Dragons of War (56 page)

Each magical gondola came to the dock and unloaded its passengers and then moved on again, passing on out onto the pool before circling and heading back to the Eferni grotto.

Awestruck, Relkin watched them go. Such had been the glories of the old world… great stairs and enormous palaces… paintings so rich and lustrous, they seemed more real than life… and magic so powerful, it lived on long after the demise of the kingdom of Veronath.

He reveled in all the wonders he had seen in his short life, which might be reaching its end. Was he to die in Arneis? Was that to be his destiny?

Then he heard Dragon Leader Turrent coming and switched his attention back to his dragon. Bazil was upright, but still half-asleep.

Relkin jumped up and ran lightly up the dragon's back.

"Aargh!" said the dragon, or something closely related. "You are no boy anymore to jump on an old, tired dragon. You put on weight in this life. It is sure that this dragon does not put on weight."

"You're fitter than you've been in years," said Relkin calmly, as he adjusted the collar of the joboquin.

"Where do we go now?"

The Purple Green leaned over. "I already asked that. Nobody knows."

Relkin knew. "We go to a field somewhere in Arneis."

"Fool boy, there are thousands of fields in Arneis. It is covered in them."

"That's for sure, but there's one that will be our place. I know it."

Carrying the mouse and bird, the eagle flew away at dawn, soaring off beyond the roofs of Dandelin town, over the ridge and into Arneis.

Captain Eads and Chief Ranard put their force on the road to Fitou as soon as they could feed their men. The townsfolk of Dandelin turned out magnificently with hot water, firewood, and food straight from their own kitchens.

Eads hurried their breakfast, however. Knowing now that the huge enemy army might have split in two in Arneis, he knew that he had to move his men toward Fitou as quickly as possible.

Between Captain Eads and Chief Ranard there existed now a strange vacuum. The shock of uncovering Ranard's deliberate deception concerning the Dark Stair had deeply disconcerted Eads. He was unsure what to think. Indeed, the good relations forged in the heat of the battle of Clove Valley were gone. And yet they were in the middle of a campaign march. This was not the time to settle anything. They had to cooperate if they were to be effective.

Thus when Ranard approached him at the campfire, Eads made the effort to be cordial and welcomed the chief and took some hot kalut with him.

In front of the captain, Ranard was downcast at first, guilty and remorseful, even ashamed of the weakness he had shown. Disunity in the face of the enemy in Padmasa had brought down all of its victims. The chief knew what Eads must think of him. As he sipped kalut, however, Ranard realized that Eads was trying hard not to show any sign of his true feelings concerning the stair. Ranard forced himself to rise to the occasion.

Eads carefully laid out the plan of action for the day.

"We go southeast directly. It's about fifty miles to Fitou. We must get there tomorrow. I know that my men can keep up that pace, now that they've been rested and fed. I expect that the clansmen of Wattel can keep up that pace, too."

Ranard nodded, the clansmen spent their lives pursuing sheep across the moors.

"The only problem is the dragons. Their feet get sore.
But
we have to have them, as you know."

Ranard understood. He'd seen dragons in action at Clove Valley. Men alone could not stand against trolls. The disparity in strength was too great. The dragons were like enormous swordsmen, armed with a prehensile tail tip.

"So we march as quickly as the dragons can march."

"That about sums it up."

"And when we reach Fitou?"

"I very much hope we will also reach the Argonathi army."

"And then the last battle."

Eads shrugged. "Only the last battle if we are defeated, Clan Chief. If we win, then there'll be others."

Ranard finished his kalut and spoke somberly. "And if we are defeated there, then it will be the end of all that is fair and lovely in the world. The iron foot of the great enemy will crush us in our own land. We of Clan Wattel understand this."

They marched, the men setting out with vigor, the dragons a little less enthusiastically. Within an hour they reached the hamlet of Satchen and turned southeast on the main Fitou road. Quite a few houses were already shuttered up. The remaining folk watched uneasily as the small army of mixed clansmen, settler militia, and legionaries tramped past. The sight of war dragons, with those huge sword hilts rising from the scabbards on their backs, turned unease to outright fear.

