But that wasn’t the concern that had blared so loudly across Raz’s concentration. Rather, what made him uneasy was not what the bowmen would do once the Priest broke through, but rather what they were doing now. Instead of regarding Carro with enthusiasm—or at the very least watching him with curiosity, as Raz had assumed they would—the sentries’ faces were rapidly shifting from surprise to suspicion, and then on to alarm. As he watched, Raz saw bows being unslung, along with swords and axes drawn from the sheaths and belt loops of the larger men all about the archers. For a moment Raz was confused, wondering what about Carro’s disguise was causing such disquiet.
Then, as he followed the men’s eyes, he realized the mistake he and the Priest had made. The massive, seventeen-hands mistake they had made.
When they’d been spying on the camp, Raz had heard many things. Voices, laughter, clinking tankards, shouted orders, arguments, the hammering of metal, the shuffling of boots, the crunching break of wood and the crackle of flames. He had been so focused on making out what he could hear, in fact, that he hadn’t bother at all to pause and consider what he couldn’t hear.
Like the whinnying and neighs that usually accompanied any larger force of men.
“Horses,” he hissed in horrified shock.
Above, Carro—who had been doing his best to maintain the pose of a proud warrior—jumped and looked down.
“What?” he gasped.
Raz had already given himself away, letting go of the saddle straps and tearing his gladius and war-ax free of their loops, when he answered.
“Horses, Carro!” he yelled, already sprinting forward, plowing as fast as he could in great leaps through the heavy snow. “They don’t have horses!”
XXIV
THEY’D BEEN less than fifteen feet away when Raz started his mad dash for the stairs. Their plan was shit now, he knew, and as he ran he heard the mountain men begin to shout, rattled by his sudden charge. He watched as the quickest of the bowmen raised his weapon, arrow drawn and nocked in rapid succession. As Gale screamed in sudden fear behind him, Raz cocked his left arm back and hurled the war ax.
It was a throw made more out of desperation than anything else, and the weapon went wide of its mark, hitting stone and clattering harmlessly away. Still, it was enough to shake the mountain man’s concentration, and he yelled some curse as he leapt sideways, his own arrow disappearing into the snow somewhere off to Raz’s right.
He might have only his gladius, now, but the move had given Raz the seconds he needed to close the distance, hurtling through the ice and slush before blowing out of the bank onto the cleared ground of the path’s base. With a snarling roar he barreled forward, going for the second of what looked to be four archers. The sound seemed to strike pure terror into the men, and for three shocking seconds a majority of them appeared paralyzed, blue eyes gaping at Raz’s massive form as he descended on them. In the blink it took him to reach the first of his victims, Raz couldn’t understand what had gripped them so suddenly.
The gladius had long fallen, in fact, hacking a diagonal slash through the man’s bow, leather, and breastbone, when Raz heard the word once again.
“Dahgün…” came the terrified whisper.
This time, the name registered. It hadn’t made an impression the first time, when the scarred mountain man he’d knocked unconscious had gasped it in shock at the sight of his face. Now, though, as Raz turned and crashed right into the middle of the tribesmen, gladius sweeping left and right as he howled like some demon born of the winter storms, Raz recalled.
Dahgün, he remembered.
Dragon.
In his desperate rush to keep from being pinned down in the snow between the trees and the stairway, Raz had forgotten all about keeping his wings tight to his back and his tail hidden. As he careened around the shocked group—sword cutting into armor and flesh wherever it found an opening—they whipped and snapped around him, crunching into bodies and throwing men off their feet. Black, scaled muscle collided with iron and fur. Leathery sunset membrane buffeted heads and faces, blinding men and sending them screaming back in fear. Against twenty Raz should have been overwhelmed, and he knew it. His goal had been to push through, not into, to draw attention so that Carro could drive Gale at any opening that made itself available between the sentries. When the mountain men had frozen, though, struck still by the terrifying apparition of his winged form, Raz had adapted.
And now, as blood streaked the frosted stone beneath his clawed feet, he realized with sudden astounding elation that he was winning.
By the time the men shook off their fear, it was too late. Four lay dead—including two bowmen—and another two were screaming their life away as they writhed about on the ground, clutching at a punctured abdomen and a mangled leg. Fourteen still stood, but even as he threw himself backward, avoiding the horizontal slash of a heavy claymore, Raz saw the horror reflected in their eyes. He had seen fear in his life. He’d seen it pooled in the gaze of every man and woman he had ever killed, drowning them in the moments before death. Fear of him, fear of death, fear of pain and the unknown.
But the terror that held the mountain men, it seemed, was of a different order altogether. Raz couldn’t quite grasp it, as he lunged between two larger men to impale a third bowman through the gut, the thinner man’s bear-skull helm leering ironically as he died. This was a different dread than anything he had yet come across.
They fear the dragon, he mused, darting back out of the ring he’d dived into, dealing one man a great, hacking slash across the face as he retreated.
Then let’s give them a dragon.
