The Dread Wyrm (Traitor Son Cycle) (88 page)

And then he awoke—he must use the time she gave, or it was for nothing.

“On me!” he roared. “Ganfroy!”

Ganfroy was a broken doll cast down on the rocks, never to rise again. His trumpet was bent under him.

Gabriel raised his own ivory horn and blew.

And they came.

Danved came, his sword broken in his hands, and he stooped and plucked a stone-headed war hammer from the corpse of a red-crested daemon. Bertran came with the standard and Francis Atcourt and Phillipe de Beause followed him. Cully came and Toby pushed himself off a rock and Cat Evil and hollow-eyed Diccon who had loved Nell and knew where her corpse lay, and Ricard Lantorn, painfully aware his brother had burned to death almost at his side, and Flarch, and Adrian Goldsmith and even Nicomedes—they all came and forced themselves into ranks, even as the pages brought forward the horses.

On the left, he could see Ser Michael, pointing down the hill. On the right, Ser Milus had lost half his lances in a single, devastating moment, and the white banda on the right had halted—shocked.

Milus went into the charred corpses of his men, and took up the pole on which the company’s old Saint Catherine had hung. And by some virtue—some working, some ancient rune—it still hung, so that when he raised it, grey ash flew, and the silk banner licked out like a tongue of flame.

There was a thin cheer. It was not much of a cheer, but in the circumstances—

Gabriel ran forward, ignoring the loss of his left hand. There was no pain, and very little blood. So far.

He turned, and raised his spear—and pointed it, one-handed, into the enemy below.

“Now!” he said. “Thorn didn’t beat you and the dragon couldn’t kill you, so now we are going to WIN.”

And instead of waiting for the enemy to come up the ridge, or even to see the result of the aerial combat, the company and their allies went down into the maelstrom of battle under the shadow of death and, when they struck, the monsters flinched.

Hartmut couldn’t take his eyes from the two dragons.

The rise of their great monster should, surely, have been the end of the conflict. But now—now, as their enemy came down the ridge to his waiting
spearmen—he saw how much devastation the black dragon had wreaked. In stealing flesh, he had all but destroyed the vanguard that should have formed the left of the line, and his fire had blasted the daemons on his right and a thousand other creatures.

Thousands of boglins were locked in a vicious, chitinous battle at the crest of the ridge to his far right, and there—at the ridge’s steepest, stoniest top—great bears and stone trolls were locked in the static agony of melee.

To his own left, the enemy’s irks had begun to crest the ridge, and from beyond them an Outwaller arrow fell harmlessly among his men.

Despite
everything
, it was still in the balance. His men were well ordered, and fresh enough.

“Up the hill!” he called. “Straight into them.”

The brigans levelled their spear points, and began a slow march up the hill. The sailors loosed a volley of bolts.

He was facing men. He could see them—good plate armour, and good swords, and he grinned. Nothing about men ever made him afraid, and he drew his sword. As it burst into flame, his people cheered. Ser Cristan pointed at the burning sword and roared a challenge. Ser Louis began to move his mounted knights to fill the open ground to the left—to clear the enemy Outwallers.

Hartmut thought—
I have them.

To his left, the enemy Outwallers began to sprint
forward
. They were bypassing him, which gave him an instant of puzzlement, and they were moments from being overrun by Ser Louis and the cavalry. But even as the sailors poured another withering volley into the armoured men on the slopes above, they paid a terrible price as the longbow arrows fell amongst them…

Hartmut’s face furrowed as he frowned.

It was too late to avoid the combat.

But there was a banner behind the savages—blue and yellow check. Occitan. And another he didn’t know, and another—a line of
mounted knights
coming on his side of the slope, moving easily through the open woods behind the line of Outwallers, led by the
Prince of Occitan.

He cursed God, and led his men into the company.

In the captain’s clever plan, the levy of the northern Brogat should have been enough, and the Royal Guard enough again, to hold the higher ridge and block the road. But the captain had never imagined the sheer horror of the dragon’s breath, nor the packed legions of boglins. When the north wall was lost, the timbers charred and the men seared to meat standing to the last, Rebecca Almspend and Desiderata stood for three long minutes in the centre of the camp, back to back, and killed anything they could see, wielding power in ways neither had ever directly attempted. Almspend’s
power had been that of a scholar, and the Queen’s that of a lover. Until today.

