Dragons of War (59 page)

Turrent whistled and waved a hand; the dragons were tensed, waiting expectantly. They heard the tramp of imps on the far side of the barricade, with their drums going and the horns blaring behind them. At the signal they clambered up into position just below the top of the barricade, each dragon standing on a mound of dirt or on a heavy wagon.

The assault column reached the top, and there came a sudden blast of legion cornets and a roar. Great dragons rose up behind the barricade and swung their deadly swords down among the imps.

Blinded by the fumes of the black drink, the imp column pushed on, but the head of the column disintegrated as rapidly as it reached the top of the barricade, like a sausage being fed into a mincer. Dragonboys worked beside the dragons and in concert with teams of legionaries who had training in fighting alongside dragons. A lot of that training had to do with keeping one's head down, a very low profile, to avoid being decapitated by the backward sweeps of dragonsword.

Not a single imp got over the barricade and when half the attacking column had been annihilated, the commanders halted it and let the rest flow back leaving the top of the barricade strewn with their dead.

The staff majors immediately spurred away to report to General Lukash. The command went back down the line of the immense army for a halt.

Once more there was a silence on the battlefield, but for the hum of bees and the song of larks. Daylight was fading now, and the sun was sinking behind the mountains in the west.

Lukash received the news with consternation and immediate rage. His plan was perfect. How could the road be blocked? What was this blocking force?

The majors reported that it appeared to be of some size, several thousand at the least. The entire southern approach to Lennink had been fortified. There were cavalry patrols working farther out along the ridge.

Lukash's face settled into a grim mask, and he examined the maps.

There was no good way, no quick way, around this obstacle. He dispatched cavalry forces to scout along the southern edge of the ridge to find a place where he might most easily get troops up for a flanking maneuver.

Meanwhile he rapped out orders for a major assault to be launched straight at the barricade. Two side assaults into the southern face of the town on either side of the barricade would also be made.

The drums began pounding as imps, men, and trolls assembled on the wheat fields below the town of Lennink.

The Magician Thrembode had climbed a tree in the Rundel Forest and used a telescope to examine the defenses.

He had seen the barricade on the main road, the reinforced walls protected by stakes and ditches all along the southern side of the town. Argonathis were visible here and there along this line of positions. He saw men moving around, and glimpsed a couple of dragons, too. That meant it was a legion force, although many of the men he'd seen were not wearing legion uniforms and helmets.

The great army would be delayed.

In front of him Lukash assembled an assault column, tipped with trolls, perhaps sixty of the great monsters. Half were of the heavyset, black-purple type: ax trolls; and half were of the ocher-hued type: sword trolls.

It took perhaps half an hour for everything to be made ready. The sun had set farther in the west, dipping well behind the mountains now, leaving a slow-dimming twilight that would last yet for another hour or more.

Then the horns blared and the massed drums began to thunder. The assault force moved off, still swigging from flasks of black drink.

It was an exciting moment, and Thrembode stayed in his perch to watch the fight.

Behind the barricade the dragons waited, suddenly nervous in a way they hadn't been before. They knew trolls were coming. They could smell them. Their cheerful banter took a bizarre turn.

"My only regret is that I have never gained a taste for troll," grumbled the Purple Green.

"I keep telling you that it needs to be fresh, and you have to cook it right through. You always want to eat things too uncooked."

"I like it that way."

"Not troll. Maybe elk, maybe cattle, you eat like that."

"Horse is good, right on the hoof."

"But you liked it roasted, I remember you said that."

"Troll needs to be baked, and seasoned well. Some like it with a lot of akh," said Alsebra, who up to this point had been quiet.

"I have not tried baking. What is the difference between baking and roasting over fire?"

"Baking is when you apply a more even heat. You have to build an oven."

"How?"

"With rocks. It is not so difficult. You dig a pit. Then you build a big fire and throw rocks into fire. When rocks are very hot you lever them into the pit. Then you put in troll and cover with more hot rocks, though not as hot as the first rocks you put in. Then you wait until the rocks cool down, you take them out, and you have perfectly baked troll. It's delicious."

