The Dragon Lord

by Peter Morwood

  “You wrote it. You translated it. You should know.”

  “Most evasive.” Goth’s chuckle was a dry sound, devoid of humour. “But that’s only to be expected.” He set aside the enigmatic piece of paper, lifted a slim dossier whose cover was wired shut and sealed with lead and wax and began to pry it open. As he did so Bruda left his place in the sun and walked lazily across the room, each step marked by the click of a long ash cane gripped in the fingertips of his left hand. Flimsy sheets drifted across the table-top as if they were leaves in autumn, half-a-dozen pages which laid a man’s life open for inspection like something on a surgeon’s slab.

  “Impressive, is it not?” said his metallic voice. At first there was no reply while each document was set out, carefully spaced, minutely shifted and arranged just-so. Then, inevitably, one in particular was singled out for closer scrutiny. It was a portrait, an image boasting little artistic excellence but disturbingly lifelike. No human hand captured tones and textures and nuances of colour with such painstaking and subtle precision. It was as if the image from a mirror was caught on paper.

  “Impressive,” said Goth at last, “is scarcely adequate.” He glanced up with a crooked smile, but as usual could see no response even though by now he was looking within the deep, dark hood. There was only his own face, distorted and reflected from the surface of a mask of polished metal. Bruda’s cane rattled as it was laid on the table, then his gloved hands came up to throw back the cowl. The burnished silver mask emerged from concealment like a weapon being drawn.

  “I had sketches made,” he said, “and distributed wherever they might prove useful.”

  “Such as?”

  “Every west-coast seaport which runs the Elherran trade to Alba. I’ve got agents in them all.”

  “Of course.” Goth nodded once, as if he had expected nothing less. His eyes were inexorably drawn back to those of the portrait: eyes as grey-green as the northern sea in winter. Looking at those eyes, he had no difficulty in believing what he had already skimmed from the dossier about this young man. “Talvalin,” he mused. “Aldric Talvalin. An Alban clan-lord. And you still think Rynert sent this? That he betrayed one of his own?”

  “I know he sent it.” Now voice and mask were one, for there was something remote and terrible in that short sentence and, as the metal-shrouded face moved, light slid sparkling away as though flinching from any prolonged contact with its surface. “I’ve known for two months now. And I haven’t found him yet.”

  “That still leaves him loose in my jurisdiction.”

  “Loose?” Bruda repeated. “I think not.”

  “What?”

  “He may seem loose, if you prefer the word, because we don’t know his whereabouts. Yet. But he must leave us,” a quick gesture recovered the cane and stirred the papers on the table, “and we know where he’ll try. And then…” The leather-gloved fingers of his right hand spread wide, like a set trap. Goth looked at it, then at the mirror-blank masked face beyond. “Then we’ll have him and we’ll hold him. Here!”

  The fingers closed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The beach edging Dunacre Bay was almost four miles long.

  It curved away to the south-west, and out in a great shallow arc past the old fortress which gave the bay its name, and at low tide it was featureless and flat, admirable for walking and the exercise of horses. The beach shelved out into the sea so gradually that few were aware of its sudden precipitous plunge a hundred yards offshore, into depths granting access to ships of even the deepest draught.

  Gemmel Errekren was one of the few.

  But Dewan ar Korentin wasn’t wholly convinced the wizard knew as much as he claimed, and the state of the beach right now was no assurance. The tide was out, just at the turn, so there was a long, conspicuous walk before they reached the water and whatever vessel was provided for their use. With luck the sentries on Dunacre’s ramparts would think them merely fishermen, or crab-catchers, or anything besides men creeping illegally out of Alba and even more illegally into the Drusalan Empire.

  But maybe the sentries wouldn’t notice them at all, for though Dewan’s eyesight was better than most, he was unable to see anything beyond the opalescent wall of mist and spray-spume which had rolled in from the sea just as their feet touched the sand. He glanced at Gemmel’s back, as he had done often since the weather took its so-convenient turn for the worse, and again shrugged it aside.

  As far as any man could shrug under the burden he carried.

