The Grand Crusade (73 page)

He almost wished he had not.

Had he not known what she had been, he never could have identified her. Blood matted the sleek black pelt, which now hung in ribbons from her body. He could see many of her bones, for most poked through her flesh. All had been broken, some sharply, and some twisted around until the bone had fragmented. Various organs dangled and intestines descended in a white, ropy curtain.

Phfas released her and she puddled to the ground, splashing Adrogans with noxious fluid that itched and burned.

The general pulled himself away, then gingerly rose to his feet. He leaned heavily on the tree he’d slammed into previously, and found his grip not quite as strong as he would have liked.

Phfas crossed to him and began to wrap the wound in his leg. “This is more than a scratch.”

“I’ve noticed.” Adrogans smiled. “Thank you for saving me, Uncle.”

“You saved me. It was fair.”

“I did? How so?”

Phfas smiled. “I made her angry. If you hadn’t killed her, she would have killed us.”

“So we are even?”

The little man cackled and Adrogans accepted that answer on all its various levels.

Chytrine coughed again and an ebon fluid began to ooze from her mouth. It looked like black saliva and Resolute expected it to drip to the floor. One tendril of it did reach toward the ground for about a foot, then retracted. All of it flowed back into her mouth and she gurgled. Her chest contracted and she tried to cough, but only produced a thick, wet sound that was a prelude to rales as she inhaled.

Her body jerked again, her stomach tightening as if she were attempting to vomit. But nothing came out, and as her chest contracted again, Resolute noticed that something spiky seemed to be pushing against her skin. The projection appeared at the base of her breastbone, and Resolute could not shake the impression that it was shaped like a foot.

The colors in the dragon’s eyes swirled faster and faster, though the blues and greens no longer appeared in distinct patterns, but melded and merged. One hue would predominate for a moment, then the other, as if thin clouds were cloaking the sky. Chytrine still tore at her stomach and chest with her claws. Then there was a distinct snapping sound, and her whole body shook. A twitch of her tail pulverized a chunk of the floor.

Another snap sounded and another—a bit muffled, but growing more distinct. The dragon thrashed more, then a scale on her chest popped out. Another protuberance forced more scales loose. Then, with the loudest crack of all, the curve of her breastbone took on a distinctly angular shape.

Scales flew and her pale flesh parted around a milk-white gemstone the size of a melon, shaped very much like an egg. A small hand—grey but distinct, with five fingers detailed down to the nails—shoved it from her breast. The opening widened as another hand tore at it, then in a gush of blackened mucus a small, nimble figure emerged in a somersault and stood dripping.

“Will!”

Sayce’s shout fell deafly on stone ears. The Norrington spun and held the stone up for Chytrine’s inspection. Her eyes widened and the flow of colors slowed as his fingers grew up and around the stone like ivy on a tree trunk. The Norrington held the stone higher and Chytrine screamed. Popping and snapping sounds presaged the appearance of cracks, then the Norrington tightened his grip, and Chytrine’s Truestone exploded into a spray of scintillating fragments.

Erlestoke reached across his saddle and drew the quadnel with his left hand as Tythsai began to whirl her flail. She looked at him with blank eyes, as if to invite a shot, but he shook his head. His heels dug into his horse’s flanks and it leaped forward, charging toward thesullanciri’smount. He set up to pass her to the left but, at the last second, swerved his horse directly into her path.

As grand as the temeryx she rode was, compared to a horse in armor it was a minor obstacle. Erlestoke’s mount smashed it with a shoulder. Bones cracked and the impact knocked the temeryx sideways. Tythsai’s flail whipped around, but passed above Erlestoke’s head as she fell back in the saddle.

It didn’t pass above his raised quadnel, however. The flail’s leash wrapped tight around the weapon and Tythsai yanked at it. Whether to free her hand or tear the weapon from his grasp, Erlestoke didn’t know, nor did he care. Her efforts merely brought the draconette in line with her body and when the muzzle was aimed at her chest, he pulled the trigger.

As with Anarus, the ball of metal wasn’t enough to kill asullanciri, but it did blast Tythsai from the saddle. Erlestoke retained his grip on the quadnel, then brought Crown around and down. The enchanted blade severed the quicksilver leash. The piece encircling the quadnel started to drip to the ground and flow toward thesullanciri. Given a minute or so, it would return to Tythsai and she would be rearmed.

