by E. E. Knight
BOOK THREE
Dragonelle
BEWARE BEGINNING A WAR. WAR TAKES MANY TURNS,
AND MOST OFTEN BACK ON THE INSTIGATOR.
—Torus (the Elder)
Chapter 21
Old muscles newly used tired quickly, and Wistala found herself panting as she circled over the Green Dragon Inn.
The scene below reminded her of a riot she’d once seen outside the Great Arena of Hypat after an underdog victory in a game of Flagstaff when bet payments ran out.
Two houses burned, and through the smoky air, Wistala marked the barbarians as they ran in and out of the other homes in no sort of order. A group of them stood looking sadly at a cart that had lost a wheel after being overloaded with tools and anvils from the smithy. Chickens ran everywhere, to be chased frequently, caught rarely, and then stuffed into sacks and baskets when they weren’t dropped in order to pursue a loosed sow or piglet.
The inn had the most barbarians about it. A long low building in back had been torn almost into planking, and the barbarians dipped helms or hands into the mead vats, to guzzle and swill and then stagger off to find vessels to carry some off before others could drink the brewery dry.
Even if the spectacle below had comedic elements, it was a horrifying sort of comedy. Dead bodies, looking like dropped bundles of washing from the sky, lay in the streets and on the doorsteps. Only one or two of the bodies—in front of the inn’s windows—were barbarian.
They’d had no luck getting through the narrow windows or stout door, and a flung torch or two smoldered on the tin roof. In the road before the inn, barbarians under the shouted commands of still-mounted leaders were piling tarry barrels and cut pine boughs on a wooden wagon, pointed so that it could be run toward the door of the inn. Others were busy chopping down the notice board before the inn stoop to give it a clear path.
Wistala’s back burned like her fire bladder, and she longed to set the Widow Lessup down. The high roof of the inn seemed the safest spot, so she landed—the uncharitable would say crashed—on the Green Dragon’s roof, striking first with her tail and then her hind legs, both from instinct and the desire to protect Widow Lessup.
“Cling to the chimney,” she suggested, but the woman needed no prompting. She reached out, prostrate on the roof peak, and hugged brick, gasping for air.
Wistala folded her wings—such relief!—and licked at the blood running from the wounds from where her wings had come. According to Mother’s tales, the emergence of one’s wings was almost bloodless; just a clear, tangy fluid suppurated. She’d known she’d pay a price for cutting them free, and hoped it wouldn’t be a lethal toll.
More hoofbeats sounded from the road, but Wistala could see little. Blowing smoke from flaming houses—four burned now—obscured all.
“I will try to return,” Wistala said. “If they succeed in burning the inn, slide down to the roof of the well shed and keep clear of the brewery.”
“Ohhhhh!” Widow Lessup wailed. “Don’t forget the master!”
“I go for him now.”
She extended her wings and launched herself off the roof. She left a trail of fire from the notice board to the wagon piled with brush and barrels, which promptly roared into flame and scattered the barbarians. As she flapped up into the sky, she noticed an arrow sticking into the inside of her sii—what difference would this blood loss make when so much ran off her back?
Every flap of her wings seemed like her last. She passed up the road, saw the Dragonblade and his horsemen in a tight formation riding for the inn, but they must have had their eyes to the sky, for they executed a neat turn, dispersing as she passed above them.
But she felt in no condition to face the Dragonblade. Besides, she had her mind bent on Rainfall.
She passed over the outer grounds of Mossbell and saw a throng of men in the courtyard around the statue fountain.
Oh, infamy! They had Rainfall there, hanging upside down from the statue, ropes looped about his ankles and the neck of the representation of law. The barbarians were hurling books—the one household item they saw no use for—at him.
Hammar and his men observed events from a little farther away.
Too tired to flap, she set her wings and glided in, spreading what was left of her fire right and left and scattering the barbarians.
She felt the arrows strike. She never remembered it as a painful feeling, more astonished that she didn’t hear them whirl through the air or hit her, but hit they did. A lucky couple bounced off her sides but others plunged into her scaleless underside. The next thing she knew, she was on the ground, nostrils full of dirt and grass, a neck-length from the fountain.