Desiderata hurled power, praying aloud for a gleam of sunshine and watching, horrified, as the embodied Ash darkened the sky above—but he was locked in a death grip with his rival, and she threw only one lingering golden bolt to penetrate his hide before returning to the rising tide at her feet. A behemoth, tusks red, crushed men and tents, and behind it a line of
hastenoch
trampled those who fled and those who stood their ground with equal vigour. The barghasts swooped on any prey that pleased them.

Blanche Gold watched the ruin of all their hopes, and stood with a short sword by the little King’s bed. She had no great power with which to fight dragons, and she had no
ops
to loan her Queen. So she guarded the wet nurse and the babe, and when the north wall fell, and the
things
came, she killed them.

And again, Pavalo Payam saved her. Again, as before, he appeared before she was wholly done, when she had killed two boglins and had one fastened to her left thigh—he cut through the wall of the tent, and his sword moved with the easy, economical flow that she remembered—that it was almost worth the pain to see again—and the creatures died. He cleared the tent, ignored the shrieking wet nurse, nodded to her—and continued out the back wall.

Blanche stood and shook for a moment, and then realized she was bleeding on the Queen’s bedding, and took action.

But as she pressed a spare shift to her thigh, there was a roar—so long it seemed as if it came from ten thousand men, and not just a thousand.

Ser John Crayford watched the north wall lost, and cursed. Mostly, he was cursing a certain arrogant young man who’d had all the answers the day before. But also his own instinct. The size of the dragon trumped any kind of preparation.

Ser John had his own knights—a handful. And the Morean cavalry, which had been beaten badly a few days before. Ser Giorgos Comnenos. Ser Christos.

He shook his head, and turned to Ser Christos. “I must try to save my Queen,” he said.

Ser Christos saw the rout, the collapse, the chaos in the middle of the camp. A thousand peasants were being flayed alive in seconds. He glanced at Ser Alcaeus, who’d seen it all at Albinkirk. And Ser Giorgos, who’d seen it at the Inn.

Ser Alcaeus looked at Ser John, and the look shared their absolute knowledge.

One-way trip.

Ser John would have liked to say goodbye to his Helewise. He’d have
preferred to catch more fish in a hundred brooks—to live forever, just stroking her back or hearing her say his name, to see the red-gold flash as the trout took a lure.

“Fuck it,” he said. He smiled without mirth. “Wedge. Two wedges.”

Ser Christos and the Moreans could form a wedge very fast.

The two men touched gauntlets. “Save the Queen,” Ser John said. “I will try to clear the wall.”

Ser Christos thought a moment. “Then let’s make this worth our lives,” he said. He shouted a series of orders at the Moreans—the virtually untrusted Moreans—who were standing, untested, on the southernmost walls.

The Moreans took their hodge-podge of weapons and began to form their
taxeis
in close order. There were Nordikaans and mountaineers and dismounted city cavalry. There were stradiotes and old, veteran infantrymen from Thrake, and young camp servants who’d scarcely ever touched a weapon.

“They will not run again,” Ser Giorgos said. “Neither will we. Let’s go.”

Ser John was almost happy.

“Let’s make a song,” he said, like the northerner he was.

The two wedges had little space in which to gather momentum—and the camp was an utter shambles. But there was not enough cover for the boglins to stand a charge of heavy horsemen.

The wedges cracked open the front of their wave of terror, and the close-ordered Moreans crashed into the disorder they created. The big axes began to swing. The spears licked out, and the shields remained tight, and a thousand boglins died. And still, the Morean infantry line pressed forward—step by step.

Ser Christos led his men brilliantly, and his sword was like a living rod of lightning, and a great wight died on it, head opened to its mandibles in a single mighty blow. And his wedge drove deep into the centre of the camp, where the hooves of his horses dealt more death than any weapon of man. At the edges of the squadron, men fell from horses tripped by tent stakes and died horrible deaths, consumed still living by myriad enemies, but the wedge itself trampled the enemy to a sticky ruin and cut their way to the Queen, where Ser Ranald’s dwindling Royal Guard opened ranks to let them in. Exhausted men all but fell to the ground in the respite the cavalry gave them—men who had swung an axe or halberd for ten solid minutes, and felt as if they’d aged two years.

