Dragon Sword Series - Dragon Sword Part 23

But rests were few and too shorthand the men were beginning to be affected as much by fatigue as by the dull heaviness that had infected the air. It was a leaden feeling, like that of a humid summer day, and it turned even breathing into work.

The wind from the east picked up, carrying with it a tang of rot, as of a tide pool gone stagnant. The darkness had touched the entire sky, and the once-blue vault hung above them like a gray shroud. Alouzon sensed a change approaching.

"Cvinthil," she said abruptly, "make sure the men can get under cover fast."

There it was again: a sudden alteration in the feeling of the land, as though the faint transparency that she had come to accept as normal had increased, shuddered, and noticeably rippled.

"Something's going to happen. I can feel it."

Cvinthil's eyes flicked ahead to the darkness. "What?"

"Don't know. Something bad." She gave Jia a soft kick and trotted ahead to stay close to the king.

He greeted her warmly, but she noticed that he was deeply concerned. "The battle," he explained. "I fear that all is not well with Gryylth."

"What about Dythragor? He seems to get pretty good results."

"Nonetheless." Vorya gestured ahead. "In the face of that, I fear we are losing."

He straightened up and lifted his hand to give a signal to quicken the pace, but the darkness moved, striking like a cobra. A long, snaking tendril blasted through the air, las.h.i.+ng directly for Vorya's chest. The king, surprised, had barely enough time to lift his s.h.i.+eld before it struck with a blue flash.

Instantly, the air turned to murk. Alouzon caught hold of Vorya's shoulder to keep him from toppling to the ground, but she could not see anything. There was a stench as of decay, and the horses were righting to break away and run.

Jia was no exception. He strained against her, trying to turn around. Alouzon did not have the strength to hold the king and fight her mount at the same time. "Dammit, Jia," she shouted. "You run out on me now and I'll fix you good!"

He quieted and stood his ground, forcing Vorya's horse to hold still also. Alouzon shook the king by the shoulder. "Vorya!"

"What?" The darkness as absolute, and a tide of confused and frightened voices was rising from behind as Vorya came to himself. "Am I blind?"

HNo. It's the darkness." She turned around and called out: "Someone light some torches." Cvinthil took up the order.

In a few moments, wavering flames appeared. "My lady, the pitch burns fitfully," said a voice as uncertain as the light. She recognized it as belonging to the man who had asked her about her children.

"Better than not at all. Get some up here: the king's hurt."

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Cvinthil himself appeared with a torch. Vorya looked pale. "My king?" said the councilor.

"I am well," he said. "My arm is numb, that is all."

"All, lord? That is your s.h.i.+eld arm."

"What of it? My sword arm is sound."

Vorya's left arm had all the life of a sandbag. Shaking his head as Alouzon moved to help, he pried his s.h.i.+eld loose from his numb fingers and threw it down, then took up the hand and tucked it into his belt.

He turned to Cvinthil. "We move on."

' 'In this darkness?''

"We marched in darkness last night. This is but little different. Marrget will need us now more than ever."

Rumbles from ahead. Deep rumbles, like barrels rolling downhill, or like mountains moving. Vorya lifted his head. "And what is this?"

Even in the feeble light cast by the torches, Alouzon could see that the ground was starting to lift. Large cracks appeared and widened, and trickles of sand and soil cascaded into them with a rattle. A wall began to rise ahead as the section of road occupied by the Gryylthans sank with a lurch.

The horses went wild. Even Jia reared. Alouzon gasped as she hit the stone pavement, but she reflected that, considering what was happening, it was better to be down.

A wind arose, extinguis.h.i.+ng the torches, whipping up to the strength of a hurricane in moments: a sudden blast of compacted air that felled those who were still standing. Alouzon crawled for a handhold against it, shut her eyes against the hail of sand and pebbles, and tucked her head down as if fighting off tear gas. She heard nothing save the sound of the driving air that ripped and slashed at a landscape that was embedded in the darkness like fossil fronds in pitch.

Abruptly, it was over. The wind subsided, the darkness cleared. Alouzon unclosed her eyes and looked up into a blue sky. The earth was still torn and shattered, but the sun that shone on it was friendly, and the only odor in the air was that of fresh soil and bruised leaves.

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The darkness had receded to the east. As they got to their feet, it dwindled to a point and dissolved.

