Dragons of War (61 page)

"What beasts of the Mother's Hand have they destroyed to make these?"

"I was told that it was mammoths."

"Oh, by the sacred breath, they have done this with the great trunkers of the northlands. How foul they are in Padmasa!"

Bowchief Starter agreed to investigate the use of poisoned arrows.

Men came running in from the farther end of the village with a supply of seven great pikes brought from the home of a wealthy man who had traveled widely in the southlands and collected military weapons.

Work on creating lances intensified. The night air was thick with the sounds of saws, hammers, and bellows. Eads's fatigue was forgotten.

The moon was sinking in the east, falling past the constellation of the dragon. The night was waning.

Three dragons stood ready on the much trampled bank of dirt thrown up behind the battered wall of the vintner's garden.

Around them was a scene of devastation, frosted by the moon's light. The wall had been battered, but the garden that had been the joy of the vintner's heart had been utterly destroyed. The fruit trees had been cut and incorporated into the barricade. The flower beds crushed beneath feet large and small, the rocks and paving stones had been hurled at the enemy.

The three dragons were oblivious to the damage. They had eaten well. Bowls of cornmeal stirabout flavored with akh. Slabs of grilled bacon. Toasted wheat cakes and honey. Fresh baked bread with hot butter, and all of it washed down with wine mixed with water. The enormous quantities of rich food had both softened their mood and renewed their strength. And although they were bone tired and in need of a week's sleep, they felt much better than they had before eating.

They stared at the moon going down and passed around the remains of a butt of young red wine.

"I do not like wine as much as beer," said the Purple Green.

"It is too acidic," said Alsebra.

"Well, well, for once we agree."

Bazil, who found wine even less appetizing but still drank a mouthful or two because it helped him forget how sore he felt, leaned over the wall and looked down at the bodies piled up on the other side.

"We will want some beer to drink when we cook these trolls," he said calmly.

Alsebra was amused. "That's eating your prey before you've caught it, my friend. We will never live to cook these trolls."

"What?" Bazil was shocked. "We beat them before. What can they bring against us that we cannot face?"

"They will keep attacking until we succumb, that is my thinking. They have to drive us away. Your dragonboy explained it well."

"He is a good dragonboy sometimes, that one."

"You have been blessed. But still it means that the enemy has to keep attacking. He has no choice."

The Purple Green was far from defeated, however.

"So, let him come. We will kill all of them if we have to. I am ready."

"I do not doubt that the Purple Green of Hook Mountain will be the last to fall," said Alsebra.

"We have fought our way out of tight places before. We won the battle at Clove Valley."

"The enemy did not outnumber us by ten times or more at Clove Valley."

"All right then, the fight back at the Lion's Roar."

"That was on a very narrow front. We fought sword tip to sword tip there, sometimes closer."

"Yes," said Bazil with a laugh. "I had to duck a few times when my wild friend lost control of his backswing."

The Purple Green was sensitive about his lack of swordskill. In a fight he tended to rely more on his terrific strength rather than well-rehearsed moves like the wyverns.

"It was not just this dragon that lost control in that fight. I remember it well."

"That was a damned close thing, that fight," said Alsebra.

"But we survived," said Bazil. "We can survive this. And then we will have ourselves a feast. We will eat some of these trolls. There are so many different types now. We can try them all."

"By the fiery breath of the ancient ones," said the Purple Green. "We will try each type three different ways."

Alsebra laughed at this, her jaws clacking. She reached down and patted Relkin on the shoulder as he stepped past with a newly repaired tail mace over his shoulder.

"I have an idea," she said. "We can cook all of them at once. We pour oil over them and set fire to the lot. Roast them all on the spot!"

"What are you talking about?" said Relkin.

"All these trolls, we have so many to cook."

"What?"

"For afterward, we plan to have a feast." She nodded to the trolls strewn across the ground in front of the wall.

Relkin's face wrinkled in disgust. "That's disgusting," he said.

"Oh! Disgusting?" Alsebra reared back with an angry eye. "And humans are so fastidious about what you eat? What goes into sausages? You just tell me that."

