Dragonmaster

by Chris Bunch

  Hal heard a bowstring twang, saw one such brigand screech, grab at his side, and go down. He turned, saw Jarth Ordinay reaching for another arrow.

  “No,” he ordered. “We may need them later.”

  Ordinay hesitated, then nodded, and put the arrow back in his saddle quiver.

  Unconsciously Hal’s section spread out as they closed on the edges of the ridge Roche supposedly still held, making themselves into less of a target.

  Canista’s cutting it a little close, Kailas thought. If I held the regiment, I would have taken us straight away from the lines until I was beyond the sight of the fighters, then come back on the Roche from the rear, trying to figure out their intentions from the deployment of their quartermaster wagons and other noncombatants who might not be able to kill you as readily as an infantryman or, worse, a heavy cavalry soldier.

  Light cavalrymen wore no more armor than a breastplate and chain mail to midthigh and an open helmet. They were generally armed with no more than bow, sword and dagger, although when facing battle, as today, they would carry a light lance, not much more than a spear. They relied on their horses’ speed, maneuverability and their own cunning to keep them alive.

  Heavy cavalry was their nemesis—men in three-quarters armor to the knee with half shields, riding great horses that looked suitable for pulling brewery wagons. They were armed with sword, dagger, lance, and frequently a mace or a hammer. They rode in close formation and if the light horsemen were brought to battle by the heavies and couldn’t escape, they were almost certainly doomed.

  These lumbering monsters were most highly regarded, their units draped with battle honors and their riders among the most noble of any kingdom.

  Hal hoped to spend this day without seeing any of them, neither Roche nor on his own side, for that would portend disaster.

  All he wanted was to obey orders, get in, get out and get back. Tomorrow, when the armies rumbled back on the move, they could resume their patrolling and skirmishing duties.

  Before he heard the first warning shout, he felt the earth begin shaking.

  Riding out of the forest fringing the Roche lines, coming between the trees in close formation, came the Roche heavy cavalry. Hal was never sure if there were two or three regiments. Not that it mattered. Just one would have given the battle edge to Roche.

  Lord Canista shouted to one of his aides to ride back for their promised support, the Sagene heavy cavalry. The young officer saluted, wheeled his horse, and galloped hard for the rear.

  He’d gone no more than a quarter of a mile when a crossbowman rose from behind a bush, and shot him off his horse.

  Other crossbowmen came up on line, ran toward Hal’s unit, closing the jaws of the trap.

  Canista shouted for the regiment to turn away from the attackers, and make for a knoll, dismount and fight on foot until their support arrived.

  They never made it.

  Half a company of Roche were charging Hal’s section. He shouted for his men to turn into the attack, comb the lancers, then try for the knoll.

  They obeyed, but the heavy cavalrymen held formation, and Hal’s section couldn’t break through. A knight was coming hard at Hal, and Kailas ducked under his lance, spitted him in the throat, above his gorget, with his sword. Another rider cut at him, missed, and Hal slashed, also going wide.

  Then he was behind the first wave, saw another stream of riders thundering toward him.

  He pulled at his horse’s reins, as the animal screamed and reared. Hal slid off the back as his mount fell back, thrashing, a crossbow bolt in its throat, another between its ribs.

  A Roche crossbowman was coming at him, long double-edged dagger held low. Hal parried, ran him through, felt another bolt whip past his face.

  A dismounted cavalryman was coming at him, two-handed sword up. Hal went to his knees, drove his sword under the man’s breastplate, into his guts.

  Then something smashed into the back of his head, and he went flat, world spinning.

  He didn’t know how long he was out, seconds or minutes, but then he was back on his feet, sword bloody, staggering toward that knoll. Someone was stabbing at him with a spear, and he cut the spearhead away, killed that man.

  There were three corpses in front of him, all three members of his section.

  A man was standing over them in Roche uniform. Hal killed him, stumbled on.

  There was a ditch, and he went down, sprawled face-first, hearing the whine of bolts above him.

