When Dragons Rage

59

Will ducked beneath the cut of a gibberer’s longknife, then rolled his hip into the creature and pitched it forward onto its face. He landed on the gibberer’s back with both knees, then used both hands to punch the jagged remains of a broken longknife through its leather armor. Snow muffled the snarl that went from savage to mewling, and as Will ripped the hilt side to side, the gibberer’s struggles likewise faded.

An arrow hissed past Will’s left shoulder, so close he could feel the rush of air against his cheek. A solid thwock resounded behind him, followed by a gurgle. Will spun and saw another gibberer thrashing its life out with one of Crow’s arrows pinning its heart to its spine.

Freeing the longknife from a nerveless hand, Will stood and parried a cut low. Before he could reverse his grip and slash back up, Lombo’s left paw swept out in a grand arc. It caught the snarling gibberer on the right side of its face and cranked its head around. Bones snapped like a thundercrack. Will didn’t know if it was the neck or skull and didn’t care.

“Thanks, Lombo.”

More arrows hissed through the air as the ambushers paused in their retreat and feathered gibberers. Some went down, but others kept coming, stuck through with shafts. They were intent on their prey and dogged in pursuit up the wooded hillside.

From the left came a series of flashes accompanied by the rattling crack of draconettes. The fusillade ripped through the gibberers, spinning some around, dropping others as if hammerstruck. A few turned to face this new avenue of attack, which would require them to traverse the hillside, but another wave of arrows swept over them. The shafts slew some and wounded more. Along with the draconette assault, it killed the gibberers’ momentum and those who could began to withdraw down the hillside.

Will and the other raiders continued their ascent—though Lombo appeared very reluctant to let the enemy go. “C’mon, Lombo. There will be more to kill later.”

The Panqui grumbled. “These break good.”

“Yeah, Resolute would take scalps from these ones.”

The particular ambush that had resulted in the hillside fight had really been the result of luck on both sides—and the raiders had just been a bit more lucky. They’d buried a cask of firedirt in the snow at the base of a hillside right up tight against the road. They set up signs to misdirect a caravan and got a small one—one that appeared to be separated from a larger one. When the most heavily laden sleighs drew parallel to the cask, the raiders detonated it. While they would have hoped for more, the sleighs they targeted were clearly carrying a lot of food.

Or so they thought.

But it appeared that the Aurolani had decided to set a trap of their own for the raiders, and had created the little decoy force. The sleighs, all high-sided and covered with canvas, had not contained food but concealed combat troops. Had the raiders attacked in their normal fashion, the combat troops would have hurt them badly.

Fortunately, the cask’s explosion blew apart two of the sleighs, toppled two others, and generally disrupted the caravan. The guards, who likewise were warriors of the first order, had driven hard and fast at the raiders. Here Crow’s preparation had proved itself. As the raiders withdrew, archers and draconetteers had cut down their pursuit.

While they had been successful in eluding the gibberers, the advent of decoys was not a good thing. They had known all along it was just a matter of time before the Aurolani sent troops after them. It was a further diversion of Aurolani resources, and they all took pleasure in that, but active pursuit would seriously limit their ability to further disrupt supplies.

Will patted Crow on the shoulder. “Thank you for that shot.”

“My duty, my lord.” Crow let his voice mock Will, but the wink he gave him through that black mask, and the smile that went with it, made it okay. “Thanks for bringing targets close enough for me to hit.”

“Is that what I was doing?”

“I hope so. Anything else would have been stupid.”

Will readied a barbed reply, but held it as Sallitt Hawkins and Resolute came to join them. Crow’s older brother’s mouth was set in a grim, flat line. “Given where we are, I’m fairly certain they’re boxing us off. There is probably a unit north of here, and one south, both moving east. They sent in this bait train hoping it might kill us, but I’m sure there is a larger force directly west waiting for word.“

Crow nodded. “They probably were relaying messages via arcanslata on a regular basis. The lack of a message will do just as much to alert the other forces as a full report. Apparently we’ve angered them.”

“And we’ll keep them angry.” Resolute grinned. “The force south of here will have pushed itself harder than the one to the north. If we angle back toward Caledo, we might miss it, or be able to find it, track it, and hit it from behind, then withdraw to the capital.”

Will frowned and tapped his mask. “I thought there was little chance we were going to get out of this raiding thing alive.”

Sallitt smiled. “Just because we invite death, Will, doesn’t mean we have to welcome it.”

Will would have just as soon told it to go away, but in the back of his mind he knew he was doomed. The cold he felt, part of it anyway, was death nibbling away at him. He wasn’t certain how he knew that, he just did. It could have been, in part, that the heroes of songs seldom came to good ends. Very few of them lived happily ever after. While Will had never considered what his life would be like after, say, thirty years of age, now he figured he would be lucky if he made it thirty weeks more.

