DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga)

by R. A. Salvatore

  “I will use Yatol Grysh’s confidence against him,” Brynn explained. “But we must strike quickly, before the three twenty-squares can be deployed outside of the city.”

  “You will attack a walled and fortified city, defended by fifteen hundred skilled warriors and a like number of conscripts, with a force of only four thousand?” asked one of her commanders, an older man from Telliqik named Bargis Troudok.

  “No,” Brynn corrected. “We will attack a fortified city garrisoned by a couple of hundred soldiers with a force that numbers near to four thousand.”

  That had all of them looking at her curiously, but Brynn only smiled. She had learned so much in her years with the Touel’alfar, and their understanding of battle, small and large, and had learned so much more during her time at the Walk of Clouds, studying the history of Behren more completely than the history of To-gai. She understood the Behrenese commanders’ expectations and likely reactions, particularly those of Yatol Grysh.

  Yes, Brynn could smile. She knew her enemy at this point, understood his confidence and his eagerness to repeat the great victory he had known over Ashwarawu. She knew how to tease him with just that possibility, and then how to take it away, oh so brutally.

  “He is not happy,” Juraviel said to Brynn later that same day, when the woman had come to see him and Cazzira and Agradeleous in their separate camp, up on the side of the cliff-facing that marked the boundaries between the two countries, and some distance from the main force.

  “He hungers for blood,” Brynn said with obvious distaste.

  “He hungers for adventure,” Cazzira explained. “Agradeleous is a patient creature, but you have kept him aside for months now, serving in no capacity other than mount and supply caravan. He considers himself your greatest warrior and has pledged his support for this fight, and yet—”

  “I am the greatest warrior!” came the hissing voice, and all three turned to see Agradeleous entering the area, a dead elk over his shoulder—and the dragon was carrying it with complete ease, as if it was no more a burden than a shawl. “Or do you fear that your warriors will see the truth of me, and fall to their knees, pledging their allegiance to Agradeleous instead of to Brynn?”

  “I fear only to show our enemies the true power before the optimum time to surprise them,” Brynn replied.

  The dragon snorted, little bursts of flames spouting from his horselike snout. “I already showed them the power of Agradeleous’ wrath! In the south—”

  “Where few escaped, and those, too horrified and disoriented to provide the truth of your power,” Brynn argued. “And need I remind you of the reports that your presence has been attributed to a trick of the Jhesta Tu? There is much more to winning a war than battle alone, dear Agradeleous.”

  The dragon snorted again, as if Brynn’s reasoning about him being no more than some mystic trick was preposterous, though they had indeed heard such a tale from some Behrenese soldiers captured at one settlement.

  “I will ride against Dharyan tomorrow afternoon,” Brynn announced.

  “And I will fly against the city tomorrow afternoon!” Agradeleous announced. “You can choose whether you wish to ride that lunch you call Runtly, or a mount truly fit for one who would be queen!”

  Juraviel and Cazzira both turned alarmed looks at Brynn, but the woman only smiled. “You will fly against the city tomorrow night,” she corrected. “I hope to fly with you, but if that is not possible, then you, and your other two riders, will know how to proceed.”

  Brynn’s grin told them that there was much more to this, told them all that she had a definite plan, and one that gave her great confidence. And so they all gathered around and held silent, except for the occasional confirming grunt from Agradeleous, as she laid it out to them.

  “A daring plan,” Cazzira said to Juraviel after the woman had gone. “One designed to exploit every weakness she recognizes within Yatol Grysh.”

  The elf glanced over his shoulder, to see the dragon quite busy in devouring his elk, and not paying the two elves any heed. “And one designed to win without giving away the truth of the dragon,” he added. “Not to the Behrenese, but even more importantly, not to her own warriors.”

  “You think that Agradeleous recognized the woman’s fears?”

  “No, but I think that Brynn is too wise to reveal too much to anyone. She knows that even with Agradeleous, To-gai is sorely out-manned by the Chezru Chieftain.”

  “And still she chooses to go after Dharyan, instead of clearing the steppes of the lesser forces.”

