Chaosbound (40 page)

Such Dedicates required almost no care. Better yet, they presented no risk to those who guarded them.

Taking these attributes was easier on the Dedicates, too. A person had to give up his endowments willingly. He might do so under the threat of
death or torture, or even with a sufficient bribe, but he had to give them willingly.

But it is almost impossible to coax an endowment from someone who fears that they might die while giving it. Braun, grace, and wit were thus hard to obtain.

Yet the wyrmlings' mix left them weaker than they might have been.

One of the young heroes that had freed Aaath Ulber was staring at the dead wyrmlings in shock, horror written plainly on his face. Rain knelt next to him, and asked, “What is the matter?”

“The wyrmlings took no glamour,” he said. “When they took my betrothed, they said that she was comely. They said that they wanted her glamour. . . .”

So the girl is dead, Aaath Ulber suspected. Most likely they wanted only her tender flesh. It was rumored that young women are tastier than men. Like an old boar bear or an aging stag, the meat of an old man takes on an unpleasant musty taste.

“They'll take her sight or metabolism,” Rain said, trying to convince the lad that his love was still alive.

Aaath Ulber considered the magnitude of the threat that the wyrmlings posed. He'd faced Raj Ahten, who had tens of thousands of endowments of stamina, and dozens of endowments of brawn and grace. After fighting a monster like that, these wyrmlings looked as if they would be easy.

But something in his gut warned him not to celebrate too soon.

There were wights in the wyrmling fortresses, and Aaath Ulber had not even told his family about the Knights Eternal or other dangers posed by the wyrmlings.

The wyrmlings will have their Raj Ahten, he knew.

Aaath Ulber sat in a lord's hall not twenty minutes later with Myrrima by his side and Draken and Rain at his back. The entire town was astir. Odd shouts echoed up from the market district as folks called orders to one another. The townsfolk were preparing to flee, for they expected the wyrmling reprisals to be swift and vicious.

An old lord sat across the table, Warlord Hrath, a stout fellow with a broad face. His braided hair had all gone gray, and each braid was tied with a bloodied scrap of cloth. Time had chiseled regal lines in his brow and face, and left his skin withered, but otherwise he was firm. There was no weakness in him, neither in his flesh, in his mind, nor in his resolve. “What is it that you need from us?” he asked. “Name it, and if it is within my power, I will grant it.”

At Hrath's side of the table were some of his own stout sons, along with the men who had helped free Aaath Ulber from the wyrmlings.

“I'll need food for our journey,” Aaath Ulber said, “just enough for me to carry south to the wyrmling's stronghold in Mystarria. Our ship is lying just off the coast.”

“Done,” Hrath said.

“I'll need good weapons, to boot. I mistrust using your tall swords in wyrmling tunnels. A good war ax for an off-hand weapon, and a large dirk would be best. I'll want wyrmling battle darts, and spare weapons to boot.”

“Finding weapons fit for a man of your size will be hard,” Hrath said, “but we'll scour the town.”

Aaath Ulber stared hard at the old lord. His wife and children and extended family were all in the longhouse—grandmothers, and babes—packing goods swiftly, preparing to flee. Aaath Ulber hardly dared ask for more.

“I'll need endowments if I can get them,” Aaath Ulber said. “Some of your young men have taken them already. I don't know how much blood metal is available.”

Aaath Ulber hoped for twenty endowments of metabolism at the very least. He couldn't fight powerful wyrmlings with any less.

With twenty endowments, he would be twice as fast as a wyrmling who had ten. That was an advantage, but it wasn't an insurmountable benefit. A wyrmling with well-honed instincts, excellent training, and ten endowments would still pose a considerable threat.

And if I meet a wyrmling with forty endowments of metabolism, Aaath Ulber worried, I'm in trouble.

Warlord Hrath held up his hand, begging Aaath Ulber to stop. He sat for a long moment, elbows on the table, and laid his head in his hands.

“I cannot easily offer you such a boon,” he said at last, “unless you can give us something more in return.

“You talk about sailing to the south into Mystarria, to strike at the heart of the wyrmlings, and this makes sense to me: Cut off the head of the snake, not the tail.

