He pulled up before it and loosed his fiery breath, blowing out the eastern windows, lighting the wooden supports.
He shifted up higher and breathed again, and then a third time, his breath igniting fires all about the structure.
Below on the streets, the people cried and rushed for cover, and Agradeleous dropped upon them, strafing a line of fire along one avenue, starting fires along the rows of houses and storefronts.
Behind Brynn, Juraviel and Cazzira worked their bows wildly, sending lines of stinging arrows out at any soldiers they could spot.
“Enough, Agradeleous!” Brynn cried repeatedly, but the dragon wasn’t hearing her, or wasn’t paying her any heed if he was! He swept along above the streets, his tail thrashing destruction, his claws snapping down at any soldiers he caught in the open, his breath sweeping out to immolate any who were not fast enough or cunning enough to get out of the way.
Soldiers died in that rush, but many more civilians fell to Agradeleous. Women died and children died, and Brynn had to fight back the bile in her throat.
Gradually, the defense began to organize, and arrows whizzed up about the riders, many striking the dragon, bouncing harmlessly off his scales or scoring hits upon his leathery wings.
And Brynn continued to scream at the beast, commanding him to fly away, as they had planned.
And Agradeleous continued to rain death and destruction, all the way to the front gates of the great city, which he leveled with a single blast of his fiery breath.
Finally, the dragon flew off, back into the darkness of night, leaving the screams and the rumble of great fires, behind him. He reached the cliff-facing, but did not land and let his riders down. No, he went up higher, searching among the heights until he found a loose boulder that he could scoop up with his great clawed feet. Then he turned and swept back for Dharyan, flying high above the city, too high for the archers or the ballistae to reach him.
He dropped the boulder, aiming perfectly for the largest fire in the city, and the huge stone smashed through the roof of the Dharyan’s temple.
“I can do this all night!” the dragon boasted.
Brynn just wanted to be put back down, and so she ordered the dragon to take her back to where she had left Runtly.
And Agradeleous did so, then he flew off with the two elves, up the cliff-facing to find more boulders and then back over Dharyan to randomly bomb the place.
Brynn came back into the To-gai-ru encampment with a heart heavy from the destruction she had witnessed on the field and especially in the city. One scene in particular, a group of women immolated by dragon fire while they ran along a street, hung thick in her thoughts.
But the warrior woman could not deny that the battle had gone almost exactly as she had planned. More than a thousand Behrenese warriors lay dead in the Masur Shinton valley, and no doubt hundreds more, soldier and civilian, had died in the dragon raid in the city. And the temple of Dharyan was still burning, and would be a complete ruin by morning.
Brynn’s own losses had not been substantial. Carving and preparing the battlefield to her choosing had given all the advantage to her warriors and they had used it to near perfection.
Now Dharyan lay ripe for the taking.
But for Brynn, exhaustion had set in, and that only exacerbated the feelings of remorse and of guilt. She said not a word as she walked Runtly into the To-gai-ru encampment, did not even acknowledge the shouts and cheers that erupted around her. She went straight to Pagonel, still at his work in tending the many wounded—only To-gai-ru wounded, for the Behrenese had all been put to swift death on the field—slid down from Runtly and fell into the mystic’s waiting arms.
He hugged her close and she buried her face in his strong shoulder, not wanting those around her to see the tears in her eyes.
“What have I done?” she whispered.
“You have struck a blow against your oppressors that will be heard throughout the steppes and throughout Behren,” the mystic answered softly. “You have given your people a chance to break free.” Pagonel pushed Brynn out to arm’s length and looked her right in the eye. “You have given them hope and the courage to fight back.”
“Even if they all should die in the war,” Brynn said with biting sarcasm, but to her surprise, the mystic only smiled.
“Even if they all should die in the war,” he echoed softly, and firmly, and he nodded and smiled, reminding Brynn that some things, perhaps, were worth dying for.
“What is next?” the mystic asked.
“We will deliver our terms for surrender in the morning,” Brynn answered.
“Yatol Grysh is a stubborn one,” said Pagonel.
