Dragons of War (12 page)

"What can be done, Lord Burly?"

"Leave me to think about this problem overnight, child. Return tomorrow at noon, and I will give you an answer. This requires careful contemplation."

Lagdalen thanked the old lord chamberlain at his door and took the stairs down three floors. Then she turned right in the grand corridor and went down to the entrance to her own family's apartments: a series of rooms, large and small that held three generations of the Tarchos of Marneri and their cousins the Dimici, who lived with them.

In the nursery she found her daughter, Laminna, fast asleep in her cradle. Two other cradles were rocking nearby, with Dimici babes born in the past year. The nursemaids, Wessary and Illin, looked up with fond smiles at the sight of Lagdalen.

After a few moments to just look at her baby and then a quick conversation with Wessie, Lagdalen went on, pausing only to pat little Dur, Wessy's three-year-old boy, on the head at the doorway.

In the salon she found her mother, Lacustra, at work with the cook, planning the menu of a dinner for ten guests that would be held in a week's time. It was to be in honor of Tommaso's twentieth year of service in the Tower of Guard.

"Mother," said Lagdalen with a little curtsy.

"My child, we have not seen you for days. How are you?"

"Well, Mother, perfectly well. But busy, terribly busy."

"And so young. It is a shame. You should be living for your child and your husband. Instead you advise the queen. Barely into your majority, and you advise the queen. Who would've heard of such a thing?"

Who, indeed, thought Lagdalen.

"It was not my choice, Mother. I never asked for this."

"How many times have I heard you say that!" Lacustra turned to the cook. "We will have the puree of turnips I think. The lamb is to be roasted without garlic, and we will want a fresh-mint sauce."

"Cream in the puree, lady?"

"No, Cook, by the goddess's sacred thighs, I swear sometimes you just want to fatten us all up for market. Use a little oil, of course, but no cream; it's too heavy."

"As you wish, lady."

Lacustra suddenly remembered something. "Lagdalen, my dearest, there is a message scroll for you. It came earlier today, from Kenor, I believe."

Lagdalen had been on her way to the great kitchen that served the entire apartment, but she turned on her heel, all thought of lifting a couple of Cook's fine sweet biscuits from the jar temporarily abandoned.

"Where is it, Mother?"

"Ah, now where did I put it? I think it is in the library, on the reader by the window."

Lagdalen swept into the library, which was empty and dark. She lit the lamp and found a short scroll sitting on the reader. It was a military scroll, and as she expected, there was a stamp from Fort Dalhousie. It was the sort of scroll used for short messages, such as those that recalled men to their regiments or announced illnesses and deaths.

It had to be from Relkin. Instinctively she knew that it meant her dragonboy friend was in trouble. She cut the seal, opened it, and found a barely literate message scrawled therein.

It took a couple of takes before she was sure she understood it. To escape a trial for murder and a likely hanging, Relkin had deserted along with two of the legion's best dragons. All three had swum the Argo and headed north into Tunina. She was implored to come to their aid. The message was signed "Swane and Mono. 109th Marneri Dragons."

Lagdalen rolled the scroll shut, and then pushed herself to her feet and headed for the front entrance. Her husband, Captain Hollein Kesepton, would want to hear this news.

The fugitives stumbled through the wet woods of summer, climbing the westernmost foothills of Mt. Ulmo. After two weeks they were gaunt and lean, their muscles hardened by constant travel, their bellies chronically empty.

Indeed, hunting the deer and elk of the mountains of Tunina had proved vastly more difficult than the Purple Green had imagined. Only once, in fact, had Relkin actually brought down a doe, with an arrow through the chest, that killed her instantly as she drank by a stream.

He took a haunch for his supper. The dragons barely stilled their hunger with the rest of her. As always, they awoke hungry to no breakfast.

Once they had come upon the remains of a far larger kill. Great bones cracked, for their marrow littered a clearing. The gnawed skull of a bull aurochs gave them the identity of the victim. The ground was heavily trampled, and many creatures had scavenged the kill that was more than a week old. Still, Bazil was hopeful. It had the feel of dragon kill. Only a flying dragon could attack and devour a mighty aurochs. These wild cattle stood as tall as a man and weighed more than a ton apiece. Something told the broketail dragon that High Wings, his lovely green dragoness, was in the vicinity.

