The Wyrmling Horde (37 page)

Talon related all that had happened to her, including Erringale's vision of Borenson sailing to their aid upon a white ship.

It seemed as if they spoke for an hour; but all of them had taken endowments of metabolism, so in truth not five minutes had passed before Rhianna leapt into the air and flew north to meet the horse-sisters.

Then the company began their race again, sprinting down the broken road to Rugassa.

Holding a blanket over her head to protect her bleary eyes, Kirissa scrambled down out of the forest and over the uneven
black paving stones into Rugassa, a fortress built into a tall volcanic cone of black basalt, smoothed on its slopes so that one could see where hundreds of towers and walkways and air shafts had been carved.

She had hoped never to see the fortress again, but the Earth King's words resounded in her mind.

The time was coming when the small folk of the world would have to stand up to the large.

But he didn't say that I'd live through it, Kirissa realized.

She stumbled, her toe catching on an uneven stone, and fell to one knee, then climbed up carefully.

The defenses of Rugassa were all underground. From the outside it looked as if you could just walk in. There were no tall walls with guards walking them, as you would see in a human castle. The wyrmlings didn't like being so exposed. No, the defenses were all inside, underground, so well concealed that those who managed to breach them never got back outside to tell how far they had gone.

So Kirissa walked across the dark stones with the sun blazing above her, a bit of sandalwood perfume upon her heel, until she reached the south tunnel.

Deep within its recesses, fifty yards from the entrance, guards were waiting. A great iron door stood closed before her, and the guards peered out through a slit, so that she could see only their white eyes.

They did not ask her questions. They only opened the door, winching it slowly, until the guards stood before her, great brutes in armor of bone.

One guard lunged for her, grabbing her in a stranglehold, then threw his weight against her so that she fell to the floor. He landed on her ribs, forcing the air from her sharply, so that she could not breathe. Two other guards grabbed her from behind and began feeling through her clothes, ostensibly searching for weapons.

One of them hissed, “I would have thought that you would be smart enough to stay gone.”

“I came back,” Kirissa grunted, “to serve the Great Wyrm. I was wrong to leave. I know that now.”

“Oh, she
knows
that now!” her strangler mocked. The others laughed harshly as his grip tightened on her throat. Kirissa gasped for air and struggled for all that she was worth for fifteen seconds.

As her lungs began to burn, she went limp, feigning unconsciousness, but the guard kept strangling.

Don't let me die, she begged the Powers. Please don't let them kill me now.

Talon and the heroes waited on a pine-covered hill with the horse-sisters of Fleeds, a fearsome company of women upon blood mounts, red warhorses with red eyes, their flanks painted with mystic runes.

Though the horse-sisters' armor was light, consisting of boiled-leather cuirasses enameled in green and gold, their lances were sharp, and they wore fantastic enameled masks over their helmets—images of stags with antlers, and boars with tusks, and bears with long fangs, and the green man with leaves for hair—so that they looked more like fearsome beasts than humans.

The forty women were four miles from Rugassa. The pines grew thick around them, but not so thick that the company couldn't see the entrances to the fortress from here.

They could not go to battle immediately. They needed to give the wyrmlings time to take their prisoner into the dungeons.

If
they take her to the dungeons, Talon thought.

There were no guarantees. Rhianna had warned that the guards might kill her outright.

Talon said, “That girl is showing great faith in us.”

“Let us live worthy of it,” the emir agreed.

It was early afternoon, a perfect time to strike.

Talon took a few minutes to sharpen her sword, then her daggers. The others did the same. She got out her sunstones, and gave one to each of her companions. She had only five, and so the Cormar twins were forced to share.

But Daylan Hammer urged, “Keep them hidden. Use
them only as a last resort. If Vulgnash sees them, he will draw the fire from them and turn their power against us.” So Talon hid her sunstone in her shoe. It was uncomfortable, but it was a familiar pain. As a child she had often hidden coins in her boot when she went to the fair.

The memory made her smile, reminding her of more innocent days.

