City of the Lost l-1

by Mary H. Herbert

  The city wall on the northeast side of the Missing City was one of two large sections that had been rebuilt. Twenty feet high it stretched from the harbor seawall for nearly four miles around the Port District and well into the Northern District. It reached as far as the old North Gate and its two squat guard towers. For about one hundred yards, the wall extended beyond the North Gate where it came to an end in scaffolding, piles of rock, and heaps of sand for mortar. There was nothing left of the original wall beyond that but scattered stones and the old foundation, but since most of the Northern District had never been rebuilt, no one thought it necessary to rush into rebuilding the walls in that area. The other portion of wall had been-rebuilt from the southwestern side defending the Garden District and Iyesta’s Lair. The original idea had been to build the two sections of wall around the city and eventually join them on the northwest side, making the rough circle complete. Unfortunately, Thunder had surprised everyone.

  When Linsha finally worked her way to the North Gate, she found the defenders there in much the same state as the soldiers at the Legion Gate. They had suffered hard fighting with Thunder’s army and had fallen back to the Gate to recover. The worst of the wounded lay in makeshift shelters and were tended by townspeople and healers. Many of the walking wounded had returned to the city for rest and care, but a few sat where they could find shelter and waited for the next attack. Those who were still unhurt stood on the walls and kept watch on the distant enemy.

  The forces of the blue dragon had paused all along the line, whether to rest in the heat of the day, regroup for a new onslaught, or pause while Thunder instigated another part of his plan, no one was sure. They were just grateful for the respite.

  Lanther saw Linsha first as she came striding along the path that paralleled the wall. He jumped up from his resting place in the shade of an awning and limped to meet her.

  They surveyed each other from battered heads, down blood-stained clothes, to dusty boots and finally grinned at each other like two survivors who had found each other against hope.

  “You made it,” Lanther said. “I knew you would not stay in the safe house. Is that blood yours?”

  She glanced down her white linen shirt now smeared and filthy with blood, dirt, soot. “Only some of it.” She pointed a finger to the chain mail and the sword slung across her back. “Falaius allowed me into the Legion armory.”

  “He’s a good man,” Lanther said, taking her arm. “Come with me. I’ve got something to show you.”

  She fell into step beside him and felt his companionship slowly dissolve the ache she still felt from her dream. While she felt no desire for Lanther, she liked his company, and after the disastrous relationship with Ian, that’s all she wanted from any man she had met so far. Maybe her heart would thaw one day, but Linsha hoped it would not budge any time soon. Her choice of men had been less than advantageous, and with two of them it had proved almost fatal.

  “What’s happening in Mirage?” she heard Lanther say, and she had to shake herself to clear her muzzy mind.

  Quickly, she told him of the Brutes’ landing and how the streets of Mirage were now in their control. She described the fighting in the streets, between the buildings, and beside the city wall, and she told him as best she could of the Legionnaires who had fallen.

  When she finished, he rubbed a grimy hand over his eyes like a man who had seen too much that day. “I am glad to hear Falaius is still alive.” He paused then went on. “It’s similar to here. The militia set up outer defenses beyond the walls, hoping to drive off Thunder’s forces, but they’re stretched too thin. The enemy has driven us back to the walls. Out there, where there are no walls, they have penetrated the militia’s defenses in a number of places. If these Brutes continue their advance into the inner city and the dragon’s army pushes through from the north, the city is lost.”

  “You’re not including Thunder,” Linsha said. “Except for scaring the population half to death, starting a few fires, and destroying the Citadel, he has been leaving most of the work to the two armies.”

  “He has been busy nonetheless,” said Lanther, escorting her into the ground-floor room of the guard tower on her left.

  After the heat of the day’s sun, the dim, cool light of the round stone room was a welcome relief. Other people thought so, too, for the room was crowded with injured men and women sitting on the floor or at the tables usually used by the tower guards. A girl from a tavern nearby served ale to the defenders from a barrel donated by her father.