Somersaulting sideways, his clawed hand getting a good grip against the cleared ground, Raz launched himself back again, well away from the twelve left. As they began to turn on him, starting to rush him as a group, Raz reached up and threw back the hood of his robes. Cold air bit at his reptilian features, a mild wind chilling his black snout and white teeth. Still, taking a lunging step forward—like the warning feign of a snake—Raz flared his neck crest up over his head, spread his ears to their extent, and let loose a thundering, howling scream that seemed to shake the very earth beneath his feet.
The sound crashed over the mountain men like one of the Laorin’s blasting spells. Many had stumbled when he’d revealed his face, howling in fear at the sight. As the rumbling cry hit them, like the defiant roar of some terrifying animal, to a one they hesitated, blood rushing from already pale faces. Leaping on the opportunity, Raz lunged at the closest man, smashing aside a desperate, terrified swing of the man’s ax and cutting him down with a vicious two-handed upward slash.
Then he heard the clop of hooves on stone, and help arrived in a flash of magic.
Raz had just whirled to face his next opponent, bloody gladius raised high, when white fire erupted outward from the ground at his feet. It bloomed in an imperfect wedge before him, racing across the stone to lick at boots and furs, singeing hair and catching on cloth where it could. At once the remaining mountain men began to yell in fear, screaming again about the “Dahgün! Dahgün!”
Over the crackle of the white flames, Raz heard the clang of steel hitting stone. Almost immediately there was another clang, then another, and through the shimmer of the magic Raz watched as the men began to fall back, empty hands raised against the sudden, crushing heat. In their delirium the men of the tribes didn’t have a prayer against this last great proof of power. With pitching wails of fear that echoed upwards, reverberating against the slopes of the mountains, the path’s sentries ran, scrambling in all directions through the snow, desperate to get away from Raz and the mocking bite of the flames.
It was only after the last of them was finally gone, sprinting back into the cover of the Woods, that Raz looked over his shoulder.
Carro was still atop Gale, right hand outstretched as he held the spell, left awkwardly wrapped about the stallion’s reins despite being slung across his chest. He looked strained and pale, shifting with the horse at the ed
ge of the cleared stone. Raz had been so preoccupied with the fight that he hadn’t kept track of the Priest, more concerned with the archers and keeping himself in one piece.
The mountain men, however, seemed to have done the same, and Carro had taken full advantage, slinking close enough to be of assistance.
Raz grinned at him, flicking his gladius free of most of the blood as he turned. “Couldn’t have asked for better timing.”
“I thought you could use the help,” Carro grumbled back, letting his hand drop. At once, the fires dissipated in fading crackles. “Didn’t think it would work that well, though.”
“They were calling me ‘dahgün,’” Raz said with a shrug. “I think you just helped prove a point, in their eyes.”
“Ah,” Carro said in understanding. “Well if they thought you were suddenly breathing fire, that’ll certainly do it. They’re a superstitious people. I doubt they have any more of an idea of what true dragons might have looked like than we do.”
“Apparently wings, teeth, and claws were the only obligatory requirements,” Raz replied, turning back to examine the aftermath of the sentries’ retreat.
While the Priest’s magic hadn’t done more than scorch the armor of the dead, it had left the ground cracked and charred. Smoke wisped upwards from burned grass that had been hiding beneath what ice and snow the mountain men hadn’t been able to clear, and steam rose from blackened stone slats that marked the start of the stairs. Atop one of these, the war ax lay innocently, awaiting its retrieval. Raz hurried over to pluck it from the ground, stowing it in its customary loop at his hip before sheathing the gladius over his shoulder.
He’d clean the rest of the blood off later.
“We need to get moving,” Carro said, as though echoing Raz’s thoughts. “Those men will be back with reinforcements inside of ten minutes.”
“Less, probably.” Raz looked up the imposing streak of white and grey against the mountain face that was the snow-covered stairway. “But you’re right. Will you be able to manage on Gale?”
“Not a good idea.”
There was a thump, and Raz turned to see that the Priest had slid himself—somewhat clumsily given his one working arm—out of the saddle. He, too, was eyeing the stairway.
“Better to go on foot,” Carro continued, leading Gale over. “The path is only going to become more treacherous as we get higher.”
“Can we lead him up?” Raz asked in concern, taking the stallion’s reins as Carro struggled to slide his staff free from where it lay strapped atop Ahna.
Carro nodded. “It won’t be easy, but we’ll manage. Mind you I haven’t got a clue how in Laor’s name we’ll get him back down, but it’s either we take him or we leave him.”
“We take him,” Raz said without hesitating, stroking the stallion’s muzzle absently as he eyed the path again.
“Aye, I thought you’d say that,” Carro said with half a smile. Then he frowned, looking around at the scattered dead that littered the blackened ground, their forms already frosted with wind-blown snow.
“Can I…” he started uneasily. “Can I have a moment…? To send them off?”
Raz paused, looking over his shoulder at the still line of the Woods that encircled them.
Then he nodded.
“Pray quickly, Priest,” he said, reaching out to grip the man’s shoulder briefly before starting for the steps, Gale in tow. “Time is not on our side.”
