The Last Battle

by Chris Bunch

  Again, Kailas visited Yasin, with his linen roll.

  T…W…O…D…A…Y…S…B…E… R… E… A… D… Y.

  Yasin's lips moved in and out, and Hal noticed that he had developed a twitch at the corner of his mouth.

  Contrary to what some morons have said, the prospect of being hanged does not concentrate the mind, but rather shatters the ability to concentrate.

  Hal wriggled in the predawn chill.

  The Adventurer had pushed away from the dock before dawn, swung round, and, under a reefed mainsail, tacked clumsily down-canal toward the sea.

  The story was that the ship was to be put out to sea for reballasting, since its master disliked the way it had tacked on the voyage south, and would return later in the day.

  Now the sun was well up, and they were following Hal's simple plan exactly.

  Just coming up were the two moles at the canal's mouth. The Adventurer's master steered the ship around the jetty, and the bows lifted, meeting the first waves from the open sea.

  The Adventurer sailed due south until it was out of sight of land, in case anyone on the moles might be watching.

  It was good to be awake, to have hastily grabbed some cold cheese and ham on a roll, a glass of tea, and stumbled on deck to make sure Storm had been fed an hour earlier, and was ready to fly.

  It was good… like in the war.

  That was an odd, sudden thought.

  Hal jolted, but there was no time for wondering about one's thoughts. He put it away for later, and led Storm down the ramp from the ship to the barge.

  He climbed into the double saddle, and Storm quivered, then, at Kailas's rein-tap, staggered forward, wings at full stretch, and striking downward, and again, and the dragon was airborne.

  Hal pulled up, and Storm reached for the skies.

  Well, he thought, maybe Farren was missing something. There was a certain majesty to dragon flight. Especially with action in the offing.

  He glanced back.

  The other dragons were on the Adventurer's deck, and one was being led down to the barge.

  The monsters would take off within the hour.

  Storm climbed high, until the ship was a dot.

  There was no need to hurry, for the dragon to strain.

  It lacked an hour of midday when Hal turned Storm back toward land.

  He thought, at this height, he might fly unnoticed, as perhaps a wild dragon.

  He followed the canal's winding, saw Frechin below him, and, on the cliffs above the city, the fortress-prison.

  He put Storm in a circling descent, orbiting down, just over the fortress.

  Dots appeared, grew, became prisoners in the courtyard, just as on other days.

  There were other dots, alert warders on the catwalks. Hal made a face. He'd hoped to find them dozing after the noon meal, should have known that someone like Rospen wouldn't tolerate slackers.

  One of the warders glanced up, saw Storm, and yelped in surprise.

  Hal could have shot him down, but he wanted the escape to be, if possible, without casualties. If a Sagene guard died, all of the rescuers might face the gallows if captured.

  He scanned the prisoners in the yard. Most were running for shelter—Storm was only about fifty feet above them. One stood in the middle of the courtyard, holding his hands clasped above his head.

  Yasin.

  An arrow whispered past Kailas, but not close enough to worry about.

  Storm flared his huge wings, and thudded down on the bricks of the yard. Yasin was running toward him, and two more arrows clacked near him.

  Too close.

  Yasin pulled himself up behind Hal, who gigged Storm into his staggering takeoff run.

  Three other dragons swept down, flying close to the battlements, as Storm's wings flapped, and he was in the air.

  The dragons dove and swooped around the fortress, like angry monstrous swallows, their heads darting at warders diving for cover, their tails lashing.

  Hal thought of so many crows, savaging an owl.

  Another couple of arrows clattered off the dragon's plating, and they were above the castle.

  Hal grabbed the trumpet hung on a hook bolted to the dragon's carapace, blatted twice.

  Then he turned west, in what was a transparent attempt to delude the Sagene that these four dragons had nothing to do with the four dragons seen above the Derainian ship that had just sailed.

  The plan was that when they reached the Galgorm, they would sail on south, into the depths of the Southern Sea, before turning west. If they stayed well clear of land, they should be able to reach the great ocean, then turn north to Deraine without being caught.

