Flight of the Fallen

5 Race for the Door

Lanther grabbed her arm and pulled her to a stop. “What do you mean? How do you know?”

“Look!” she said. Her hand pointed to the empty nest. “There are no eggs! They were just used to lure us down here. We’ve got to go!”

Tanefer trotted to her side, his bearded face locked in a frown. “Are you sure? Couldn’t the Tarmaks have placed the eggs somewhere else? This labyrinth is huge.”

Linsha didn’t want to argue. Every part of her mind screamed at her to leave as quickly as possible. But the centaurs and the Legionnaires milled around in confusion, staring at the dead dragons and talking among themselves.

“There is no other place in this labyrinth suitable for incubation,” Linsha said. “Iyesta and Purestian altered this cavern with magic to give it light and warmth and the proper conditions for the eggs’ development. There is nothing left here but the light, and even that is failing. No, there are no eggs down here. Now get rid of those baskets and run!”

She was relieved to see her urgency finally sink in. Young Leonidas was the first to accept her word. With a swift cut of his dagger, he loosed the ropes holding the baskets on his hack, dumped them on the floor, and gave her his hand. He hauled her onto his back. Lanther and Tanefer exchanged alarmed glances before they too urged the others to move. Baskets fell to the floor, swords were drawn, and the Legionnaires were quickly mounted on the backs of the centaurs.

Suddenly Varia’s feathered “ears” popped up. Her eyes grew enormous. She screeched an alarm everyone understood and flew out the tunnel entrance.

Linsha and Leonidas did not need another warning. The buckskin centaur cantered for the tunnel, the others close on his heels. With their torches held high, they hurried back the way they had come, hoping to reach the faraway pool entrance before anyone else in the labyrinth knew they were there.

But they had not gone far when Varia returned, winging up the passage they had just entered. The centaurs stopped, and in the sudden silence that fell among them, they all heard what the owl had heard in the cavern—voices and the sounds of a large troop moving at a quick march through the tunnels. In the twists and turns of the labyrinth, it was difficult to tell exactly where and how far away a sound originated, but no one doubted the creators of the noises that echoed up the tunnel were not far away. Surely they were even now on their trail of hoofprints in the layer of dirt on the tunnel floors.

Linsha thought fast. Although she had spent more time down there than anyone else in the group, she had always had a guide to help her find her way in the lightless maze. She did not know it well, nor was she familiar with more than four or five doors. Two of those doors were out of their reach in the old foundations of the city, one was the way they had come through the pool house, and one was guarded by the mercenaries on the palace grounds.

She raised an arm for Varia. When the owl landed on her wrist, she whispered, “Who is there?”

The owl clacked her beak in anger. “Tarmaks. Many of them. They are in the tunnel that you must take to reach the pool door.”

“How convenient,” Linsha snapped.

Several well-chosen curses ran through her mind, all aimed at herself. She had been so sure. She wanted to be so sure! She wanted those eggs back so much that instead of doing something sensible like coming down alone to scout out the situation, she had brought along seventeen others to share in her heedless stupidity. Now they were trapped in this maze without a safe door out.

“Where do we go?” Leonidas asked. His hooves shifted nervously beneath him.

There was only one place she could think of, only one door that they might be able to break through. “The palace. We’ll have to go to the door in the palace gardens.”

“Isn’t that one guarded by the mercenaries?” Lanther reminded her. She wished he hadn’t, but the others may as well be prepared.

“Yes. Who would you rather fight, the Tarmaks or the mercenaries?”

No one bothered to answer. In one motion, they wheeled around and hurried back toward the egg chamber. They passed the chamber and plunged into a different tunnel, one leading away from the abandoned nest. From that point Varia helped direct Linsha on the route to the western side of the labyrinth and the chambers that lay under the vast palace of Iyesta’s old lair. The centaurs jogged as fast as they dared, and for a little while Linsha hoped the Tarmaks would turn into the egg chamber, that they didn’t know the militia group was down there. But that faint hope soon died. Their small troop could not seem to escape. Every time they paused and allowed the sound of their hooves to die into silence, they heard the noises of pursuit echoing behind them. Their pursuers moved surprisingly fast and had no trouble tracking them through the settled dust and dirt on the floor.

