When Dragons Rage

65

In some way, Erlestoke reflected, it was unfortunate that the Aurolani arrow had not been poisoned. It had taken him through the right thigh. Jilandessa said it hadn’t done too much damage, so he didn’t let her do more to it than stop the bleeding and close the flesh. Her skills were needed elsewhere, on more grievous wounds, and he was able to limp along as he was.

But had the arrow been poisoned, he’d be dead. That would mean his nose and cheeks, ears, toes, and fingers wouldn’t be burning with frostbite. He’d not be consumed with fear about the DragonCrown fragment falling into enemy hands. He wouldn’t feel hungry and tired or any other of those things that differentiated the living from the dead.

Their escape had not been without casualties. Jullagh-tse’s plan had functioned well, and they’d made it into the trickle tube easily enough. As they started to exit, though, Verum volunteered to stay behind. Erlestoke still heard shooting when he left the tube, so he allowed himself to imagine that, somehow, the meckanshü might still be alive somewhere in Sarengul.

Jullagh-tse Seegg led them through the mountains on a course that ran south and a bit west. She was angling for a pass with a chasm spanned by a rope bridge. It had been years since she had gone that way, but all of the landmarks remained in place to guide her. The chasm literally split one whole duchy in Sarengul, and if the Aurolani were going to use the internal tunnels to get ahead of them, they would have to go far out of their way to do so. They all hoped that the Aurolani forces had not yet penetrated that deeply into Sarengul.

To fully escape pursuit, all they would have to do is reach the bridge and cross over, then cut it behind them. Jullagh-tse had also described the chasm as being huge and bottomless. In the back of his mind Erlestoke considered it a possible dumping place for the DragonCrown fragment.

The Aurolani did pursue them, and relentlessly. At dawn the Aurolani had ambushed them—killing three and wounding four, though none of the wounded was crippled. His group had gone from a dozen to seven, which, given all they had done, was rather remarkable. Still, being tired, falling into that ambush, and losing people so close to their final escape took the heart right out of him.

Wind whipped through the mountains, driving snow south. Erlestoke much preferred the wind at his back, but it made watching their back trail painfully difficult. Out through the shifting sheets of snow he could see gib-berers. Some were on the ground, following their path directly, while others moved up into the rocks. The wind neutralized arrows, but that didn’t stop the Aurolani from launching them.

And, as always, trailing them, came the cloaked figure. It walked awkwardly, but kept advancing. The wind tugged at its scarlet cloak, but it never stopped. It never hunkered down against the wind, nor raised a hand to shield its face. What seemed worse to Erlestoke was the nagging sense that what had been a severed arm two days previous had, in fact, grown back somewhat.

Jullagh-tse pointed south and then to the right. “There, you can see the opening to the canyon. Not far now.”

“So they will have to make their move if they don’t want to be cut off, right?”

“Yes.” The urZrethi looked down. “Highness, I am best equipped in the mountains…”

“Yes, of course.” Erlestoke made to shrug his way out of the harness that held the DragonCrown fragment. “Take this and head out, fast.”

She laid a brown hand over his mittened right hand. “No, Highness, what I mean is that you should move quickly and let me hold them off.”

“It’s not happening that way.” He looked back at the others. “Let’s move fast now. Speed will be our friend. Once we’re over the Ijridge, we’re safe. Rys, Finn, go!”

The two elves led the way through the narrowing canyon and off on the twisting crosscut that would lead to the chasm and their salvation. The wind muted the cry of a gibberer high on a point, but others heard it and began to come on faster. Other cries came from the high rocks, and Erlestoke surmised that more Aurolani troops had arrived from inside the mountains.

Jullagh-tse helped him limp back as best he could. He held his quadnel in his left hand and had his right arm draped over her shoulders. His right leg wasn’t working that well, so his foot dragged along, leaving a long, serpentine trail.

A couple of black arrows fell here and there. Ryswin snatched one up, fitted it to his silverwood bow, and returned it to one of the gibberers.

Onward they raced into the western canyon. It narrowed to twenty yards at the tightest point and twisted back and forth twice, making it easy to hold off pursuit, even if for only a moment. Inside the canyon itself the wind died. Erlestoke could hear the crunch of feet on snow and the hissed grumbles of his wounded comrades as they worked their way west. Anticipation grew as well, for the canyon began to widen and took one more grand, sweeping turn to the south.

There they would find the chasm and the bridge.

They did—but things were not quite as predicted.

The chasm itself was much as Jullagh-tse had described it. The canyon sloped slowly down to it, barely five hundred yards distant. When she’d seen it last, it was in the summer, with meadow grasses providing a verdant carpet dotted with the reds, yellows, and blues of flowers. Grey stone showed where ice and snow now clung in frozen sheets. The chasm itself, which was easily two hundred yards across, had its own coat of snow and ice on the edges, almost suggesting a dark trough between two snowdrifts.

Erlestoke looked over at Jullagh-tse. “When you said you’d not been here in a while, exactly how much time were we talking?”

“Seventy years or so. At that time they were only talking about doing this, and they’d been talking about it forever.” Her flesh lightened to a streaky tan. “I had no idea.”

The rope bridge that was to be their salvation had long since been replaced by a strong, proud arch spanning the gulf. Heavy blocks had been used to create it, and marble to finish it. In the urZrethi tradition, it was decorated with wonderful running sculptures and tableaux. Though snow did cling to portions of the span, the majority of it remained clear. Wide enough to let four horsemen ride abreast, it featured welcoming stone sentinels who greeted the travelers with broad smiles.

