Dragons of War (35 page)

Best of all from Eads's point of view, his own casualties had been light, six dead, a dozen wounded. The dragons were virtually unscathed except for an arrow here and there. The Purple Green had taken a slashing wound on one enormous leg, and Alsebra had a stab wound in her right forearm, but neither would be put out of action. Arrows rarely penetrated all the way through a dragon's thick hide.

Eads ordered the piled-up Baguti bodies set afire. Brush was pulled out, piled up high, and set aflame. Then they threw the bodies onto the flames and left a huge smoldering funeral pyre by the side of the ford.

They rode up the path and went on upriver into the country of the Kalens Valley.

They marched upriver singing the Kenor song, their hearts uplifted by their victory. At the bottom of the Lion's Roar, they came upon the rear guard of the refugees. All the way up the rapids the refugees were stretched out, struggling with bags and children. Possessions, prized until this moment of truth, when they had to be carried on their owner's backs, were discarded all along the way. Their boats likewise were abandoned at the bottom of the rapids.

From here on they would have to march, men, women, and children, in a desperate race for the Malgun Mountains, which lay more than a hundred miles to the east.

Eads had been in deep conversation with Bowchief Starter, who knew the land well, having hunted along the Kalens in his youth. Eads needed a place where he could make a stand. They had to buy some time to allow the refugee column to get a good start.

The Talion scouts reported that the Baguti had regrouped and were approaching at a cautious distance of two miles. They had a heavy screen of pickets out in front. The Talion scouts had had several run-ins with them.

Eads's nightmare was of being harried through open country by the Baguti, unable to stop and take a stand because of the overwhelming power coming up behind them. With only a few hundred men and dragons, he could not give battle in the open field to an enemy with one hundred trolls and thousands of imps. He would have to fight a skillful, tactical campaign.

Eads consoled himself with the thought that at the least the sharp little clash at the ford had taught the Baguti a degree of caution.

Bowchief Starter knew of two good places, the first just at the head of the Lion's Roar where the river cut through the hard Kalenstone conglomerate. The valley narrowed to a tight little notch, with precipitous cliffs of Kalenstone to either side and no good place to cross and get on the flanks of the defenders for fifteen miles either north or south.

Eads's hopes had risen instantly on hearing of this final detail. On the way through the rapids he had noted the defensibility of the spot. Now he was reassured that they could hold the place and not be flanked. He sent orders for everyone to pick up the pace, and he set the sergeants and lieutenants to keep the men moving quickly. He also ordered some of the best canoes to be carried up. He had an idea that they would be very useful during the march up the Kalens river valley. The second good place for a stand was in the marshes of Dern's Bend where the river broke into a hundred confusing little channels. Canoes would be useful in such a place.

Eads felt a tight, hard determination in his chest. He was a self-made man, risen from the slums. He had received no favors on his way to a captaincy, but had won it on the merits. Most of his combat career had been spent against the Teetol, so he naturally thought of traps and snares, the stock-in-trade of that kind of war. Now he vowed to show the enemy every trick he could muster. The odds against them were heavy. Outnumbered ten to one all told, and five to one in trolls to dragons, with a slow-moving refugee train to protect, by all rights they should soon be overwhelmed. Eads would not make it easy for them, this he swore.

Even while climbing the Lion's Roar, the men kept singing the Kenor song. There was jubilant spirit among them. Nobody could defeat well-organized legion soldiers, backed by dragons and cavalry.

Among the dragons and dragonboys there was a special elation, the sense of shared success in the first fight for the renewed 109th Marneri. In truth the 66th were just as bouyed up. They had all hammered the Baguti in the fight by the ford. A few minutes of such fighting created an immense bond between dragons and consequently between dragonboys. They willingly put their shoulders behind the loads being lugged up the rapids. They whistled and sang as they helped push and carry the refugees through the mud and across the bare slippery rocks. Everyone was singing.

