And a sudden realization hit home. The warlords of Internook were not keeping pet wyrmlings. The wyrmlings were keeping pet humans.
Draken tried to whirl and flee into the crowded arena, but the doorman grabbed him from behind in a choking hold.
“I have him, milord!” the doorman cried.
In the flutter of a heartbeat, the wyrmling grabbed Myrrima and pulled her upward in the air, nearly snapping her neck in the process, as if she were no heavier than a doll woven from straw.
Then its free hand grabbed Draken and hurled him against the wall. Lights flashed behind his eyes like exploding stars, and he heard bones crack.
He sank into pain and forgetfulness.
21
BROTHERHOOD
The call of the wolf is the call of the Brotherhood. When you hear it, know that your brothers are in danger, and evil is near.
—Code of the Brotherhood of the Wolf
Three times during the day, Rain had tried to follow Wulfgaard from the stable. But each time, their attempt was cut short.
The wyrmling patrols came often. Sometimes they’d march by three minutes apart. Sometimes the roads would be clear for half an hour. But regardless of how seldom patrols came by, it was clear to Rain that the streets were not safe.
The markets did not reopen. No fishmongers called from their stalls. No one wandered the streets.
Rain and her newfound cohort could not sneak out.
“The wyrmlings have all the advantage,” Wulfgaard told her. “They can stand on a hill two miles off and watch the streets with ease. With their endowments of sight, nothing misses their attention. With their endowments of metabolism, some of them can run a hundred miles in an hour. If we walk into the open, they’ll rush down upon us, and there is no escape.”
The young man did not talk loudly. His voice was all whispers, lest a wyrmling be within hearing range.
The power of a great runelord of course was legendary, and evil men with such power were the stuff of nightmares. But the wrymlings were doubly frightening.
“We must wait until the wyrmlings give the townsfolk the all-clear. Then we can blend in with the crowds.”
So the two waited, Rain biting her lip, sometimes twisting her ring nervously. The hay that they lay in smelled fragrant. It was a mixture of grasses—fescue and oats, with sweet clover and a bit of alfalfa. It had been harvested only recently, weeks before, and so did not have the underlying odor of mold. Rain and Wulfgaard had covered most of their bodies with it, to hide their scent. They left only their faces exposed, so that they could breathe, and speak.
“You said that you need help,” Rain asked once when the streets were dead quiet, and they did not fear the wyrmlings. Even then she whispered softly, so that her words barely carried to Wulfgaard’s ear. “What makes you think that you need Aaath Ulber?”
“The wyrmlings fear him,” Wulfgaard says. “They do not fear anyone else, even the greatest of our lords. . . . So the Brotherhood has been searching for blood metal.”
“You found some?” Rain asked.
“We did—a stone here, a small cache there. The wyrmlings have managed to get most of it, but there are stores of it hidden away. . . . We have forged our forcibles in secret, and there are many who are just waiting for the hero to arise.”
“You think Aaath Ulber is that hero?”
“He’s a giant, sailing from the north—a man who knows the wrymling strongholds . . . and their weaknesses. Who else could it be?”
No one that Rain knew. But she couldn’t reconcile her feelings. Aaath Ulber was dangerous to the wyrmlings, but he wasn’t the kind of man she’d pick to be her hero.
“We’ve been preparing for weeks,” Wulfgaard said. “The wyrmlings have taken many of our people, our best fighting men, and marched them down into their fortress to harvest their endowments, or sent them to the mines to work in chains. I am one of the few who has escaped attention. I feign a bad back, so that they will not take me.
“Each day, our people grow weaker and the wyrmlings grow stronger. We cannot afford to wait. . . .”
“Would your people grant him endowments?”
“Some would,” Wulfgaard said hesitantly. “Perhaps many will rally to his cause.”
“What would stop them from giving aid?” Rain asked.
“The wyrmlings are everywhere. Their scouts are on guard for those who have given endowments. Those who are too sick to walk or to work, are culled. A man who gives endowments . . . I do not think he would last a week.”
