The Dark Defiles

by Richard K. Morgan

  Now it was the beast’s turn to scream.

  Shrill and deafening—in this close, it was like tiny knives slicing deep in his head. He’d seen men drop arms and shields in the midst of battle, clap hands fast to their ears, trying to shut out that awful shriek. He gritted his teeth and gouged with the lance, felt the blade shift downward as it sliced through the dragon’s flesh. The haunch spasmed and lifted, the beast lashed out with its rear leg, trying to kick loose the source of the pain. It took the Dragonbane up into the air; he hung on with both hands, and the Kiriath edge on his lance blade tore a long line right down the dragon’s thigh and out. It dropped him back to his feet again, set him stumbling backward in surprise. Thick, crimson gore on the blade, dripping—a dark cheer rose in him at the sight. Now that’s a fucking blade, Eg!

  Now move!

  The dragon screamed again and whipped its tail sideways. Instinct snapped him down in a crouch; he ducked and heard the blow strop through the air overhead. Swung up behind the tail swipe and leapt in close again. For brief seconds, he had the creature blindsided. The vital truth of combat against dragons, Gil had once read to him, from some treatise or other he was scribbling at the time—proximity is your friend. Cuddle up close; it’s the one safe place to be. Safe being a relative term. All right then, Gil. He hacked with the lance, tore into the dragon’s hindquarters where the tail thickened to join the body. The scales were softer there, he knew, and the Kiriath blade went through them with no more effort than cutting cloth. He tore the steel loose, reversed the lance’s shaft, gouged again with the other blade.

  Loud blurting noise, the soft clump of things falling amid the rubble, and a sudden faint mist around him as the dragon shat itself—he coughed and gagged on the reek, locked up his throat and stumbled to get out of the way. Dragon dung was pretty corrosive when fresh; even the accompanying gas wouldn’t do you a lot of good if you inhaled too much of it. So let’s not do that, Eg. He tried to sprint up the huge scaled flank toward the head and crest, but the creature was turning too rapidly, spinning in its own tracks, stomping and shrilling and lashing out. A glancing blow from the rear limb on that side knocked him flat. He hit the rubble, bit the inside of his cheek almost through with the impact—blood squirted and ran in his mouth, he spat it out, no time, no fucking time for this, Dragonbane. Get up!

  He shoved himself hastily back to his feet, staff lance at guard across his body, saw the head of the beast come snaking around and down, crest flexed and flaring, one gleaming green eye fixed in a reptile glare behind the thicket of protecting spines …

  And there, suddenly, was Alwar Nash—in at the dragon’s planted forelimb, shield raised, sword chopping solidly down. Egar saw the blade bite and slice, saw the dragon jerk its claw upward in shock, saw Nash dodge back in nifty zigzag fashion, not bad, not bad at all, young man. Might make a dragon-slayer of you yet. Egar was already straight back in, grabbing the chance while it lasted, while the beast was distracted. He leapt for where the forelimb would hit as it came back down, had the staff lance up and poised to hack at the rear tendon where it cabled thickly from elbow joint to heel. Kiriath steel—the blade was going to slice right through that shit, hamstring the beast at the front end in a single blow—

  It didn’t happen that way.

  Somehow, the dragon knew he was there. It arched and coiled, backed up at whiplash speed, batted at him with the injured forelimb like a cat at play. It caught him full on—he felt the talons rip through his clothing and the flesh beneath, felt the blow hurl him aside like a chewed bone. He hit hard, dull crunch as more than one rib fractured from the force of it, and he smashed his left hand against ragged stone. His little finger caught and snapped, agony stabbed through his hand and up his arm, he lost his grip on the staff lance. The dragon shrilled above him; he breathed the stink of sandalwood and scorching. Scrabbled desperately to get up. He made it halfway, but there was something wrong with his leg. He squirmed on the uneven ground, the clawed forelimb smashed down. Rubble shattered apart beside him, flying fragments of stonework stung his cheek.

  “Egar!”

  Archeth’s voice.

  He lifted his head muzzily, turned toward the sound, saw her there fifty feet away. Knives out in either hand, apparently looking to fucking throw them at this roaring, trampling, coiling storm of scale and rage. Kanan Shent crouched in front of her, shield up—yeah, like that’s going to do any fucking good—battle-ax raised. The dragon’s head swung toward them, then swung further as Alwar Nash charged in past them, broadsword swinging, a wordless yell let loose …

  The dragon coughed.