Relkin stared at her. "There's a difference between a pig and a troll don't you think?"

"Why? They are both animals, both have flesh and bones. They are not poisonous."

"Oh, well, I don't think you understand."

"Alsebra understand."

The Purple Green made the terrible sound of dragon laughter.

Relkin shrugged and looked out over the wall. His eyes roved south, and he let out a cry.

"Look!"

A reddish light was spreading up into the sky on the far horizon.

The dragons stared. Suddenly the Purple Green sniffed the air. "A burning. A human place is burning."

"The city of Fitou lies in that direction," said Manuel, coming over to join Relkin.

"Show me," said little Jak, jumping up from below where he'd been working on Alsebra's damaged joboquin.

"Fitou is burning." Relkin pointed to the southeast.

The group on the wall of the vintner's garden were not the only ones who became aware of the blaze rising in the distance. From the knoll in Rundel Forest, General Lukash examined the distant glare with a spyglass and pondered its meaning with the Magician Thrembode.

Both were aware of the presence of the Mesomaster Vapul, who sat a horse off in the shadows of the glade.

"It might mean we have won, and our troops are burning the town. It is hard to control imps when we have a victory," said Lukash.

"It might also mean the Argonathi were gone when our army arrived, and the imps went berserk anyway and have fired the place. They're capable of anything in such situations."

"We struggle to control them; you know how they are. If we had more men, then we would need to rely on them less."

"If the Argonathi are not there, where would they be?"

"Coming here as quickly as they could."

"Then, we must turn about and face them."

"We will protect our flank. But we must break through this barrier in front of us and go on at once. It would be better not to give battle to seven full legions of Argonathi."

"We have the secret weapon."

"Magician, you were at Salpalangum, I believe."

"Indeed, I was. I know how formidable Argonathi troops can be. But the army of Sephis was deficient at that time. They lacked trolls or anything that could trouble the dragons."

"It would be better for us if we could avoid giving battle on this side of Bel Awl. If we reach Bel Awl gap, then we can probably hold them off indefinitely. Then our force on the river Alno would march on Kadein, which will be defenseless."

"What are you saying, General?"

"That we use the secret weapon now. We break this line and we go through to Waldrach, then destroy the bridge there and slow up the Argonathi army. At Bel Awl we will go on the defensive. They will not be able to dislodge us from Bel Awl gap."

"The secret weapon is not to be divulged without permission."

"Bah, it is no secret anymore. The damned things have marched in our army all this way. Every imp knows about them."

Thrembode almost lost patience. "General, it is not by my orders that they are kept secret. Ask Vapul."

Lukash flashed a look of annoyance, but there was no choice.

"All right," he said, "I will."

It was the hour before dawn. The light from the burning of Fitou filled the southeast sky. Eads had scouts out down toward Consorza seeking for the cavalry that would be the first signs of the arrival of the Argonathi army. So far they had seen nothing except parties of Baguti working the open country to the south.

In the meantime, men and dragons worked with whetstone and paste on their blades while dragonboys and bowmen fletched arrows.

The enemy was regrouping for the next attack. In the vintner's garden, the defenders could clearly hear the bellowing of officers and the burst of drumming. A glance over the wall would show thousands of torches in motion, many gradually coalescing into the outline of another assault column.

The drums began to beat steadily, a monstrous thrub-a-thrub that went on and on like the breath of some monster come to devour the last hopes of the world.

"They are coming," said little Jak nervously.

No one else said anything. The spearmen, led by Corporal Deenst, tumbled out of the house where they'd been throwing dice and took up positions. They had been equipped with a rough-and-ready pair of lances, each ten-foot long and tipped with a foot of steel. They had been told they were to face a kind of oversized troll. They had also been told to try and hamstring the brutes, to fight in the way imp infiltrators fought.

Each man faced the prospect with a different degree of concern or equanimity. All had long since realized that they might well die in this place and had come to terms with this thought. They were professional soldiers; it was their lot to fight for the salvation of the Argonath, This was the fight they had trained for since they had joined the legion.