After a century of peace, the threat of war had come once again to this lovely land of vine and wheat.

It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny with a few white clouds passing overhead, slow sailors across the azure vault. They marched at a good pace, in the shade of the great oaks that lined the road.

By noon they were lunching on the village green of Hay. The remaining inhabitants of Hay brought out grain and bread and cheese in plenty, with wine and even winter ale to wash it down.

They ate prodigiously, dragonboys slathering fresh loaves of bread with soft cheeses, one after the other, while the wyverns poured ale by the pail down their gullets to wash down the bread.

Then they turned their attention to potchoons of stirabout enriched with milk and honey. And to finish if off, they each took a bucket of fresh boiled noodles slathered in akh.

Full, for once, they heaved themselves to their feet with a few deep groans and hisses, and resumed the march.

As they went the dragons complained mildly about their feet, which always took a pounding on any march beneath so many tons of dragon. In truth, the great reptilian feet had been hardened by the campaign they'd fought up the Kalens Valley. So far they were merely sore and not blistered at all.

Now they moved out of the wheat fields about the village of Laleet and climbed up onto the gentle northern slope of the long Sprian Scarp. The south face was much steeper, forming a bluff perhaps two hundred feet at the highest point near the town of Lennink. The scarp ran on for thirty miles or more, trending east of south. The road to Fitou went along the top of the ridge for most of that distance before coming down off the slope to the town of Consorza.

The broad, gentle slope on the northern side was given over to fields of hops, vegetables, and flowers. Bees were at work in vast numbers over clover and alfalfa crops.

The south face of the ridge presented an altogether different picture. Here there were woodlots on the steepest parts. Elsewhere there was a long smooth slope of poor soil over calcareous limestone where lay some of the greatest vineyards in the world. They grew the black pearl grape, known locally as the "micoste" and from it made the wines of Spriani known and loved across the world. Each legendary vineyard was separated from the next by a stone wall or a narrow lane. Solidly built farmhouses stood at every road junction along the ridge section of the road. The villages of Sprian and Lennink were built of stone and encompassed a flourishing wine-making industry.

It was a prosperous land, and marching under the beaming sun, the men and the dragons kept up a good, league-consuming pace. Morale was high.

In the villages, the people came out to stare at the dragons. Wyverns were unknown here, and war had become nothing but a set of legends from the past.

Captain Eads had the Talion troopers working out on the front, scouting the ridge down to Lennink, where the Fitou road crossed the royal road to Bel Awl and points north to Marneri.

The heat of the day had arrived, and a hush enveloped the land broken only by the hum of bees and the song of the lark.

In one way, the hush was ominous. The bells of the temples in Sprian and Lennink should have begun ringing for the early afternoon services.

Then, from way off to the north, they heard the big bell of the temple in Waldrach, but it was not calling for the afternoon services. It was ringing wildly, broadcasting alarm.

They looked off to the south, down through the walled vineyards to the woodlots. Beyond the ring of woods lay fields of wheat, more vineyards, then the dark mass of the Rundel Forest where they grew the oak for the barrels that aged the wines of Spriani.

The bell clanging away in the distance could be heard clearly, though faintly. The men looked off in that direction, but saw nothing but lines of trees and the bright green of hop fields.

Eads confided to Ranard that he wouldn't feel confident of anything until they'd reached Consorza. By then he expected to have some intelligence as to where the enemy armies were. All he knew for sure was that Cujac had fallen to the enemy two days previously and that the enemy intended to make a lunge for Marneri.

Eads's earlier forebodings had been borne out. This made it even more important to get to Fitou as quickly as possible. The great battle could come at any time.

They had to reach Fitou! Eads prayed that the army was still there and not driven farther back. He prayed even harder that the enemy was not between him and the Argonathi army. To get around a vast enemy army, with clouds of Baguti cavalry surrounding it might be impossible.

Where was that eagle? The witches had promised they would return with information about what he was marching into. But they were not yet in sight.