She heard blood rushing in her ears—no, it was the barbarians hooting and cheering, sharp black shapes against Mossbell aflame.
Her breath came with difficulty, and her vision foreshortened. But Rainfall still breathed. She would die beside him. More arrows and a hand-ax bounced off her scale; she noted the strikes uninterestedly. She made one painful crawl toward him, got her nose on the edge of the fountain, smelled blood and water. One of the goldfish came to the surface and looked at her, mouth opening and shutting as it hoped for a tidbit.
Dully, she saw the column of the Dragonblade’s men ride up. The Dragonblade pulled up, and the black helm waved this way and that as it took in the scene. The man-boy in leather, staggering and with the side of his face crudely bandaged and a medicine vial in his hand, pointed with the unsteady hand of a drunk at the fountain.
Wistala found she had a terrible thirst and drank, causing the goldfish to flee to the other side of the pool. As she sucked water, she watched events in the courtyard with amazing calm. Even Rainfall’s moans as he hung, upside down and red-faced, were just another component of the tableau.
The Dragonblade dismounted. He took off his helm, hung it on the pommel of his horse, and drew a gleaming blade. He strode forward, eyes burning.
This is the end. She wondered what would happen to her head and claws. Would they be sold together, as a set, or separately?
The Dragonblade swung, and she shut her eyes.
Amazingly she felt nothing, heard only a splash—her own head falling into the pool at the base of the statue?
She opened an eye. The Dragonblade had cut down Rainfall, pulled him out of the water and set him down on the ground, propped up so he sat against the fountain pool.
“Thank you,” Rainfall gasped.
The Dragonblade glanced down at her, his broad, flat face frowning, gray wisps in his dark hair and thick at his temples, and he turned and walked toward Hammar, removing his thick gauntlets.
She felt Rainfall’s hand on her snout. So tired. But the water was helping. She sucked a little more.
“The dragon’s finished,” the Dragonblade said.
Dragonelle, Wistala corrected rather absently. I lived to fly and by rights must be called a dragonelle.
“More by her own doing than any arrows,” the Dragonblade continued as he walked up to Hammar.
The Dragonblade moved so fast, Wistala wasn’t sure what she saw, but Hammar fell backwards. Ah, the Dragonblade held his gauntlets aloft; he’d lashed out and struck Hammar across the face. He threw the gloves into Hammar’s face.
“I’m a slayer, and I quit whatever feud you have,” the Dragonblade said.
“I’m takings her earsh,” the man-boy slurred, drawing a blade and moving forward. “My idea to baitsh the creasure with—”
The Dragonblade reached out, caught him by the red shoulder sash and spun him around so hard that he dropped the medicine bottle and fell. The man-boy got to his hands and feet, and the Dragonblade kicked him at the tailvent, so hard that the youth went face-down in the dirt. “Get him on his horse,” the Dragonblade said to the line of archers.
“Mount your horse, and let’s be off,” the Dragonblade said. “Vagt kom trug mid suup-seep,” he said to the barbarians, who growled and fingered their weapons. He waited expectantly.
“I thou
ght not,” the Dragonblade said, turning.
One burst from the others, howling and waving a short ax in each hand. The Dragonblade whirled, lifted his scabbarded blade and used it to catch the pair of axes under the head. He lifted his arms so the squatty barbarian hung gripping the ax-handles with legs kicking, and head-butted him so that the barbarian dropped unconscious.
With the aid of one of his men, he remounted his armored horse. “I leave you the honor of finishing the beast off, brave and lordly men of Galahall—Ha!” He glanced back at the man-boy, who was sagging in the saddle he’d been hoisted into, and touched heels to horse flank. “Keep the rest of my fee, Thane. Gold from you could buy only wormy meat and ill-fitting shoes.”
The thane’s armsmen stirred and looked to their chief for orders.
Hammar held up a hand, and his men remained in their places. “You’ve made an enemy to remember—and regret!” Hammar shouted at the riders filing east. The Dragonblade tilted back his head and laughed. “Drakossozh!” Hammar screamed into the night. “You’ve insulted a king!” Only laughter answered.
