Dragons of War (60 page)

And now they were close enough for the defenders to see the massed imps and trolls clearly through the dark as they strode forward. Battalions of drummers were driving them on, and as they came into range and began to receive the defensive fire of stones and arrows, they moved more quickly, bent under their shields, scrambling up the outside edge of the barricade.

With a great roar edged by the shrill legion cornets, the defenders rose up and met the assault.

To get up the wall, the assault brought forward great masses of brush bound into faggots, which they piled on the outside of the thick wall that surrounded the vintner's garden.

Up onto this mass clambered the trolls. They were uneasy, for the footing was uncertain and the faggots were springy, giving way erratically beneath their massive feet. This put them at a disadvantage. In their favor was their weight of numbers.

The fight was brutal and desperate, and though the dragons, the dragonboys, and the legionaries had learned lessons from previous battles, it was terribly easy to get killed in this kind of chaotic melee.

Right at the start, one of the spearmen on Relkin's right went down with an imp arrow that penetrated his nose into his brain.

Then came a blizzard of steel, with men and dragons hacking and chopping into the raging mass of attackers who came on with the mad light of the black drink in their eyes.

At one point Bazil Broketail was almost knocked off the embankment by an ax troll who stood over him with ax raised high. The troll might have killed him except that Relkin stepped forward and thrust his sword into the troll's genitals and distracted it entirely.

Bazil recovered, and Ecator came around, quivering like a live thing and decapitated the troll, still screaming from Relkin's thrust. The huge body fell away, spraying great gouts of black blood and tumbled onto the struggling mass seeking to climb the wall.

Alsebra slew a tricky sword troll with a terrible smashing blow of her shield, crushing its head and sending it toppling inside the wall, where it fell on two soldiers and crippled them.

The Purple Green fell prey to an especially quick sword troll and lost his sword. Quick as lightning the wild dragon seized the troll in his big forehands, lifted it up, and then threw it back over the wall like a missile. Where it landed, imps were tossed up like chaff.

All of this was seen in glimpses in the midst of an endless inferno of noise, drums, screams, horns, and the smashing of steel on steel. It went on through the first hour with scarcely a break. The defenders drew close to complete exhaustion.

Bazil slew a great ax troll with a thrust. Ecator skewered the thing, and it toppled forward into the dragon's arms. The sword wouldn't come free. It had lodged on the creature's ribs. Bazil put a foot on its chest and gave a great shove, sending the thing flying backward. Bazil slipped, however, and fell right off the embankment and landed on a dead troll slain earlier by Alsebra.

For a moment there was a gap in the line. Spearmen came forward to hold it and hold it they did, although another ax troll came up immediately, and they paid the ultimate price. All three were dead when Bazil hauled himself back into place and slew the ax troll.

The assault kept coming. The enemy lapped around the entire southern margin of Lennink now, seeking the flank of Eads's small force.

Eads had readied a riposte. When at last the attackers turned the right side corner, flowing up onto the ridge unopposed, he unleashed a column of two hundred men and five dragons from the 33rd Kadein, who had been waiting in an alley behind the houses at the edge of the town. This force came out of the dark suddenly and hit the exultant trolls and imps like a hammer and drove them back down the slope into the vineyard of Decleve, which was destroyed beneath their huge horny feet.

The fires glittered redly into the distance. The drums kept up their thunder, and the enemy ranks advanced. It seemed it would go on forever. The mound of dead imps and trolls on the outside of the barricade was almost half the height of the barricade itself now. And still they came on, wading through the imps, over the crushed faggots and up onto the walls of the vintner's house.

Dragons reached for the last reserves of energy. Dragonboys ran out of arrows and began to cannibalize the thousands of imp arrows that had landed in the garden.

At one point the enemy got over the barricade in the center where Vlok and Chektor held the line. Vlok was tricked by a wily sword troll and then struck senseless by a troll ax. A sudden shove opened the way and fifty imps poured in through the gap. Eads sent in a plugging force made up of thirty men of the Fird and fifteen veteran legionaries. To replace Vlok he sent in Harapha, a leatherback in the Kadein 33rd, with his dragonboy Dimmi.