  There might be a stink from Sagene's Council of Barons later, but Hal knew King Asir would hardly turn his Dragonmaster over to them.

  Of course, it would be some years, if ever, before Hal could use the apartment he and Khiri had bought during the war in Sagene's capital, Fovant.

  But what of that? It had really been Khiri's from the first.

  He turned his mind away from that, looked over his shoulder.

  Yasin, a grin stapled on his face, clung to his back.

  "I owe you a great debt," he said.

  "Godsdamned right," Hal agreed.

  "What next?"

  "Next, we get back to my ship."

  Hal brought Storm to a southerly heading, the line of the canal barely visible to the east; he used it to find the ocean.

  Bodrugan had replicated a spell his master, Limingo, had cast years ago, that acted as a sort of compass to find a ship.

  Hal whispered the words, touching the dragon emblem he still wore around his neck:

  Beef of old

  Covered with mold

  We shun thee yet

  Your odor set

  We turn away

  Our stomachs at bay

  Protect us all

  From your horrid pall.

  The spell had been cast around the salt beef all ships carried as a staple, and which most sailors and all landsmen detested.

  Instantly, Hal felt a dislike for a certain direction. There would lie the Adventurer—and its barrels of beef.

  The aversion was very strong. Hal frowned, then guessed it was his stomach, for he had not eaten any salt beef, thank the heavens, since the war had ended.

  "It's nice to be in the air again," Yasin shouted. "Especially without a rope holding me up."

  "Very funny," Hal said. "But you're repeating yourself. Now shut up and look for our ship."

  "Which will be?"

  "The only one around, I hope."

  A few moments passed. Hal looked back, and made sure the other four were close behind him.

  Yasin jabbed him in the ribs.

  "Sail ho, or whatever sailors say," he said. Then, a little worriedly, "In fact, two sails ho."

  Hal swung forward.

  There were, indeed, two ships, dark dots, ahead. And they were fairly close together, certainly enough for them to have line of sight on the other.

  "I guess one is yours," Yasin said. "But the other…" He broke off. "I don't have a glass," he said. "But I think the other is a Sagene patrol ship. We saw it often enough bringing supplies out of Frechin."

  "Son of a bitch!" Hal swore.

  This part of the rescue, after the actual lifting of Yasin from the prison, had always been the weak link. He knew the thin story about reballasting wouldn't last beyond the sight of the dragons over the prison walls.

  If the Galgorm was captured, Sagene's wrath might fall on the sailors, even though the main villains had escaped.

  He'd made arrangements for bond money for both the ship and the crew with Sir Jabish Attecoti, and for Bodrugan and the captain to take charge of the vessel if Hal wasn't aboard.

  He knew their problems would be worse if Yasin and the dragons were captured with them, and had told Bodrugan the dragon force would try to evade if they saw the Galgorm was in trouble. He had also ordered the magician to claim utter ignorance
of his plans.

  But he'd assumed the worst case would be capture after they'd had a chance to land and change to fresh dragons.

  As it was…

  Hal blew a warning note to the others behind him, pointed down at the two ships.

  He turned Storm east, toward where he'd seen, on the ship's charts, small islands.

  He reached in a pouch, took out a compass, thought quickly, and devised a heading.

  "Look!" Yasin said, pointing again.

  Smoke, no, fog was billowing up and around the Adventurer. It must be a spell, cast by Bodrugan. A second incantation, a standard confusion casting, drifted up to him.

  The Galgorm Adventurer might have been a pig, far slower than the coastal patrol ship.

  But perhaps magic could save it.

  There was nothing Hal could do.

  * * *

  Just when Hal was starting to worry about missing the islands, and being forced to turn toward Sagene, and Storm was starting to tire, they saw them, a pair of dots ahead.

  Hal brought his flight in over the islands, saw no sign of habitation, and landed on a rocky plateau.

  All of the dragons were trained to a rein tie, and stamped about, panting hard, as their riders, grim and worried, came up to Hal.

