Flight of the Fallen

3 The Messenger

“Lady Linsha!” Her name rang down the canyon and echoed off the high rock walls.

Linsha looked up from the stone and the sword in her lap, cocked her head for a moment, and went hack to work. The Scorpion Wadi was a deep, curving canyon with a complicated maze of caves, tunnels, washed-out gullies, and eroded stone walls. Voices carried in odd ways through the Wadi, so it was often difficult to tell where the caller was located.

Not that Linsha bothered to find out. She had finally managed to steal another few minutes away from the crowded, noisy camp, and she was in no mood to help someone find her and ruin a rare moment of sulking.

“Lady Linsha!”

She continued to ignore the call while she ran the honing stone along the edge of the sword blade. Her name bounced off the rock walls and went unheeded.

“It might be important, you know,” a raspy voice said from the shaded ledge of a nearby outcropping.

“They’ll find me,” Linsha replied in a tone as hard and uninterested as the whetstone in her hand. She flipped the weapon over and began to sharpen the opposite edge.

“It sounds like young Leonidas,” prompted the voice.

Linsha’s clear green eyes narrowed and her lips tightened to a thin line. Couldn’t she enjoy a bad mood alone for just a little while?

“All right, all right,” she grumbled. “Go get him.”

An owl, brown and creamy in color, hopped off the ledge and glided silently out of the side gully and into the main canyon.

Linsha paid scant attention. The whetstone in her hand continued its raspy journey along the length of the sword blade. From guard to tip. Again and again. Slow. Steady. With even pressure and fierce concentration. The stone evened out the inevitable nicks and honed its edge to a killing line.

If only, Linsha thought wearily, there was a whetstone somewhere to take the nicks and bluntness off her soul. She felt as battered and worn as the sword in her calloused hands, and there wasn’t anything she could do about it in this place.

Hooves thudded in the canyon close by then clattered into the dry gully where she had chosen to retreat. She didn’t bother to look up. Varia had been right. The one who called her name was the centaur, Leonidas. She could recognize those hoofbeats anywhere. Feeling perverse, she ignored the new arrival and bent over her sword.

“Lady,” a male voice said, then she heard an audible intake of breath.

Leonidas may have been a gangly buckskin stallion barely out of colthood, but he had been a friend to Linsha through the long, bloody summer, and he had learned early to recognize many of her moods, including her occasional bouts of temper. Although she normally kept them in check, once in a while something would slip loose and she would erupt like Mount Thunderhorn. Since Crucible left two days ago, even the lowliest camp potscrubber stayed out of her way.

“Before you throw that sword at me, I have a message. Lanther sent me to tell you we have captured a prisoner who has news of the eggs.”

Something twisted in the pit of Linsha’s stomach. Her hand fell still.

The eggs. In the name of Kiri-Jolith, why had Iyesta left those eggs in her care? They had been the bane of her summer. The great brass dragonlord had meant well, Linsha supposed, when she’d made a human promise to look after the clutch of brass dragon eggs that she’d left to incubate in the hot sands in a labyrinth under the city. Linsha assumed at the time that vow was simply a gesture of respect. None of them, including the sleeping mother dragon, had ever suspected Iyesta would be dead only a few days later. Then the mother brass was murdered, the eggs disappeared, and the promise made by a Rose Knight of Solamnia became a matter of honor.

Linsha suspected the Tarmaks had the eggs, for reasons known only to them, and she had tried everything she could think of to learn their whereabouts, only to be thwarted at every step. As far as she knew, the eggs had vanished. But what if they hadn’t? What if the Tarmaks had hidden them somewhere and someone else knew about it? It was a chance she could not ignore.

“Lady, did you hear me?”

The sudden, insistent voice jolted Linsha’s attention back to her surroundings. She hadn’t realized she was staring blankly at the ground. For an answer, she slid the sword into its battered scabbard and rose to her feet.

“I heard you.” She sighed and raised her arm, wrist straight out, in an invitation. There was a flutter of wings and the owl, Varia, came to land on her forearm. Sidestepping delicately, the bird made her way up to Linsha’s shoulder and settled comfortably close to the woman’s head of auburn curls.

