Fortress Draconis (17 page)

She shook her head. “Even if stories of the Aurolani soldiers being equipped with small, single-user dragonels are fable, would you allow your troops into combat where they could be slaughtered by such weapons? It really doesn’t matter if you would take that chance or not, General, because I will not. Until proven otherwise, I shall assume that the eastern force is well equipped.”

“And not the western force?”

Alyx laughed once. “You saw, as is evident by your plan, that the western force is already forfeit. It’s bait for a trap. It could be that the trap does involve dragonels concealed across the river. I don’t know, but I do know that a trap which is disarmed is a trap that won’t hurt my troops. The eastern force is the noose of this snare, and it must be eliminated.

“The other big flaw in your plan is this.” She traced the distance from the heavy cavalry’s line to the Aurolani line. “Three hundred yards at the start. That’s too long a distance for you to sustain a charge and maintain unit integrity. You’re better at one hundred yards. Then you are unstoppable.”

Caro held a hand up. “You skipped something. The eastern force, how will you eliminate it?”

“Simple. I send a light foot company south, to the upstream ford. They cross to the east. The other light foot companies will stay here in the woods to be used much as you planned to use them. Your horses will be back here, at the edge of the woods, waiting.”

“That’s four hundred yards from the enemy.”

“I know.” Alyx nodded solemnly. “The heavy infantry will be positioned here. Downriver, at the north ford, my Wolves and the two light horse battalions will cross and head south. We attack, breaking the eastern force against Porasena.”

Caro frowned. “That is well and good for you, General, but it still leaves me with a thousand Aurolani troops outside the range for an effective charge. You can’t think a single battalion of heavy infantry will drive them against us.”

“They won’t have to. The light horse and my Wolves will.”

“Impossible.” Caro pointed at the maps. “One ford is ten miles away, the other is seven. Your ability to attack west is limited by the same factors that make it impossible for the eastern force to support their fellows. By the time you’re across the river, the western force will have fought free of the infantry and will be off raiding.”

“You’re wrong, General Caro, very wrong.” Alyx gave him a cold smile. “Your force will be the anvil, and we will be the hammer. We have one advantage the Aurolani don’t, and two days hence, that advantage will destroy their invasion.

Resolute had come thundering up on his horse, snarled something in Elvish at Will that sent a shiver down his spine, then rode on past. He flew into the forest, along the gibberers’ back trail. Will almost swung into the saddle to ride after him, but reconsidered.Angry as he is, if he doesn’t find gibberers to kill, I don’t want to be around.

The thief ran to the fallen man, but didn’t get too close. He could see that he was breathing, but it clearly wasn’t easy, and that blue tinge to his skin looked bad. Drawing a small boot knife, Will dropped to one knee and cut the noose free of the man’s neck. His breathing came easier, but he remained unconscious, which wasn’t something that bothered Will too much at the moment.

Leaving him in the dirt, Will quickly went from gibberer to gibberer, slitting throats just to make sure they were dead. He assumed Resolute would berate him for the necessity of doing that—something that showed that Will was not confident of his martial skills—but better that than his being yelled at for not making sure they were dead.

Cutting the throat of the one the man had killed took a lot of work. The man’s grip had crushed the neck and pulverized the bones. Will had no doubt it was dead and felt his own throat tightening as he remembered the look in the man’s eyes as he came for him.

Crow rode up quickly, leading the packhorses. He swung from the saddle, his bow still strung and an arrow nocked. He frowned at the bloody work Will had been doing. “Have you checked the man?”

“He’s breathing.” Will wiped his hands off on the gibberer’s pelt. “He was coming for me before he collapsed.”

Crow returned the arrow to the saddle quiver and slid the bow home into its scabbard. Crossing to the man he crouched, pressing two fingers to the man’s neck and examining the abrasions there. “Not too bad. Blood in his hair, though, likely had a hard knock or two. Help me, we’ll get him inside.”

The two of them struggled to lift the huge man and had a hard time dragging him to the cabin. Will got the door open and they got the man into bed over in the back corner. The way the man overlapped it side to side and off the foot clearly indicated that the cabin wasn’t his.A rat trapped in a thimble would have more room than this man in this cabin.