  Gemmel insisted they leave their horses stabled at the tavern and walk to where they had hidden their baggage the previous night. Unencumbered by the necessities of travel, they would seem nothing more than two gentlemen taking their ease with a constitutional stroll along the beach.

  They might have been unencumbered when they left the inn, thought the Vreijek wearily to himself, but they weren’t bloody unencumbered now. It was remarkable how Gemmel managed to foist the truly heavy gear onto Dewan’s broad shoulders, whilst he stalked elegantly along with only his staff and a waxed-leather satchel of books. If he was the powerful sorcerer young Aldric Talvalin claimed, then why couldn’t he just wave that magic Dragonwand and make the bundles float out by themselves?

  Dewan knew his notion was just a daydream. He had seen very little sorcery, though even that was more than enough to make him aware the Art Magic was as precise as any science. Too precise, it seemed, to lift the weight off his back. He grunted, swore to himself as the unbalanced stuff he carried slipped further to one side and hitched at it so ferociously that it continued to slip, except this time off the other side.

  “Where’s the bloody ship, wizard?”

  Gemmel showed no sign of having heard him, for the wind from the sea pulled Dewan’s words off his lips, tore them to meaningless syllables and noise, then tried to push the fragments back down his throat. No natural fog could stay in place with such a wind to disperse it, but Dewan could remember another fog, one which blanketed the battlefield of Radmur Plain, created and locked in place by this same scholarly old man. As if sensing the trend of his companion’s thoughts, Gemmel hesitated and half-turned with the shadow of a smile still crooking one corner of his mouth.

  “Yes indeed, Commander.” Though Dewan’s shout had been lost on the tumbling wind, the enchanter’s voice carried clearly and without strain. “I caused this fog. But part is real, so I can spare more energy to secure it.”

  The explanation, if that was what it was, told Dewan ar Korentin only that he needn’t worry about vagaries of the weather leaving him exposed on an open beach half a mile from any shelter. It didn’t reassure him, for his concern wasn’t now about the possibility of betrayal, but its consequences. Mist or no mist, he still felt as if he was a small black bug crossing a vast expanse of floor with the same anticipation of a lethal swat coming out of nowhere. But unlike the bug he was all too aware of where the swat would come from, and who would deliver it.

  His rank and position as Captain of the King’s Guard – his late rank, he reminded himself, left behind along with everything else except his self-respect – had given him access to military information such as the current state of Alba’s coastal defences. Dunacre was far from the newest of the southern fortresses, but by no means the weakest or most poorly manned, with three squadrons of heavy horse stationed there. Dewan knew all about that. He knew too about a recent reinforcement of troops from his own command, the Bodyguard Cavalry. They were good. Far too good for comfort, when he was walking along a shoreline tailor-made for the shattering Imperial-style charge he had taught the Bodyguard to execute.

  And ‘execute’ was the best word for it.

  “Where’s the ship?” This time Dewan shaped the words on his mouth so that Gemmel could read them, “and how big is it?”

  “Boat, not ship,” Gemmel corrected him, and enhanced it with a gesture of the Dragonwand across a thirty-mile sweep of open ocean. “Big enough, and out there.”

  It wasn’t an answer a
s precise as Dewan wanted, but he didn’t argue. Instead, trudging after the sorcerer, he tried without success to forget what he had learned about the coastal citadels. There was much truth in that old proverb about the dangers of too much knowledge. It was just casual interest in the comfort of his quarters over a glass of red and some honeyed fruit, but of pressing import here where its effectiveness might be demonstrated in the most explicit manner. There were things like powerful long-glasses, installed at his suggestion, to monitor the route of any potential invasion force. There were things like massive counterpoise catapults, whose missiles could burn and sink any Imperial battle fleet before their shipboard artillery was close enough for even ranging shots. There were things like…

  Like the ghostly outline of a white-painted tree trunk looming out of the fog, as tall as a ship’s mainmast. It was identical to hundreds of others along the eastern coast of Alba, set up as range markers. Gouges in the heavy timber showed where the shore batteries had been putting in good practice. This was the killing-ground, the area where a practised crew might ignite their target with a single launch, and certainly with no more than three if they wanted to avoid a punishment detail.

