Battledragon (58 page)

At the same time the witches organized an immense effort to destroy all traces of the enemy's secret weapon. The pieces of the metal tubes were collected on carts and thrown into the deepest parts of the Inland Sea.

The stone balls were more of a problem, and in the end they were left, a puzzling array of perfectly spherical, smooth boulders scattered across the plain of Broken Stones. In time the legends about them would grow and magnify to include a cast of saints, who fought monsters from out of the southern forest and turned them into big stone balls.

An investigation of the Isle of the Bone, once the volcano had quietened again, showed that no one else had survived. All the wizard's craftsmen had perished, along with the trolls and slaves in the foundry.

Word of the weapons, however, would be taken back to the lands of Czardha, Kassim, and the Bakan coast. The men of the Argonath legions would also carry away the news. All this posed a continued threat, for clever men were spread across the world, and spurred by such stories they might begin to recreate the fire tubes of Heruta.

The witches worked to confabulate the recent battle. With artful rumor and some wit, they turned the fire weapons into living monsters in the minds of most of the men. There were so many wild stories about the things that the reality was almost tedious and unbelievably flat. Serpents that spat balls of stone into the sky was the most common belief by then, although there was another story about owls, giant birds that seized the stone balls in the sky and dropped them on the legions. All anyone could be certain of was that whatever the weapons had been they were deadly because the expeditionary force from the Empire of the Rose was coming home with appalling losses. Less than half the initial force would ever return to their homelands, and in the case of the Czardhans, there were but eleven surviving knights for the Count Felk-Habren to command for the return trip home.

In time a relief force from Og Bogon reached the legion forces, having marched over the mountains on the old roads. The Argonathi engineers, with a large force of former Kraheen warriors at their disposal, were busily improving the roads to the frontiers.

The legions gathered themselves up and then began the trek to the east, returning over the mountains and across the waist of the continent to Sogosh. It was a long march and took several months.

Along the way they stopped at Koubha to report to the great King Choulaput. The king was greatly distressed by the news of the loss of the broketail dragon and dragoneer Relkin. He proclaimed a national day of mourning in their names and ordered statues to be carved of them and set up in the palace.

But at last, two years since they'd first set out on the march to the interior, the legions embarked at Sogosh and started the long voyage home. By then, of course, Lessis, accompanied by Lagdalen, had long since reached Marneri. Lagdalen rejoined her family, finding Hollein Kesepton already there after the success of his diplomatic mission on the southern coast of Eigo. Lessis had gone on at once aboard the frigate
Lyre
, bound for Andiquant and a grim interview with the emperor. Their losses had been terribly heavy, but they had destroyed the enemy's weapon and halted, for a while, the spread of such things. They would have to remain vigilant, however, for as they had seen, the use of such weapons would quickly change the nature of war.

All the way across die Bright Sea, Lessis kept to herself, either in her cabin, or walking on the quarterdeck alone. She did not dine with the captain or anyone else. The packet with all the names of the casualties was heavy. The emperor would be shaken by these losses. Some regiments were but a tenth of what they'd been when they set out. In some ways, Lessis thought, it was a pity she'd survived the destruction of Heruta.

And still Lessis's heart felt the heaviest when she thought of a particular pair of casualties, a certain battledragon and a young dragoneer with whom her life, and the fate of the entire empire, had been much entangled. Never in all the five centuries of her life had she felt more inclined to beg for the release of death. At the very least she wanted to retire after this mission.

She would go to Valmes. It had been years since she had lived in her own home. She would go to Valmes and pick apples and spend her time in peaceful meditation. Perhaps she would retire into the mystic. Perhaps she would be able to persuade young Lagdalen to come to the Isles and undergo the training for a witch. Whatever she did, she wanted to have plenty of time for her garden. It would be in ruins by now, she imagined, unless her neighbors had been kind and intervened. She could barely remember when she'd last spent more than a week in Valmes. A cell in Andiquant when she was lucky, and a rock for a pillow when she was not, had been her lot for years. She wondered how the old pear tree in the garden had done this year. And the delphiniums, did they still thrive on the walk by the front door? She prayed they did, she would need to see them after she'd endured this meeting with the emperor. The delphiniums and then the roses, and then to eat a pear, that's what she would do.

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