The Schemes of Dragons

VIII

THE FOREST REVERBERATED with birdsong. The fragrance of honeysuckle clung to the breeze. The glade reminded Elenya of the one where she had often hidden as a little girl, a short way inland from Garthmorron Hold, away from the roads, where the foliage locked out the revealing light of the sun and the shadebrush grew so thick that a child could avoid an adult with ease. Her nostalgia was appropriate; Garthmorron was only a few leagues away.

Behind her the other rebels went quietly about their activities. Wynneth groomed a oeikani; Solint the Minstrel repaired his doeskin jerkin; Dushin and Iregg, having served on the night watch, were catching up on sleep. Elenya guarded the trail.

It was a harder task than usual. Over the past year, at times such as this, Milec would have been with her, perhaps taking advantage of a few hours out of sight of the other members of the band. She idly plucked her bowstring. Seven days he had been dead and buried. Now the flight from Old Stump was behind them and she had time to think about peaceful moments gone by.

Hoofbeats.

She nocked an arrow and pointed it at the path. In due course a lone rider emerged between the boles of the giant trees, threading carefully along a way meant for deer, not their larger cousins, the oeikani. Elenya let him continue well into range.

"Well met, Sir Enns," she called.

The rider flinched, and stopped his mount. He stared toward the foliage where she knelt. His glance continued to wander, searching the shadows for some sign of her. Eventually he gave up.

"Well met, princess," he said. "I see you are not wearing white."

"Not today. How went your mission?"

"We've food for a week. It should be ready to fetch almost immediately."

"Good. You'll find Alemar by the spring."

Enns nodded and continued into the camp. Elenya set her arrow on the ground, but kept an eye toward the trail in case Enns had been followed.

After about half an hour, Alemar joined her.

"Two people need to go back with Enns to bring the supplies. Care to go?"

His expression was far too innocent. "Are you thinking I need something to occupy my mind?" she asked.

Alemar managed a guilty smile. "Enns suggested it this morning. Wynneth and I both thought it was a good idea."

She shrugged. "I suppose it is. I'll go."

"Good," Alemar said, appearing relieved. "Dushin's awake. He'll be the third. If you leave now you can be back well before sundown."

They each took two animals, one for riding, one as a pack beast. Their destination was a silk farm out on the extreme edges of the settled area surrounding the community of Eruth. The farmer was sympathetic to the rebel cause, though, like most of Cilendrodel's populace, he did not make his loyalties public. Once or twice a year he would accept rebel funds and purchase foodstuffs and other supplies for Alemar and Elenya's band, leaving them in his barn to be picked up while he and his family were absent. The scheme was deliberately designed to leave as little direct contact as possible between him and the outlaws.

Elenya rode at the back, though she knew this region as well as any of the party, having been reared in the vicinity. She avoided conversation, though she liked both her companions well enough. They had shared a great many trials. Dushin had joined the band two years earlier, after a price was set on his head for having slain the Dragon's soldiers that he had caught raping his niece. Enns, a member of the Cilendri royalty dispossessed by the Dragon's occupation, had known the twins before they left for the Eastern Deserts, and ever since their return had accompanied them in their relentless flight back and forth across Cilendrodel. They did not seem to begrudge her her contemplation.

Enns led them along a twisting, almost invisible track, designed to circumvent roads, though those were not common in this sector of the province. Finally Elenya began to smell the peculiar odor so common to this part of Cilendrodel. Abruptly they left the wild timberlands behind and entered a grove of silk trees, so called because their fragrant leaves were fed to the worms that spun the famous quarn silk. They could see nubs and indentations on the branches where some leaves had been recently harvested.

Elenya felt the watchful gaze of the rythni vanish. The little folk declined to suffer the discomfort they always felt upon entering an area where the hand of man had disrupted the nurturant energies found in native woodland.

They emerged from the trees into the grounds of the silk farmer's residence. There was a modest house, a stable, and a long shed for the cages of worms. The buildings were nestled in the shade of several massive silk trees, away from the sunlight that would reduce the worms' rate of production. As arranged, no one was home.

They dismounted. Elenya slid her rapier out of its sheath, and the men drew their swords. They circled the buildings on foot, checking the perimeter for signs of armed men lurking in ambush, but the only foot and hoof prints were the expected ones along the narrow lane leading toward Eruth.

