The Dragon Lord

by Peter Morwood

  The figure by the wall straightened rumpled garments and still more rumpled dignity, stared for a few seconds in the horseman’s wake, then studied the blank house-front as if considering whether to become embroiled in whatever was going on there. When a fold of the cloak flicked aside, sword and armour became more than mere suggestion.

  Two grey-clad men flitted down from neighbouring rooftops and paused for an instant before entering through a front door left unlocked for just that purpose. Unseen in the fog-dense shadows, the cloaked intruder watched with fascination but didn’t interfere.

  Especially when a third man, helmeted and clad in full splint-mail, stalked with all the arrogance of rank and privilege towards and inside the house.

  *

  “Give me that.” Voord’s right hand, gloved with sable leather and red-enamelled steel, came out with fingers open and palm uppermost. He acted as if the possibility she might refuse didn’t even deserve consideration.

  A consideration of her own crossed Kathur’s mind with the speed and brilliance of a lightning-flash. Not refuse but use, now, without warning. Voord wouldn’t expect it, and even as the dart struck him down he wouldn’t believe it. The telek was loaded and cocked, its safety mechanism disengaged, it would shoot on one pressure and there was no need to aim. Yet the thought of exerting that pressure turned her sick. Kathur could no more kill a human being, even one as inhuman as Voord, than she could turn the weapon on herself for all that it might be preferable to his company.

  Between one breath and the next her chance of success passed out of reach, and only compliance remained. Kathur’s thumb secured the safety-slide, then she reversed the telek and laid it into the hautheisart’s waiting grasp. His fingers closed, and with the weapon now pointing at her Kathur half-expected to feel a dart hit home even before she let it go. But there was no dart. Instead Voord hefted the telek’s weight, and its carved stock settled into his hand like a falcon onto a familiar wrist. It fitted well, shaped for a right-handed grip, and he looked at it with something as close to admiration as any Imperial officer would grant to a thing of Alban origin.

  “Very fine.” He spoke mostly to himself. “Yes. Very fine indeed. But then the Albans are always good at things to kill each other.” His eyes met Kathur’s and locked with them, like a snake with a sparrow or a weasel with a mouse, and though there was a smile on his lips it didn’t warm those eyes at all. “Tell me – does it work?”

  Now the dart… Kathur’s body tensed, anticipating the impact, and her eyes snapped shut in a useless reflex that was no defence against the death she faced. When nothing happened their painted lids fluttered open again. She was terrified in case any movement at all would invite the response she dreaded, but more terrified to stay in the dark.

  “I said, does it work?”

  “I…”

  “Does it work?” Her gaze dared to tear away from the weapon’s shrouded muzzle, but Voord was implacable. Whatever answer she gave would be the wrong one. “Does it work?”

  “Light of Heaven save me, I don’t know. I don’t know!” Voord’s teeth showed in a shark’s smile.

  “Then let’s find—” A soft sound broke his words off short and he snapped around with the telek raised and ready. Then he relaxed. “Ah. You.”

  Kathur’s servant tried to lean his weight on one elbow, unable to take his other hand from the cut Aldric’s taipan had made in his thigh. No matter how tightly those fingers clamped onto his own flesh, blood still seeped through them. He stared at the two by the bed, seeing them through a haze of pain, unaware of what was happening, conscious only of defeat.

  “I f-failed you, my lady,” he managed to say. “F-forgive me…”

  “Failed you?” Commander Voord’s head came round with the slow deliberation of a weapon-turret on a battleram. “What was he meant to do?”

  Kathur made no response by word or gesture. She already knew too well how Voord’s mind worked. And because she knew, a burst of crazy courage sent her leaning forward to clutch the levelled telek and drag it down. The hautheisart stared at her hand as if it was some sort of noxious vermin.

  “No!” Her voice was soft, vehement, pleading. “Don’t. Even he saw no need—”

  “He? The Alban? He saw no need to what?”

  “To kill. Not even in the heat of a fight. Because it wasn’t necessary. And it still isn’t.”

  Voord’s thin lips moved, stretching to a brief smile as he blinked, lazily, like a cat, and something in that feline blink reminded Kathur for just an instant of Kourgath who had shared her bed.