“Then he will endure a night of dragon fire the likes of which the world has not seen in centuries,” Brynn replied, and there were no more tears at that time, just a determination so cold and so grim that it sent a shiver coursing down Pagonel’s hardened spine.
The next morning, Brynn rode at the head of a column of nearly four thousand To-gai-ru warriors, closing to within fifty yards of Dharyan’s wall.
“They are all dead, Yatol Grysh,” she called out. “Send forth an emissary or your city will be destroyed around you.”
She let it go at that, and when no rider came forth from Dharyan’s blasted gate, Brynn motioned for her warriors to encircle the place. None would flee Dharyan, and none would enter without her knowing of their approach.
That night, she took Agradeleous over the city again and again, blasting his fire and dropping rocks from on high, above the reach of the Dharyan defenses. Her warriors, too, came forward in short and unexpected bursts, showering fiery arrows into the city.
The next morning, smoke hanging as heavy as the cries of lamentation in the air, Brynn approached the city again, and again called out for an emissary, and this time, she was answered.
A lone rider exited the gate, bearing a white flag of truce. He was not a skilled horseman, obviously, and he nearly fell off several times as he galloped his horse up before the warrior woman.
“I am Carwan Pestle,” he introduced himself. “Emissary of Yatol Grysh.”
“Come to discuss the terms of surrender,” Brynn remarked, and looked over at Pagonel, for she noted that the man looked quite nervous, and uncomfortable, as if he would have to deliver words she did not wish to hear.
“My Yatol instructs me to inform you that he has near to two thousand To-gai-ru slaves within the city,” Carwan Pestle began slowly and uncertainly.
“Two thousand reasons for him to evoke my ire no further,” Brynn replied.
“He bids you to ride away, back to your own land,” Carwan Pestle continued, and he was shaking so hard that it seemed as if he would fall off his horse. “Be gone, Dragon of To-gai, else those slaves will be executed, and most horribly.”
Brynn didn’t blink, but simply, slowly, nodded and turned to Pagonel. “Tell me, my Jhesta Tu friend, how long would it take for Yatol Grysh to organize such a mass murder as that?”
“Hours, I would guess,” Pagonel said with equal calm.
Brynn turned back to Carwan Pestle. “Then I will not give him hours,” she said, simply.
Carwan Pestle stared at her curiously, not understanding. “Is that the message you wish for me to return to my Yatol?”
“You?” Brynn asked incredulously. “Oh, no, my good man Carwan Pestle. I intend to deliver my message personally.” She looked over one shoulder, to Pagonel, then over the other, to the line of her commanders. “Now,” she said. “Sack Dharyan, and extra rations to the man who brings me the dog, Grysh!”
Before Carwan Pestle could even begin to respond, the To-gai-ru line erupted in battle cries, and in the thunder of charging horses.
The response from the Behrenese wall was minimal and fleeting, with the soldiers, mostly civilians pressed into emergency service, throwing down their weapons and fleeing back for their homes. Like a dark flood, the To-gai-ru rolled through the gate and widened out to engulf all the streets, and then
above them came mighty Agradeleous and his two riders, swooping in low to blast away any pockets of resistance with a purging gout of flame.
It was over before midday, with all resistance broken, and with most of the two thousand To-gai-ru slaves freed—and many taking up arms against their oppressors.
The killing went on through the day and night, and Brynn heard so many disturbing reports of rape and execution.
On Brynn’s orders, no further destruction of property was allowed, and only combatants were to be killed, but it seemed obvious to her that many of her warriors were using any excuse they could find to label Behrenese as combatants, and many of the freed slaves would not walk away without exacting the harshest retribution upon those who had so badly mistreated them.
Late the next morning, a fat, whining man was brought out before Brynn and thrown down in the dirt at her feet. He looked up, his hands entwined in a pleading position.
“Yatol Grysh,” explained one of the two To-gai-ru warriors who had brought him out. “We found him hiding in a deep wine cellar, trembling with fear.”
“The coward!” the other warrior said, and he spat in Grysh’s face.
“Please, I beg of you!” Grysh pleaded. “I am a rich man. I can pay.”
“I do not want your money,” Brynn said to him. “I want your people out of my city.”
