King's Dragon

  But they were coming out too slowly. So few would escape. Surely by now the Dragons had been utterly overwhelmed. At any moment she expected the stream of refugees to end, or Eika to spring forth, hacking right and left with their axes and deadly spears.

  “Ai! Wagons!” cried one of the boys at the ridgetop.

  And another: “They bear the mayor’s colors!”

  Liath ran with the farmer to where a road—such as it was—cut up near his farmstead. A few brave deacons followed, but the rest remained by the field as if the cave and the reminder of the saint’s mercy would grant them safety. Liath took out her bow and gave herself cover behind a tree. The farmer hefted a pitchfork.

  But they needed no weapons, not this time. The wagons did indeed belong to Mayor Werner. They lurched and careened over the two ruts that served as road. The mayor himself, red-faced and flushed with weeping, sat in the front of a wagon driven by—

  “Wolfhere!” Liath leaped out and ran forward, jogging—almost dancing—beside the wagon as it pitched and jolted the rest of the way up the hill, coming to rest at last beside the two poor huts of the oat farmer.

  Wolfhere swung down, looked her over carefully, then beckoned to the farmer. “Show these servants where they can build a fire. Somewhere out of the way.”

  “And alert the Eika?” the man protested.

  Wolfhere made an impatient gesture with a hand. “They have found better prey today than the poor pickings they could scavenge here.” The farmer retreated obediently.

  “I saw Gent,” said Liath. She could not take her eyes off Wolfhere. She could not believe he was alive. “It’s burning.”

  “So it was when we left.”

  “How did you get out?” She stared back, hoping to see—

  But there were no Dragons in attendance, only servants from the palace, about thirty of them walking alongside the ten wagons. A pale, pretty woman drove in the last of the wagons and, dry-eyed and grim, began to rub down the horses. Liath recognized her: She was the servingwoman who had, everyone knew, been carrying on an affair with the prince. Would she weep for her lover? Or was she only glad to be alive?

  A man came up beside her to aid her; in the wagon’s bed a girl-child raised her head weakly to look around. It was the pair she had saved from the streets, father and daughter.

  Refugees from the tunnel swarmed forward, surrounding Mayor Werner, drowning him in questions and pleas and demands. “Where is my husband? Do you know what happened to my mother? Has my brother been seen? What of the mint? My father guarded there. Does the biscop yet live?”

  And on, and on. Like a coward, she thought bitterly, the mayor had saved himself rather than die in the defense of his city. That duty he had left to Prince Sanglant and the Dragons.

  “My good people,” he cried, wiping tears from his cheeks. How she had come to hate his voice, filled with self-importance and a trace of the whiny, indulged son he had been. “Pray, grant me silence. There is no time to waste. We must begin to march. It will take many days to reach Steleshame, and most among us are weak or young. We have emptied the stores from the palace. This must serve us on our journey. Listen to my words!” Now, finally, the ragged band of refugees had quieted and drawn closer while yet others still emerged, in ones and twos, from the cave mouth.

  “Let the elder children shepherd the younger, and let the children be divided into groups so there will be no confusion and none left behind. Let those who are strong enough carry food on their backs, so there may be room in the wagons for those whose legs grow weak. We will pass out bread now. In one hour we begin our journey. We dare not wait longer than that.”

  With that he turned and began directing his servants. The pretty servingwoman pulled back the heavy cloth that had been draped over the foodstuffs in her wagon, and she began distributing bread with the efficiency of long practice, aided again by the father. Deacons began to organize the children into groups of ten, each under the command of an adolescent. A woman, sobbing quietly, nursed her infant while another child clung to her skirts. One of the slender acrobats came up cautiously to the woman and offered her and the child bread. At the cave’s mouth, more refugees stumbled out into the noontide glare. Now, however, there were servants to guide them to food and a place to rest until the next stage of the journey began. Now, one in five of the refugees were adults with wounds or singed clothing; there were, perhaps, eight hundred people in the oat field. She judged, by measuring the height of the sun with her fingers, that she had emerged an hour or so ago. Would the Dragons never come?

