both hands above her head, chanting some prayer of supplication. Although he knew she must follow him quickly into death, he was unaccountably comforted by the sight of her.

In that moment of peace, the short spear from her ladyship pressed a reminder against his side. He drew it. “Die!” He screamed, “Die! You twisted demon out of hell. Die!”

He plunged the spear into the side of the monster, and it screamed, dripping gouts of blood that steamed and blackened the paving stones where it fell. Enraged, the creature writhed away from the weapon and rose into the sky, still shrieking in pain and fury.

Suddenly an answering roar filled the sky and made the very temple shake. A horde of dragons filled the sky, the Golden River Dragon in the lead, a smaller silver queen following with three younger dragons behind her. The dragons separated at the market square, the younger ones fanning out into city, while the silver queen descended upon the battle being waged before the palace.