Dragons of War (48 page)

It was only when Manuel fell in beside him and asked him how he felt about the upcoming fight that he even recalled just where he was and what he was going into.

"Has it occurred to you that we might, none of us, survive? They outnumber us so heavily."

Relkin pursed his lips and shrugged.

"There's more of them, but I reckon these Wattels are going to give them a hell of a fight. They're wild as wolves and a lot fiercer if you ask me."

"I wondered why you weren't praying. Everyone else is."

Relkin shrugged again. "I ain't really a worshiper like them. I hold to the old gods."

"If they exist, then maybe you should be asking them for their help."

"I don't know about calling on them for help. You take your chances when they help you."

Manuel smiled. "You have been through a lot in these last few months."

"If old Caymo's been helping me, then my luck must have been really terrible."

Manuel's smile was brittle. "So you aren't afraid?"

"This is your first time in a big fight isn't it?"

Manuel's head dropped slightly. "Yes." He was older than Relkin and well educated, but he knew that Relkin had seen more action in his three years of service than most men saw in their entire terms of ten.

"Manuel, anytime you go into a fight, you take the chance you won't come out of it. You know the most common form of serious injury for a dragoneer?"

Manuel looked up, a sudden gleam in his eye, "Of course. Getting stepped on by the dragon."

Relkin nodded. "Right. So you can forget all that stuff about glory and honor they told you in the academy. Fighting is just a state of fear and rage that goes on and on for as long as you can stand it. Fighting is about you and me and the dragons and the rest of the squadron. It's about us, the fighting one hundred and ninth. Just us, we seen a lot of action and lot of tight corners, and we always come back. Nobody can beat us, right?"

"Right."

Relkin knew that Manuel would fight. He was one of them now.

It was also true that Relkin viewed the battle ahead with a certain detachment, tinged with the curious resignation of the military mind. After the battle of Salpalangum, any battle would seem small. After the siege battles in Ourdh, any battle would seem relatively tame.

And besides, he knew he must survive because his "destiny" was waiting for him in Arneis. And Relkin knew that Arneis lay to the east of the mountains.

Moreover, he knew he was right when he sensed a high mood right through the column. Even though the enemy had five times their numbers, they were seething with a confident rage. The dragons, well fed for the first time in days, were boiling with the urge of coming to grips with the enemy.

Then there were the Wattels, who seemed equally eager. They were a clan with a proud history of war, and their spirit was great. These few thousand were the cream of their young men, led by the greatest of the old warriors.

Even as they marched, riders on little hill ponies were crisscrossing the farthings of Wattel, summoning every able-bodied man over the age of fifteen to serve in the Fird of Wattel.

Manuel fell back, beside the Purple Green. Relkin returned to thoughts of Eilsa Ranardaughter, but the mood was broken somehow. An annoying little voice began breaking into his dreams. It was the voice of reality, and it told him he was a fool to even think that a clan chief's daughter would seek out an orphan dragonboy either for her lover or her husband.

And this train of thought led him to think of Miranswa Zudeina all over again. This would end just as that had with his heart broken and his feelings crushed for months.

If, and the it's piled up enormously, if only he could speak to her alone. There had been that look in her eye. She could not fake that.

Or could she? Girls were capable of the most astonishing deceptions.

But he had seen that look in her eye. She was interested in him. Perhaps all that boasting from Swane had caused it? She thought he was some kind of hero. Once she found out the truth, would that be the end of it?

It was all ifs; it's piled on ifs. He shook his head to dispel these thoughts and looked around him, focusing for the first time in miles.

The path moved down a steep track here, with a grassy bank above on their right and a widening canyon filled with rocks and splashing water on their left.

The dragons stalked along, great killing beings, their swords over their shoulders, the hilts rising up like strange crests. Their shields were hung there, too, giving them a carapaced look, as if they were some hybrid of land animal and giant turtle. Relkin shrugged, whatever would be would be, and he was destined for somewhere else, Eilsa Ranardaughter or not.

