by Stephen Deas
They couldn’t be winning could they, the little ones? She half jumped, half flew up onto the broken stump of one of the smaller towers. The walls around her were breached. A few of the bigger towers were still intact, but the smaller ones were all smashed. Everything that would burn was in flames. The earth and the air trembled and thundered. A thin haze of smoke filled the night. She could see the shapes of the other dragons clear enough, but the little ones . . . The smoke hid them.
The Earthspear! She reached out for it with her thoughts. It had fallen silent, but it was near.
Yet another bolt slammed into her side. Then another. The rage flashed inside. Her head snapped around, looking for where they’d come from. But she couldn’t see. Everything looked ruined or was lost in the haze.
Another bolt bounced off her head, leaving a burning scar. We should never have come in the night. She’d been hit by dozens now. So many she’d lost count. Little ones, little ones, she could taste their thoughts, so many, scurrying, running, but she couldn’t see them!
She launched herself into the air. Defeat. She could taste it. Inconceivable defeat. And yet the rage drove them on and they were powerless against it. The dragons around her were all lost in the fury. It would never occur to them to stop until the fire took them.
No. Not now. Not this close. It can’t be. I will not allow us to fail!
A tail as thick as a man whipped over his head and crashed into the remnants of the Tower of Air behind him. Shards of stone flew like shrapnel; larger pieces tumbled, crushing the ruined walls around him, breaking men and metal alike. The dragons shook them off. Much of the palace was bathed in fire. Dragons out of control, out of their minds, burning up with their own rage, pouring it out on everything around them. Vale sprinted straight through the middle of them, hurdling the bodies of the fallen, the burned and the crushed. The palace was awash with the ashes of the dead. In the end metal buckled. Men were roasted and died. Even dragon-scale wasn’t perfect.
He raced between the legs of a young hunter that tried to bite him and missed. The more they burn, the more our poison will grip them. A tail slashed across the ground, throwing up a cloud of black ash, of stone and armour. Of blackened arms and legs and torsos and heads. Vale ran under the belly of another dragon, which didn’t even seem to notice he was there. He’d lost track of where the spear was, but it must be buried in bodies and rubble by now. He’d done what he could. If there were any working scorpions left on the walls, they were too few to matter now and he couldn’t tell them from the mangled remains of their cousins. Most of the Adamantine Men were dead. They’d never know whether they’d died in glorious victory or in defeat.
He reached the doors of the Glass Cathedral. Walls thick enough to stand even dragons welcomed him. As he ran, the doors flew open. Behind him, a dragon turned and lunged. Vale threw himself to the ground, sliding the last yard on his belly across stones sticky with cooked blood. Behind the doors, a dozen scorpions all packed together spat out a final volley.
‘Run!’ he shouted. No time to load and fire again. No point in losing more men. Tomorrow’s Night Watchman would need them. He tried to get back to his feet, but for once his strength failed him. He stumbled and fell in the doorway. Someone else would take the fight to the dragons after today. He’d done the best he could.
He rolled onto his back. ‘Come and get me!’ There were sacs of poison strapped to his armour. Too much for a man to drink and survive. Enough, perhaps, to kill a dragon. And there it was, the dragon that had taken a face full of scorpion bolts, towering over him, eyes ablaze, flames licking out between its teeth, insane with fire and fury. ‘Come on!’ he screamed at it. ‘Eat me!’
Its head swayed from side to side, almost mocking him, as though it could read his mind. And then, very slowly, it toppled over and crashed to the ground. Fire sputtered around it. Flames flickered on its tongue. Even through his armour Vale could feel the heat. He lay there and stared.
And I thought we were going to lose.
He started to laugh. Once he’d started, he couldn’t stop.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a single dragon, pale as a ghost in the moonlight, take to the skies and fly away.
48
The Morning After
Jehal couldn’t put his finger on when the battle ended. The noise, the rumbles and thunder as the dragons smashed down the Adamantine Palace went on most of the night. He sat awake in bed, listening to it. Eventually it faded away and stopped. He might have dozed after that. He wasn’t sure. Lystra slept, and he watched her. Looked at her by the light of a single tiny candle. He stroked her face and her hair, gently so as not to wake her. After a while, after the noises had stopped and everything was still, he very carefully climbed out of their bed and dressed.
