The Only Option (9 page)

Tilo opened his mouth, closed it again.

More gently, Rochus said, “You can't be a good leader if you don't know and acknowledge your own limits. You've done enough. You brought me here to help, so let me help. Keep an eye out for Fury and Song; they should be returning with food and other supplies.”

“All right,” Tilo said, and Rochus had the impression that if he were in dragon shape his wings would have been drooping. “Be careful.”

“That's the plan,” Rochus said with a faint smile. Ignoring a stupid impulse to kiss him, Rochus turned and headed out of the castle, off to face a bone wyvern.

Getting rid of a bone wyvern entailed emptying the contents, as it were—ripping out all the spirits stuffed inside it. Most of the time that wasn't hard, as they were poorly and hastily made, intended only for show, and the seams easy to tear open and the contents then easily yanked out. Like Memory was fond of doing to his best pillows.

Rothenberg's bone wyverns were not so simple a matter because not only had they been well-made, they'd also lasted a long time, so the various spirits inside had mixed and melded together to become a single, much stronger entity, so that Rochus was less tearing feathers out of a pillow and more yanking an angry bird out of a sack. A large, pointy, violent sack with teeth.

It still wasn't the worst he'd ever faced, though it was probably going to end up an uncomfortably close second. The trick was not using force, a lesson he had learned the hard way.

He was keeping the blood wine, that was for certain.

Silence fluttered on his shoulder, all the warning he had before he abruptly felt the bone wyvern—and a few moments later, heard it down to his bones.

He stepped off the road and into the trees as it came around the bend. Reaching into his satchel, he pulled out a set of panpipes. As the wyvern drew closer he pressed them to his lips and began to play a bittersweet hymn, an old spell that had never translated well to speech. Some spells were simply best cast the old ways.

The bone wyvern slowed, wavered, came to a tenuous halt. Shifted and swayed, stopped and started, caught between the thrall of the music and the original spells driving it. But unlike the necromancer who'd had the sense to collar the walking dead, the necromancer behind the wyverns had trusted solely to his own power and skill.

Whoever was behind this had probably hired the first young, cocky necromancer he'd come across. Or he'd gone abroad for one, though that would have proven more expensive than conniving bastards of this ilk liked. Easier to poach from the young ones who thought being bored was something to complain about and didn't ask questions about what they were hired to do.

Rochus couldn't claim he wasn't stupid, especially given his recent behavior involving a certain beautiful dragon, but he was
old
and stupid, which meant he had a few tricks young fools didn't.

So he played his song and kept the wyvern busy, slowly but surely unraveling the other necromancer's hold. It was exhausting work because he could not stop playing and his energy leeched away with every note, but it was working. And much easier than the flashy way he'd insisted on doing it back when he was young, drunk, and way in over his fool head.

As he felt the wyvern begin to tear, he altered the song to a lullaby, calling to the spirits within, who were drawn to him like dragons to jewels.

Then he felt the jarring
yank
as the other necromancer tried to take back control. The wyvern snarled, but couldn't quite break free of the net Rochus had cast. He played harder, infused the music with even more of his power, ignoring the exhaustion that washed over him.

The other necromancer kept trying, throwing his power like a brawler in a tavern fight. But Rochus had built a wall brick by brick, and it was going to take more than a temper tantrum to knock it down.

When the necromancer was finally forced to withdraw, Rochus finished his song and let the music fade away. Reaching into his satchel, he pulled out the little box that held his crystals and drew out a large black diamond strung on a black thong.

He started humming the lullaby he'd just been playing, letting the crystal sway back and forth. It began to glow as the spirits within stirred and called to those bound within the wyvern.

With a deafening roar, the bone wyvern collapsed, making the ground tremble. As it began to break and shatter and crumble to dust, all the trapped spirits spilled out and drifted toward Rochus's crystal.

As they gathered around him, however, Rochus dropped the crystal, splayed his hands with palms out toward them, and with a few sharply spoken words, banished the spirits once and for all.