  "And so this is the ringy-dingy prize?" Farren said. "Doesn't look as if he's been starvin' from worry."

  Yasin ignored him.

  "I guess," Cabet said, "our best chance will be to wait, then use our spell to head back for the Adventurer, although I like that but little."

  Calt, very definitely the junior man, said nothing.

  "That's not a goer," Farren said. "M' beastie's sore tired, and needs watering and a rest."

  Calt nodded.

  Hal knew Storm could fly on, but he would be on his reserves.

  "I don't think that's best," he said slowly. "I'm afraid we have to go back to Sagene, raid a village or a big farm, then figure what to do next."

  "I know where we can go," Yasin said. "There's a big estate we used to resupply from not far from Frechin. That's the bastard who betrayed us.

  "He could do with a bit of a lesson."

  "Not from us," Hal said. "We're in enough trouble as it is."

  Yasin nodded reluctantly.

  "But we can buy supplies from him, perhaps. Or requi-sition them, at any rate," Hal went on. "And we'll be gone before the alarm can spread."

  "To where?" Farren said. "We can't go araidin' hither and thither as we go northward, a song in our hearts and a smile on our lips, and hope to get home or even to Paestum without attracting a scowl and a chase.

  "I don't think we're the only dragons to be flying over Sagene, and we'll be pursued."

  "You're not," Yasin said. "Their Council of Barons still maintains a border watch in the skies. I learned that the hard way."

  "And we can't go looking for the Adventurer," Hal said. "We don't know if it escaped, or if it's in the hands of… of Sagene."

  He'd almost said 'the enemy.'

  "It seems quite obvious," Yasin said, an ironic smile on his lips. "The only safety we've got is to fly farther east, into Roche."

  6

  They flew northeast, back toward Sagene, and made landfall some distance away from Frechin. They flew about a mile inland and turned due east, Hal following Yasin's instructions.

  They grounded where Yasin said to land, in the middle of the palatial estate that Yasin claimed he'd been betrayed at.

  Hal and Cabet went to the main house. Yasin grumbled, and wanted to come with them, to wreak a bit of vengeance. Hal flatly said no, and he would have Mariah sit on him if he kept arguing.

  The property's owner was supposedly in Fovant, they were told. But the rather nervous majordomo sold them beeves on the hoof, wine, bread, and preserved meats, after hearing the story that the dragons were part of a Sagene border sweep.

  The four withdrew to a grove some distance from the estate houses, ate, and relaxed. Being former soldiers, they could lie at ease, unworried, with unsheathed swords at their sides, as long as their enemies weren't in sight.

  "Now what will we do?" Calt Beoyard wondered.

  "As I said, push across the border," Yasin said. "Make for my lands. My family may not be as rich as we were before the war, but there'll always be food and shelter for men I owe my life to."

  "Damned well better be," Mariah muttered somewhat darkly.

  Yasin stared at him, and Hal saw the stocky man brace for a fight.

  Farren Mariah thought about it, then shook his head.

  "Naah," he said. "The Dragonmaster said we were to be friends, and that names it."

  After an hour's rest, they flew on, toward Roche.

  They passed over the ravaged border into Roche near dusk.

  Hal thought, wryly, that if anyone had told him, three years before, he'd feel relief at being in Roche, he would have damned that person not only as a false prophet, but a total fool as well.

  "Fly east by northeast," Yasin shouted.

  Hal turned Storm in that direction.

  Near dark, they approached a small town, little more than a village.

  "That's Anderida. We can land there," Yasin shouted. "My family is well-known."

  Hal, not quite trusting Yasin, especially in Roche, made a few orbits before looking for a place to set down.

  Anderida appeared quite untouched by the war, and by the civil disorders afterward.

  Outside the town were armed horsemen, riding in pairs. One pointed to the sky, then galloped into the town center, where Hal lost sight of him.

  Yasin told Kailas to land in the grassy square in the middle of town.

  Hal chose an open field on the outskirts, and brought Storm in.

