Dragons of War (25 page)

"Just a minute or two. You'd better get out of here."

Relkin looked back to the door of the warehouse.

"Thanks," he said, and he took the reins on Snapper and led him out to the street.

Relkin was only just in time. A posse of five Dianines was hurrying forward to seize him. Relkin pointed Snapper in their direction and then jabbed the cantankerous mule in the haunch with his dirk.

Snapper lurched forward with a harsh bray and lashed out with his hind hooves. Relkin had ducked and was already sprinting away in the opposite direction, straight up the hill toward the fort.

Old Snapper was not one to pass up an opportunity to avenge himself on human beings, and the Dianines were forced to scatter in front of his hooves and teeth, giving Relkin a precious twenty-yard lead on the pursuit.

Sitting in the stocks outside the courthouse, Jak tried to be brave while he waited for his sentence to be carried out. He was due to be lashed within the hour.

Three little boys and a girl who was rather older came by in a tight little group. They were clad in black like everyone else. They stood in front of him in a solemn little line.

"You will have to be stoned to death," said one of the little boys.

"The stone sellers will have a big day," said the girl.

"Why is that, Ferina?" said the boy that had spoken first.

"Because this is a dragonboy, Kerik. Dragonboys are notorious thieves."

The boys all stared at him with fierce little eyes.

"Thieves are bad people."

"Who must be killed."

"We will help them stone you."

Jak mumbled that he hadn't stolen anything. That he wasn't even charged with stealing, but only with having blasphemed against the Dian.

"You're lying. I bet you are a thief," said the girl, who already had the thin-lipped look of the adult Dianines.

"Look, I'm not from your town, I'm a dragoneer. I serve the empire."

"We know that, silly," said the girl, "but all the men in the fort are thieves. That's what my father says."

Jak protested that the so-called thieves had just ended the menace of Bleuse Crall.

"So what?" said one of the boys.

"So, doesn't that rate a little gratitude?"

"There can be no gratitude to those who do not follow the Dian, thus it is written," said the boy with a peculiar blank-eyed stare.

"Where is this written? I have never heard of this before."

"It is written in the Great Book of Dian. If you have not heard of it, then you must be a sinful person," said the girl, staring at him with angry eyes.

"You people don't make sense." Jak's head was swimming. He felt terribly alone and afraid, and angry, too.

"Only the word of the Dian can be listened to. Come, boys." The girl pulled her smaller companions away from him. With many backward looks, they went on across the square and out of sight.

Soon after that, the judges and the men known as "the Instruments of the Dian" came out. Two burly men, they seized up the boy from the stocks and prepared him for flogging.

A crowd was quickly gathering, and a man with an immense red nose took charge of the proceedings.

"Now, fellow servants of the Dian, we must once again contemplate the works of evil. Wherever callow youth be allowed its head, it will demand license. Freedom for such youth will cause abuse! The Dian demands discipline!

"Again and again, we see the mark of laxness and the evil of covetousness among the unfaithful who visit our holy town. Again and again we are called upon to mete out the justice of the discipline of the Dian."

"Use discipline!" shouted the crowd.

"Here we have an example of the worst sort, a drunkard, a thief."

"Use discipline. Stone him to death."

"Nay, brethren, he shall not be stoned to death. He is too young for that. He shall merely be flogged and kept in the jail. There he will be given the chance to repent and accept the Dian in his heart. If he does not repent, then he shall be flogged again. If he still resists the truth, then the stone sellers will be sent out."

"Shall anyone be stoned to death today?" cried a disappointed voice.

"Why do you ask, pray?"

"The stone sellers are waiting. The people itch to purge themselves of the wicked."

"Then we shall stone to death the sailor."

A whistle brought several men into the street carrying boxes filled with smooth, polished stones that they began selling to the crowd.

"Get your stones here," they cried, and they did a brisk business.

