Prisoner of Haven

3

Usha woke suddenly, Dezra’s voice cutting through the haze of sleep. “Get up, Usha! Fire! Get up!”

She scrambled out of bed and dragged on her clothes. She heard screaming from the street and smelled smoke. It came in through the window on a choking gust of night wind, and it came from under the door as well. Someone pounded on the door, yelling, “Get up! Get out!” and ran on to hammer the same warning at another door, then another.

A woman ran screaming down the corridor. “Oh, gods! The roof is on fire!”

Dez flung herself away from the window, eyes glittering, face pale in the moonlight. “Dragons!”

“Come on, Dez!” Heart pounding, eyes streaming tears from the smoke, Usha yanked open the door. More smoke poured in. There was another floor of rooms above them. She heard the crackling of fire up there but saw none on this floor yet.

Dez had already grabbed her bow and quiver. She belted on her sword running. All else they would leave behind.

Eyes stinging, they plunged out into the dark corridor. They tried to find the crossing passages that led one out to the garden and the common room. A young woman bolting out of her room collided with Usha, shoved her aside and ran on. Someone else dragged Usha up to her feet and thrust her forward, urging her to follow the people only dimly seen ahead.

“Usha!” Dez shouted, far behind.

Usha turned, but she could not see Dezra and the terrified people in the hall swept her onward.

“Go to the garden, Usha! Don’t go—!”

But she had no choice of where to go. The panicking people swept her along, pushing her to the crossway and into the passage to the common room. She heard the first screams when she stumbled across the threshold, and the stench of burning flesh came in a sickening wave on a billow of smoke. A keg of volatile dwarf spirits behind the bar had ignited. Flames flashed to candles and stacked firewood, then to chairs and tables. The common room became an inferno.

A howling figure staggered across the floor of the wide room, clothing aflame, hair afire. A woman ahead of Usha screamed, a child wailed in terror, and Usha turned from the sight.

She put her back to the doorway, thrust her arms out before her and cried, “Stop! Go back!”

Her voice, clear and sharp, halted the boy who’d been behind her. His father stumbled into him and tried to reach over him to shove Usha aside. She grabbed his wrist before he could grab her shoulder.

“Stop! Look!”

He didn’t have to look. The agonized howling and the stench of burning flesh told him everything. His eyes went wide, shocked and comprehending. Behind him others staggered. Some stumbled and fell.

“We have to go back!” Usha said, raising her voice to be heard, striving for calm and grateful that she’d at least managed to keep her voice firm. She put the hand on the boy’s shoulder and looked past him to those milling behind, clogging the corridor, elbowing each other and cursing; all frightened by the roar of fire. “Go back to the garden!”

A man she couldn’t see shouted, “There’s dragons out there! I saw ’em from the window. Hundreds! I saw ’em in the sky!”

Panic rose to near hysteria, cries of fear became screams of horror at the thought of hundreds of dragons over Haven. Waves of heat rolled past her, over her, and Usha shouted him down. “There can’t be hundreds! There is fire in here! Go back into the garden! Go!”

They turned, first those farthest from her, now closest to safety. Turning, they became the same kind of force that had carried her along the passage to the common room, strong and terrified and almost without mind. The father and son nearest her, once first were now last and they shoved and pushed to get to the garden. Usha went in their wake, and it wasn’t long before she felt the cooler air of outdoors. She tumbled out the door and staggered into the bricked courtyard that framed the inn’s garden. Long wooden tables and benches filled the space. No one stopped to rest. All flowed out of the broad gates into the street. Next door, the inn’s stable rang with the clatter of hooves, the screams of panicking horses, the shouts of men and boys trying to get them into the streets and away from the fire.

Usha ran for the gates, but a hard hand caught her elbow, holding her. She pulled away, then stopped when she recognized the dwarf Dunbrae. He pointed up to the dark space of sky between the inn and the stable. Smoke hid the moon, erasing the stars. Between one rolling billow and another, Usha saw broad swathes of flame as two red-scaled dragons soared above Haven.

Sight of them sent icy terror rushing through her. She stiffened her knees, not permitting them to tremble or buckle. “How many?”

He shook his head, lips twisting into a wry, humorless grin. “Enough. Come with me.”

