Dragon (Vlad Taltos)

  We went forward, straight into an unmoving mass of warriors. They stood shoulder to shoulder about halfway up the hill. The hill, by the way, had a long and gentle slope, deceptively gentle. It looked like it might be possible to run up it without being winded well before you reached the enemy position. This turned out not to be the case. I was already breathing heavily before we broke into a run, and so were Virt and Aelburr. We kept getting closer, and I kept wondering how I was supposed to fight in this condition. And at the same time I was both dreading and longing for the signal to charge.

  And then they launched their javelins at us.

  When we had thrown, it had seemed as if we had launched a single, vast, sheet of metal at the enemy. Now I was on the other side, and it seemed just like that. Then, I had wondered how the enemy kept coming at us; I still wondered. Now, after it is all over, I still wonder.

  But I kept moving.

  Then Crown waved his sword, and the colors surged forward, and I heard Rascha’s voice, somewhere to my left: “Charge!” I couldn’t go any faster up the hill, but everyone around me was able to, so I did too, and the effort distracted me from noticing what effect, if any, the javelins had had on our forces. Then they launched a second barrage, and this time I noticed: Virt stumbled and went down, and I remember thinking that I wished it were possible to stop and help her, and I still don’t know why it wasn’t, but I kept running. There was a horrid yelling, and I realized that I was making some of the noise myself.

  There was a third barrage of javelins, which did some damage, to judge by the screams around me, and then a fourth, during which one went screaming past my ear and made Loiosh yelp psychically, and then we met the enemy.

  The noise is what I remember most about that first instant, a screeching, groaning thunder that filled my skull and became something greater than noise, that went beyond the pain from my ears. It encompassed the battle like a shroud, and everything that happened was twisted and dulled by the din—out of which it was impossible to isolate what was causing any of it; it was just one unending roar. And through it, I kept trying to go forward, and I couldn’t.

  Now look, I think I’m more than a match for just about any of the swordsmen you care to name. For one thing, I’m good with a blade, but more important than that, I fight in a way they aren’t used to: We Easterners have our own ways of fighting that I can use to take advantage of the fact that I’m smaller and quicker than they are. This mostly involves staying out of the way of those big monster blades they use, not giving them a good target, and never putting myself into a position of setting my strength directly against theirs.

  Okay, now that I’ve said that, you probably already see the problem. I was not out there fighting against another swordsman with the object of killing him or taking him out of combat; I was out there trying to get myself past a certain point along with several hundred others, and at no point did I really have the chance to settle in and actually fight someone. I ducked a lot, and scampered back and forth, and I’d occasionally make a halfhearted jab in the direction of one of the defenders, but there was just no way for my fighting advantages to be of help, whereas all of my disadvantages were multiplied.

  It’s nothing short of a miracle that I wasn’t killed inside the first twenty seconds after we met their line. The very first instant someone brought a big old sword cutting down at my head, and I still don’t know how I got out of the way. He certainly would have killed me if he had followed up on that first strike, but I guess he got distracted after that. For whatever reason, I picked myself up (no, I don’t remember falling or dropping to the ground or whatever I did) and charged again, and someone came within a whisper of disemboweling me. I don’t remember gasping for breath while this was going on, but I must have been. I just remember thinking in a strangely detached way, That’s two; the third will probably kill me.

  Then Loiosh said into my mind, “To the left, Boss!” which accomplished two things. The first, and most immediate, was that it caused me to look to my left, where someone was drawing a bead on me with a sword swirling over his head. The second thing was that, somehow, it transformed me from a soldier into what I was. Or, to put it another way, it reminded me that I had more weapons than my sword—although that isn’t accurate either, because I didn’t exactly remember, because I never made a decision, but the next thing I knew I had put three shuriken into his chest, which slowed him down a bit, and while he was trying to decide how badly he was hurt, someone—I think it was Aelburr, though I’m not sure, cut his legs out from under him.

  I went back to looking ahead of me, and when I attracted someone’s attention I threw a knife at her, missing, but I guess making her decide to look elsewhere for entertainment.

  How long did our assault last? Well, I saw in the log book where it was recorded at four minutes. To me it seemed longer and shorter. Longer because at the time it seemed to go on and on; I kept thinking that something had to break, but nothing did. Shorter because I can’t account for most of it. I usually have good memories of fights because my mind is always working, keeping track of the movements that training has made instinctive and making notes for future reference, but in these battles it had been different, and in this one in particular I can only account for about a minute of the fight, and then we were retreating back to our own lines with Rascha shouting to maintain our line. I remember seeing our colors and telling myself, Okay, we didn’t take them, but we weren’t broken. I didn’t know that the color bearer had gone down, and his replacement, too, but I suppose that didn’t much matter; what did matter was that we retreated in order and looked threatening enough doing so that whoever was in charge of the company that had just repelled us decided not to counterattack.

  Which is part of what I meant earlier when I spoke of mistakes. I am fairly sure they could have broken us if they had charged immediately. They had elevation working for them, and we were at least a little demoralized, but, probably because we looked like we were retreating in order, or maybe because we’d killed some officer, or maybe just because the enemy commander lacked backbone, they didn’t attack.

