Dragon Ultimate (15 page)

The Radusa boys didn't know about any of that.

Kale and Rakama pulled off their shirts and took their stances Kale was a burly fellow with a hairy chest and massive round arms Pug-nosed Rakama was sleek and highly toned with intense muscle definition on his upper body Rakama had heft through the shoulders and back muscles that betrayed his power with a punch His hands were already taped and now he pulled on a pair of lightly padded gloves.

They came together between the two sides.

Rakama was hunched low and kept constantly in motion, head moving from side to side, shoulders bobbing as he shifted around, measuring the bigger man.

Kale looked to grapple and bear the smaller youth down. Failing that, he would go for roundhouse punches and kicks to the lower part of the body.

Rakama bored in Kale kicked at him and missed Rakama tried a jab and scored a stinging blow to Kale's nose The pain shocked and enraged Kale Radusa, who jumped forward swinging wildly with both hands Rakama ducked, weaved right, and came up inside Kale's left arm to deliver a stunning left-and-right hand combination that rocked Kale and sent him staggering back into the wall of the stables.

The Radusa boys exchanged looks of consternation.

Kale shook his head and paced backwards, keeping out of Rakama's range Then he feinted and swung a foot Rakama seemed to fail to read it, standing there until the very last moment, then slipping aside like an eel. He came in close again and Kale tried to grab him by the wrist. Kale grasped only at air as the youth shimmered away from him while bestowing another stinging left-hand jab to his already battered nose.

They were apart once more Kale was breathing hard, feeling blood flow freely from his nose while he shook his head to try and clear the pain.

For a moment or two they circled, then Kale tried to grapple again, throwing himself forward, only to catch a powerful upper-cut to the chest and another straight right to the jaw.

Kale sagged sideways and went down on one knee.

Since they were not fighting by any recognized rules, Rakama could have leveled Kale with his boot, but he held off.

Kale took a full half minute to get back on his feet He was a little unsteady now. His brothers shouted encouragement, but could not keep the uneasiness out of their voices.

Kale crouched low and angled in crabwise, looking to stay out of Rakama's range until he could get a hand on the dragonboy Rakama circled Kale, then suddenly bounced forward and connected with a right hand to the jaw. Kale sat down hard Rakama stood back, resumed his stance.

This time Kale came to his feet really mad. He was seeing double, but his anger overcame his caution. He lumbered toward Rakama and swung a haymaker with his right, missed and received two powerful shots in the belly. He spun away and took another jab that mashed his lips against his teeth.

Kale's temper evaporated in incandescent rage. He tried to hurl himself on Rakama, but the younger man seized his arm, turned, and threw Kale over his outstretched leg. The heavier boy went down with a cry and landed hard on his back The air went out of his chest, and he struggled to breathe.

"The watch!" shouted a dragonboy from the stable end.

"Go'" shouted Swane. Boys melted back into the dragonhouse, pulling Rakama with them. Swane came after and pulled shut the gate before ducking through the pump-room door.

The men of the watch, a pair of stern-faced guardians of the law, approached at a run. Kale Radusa was dragged to his feet by his brothers and pushed into the saddle just as the constables of the watch came up close enough to snatch at him. They missed, but the Radusa boys were well-known to the constables, and they had been identified. As they rode across the parade ground the watch called after them that they would be hearing more of this before the candles were lit that night.

In the dragonhouse, Relkin found Curf barely conscious, lying on his side swathed in bandages on a bunk in the sickbay. They'd put liniment where it would do some good, cleaned all the cuts and treated them with Old Sugustus and bound his broken fingers up with nice fresh bandages.

Swane was still there, going over Rakama, who had hardly picked up a scratch in his bout with Kale Radusa.

"Cuzo's gonna be mad about this for a long time," said Relkin.

Curf had been warned by everyone to stay clear of Emelia Radusa, and he had ignored the warnings. It was not as if Curf had a lot of points in his favor as it was. Now he was sure to be out of action for a week or more. Other boys would have to pick up the slack and look after Wout.

"We couldn't let them beat Curf like that and get away with it."

Relkin nodded. "Yeah, you're right," he admitted with a shrug. Relkin understood that the Radusans had gone too far this time. "And Rakama taught them a lesson."

Rakama looked up, a gleam in his eye.

"Didn't hurt him too bad, but sure busted his nose."

"I can imagine all too well." Relkin had watched Rakama box in the ring. "Made an enemy for us in the Radusa boys, though."

"Yeah," said big Swane, "but they sure weren't going to be our friends, anyway."

Relkin looked back at poor Curf, huddled on the bunk. Curf wasn't going to have many friends left in the unit if he kept on as he was, either.

Porteous Glaves, in his cell below the Tower of Guard, was visited by a young doctor, who then went home to his wife and family. A nurse washed him and put his imbecilic body into a clean shift. He was left on a pallet in the cell. Uneaten food was left beside him.

Through the night he ripened like a deadly cheese and the undetectable odor was in itself deadly to all men who breathed it.

The fever began in the first hour of morning. Glaves twitched and muttered and huddled on the pallet, his flesh shaking as the fever began to rise.

An extraordinary thing happened. The spell that had virtually stripped him of his intelligence broke asunder as the fever intensified. It was as if he had been asleep for a long, long time, and had dreamed his life rather than lived it. Now he lived again, felt in control of his own mind and body. Now suddenly he saw all that he had been through in the past year, since that terrible meeting with the sorcerer in the cellar of Wexenne's house.

He understood that the fever would be his parting gift to Marneri, a chalice of the purest poison. That, at least, was something to salve his pride with, a blow that would level the city that had cast him out because of a single moment of weakness during the Ourdh campaign.