Groans of disappointment went up from the crowd when they saw the Instruments lifting the boy onto the whipping rack. Poor little Jak was seized up to the grating, and one of the Instruments took out the rods of correction. The Instruments whistled the rods in the air, and the man in the red nose opened his mouth to order the chastisement to begin.

He was stopped by a cornet blast, a silver shriek that cut through the crowd like a red-hot knife through butter.

"Hold!" came a determined voice. "Whoever strikes that boy will die in the next instant." To emphasize the point, an arrow sank into the left upright of the stocks.

To the shocked amazement of the crowd, dragonboys were standing on the roof of the courthouse. They had those wicked little Cunfshon bows trained on the Instruments.

The burly men saw those bows and lowered their rods.

"Unbelievers!" shrieked someone in the rear of the crowd.

"Kill the unbelievers!" bellowed others. A stone arched upward and clattered off the roof of the courthouse.

"Kill, kill, kill," chanted the crowd in a paroxysm of rage. It looked as if they would not hold back. They would slaughter the unfaithful who were among them. There were men tearing up the stairs toward the roof of the courthouse.

Then there came more cornets, and the sound of heavy footfalls. In fact, it sounded as if a herd of cattle was stampeding toward them.

A chorus of screams went up as tall figures with long necks and heads in grotesque helmets came into view. Within moments the crowd of Dianines was melting away in terror, leaving only the judge and a handful of utter fanatics to confront ten great battledragons with their collective dander very much up. They had great swords in hand, sloped back on their shoulders, shining in the sun as they rolled into the plaza with a long, loping step.

"Get out of the way," said the leading dragon, a greenish brown beast with a curiously bent and broken looking tail.

"How dare you come here like this?" began the judge.

Another tail, this one green, looped down and picked the judge up around the stomach. He gave a wail of fright as a green dragon, just a little smaller than the others, set him down to one side.

"You would be foolish to stand in our way, red-nosed man," she said.

A gigantic beast of an orange shade of ocher thrust forward to the whipping post, took up the chains in his huge forehands, and snapped them as if they were string.

"This is an outrage," shrieked the red-nosed one. "You will be hunted down, all of you. You cannot take that youth. He is a convicted felon and must be punished."

The orange-brown beast had put the boy up on his shoulder. He took a long and distinctly ominous stride toward the judge and the group of Dianine elders standing behind him.

They quailed in their shoes.

The dragon with the broken tail put out a restraining hand to the orange-brown giant's massive shoulder.

"The boy lives. He seems unhurt."

"Did they hurt you, boy?" said big Rusp.

"No, Rusp, they didn't have time to."

Rusp swung his big head back toward the Dianine elders.

"But they wanted to hurt my dragonboy."

The judge, despite his terror, would not give ground.

"That boy has been convicted."

Another youth, a familiar one, had appeared among the dragons.

"Sure he's been convicted, but tell Rusp what he's been convicted of, why don't you."

The judge swallowed, "You are an escaped felon, too. You must be put under arrest and sentenced."

Relkin spat on the ground in front of the judge.

"That for your idea of justice. You have no jurisdiction over either me or young Jak."

The judge's face was a deathly white from repressed fury.

"We go now," said the broken-tailed dragon.

"Why don't we kill them?" said another dragon, this one a purple monster that even had wings, folded back along its huge body.

"It is against covenant. We do not kill them," said the broken-tailed one.

A surly faced dragonboy stood close to the judge and slapped a two-foot dirk against his palm.

"Lucky for you," he said with a menacing grin. "If you'd harmed him, they'd have leveled this town. If you'd killed him, well, I don't think the covenant would have stopped them."

The judge expelled his breath with a hiss.

"This is military mutiny. You will all hang."

More cornets were blowing, and a dozen riders came surging into the plaza at a gallop. They pulled up in front of the stocks where the dragons loomed over the judge and the Dianine elders.

Captain Eads sat the saddle with an expression of cold anger on his face.