  “No need? No need for a man who can hide behind his code of honour. Not when the proper words can gift-wrap any excuse. Oh yes. It’s easy then, with a dainty black knife to escape from failure and no-one thinking worse of you for using it. Well, I earned my honour, I wasn’t born to it, and I must carry my failures as I carry success. As I carry these.”

  His left hand reached up to touch the rank-marks on his helmet and on the high-collared black robe over his red armour, and Kathur stared. Not at the hautheisart’s double bar-and-diamond worked in silver on black velvet collar tabs and scarlet steel, nor at the insignia beside it. The thunderbolt of the Secret Police frightened the ignorant, yet it was still just the way in which Voord served the Empire. As did she.

  No, this time she stared at his hand.

  When she had last seen it, when it had last touched her, that hand had been slender and graceful like the hand of a musician, its contact soft as a butterfly’s caress. Now it was twisted and hooked like part of a military machine, a claw of distorted bone and sinew hidden by a leather glove. It was a mutilation of the kind that made people wince and thank whatever powers they worshipped that it had happened to someone else.

  “Yes, dear Vixen. I wear my honour for all to see, whether I wish to or not.” The frightful talon lowered from her line of sight, but its presence beneath the concealing glove remained in her mind and made her skin crawl. Voord watched it crawl. “I suffered this, my dear, and so earned my present rank. Now I am Hautheisart Kagh’Ernvakh, responsible for security, spying, rebellion, and the enforcement of—” a jerk of his wrist wrenched the telek from Kathur’s grip, “—discipline.”

  She flinched at the flat, vicious whack of the weapon’s discharge and shut her eyes again, but she couldn’t shut her ears to a sound like a melon hit by a mallet, or a hollow thump as her servant Stromin’s head slammed against the floor as if kicked there. Nor could she shut her mind’s eye to the image seared into it as if by red-hot irons, an image she could still see now. An image she would always see. The instant of a man’s death.

  He lay on his back, one hand thrown wide and the other still trying to staunch the wound in his leg, but there would be no staunching of this new wound. Blood and slime spattered his cheek and forehead, his left eye-socket was a pit of oozing mush and a triangular chunk of his skull lay feet from where the telek dart had punched it from the back of his head.

  “So it does work.” Voord looked back at Kathur as if analysing her reaction, then at the telek, and it was as if some idea was conceived and concealed in the same blink of an eye. “It works very well indeed. And so do you, Kathur. Most of the time. Like another woman I once knew. But Sedna failed me. As you failed, by disobeying my direct command. You must remember in future. Punishment will aid your memory.” He made the weapon safe and laid it aside, then removed his helmet and dropped it to the floor. Sweat darkened his fair hair and plastered it flat against his skull.

  “The usual sentence is impalement. Yet it could be said in your favour that you tried. You were ordered to keep him drugged and bound, and you didn’t obey those orders. But you still succeeded until… What was your claim? ‘I had him until minutes ago’? And how many times did you have him before that, eh? If you plead for clemency, I might commute the sentence. Should I consider such a plea?” Kathur made no sound other than a shuddering intake of breath, but Voord nodded. “Very well. The plea is considered, and ac
cepted.” His hand stroked along her face and down the rigid muscles of her neck.

  The left hand…

  Kathur cringed but didn’t dare let her revulsion show, even when that dreadful claw settled on her shoulder like a gross spider and tugged the heavy satin of her robe aside. The garment fell free of its own weight and whispered down to puddle in crimson folds about her ankles. Even then she didn’t cover her nakedness but stood, a condemned prisoner facing the block, with arms hanging at her sides and eyes lowered in a shame she had never felt with Kourgath. She heard the slow creak of leather as that hand’s remaining muscles forced Voord’s fingers open, and waited for the degradation of its touch.

  There was no such touch. Instead the crooked fingers clutched the back of her head, tangling in the locks of auburn hair, tilting her face up so he could lean forward to kiss her on the lips. A faint scent of perfume such as courtiers used hung about him, and a recent chewing of lancemint leaves sweetened his breath. Other than that, he smelt fresh, like wind-dried laundry, and that was worst of all.