Erlestoke shook his head. Even using every last ounce of firedirt they possessed, they couldn’t have loosened a single block. “And it’s too wide to defend against what is pursuing us.”

Ryswin, who had stopped twenty yards on, looked back at him. “What do we do?”

Before Erlestoke could answer, an arrow slanted down from above and tugged at the elf’s shoulder. Blood splashed on the snow, but Ryswin did not go down. The arrow had only grazed him. He twisted out of the way of another shot, then danced back as he nocked an arrow of his own.

He drew and shot as everyone else began to run for the bridge. Behind and above them came the hoots and howls of gibberers. Arrows flew. Most went long or wide, though one did hit the quadnel and get caught between barrels. Ahead someone went down with an arrow in the back of his thigh.

Erlestoke gave Jullagh-tse a shove. “Get Nygal.”

The prince turned, drew a bead on one of the leading gibberers, then squeezed the trigger on his quadnel.

Nothing happened.

The priming dust had blown out of the hole. He eared the hammer back, drew his powder horn, and calmly reprimed. The gibberers howled and shrieked as they rushed forward. Longknives gleamed in the air. From the right Jancis snapped off a shot that dropped one gibberer, but that effort would fall far short of what was needed to stem the tide of onrushing troops.

Even if my every shot counted for ten…

He squeezed the trigger again. The hammer snapped. Priming powder burned. A heartbeat later the quadnel thundered and bucked against his shoulder. It ejected smoke and fire.

A running gibberer fell.

And then another.

The thunder built, echoing from the canyon walls. There, either side of them, waiting in the rocks, were draconetteers. Meckanshü! Erlestoke couldn’t believe it. How did they get here?

A tiny winged shape buzzed in front of him. His four fast-moving wings dispersed the smoke as he hovered. “Quick, Highness, quick, come quick.” He grabbed Erlestoke’s left shoulder and pulled.

The prince turned and started running as fast as he could. Behind him, gibberers howled, but from frustration. Glancing back, he could see them retreating, leaving a dozen or more bodies in reddening snow.

A man reached him. Though the man was wearing a black mask, the prince recognized him from the scars on his cheek and his white hair. “Crow. How is it you are here?”

“The Spritha, Qwc. We knew a fragment of the DragonCrown was heading through Sarengul, and Qwc knew where he was supposed to be. We just followed.” Crow turned and pointed with a silverwood bow toward the bridge. “The rest of our men are on the other side, along with our horses. We deployed our meckanshü, and have the rest holding the way out.”

From around the edges of the valley the meckanshü began to pull back. At the northern end, the gibberers had drawn together into a group. They appeared to be reluctant to advance again.

Then the cloaked figure entered the valley. The gibberers drew away from him. He came forward, ignoring the draconette shots that spat snow near his feet. He stopped well shy of the corpses, raising his left hand and holding it out expectantly. “Very well, your lives for the Truestone. You have earned that much.”

Will came up beside the prince. “What is that?”

Erlestoke shook his head. “I don’t know, but it has followed me from Fortress Draconis. It’s been shot and worse, but nothing stops it.”

Crow patted the prince on the shoulder. “Let’s move.” He turned and signaled the others. “Let’s go!”

The cloaked figure spoke again. “A second time I offer you your lives. Harken unto me and you need not die.”

Erlestoke straightened and threw back his cloak to reveal the blue-green stone in the harness that had been fashioned for it. “Your life, not ours, for this stone.” He closed his cloak again and turned toward the bridge.

Already on it were a handful of meckanshü and a man he’d met in Crow’s company at Fortress Draconis. He pointed his people to it. “Let’s go.”

From behind the prince rose a keening wail filled with longing and fear, but also an incredible amount of power. It froze Erlestoke’s guts and cut at his knees. He slumped heavily on Crow, and felt the other man begin to go down, too. That sound conjured fears with the numbing power of childhood nightmares and left him quivering.

The pain of sinking to one knee shocked Erlestoke’s mind to clarity, and he wished it had not. When his head came up, he found himself looking at the bridge. Then a vast, cruciform shadow passed over him, the edges of it rippling against the canyon’s stone walls. From overhead a creature drifted into his vision. He had seen its like before, but never from that angle. And never had he felt so much like prey.

The dragon, its horned, serpentine head flashing a coppery red in the sunlight, soared lazily forward with the ease of a hawk. Erlestoke could feel the touch of its gaze like a lash across his back. If it wanted to take him, it could, and there was nothing that could be done to stop it.

The dragon’s mouth opened, affording a momentary view of massive ivory fangs before a boiling gout of fire obscured everything. Thick and furious, the red-gold flames splashed over the center of the span. The stone sentinels at the nearest end melted like candles left too close to an inferno. For the blink of an eye Erlestoke could see Dranae and the others in silhouette at the peak of the span, then they and molten rock poured into the chasm.

The dragon’s passage pulled the fog of melted snow in its wake. It passed over the chasm, then folded its wings and perched on a cliff beyond the far side. Talons clutched stone, crushing sheets of ice that fell below. The creature settled itself, then swathed itself in its wings.

Its eyes blinked, then it spoke in sibilant tones. The words rekindled Erlestoke’s fear. They twisted maggotlike over his flesh and inside his skull. He did not know what they meant, and was certain they would always be beyond his comprehension. And he also knew that were he tortured for a year and a day, he would not sink to the depths of despair he felt at that moment.

From behind him, the cloaked figure spoke clearly. “Gagothmar says he would like the Truestone. It would greatly displease him if he needed to cleanse it of your ashes.”