Peril & Profit

by M. H. Johnson

  They were all well aware, instinctively, of how difficult it would be to land, let alone take off, in the narrow streets of Caverenoc. Or indeed, in almost any city. And certainly no roof could support them. Further, they could hardly stride through the streets, all too likely deforming the cobblestone road if they did so, at least in Sorn's case, and they would certainly frighten any citizen who bumped into their massive invisible forms. If the person took actual injury, of course, their spell would dissipate from the backlash, and the terrifying presence of a dragon suddenly looming in the people's midst would most assuredly cause panic, no matter how pretty or soothing the patterns of their scales.

  "The plan is this," Sorn declared in an authoritative rumble. "You three will act as lookouts, ready to intercept any man coming from the direction of the palace or, indeed, coming from any direction at all, to the warehouse. Restrain him if you can, especially if it seems he is investigating on behalf of the king, but since it will all too likely be an enemy informat, kill him if you must."

  Elthsiss’s cousins nodded solemnly at his instructions.

  "And in all cases, if it seems that the men hiding in the warehouses have been alerted, retreat! I will not have my clutchlings butchered by a ballista or somesuch that these loathsome sods might just have hidden away, and the risk of scores of bolts flying in your direction from the sophisticated crossbows at their disposal is all too likely. Remember what happened to me, cousins, and know that it can happen to you three as well, once your wards are vanquished, which would occur after the first dozen or so bolts hit you."

  His three young ward's serpentine necks once again bobbed solemnly at Elthsiss's warning. "Your mithril mail is of the finest weave and will hopefully catch any bolts fired at it. Yet even if they can't slip through the links of your mail or pierce your skull, your hands, eyes, and lower legs are vulnerable still. "

  His cousins sighed, all too aware of this possibility.

  "But, Sorn," queried Elquit, now very much in the mindset of Fitz. "Couldn't we just incinerate the warehouses?"

  Elthsiss nodded his head in understanding of his cousins' tactic, indicating with his draconic grin and head bob that though it was a faulty plan, it did have merit. "It is true that in that way we could quickly take care of the most immediate element to the threat, but there are several things to consider.

  “First off, the heat of our fire is such that we may well obliterate all evidence of our foes, and who knows when the king would even be able to dig out the entrance to the tunnel. We don't even know where it is located, but the surrounding cobblestones may end up radiating what is for humans unbearable heat for a day at the very least.

  “Secondly, and even more importantly, the very intensity of our draconic flame could all too likely cause the resulting fire to spread out and consume a sizeable portion of the city. You know as well as I that even with care, it would be very hard to control such a fire here. And since we would be attacking them from above, the heat needed to assure that we obliterate all trace of the enemy in the first level of the building, composed as it is of stone, dictate that we could not hold back our fires. And that would certainly generate heat and embers sufficient to set the top stories of neighboring buildings, made as they are of wood, ablaze.

  "Thirdly, we would have to hit fast and hard and obliterate all trace of them lest they, however slim the odds might seem, have multiple siege bows in position to shoot bolts at high angles and, however unlikely, succeed in marking us with a lucky shot.

  "Remember, though your missile ward is a great spell for stopping the momentum of light crossbow bolts, it will only halt a fraction of the power of a siege bolt. Those bolts being, if they are anything like what the elves were recorded to have forged, at least three feet long and sharpened to a deadly point. Admittedly, their steel would never pierce our scales, and would in all likelihood shatter or warp against our hide, but a lucky shot to an eye, even if a million gold crowns to one against, is still a greater risk than I will see taken on your behalf.

  "No, my cousins. We would have to hit them fast and hard and obliterate them in our flames with a concentrated blast. Though it would melt even the stone that touched the heart of our flame, so too the heat released would in all likelihood send nearby buildings ablaze. And finally, do we really want to reveal our presence to these people in such an adverse light? I think not."

