Dragon (Vlad Taltos) (24 page)

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Authors: Steven Brust

BOOK: Dragon (Vlad Taltos)
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“Watching them muster?” said Virt.
“Yes. More of them, this time.”
“We getting reinforced?”
“Don’t know.”
We watched some more.
“A lot more of them this time,” I remarked.
“Well,” she said, “if I were the enemy commander, and our assault had failed three times, and I wanted to make a fourth, I don’t think I’d attack with fewer men. But that’s just me.”
“Shut up, Loiosh.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Never mind. Private joke.”
Aelburr came up next to us. “Our side again,” he said. “Napper felt left out last time.”
“Wouldn’t want that,” said Virt.
The enemy began moving up. The juice-drum explained that it would be best if we formed a defensive line. I chose not to argue with the juice-drum.
They came slowly up the gentle part of the slope. Very slowly. I strained my eyes until my vision began to blur, then said,
“Loiosh, are they carrying something odd?”
“I’ve been watching, Boss. They’re all carrying a stick or something, but I don’t know exactly what it is. I’ll go check.”
But he didn’t have to, because Virt’s eyes were better than mine. “What by Deathgate are those things?”
“That’s what I’ve been wondering,” I said.
“You know, it makes me a bit nervous to see an enemy approaching carrying things I don’t recognize. It makes me—wait. I recognize them now. Rascha!”
The corporal came over. “What is it?”
She gestured down the hill. “Javelin shooters.”
“Bloody damn,” said the corporal. Then called, “Sergeant!”
A moment later I heard Crown’s voice say, “Drummer! Beat ‘Kiss the Ground.’”
“That sounds entertaining, Boss,”
said Loiosh as the drum started up with a call I hadn’t heard before.
I turned to ask Virt what it meant, but Virt, and everyone else, was busy lying down on the ground. I made a quick deduction and joined them. When the drum stopped, I said, “Javelin shooters? I don’t like the sound of that.”
“No. You won’t like the effect, either.”
“What—?”
“Here they come!” yelled Rascha, and a mass of javelins flew over our heads, save for a few that landed, point first, in the ground near us. Down the line someone began cursing, very creatively, in a low, even, conversational tone of voice. One of the javelins had fallen about two feet from my right hand, and was sticking out of the ground; it was much smaller than the ones we were throwing, and had feathers near the back, and, at the very end, the wood had a small notch.
“Take a length of green, bendable wood,” said Virt. “Put a string to it, and you can use it to shoot those things a long distance. Longer, even uphill, than we can throw our javelins downhill.”
“A shield would be nice to have along about now,” remarked Aelburr.
“We just going to stand here and take it?” I asked.
“I doubt it. Most likely—”
She was interrupted by the juice-drum. “I recognize that one,” I said.
“‘Time to Be Alive,’” said Virt. “We’re going to charge them.”
“Oh, good,” I said.
“Any other ideas?” she said, standing up but remaining hunched over.
I waited for the order to charge. If I got myself killed doing this, not only would it be annoying to me, but Morrolan would be irritated that I risked myself this way instead of doing my job. There just wasn’t any good reason to be here. I glanced over at Aelburr and found that he was looking at me. I managed part of a smile and turned my eyes back to the enemy.
Crown walked in front of us, about ten feet down the hill, appearing utterly unconcerned by the javelins falling around him. He waved his sword.
“Give them a good yell as you go,” he said. And added, “Charge!”
Well, it was better than just lying there waiting to get a hole punched in me.
So I charged down the hill, sword in hand, and then I was back in my tent with a familiar face looking down at me.
“We were sent help,” said Virt. “Otherwise I don’t think we’d have made it.”
“What sort of help?”
“A platoon of cavalry from one side, three companies of heavy infantry from the other.”
“We grind them up?” I asked.
“No, but we escaped.”
“Everyone all right?”
“Aelburr took a scrape in the shoulder, but no one got it as bad as you. And Napper had himself a fine old time.”
“Oh?”
“He laid about in grand style. I think he took out six of them all by himself.”
“Maybe he’ll get a decoration.”
“Yeah, and we both know what he’d say about that, don’t we?”
I grunted.
She said, “How are you doing?”
“I feel fine.”
“Yeah, well, they’ve got you pretty doped up.”
“Do they? Really? I feel normal.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you could see your eyes rolling around.”
Now that she mentioned it, I was having a bit of trouble focusing. I said, “My back feels wet. I’m not still bleeding, am I?”
“No blood. They got this gunk all over your back, for the burns.”
“Burns? From what?”
Loiosh butted in at that point, saying, “Boss? You okay? You’ve been out cold forever.”
“I think I’m all right. What happened?”
“I don’t remember. You got hit by something. A spell. I must not have seen it coming.”
“That’s two of us, I imagine.”