‘I’m sorry, my love,’ he whispered in her ear, ‘but these particular caves don’t agree with me.’
The caves under the Glass Cathedral were still and quiet. There were no guards on his door, none to keep him safe and none to keep him from leaving either. He hopped and hobbled through the silent tunnels. Frightened faces glanced at him and turned away. Servants, scared witless, knowing they were doomed to die down here. But starving is better than burning, isn’t it? Or is it?
He didn’t find any soldiers until he reached the stairway to the Glass Cathedral itself. Until he climbed them, one excruciating step at a time. And at the top there’s going to be a dragon waiting for me. And then what? He didn’t know. What he knew was that kings didn’t hide in cellars while their kingdoms burned around them. Kings faced their enemies. Even if they couldn’t win. Kings died in daylight. In the open.
He reached the top of the steps. He’d expected bodies, but the cathedral was almost empty. The wreckage of a dozen scorpions lay scattered around the door. The air stank of smoke, of burned wood and scorched flesh. No bodies though. None alive, none dead.
He heard voices. Men, calling to each other. Outside. Not screaming and dying calling, but the matter-of-fact shouts of men busy at work. He hobbled to the door, blinking. No dragons? Was that possible?
A grey glimmer of dawn lit the horizon. Not much light, and at first he couldn’t see the damage. The Tower of Air was a stump. The Speaker’s Tower was still there, although it seemed to be missing several large pieces. He scanned the silhouette of the palace, looking for anything else that was familiar and finding little. The Tower of Dusk, the Tower of Dawn, the Humble Tower, the Azure Tower . . . all gone.
‘Hello?’ he called. ‘Did we win then?’ There were dim figures moving in the darkness where the walls ought to be. They had bits missing, he began to see. Quite a lot of bits missing. It was warm outside too, strangely and almost uncomfortably so.
In the half-light a shape took form nearby. Jehal swore and jumped back, lost his footing and fell back through the cathedral door. ‘Shit! Crap crap crap!’ He was staring at a dragon only a dozen yards away. Rather, he was staring at a dragon’s head. Lying on the ground. Still. Not moving. The size of a carriage.
He squinted, tracing the outline of the shape back into the gloom. Definitely a dragon. Dead.
An armoured hand reached down towards him. Held out to help him up. Jehal took it without thinking.
‘You should be underground.’ The voice was Vale’s, ground flat with fatigue.
‘Did you actually win?’
‘Bluntly? I don’t know. I don’t think so. We drove them off. That’s all.’
‘There’s a dead dragon in my palace.’
‘There are more than twenty.’ In his other hand, the one that wasn’t helping Jehal to his feet, Vale was holding something strangely familiar. The Speaker’s Spear.
‘You won, Vale. You actually won.’
The Night Watchman laughed in bitter choking hacks. ‘No. We didn’t get them all. And even then . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Do you want to see what victory looks like? I will show you. Come!’
Jehal pursed his lips. ‘Is this the part where you throw me
off the top of a tall tower and then say I slipped?’
Vale slapped him so hard it made his head spin. The next thing he knew there were arms around his waist and he was picked up and thrown over the Night Watchman’s shoulder like a sack of corn. ‘All a joke to you, is it?’
‘Let me go!’ Panic and angry affront fought each other for Jehal’s attention.
‘No. Come and see your realms. Come and see what’s left.’
Jehal supposed he ought to be afraid, but he wasn’t. He was tired. Tired of fighting all the time. And he’s not going to do it. He’s not going to kill me. He can’t. However much he wants to, he can’t. It’s not in him. ‘Put me down, Vale. If you’re going to murder me, at least give me the dignity of walking to my doom, eh?’ Although, shameful to admit as it is, this is considerably less painful than walking would be.
‘You did this, Speaker Jehal. You and all your kind.’ Vale started to clamber over a heap of rubble that had once been part of the palace wall. In the half-light, draped over his shoulder, Jehal still couldn’t see much. What he could see looked a mess. ‘You don’t get to die. You haven’t earned that yet. I want you to see.’ Reaching the top of the wall, a section that was still intact, Vale dropped Jehal on the ground next to a shattered scorpion.
