Brothers in Arms

by Margaret Weis

  “Confound it!” the dragon roared. “Come down at eye level! If I do decide to slay you, I will give you fair warning first. I will allow you to put up your pitiable defense, if for nothing else than for my own amusement. Agreed?”

  The human considered the proposal, decided to accept it. She jumped lightly from the dragon’s shoulder to land on the stone floor of his cave—the oh, so empty stone floor of his cave.

  Immolatus regarded the emptiness with gloomy melancholy. “It cannot be the lure of my treasure that brought you. Not unless you have a burning desire to collect rocks.” Sighing deeply, he rested his gigantic head upon a stone pillow, which placed the human level with his eyes. “That is better. More comfortable. Now, who are you and why have you come?”

  “My name is Kitiara uth Matar—” she began.

  Immolatus rumbled. “Uth Matar. It sounds Solamnic.” He glowered, having second thoughts about slaying her later rather than sooner. “I have little love for Solamnics.”

  “Yet you respect us,” said Kitiara proudly. “As we respect you, my lord.” She bowed. “Not like the rest of the foolish world, who laugh when dragons are mentioned and claim that they are no more than kender tales.”

  “Kender tales!” Immolatus reared his head. “Is that what they say of us?”

  “Indeed, my lord.”

  “No songs of conflagration, of holocaust? No tales of burning cities and scorched bodies, no stories of murdered babies and stolen treasure? We are …” Immolatus could barely speak for his indignation. “We are kender tales!”

  “That is what you have become, my lord. Sadly,” Kitiara added.

  Immolatus knew that he and his brothers and sisters and cousins had been asleep for many decades—centuries, even—but he had thought that the awe in which dragons were held, the stories of their magnificent deeds, the fear and loathing they engendered would have been passed down through the ages.

  “Think back to the old days,” Kitiara continued. “Think back to the days of your youth. How many times did parties of Knights seek you out to slay you?”

  “A great many,” Immolatus said. “Ten or twenty at a time, arriving at least twice a year.”

  “And how many times did thieves enter your lair, bent on securing your treasure, my lord?”

  “Monthly,” said the dragon, his tail twitching at the memories. “More often than that if there happened to be a goodly number of dwarves in the area. Pesky creatures, dwarves.”

  “And how often, in this day and age, have thieves tried to sneak in and steal your treasure?”

  “I have no treasure to steal!” Immolatus shouted in pain.

  “But the thieves don’t know that,” Kitiara argued. “How many times have you been attacked in your cave? I would venture to guess the answer is none, my lord. And why is that? It is because no one believes in you anymore. No one knows of your existence. You are nothing but a myth, a legend, a story to be laughed at over a mug of cold ale.”

  Immolatus roared, a bellow that shook the walls and sent rivulets of rock dust cascading down from the cavern’s ceiling, a bellow that caused the ground to quake and forced the human to cling to a handy stalactite for support.

  “It is true!” The dragon gnashed his teeth savagely. “What you say is true! I never thought of it that way before. I sometimes wondered, but I had always supposed it was fear that kept them away. Not … not … obliviousness!”

  “Queen Takhisis intends to see to it that they remember, my lord,” Kitiara said coolly.

  “Does she?” Immolatus muttered and shifted his great bulk. He scraped his claws across the stone floor, leaving gouge marks in the rock. “Perhaps I misjudged her. I thought … well, never mind. It is not important. And so she has sent you with a message for me?”

  Kitiara bowed. “I am sent by General Ariakas, head of the Army of Queen Takhisis, with a message to Immolatus, greatest and most powerful of Her Majesty’s dragons.” Kitiara proffered the scroll. “Will it please your lordship to read it?”

  Immolatus waved a claw. “You read it to me. I have difficulty deciphering the chicken scratches of humans.”

  Kitiara bowed again, unrolled the scroll, and read the words. When she came to, “Four times before you have spurned my command. There will not be a fifth. I am losing patience,” Immolatus cringed a bit, in spite of himself. He could hear quite distinctly his Queen’s furious voice behind those words.