They climbed into the belt of high meadows, where two years before, Bazil and the Purple Green had fought their duel for the dragoness. As they climbed, the Purple Green fell into a morose silence.

Around them the lands of the Argo were visible through breaks in the trees. The river wound sinuously through the highlands to the east, while to the south, the land opened out into the great vale of Dalhousie. There, the Dally and the Tuala met beneath the green eaves of the forest of Valur, a name of antique legend, where once the ancient kings of Veronath were wont to hunt. In the day, they hunted boars, in the night, women.

The hemlock forest had thinned and been replaced by woods of ash and birch, with mountain beech and hickory and pine. The sun was able to penetrate these woods and the traveling was warm work. But after the stifling cool gloom of the hemlock forest in the lower lands, they were all glad for the sight of the sky.

Shortly before nightfall, Relkin spotted something wheeling high in the sky, far to the east of them, above central Tunina. He gave a great cry and pointed, and the dragons craned their long necks and stared off in that direction.

" 'Tis not she," said the Purple Green, "too small."

There was a silence. Then Bazil spoke up.

"It is Braner, the young male. Mine."

"He flies well for one with wyvern in his parentage."

"Indeed he does. In this he goes far beyond his old sire. Mmmm. I wonder if he swims?"

"Unlikely, they have lived their lives in Dragon Home. The water there is not for swimming; it is all frozen into ice."

The distant dragon spiraled down into the distant forest and was lost in the gloom. The dragons remained frozen in place, their eyes fixed on that distant spot in the gloom where they had last seen the bronze body of Braner.

Relkin busied himself building a fire. He had some wild turnips, a dozen half-ripe, purple tops. He roasted them in the hot coals of the fire. They were bitter but edible, and they were all they had, so he ate several before lying down to sleep. His stomach churned frenziedly as it digested the turnips, but he barely noticed and was quickly asleep.

The dragons now furtively edged over and tried the turnips.

"Disgusting," muttered the Purple Green.

"Exactly my thought. Boy did not say they were good to eat, only that they could be eaten."

"Not by this dragon."

"We find food soon. She is still here."

The dragons sat long into the night, their stomachs tightening, but their hearts set afire by the thought of the dragoness nearby. Warring emotions churned within each great dragon heart.

Only two years before, they had fought for the female.

Now, seasoned by a year in the legion himself, the Purple Green understood the mechanics of Bazil's inevitable victory over him. He, too, knew how to wield a dragonsword now.

"If we were to meet again over the green High Wings, it would not go so easy for you this time, my Broketail friend."

Bazil grunted. "You have gained skill with the dragonsword, my wild friend. And you are very strong." He was diplomatic.

The Purple Green grunted. "I saw you beat Burthong, Broketail. Burthong was too fast for me; he almost as fast as leatherback dragon."

"By the breath of the ancients, that is true."

"But it was not just swordplay that you used. I remember one blow from a fist."

Bazil whistled. "You were trying to bite my neck. I had no choice."

The Purple Green strangled a horse again, a sound that carried in the night air and caused predator and prey alike to raise their heads in wonder on the slope of Mt. Ulmo. Some coyotes caught the scent of the dragons and the roasted turnips, and sat back and howled the news to the world around them.

Wolves in the distant forest of Tunina answered them, first one pack quite close by and then a much larger pack farther away. For a while the howling seemed to echo off the night sky, warning all who could hear, that terrible creatures from the ancient world were abroad in the forests.

At last the howling died away. The winds seethed through the branches, and the moon rose in the west; a crescent, bright silver.

The dragons tossed and turned in unhappy sleep.

Relkin awoke at dawn, stoked up the fire, and cooked the remainder of the little purple-top turnips. They were a disagreeable way to start the day, but they were better than nothing, especially after the semi-starvation of the past several days.

