The Dragon Lord (22 page)

That inferno of sweat and stink and nauseous motion would remain one of his choicest nightmares for a very long time. Not being slaves, the men in the drive chamber were not flogged as they worked; Aldric escaped only because of those wonderfully restricting orders. But they laboured achingly hard for all that, feet buckled into stirrup cranks that were like and yet unlike a treadmill, using the big muscles of their thighs and their body weight as well to turn the flywheel-weighted subshafts which led at last to the grinding, greasy main drive. After only a few minutes wrists and arms and spine and legs were all trembling with the strain of the incessant pumping push-and-pull, heads aching and giddy with the constant bending and straightening, hands flayed raw against the brace-bars for all that they were fitted with rotating sleeves against just such an occurrence; backwards and forwards, up and down again, and again, and
again
, hour after hour amid grunts and cries of effort, the constant squeak and clatter of machinery that was so wearing in itself and so unusual to one familiar only with the noises of a sailing-ship, the rush of water against the lead-skinned underwater hull and always in the background like the beating of a weary heart, the whap-whap-whap of the great rotating blades.

But it was over now and Aldric felt a certain glow of satisfaction, even of pride. Having been forced to the work and given no other option, he had done as well as any of the others who, he fancied, were more used to it. He had neither vomited nor fainted, although he had witnessed both, and he had completed his “shift,” as the drivemaster-serjeant termed it, without flagging behind his fellows. Maybe he had been lucky, because he had been right below one of the shafts which drew cool fresh air from the open deck—by means of yet more bladed propellers, these turned by boy-sailors—but even so, that was not to say he would be in any haste to repeat the experience. Nevertheless it had crossed his mind that the underwater drive-screw at least preserved the integrity of the warship’s armored shell, and that if there was another way than manpower to propel a ship in that fashion, it might well be worth a closer study…

It was then that somebody—some evil-minded bastard!—had sluiced him down with a bucket of icy fresh-drawn seawater all over his naked, sweat-scalded skin, and in the sudden horrific-becoming-glorious shock Aldric forgot everything else.

That had all been half an hour ago. Now, dressed in borrowed clothes and feeling at least marginally cleaner— if also hellishly tired—he stood on the battleram’s fore-deck in the shadow of one of her weapon-turrets and watched as she was teased with a delicacy that approached art into a stonewalled holding bay little wider than the ship herself. Evening was approaching, and both his own vessel—he smiled wryly at that unconscious usage of the possessive—and the five or so others either in fortified docks like this or riding at anchor out in what seemed an estuary, were showing lights. That understatement scarcely described the hulking armored vessels which were illuminated like so many oceangoing mansions; or rather, like the floating fortresses they were.

“Alban?” It was
tau-kortagor
Garet again; one of the several men aboard who had treated him with markedly more friendliness since his unstinting efforts down in the warship’s drive chamber. “You disembark here, Alban.
Teynaur
is going into dry-dock for repair after…”

“After what happened?”

“Yes.” The expression within Garet’s helmet might conceivably have been a grin. “You’re being talked about.”

“I can’t say that I’m surprised. What do they say?”

“Do you want the polite version, or the truth?”

This time it was Aldric’s turn to grin, even though the expression looked stretched and uncomfortable. “If that’s the way of it, forget I asked. But…” He hesitated, knowing that he was about to presume on a tenuous bond of acquaintance—not even friendship!—which probably didn’t exist at all. “Where are we? And who had me brought here?”

The questions seemed to make Garet uncomfortable; at least he turned his head away as if fascinated by non-events at the far end of the harbor, and Aldric could no longer see his face. “The first I’m not allowed to answer,” Garet said without looking back, “and the second, at my rank”—he touched a ringer pointedly to the solitary rank-bar at his collar—”I’m not allowed to know.”

Aldric shrugged. It was the sort of response he should have expected, even if more courteously phrased than it might have been; but a waste of time and breath for all that. With a nod of acknowledgement to the officer-cadet, he squared his shoulders and walked—not slowly, but not especially fast—to a boarding-ladder where the crew of the ship’s cutter were waiting to take him ashore. Ashore!

