When Dragons Rage

52

For Erlestoke and his people, finding the northern gate to Sarengul shattered was both good and bad. On the good side was the fact that they could not be denied entry, and any shelter from the cold would be welcome. For two weeks they had traveled south and a little east, with hunting parties driving them on. The mountain halls of the urZrethi homeland would let them move faster and, with any luck, escape their pursuers.

But escape into what?

Jullagh-tse Seegg had followed signs invisible to Erlestoke and had brought them through a narrow mountain valley that led to the gate. Snow choked the small cul-de-sac and had there been bodies left behind from defenders and attackers, they had been firmly blanketed in white. Snow likewise decorated the carvings around the circular gateway, frosting the stone urZrethi warriors engaged to drive off a dragon. While that representation was hopeful, the fact that the gate lay broken beneath the arch undermined any good feeling.

Jullagh-tse stepped forward, tentatively, on her long legs. She peered into the shadowed interior, then came back to report to the others. “I see nothing but snow, smell nothing at all, and hear nothing but the light whistle of wind. This was just one of many traveler gates. Could be attackers are further inside, but the defenders could have cut things off.”

The prince frowned. “But the fact that the gate has not been retaken, and that we see no signs of recent fighting, is not good. I don’t really want to think about what it took to open the gate.”

Ryswin pointed at the gate with his bow. “Strong as it would have been, enough pounding by a dragonel would have opened it.”

“Might be,” Verum offered. He pointed toward the high sides of the canyon. “By the same token, the Sarens would have emerged up there and slaughtered troops on the ground. That means the Aurolani took to the heights, ambushed the Sarens, then pushed on in. If they had urZrethi help…”

Jullagh-tse shook her head adamantly. “No urZrethi would betray his homeland.”

“Don’t need Sarens to do it, Jullagh-tse. You remember the old stories about the urZrethi left behind in Boragul forming an alliance with Chytrine?” Ryswin shook his head slowly. “They’d know what sort of defenses had been set up. They lead troops to the right places, and ambushes will succeed.”

The urZrethi hesitated, then nodded reluctantly. “If that is true, if they had Boras to lead them and help plan, things could have gone badly. If the Boras came claiming to be escaped slaves, they would have been welcomed and could have worked from the inside to cause more trouble.”

Jancis Ironside looked over at Erlestoke. “What is your plan, Highness?”

Erlestoke unslung his quadnel from his shoulder. “We’ll leave fewer tracks in there than we will out here, and going through the mountains is preferable to going over them. The state of affairs in Sarengul is also going to be important to assess. We will need to send a report on it via arcanslata. They need to know down south what is going on.”

The elven archer narrowed his blue eyes. “Given what we carry, is entering a realm where the enemy might be in control a wise idea?”

“Probably not, but moving through the mountains is even less so.” Erlestoke looked around at the company. The three elves and one urZrethi had weathered the two-hundred-mile journey fairly well. Jilandessa had clearly had the toughest time of it, but that was because she was doing a lot to keep everyone else healthy. The others—old and young, human and meckanshü—had been sorely tested by the trip. Erlestoke could barely remember when he’d last felt warm, and he couldn’t recall when his muscles didn’t ache. Discussions over cold meals had become centered on hot ones, and spirits in the company had slowly begun to ebb.

The prince pointed his draconette toward the dark hole in the mountainside. “We’ve been running for over two weeks. We’ve been lucky in avoiding our pursuit, and Sarengul is going to give us a good chance to leave them behind. If we are able to kill some Aurolani and help the Sarens, I have no trouble with that. If they choose to help us in return, we are far better off than struggling through the mountains. We go in as a team, as we have done throughout.”

The elf nodded. He and Finnrisia, the other elven archer, moved to the fore, stepping lightly over the snow and leaving no tracks Erlestoke could read. The rest of the company crunched after them, unlimbering quadnels. They fitted lengths of slow-match cord to the firelock, then let Verum ignite the ends so that the weapons were prepared for use.

