Dragon Ultimate (28 page)

A huge catapult spear suddenly sank into the uppermost part of the parapet in front of Bazil. The wood splintered apart, and the spear ended up projecting through for half its length. Relkin's heart skipped a beat. The big leatherback had covered with his shield, though not even a shield could stop some of these catapult projectiles.

"Keep down!" Relkin shouted.

"This dragon is keeping down."

Bazil had slain three trolls and cleared his front. Alsebra was occupied with two trolls, unfortunate Vlok had three. Swane had missed his imp and was busy fighting on the ground with another.

Their neighbors pitched in to help. The Purple Green knocked one troll senseless with the flat of his sword. Manuel shot the imp that almost got Swane. Bazil engaged the sword troll that was climbing through the broken parapet in front of Vlok. Bazil's stroke was held, the troll was strong as well as quick. It made a cut and then a return that Bazil could only take on the shield and deflect with Ecator. Vlok helped out some more by tripping on a dead troll, falling, and knocking the sword troll down to its knees. Bazil finished it with a flash of the sword. A huge albino troll, its yellow tusks exposed in a savage snarl, went belly to belly with Hexarion, the green from the 145th. Hexarion was actually borne back a step, though the troll was barely two-thirds his own weight.

He shook off the thing's grip and smashed an elbow into its hideous face. It shrieked and they wrestled, snarling and spitting in each other's faces until Alsebra leaned over and slid her blade into the troll's side and finished it.

Hexarion stood over the body. "Thank you, that was a hell of a strong troll."

"You're welcome," was her response as she engaged with some spearmen in the black-leather uniform of Padmasa.

The fighting was chaotic and intense, but Legion training came to the fore. The men formed into triads, then coalesced into a short line. Lines connected to one another. Dragons fought in front, men stayed out of the wyverns' way.

The imps pressed against them, but the trolls could not break the wyverns' line, and any imps that got past them were swiftly dealt with by the men. Where a wyvern was speared or cut down, the line of men would move forward at once to engage at the parapet edge, where they worked with spears and arrows against the trolls. That could hold them back for a while, but eventually a new dragon would be needed in that hole.

The line along the much-damaged parapet stabilized. The Legion force had almost been shocked off the rampart and into flight, but had held after that first fierce struggle. The battle seesawed a little more, but it was starting to settle into a pattern. The Legion, with the dragons on the rampart, could not be broken. Dead trolls mounded up at the edge of the parapet. Imp casualties ran into the thousands.

Still the Padmasans had not given up. They regrouped, more black drink was passed among the imps, and once more they came on against the battered stockade. As before, the powerful green light flashed on just at the moment of impact. The Legions were better prepared this time, but it still had its deadly effect, and the imps and trolls broke through once more.

Relkin felt his sword ring against another imp's blade! He turned inside, and rammed his knee into the imp's midriff, where the armor was slight. The imp gave a gasp, Relkin got past its guard, and slew it in the next moment. Another was coming, almost immediately.

And then Jumble was there, swinging with nice crisp strokes, wielding his village blade, Chantceer. He disabled a troll, spun it around, and sent it crashing back into the ruins of the parapet. His tail sword came over and sliced its throat with a nicely timed move. The troll thrashed in the broken timbers.

Jumble then swatted some of the insurgent imps and kicked others back. They retreated to the parapet, past the still-thrashing troll. Relkin shot one as it went. Jumble caught another one with his sword. The troll was dead at last, and the imps were gone.

For a moment their front was clear. Bazil had killed everything that had come over the parapet on his front. He had also unwittingly brained a poor soldier from Bea, who had failed to duck the tail in time. The Purple Green and Alsebra had cleared their fronts, too, and now the parapet was back in the hands of the 109th all along their front.

Catapult spears were still whipping into the position. Wynelda, a lively freemartin in the Kadein 144th was killed as a spear passed clean through her upper body. Officers, tongue-lashed by Tregor, were out there with the engineers, dragooning men into repairing the stockade. Their efforts were hastened by the sounds from the enemy. The trolls were starting to roar again, and the imps clashed spears on shields as the black drink took effect once more.

Bands of copper wire and stout rope were employed to tie back together the broken sections of the parapet where it was possible. Where the damage was too great, the timbers were hastily hammered across the gap horizontally and bracing posts were rammed into the rampart behind them.

And still arrows and spears from the enemy catapults flashed through breaks in the stockade. Several engineers had fallen during the repair work.

One ten-foot spear smashed through the stockade between Vlok and Bazil, who were hunched down behind the parapet. The spearhead quivered about three feet inside the wall, directly between the two leatherbacks as they faced one another.

"This dragon hate these catapults."

"This dragon agrees."

They shifted back several feet. The dull horns were blaring again, and the enemy was readying for a third assault on the lines.

At that point they heard a sudden crescendo of comet calls from the south. Sharp shrieks announced trouble on the southern flank, past the Red Rose Legion from Cunfshon.

General Tregor heard the cornets and bit his lip. The Baguti had reached their flank? But they had been miles away. How had they driven themselves to get this far so soon? They must have traveled through the night, across the bogs and swamps. How? It seemed so unlike the usual pattern of warfare from the nomads, who avoided arduous conditions and hazardous attacks whenever possible.

More cornets told him that it was indeed the Baguti, and that a crisis was building on the flank of the Red Rose Legion.

Tregor was on his horse and riding for General Va'Gol's command post in the next moment. Sublieutenant Gink was on his mount just a few moments later.