  It was only when we had retreated all the way back to the bottom of the hill and an additional hundred yards besides that I became aware that there was fighting going on around us. We had, it seems, been only one part of a major battle, which I should have known but had never thought of until, motionless and recovering my breath, I noticed dust clouds from several of the hills around us, and the movement of troops, and opposing banners awful close together.

  I didn’t watch, however, because I couldn’t see much and didn’t want to anyway. I overheard various remarks about who was winning where, but they didn’t agree with each other so I concluded that no one knew.

  Presently Virt came up next to me, and it was only then that I remembered she’d gone down. Aelburr said, “Good work, slackard.”

  “Good move on their part,” she said. “If they hadn’t knocked me down we’d have won.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You’d have taken the position by yourself.”

  “Damn right.”

  “What happened?” I said.

  “The bastards missed my knee, that’s what. Thigh wound, about as clean as you could ask. I’d have kept going up the hill but I felt like taking a nap.”

  “You and Napper,” he said, which was when I realized that I hadn’t seen Napper since the fight, but then I noticed him almost at once, lying on his back just past Aelburr; as near as I could tell he was sound asleep.

  I tried to decide how I felt about that, but gave up and threw myself onto the ground next to him.

  “Behold the grim aftermath of battle,” remarked Virt.

  Loiosh tells me I caught a nap myself after that, and I can’t prove him wrong. In any case, the juice-drum brought me to my feet with “Rubbing Elbows,” the call to form a defensive line. I looked around the battlefield, aware that I’d been resting my eyes for a little while, and saw that the scene had changed; our col
ors now occupied a hill we hadn’t been on before, and I could just barely make out fighting a long way to the right. They were, I supposed, attacking our flank. (Well, no, they weren’t, as it happened; it was some sort of complicated diversionary move to cover an envelopment on the other side that never happened, but I didn’t find that out until much later.)

  I asked Loiosh, who had been strangely silent since we charged, if he was all right.

  “Boss, we don’t belong here.”

  “I know. What’s your point?”

  “We should cut out.”

  “Can’t do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “For one thing, I’ve agreed to a job.”

  “Do you see any way to do it?”

  “Not at the moment, but—” I said aloud, “Where do you suppose their command center is, Virt?”

  She pointed to a hill about four hundred yards south of us. “I’d be there,” she said. “It commands a good view, and it’s hard to tell for sure, but I think it’s pretty steep. It would be easy to defend, easy to retreat from, easy to advance from. I’d certainly have my sorcerers there, and probably my command post. Why?”

  “Just curious,” I said.

  Napper gave me a look. “You got something?”

  I shook my head and didn’t answer.

  Aelburr sat down with his head in his hands, his long knees drawn up. Farther down the line, Tibbs was in the same position. Virt, though still standing, had a look that matched their poses. Napper wasn’t glowering; he was just staring at the ground in front of him.

  I said, “We got beat, didn’t we?”

  Virt nodded. “We got beat,” she said.

  Napper glanced at me. “Maybe they’ll come at us now,” he said hopefully.

  I agreed with him, but didn’t feel hopeful, so I didn’t say anything.

  Presently Rascha came along the line. Virt said, “We’re expecting guests?” She nodded. Virt said, “How bad did we hurt ourselves going up the hill?”

  “Could have been worse,” said Rascha.

  “Which means?”

  “Fourteen killed or missing, twenty-six wounded. It could have been worse,” she repeated, and moved along the line.

  “Sure,” murmured Virt. “It could have been—”

  “Why don’t we have javelins?” said Aelburr, looking up suddenly.

  Virt used the sort of language soldiers have traditionally used in such circumstances. I was impressed.

  For someone who had never touched a javelin two weeks before, I certainly had become attached to them. I suppose charging through a storm of them and actually feeling what it was like on the other side had a lot to do with that. What was worse, however, was the feeling that, if things had broken down badly enough for our javelins to go missing, what else was liable to go wrong?

  The answer was, something big went wrong, but fortunately it was in the enemy’s camp: They failed to attack us. Another example of what Sethra was talking about, I suppose. I did ask about that, too, but Sethra didn’t know why they failed to attack that day. As far as I was concerned, I watched them, tense and more than a little scared, for several hours. Around us the battle continued, but it was a day of missed chances and maneuvering, or so I’ve heard, and what I saw was a great deal of marching and almost continuous skirmishes, but no real battles except for our charge up that hill.

  Lucky us.

  A couple of hours later we were issued javelins, and a little after that we were issued more biscuits and cheese, and this time we each got a strip of salted kethna to chew on. By then we were entertaining hopes that they wouldn’t attack and fears that we’d be ordered to go after them again. But we weren’t. Late in the afternoon, Rascha came by again. “They’re shirting,” she said.

  “Leaving the hill?” said Virt.

  “Now we can take it,” said Aelburr.

  “I assume they’re being replaced. We’ll find out tomorrow who we’ll be facing.”