  If his body stank or he had foul breath, Kathur could have prepared herself better. She had seduced enough men for Kagh’ Ernvakh to learn that simple grubby officers usually had simple straightforward vices, while it was the well-scrubbed politicians and the holy men who liked their perversions filthy and obscene. The contrast always shocked her, just as Voord shocked her. He was always clean, and his mind was vile.

  The kiss grew more intense, more passionate, and almost by reflex she responded with a pressure of her tongue against his lips. Then his teeth closed. She felt the stab of pain, and tasted blood, and realised that even though he had acknowledged her plea she would suffer punishment after all.

  Kathur wrenched away, but Voord’s taloned hand remained locked in her hair and she jolted to a halt at the length of his arm. He grinned at her with streaks of dark red on the white of his so-clean teeth, and the glitter in his eyes was like nothing she had seen on any man’s face in all her wide experience.

  “Surely you expected this, dear Vixen? Surely you looked forward to it as much as last time?” He unfastened his clothing as he spoke, not all, just enough. “And impalement is a fitting penalty.” Voord flung her onto the bed and pinned her with one hand then a weight of warm flesh and icy armour. “You might even enjoy it. And even if you don’t,” Voord plunged like a man riding an unruly horse, “I will!”

  *

  The noises they made reached the street outside, where a figure wrapped in a hood and cloak shivered in sympathy. Three men had gone into the house. Only two had come out of it. Nothing could happen until the third was also gone, even if awaiting his departure took this whole foggy night. From the sound of things, it might.

  *

  Why only one and not both? Aldric glanced at the stock of his remaining telek then the saddle-holster where the other had been. There was no sensible answer to his unvoiced question, and he set the matter aside once again. Reining Lyard to a standstill, he stood in his stirrups to glance back the way he had come, but could see nothing except the fog that darkened into blackness and night.

  Yet he was certain someone was watching him.

  It was gloomier here than he had expected. An unlit city could be as dark as any place not buried beneath the earth, but in normal circumstances Imperial cities weren’t unlit. However at a recent stage in Tuenafen’s past, some group had decided it would help their cause to smash nearly all the doorway lanterns in the seaport’s Old Quarter. Nearly all? thought Aldric. More likely they had destroyed the lot, and what few he saw now were the replacements. There wouldn’t have been many to begin with, since most houses in this part of the city were eighty years behind such modern affectations. Above his head the upper stories of both sides of the street leaned together like conspirators, enough that in places one householder could lean out and rap his opposite neighbour’s window. Even at midday they would block out most of the light, and after this foggy nightfall the effect was stifling and claustrophobic.

  Lyard shifted beneath him. The big horse was unsettled too, because of the slick pavement with its treacherous film of condensation, or because of his rider’s mood, or simply because he too disliked the fog and dark and oppressive stillness. The courser’s hooves clanked loudly, too loudly, as Aldric moved into the false comfort of lamplight muted by the watery yellow halo which surrounded it. He wondered if he could have spared the extra few minutes needed to load the pack-horse with his gear. But the arguments then and now lacked the weight of conviction. Bits of equipment and pieces of armour, even such armour as Gemmel had given him, were all things he could replace. Time lost was time gone forever, time which might well make the difference between…

  Between what and what? There was more than enough wasted time in the way he had spent part of today, enjoyable though it had been. His wary gaze flicked from side to side, taking in what meagre detail he could see through night and fog. Potential ambush points, escape routes… Escape routes! He smiled crookedly at the idea, none too sure of even how to get back to Kathur’s house, and freed Widowmaker from where she rode across his back. Once the taiken’s scabbard was hooked to his weapon-belt, he gathered up the reins again and kneed Lyard forward.

  A nearby clock ground into life and began striking the hour. It was many, many minutes late, though Aldric was in position to notice, not after the sudden noise shocked his already nervous mount and sent the big horse skittering sideways towards the ragged granite facing of a wall. He saw the stonework loom out of the mist and kicked his nearside foot out of its stirrup-iron, getting it up across his saddlebow before foot and leg were crushed, then twitched on snaffled reins to get the warhorse back under control before his flank ground into the abrasive surface. The brief pressure of even that light bit on his velvet mouth stopped Lyard at once. Aldric had no need for the vicious metal used to dominate their steeds by self-styled horsemen who preferred brute force to schooling.