Lord God! Beyond the quays and the loading-cranes that were commonplace on any waterfront whether military or civilian lay a sprawling structure that had nothing whatever to do with wharves or warehouses. It was a fortification, walled and turreted, gated and grim, and its courtyards were alive with troops of horse and foot moving purposefully to and fro. Even to one accustomed to such things it was an unnerving sight.

Teynaur
had put into harbor three days late. This was the first day of the tenth month, the first day of the beginning of winter, and the evening sky was gray as woodsmoke. Despite the many lanterns which bejewelled its massive walls, the crouched shape of the stronghold was ugly and ominous beneath that somber canopy of cloud. Its spired turrets were stark against the lowering heavens and the banners which they bore— indecipherable in the dusk—flapped listlessly from their poles. There was no elegance in the place, none at all; not even that austere grace sometimes born of pure functional design. This looked like no more than it was: a fortress—and a prison.

Aldric stared out over the bows of the cutter and tried to keep real and imagined terrors under control. The sort of power involved here was appalling, and he could not imagine who would want him so badly that a fully-crewed battleram could be sent to bring him back. He fancied that he was soon to find out.

“
Hlens’l
?” One of the marine escort tapped him on the shoulder and proffered a leather bottle of the regulation pattern which all Imperial troopers carried as part of their equipment. If there was one thing Aldric would never refuse at a moment like this, it was a drink—even the notoriously rough, sour ration red. But at least it was cool in his dry mouth and warm in his belly and head; that was enough reason to gulp it down. He drank a little more, stifled a nasty acid belch—there was nothing but the wine inside him, and his stomach was complaining about both matters—then handed the bottle back and tried to snuggle deeper into the wolfskin
coyac
that someone had returned to him. While it didn’t make him feel much warmer, it did make him wonder for just a moment about something other than his own imminent fate.

What phase was the moon just now?

Then the cutter bumped against a wooden jetty and he all but fell off the upturned barrel which was doing duty as his seat. The marines laughed, but not unkindly, and made observations about Albans and army-issue wine which Aldric preferred to ignore. He had in his time downed enough alcohol to float the
Teynaur
, and never before had he tasted stuff that was so obviously rented for re-cycling.

Two soldiers—regulars in crimson armor and full-visored helmets, not Fleet marines—came clattering down the steps of the jetty and lifted Aldric bodily, as if he was a sack of meal. He wasn’t pleased. Directly his feet touched the lowermost step, weed-covered slimy wood but dry land for all that, he shrugged himself free.

“Thank you both, gentlemen,” he said, “but I
can
walk quite well without you.” For once he managed to achieve the right tone of injured dignity rather than dangerous rudeness, but that was not why the soldiers laughed—a hollow, metallic sound inside their closed helmets.

It was because, as Aldric discovered, legs that were both tired and grown accustomed to the constant motion of a deck found the immobility of solid ground a far from certain footing.

But he managed. Just.

The first two soldiers flanked him, presumably in case he did fall after all, but several more who had remained atop the jetty formed up behind and in front before setting off at an unsettlingly rapid march-pace.
Teynaur
was late, therefore he was late, therefore his presence was required at once. The Imperial
at once
did not leave room for excuse or further delay.

Their destination was one of the largest buildings within the fortress complex, and as they approached its door up a flight of broad stone steps, the sentries to either side of the door flung it open so that the little group could pass through without breaking stride. The sullen boom as it was slammed shut behind them had an unpleasantly final sound, but Aldric was given no time for reflection and little enough in which to look around.

This place might have started life at some time in the past as a palace or a mansion—before the military took over—and it remained a building where the high-born of the Empire would not look out of place. But there were no aristocrats in the handsome panelled corridors this evening: just soldiers, some in half-armor but most in tunics with both their arms full of paperwork. Even when the passages were briefly free of hurrying figures there was an air of furious activity, a tension which made the atmosphere tingle.

The boots of Aldric’s escort awoke echoes in a vaulted hall as he was quick-marched through, neither pushed nor forced but simply hemmed about so closely that he either matched their pace of his own volition or had his heels trodden by the rearguard. They rounded another corner, entered a short, well-lit corridor which had only one doorway at its end and then stopped dead, for this passage was lined with soldiers.