  “It is because of that very fact that she knows she must strike, and hard,” said Juraviel, nodding and staring into the direction where Brynn and Runtly had ridden away, a grin of respect widening on his small and angular face.

  “They were spotted traveling north through the valley of the Mazur Shinton, Yatol,” Carwan Pestle reported to Grysh. “A considerable force, several times larger than that Ashwarawu led against us.”

  “And are there any dragons flying about them?” Grysh asked with obvious sarcasm, and a wry crooked smile. He looked away from the map tacked up on the wall to consider his attendant.

  “The Dragon of To-gai leads them, we believe,” Pestle replied. “A woman, and not a wurm.”

  Grysh laughed heartily. When the Jacintha soldiers had arrived, he had bidden them to come in quietly, thinking to turn them loose upon the steppes as soon as the weather softened into springtime. How glad he was now that he had delayed! And that he had kept their arrival relatively quiet! For the reports had been coming in daily that the new rebel, this Dragon of To-gai, had come down from the steppes and into Behren at the head of a considerable force.

  “They say that she rode with Ashwarawu, you know?” Grysh asked, and Carwan Pestle nodded. “She wants revenge, and so she will come against us, oblivious to the fact that we now have more than twelve hundred new warriors at our disposal.”

  “Shall we deploy them as we did against Ashwarawu, Yatol?”

  “No,” Grysh said without hesitation. “This woman remembers well that disaster and she will no doubt look for signs of any armies camped nearby. Our guests are to remain in the city—no one is to leave! Not a Behrenese nor a Ru! Do you hear?”

  “Yes, Yatol, it has already been ordered, all about the wall.”

  “Let the Dragon of To-gai charge right up to our gates. Then we will hit her and her wretched band with a volley of destruction that will overwhelm them where they sit astride their pretty ponies.”

  “Yes, Yatol.”

  Grysh looked at the map, at the valley of the Masur Shinton. If the reports were correct, the Dragon of To-gai would arrive at Dharyan’s gates early that very evening. And there she would die, as Ashwarawu had died.

  That thought did bring a twang of regret to Yatol Grysh, for his friend and trusted commander, Wan Atenn, rotting on the sun-baked stones of a far-distant southern wasteland, would not partake of this glorious victory.

  But now he had seven Chezhou-Lei at his disposal, he reminded himself, his new advisor and the six who had come in from Jacintha. That would suffice to destroy utterly this pretentious rebel and her followers. Then Grysh would lead the force personally into To-gai, spending the summer moving across the steppes, bringing harsh justice to the upstart Ru. They would accept the rule of Behren, or they would die.

  It was as simple as that.

  “Mark the line, left and right,” Brynn instructed as her force of nearly a thousand neared Dharyan. She stretched out her front line, spacing the warriors widely, and squared them up to the city, its dark wall back-lighted by the fires burning within.

  Beside her, Pagonel sucked in his breath, as did many others.

  Brynn looked to him for support. She had pleaded with him not to come out there, but he had refused to be left behind, and in truth, she was glad that he had. Now that the time was upon her, Brynn did not think that she could get through this difficult beginning without him beside her.

  But how much wo
rse would it become if he was felled by an arrow?

  Brynn growled that dark thought away. “Strike the torches!” the woman ordered, and the call went along the line, and those few brave volunteers who had agreed to wield the torches brought them up in a blaze.

  “Cadence slow!” Brynn cried and the drummers began, beating out a slow pace, the whole of the force walking deliberately toward the distant wall. Those drums would be heard within Dharyan, Brynn knew, and in fact, she was counting on it.

  More torches went up along that wall, and a voice called out, “Halt where you are and be recognized!”

  “Do you not know me, Yatol Grysh?” Brynn cried back. “Have you not heard of the Dragon of To-gai?”

  A great cheer went up behind her at that proclamation. “Well said,” Pagonel remarked, and it was just the bit of support that Brynn needed at that moment.

  “First volley!” she yelled, and a thousand bows bent back and a thousand arrows soared into the dark sky, arcing for Dharyan. They were a long way out, though, and the barrage had little, if any, effect.

