Battledragon (43 page)

Still the initial news was so much better than she might have expected that her heart soared. As soon as she had taken some soup, she asked Lagdalen to help her walk across to meet with General Baxander.

Baxander had only recovered half a day previous, and he was still shaky. He had, however, taken stock of the situation and was able to brief Lessis extensively when she appeared at his tent, barely able to walk, leaning on Lagdalen for support.

The news of the losses caused Lessis despair.

"I blame myself; it was some kind of plague that we had not considered. I had hoped that we would be protected by the spells and the use of quinine. It had worked well for most of the journey."

"Lady, it worked very well. Everyone on my staff was surprised that we even reached the Ramparts of the Sun. You could not expect to have knowledge of every plague that haunts these fevered forests."

Lessis accepted Baxander's reassurances gratefully. Yet there was a greater concern still troubling her.

"We have lost time, precious time. Every hour is priceless now. We are so close, and our enemy has been making haste to prepare for our arrival for weeks."

Baxander had anticipated Lessis.

"We can march in two days. We took some losses in the ox teams, but not that many. We lost seven horses to the wild beasts."

"From what I was told, it was something of a miracle that we were not devoured in our beds. Our thanks must go to the Mother and to a certain leatherback dragon!"

"Indeed. Now, as to the line of march, if you would care to look at the map, Lady? We go north, along a riverbank for part of the way. Scouts report it makes a good path, surprisingly firm."

Two days later they struck camp and marched out. Around the camp rampart they left a drift of bones from dead beasts. Many of the men had collected strings of daggerlike teeth to sell for necklaces. Others had gathered sickle claws. There would be a relative dearth of predators in that region for years to come.

And now the Mother seemed to smile upon Her children, for the rain held off for seven full days. The ground firmed up and in the last three of those days they made almost thirty miles, as much as they'd managed in the first four.

They were aided also by the relatively flat terrain, sloping upward to the north. Whenever possible they moved along the open banks of subsidiary rivers. When necessary the engineers cut trees, built bridges, and hacked out crude roads. Everyone worked incredibly hard, digging, clearing brush, pulling out trees when absolutely necessary.

Occasionally predatory monsters came out of the woods to investigate the oxen, or even the work crews. The cavalry dispatched most of these, although a few of the largest and most obstinate had to be confronted by dragons with dragonsword.

The land around them was changing, though. As they climbed northward, they found a new kind of forest around them. Flowers reappeared, and with them came the birds, many of them brightly colored, darting through the green canopy. And every day the sightings of the great beasts declined in number. The very air seemed to grow fresher, and there was a cool breeze at night blowing in from the nearby waters of the inland ocean. Finally, at night the forest was noisier than ever, far noisier than it had been down in the bottomlands, but the men did not complain about such noise anymore.

In the 109th the mood was one of relief and expectancy. They had suffered no casualties. There was one casualty they would have welcomed, but their dragon leader, too, awoke from the fever unharmed and in a foul mood. The sunny disposition of just a few days before had vanished. The dragon leader was distant and cold with everyone. He called inspections every morning, though, and demanded spotless joboquins. This was unreasonable, since they were marching through wild country and the dragons were doing all kinds of intensely physical things every day, whether cutting and shifting trees or digging or occasionally whacking some predator too hungry or stupid not to leave them alone.

Relkin sensed that something was wrong. Wiliger was back to behaving as if he was hurt and insulted by his own unit. Like it had been on board ship and during most of the march. Perhaps the constant repetition of "We'll do it. What is it?" jokes that kept the boys sniggering had reached him. His unfortunate motto had sunk to being the butt of endless jokes in these days of improving morale. Wiliger was a creature of fragile pride, easily dented.

"What are we, lads?" Endi would say in a stage whisper.

"We're the 'We'll do its'!" would come back from several others.

