The Dragons of Argonath (48 page)

Kosoke gave him a flat stare.

"The Lord Lapsor does not accept such replies."

"I'm afraid that he must, in this case."

"The Lord Lapsor has given me my orders," said Kosoke.

To Wexenne's horror, Kosoke turned to the huge pig-faced brutes and said something in a harsh-sounding language.

They pounced on Faltus Wexenne and lifted him off the ground with huge hands tucked under his arms and bore him away, as if he were no more than a young shoat. He saw the horrified looks on the faces of the workmen, and then he was out of the entrance and being lugged down the passageway to the main stairs, his feet barely touching the floor. The grip of the huge brutes was indescribably painful, and Wexenne was barely able to breathe. His thoughts were a whirl of panicky fears. This adventure was taking on a nightmarish aspect.

Down the stairs he went, too fast to even think of calling for help, with Kosoke trotting along behind. Wexenne contemplated pleading with Kosoke, and decided he would achieve nothing by it.

Then they passed through the entrance to the catacombs below, and those enormous bewk things loomed out of the dark. Wexenne realized at last just what an utter fool he had been.

The realization came a little late. He was whisked on into the bowels of the new kingdom here, the realm of the Lord Lapsor.

There were several rooms now, filled with the ghastly experiments on children that were so important to the elf mage. Wexenne tried not to look at the little faces in the glass booths. The sores and the lesions, the boils and pustules that covered their little pink skins.

Doors opened, and he was swung into the presence of the Lord Lapsor. The brutes released him, and he stumbled and went down on hands and knees. Painfully he regained his footing.

Not ten feet away Lapsor, heavily bandaged around the throat, was lying back on a raised couch covered in gold cloth. Wexenne recognized the couch at once, for it came from the front drawing room of Deer Lodge. Cold fury filled his veins. They were even daring to move the furniture around in his house without his permission!

For some reason this thought made him angrier than ever. For the moment his terror was forgotten.

"What is the meaning of this outrage!" he snapped as if he were addressing just another Aubinan magnate.

"Indeed," purred the wounded Lord Lapsor. "What is the meaning of your outrageous conduct, Wexenne? I took the trouble to secure a couple of young women for my work, and you have sequestered them from me! How dare you interfere in my study program!"

"You cannot use young noble women in this way. I cannot allow it. Nor can I allow your creatures the free run of my house. This outrageous seizure of my person is absolutely unacceptable."

"Oh, yes, so you think."

Lapsor nodded to Kosoke, who snarled something horrid to the creatures.

Huge hands were laid on Wexenne. He struck at them and received a lazy slap that almost knocked him headlong. His clothes were unceremoniously torn off his body, just ripped right off him, and he was thrust down on the floor and struck three times with a heavy whip.

His screams echoed in the room. Shocked, gasping, terrified, he stared up at the elf mage.

"You have brought this on yourself. Now, send me the young women as I demand."

Wexenne paled and shivered. There was a problem with that, unfortunately.

"I'm afraid I can't. They, um, escaped custody and are at large."

"What?" The anger that blazed from the elf lord eyes made Faltus Wexenne quail.

"They somehow escaped from the gallery, where they'd been confined. They will be found shortly. They can't have left the house."

"You had them, and you let them get away?" Lapsor raised himself onto one elbow, and gave him a look of such malice that Wexenne almost swooned.

Lapsor snapped his fingers and said something to Kosoke. Kosoke left and returned a few moments later with a group of men, naked, marked by the lash, and wearing new brass collars on their necks. The men, former servants of Wexenne, were carrying the great painting by Aupose,
Gates of Cunfshon
.

Faltus Wexenne felt the blood drain from his face.

The ancient lord spoke in a soft, velvety whisper now.

"This daub is your most treasured piece, yes? You will bring the young women to me by daybreak, or I will burn this thing to ashes."

The absence of Bazil Broketail and Relkin was discovered in the middle of the night at the change of watch. Cuzo was informed after a few minutes of debate among the dragonboys. He took it quietly, though his eyes registered enormous shock. Then he sent Curf hotfoot with a message for General Tregor. Very shortly there came a visit to the 109th's lines by a group of junior officers. Then General Tregor himself roared up to see them in person.