  But of course they would not. Prince Sanglant would not leave the city until every last soul was safe or dead.

  “Liath.” Wolfhere beckoned. She followed him back behind the hut where the farmer had built a fire in an outdoor hearth. It blazed merrily, a lattice of sticks that collapsed as those at the lowest rung burned to ash. The farmer set more logs on the fire and, at a sign from Wolfhere, retreated, leaving them alone.

  “We must look,” said Wolfhere.

  “How did you get free?” she asked. “Did any others—?

  Where is Manfred?”

  He shook his head. For the first time she saw his mouth tighten, concealing heart’s pain. “We loaded the stores into the wagons and made our way to the western gate. Others fled the city by that gate as well, though many died at the hands of Eika. Some may have escaped. But we came later. By that time the battle that started at the eastern gate had grown until it engulfed half the city. So we were able to get away with less trouble. We lost only one wagon, and that because its axle broke. And we met Dragons—”

  “Dragons!”

  He lifted a hand sharply, silencing her. “You will remember them. They were the ones who saved us when we first rode into Gent a month ago.”

  “Sturm,” she murmured. Her cousin, if report was true.

  “They cut through a company of Eika, freeing us.”

  “And then?” she demanded.

  He frowned, almost wincing, as if the memory did not bear recalling. “Then they rode into the city by the west gate, to join with their fellows.”

  Liath shut her eyes.

  “Attend,” said Wolfhere. “We have no luxury for grief, Liath. We must see with Eagle’s sight. That is our duty.”

  “Through fire and stone?” she whispered.

  “Not every Eagle has such skills, it is true. Now. Attend.” He shut his eyes and raised his hands, shoulder width apart, palms facing in toward the fire.

  “But it’s true,” she said, interrupting him. He had to understand. “I can’t see that way. In the crypt I saw nothing, not because there was a shadow, but because I saw only the stone. And the Eika—There is an enchanter, and he is Eika, not any other kind of creature.” This memory hurt, it was still so raw. Remembering how Sanglant had seen and named the Eika chieftain. “That is how the gates were breached. He wove an illusion. It wasn’t Count Hildegard’s forces at all.”

  Wolfhere opened his eyes and stared at her. “Go on.”

  “It was an illusion. Everyone saw the banner and the count and her people. Everyone. Except me. I could see through the illusion.”

  “What are you saying?”

  ‘I am saying that I am deaf to it, as Da said. Or else guarded against it. I don’t know which.” Immediately she cursed herself inwardly for confessing to him. But she had been so happy to see him. Surely that joy meant he could be trusted, or trusted in part. He had saved her from Hugh. He had treated her with unrelenting kindness and good will. And she had, she realized, come to care for him. Reflexively she rested a hand on the warm leather of her saddlebags, feeling the book hidden within. She waited.

  Wolfhere looked truly startled. “Bloodheart,” he said. “Illusion. I understand now. I did not before. I wondered why I had seen nothing of Count Hildegard’s soldiers within the city, even the last survivors of that force. I wondered how the gate had been breached. For I saw it, too, Liath. I saw her banner, and her retainers, pursued by Eika. F
rom the palisade at the mayor’s palace I saw them reach the bridge, and then I saw no more. And yet you say you saw through the illusion.”

  “I did.”

  “I cannot explain it, either to you or to myself. Attend me, Liath. Tell me what you see.” He lifted hands again and shut his eyes, then, after a moment, opened them, staring into the fire.

  Yellow-orange flame licked the air. Liath stared hard at it. She envisioned in her minds’ eye a circle branded into the air—the Ring of fire, fourth step on the ladder of the mages. Through this she viewed the flame.

  She saw nothing but the lick and spit of fire. And yet, had she not once seen salamanders, their blue eyes winking in the coals of the hearth? Had she not once seen butterflies called up by her father in the summer garden? Once, years ago, before her mother died, she had seen magic. Before her mother died. Then everything had changed.