At Crow’s order, Will fetched water andmetholanth, which they used to clean the man up and pack some of his wounds. His feet were raw in places and the gash on his head looked bad after Crow cut away enough matted hair to be able to see it. Tearing apart the threadbare clothes they found in the place—which never would have fit the man anyway—they fashioned bandages. The man didn’t so much as stir while they cared for him.

They’d finished up and Will had just begun to explore the single-room cabin for any hidden storage areas when Resolute returned. This caused Will to intensify his search for hiding places, but the floorboards were solid and the generally rickety furnishings held no secrets.

Resolute bowed his head as he entered the cabin. “The man?”

Crow shrugged. “Unconscious. Needs food and water, but is in very good shape otherwise. Find anything on the trail?”

“Nothing of note.” The Vorquelf’s silver gaze found Will easily enough. “I need to speak with you, boy.”

Will forced the fearful flutter in his stomach away. “You’re going to tell me what I did wrong, right? You’re going to tell me I was stupid to ride up to help him when I did, right? You’ll tell me this even though you’d have done the same thing.”

Resolute lifted his head. The hair on his head brushed the roof, and a shoulder brushed the central beam. The expression he wore hovered between anger and a grim resignation. He slowly folded his arms over his chest and watched Will in silence for a moment.

Then he nodded. “That is exactly what I would have done, if I had seen what you saw, andif I were as inexperienced as you are. Do you think Crow or I would have liked seeing him being led along like a cow? You’ve got perhaps fifteen years in you, maybe sixteen. You were spared seeing gibberers lead your mother off that way, seeing them hack your friends to death. I wasn’t, and I made the mistake you did, but I made it over a century ago.”

Will frowned. “And mistakes aren’t allowed now?”

“No, boy, they aren’t, not for you.” Resolute pointed back toward the west. “Have you forgotten the mountains? Have you forgotten that you are the person we need to defeat Chytrine? For you to launch a suicidal attack was unforgivable and irresponsible. If you had died …” He snarled and slammed his right fist into the side of the main beam.

Dust poured down in grey ribbons from the beam. Will wished it would cover him and insulate him from Resolute’s anger. He knew it wouldn’t.I can’t hide, nor should I. Will’s own grey eyes narrowed and he bared his teeth in a snarl.

“How was what I did here different from what we did in Stellin? We were all going to die there, including me, includingme, your hope to defeat Chytrine! I came closer to dying there than I ever did here, but you didn’t hide me away there. You let me be in danger. I don’t understand.”

Resolute smashed his fist into the palm of his left hand. “We had no choice there, boy. Here we had a choice.”

“Sure, let him die.”

“Stop it, both of you!” Crow rose to his feet, arms outstretched. “Resolute, the fact is that Will isn’t dead. He survived the mistake. He knew it was a mistake. He slit their throats to make sure there was not going to be more of a problem. You saw that; you know it. You’ve made sure he knows how serious a mistake it was.”

The triumphant smile blossoming on Will’s face died as Crow spun, anger flashing from his brown eyes. “Don’t you dare for an instant let yourself believe that just because a prophecy seems to apply to you that it trulydoes and somehow that makes you immune to misfortune. Just as things you saw in the cave were changed by your seeing them, so it could be that things change without our knowing it. And let there be no illusion on your part that—evenif you are the person mentioned in the prophecy—this prophecy is true.”

Will blinked. “It might be a lie?”

“We don’t know, Will, but we’ve been working for the past quarter century to put things in place so it won’t be. Assuming a prophecy will make things just fall into place and come true is like assuming having a road map is the same as making the journey. It’s not.”

Crow walked over to him and rested his hands on Will’s shoulders, then crouched enough to look into Will’s eyes at a level. “Risking your life to save this man, that wasn’t wrong, buthow you did it was. You didn’t know if those five were the vanguard of a force, or if they had allies nearby, or if this cabin was full of them. Were they about to kill the man, yes, you would have had to intervene. You could have, however, waited, given us a signal, or done any of a number of things that would have lowered the danger.”