  “Tomorrow,” said Aelburr.

  “Tomorrow,” I said. “I like that word. That’s a good word. Tomorrow.”

  “But we have to stay alert for night attacks,” she said. “Extra picket duty all around, and like that.”

  Napper moaned suddenly. “What is it?” said Virt.

  He stared disgustedly at his javelins. “We have to set camp again.”

  “Life is rough,” said Aelburr.

  “Might as well get to it,” said Virt.

  We struggled to our feet.

  “Tomorrow is going to be ugly,” said Aelburr.

  “I hope so,” said Napper. “We going to take whatever that hill is called tomorrow?”

  “Dorian’s Hill,” said Rascha. “And yes, I think we are.” She moved off down the line. Loiosh and I kept our cynicism to ourselves.

  INTERLUDE: COUNTERATTACK

  The day after our visit with Aliera I sent a message to Sethra the Younger in care of Lord Morrolan.

  “She’ll be pleased,” I told Cawti.

  “There have been no promises,” she said.

  “Yes. But you know Aliera will agree. Eventually.”

  Cawti nodded.

  That was the day before yesterday. Yesterday I finished telling my story, as far as I felt like going, and came home in time to prepare dinner for Cawti. I was planning to treat her to a three-fish three-pepper stew with leeks and white wine, because no woman who has tasted it can resist me. Oh, okay, maybe I’m stretching a point. But it is good. So I did my shopping (I enjoy shopping for food, and if I ever achieve real wealth, I think I’ll continue to do so), returned home, started preparing the oysters (yes, yes, I know oysters aren’t fish), and was interrupted by Loiosh telling me that someone was clapping at the door. I started to yell “Come in,” when Loiosh said, “It isn’t Cawti.”

  I opened the door and found myself staring up at Sethra the Younger. My mouth fell open. She looked down at me. I swallowed and said, “Would you care to come in and sit down? I’m afraid it falls short of your standards for a domicile.”

  “Save it,” she said, stepping in. “I’m not here to criticize your decorations.” She paused, looked around, then said, “Although I must admit I find your home surprisingly tasteful.”

  Tasteful? I have furniture that one could sit on, and floors that are clean, and walls that hold the place up. I have one shelf of knick knacks with sentimental value. Home is where I go when I sleep; the only room I’ve put much thought into is the kitchen. But okay. Maybe she meant she expected to find it a kethna’s nest with peeling walls, bloodstains, and rusted weapons lying about, I don’t know.

  But I said, “Okay, why are you here?”

  “Can’t you guess?”

  “No. If it was about the trade you want to arrange with Aliera, I’d have expected you to send for me.”

  “And would you have come if I had?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I hadn’t thought so.” She unbuckled her sword belt, and I noticed its size at once. She carefully set it on a table, and then sat down. I gritted my teeth and brought out some wine. She said, “Perhaps we should send for Aliera and get this done.”

  “Actually,” I said, “I had plans for the evening.”

  I could see her forming the words “Break them” and then changing her mind. After a moment she said, “Are they breakable?”

  “Perhaps. If you can convince me—” There was another clap at the door.

  “Loiosh?”

  “Yes.”

  “My plans for the evening,” I said. I went over to the door and admitted Cawti.

  She took in the scene at once; I saw her notice the sheathed sword on the table. I said, “It wasn’t my plan. She wants to finish things tonight.”

  “Why not?” said Cawti.

  “Why not indeed?” said Sethra the Younger.

  I could have made some answers, but I decided the question was rhetorical. “All right,” I said. “Then someone should reach Aliera. Who wants to do the honors?”

>   “Why don’t you?” said Sethra the Younger.

  “All right,” I said, and composed my mind for the contact.

  I reached Aliera more quickly than I’d have expected to. I guess I was getting to know her. I had mixed feelings about this.

  “What is it?” she said without greeting, preamble, pleasantry, or anything else I hadn’t expected.

  “Sethra the Younger is here.”

  “There? Where is there?”

  “My flat”

  “What does she want?”

  “To conclude the transaction.”

  “I haven’t agreed to the transaction yet.”

  I said aloud, “She hasn’t agreed to the transaction yet.”

  “Then let’s talk about it,” said Sethra.

  “Then she suggests you talk about it.”

  “I—very well. Can you give me a picture?”

  I did so to the best of my ability. It got me enough into her head that I could tell what she thought about the best of my ability.

  “Very well,” she said eventually. “I’ll be there directly.”

  “Well?” snapped Sethra the Younger.

  “She’ll be here.”

  She nodded.

  We sat in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes; Cawti sat next to me and held my arm. Aliera clapped outside the door; I let her in.

  Sethra the Younger stood up. They gave each other slight bows over mutual glares.

  Sethra said, “You know the bargain I propose.”

  Aliera said, “You should never have received the weapon in the first place.”

  “Received it?” she said, and I remembered, then, that final encounter at Baritt’s Tomb. It hadn’t stayed with me because I hadn’t known her then. She said, “I didn’t receive it, Lady Aliera. I took it. I used it. I—”