The Dinosaur Lords (39 page)

“Why waste breath on the scum?” said Percil. “We can settle this simply enough. Men—”

Rob laughed. “Is it that eager to die you are, then?”

Percil froze and said no more. “We have guards,” said Yannic. “Who’s going to threaten us?”

Lucas stepped up beside Karyl. “We stand with our captain.”

That’s far from a unanimous sentiment, I’m sure,
thought Rob, who was trying to loosen his axe-head case unobtrusively. He glanced around. To his surprise several other men had stepped up behind Karyl. The tall, blond-moustached woods-runner, Emeric, had an arrow nocked though not drawn, pinned to his shortbow by a brown finger.

“Be careful starting anything you don’t know how will end,” Karyl said.

“Ah, wise words,” Melchor said. “Perhaps this man’s a mendicant monk, as his humble garb suggests. In any event, why put ourselves to bother, my friends, when we can simply go back and sort this out with the Garden Council?”

“Very well,” Yannic said, without decompressing his lips. Percil just glowered like an angry baby vexer.

They mounted and rode away. Once they got out of easy earshot, they began to argue animatedly. Their house-troops, stone-faced, turned about and marched off behind.

Rob tipped his head near Karyl’s. “Will the Council listen to them?”

“Probably.”

“What if they decide those noble nitwits should lead the militia?”

“If they really wanted to do that, they’d have done it. Still, if the Garden Council does hand them command, I’ll happily go on the road again.”

“You’d give up without a fight?”

“It’s not my fight.”

Ignoring Rob’s sputter of fury, he turned away and nodded to Lucas, then to Emeric and the recruits who stood with him.

“Thank you,” Karyl said. “Now get back to work. We’re wasting light.”

Chapter
32

Terremoto,
Earthquake
—A call too low for humans to hear, employed as a weapon by crested hadrosaurs such as halberds, morions, and sackbuts. Can panic or stun; a mass terremoto, properly focused, can deal lethal damage to the largest meat-eater and instantly kill a human. Effective to thirty meters, forty en masse. Favored ranged weapon of Nuevaropan dinosaur knights, whose armor and training helps them resist its effects. As it takes a hadrosaur several minutes to recover from giving a
terremoto,
it can normally be used only once per battle, to disrupt an enemy formation during a charge.

—THE BOOK OF TRUE NAMES

A hush had fallen over the watching grandes.

Few of Nuevaropa’s nobility were physical cowards. But there was nothing glorious about Dom Xurxo’s death. It was ugly. Now they watched with open admiration as their Condestable rode down the slope toward the bloody-jawed monster.

Snarling, the matador turned to face Camellia. Smelling the meat-eater, she tossed her crested head and trilled her dismay. Jaume felt her heart beat like a bass drum inside her chest. Like their riders, war-hadrosaurs could at best only learn to control their fear of such monsters, not suppress it entirely.

But the duckbills had a weapon of their own, beyond their considerable mass and strength.…

Jaume trusted his Companions to restrain their dinosaurs’ use of their fearsome voice-weapon. A terremoto couldn’t be aimed precisely enough to avoid hitting Jaume and his mount. Both had been trained to withstand the panic, nausea, and stunning effects of the ultradeep sounds. But no amount of training would protect the unarmored Jaume from burst capillaries or lesions in his lungs. He could only hope Monta
ñ
azul and his friends didn’t evoke their mounts’ “earthquake” calls, through ignorance, heedlessness, or something darker.

Why Dom Xurxo hadn’t used his sackbut’s terremoto against the matador, Jaume would never know. Perhaps he thought it unchivalrous. Jaume, murmuring encouragement to his beloved beast, suspected the young Gallego knight had simply forgotten about it, in his heat-rush of fury, fear, and bravado.

The Allosaurus waited thirty meters down a shallowing slope. It roared—itself an effective terror-weapon. But it was just a scary cry; it had no further impact.