Then someone else would say, "Wrong! We're the 'What is its?' " This tepid humor was enough to get the boys giggling again and again. They were in a wild mood, alternating between silly relief at escaping plague and the dark forest of antiquity, and tense excitement at the thought of battle at the end of the march and an end to this long campaign.

Relkin watched with some concern. He even tried to dampen the giggles over "We'll do it. What is it?" jokes, but did not succeed. The earlier reincarnation of Wiliger as Delwild the Nice had done something to his spell over the younger boys. Whereas before they had been in fear of him and his endless punishments and inspections, now they had nothing but contempt.

They marched, a process that included shoving wagons out of mires, cutting and hauling timber, while engineers built rickety bridges across endless winding streams of murky brown water. They marched, or more accurately they covered ground. In the process they got covered from head to toe in mud every day. Keeping equipment ready for parade ground inspections was almost impossible. Yet Wiliger kept riding them. Punishment details were being handed out again in broadsides.

At the end of the first week, the rains came. For two days they sat in camp while the brown waters rose around them and then subsided. The ground ahead was mired thickly. Their progress slowed dramatically. On the first day they barely made five miles. On the second only three. Then as the ground firmed up again to the point where it could take iron-shod wheels, they began to improve.

On the twelfth day they saw the last giant beasts. A pair of loping two-legged animals, harmless and inoffensive, about the size of wyvern dragons. These beasts, colored light green on the upper surface and a dusty ocher on the lower, were grazing on bushes at the edge of a long glade. They ignored the marching columns of men and ox wagons, although they stopped and stared for a long moment when they saw dragons march by. When the Purple Green noticed them and stopped to consider them, they grew nervous and shifted back into the forest and disappeared from view.

The Purple Green tried to inveigle Bazil into a scheme for hunting the herbivore beasts, but the Broketail was too tired at the end of every day to consider any extra effort. It was all he could do to eat several big tubs of noodles lathered in akh and then turn in and sleep every hour allowed.

Still they made progress and by the eighteenth day had crawled up the northern side of the basin and entered a different land. They saw the first human villages they'd seen since they'd crossed the Ramparts of the Sun. The villagers had long since fled. The batrukhs had not ceased to stalk them every night. They were in the land of the Kraheen, and the Kraheen knew they were coming.

At length the army came to a plain covered in shattered rock known to the Kraheen as the Tog Utbek, the place of broken stone.

The rock came in all sizes, from that of a fist to lumps as big as a man. The volcanic origin of the rock was clear enough, and its source lay out in the midst of the waters of the Inland Sea, the Island of the Bone.

This barren place was a surprise to the men, who'd grown used to greener pastures. For days now they had tramped along muddy farm roads through a region lush in grainfields and orchards of tropical fruit. They had found large villages, emptied by their approach, stripped of most provision.

Denied the stores in the villages, the army had harvested the almost ripe grain from the fields and taken green fruits from the trees. These were a welcome addition to their now-dwindling supplies of grain.

Even more importantly, they cut lush fodder for oxen and horses, and this put new impetus into the scouting operations going on far ahead of them.

The plain of stones seemed harsh, almost unreal to them for a while. Relkin thought he'd never seen uglier ground in his life. Manuel scoffed and mentioned the sorcerer's isle. Relkin had to agree that that had been bad, yet there was something about this place that he did not like.

They marched a third of the way across the plain, and Baxander ordered the halt for the day. It was still early, but camp was set up while the surrounding ditch was dug. Baxander and his staff met under canvas, with the maps spread out before them. Being unsure about what lay ahead, he waited for the final report of the day from his scouts. In truth, they were feeling their way through this land. The Imperial maps were vague about this entire region. Imperial surveyors had never been here, and everything was mapped according to the sketches produced by explorers of many types. From a dozen accounts of varying qualities, the maps had been cobbled together. There was a lot they did not know.