"This sounds interesting," said the Purple Green.

"We will try it later. I'm sure we'll have plenty of trolls on hand," Bazil decided.

"Yes," gloated the Purple Green, "we will try it all three ways, the Broketail will roast his until it's black, I will roast mine just a little, and Alsebra will put hers in a hole with hot rocks. Then we will taste all three and see which is best."

"Hush, they're coming," said Manuel.

"Why hush?" The Purple Green raised big eyebrows.

"With all the noise they're making, they couldn't hear us even if we roared."

But Manuel did not reply, too intent on the oncoming enemy. He crouched behind broken vegetation at the top of the barricade and watched them come. It was hard not to think that he might die this time. They might all die. They were enormously outnumbered.

They came on, a long rank of imps, perhaps one hundred wide with rank after rank behind them and among them trolls, huge monsters eight and nine feet high, striding among the imps.

They reached the outside of the barricade and began to climb.

A cornet blew. Instantly the dragons seized up cobblestones in both big forehands, and then began pitching them over the barricade on nearly vertical trajectories. The stones flew up thirty or forty feet before falling back with stunning force on the trolls that were struggling up the outside face of the barricade. Trolls were never good at climbing, and under a hail of twenty-pound cobblestones, they were even worse.

As the cobbles flew, dragonboys and bowmen opened fire from the top of the barricade and men readied themselves.

The assault column staggered and then came to a halt. A dozen trolls had been laid out by the cobblestones. The imps were wavering under the storm of rocks and arrows.

The drums thundered, and the horns blared louder than before. The imp commanders lashed on their imps, and the troll leaders goaded the trolls while ordering them to raise their shields over their heads to protect themselves.

The column steadied and then came on once more. Even as more trolls and imps fell, they stumbled up the barricade. The cobblestones kept coming, but now they bounced away from shields as often as they hit trolls directly. Caroms off the barricade flew among the imps, but still they came on, the fumes of black drink thick in their nostrils.

Cornets blew thrice to summon up spearsmen, and legionaries sprang to the top of the barricade and hurled javelins into the exposed trolls. The javelins were made with a long, square-sided point made of soft iron. They embedded themselves in troll hide and the leather armor that the sword trolls wore. The iron heads immediately began to bend, and the shafts became impediments to movement.

Another dozen trolls had fallen by this point, most felled by rocks, but now, at last, the first among them reached the top of the barricade. Battered, feathered with arrows, smarting from spear wounds, the enraged trolls were now met head on by a line of great dragons, who strode onto the embankment and engaged them at the top of the barricade. Huge steel blades rang off one another and crunched into massive shields. Heavy troll axes swung with a fury, dragon tail maces cracked off troll helmets and smashed into troll faces. Troll shields clashed with dragon shields, enormous muscles bunched and strained. Dragons heaved trolls back and hewed down, huge heads flew, gouts of black blood spouted into the air. Gargantuan bodies fell back sundered from life.

And beneath the clash of heavy weapons, dragonboys kept imps at bay or slew them if they dared to rise to the top of the barricade.

For half an hour it continued thus, and then the remaining trolls lost heart, retreated, and would not fight again.

Among the imps the black drink was wearing off, and they, too, were faint of heart. The barricade was now festooned with enormous troll corpses while a pile of dead imps was forming at the bottom.

Slowly, despite the drums and the horns, despite the frantic lashing with whips by the imp commanders, the enemy assault column broke up and streamed back away from the unbreakable barricade.

A cheer went up among the defenders, and then they set to rebuilding supplies of cobblestones and retrieving arrows and spears.

Relkin examined Bazil carefully. The broketail dragon had decapitated one troll and hewed down three others. During that time, Relkin had shot a brace of imps and taken another one on his sword when it went for Bazil's underbelly with its crude sword.