“But there is still power in the tail. Regardless of what you do next, the wyrmlings will make us pay dearly for this night. My family might flee, but where could we hide? I do not know. The wyrmling scouts can track us down by scent, and no matter where we might go, the wyrmlings are already there. They're scattered everywhere across Internook, ten to this village, fifty to a city. You and your men slew but five. I don't even know where the rest of the city guard is tonight. Usually the number of guards is double or triple what we found. Perhaps they had trouble in the countryside. It is rumored that they go to search for blood metal at night sometimes, when the town is sound asleep. . . .”

“It's not just
our
town's guards,” a young man added. He leaned forward, whispering as if a wyrmling might overhear him. “Many of the largest and most fearsome of the wyrmlings' runelords have been leaving the past couple of weeks. I've gotten reports from many villages.”

“There's no mystery to that,” Aaath Ulber said. “It's high summer—time for the wyrmling rut. Only the largest and most fearsome of the males are allowed to breed. They will have returned to their stronghold, deep within its recesses, down where the women are kept as breeders.”

Aaath Ulber did not dare say it, but he suspected that the lich lord had purposely either called much of the guard back to rut or sent them on some fruitless errand.

For reasons that he did not understand, she had sided with him against the Wyrmling Empire.

Perhaps, Aaath Ulber thought, this lich hopes that when I slay the emperor, it will leave her in charge.

Or maybe she is merely mad.

Wyrmlings were not the most stable creatures.

But, he vowed to himself, whatever she wants, whatever she offers, I refuse.

Warlord Hrath pounded the table, gazed at Aaath Ulber. “We will give you what endowments we can, and we will send word far and wide that you have come. We can gather the blood metal that we need. But if we do this, we will need your protection.”

Aaath Ulber was loath to make such an offer, but there were no good choices. If he took a few endowments and then left, the wyrmlings would likely hunt down his Dedicates and slay them, leaving Aaath Ulber weak and vulnerable.

But he did not want to spend the rest of his life here defending the barbarians on this island. Aaath Ulber sighed. “Just my luck,” he said. “I come to town for a loaf of bread and piglet, and what do I get? A war!”

At that, the barbarians laughed, Warlord Hrath pounding his mug on the table.

“I suspect that you will need my help,” Aaath Ulber admitted. “But you understand that the wyrmling presence here in Internook is thin? Their main stronghold is in a fortress called Rugassa, in the very heart of Mystarria. You have tens of thousands of wyrmlings here on this island. There are millions more down in the heartland. I intend to breach their stronghold.”

“You intend to fight them? Millions?” Warlord Hrath asked. “Just you few?”

“I intend to do all that I can,” Aaath Ulber said. “But I hope for more aid. There are men of my stature to the south, or there were before the binding. I do not know how many might yet survive, but my plan is to unite them against the wyrmling hordes.

“I cannot fight that empire myself, but a thousand warriors like me, men with endowments, we could make the foundations of Rugassa tremble. . . .”

“No doubt,” Hrath said, chewing his lip thoughtfully. “So you think to sacrifice us?”

The warlord was testing him, Aaath Ulber knew. He was asking if Aaath Ulber would simply take endowments and march into war, leaving the island defenseless. Hrath needed a commitment that Aaath Ulber would leave them secure.

“A man who takes an endowment,” Aaath Ulber said, “takes the greatest of boons that another may offer. I would not want to put the men, women, and children of Internook at risk.”

“Yet it is what your people have always done,” Warlord Hrath intoned. “Your rich lords in Mystarria have hired our children, put them at the front of their battles, and used them only to blunt the weapons of the runelords that they were fighting. I know this. I myself was one of those young men. I fought for King Orden against the Merchant Princes.”

Aaath Ulber stifled a groan. He had been but a child when he learned of that fray. Gaborn Val Orden's father had been king at the time. The Merchant Princes had sought to establish a trade route down into the forbidden lands of Inkarra, and King Orden had defied them. The Merchant Princes were known cowards who never fought their own battles, and so they had hired heavy lancers out of Beldinook and wild hill men out of Toom.

King Orden was a pragmatist, and had not wanted to test the enemy's resolve with his own troops. So he'd hired mercenaries out of Internook, and ordered them to form a shield wall that took the brunt of the enemy's charge—all while he held off at a good distance and gauged which among Beldinook's lancers were most rife with endowments.