  Jaws agape. Almost like it was laughing at them.

  The gob of venom spat glistening from its throat, met Nash halfway, splattered him from head to foot. The Throne Eternal screamed, a single high-pitched, wrenched shriek of agony, and then he went down in smoking ruin.

  Staff lance—there under the groping fingers of his right hand.

  The dragon trod forward, clawed savagely at Nash’s smoldering remains, shrieking in fury. Egar snarled a grin. He’d seen this before, he knew what it meant. Rage instinct—they’d pissed the beast off. It was no longer thinking straight. Should make things a little easier …

  On your feet, Dragonbane.

  Archeth and Shent over there—gaping disbelief. They were next, if they didn’t snap out of it and fucking move. But horror held them locked in place.

  Get up! Get up, and kill this fucking thing, Eg. It’s what you do.

  He gripped with his right hand, dug one end of the staff lance into the ground. Levered himself upright, got to his knees. Laid his left arm over his right and stared at his mangled left paw. The little finger stuck up bluntly from the curve of his hand. Can’t have that, can we? He leaned in against the lance shaft, freed his right hand for a moment and snapped the finger back down. Ouch. Something wrong with his vision. Oh yeah—blood running down his face again, it was getting in his eye. He grabbed on to the staff lance again, cuffed the back of his fixed hand clumsily across his brow and then his eye. The blur in his vision wiped clean.

  That’s more like it.

  Low snarling in his throat now as he tried to rise. He leaned hard, came upright, wavering on his feet. His left hand flared agony where he gripped the shaft of the lance. His left leg dragged. The dragon was a good thirty yards off, still clawing what was left of Nash into the ground. He didn’t think he could stagger that far before it lost interest in the Throne Eternal’s shredded corpse, and looked around for something else to tear apart …

  Stones.

  Raining down from the façade of the ruin above them. Stones and strained, discordant yelling.

  He blinked muzzily upward. Saw forms and faces at windows and gaps in the stonework. The rest of his men were up there, roaring abuse, hurling down whatever projectiles they could find. Some of them, he knew, were equipped with newly made crossbows from the Warhelm’s armory. He saw the dragon pause in its clawing rage, tilt and turn to meet the sudden stone downpour, raise one forelimb in a peculiarly human shielding gesture.

  He saw the moment for what it offered. Grasped it.

  “Archeth!” Bellowing across the gap between them. “Get out of there!”

  She flinched, looked at him. Grabbed Shent by the shoulder and pointed. Sprinted flat out.

  Toward him.

  “N—” The cry died in his throat. He saw the dragon coil massively, rapidly about.

  Saw it grin.

  Rain of stones forgotten, ignored and left for later. Perhaps it caught the flicker of motion as Archeth and the Throne Eternal ran, perhaps it just heard him yell. Perhaps, inside that giant spined cranium, rage ebbed just enough to let whatever cold reptile intelligence normally governed there take the helm again and remember what it was about.

  Perhaps not. He’d never know.

  He knew it was going to turn Archeth and Shent into smoldering chunks of meat, dead before they fell. He took his desperation, the pain flaring across his
body, crammed the whole lot into his throat and lungs, hooked back his head and screamed.

  “Dragon Bane!”

  The dragon’s focus must have slipped. It spat and missed. Venom splattered across masonry a couple of yards left and wide of where Archeth’s feet had just been. Impact splash got Shent, he stumbled and went down yelling. Archeth, almost to where Egar stood by now, spun about. The dragon’s jaws snapped shut with a hollow sound that echoed off the ruin’s walls. It jerked its head and snout backward, for all the world like some suddenly perplexed giant dog. Archeth ducked back to where Shent lay screaming. The dragon leapt forward—an awful, snaking grace to the motion—landed crouched on all fours, looming over Archeth as she tried to drag a flailing Kanan Shent back to his feet. The gigantic head tilted, birdlike, as if trying to get a better look at the two tiny figures it was about to annihilate. Then it drooped low and the jaws gaped open.