Happiest of all, perhaps, was Dragon Leader Turrent. He had faced down his fear of enemy cavalry, and had overcome it and fought as well as anyone. He was half certain that it had been his sword thrust that had taken down one Baguti chieftain. In the confusion, the whirling dance of men, horses, and dragons, he hadn't seen the man fall since he'd been too busy ducking Alsebra's great blade as it whirred over him. Swords of all sizes glittered and rang, the enemy screamed as they were cut down, wounded horses screamed as well. Blood and vomit and the stench of guts, the fight had been terrifying, and yet he had responded with his own savagery, plus the skill of years of training. And the dragons had been magnificent! He'd never seen a whole squadron in action like that, ten dragons, swords whirling as they cut into the Baguti, sundering men, horses, everything in their path.

He had fought with these dragons and dragonboys, sharing in the peril and the victory. He had seen them fight, all the boys had fought well, wielding their rapid-fire Cunfshon crossbows with deadly accuracy. Even little Jak had shown himself to be a demon on the battlefield, ducking along beside the great hulk of Rusp, covering the rear and the flanks.

Turrent was bonded to them now, and they to him. Even though he would keep them on their toes, he would never feel the same about them when he surveyed their improper kit and unshined metal.

If Turrent was the happiest among them, it was little Jak who had the greatest play of emotions after the brief little fight on the riverbank.

Jak had killed his first man that day, his arrow taking a Baguti in the throat. It had been his third arrow of the engagement. He had watched the man topple, then ducked a scimitar aimed at his head, and scampered sideways to stay clear of Rusp's right foot. The sword had whistled overhead, and the Baguti had paid for his proximity to the dragon. Then Jak stood over the man he'd killed and found the sight both elating, and somehow sickening. In death the Baguti man seemed much the same as any man. He could even have been Jak's unknown father, except that Jak was sure his father was no steppe nomad. But equally certain was the fact that the dead nomad had been someone's son and maybe someone's father. Only now he lay dead on the field with Jak's arrow in his throat.

And it had been about that moment that the fight had ended. The nomads bellied into the water. Escape from those terrible dragon blades was all they could think of. Jak would remember the moment all his life.

Relkin had been nearby and had seen the shine of victory in the younger boy's eyes. Relkin was only a few years older, but already he had lost that shine.

Still, it had been a complete victory, and Relkin shouted with the rest of them. On the surface he was with them. Underneath he seethed with anxiety about the mysteries of destiny and Arneis, which seemed to be where they were bound to go. And at last, there was a disgust with the leavings of war, the twisted, crumpled forms, the viscera, the sundered limbs and scattered heads. Relkin felt strongly that men should never be placed in a position where they must fight dragons.

And yet it was a victory, and Relkin knew they would need many victories in the days to come if they were to live to see the lands of the Argonath on the far side of the mountains.

They climbed the Lion's Roar, and at the top they began fortifying the narrow gap where the river plunged through a jagged cut in the hard dark stone. It was a natural gate. On either side were cliffs, cut from the same hard Kalenstone.

They felled what trees they could find a little farther upstream and floated them down to the beginning of the rapids, where the dragons took turns fishing them out. The trunks and branches were then twisted and woven together into a dense, difficult barrier.

Meanwhile, the Kenor bowmen were at fletcher, and with them were those dragonboys who didn't have wounded dragons to tend.

Bazil had come through the scrap by the ford almost without injury. A horse had kicked him on the breastplate, and an arrow had found a chink in the joboquin, but had not penetrated the hide. Relkin had immediately extracted the arrow and cleaned the wound with Old Sugustus. The dragon felt nothing, and he always complained of the sting of Sugustus disinfectant, so Relkin knew the wound was trivial.

Relkin made arrows with the rest of the dragonboys while the dragon enjoyed himself standing up to the waist in fast-moving water and grabbing the small oak trees that were being floated down from the woodcutting parties.

Other dragons, and most of the men, including farmers from Bur Lake, were hard at work adding new material to the barrier, which was now continuous across the gap on the southern side. In form, it was a monstrous tangle of tree limbs, rocks, and brash. On the northern side there were still some gaps, but they were in the process of being plugged. The Purple Green and Chektor were moving some rocks into position to buttress the barrier on that side.

