The Dragonswarm (27 page)

I shook my head. "It matters not. I cannot trust that form of loyalty. I much prefer the kind that will challenge me when I'm a child."

He nodded back past me, toward the south. "And what did you find?"

"It's not six miles to the tower from here," I said. "We'll have our lunch tomorrow inside the walls, such as they are."

Caleb nodded. He turned back toward our camp and jerked his head. I fell to a walk beside him. After a moment I asked, "How much do the men know?"

"By my order, they know we are moving into a vulnerable but defensible position. They know it will take work to prepare the defenses, and the king will come to test those defenses within days or weeks."

"That's all?"

He shrugged. "By my order, that's all they've been told. But I'm sure every man knows it's Palmagnes, the way rumors spread. Most of them know you plan to rebuild it, that you want to be king of the mountains, that you're a total madman, and that you are the FirstKing's ghost." He threw a glance up at me. "Some among them have even suggested you intend to fight dragons, but outside the first battalion, most consider that a baseless lie."

"Excellent," I said darkly.

He barked a laugh. "It's the nature of rumor in a body such as this. It's not worth troubling over. They should be ready for the work ahead. That's what matters."

"We've pressed them hard," I said. "And rebuilding those walls will be no small task. Pass the word that they can have tomorrow afternoon to rest, and we'll begin at dawn the day after."

"No, my lord."

I looked down at him, surprised. "No?"

He looked back with a gaze like stone. "You bid me challenge you when you were wrong. And you are wrong in this."

I crushed a harsh response before it could even resolve to words, and let it go with a long, slow breath. Then I asked him quietly, "What should we do instead?"

"Put them to work tomorrow. The moment we arrive. You do have a kind heart at times, but these are the wrong kind of men for that.
You
may rest tomorrow, but these men respond better to orders than to leisure time."

"That seems reasonable," I said.

He frowned as though I'd argued with him. "
And
we have an army bearing down on us that would tax the defenses of Whitefalls, let alone this pile of rubble you've described. We cannot spare the day."

"I understand," I said.

"The easy answer is this: Do not tell me how to run the army. Tell me where to point it, what to teach it, and when to let it loose, but
don't
tell me how to run it."

I nodded, thoroughly chastised, and managed a meek, "Yes, Caleb."

He grunted. "You are most gracious, my lord." My horse approached the first row of tents then, and Caleb caught my bridle almost absently and began to lead me through the camp. As we went, he continued, "We'll start out at dawn, and I'll wait until we're well and truly moving before I pass the arrival orders. We'll need an honor guard, too. How many men do you think will fit inside the walls?"

"All of them."

He threw a measuring glance back at me, as though to see if I were mocking, then shrugged and turned forward again. "That is better than I had hoped, but I think you misunderstood. I'm planning for tomorrow, and right now it's just rubble. Before we start rebuilding, how many can this fortress house?"

"Twice our numbers," I said. "Have you never seen Palmagnes?"

"No man alive has," he said. He looked north, beyond the sprawling camp to the baron's lands. "Not even these farmers, I would guess. It's miles to the nearest house."

"True." I chuckled to myself. "Does Lareth know it yet?"

"I think he half suspects. But then, like all grown men, he knows it's just a legend."

"Well, we will make it real," I said.

He stopped, then offered me a hand down from the horse. "At dawn," he said. He'd led me to a bed I hadn't bothered to prepare, an unlit fire built within a shallow pit, a water skin and a wax paper bundle of rations. "For now, you need to rest. You push yourself too hard."

"And you?" I asked. "Do you
ever
sleep?"

"Not while I have enemies awake," he said. "But I am made of stronger stock than you."

"I think perhaps I have encouraged you to speak too freely."

"Perhaps," he said, every line of his face perfectly serious. "Only time will tell."

"Good night, Caleb."

"My lord." He led my horse away, and I watched until he disappeared into the darkness. Then I fell gratefully among the thin blankets, and lay there long awake anticipating what the next day would bring. I barely thought of Isabelle at all.