On came the enemy column, the lights coming closer and closer.

Beside each dragon was a pile of cobblestones. Still they waited, the column was not yet in range.

The column widened out, from the river of torches behind it they estimated it was much the same size as the previous assault column. They watched it with grim determination as the imps formed a wide line for the assault, regiment upon regiment of them. Trolls could be seen, moving in packs of six or seven, in the midst of the imps.

For a moment there was a lull. The drums ceased their infernal thunder. The torches blazed and a near silence fell over the vineyards on the slope of Turmegint, south of Lennink.

Then came a massive blast from the dull horns of the enemy, the drumming resumed, and the lines came on at a trot. As they drew closer now, so the keen eyes of the dragons saw the new monsters first.

"There they are," Alsebra pointed to a trio of shapes that towered over imps and trolls.

"By the breath," muttered Manuel. In the glare of the oncoming torches, Relkin saw the older youth's face tighten with dismay. And well might he feel concern. These things that shambled toward them were as much as fifteen feet tall; they would tower over even the Purple Green.

"They have shields, a design I've never seen before. A lot longer than troll shields."

Relkin felt a shiver go through him. Destiny approached.

"Twice the height of a man, must weigh as much as a dragon."

"Yes for sure, but which kind of dragon?"

"Important point. Let's hope they're slow."

"Seem to have axes over their shoulders."

"Good, that means they're slow-witted. Be bad if they could wield a sword."

"I don't think those are axes. Those are hammers."

"Then they're really slow-witted."

"Maybe they were meant for siege work."

On they came, in groups of three, behemoth ogres, monsters torn from the bellies of dying mammoths. They betrayed no trace of their origin in the elephant race, except in the grey and wrinkled texture of their hides. Instead of being mammothlike the heads were a grotesque mockery of those of the great apes, except that they bore even rows of six-inch daggerlike teeth in jaws three feet across. They lurched toward the defenders surrounded by clusters of trolls and regiments of imps.

Dragon Leader Turrent came around to check on them. They pointed to the ogres.

"Ungainly looking things, we will emphasize our speed" was his comment.

Dragonboys shot Turrent incurious looks. They had long since weighed the approaching brutes and reached that same conclusion. Turrent sensed that he was superfluous and bit off any further remarks. Despite his outward calm, he was feeling nervous. The oncoming monsters were terrifying. He was impressed by the placidity of the dragonboys. They had absorbed the phlegmatic battle mood of their great charges. He wished he could be so inwardly relaxed.

After a few moments he left them and jogged back to the rest of the squadron on the barricade.

The enemy came in range, and the air filled with great rocks and paving stones. Gaps appeared in the ranks of imps. Trolls were felled and left behind. A rock bounced off an ogre's shield and even that monstrous hulk was shaken, but only for a few seconds, and then it resumed the forward march.

The rocks were accompanied by a storm of arrows. Bowmen ranged along the wall of the vintner's garden as they took shots at the eyes of trolls and ogres.

The dragonboys waited, holding their fire until it would count. On came the enemy, the drums throbbing through the world and the ranks of imps screaming in battle lust. They tramped over the bodies of the fallen and up to the great mound of faggots and corpses on the other side of the wall. A paving stone from the Purple Green felled a great ax troll even as it set foot on the faggots. Others surged past it as it fell. Imps were thrusting up crude ladders against the wall, and Relkin joined two spearmen in shoving one away. He got a hand on the top of the ladder and pushed sideways. A spearman had the butt of his spear rammed against it, and despite the imps scrambling up, it slid off the wall and fell, taking down the next one with it.

Relkin's elation was short-lived. The next moment he felt a solid impact on the top of his head, his helmet rang, and he ducked down and realized he'd been hit a glancing blow from an arrow. It was only the first of a near avalanche of shafts. The spearmen and dragons crouched, not all of them in time. Relkin heard a cry and turned his head and saw another spearman topple backward with an arrow projecting from his face.