Ser Alcaeus asked no permission, but grabbed the Queen and threw her over his saddle. Beside him, men did the same for her women—the three still alive—and the babe. Ser Giorgos pulled a tall woman with bright gold hair onto his crupper and found that she had the King of Alba in her arms.

The line of Morean infantry was inexorable and despite men lost, the phalanx appeared untouched—men fell, and were stepped on. The spears and axes rolled another pace forward.

Boglins are living creatures. They seek to live.

Many began to seek life through flight.

Ser John Crayford cut his way to the north wall. He led his men along the relatively open ground that had been the camp’s parade—he cleared the west face of the Royal Guard’s square, buying men time to drink a sip of water, or merely take a breath—and then he struck the full, packed mass of the enemy in the north-west corner.

He broke his lance, and drew his sword. The boglins were small—too small for a short weapon—and he had to reach
down
to kill them. His charger did it better than he.

On they plunged, and for the first time in many years, Ser John remembered the joy of combat. The pounding rhythm of the gallop, the surge of near perfect exhilaration to see the men on either side of him, the feeling of oneness with his horse.

The feeling of a living thing coming to pieces under your weapon.

He got his horse onto the ramp to the north wall. Behind him, his banner moved, and still he cut—his charger killed—and they were up on the earthen bank of the wall.

All the ground down to the burning first line seemed to be teeming with enemies. Like a termite’s nest, kicked.

He wished for a mighty adversary—a wight, or a cave troll. But instead, he simply fought well—carefully, as was his wont—and cleared the wall a few steps at a time, minding his horse’s safety, and killing.

And killing.

And killing.

In time, he could not really raise his arm. His horse was bleeding—and sluggish—and had boglins fixed to it like leeches. Ser John couldn’t smile. But he might have, given time. In the centre of the camp, the Morean phalanx had cleared the Royal Guard. One glance told him the Queen was safe. His charger—game to the end—stumbled. And there were no more miracles.

“
Goodbye, Helewise,” he said out loud. Then he rolled off his saddle into the monsters, and killed until they finally dragged him down.

Miles to the north, Harmodius stood almost alone. The battle line had swept over the ridge in front. He had nothing to do with that, and in fact—such was his mood—would not willingly have killed any living thing except a dragon.

He watched the two vast predators duel. After an initial, vicious encounter with power and talon, they had taken to making long, bloody passes—each circling for altitude and speed, and then coming back together again. He could follow them in the
aethereal
as well—where the whole of the place was an increasing fog of falsehood and spent
ops.
Harmodius had
never seen power used on such a scale, and for the first time in his long life he sensed that a locale might itself be drained of
potentia.
Certainly something was happening in the
aethereal
that was beyond his experience. He watched it.

To the south, he saw it—in the misty
aethereal
—as Mortirmir opened up.

That was humbling.

More
potentia
drained. In the centre of the hermetical combat, in the real, trees—late spring trees—began to lose their leaves. And then to die.

And above them, the rainy day began to turn to storm. Harmodius saw it happen—as if nature abhorred the fighting and strove to extinguish it. More and blacker clouds were rushing in. The rain grew stronger.

The Queen still lived, a banner of gold to the south.

The Faery Knight still lived, to the west, and Mogon, to the east.

Harmodius watched, and waited.

Morgon Mortirmir had no reason to be cautious. And a great deal of youthful arrogance that was, on this day and in this place, well-earned.

He killed.

He pounded Thorn’s horde with balls of fire and when a shaman or a fledgling hedge mage among them showed his talent, Morgon concentrated his efforts until that target was dead—and went back to flensing the unprotected.

Around him, the white banda—all but broken by the dragon and stricken by its losses—re-purposed themselves as his bodyguard. He was content with that. He moved when he had to—clearing away the last
schiltron
of irks covering the flank of the Galles—and then, because they were intermixed with the company, passing over them to grind cave trolls to sand.