Dawn found me already alert and mounted, waiting anxiously. Caleb had apparently anticipated that, because he had the men ready to strike camp before the sun was even up. Still, I chafed to wait in quiet review of my troops. Instead, I inched along the line, closer and closer to the head of the column, and when the order to march was given, I rode ten paces ahead of the front line.

I saw no sign of Caleb himself, but I recognized his handiwork when three mounted warriors came galloping past the column to fall in just behind me. My bodyguard. I glanced back over my shoulder and discovered I'd crept another forty paces ahead of the line. The tower called to me. The chance to act called to me. I shook my head and set my eyes to the south and fought to rein against my own impatience.

Over the course of the next two miles, nine other soldiers came forward to join my guard, and as the last of them drew close I finally gave up my efforts at restraint. I cast one quick glance among them, nodded to the south, and kicked my horse to a run. We covered the barren miles quickly, then slowed to a reverent walk as we approached the tower.

We passed within a pace of Isabelle's abandoned campsite, but no sign of it remained. I'd destroyed the tiny obelisk and refilled the shallow grave and buried the circle of stones. The note she'd left I carried near my heart, but nothing else remained.

I led a dozen of our best men over the rough slope of the crumbled archway and into the courtyard of the ruined fortress. The morning was strangely quiet as we all dismounted and stood in the awesome immensity of the rubble-strewn courtyard. I closed my eyes and looked with the wizard's sight, searching every shadow in the place for any sign of a lurking drake, but there were none this time.

Too far from men, too far from wealth, too far from any power except the memory of man. The drake I'd met before had been a hunting scout of Pazyarev's. But he had seen me all across the south Ardain. With any luck at all he was still scouring the mountains or the plains where I had slain his greens. I would face him. With this army, I could face him. But first I needed time, and a stronghold worthy of my power.

I stretched out a hand and brushed aside a pile of rubble paces tall as though it were just dust. I remembered the staggering toll it once had taken for me to raise a wall of earth, but here with far less effort I did much more work, and none of it with borrowed Chaos. The men behind me hushed with awe, and a smile touched my lips as I pressed forward, clearing off a hundred square paces of courtyard floored with the chipped and crumbling paving stones that the FirstKing had placed more than a thousand years ago.

When Caleb and Lareth arrived at the head of the column, my bodyguard was already busy scouting the vast premises of the fortress, trying to define its exact dimensions among all the ruin. I sat waiting at the foot of the broken stronghold. A quiet satisfaction stole over me as I watched the trotting column slow without an order to a reverent walk, just as we had done, every neck craning as the tired men filed through the gateway gap.

They looked on rubble and ruin barely distinguishable from wild nature, but every eye carried a far-off look as they mentally reconstructed the old glory of these crumbled stones. They could see the reality that wasn't yet real, and they thrilled at the chance to play a part. They knew what I meant to do—or at least some part of it—and I saw the faces of men I had forced into service suddenly glowing at the thought of the future.

Perhaps I had a chance.

Caleb had little time for me, then, as he began the process of securing the perimeter as well as setting up an orderly camp for so many men. I didn't envy him the task, but he had found a competent staff of officers among them, and he seemed to have a plan.

I needed to speak with Lareth, though. He'd entered the walls a step ahead of Caleb, at the very front of the column, but he seemed as overwhelmed at the power of the place as I had been. He stood transfixed just inside the gateway while the soldiers came flowing in around him. They parted to avoid him, hundreds of men walking past, but Lareth ignored them all.

When he finally moved, it was with a slow and measured step that carried him directly toward the tower. I watched him come, his eyes searching the sky above for the fabled floors that no longer stood. His eyes were on the reality of the past, not the shadow of the present. I understood.

When he reached me, he stopped. He said, "It's real."

"Yes. And it is mine by right."

His eyes met mine, and I shrugged. "It was, at least. And I will make it mine again." I waved a hand at the empty sky, where a tower should have stood. "And I mean the tower to stand."

He nodded, his eyes far off again, but then he looked at me sharply. "All of it?"