Linsha turned her face to let the owl’s soft feathers brush her skin. The scent of owl, mingled with cedar, desert wind, and dust filled her nostrils. A bit of down tickled her nose, causing her to sneeze a gust of air that fluffed out the owl’s feathers across her chest.

Varia gave a throaty chuckle. She was a rare bird—one of a kind as far as Linsha knew—who had appeared in the forested mountains outside Sanction and adopted Linsha as her own. They had been inseparable for years and were very familiar with each other’s personalities.

“Are you through sulking?” Varia asked.

Linsha smiled. “Not yet, but I’ll work on it.”

She could never remain sullen for long. It was too much work. Her temperament was naturally optimistic. Like her parents and her grandparents, she was a fighter who sought to find the positive in any situation—even one as dire as the circumstances she found herself in now. As long as there was a scrap of hope, the Majeres managed to find it.

Her bad mood ebbed a little, and instead of nurturing it as she had since Crucible left, she let it go. She really needed about two months of sleep, steady meals, and easy duty to feel normal again, but she could at least do herself a favor and let her better nature take over.

She saw Leonidas watching her dubiously, like a man watches a cobra from a distance, and she offered him a faint smile as an apology. “Thank you for bringing Lanther’s message. Where are they?”

The young centaur swished his black tail and stamped a hind foot as if to say, “about time!” What he said aloud was, “They’re on the way to the Post.”

She looked at him closely and saw for the first time the dark patches of sweat on his sandy-colored hide and the dust on his legs. He had traveled hard and fast to reach her.

Without wasting more time, they hurried down the trail through the Wadi, wending a way between high stone walls tinted with late afternoon shadow. Smoke and smells from the cooking fires wafted down the canyon on a capricious wind. Voices bounced off the rock walls. A mile from Linsha’s chosen retreat they came to the edges of the camp that had sprung up in the canyon that summer after the death of Iyesta and the fall of the Missing City to the Tarmaks.

In the open plains that surrounded the port city, the Wadi was the only defensible position large enough to provide sanctuary for more than a few people, and in desperation, they had come in the hundreds. Someone had made a complete head-count shortly after the fall of the city and numbered 892 men, women, children, centaurs, elves, kender, and miscellaneous sorts living in the canyon. That number had changed often as more refugees and escaped slaves arrived, as a few displaced families left to seek shelter on the Plains of Dust with relatives and clans, and as people succumbed to wounds, disease, and conflict. It was a population mostly of fighting men and centaurs made up of remnants of the dragonlord’s once-proud militia, the City Watch, the Legion of Steel, and a few tenacious survivors of the Knights of Solamnia. No one knew exactly how many people remained in the Wadi, and most people were too tired to care.

As Linsha and Leonidas walked the narrow paths of the camp, they passed corrals and pens that were nearly empty, tents and huts and caves where people slept, clearings where a few children played, and groups of people bending to a myriad of tasks. Everyone was busy, for there was always work to be done. No one sat and did nothing, except the wounded. A few people nodded or waved to the Lady Knight and her escort, but most paid little heed. They concentrated on their work with the joyless weariness of people who knew they had nowhere else to go.

They were a disreputable looking bunch, Linsha observed. The mercenaries she had met two days before looked better equipped and certainly better fed. The people she saw now were dirty, lean from thin rations, and hollow-eyed from exhaustion that went bone-deep. Living in a strong, defensible sanctuary was well and good if there was enough food and water to go around, but here there usually wasn’t. The refugees didn’t have the means to grow crops, and any hunting party or scavenging patrol ran the risk of being caught by the Tarmaks or mercenaries. Several patrols had disappeared without a trace while too many others were found slaughtered.

Food was not the only thing that had become hard to replace. Weapons, clothing, saddles, horseshoes, tools, medicine, armor, rope, and blankets were all in short shrift. Everyone made do the best they could with makeshift repairs and crude replacements. The dead of the enemy were stripped whenever possible, and a few supplies had come in from the barbarian tribes to the east and the centaur clans to the north. But it was not enough. It was never enough. And no one knew what would happen when winter set in. Winters on the southern edge of the Plains of Dust received the brunt of the fierce winds and cold from the southern glaciers. They were long and hard and difficult enough to deal with when there were snug walls, warm fires, and plenty of food.