The lancers from Beldinook had taken more attributes than King Orden had surmised, and Orden's mercenaries were decimated.

“I am not King Orden,” Aaath Ulber said at last, reaching his decision. “I will not leave you defenseless.”

“Then what will you do—secure Internook in our behalf before you go?”

Taking Internook would be a monumental task. Doing so might require months or weeks, if the land could be taken at all. And every minute that Aaath Ulber spent here was one more minute of frustration, one more minute of aching to learn if his wife Gatunyea, his children, and his people in Mystarria still survived.

Myrrima leaned forward, touched Aaath Ulber's arm, begging him to help these folks.

Aaath Ulber was loath to accept such a heavy onus, but Myrrima said, “We can't just leave. This island must be secured. If we try to just sneak away, the wyrmlings here will attack. This village itself will be demolished. Our only hope is to secure this island, then go south.”

“How many enemy troops are here on the island?” Aaath Ulber asked.

Warlord Hrath looked to a young man, one of the striplings who had helped free Aaath Ulber. “Wulfgaard?” The boy leaned forward eagerly. Warlord Hrath explained, “This young man has sworn an oath to fight the wyrmlings. His woman was taken by them within days of the binding.”

There was a deadly gleam in Wulfgaard's eyes, the kind of determination that Aaath Ulber had seldom seen.

If his woman had indeed granted an endowment to a wyrmling, there was no way to know which wyrmling it might be. If she'd granted sight, she would remain blind until her lord was killed. If she'd granted metabolism, she'd be in a slumber. In either instance, Wulfgaard would have to slaughter one wyrmling after another until his beloved revived.

“We estimate that about twenty thousand have shown themselves,” Wulfgaard said. “But we suspect that there are many more in their main fortress to the south. As Warlord Hrath told you, those twenty thousand are stationed all over the island, but half of the guards in any given city get switched once a week, and shock troops form roving patrols that travel the length of the land—”

“In squadrons of fifty,” Aaath Ulber finished. “I think you're right. There will be many more below ground. The wyrmlings always hide their numbers that way. And though their head is in Rugassa, they have hundreds of smaller fortresses scattered all across the mainland.”

Aaath Ulber didn't want to admit it, but his own people had never been able to calculate how many wyrmlings might be about. He'd argued with the High King many times that they should take their people south, flee beyond the mountains, in hopes of escaping the wrymlings. But the king had justly argued against it. Wyrmling fortresses were hidden everywhere, and flying into the face of one offered no hope—not when Aaath Ulber's
own people might have found themselves fighting in the open, without walls or towers to protect them.

“How many endowments can you grant me?” Aaath Ulber asked.

“We have been gathering blood metal for weeks. Indeed, we have already taken endowments in your behalf.”

“Taken endowments?” Aaath Ulber asked.

Warlord Hrath leaned forward. “I myself have taken endowments of scent from three dogs. Other men have taken brawn, grace, stamina, metabolism, glamour, voice, sight, and hearing. We can vector endowments from a thousand people across the island within a couple of days.”

Aaath Ulber leaned back, astonished. He had imagined that it would take a week to garner a hundred endowments. “How could you take them in my behalf?”

“The wyrmlings themselves announced your coming,” Warlord Hrath said. “They have been hunting for a giant, sailing from the north. They've searched our houses, searched our fields, looking for a man with horns upon his head. At first, we thought that they were mad. But as they began to lay heavy burdens upon us, our disbelief turned to hope.”

Aaath Ulber sat thinking furiously. He had long been hunting the wyrmlings, and he knew that their lich sorcerers had strange powers. But he'd never heard that they were prophetic.

So how could they have known that I was coming? Unless, he reasoned, their powers have somehow grown or shifted since the binding of the worlds. . . .

“You could have created your own champion,” Aaath Ulber suggested.

“For what purpose?” Wulfgaard asked. He scraped his chair forward, so that a young maiden could pass, bearing an armload of pillows. “We might protect our own lands for a time, but rumors say that the real danger lies to the south, beneath the shrouds of darkness. Where would our champion go? Who would he strike? So we waited for you.”