AllFreeNovel
Share Us
As it turned out, he didn’t return to SiDrakkon in time. After reluctantly pressing Harf into service as a food carrier, he, the bats riding in a two-layer basket, and his thralls made the surface two days sooner than it had taken on the trip with the main force, thanks to a quick passage on the rails. The Copper drove the cart day and night, sleeping uncomfortably on the noisy rails when he wasn’t pulling.
The rains had turned the countryside green in the interval, and there were herds everywhere, following the water and growth. Dry washes now ran with water, and armies of frogs had appeared as though by magic.
The bats had good hunting at night, for the waters had awakened all manner of insect life as well.
Harf disappeared one rain-filled night, and Fourfang guessed he’d run away. The Copper toyed with the idea of sending the bats to find him, but was in fact relieved to be rid of him, and wished him well. Fourfang prophesied: “Day and day at most before lions eat him.”
They reached the Mud City, and the Copper simply waited in an open square, watching some half-grown humans practice throwing spears, until NiThonius showed up. He’d taken the laundry off his horns with the rains, but he still looked haggard.
“I’m relieved to find you here,” the Copper said. “I really must learn a few words of this tongue. I can’t even ask those children playing there where to find you.”
“Children playing? That’s part of the king’s guard, now. Every family in Bant has had to send a fresh warrior, and rather than give up strong men they’re sending the old and the young.”
SiDrakkon had taken his war, and what of the king’s forces he could scrape together, all the way to the Black River. Nithonius gave him three blighter guides, who took him across the savanna, hunting as they traveled. They also taught him several words for the local flora and fauna, though he made little progress with the language beyond that.
So within two-score days’ time of leaving the Lavadome he found himself on a bluff overlooking a green river valley, and a battle being lost.
It was a strange transition. One moment the Copper was walking up a long, grassy slope still wet with morning dew. A spotty-hided feline watched them from a dead tree limb, the silence so perfect he heard each grass-parting footstep from the guides in front and Fourfang and Rhea behind.
Then they crossed the hillcrest into chaos.
The river broke into pieces here, lined with sandbars, some with trees up past their roots in floodwaters. On the far bank stood a fortress of the Ghi men: a rounded hill, crowded with stone housing and surrounded by a wide, stout wall and marshy ground. The fortress stood next to taller hills cut open and butchered for the stone they contained.
A dead dragon lay on the riverbank, below a raised path that led up to the fortress gate. The path itself was littered with what looked like colorful bundles, and it was only after a moment’s reflection that he realized they were bodies.
Another of the duelists lay, apparently unconscious, panting, bleeding, while a couple of blighters pulled gingerly at spear shafts sticking out of his underside. The Copper left Fourfang and Rhea with some gibbets of drying game and dead Ghi men and approached the wounded dragon. It was HeBellereth, the red.
The Copper looked downriver and saw confused motion at the bank of some eddies in the river. Bant men and blighters were riding or wading across the thigh-deep water, retreating from the far bank.
“One more flight, NoTannadon. Just one more flight,” SiDrakkon was saying. “You must keep them off the Drakwatch and what’s left of the blighters. Otherwise they’ll never get back across the river. They’re out of range of the war machines now.”
The duelist dug in his throat with his saa and extracted a piece of an arrow. “And end up like HeBellereth, or the corpse across the river? Go yourself.”
Several deep thwack noises rose even to the hilltop, and the Copper saw the arms of war machines whipping up from thick hedges of concealing brush. They threw masses of stones high in the air, dark clouds that dispersed as they fell on the river crossing. Warriors threw cowhide shields up over their heads for protection, but they had no more effect than a mist. Blighters fell by the score.
“Curse them!” SiDrakkon roared, and flapped into the air. He swooped down over the river crossing and loosed his flame upon the bushes and war machines.
He turned a tight circle over the river valley and plunged among the burning machines, throwing men and their constructs this way and that in his fury.
The Copper saw a group of Drakwatch clustered around Nivom—he was easy to see at a distance, a white vesper with head rising again and again to call to the drakes. Nivom loosed his flame into a mass of rock and washed-up timber on the riverbank, and was rewarded by the sight of tin-helmeted Ghi men running, throwing aside their weapons. Nivom dashed through the inferno and came back with something in his mouth. He dropped it long enough to call to the last few Drakwatch on the north bank of the river, and as they plunged into the current he retrieved his prize and followed.
The blighters staggered back up the hill, some throwing themselves into the first piece of cover to pant or tend one another’s wounds. The proud Drakwatch had an easier climb, being four-legged, save for the wounded. Nivom stalked right past his injured drakes and started up the hill.
The Copper looked from blighter to drake and back again. Dragons were a superior species in every physical respect. Their scale kept out arrows that felled the blighters, their crests could deflect a fall of stones such as rained down on the blighters at the ford, and their fire terrified even if it did not kill.
But the blighters would not abandon an injured fellow warrior to his fate.
Nivom threw down his captured weapon, a contraption of wood and metal, in some respects similar to a bow. “Curse them. They’re using dwarvish crossbows.”
A bleeding drake just made it to the top of the hill and collapsed. The Copper approached to see to his wounds, but the drake just snarled a warning: “Keep off!”
The wounded drake curled into a ball.
SiDrakkon flapped across the river and landed on the hilltop, somewhat bloodied about the griff and gums. A blighter ran up and tugged at an arrow projecting from his saa, and the dragon growled and struck him down.
On the other side of the river, the Ghi men sallied out of their fortress, teams of spearmen hunting about the riverbank. They flushed a wounded drake and put an end to him. Wounded blighters they beheaded, digging into the ground the warriors’ short stabbing spears and setting the taken heads atop, grisly flowers lining the road leading to the Ghi men’s fortress.
“Come, NoTannadon,” SiDrakkon said. If he noticed that the Copper had returned he gave no sign of it. “We’ll return to the Lavadome and there ask for more dragons to redeem this. Nivom, go back to the Mud City as best as you can. I’ll return with two-score dragons ready for war!”