Vorya brushed himself off with his good hand. "The attacks of the Dremords are short-lived," he remarked. He looked at his left arm in disgust. "I would so were their wounds."

"We're not talking about weapons here," said Alouzon. "Not material ones, anyway."

He caught her meaning. "I will send for Mernyl. My mind is made up. But we have other tasks now, for who knows the fate of the wartroops? "

The wind had done only limited damage to the unmounted soldiers who had not had to contend with panicking animals. Some dislocated shoulders, some sc.r.a.pes, one or two broken bones. The few who could not go on were sent back to the towns that lay to the west. The rest started forward again.

The men climbed the wall that had arisen; the horses detoured some distance into the fields on either side in order to pa.s.s it. But beyond, the going was smooth: the earth movements had been concentrated in the vicinity of the king and the wartroops. There were cracks and pits beyond, to be sure, but few, scattered, and easily avoided.

Under the bright sky, the journey seemed to go more quickly, and the absence of the darkness gave the party less of a sense of condemned prisoners, and more that of a rescue squad. Alouzon heard someone telling jokes in the ranks, and the deep laughter of the men was a comforting sound. Her actions during the attacks had gained her respect, and some of the men were actually saluting her. She noticed, with a scholar's dogged persistence, that it was a distinctly Roman gesture.

Then they topped a rise and saw what the battle had left.

Alouzon surprised herself: she was not sickened by the sprawling heaps of dead that lay in shapeless hummocks as though bulldozed in a recreated Auschwitz. In truth, it was nothing that she had not seen before, seen and become inured to through the vitric safety of the six 206.

o'clock news. Death was the same everywhere: in Germany, in Vietnam, in Gryylth, and she discovered that, whether she confronted it as phosph.o.r.escent images in a cathode ray tube or face to face, it had, en ma.s.se, lost the power to move her.

Grief needed individuals. Even in Bandon there had been individuals. Here there were none. No faces to remember or to identify. Just colors and patterns laid down as though spattered by an artist. Just men-corpses of men-heaped as they had fallen, or as they had crawled together to seek some company in death.

The land was silent. There was no wind. A hundred yards away, a few crows rose into the" air. Alouzon wiped away a trickle of sweat that was threading down her cheek. She could hear the harsh breathing of the king beside her, and his voice seemed overloud as he ordered the men to look for survivors.

"The Tree," said Alouzon softly.

"Then we must concede defeat now," said Vorya, "for a sorcerer who can raise the elements against us in such a fas.h.i.+on cannot be stopped by mere bronze or iron."

"Mernyl?"

He shook his head. "Nor by Mernyl, I fear."

"My lord!" called Cvinthil from the far side of the valley. "We had best take the higher ground."

Vorya nodded absently and gave the signal to move. "And what of Dythragor?" he said. "Is he dead also?"

He lives, thrummed a voice in Alouzon's head.

Haul your a.s.s back here, Silbakor, she thought. But there was no reply.

Unconsciously, she had shut her eyes when she had addressed the Dragon, and she nearly rode into Vorya, who had stopped suddenly in front of her. Drawing rein, she followed his gaze to the slope ahead.

There was a man there: b.l.o.o.d.y, filthy, but alive. Open wounds on his arms had scabbed over but lightly, and he moved with an effort as he stumbled down the slope. Only the blond curls, now matted with dirt, told Alouzon that this was Santhe. His smiles were gone. His face held .

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nothing but shock and sorrow, and would not compromise on the slightest happiness.

He staggered forward until he reached Vorya. "My lord," he said thickly. "I bring news of Marrget of Crownhark.''

"Santhe, where-"

All his past laughter now added to the grimness that had fallen on him. This was Santhe, and yet not. Something had happened to him that went beyond the killing of men and the witnessing of death. "I learned of the breakthrough from Mernyl," he said, "and rode directly to the battle. I met my wartroop, and was leading them in a charge when . . ."He fell silent. His eyes stared at the ground, then at the sky. He became aware of Alouzon, and he flinched away for a moment before he recognized her.

"And what of Marrget? Is he alive?"

"Marrget . . . lives. The First Wartroop also." He almost collapsed, and a soldier dropped his spear and rushed forward to support him.

"Speak," said Vorya. "Are they wounded? Dying? Can we bring them relief?"

Santhe fought with his emotions and his wounds. He seemed ready to scream, unable to form coherent words. Alouzon leaned toward him to hear what he had to say, a dim sickness growing in her belly.