  Elthsiss paused to regard his cousins, all nodding thoughtfully, including Elquit who now seemed embarrassed at even having made the suggestion.

  "Make no mistake, Elquit," Elthsiss said in the same soothing tone he would use with Fitz, "Your idea is a sound one, and indeed, I can think up a number of scenarios where we could attack the Empire's legions directly, taking out first ballistae, then catapults and trebuchets in blitzkrieg strikes under cover of pitch blackness, flying off after every strike before they have a chance to respond. But even engaging the enemy's main body with the element of surprise on our side should only be done as a last resort.

  "We would never attack them by announcing our presence in the broad light of day, losing every element of surprise we had, and allowing our enemies to maneuver their siege weaponry in our direction. Then the million to one chance against a lucky shot to the eye becomes far riskier, with massive boulders shot by catapult and trebuchets being an added threat to dodge.

  "It is best if we leave our enemies completely in the dark as to our true natures, revealing ourselves only should Empire troops start pouring out of their holdouts in earnest, and we needs must obliterate their strongholds within the city before they can overrun Caverenoc."

  Ethsiss bobbed his head at his cousins. "In short, engaging Empire soldiers in our true form, not matter how the odds favor us, should be a last resort only, ideally with the king understanding the threat. Hopefully, he would then have the presence of mind to flood the tunnels with water or otherwise barricade them. Otherwise, he would be at risk of the Empire's tunnelers quickly forming side passages to the basements of other buildings, and again giving a route for our enemies to take Caverenoc unawares."

  Elquit nodded, head dipped deferentially before his cousin.

  Elthsiss heaved a great sigh, his long powerful neck gently sinking into the sea as he contemplated his own upcoming mission. "I, of course, shall have to determine why our men are being arrested, and why we saw no troops heading for the warehouses when we flew over them on our way here."

  "How are you going to do that?" Kring inquired with a slow blink of his wide sapphire orbs. "Certainly these troops would capture us on sight, and even if you made yourself invisible, the minute you make your presence known, any guards in sight will probably try to arrest you."

  Elthsiss nodded his head at his cousin’s insight.

  "All too true, Kring, all too true. Not to mention that it may be a bit of a pain to sneak into the palace, even while invisible, though I have no doubt that it could be done. Rather, I had a slightly different approach in mind. One that will facilitate a quick entry and exit if needed, as well as allow me the advantage of discrete surveillance over the palace entire. Further, I am hoping I just might be able to engage one or two people in conversation, and hopefully without the stigma that might, for the moment, be attached to Sorn."

  His cousins favored Elthsiss with contemplative stares before nodding their heads in agreement, deducing what their cousin intended.

  "Are you sure you will be all right?" Elquit asked, his concern for his cousin apparent in the worried tone of his soft hissing. "I know you refrained from changing earlier, because you were afraid the injuries might carry over from Sorn to your crow form, since you always turn to the crow as Sorn."

  "I know," Elthsiss said, "And I appreciate your concern. However, I had the chance to heal a great deal of the damage Sorn had suffered during the skirmishes of the past few days. Yet you still raise a very important point. Should Sorn the man be injured, I am more than able to transform from Elthsiss the dragon to Sorn the crow without hesitation,
and without needing Sorn as an intermediate step. The fact that I have almost never shifted directly from my natural form to crow in front of you before does not mean that I lack the ability."

  Elthsiss closed his massive eyes and began to breathe deeply. Instantly he could feel the roaring fury of the arcane energies swirling within every fiber of his draconic being, his practice with Sorn having made channeling magics in his true form utter child's play in comparison.

  With the grace of long practice, he concentrated his energies, channeling them into the brilliant, precise matrix of Sorn the crow, and felt himself effortlessly flow into that form. As his mother had rather adamantly for the last handful of seasons that he wear only the forms of man and crow, save when Elthsiss needed to hunt, transforming from man to crow had become his habit, and all his cousins had ever seen from him, for all that such a transformation was easier to initiate as a dragon.