"Judge Penbar, I don't know what you were thinking of doing, but you have no legal right to punish anyone under my command. You may arrest them, but at that point you must communicate to me that you have done so and on what charges they have been detained. All the men, boys, and dragons under my command are ruled by military discipline, and that is only conducted through the legion courts. I hope you understand me."

Rorker Eads was famous in his generation of officers for his fierce temper. He was obviously very close to losing it.

The judge of the Dianines would not budge.

"This is an outrage, Captain. You will be cashiered for this! I will see you hanged, sir!"

Eads looked dangerously close to drawing steel on the judge. Troop Leader Croel let his horse loose a moment to nudge the captain's and distract him a moment. With a great effort, Eads pulled himself back from the brink.

"You, sir," he snapped, "are a fanatic and a murderer. Watch what you do, because there will be military discipline imposed here, and then you will find youself on the chair before real judges."

"How dare you!" roared the judge. The other chief Dianines turned purple with rage.

Eads spurred past and drew up beside the broketail dragon's imposing bulk.

"Dragoneer Relkin, you are making a habit of getting into trouble. This must stop. Return to the fort. This evening, you will report to my office. I will want a full explanation for this, do you understand?"

Relkin nodded, "Yes, sir." Before Eads turned away, though, Relkin spoke up again.

"Sir, request opportunity to speak, sir!"

"Speak, Dragoneer!"

"There was a sailor who was arrested with us. He did nothing wrong, no crime, except to sit on the dock and talk to me while I ate my lunch. That's not justice, sir!"

"Indeed, not as I understand it."

Eads's face grew thunderous again.

"What are the charges against this sailor?" he demanded from the judge.

"He has blasphemed against the Dian. He was overheard by a true believer who reported the crime."

"What did he say exactly?"

The judge turned to the elders behind him.

"He claimed that the Dian was only an aspect of the Cunfshon goddess."

"Well," said Eads, "isn't that the truth of the matter?"

"Most recent exegesis has shown that this is not the truth. The Dian is a perfection, an elemental that rises beyond such matters as gender and duality."

Eads cocked an eyebrow.

"I think you better take that up with the witches, Judge, not with me. As far as I'm concerned, the sailor's perfectly correct. What was his punishment to be?"

"Ah," said the judge. "He had been found guilty of the foulest crime, and so he was sentenced to stoning."

Eads rocked back in the saddle. "You were going to stone a man to death for saying what virtually any reasonable person would agree with?"

"Our recent exegesis has shown that beyond any doubt, stoning is the best response to such wickedness."

"Silence. You have come perilously close to committing murder under the laws of Kenor. By the authority vested in me by the legion command in Dalhousie, I will override this sentence."

Captain Eads turned to Lieutenant Grass of the Talion light horse.

"Free the sailor; bring him to the fort to testify."

Eads swung his hand over his head.

"We will now return to the fort. There will be no destruction of property, no further hostilities. Am I understood?"

Ten pairs of big dragon eyes looked to him. They were still aroused and quite eager to level this town where there was no beer and where someone had dared to threaten a dragonboy for no good reason. Jaws clacked, but discipline retained its hold and after a long moment they turned about and started away, dragonboys bouncing along beside them.

The sun was sinking behind Black Fell by the time the rescue party marched back into the little fort. The dragons were generally elated and went back to their stalls with much cheerful banter and mock aggression.

Captain Eads went to his office at once to compose a message for General Wegan in Dalhousie and had it sent immediately, the rider thundering out at a gallop for the Darkmon Breaks.

A deputation from the town merchants arrived some moments later to lodge a vehement protest. They demanded that the "escaped prisoners" be returned to the justice of the town and its chosen judicial officials.

Eads listened to them for a while and then silenced them by producing a copy of the
Laws of the Land of Kenor
. To cap it off, he brought out a dog-eared copy of the
Legion Manual of Control and Discipline
.

"As you gentlemen are well aware, the Laws of the Land do not give township judges powers of life and death except in cases of murder, and even then there must be a fair trial."

"This is Kohon Town, Captain," they replied.