Erlestoke didn’t give her that time. He turned his horse and slashed, catching thesullancirion the back, beneath her right shoulder blade. Crown ripped through her, spinning her around. Tythsai bounced off another horse but didn’t go down.

With a snap of his wrist, Erlestoke slashed once more and harvested her head. The stitching keeping it in place parted and it popped into the air, spinning swiftly. As it did so, the flesh tightened and aged, splitting over the bones, then flying away as wispy fragments, like burned parchment. The skull smashed to the ground, staining the earth with ivory powder.

Dragonels blasted to the west and east. As the Saporician Crown Lancers raced around the western trench and thunderballs exploded in the woods, Alexia

watched a new cavalry force enter the field. At that distance it took her a moment or two to recognize the crest. “Crow, those are the Alcidese Horse Guards. That’s Caro leading them.”

Crow smiled. “So that’s Adrogans down there. Not only does he have dragonels, but his people can shoot them. But look at their horses.”

She nodded. Even as the felinesullanciribounded down toward the forest, the Alcidese Horse Guards pounded forward on huge steeds that flew faster than any she’d seen before. Behind them came the Jeranese Horse Guards, the Valician White Mane, and the Savarese Knights. They moved with alacrity and made for the northern side of the fortress. Even though a dragonel battery there could cover their approach, they came with such speed that Alexia doubted the Aurolani could get off more than one volley before the cavalry was among them.

On the left and right wings, the infantry poured forward. The ship that had appeared on the lake cut loose with a second volley that smashed into the masses of Aurolani troops. Already to the rear of that formation, some units began to pull back.

A figure near Nefrai-kesh stepped away from him. In a shimmer of golden light, that person vanished and a dragon appeared. Black with green wing membranes and belly scales, he raised his head, shrieked, then took to the air. He looped north and around to the east. A quick blast of fire turned some of the Aurolani troops and prompted others to push forward. The dragon pumped his wings and made one pass over the ship, dipping a wing lazily to come back around.

Before Alexia could issue an order, Arimtara sprinted along the hilltop and leaped from the steepest point. As she flung her arms wide, they became wings. Her body grew in an eyeblink. She swooped low over Erlestoke’s army, then came up swiftly. Only as she closed with the Aurolani dragon did it become apparent how small the enemy dragon truly was.

Arimtara let loose a blast of red-gold fire that caught the black dragon right between the wings. That blasted him sideways through the air until his wingtip began to drag. He tried to right himself, but his tail struck the water. Unable to pull up, he landed with a big splash and she circled overhead, chattering in a sibilant tongue that conveyed more in tone alone than many human orators could muster with an overabundance of words.

Alexia looked at Crow. “Now, beloved. Now is the time.” She signaled a bugler and the center of her army pushed forward. Gyrkyme made runs at the central dragonel batteries. They hurled firecocks, which, for the most part, exploded harmlessly before or on top of the roofs over the batteries. One did swoop low and come in on a level flight. He pulled up at the last moment, releasing the firecock in a flat trajectory that exploded on the edge of the battery. As he came up, a half-dozen arrows brought him down, but a second, far more violent explosion shook the battery. The expanding fireball touched off several other explosions—shredding the roof, blowing gibberers high into the air, and sending one flaming dragonel careening down the slope toward Alexia’s oncoming troops.

Her infantry came on as quickly as they could, but Alexia, Crow, and the Alcidese Iron Horse used the gap to swing around them. Reaching a full gallop, they sped through the riverbed and up the slope. They drifted toward the west, using the fire and smoke to screen them from the intact battery, then rode through the gap the explosion had torn in the Aurolani defenses.

The heavy cavalry burst through the lines. The explosion had stunned many, terrified others, and left no one in their fixed positions. With Heart, Alexia slashed and chopped her way through a milling throng of gibberers. Theturekadinewere doing their best to organize defenses, but too much was happening at once. To the east and west thesullanciriin command had left their posts. The cavalry coming in from the north had demanded attention and a diversion of troops, all of whom had been caught on the hilltop when the battery blew up. Though theturekadineshouted orders, Alexia doubted many of those who had been close to the explosion could hear them, much less have the presence of mind to follow the commands.