It had been necessary for him to take over a ship. That act had led to some regrettable killings, but it had been essential so that he could escape Ourdh. He couldn't be expected to stay there and die like a rat in a trap. There had been no reason to charge him with anything. He would have happily set up financial funds to take care of widows and orphans, anything they had asked for, as long as it would not harm the honor of the Glaves name. Would they listen? Oh no, and so it escalated to the threats of trials, then actual trials and sentences to the Guano Isles.

Well, of course, Porteous was not about to spend his life on the Guano Isles. And he had taken steps to secure his freedom.

For a moment Porteous grinned. Wexenne was on the Guano Isles, serving a fifty-year sentence with no chance of parole. Porteous had heard this news while hiding in Aubinas, but then it had meant little to him since at that point his mind was in thrall to the will of the Master.

Porteous's mood changed as he recalled the Master himself. Wexenne was getting off lightly. To serve the Master for a day was far more onerous than a life shoveling bird excrement under the hot sun.

But the Master had taken pity on poor Porteous. He'd decided to use him as a weapon and allow him the freedom of death. He had made him into a missile which he cast into the tinder of the city of Marneri. The fire that burned in Porteous would soon be a conflagration.

The malice of the Great One had never wavered since that moment of ignominy when he'd been forced to flee Ryetelth. Stewing in his rage while he slowly recovered his health, he had carefully considered his revenge. He had studied the people of Ryetelth closely and had investigated them for their susceptibility to diseases.

He had prepared not one, but two plagues with which to annihilate the great mass of the people. For it was annihilation that he sought. Waakzaam had seen that the people were becoming so numerous that the world Ryetelth was growing beyond his power to rule. Once he had conquered it, which he still regarded as inevitable, there would be endless problems controlling the unruly hordes. Beyond that concern was his aesthetic distaste for such hordes. He preferred an emptier landscape, devoid of cities and population centers. It was best in fact when the cities were but empty shells, broken pinnacles beneath the bleak light of a cruel, dead moon.

Glaves felt tears leak from his eyes even as he accepted the crumbs of his Master's dread vengeance. His wailing brought in the guard, and Porteous made sure to breathe over him when the man came too close.

"My breath is death," he said with a giggle. Porteous sat up, although it took a great effort in his condition. He leaned forward and put his arms through the bars and caught hold of the guard's belt.

"Get off me, you," said the guard.

Porteous released him and wailed again.

"What ails you, prisoner Glaves?"

"I want to see a priestess," he hissed.

The guard turned away with a curse. It was the one request he could not refuse.

Porteous sagged back on the pallet. The fever swelled and madness burned in his heart. He saw them dying, their faces consumed by the raging fever, their eyes bulging in their heads, their breath stinking as they rotted and died. By the hundreds they would fall, then by the thousands until the city stank of death and the survivors wandered witless in the forests, their ears stopped forever from hearing the very name Marneri, for it would be the name of death.

Later a young woman in plain gray cloth with a light blue surplice came to see him.

"You said you wanted a priestess," she said in a quiet voice.

"Shrive me, sister, shrive this sinner."

"Is it that you are dying, son of the Mother? Are you ready to go to her Hand?"

"Dying?" He emitted a ghastly chuckle. "I am death, sister, death come before you in all his glory. I bring you the light of the grave and the air of the tomb."

"These are fell words, son of the Mother. Perhaps She would hear you better if you softened your words."

"I have sinned, I know it. I have killed and ordered others killed. I have lied and cheated and I have got my revenge on you all. You are all going to die because of me."

"These are grave matters you speak of, son of the Mother. You have killed?"

"It was necessary." Fever's delirium was settling over him. He walked in the shadowland.

"Such matters can never be so described, son of the Mother."

Porteous's eyes glittered with malice as he looked up at her.

"Lean closer," he hissed in a gasping whisper, then he spat on her when she bent her head. "Die, bitch, and take all the other bitches with you."

He fell back to the pallet with a groan. The priestess, Kemily of Marneri, wiped her face and left him, greatly troubled by his words.

In the temple, Fi-ice had acted at once on receiving the message from Hanth. The spell was difficult to cast, and precious time was lost when the thread was broken on the first attempt. Eventually it was found that a volume had been cast incorrectly and fresh lines had to be forged to reshape it on the second pass through the spellsay. It took hours, but at length they managed to send out a simple alarm call on the psychic plane. A call that could be heard by the listening greatwitches in Cunfshon.

Within an hour the city's witches were summoned to the Black Mirror chamber in the tower and Lessis herself came through the mirror shortly thereafter.

Lessis hurried to confer with Fi-ice, who told her of Kemily's troubling conversation with Glaves. Lessis realized that a new plague had most likely been loosed on them. General Hanth was rudely torn from his morning routine and hurled into action in a desperate bid to stay the progress of the new plague.

Cornets shrieked through the tower and its outliers. Men were hurriedly mobilized in a desperate attempt to find and quarantine all those who might be infected. At the same time great efforts had to be made to prevent panic and any attempt at a mass evacuation by the people of the city.

The guards who had been at the gate when Higul the Lame rode up, the men in the lockup and the women who hosed Glaves down and tried to feed him, all of these were found and quarantined, along with their families. The young doctor, the elder advocate, the nurse and the priestess, these too were found and confined.

And still the plague spread. Even as the guards began to grow feverish, soon followed by the men in the lockup and the nurses, a flower seller on Tower Street who had sold some chrysanthemums to the young doctor was incubating the fever even while he continued to sell his flowers on the corner.