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“The Upholder would just as soon end this war quickly,” Nivom said. “In his Uphold, NiThonius speaks with the Tyr’s voice.”
The Copper tried to count the warriors left in the towers, his blood cooling and the wisdom of Nivom’s words settling his scale. “A few days behind those stone walls and they’ll mourn their dead and get over their fear. They’d give in fast enough if there were nothing between them and the blighter tribes but a pile of rubble. If only we could bring them down somehow.”
“Yes, the walls are an enemy as strong as the Ghi men. But I saw fire slide off the stones like rain,” Nilrasha said.
“War machines would help,” the Copper said. “Couldn’t the blighters build some?”
Nivom sighed. “Not to match the Ghi men’s. They’re cleverer when it comes to such contraptions, and they have better steel and wood than the bleached-out timber under this sun around here. Their projectiles can always fly higher and farther….
Nivom gave a little choke, and the Copper wondered if he was having an attack of some kind. Had a poisoned arrow pierced him somewhere unsuspected?
“Air Spirit, Rugaard! I think we can do it. Yes, I’m sure we can!”
Over the next day the two sides gathered, each on their own bank of the river. According to the blighters some of the smaller farming settlements and posts had been abandoned as Ghi men sought safety for their families behind the thick stone walls of the town. Boats soon crowded the riverside below the town, and herds sheltered at night beneath the city walls.
The blighters gathered too, but some of them, seeing no fight at the moment, little food, and no plunder, grew bored and wandered away. Even the king himself came, with NiThonius and such forces as could be spared from guarding the river crossings, which set the blighters all to groveling and celebrating as they heaped the few remaining captured weapons at his feet.
Meanwhile, Nivom worked with HeBellereth. The dragon recovered from his wounds quickly, eating rainy-season-fat Bant cattle and gazelles, though he sometimes winced when he had to walk far. The king watched HeBellereth’s endless flights and practice drops with the stones, and then ordered his people to assist the dragons with their strong backs.
Each day the Copper took Rhea to the riverbank for water and bathing. He liked to check on the men’s boats in any case, to see if it looked as though any had been loaded. There were two-score or more small, narrow vessels and they could get a substantial force over the river if they so desired. Once satisfied that another day had passed with the two armies glowering at each other from their opposite points, they went to an island-sheltered bank and he’d let Rhea bathe him, and herself. He ventured out into the pool first to check for crocodiles; then she went in and scrubbed him over with rushes. Sometimes he would roll over and she’d tickle his belly.
Fourfang didn’t think much of bathing, but he took a captured Ghi-man spear into knee-deep water and came back with a fish or two, sucker-mouthed bottom-feeders that he would fry on an old shield, bathed in herbs.
While they dried, Rhea would sometimes skip stones at Fourfang and spoil his fishing. She took perverse pleasure in making the blighter splash around and curse her. At times she laughed, and the Copper found the sound so pleasing that he prevented Fourfang from thrashing her with cattail stalks.
Nivom joined them one evening.
“I wonder if this will work after all,” Nivom said. “Should we even attempt it if it might fail? Another failure before their walls will just encourage the Ghi men. The king sent a messenger across, letting the Ghi men know he was present, but they sent forth no emissary to plead for peace.”
“Is he having trouble dropping the stones?”
“If he releases them too high, he misses the target marker. If he releases them low enough so they’re sure to hit, he’ll pass over the town belly-down. Their war machines will get a chance at him then, and it will probably take many stones to collapse the wall. He still wants to try. It’s a terrible thing to have a vision and not be able to see it through.”
The Copper didn’t know what to say. If Nivom wasn’t smart enough to figure out how the walls might be brought down, the Copper certainly couldn’t improve on his plans and practices.
Out in the pool Fourfang speared a fish and bent over to retrieve it. The Copper nosed a river-smoothed rock toward Rhea.
She cackled and picked up the stone, then flung it with her arm out sideways so it skipped across the water and hit Fourfang square in that odd assortment of reproductive apparatus male mammals displayed.
Fourfang howled as he clutched his fish and his loincloth.
Nivom took a startled breath. “Of course! Of course! Why didn’t it occur to me? Speed—speed’s the thing, and he can get all he wants far from the walls. That’s it, Rugaard; your little human did it!”
He hurried off up the hill without any more explanation.
Chapter 18
SiDrakkon returned before Nivom’s attempt against the walls could be put into effect. He seemed rather surprised to find the drakes and HeBellereth still camped on that hilltop, with some of the signs of an intact army at war: herds of cattle and goats, blighters making charcoal, members of the Drakwatch on the adjoining hills and keeping watch from stone piles on the savanna.
With him were two young dragons with wings freshly uncased, and another veteran duelist, a one-eyed, rather fat dragon who collapsed to the ground as soon as they alighted and roared for food to be brought to him.
“Cursed ill luck,” SiDrakkon said, looking south at the rolling cloud banks portending the afternoon’s rain. “I set out from the Lavadome with a full score, but everyone had to get a turn of hunting in when they weren’t arguing. I’ve brought what I can; the rest will catch up or deal with my wrath on their return.”
Nivom and the Copper exchanged a soft snort.
SiDrakkon looked from the working blighters, using drag ropes to bring a boulder up the hill, to Nilrasha teaching some of the Drakwatch how to stalk in tall grass, to the temporary huts and corrals that had been built for the Bant king and his retinue.
“What transpires here?” SiDrakkon asked.