  A man jumped down, breathing hard, started to stab Hal, saw he wore the same uniform, clambered out and a spear took him in the shoulder. He spun, and another spear went into the back of his neck.

  A Roche soldier ran up, not seeing Hal, and Hal’s sword took him in the armpit.

  There was blood, there was screaming, loud, dying away, and Hal was down in the dust, seeing the Roche heavy cavalry ride past him, back toward their lines, the crossbowmen who’d closed the trap trotting beside them, prodding a few prisoners ahead of them.

  Then there was nothing but the sound of men dying.

  Hal got back up, waiting to be killed. But there was no one on the field except the dead, dying and desperately wounded.

  There was no sign of the promised Sagene heavy cavalry.

  Hal considered his injuries. A slash across the back, no more than painful, but bloody enough to have made him look dead, lying in the ditch. An arrow stub stuck out of his upper thigh, and he pushed it through, snapped the arrowhead off. He almost fainted, then pulled the shaft free and tied up the bloody wound with his torn tunic. He was bruised here and there, but felt no broken bones.

  He should have gone back to his own lines before the vultures and thieves came.

  But he stopped, seeing a man who’d followed his orders, down in death.

  A strange fascination came, and he wandered the battlefield, finding one, another, others of his section, all dead.

  He saw the body of Lord Canista, half a dozen armored Roche sprawled around him.

  A dozen yards away was the body of Sir Kinnear, lying back to back with the Sagene knight who’d challenged him. They, too, had taken their share and more with them.

  Time blurred, and it was late afternoon, almost twilight.

  He was kneeling beside the body of Jarth Ordinay, who was sprawled on his back, his dagger in the chest of one of the three men who’d died killing him.

  Ordinay’s face had a quiet, peaceful smile. The lines of premature aging were gone, and he looked the boy he’d been when the army took him.

  Hal nodded solemnly, as if Ordinay had told him something, got up, and started back the way he’d come.

  Somewhere he found a horse, a bloody slash along its neck, pulled himself into the saddle, and rode slowly back toward safety.

  All dead, he mourned. All gone. All dead.

  His mind wryly told him, now you can go ride the king’s damned dragons if you want, can’t you?

  The hulk’s sails caught the southerly wind, fair for Deraine, a dim line on the horizon. The ship plunged in the swell, yards clattering and sailors scurrying about.

  Hal paid little attention to the bustle, eyes on Paestum’s harbor they were sailing out of, and the distant border of Roche to his left.

  He would be back, though, as a dragon flier.

  Back, with a hard vengeance to take.

  9

  Deraine’s capital, Rozen, had he been in another frame of mind, could have angered Hal Kailas. There were no buildings shattered by catapult stones, empty store-fronts, shops with only one or two items for sale.

  Deraine could almost have been a country at peace.

  Almost.

  But here was a column of uniformed recruits being chivvied along by a pair of shouting warrants; there another formation of trained soldiers, grim-faced under steel helms and laden with weaponry, and there were far fewer young men to be seen on the streets and in the cafes than in peacetime. Here was a knot of women wearing mourning bands, there other women an
d children scanning the posted list of those killed or wounded across the Straits.

  Small patrols of warders, half civilian, half military, swept the streets.

  Kailas paid them no mind, his orders secure in a belt pouch, his mind on other things, specifically the cup of iced custard he was wolfing.

  He grinned. The hardened warrior, home at last, was supposed to head for the closest taproom and drink himself senseless on his favorite brew.

  Kailas, who’d never thought himself much of a milk drinker, had developed a lust for the rich, cream-heavy Deraine liquid, despising the thin, frequently watered whey of Sagene. He’d had three big glasses, and was topping them off with this custard, flavored with cloves and cinnamon.

  Kailas also thought of the other requirement of the homecoming soldier—a lovely girl under his arm, or at least a popsy.

  He had no one.

  Hal turned his mind away from loneliness, headed for the address he was supposed to report to.