These were big men in full battle harness, and their faces were uniformly blanked by the featureless closed visors of their helmets. There were six of them across the double doors, razor-edged gisarms carried at the port; but when two of Aldric’s guards continued to advance, all of the sentries took a single well-drilled forward step—a step so precise and simultaneous that Aldric half-expected to hear the whirr of machinery— and levelled their spears, three at each chest. There was something cold, something automatic about their manner; something chilling. It was a suggestion that these men had their orders, and if those orders involved killing comrades-in-arms, then the killing would be done with dispatch and without a second thought. Only when the senior-ranked soldier of the escort spoke a password did the wicked points withdraw, and as if the word had set off a new series of signals, four of the gate-wards stepped aside while the remaining two threw all their weight into opening the ponderous bronze-sheathed doors.

The room revealed beyond the threshold was long, and low, and wide; lamps burned in sconces along its walls, striking reflections from the polished table which dominated the center of the floor, from the crystal goblets which rested on it—and from the gold-worked crimson armor of the twenty Imperial officers who sat along its sides and who turned as one man to stare at the intruder in their doorway.

Escort or no escort, Aldric froze in his tracks. At his back there was a rippling clatter of parade salutes, and only after they had been completed did someone give the Alban a much-needed shove between the shoulder-blades to send him stumbling into the conference room.

As he halted and straightened up a little, he eyed the officers dubiously—for their part, nineteen-twentieths of them regarded him with open curiosity—but at the same time he felt the stirrings of relief. There was real power here, the kind of power he had thought to find at the back of all—that of the Imperial military machine. Oh yes. Aldric knew the yellow metal bars and double dia-monds of general-rank insignia when he saw them, and there were several right before his eyes. But he also knew the Emperor’s crest of the eight-pointed star, and that was worked in precious metal on the temples of each man’s helmet, resting on the table among the wine-cups. Emperor Ioen’s supporters had no grudge against King Rynert’s men—he had been assured of that, and it was one of the reasons which had brought him here to the Empire, what seemed so very long ago. Not caring who could overhear him, Aldric released a gusty sigh of held-in breath. Whatever he might hear from these granite-faced gentry would never be as bad as his imaginings.

There was one officer in particular who drew his eyes; the man was seated at the head of the table, gazing at him steadily, saying nothing, his only movement the slow
tap-tap-tap
of one index finger. His rank-marks were of a type of which Aldric had only been told and had never seen: the twin bars of commissioned rank, and over them a pyramid made up of three diamonds. All in bullion gold soft and pure enough to scratch with a fingernail. This was the most senior of all Drusalan military ranks, before political significance took over:
en-coerhanalth
, Lord General. But which one? With a perfunctory gesture of his hand the officer dismissed Aldric’s escort— all but two who closed in to grip the Alban by wrists and biceps—before he rose and strode down the hall to confront his captive at close quarters.

He was a stocky man, this general—Aldric’s own height, but with an already-broad build made massive by the armor which encased him. Though his grizzled beard and balding iron-gray hair were those of a middle-aged man, there was no dullness of age in the pale eyes which glinted below his heavy brows. Those eyes drilled through Aldric as if, like Ymareth’s, they probed the innermost recesses of his mind. Except that this officer appeared more plainly to disapprove of what he saw there.

Aldric swallowed and refused to meet that piercing stare. Even without the guards, the other officers, the armor and the marks of rank, this man had a forbidding presence of his own. One blunt-fingered hand reached out, closed on Aldric’s chin and lifted it up and back from where instinct had tucked it low over his throat. A finger of the other hand tapped—as it had done to the table—against the heavy silver torque of the Alban’s crest-collar, and the general grunted softly to himself as if satisfied. That same finger touched lightly against the scar on Aldric’s face, and this time the tone of the grant was displeasure at the wound’s apparent newness. A moment more and the general turned away. “Release him,” he said over his shoulder, and Aldric felt a muscle in his face tic involuntarily. Because the language of the order was his own.