It would take great courage to give an endowment under such circumstances. Rain wondered how many might really do it. But no one doubted the warlords of Internook. For generations their barbarian hordes had been trained to rush into battle against runelords with more endowments and better armor, and throw themselves against their enemies’ spears. No warriors in the world had greater courage.
Rain asked, “You said that you needed Aaath Ulber’s help. . . .”
“There is a girl,” Wulfgaard said, “my beloved. The wyrmlings took her. For the past six weeks they have been demanding thralls—men and women to be stripped of attributes. The wyrmlings put them on ships and sailed them to Mystarria, under the eternal clouds.
“None that have been taken shall ever return.
“But I am not the only one to lose a loved one,” Wulfgaard added. “Tens of thousands have been taken, and nearly everyone in the land feels the loss. They may have been deprived of a brother, or mother, or perhaps a friend.”
“Why would the wyrmlings want your betrothed?” Rain asked. “Grace, glamour, metabolism?”
“Glamour,” Wulfgaard said. “She is very beautiful.”
Rain wondered. Would a wyrmling care about taking an attribute of glamour? She suggested softly, “Aaath Ulber said that the wyrmlings eat human flesh.”
Wulfgaard was stricken, and he barely muttered, “We have suspected as much, but I hoped that it was not true. They do not have fields or gardens. . . .”
“Because they don’t need them,” Rain confirmed. “They eat only flesh. And there is more. The wyrmlings cut the heads off of people and extract glands from them, to use in making their weapons. They are called ‘harvester spikes.’ They are nails that the wyrmlings push into their flesh before they go into battle. Have you seen them?”
By now, Wulfgaard’s face had gone pale indeed. He was trembling. He shook his head no. He had not seen the spikes.
Rain felt for him. The best that he could hope was that his beloved was still alive and had only been forced to give up an endowment. If she had given glamour, there would be no beauty left in her. Rain imagined that instead of honeyed locks, the girl’s hair would be limp and colorless. Instead of bright blue eyes, her orbs would have turned yellow and sickly. Gone would be her smooth skin, and the surface of her face would look weathered and papery.
Instead of a beauty, the girl would be a horror.
“You know what the wyrmlings will do to this girl of yours. Do you imagine that you will love her still?”
Wulfgaard tried to hide his own uncertainty. “She was raised in the long house next to mine. We have been best friends since we were children. In some ways, she is more like a sister to me than a wife. Yet I love her as I love myself.
“Besides,” he added, “I plan to kill the wyrmling that took her glamour.”
“That is easier said than done,” Rain said. “The wyrmlings are roving wide. We saw ships full of them heading for Landesfallen.”
“Still, I must try,” Wulfgaard said. “Think of it. The wyrmlings are trying to enslave us. At this moment, their burdens are light. But already we see the shadows on the wall. The wyrmlings do not care for us any more than we care for a pig that we shall butcher. They will use us—for our attributes, our glands . . . and if you are right, for food.”
“They must be stopped,” Rain said.
“They must be eradicated,” Wulfgaard corrected.
Outside, there was the fam
iliar clank of wyrmling armor, bone against bone. A soldier came within a hundred yards of the stables and stood for a long time, as if straining his ears.
Wulfgaard and Rain fell silent, and waited until well after dark. At sunset a great horn blew five short blasts, repeated five times.
“That is the wyrmlings calling,” Wulfgaard said. “They will assemble at the moot hall.”
“Do they do that often?” Rain asked.
Wulfgaard frowned. “Only twice before: Once when they took over the village, they told us the rules. The other time—it was to punish some men who would not give up their children.”
He did not have to say it. Rain immediately suspected that the wyrmlings would dole out punishment to Aaath Ulber tonight.
“What did the wyrmlings do to those men?”
“I don’t think you want to know,” Wulfgaard said.
Only when the horns had stopped sounding did Wulfgaard dare stir, to creep from the stable out onto the street.
Before he left, he warned, “Only men will be allowed at the moot, I fear. You must stay hidden, until I return. . . .”
