A Birthright of Blood (The Dragon War, Book 2) (26 page)

Tilla had trained for this. She
had spent a year training for this. Yet now she only wanted this to
end, to stop this desecration of her memories. How could she fight
for the force that toppled Cadport? How could she lead dragons to
burn her home? Why did Rune not emerge and end this?

"Lanse!" Shari
shouted. "I gave you an order. Lead your dragons! Stop those
cannons."

Fire blazed inside Tilla.

You
force me to do this, Rune,
she thought.

Her eyes stung and she roared.

Rune had attacked Castra Luna
with his Resistance, slaughtering hundreds of soldiers from Cadport.
Rune now lurked here like a coward, firing cannons from shadow rather
than facing her in open battle.

"Dragons!" Tilla
shouted. "Follow!"

She began to fly over the
burning homes, heading toward the square. Everywhere below her,
buildings burned and collapsed. Still the resistors fought from
hiding, emerging from holes, windows, and tunnels to fire arrows,
then scurrying back into shadow.

You
did this, Rune!
Tilla thought with a growl.
You
hide in homes, forcing us to topple them. You lurk like a coward,
forcing us to destroy our city.

She howled, racing above the
streets. Her phalanx roared behind her. Beyond roofs and alleyways,
they reached the city square. The courthouse, the place where Tilla
had seen Pery beheaded, rose ahead from smoke.

Its portico shook. Smoke
blasted and fire blazed. Cannonballs shot from between the columns
toward Tilla's phalanx.

She swerved. One cannonball
roared over her head, another beneath her wing. Beside her, a
projectile slammed into one of her dragons. The warrior didn't even
have time to roar. The cannonball tore through his magic, leaving
him to tumble to the ground in human pieces.

"Burn them!" Tilla
roared. "Before they reload!"

She dived lower and skimmed over
the square. The cobblestones raced beneath her. She beat her wings,
racing toward the columns ahead. She could see more cannons there,
their muzzles lowering to face her.

She roared her fire and soared.

The flames blasted between the
columns. The cannons inside jerked violently like marionettes whose
strings were tugged. Fire blasted and more cannonballs flew. Tilla
rose higher, screaming. One cannonball slammed against the tip of
her wing, tearing off her claw, and she howled in agony. The pain
blazed through her like a fingernail ripped off a hand. Her dragons
blew fire around her. Cannonballs tore through two dragons at her
side, scattering human limbs across the square.

"Fill this place with
fire!" Tilla screamed.

She rose above the courtyard
roof. Holes had been carved into the stone; she saw them too late.
Arrows fired from within, and Tilla screamed. Several arrows
shattered against the breastplate that protected her belly. Two more
pierced her wounded wing, tearing straight through the skin. The
pain nearly blinded her, but she turned and dived.

She swooped down along the
columns and sprayed her fire into the courthouse shadows.

Cannons blasted from within. A
hundred cannonballs flew skyward, tearing into dragons; one skimmed
along her breastplate, raising sparks. Tilla snarled. Beyond the
shadows and smoke behind the columns, she saw men scurry to scoop
gunpowder from barrels.

Tilla growled and blew fire.

Her flaming jet spun between two
columns, raced by a cannon, and slammed against the barrels.

Tilla soared.

Arrows whistled and shattered
against her armor and scales. One scraped alone her tail. Tilla
kept rising.

An explosion rocked the
courthouse below.

Smoke burst skyward, enveloping
Tilla.

Chunks of stone flew, peppering
her breastplate and slamming into her wings.

She kept soaring. The dragons
of her phalanx rose along with her, howling and coughing.

"Get back down there,"
she shouted, "and slay them all!"

She dived back into the square.
She drove through the smoke, heading toward the courthouse. She beat
her wings, shoving the smoke back, and revealed three shattered
columns. A chunk of roof had fallen, and blood seeped from beneath.
Some columns still stood, and cannons lay overturned beside them.
Resistors scurried deeper into the crumbling building.

"Warriors!" Tilla
howled. "Human forms—enter after me!"

She landed by the standing
columns, shifted into a human, and drew her sword. Behind her,
dozens of dragons followed suit.

"Slay the Resistance!"
Tilla shouted. "Slay them all."