  “But how was I supposed to know that the world had come to such a pass?” Immolatus muttered to himself. “Dragons forgotten! Or worse—laughed at, despised!”

  “Take upon yourself human form and return to Sanction with the bearer of this, my ring, there to receive your orders from Ariakas, soon to be general of my dragonarmies.”

  “Human form!” Immolatus snorted a gout of flame from his nostrils. “I won’t,” he said grimly. “The world has forgotten dragons, has it? Then they will soon come to recognize their error. They will see me in my glory. I will fall upon them like a thunderbolt! They will come to know dragons then, by our Dark Queen! They will think that she has snatched the fiery sun from the heavens and hurled it into their midst!”

  Kitiara pursed her lips.

  Immolatus glared at her. “Well, what is it? If you think I am worried about disobeying the orders of Takhisis, I’m not,” he said petulantly. “Who is she to name herself Queen over us? The world was given to us to do with as we liked. And then she came among us, making promises, a different promise with each of her five mouths. And where did those promises lead us? To the sharp end of some Knight’s lance! Or worse—torn to pieces by some god-cursed gold dragon!”

  “And that is precisely what will happen if you proceed with your plan, my lord,” said Kitiara.

  Immolatus growled and the mountain creaked. Smoke curled from between his fangs, his lips pulled back. “You are beginning to bore me, human. Take care. I find that I am starting to hunger.”

  “Go out there into the world and what will you do?” Kitiara asked, gesturing toward the exit hole of the dragon’s cavern. “Destroy a few houses, burn some barns. You may even wreck a castle or two. A few hundred people die.” She shrugged. “And what happens? You cannot kill everyone. The survivors band together. They come looking for you and they find you—alone, without support, abandoned by your brethren, forgotten by your Queen. The gold dragons come, too. And the silver. For there is nothing to stop them. You are mighty, Lord Immolatus, but you are one and they are many. You will fall.”

  Immolatus’s tail lashed, and the mountain shuddered. The human was not daunted. She took a step forward, daring to come nearer the huge teeth that could have bitten her in twain with a single snap of the dragon’s jaws. Though his anger burned like brimstone in his gut, Immolatus could not help but be impressed with the human’s courage.

  “Great lord, listen to me. Her Majesty has a plan.” Kitiara explained, “She has wakened her dragons—all her dragons. When the time is right, she will call all her dragons to war. Nothing on Krynn will be able to withstand her fury. Krynn will fall to her might. You and your kind will rule the world in the Queen’s name.”

  “And when will that glorious time come?” Immolatus demanded.

  “I do not know, my lord,” said Kitiara humbly. “I am only a messenger and therefore not privy to my commander’s secrets. But if you come back with me to the camp of General Ariakas in human form, as Her Majesty recommends—for it is requisite that we keep all knowledge of your return secret—you will undoubtedly learn all there is to know.”

  “Look at me!” Immolatus snarled. “Look at my magnificence! And you have the audacity to ask me to diminish and demean myself by squeezing into a weak, soft, flabby, puny, squishy body such as the one you inhabit?”

  “I do not ask such a sacrifice of you, my lord,” said Kitiara, bowing. “Your Queen asks of you. I can tell you this, my lord Immolatus—you are Her Majesty’s chosen. You alone have been asked to come forth into the world at this time to accept this diffic
ult challenge. None of the others have been so honored. Her Majesty required the best, and she came to you.”

  “None of the others?” Immolatus asked, surprised.

  “None, my lord. You are the only one of her dragons to be entrusted with this important task.”

  Immolatus heaved a deep sigh, a sigh that stirred up centuries of rock dust, enveloping the human in a cloud and setting her coughing and choking. Just another example of the pitiful nature of the form he was being asked to assume.

  “Very well,” said Immolatus. “I will take on human form. I will accompany you to the camp of this commander of yours. I will listen to what he has to say. Then I will decide whether or not to proceed.”

  The human attempted to make some response, but she was having difficulty catching her breath.

  “Leave me,” said the dragon. “Wait for me outside. Altering form is demeaning enough without having you standing there gawking at me.”

  The human bowed again. “Yes, my lord.”