Usha shook her head, looking around wildly for Dez. “I’m not alone! I have to find—”

Dunbrae pointed across the garden. Near the gates Dez stood, shifting from foot to foot, scanning the faces of the people running by her. The dwarf whistled sharply, and Dez turned, her face alight with relief.

Dunbrae gave Usha a forceful push. “Now let’s go.”

As they ran, the two women following Dunbrae along streets Usha didn’t know, they heard the sound of Haven’s fall—the roaring of dragons, the screams of terror, the bellowing of fire leaping from roof to roof. Somewhere, Usha had lost her shoes. Her naked feet hurt when she ran. She stumbled on the hem of her skirt then clenched the material in her hands out of her way. She fled beside Dez, running behind Dunbrae down alleys so dark the way could be found by few but a dwarf whose eyesight had been for generations bred beneath the mountains. Once, at the end of a narrow, dank alley, they stopped to catch their breath. Gasping, leaning against a cold, wet wall, Usha saw the river. It ran like a torrent of fire as it reflected the burning ship and the flaming piers.

It’s all gone, Usha thought, her stomach turning. She looked at Dez and saw a stunned look that must surely mirror her own expression. In one night, Haven is gone!

Aline put a cup of tea on the table beside Usha. The steam rising smelled faintly of apples and lavender, but the soothing fragrance didn’t draw Usha from the window. She’d been there much of the night, hardly moving from the cushioned seat since Dunbrae had brought her and Dez to Rose Hall. Though Aline had made bedrooms ready for them, neither Usha nor Dez had taken advantage of them. With Aline, they’d spent the rest of the night in a high room, watching the taking of Haven, ready to flee if they must and hoping that the battle would not come sweeping down on them.

It had not.

The dragonriders fought at the wall, handily defeating Haven’s militia made up of farmers, shopkeepers, apprentices, and a few doughty dwarves from the smithy district. The dark knights had thrown open the gates to admit a column of foot soldiers, and Haven had fallen before dawn. Now, with morning shadows beginning to grow long, Usha could not take her eyes off the sooty sky.

“I thought Haven was gone,” she said. “When Dunbrae came for us, I saw dragons in the sky.”

“Haven isn’t gone,” Aline said. “She’s hurt, though.”

Dezra, hands clenched into tight fists, paced the carpeted floor, her boot heels muffled, her stride silent. She had said little since they arrived at Rose Hall, but her restless energy filled the room.

Grimly thoughtful, Usha said, “Haven is more than hurt, Aline. She’s occupied by a foreign army.”

“Yes, and that’s why I want you and Dez to get out of here. Now. This morning. I have horses for you.”

Dez stopped pacing. The stillness drew Usha’s attention.

“People left the city at first light,” Dez said. In answer to Usha’s questioning look she said, “One of the boys in the kitchen told me. One or two families, a couple of lone men and women, some on foot and others on horseback. The knights aren’t closing all ways out. Yet. Aline’s right. We should leave. Now.”

Usha was not inclined to argue. The chancy paths of Darken Wood seemed more appealing than winding streets in a city occupied by the green dragon’s knights. Impulsively, she said, “Come with us, Aline. Once he hears what you’ve done for his daughter, Caramon Majere will see that you have shelter at the Inn of the Last Home as long as you need it.”

Dezra added her agreement, but Aline shook her head. “No. Thank you, but not now.”

“Aline—”

Green eyes sparked, the only thing to speak of the stubbornness few would have thought quiet Aline possessed. “This is my city, Usha. Haven is my home. I wasn’t going to leave after Lir died. I won’t leave now. Look.”

Outside the window a pair of red dragons swung in broad lazy circles, wings wide as they sailed low over the smoky city. In the south part of Haven fires still burned. Unlike the fine houses where Rose Hall stood, houses in the poorer quarters did not have slate roofs. Neither did the buildings of the warehouse district, but nothing burned there. Even the pier the knights had fired last night was far enough away from the storehouses to have made a good threat while presenting no real danger.

“Someone made a very careful strike last night,” Aline said. “It’s meant to terrify the city, while leaving most of our assets unharmed.” She shook her head. “I’m in little danger, I think. Certainly nothing our friend Dunbrae can’t protect me from. But you and Dez ...”

“Are getting out of here,” Dez finished. “Come on, Usha. The High Hand is in ashes, and everything we brought with it. We have nothing to pack, and by Aline’s grace two good horses. Let’s go.”