  Da was protecting me.

  He had given his life to protect her. To hide her.

  There are spirits burning in the air with wings of flame and eyes as brilliant as knives. At their backs a wall of fire roars up into black night, but there is nothing to fear. Pass through, and a new world lies beyond. In the distance a drum sounds like a heartbeat and the whistle of a flute, borne up on the wind like a bird, takes wing.

  Wings, settling on the eaves. A sudden gust of snow through the smokehole. Bells, heard as if on the wind.

  “Where is she?” said the voice of bells.

  “Nowhere you can find her,” said Da.

  The fire blazed higher, growing, engulfing the logs until it burned like a storm. And in the flames she saw battle, the steps of the cathedral, the Dragons in a last ragged line, so few of them now, the last, their horses and their comrades strewn like so much refuse along the course of their retreat. Dogs—those who were not raging in the thick of battle—fed voraciously. She shuddered, convulsed by nausea.

  A last knot of city militia fought desperately by the mint and then finally were overwhelmed. Behind them, the palisade of the mayor’s palace and the timber roof of the great hall burned in sheets of flame, a terrible bright backdrop to the last killing field.

  The Eika pounded at the Dragons, axes chopped down again and again on the teardrop shields, red serpents pressed against dragons, shoving them by sheer weight of numbers back and back up the steps to the doors.

  There! Sanglant, limping and bloody, striking at either hand as he retreated step by step, the last man in the wedge, taking the brunt of the onslaught. At his right hand, the scarred-face woman, ragged Dragon’s banner draped around her shoulders, her spear working, jabbing, wrenching free; at his left, Sturm, blue eyes grim as he cut down first one Eika then, when that one fell, the next. Manfred stood half inside the cathedral doors, staring; seeing, as was his duty.

  But one by one, Dragons fell, Gent burned, and the streets were deserted except for Eika, prowling and sniffing in doorways and looting. Except for the dead. Except for the feeding dogs.

  A wagon had been brought into the square fronting the cathedral and from atop this, surrounded by his howling troops and by a pack of slavering dogs, Bloodheart surveyed the ruins and the last stand of the Dragons. He leaped down and hefted a spear in his huge hands, ran with it to the steps and took them two at a time. Behind him came his soldiers, their mouths open in shrieks and howls Liath could only see, not hear. Only the naked old Eika male remained behind in the wagon, but even he grinned, jewel-studded teeth winking in the reflected glare of flame.

  Bloodheart’s charge hit the last Dragons like a hammer. So few, and already wounded and exhausted, half of them went down, crushed beneath the assault. Sturm vanished in a hail of ax blows. The scarred-face woman was torn away, the weight of huge dogs bearing her down. Dragons shouted their prince’s name, but they were all separated now, a few at the door, a few swarmed and surrounded and harried down to the base of the steps, and Sanglant in the center—the eye of the storm—striking on either side like a madman as he hacked his way toward Bloodheart.

  The blow that took him came from behind.

  Surrounded, flanked, engulfed. A screaming Eika had leaped into the gap that opened behind the prince. The creature swung. Sanglant jerked and then collapsed, that fast, like a rock let drop. His body landed hard, sprawling, at the feet of Bloodheart.

  The Dragons were gone, vanished, as if they had never existed. Bloodheart stared down at the prince. He bent and wrenched the helmet from Sanglant’s head to reveal the lax face. He twisted a hand under the gold torque and yanked it off, his white claws cutting the prince’s face and neck. Blood seeped, slowed, stopped.

  Bloodheart raised the gold torque up like a trophy, threw back his head, and howled with triumph.

  Liath shuddered. She could not hear it, yet she could—as if borne miles on the wind, as if carried through the ranks of the refugees who fled through the tunnel, as if cutting straight to her heart.

  But she could not look away.