Wulfgaard crept down from the loft, then slipped out the door.
Rain wondered. Men were on the streets, and with her breeches and tunic she was dressed much like a man. She pulled up her tunic, tightened her breast band, and then made her way into the streets.
Boldly she trod down the center of the street in the dusk as the men of the town joined her.
But where do I go? she wondered. A wyrmling guard was on the street, not far ahead. She avoided eye contact, tried to keep an even pace.
If I head down to the docks, I will be seen. The wyrmlings will have me before I get far.
So she strode forward to the moot hall, hoping to learn Aaath Ulber’s fate.
“When were you going to tell me that you found their champion?” Yikkarga demanded of Crull-maldor.
It was just past sunset. The wyrmlings were stirring in their dens, and the Fortress of the Northern Wastes was coming alive. Crull-maldor was in the Room of Whispers, and from every listening post she could hear the trod of heavy feet and the growls and snarls that made up the wyrmling tongue.
“I was going to tell you when I was certain,” Crull-maldor hissed. It was a game between them, hiding information. “I know only that a large human was caught, one with red hair. I doubt that it is your hero.”
“Why do you doubt?” Yikkarga asked. “He killed two of your men.”
“He is not one of the small folk,” Crull-maldor said. “He is a true human, from Caer Luciare.”
Yikkarga snarled in outrage. “He is the one. I must take his head, immediately.”
Crull-maldor gave him a sidelong look. She had suspected that he had been withholding information. Now he had confirmed it. “You never mentioned that you were searching for a true human. How many weeks have my men spent searching in vain for some phantom hero? Through your foolishness and ineptitude, you have placed the entire realm in danger. Or was it sabotage? The emperor fears this human. Are you trying to get the emperor killed? That would be treason! I am going to have to report your . . . indiscretion to Lord Despair.”
Yikkarga had begun to turn as if he would race off to find the human, but now he whirled on Crull-maldor, fear in his eyes. Crull-maldor had him now. Most likely, Yikkarga had been ordered to hide the needed information by the emperor himself, in order to discredit Crull-maldor. But the emperor could never admit that to their master, Lord Despair. So Yikkarga would be left to shoulder the blame, and he would face the tormentors in the dungeons of Rugassa before this was through.
The huge wyrmling hesitated, then gathered his courage. “You are bluffing. You don’t have Despair’s ear.”
“Six weeks ago that was true,” Crull-maldor said. “But the world has changed. We have many enemies here in the North, and a surplus of humans that are of much worth to Despair. He whispers to my soul now, asking for frequent reports.”
Yikkarga could not know that Crull-maldor was lying. Those who had wyrms could talk from spirit to spirit across vast distances.
“I . . . I am under orders to take the head of this human myself!” Yikkarga said.
Ah, Crull-maldor thought, of course. The emperor fears the human champion, so he sent an assassin—a warrior who could not be killed. Who better to make sure of the humans’ champion?
“That won’t be necessary,” Crull-maldor suggested. “I have arranged for his public execution tonight, in the arena in Ox Port. He will fight a wyrmling—a runelord fully armed and armored.”
A fool of a runelord, Crull-maldor thought. The wyrmling that she’d sent had taken endowments of speed and brawn, but he was a bumbling lack-wit. Aaath Ulber had already slaughtered better wyrmling troops on the street. If Aaath Ulber managed to take this one in combat—a broken and wounded human slaughtering a wyrmling runelord in full battle armor in front of an entire city—Aaath Ulber’s reputation would be sealed.
Yikkarga immediately saw the danger. “This man has already slain two of your troops in combat!”
“True,” Crull-maldor said, doing her best to sound addled by age. “Yes, now I see the wisdom in it. Perhaps you should go!”
With that, the wyrmling’s champion was off, rushing from the room, disappearing in the blink of an eye. He had to have at least eight endowments of metabolism, and thus he could run some eighty miles in an hour. Ox Port was some eighty-seven miles away.
With any luck, Yikkarga would reach the arena just in time to see Aaath Ulber slaughter the wyrmling’s slow-witted champion.