Aline’s assertion of her own safety was mostly bravado, but her determination to remain in Haven was unshakable. In resolve, she didn’t look less homely, but somehow regal.

Usha embraced the young woman warmly, begged her to take care of herself, and went out to Rose Hall’s stable with Dez. A half-grown boy stood in the shade of the stable roof’s overhang, holding the reins of two saddled mares. His face was smudged with the soot of ashes drifting down over the city, his eyes wide and white.

“Will you be leaving soon?” Usha asked.

“No, lady. Me ma an’ me sis is here.” He looked up at tall Rose Hall already being covered in a lace of gray ash. The boy looked for only a moment, then he thumped his chest once, proudly. “I’m stayin’ to take care of me own.”

Another time, Dezra might have laughed and good-naturedly called the boy a fool for thinking he could protect his mother and sister from green Beryl’s knights. Now Usha silently blessed Dez for what she did say as she took her horse from the boy and swung into the saddle.

“Good lad. You keep an eye on them. Don’t look for trouble, and your family will be fine.”

The boy’s cheeks flushed. He held the stirrup for Usha to mount, and the shadow of a dragon slipping along the ground passed over them. Usha could just hear the tremor in the boy’s voice when he wished them a good journey.

Usha and Dez rode along the streets where gardens drooped beneath ash. They couldn’t smell the roses for the dry stink of burning. Beyond the tall houses of the wealthy, high above any other structure in the city, Old Keep rose. Their way took them near its grounds. Soldiers of the dark army guarded the place, knights on horseback patrolled, their chain mail shimmering in the light, their blades sheathed, their lances couched, and all on prominent display.

“Look,” Usha said, pointing to the tower.

Dez cursed. Upon the tower’s top, the flat granite roof where the defenders of Haven had once stood to keep watch for pirates, a black dragon sunned itself. It raised its wings, preened a spiky crest, and stretched its neck to bellow at the sun. Sunlight edged the countless black scales of its hide, sliding along immense muscles, glinting from the tips of fangs. So close to the creature, Usha’s blood went cold and her knees weakened so that it was hard to grip her mount. Dragonfear wound through her, like a cold snake in the belly.

No other dragon was near Old Keep, not on the ground or in the sky. Usha imagined that no other dragon would dare infringe on this one’s territory. The proudest building in all Haven had become a dragon’s lair.

Past Old Keep they joined a throng of men and women. Some were afoot, others on horseback. Those with children, elders, or the infirm pushed high-wheeled hand carts. Usha looked for a way around the swelling crowd. She found none. In this part of Haven, the best roads were crowded on both sides by houses and shops; the lesser ways were often no more than narrow streets that opened into smaller lanes or ended in shabby garden fences. At every intersection, black-armored knights on tall horses, or soldiers afoot with pikes, lances, or swords kept close watch on the procession of hopeful refugees.

Usha nudged Dez to show her that now and then a knight or a pair of soldiers fell in with the crowd. They did no more than create breaks in the flow, but it was enough to turn back the faint of heart.

“No way the knights are going to let all these people out,” Dez said. “They might have earlier, but it looks like they’ve decided too much of Haven is on the march now.”

They’d come to the city wall and the stout gates that opened on the road from Darken Wood. Two figures stood on the watch walk. Each bore long pikes, though neither was geared as a knight.

“Two of the foot soldiers,” Usha said. The wood of the wall bore dark stains she hadn’t seen when they’d entered the city. Her stomach clenched when she realized this was blood, lately spilled in Haven’s defense. “I wonder who is left of Rinn and his friends.”

Dez grunted but did not speculate.

The crowd was indeed thinning behind them, and ahead it had stalled. Someone shouted, “Look!” and a murmur washed through the throng. Usha rose in the stirrups to see a knight in mail stride out of the northern watchtower. He held a black helm under his arm and used a pair of padded leather greaves to slap dust from his breaches as he walked. He spoke to one of the men, and both put aside their pikes and strung their bows. One looked outward over the forest, the other looked inward to the people milling at the gate.

“Well, he’s a handsome fellow,” Dez said. “You think he’s setting up as the new lord mayor?”

Usha hushed her with a gesture as the crowd’s murmuring settled. The knight looked over the crowd, their faces turning up to see him.

“Hear!”