  Bloodheart lowered the torque but only because he had to beat back the dogs. He hit hard around himself, using both haft and head of his spear, and he growled and cursed at the dogs, driving them back from his prize: Sanglant. The dogs cowered finally and sat back on their haunches, eyes burning yellow with rage, tongues hanging out, muzzles rimed with saliva and blood. The biggest of them snarled, baring its fangs at the Eika chieftain, and he struck it hard on the head with his bare hand; his own claws—a bristling growth at his knuckles—sliced its cheek open. It whined and groveled before him. The others slewed their ugly heads round and stared hungrily at the prince’s body, but they didn’t move in. Yet.

  Soon. Soon he would be theirs.

  Liath leaned in toward the fire as if she could reach and drag the corpse to safety, spare it this desecration. The heat burned away her tears, but it could not burn away her pain. It could not change what she saw and so witnessed.

  Bloodheart shook himself and whirled once, spinning as if he felt the breath of an enemy on his spine. His gaze lifted to the middle distance. Everything shifted; the fire flared before her. She blinked, and he was looking at her.

  “Who are you?” Bloodheart demanded, gaze impossibly fixed on her through the fire. “You trouble me with your spying. Be gone!”

  He spit. She flinched back and was staring at fire, roaring and crackling and consuming, burning, buildings of stone consumed by the dull red of heat and the white-blue searing of flame, smoke thick and oily in her nostrils. She heard the pound of horses galloping past, a haze of distant shouting, a faint horn caught on the wind. But these were no buildings she had ever seen before. These were not the buildings of Gent.

  A figure turned, staring, a male figure, armed with a bronze breastplate and silver-tipped lance. “Liathano,” he said.

  But through him a gateway, his shade itself is the gateway, like stars seen through a gauze of fine linen. A drum sounds like a heartbeat, and a flute draws its music over the air like the rising and falling of waves. She sees through flames, staring out through a fire but a different fire, not her own.

  There on a flat stone sits a man—not a man, perhaps, for his features are exotic and unlike those of any man Liath has seen except there is a passing resemblance to Sanglant, that bronze-tinged skin, the high, broad cheekbones, the beardless face. He is dressed strangely in a long, beaded loincloth so cunningly worked that the pattern of beads describes birds and leaves woven into a tight embrace. Leather sheaths encase his forearms and his calves, covered with gold and green feathers and tiny shells and gold beads and polished stones strung together. A cloak trimmed with white shells and clasped with a jade brooch at his right shoulder drapes to his waist. He twists lengths of fiber—flax, perhaps—along his bare thigh, binding them into rope.

  He looks up, startled, and stares at her but without truly marking her. Behind him, a figure moves, too far away to be plainly seen.

  “Liath.”

  She jumped back and found herself, face singed from heat, staring at the hearth fire
and at Wolfhere, across from her. Tears stood on his cheeks, but only a few. He stared into the flames and finally drew his gaze away as if from down a long distance and murmured, so soft she barely heard him:

  “Aoi.”

  She blinked, bewildered. Who had spoken her name, there at the end, wrenching her out of that final vision?

  “Those were the Lost Ones, Liath.”

  “Who were?” But she could not make sense of the world, of her fingers on her hands, of the snap of fire or the brush of wind on her face.

  Ai, Lady. Sanglant was dead.

  Wolfhere shook himself all over, like a dog—or a wolf—and stood abruptly. “This mystery must be solved later,” he said. “Come, Liath. Our first duty is to the king, and he must have word of this.”

  “Word of what?” To form the question was difficult enough. She could not move. She could not even remember what it was to move.

  “Of the fall of Gent. Of the death of his son.”

  The death of his son.

  “Fed to the dogs,” murmured Wolfhere. He grimaced like a man enduring an arrow’s barbed head being dug out of his thigh.

  Liath fell forward onto her knees and clasped her hands before her. “Ai, Lady,” she whispered. “Hear my pledge. I will never love any man but him.”

  “Reckless words,” said Wolfhere, his tone sharp. “Come, Liath.”

  “Safe words,” she replied bitterly, “since he is now dead. And I will follow the fate others have determined for me.”