  A crowd gathered.

  Hal noticed some of them were armed, although they tried to keep their weapons hidden.

  Kailas cocked his crossbow, letting a bolt drop down in the trough.

  "You won't need that," Yasin said.

  Hal didn't believe him. Nor did he disbelieve him.

  He kept the crossbow hidden behind Storm's carapace.

  The other fliers landed after Storm.

  A rather fat man came into the meadow, holding up his empty hands.

  "Greetings, strangers." He didn't sound very friendly.

  "And greetings to you," Yasin said. "I am Ky Bayle Yasin."

  There were shouts from the crowd, of welcome and cheers.

  "I… I greet you, Ky Yasin," the fat man said. "But we heard you were in… well, desperate straits."

  "I was," Yasin said. His command-trained voice, unraised, carried well. "These men… Derainians… rescued me from a Sagene death cell."

  Now there were real cheers. The crowd got bigger, weapons forgotten.

  "Then we greet and welcome them, as well," the fat man said. "I am the Town Leader, chosen after your last visit here, during the war, and am named Gavat. All that Anderida has is yours… and theirs."

  Yasin turned back to Hal.

  "You see? Now we own the city. As we shall own the whole of Roche."

  Hal didn't know about the whole of Roche, but Anderida took the occasion to have a holiday.

  They were given rooms at the best inn in town—there were only three—and payment was horrifiedly refused.

  The dragons were put up in the stables behind the inn. The horses there were unceremoniously rousted.

  Any time one of the dragon riders peered out of the window, he was cheered.

  They found that embarrassing.

  They washed, and went to the taproom for a beer, and then were escorted into the dining room.

  The fare was sumptuous.

  It began with raw oysters, brought down the River Pettau, past the ruins of Lanzi. Someone said something about the problem they were having "up north" with barbarian raiders coming in from the east, and that if Lanzi still stood, patrols would have kept them away.

  Hal, who'd been responsible for the total destruction of Lanzi, looked innocen
t. Mariah, who'd also been on the raids, as had Cabet, wasn't nearly so successful.

  Yasin asked about Anderida's seeming peacefulness.

  Gavat, who was serving as feast-master, nodded.

  "Peaceful now, yes," he said. "But not before. There were landless men come on us, and… and there was an outrage. An old man was taken prisoner, and his feet held against his own stove, until he told them where his gold had been kept.

  "The men fled, after killing their captive.

  "But we have a witch, and she sought and found them.

  "They were brought back here, and hanged on a gibbet in the square.

  "After that, we had our young men—those who'd survived the war—ride guardian around the town's borders, as they ride now.

  "Twice, lawless men tried to enter the town, and were driven off. We put their heads on stakes on the roads approaching the town, and since then have had no further problems.

  "Not like what we hear from the cities. Merchants, who now travel in convoys, well armed, have told us of the disaster Roche has fallen into since Carcaor was brought down in ruins and Queen Norcia set aside.

  "Fortunately, we need little from the outside.

  "But this is hardly a subject for a feasting's conversation," he said. "Try these pasties. But save room. The meal has scarce begun."

  The pasties held caviar, also from the north, with soured cream atop them.

  Small game birds, stuffed with an exotic fungus and goose liver, came next.

  Coins of beef, with fungus atop them, in a rich wine sauce followed.

  Hal was starting to founder.

  He made it through the fruit souffle, but caved in before the salad, the cheeses, and the dessert.

  Some of his faltering came from the foaming dark wine that was served in profusion.

  Some more of it came from his servitor.

  Anderida banquet custom evidently dictated that each guest have his own attendant.

  Hal's was named Brythnoth. She was nineteen, she had white-blond hair that Hal thought might be real, a round face, and slender body. She also had a soft contralto voice, and firm breasts exposed in a diaphanous loose blouse.

  She seemed to think that he was the most fascinating man who'd ever lived, with the possible exception of Yasin, who'd been a family hero during the war, and whose portrait had hung next to the family gods, she said.