Kingsteel (The Dragonkin Trilogy Book 3) (31 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Breaking the Siege

B
y the time dawn crested the battlements of Atheion, Aeko Shingawa had already been pacing for hours, dressed in full armor, a sheathed adamune resting on her hip. Her dark braid was coiled beneath her helmet. Unlike the Isle Knights who wore strange or frightening facemasks, she’d chosen a helmet that left her face exposed. Men said her scowl was her sharpest weapon. But even her infamous scowl had limits, and Aeko realized that as she spent the morning inspecting Atheion’s troops.

The Noshan king had declared that until the siege was lifted, one third of his army must stand ready at any given time. While most of Atheion consisted of gigantic skiffs that floated on the sapphire surface of the sea called Armahg’s Tears, there was still a squat wall of sandstone forming a half circle along the shoreline. The bulk of the city’s defenders stood watch there. Others lined the skiffs in case the enemy attempted to circumvent the wall and take them by sea.

Most of the Noshans wore brigandines, but a few wore chainmail or half-plate armor. All wore tabards emblazoned with Atheion’s crest: a white sailboat between mountains. Some carried longswords, but most preferred spears, bows, and shortswords. Most had never been in battle. And all of them looked half asleep.

Aeko stopped to shake a few of them awake. Some jumped at the sight of her, blushing as they muttered apologies and fumbled to their feet. Others blinked, frowned, and went back to sleep. Those Aeko kicked again, intoning the appropriate threats of what would happen if they fell asleep on duty. She doubted many believed her, though.

Other Isle Knights had been stationed along the wall. All stood at attention, bowing as she passed, some rolling their eyes over the poor conduct of the Noshan troops. But Aeko saw weariness in the eyes of the Knights, too. She could hardly blame them. Sieges were tedious things: days, even weeks of boredom, punctuated by brief, frantic moments of combat.

But there had been no such moments for nearly a month.

The Jolym had simply fanned out to form a steel perimeter on the shore, just out of bow range. At first, there had been only twenty, but more arrived every day. By the end of a week, four hundred stood along the shore.

Almost immediately, Atheion had braced for trouble. While some Noshans had greeted the Isle Knights as heroes, grateful that they’d shown up in time to protect the city against the Jolym, King Hidas in particular had not been happy to see the Isle Knights. Apparently, though, Crovis Ammerhel had addressed the city’s fathers with a silver tongue, eventually winning over so many clerics that they, in turn, pressured the king into welcoming the Knights.

Meanwhile, the portions of the city that existed on the mainland—homes, shops, and a graceful row of white windmills—had been abandoned. King Hidas had mobilized all his troops, drafted two thousand additional men and boys, and armed them all with bows and spears. At Crovis’s insistence, the king gave them strict orders to attack each Jol’s eyes once the fighting started.

Since then, the Jolym had simply stood motionless, staring at the city. Snow piled around them. Some showed signs of rust. Men speculated that the Jolym had died somehow. A few had even suggested that they were nothing but empty suits of armor placed there as part of a cruel trick by the Isle Knights.

Before anyone could stop him, an eager Noshan officer had gone out with a dozen men to inspect the Jolym. As soon as they got close, the Jolym came to life and cut the Noshans to pieces. Aghast, the Noshans braced themselves, thinking the attack was finally about to begin. But the Jolym had simply returned to being statues.

Gradually, the Noshans fell back into complacency.

They even discovered that if they sailed to a different patch of shore, they could go to and from the mainland without the Jolym seeming to notice, let alone respond. Atheion’s vibrant sea trade had resumed, albeit slowly. Ships still sailed to and fro, navigating a wide, calm river called Zet’s Blood that joined Armahg’s Tears to the islands and ocean beyond.

Traders brought strange stories of mass slaughter in Stillhammer and fires burning throughout the Lotus Isles, but the Noshans scarcely believed them. After all, the Jolym had done so little. And if they ever did actually attack, the Isle Knights would protect them.

“Fools…” Aeko glanced over the battlements, glowering at the steely figures beyond. She doubted that Jolym felt cold, though she desperately hoped they were at least half as miserable as she was.

She considered Crovis’s suggestion that they ride out in force, bolstered by the Noshan army, and finish the Jolym once and for all.
A lot of good that did Bokuden…

Aeko winced, chiding herself for thinking so glibly about the death of her friend and mentor. She reminded herself that Bokuden had not been undone because of a flaw in his strategy. Word had reached them from a handful of survivors: Saikaido had been attacked by the Nightmare, in league with Chorlga. Neither had been seen since, but the Jolym had continued to ravage the islands of the Shao, driving the Isle Knights from one temple-fortress after another.

Now, Crovis insisted that they attack the Jolym—not just to avenge the thousands of Knights who had been slain on the Lotus Isles but to clear a path for them to ride back and retake their homeland. Other Knights had proposed that they leave the Jolym besieging Atheion to King Hidas and simply sail back to the Lotus Isles on Zet’s Blood. Winters in Nosh could be long and harsh. Zet’s Blood was still passable, but in a week or two, their route to the ocean would be hopelessly blocked by ice.

All my Knights want to go back to the Isles. And here I am, forcing them to stay and fight to defend a home that isn’t even their own.

Aeko sighed, glancing over the parapets at the distant Jolym. Then she heard someone approach and turned to see Captain Reygo ascending the steps. The Noshan’s face was taut with cold. She guessed he’d run all the way from King Hidas’s palace, crossing one bridge after another until he’d moved from the heart of Atheion to the shoreline. His eyes were dark with irritation.

“Lady Shingawa, the king sends his response to your plan.” Reygo waited for Aeko to nod. “With respect, he says no.”