  An instant later his bemused contemplations were replaced by shock and surprise both, as he was immediately inundated with cool sea water, sputtering as a trickle managed to work its way up his sensitive, though quite resilient, beak.

  "Aargh! I hate that!" griped Sorn the crow, sputtering once he realized his mistake. "Why the heck didn't I think to get on land first?"

  Sorn's grumbles soon had company in the form of his cousins rumbling snickers. How they loved to see their cousin and denmother be humbled by his own mistakes.

  "Stuff it up your you-know-what!" Sorn squawked, spearing out of the water and giving a final sharp command for his cousins to get a move on.

  "And change in the water!" Sorn added a tad vindictively. "You need to clean the gore spatters off your equipment in any case!"

  With that Sorn made a beeline for the king's palace, graceful arches and minarets with pennants flapping in the evening breeze soon coming into clear focus for him despite the darkness of the hour.

  19

  Sorn gave a contented sigh, though this was an odd sound for a crow, once he passed the palace gardens below. He contemplated stopping for a moment just to enjoy the soothing arboreal scents wafting in the air from the flowers below.

  Surprised at how quickly desire had turned to action, Sorn found himself just inches over the wonderful smelling rose bushes, looking for a discrete nook to tuck his durable little body into for a quick nap. Snap out of it, Sorn! he commanded of himself with a shake of his beak. Sorn realigned with his chosen path and once again flew to the palace proper, intent and focused upon his goal.

  Though impervious to unauthorized visits from more mundane trespassers, Sorn soon found that the main palace dome had a number of discrete nooks from which a determined member of the avian races could make his way into the palace proper. He disturbed more than one irritated bird upon doing so, said creatures more than ready to give Sorn a mean pecking for trespassing upon their nesting space until giving Sorn a second look, whereupon even their limited intelligence quickly deduced that such might not be the most prudent course of action with this particular interloper.

  "Yeah that's what I thought, pecker head," Sorn grumbled as one bird resolutely ducked his head deep into his neck feathers upon seeing how little Sorn was impressed by his avian display of dominance. His uncertainty about the situation was, of course, only heightened by Sorn's sarcastic quip. Deciding that now was a wonderful time to do some territorial safeguarding, preferably far away from this particular crow, the confused creature quickly beat a hasty retreat.

  Soon enough Sorn found his way into the hallways of the palace proper, his inquisitive head popping out of a gap in one of the ceiling's finely wrought mosaics. The hole was disguised by the fact that it was in the midst of a series of dark tiles, Sorn found. Perhaps everyone simply thought it part of the normal pattern. Sorn quickly debated whether he should fly invisible, but soon decided against this. No doubt it would probably cause a lot more alarm if people heard an invisible bird flapping around like a ghost, as indeed he could do no gliding in these tight corridors, than it would be if he just appeared a dumb bird who had managed to lose itself in the palace.

  A good thing I've been here before, Sorn thought as he flapped past more than one guard whose head tilted toward the ceiling at his passing, though they favored him with no worse than a dirty look and grumbling about cats earning their keep.

  "I would like to see them try," Sorn mumbled, though the startled look on one guard's face followed immediately by the shaking of his head and a curious look at his upraised water flask reminded Sorn he had best keep a lid on it, however much the quip begged saying.

  Soon enough he spotted what he was looking for, the King's receiving room, location confirmed by the richly embroidered tapestry he recognized next to the doorway. Veined with gold and silver, the elegant tapestry depicted a brilliant white unicorn spearing what Sorn took to be a fearsome black knight, symbolic of vanquishing some great evil, no doubt. Sorn couldn't help but admire the way dozens of tiny silvery white pearls had been sown into the unicorn in such a way as to give it a rich, lustrous appearance. Indeed, the black knight himself was given an almost obsidian sheen by the black pearls sown about his person as well.