Linsha wished for the thousandth time that Crucible had not left. Crucible had provided a valuable service by tracking down and killing cattle from Iyesta’s scattered herds to feed the hungry in the camp. He also served as a powerful guardian to the encampment.

“I miss him, too, you know.”

Linsha started at the voice beside her ear. She had been so deep in thought she’d forgotten the owl on her shoulder. Sometimes, she swore, Varia could read her mind.

“Who? Crucible?” Leonidas snorted. “We will all miss him. Especially at meal time.” He shook his shaggy head and looked around the camp. “I wonder how long it will be before the Tarmaks know he is gone.”

Linsha had wondered the same thing. And what would the Tarmaks do about it?

Shortly the activity of the camp fell behind them and they passed through a fortified earthen wall recently completed. Sentries stepped out, saluted the Lady Knight and the centaur, then faded back out of sight. The camp was nearly two miles from the mouth of the Wadi and could be reached only along a narrow path that hugged the canyon floor between towering walls pockmarked with caves and scarred with gullies, washouts, and dead ends. It was a perfect place for an ambush.

At the mouth of the Wadi, Crucible had triggered a landslide that blocked all but a pathway barely wide enough for two horsemen to ride through abreast. There, cleverly disguised at the juncture of the massive slide and the canyon wall was a small complex of stone shelters and holding cells that represented the headquarters of the beleaguered force. The refugees simply called it the Post.

When Linsha and Leonidas approached, they saw three men and a centaur standing around a rough table laden with maps. The men, bent over the table, were talking and gesturing all at once. The centaur stood slightly apart, his arms crossed over his chest and his face impassive as he listened. He was a stranger to Linsha—a tall, rangy horse-man with a reddish-blond beard and mane and a coat the color of polished cedar.

“Who is that?” Linsha asked her companion.

“I don’t know,” Leonidas replied, curious himself. “From the look of the harness he wears and the white color of his arrows, I’d guess he’s from Willik.”

Willik. Linsha tracked through her memories for that name and found it. Willik was a centaur settlement in Duntollik, the free human-centaur realm pressed precariously between four dragon realms. Until recently the harried people of Duntollik had maintained a mutual protection pact to help defend their lands from the green dragon, Beryl, to the west, the blue Thunder to the south, and black Sable to the north. Only Iyesta to the east had given them any aid and support. Now that two of the four dragons were dead, Linsha considered what was happening in that land that would bring a messenger so far from home.

The group around the table glanced up when they heard Linsha and the centaur. Pausing in their discussion, the three men waited for the two newcomers to arrive.

These three men, Linsha knew, were the reason the small fighting force in the Wadi had held together as long as it had. They were the backbone, the spirit, and the strength of everyone who sought refuge in the canyon.

By sheer weight of seniority and forceful presence, Falaius Taneek, the commander of the Legion of Steel, had assumed overall command. Bluff, blunt General Dockett of Iyesta’s once-proud militia became his second-in-command. Knight Commander Jamis uth Remmik of the Solamnic Order grudgingly filled in as third ranking officer.

Although the Solamnic commander would have preferred to keep his Knights separate, he was realistic enough to know they had nowhere else to go. He could not pull them out, for their small numbers could not easily strike off across the vast Plains of Dust on their own without supplies, horses, or support, nor could he withdraw in good conscience. He had not received orders to retire the Solamnic Circle from of the Missing City, and Lord Knight Remmik based his life on the strict adherence to the Law. Instead he curbed his feelings and stayed with the eighteen Knights who were left from his garrison of seventy-five and lent his considerable talents to scrounging supplies and building defensive fortifications.

As she drew near to the men, Linsha felt her teeth grind. Only Falaius and Dockett looked pleased to see her. Sir Remmik deliberately angled his body to keep his back turned to her so he would not have to look at or speak to her. The Knight Commander had never forgiven her for several alleged crimes and for surviving the Tarmak attack on the city when most of his favored Knights had been slaughtered. He had declared her blacklisted to all Solamnic Knights, although he’d never had time to send a full report to the Grand Master in Sancrist, and ordered the Knights of the Circle to behave as if she did not exist.