"All of it. I mean to rebuild the whole fortress."

"And they say I am mad."

"Lareth, I mean to fight the dragonswarm. Brant's rebellion, the king's petty vendetta, all the politics of men cannot compare with the horror that is rushing on the world."

"It has arrived," the wizard said. "Perhaps you know. But these last days the men have shared their rumors. They think it odd that such similar stories reached such distant parts of the plains, but every camp has heard it now."

"They're to the plains?" I said, not really asking. "That is not the beginning, Lareth, that is the end. They started in the mountains, in the depths, in the high dark passes. I shudder to think what has transpired in the Northlands, or high along the western coasts."

"There have always been dragons," Lareth said.

"One or two, perhaps. But now they all awake. Across the world. In their thousands. Whole broods that strike with one mind and unimaginable power. And
they
do not look to capture thrones. Their only goal is to set the world on fire."

Lareth looked past the rubble of the tower, the ruins of the walls, to the huge black mountains that clawed at the horizon to east and west. "And you brought us into their midst?"

I nodded slowly. "I brought us out of the world of men. When we strike, they will strike back."

He turned his eye to me. And then I saw the subtle change in his expression as he looked on me with his wizard's sight, and the tiny, hungry tremor that shook him. "For that you've gathered all these men?"

"And men are just the start," I said. "They are a tool, but I need more. I need—"

"You need a fortress of legend. You need an army unafraid of any power. You need a man like living death to be your shadow."

I smirked at that. "You mean Caleb?"

"He terrifies me," Lareth said, his voice far away. And then he snapped right back to reality, and his gaze dropped shyly away from mine. "And you will need as well a...a wizard?"

"I need a wizard, Lareth. I do not need a madman drunk on the ecstasy of power." He blinked at me, and I took a heavy step closer to him. "I do not need a conniving rat scrabbling for every scrap he can get. I do not need a traitor or a monster. I need a man who is willing to fight against the darkness."

I raised a hand and touched one of the sleek black shards still pricking at his throat. The skin beneath its point had raised a jagged, star-shaped scar. Lareth's eye followed its every subtle motion as I lifted away the shard, thin as paper, and considered it for a long moment. Then I let it dissolve into dust.

"Can you be a man, Lareth?"

His eye snapped to mine. He swallowed hard, and a handful of the shards I'd left pressed dents into the scars they'd raised. Then he dipped his head once, and a wheeze touched his voice. "For power like you have—"

"No," I said, firm, and he cut off sharp. I held his gaze. "I do not believe that you are mad. I have seen too much of you. It serves you well to play the part, but I demand sanity. As your master, as your lord, I demand you give me reason."

His mouth fell open. After a long moment, he gave a tiny shake of his head. He looked away. "You ask too much."

"Find it in you," I said. "I have been a monster. I have tortured men and I have killed with glee. I've been a puppet in the power of mighty things, and I have tasted Chaos on my tongue." I bent a thread of air to turn his head until he faced me again. "I know every shade of your madness, Lareth, and I will not allow it in my tower."

I raised a hand, and another of the shards lifted away from his throat and floated to me. I called them one by one until they rested in a pile in my palm. Then I turned my hand, gripping just one between thumb and forefinger, and let the others melt to ash. He flinched as though I'd struck him.

I held the one remaining shard out to him. "I should have done this days ago. Keep this as a talisman or drop it down a well, but I tell you this: I will not keep a man like a dog upon the leash. I will not keep you here if I must do it under threats and promises of power."

He took the shard and turned it over and over in his hands. He tested the edge of it with the pad of his thumb and drew a tiny line of blood. He shrugged pathetically. "But that is just the nature of a man. Every kind of king—"

"I am not a king," I told him. "I am a protector, and I cannot do that if I let the dark abide. If you can be a man by your own will, you will have a place here. If you can only be a monster, mad with power and hungry to burn the world, then I must destroy you as I will the rest of them."

He shook his head, and his words came out in a whisper. "It can't be tamed."

"It can," I said. "It can be crushed. Humanity is stronger than the darkness."