Jaume signaled Camellia with his knees. She extended her neck and opened her beak. Jaume heard a weird rumble, like Paradise playing the dulcian: the terremoto’s just-audible harmonics. As the vibrations rose in power, he felt his skin creep, and his vision blurred at the edges. Pain stabbed through his skull. But he expected those effects, and accepted them as he did the way his sword hilt stung his hand when the blade struck something solid.

The matador caught the full brunt. He reared up, bellowing in surprised pain, his scarlet eyes blinking rapidly. Camellia dropped her forelegs to the ground and charged home.

Jaume clenched his whole body to steady his spear. He aimed carefully. The leaf-shaped head sank into the monster’s narrow chest.

He took the bruising impact between his arm and his ribs and hung on, allowing the full momentum of Camellia’s galloping three tonnes to drive the spear deep, its flaring steel wings cutting a wide wound through muscle and the lungs working like bellows behind.

The matador uttered a wheezing scream. Its breath rolled over Jaume like steam from a volcano’s vent, but reeking of carrion instead of brimstone. The shriek threatened to burst his eardrums.

The meat-eater twisted quickly to its right. The move came too late to escape the fatal thrust, but it kept the much-larger Camellia from knocking him down. The stout ash haft snapped in Jaume’s hand.

The monster darted its head back to bite off Jaume’s face. He leaned far over in the saddle. The jaws crashed shut. Then Jaume and Camellia were by, crunching through brush that whipped at Jaume’s bare legs.

Jaume rode on between widely spaced boles to increase separation from the foe. Then he drew the Lady’s Mirror from its scabbard across his shoulder and wheeled Camellia back to face the matador.

The matador had turned and stood with pink froth bubbling from its nostrils and running from its lower jaw. It started forward, gathering speed.

Jaume nudged Camellia to charge once more. She fluted dismay, but she obeyed, plunging forward on her massive hind legs with her forelimbs tucked against her chest.

The monsters slammed together chest to chest with a mountainous impact. The matador bellowed in agony as Camellia’s weight drove the spear stub deeper into its chest.

It bit at Camellia’s face. She swung her head away with a glass-shattering squeal. She threw her weight into the narrowly built predator and bowled it over on its side.

Even though breath and blood gouted from mouth and nose when he hit the ground, the matador was far from finished. Sustained by rage, he immediately rolled onto his belly and started to rise.

Jaume had sprung from the saddle. As he dropped feetfirst toward the fallen-needle carpet, he gripped his longsword in both hands.

The matador’s head came up. The Mirror chopped down. It took the monster on the back of the neck and wedged between vertebrae to cut the spinal cord.

The monster’s body convulsed to the last impulse transmitted by its furious brain. Its tail whipped around. It caught Jaume on the right side and thigh and flung him through the air. Somehow he managed to keep his grip on the Mirror’s hilt, ripping it free of the dying embrace of muscle and bone.

Jaume struck a tree trunk. White lightning shot through his body as he felt ribs crack. He fell into the undergrowth.

He lay on his back, knees up, breathing laboriously. It felt as if he were inhaling fire. He had no way of knowing if his thigh was broken. He did know that it would hurt, once the numbness went away.

He heard the matador’s weakening spasms, and then more localized thrashing. “Here he is!” he heard Bernat shout in Catalan-accented Franc
é
s.

“Don’t move him!” answered a deep bellow that seemed to rival a dinosaur’s.

Men knelt over Jaume. Concerned faces peered down from halos of sunlight though hair. Then they went away as giant Timaeos tossed his brother Companions aside like dolls.

Timaeos was the order’s healer. His hands were gentle yet professionally brisk as he examined his fallen Captain-General. The red-bearded chin sank to his breastbone, the big brows knotted in concentration. After a few moments Timaeos nodded.

“His back’s not broken,” he told his fellow Companions. They showed as little resentment at being manhandled by him as he had shown awareness he was manhandling them. When he set about a task, Creators help whoever or whatever got in his way. “His leg isn’t either. Make a stretcher.”

“Not … necessary,” Jaume said. Talking felt like stirring glass shards around in his chest. “Help me up, please.”