Linsha found his attitude ludicrous. She knew she was innocent of the crime he despised her for, and in the close proximity of the Wadi, it was difficult to avoid someone who struggled beside you to survive and whom you had worked with for more than a year and a half. Linsha took perverse delight in being unfailingly polite and friendly to Sir Remmik and forcing him to acknowledge her in the presence of others, even when she preferred to punch him in the sneer on his aristocratic face.

This day, however, enough traces of her bad temper remained to kill any thoughts of playing nice to Sir Remmik. Striding up to the table, she spoke warmly to Falaius and General Dockett, nodded to the centaur, and passed her gaze over the Solamnic Knight as if he did not exist.

The Legion commander and the militia general were used to such hostilities between the Lord Knight and the exiled Lady Knight, but the centaur looked surprised by their rudeness.

“Lanther just arrived,” Falaius told Linsha. “He’s in the pens.” He held out a hand to stop her before she turned. “Lady Linsha, this is Horemheb of the Willik clan of Duntollik. He has brought us news you might find interesting.”

The centaur’s eyebrows rose at the plainsman’s use of the Solamnic title, and his eyes slid from Sir Remmik to Linsha and back in surprise.

Linsha didn’t blame him. While Sir Remmik still wore the formal blue and silver tunic of the Solamnic Circle and made an effort to keep it clean and repaired, she had lost her armor and her uniform months ago to battle, blood, and exile. Now she wore a stained and battered tunic that looked a little worse for her dunking in the sea, a leather corselet that was two sizes too big, and pants she had washed and repaired so many times there wasn’t much left of the original color. Her boots had holes in the soles and were held together by bits of rope and leather strips. Her auburn hair was shaggy and unkempt, her nails were dirty, and she was thinner than she had been in years. An owl perched on her shoulder. She hardly looked the part of a high-ranking Solamnic Knight.

Leonidas beside her chuckled and, giving a salute to his kinsman, said, “Do not be fooled by appearances. It takes more than a fancy coat to make a warrior.”

A rude snort brought Linsha’s attention to Sir Remmik’s face. Anger suffused his lean features and creased heavy frown lines around his nose and across his high forehead. “That’s true, horse-man,” he said fiercely. “It takes morals and obedience to a higher law.”

Linsha’s temper, already straining at its bit, lashed out. Ignoring Varia’s warning hoot, she leaned forward, her hands on the table, and held him with her eyes. “It also requires an open mind and the ability to see beyond the end of your nose. The Tarmaks killed Sir Morrec. I told you that, but you refuse to accept anything that does not conform to your own fantasies.”

Sir Remmik leaned forward as well, the other men forgotten. “You have no proof.”

“I cannot drag the Tarmak leader before you to admit to his complicity,” she retorted. “I have given you my word as a Rose Knight, something which even to you should be inviolate.”

“You were tried and condemned before a council of your peers. You are an abomination to us. Your word means nothing!”

“A pretty use of logic!” she spat. “That council was of your making. You—”

Falaius held up a hand between them and said calmly, “We’ve heard this before.”

Embarrassed, Linsha stepped back. Why had she let Remmik goad her again? She knew better than to engage in an argument with him, especially in front of a stranger—or Falaius and Dockett. Sir Remmik had convinced himself and much of the Circle that she had killed their commander, Sir Morrec, during an ambush on the night of the great storm. His evidence of her alleged guilt was the presence of her dagger in Sir Morrec’s back and the fact that she had been the only one of the honor guard to survive. She had failed to defend her superior officer, and she had failed to die. In Sir Remmik’s eyes, that alone was enough to condemn her to exile and, if possible, death.

Thankfully neither the militia nor the Legion fed on Sir Remmik’s idea of the truth. They accepted Linsha into their ranks, gave her sanctuary, and protected her from Sir Remmik’s wrath. Falaius had even offered her a place in the Legion, an honor for which she was truly grateful. But in spite of the fact this was the second time members of the Order had tried to convict her and blacklist her, the Solamnic Knighthood was too deeply ingrained in her bones. She wasn’t ready to give up on it yet.

