Dragons of War (37 page)

Dragon mirth was short-lived, however. There were too many trolls for that, and they kept coming, urged on by the blaring horns and thundering drums. Still complaining and promising to eat pesky imps for supper, the trolls climbed. Around their feet like hounds around hunters came packs of imps, and among these were men, the officers who ran the imps, men in the black of Padmasa.

One of these vaulted over the top of the barricade on the heels of four imps. Ecator flashed and cut down two of the imps. Relkin put an arrow into another and then ducked behind a branch of oak as a black arrow sang past his head. The enemy skirmisher leapt for him, sword in hand.

Relkin met him sword on sword, but the man was twice his size and heaved him backward right off the barricade. Relkin landed, staggered, and recovered, then got his sword up in time to meet the enemy's. He deflected a killing thrust and used a low slice to force the fellow to lift his feet. Relkin's shield struck inside the other's and he got a thrust home between mail and hauberk. He saw the man's face go pale, then he was down and Relkin was pulling his sword free.

He looked up and saw a great troll, easily nine and a half feet high go shield to shield with the Broketail. The troll wielded an immense ax, which the dragon met with his shield.

Ecator swung, and the troll raised his shield to block the anticipated blow, but instead Bazil shoved forward with his own shield and brought the tail mace over with a whistling crack to ring off the troll's heavy iron helmet.

The troll staggered backward and came in perfect range for Ecator, whistling across and sinking deep into the troll's torso, which collapsed at once.

More trolls were there, one was swinging the great ax, Bazil dodged aside, but still felt some of the ax blow ringing off his right greave. His shield absorbed another blow, from his left. Ecator struck back, both trolls were knocked sideways. An imp ran in, Relkin's arrow missed, and it tried to get Bazil's hamstring. Relkin flung himself on it, heaved back the misshapen head, and cut its throat with his sword.

There was a huge shriek of rage and pain on their right, and Relkin saw the Purple Green lift a troll up bodily overhead and throw it straight into two more of its fellows who were climbing over the crest of the barricade.

Bazil deflected more clumsy blows with the giant axes, but then one troll got a full two-handed swing, and Bazil's shield was hewn through, above the arm grips. The shield was held fast by the ax stuck into it, more trolls were coming. Bazil unshipped the shield and swung Ecator with both hands. The great sword clove through the troll's shield.

Now they were even. The troll came again and they grappled, hand to hand. The troll kicked Bazil in the stomach and tried to bite his muzzle. The dragon kicked back, then gave a heave and flung the troll aside, knocking down a pair of imps like ninepins.

Two men from the 322s were positioned perfectly, their spears thrust upward, and buried themselves in the troll's vitals. It gave a hoarse scream and died, black blood gushing from its mouth. The imps were just getting to their feet when it fell on them crushing them into the torn and shattered oak trees of the barricade.

The horns were blaring again, the light was dimming, the sun was down behind the hills.

The trolls and imps were pulling back, ebbing away from the barricade. It was over; they had survived the first attack.

The next day dawned with lowering clouds that opened within the hour and poured forth a cold, constant deluge that lasted almost the entire day.

The enemy mounted a few probing attacks, but with so much water, so much mud, and the barricade already proven to be a tough nut to crack, he did not engage with full force.

For once, the men and dragonboys did not complain about the rain, even though it soaked through everything and made it impossible to keep more than a single fire going for the cooks. As long as it rained, the enemy would hold off, and they would regain their strength.

When the rain finally ceased in the late afternoon, they stood to at once and waited anxiously for the expected attack. It did not come. The enemy had given up on that day altogether. All night they heard the sounds of hammering and constant motion from lower down the Lion's Roar. Great fires blazed down there, which caused some wonderment since all the woods were sopping wet. The next morning dawned brightly and soon brought on the first assault. The enemy had built crude shelters to protect their archers, and these were brought forward until they were positioned just beyond the range of a dragon throw. Bazil and Chektor tried to hurl smaller rocks, the size of a man's head, at them but fell short. The enemy archers set up a constant ranging fire that made the barricade a dangerous, difficult place to stand. To show one's head above the edge of the tangled mass of broken oak limbs and trunks was to draw an arrow in an instant. The range was too great for the little Cunfshon bows of the dragonboys, but the Kenor bowmen dueled with the enemy archers, their heavy composite bows snapping loudly as they drove their projectiles off and away.