  Egar crashed in from the side, sliced through the forelimb tendon with a single blow from the staff lance blade. Drenching flurry of reptile blood, and the dragon shrieked. The wounded limb snapped up protectively against its belly. The Dragonbane got in underneath the drooping head. Found the throat.

  “You die, motherfucker!”

  He hacked upward, left-handed, screaming at the pain from his grip. Sliced through the soft scaling, ripped into the throat, gouged out a long, levering wound. Venom from the tubes and chambers within spilled down, mingled with the dragon’s blood, splattered over him. He reversed the lance fast, before he could feel that shit eat into him, before he could scream. Struck hard upward, with his good right hand now, no pain, no fucking pain, Dragonbane, that’s not pain …

  “You! Die!”

  Tore out the rest of the dragon’s throat.

  Felt it all come down on him, felt the pain come searing.

  Felt how it dropped him to his knees, choked the breath in his chest, drove him backward from himself.

  Thought he heard his father’s voice calling, faintly in the roaring dark.

  And—tilting downward now—saw through dimming vision how the rubble he knelt on came barreling up at his face.

  He never felt it hit.

  BOOK III

  Last Man Standing

  For it is the Mark of a Hero, that Loss leaves no Lasting Scar upon him, that he rejoices in the Glory of Great Deeds done, no Matter the Price that must be paid or the Hard Road taken. Of such Sinew are the Holy Defenders of Empire made, and we give Thanks for our Great Fortune that they have walked among us …

  The Grand Chronicle of Yhelteth

  Court bard edition

  CHAPTER 44

  umor ran in the slum streets of Trelayne like sewage in the gutters, mingled and colorful in its contents, but mostly shit. Heightened by the tension of wartime nerves, imaginings among the citizenry slipped the common bounds of reason. Gleaned facts were twisted out of all recognition by each tongue that passed them on, fiction was drafted in wholesale where truth would not suffice. Simple narrative gained the grandeur of myth in less time than it took the increasingly stormy day to darken down. By nightfall proper, the taverns were replete with legends in the making and their drink-cadging authors. Spellbound audiences hung on every ornate word.

  Hear, then, how the outlawed renegade, imperial lackey, and lately cursed dabbler in black magic Ringil—whom none should any longer call Eskiath so as not to sully that long-honored family name—was finally brought low, defeated and slain in battle at sea by a commission of inner-circle mage privateer captains invoking the long-lost powers of the Vanishing Folk. The Marsh Brotherhood, come lately to patriotic terms with the City Elders at the Chancellery, offered up sorceries only their kind had access to, all in service to the League forces. A cabal sworn to protect the Fair City in time of need stepped in, recruited and anointed the necessary men, gave them ships, and sent them out to do magical battle against the renegade and his encroaching imperial forces. And perhaps it was not just Aldrain power that Trelayne summoned in its hour of need, but the flesh-and-blood Vanishing Folk themselves—because dwenda have been seen, good gentlemen and ladies, seen by many in recent weeks, stalking the streets of the city by night, luminous and lithe and grim. Ask anyone, it is well known.

  And so, all along the northern coast of Gergis the night of the engagement against the imperials, lightning reached down from a storm out of the west, striking with harsh white fire into the heart of Aldrain stone circles on cliff tops and bluffs, stirring strange shadows from the hallowed turf within. At Melchiar point, out beyond the marsh, a bolt struck directly at the Widow’s Watch Stone and split it open from the top. And as the surf burst there in the bang and flash of light on the rocks below, there were those who claimed they’d seen merroigai, breaching and sounding in the chop of the waves like bathing maidens at play, seaweed draped wetly across their plump and comely naked breasts, tangled in their long, flowing locks of hair and …

  Thank you, kind sir, my thanks indeed. My throat is parched with the telling.

  Now—where was I?

  But if the black mage renegade was routed, it came at a grievous price. For in the moment that he was struck down—some said by a crossbow blessed in holy fire at Firfirdar’s temple in the Glades and fired across the space between ships by a Hinerion nobleman and great white mage named Klithren—the dark outcast invoked the last of his sorcerous strength and climbed the mainmast rigging, where he clung like some monstrous black bat entangled, and with his dying breath hurled a demonic curse upon his killers. Little enough was thought of it at the time; after all, what villain will not spit and curse when his hour has come around? But some few men among those who witnessed Ringil’s passing were heard to remark that they felt the cold touch of a shadow fall on them with the dying renegade’s words. And that same night, plague crept among the surviving vessels, walked the decks among the resting heroes like a wraith, touched each brave privateer without exception and laid them all low.