A baby wailed in its mother’s arms, and a mule brayed somewhere behind Usha and Dez. All else was still.

“By order of Lord Radulf Eigerson, knight and commander of the army serving the green dragon Beryl, you are commanded to return to your homes.”

A sharp voice lifted from the crowd to Usha’s left. She turned to see a lanky young man standing nearby, his arm around a girl of about the same age. The girl had a bundle in her arms—the wailing infant from a moment ago.

“Ain’t goin’ home, Sir Knight,” the young man shouted. Usha saw his face go pale when he looked at the blood of Haven’s defenders on the wall. Still, he was not cowed. “You go tell your lord we’re leaving Haven!”

They were only three on the wall, behind the crowd the mounted knights and foot soldiers were not in sight. Usha looked a question at Dezra, Where did they go? Dez shrugged uneasily.

Emboldened, the young man looked around him at the others gathered. “We’re free men of Abanasinia. We damn well go where we like!”

Angry muttering swelled like a wave rolling on the ocean, agreement washing up against the closed gates.

On the wall, the archers drew and let fly. Two arrows wasped through the air. Beside Usha, the woman with the child screamed. In the ground inches from the toes of her husband’s boots the two arrows hummed, quivering. Usha’s horse snorted and danced back. She felt it gather itself to rear and leaned forward as Dez leaned across the little distance between them and took hold of the reins.

“Now,” the knight drawled, “I have orders to leave as many of you alive as I can. But it’s up to me how many that turns out to be. Hear again! No one leaves the city without a pass, and no one gets a pass from anyone but Sir Radulf.”

He nodded in the direction of the Old Keep. Many turned to look, as Usha did, and saw the black dragon sunning itself on the granite root of the tower.

“As far as I know, no one’s getting a pass just now for love or money. That might change, it might not.”

Three red dragons sailed the sky high over the crowd, their riders gleaming in black armor. Helmed and faceless, they patrolled this quarter of the city in wide rounds.

“No need for knights on the ground now when they have knights in the sky,” Dez said.

Dragon shadows spun across the ground and the white faces of the people below as the knight on the wall shouted, “Now disperse! Whoever I find still here by the time those dragons turn round again will die.”

The knight tipped his head. Two more arrows flew, this time over the heads of the crowd. People cried out, some in anger, some in fear, and the crowd melted away. Last, Usha saw the face of the young man as he guided his wife away from the wall.

“He’s ashamed,” she said to Dez, lowering her eyes so as not to meet his.

Dez nodded. “And really angry. Sir Radulf, who ever he is, will want to be careful of that.”

Usha turned to question.

Dez shrugged. “It can’t be a good thing for the commander of an occupation to have angry, restless people to control. Come to that, though, it’ll be worse for the people than the knights.”

They rode in silence for a while until Usha turned down a quieter road leading away from the wall.

“Where are you going?” Dez asked. “Back to Aline?”

“No,” Usha answered, and with a certainty that surprised her. “I don’t want to impose on Aline for who-knows-how-long.”

“Nice enough idea,” Dezra said dryly. “Rooms at inns cost money. I’m willing to pitch in all the money I had for supplies. You might remember, though, that after last night we have no inn to stay at.”

Usha ignored the irony. “Then we shouldn’t waste time finding one. Everyone who had been at the High Hand will be looking for another place to stay. What inn did you like when you weren’t staying there?”

Dezra said she liked a few, but only to look at. “I’ve always stayed at the High Hand.”

“All right, then,” Usha said, turning down another narrow lane.

Ahead was a whitewashed stone building, long and low in front, with a second story rising in back. Ivy covered its walls making a green tapestry of sunlight and shadow. Near a curve in the lane where the path to the inn’s dooryard began stood a sign painted in white and green: The Ivy.

Usha pointed. “I like that place.”

Dez eyed it up and down, the chimneys, the green-cloaked walls, the long, low front that surely held the common room. A second story rose up in back. The kitchen was safely off to the side, and a stable in back. “Very nice, but this isn’t a shabby part of town. What money we have won’t last very long there.”

Usha smiled, and it felt like the first time she had in a long time.

“Don’t worry about that, Dez. Now and then people get lucky and things work out all right.” She turned her horse’s head down the path to the Ivy and said over her shoulder, “All things considered, don’t you think we’re due for some luck just about now?”