“Is there another way to reach this door?” Tanefer asked Linsha. “Or could we work our way around and lose them in the maze? Then we could go back to the pool door.”

Linsha had wondered the same thing. Although she did not know the tunnels well enough to find an exact route, it just might be possible to hide their tracks, wander around long enough to lose their hunters, and find another way out of the maze. But Lanther didn’t give her time to speculate.

“No,” he shot back. “We can’t afford to run aimlessly around down here. We have no water or food, and the Tarmaks will put guards on every entrance they’ve found—if they haven’t already. It would be better to make a fast break out and try to get past the mercenaries before they know we’re there.”

Not a word of dissent was spoken. Everyone wanted to escape the heavy, brooding darkness and the threat that closed in on their heels. They hurried on.

Before long they reached a section of the labyrinth Linsha remembered well. She had been here several times with Mariana and Crucible. The chamber where Iyesta had died was only a turn or two away. As much as she would have liked to stop to pay her respects to the dead dragonlord and be sure the body had not be disturbed, she knew there was no time.

“We’re almost to the palace,” she warned Leonidas.

The young horse-man nodded once. He pulled his short hunting bow off his shoulder, strung it, and settled the quiver of arrows at his side where he could easily reach it. The other centaurs followed suit.

They reached the high, wide passages that crisscrossed beneath the grounds of the old elven palace, and to their relief, found them empty. The treasure-hunting mercenaries seemed to be busy elsewhere. Hurrying faster, they passed the arched entrances to the tunnels and the vast stairs leading to the palace and took the corridor that sloped up to the surface. At the foot of another flight of stairs, Leonidas and Tanefer stopped the others. They gathered close, grim and silent, their weapons ready.

“The entrance is up those stairs and through a short hall,” Linsha told them. “The last time I saw it, the doorway was hidden behind vines and overgrown bushes, but it was open and wide enough for us to pass through one at a time.”

The centaurs and the Legionnaires did not look happy at that news. A small doorway made it too easy for an enemy to pick off departing opponents one by one. Warily they walked up the steps. At the end of the hall they saw a glimmer of daylight and realized night had passed and the sun was beginning to rise. So much for the cover of darkness.

Tanefer set three centaurs and their riders to watch the top of the stairs, then he and Leonidas led the rest down the hallway toward the light. A clatter and a loud outcry from outside suddenly broke the quiet of the dawn. A horn’s blast echoed into the corridor. The centaurs and the humans looked one another in alarm.

They recognized those sounds all too well. It was the noise of armed conflict.

“Oh, gods, now what?” Tanefer growled, voicing the frustration of all. Their group wasn’t outside yet. Who would the mercenaries be fighting?

Linsha slid off Leonidas’s back and hurried to the entrance. The door was smaller than the arches and corridors below and opened into a spacious courtyard that was part of the large, overgrown gardens connected to the palace where Iyesta had once made her lair. The doorway was as she remembered, its wooden door long rotted away, its opening cloaked in vines and disguised by the roots and branches of shrubs and young trees. Keeping to the shadows, she pushed aside some vines and peered carefully out, squinting in the early morning light.

The signal horn sounded again, loud and fierce, and this time it was accompanied by shouts and screams from several directions. Weapons clashed somewhere out of sight.

There was nothing Linsha could see in her immediate vicinity, so she held out her arm for the owl and waited as Varia stepped to her wrist and launched herself out into the rising morning wind.

Lanther crowded in beside her and together they watched the owl wing silently into a copse of nearby trees. “Where are they?” he muttered in Linsha’s ear. “Do you see anything?”