  But even they had to see what they were shooting at…

  He quickened his pace to draw level with Gemmel, who was striding out as though indeed walking for the good of his health – which, if he knew what the markers meant, was an accurate assumption. Yet the old man seemed so unconcerned that perhaps he didn’t know after all. Dewan considered that possibility then dismissed it as unlikely. Gemmel might not know everything but without doubt he invariably knew a damn sight too much. Dewan was drawing breath to speak a few home truths about the beach when the sorcerer turned and held up his hand.

  “Silence,” he commanded. “Listen!”

  At first Dewan could hear nothing but the hiss of wind and waves, and what was important about them? Then he heard something else, a sound made all the more immediate by his own nervous brooding. Off in the distance, someone was striking an alarm gong. With a spasm of irritation Gemmel drove the Dragonwand butt-downwards into the sand. Not anger, not fear, just irritation such as a parent might feel at their child’s act of pettiness.

  “So,” he said.

  “So…?” echoed Dewan.

  “So King Rynert has decided we’re not to go our – my – own way after all. Despite all his assurances.” There was a grim calmness in the way Gemmel spoke, the cold satisfaction of logic proved.

  “Are you telling me that Rynert had choice of yea-or-nay right up to where we are now?” Dewan knew it was crazy to begin a discussion until they were clear of this mess, but the words came tumbling out anyway.

  “His representative had.” Gemmel plucked the Dragonwand free and walked rapidly towards the mist-wrapped sea, talking as he went. “The thin-faced gentleman I hoped was still asleep in the tavern. I didn’t point him out in case you did something regrettable, and thought we’d shaken him for long enough to reach the boat. He must have noticed our departure and made straight for the fortress. He wouldn’t like our intended destination. From this coast there’s only one place we would go.”

  “But Rynert knew about that!”

  “Did he tell his man? I doubt it.” Gemmel’s speech was growing staccato as his long legs raked over the ground like a wading bird. He wasn’t running, there was no need for anything so undignified yet, though Dewan had been at a jog-trot for the past dozen strides. “He didn’t give instructions. Guidance yes, but nothing exact. So he isn’t responsible. Regrettable mistake. Nervous troops. Suspected spies. Not identified until afterwards.”

  “Afterwards?” Maybe it was the running, or the shock of what Gemmel was telling him, because in normal circumstances he wouldn’t have uttered a word. But this time he did and was flayed for it when Gemmel stopped in his tracks with anger livid on his high-cheekboned face.

  “Father of Fires, must I draw diagrams?” The derisive sneer Dewan had heard once before was in his voice again, like poison in wine. “I had four years to kill the habit of idiot questions in my son!” His lips came back from his teeth in an expression which might have been many things, but was most definitely not a smile. “My foster-son,” he corrected. “Best learn it in the next four minutes, Dewan ar Korentin, if you want to survive the next four hours. You’ve crossed Rynert of Alba, so you’re a dead man.”

  “But I’ve served him for—”

  “Years, yes,” Gemmel sneered. “Now you no longer serve him. You’re no longer of use but you know too much, and men like Rynert snip off the loose ends that can make their plots unravel.”

  That was a moment Dewan knew would haunt his dreams if he lived long enough to have any. The moment when a sorcerer whose eyes blazed like phosphorescent emeralds told him, in tones defying doubt, that the lord for whom he had shed blood, lost blood, suffered pain and gained his first-through-fiftieth grey hairs had cast him aside like a torn cloak. Arranged for him to be smashed into oblivion, by accident and by the men he had trained himself, to snuff out all trace of their differing opinions before it passed the bounds of simple gossip.

  “If I live through this—” he began savagely.

  “If any of us live through it, you’ll have to take your turn after my fos— No, call him what he is: my son, though I don’t yet merit being called his father. Now run, Dewan ar Korentin. Run as if your life depended on it. Because it does!”