It seemed that the sun crawled through the sky. Talon saw the emir wander off into the trees.

She followed him, until they found a private place in a small glen.

He did not speak. He took Talon's hand and squeezed it. It wasn't that he had nothing to say, she realized. It was that he had too much to say, and words did not suffice.

So she kissed him again, and held him for a time.

“Don't die on me today,” Talon said.

He made no promises.

Am I not reason enough for him to live? she wondered. But she understood his math. He had taken endowments from people, and he needed to give them back. The happiness of the many outweighed the happiness of two.

At last, Rhianna gave a small shout. It was time to fight.

The two of them walked up the hill, hand-in-hand, until they reached its top.

Daylan Hammer and the Cormars were itching to go. The horse-sisters were all mounted, ready to ride.

“Good fortune to you in your hunt,” Sister Daughtry said.

“Are you going to ride to Caer Luciare now?” Talon asked her. Almost she wished that the horse-sisters would join the raid, but none of them had taken the number of endowments that would be needed for such a fight.

“Yes,” Sister Daughtry answered.

“Don't try to take it yet,” Rhianna said. “You don't know what you'll find there. There will be Death Lords for certain, and Runelords. Find a place to camp for the night, and hide well. We will join you as soon as possible, if we can!”

“Well spoken,” Sister Daughtry said.

Raising their fists in salute, the horse-sisters urged their mounts forward one by one, and headed down the road to the south.

When they were gone, Rhianna leapt into the air and led the charge, flapping madly, flying low above the road, veering among the trees, building up incredible speed—until soon she was a blur, faster than a falcon.

She had volunteered to hit the gate first, take out the guards, and leave the way open for the others.

The five stood upon the hill, watching her fly, and in moments she was lost in the trees. Just as Talon began looking for her, suddenly Rhianna was there at Rugassa, rising up out of the forest and hurtling over the wall. She could not have been visible for two seconds before she disappeared into the fortress, choosing a huge black gaping tunnel at the southernmost face.

“Good hunting,” Talon prayed, as she raced to catch up.

“Come, and see this, my friend,” Lord Despair said to his visitor. “Forces are coming to attack the fortress. I believe that they are humans, empowered by runes. You should enjoy the spectacle.”

The creature beside him was covered with coarse dark hair, and stood nine feet tall, but the vast wings at his back rose even higher. He smelled like a storm, and normally would have wrapped himself in clouds and darkness, drawing all light from the room. But here in Rugassa, he felt at home. He was a Darkling Glory from the netherworld, but he was more than that. There was a wyrm feeding on his soul, a powerful wyrm named Scathain, the Lord of Ashes. For nearly twenty years now, Scathain had been feeding upon the Darkling Glory.

Despair was filled with nervous energy. Hundreds of endowments he had been granted this day, sent through various vectors. He had not wasted his time attending the rites. He'd been too busy negotiating. He'd taken so many endowments
of stamina, he almost felt as if health and vitality must be radiating from him, bursting like beams of sunlight from every pore. His endowments of brawn were so great that he felt as if he was hardly touching the floor. His own weight seemed insignificant, as if he floated above the ground instead of walking. It was all that he could do to restrain himself, to keep from running.

Scathain followed at his side, walking in a hunched manner. Lord Despair said, “The attackers will come down this very tunnel.”

“How can you be certain?” Scathain asked.

“My Earth Powers,” Despair said. “Some of my chosen servants are down the corridor. I sense the danger coming.”

Lord Despair could see the attackers' path in his mind's eye. They would leave a trail of dead—all the way down to the dungeons, if he did not stop them.

“Yes, they will come,” Despair said, his anticipation rising pleas ur ably.

“Would you like me to deal with them?” Scathain asked.

“No. My wyrmlings will handle the intruders.”

“Yes, Great One,” Scathain said. Despite his size, the Darkling Glory walked lightly.