  Lanther worked his way through the crowd to a small narrow stair leading down to the lower level. The small room below the tower was mostly used for storage, but tucked away in the darkest space was a set of holding cells.

  “Ah,” Linsha breathed. “Your prisoners.”

  “I just wanted you to see them. They are in no position to talk at the moment.” His lips pulled back in the dim light to reveal his white teeth like a snarl. “I had to be a little rough on them.”

  She followed him forward and looked over his shoulder at two men sprawled on rough blankets thrown on the floor. Both men looked battered and bloody, and both wore a makeshift emblem of the blue dragon on their sleeves. One, a rugged-looking plainsman, scrabbled back into the darkest shadow when Lanther approached and huddled there, his breath rasping through his swollen nose and mouth as he stared fearfully at the Legionnaire. The other man did not move. The skin on his face hung slack and his half-opened eyes stared unseeing at the ceiling.

  Lanther muttered something under his breath that Linsha could not understand, then louder he said, “That one didn’t make it. I’ll have to get someone down here to get him out.”

  He turned and ushered his companion up the stairs before she had a chance to say a word to the other prisoner.

  Linsha felt her irritation rise. Surely, he had not dragged her away from the Legion Gate and some much-needed sleep just to get a quick glimpse at a dead man and a battered prisoner. “Why did you want me here, Lanther? What did they tell you?”

  He said nothing. Passing by the barmaid, he whisked two cups off her tray and held them out to be filled. Still without a word, he took the brimming cups of ale and led Linsha outside, past a row of sheds and huts left by the wall builders, to a clump of shrub hazel growing in the foundation of an old ruin. He sat carefully on a fallen pillar and indicated a seat beside him.

  “No prying ears out here,” he said quietly.

  The ale looked so good to Linsha that she would have sat anywhere just for the chance to drink it. She accepted his offering and sat beside him where she could keep a watch on the comings and goings at the distant gate. Far to her right, she could see a burial party hastily burying some of the dead before the summer heat took its toll on the bodies. To her left, she saw a troop of human militia taking advantage of the lull in the fighting to bolster their flimsy defenses with rocks and sand bags. She wondered briefly where the centaurs were and if young Leonidas was faring well enough.

  “What do you know about the brass eggs Iyesta was guarding?”

  If Lanther had thrown a bucket of ice water on her, Linsha could not have more stunned and surprised. She choked on the ale. “What?”

  “I know Iyesta took you somewhere the day the triplets disappeared. Some place that left smudges of dirt on your face and the smell of damp on your clothes.”

  Linsha glared at him. Good gods, where had this come from? “She took me into Thunder’s realm to see him. I told you about that.”

  “Yes, you did. But I know Chayne and Ringg came back long before you and Iyesta. The dragon took you to another place.” He narrowed his eyes and stared at her; his blue eyes gleamed cold like the water at the foot of a glacier.

  Linsha felt his gaze bore into her brain to the very back of her skull, and she felt a shiver run up her back.

  Fiercely, she closed her thoughts and shuttered her eyes and brought her pulse back under control. He had taken her by surprise but it would not happen again. “Iy
esta and I spent some time in her garden talking. She was worried about the triplets and furious at Thunder. She wanted someone to listen.”

  A flash of speculation tightened the lines around Lanther’s eyes, then he smoothly changed his tone. “I’m sorry. I should have approached this from a more discrete direction. Those men we hold told me Thunder is looking for eggs. He has ordered his entire force to search for them as soon as the city falls. This was news to me. I had no idea Iyesta had a nest of eggs around here.”

  “What makes Thunder think there are eggs?” Linsha countered, but the answer came to her with sickening certainty. The three young brasses. If the giant blue captured and tortured any one of the triplets, or all of them, he could have used his greater, more malevolent power to wrench the knowledge from their minds.

  “Dragons have ways of learning things,” Lanther said. “The men did not say how Thunder came by this information, only that he had it. Is it true?”