Tregor found Va'Gol's command post a scene of anxiety and confusion. The Legion line had broken under an assault by dismounted Baguti. Then mounted Baguti had followed and now the nomads were pouring in, thousands of them. The entire left flank had been broken down and turned off the ramparts, forced to fight ad hoc in the woods behind the beach.

The Legionaries' iron discipline had held, they were fighting well now, but the rampart was compromised, and there were ten thousand or more Baguti engaged on the southern flank against less than two thousand defenders who had no defensive works left.

Tregor immediately ordered some of his slender reserves to hurry south and bolster the Red Rose Regiment. Dragons were shifted south, too, a scramble of heavy bodies moving down behind the rampart.

The enemy charged the stockade once more. Horns blaring, trolls roaring, and imps howling, they came on, threw up their ladders, drove home with their hammers, and once more the green light threw everything into stark, hideous relief.

The line shook all along the front, but this time the Legionaries held firm. Men and dragons ducked behind their shields at the crucial moment and avoided the blinding light. Then they took on the enemy, despite having the fierce green light in their eyes.

At which point Tregor received the news that the enemy had assaulted the Legion positions at Brownwater Lagoon and also at the Angle on the Military Road. The Baguti had moved with far less lethargy than they'd ever shown before, and as a result Tregor's army was bottled up on the beach with no clear road back to the fort at the volcano.

He had expected something like this to develop, but not this early and not with his left flank broken off the rampart and in extremis in the woods.

Tregor faced the prospect of annihilation and the loss of the empire's main surviving army after the two plagues that had struck the lands of the Argonath. He put his head in his hands for a moment and prayed for strength and guidance from the Great Mother of all things.

The fighting petered out toward midmorning, leaving the Legion position damaged but unbroken. The imps were simply exhausted. Not even unlimited black drink could kick them forward in another charge. The enemy retreated back across the river, leaving only the catapults on Crescent Island to continue hostilities.

Catapults sniped all day while the Legions worked to repair their battered lines. On the beach, mounds of dead imps and trolls began to heat up in the sun. On the southern flank, in the woods north of the Little Fish River, the Red Rose Legion dug itself in with a furious effort. A ditch, a short rampart, and a stockade were going up in record time.

Relkin had time to examine the two wyverns under his care. Bazil had some scrapes, some bruising from a troll hammer, and plenty of damage to his shield. The secondary strap on the third lumbar had come loose on the joboquin. Lots of other straps were stressed, but his cross-stitching had held.

Behind the dirt rampart, safe from catapult fire, all the dragons that hadn't been recruited to work on the southern flank fortifications were sitting down, working over their weapons. Bazil took up a whetstone to work on Ecator, which had certainly lost some of its edge after the work of the dawn hours. It felt heavy and full, as if the fiery spirit that inhabited the blade was sated in some grim way.

Jumble had some serious damage to the straps for his breastplate. He also had a pair of nasty cuts on the right flank, where something had cut into him twice. Relkin cleaned these wounds and sewed them up as quickly as possible. Jumble let out a few whistles as the disinfectant bubbled in the cuts, but Relkin was quick and deft, and the sewing was done in little time.

Jumble took the whetstone to his sword and went to work beside Bazil. There was some soreness on his right side, but he worked through the pain.

"Boy is very quick with stitching," he rumbled.

Bazil had to agree. "Boy is one of the best. I have few complaints."

"I miss Sui, we grow up together back in Keesh. But he was not this good with stitching."

"Boy Relkin is very good at close work. This dragon always impressed by results. Men work very small, little hands in constant motion, and yet work they do is enormous in every way. Far too complicated for this dragon to understand."

Jumble nodded. He, too, had once thought of this, but had not mentioned it to the other young dragons. "That's the difference," he agreed. "Dragon not need joboquins for wyvern life."

"Only for war, always war."

Relkin was down behind the fortification where he'd found a useful flat rock on which to work on the breastplate straps for both his dragons. Working as swiftly as he dared, he rethreaded the fastenings of the straps with seasoned thong and tied off with neat knots known as shoebows.

He recalled for a moment how old Macumber used to teach them this knot, with that constant refrain, "Tie them shoebows neat, boys, tie them very very neat…" Well, old Macumber would be proud of these shoebows, he thought. He tied them without conscious thought and produced an even, neat, very tight knot every time.

From the breastplate straps he went to the helmet strap and then finally got to Bazil's joboquin, which required heavy needle and yarn.

Some men and dragons came in from the Angle on a relief. They spoke of fierce fighting against the Baguti on the Military Road. The Angle had held, though. As had the line at Brownwater Lagoon.

Three dragons from a Kadein squadron tramped past with cheerful waves to the 109th and 145th where they sat together whetting their blades. A messenger came running past and stopped at Dragon Leader Cuzo's dugout in the rampart. Everyone watched with interest. The messenger reappeared after a few minutes, then ran back past them at the double, not responding to their cheerful inquiries.

A few moments later Cuzo burst out of his dugout and told them to get ready to move out.

"We're rotating up to the Angle. There's a Kadein squad that's going to Brownwater. More Kadeins coming up to take this position. So let's move it, everyone. Get our bags packed and on our shoulders as quickly as possible. I want to move out within twenty minutes."

With a few groans from dragonboys who were still completing repairs to joboquins and straps and equipment, they moved.

The dragons set down the whetstones and sheathed their giant blades. The wagons were brought round, nervous oxen shifting restlessly in their yokes. The whetstones were loaded up, along with helmets and heavy pieces of armor. Tents, axes, and miscellaneous tools went into the big chest on the second wagon. Cuzo was up and down their line making sure that nothing important was left behind, particularly rope.