What they did know was that there were low hills, scooped up from the rock-strewn plain, about five miles ahead. To die flanks, the ground rose gently on either side in a long flat plain. Beyond the ridgeline the land sloped down toward the Inland Sea. Thick forests choked the lower ground. On the right, the hills rose to higher masses extending back many miles from the plain. For the legions, engaging a larger force, the ground resembled a possible trap, a box in which they could be shut.

Shortly, Baxander was closeted with Steenhur, Felk-Habren, Prince Ard Elac of Kassim, and Lessis of Valmes. Around them a camp was being hammered to life. A ditch was dug, a rampart thrown up above it, and along the top of the rampart was set the palisade they carried with them.

Baxander unrolled the general map of the region and pointed to its center.

"Beyond this plain lies the heartland of the Kraheen. They must give battle soon. They cannot risk letting us get past those hills."

"If they sit up on those hills," said Steenhur gloomily, "they will have good ground."

"They will attack us. They cannot stand on the defensive with untrained troops. The fanatic is ill suited to discipline. They will want to use their numbers as quickly as possible, while they have the fervor hot and strong."

The Count of Felk-Habren rubbed his hands together.

"If they attack, we will be ready for them. Horses are well fed now, eager for the charge."

Prince Ard Elac agreed with the count. The Kassimi were eager for battle. The battle at Koubha seemed long ago and far away.

All senior commanders reported good spirit in their units and a general readiness for battle. Effects of the great fever had largely worn off.

Lessis was quiet and added nothing of her own. When the others left, Baxander asked why.

"The question I must ask myself is simple: Have we come too late?"

"Dear Lady, we have brought a great army, capable of smashing our foe, halfway around the world in the matter of less than half a year. He has had advance warning of our coming only for a few months, since we landed at Sogosh and defeated his invasion force at Koubha. He cannot be ready to face us."

"I understand what you have done, General, and it has been magnificent work. Your staff has wrought a new kind of magic. I trust that they will infect all our forces with it. It has a miraculous strength. No one could have asked for more than this army has given our cause."

These words evidently pleased the general.

"A good staff, the best engineers in the legions, and willing men. With such weapons we can defeat any foe."

Lessis nodded and did her best to suppress her fears. The army was doing everything that General Baxander could want in preparation for battle. Still, the loss of those weeks in the swampland, brought low by the fever, cut at her. Who could say what the enemy might have accomplished in that time?

She left the general and made a swift tour of the medical section. Most of the remaining fever victims were still weak; all were still being carried in ox carts now emptied of food and materials. Lessis was more interested at that moment, however, in the veterinarian report on their stock of horses. The recent renewal of good fodder had done wonders for their condition, but there were still problems, particularly for the Czardhan warhorses, which were large brutes with rather fragile dispositions. The Czardhan leaders were still sanguine about their horseflesh, but the veterinarian was worried. He thought that they had yet to regain their endurance.

"Such horses must be as strong as trolls. They must carry a man in full armor with heavy weapons. Weak horses will walk rather than charge!"

Lessis listened and did her best to boost morale. She reminded the vets that they would probably fight a defensive battle and in such a battle the knights could fight dismounted, as part of the shield wall.

As for the dragons, to the surgeons it seemed that the wyverns had completely recovered from the plague. They were well fed and hardened by the weeks of marching. Lessis could be assured that they would fight as well as ever.

At last Lessis made her way to her own tent. Lagdalen brought her some hot soup and fresh-baked bread, and she sank down to eat it.

Hardly had she touched it when a courier came running up. The scouts were in, and the enemy army had been sighted. Lessis darted up, all fatigue forgotten and left the soup to grow cold. She went at once to the command tent, but found the generals already gone, galloping for the camp gate.

Baxander and his staff spurred their mounts forward to a little rise a mile ahead. From its top they could spy out the enemy position.

The plain dipped down in front of them and then rose up ahead to the low hills. The enemy had formed a battle line on the farther slope some three miles distant.

"They have chosen good ground," said Baxander.