Wistala found she had the energy to climb up into the fountain. She settled into the water, rubbing her back and washing out her wounds but also washing out one of the goldfish, poor fellow. Pleasant warmth suffused her, and she curled in the pool about the statue so her head was near Rainfall.
Not only did the water feel good, but her underside was now protected by the pool’s thick lip of masonry, as well. She rattled her griff in challenge and waited.
“Well. You heard him,” Hammar said to his bodyguards. “Kill the creature!”
“We need spears for that, Lord Hammar,” the closest said. “Longer spears than our allies carry,” he added hastily, as Hammar pointed to the spears in dirty hands all around.
“You have your swords!”
A man with a deformed lip curled up to reveal brown teeth shook his head. “It’s still moving. I’m not going near those jaws, whatever that dragon-hunter said.”
“Then start at the back and work up!”
“The tail’s just as dangerous. That boy lost his eye!”
Hammar opened his mouth as if to say something else but thought better of it. “Someone get me a bow!”
Barbarians began to ride across the yard, their horses laden with bags and tied barrels. Some carried off bound women and children.
The barbarians before Mossbell were conducting an informal market, swapping candlesticks for plate, furniture for spice boxes and kitchen implements. Hammar yelled something at one of the brow-tattooed leaders, who shrugged or glanced in any direction but the fountain or scratched their beards as if to say, Dragon . . . I see no dragon!
Part of Mossbell’s sod roof collapsed with a roar.
One of Hammar’s riders rode up with a hunting bow, fully as tall as a man. Hammar notched an arrow and drew.
Wistala saw him sight on her eye. She pressed herself flat into the water, which surged and washed over the rim.
At the last instant, Hammar shifted aim and fired an arrow into Rainfall’s chest. The elf let out a weak cry.
“That was for practice,” Hammar said.
Wistala lunged out of the water. It wasn’t a dragon-dash, more of a desperate crawl, and Hammar backpedaled, dropping his arrow—
And Mossbell’s south yard-wall exploded in orange and yellow.
Through the dust and falling bricks came three gargants, charging abreast, dwarves tied on their backs holding rein and weapon.
Behind the gargants rode others from the circus, men and women on the show horses who were used to confusion and noise and crowds, and behind them others on foot, carrying everything from mallets to clubs bristling with tent spikes.
Hammar gave them one openmouthed look and ran. Wistala did not have the strength to pursue him.
The barbarians instinctively drew together into a bunch to face the attack, linking wooden shields and raising war-pick and ax, but the dwarves tightened their formation and let the iron-shod feet of their gargants crash through and stomp the barbarians as easily as they would a flower bed. All order left the barbarians, and they ran for their lives.
But the circus was not done yet. The dwarves situated highest on beast-back fired crossbows down into the rout, passing the empty bow back for others to load and taking up another with remorseless precision.
The riders harried the barbarians at the edges, throwing knives or small axes, or hooking men at neck or feet with ropes. Ragwrist himself sent Marlil and her women after the fleeing thane and his bodyguard. They lit red candle-fireworks and rode hard on the heels of the men, shrieking like loosed demons and throwing knives until the bodyguard plunged into the woods—save for the man who was dismounted by a branch.
The battle passed in fury. Dsossa appeared as though dropped from the sky, kneeling next to Rainfall. Those on foot were the last to leave the yard, clubbing their way through the lamed and the wounded barbarians.
Wistala tried to rise to her feet, failed. The front balcony on Mossbell fell in a shower of sparks.
Ragwrist returned, dismounted, ran to Rainfall, fell to his knees. Ragwrist used his thumbs and turned up Rainfall’s eyelids. He detached the sobbing Dsossa, placed a hand on Rainfall’s heart, then tore out the offending arrow.
“He is dead,” Wistala said. She could hear no breathing.
Ragwrist blew his whistle, loudly, and again. He stopped only when he heard answering whistles from the thundering gargants.
