When Dragons Rage

49

The piteous notes in the screams echoing through Porjal were what unsettled Isaura. She fully understood the need to pacify the city. The siege had been successful, but the resistance had been fierce. Lord Neskartu had been forced to work hard to counter the magicks that rebuilt the shattered walls. The dragonels had to pound them into gravel and then dust before her mother’s troops were able to enter the city.

Once they were poised to do that, a heavily armed force burst from the city and headed away, westward along the coast. The Aurolani troops entering the city had become overconfident, and assumed there would be no one left to fight them. In a sense they were correct, for very few people remained. Those who did, however, were clever, suicidal, and adept at setting up and springing ambushes and booby traps that mangled, maimed, and occasionally killed.

Given the casualties among the sorcerers Neskartu had brought south with him, Isaura found herself pressed into duty aiding the wounded. She joined Trib in trying to heal some grichothka. One had fallen into a pit that had been lined mostly with upward-pointing spikes that impaled him as he fell in. Others at the bottom of the pit pointed down, holding him as his fellows tried to pull him free. Yet others had arms smashed or severed, shoulders crushed and legs broken as stones fell, or logs rolled. Any number had their feet punctured by a pair of iron nails bent at right angles and welded together in the middle. With all points sharpened, they could be tossed on the ground and a spike would always point upward.

She’d shaken her head when first she saw a collection of the wounded.

Isaura had actually heard the pained puling and mewing, but not even that had prepared her for blood-matted fur, rent flesh, and eyes wide with agony. The weapons used against the gibberkin clearly had not been meant to kill them. The spikes in the traps were too short to stab all the way through. The traps were meant to wound, and that made no sense to her.

Trib, his white fur reddened up to his elbows and dappled crimson over his chest, explained carefully. “They have no desire to kill, my lady. A dead warrior requires only a hole in the ground. These require care and food and housing until they are recovered enough to go home or back to war. A corpse can be abandoned, but a wounded comrade must be rescued, often putting the rescuers at risk.”

“But that is so cruel.”

“This is why we fight them.” The kryalniri looked about him at the living carpet of wounded. “If we do not stop them, they will do this to our people when they come for us.”

Retribution and reprisals had come hard and fast. Much of the outer ring of the city had been reduced to rubble, but the interior and the seaside remained virtually intact. Squads had roamed through the city, flushing out humans and herding them into squares. Some had been burned alive, the thick, nauseating smoke swirling through the city, while others were crucified and left to suffer. Their cries lacked the shrieked urgency of the burned, but took on a hideous tone as they subsided.

And there were always more, stronger cries ebbing slowly to replace them.

She could understand the repression and punishment of the city’s populace. If they were not discouraged, they would continue in their cruelty. While she could even understand their desire to protect their homes, their conduct—in the way they lived and in the way they fought—showed them to be lacking in the ways of civilized behavior. It is not possible to reason with the unreasoning.

Yet despite her understanding, the way things were being done did discomfort her. Children were being slain along with adults. Isaura accepted as fact reports that said children were leading the troops into traps, but certainly they were merely imitating adults. Lord Neskartu had chosen some of them to be borne back to the Conservatory, so they had potential for use in the future. She wondered if all the children could not likewise be redeemed, once they were showed the error of their ways.

This thought woke her—at least she decided this was what awakened her, not the dying echoes of a scream. She was tempted to use the magick Nefrai-kesh had given her so she could report her unease to him and suggest a plan to save the children, but she refrained. The last time she had reported to him, she caught a vision of two women, and it had frightened her—though she did not know why. It did make her reluctant, however—that late in the evening, with the wind howling outside—to speak with the king of the sullanciri.

Unable to return to sleep, she slipped from her bed in an unruined portion of the duke’s palace. She pulled on a blue robe and belted it about her waist with a gold silk tie, then padded barefooted through the palace. She knew that with rebels about she was taking a risk, but she felt no fear. She was determined to find Neskartu and broach the subject of reforming the children.

Her journey took her deep into the main building, and high. Cool air bled into the upper corridors from shattered windows and one spot where a wall had been holed, but it still felt mild to her. She hurried past battle-weary grichothka on post on the lower levels. In the upper reaches of the palace, however, the gibberers were taller and stronger, wearing clean tabards, and kryalniri patrolled the halls.

No one questioned or stopped her, however, so she reached the modest chamber in which the duke had once held audiences. Eight pillars supported the ceiling, which did not rise high enough to escape light from the burning torches below. Scenes of myth, of hunts for giant serpents or temeryces, looked down on the four figures gathered in the room.

Lord Neskartu stood with the two other sullanciri leading the Murosan invasion. Anarus, who wore a wolf’s-visage and had a thick pelt covering his body, curled a lip in a snarled greeting. He had neither seen nor heard her enter. His nostrils had flared as he caught her scent, and he meant the greeting to be pleasant, but a flash of lupine fang and a ripple of powerful muscles would require far more effort to seem welcoming.