The scattered Aurolani infantry fell swiftly. It occurred to her that bards might suggest they were ripe wheat before scythes, but that analogy was simply too pristine. Wheat stalks did not scream when an arm hung by a ligament. They did not bleed or whimper and they certainly couldn’t leap at a warrior, drag him down, and bite his throat out. That would ever be the way of it, though—that bards would sanely describe the utter insanity of war.

At the center of the plain, in a circle oddly devoid of bodies, Nefrai-kesh waited with sword drawn. Burning fragments of the dragonel battery surrounded him like the votive candles in an Alcidese ancestor shrine. Neither their guttering flames nor the day’s light could penetrate the shadow of his mask nor, oddly enough, did he cast a shadow.

Alexia saw riders directing their mounts at him. Lances were leveled, spurs drew blood, but for twenty feet around thesullanciri, nothing could pass. Horses, foam-flecked and wide-eyed, shied away. Gibberers, even those fleeing mindlessly, skirted him. Men who had lost their mounts would reach the perimeter of his domain, then double over, as if stuck in the guts with the black sword he rested his weight on.

She reined her horse around and drove at the invisible barrier. As she drew close, something curdled in her stomach and her hands began to shake. Her horse fought her and tried to shy. Alyx dug her heels into the beast’s flanks, trying to urge it on, but a sour taste rose in her mouth. Thesullanciri‘s image grew huge, dark and terrible, oozing corruption. She jerked the reins to the right, moving out of the way, catching a flash of Crow as he bore on.

Nefrai-kesh’s head came up, his eyes white in a black face. Crow rode within

the circle and sprang from the saddle. His mount leaped away as if off hot coals. Alexia’s lover raised Alarien in a salute, then brought it down. “What you asked before, I do today.”

“Pity your hand was stayed then. Had you struck, neither you nor they would have died here today.”

Crow shook his head. “You know that’s not true. The guilt for what happened here, and in Okrannel, and everywhere else, is not mine. It belongs to you and your mistress.”

Thesullancirinodded, then brought his sword up in a salute. “Pity our sword master is not here to watch us.”

“Did you think so little of him that you would wish upon him the pain of watching us kill one another?”

Nefrai-kesh hesitated. “The man I once was understands that question. The creature I am now is beyond that.”

The two men closed and Alexia saw similarities in how they moved. She could have ascribed it to them having been trained by the same swordsman, but she knew it was more. The jawline, the eyes, the length of their limbs—they were not identical by any means, but close enough that blood kinship was inescapable. Each moved with the same grim economy and the energy gathered for decades in preparation for this encounter.

Swords flashed. The silver of Alarien countered the black of thesullanciri’sblade with a ringing crash. Crow caught and turned a cut at his head, then lunged. Nefrai-kesh pulled his left shoulder out of line, avoiding Alarien’s point, then snapped his wrist and brought his blade down in a low slash.

Crow leaped above the slash, then kicked out with his right foot. He smashed Nefrai-kesh in the chest, driving thesullanciriback two steps. The shadow on his chest devoured the dusty boot print. Crow landed, dropping into a crouch to let another slash pass over his head, then came up and lunged again. Nefrai-kesh parried that lunge wide, then slammed his blade’s pommel against Crow’s forehead.

Crow spun away, bleeding from a cut over his left eye. He raised his left hand, probed the wound, and smeared the blood down over his cheek. Then readjusting his helmet, he came in again at his brother. The two of them struck, parried, riposted, and parted so quickly Alexia could only read their bodies, not follow their blurred blades. Crow moved strongly and deliberately, coiling then striking. Nefrai-kesh held back more, flowing as if he were shadow, letting the attacks come, shifting so they narrowly missed, then launching his own attacks. Those Crow beat back strongly, buying himself time to riposte, but thesullancirialways managed to evade him.

Then Alexia saw it. Nefrai-kesh lunged and Crow leaned away from the blow. With both hands wrapped around Alarien’s hilt, he brought the silver sword around and down, catching thesullanciriacross the right forearm. He carved away a piece of the cloak and split the sleeve. It should have amputated the limb