  Little physical effect, Brynn knew, but this attack was not about that.

  Brynn held aloft her sword and set it ablaze. The drums stopped.

  “To-gai free!” she cried, and brought her sword sweeping down, and so began the charge, a thousand horses shaking the ground.

  A second volley went away, and then a third, with more and more arrows making the wall, even taking down enemies.

  Brynn gritted her teeth as they continued their charge, for they were getting close—too close, she feared! When would the response come?

  Perched a few miles away, on the cliff-face of the To-gai plateau, Juraviel, Cazzira, and Agradeleous watched the line of torches snaking across the dark plain.

  “They will fight without me again!” the dragon complained bitterly.

  “No, this is no fight,” Juraviel explained. “She waits to turn.”

  “They grow close,” said Cazzira.

  “Brynn awaits the revelation,” Juraviel remarked. “She needs Yatol Grysh to show his strength to chase her away.”

  Agradeleous grumbled and shook his head, obviously not catching on to it all.

  “She centers the leading line of the charge,” Cazzira noted. “Brave, perhaps, but foolish will she seem if she is cut down.”

  “Then she will lead as a martyr,” Juraviel said grimly, but his wince belied his stoic tone.

  Arrows came out at them, as well as a few huge ballista bolts, giant spears creasing the air, close enough so that the charging warriors could hear them whistle past. The Dharyan catapults even fired, though their fiery pitch balls were easily spotted and avoided by the skilled To-gai-ru riders.

  They were barely fifty yards from the wall by then, close enough to pick out forms scrambling in the torchlight, and so their volleys proved more deadly, and so the cries of agony began, at the wall, and then among the To-gai-ru ranks.

  Brynn grimaced, but held fast her plan, knowing that many of these brave warriors would not ride out of this deadly place. They had all known that grim reality, and yet every man and woman in her army—every single one!—had volunteered to ride with her to the base of the wall. Still, this macabre game of nerves was starting to fray hers. “Commit them,” she whispered, a quiet plea to Yatol Grysh. “Show us our folly.”

  Forty yards.

  “Sweep left and right!” she ordered her band, though she understood that such a turn might actually leave more of them exposed.

  Immediately, the well-drilled To-gai-ru line split down the middle, going left and right. For the skilled horsemen, who hunted the wild steppes while riding, the turn did nothing to deter their attack, and their arrows continued to skim the top of the wall.

  But then came a cry from that wall, a familiar voice, speaking in the language of the To-gai-ru.

  “A trap! A trap!” Ya Ya Deng, Ashwarawu’s informant, cried out, and then her words became a groan, and all who heard it understood that she had been silenced by a sword.

  “Hold! Hold and center!” Brynn cried immediately, and how grateful she was for that unexpected assistance, for the excuse to keep her soldiers back a bit farther from the wall.

  And not a moment too soon, for even as the split forces began re-forming at the center, and back out to more than fifty yards, the horns began to blow wildly within Dharyan and the top of the wall seemed to grow, as hundreds of soldiers stood up, bows in hand, letting loose a volley that would have surely devastated the force had they been closer. Even as it was, many warriors fell in that devastating volley, stuck with arrows or with their prized horses shot out from under them.

  “A trap! A trap!” went the cry along the To-gai-ru line, on cue. “Run away! Run away!”

  They milled about in seeming confusion, though in truth, the skilled horsemen knew exactly their course. They scooped up comrades, grabbed horses wandering riderless, and suffered the storm of another arrow volley.

  And then they turned and fled, crying out in seeming despair.

  All along the Dharyan wall, a cry of victory erupted, with soldiers throwing their arms into the air and yelling out for Yatol Grysh. In the courtyard behind them, the Yatol stood with his seven Chezhou-Lei commanders.

  “The Dragon of To-gai!” one spat. “She turns and flees at the first resistance! Coward Ru!”

  The others murmured their agreement with the assessment.

  “They have ridden all the day,” the supremely confident Yatol Grysh told his commanders. “Take your men and their horses, hunt them down, and kill them.”