They vanished like snuffed candle flames, and Rochus dropped to his knees, trembling with exhaustion and dripping with cold sweat. Silence flapped and fluttered at him, and Rochus mustered a faint smile. “I'll be fine, merely in need of a good night's sleep or six. I should probably take care of that trapped wyvern, hmm? Better two to deal with on the morrow than three.” Silence flapped and hopped impatiently. Rochus rolled his eyes as he picked up the dropped crystal and settled it around his neck. “I'll be fine, truly. Stop fussing.” She hopped forward and pecked at his hand. “Stop that! No I am not being a hypocrite. I am a long way from a young, idiot dragon who ignores his limits for the sake of saving the world.” He jerked his hand away before Silence could peck him again. “Quit your complaining because it won't stop me.”

Heaving to his feet, he tucked his dropped box back into the satchel and pulled out the pipes again, along with a small glass vial tucked into a special pouch with three more. Tucking the remainders away, he uncorked the vial and quickly drank the contents—specially preserved pig blood, retained for emergencies. It tasted awful, the spells and herbs used to preserve it ruining the flavor completely, but it gave him a sorely needed boost of strength that should sustain him long enough to take care of a second bone wyvern.

As he climbed a hill and the trapped wyvern came into view, he put the pipes to his lips and once more began to play. The trapped wyvern would be a good deal angrier and more likely to resist than his departed brother, so starting soft and almost beneath its conscious notice would hopefully help Rochus overcome that.

Memory came mewing up as Rochus drew closer, rubbing around his ankles and nearly tripping him in the process. Glaring over the pipes, Rochus kept going. The wyvern snarled and growled when it saw him, fighting the pull of his magic, but also tired from fighting uselessly against the trap.

Rochus increased the volume of his song as he reached the edge of the trap, pouring more energy into it, determined to bend the damned thing to his will.

A sudden sharp hissing, claws in his leg, snapped his concentration like a twig. Rochus looked at Memory, alarmed that she'd do something so reckless, but before he could ask the question, the answer provided itself: two echoing roars, two enormous figures coming over the top of the far hill.

The fucking necromancer had drawn all three remaining beasts together. “Are you serious?” Rochus muttered, stuffing the panpipes back into his satchel even as he turned to run.

Not that he stood a chance of getting away from two bone wyverns, especially given how tired he was, but he wasn't going to stand around and wait quietly for death, either.

The ground trembled and shook as the bone wyverns ran full tilt toward him, their bellows ringing in his ears and thrumming in his chest. Panic drove his feet faster, but it was hopeless. “Silence!” He shouted. “Get Memory to safety!”

Silence obediently snagged the cat and flew off, though it was easier said than done given how much hissing and spitting and fighting Memory did the whole time.

A shadow appeared over Rochus, and he looked up—and could have wept with relief to see Tilo.  As he dropped low enough to reach, Rochus jumped and grabbed hold of one his dangling forelegs.

“Not the castle!” Rochus shouted when he saw where Tilo was headed.

Tilo rumbled in annoyance but swerved and flew over a long stretch of trees to what proved to be an old, ivy-covered watch tower. He flew low again and Rochus dropped to the ground with a grunt. Tilo landed next to him and shifted back. Rochus removed his cloak and handed it over; Tilo took it with a murmured thanks.

“Thank you,” Rochus said. “How did you know I needed help?”

“I was watching with a bird scope from the gate towers,” Tilo said. “I was worried one of the others would show up, or that one would break out of the thing you trapped him in.”

Rochus shook his head. “The only way he's getting out of that trap is if I open it or the necromancer controlling the wyverns comes to break it, which they won't because then I'll have the little bastard. The bigger problem is those other two probably still coming after us. At least they won't destroy your beautiful home now, hopefully.”

“The castle has withstood worse than this, according to the archives. It's burnt near to the ground twice, at least.”

“Well, let's not be in a hurry to make it three all the same,” Rochus replied. “Are you all right?”

Tilo shrugged. “Well enough. What do we do?”

“Are you up to fire? I mean a
lot
of fire.” Rochus opened his satchel and rifled through it a moment before finally locating the box he wanted. Similar to the other one, it contained several crystals strung on leather cord or occasionally silver chains, but the other box was strictly human spirits. This box contained an assortment of rarer spirits, most of them traded to him—including a large piece of amber that contained the spirits of three dragons.