No one had any idea why the famous pair had absconded. Tregor was left baffled and furious.

Meanwhile Hollein Kesepton was unable to sleep. Indeed, he'd been contemplating slipping away himself and heading into Nellin to find his wife. It would be the end of his career, but Lagdalen was down there somewhere and in danger. It was impossible to think of anything else. Moodily he poked at the embers of a small fire with the point of his knife.

Then he heard the news, which was electrifying, even if he'd half expected it, from the moment he'd passed the word to Relkin. Hollein was ordered to present himself at the command post. He found Tregor staring at a map under a dark lantern.

Hollein had heard pretty much all the story from the messenger. Relkin had clearly cracked under the pressure. Hell, Kesepton was close to cracking too. It was damnably hard to think of duty when the woman he loved more than anything in the world was a captive being taken further into danger every moment.

Tregor greeted him with a sharp denunciation of the absconded pair.

"Sir," Hollein drew himself up. "I wish to volunteer at once to go after them and bring them back. I know them well, sir. We fought together at Tummuz Orgmeen."

That dread name floated there quietly for a moment.

"Ahem, yes, that is well-known to me, Captain. That's why I sent for you, in fact. I think they might listen to you. So take a couple of good men and go out and bring them in."

Just like that? Bring in a two-and-a-half-ton battledragon, who just happened to be the reigning champion with the sword?

"Yes, sir."

"We have the barest minimum force to do this job, Captain." Tregor was now grimly aware of all the problems that had worried poor Urmin to the bone. "To lose even a single dragon risks disaster."

"I'm certain there must be some very compelling reason for this dereliction of duty, sir."

"Sure there is, but still this is unacceptable. Those two have been in trouble again and again. I was one of those who doubted the boy's word in that killing up on the Argo a few years back. They absconded over that, if I recall correctly."

Hollein was tempted to blame the Purple Green, but thought better of it.

"They stood trial, sir. They were found innocent of murder."

"On the evidence of dragons, Captain. It did not sit well with the public."

"Yes, sir."

"They were involved in some other scandal quite recently, were they not? Something to do with gold they'd looted on the southern continent. Peculation and plundering, we can't have it."

"Yes, sir."

"Now this, absconding from duty. There'll have to be a court-martial, you understand."

"Sir."

"I know this is a famous dragon, but now we have a direct challenge to the chain of command. If every dragon behaved like this, we'd have no dragon force worthy of the name."

"Yes, sir."

Tregor vented his anger for a while longer, and then Hollein was set free. He rode out at once with two troopers from the Talion 64th, Dricanter and Tegmann.

The dragon's tracks had already been followed down to the wash on the southern flank of the position. There they appeared to double back and work eastward to the rear of Tregor's force. Then they headed south again.

Hollein realized that the Broketail dragon wasn't trying to hide his tracks in the damp, soft ground, and it was easy to follow the trail on muddy lanes through the early dawn. The three horsemen traveled spread out, but within spyglass range, carefully working through the landscape ahead. There were enemy patrols around; they'd seen plenty of tracks earlier.

The dragon had gone on four feet, as they often did on a march, always heading southward. Through fields, down lanes, even on a logging trail through a woodlot filled with young trees. The fugitives had been moving fast as well. Hollein felt sure they wouldn't catch up before nightfall at the earliest.

The hours wore on, and Hollein struggled with himself. By now he was finding it hard to deny the thought of joining Relkin and Bazil and going on to find Lagdalen. His sense of duty to the army was part of the core of his being, but Lagdalen was the girl that had bewitched him, whom he loved more than any other, who was the mother of the baby girl he adored. Hollein Kesepton's inner core was made of rock, but that rock was taking a terrific pounding all that day as he rode southward through the lush lands of Lucule, with Nellin growing closer all the time.