She ran between the columns into
the shadows. Her men ran behind her. Arrows flew from within, and
one grazed her armor. Others slammed into men behind her; some
arrows punched through steel, and the men fell.

"Slay them!" Tilla
shouted. She ran, sword held above her, into a shadowy hall.

They waited there, a hundred
resistors. They were ashy and bloody, yet they drew their blades,
shouted, and ran toward her.

"Hail the red spiral!"
Tilla cried, slammed into their ranks, and swung her blade. At her
sides, her fellow warriors clashed against the enemy. Swords lashed
and men fell dead.

You
made me do this, Rune,
Tilla thought as she swung her sword, slicing into flesh, slaying men
at every turn. She screamed madly, painting the hall red.
You
made me kill.

Tears burned in her eyes, but
still Lanse Tilla Siren fought and killed as her city burned around
her.

 
 
RUNE

He crawled from the tunnel into
the silo, covered in dirt and ash. At least, once this place had
been a silo. The grain had been emptied, and the chamber now served
as a pillbox, a brick outpost with embrasures along the walls for
firing arrows or dragonfire.

The corpses of two archers lay
here, charred black.

Fire
can be blown inward too,
Rune
thought with a grimace, stepping over the remains.

The brick walls surrounded him,
sooty and still hot. Rune sucked in his breath and shifted into a
dragon, all but trapping himself between the stone walls. Through
the slits, Rune glimpsed legionaries running through the city
streets, shouting in the night.

He thrust his jaw against an
arrowslit, sucked in his breath, and sprayed the street with fire.

Screams rose.

When his flames died, he saw
soldiers falling ablaze, tearing at their red-hot armor.

"A hundred or more
outside!" Rune shouted over his shoulder to the hole in the
floor; more resistors hid there.

"Hold them back!"
Kaelyn shouted from below.

Rune peered out the arrowslit.
A dozen soldiers had fallen. A dozen more were rushing forward. He
blasted them with more flames, and they fell.

A dragon shrieked.

Blasts of air pounded the
street, scattering dust, discarded armor, and a severed hand. Rune
glimpsed blue scales in the night—a dragon swooping toward the
pillbox. A boom echoed. The walls creaked and rained dust. The
dragon slammed into the walls again, shrieking, and through the hole,
Rune glimpsed a blue tail lashing.

"Damn it," he
muttered. He blasted flames out the arrowslit, and the blue dragon
shrieked. Rune glimpsed the beast stumbling back in the street, and
his heart seemed to freeze.

The dragon had only one wing.
The other was built of wood, rope, and leather.

"Shari Cadigus," he
whispered.

Charred and howling, the blue
dragon faced the silo again. Through the arrowslit, her eyes met
Rune's.

He blasted more fire outward.

Shari shrieked.

"Resistor in the silo!"
rose her howls. "Topple it down. Tear down the walls!"

More dragons slammed into the
walls. Loose bricks fell and clattered.

"Get out of there, Rune!"
Kaelyn shouted below.

He blasted more fire out the
hole, scorching Shari, and shifted back into human form. The walls
trembled and cracked around him. He leaped into the tunnel and
plunged into darkness.

Kaelyn grabbed him, and they
crawled as fast as they could. Above him, Rune heard the silo
collapse. Bricks and dust tumbled into the tunnel, and he coughed,
blinded.

"Keep crawling!"
Kaelyn said and tugged his arm. They raced down the burrow. A dozen
resistors crawled ahead of them, holding lamps.

Shari's voice echoed above,
muffled beyond the debris.

"Clear the bricks and into
the tunnel! The rats scurry there."

Rune crawled as fast as he
could, burrowing forward on his elbows. Heat blazed behind him.

"Rune, they're coming after
us!" Kaelyn shouted, crawling before him.

"Keep moving!" he
shouted back.

Where's
the rope? Damn it, where is it?

He heard the legionaries tug
bricks, clearing a path to the tunnel. Rune hissed and kept
crawling. Armor clanked behind him, and the cries of legionaries
filled the tunnel.

There!

The rope dangled from the tunnel
roof. Rune scurried by and tugged.

Hands reached out and grabbed
his feet.