I said, “Where am I?”
“In camp. Top of Dorian’s Hill.”
“Did we delay their attack?”
“What?”
“The expedition. Burning up their biscuits. Did it—”
“That was days ago, Vlad.”
“Oh. My head is scrambled.”
Virt said, “You got caught by some spell, straight in the back. You don’t remember?”
“I don’t remember anything. Well—”
“Well what?”
“I don’t remember anything that actually happened. I think.”
“You think?”
“Was there a little girl on the battlefield? You know, a child?”
“No, I think I can safely say there wasn’t.”
“Then I can safely say I don’t remember anything about the battle.”
“That’s probably just as well, then.”
I tried to fill in the intervening time. Presently I said, “So their trap didn’t work.”
“So far, at least. And if Sethra or Brigade or whoever was planning a countertrap, that didn’t work either. We’re expecting a night attack, though.”
“Don’t wake me up for it.”
“I won’t.”
“I was kidding.”
“I wasn’t. You’re out of it tonight. Physicker’s orders. He also says, by the way, that you’re to stay on your stomach all night. I hope you can sleep that way.”
“I always enjoy the chance to learn a new skill,” I told her.
“As for fighting,” she said, “we’ll see how you’re doing tomorrow.”
“If there is a tomorrow.”
“Oh, there will be. Somewhere. Now excuse me. The others want to know how you’re doing.”
“I’m touched.”
“If you need help, you can …”
Her voice trailed off. What had she been about to say? See the physicker? Then why didn’t she complete the sentence? Because the physicker wouldn’t be able to do anything more than he’d done? Just how bad was I hurt, anyway?
“Just how bad am I hurt, anyway?”
“You’ll live,” she said.
“That’s good to know. What else can you tell me?”
“Nothing.”
“Okay. Well, thanks for coming by.”
“You’re welcome.”
She left me alone.
“What happened, Loiosh?”
“I don’t know any more than you, Boss. Whatever got you, I caught a bit of it myself. I don’t remember.”
“Are you all right?”
“
I think so.
”
“I don’t like it that I got hit in the back, though. I mean, was I running?”
“Maybe, but I don’t think you’re smart enough for that. More likely you got turned around during the fight. Or—” He broke off.
“Or what?” I said.
“Well, it’s possible it was our own people. I mean, if they were counterattacking, reinforcing us, and using spells …”
“Right.”
Over the next several months, by the way, I started to remember more and more of it. I eventually got a pretty clear memory of getting hit: the feeling of having my muscles contract almost to the point of breaking my own arms and legs; the feeling that my eyes were trying to pop out of my head; the peculiar sensation of every hair on my body suddenly standing up; and watching the battle progress around me as I slowly fell over. But I still have no memory at all of what led up to it—the time between the beginning of the charge and the point where I was hit is completely gone.
All of which is to say that if you want war stories to tell your grandchildren, don’t get hit by sorcery.
There, you ask for a story and you get useful advice out of the deal.
At the time, however, I remembered none of it, and that was scary, too.
“Wish I knew how bad I was hurt, Loiosh.”
“What good would it do to know?”
“I’m scared anyway. It would be nice to know if I had cause to be.”
“
Well, Boss, if we can judge by what remains of your jerkin, your back got hurt pretty bad.
”
I thought that over and decided I didn’t care for it, and I suppose I fell asleep for a while, but I didn’t sleep well; I had all sorts of odd dreams.
A WALK IN THE PARK
“Got it,” said Daymar into my mind and into the silence of Fornia, his honor guard, and his sorcerers all staring at me and waiting for me to do something. Relative silence, I should say; there was still a battle moving toward me. Had Daymar actually succeeded? Pulled the information out of Fornia’s mind, just like that? Well, I had to believe it.
“Let’s have it, then,”
I said.
“Wait!” said Fornia to those of his honor guard who were moving forward to search me. They stopped and looked at him, while he stared at Daymar, then at me, then back at Daymar. He had evidently felt Daymar invade his mind and he had evidently taken it personally. I wondered if that had pushed him over the edge—if he would now order us killed out of hand. Hell, I would have.
The trouble was, that wouldn’t help him any, and would undo the good fortune—from his perspective—of my having arrived here, because, of course, my being here would likely draw Morrolan; so the Easterner’s showing up, while puzzling, and thus worrisome, had fit in so well with his plan to have a face-to-face meeting with Morrolan in the middle of the battle and engage him so he could—Oh,
that’s
what was going on.
“Good work, Daymar,” I said aloud. And to Fornia I said, “You don’t know exactly what it is, either. And you’re only guessing about how to bring it out. That was a possibility that hadn’t occurred to me.”
Ori stared back and forth between me and Fornia, and the other sorcerers and the bodyguards also seemed uncertain about what had just happened and what to do about it. Fornia said, “I suspect killing you here will draw him to me anyway; I think I no longer need you alive.”