Swane and Dimmi fought side by side around Harapha as they forced the imps back and constrained them and swept them back across the barricade.

Poor Vlok was woken up with buckets of cold water and a shot of hot kalut through his numbed jaws. Still shaking the stars out of his head, he grabbed up his "Katzbalger" and shambled back to the fight.

But now, at last, the enemy assault weakened and fell off. Ten thousand imps had been hurled at the defense lines, and their formations had disintegrated. Two thousand were dead along the margins of the town, huge heaps were piled up in front of the barricade. The trolls were downcast, disorganized, fleeing back into Rundel woods.

The moon had risen and threw a dread yellow light across the field of slaughter. Relkin looked up and saw a great shape flit across the moon, a flying form sliding west across the sky, and he felt a sudden cold go through him and a shiver ran down his spine.

A lull settled over the battlefield as the two armies stood back like gladiators, dragging down deep breaths of air while sweat and blood ran from their bodies and dripped to the ground.

Captain Eads staggered back to his command post, set up in the parlor of the Rosebush Inn, and collapsed in a chair, his sword arm completely numb. At the end he had been in the thick of the fight on the barricade, seeking to staunch the gap. Corporal Fox brought him a glass of water, they'd drunk the Rosebush dry of beer already. Eads felt it slake off some of the crusted salt and dust in his throat.

The door was open, and he looked out on a hellish scene as wounded men, some crying out piteously, were carried back to the surgeons. Torches flared and sputtered. Somewhere nearby a smithy had been set up, and men were hammering hot steel as hard and as quickly as they might. There were a great many swords that needed edging.

The terrible questions pounded in his brain. Could they possibly hold out much longer if there was another attack? How could there not be? He understood as well as the enemy commander the nature of the strategic gamble the enemy had taken. They had to break through here before the Argonathi army could come up. Seven legions could rip the guts out of this enemy force if they met it on open ground. So the enemy would attack again and again until they broke through here. They had no more choice about it than he had. He felt his eyes glazing over. There was a well of fatigue that seemed to run from the top of his head, down his backbone, and then to split down each leg.

They would have to hold the enemy. It would be very hard. He did not want to think it might be impossible. He felt his thoughts wander. His wife Lernisse, his boy Axel, his home in Blue Hills. There had been Eads's in the Blue Hills since the earliest days of the Argonath. Mother preserve them all if they failed here and this foul enemy Host got through. Darkness seemed to settle over his soul.

He slept, and his dream was a seething, terrible one, in which the battle was refought, a continual hammer of men and imps and steel with great monsters roaring above and below.

Something pricked at his ear. He put a hand up. In his dream the sun burned through the clouds, and the darkness faded away.

He woke up with a start. Again something pricked at his cheek and then at his ear. He put up a hand and felt something flit away. A small bird perched on the back of an empty chair. The bird looked at him, and he knew, as his hair rose in an involuntary shudder, that it was no ordinary bird.

"You came back!" he whispered. "Thank the Mother. What news do you have? Did you find the army?"

The bird made no response, but a few moments later he saw something small zip across the floor. A mouse was standing there, paws up, staring at him through little beady black eyes.

The mouse came forward. He bent down, ignoring a stab of pain from his side, scooped up the little animal, and held it close to his face.

Out in the walled garden, they ate. At least the dragons ate, heartily, with enormous gusto. Bowls of corn stirabout flavored with akh, some day-old bread found in the baker's shop, and a jug or two of ale, discovered in the cellar of another house.

Relkin had patched and sewn nine separate cuts and nicks on the dragon. Then he turned to his own injuries. His left forearm had a nick from an imp's blade, and there were lots of scratches where he'd fallen or been knocked. Old Sugustus lay to hand, and the familiar sting caused him to squeeze his eyes shut while he counted to ten.

When he opened them, Eilsa Ranardaughter was there, a perfectly stricken look on her face.

"Sir Relkin, I would ask a favor of thee." There was smeared blood on her forehead, but no cut that he could see.

"Ask."