It took a moment for the words to register to those around her, but when they did, they brought whoops of delight from the To-gai-ru and a wide-eyed stare of disbelief from Yatol Grysh.
“Bring the emissary to me,” Brynn instructed Pagonel, and the mystic rushed off to find Carwan Pestle.
“You cannot think to hold Dharyan,” Yatol Grysh dared to say.
“Not Dharyan, no,” said Brynn, moving about him and putting her finger to pursed lips as if she was working through some details even then. “No, that is a Behrenese name, and not one I desire. No, we will name it Dharielle. Yes, that is a fitting name.”
Triumphant cries erupted all about her, and as the news filtered down the streets, more and more took up the chant of “Dharielle!”
Pagonel and Carwan Pestle arrived soon after.
“Yatol!” the poor Shepherd cried, and he moved for his master but was easily detained by the mystic.
“You were my witness to the conquest and so you shall be my witness before the court of the Chezru Chieftain,” Brynn said to the confused man. “Tell him that To-gai is free, and that any Behrenese caught uninvited upon our soil will be killed. Tell him that this city, Dharielle, is now part of To-gai.
“Tell him,” she said, moving very close and imposing, staring so hard at the man that he seemed to wilt before her, “that if he ever again sends a single soldier against me, I will burn Jacintha to the ground, and him along with it.”
“You fool!” cried Grysh, and somehow, as if he had only then realized that he had absolutely nothing left to lose, he found the strength to stand before her. “Heathen, barbarian dog! He is the God-Voice, the chosen avatar of Yatol! He is—”
Brynn looked to some of her soldiers around her and ended the tirade with two simple words. “Hang him.”
The next day, every surviving Behrenese man, woman, and child marched out the eastern gate, down the long and difficult stone-paved roads through the empty desert, exiting the city right beneath the wind-twisting corpse of the man who had ruled over them for decades.
Chapter 27
Ghost Town
CARWAN PESTLE HAD ENTERED THE SAME CHAMBER TENTATIVELY ONLY A FEW months before, nervous then because he had been sent by Yatol Grysh to beg for hundreds of soldiers. How much greater that nervousness was now for the poor Shepherd, walking into the chamber of the Chezru Chieftain with the news that Yatol Grysh had failed, that all twelve hundred of the soldiers the Chezru Chieftain had sent to Dharyan were dead, and that Dharyan had fallen!
Merwan Ma shot Pestle a truly sympathetic look as the young man, so much like Merwan Ma in many ways, made his slow way about the room, to stand right before the seated Yakim Douan.
They already knew much of the tale, Carwan Pestle realized, from the sympathy of Merwan Ma to the intense expression on the face of the Chezru Chieftain. The man wasn’t even looking up at him, but was staring straight ahead, his thumb and index finger fiddling with his bottom lip.
With his free hand, the Chezru Chieftain motioned for Carwan Pestle to speak.
“I hardly know where to begin, God-Voice,” the Shepherd remarked, his voice quivering.
“Is Yatol Grysh dead?”
“He was hanged by the Dragon of To-gai.”
Yakim Douan’s fierce eyes turned up to bore into the poor man. “The Dragon of To-gai?” he echoed. “Pray you tell me, who, or what, is the Dragon of To-gai.”
“A woman,” Pestle stammered. “A young and small woman. But fierce, God-Voice.”
“Then it is not a true dragon, as if one of the legends of old.”
“But she is!” the Shepherd explained, or tried to. “A great beast! She flew over the city at night, her fiery breath setting great fires. On the first night, she destroyed the temple, and killed so many!” He was gasping as he spoke, so overwhelmed that he seemed to be running out of breath with each word.
“And then she flew up high, God-Voice! So high, and dropped great stones upon us! We could do nothing to harm her!”
Yakim Douan patted his hand in the air, trying to calm the man, and eventually, Pestle did pause and take a deep breath.
“And this dragon killed three twenty-squares of my soldiers?” the Chezru Chieftain asked. “Alone?”
“No, God-Voice. The Dragon of To-gai came with a great army—thousands of warriors! I do not know that she even took her dragon form in that battle, and in the end, when she swept over our wall and conquered Dharyan, she was in the guise of a human, a simple woman.”