Aeko nodded again, unsurprised. A few days ago, she’d proposed a daring strategy to the king, who had sworn to give her idea due consideration. But as soon as she’d seen the captain approaching her, she’d known the king’s answer would be no.

“But, Captain, I was correct in assuming that the skiffs can be unmoored and sailed down Zet’s Blood like boats, correct?”

Reygo’s face flushed. “Yes, m’lady. But as the king pointed out last week, the skiffs are joined by bridges and walkways, some of them centuries old. Relocating the entire city of Atheion to the Lotus Isles would mean destroying them. The clerics would object. So would the people.” He paused. “And so would I.”

Aeko withdrew a scrap of parchment from her belt. She handed it to the captain. “I trust you’ve seen this?”

Reygo gave it a cursory glance and nodded. “My king showed that to me days ago.” He handed it back.

Aeko glanced down at the message that had been sent from the Wytchforest. The raven carrying it had been shot down by Noshan hunters before the strange message could be delivered, but the nervous hunters had found the message and carried it to Atheion themselves. “These Jolym are the product of a Dragonkin… one who has been sowing destruction across the entire continent, careful not to reveal himself. He’s cunning. He is not to be taken lightly, nor are his servants.”

“I take my enemies seriously,” the captain said pointedly, “but you’re asking us to uproot our city, effectively end our entire way of life, over a scrap of Sylvan paper and a few hundred armored curiosities who are too afraid to do anything but stand there.” He started to walk away.

Aeko grabbed his arm. She pointed at the Jolym. “When the ice is thick enough, those bastards will be able to walk right up to the palace and put your king to the sword. I wonder if you’ll be glad you kept your precious bridges then.”

The Noshan captain shook his head. “No disrespect, Lady Shingawa, but I have two thousand trained swords under my command. I can draft another five thousand, if necessary. And we have your Knights. That’s more than adequate to beat five hundred dull-witted demons in rusting armor.”

Aeko’s eyes narrowed. “Do you have a great deal of experience fighting armored demons, Captain?”

“No,” Reygo confessed, “but I’ve spent most of my life fighting berserkers. You ever see a Lochurite, Lady Shingawa? I imagine they’re a lot like these Jolym. They’re so drugged, they don’t feel pain. They’ll literally come at you until you cut off their heads or chop the legs out from under ’em.”

Aeko remembered hearing that the fey, tribal folk had a long tradition of sending not just men, but women and children into battle. She studied the captain’s stern expression, wondering how many of the latter he had faced. “Lochurites might be mad, but they’re still flesh and blood. Jolym aren’t.”

“Whatever you say, Isle Knight. I have to get back to my duties.”

“You’re the Captain of the Guard. Your city is under siege. What duties do you possibly have that don’t involve you standing beside us on this wall?”

Reygo smirked. “Atheion is a trade city. And there’s the Scrollhouse. You might not believe this, but my job involves more than whoring and bar fights.” He saluted. “If something changes, let me know. If the Jolym attack, one of my men will come get me.” He turned and left.

A few Isle Knights who had been eavesdropping shook their heads in displeasure, though the Noshans standing next to them snickered. A few Noshans uncorked wineskins. Others nibbled on breads and sweet rolls brought to them by pretty, well-dressed women carrying baskets.

Disgusted, Aeko ignored the rumbling in her stomach and turned back to the battlements. She faced the stark white plains that spread beyond the Jolym beneath a crisp, pale sky. Minutes turned to hours. Anger became boredom. Aeko blinked and pinched her wrist with gauntleted fingers, trying to stay awake.

Matua did not know whether to feel honored or insulted.

The aging cleric had always wanted to see the inside of Atheion’s Scrollhouse, a repository of knowledge and literature that predated the Shattering War. He had even become a cleric of Armahg in order to fulfill that dream, since they were tasked with maintaining and safeguarding the famous structure. But upon arriving in Atheion, he’d promptly realized that one could not simply wander into the Scrollhouse and read to his heart’s content. Even the king could not enter unannounced.

But the discovery of a theft had necessitated some changes. Outraged, the high priests had declared that every last scroll, book, antique, artifact, and scrap of parchment be cataloged so that they could ascertain the extent of the theft. That meant countless hours of labor. So low-ranking priests like Matua had been drafted to comb through the aisles of the Scrollhouse and see it done—under guard, of course.

Thus, Matua had finally been allowed to enter the Scrollhouse. The novelty had quickly worn off when he realized the tedium and frustration of his assignment. Instead of being allowed to actually sit down and read the books and scrolls, reveling in their ancient knowledge and wit, he simply had to note their titles, offer a line or two of description, assign them a number that denoted their location within the Scrollhouse, then move on.

By the end of his first day in the Scrollhouse, Matua knew that dragons had once lived in the ocean as well as on land, that Ruun was only one of five continents located throughout the world, and that the key ingredient in kingsteel came from a mountain of fire that had fallen from the sky and landed on the Lotus Isles eons ago. One legend said that it had been cast down by Armahg as a test, for whichever realm possessed kingsteel was destined either to protect the helpless or to become itself a nation of bloodthirsty conquerors.

He’d learned of herbs that could increase or decrease the likelihood of pregnancy, including some that raised the odds of a Shel’ai being born to a Sylvan mother. He’d read that Dwarrish darksoil, which could grow food without need of sunlight, was made from the ground-up bones of dragons. And perhaps most fascinating of all, he’d learned that their sun was but one sun in a vast armada of stars called a galaxy and that Armahg’s Eye was not actually the looming eye of a goddess but another such galaxy moving slowly toward them across a great, immeasurable void.