  Perhaps the infection emanated from the slain corpse of the renegade himself, brought home as trophy with tongue and eyes put out, and fingers struck off at the roots. Or perhaps it came on an evil wind from the south. Whatever the case, now the plague ships sit at anchor out beside the prison hulk fleet, easily seen from the southern wall for those who doubt my word, flying pennants of distress and in bitter exile from the Fair City that birthed their crews. Yes, under grim banners, Trelayne’s heroes of the high sea now lie stricken, and unhallowed magic, though defeated, has left its tragic black stain for all to see …

  The rain, m’dear? Sorcerous? Admirable imagination, truly, in one so fair and, uhm, unspoiled, if I may say so, by her dealings with the world. But I think not. The storm is unseasonal in its force, indeed—just listen to it! And damnably inconvenient, I must say, if it’s not eased by the time I must make my way to the poor garret where I lay my head some distance from here, if no closer, kinder shelter may be had, dear lady, by a poor wordsmith and romantic at heart.

  But sorcerous? A sorcerous rainstorm? Hardly.

  AMID WATERS SO LASHED BY THE DOWNPOUR THAT THEY SEEMED TO BOIL and steam in the fading evening light, the prison hulks slipped their chains one by one, rode the low swell, and were borne in toward Trelayne on no current Sharkmaster Wyr could ever remember pulling that way across the delta.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Ringil told him. “You’ll get where you’re going. Just concentrate on holding up your end once we get there.”

  Wyr looked bleakly up at him from where he was crouched at Sprayborne’s blunted prow, watching their progress. He was drenched to the skin, but seemed not to care. He held the ax-head pike in his arms almost like a nursing mother with an infant, and he drew a smooth, flat whetstone repeatedly down the long, curved edge of the blade. It made a harsh scraping sound on each stroke that he appeared to find soothing.

  “I’m a man of my word,” he said.

  The city came glimmering wetly at them through curtains of rain—harbor lights in marching sequenc
e along the sea walls and the wharfs that flanked the river mouth, the dim outline of buildings with lighted windows rising beyond. Somewhere further back in all that, the Chancellery squatted on the closest thing Trelayne owned to a hill, commanding views across the city to both the ocean and marsh. But those overlooking towers and their lights were lost altogether in the murk. Gil had called down the rain in preference to summoning a fog because he reckoned it would clear the streets for him, but he had to admit it shrouded things pretty well into the bargain. There’d be watchmen, of course, up on the harbor walls, but their visibility was going to be way down in this weather, and what they’d be watching for mostly, squinting against the lash of the rain when they could be bothered, was the loom of masts and sails, neither of which the prison hulks had to offer. By the time the low profile of their hulls drew attention, Gil was hoping it’d be too late for anything other than panic.

  His own ships, hanging back in the wake of the hulk fleet, could skulk in once the mess was made. Still flying their plague pennants, they’d likely cause almost as much dismay among the populace as the ghostly driven prison hulks that preceded them. And by then, the loosed prisoners would be on the rampage through Trelayne like soldiers given leave to sack.

  House Eskiath, your outlaw son is home.

  Light flickered low in his field of vision—the mast lantern on a fishing skiff caught out in the storm and struggling for haven. Sprayborne was on them before they could react, looming out of the swathes of rain, almost trampling them into the ocean under its bow. Ringil leaned hard over the rail and peered down, saw three pale faces staring back up at him as the hulk shouldered past. One of them looked to be not much older than a boy. Wide-eyed shock and accusation in the rain-whipped features, Gil caught the look and found himself hooked to it. Involuntarily, he swung around to watch as the skiff passed along Sprayborne’s waist, then fell away into the murk to stern, taking something with it he could not define. For a couple more moments, he could make out the agitated swing of the lantern light as the skiff rocked on the chop from the prison hulk’s passage. Then the storm came and took the last glimmer of light away in raging wind and rain.