The Dinosaur Knights (19 page)

“You're as infatuated with Bogardus as ever that Imperial chit is,” Rob said. “You put too damned much faith in him.”

Karyl rode a few breaths in silence. It was a time of cold belly-turning fear for Rob: that he had gone too far. It was a usual consequence of letting his imp of the perverse—never long dormant—take control of his mouth.

But instead of drawing the conventional, cross-hilted arming-sword he wore to battle and cutting short Rob's young life, Karyl answered quietly, “I know.”

Rob literally swayed in the saddle.

“You know?”

“Of course. I'm … a seeker, I suppose. It may be all I'm really living for.”

“Seeking what?”

“Some kind of certainty. What the Witness told me, the things I've experienced, have brought all that I knew, or thought I knew, about my world and myself crashing into ruin. I don't even know why I'm alive.”

He held up his left hand. His sword hand, now tanned and strong and in no visible way different from the other. Even now, with it slowly dawning on Rob that he was likely to be allowed to keep his head a while yet, said head couldn't help swelling with a hearty case of
I told you so
.

A domesticated horror belonging to a pack set on Karyl by Duke Falk's mother, the Dowager Duchess of Hornberg, to make sure he was dead after the Battle of Hassling had bitten Karyl's sword hand clean off. When the self-proclaimed witch Aphrodite had hired him and Rob on Bogardus's behalf to come to Providence and raise an army to fight, she had performed a magic she claimed would grow it back. Skeptic to the core, Karyl openly doubted the existence both of witches and of magic.

Rob had taken a different view. And when the lost member in fact sprouted anew, good as ever, on the long journey hither, Karyl had seemed as much soured by it as overjoyed.

“Even skepticism's played me false,” he said, as if sniffing Rob's thoughts. “I don't what to believe anymore. I need the hope that I might find answers, somewhere. Bogardus is wise; he practically glows with certainty. Maybe he has what I need.”

“Why not ask him?”

Karyl shook his head. “My need shames me. Its intensity, its urgency.”

“I don't mean to make light of your feelings, my friend, but after all you've faced and all you've survived, surely you'll not let shame get the better of you?”

Karyl's face was a naked plea. “But what if he tells me he doesn't
know
?”

*   *   *

Rob sighed. Putting hands on thighs he hoisted himself off his seat on a fallen log.

The evening conference had been quick. It was early yet. Despite the fact sunlight still shone nearly level between slim sapling boles a small fire danced yellow, chuckling to itself. The tang of its smoke was already noticeably mingled with the smells of meat roasting and legumes boiling for two thousand or so evening meals.

The sun was still a red ball beyond the clouds above the eastern horizon when Karyl ordered a halt for the day, amidst country that had begun to roll noticeably more than the earlier pure farmland. It struck Rob as early. Clearly Karyl was in no hurry.

It's Himself's decision to make, and I've no interest in the why and wherefores
, he thought.
All I am is glad it isn't mine
. Even though he'd been relieved of the crushing burden of being quartermaster, he found himself with more responsibility than he wanted or ever had wanted, thank you kindly.

It was strange
, he thought. A dinosaur master had plenty of responsibility, and that was the trade he'd chosen, and was happy to be practicing it again. It seldom felt like a burden when he was doing it. And being master of the scouts and spies, now—that was more like what the grandes called a
hobby
. The achievement of a mischievous childhood dream—more play than anything else, really. Yet add them up and you got—

Responsibility.
Ugh. I can't seem to get the awful thing off my back.

Most of Karyl's captains had quickly departed the little clearing in a sapling-stand atop a low hill. One of the last to leave laid a hand on the commander's shoulder and said something that made him shrug.

Baron Côme was a man of Rob's height or a little more, a muscular sixty-five-year-old with a shock of tan hair, and a face like an old shoe that was rescued from plainness by bright blue eyes and a smile roguish enough for an Irlandés. He and a few dozen retainers had joined the army within days of Karyl and Rob's acquittal. The blue-jowled Baron Salvateur had taken out his fury at being repulsed from Providence town by driving Côme from his domain,
Le Vallée de la Sérénité
.

Rob would've resented the Baron's late arrival, if not for the fact that his fief on the Lisette had stood a bulwark against the invaders since the incursions began, long before Rob and Karyl got here. And that Côme's beloved wife, Zoé, had fallen fighting the Brokenhearts the year before. He was that near-oxymoron, a genuinely clever buckethead, as opposed to simply sly or cunning. He was popular among both lowborn and high. Rob liked him himself, for a wonder.

More than he liked the taller, red-haired man who hung back with Côme. Eamonn Copper was Ayrish, and it may have been his share of native charm the Francés, Côme, had hogged for himself. A noted mercenary captain on his own hook, he had joined the army with a contingent of eighty mailed spear and shield men, the most of them former house-troops, like as not deserters.

Copper had trouble keeping employment. The anger many of his and Rob's countrymen shared crackled along the surface of his skin like static electricity. Men said he was overly fond of drink.

Although he made no claims of noble birth, or knighthood—he was as chary of details of his own history as Rob Korrigan was with truth about his own—he was known to be skilled on a war-hadrosaur. Having satisfied both Karyl and Rob of his ability to use her, he had been given Brigid, as Rob had dubbed the somewhat flighty orange sackbut female they'd taken from the knight at Whispering Woods, the same having no further use for her.

The two moved on. All but yapping at their heels like a pug dog, and equally ignored, went a rotund, bearded figure. Rob spat after him as they went away out of sight through the brush and down, not caring if he saw or not.

“Why do you put up that treacherous, fat fuck Melchor?” he asked Karyl. The other surviving town lord, Yannic, still sulked in his manor, claiming incapacity from the wounds he'd had at Blueflowers. Rob reckoned he was malingering, and good riddance.

