The Wings of Dragons: Book One of the Dragoon Saga (8 page)

The sergeant swore, but Iren covered the
knight’s mouth. “Shut up. Enemies.”

Balear looked like he might vomit. Iren
couldn’t tell if it was nerves about an impending attack or the
fact that Iren had touched his face.

The four regrouped around Rondel. “I’d say
twenty of them,” she whispered. “They’re clever. They ripped up
patches of sod and covered themselves, then crawled to the base of
the hill. They have us surrounded.”

Rondel’s altered demeanor still stunned
Iren, and judging from Balear’s reaction, the sergeant felt the
same way. If the change fazed Amroth, though, he didn’t show it. He
responded firmly, “We’ll charge their line. By the time those on
the other side of the hill reach us, we’ll have dealt with the
first few.”

“
No,” Rondel countered. “If
we do that, it means abandoning our campsite. While we’re busy
fighting on one side of the hill, our foes on the other side will
simply loot our gear, steal our horses, and leave. We’d survive,
but we’d have to go back to Haldessa to resupply.”

The captain’s strained expression indicated
that going back to Haldessa didn’t sit well with him at all. “What
do you suggest, then?” he asked.

Iren shook his head, sure he wasn’t hearing
right. Amroth was taking orders from Rondel?

“
Fan out to the edge of the
campsite and form a perimeter,” Rondel commanded. “We’ll each have
to fight five of them. Not great odds, but all of us have faced
worse. Except the child.”

Iren gulped at her reference to him. The
cold way Rondel put it drove home what he had avoided thinking
about until now. Everyone else, likely including their enemies, had
battled before. Apparently, even the doddering windbag had seen
combat. He alone would enter this fight a total novice.

“
I have faith in him,”
Amroth said. “Iren’s no child, and he won’t die as easily as
this.”

Cursing repeatedly under his breath, Iren
tried for the captain’s sake at least to look brave. Following
Rondel’s instructions, they spread out.

The old woman stood to Iren’s right, and
Amroth positioned himself to the left. Balear took the opposite
side of the hill. Iren, meanwhile, felt paralyzed. His hands grew
so sweaty he feared he might drop his father’s sword the moment he
tried to swing it.

As the four took their positions, their
enemies suddenly threw the sod off their backs and charged the hill
at full speed. The steel of their weapons glinted in the moonlight.
Iren tried hard not to think about what would happen if he screwed
up. At the same time, a perverse kind of curiosity took him,
wondering what it would feel like to have a sword cut him in
two.

He was pretty sure he didn’t want to find
out.

Then he had no more time for thought,
because the first attacker reached him, lunging forward with a
long, narrow sword. Panicking, Iren leapt back, avoiding the blow
but leaving him far out of range to counterattack. His breath came
in gasps, not from exhaustion but terror. He knew he would die.
There was a huge difference between swinging a mop at imaginary
opponents inside the Tower of Divinion and wielding a sword against
a real person trying to kill you. He didn’t stand a chance.

Then again, maybe he did. He kept dodging,
weaving, and retreating. He blocked only when absolutely necessary.
With his foe’s greater reach, Iren couldn’t get close enough to
attack, but even so, his opponent hadn’t landed a strike yet
either. Indeed, after the time spent under the sod, the charge up
the hill, and the first series of strikes, the bandit looked
exhausted. He was sweating profusely and breathing hard, even
though they’d only been fighting for a few seconds.

Iren no longer panted; his breath came as
steadily as on a gentle stroll. Soon his initial panic evaporated,
and the fight became almost like a dance in Haldessa Castle’s grand
hall. Conscious thought faded away, and his body reacted on its
own, shifting in time to music only he could hear. When the second
opponent reached him, he just adjusted the tempo to match his pace
to that of his two foes. Iren couldn’t understand it. These enemies
obviously knew how to fight, yet he found their techniques absurdly
predictable. The instant one of them committed to an attack, Iren’s
block was already waiting for it.