Soon the enemy attacked with full force. Mixed parties of imp and troll, driven on by the men in the black uniform of Padmasa surged up to the barricade, climbed on the torn and tattered oak limbs, and engaged the dragons and men behind it. Attack after attack shattered there and fell back. Twelve trolls were slain and a hundred imps. Not one dragon was killed and only a few suffered wounds.

The enemy paused for three hours and tried again in the waning daylight, as on the first day. Still he could not break the line. Despite the overwhelming advantage in numbers, the defense was adamant.

For a third night, they slept by the barricade. The enemy worked ceaselessly down below.

Captain Eads had several rafts built earlier. Now as the surgeons finished with the wounded men, they were loaded aboard the rafts and hauled upstream by local farmers' plow horses.

Among the dragons there were a lot of cuts, abrasions, and bruises, but only a few serious wounds. Two dragons were disabled: Tenebrak of the 109th and Ninu of the 66th. Of the pair, Tenebrak was the more serious case. A troll ax had hacked deep into his side, breaking ribs, opening the body cavity. The surgeons had stitched him back together and poured medicinal honey into the wound to dry out any deep infection. The use of sugar in this kind of deep wound was a popular remedy in the Empire of the Rose. Old Sugustus was applied to the surface tissues, and then the wounds were bandaged. Finally Tenebrak was loaded onto a raft and sent upstream. Ninu had a broken right forelimb and some serious slashes from imp swords. Ninu was a hard green, a breed with a legendary disdain for pain. The surgeons, with the aid of the strongest men in the unit, set the immense broken bone, treated his wounds with disinfectant, and set him to marching upriver on the trail.

That night the skies clouded over, and a merciful downpour began two hours before dawn. The enemy would be slow to attack in such conditions. The sun rose as a dim grey light lost behind heavy clouds.

Captain Eads was roused from his tent by the arrival of Captain Retiner of the Talion Horse. They conferred over a cup of kalut, and then Eads ordered the retreat.

They had finally been flanked. A party of perhaps a thousand imps, with Baguti cavalry and trolls, had climbed the Kalenstone scarp some ten miles to the south and was advancing on them slowly. They were being held up by the rain and mud and the Talion Light Horse.

Eads sent out the bowmen and some of the yeomanry to help the Talion Light Horse while the rest of the men rose, ate cold porridge with strong, hot kalut, and set out eastward, moving as quietly as possible.

A few miles farther upriver, there was the last usable ford for forty miles. The trail on the south side of the river was much the better one. On the north, there were a series of sharp gulleys and steep-sided little hillocks, which went on for miles.

At the barricades, they left behind a handful of skirmishers who kept the fires going and sniped at the enemy in their shelters down below.

This was enough to keep the enemy from pressing things for several hours, and it was not until almost noon that he discovered the truth and sent up a full-scale assault. The skirmishers slipped away upriver on foot and by canoe, and with them went the last of the Talion Light Horse and the bowmen, who had been harassing the Baguti cavalry.

The rain eased up in the afternoon and settled into a constant thin drizzle. Now it became a footrace through a waterlogged world of mud and steaming vegetation.

Eads's men had a good lead, and the Talion Light Horse had done a brilliant job of delaying the Baguti. The Talions were tiring, however. Eads had already recalled the thirty men from the guard on the refugee column, rotating out thirty others who were the most exhausted, wounded, and in need of a rest.

The Baguti were still probing cautiously, but Eads knew they would change soon, because now they could range ahead of his force, outflanking them to the south. Still the nature of that country, a tangled, wild woodland of oak, beech, and hemlock, would slow them some. He kept most of the Kenor men out on the flank, working with the Talions to set up small, deadly ambushes of Baguti outriders.