Tythsai bowed her head, slowly, in Isaura’s direction, but did not do so out of overt respect. As with several other of her mother’s generals, Tythsai had entered Aurolani service after death. The crude stitchery that kept her head on her body was impossible to miss, as was the lack of a flesh-and-blood right arm. Isaura seemed to recall, decades previous, when that arm had likewise been sewn on. Later it had been replaced with the first of several mechanical arms, making Tythsai into a meckanshü of sorts. Her current limb appeared to be made of quicksilver, though quite ordinary except for that detail.

The fourth member of the group immediately dropped to one knee. Even when he bent his head, he remained taller than she. The black cloak he wore covered him from shoulders to floor, with the spikes on his shoulders, arms, knees, and back poking out at sharp angles. The broad face, even with its twin curves of ivory fangs and covered in dark green scales, appeared softer and more friendly than that of Anarus. His big, dark eyes blinked once, then he lowered his gaze.

“Highness, I am honored.”

Isaura nodded toward him and her white-blonde hair slid forward past her shoulders. “Naelros, this is unexpected. You were at Fortress Draconis?”

Naelros kept his head bent and would not meet her gaze. “I have come south, Highness, for I have failed the empress. I have brought my troops to help here and to search. One of the fragments was stolen from Draconis. Others are out hunting, but there is a chance the thieves tried to come south. We will find them, but our strength is needed here.”

It will be most welcome, Naelros.

Anarus snapped his jaws at that assertion. “Your strength may be needed, but you dilute our strength with your suggestions.” The lupine sullanciri moved to a table upon which had been spread a large map of Muroso. Heavy silver candlesticks held down the corners, and up by Porjal wax had already spilled onto it. “The only course of attack is to drive on Caledo. Once we strike the head, the body will die.”

Yet because this is the obvious course, Anarus, they will defend against it.

“What matter? They cannot stand against us!” The sullanciri hunched his shoulders and raked his clawed hands through the air. “We have the might—with or without your people, Naelros—to crush their capital.”

Naelros slowly rose to his feet and walked to the map. He kept his gait steady and slow, but his long legs devoured the distance. The table touched his legs just above his knees and he had to bend down to tap a taloned finger to the map. “The coastal cities are easier to take. Once we eliminate them, we will be able to reinforce and resupply ourselves, and they will have nothing. We close the border with Saporicia and Muroso dies.”

“Take Caledo, and the coastal cities will open themselves to us.” Anarus turned and nodded toward Tythsai. “You concur, yes?”

The female sullanciri said nothing, but her right hand tightened into a fist. Her fluid metal fingers drove down through her palm and emerged as spikes through the back. The end of her limb thickened as the fist became a spiked mace. One long spike grew from the top of it and she tapped that against the map’s representation of Caledo.

Neskartu reached out with a hand, letting his arm and fingers stretch out beyond all normal proportions. His fingertip played over the coastline. These are the better targets.

A low growl rumbled from Anarus’ throat. “What is it you fear?”

Nothing. The toll taken on my studeids and your stores offiredirt, however, was greater than expected. If we have the ports we enrich ourselves and hurt them.

Anarus snorted. “This is precisely why you are not in command of this invasion. Do you think supplies will flow here immediately? Yes, we can send ships from Vorquellyn, but this invasion will be won with the supplies already flowing south on the land route. There is nothing that can oppose us.”

Then you devalue the magery of Muroso.

“No, I count on you to rid me of their mages.”

This shall be done. What of the Norrington? What of Alexia of Okrannel?

Anarus started to snarl again, but Isaura’s gasp cut him off. “She is here!”

The wolf-thing’s head snapped around. “Who? Your mother?”

“No, this Alexia.” Isaura pressed her hands to her temples. When Neskartu had communicated the concept ofAlexia, it merged perfectly with the image of the blonde woman she’d seen when speaking with Nefrai-kesh. “She is in Caledo.”

“How do you know this?”

Naelros snorted a hint of steam. “Even I have heard rumors that the Norrington has come north to Muroso. Alexia travels with him. She will be a formidable foe.”

“A foe without dragonels.” Anarus glanced sidelong at Naelros. “A foe without your kin.”

“They are not for you to command, but for the empress.” The draco-morph’s dark eyes narrowed and his voice lowered in volume with no loss of timbre. “Anarus, you took Porjal, but it took longer than any other city. In Caledo you will face even more severe defenses. You may receive help, but if you insist on attacking the southlanders where they are the strongest, the cost of your victories will slay the invasion.”

“Were your prophetic visions accurate, Naelros, you would have foreseen the theft of the fragment. Your performance pleases our mistress not at all. Mine does, which is why I command here. I welcome your strength, but it is my vision that has brought us this far, and shall carry us further.”

He tapped a finger on the map. “Caledo will fall. There is nothing a foundling princess from Okrannel or a bastard gutterkin from Alcida can do about it. It is our empress’ will that Muroso fall, and so it shall. Before there is a hope of spring, this nation shall be ours.”