Then the rhythm faltered. The first bandit’s
stance shifted. It was a momentary lapse, but Iren recognized it as
a weakness in his enemy’s left leg. For the first time, Iren
attacked. He swung his sword from the outside, intentionally aiming
for the thief’s blade. Metal crashed against metal, and the force
jerked his foe’s sword hard to the left. The man’s weakened knee
gave under the strain, and when it did, Iren quickly flicked his
blade and struck him in the side, just above the right hip.

Blood spattered the hill, and the man
screamed as he dropped to the ground. Without hesitation, Iren
followed through on his attack, striking down on the fallen thief’s
throat.

The screaming stopped.

Iren’s second opponent paused briefly at the
loss of his comrade, but he quickly redoubled his efforts. There
was no time for Iren to contemplate that he had just killed a man,
had just ended someone’s life the same way the Quodivar leader had
ended his parents’. The dance of battle prevented such thoughts.
Soon two more bandits joined in, forcing Iren to face three enemies
at once. His eyes glazed over. It was like viewing someone else
fight for his life. He watched passively, as from a great distance,
while he slew his three assailants without getting so much as a
scratch.

When his foes lay dead around him, he took a
moment to recover and observe the battlefield. He couldn’t see
Balear, but he heard clashes from over the hill. Rondel and Amroth
both still struggled against their foes as well. Iren was amazed.
Somehow, without any fighting experience, he had defeated his foes
more quickly than Lodia’s finest warriors.

A rustle downhill distracted him. He whipped
around, looking for an enemy, but he saw only grass.

Sharp pain filled his lower left leg, and he
collapsed. His mistake came to him immediately. Rondel said there
were five opponents for each of them, but he’d only killed four.
The fifth man, whom he’d completely forgotten, had remained hidden.
Once Iren was distracted, the thief had used a long knife to slit
Iren’s hamstring.

Iren howled as his blood leached over the
hill. The bandit stood over him, triumphant. Iren tried to swing
his sword, but the thief quickly threw his knife down and pierced
Iren’s arm, pinning it to the ground and forcing him to drop the
blade. Blinding agony overwhelmed him, and he thought he would
black out. Through dim vision, he saw his enemy draw a second knife
and stab it toward Iren’s head.

Instead of his own dying screams, however,
Iren heard a strange gurgling noise. A thin steel point protruded
from the thief’s chest. It withdrew a second later, and the man’s
hot blood cascaded onto Iren’s prone form.

Iren panted. He couldn’t believe he had
survived, though as he felt the burning pain in his left arm and
leg, he knew he was severely, perhaps mortally, wounded. Then,
despite his injuries, he noticed something that made all thoughts
of death vanish from his mind.

The thief’s limp body dropped, revealing
Iren’s savior. Rondel stood over him, holding her dagger with its
triangular, double-sided blade that ended in a lethal point. It was
not the weapon itself that shocked Iren, however, but the way
Rondel held it: in her left hand.

He had no time to ask her about it. Without
speaking, Rondel sheathed her dagger and knelt to examine Iren’s
wounds. After a quick once-over she retrieved his father’s sword
and pressed its hilt into his left hand, wrapping his fingers
around it. “Keep hold of that, no matter how much it hurts,” she
said.

She sounded calm, but her words made Iren
despair. Everyone knew a warrior died with his weapon. Even dying
of old age, a Lodian Castle Guard member always wanted a blade in
his hands at the time of his passing.

If Rondel was the least bit concerned about
him, though, she hid it well. In fact, considering twenty bandits
had just ambushed them, she looked remarkably at ease. She breathed
normally, and she didn’t have a bead of sweat on her. Without the
slightest hint of doubt, she called to Amroth and Balear, who had
finished dealing with their opponents. Balear had received a small
wound to his right arm but nothing threatening. Amroth, as
expected, remained unhurt.

The captain ran over, eyes wild. “What
happened to him?” he cried.