Maybe even thirty days…

He glanced at Crow and marveled at his chiseled features, the wrinkles and scars age had given him. The same was true of Sallitt, whose half-metal face made him seem yet more ancient. Even Resolute, though his flesh had the ageless youth of all elves, had a distant, aged quality to his silvery eyes. All three of them had seen more of life than Will ever had, and likely ever would. They had done things and endured things truly worthy of heroes, yet they would go unsung because they had no prophecy wrapped around them.

And they will live happily ever after.

A chill ran down Will’s spine. That was it, then, the element that separated everyday people from heroes. Everyone wants to live happily ever after. People want to prosper; they want to see their children and grandchildren grow up. They want to live their lives as well as they can, and make things better for others. They work hard to do that.

But heroes work harder. Heroes are willing to sacrifice their own lives so others—people unrelated to them, people who have never even heard of them—can live their lives to the fullest. Heroes are willing to invest their lives in the lives of others, using their lives to shield others from evil, even though the people they save may never be aware they were saved.

Will looked around the vale into which they strode. Men and women were gathering their gear, saddling their horses, helping each other. There were spare horses and empty saddles, for the raids had not been without risk.

There were those who had died, those who were injured badly enough that they might not survive, and others who would bear the scars of their encounters for the rest of their lives, no matter how short that life might be.

Every one of them was a hero. The black masks proclaimed them so. Each one of them had chosen to abandon his or her life to head out on a mission that, if Chytrine won, would be deemed foolish at best and an utter failure at worst. If Chytrine won, their efforts would be cursed, and those who survived to flee farther south would say that all could have been saved if the raiders had tried harder.

But who could say we did not? The meckanshü all gathered together and Will watched them with wonder. They were men and women who had been horribly disfigured in combat and allowed themselves to be put back together through magick that welded metal to their bodies. Sallitt’s right arm had been mangled by a blow from a sullanciri’s ax. Somewhere he had gotten it hammered back into shape, though Will could see some residual twists in the metal. He had no idea what it would have felt like to have a smith pounding those crooked metal bones straight again, but the idea that anyone could think that what a meckanshü endured in order to fight again was not enough of a sacrifice astounded him.

As for his own Freemen, he wondered what possessed them to leave their homes and follow a boy into another nation to fight against a foe that was devouring all nations. He looked at his half brother, who didn’t need to be here, and Linchmere, who could have had all the armies of Oriosa between him and Chytrine’s troops. Anyone who could suggest that these men were not heroes was insane.

When he first met Resolute and Crow, the Vorquelf had ridiculed him for desiring to be a hero—at least a hero on the scale he had been thinking of. Will believed heroism consisted of the actions recalled in songs, but the heroes he modeled himself on, he realized now, were hardly worthy of the title. While he knew heroes sacrificed mightily, he had focused on the glory.

He shivered. Being cold and hungry was hardly glorious. Being cold and hungry was hardly heroic, either, since countless people were both every day. The difference, he decided, was that they were enduring the cold and short rations for a good cause. It wasn’t that the ends justified their means, but it elevated their circumstances. Anyone could go without food, but how many could do it while fighting an army?

How many would volunteer to do that? Will hugged his arms around his chest. How many would die in such an effort and count themselves lucky to have done so?

The arrival of a signal-mage bearing an arcanslata interrupted his reverie. “Crow, this just was relayed from Caledo. Two pieces of news. The first is old: Sarengul is under assault by Aurolani forces and may have fallen to them as much as two weeks ago.“

Crow nodded. “It seems that heading east and fading back into the mountains isn’t an option. Your plan may be it, Resolute.”

The signal-mage shook his head. “It gets worse. A fragment of the DragonCrown is located in Sarengul. There are a number of people in there from Fortress Draconis. We don’t know if they have it, or if they are hunting it, but a piece of the crown is buried in a place crawling with Aurolani troops.”

The meckanshü tapped a metal finger against his chin. “Has to be in possession of the people from Draconis. If the Aurolani had it, they would be headed north. If our people were tracking the Aurolani troops, we would have been told to send people to help retrieve it.”

Resolute nodded. “And if they said nothing about having it, it was because they didn’t want spies alerted to its presence. How did they learn the fragment is there?”

The signal-mage shook his head. “It was not stated.”

Crow and Will spoke at the same time. “Kerrigan.”

“If it’s Kerrigan, I’m willing to trust the report.” Resolute’s argent eyes became slender crescents. “We have to assume it’s moving. They need to keep us informed of its location. We can find it and them if they do.”

“Wait a minute, Resolute.” Crow jerked a thumb west. “If we head into the mountains, we bring pursuit with us. We could find the fragment and then have to face them.”

“True, though if we flee before them, they might not pursue as aggressively. They want to stop our raids, after all.”

Will raised a hand. “What if they learn of the fragment?”

“I doubt they will want us more dead.” The Vorquelf shrugged. “Their motivation doesn’t matter; they’ll die all the same. The mountains will just make us a bit harder to find, and we’ll have to hope that will make enough of a difference.”