The two elves mounted the steps to the opening, then Finnrisia ducked inside. After a couple of seconds Ryswin joined her. Jullagh-tse quickly entered after that, then the urZrethi reappeared in the opening and waved the others through.

The light reflected from the snow illuminated the hall, revealing small drifts and a few bodies frozen in death. Erlestoke spotted a couple of gibberers, a vylaen, two urZrethi, and a crawl, as well as enough debris scattered deep in the hallway to suggest that a dragonel or a charge of firedirt had been used to open the gateway.

As Verum directed warriors to secure cover, Erlestoke turned to Jullagh-tse. “Any suggestions for where we go from here?”

She pointed along the main hallway, which headed east. “This route will connect with one of the grand corridors. It will head north and south. I’ve been on part of it, but only coming up from the south. There it connects with the other major route that runs northeast-southwest, from Muroso to Nybal. It will be the most direct route, and the most likely place for us to meet resistance.”

“Are there alternate routes?”

She nodded. “All along the grand routes there are villages and towns. Some have the grand routes running through them, so they are built all around them, above and below and to all sides. Other villages are removed from them, with their own roads. There are routes down to the mines, or to the springs. The mountains have a web of trails that are known, and probably an equal number that are hidden.

“The problem is this: invaders could move through the grand route without ever having to see any of the outlying villages, and those villages could block a tunnel so that it would take forever for an invading force to open it. With access to stores and water, a village could survive a siege for months, if not years, and would always have a route out to the skyside.”

The prince rubbed a hand over his new-grown beard. “If someone decides not to let us pass, we could be trapped. Worse, we could be lured into a trap. Seems moving along the larger routes and seeking smaller if we need to is going to be our best bet right now.”

Jullagh-tse nodded. “The heartening thing is this: we have not seen Au-rolani reinforcements heading this way. Chytrine must think she has the Sarens defeated or contained. The Aurolani troops think there is no one coming in behind them, else they would have left guards. If we are cautious, we might get through this.”

“It is something to hope for, yes.”

The prince stood and signaled for everyone to move out to the east. He took pride as his soldiers moved from point of cover to point of cover, with the elves going first and the urZrethi bringing up the rear. As they moved deeper into the mountains the amount of light faded, such that elven vision was very helpful. The others moved up smartly, investigating homes and halls as they went.

The devastation could be easily seen. Dark bloodstained walls, and the stench of death permeated the air. Jilandessa used a little magick to see what she could learn about some of the victims, but all her spells told her was that they had been dead for a long time—not quite as long as her people had been on the road, but close.

The injuries inflicted, and the victims, testified to the savagery of the attack. Children had died clutched in the arms of mothers. One child had been killed by the same draconette shot that slew her mother. As had been the urZrethi tradition, the dead lay where they fell, but Erlestoke was fairly certain that the Aurolani assault would have made it impossible to recover bodies, even if that were the urZrethi way.

The Aurolani had not invaded with impunity. Bodies of their dead littered the hallways, but not nearly enough to make Erlestoke take heart. He’d kept a rough tally in his head of urZrethi warrior fatalities to those of the enemy, and the ratio proved depressing—overwhelmingly so when he factored in the civilian bodies. The Aurolani forces had come through, and an orgy of butchery had followed.

Once they reached the intersection with the north-south route, the numbers of bodies shrank appreciably. Erlestoke guessed that once the gate had been breached, alarms had gone out, and the people who lived around the grand routes were evacuated deeper into the mountains. By doing that the Sarens could avoid casualties and, if they were lucky, let the Aurolani pass through.

Late in the afternoon they found a small complex of rooms that had been abandoned. While the Aurolani had looted it, they had been haphazard. Jullagh-tse located some stores of wood, food, and wine, and they were able to seal the door. That night they enjoyed a hot meal ana“ managed to get some rest in warmth.

A warm breakfast and good night’s sleep helped revitalize the company. Morale was slowly climbing and remarks were made about pursuing the Aurolani instead of slinking away from them. Everyone replenished their provisions and the squad moved out cautiously.