Resolute nodded slowly. “This course we are committed to, it demands we risk our lives, but not foolishly.”

Will shivered, then sagged back against the cabin’s wall. “It is somethingyou committed to, but you kidnapped me, made me think of this as an adventure. I was thinking of stories and legends—mylegend, the one I’ll become. You have known for always what you are doing, but me … ?” He frowned. “What am I doing here?”

“Life … saving…” The harsh croak came from the room’s far corner. The bed and its rope mesh creaked as the large man shifted on it. He rubbed his right hand over the bandages on his throat. “Thanks.”

The word came more whispered than spoken, but the nod that accompanied it underscored its sincerity.

Will levered himself off the wall and trailed in Crow’s wake as the trio moved toward the bed. Crow gave the man a waterskin and helped him drink from it. The man drank greedily, with some water coursing down his cheeks and through his beard to splash on his broad chest and mat the thick, black hair there.

With his hands behind his head, catching on to the main beam, Resolute leaned forward. “What’s your name?”

The man grimaced for a moment, closing his cold blue eyes, then nodded. “Dranae.” He pronounced it slowly, drawing out both syllables. He placed a massive hand on his chest and repeated the word.

Will frowned. “Never heard the like of that name before.”

Crow arched an eyebrow at him. “Are you certain you want to start comparing the oddities of names?”

“No.”

“I have heard mention of similar before.” Resolute’s voice came low and soft, though still resonant. “It’s an old name, an old man-name. Likely he was named for an ancestor.”

Dranae just shook his head. “Don’t know.”

“With that knock on your head, might take some time before your thoughts are clear. I’m Crow, this is Will, and that is Resolute. Do you live near here?”

Again Dranae shook his head. “I know little.”

Crow pressed the man back down into the bed. “That’s fine. Rest. Rest both your head and your throat. You’re safe now.”

The man tried to resist, but failed and sank back down into the bed. Resolute went out to the packhorses and came back with a blanket that he spread out over the man. It barely covered his body, leaving his feet and much of his shins uncovered, but that appeared not to matter much. The man’s breathing became steady.

Will slipped from the cabin and began to look after his horse. The other two joined him to likewise care for their mounts, though they conversed in Elvish and in low tones. That angered Will a bit, but his anger faded fast as the chill he’d felt before swallowed it.

What am I doing here?He knew he’d let himself be seduced by the lure of adventure—-and a desire to get out of Yslin to save himself from Marcus’ wrath. On the road Resolute had driven him hard, forced him to work hard, and never gave him much of a chance to think about things. While the journey had been uneventful he’d been learning, and since the cavern, they had constantly been in danger.And now, when I do have a chance to think about things, I’m so deep in it that what I think doesn’t matter.

He realized the whole journey had been an illusion. It was a fable unfolding around him, with things like Oracle or the Gyrkyme just adding to the weirdness of it all. Even memories of the hard knocks he’d taken were fading, along with the bruises they left behind. As he thought about it there didn’t seem to be anything he could identify as real, then two things rose up to contradict that.

The first was the feeling he’d had when he had been entrusted with the leaf. The most surreal part of the whole journey, his bond with that ancient leaf, felt the most real to him. That sensation had provided a foundation that made believing everything his companions told him easy. The leaf had taken him to the caverns, then the assaults by gibberers had taken over, emphasizing the opposition. One thing urged him on, the other tried to stop him, but each were different sides of the same coin that impelled him to continue.

The second was the sound of Dranae’s words. Willhad saved him and the man was grateful. His words, hoarse though they might have been, carried sincerity and opened a door into Will’s understanding of Resolute and Crow.For far longer than I have been alive they have been working to save people. I’m now a necessary part of that for them. Will’s realization explained some of Resolute’s frustration, though it made it no easier to take.

Having removed the saddle from his horse, Will grabbed handfuls of grass and began to rub the beast down. In evaluating things, the thief realized he was being a fool. Chances were excellent that he’d get himself killed and no one, not once, had mentioned any sort of reward or treasure to be won. It might be all well and good that he defeated Chytrine, but if he returned to Yslin with empty pockets, the Dimandowns would echo with stinging ridicule.