Now, that was unfortunate for me.
I said, “Remember, I surrendered.”
“Spies can be executed.”
“I’m in uniform,” I said, remembering from somewhere that that might matter.
“Then you’ll look properly military when—” He broke off, staring over my shoulder.
“Boss, don’t look now, but we’ve got company.”
“Who?”
“Napper.”
“What?”
In spite of his warning, I looked. And there, about fifty yards away, was Napper, sauntering up the hill, come, no doubt, to get in on the action. Did this change anything? Well, yeah, it did change one thing—it put my back to Ori, and that caused a panic that, I suppose, was inevitable after what I’d been through the day before, so I spun back and almost set off a melee right there. I can’t believe, with Napper showing up right then, that Fornia would have done anything except have us killed at once if there hadn’t been sudden cries from the honor guard—Morrolan’s band was on the verge of breaking through—thus giving him other things to think about than this pesky Easterner and his odd friends.
He addressed those of his guard who had been about to bind and search me, and said, “Guard them, all of them. Kill them the instant they do anything suspicious,” then he turned back to his war.
That was good. Twice in two days would have been uncalled-for, even if I lived through it.
I almost hadn’t lived through it the first time. I even dreamed
that I didn’t. I half remember several of the dreams, but in one that I remember most of I was sent over Deathgate Falls, and in the Halls of Judgment (which looked a lot different in my dream than they did when I’d actually been there) the Gods all thought it was the greatest joke in the world that I was asking to be admitted, and in the confusion of the dream I tried to explain that I deserved to be admitted as a Dragon, and they just couldn’t stop laughing. It sounds funny to tell, but I woke up in the middle of the night in a sweat, breathing hard, and shaking.
I got out of bed because I suddenly couldn’t stand to be lying still. I walked out into the quiet of the camp; the mountain air was cold on my chest, but felt good on my back, which was hot, like I had a localized fever.
“Where are you going, Boss?”
“I’m not sure. I need to walk.”
“The physicker’s tent is this way.”
“I’ve gotten plenty of physic.”
I slipped past the pickets, almost out of habit.
“Am I going the right way, Loiosh?”
“What do you mean, Boss? You’re not heading toward the enemy, but you’re going downhill.”
“That’s what I meant. I wouldn’t want to present myself to the enemy just yet.”
“Then where are we going? Are we finally getting out of here like sensible people?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Because if we are, you’ve forgotten a few things.”
I made my way down into the darkness, my eyes straining to pick out a path from the bits of light from distant campfires. Loiosh landed on my shoulder.
“Ouch.”
“Sorry, Boss. You should have a jerkin on.”
He was probably right. I had no jerkin, no cloak, no boots, no sword, Spellbreaker was back next to my bed, and the only weapons I carried were two paper-thin throwing knives concealed
in the seams of my trousers. I hadn’t been out of doors this naked since I joined the Jhereg, and there was something exhilaratingly spooky about it. It was a cleaner fear than what I’d felt in battle, and the pain of stepping on rocks with my bare feet was clean, too, and so was the cold. I hadn’t realized how much I needed to feel clean.
I slipped past another line of pickets, effortlessly, and for a while I entertained the illusion that I was the wind itself, that I didn’t feel the cold, rather I
was
the cold, and none could see where I went, but they would feel me pass by a prickling of the hairs on their necks. I was naked but invisible, helpless but omnipotent, and I was lost in the world I all but owned. Certainly, it was false; in the streets of Adrilankha I owned the world, but this was a desert filled with soldiers; the feeling was different, and illusory, but it was there. I made no sound, and, had anyone been looking, I don’t think he’d have seen more than my breath in the night air. My awareness of those around me came, above all, from the faint sounds of breathing, and I knew that Loiosh, as silent as I, was above me in the night, in the wind.
A single bush, like a sentry, waves to say with a laugh that it, at least, sees me, and I wave back though my arm doesn’t move; a pebble between my toes is a burden which I reject, so it rolls away in search of its own reason for being; my time is filled with empty space, and my space with empty time, and my legs can’t move so I must float float float through the armies of the world, clashing forever on the battlefield of my mind where all is in motion and nothing moves and the Cycle looms overhead, and at its top is the Dragon, glaring, plotting, scheming, protecting its young by devouring the souls who are cast loose to roam the night and come to me for protection that I cannot give, for I am in no place but everywhere, and there is no end to the night that is me.
How long I walked, or where, I don’t know; nor do I know how far my mind wandered on a journey of its own, but somewhere in the night real thoughts returned, and practical matters
impinged on my consciousness and brought me a few steps closer to home.