‘Ouch.’
Vale crouched beside him, gripped him by the throat and hauled him to his feet. ‘Do you see?’
‘Do I see what?’ All he could see were ruined walls. The jagged remains of charred wood and steel that had lined them. Smashed towers. When he peered, he could see men moving among the rubble. Now and then he heard a shout. They were clearing the walls of debris, he realised. Very slowly, but they were clearing the walls and putting new scorpions in place. ‘You never give up, do you? I’m impressed.’
Vale wrenched Jehal’s head around to the glowing embers that had once been the City of Dragons. ‘Are you impressed by that?’ he hissed.
Jehal pulled himself away. His leg gave way again and he stumbled towards the battlements. Vale caught him.
‘You don’t get away that easily, Jehal.’
For a few moments he didn’t know what to say. The city was gone. Totally gone. Torn to pieces and then set on fire. What hadn’t been smashed, burned. ‘Zafir,’ he whispered. ‘Zafir did this.’
‘No. You did.’
‘No.’ Get a hold of yourself. ‘No, I didn’t do this, and now I think of it, neither did Zafir. You can blame us for a lot of things, Night Watchman, but we never woke any dragons. It’s gone. So what? We’ll build another.’
Vale’s fingers tightened on his arm, gripping painfully. ‘Build another?’
‘Yes.’ Jehal shook himself free a second time, careful not to fall over. ‘That’s what we do. Build another. You won, Night Watchman. You have fulfilled your purpose. Your name will go down in history. You have averted catastrophe. Well done. Now piss off because I have a lot of work to do.’
For a moment the Night Watchman seemed lost in thought. He was staring at the Adamantine Spear. ‘I slew six dragons in the night. There.’ He pointed at something that looked like a dragon turned to stone and broken into pieces. ‘There.’ Another, much the same. ‘There.’ The third was largely intact. The look in Vale’s eye was of a man in deep thought. Which wasn’t what Jehal wanted at all.
‘Go find some builders who can clear up this mess.’
Vale didn’t move. His face didn’t flicker, but there was a tear in the corner of his eye. ‘The sun is coming up,’ he murmured.
‘Yes. Valuable working time is about to go to waste, eh?’ And there I was, thinking for a moment of keeping you alive. Letting you see me have my victory, day after day after day. Letting that be my revenge. But no. You’re too dangerous for that. He turned away.
‘Jehal.’
‘I am your speaker, Night Watchman. Address me properly or I’ll have your tongue cut out.’
‘Your Holiness.’ Vale sneered. ‘How many dragons went missing, Your Holiness?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I was too busy putting down Zafir. Ask the alchemists.’
‘The alchemists are largely dead, Your Holiness. The Adamantine Eyrie is gone. Look.’
Jehal squinted. All he could see was a thin haze of smoke that smothered everything. ‘I see nothing.’
‘I know. You were ever thus. The eyrie is gone. Your dragons are gone. Your palace is gone. Legions of my men are gone. Six hundred scorpions lined these walls last night. Perhaps a dozen have survived. We have more, of course. But we won’t get them ready in time to make a difference. Go back to your tunnels, Jehal. Live in the filth and the darkness where you belong. For what little time you can.’ He sighed. ‘No, Jehal, I did not win.’ He was staring at something behind Jehal’s shoulder.
Jehal spun to face him, furious. ‘That is the last . . .’ The words died in his mouth. Instinct made him follow the Night Watchman’s gaze. On the furthest corner of the palace, away towards the Mirror Lakes, a white dragon sat staring back at them, barely visible in the haze of smoke but clear nonetheless. Another smaller shape sat beside it. Dark. A young one. And then he saw another adult, and then another, squatting on the walls. As he watched, a fifth and then a sixth dragon glided silently out of the gloom and settled to watch. Then a seventh and an eighth. Three were hatchlings, barely out of the egg.
‘What are you waiting for?’ roared Vale, shattering the stillness and almost making Jehal jump out of his own skin.