XXV
“It is the opinion of many a learned man that the Laorin’s magical ‘gifts’—whom the faith believe to this day were granted to their founding members by their benevolent Lifegiver—would be more aptly classified as a sort of unorthodox art. Their abilities, while limited, are varied and adaptable, allowing the use of the base, simpler spells to be worked and molded into more complex creations. One such scholar—the famed author Agor Kehn—claims to have been fortunate enough to observe this phenomenon while traveling along the Northern roads, doing research for a book. Caught in a summer storm, Kehn asserts to have stumbled across a wandering Priest who offered to conjure up a ward to shield them both from the rain and wind. In great detail Kehn would later put to ink a description of watching in amazement as the man twisted magics of warmth and protection about a ‘messenger spell,’ encasing them in a comfortable shell that would warn the Priest if anyone should disturb them while they slept. Kehn would go on, some time later, to make comment on this experience, finishing his retelling with a literary flourish in which he compared the Priest’s spellwork as ‘akin to a master painter’s combination of essential colors into a creation of endless magnificence…’”
—LEGENDS BEYOND THE BORDER, BY ZYRYL VAHS
THE FIRST ward triggered silently, alerting Priest Elber just as he was seating himself along one of the long benches that adorned the great hall’s leftmost table. The magic pulsed and ran over his skin like a shiver, tingling up his arms and into his back. He froze, almost dropping the sparse plate of seared venison, salted potatoes, and toasted grains that were the paltry rations of the midday meal. His appetite—ignored well past noon as he’d diligently made his daily exam of the spells that surrounded the Citadel—was suddenly forgotten. He shot up straight again, looking about for Benala Forn, whom he was sure he’d seen upon first entering the hall.
Sure enough, the old Priestess was there, clambering to her feet two tables over even as her eyes met his, wrinkled face tight and pale.
She sensed it too.
And the woman wasn’t the only one. Throughout the rows of late lunchers, several among the faithful had stiffened suddenly, jolting up from their meals or away from conversations. Elber recognized them as a scattering of the Priests and Priestesses he and Forn had selected to help them craft the wards, after Jofrey had put them in charge of the Citadel’s first lines of defense.
“Damn…” Elber cursed under his breath.
Then he dropped his plate roughly onto the table, ignoring it as much of the food bounced and spilled onto the roughened wood, and took a rapid path through the diners back towards the hall’s wide entrance.
“Did you feel it?” Forn asked him, her wise, kindly voice sounding uncommonly edged with what might have been fear.
Elber nodded. “I did. Let’s hope Jofrey is in Talo’s quarters. He’ll want to know something is coming up the path…”
Jofrey, lamentably, was not in the High Priest’s quarters, nor was he in his own smaller chambers when they went looking there. Eventually a young Priestess was able to tell them that she had seen him in the library, tucked away in a secluded corner that the other men, women, and children had been giving a wide berth all morning.
They’d thanked her, then hurried off.
Five minutes later they reached the huge, ornately crafted door of the library, its layered wood paneling overlapping and tucking into itself to form a maze of fascinating, abstract geometries. Elber and Forn didn’t look up as they entered the expansive room that formed what was arguably the single greatest marvel in the entirety of the Citadel. Both council members had spent more decades serving Laor within the walls of Cyurgi’ Di than either cared to count, and so the awe that struck all newly indoctrinated when entering the vaulted chambers had long since worn away. There had been a time, perhaps, when Elber and Forn had felt the warm, blossoming magnificence of the place, radiating about them from the thousand upon thousands of cloth and leather-bound texts that sat patiently on ring after ring of ancient bookcases. Perhaps then they might even have been tempted to raise their eyes skyward to the incredible painted murals of the faith’s history that adorned the domed ceiling, or inward to the great raised grate through which the fiery glow of the temple’s furnaces could be seen a dozen floors below.
As it was, though, Elber and Forn saw none of this, each scanning one side of the library only for a sign of Jofrey al’Sen. It took them a minute, but eventually Forn caught sight of him—indeed seated behind a narrow student’s desk in a far corner of the room—and she tugg
ed on Elber’s sleeve, indicating the interim High Priest with a silent jerk of her head.
Quickly, they hurried over.
They were ten feet away when Jofrey seemed to take notice. He began to look up, a scowl darkening his aged face.
“If it’s not important,” he started crossly, “I’d very much prefer not to be bothered right n—”
He cut himself short, seeing who it was that was interrupting what looked to be a very thorough study of any book within the library that might make mention of the mountain clans. As he and Forn came to a stop to hover over the narrow desk and its occupant, Elber saw copies of such tomes as Cultural Clashes of the Common Age and A Study of Mythos: the North. The text Jofrey was now perusing, in fact, looked to be the fragile, two-hundred-year-old journal of Priest Gálos Br’hest, a former chieftain of a small Saragrias tribe whose remnants had been rapidly swallowed by the larger clans after Br’hest’s voluntary conversion to the Laorin way.
Elber allowed himself a moment to pity Jofrey. After no news of Syrah’s condition in over a week, most of the council assumed her dead. Jofrey, however, had refused to give up on the woman, and spent every moment of what little spare time was afforded to him collecting any scrap of information he could on the tribes, hoping to find an avenue of negotiation.
As far as he knew, Elber did not believe the man had had any success.
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