I found that I was thinking, for example, about just how big Morrolan’s army was. My own unit—I couldn’t help thinking of it that way—was one company out of scores in one brigade out of dozens. I passed tent after tent, all the same, all full of Dragons and Dzur and Teckla who would be going out the next day to cut and hack at Dragons and Dzur and Teckla on the other side. I walked through the camps as one might travel in a dream, apart from it all, and it came to me that the power I held as a Jhereg was nothing to the power of a Dragonlord, who could, on a whim, command so many to do so much. If I had such power, how would I use it? And what would it do to me? Did that explain why Morrolan was the way he was? There are stories that, in his youth during the Interregnum, he had entire villages put to the sword in sacrifice to the Demon Goddess that she might grant him knowledge of the Elder Sorcery. If the stories were true, did I now understand why? Was it that, having such power, he used it merely because he could? And would I be the same way, given the chance?
I came to the river and turned north, walking by still more camps, and supplies, and pickets to whom I was invisible. That was my own power, and I was using it, I suppose, because I could, and maybe there was my answer. To my right were several large pavilions, some with lights showing within. Perhaps Morrolan and Sethra were meeting even now to plan the destiny of the thousands assembled here—because they could.
And what of Virt, and Napper, and Aelburr? They were all volunteers, professional soldiers, who fought—why? Because if they died bravely they would receive high status in the Paths of the Dead? Or have a chance to be reincarnated as a commander who could lead others into the sorts of battles that led to their own deaths? That didn’t account for it, but I couldn’t get any closer.
None of my answers satisfied me.
I stepped out into the river, just a few feet, and felt the bitter current against my legs and the sand between my toes. I stood there, alone amongst thousands, and only then became aware that my knees were trembling, and that I felt light-headed, and that my arms were without strength. Whatever the sorcery had done to my mind, which was, apparently, a great deal, it had also taken a lot out of me physically. I wondered if I’d be able to fight the next day. I began to shiver uncontrollably, but I stayed where I was. It would be wonderfully ironic if I passed out from weakness and drowned in two feet of water.
“You have any answers, Loiosh?”
“To what, Boss?”
“To why Dragons are the way they are.”
“That’s easy, Boss: They can’t help it.”
Well, there was maybe something to that, but it was hardly satisfying. When I thought about it, the differences in character among Morrolan and Aliera and Virt and Napper, to pick four, were greater than the similarities. What was the common thread? Put that way, the answer was obvious: Once having decided on a course, motivated by greed, or by anger, or by the highest moral outrage, they attacked with a ruthlessness that would excite envy—or disgust—in a hardened Jhereg operative. I tried to decide if this were inherently a bad thing, and I could come to no conclusion. Fortunately, no conclusion was demanded of me.
I did, however, come to two other conclusions. The first being that, if one were forced into the service of a Dragonlord, one was better off serving a Dragonlord who was better at being ruthless than the other Dragonlord. The second being that the river was bloody damned cold, and that it was surpassing stupid for me to be standing in it when I hardly had the strength to remain upright.
“I bid you a pleasant evening, Lord Taltos.”
The voice came out of nowhere, but I must have subconsciously
known there was someone around, because it didn’t startle me.
“Who is it?”
I turned around. At first I couldn’t see her, but then she came up to the edge of the water and nodded to me, and then I recognized her. It took me a moment to reconstruct where I had met her before, but it came back to me at last.
“You’re the Necromancer,” I said.
“What are you doing?” she asked me.
I considered the question carefully, then said, “Dreamwalking, I think.”
Her head tilted. She was very, very thin, wispy, and her skin was so pale it almost glowed against the darkness and against the black of her garments. “I didn’t know Easterners did that,” she said.
“Neither did I.”
“I sense that you’ve been injured.”
I turned enough to show her my back, then faced her again.
“I understand,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“I understand why you’re dreamwalking.”
“Ah. But I’m really here, aren’t I?”
“How do you mean that?”
Crap. Even while dreamwalking there was only so much mysticism I could take. I said, “I mean that if I drop dead I’ll be really dead, and my body will be found here in the morning.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. Your body will actually float downriver from here, at least as far as the next bend. If you climb up on the shore—”
I laughed, probably more than it was worth.
“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”
“Did what?” she said.
“Made me laugh. Brought me back.”
“Oh. Well, yes. You may have to fight tomorrow.”
“Not the way I’m feeling now.”
“Oh? Oh, of course. You were hit hard, weren’t you? Come here for a moment.”
I did, walking up to the bank until only my ankles were in the river, and she reached out and cradled my face in her hands. Her hands were very, very cold, and I tried not to think about what was touching me. I looked into her eyes, and it seemed she was a long way away, speaking to me from another world. I got the sense that speech for her required effort; she didn’t think in words the way I did, she probably thought in—no, I didn’t want to consider what forms her thoughts might take; I probably couldn’t understand them anyway.

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