Despair had ordered a certain member of the High Council to watch the southern passage. That was how he knew exactly where the enemy would enter. He could feel death approaching the fool. But Despair dared not use his Earth Powers to warn him. If the wyrmling lord warned others, it could cause a panic. People would flee, defenders might gather. Despair could not allow that. The enemy could not suspect that he had set a trap.

But what is the source of the attack? he wondered. As of yet, he had not glimpsed his foes. Most likely it was humans, since they were attacking in the early afternoon, when the sun was the brightest.

It could be the Fang Guards coming from Caer Luciare, he decided. But wyrmlings would traditionally travel at night. Still, he supposed, if it were members of the Fang
Guard, they might have taken enough endowments of stamina to resist the sun's burning powers.

But something else came to mind. What if the Fang Guards had discovered some other way to abide the daylight?

What would happen, Lord Despair wondered, if a wyrmling took an endowment of sight from a normal human? Would he suddenly be able to withstand sunlight better?

What a fearsome thing that would be, Despair considered—a wyrmling that can abide the light.

He sent a guard to tell his facilitators to test the theory.

Or perhaps, he wondered, it is neither the folk from Caer Luciare nor the Fang Guards. His warriors had been harrying the small folk on his borders now for three nights running. Perhaps some of the small folk had found some blood-metal ore and taken endowments. Perhaps it was a contingent of these that were coming, a band of Runelords who planned an attack for reasons of their own.

He was so in tune with the Earth Powers, he could almost count the seconds until the attack. It would come at the southern gate, in only a few moments.

Running now, Lord Despair charged up the stairs to his chambers, three steps at a time, until he found himself in his rooms. He went to his parapet, and crouched there in the shadows in his black robes beside the gargoyles, watching to see what enemy would come.

Scathain raced up to his side, and knelt like a great black gargoyle himself.

The sun stood still in the sky, and the air was almost perfectly calm. Only the slightest afternoon breeze played across his brow.

With his endowments of hearing, birdsong seemed to rise in a chorus from the forest in every direction—the cooing of wild pigeons, the ratcheting of jays, the chirps of songbirds.

The plains before the gates of Rugassa were empty now.

In the nights, the fields would come alive as his minions toiled by the tens of thousands, a dark mass of wyrmlings coming to feed the city: huntsmen bringing in handcarts
piled with carcasses to feed the empire; skirmishers leading bands of small folk in chains, to be stripped of endowments; woodsmen tugging carts filled with cordwood for the cooking fires; wyrmlings bringing animal skins for clothes, and ingots of iron from the mines, and all other manner of goods.

In such a throng, it would have been difficult to spot intruders. They might have hidden among carts or worn disguises.

But the plains were empty now.

Despair saw no armies in the distance. With a dozen endowments of sight taken both from wyrmlings and from the small folk, he would have spotted them across the miles.

Yet alarms blared in Despair's mind. “Death is coming. Tell your chosen one to flee.”

At last something caught his eye on the horizon to the south: a flash of red in a shaft of light—the crimson robes of a Knight Eternal.

It was hastening toward the fortress, flying low through the pine trees that ran along the road.

Kryssidia? Lord Despair wondered. What is he doing out?

The Knight Eternal that flew toward the castle had endowments, it was obvious. He was flying at tremendous speed, perhaps two hundred miles per hour, making toward the southern entrances.

“Flee,” the Earth Spirit said. “Warn your chosen to flee. Death is coming.”

Could it be Kryssidia? Despair wondered. Dismay filled him. If his Knights Eternal were to turn against him . . .

Then he spotted movement in the distance—too far for the city guard to see. But a handful of warriors was also racing toward Rugassa in the midday sun.

Humans. So, the heroes had come to rescue Fallion.

Death was imminent for the High Council member at the south gate. The Earth Spirit seemed almost to be thundering in his ears. The attackers on the ground were still miles away when the Earth screamed its final warning, and it took
a great of amount of discipline for Lord Despair to withhold aid.

So the flier is just the vanguard, Despair realized.

Kryssidia would not be in league with humans.

It is one of them—a human with stolen wings and a Knight Eternal's robes.