  It was an order eagerly received. Within only a few minutes, Dharyan’s western gate swung wide and the ground shook under the hoofbeats of nearly fifteen hundred cavalry, the Jacintha warriors and a good portion of the Dharyan garrison beside them.

  They came out strong, barely taking the time to form into any coherent groupings, and swung to the south, thundering away in full gallop.

  Soon after, the fleeing To-gai-ru force was spotted, still running south, paralleling the plateau. Thinking their prey tiring, the Chezhou-Lei spurred their forces on even harder, gaining ground.

  They came into the northern end of one narrow vale, split by a wide and shallow river, and saw the torches of the fleeing To-gai-ru streaming out the southern end, only a quarter of a mile ahead.

  Up went the war cries, the leaders and their soldiers bending low over their mounts, thinking their victory, over a tired and battered foe, at hand.

  And then their world changed, so abruptly, so stunningly, as both hills, left and right, came alive with swarms of To-gai-ru warriors, as the Dragon of To-gai’s three thousand hidden warriors sprang up, raining death from on high.

  At the south end of the valley, Brynn called for a halt and turn, re-forming her line. She didn’t turn them loose immediately, but let the rain of death continue, let the Behrenese ranks break apart with terror and confusion, let them thin as soldier after soldier was plucked from his horse.

  Then came the charge, left and right, the To-gai-ru forces closing like the jaws of death, angling to seal off any retreat.

  And then came Brynn’s charge, in a long and thin line, bows humming and then swords clashing.

  The Behrenese had nowhere to flee, and no time to regroup into any semblance of a defensive formation. Nor could the Behrenese shoot from horseback with anywhere near the speed and accuracy of the skilled To-gai-ru hunters. Brynn had shaped the battlefield perfectly to fit her forces, and had used the overconfidence of Yatol Grysh to coax his soldiers from behind their defensive walls, out into the open, where they were no match for the fierce To-gai-ru riders.

  And she eagerly led the way in for close combat when the time was upon them, her fiery sword flashing death to any Behrenese who wandered too close.

  In truth, most were merely trying to flee. That only heightened the slaughter.

  “My night has just begun,” Brynn said to Pagonel when the battle had ended. She found the mystic har
d at work tending the wounded, though he had not escaped unharmed, and showed a bright line of blood across his upper arm where an arrow had creased his skin.

  The mystic nodded. “You understand the power you now unleash?” he asked.

  “I understand that Dharyan will fall in the morning,” Brynn grimly replied. “Whatever the cost.”

  The mystic nodded and Brynn turned Runtly and galloped away to the west, to the base of the plateau divide.

  Her friends were waiting for her, Juraviel and Cazzira already sitting astride the great dragon, who was back in his more natural, and more imposing, winged form.

  “I feared that we would have to leave without you,” Juraviel remarked, obviously greatly relieved to see the woman still alive and unharmed.

  “This is not a fight I wish to miss,” Brynn replied, climbing up atop the dragon’s lowered neck.

  “We marked well the ballista emplacements,” Cazzira informed her.

  Brynn nodded. “A few, perhaps,” she agreed. “But the prize I seek is greater.”

  “Their great spears are the only weapons which can prevent me from razing the city wholly,” the dragon argued.

  “We will break their heart and their will, and so Dharyan will fall,” was all that Brynn would offer at that moment.

  Up they went, high into the dark sky, and in moments, the lights of Dharyan were in clear sight.

  How much brighter they would soon burn!

  Brynn brought the dragon around to the north and then to the east, knowing full well that all of Dharyan’s eyes were straining south and west.

  Agradeleous climbed high into the dark sky, then he turned and held for just a moment, and then he plummeted, gaining speed. With a tremendous rush, his wind alone blasting surprised guards from the northeastern wall, the dragon crossed over the city. Despite Brynn’s instructions, he did veer to cross right above one ballista emplacement, his raking claws and sweeping tail destroying it and its crew as he rushed past. And then he turned for his primary target, and it was not difficult to spot, for the temple of Dharyan was easily the largest structure in the city.