  Rozen was a city that had cheerfully “just grown” at the confluence of two rivers. The only coherency it had managed was the result of three fires four hundred years earlier. Then there’d been great architects, working under the king’s close supervision, intending to build a city of splendor, the marvel of the world.

  There were those great palaces and monuments, but two streets away might be a slum or a silversmith’s street or even a knacker’s yard.

  Hal had been in Rozen twice, before he joined Athelny’s circus, and hated it both times, feeling alone and forgotten—which he had been.

  Now, an equally faceless figure in battered half-armor, sword-belt tied around his meager roll of belongings, he felt quite at home in the great city.

  He felt as if he were watching a camera obscura, arranged for his solitary pleasure. Kailas felt outside this city’s life, but it wasn’t unpleasant at all.

  He’d been offered leave after the destruction of his regiment, and had thought about it, but there was no one for him to go to. He had no desire to return to the tiny village he’d come from, nor any desire to visit his parents, and so he asked for orders to his next duty assignment.

  He wondered if soldiering had changed his outlook from the other times he’d been in the capital. Perhaps he’d seen enough people die young and violently to not mind being an outsider. He decided to give the matter a bit more thought, perhaps over a pint, later, after he’d reported in.

  His orders read for him to report to the Main Guildhall, which seemed odd, until he entered the huge building. It had been commandeered by the army, and now was a shouting bustle of recruiting booths.

  It was near chaos: a warrant brayed about the virtues of the dragoons, a clerk talked quietly of the safety of the quartermaster corps, an archer chanted about his elite regiment. Other warrants shouted how smart Lord such-and-so’s Light Infantry uniforms were, or how Sir whatever would not only outfit a recruit, but send money to his family. Every branch of the service was represented, from chiurgeons to an arrogant-looking pair of magicians to a brawny farrier to a pair of jolly teamsters. There was even a scattering of women, raising nursing, transport, support units.

  Most of them had at least one, frequently more, recruits weighing the virtues and dangers of a corps.

  Except for one, a stony-faced, leathery-looking serjeant, lean as death, wearing the coronet of a troop warrant over his two stripes.

  Behind him, tacked to the wall, was a poster-size version of the leaflet Lord Canista had shown Hal a month ago, announcing the formation of dragon flights.

  Civilians prospecting the various booths would look at the warrant, then at the poster, and hasten onward. Evidently dragon flying was thought an advanced form of suicide.

  Hal walked up to the man, saluted.

  “I’m one of yours, Serjeant.” He passed the orders from his corps commander across.

  “Fine,” the man said, lowering the parchment. “M’name’s Ivo Te. I was starting to think I’ve got plague.”

  Hal didn’t answer. Te looked him over hard.

  “You appear to have been rode hard and put away wet, young Serjeant.”

  “Polishing rags aren’t easy to find in Sagene,” Hal said.

  “Don’t I know it,” Te said. “Until two months ago, I was top warrant with Eighth Heavy Cavalry.”

  “I was Third Light. We scouted for you a few times.”

  “You did,” Te said. “I heard about your disaster. But it’s nice to have someone else along who knows which end of a sword gets sharpened.”

  “There are others?”

  “There are others,” Te said grimly. “And, with one or two exceptions, a bigger lot of shitepokes, crap merchants, layabouts and deeks I’ve never met before.”

  Hal grinned. “That good?”

  Te sighed. “It’s going to be a long war, lad. A long war indeed.”

  The recruits for dragon school were housed in an inn not far from Guildhall. Hal had little time to assess them before a dozen wagons arrived and, under a steady storm of cursing by Serjeant Te, the forty prospective fliers and their dunnage were loaded aboard and the wagons creaked away for the secret training grounds, somewhere beyond the capital.

  The base sat close to a forbiddingly high cliff, on Deraine’s west coast. Below, gray surf boomed uninvitingly.

  “Be a good place for a morning bath after a good, healthy run,” Serjeant Te said briskly, and was glowered at all around.