They marched, swinging along the clove valley path at a good pace. They cut down by the Whistling Pool and crossed the little river Niss in the boulder-strewn canyon and passed on down until they entered a forest of oak and pine.

At about the same time, they began to hear faint noises. They progressed, moving through ferns and vines on the forest floor. Ahead the noise grew louder. They discerned the elements of a great din. Horns were blaring, and drums were thrubbing underneath, and there was a continual roar of voices.

Clan Chief Ranard had already made his decision. "Broaden the front, one hundred men in each line. Then we go forward, as silently as possible."

They broadened their front and moved out, springing quickly through the undergrowth toward the sounds of battle.

Dragonboys were positioning their quivers for battle use and taking up the first shaft for their cunning little bows. The Wattels had their spears ready and their shields deployed. Only the dragons waited to draw steel, and on they went, treading quietly toward the battle.

As they approached, they heard clearly the clash of steel, the screams of men and animals, and a dull roaring sound that those who knew it knew too well, the raging of trolls in battle.

They pressed on, filtering through the trees in a line one hundred long with the dragons in the center, and ten deep. Soon they could clearly perceive the extent of the fighting ahead. A crude barricade of felled trees and boulders blocked the road at a narrow point where the out-thrust arm of the Bek from the right side of the Clove Valley came within a hundred meters of the lake shore.

In front of the barrier, the woods teemed with a great mass of imps and men. Drums thundered in their midst, a constant booming roar. Horns blared, and harsh shouts drove the imps forward to rush the barricade and go up and engage the exhausted defenders. Among the imps stalked teams of great trolls who engaged dragons at the top of the barricade. The dragons were outnumbered greatly and hard-pressed.

In a forest glade, not two hundred yards distant from the fray, Chief Ranard called his daughter to him. Briefly he clasped her hands.

"Eilsa, I would beg thee to retire. This battle is not for a young woman."

"I will not, Father. My place is with the clan, and I can fight with the rest of them."

"Think of your mother."

"My mother would say the same that I say. Since I am here, and we need every sword arm, then I should fight."

Ranard sighed. He'd known this fiery daughter of his would choose as she had.

"My daughter, if we do not meet again, be it known that I love thee and find thee perfect and goodly and fit to be mine heir."

For a moment they held this way and then they donned helm and loosened sword and made ready for a most desperate stroke.

And now Ranard gave the order for the host of Clan Wattel to charge. They stepped out and ran through the trees, silent, coming in directly on the rear and flank of the enemy. Only when they were within a hundred feet were they even seen. At that moment the Wattel pipes burst into life and sent their eerie ringing cry wavering through the trees to bring a sudden silence to the battlefield.

Then out of the trees and straight into a startled mass of imps burst the Wattels, with dragons among them and those terrible swords awhirling.

A grim slaughter took place in a matter of moments and hundreds of imps fell beneath their blades. Imps and trolls turned back from the barricade, but already the heart was out of the mass of imps as they were taken in the rear by what seemed like a great army of fierce warriors driven on by an insane whirling sound that was like nothing they had ever heard.

As the mass of the imp army began to break down, so its human commanders rode about in panic, laying on with their cat-o'-nine-tails and then their swords, but then arrows from the enemy were whistling through the position and then men were toppling from their horses.

The first trolls turned and met the onrushing fury of Bazil Broketail and the Purple Green. Ecator whistled in a series of tremendous chops and sweeps and a sword troll was bowled over and then sundered in twain with a swinging overhand.

The Purple Green struck into more black-purple ax trolls, crashed heads with his shield, and lopped off limbs, heads, and entire torsos with his good old service blade.

Relkin darted past Wattels engaged in pulling down an enemy trooper from his horse. They cut his throat and took his steel.

Alsebra got in among a great gang of imps, flowing back from the fight at the barricade, and her sword Undaunt flew among them with terrible effect.