That second day passed uneventfully. Erlestoke could feel how anxious everyone was to move quickly, for the route they took was wide, tall, and largely without sign of conflict. Yes, the Aurolani had taken to defecating on anything that could even vaguely be considered ornamental, but even having feces smeared over murals did little to spoil the majesty of Sarengul’s Grand Corridor. The sculptures that decorated pillars and defined balustrades defied desecration. It made Erlestoke imagine that while the Aurolani might take control of Sarengul, they would never truly possess it—and that it would welcome those who came to liberate it.

That second day ended in another way station where they again found stores of food, drink, and fuel. It struck Erlestoke as a bit odd that those who had evacuated the area had not come back in the wake of the Aurolani advance either to secure or to poison these supplies. Jullagh-tse offered no answer as to why that had not happened, but the supplies proved to be untainted, so the group spent another night in relative comfort and safety.

On the third day, however, any illusion of safety vanished as they came upon the reason no urZrethi had ventured into the Grand Corridor. The route had run south and Jullagh-tse indicated they were getting close to one of the larger towns and an intersection with more roads similar to the one through which they’d entered. Even before the dim lights allowed them to see what had happened, they could smell it and, worse yet, hear things feeding upon the aftermath.

Little frostclaws, not much bigger than dogs, worried the bodies of the dead.

The huge, cylindrical intersection for paths from all levels of the mountains had roadways that spiraled up and down. Directional arrows carved in the stone pointed out the diverse destinations that could be reached over the broad avenues. Even though most of the intersection remained hidden in shadows, it was easy to imagine it as a place of much activity.

Now, though, the activity consisted solely of the flapping of flesh as greedy little temeryces crawled inside bloated bodies to feast on decaying flesh.

Erlestoke had little problem understanding what had happened. The urZrethi defenders had fallen back before the Aurolani assault. Chytrine’s troops had pursued quickly and had not taken precautions against an ambush. When they reached the crossroads, the urZrethi hit them with a withering attack.

Unfortunately, they had not hit hard enough.

It could have been the presence of dragonels and draconettes that undid the urZrethi. He saw much evidence of the damage that both would wreak. A dragonel ball bouncing up and around one of the spirals would eventually lose momentum and stop, but it would harvest arms and legs as it went. Bodies of urZrethi magickers appeared to have been riddled with draconette shots, and their deaths would have made countering Aurolani magick all but impossible.

The crawls, it seemed, had won the battle, for there were very clear signs of their presence. Not only were bodies blackened and burned as the result of spells, but holes had been melted in walls. The sheer power of the magick astounded him, and the evidence of the cruelty with which it had been employed sickened him.

All around the walls, the crawls had been at work. Magick had melted stone, and survivors had been pressed into it, hand and foot. The stone then solidified, binding them there—in essence crucifying them. While the urZrethi should have been able to shift their shapes to escape those bonds, being battle-weary and, as most were, wounded, would prevent them from effecting any escape.

Crucifixion, Erlestoke knew, was not an easy death. Hanging there, the body would labor to draw breath. The very weight of the viscera on the lungs would shrink their capacity until the victim slowly suffocated. Cries for mercy would shrink to moans then mews, rasped breaths, and finally death rattles.

Jilandessa started to cast a spell, then shook her head. “A week ago this battle took place, not much more. The victims here lasted two or three days, five at the most.”

The prince nodded. The cylinder would have collected the sounds of their dying and sent it through the mountains like an ill wind. No one knowing of the attack and hearing that finale would have ventured forth. The silence that came with their deaths would have been welcome, but would have encouraged people to stay hidden.

Jullagh-tse Seegg pointed south. “The Aurolani went that way. We will catch up with them soon if we follow.”

Erlestoke frowned. “The first thing we do is find a place to hole up, then we backtrack and see if we can find a parallel route. If we can’t, then we follow in their wake. They’re not going to let themselves fall into another ambush like this, but what we see here doesn’t mean they’ll be unopposed hereafter. Our goal is to get through—and we will, somehow.”

He took a last look at the walls. “We have to. If we don’t, there are many other places where we’ll see this and worse.”