She bowed apologetically to the centaur. “Forgive us. It is an old feud.”

Sir Remmik backed away, too, and had the grace to looked slightly ashamed.

On the woman’s shoulder, Varia huffed out her feathers and made a low-throated grumbling sound of indignation. Although she had a vast range of sounds and voices, she preferred to remain quiet in the presence of strangers.

“As I was saying,” Falaius said, “Horemheb has come from Duntollik with news.”

The rangy centaur shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe what he had just heard, then returned to his business. “In truth, I bring news. But I came to seek news as well. For years we have kept a close watch on the blue dragon, Thunder, since his realm borders on our own. Many times he has flown over Duntollik to spread terror and raid our villages. I think he would have driven us out long ago if Beryl and Sable had not forbidden him to seek more territory. Lately, though, our chieftains have grown concerned. We have not seen either Iyesta or Thunder these past three months, and news from the Missing City has completely stopped. I was sent south to find out what is happening.”

Falaius pointed to the maps and said to Linsha, “We have told him of the storm, the invasion, and the fall of the city. Since you are here, you can fill in the rest.”

Sir Remmik had not left the table, and Linsha could feel his pent-up anger radiating off him like heat waves on the sand. He had never fully believed her story of the death of the dragons—he didn’t want to believe her part in it—and he probably feared she would lie again. Linsha pushed him from her mind and let her thoughts slip back to midsummer and the dark-drowned caverns below the city. In her mind’s eye she saw them again, the huge corpses, two withered and reduced to heaps of bones and scales; one rotting in the sands of the empty dragon nest.

“They’re dead,” she said at last.

Horemheb started as if stung. “Both of them? By the gods! What happened?”

“The Tarmaks brought an Abyssal Lance. Thunder used it to kill Iyesta during the storm. Crucible and I and a centaur named Azurale turned it against him and killed him just after the city fell. Their bodies are beneath the Missing City, so the news has not spread quickly.”

The Willik centaur rubbed his bearded chin. He looked stunned. “Falaius has told me of the Tarmaks, but who is Crucible, and what is an Abyssal Lance?”

“Crucible is a bronze dragon who helped us for a while. He has since returned to his lair near Sanction.” Linsha paused, took a deep breath, and went on. “The Abyssal Lance is a vile weapon. I was told a few were made during the Chaos War. A Dark Knight presented one to the Tarmaks—the Brutes as you might know them—who used it as a lure to overcome Thunder’s fear of Iyesta. They convinced him to help them invade the city in return for a large share of her treasure.” She grimaced. “As soon as Iyesta was dead and the Missing City had fallen, the Tarmaks left the lance for us to steal, knowing we would try to kill Thunder.”

“Why would they do that if he was their ally?” Horemheb asked, still trying to absorb the monumental news.

Linsha lifted her free shoulder in a shrug. “You know Thunder. He was vicious, greedy, and unpredictable. I think they hoped we would rid them of him before he became a problem for them.”

“They wanted Iyesta’s city for themselves,” General Dockett said.

“They won’t stop there. I believe they want her entire realm.”

Linsha turned at the sound of the new voice and grinned at the tall man coming to join them. Lanther’s eye caught hers, and his weathered face broke into a matching smile of pleasure. Dark-haired and lanky, he had been a formidable warrior once until a serious injury two years ago had left him with a limp and a livid scar down his right cheek. The injury had sent him into semi-retirement in the Missing City while still in his forties.

He stopped beside her, gave Varia a wink with a bright blue eye, and bowed gravely to the messenger. “Your pardon for the interruption,” he said.

Introductions were made again to acquaint Horemheb with Lanther. The centaur studied the Legionnaire carefully and nodded once. “You have seen your share of fighting these past years,” he observed.

Lanther laughed, a sharp sound of grim humor. “What gave it away? The scars or the limp?”

“Those, and the tales that are told about you in the City of Morning Dew. I went there before I made my way down here, and they are still telling stories of your rescues in the tavern.”