Crull-maldor smiled. She was a wight, and thus was not bound by the physical limitations imposed by mortal flesh. She could not travel at the speed of thought itself, but she could still cover a hundred miles with great haste, when need drove her.
She shucked off her spider robes, in order to gain more speed, then headed up through the dark tunnels toward the surface. Almost instantly she flew out of the opening of the watchtower, a shadow blurring through an evening sky lit by only the first star.
Down below, she spotted Yikkarga, racing down a winding dirt road.
She willed herself ahead, gathering speed until she rode through the sky faster than a ballista bolt.
She would be in Ox Port to greet Yikkarga when he arrived.
The wyrmling stood before Aaath Ulber, sword at the ready, poised for battle. It was studying him, refusing to make a move.
The arena was lit by a circle of torches, in sconces high up on the wall. Aaath Ulber’s eyes were nearly swollen shut, and the smoke made them water. He blinked away tears, trying to get a better look at his foe.
Every breath was bought with pain, for Aaath Ulber had more than one cracked rib. He took a deep inhalation, and laughed. “You’re the one with armor and weapons, yet you’re afraid of me.” Aaath Ulber danced to the side, and the wyrmling blurred to intercept.
Quick, too damned quick, Aaath Ulber realized.
“I do not fear you,” the wyrmling roared in challenge. “I shall roast your flesh on the end of my sword, and your blood will run down my chin this night!”
Aaath Ulber couldn’t guess how many endowments the wyrmling had. His speech gave a hint. He spoke quickly, an octave too high.
But it was his breathing that gave him away. A man with metabolism draws breath more quickly. By counting the seconds between breaths, one can estimate how many endowments of metabolism a foe might have.
On average, a man draws about one breath every three or four seconds.
The wyrmling was drawing one breath every second.
No less than three endowments of metabolism, Aaath Ulber suspected, but perhaps no more than four . . . unless, of course, the wyrmling was purposely slowing his breathing, in order to hide the number of endowments that he had taken.
That was the problem when facing a runelord. You could never be certain how many endowments they might have. A smarter wyrmling might have refused to react just a moment ago. He might
have tried to keep Aaath Ulber guessing whether he even had endowments.
But this wyrmling was dumb. It wasn’t just his lack of strategy that convinced Aaath Ulber. It was the vacant look in the creature’s eyes.
This fight is rigged, Aaath Ulber realized. The enemy wants me to win.
But why? To get rid of one useless warrior? That made no sense.
Unless this battle is only meant to warm the crowd, Aaath Ulber thought. Perhaps another wyrmling is waiting in the wings, ready to fight, hoping to expand his reputation.
That felt like the right answer.
Which means that I must conserve my energy, Aaath Ulber thought.
He took stock of his wounds—swollen eyes, blood loss from his ear and leg, broken ribs.
And everything else hurts, too, he thought.
It is possible to fight a man who has more endowments of speed than you, Aaath Ulber knew. A man who is well trained in battle, who acts and reacts without thought, can sometimes beat a man who has taken several attributes of speed. That is because a runelord with such attributes learns to use them as a crutch. They imagine that they are so much faster than a commoner that they can decide how to attack or defend when the battle is upon them.
But Aaath Ulber had been practicing to fight faster opponents all of his life, and he was going to teach this wyrmling a trick or two.
He shouted and lunged to the wyrmling’s left, keeping clear of its blade. He grabbed its shield and jerked, pulling the wyrmling toward him, then used his momentum to get behind the monster. With a single bound and twist, he was on the creature’s back. He worked an arm down beneath the wyrmling’s chin and put the creature in a choke hold, then just dug his knees into the creature’s back.
The wyrmling bawled, like an enraged bull, and struggled to shrug him off, batting his shield back uselessly, then spinning in an effort to throw him off.
For two seconds Aaath Ulber rode the monster. Suddenly it realized that Aaath Ulber could not be dislodged, so it threw its weight, all eight hundred pounds, back against the logs that lined the arena.
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