The tunnel collapsed behind him.

Bricks and soil crashed down,
burying the legionaries who'd grabbed him. Dust blinded Rune, heat
bathed him, and he coughed. When the debris cleared, he breathed
raggedly.

"Another tunnel lost,"
he said hoarsely, tugging himself free from the dead man's grip.

They had been fighting for a
night and day now. They had lost a dozen tunnels, a dozen homes, and
a dozen pillboxes. The courthouse had fallen.

So many were dead.

Kaelyn coughed ahead of him,
smeared with dust and dirt. She reached out and grabbed his hand.

"Come on, Rune," she
said. "We have to keep moving. Keep crawling. We're almost at
Castellum Acta."

He kept crawling, following her
and the others. The sounds of battle faded behind. Judging by the
other tunnels they had sabotaged, it would take the legionaries an
hour to clear the rubble and crawl in pursuit.

But they always did follow.

They always emerged into the
next hideout, swinging their swords and blowing their fire.

But he kept crawling.

He kept fighting.

It had been a night and day, and
he had not eaten, drunk, or slept, but he kept going.

"How many still fight in
the fort?" he asked, pulling himself through the darkness. It
was almost winter, but the air was sweltering down here; he could
barely breathe.

"Six hundred men last time
I was there," Kaelyn replied. "But the damn Legions keep
blasting fire at the walls. We're down to only ten barrels of
gunpowder."

Rune felt his belly sink as he
crawled.

"We will not last a day
there," he said. "They are too many."

Still wriggling along the
tunnel, Kaelyn snarled at him over her shoulder. "We will last
a moon. We will keep slaying them. Their bodies litter the
hillside, and we will slay ten of them for every one of us they
kill."

They crawled for an hour,
passing many forks in the tunnel where other resistors moved. Many
were bloodied. Some were missing limbs. Some screamed as their
comrades pulled them into safe burrows for healing. Rune could not
guess how many had died already, but at every house and street where
he had fought, he saw them there—the corpses of his brothers and
sisters.

Finally they reached the tall,
narrow shaft that rose upward into shadow. A wooden sign stood here,
bearing the word: "Library". The actual library lay
hundreds of yards west of here; all the signs in these tunnels were
mislabeled, meant to confuse the Legions should they crawl here.
Kaelyn, Rune, and the other resistors climbed the shaft, clinging to
its wooden ladder. They opened a trapdoor and emerged into the hall
of Castellum Acta, the fortress on the hill.

A hundred resistors stood here,
surrounding a table heavy with maps, swords, and wooden pieces carved
as dragons. Kegs of gunpowder rose at the back. A dozen archers
stood along the walls, firing arrows from slits.

Valien stood at the table, clad
in leather armor, glaring down at a parchment map of the tunnels.
Other resistors stood around him, caked with dirt, and moved pieces
around the map.

"Valien!" Kaelyn said,
walking toward him. "The silo at Well Road has fallen. We
destroyed the tunnel before fleeing."

Valien looked up, cursed, and
slammed his fist against the table.

"Stars damn it." He
lifted a piece of coal, and crossed out an outpost on the map. "Is
the silo claimed or completely fallen?"

Rune marched forward too,
wincing. Welts blazed across his body.

"Damn walls fell all around
me."

Grumbling, Valien moved several
small wooden dragons across the map. When Rune stood closer, he
stared down at the parchment and cursed.

"Merciful stars, Valien,"
he said. "We've lost, what… a quarter of our tunnels
already?"

The grizzled old knight nodded.
"And losing more fast. I—"

Shrieks sounded outside the
hall. The archers shouted and fired with more fervor.

"Another assault!" one
archer cried over his shoulder. "Two phalanxes—and they're
angry."

Valien was already shouting
orders at his men. "Send two hundred dragons out—stop that
assault!"

Resistors leaped onto a stairway
and raced up, leaving the hall and climbing the tower. Wings thudded
and more dragons shrieked. Through the arrowslits, Rune glimpsed
hundreds of resistors flying as dragons—they had emerged from the
tower top—and crashing against the enemy. Blood rained.

Rune began marching toward the
tower stairs; the hall doors were bricked up, but the tower still
held a trapdoor for fighters.