Once more they set off, now trending westward, circling around Mt. Ulmo's crown, heading for the southeastern slopes. As they went, Relkin began to have the feeling that he was being watched. Often he turned around to catch sight of that that observed them, but found nothing. It was an uncanny feeling, and one that would not go away. Briefly he confided to the dragons, and they all kept a careful lookout from then on.

About an hour after noon, they came on the trail of a small group of elk. Relkin estimated three adult females and several smaller animals, yearlings, and fauns.

They diverged, the dragons swinging out to either side, Relkin pressing forward, cautiously, with his bow cocked and ready.

The dragons crept as quietly as possible through the woods on either side of the grazing elk, who had gone out onto a long, narrow meadow that curved around the slope, skirting a pine forest on one side and a birch forest on the other.

The elk worked the center of the meadow. Because the wind was blowing directly down the length of the meadow, they did not sense the dragons lurking on either side.

At length the Purple Green had worked himself close to the margin of the scrubby birch woods. Hidden in a clump of mountain laurel, he was barely a hundred paces from the elk, and they were drifting his way. Anxiously he scanned the woods on the far side. Where was the Broketail? Was he in place? And then came the signal, a single flash from an exposed sword tip. Bazil was on the far side. The wind was blowing across the meadow from left to right; neither dragon was upwind of the elk yet.

The Purple Green knew that the boy would be back at the point where the meadow broke open, in a good spot, waiting to shoot.

All was ready. The Purple Green waited, growing more and more tense by the minute. His belly rumbled within him, reinforcing the need for this kill. Patience was difficult. His pattern of hunting had hardly been the patient kind, when he was a flying predator. He roamed the skies above the north-land, and fell on whatever he saw and devoured it. Thus it had always been for dragonkind.

Now he waited, like some enormous cat, his great dark eyes fixed on the elk as they grazed slowly, ever so slowly, toward him. Every so often they would look up, or annoyed by the flies, they would duck their heads to dislodge a tormentor. Still they did not see the peril. The four-ton beast lurking in the mountain laurel was invisible to them, and they were in line against the wind. They were within fifty paces. The Purple Green readied himself.

Then the wind began to shift. He sensed it at once. The mountain laurel shivered, so did the birch trees. Then came another gust, and the elk raised their heads as one. Despair gripped the Purple Green. He was too far. There was no chance of pouncing on one of those fat, luscious elk.

In the old days he would have eaten two or three of them, just by himself. Now he would be incredibly lucky to get in range of any of them. With luck, the boy would get a good shot.

He gave his great hunting cry, launched himself out of concealment, and sprang toward the elk. He bound forward on all four legs, his huge feet digging for purchase in the meadow soil and scattering divots and gravel behind him.

For a moment the elk stared at this terrifying apparition from the ancient era when reptiles ruled the world, long before creatures like elk and lions, bears and men ever strode beneath the sun. Then the elk turned as one and sprang lightly away across the meadow, toward the distant trees. They sprang very swiftly, indeed, and soon distanced the wild drake. However, they did so in the direction of the pine forest on the opposite side of the meadow. The Purple Green gave an exultant roar even as the impetus went out of his charge and his great body began to slow.

The elk bounded on, intending to vanish into the pine trees, in complete ignorance of the trap.

However, for some reason known only to themselves, they began to angle toward a gap between the trees some two hundred paces to the right of Bazil's hiding place. The trap would not work unless he moved, and if he moved the elk would see him too soon. There was nothing to be done about it, Bazil was forced to move, bursting from concealment, Ecator in his hand, and charging at the elk.

The bounding mammals skidded to a halt so abrupt that some of them fell down in their terror. Divots were kicked up from the meadow in the frantic confusion, and they turned to their right and bounded away, down into the open length of the meadow, directly away from where Relkin waited, arrow notched, a groan of frustration dying in his throat.

He stood up and trudged onto the meadow. "So much for that!" He shouted at the Purple Green, who shot him a defiant, angry look. Bazil drew up short, slowing to a glum sort of lumber. He stopped and emitted a groan of disappointment. The Purple Green sank his sword into the ground and squatted down on his immense haunches.