“Are you hurt?” It was Bartomeu, his eyes and cheeks puffy and red.

“Yes. You know—how I’ve always told you there’s no appreciation of pleasure without pain? Well, it seems damn foolish now.”

Bartomeu looked blank. The dozen Companions gathered around him now laughed, perhaps a touch more uproariously than the quip called for.

Jaume heard a loud snort. Warm breath that smelled of greenery washed over him. A broad, rounded beak nuzzled his cheek.

He laughed and scratched Camellia’s muzzle affectionately in return.

“I’ll live, I’m afraid, big girl,” he said. “How is she?”

“F-fine,” Bartomeu sniffled.

Taking Jaume by his right arm and left shoulder, Timaeos hoisted him effortlessly to his feet. That hurt a lot, but Jaume had a long acquaintanceship with pain. He could live with it.

“Mind the ribs on his left side,” Timaeos said. As Florian hung Jaume’s right arm over his own neck, Timaeos enfolded the injured man’s left upper arm with one hand. He would steady Jaume as Florian bore as much of his weight as needed.

A couple of tentative steps and one knee-buckle dissuaded Jaume from a half-formed intention of shrugging off their help. The three gimped painfully back up the slope as Bartomeu led the cream-and-orange Corythosaurus after them by her reins.

Manfredo hovered right behind Florian, ready to catch Jaume should the Franc
é
s knight falter. There was no need to spot for Timaeos. He could have carried two Jaumes outright.

“You shouldn’t have done that by yourself,” Manfredo told Jaume.

From the other group of knights who had watched the fight came a clatter of gauntlet on gauntlet and hoarse
bravos
. Even Bluemountain was red-faced and pounding the pommel of his saddle in excitement. Only Ironstar sat silent on his iron-grey and forge-orange sackbut, his face as impassive as if cast from his namesake metal.

“And that, gentlemen, is how you do it,” Florian told his comrades from beneath Jaume’s right arm.

“At least they won’t question the captain’s fitness to lead anymore,” said Dieter with fierce pride.

“For a week or two,” said Florian.

*   *   *

The town lords came back next morning early. This time they brought at least thirty house-archers and spearmen.

With Rob at his side, uncased axe in hand, Karyl stood in the road to meet them as they resolved out of the mist. His silver-streaked hair hung unbound to the shoulders of his simple brown robe. His hands were folded over the top of his staff.

Lucas stood on Karyl’s other side. He had an arming-sword belted on and fairly danced with eagerness to use it.
Careful what you wish for, lad,
Rob thought.
Blood’s not so easy to put back in, once you let it flow. Your own no more than anybody else’s.

Emeric stood by Rob, far calmer but still alert. Rob took his demeanor as corroboration that he had seen his share of trouble, and maybe a couple of other men’s as well. The woods-runner struck him as a man who neither sought out trouble nor shied away from it.

A disheartening few others came up to stand on the pumice-graveled High Road behind them. A larger number stood off the causeway near the farmhouse. Apparently they wanted a safe vantage point to watch the fun.

“Ma
î
tre Karyl,” called Melchor, the stout, bearded Town Lord. If tones of falsity rang though his heartiness, not even a seasoned scammer’s ears could hear them. Yannic on his jittery strider looked as if he were sucking on a bitter root. Persil had his outsized head hunched down between his shoulders.

“Bogardus explained to us that you’re a noble from a far land, who has graciously consented to lend your considerable skill at arms to defend us from our neighbors,” Melchor said. “Please forgive yesterday’s misunderstanding. Naturally we shall be honored to serve under your leadership.”

He bowed from the saddle of his mule, which was no easy task across a paunch like his.

Who’d’ve thought Bogardus could bestow a magisterial ass-chewing?
The notion delighted Rob, but didn’t allay his building anger.

“So if you were the greatest warrior in the land,” he hissed aside to Karyl, “which of course you are, but born of a washerwoman, they wouldn’t consent to learn from you?”

It sorely tried self-control not to bellow it in the noblemen’s faces: “What arrogant sods!”