  It was no wonder such an exquisite work was to be found in the halls of royalty, and the very impressed bird spent a handful of seconds appreciating the effort and skill that had gone into making the captivating tapestry. Or perhaps, being a crow, he just liked the shiny pearls. In either case, his attention snapped back to the present the moment he heard voices coming from the other side of the door.

  "But, Father, they won't even let Halence speak. I say they carry their prerogatives too far! There is obviously something foul afoot, and our friends seem to have fallen prey to it." This clearly the voice of Elissa, turning his mild curiosity into an intense desire to see the beautiful face accompanying the passionate words.

  "Be that as it may, my child, the fact remains that the lords do have that prerogative. Our Crown has secured great stability and longevity for itself, in part by our ability to curb what were once little more than robber barons following no law save their own, into a cohesive body of lords subject to one voice of rule. Remember, Elissa, this did not come about simply by political maneuvering and force of arms, but by our ability to come to compromises and always, and I do mean always, honoring the promises we made.

  "The assurance of a safe zone wherein they did not have to worry about fatal intrigues, nor their neighbors laying siege upon them and taking their families hostage was a key factor that eventually resulted in the lords moving into our city proper, leaving us to deal with the details and follies of administering the land. They achieved both safety, title to their lands, and wealth through rents; those objectives being dearly prized during that earlier time of terrible uncertainty, where intrigue, betrayal, and the wholesale butchery of entire clans was the norm. Our kingdom, in turn, truly became one, with all the lands of the nobles who acquiesced to live within our bosom administered as one under royal decree. Only then were the united forces under your many times great grandfather's rule able to crush any and all dissident forces and troublemakers who would not accept our rule, nor the laws and stability we offered.

  "As a result, we all benefited. The lords arguing even now in court have to this day been able to maintain their title, station, and work-free income as well as the benefits of security and stability and an ease-of-life that their ancestors had never known. The price, of course, was acquiescing to royal administration of their lands and soldiers, allowing us to truly be a power on this continent, all our troops under one banner.

  "Truly, it is better this way for everyone, and you know as well as I do that our state is a far better place with the lords now spending most of their time dressed as elegant fops competing for the most stylish cut of cloth and sleekest saber, or spending their days in drink and excess, than we would be, were they riding across our lands in warbands intent on butchering their neighbors for a couple more bloody acres of land to add to their rule."

  El
issa couldn't couldn't quite hold back a small chuckle at her father's wry commentary, Sorn noted as he discreetly hopped his way past the guardsman, using his unnatural strength to squeeze open the door sufficiently to gain entrance for himself.

  "Of course you are right, Father. Truth to tell, I can hardly visualize half the court as being anything other than the elegant popinjays whose namesake they so adroitly mimic in all ways that I can see."

  Her father smiled, lightening up careworn features, his blue eyes twinkling with mirth. "Truly, my daughter. Far better a court of slightly spoiled fops, than one of dozens of power hungry lords each seeking to do the others in. We all benefit with our present arrangement, various excesses being far, far less an evil than treachery and slaughter. In fact, there are any number of days that I don't mind a little bit of excess myself."

  "Father!"

  "Just a joke, my dear, just a joke. The point is that they, like all men, need their pride intact for all that the world has changed around them, and we need to keep our own commitments as a matter of principal and honor both. The fact is that they are still lords, due the respect entitled by their rank and station. They need the assurance that their title still means something, which is why their families were long ago granted free access to the king's council for at least an hour on most days, so long as they reside here.

  "And since we have, in fact, made their families more or less permanent guests of our city, this necessitated allowing for the formation of a specific lord's council. As you know, most of the time this serves as little more than a gossip center for the latest in fashion and fencing, with the occasional spree toward city improvements. Once in a while some of them might form a petition formally recommending new laws of one minor nature or another which, to appease them, I will occasionally sign, should it not be too obnoxious. Fortunately these laws have a set lifetime, though they can always appeal to renew such."