"My father is wounded beyond my powers to heal. Our surgeons are hard at work, there are so many badly wounded men. My father will not go to them, and I fear he will aggravate the wound."

Relkin understood. "Eilsa, I am not a surgeon."

"I know, but you have a great deal of experience with wounds."

He took a deep breath.

"My experience is limited with human patients, but I will try."

In truth, he would try anything for Eilsa Ranardaughter.

They made their way through the crowded street to a stable. Ranard was lying on a thick bale of hay in a well-lit, clean stall.

The wounds were bad. A deep slash on the right thigh and two puncture wounds in the abdomen that Relkin feared would be fatal no matter what he did.

Relkin offered to clean them and sew them.

"It will hurt, sir. I'm not as good with a needle as some of them."

Ranard nodded. "But it's necessary, I believe."

Relkin probed the wounds. The one on the right was deep, more than an inch. He suspected it must have cut into either the intestine or a vital organ. Either way, it would probably be the deathblow.

Still there was Old Sugustus. At the least he could cleanse and sterilize the wound and the area around it. He would then place an absorbing poultice over the wound.

"We need honey," he muttered. His best poultice would have medicinal herbs, a soaking of Old Sugustus, and an ounce or so of honey with which to pack the wound.

"Honey?"

"Yes, the sugar dries out a deep wound and keeps it from corrupting."

"It seems a strange thought."

"It works is all I know. Where can we find some honey. There must be some in this town."

"The building next door was a general food store I believe. Let us look there."

Eads had ordered the shop broken open and looted. Accounts could be settled later, and at that moment his men needed to eat energy-rich foods like sausage and butters and eggs and cream.

Indeed there were cook fires going everywhere with the whole town's supply of bacon sputtering on the end of sticks. A mouthwatering aroma arose over the devastation.

"It seems that if there was any honey, it has been taken."

"What about below. There must be storage cellars."

Relkin found a locked door down a flight of steps and broke the lock with several swings of a heavy ax he found out back. When at length they were through, they found themselves amid a wealth of stores, mostly of olive oil. The smell of olives assailed them at once, and they raised a lantern over long rows of massive barrels of oil, quietly aging in the cellar.

Relkin went on down a narrow, dusty passage and found another cellar, also filled with barrels of oil. He turned back and bumped into Eilsa.

"I found it, Relkin," she said holding up a jar.

Despite smuts and the smeared blood on her face, she looked supremely lovely at that moment. Relkin leaned forward and kissed her. She stared at him in shock, eyebrows contracting dangerously.

"I might never get another chance, Eilsa Ranardaughter, and I would rather die with your kiss on my lips."

There were tears in her eyes; her shock gave way to softer emotions.

"I can't stand to think that we can fail. We have fought so hard…"

"We can hold them yet. And with that honey, we may be able to save your father."

Captain Eads had learned much from the mind of the Queen of Mice. He knew, for instance, that the Argonathi army was close now, but that it had some miles to go before it could exert any influence on his battle. He also knew that the enemy would probably deploy a secret weapon, giant trolls known as ogres.

It had been difficult to comprehend what was being described at first. When he finally understood, he felt the sweat cool on his brow. To defeat these monsters would require heroics from his dragons, and he had so few dragons!

However, he responded with characteristic energy. He ordered long lances to be cut and tipped with steel. He ordered the villages to be stripped of any old weapons with long enough shafts. He sent a search party at once to the manor house of the magnate of Waldrach. The magnate was known to have a passion for jousting in antique armor. Any useful lances were to be brought back at once.

He called for his officers to meet at once, and he briefed them on the likelihood of ogres and the defensive measures they would adopt. The spearmen already trained in tactics against trolls, fighting in trios, seeking to thrust home with stabbing spears, or to cut the hamstrings, all these things would be called on, and the men would be equipped with longer spears.

Bowchief Starter met with him to discuss poisons for arrows. The Bowchief was horrified at first. Poisoned weapons were utterly against everything he knew and understood. They were the technique of the enemy. But when he heard of the ogres, his face cooled and his eyes glinted in fury.