They met at the front of the stable. Dushin lifted the bar and opened the doors while Elenya and Enns stood guard. They saw sacks of food piled on the packed dirt between the pens of milk goats and the empty oeikani stalls.

Satisfied, they headed back to fetch their pack animals, sheathing their weapons as they walked. Elenya noticed out of the corner of her eye that Enns's blade seemed very bright, almost as if it were brand new. She forgot about it in her struggle to drag her obstinate oeikani to the stable doors.

They began loading their beasts, each taking responsibility for their own to ensure that each burden would be properly secured. Elenya hooked her fourth bit of cargo into place and reentered the stable. She passed Dushin on his way out, sack of millet over his shoulder; Enns was standing by his oeikani.

Suddenly a small shape fluttered out of the hay loft and sped by Elenya. "Princess! Beware!" it cried.

Elenya heard sounds of rapid movement from the goat pens, the stalls, and the hay loft. She ducked.

She was fast enough to avoid the noose of one lasso, but not the other. It settled around her shoulders and yanked her off her feet. She landed on the sacks, tumbling. As she rolled she brought up one of her demonblades and sawed through the rope that was pulling her. The hemp parted with a snap.

Five quick glances told her the situation: in a goat pen the man who had lassoed her was dropping the severed piece and reaching for a weapon; in a oeikani stall the other rope thrower had already drawn a saber; above in the hay loft a third man was preparing to drop on top of her; at the entrance a fourth man was standing, bloody sword in hand, over the prone, gasping figure of Dushin, whom he had just stabbed from behind; and out near the oeikani, Enns was waiting, doing nothing.

Suddenly she knew how Enns had possessed the money for a new sword. Suddenly she knew just how Puriel's men had known where to ambush Milec.

"Traitor!" she screamed.

The man in the loft jumped, but she was ready for him. Bounding toward a clear space, she flung her demonblade, fatally stabbing him in midair. She threw her other knife at the man in the pen, pulled out her rapier, and charged the man from the stall.

"I told you she was fast!" Enns shouted.

Elenya would show them just how quick she was. The gauntlet blazed. She felt the sorcery course through the muscles of her hands, her hips, her ankles. The talisman made her as fast as a person could be.

Her current opponent was the only one heavily armored. The others had sacrificed protection for stealth and mobility. She needed this one out of the way quickly. It took four thrusts to mortally wound him, leaving her barely enough time to meet the man rushing in from the door.

As Elenya engaged him, she saw over his shoulder that Enns was mounting his oeikani, not content with the worsening odds. Her rage made her even faster. The soldier came in thrusting. She parried and drove her point in through a seam under his arm. He winced and jabbed again. She sidestepped, blade high, and spotted an opening.

Her weapon was abruptly yanked from her grip. She jumped backwards, caught by surprise. The man from the goat pen had apparently blocked her demonblade throw, or his armor vest had saved him. He was moving in, a mace in one hand, in the other the whip with which he had disarmed her. He lashed at her again, striking her cheek such a blow that her head rang.

Her plight went from bad to worse. The dying man on the ground grabbed her legs, making her lose her balance. The man with whom she was fencing drove forward. She feared she was lost.

The rythni swooped out of nowhere and beat its wings in the swordsman's face.

Elenya twisted out of the path of the thrust, and, though her legs were still trapped, she managed to fall backward, further out of danger. She kicked. The man on the ground, weakened by blood loss, could not maintain his grip. As she rolled free, she saw that she had landed beside her tackler's discarded saber. In an eyeblink it was hers.

The tip of the lash pinked one of her ears, but she swung in time to sever the last two feet of whip. The wielder blinked in awe at her swift reaction, but like a veteran, did not let it delay his immediate follow-up. She was already out of range, however, on her feet, rushing the swordsman. The rythni had disappeared.

She went high, a dangerous strategy for a fencer. She skewered him in the eye. Though doomed, he began slashing wildly. The first swing nearly cut her belt off of her, but did not touch her skin. She danced out of the arc of the rest.

The whip missed her head so narrowly that the end captured a few strands of hair and ripped them from her scalp. Once again she spun and trimmed the length.

If her adversary was daunted by the rapid disposal of his companions, he did not reveal it. He flicked his lash and, once again, snatched her weapon out of her grip.