While Captain Kesepton rode south, a heated conference was in progress in the lines of the 109th. Vlok, Alsebra, and the Purple Green, with Manuel, Jak, and Swane, were discussing the Purple Green's proposal that they all follow the Broketail and help him with whatever it was he had to do. The Broketail was in some kind of fix, that was obvious. The dragons of the 109th had better go and take care of this problem, before it got any worse. You could never tell what that Broketail dragon was going to get into.

The Purple Green's notions of obedience to legion rules and regulations were rudimentary, but Alsebra, and especially Vlok, had the innate conservatism of the wyvern dragon that had spent its life in the legion system. They found it hard to imagine taking off without permission and going outside the walls of discipline that had bound them all their lives.

"Purple Green is right when he say this enemy is evil," rumbled Vlok. "But can we leave position without weakening it?"

"They have 155th here."

"This dragon thinks the fighting here is over for now," said Alsebra.

"What is this enemy?"

"Same thing we fight in Quosh. Evil elf of some kind. I sense him, and I sense that we will be needed to destroy him."

Vlok and the others stared at Alsebra.

"Dragon sense?"

"Deep feeling, like when the red stars are high in sky."

"That settle it for this dragon," growled the Purple Green. "We go. Find the Broketail and kill this enemy."

Manuel, of course, was against the idea. Swane was for it, and Jak was not sure. Jak had been in a heap of trouble at various times in the past, and he wasn't sure he wanted more of that. On the other hand, Relkin was his friend, and the Broketail was a legend. The Purple Green was adamant in his usual vast, implacable way.

"We go south, like Captain Kesepton. The Broketail went south."

"That leads to Nellin," said Manuel. "Right into the heart of rebel country."

"If we're going to go, we'd better go soon. They already have a long lead on us."

When Alsebra said this, Jak looked up and found that he was ready to go. He'd already made his own decision. If Relkin needed help, then Jak would be there for him.

"They'll court-martial us, for sure, but we gotta go help them."

Jak was right about that, and everyone knew it.

Swane was ready, of course.

Alsebra had obviously made her decision. Vlok shook his head, deeply troubled.

"Not good to leave. Break rules."

"Yes. This hurts this dragon too." Alsebra clenched a huge green forehand into a clawed fist and waved it menacingly for a moment.

But it was the Broketail who needed their help. Their decision was foreordained. The Purple Green even had a plan, such as it was.

"We will all be on first watch together. We leave then."

"There'll be no watch at all."

"We leave Curf to watch."

Alsebra hissed at this thought.

"That boy doesn't have even one-half brain."

"True," said the Purple Green, "but this is an emergency. Curf can raise the alarm if anything attacks."

"There's been one night attack. We only just beat them off that time."

"Even without us, there will be almost as many dragons as there were before the fight."

"It's wrong to do this," said Manuel, still troubled. The Purple Green grew snappish.

"Boy always say it is wrong. This time it is not. Listen to this dragon who has flown many skies and eaten prey on every mountain in the north."

Manuel was well used to the ways of the Purple Green, he was not intimidated.

"They will court-martial us, and we'll all end up in military prison."

"They not dare, we are 'Fighting 109th.' "

"Oh, of course," Manuel threw up his hands. His career was about to be destroyed, and there was nothing he could see to do to stop it. He groaned and sagged a little.

"Whatever those two are doing, it's bound to be trouble, big trouble. It always is."

"Very likely," said Alsebra.

"But it is them, isn't it, and we couldn't do anything but go," concluded Manuel.

That evening, after a big feed, the three dragons stood the first watch, spaced out sixty feet apart down the front of the position. The fires were dimmed, snores arose from the lines, the dragons became invisible in the great murk. At Jak's whistle they moved. Slipping quietly away, fading southward, climbing down into the streambed and up the other side, and moving on with the sometimes startling silence of which their kind was capable. All metal had been previously wrapped and tied down tight to avoid clinking and clanking. They were gone, and no one was aware of it.

Their disappearance wasn't noticed until hours later when Cuzo came through the lines and found nothing but Curf, at the front position. Curf, who'd been humming out a tune and trying to come up with the best chords, had noticed nothing. He didn't even know the dragons were gone.