  Before the war, the base had been a religious retreat, gray-stone main buildings and cottages scattered about the huge estate. Hal saw at once why the retreat had been taken over—the religious types must have worshipped a horse god, or else their benefactors were of the galloping set. There were huge barns and corrals, and what must have been a race course at one time, now being leveled by teams of oxen towing rollers back and forth.

  “Where are our dragons?” a very young, very redheaded, very confident woman asked.

  “Not here yet, and that’ll be Serjeant to you,” Te growled.

  “Then wot the ’ells will we do, waitin’? Play wi’ ourselves?” a man who could have been the young brother of Hal’s cocky second, Jarth Ordinay, asked, cheekily.

  “The Lord Spense will find work for you,” Te said. “For all of us.”

  Hal noted, with a sinking feeling, the serjeant’s face didn’t look pleased.

  Te had good reason.

  This was only the second dragon flying class held here at Seabreak—three more schools around Deraine were also training dragon flights.

  Hal asked how the first class had managed, if the school didn’t have any dragons, and was told they’d taken their monsters with them to Sagene, just as his class would . . . when the dragons materialized.

  The trainees were detailed off to the four-person huts by shouting warrants. One, a Serjeant Patrice, saw Hal’s evident status as a combat veteran, but, unlike Te, didn’t appear to like it, and chose Kailas for special attention, which meant more close-range shouting than for others.

  Hal had learned, trying to sleep in the rain, to put his mind elsewhere, generally soaring with dragons, so it was easy to ignore Patrice.

  The huts spread out in four rows, each in a different compass heading, meeting at a common assembly area.

  Hal managed to get one as far from the assembly field as possible, knowing which huts would likely be chosen for details by the warrants.

  He did manage a minute with Serjeant Te, and requested the diminutive Farren Mariah, and “anybody else you think livable” for hutmates.

  The other two were Ev Larnell, a haunted-looking, thin man a couple of years younger than Kailas, and Rai Garadice, a cheerful, muscled youth the same age as Hal, whose name sounded familiar to Hal.

  The thirteen women on the course had their own huts, interspersed with the men’s. No one, at least so far, slept anywhere but in the hut assigned him or her. There hadn’t been any regulations read out about sex, but everyone automatically sensed it was against the rules. It
had to be, since it felt good.

  The huts were single open rooms, twenty feet on a side, and there was a wooden bunk and a large open hanging closet for each student. In the center of the room was a stove, which would be welcome as fall became winter, and a wash basin near the door.

  Studded amid the huts were privies, with a long door at the rear, and half barrels to catch the waste. Patrice had told them his favorite detail was telling someone to jockey a wagon down the rows, collecting the barrel’s contents. All this was said with Patrice’s usual expression, an utterly humorless tight smile the trainees found strangely annoying.

  They were allowed half an hour to unpack their gear, then fallen back out. Hal had a few moments to consider a few of the other trainees: the confident, redheaded woman, Saslic Dinapur; a stocky loud man named Vad Feccia; and an arrogant man named Brant Calabar, Sir Brant Calabar he was careful to let everyone know. He reminded Hal of his old enemy as a boy, Nanpean Tregony.

  Then they were pushed into formation, the experienced soldiers already knowing the drill, the civilians becoming quick studies of the others, for an address by the school’s commanding officer.

  “This is not my first school command,” Lord Pers Spense said. “I’ve taught at His Majesty’s Horse Guards, and was chosen to be Master of the Ring; and half a dozen crack regiments had me as their guest instructor before the war.

  “I know little of this dragon flying you men—and women,” he added hastily, “are about to attempt, but doubt me that it can be that different from riding any beast, except that you will be high in the skies.”

  Spense was red-faced, probably balding under the dress helm he wore over a very flashy uniform Hal couldn’t identify, but knew it wouldn’t last beyond the first archer on the battleground. He was most stocky, hardly appearing to be anyone who was the first to push back from the dinner table.

  Spense slapped a riding crop against his highly polished thigh boots.

  “Therefore, we shall begin training all of you in what I call the School of the Soldier.