She blinked. The man was good. She was caught off guard by someone who could-at least with that particular weapon-match her exaggerated speed. It left her unprepared for his charge.

Her mind was clear. She knew that if she tried to dive out of the way, or jump for a weapon, she would not make it. So she stepped in.

His mace struck a glancing blow on her biceps, numbing her entire arm. But her mailed fist landed squarely under his nose, caving in the front of his face, the magic reinforcing her punch. He went down like a steer struck by a slaughterhouse mallet.

His momentum carried him into her, knocking her down. She had to pause to regain her breath, then she untangled herself and bolted for the exit, grabbing Dushin's sword from his corpse as she passed. She ignored her mount; she could never catch the traitor on oeikaniback. Her augmented legs were the only hope.

Enns had a good lead. She had lost too much time with the ambushers. She pumped her legs as fast as they would go, until the boles of the trees on either side of the lane began to blur. The jewel above the knuckle of her left middle finger began to throb. She drank more deeply of its power.

He would not get away. She would not let him get away now.

After almost a mile, the lane ended, spilling her out onto the main road. Enns was galloping toward Eruth, visible only as a blur at the head of a streamer of dust.

She ran until her feet ached from the force of the inhumanly rapid impacts and relaunches. She smelled the sweat of the oeikani. The ruins of an old building slipped past on her right, the first indication that the village was near.

Her side was beginning to cramp. She heard the oeikani's labored but regular breathing. It was running at its limit, but it was still fresh. It was meant for this kind of a race, and she, in spite of sorcerous assistance, was not.

Her face was stung by dirt kicked up by the oeikani's hooves. The tail of the animal waved before her eyes, just out of reach. Enns turned. A look of horror filled his face. He began to lash his mount.

Elenya forced herself to one ultimate burst of speed. She readied Dushin's sword. She had the chance for one, and only one, slash at the back of the oeikani's knee.

She collapsed as she swung, the roadway scraping flesh from her face. But the pain there, and in her biceps, and in her side, seemed faint and inconsequential against the scream of the oeikani. She lifted her head just in time to see the hamstrung animal slide to a wrenching, tumbling halt. Its rider was flung heels over head.

She could not inhale fast enough. Spots flickered in front of her vision. She spat grit. Only sheer will kept her from fainting. She forced herself up to a kneeling position, bracing her upper body with her good arm. Her weapon lay in the dust not far away, but she left it, unable to do anything but pant. The jewel on her gauntlet had gone dead. That arm, the one struck by the mace, felt like an anchor.

Enns groaned and picked himself up from the road. He stared about, befuddled, eyes drawn first to the thrashing of his crippled animal, then to his torn sleeves, and finally to Elenya. He staggered back, but the half-focused quality left his gaze. He steadied himself and drew his sword.

The graceful way he freed the blade from its scabbard proved that the tumble had not stolen his ability to fence. She crawled to her sword, clasped it, and waited for him on her knees, still doubled over from the pain in her diaphragm.

When he realized how stricken she was, and the mildness of his own injuries, he laughed. He advanced immediately, though with caution, steel first.

He opened with three quick thrusts. She managed to parry them, and when he paused, she threw dirt in his face. He cursed and backed off, instinctively parrying her feeble jab. He stopped after three steps and shook the grit off his eyelashes. She slowly rose to her feet.

Standing took more effort than she had to spare. She got her blade up in time to contact his, but not well enough to deflect his thrust. She stopped the point by catching it with her left palm. As the weapon met the ward around the gauntlet, jagged splinters of electricity snaked out in several directions. She stumbled under the weight of the blow. He winced at the vibrations running down the sword and retreated.

On the next attack he abandoned broad, telegraphed movements in favor of subtle techniques. Elenya parried one thrust with her sword guard, another with her armored hand, and tried to force her enervated body to obey her, tried to shake the effects of the mace blow from her left arm. She licked a trickle of blood, a result of her fall, off her lip. Even if she had been fresh, his swordplay would have been difficult to deal with. Like her, Enns had been taught by Troy, Cilendrodel's best fencing instructor, and he had been an apt pupil.

Enns grinned savagely. "Not so fast anymore, are you, your highness?" The sarcasm he put on the honorific explained a great deal.