She stared into the trees and gave her head a brief shake. “No. But judging by the horns, the mercenaries are under attack. Did Falaius have something planned I didn’t know about?”

“Not that he told me. Maybe this was meant to be a distraction?”

Any thought of that abruptly ended when a dozen or so mercenaries burst through the grove of trees where Varia hid. They ran as if all the denizens of the Abyss were after them. The mercenaries scrambled over a collapsed wall and ran through the overgrowth toward the distant palace. A flight of arrows ripped through leaves behind them and fell in their midst. Several men fell and lay still. Another fell screaming but fought his way to his feet and staggered after his companions, none of whom stopped to help him.

More figures, their bare skin stained blue, crashed through the undergrowth into the courtyard and loped after the mercenaries. They caught up with the wounded man, slit his throat, and moved on without a pause. They disappeared into the trees and brush just behind the fleeing mercenaries.

Linsha stood transfixed.

Lanther’s eyes smoldered with anger while he watched; the scar on his face burned a dull red against his weathered skin. “The Tarmaks are finally moving,” he said as if pronouncing a doom.

Linsha knew he was. She had suspected for some time that the Tarmaks were biding their time, allowing Thunder’s hired mercenaries to grow lazy and complacent in the dragon’s lair before they disposed of them. Today of all days they had launched a surprise attack against the soldiers, and Linsha and her militia had rushed into the thick of it.

“We can’t go out there,” she said. “We’ll be caught in the middle.”

Shouts suddenly rang through the passageway behind them. Hoofbeats pounded on stone.

“We already are,” Lanther said as the centaurs crowded into the hall.

“What are you waiting for?” Tanefer bellowed from the back. “The Tarmaks are coming up the stairs. Two of ours have already fallen.”

“The Tarmaks are in front of us, too!” Linsha replied. She glanced back at the centaurs and Legionnaires crowded into the dimly lit corridor. She saw concern and some anxiety on their faces, but there was determination as well. They had fought together for so long, they had no need to question one another or seek advice. They knew what needed to be done.

Linsha hauled aside a clump of vines to clear the door. “Go!” she snapped.

The first centaur sprang out, his rider ducking low and hanging on with all his strength. They did not run though. Both man and centaur drew their bows and took a position to the right of the door to cover the courtyard. The second centaur drew up beside them, then a third.

Four centaurs waited outside the entrance when an owl’s cry shattered the air. Ten more Tarmaks erupted from the dense stand of trees and raced over the ruined wall. Both foes saw one another and released their arrows at the same time. A howl rose from the Brute warriors, and without waiting to see how their arrows fell, they plunged in with swords and battle-axes. Two Legionnaires and a centaur fell, mortally wounded. Two more centaurs charged out the doorway.

Linsha had no time left to watch. Leonidas came up beside her, hauled her onto his back, and barged out of the door before she could see if Tanefer and Lanther were behind her.

War cries rang out in the passage, and a bevy of crossbow bolts whirred out behind her. She felt a stinging blow to the back of her left arm, and when she reached around, she felt a bolt protruding from the fleshy part of her upper arm. It was only a flesh wound, but it hurt like fury down to her fingers, and she had no time to work the bolt loose. Warm blood stained her sleeve and seeped down her skin.

Meanwhile the Tarmaks had pressed their attack with a cold ferocity, in spite of the fact that they were attacking a superior force of men and centaurs. Their swords brought down two more centaurs and badly wounded a Legionnaire before Leonidas reached the fray.

The young stallion fired his crossbow pointblank into the neck of the Brute attacking the wounded Legionnaire. Blood spattered over his chest and Linsha’s legs. Linsha tried to help the wounded man onto Leonidas’s back, but another Brute whirled and threw a small axe into the man’s back, severing his spinal cord. The Legionnaire, a man Linsha respected and knew well, gave a grunt of pain and shock and sagged out of her arms. His face went slack as his body struck the ground. Leonidas sidestepped away from the body and drew his sword.