Eads and Bowchief Starter surveyed all this with some satisfaction. The enemy was coming on, but slowly. The Talion scouts reported some Baguti down at the bottom of the Lion's Roar, but the main column was still a few miles back. They would not face serious attack until the morning. There was plenty of time for Eads to fortify this place so that his five hundred could hold it against thousands.

The enemy would have to flank him, marching many miles in either direction to find a reasonable route up the Kalenstone cliffs. And that would buy time for the long column of refugees, tramping up the Kalens on the south bank. He had armed as many of the women and old men as he could. From Widfield they'd taken all the field implements, scythes, rakes, forks. None would go easily into the horror of captivity in the breeding pens, but they had to keep ahead of the oncoming enemy army.

Eads passed the smithy and nodded approvingly. They were fashioning spearheads from pots and pans abandoned by the refugees along the path by the rapids. Nearby, men were splitting and sawing spear shafts out of some of the better oak trees they'd found. When they were cut, they were rolled in hot ashes and heated over a fire to harden the wood. They were then fitted to the spearheads and finally placed aside for inspection. With one hundred trolls or more to fight, they would need a great many spears. His dragons would be outnumbered, so the men would have to help in dispatching trolls. Men with spears could do the job, though it was risky.

Both Eads and his men knew that they would have to take such risks. The enemy would not present them with any more easy victories. The enemy knew that they had dragons. The enemy also knew that they had more than enough trolls to overwhelm them.

All through the night, the scene at the notch above the Lion's Roar was alive with activity. Behind the wall of woven oak limbs, they built platforms for archers. In front of it, where possible, they dug a ditch.

Men collected rocks for the dragons to throw. A dragon could serve as a crude sort of catapult, hurling rocks as heavy as a man over this sort of barrier.

Eads met with his officers and the leaders of the refugee column, just as the moon was rising above the trees. The night was clear, the stars bright and hard. The river roared in the chasm below their position and threw up a mist in that direction.

Captains Senshon, Deft, and Retiner stood to one side with Dragon leader Turrent, Sergeant Quertin, and Bowchief Starter behind them. Opposing them in a looser group were the refugee leaders, landed gentry for the most part, self-elected leaders. From Bur Lake there were Farmer Besson, a red-faced man of fifty years and massive countenance, plus the obstreperous Tursturan Genver, who owned a large estate near South Bur Lake. From Upper Lake, twice as far away, there was Hopper Reabody, a small, wiry man, nearly bald, who favored a suit of green leather and boots in an old-fashioned, knee-high mode.

Eads laid out his plan, turning to Bowchief Starter for occasional details concerning the terrain of the Kalens Valley. The refugees were to march straight up the south side of the river where the best paths existed. Thirty Talion troopers would go with them to provide a covering cavalry screen. Other than that, they would have to defend themselves if the Baguti caught up.

"But that is terrible, you would leave us naked to the enemy!" shouted Tursturan Genver.

"I can spare you no more than the thirty Talionese. I may even have to call them back in case of a real emergency. I will need every man to hold the enemy here for a few days."

Genver huffed and puffed.

"But your mission is to ensure our protection, sir!"

"Which I can best do by holding the enemy here for perhaps three days. If we can win three days here, then I think we can certainly beat them to the mountains."

Genver and Reabody were visibly unconvinced. Eads pressed. "Your people can be eighty or ninety miles east of here by then." They blanched. His tone grew firmer. "You must push them. We have sent messages ahead to the farms of Midvale and Wattel, and there will be some food from them, but for now everyone must march on empty stomachs and not let up.

"Once they winkle us out of this position, we shall have to fall back up the river. This will not be easy in the face of their superior numbers. We will need every man we've got to hold them off while we do this. We will then delay them in the woods, but not for long. There are no easily fortified positions there. Our next good chance of a blockade will come at Dern's Bend, in the swamps."

"Ah yes," blustered Genver, "the swamps. You want us to make our way through the center of the swamps using nothing but a trader's trail."