“Ah yes, the Sunken Ship.” Lanther turned to Linsha, who had never been to the City of Morning Dew and said, “It’s an old boat they grounded at the edge of the swamp and converted into the city’s only tavern, inn, watering hole, gathering spot, and gaming house. All the Legionnaires go there to sit around and tell wild stories of their exploits.”

She crossed her arms. She knew the tales, too—of his dangerous trips into Sable’s black swamp to rescue slaves and escaped prisoners—but she couldn’t helping asking, “So who did you have to rescue from the tavern?”

“Two barmaids and a confused crocodile.”

His comment brought several smiles, a chuckle from Dockett, and gave them all a moment of lighthearted humor—something rare in that canyon. As soon as it faded, Horemheb returned to his questions.

“What did you mean they want Iyesta’s realm?” The centaur asked, unable to disguise his alarm.

Lanther tapped a forefinger on a map. “The Tarmaks do not seem content to stay where they are. From the news I have picked up from prisoners and our few spies in the city, the Tarmaks are building a new army—one equipped for a land campaign rather than a seaborne invasion.”

Sir Remmik agreed. He despised the Legionnaire, but he knew the business of supplies, shipping, and organizing an army, and he, too, had been keeping a watch on the port. “They are receiving several ships a week—filled with reinforcements and supplies. They have already outstripped us in numbers, and they are far better equipped.”

“Where are they coming from? I thought these Brutes were only a slave race controlled by the Knights of Neraka?”

Linsha shook her head. “We don’t know. Even their mercenaries have no knowledge of their origins.”

“At least we’ve seen no indication of Dark Knight involvement,” Falaius added. “The Tarmaks seem to be attacking us on their own initiative.”

Horemheb rubbed a large hand across his face and looked pensive. “I will have to get this news back to Duntollik. If this realm falls to these Tarmaks…”

He didn’t need to finish. They all understood the pressures of Duntollik’s geography.

Linsha, the men, the centaurs, and Varia stared down at the maps scattered across the table. No one had to explain the grim truth staring them in the face. The forces of Iyesta had refused to admit defeat even after the city fell. Led by the three commanders, they had formed a thin line of defensive positions, fortified outposts, and roving patrols anchored on the Scorpion Wadi that surrounded the Missing City in a rough half-circle. At first they had waged a successful campaign to keep the mercenaries and the Tarmaks confined within the boundaries of the city. But as the weeks passed and the numbers of besiegers dwindled, the effort to contain the Tarmaks had become little more than a waiting game. Before too long, Iyesta’s forces would either have to find another way to keep fighting or retreat back into the empty Plains of Dust.

“How long do you think it will be?” Horemheb asked quietly.

“If they are planning a campaign for this year,” General Dockett replied, “they will have to move before winter.”

Linsha stirred, remembering what Falaius had told her. The centaur had come with news of his own. “What about your people? What is the news from Duntollik?”

A look of frustration marred the centaur’s face. “We are watching and preparing what we can. Something is happening in Qualinesti. There have been large troop movements over the border and a great deal of activity among the dwarves in Thorbardin. Sable has been quiet, but we heard disturbing news from Schallsea.”

The men bent over their maps again, intent on gleaning every bit of information from Horemheb’s news. Soon they were asking questions of their own, jabbing at the maps, and talking to the centaur.

Linsha listened for a moment, hoping to hear the news about Schallsea, then felt herself pulled back by a hand on her arm. “Come see this prisoner who spoke of the eggs,” Lanther whispered. “He won’t last much longer.”

She turned to go, but Horemheb stopped her with one last question. “Lady, where is this Abyssal Lance you spoke of? Do you still have it?”

Linsha could not speak for a moment through the welter of emotions that suddenly assailed her. Anger, shame, dismay, and regret whipped on by a deep-seated fear—all charged through her thoughts.

“I don’t know where it is,” she said at last. “We were forced to leave it in Thunder’s body, and when we returned to retrieve it, it was gone.”

She said nothing more, nor did she wait to hear any possible disappointed comments or critical remarks from anyone. She’d already heard them all or said them to herself. She turned and walked away with Lanther, leaving Leonidas, Horemheb, and the men to finish their discussion.