I ought to run, Jehal thought. Right now. He glanced down towards the doors to the cathedral. A fit man, strong and agile, could get there in time. Pity that’s not me.
The young dragon moved. Sprang down from the wall and streaked like lightning through the rubble. Jehal had never seen anything move so fast. Hunting cats, maybe. And maybe a fit man couldn’t have reached the doors in time after all.
He was shaking. The dragon was a lot bigger than it had seemed over on the wall next to a full-grown adult. It ran up the side of a small half-toppled tower at the end of the wall in front of Vale, spread its wings and hissed.
Your fear is delicious, little one. The voice erupted out of nowhere inside Jehal’s head. His heart tripped and then hammered in his chest, and a cold settled over him like a blanket of snow, suffocating, silent and deathly. He stared at the dragons and the dragons stared back. He could see something different in their eyes, in the way they held themselves, even across the distance between them. The hunger and the desire, the impatience and the sheer raw force, they were all there just like any other dragon. But these had something else. They fixed him with their eyes and held him fast. There was a coldness to them. An intelligence. A relentless determination. He could feel them, feel them in his head, reckoning him.
The dragons stared, and in their gazes they showed him exactly what he was. Small and shallow and worthless. Crippled and useless. With two working legs, he might have tried to run anyway. As it was, all he could do was . . . nothing.
Where are your words now? How will people remember you, Jehal? Jehal the great? Jehal the brave? Jehal the strong?
The young dragon jumped from the tower and swooped. The Night Watchman held up the Adamantine Spear, let out a howl and charged to meet it.
Jehal the wise? Jehal the good?
The dragon and the Night Watchman came together. At the last instant Vale shifted impossibly sideways and kicked off the battlements. He was flying almost sideways through the air as he reached the dragon.
How will people remember you, Jehal?
‘Get out of my head!’ he screamed, yet the voice wasn’t anyone but himself.
The dragon’s jaws snapped. The Night Watchman’s spear flashed. And then they passed one another and both crashed to the ground. A shock of air and light knocked Jehal stumbling back. His good leg caught on a piece of tortured metal that had once been a scorpion. His bad leg buckled and he went down.
Jehal the cripple? No, you can’t hide behind that.
The Night Watchman’s spear was bu
ried in the dragon’s skull. Just like the statue that had once stood in the centre of the City of Dragons. And, like the statue, the dragon was now stone. The Night Watchman was still moving. Just. He laboured ever so slowly to his feet. Jehal struggled to do the same.
If there’s anyone left, they’ll make jokes about you. Look at you, Jehal! Can’t even get up.
Vale rose shakily. For a moment Jehal couldn’t put his finger on what was wrong with him. Only for a moment, though, until he turned. The dragon had torn half of Vale’s face off. Vale staggered and made a loud wet hooting sort of noise. He reached the spear and pulled it out of the now-stone dragon, then turned to face the others. They didn’t move. Vale was swaying like a drunkard.
‘Kill them!’ Jehal screamed. ‘Use it! Kill them!’
Vale turned back to Jehal again. You couldn’t read much into his expression because his lower jaw wasn’t there. His eyes were wild. For a moment Jehal thought Vale was going to kill him. Then the Night Watchman threw the spear as hard as he could, a mighty throw, right across Speaker’s Yard and through the open gates of the Glass Cathedral. He staggered, lurched sideways, stepped off the edge of the wall and crashed into the rubble below.
Somewhere off to one side came the loose rattle of a ragged volley of scorpion bolts. In the haze the dragons launched themselves silently into the air – all except the white one, which stayed there, watching him. Jehal couldn’t move. Couldn’t even stand. He was on his knees, shaking like a kitten.
Look at you. Think of all the people you’ve killed. Betrayed. Murdered. You know you’re worth less than any of them. Deep down, you know that to be true.
Shut up shut up SHUT UP!
Two or three scorpions fired again. After that they were silent. The dragons moved sedately across the palace, slowly, calmly and methodically crushing anything that was alive. They didn’t roar and they didn’t breathe fire. Eventually the white one launched itself into the air. It glided across the distance between them and landed with a quiet grace where Jehal knelt. It reached out for him with its claws. Jehal let out a thin wail and scrabbled vainly away.