Bazil had a new wound, just under the place where the joboquin fastened beneath the arm. It was a vulnerable place. From the size of the wound, about an inch long and an inch deep, Relkin assumed it had come from an imp arrow that hadn't stuck. He cleaned it quickly with Old Sugustus and applied a bandage that he wrapped around the dragon's chest. Back on went the joboquin and the breastplate. Back on went the helmet, and once more the dragon was ready to fight.

"Well done, everyone." It was Dragon Leader Turrent making his rounds.

Eyebrows rose among dragonboys who had never heard such words from Dragon Leader Turrent before.

"No casualties on our side of the barricade," said Turrent when he paused to congratulate the team in the walled garden.

"No casualties, that's great," said Manuel, who was working on some nicks on the Purple Green's left thigh where an imp had proved troublesome.

The dragons were silent, breathing hot and heavy, resting their weight on their sword hilts. They were still in the terrifying mental state they went into for war.

"It will be dark soon," said Jak.

"Yes, that should end it," said Manuel.

Relkin looked over the garden wall at the dark mass that could be seen bottled up on the road through Rundel Forest, and was not so sure.

General Lukash received the news badly. He cursed in his native tongue and spat on the ground. The staff majors trembled. Then he dismissed them and turned to the maps again.

Lukash licked his lips nervously. It would soon be dark. Vapul might come at any time, swooping in on that monstrous creature. Vapul would find him bottled up here, hours behind where he ought to be.

There was only one answer. To continue the assault.

He looked up see the damned magician eyeing him speculatively.

"We will make a night assault."

Thrembode had seen the fighting through his telescope. He knew it would be desperately difficult to break through the Argonathi defense line.

"Possibly you should reconsider going around this force. It cannot be that large. Maneuver around it and go on."

Lukash's mouth was dry. Vapul could come at any time.

"No, there is no time for that. We must smash through them and go on at once. The attack was on too narrow a front. We will widen it. I will have torches prepared to light the battlefield."

"What word do you have concerning the Argonathi army?"

"They sit in Fitou. Our diversionary force approaches their lines."

"Can you trust the Baguti on this? It seems they missed this blockage we're up against here."

"Damned Baguti are worthless. Hazogi are worse."

"Yes, I've thought much the same thing myself on occasion." Thrembode smiled. He toyed with the little whistle for a moment while Lukash's face froze. As it happened, he agreed with Lukash. An assault on a wider front would probably do the trick, the damned Argonathi must be thinly spread. And lingering at the back of his thoughts was the image of Vapul. The Mesomaster was still up on his distant crag, but within an hour or two he would mount the batrukh and fly down to visit them as he did every night. It would be better if he found them in the midst of battle, or better yet, marching on through Lennink after a quick victory, rather than stuck here or blundering about in the back country roads.

"Let it be on your neck, General, but go ahead. Smash through this arrogant little band. Let us get on with our march."

Not long afterward the darkness blossomed with torches, hundreds upon hundreds of flames flaring in the night, each torch cut from deadwood in the forest, soaked in pitch and lit by imps tramping forward to the night assault.

The drums rumbled, and there were the bawling commands of officers as ten thousand imps and hundreds of trolls were lined up.

Now the assault line was widened to include most of the southern approaches to Lennink. At the last moment imp commanders passed black drink through the ranks. Even trolls were given some, an often risky procedure since they might attack anyone or anything once intoxicated.

With such a wide assault fine control was impossible, at least with imps as troops. The horns began to blare, and the drumming rose to a thunder. Now the mass began to move forward once more, stamping up to the barricade, heads bowed beneath a rain of rocks and cobbles and arrows and spears.

In the walled garden of the vintner's house, they faced the onslaught in the darkness with the light of the enemy torches reflected off battered steel helmets and shields.

There was considerable confusion in the enemy ranks. The torches knotted and bobbed and formed blots of flame, but with stentorian bellows of rage the imp commanders untangled their troops each time and sent them on with the whips cracking over their heads.