  As he leaned forward to gentle the Andarran, coaxing calm back into himself as much as the horse, he knew it would take just one more fright like that to send him off on any other route but this. Yet retracing his steps, necessary if he was to find the last junction again, would bring him back to a high-walled courtyard. And that seemed, as it had never seemed before, an ideal place to set a trap.

  But it wasn’t the only ideal place in Tuenafen.

  As if summoned by the striking clock and the clattering of Lyard’s hooves, boots slapped the wet paving-stones behind him. Many boots, worn by men closing on him fast. A voice shouted in Low Drusalan, its words an all-embracing order to stop, dismount, drop weapons and surrender. They were enough to send Aldric’s heel jabbing at Lyard’s flank, even with the other still hooked around the pommel so he rode side-saddle with a seat ill-suited for it. The horse responded like a clap of hands, snapping from immobility to surging acceleration towards the shelter of the nearby alley. And that, not the courtyard, was where a rope had been stretched taut across the entrance. It was at a height calculated with enough precision that it barely tickled Lyard’s laid-back ears as they went underneath.

  But it caught Aldric square in the chest and pitched him to the wet ground, with shrill stars flaring through the inside of his skull and not a breath left in his lungs. A weighted net whirled down towards him, opening black against the grey of the foggy night like a predatory spiderweb before its mesh enveloped him in clinging folds.

  The rough weave of the net’s cords was harsh against his face, but it was nothing like as harsh as the rage burning through him. Rage at whoever had set this up, rage at the delay for which he alone was to blame, rage at being brought to this, floundering like a landed fish in a Tuenafen street. It was a fury whose heat wanted quenching in shed blood. With Isileth drawn he might have cut the net, might have butchered the men who emerged from the shadowed fog, might even have escaped…

  But the scabbarded sword was an ache against his side where he had landed on the unyielding steel of her hilt, and
though the pain told him where it was, he couldn’t get a hand to it. When the net’s drawline was hauled in and its mesh tightened around him, he couldn’t even move enough to ease the discomfort.

  He fought uselessly against the heavy hands laid on his arms and legs, then stopped fighting as they wrapped him in what felt like an excessive quantity of rope. To Aldric’s dazed mind, coherent thought struggling for precedence over the swirling sparks of mild concussion, all this care and consideration seemed too elaborate. An arrow from the darkness would have been far more efficient. Then as his wits trickled back and things fell into place, fear took over from confusion. He should have been held in Kathur’s embrace until collected, and though Stromin’s attempt to kill him wasn’t part of the pattern, he was still captured almost unhurt.

  Who wanted him? And why did they want him undamaged? That was the most unnerving question, because it supplied its own answer. The surrounding men wore grey hoods and masks like taulath mercenary assassins, and Aldric knew enough people – or their friends and surviving relatives – who would pay what tulathin cost just to have him taken alive so they could make his death a long-protracted pleasure.

  Despite the chill of the night a drop of sweat trickled down his face. They had taken all his weapons by now, including three hidden daggers not hidden well enough or known about in advance. They had even found the Echainon spellstone, which no more resembled a weapon than his crest-collar, and everything from the ring on his finger to the scar on his cheek was compared against a written list examined by the thin light of a shuttered lantern. It all happened without a surplus word or gesture, although one man cuffed him across the face when he tried to bite. They were petty gestures on both sides, and even the backhand slap was no reassurance. It was far too gentle.

  “He’ll do. Take him.”

  One of them pulled out a hood for him to wear, but this was no mere blindfold. It stank of soporific drugs. Aldric had grown wearily accustomed to the way such herbs and chemicals were so casually employed in the Drusalan Empire, as if those who might have been enchanters had instead become apothecaries and chemists, juggling not power but poisons. As the aromatic reek flooded his nostrils, his mind went back to the last time he had smelt such a smell.