Tilo hesitated, but then nodded. “Yes. I won't be good for much else after, but I can breathe as much fire as you want. Assuming you don't want me to do it for an hour straight.”

Rochus shook his head. “No, merely long enough to burn those two monstrosities to ash.”

“They don't burn,” Tilo replied, brow furrowing. “I tried that numerous times in the beginning. I swear they just laughed at me.”

“We're not going to use dragonfire. We're going to use shadowfire.”

Tilo's eyes widened. “I've heard of that! I thought it was just another one of those exaggerated tales people told, like you being half-dead and such.”

Rochus's mouth quirked. “Half-spirit is more accurate, though even that's not quite right. And the shadowfire is completely true. It's how I killed a bone wyvern the first time I encountered one.” Drunk and scared to death, and the dragon he'd made help him had barely stopped shaking long enough to be of use. “Let's get to a position where they can't get around us.”

“This way,” Tilo said, and grabbed his hand briefly to drag him along before letting go and darting ahead.

Rochus followed close behind, acutely aware of the warmth lingering on his hand, fighting a sharp need to drag Tilo in close and kiss him deeply.

He really was the world's biggest damn idiot.

Tilo led him to a wall of smooth white rock. “We're in the original kill that gave the territory its name. If we keep going east, we'll come across the old mines. I thought at first that's what everyone was after, but whenever they offered to help, it was in exchange for water rights—if not the whole damned territory, or a marriage contract.”

“Goddess have mercy, and people say I'm the half-dead one,” Rochus muttered. “Purely to confirm a theory, does your lake have a direct connection to the river?”

“Not until a few years ago,” Tilo replied. “I mean, it was always there, but more or less underground. You could follow it through the mountains but only in small boats and if you were willing to risk the currents. But there was an earthquake some years ago that did a lot of damage to the mountains and opened part of the tunnel up. We finished the job because it had become treacherous, so now there's an open path straight on up the tributary. But we don't have much cause to go up that way. It's just a shortcut we use sometimes to trade up north for occasional supplies. Mostly we go south or have what we need here. Is that what everyone is after? A connection to the river?”

Rochus smiled, started to lean in to kiss Tilo before he caught himself. “A direct connection to the river makes your land at least a hundred times more valuable than it was before, and that lake… you could live like a king if you desired, my little kit. Turn your territory into a bustling hub.”

Tilo wrinkle his nose. “Why would I do that? I like my territory the way it is, and so do all my people.” He slumped abruptly. “At least, I hope they still do. What if none of them come back?”

“They will, and any that don't will be replaced by others. Trust me, there is always someone in want of a home and yours would be perfect for many. You'll have your precious little hoard of people again soon, kit.”

Tilo's cheeks flushed. “I'm not a kit.”

Rochus just smiled again. “Come on, we'd best focus on the shadowfire and save the discussion of your land for later.”

“So what do I do?”

“What dragons do best,” Rochus replied. “As they get close, do your level best to set them on fire. I'll take care of the rest.”

“Meow.”

Rochus looked down at where Memory had appeared from nowhere, a disgruntled Silence riding on her back. “It's about time you showed up, you worthless fur bag. What did you do, stop for a snack?”

Memory meowed again, shook off Silence, and sat back to lick one paw.

Rolling his eyes, Rochus turned his attention back to the matter at hand. “If you think you're in danger of running out of fire, signal somehow, then grab us and fly as far as you can. But even with creatures this well-established, I think we'll manage it. I have very strong spirits here and you're young and robust.” The minute he said the words he regretted them—all the more at the brief smirk that curved Tilo's troublesome mouth. “Not a word.”

“Not a word,” Tilo replied, smirk turning into a full-fledged, mischievous grin. He shrugged off Rochus's cloak and took his time handing it back, making certain it did not obstruct the view.

Pointedly ignoring the view, Rochus dropped his cloak on top of Memory just to hear her squawk of outrage. After she'd managed to extract herself, he pulled out his bag of anchors and gave one each to Silence and Memory. They wouldn't make a truly useful trap, but they could make a wall that'd slow the wyverns down when they tried to escape.