Eads reassured himself that once they reached Consorza, they'd have only fifteen more miles to cover to get to Fitou.

They were now crossing the highest part of the long ridge. Ahead stood Sprian itself and then Lennink, a crossroads town, where the Fitou road met the main road to Waldrach and points north and east. Eads pulled up his horse to one side of the road and studied the terrain ahead carefully. The ridge rippled its way due south, rising and dipping as it followed the line of the hard sandstone that formed it. To the south the dark mass of Rundel Forest filled out the horizon. To his immediate right lay the entranceway to the Vineyard of Kepeche.

He climbed the wall of the vineyard and used his spyglass to examine the land to the south. Empty wheat fields and vineyards sparkled under the sun. Stone nouses stood at every crossroads. He saw three Talion troopers riding up a farm road about two miles ahead. They were unhurried. Gave no sign of any alarm.

He pulled down the telescope and scanned the sky for any sign of the eagle. Nothing but a couple of white clouds interrupted the vault of blue.

The streets of Sprian village were nearly empty. Only a handful of residents remained, and these were hurriedly packing belongings in their donkey carts.

He sent a patrol through the town. Obviously the people here had heard something that the Talion troopers had not yet picked up.

In short order, he learned that a small party of Baguti had ridden up toward Lennink just a couple of hours before. They had been driven off by determined archery from a handful of good bowmen in the village.

Their appearance had started an immediate panic. Everyone in Lennink had packed and left. A couple of Sprian men, in Lennink for business, brought the news to Sprian, which emptied right afterward. Many folk were already packed, nervous since they'd heard of the fall of Cujac.

Eads pondered this news. It was stronger than a rumor, and recent. He rode ahead and climbed another wall, this time the crumbling brick wall surrounding the vineyard Etek.

He saw a dragonboy already sitting on the corner pillar of the wall. The boy had a bandage around his head.

Eads scanned the Rundel Forest. Some hidden sense, perhaps the whisper of the Great Mother Herself, told him that he was not far distant from a great army.

A minute later, two dusty, sweat-stained troopers rode up to report that Lennink was deserted.

Eads pondered the situation. He had no accurate map of the region. His campaign maps were all of central Kohon. He called over Troop Leader Croel, who was posted nearby.

"Where does the Lennink road go to?" he asked.

"To Waldrach."

"And beyond Waldrach?"

"To Rusma. Bel Awl."

"And past those lies Lucule and Seant, Troat and Aubinas."

"Correct, sir."

"Thank you, Troop Leader."

Eads reconsidered the road to Rundel and the dark forest. It seemed the enemy had done as the witches had foretold. They had split their force and sent an army marching up this very road.

The Argonath army was sitting down in Fitou, twenty miles away. The enemy's screening force was large enough to convince the Argonathi that they faced the whole enemy Host, while another force, probably just as large, was sent marching away through the Bel Awl gap and into the helpless provinces of Marneri.

Eads realized with a somber kind of helplessness that his small force, allied to Clan Wattel, was probably all that stood between the foul enemy Host coming up that road and Marneri itself.

Suddenly there was a shout. A dragonboy, the one with the bandage around his forehead, came running up from the vineyard.

"Baguti, sir, I see Baguti, down in the forest there."

Eads spun around. "Keen eyes there, that man," he said clearly, and noted to himself that it was Relkin of the 109th. His glass came up to his eye, and he studied the forest.

At first there was nothing but trees and shadows, and then he saw them, the legs of horses in motion in the shadows, their hooves quite distinct. And then out from under the eaves appeared a Baguti riding a chestnut pony. Only for a moment did he appear, and then he was hidden again. He and his fellows were riding toward the Lennink-Cujac road, which divided the forest of Rundel.

Eads came to a decision.

"Quick march to Lennink," he ordered. "We will set up a blocking position there. The enemy comes up that road. We will hold him up."

He sent a trooper riding for the south with a message for General Felix describing the situation as Eads saw it.

They found the town of Lennink empty and immediately set about fortifying the southern approaches. There was still no sign of the enemy, not even of the Baguti they'd seen riding on the forest's edge.