Now the exhausted men and dragons on the barricades had risen and impelled by the legion cornets, they were pouring down over the barricade and pitching into the rearmost imps and trolls.

This completed the rout, the imps panicked, burst into flight and lost all cohesion and sense of purpose. Their officers were forced to ride for their lives, and the trolls, left without handlers, lost heart and ran, too.

They were slow runners, however, and dragons soon caught up with them and cut them down. The dragons pursued the trolls for more than a mile in this way and scattered a dozen or more troll heads among the roots and rocks.

Then, exhausted, they slowed and tramped back to rejoin the rest.

Captain Eads rode up to Clan Chief Renard.

"I thank you, sir, on my own behalf and on behalf of my men and dragons. Your coming could not have been more timely, for had they come at us for much longer we would have given way. I confess we are very much at the end of our strength."

"You have fought well, Captain, I congratulate you on what you have achieved. Your people will be safe now."

Eads's haunted eyes showed that he did not believe this.

"The enemy will regroup, sir. He will come back. They cannot leave the women now."

Chief Ranard nodded. "I expected as much. I have summoned the Fird. We will have a shield wall of three thousand in addition to the host. With your men, we will have four and a half thousand, plus the dragons to hold back the trolls."

Eads gave a big sigh. "That is good news. But the people are very weak. My men need to rest. And they are hungry. It has been days since much food could be prepared."

"We will withdraw at once up the Clove Valley. We shall make them fight us at the head of the valley, where it is narrowest and most easily held. Then we shall see if the strength of Wattel steel is still what it used to be. Either we shall be valiant and triumphant over these shadows of the dark enemy or we will go down to defeat, and the days of our clan will at last be ended on these Beks."

The disorganization caused by the Wattels' sudden charge into the enemy's right flank and rear was severe enough to remove any threat beyond that of the Baguti cavalry for the next two days. For their part the Baguti were tentative, disliking the narrowness of the Clove Valley and the close presence of numerous great Gazaki from whom they had suffered so much.

Then it began to rain in torrents as a storm billowed up from distant Ourdh and brought a virtual monsoon effect to the Kenor side of the Malgun Mountains. The downpour went on all night, well into the following day and effectively hindered the enemy's pursuit, slowing the imps in torrential streams and mudflows, cooling the blood of trolls, and leaving them sluggish and ill-tempered.

During this valuable time, the Wattel muster continued as the men of the farthings came in and presented themselves for duty in the Fird. In addition, they brought extra weapons, which were eagerly taken up by some of the refugees. Quite a few had recovered their strength following two days and nights of rest and good food. They had slept in caves and tents and been adequately protected from the elements for the first time since they'd fled their homes weeks before.

Eads had at first been unsure whether to accept these arms. There were some women among the settlers who wanted to take up sword and shield. Eads did not think it was a good idea. The very presence of human women tended to arouse imps to a blood lust. Nor did he think the legionaries would view it favorably. Only men served in the legion as line soldiers.

A deputation came from the settlers. It was lead by Hopper Reabody and Fanner Besson. The arrogant Tursturan Genvers was noticeably absent. Reabody's green leather suit was now scuffed and worn. His boots were about worn-out.

Besson had lost much of his fat, and his body had hardened to the condition of its youth. Both carried sword and dagger.

They represented one hundred and eleven male farmers who wished to take a place in the shield wall, or to serve in any way useful. Twenty-five of them were legion veterans and had their own weapons, all but for heavy spears. In addition, there were nine women settlers, from all walks of life it seemed, and they, too, demanded a space in the line.

Eads was stumped. This was an unexpected problem. He took their message under advisement and promised them an answer within the hour.

He sounded out his captains. Deft and Retiner were against it. It would unsettle the men. Dragon Leader Turrent was also against it. Women should not be in the line, that was all he had to say on the subject.

Then Bowchief Starter appeared. The Bowchief was nonplussed for but a moment before he made an excellent suggestion.

"Accept their service, use them as messengers."