  She laid her hand upon the end of a rope dangling down from the air shaft—a rope the dragon had not noticed until now. Grasping hold, she climbed it nimbly to the top of the cavern and crawled out the air shaft, hauling the rope up after her.

  Immolatus watched this proceeding grimly. After the human had disappeared, he grasped a boulder in his red claw and jammed the boulder into the air shaft, wedging it in the hole tightly so that no other intruder could again sneak inside.

  The cavern was now darker than he liked it and less airy; the sulfurous fumes of his own breath were starting to make the place stink. He’d have to open another air shaft, at considerable cost and trouble to himself. Humans! Blast them! Nuisances. They deserved to be burned. All of them.

  He’d see to that later. In the meantime, it was only right and natural that Queen Takhisis should turn to him for aid. Though he considered her selfish and scheming, arrogant and demanding, Immolatus could not fault Her Majesty’s intelligence.

  Kitiara waited on the mountainside for the dragon to join her. The experience had been a grueling one; she freely admitted that she never wanted to undertake another like it so long as she lived. She was exhausted; the strain of controlling her fear, of trying to outwit the quick-thinking creature, had drained her almost past her endurance. She felt as weak as if she had marched twelve leagues in full plate armor and fought a prolonged battle in the process. Slumping down among the rocks, she gulped water from her flask, then rinsed her mouth, trying to rid herself of the taste of fire.

  Tired though she was, she was pleased with herself, pleased with the success of her plan. Pleased, but not surprised. Kitiara had yet to meet the male of any species, dragon or otherwise, who was immune to flattery. And she would have to keep piling it on thick during the journey back to Sanction in order to keep her arrogant and potentially lethal companion tractable.

  Kitiara slumped down on a boulder, rested her head in her arms. A man in armor came running toward her. His mouth open, screaming, his face contorted with fear and pain, but she knew him.

  “Father!” Kitiara sprang to her feet.

  He rushed straight for her. He was on fire, his clothes burning, his hair burning. He was being burned alive. His flesh sizzling and bubbling. …

  “Father!” Kitiara screamed.

  The touch of a hand woke her.

  “Come along, worm,” said a grating voice.

  Kitiara rubbed the sleep from her eyes, wished she could rub its grit from her brain. She looked closely at the corpse, as she passed it. She was relieved to see that the man had been a foot shorter than Gregor uth Matar. Still, Kit could not repress a shudder. The dream had been very real.

  The dragon poked her in the back with a long, sharp nail. “Keep moving, slug! I want to be done with this onerous task.”

  Kitiara wearily increased her pace. The next five days were going to be long. Very long indeed.

  9

  IVOR OF LANGTREE WAS KNOWN THROUGHOUT THE SURROUNDING countryside as the Mad Baron. His neighbors and tenants did truly think he was crazy. They loved him, they nearly worshiped him, but as they watched him ride his galloping steed through their villages, jumping hay carts and scattering chickens, waving his plumed hat as he dashed past, they would shake their heads when he was gone, clean up the debris, and say to themselves, “Aye, he’s daft, is that one.”

  Ivor Langtree was in his late thirties, scion of a Solamnic Knight, Sir John of Langtree, who’d had the good sense to pack up his household and quietly leave Solamnia during the turmoil following the Cataclysm, traveling south with his family to an inlet on the New Sea. Finding a secluded valley, he’d built a wooden stockade and established his home. He worked the land, while his lady wife took in, fed, and clothed the poor exiles driven from their homelands when the fiery mountain fell upon Krynn. A great many of the exiles chose to live near the stockade and helped defend it against marauding goblins and savage ogres.

  The years passed. The eldest Langtree son succeeded his father; the younger sons went off to war, fighting for causes that were just and honorable. If these causes happened to pay well, the sons brought their fortune home to the family coffers. If not, the sons had the satisfaction of knowing that they had acted nobly, and when they returned home, the family coffers supported them. The daughters worked among the people, easing poverty and helping the sick, until they married and went forth to spread the good work their lady mother had begun.