  They ran, with a slop of wet salty sand flying up around their booted legs at each footfall. Somehow the mass of gear across Dewan’s back was lighter than before, still as bulky, still as awkward, but no longer the same crushing deadweight. Was it Gemmel’s work, or the urgency of flight? He neither knew nor cared, but he was thankful all the same. The wizard’s voice reached his ears again, piercing the sounds of wind and water, gasping breath and the wet splat of running feet. But this time the old man wasn’t addressing him.

  Gemmel was speaking to the fog.

  Something – some thing – went over Dewan’s shoulder with a noise like a hoarse whisper, and for one heart-stopping instant he thought Dunacre’s weapons had opened up on them. Even shooting blind into the mist, those catapults could set the beach aflame from surf-line to shingle and roast any living creature on it. But this had nothing to do with human weapons, or even with humanity at all. Sorcerous energy tore a tunnel in the fog that was two men wide, one man high and ran straight as a spear-shaft out towards the sea. He could see parallel white bars of foam where waves curled in to break on the shore, and beyond them a small dark blot sliding swiftly closer which was the wizard’s promised boat.

  ‘Boat not ship’ was right. Cockleshell was more right still.

  If Dewan hadn’t needed all his breath for running, he might have made biting observations about the vessel’s size, speed and potential seaworthiness. He might even have passed comment on wizards who thought that if something could float it would be enough. But a sound in the sky wiped all criticism from his mind.

  *

  It was a huge rush of displaced air, like something monstrous falling from the clouds, and if Dewan’s wild guess was correct that was the truth. He flung himself at Gemmel and both men went headlong to the sand and into a tidal pool already ankle-deep with chill salt water.

  “What the hell?” There was outrage and real fury in Gemmel’s voice, enough that Dewan didn’t like to consider the consequences if he had guessed wrongly. But before the wizard could say more, Dewan got the justification for his hasty tackle from a thump of impact through the ground beneath them. A split-second later, the fog flared incandescent orange and washed their backs with heat.

  The vast tearing boom of detonation came a full two heartbeats later, then greasy smoke that stank of naphtha and made them cough. As Gemmel regained his feet he ignored the mess of sodden sand caking his clothes, instead reaching out one hand to Dewan as the Vreijek hauled himself and his cargo from the mire. Their eyes met, and in the wizard’s there was true friendship for the firs
t time.

  “Thank you, Commander.” It was enough. Dewan nodded once, then looked from side to side, spitting to clear his mouth as he surveyed the beach. There was more of it to see now than before the missile landed, too much more.

  “They must realise this fog isn’t natural,” he said, thinking out loud. “The wind would tell them, and I remember you warning Rynert how hard it was to stabilise such a charm.” There was no accusation in his voice. “It’s the sort of thing he would remember. And he’d pass the warning on.”

  “Enough heat would burn off even real fog,” said Gemmel matter-of-factly. He was already jogging seaward again, moving more slowly now so the noise of his own progress didn’t drown the sound of more incoming shots.

  Twice more they flattened against the beach, cuddling the gritty wetness of the shingle as if it was the softest feather quilt while fire tore at the world around them. Though Gemmel’s cunningly constructed shroud of mist was almost gone, it was supplanted by the acrid black smoke which made their eyes water and scored at throat and nostrils until each lungful of air was an enemy.

  Then they heard the high, shrill scream of a cavalry trumpet. Gemmel bared his teeth and broke into a run again, aware that safety lay in speed, but ar Korentin didn’t move and an instant later the wizard jolted to a splashing halt at the sound of a sword leaving its scabbard.

  “Dewan, no!” He was shouting the words even as he turned. “Light of Heaven, don’t!” Dewan’s head jerked round and there was unconcealed scorn on his moustached face.

  “Will I let them ride us down without a fight?” The eyes in that face were cold and flinty, an expression Gemmel had seen before on Aldric’s face, in Aldric’s eyes. It was an expression that promised violence.

  “Don’t fight them!” The sorcerer’s lean hand clamped onto Dewan’s wrist and exerted a pressure that made the Vreijek’s brows lift in astonishment. His sword was forced inexorably down until its point grounded on the sand. “They’ll be king’s-men, perhaps your men. Perhaps your friends.”