“Linsha, we’ve got to get out of this!” he yelled. He blocked a blow from another warrior and kicked a hind hoof into the knee of a third. Linsha forced herself to hold on. Her head felt heavy and dizzy from the loss of blood.

“Where are Tanefer and Lanther?” she cried. She looked around wildly and saw nothing of the man or the black stallion. Forms moved in the doorway, but when she looked that way she saw only Tarmaks hacking aside the vines and pouring out of the dark exit. Her heart sank.

“Go! Go! Go!” she shouted.

There was nothing else to do. If Tanefer and Lanther had not left the passageway by now, they had probably given their lives holding the door against the enemy.

The centaurs still standing upright heard her call and obeyed. Including Leonidas, there were only four centaurs, three Legionnaires, and Linsha able to flee. They took what wounded they could and broke away from the Tarmaks. The footing was treacherous for horse hooves among the tumbled stones, fallen trees, and tangled roots of the ancient ruin, but they tried to increase their speed away from the bows and throwing axes of the enemy.

The Tarmaks jeered loudly and moved to follow at a determined pace. One pulled out a small horn and blew two quick blasts and a longer one.

Linsha stiffened. Those horn blasts sounded too much like a signal. But a signal for what? She was also alarmed to see that her small group was moving toward the palace instead of north to the edges of the ruined city and the open plains beyond. If the Tarmaks were attacking the mercenaries’ headquarters in the dragon’s palace as she suspected, the last place she wanted to be was caught in the middle of that fight. Just what did that signal portend?

The centaurs reached a strip of open grassland where a few cattle stood huddled in a frightened group. Bodies of mercenaries lay scattered across the grass in cooling pools of blood. Just beyond a line of tall pines, the crumbled buildings of the huge palace thrust up through centuries of wild growth. The tall, elegant hall of the dragonlord still stood proud and gleaming above the ruins. Its missing roof was the only visible sign of the damage inflicted by Thunder during his brief possession of the lair a few months ago.

In the open areas of grassland and park around the outskirts of the palace, Linsha saw groups of mercenaries locked in desperate struggle. Sunlight gleamed off weapons and polished helms. The wind, blowing warm from the plains, pulled at wisps of smoke rising from the palace’s main gate in the encircling wall. Not far from the gates a Tarmak siege engine hurled another fireball at the walls, and more warriors released a thick hail of arrows at the defenders.

Leonidas did not need prompting. He saw the fighting and veered to the right away from the palace and toward the outskirts of the city that led to the open plains. Out on the flatter grasslands, the centaurs could run and not even a Tarmak on horseback could catch them.

But the small group of survivors never had the chance to reach the open plains. They were nearing the edge of the meadow when Linsha saw Varia flying overhead. The owl winged by them, reached a grove of trees, and all at once veered on a wingtip. To Linsha’s horror, several arrows flew from the trees after the owl. She saw Varia lurch in flight then vanish into the tree canopy.

“Archers ahead!” she screamed. “There are Tarmaks in the trees!”

The centaurs dug in their hooves, slid to a stop, and tried to turn another direction.

Too late.

Tarmaks approached from the gardens at a swift run, while others came from the east where the battle raged around the palace. More blue-skinned warriors emerged in a line from the grove of trees, their bows drawn and arrows nocked, effectively cutting off any hope of escape.

The centaurs milled frantically then drew in a tight circle, rump to rump, back to back, their weapons drawn and ready to make a last stand. The humans did likewise.

Swiftly the Tarmaks came after them, as fierce and hungry as a pack of wolves. With a shout in their strange language, they encircled the beleaguered militia and drew the trap closed.

Silence measured a long, terrifying minute. The centaurs panted for breath and waited, their expressions grim. The larger number of Tarmaks crouched, bows and a dozen spears ready to kill.

“Surrender!” one Tarmak said in clear Common. “Surrender at once or we kill all of you!”

Linsha sagged against Leonidas, numb with defeat.