“Not so simple, I would say,” Douan said dryly.
“They killed so many,” Carwan Pestle lamented. “And their warriors took great liberties with our women, and then murdered many.”
“But most of the citizens of Dharyan came down the desert road?”
“Yes, God-Voice. She sent us out into the desert with hardly any food and water. We were lucky to make the Dahdah Oasis with only a few losses. Many are still there, hoping to return to their homes once you destroy this dragon.”
“She occupies Dharyan?”
“She has changed the name, calling it Dharielle now.”
Yakim Douan nodded. “And tell me, Shepherd Pestle, were any Jhesta Tu mystics involved in this unprovoked and heinous attack?”
“She had one beside her, God-Voice. A man of middle age—some say that he was the same one who had fought at Dharyan with Ashwarawu, though I cannot be certain.”
“Likely, he is,” Douan replied with a knowing chuckle.
“God-Voice?”
Yakim Douan held his hand up to calm the man. “Rest easy, Shepherd Pestle. You will have your homes back soon enough.”
“But the dragon …”
“She will fall, quite dead, and her warriors will be sent running back to their forsaken steppes. And there, I will catch them and punish them. Oh, yes, all of To-gai will rue the day that this dragon-woman came into their midst.” He finished with a nod and wave of his hand, and a smile so wicked and confident that it surely bolstered Carwan Pestle.
The Shepherd bowed and exited the room.
“Damn her!” Yakim Douan exploded, the moment the young man was gone, surprising Merwan Ma, who, like Pestle, had believed that the God-Voice had all of this under complete control. “Damn this witch and the Jhesta Tu! And damn Yatol Grysh, the failure!”
“God-Voice, it seems as if he was overwhelmed …” Merwan Ma dared to interject.
“Overwhelmed?” the Chezru Chieftain echoed incredulously. “Overwhelmed by a ragtag band of To-gai-ru? Yatol Tohen Bardoh captured half of To-gai with fewer warriors than Grysh had at his disposal, and that was on the open plains, not huddled behind a fo
rtified city wall! No, he erred. He erred badly, as Kaliit Timig erred. We are playing to our enemy’s strengths, don’t you see? We are underestimating them.”
“But what of this dragon, God-Voice? Surely neither the Kaliit nor Yatol Grysh could have anticipated—”
“A trick, likely,” Douan insisted. “The Jhesta Tu can do such illusions, I am told.”
“But you heard Carwan Pestle. He claimed that it was a great beast, a dragon of legend.”
“And in the dark night, with fires burning and the city under siege, and likely bombardment from distant catapults, everything that he heard or saw would be multiplied many times over by sheer terror. A dragon? Well, perhaps this fool To-gai-ru woman is such a beast, or has harnessed such a beast. They do exist, or did, and so it is not impossible.”
“But then, what are we to do?”
“Kill it,” the Chezru Chieftain said calmly. “As we kill all of them. Dragons are not immortal, nor are they invulnerable. Send every scholar to the library to study every legend and detail about such creatures. This Dragon of To-gai has won twice, but both with the element of surprise. The next force we send against her will be ready to deal with any dragon, I assure you. Phalanxes of great bows and poison-tipped arrows will bring the beast down.”
Douan paused and chuckled. “If there even is such a beast, and I doubt that there is. But nonetheless, my time of showing any leniency or mercy to To-gai is at its end. They dare to conquer Dharyan? Well, I will respond, do not doubt. As I promised Pestle, I now promise you. Call up all the men of Jacintha. Assemble the garrisons. In a fortnight, we will send fifteen thousand soldiers marching to retake Dharyan, and with them will be the greatest engines of war we can devise. Let the Dragon of To-gai show herself. Perhaps her fiery breath will kill a few, but then she will fall, right before the stunned and horrified eyes of her foolish followers. And then where will they turn?
“Back to the steppes of To-gai? Ah, but we will pursue them, from Dharyan and from the south, where Yatol Tohen Bardoh will march with fifteen thousand more soldiers.”
DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) Page 159