"My king," he said, "they are women."

* CHAPTER 14 *

t Santhe's words, Vorya looked blank, but only for -a moment. He leaned down to the wounded man. "By all the G.o.ds, Santhe, if this is your laughter speaking, you shall not speak again."

Santhe looked at him. There was not a shred of laughter left in him. Laughter was something unknown here on the fields of slaughter, with sightless eyes looking on and seeing nothing, and dead ears too full of screams to hear the joke. "My lord," he said evenly. "I speak the truth."

"Where are they?"

He gestured stiffly. "Across the ridge."

The king did not reply. Instead, he spurred his horse into a gallop and mounted the hill. Alouzon and Cvinthil stayed at his side, keeping pace with him. At the crest, they stopped, and Vorya muttered a protective oath.

Below, in a shallow valley, a group of riders stood dismounted. They bore the armor and insignia of the First Wartroop, and when they noticed that their king had come to them, they turned to face him.

It was as Santhe had said: they were all women.

One of them mounted and rode toward the king. Only the armor and the escutcheon indicated that this was Marrget, the captain. The burly warrior had become a thin young woman with ash-blond hair and a sense of fragility about her. There was a haunted, horrified leanness to her face, and she bore her body like a fresh scar.

Twelve feet from Vorya's horse, she stopped. "My 208 .

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lord," she said, fighting to keep her voice even, "the First Wartroop desires to lay down its arms to you, and to be dismissed from service." It was a formal request. Formality was all Marrget had left.

Vorya's jaw was set. Alouzon sensed that he was fighting some battle with himself, but she had no idea what the sides involved were. "You make your request too lightly, captain," he said at last. "I see no reason to relieve you of your duty and your oath to Gryylth. Tell your . . ." He groped for words. Marrget waited. "... your . . . warriors to have a care for their horses and for themselves, for battle weighs heavily on them all." His voice seemed to fail for a moment, but he managed to continue. "When you have attended to that, I will question you as to your encounter."

Still formally, Marrget drew her sword and saluted Vorya, then rode back to her warriors. Alouzon noticed that the man she had known had not been completely effaced: the piercing eyes and proud set of the head were still evident.

If Alouzon had required individuals to make her weep, here they were. Unrecognizable, yet friends, a group of intimate strangers, their faces were distinct, each expression plain, direct, uncompromising. She wiped at her eyes, watched through a film of tears as Marrget went to her warriors and spoke to them, her voice low.

What did she say? This was no aftermath such as the Heath had left, with two corpses that could be called dead with no equivocation. This was something else, an alteration that affected each member of the wartroop with a profundity that eclipsed the neat, tidy termination of another's life. What could she say?

The women listened, and slowly, fumbling for buckles with unfamiliar hands, they began to doff their oversized armor. Marrget was their captain, and, regardless of her form, they were loyal to her. Perhaps they even loved her. Whatever words could be said, Marrget had said them.

Alouzon wished that she had the captain's skill. Once, at Kent, she had tried to comfort the wounded and dying 210.

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while they had waited through innumerable minutes for the ambulances. But all she had found were trite and plat.i.tudinous words that exposed themselves for the lies that they were even as she uttered them.

She wanted to say something now to Marrget, to the comrades with whom she had fought and shared respect. The circ.u.mstances demanded that she say something. But she would not insult friends with those same untruths, for the circ.u.mstances also demanded honesty.

It's going to be all right.

Sure. And, by the way, you're dead.

She recoiled from the thought. No, they could not be dead. She would not allow it. She had been able to do nothing at Kent. But here, she was a Dragonmaster. She could do something.

Please say that it's going to be all right.

She might have said the words aloud. She wondered: could one pray to the Grail?

Vorya turned back down the hill to his troops, leaving the First Wartroop hidden behind the ridge. As he descended, he called Cvinthil to his side. "Find someone trustworthy to go to Mernyl with all possible speed. Have the sorcerer brought to me. Have him told whatever is necessary to insure his haste."

Cvinthil was still in shock. "And what of Dythragor's ban on sorcery?"

Beside him, Alouzon seized his arm and brought him to a halt, and stared into his face for a moment. "f.u.c.k Dythragor," she said, and the bronze resonance of her voice seemed to clear the councilor's head. "You've got a bunch of people back there who need help, Cvinthil. Your fellow warriors."

He looked ashamed. "I am sorry, friend Alouzon. I. . ."