She blew a sweat-drenched strand of hair away from her lips. She was finally able to inhale through her nostrils, though she still exhaled through her mouth. She felt a little less dizzy.

"I can deal with a lowly duke's nephew, especially one who uses blood money to buy a sword," she said.

He bared his teeth. "I was always better than any royal bastard."

She nodded. The old adolescent jealousy, which she had thought long buried, had been reawakened by the temptation of the reward for her capture or death.

He pressed. The Ezenean Offense. She blocked the first move, was late with the second, had to step back. He smiled, both of them seeing in that split instant that she would never be in time to stop the third. His jab drove into her right breast.

The pain nearly blacked her out. Yet she wrapped her gauntlet around his sword, preventing him from pulling it out, keeping him within range. She sliced him across his throat.

An expression of denial crossed his features. Together they sagged to their knees. Enns was dying more quickly than she; her steel had severed an artery in his neck. He let go of his sword hilt and fell face forward in the dust, writhing.

Elenya kept the steel in her body as motionless as she could manage, which, thanks to her shuddering limbs, was not as still as she would have liked. The tip had gone in deep, all the way to her scapula. She waited on the edge of consciousness, winded yet not daring to breathe deeply. She tasted blood at the back of her tongue. She suppressed an urge to cough. She had to avoid going into shock. She had a chance.

Enns's thrashing nearly knocked her over. She ignored it, focusing every last iota of concentration on the amulet at her throat. Her brother was only a few leagues away; if he was not preoccupied with a task, he might hear her summons.

Five seconds. Ten. Then the wordless voice that she had known for so many years called out, and in one brief image she communicated her need.

The familiar tingle of magic rose up along her spine and flared in a hot corona around her wound. She gingerly drew the sword out. Blood trickled briefly, slowed, and congealed. Then, far too soon, the sorcery ended. She gasped. The puncture remained, barely knit, as if it were a day old. She heard a psychic cry.

Alemar. Pain not her own flared briefly in her mind, and was gone. Her brother had lost consciousness.

What had happened? She swayed, eyes drawn to the nearly still body of Enns. The hemorrhaging of his throat was creating a broad stain in the roadway. "What have you done to my brother?" she choked.

The wounded oeikani was mewling. She had not wished to harm the animal. She wanted to put it out of its misery, but it might struggle, and if it jostled her too much it might tear open her wound.

She had another use for her blade. She pointed Enns's face toward the sky, and with great deliberateness etched two characters in the skin of his forehead. "For Milec" it read in the ideograms of the High Speech.

Finally the tears came, and with them the sore throat, the heat in the cheeks. She wept until the droplets fell from her bruised chin and created small specks of mud in the roadway. She would have sobbed had not the instinct of self-preservation told her not to put stress on her lungs. She had not allowed her grief to surface all week, but now she had no reserves left to keep it in. She cried for the first man to brush that special spot inside her since her days in the desert.

"For Milec," she murmured bitterly. Her mourning was all the more intense for the knowledge that he had loved her far more deeply than she could ever have loved him.

Tiny eyes stared at her. A rythni waited, half-hidden in the grass at the road's edge.

She had no doubt it was the same one who had warned her of the ambush. She beckoned, but the little creature stayed back, wary of the scent of battle, blood, and death. Almost any other rythni would have shied away from the scene altogether, but Elenya knew this was a special individual. She had proved that by flying in the face of the swordsman, breaking her race's strict taboo against taking part in violence. She was trembling, frightened by what she had seen and done. This was no queen, able to fend off the censure of her elders.

The creak of old wagon wheels warned Elenya that someone was coming around the bend. She staggered to her feet and managed to hide herself within the woods before the vehicle appeared. She continued across a shallow creek and into a patch of ferns where she was not likely to be seen once she lay down. The rythni followed, flitting like a butterfly from perch to perch.

Elenya needed the tiny being. Her wounds had taken so much out of her that she had to set the amulet, as well as the gauntlet, at her side. The talismans would draw energy from her that she needed in order to heal. She could not summon her brother with sorcery, even assuming he was well. She waved to the rythni, which finally gathered courage and came near.

"Bring help," Elenya whispered.

The rythni sped away. Elenya sighed, made herself as comfortable as she could, resting her head on the cold earth. Within seconds she had faded into unconsciousness.