“Better to have him where we can keep an eye on him.”

“Which presupposes a man can stand the sight of him.”

Karyl shrugged. “I told him that if he showed any sign of getting out of line, I'd kill him.”

Rob laughed. Not because he thought Karyl was joking. But precisely because he wasn't.

“So, what chance do you give us, Master Rob?” Karyl asked.

Rob clucked thoughtfully, low in his throat, rubbed his beard and nodded.

“We've scarce a thousand effectives,” he said. “Count Guillaume has at least half again as many, with twice the heavy-horse and three times our own dinosaur knights. He outnumbers us in every way, for a fact, except in missile troops, and in light-horse, which he's got none to speak of. And while our common pikes are nothing to raise more than a horse-laugh from a Nodosaur centurion, they are trained at least halfway, with even some leather armor and iron hats from the Town Armory among them. So I fancy their chances against his larger mob of unhappy peasants with sharp sticks.

“Crève Coeur's got no more field artillery to speak of than we do, which isn't any. He does have some siege engines, but correct me if I'm mistaken, if we find ourselves on the receiving end of
those,
we're doing something grievous wrong. And of course no one in all the land has anything like our six living fortresses. We're better equipped than any scratch force has a right to be. But the Brokenhearts are better trained and experienced, along with there simply being more of the brutes. So, all taken with all—they'll win. Unless, of course, we cheat like a bastard.”

He grinned, all wild and sudden. “And you're just the man for that, Karyl Bogomirskiy!” he exclaimed.

Karyl flashed a rare smile. “I am.”

“So what about you?” Rob said, as the flash passion passed and left him chilled. “Do you think we've any chance, then?”

“You may recall I expressed my distaste for fighting battles I know I can't win.”

Rob nodded. “Aye. And I note you didn't kick, this time, about taking the field, but rather told the Council straightaway you were ready to march. So—what is it gives us this chance, against a foe who seems to be holding every trigram card in the deck?”

Karyl smiled. “Why, you, Master Korrigan,” he said. “You and your mad young men and women.”

Rob's jaw fell open. Before he could think of anything sensible to let out of it—

“Master Rob,” a hesitant voice called.

Poised at the clearing's verge, like a yearling springer ready to bolt, stood a young woman dressed in the leather jack and high boots typical of Rob's scouts. Her blond hair hung in pigtails, framing a pretty, blue-eyed face. She wore a longsword slung across her back. The hilt was plain black wood and looked to have been polished by use.

“Valérie,” Rob said. “Come ahead, lass. We'll not bite your head off. Have you something to report, then?”

Shyly she stepped forward, nodding. She dealt easily enough with Rob. But as far as he knew she had never met Karyl. And a lot of the newer recruits, having imbibed not only survivors' tales that exaggerated the heartbreaking debacle of the Blueflowers into brilliant victory, but songs of Karyl's epic past as well—no few penned, and frequently sung, by none other than Rob Korrigan—regarded him with near-worship.

She was a city girl, youngest child of a trading family. Évrard's house was easily the biggest and richest, but Providence town was far too prosperous to support only the one. The important details were, she knew how to ride well, and was willing (or mad) enough to serve as one of Rob's scouts.

It was a perilous undertaking, and no mistake. Over a score had already gone down, dead or injured. Only a handful had been captured. But the Brokenhearts treated them as they did captive woods-runners. It may have had the effect of making fewer willing to enlist—Rob honestly had no way to know—but it certainly inspired the remaining scouts to savage vindictiveness that matched their
coureur de bois
allies'.

“So, what have you to tell us?” Rob asked.

She flicked a nervous glance at Karyl. He nodded.

“We spotted a party north and west of here, riding through the woods,” she said. “Eight people, mounted on amblers. There was Councilor Absolon and several other Gardeners. Uh, all from the better families. And … the Princess, sir, and her black-haired friend that came with her from Spaña.”

“And they're going—?” Karyl prodded.

Rob felt absurdly gratified that she glanced to him before replying, as if to confirm it was all right. And then the awful impact of the girl's inevitable next words struck him.

“West, Captain, sir. Toward Count Guillaume's lines.”

Chapter 15

Cabeza de Tirán
, Tyrant's Head
—Home to our Empire of Nuevaropa, the Tyrant's Head forms the western end of the continent of Aphrodite Terra. Taken with the large island of Anglaterra across La Canal (the Channel), it supposedly resembles the head of a
Tyrannosaurus rex
. The mighty Shield Mountain range,
El Scudo
, separates it from the Ovdan Plateau. Its climate is mostly tropical, though it doesn't have distinct rainy seasons. Humid coastal swamps and forests rise to a fertile central plateau, including Spaña's arid
La Meseta
. The Tyrant's Head is spanned from north to south by a forest of mixed conifer and deciduous trees called Telar's Wood.

—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS

“My lord Count Guillaume,” said Melodía, her knees feeling the morning warmth the soft grass of the clearing through the fabric of her plain white gown. “We've come from Providence town to beg you for peace.”

Before her sat the Count of Crève Coeur on a folding gilt chair, with his elbow propped on one arm and his chin in his palm. He was a big man, not all of his size muscle, dressed in a silken gown, one side blue, the other green. The Broken Heart emblem was sewn in gold on the right breast: the blue side. His big, red face frowned beneath his shock of prematurely white hair. His expression showed perplexity rather than displeasure. Melodía hoped.

“Do you actually have the power to negotiate?” he asked. A knock-down awning of gold-trimmed green silk shaded him from morning sun already fierce through a high, thin screen of cloud. A half-dozen retainers clustered around him.