“Quarryness is aflame,” Ragwrist said. “It would appear the thane had enemies there, as well. That fat low judge is hanging from the Hypatian Hall peak.”
Wistala’s light-headedness brought a strange sort of clarity.
“You’d better move the circus south of the bridge.” She would remain beside Rainfall, now and for eternity. . . .
Swinging, flying again—no, she was being hauled up onto gargant-back by dwarves with ropes all around.
Through a sticky eye she saw a golden summer dawn. Mossbell still flamed at the end of blackened beams. A door-pull glittered in the char-heap, and the wind was carrying off fine white ash—probably the remains of Rainfall’s library.
They passed through the village, better than half the houses were burnt, and the others were emptied, but the inn still stood. The villagers had thrown the few dead barbarians on the burning cart before the inn, and added broken shutters and doors. Some joined the circus column, carrying bundles or pushing household goods in carts, and so passed over the bridge into the next thanedom.
Ragwrist arrayed his house carts to block the bridge, and the last memory Wistala had was of Widow Lessup consoling Mod Lada—Rayg had been at academy outside Quarryness, and none in the despoiled town could say what had become of him.
They buried Rainfall the next day on a cool summer morning of the sort that always saw him long at work in his garden.
Wistala, drinking like a horse fresh from a race, begged Ragwrist to drag a dead horse from the village and a team of dwarves with a gargant went and fetched two so that she might have one the next day. They hung one and she devoured the other despite the flies. With food and water in her, she felt up to a slow, stiff walk up the riverbank to a prominence overlooking Mossbell’s grounds.
“He’d rather be rooted with the family across the gorge there,” Ragwrist said. “But Hammar is a bitter man, I’d hate to have him take vengeance on a rooting elf.”
Wistala watched the procedure. Under Ragwrist’s direction they sat the body cross-legged, facing the river and bound up in canvas, then coated him with fresh clay, until he resembled a lumpy, three-sided pyramid. The crown of his head they left naked to the elements. His hair still sprouted there, if anything a little brighter green than before. “He’ll like it better on the south bank anyway, the sun catches the river mist, and he’ll have rainbows. And a better view of his bridge and lands.”
She asked Ragwrist about the custom as Dsossa smoothed the clay sides with her hands.
&
nbsp; “The being you knew is dead, certainly. The dormant comes to fore after death,” Ragwrist said. “Some elf families bury their dead upright in a hole, others hollow out dead trees and place them in there. With us it is clay.”
“Us?” Wistala asked.
“Yes, Rainfall is my brother.”
She was shocked into speechlessness. “But you’ve only shown—”
“To elves family is an accident, Wistala. We are dutiful to our parents and try to pass on all we’ve gained from the world, in wisdom and wealth, to our children, but as to siblings or cousins or all that stuff humans and dwarves set such store by—” He shrugged. “Just as well, for I’ve seen feuds start between brothers over family obligation that make the Steppe Wars mild by comparison. It is sad to see another full-elf go. So few are born anymore these days.”
“It is the same with dragons,” Wistala said, as Dsossa kissed a new bud on Rainfall’s head. She planted a handful of Mossbell’s green lichen to keep him company. “Why is this? Are elves hunted, as well?”
“If I knew the cause, I’d be in a shell-house, looking out over the water gardens of Krakenoor. We have our enemies, true enough, but that is not the cause. They say the magic is being leeched out of the world. But what do poets know?”
Dsossa touched her at folded wing edge. “Wistala, I know Rainfall would want you to have this,” she said, drawing the blue battle sash from beneath her weather coat. “It is a relic of Hypatian Generalhood and should go to his daughter.”
The silk was so shiny and smooth, it was as though water had been woven into fabric. “I could not wear it. My scales would tear it to pieces.”
“Carry it, then. What has become of your harness and satchels?”
“We lost much baggage in Quarryness,” Ragwrist said.
“I will ask Brok to make you something more fitting,” Dsossa said.
“Will you come with us south?” Ragwrist said. “If the circus is to continue, we must back to the winter camp and replace our losses. Would that they’d just taken money instead of lives! Money is so easily replaced.”