  The land prospered. The fortress became a castle, surrounded by a small city, the city of Langtree. Several small towns and villages sprang up in the wide valley, more were established in a neighboring valley, all of their people swearing allegiance to the Langtree family. So prosperous did the Langtrees become that John III decided to call himself baron and deem his land holdings a barony. The villagers and city dwellers were proud to consider that they belonged to a barony and were more than willing to make their lord happy by so doing.

  After the first baron of Langtree, sons came and sons went—mostly went, for the Langtrees loved nothing more than a thumping good battle and were always being carried back to the castle by their grieving comrades, half or wholly dead. The current baron was a second son. He had not expected to become baron, but had ascended to that title on the untimely death of his older brother, who had fallen while defending one of the outlying holdings against a tribe of hobgoblins.

  As a younger son, Ivor had been expected to earn his living with his sword. This he had done, though not quite according to time-honored fashion. Having taken stock of his abilities and natural gifts, Ivor had come to the conclusion that he would do better hiring other men to fight with him than he would by hiring himself out to other men.

  Ivor was an excellent leader, a good strategist, brave but not foolhardy and a firm believer in the Knight’s Oath, “My honor is my life,” if not the grinding and binding rules of the Measure. A small man—some mistook him for a kender, a mistake they did not make more than once—Ivor was slender and dark, with a swarthy complexion, long black hair, and large brown eyes. Men were wont to say of Ivor that though he was only five foot two, his courage stood six foot four.

  Ivor was wiry and tough, clever in battle and deceptively strong. His plate armor and chain mail weighed more than some full-grown men. He rode one of the largest horses in the barony or out of it and rode it well. He loved to fight and he loved to gamble, he loved ale and he loved women, mostly in that order, which was the way he’d come by his nickname, the Mad Baron.

  Having been most reluctantly made a baron by the death of his brother, Ivor had interviewed the stewards and the secretaries who undertook the daily running of the barony and, finding they were sound in their jobs and trustworthy, he placed them in charge and continued to do what he liked to do best—train men for battle and then find battles for them to fight.

  Thus the barony thrived, and so did Ivor, whose exploits were the stuff of legend and whose mercenaries were much in demand. He had no need of money, he was offered mo
re jobs than he could possibly accept and chose only those that suited him. The promise of steel had no power to sway him. He would turn his back on a sum large enough to build another castle if he deemed the cause unjust. He would spend money like water and his own blood in the same manner to fight for those who could pay only with their grateful blessings. Another reason he was called mad.

  There was a third reason, too. Ivor, Baron of Langtree, worshiped an ancient god, a god known to have left Krynn long ago. This god was Kiri-Jolith, formerly a god of the Solamnic Knights. Sir John of Langtree had never lost faith in Kiri-Jolith. The Knight had carried his faith from Solamnia with him, and he and his family had kept that faith alive, a sacred fire in their hearts, a fire that was never permitted to die.

  Ivor made no secret of his faith, though he was often ridiculed for it. He would laugh good-naturedly, and—just as good-naturedly—give the jokester a buffet on the head. Ivor would then pick up his detractor, brush him off, and, when the jokester’s ears had ceased ringing, advise him to have respect for another’s beliefs, if he could not respect those beliefs himself.

  His men might not believe in Kiri-Jolith, but they believed in Ivor. They knew he was lucky, for they had seen him escape death in battle by a whisker more times than they could count. They watched their Mad Baron pray openly to Kiri-Jolith before he rode into battle, though never a sign or a word did he have that the god answered those prayers.

  “It is not a general’s business to take time to explain to every blasted foot soldier his plans for the battle,” the Mad Baron used to say with a laugh. “So I don’t suppose that it is the Immortal General’s business to explain his plans to me, ha, ha, ha!”

  Soldiers are a superstitious lot—anyone gambling on a daily basis with death tends to put his trust in luck-bringing objects, in rabbits’ feet and charmed medallions and locks of ladies’ hair. More than one, therefore, whispered a little prayer to Kiri-Jolith before the charge, more than one carried a bit of bison fur into the fray—the bison being an animal sacred to Kiri-Jolith. While it might not help, it could not hurt.