The main mass of the enemy marched straight up the south side of the river behind them, confident that in time he would catch them and crush them in the open with his vastly superior numbers.

From a canoe, Eads had personally measured the enemy's speed of march with his long glass. He reckoned the enemy to be marching a little slower than his own men, about twice as quickly as the refugee column, now about sixty miles ahead of them, negotiating the beginnings of the marshes.

There the Kalen's main channel swung wide in a flat bend, and there were many smaller channels and cut-off oxbow lakes, lost among a wilderness of marsh.

There they would turn and make another stand, guerrilla style.

The marshland was a wilderness of another kind where purple-headed reeds, ten feet high, formed the world. The wind made ripples in the sea of stems, flashing bright sparkles from sunlit leaves. Below the purple was mud, narrow river channels and winding trails. It was a good terrain for guerrilla war.

Four dragons, four boys, Dragon Leader Turrent, and twenty men from the 322s crouched in ambush in the reeds overlooking a trail. Coming toward them slowly was a party of Baguti, riding in single file on the narrow trail. Gnats whined about them and occasionally bit. Dragons were impervious to mere gnats but the dragonboys and the men were not, and there was much slapping and quiet cursing.

Bazil hefted his shield and felt reassured by its familiar mass. The boy had done well, getting the shield repaired even under the chaotic conditions of the retreat. Without the shield he'd felt nervous, almost unnatural. It had come to be almost a part of him.

It was another example of the power in the things men made, things that changed one's life and became so important that one could hardly live without them. The Purple Green sneered at Bazil's dependence, but Bazil could see the wild dragon slowly but surely growing addicted to the power of the sword and the shield.

And now the shield was good again, perhaps not perfect, the repair had been hurried, but he was confident it would turn aside spears and lances and even troll axes. With a good shield and with Ecator in his hand, the broketail dragon was ready for anything.

Relkin returned, after reconnoitering the trail to their left, ahead of the Baguti. He reported to Turrent and then joined his dragon.

"It's all clear to our left. We just hit them hard and turn up the trail to get away."

"Good."

Bazil craned his neck and was afforded a view across the reeds. Close by, to the right, they came to an end by the river's edge. There, invisible beneath the reeds, lay the trail.

He felt a nudge in his side. It was the Purple Green.

"Broken-tailed friend, have you considered my idea?"

"Concerning the Baguti horses?"

"Of course. We will take one, only one, and roast it. The men can have all the others that we capture."

"The men will not allow it."

"The men will not? Who are they, Gods? We are free dragons. We fight for these men, and we need to eat something interesting once in a while. Horse makes good eating, and I want to try it this human way, burning it with flame. This is a great secret that our ancestors had but that was lost somewhere along the way."

"You think old Glabadza roasted his meat?"

"Why not, now that I have tasted human cooked meats, I understand very well. It much improves the flavor. Now horse is good even as I used to eat it, with the skin on. It was a treat, like caribou in season, or the aurochs. Aurochs are rare for a good reason. Too tasty to be anything else. But I always looked forward to horse."

"The men regard horses as sacred; they do not allow dragon to eat horse. This they teach us from very early days."

"Taught! Instructed! Manipulated if you ask me. Anything that you want to do, they refuse to allow."

"They feed us well. We fight the great enemy. We retire on this land. Really, there is not choice for battledragon. Cannot survive in the wild, except in the sea, of course, but they keep us away from the sea. Maybe cannot even survive in the sea. Certainly the food would be just as monotonous."

"Just one horse. Already dead horse. We quarter it and take it with us. We not have to kill one later that way."

Bazil sighed, knowing what he was getting into.

"All right, we take one if one killed and we have the time."

The Purple Green bobbed his huge head and clacked his jaws. In his time, the great wild drake had eaten an entire herd of mountain ponies, starting with the stallion and proceeding to the foals. He was looking forward to trying his favorite prey in the human manner, roasted over fire until sizzling.

He caught Manuel looking curiously at him. The dragonboy was always studying him! The Purple Green snapped. "Boy stare too much, he go blind. Get dragon-freeze for good!"