  Linsha felt a cold sickness creep through her and settle in her stomach. She took a long swallow of her ale, but it tasted flat on her tongue. Of all the dreadful possibilities to endanger the eggs, it had to be Thunder. She did not doubt Lanther’s information. There was no reason that he would make up something like that and several reasons to believe his sources.

  “I don’t think we need to worry about it,” she said, trying to sound casual. “If there is a nest, it is too well hidden for anyone to find.”

  Lanther rested his elbows on his knees and gazed deep into the golden depths of his ale. “Not if there are enough people looking for it.” He stopped and looked at her again. “Just why did you want to go to Iyesta’s lair so desperately after we freed you from the Citadel?”

  “To look for Iyesta. I found her, too. Remember?”

  “Linsha, we cannot let Iyesta’s eggs fall into Thunder’s control. He will destroy them.”

  “What about Iyesta's skull? It seems to me we should be more concerned about Thunder collecting dragon skulls. Did you ask those men if he is building a larger totem?”

  “Yes, I asked. They did not know. All they would tell me is that Thunder plans to move into Iyesta's lair as soon as it captured.”

  “Like Chaos he is!” Linsha snapped. She shot to her feet.

  Lanther grabbed for her arm. “Where are you going?”

  Linsha was too quick for him. She twisted out of his grip and backed away. “To the palace. I can fight as well there as anywhere. I will not let that foul monster use her lair as his own!”

  With a speed that belied her aches and exhaustion, she tossed him the empty cup, spun away, and jogged into the last golden streaks of the setting sun toward the palace of the dragonlord.

  Lanther made no move to follow. He watched her go, his face impassive, until he could no longer see her in the gathering twilight. Only then did he allow a faint smile to lift his lips.

  19

  The Dragonlord’s Palace

  Thunder’s forces launched a second attack just before midnight. From the hill of the ruined Citadel came a great horn blast that soared out over the city and, in the quiet of night, was heard from Legion’s Gate to Iyesta’s palace west of the Garden District. A roar rose up from the enemy surrounding the beleaguered city, and in almost the same movement the Brutes and the mercenaries gathered by Thunder threw themselves forward against the fortifications and walls. Rank after rank pressed forward, their spears and swords gleaming in the light of hundreds of torches. Their trampling feet made the ground tremble. Grim and angry, the defenders held their ground. Falaius had placed most of his available troops in a line across the Northern District and the Artisans District to block entry into the heart of the city through the missing sections of the walls. During the lull in the fighting that evening, they had built hasty fortifications and barriers, and there the centaurs had placed themselves foremost before the barricades, counting on their size, strength, and speed to help beat back the attackers.

  At the Legion Gate, the Brutes revealed they had come prepared for a siege. From the shadows of two buildings they wheeled out two squat catapults. With practiced efficiency, they set up the machines just out of arrow range and began to hurl missiles at the watch-towers. At the same time, another engine of war wheeled up the street and rolled into position outside the big gate. It was shaped like a simple, peaked tent covered with damp cow hides, but inside the wooden framework hung a heavy tree trunk tipped with iron and suspended with ropes. Men inside the framework swung the ram, and the first loud boom echoed through the streets. While the siege engines kept the gate defenders busy, other Brutes stormed the city walls.

  Falaius, the Legion, and people from all walks of life fought back with everything they had. Arrows flew in deadly showers into the struggling enemy. Firepots, jugs of lime, and cauldrons of boiling water were hurled over the walls. Older children with axes scrambled back and forth around the archers to cut the ropes of the grapnels that Brutes threw over the wall in an attempt to climb to the battlements. Women carried away the wounded and the dead, collected spent arrows and spears, beat out fires started by fire arrows, and piled up rocks and debris behind the big gate. Everyone who could do something at the walls did their best, but the toll for their courage was high.

  Try as they might, the defenders could not keep the ram away from the gate. They killed many Brutes inside the tent structure and scorched the hide covering with burning tar, but there were always more Brutes to fill in the gaps and the ram continued to swing with relentless force. Already cracks appeared in the tough oak timbers and the iron supports were buckled and bent. The hinges creaked with every crash of the heavy tree.

  “My lord,” a Legionnaire cried to Falaius on the wall. “The Brutes are nearly through. The gates are about to fall.”

  The city’s commander drew a small horn from his belt and sounded three long notes-the signal for retreat.

  Boom, the ram crashed against the gate. The oak doors shuddered.

  “Go!” shouted Falaius. “Get off the walls! Fall hack!”

  The Legionnaires obeyed. They grabbed their wounded comrades, herded the women and children off the walls, and drove everyone back to the streets and houses that formed their second line of defense.

  Boom. This time the gates shook, and the right half split from ground to peak.

  Falaius was the last to the leave the wall. Gripping his sword, he watched the ram swing back and forward into the city gates. The heavy oak barriers splintered into useless firewood. Feeling sad to his bones, the old Plainsman dashed down the steps and raced across the pavings to the house directly across the street. There he lined up his archers and prepared to make the Brutes pay dearly for every man who crossed that threshold.

  All around the perimeter of the city, the defenders gave way step by bloody step in the face of the merciless onslaught. The two gates, the Garden Gate in the west wall and the Legion Gate, held out the longest, but they were overwhelmed by the siege engines, and the defenders were forced to retreat into the streets, buildings, and cellars of the city itself. In the Port District and the western edges of the Garden District the fighting in the streets became ferocious. The city dwellers fought for their homes and their families, but their courage and devotion was not enough to overcome the Brutes’ superior expertise and hunger for battle. Only the centaurs were the Brutes’ equal in skill and weapons, and most of them were too busy fighting among the barricades to the north. House by house, street by street, the defenders were pushed back toward the center of the city.

  Shortly after the fall of the western Garden Gate, the mercenaries under the command of the Brute officers slowed their advance when they reached the wealthy neighborhoods in the Garden District. These warriors-thieves, thugs, outlaws, exiles, and sellswords-lacked the discipline of the Brutes. They took one look at the richly furnished homes and lost their momentum in a spree of looting, pillaging, and gluttony. The Brutes who handled the siege engines looked on in disgust.

  The battered militia
, who had guarded the gate until it burst apart at its hinges, withdrew toward the palace and the wild gardens of Iyesta’s lair. Half of their number met with the dragon’s guards and established a defensive ring around the palace. The other half melted into the city streets to set up ambushes, build barricades, and recruit more help. Runners were sent to Falaius and messages arrived from other strong points. Linsha and her companions learned the lines of centaurs and militia had grudgingly fallen back all along the northern defenses, but they had fought hard and did not flee in panic. They had abandoned the entire Northern District and most of the Artisans District and were gathering along a line north of the palace to the Little Three Points.

  When dawn lifted the veil of darkness the next day, Falaius and the people of the Missing City still retained control of the heart of the city, Little Three Points, large areas of the Garden District and not quite half of the Port District. But there was little cause for celebration. The walls had fallen, the harbor was lost, and many members of the irreplaceable militia and Legion were dead or wounded. There was no hope of aid or godly intervention.

  As the sun rose and the heat returned to the land, the fighting in the streets and houses dwindled to an exhausted standstill. Thunder’s army settled down to strengthen their grip on their stolen territory while the defenders assessed the damage and looked to a gloomy future.

  At the edge of the dragonlord’s gardens where the wild parkland gave way to the homes and streets, Linsha dispatched the last swarthy swordsman that had probed too far into the defenders’ lines. Panting, she wiped her sword blade clean and slid it back into the leather scabbard.

  “Vermin!” Mariana said vehemently. She dabbed ineffectively at a slash that crossed the back of her right shoulder.

  “Sit down,” Linsha suggested. “I’ll do that.”