Rondel shrugged nonchalantly, and Iren
noticed that her grin had returned. “You brought along quite the
bumbler in this one.”

From his spot on the ground, Iren growled,
“How can you joke at a time like this? Don’t you realize I’m about
to die here?”

The irritating hag kept right on smirking.
“What do you mean, whiner? You don’t have any injuries.”

He glared at her, confused and furious.
She’d seen his wounds. She’d handed him his sword, a sure sign he
would perish. How dare she pretend he had no injuries while he lay
here in searing pain!

Then it hit him. He’d gotten so angry at
Rondel that he’d forgotten the pain. Now he remembered. That was
the right word for it, too, because he no longer felt any.
Gingerly, he reached down with his right hand and felt where he
knew the knife had cut him.

There was no wound.

He uttered a cry and leapt to his feet,
which amazed him all the more. He couldn’t explain it. All too
clearly, he recalled the intense agony of both strikes. He could
feel blood on the back of his leg, and on his left arm too. He
could see tears in his pants and shirt where the knife had sliced
through them. The injuries themselves, though, no longer
existed.

Iren stared at Rondel, open-mouthed. “I know
the thief cut me. I should have died. How could I heal just like
that?”

The hag folded her arms. “As if I would
know, you Left freak.” She spat the last two words to emphasize
them, but even so, he noticed that she didn’t look at him as she
did.

“
Devil magic, if you ask
me,” Balear offered. Amroth, Iren, and even Rondel shot him dirty
looks. “What? It’s as good an explanation as any.”

Shaking her head, Rondel replied
defensively, “You all should listen to your elders more. I told
you, didn’t I? He didn’t have any injuries.”

Iren eyed her shrewdly. “You’re lying,” he
said. “You know I got injured, and you know how I recovered. What’s
more, you’ve been lying to us from the start. I saw which hand you
used to finish off that bandit. Rondel, you’re a Left!”

Nobody got any more sleep that night. Rondel
stormed off, refusing to speak to anyone. Amroth busied himself
surveying their fallen assailants and concluding that they were, in
all likelihood, Quodivar. Balear made himself useful by shouting at
Iren about what an idiot he was.

“
Well of course she walked
away!” he bellowed. “Luckily for you, she didn’t do anything else.
If you accused me of being a Left, I’d probably kill you. Also,
what a useless fighter you turned out to be! Honestly, if you can’t
take this mission seriously, you should just turn around and go
back to Haldessa.”

“
Enough, Balear,” Amroth’s
sharp retort carried over the hill. “Hurry and get the horses
loaded. I can’t stand the smell of this carnage. Dark or not, we’re
leaving.”

Everyone hurried to follow his command. Iren
felt Balear’s hard gaze on him, but he only had eyes for Rondel.
The cantankerous bat was decidedly avoiding him.

The four set off wordlessly, though more for
safety than anything else. They had killed a large group of
Quodivar, but they couldn’t relax. If anything, it meant more
bandits could easily have hidden themselves nearby.

Fortunately, they encountered no resistance
the rest of the night. As day dawned and they returned to the road,
Balear at last broke the silence. He said,
“Capta . . . Amroth, you seriously don’t intend
to let Iren continue traveling with us, do you? Aside from the fact
that he’s a devil-child, he’s clearly worthless in a fight.”

Not bothering to turn around, Amroth
countered, “The first time you held a sword, could you have slain
four enemies in a row?”

Balear had already opened his mouth to speak
but promptly shut it.

Continuing, Amroth said, “Iren performed
excellently last night, and having experienced his first battle,
he’ll be all the more prepared the next time. Right?” He turned and
gave Iren a warm expression.

Truthfully, Iren didn’t want to think about
last night, and he really didn’t want to think about having to
fight again. The feeling of cutting down another person, the look
on their face as they realized they were going to die and never see
anyone they cared about ever again . . . it was
too much. Back at the castle, he had never thought twice about
teasing people. Even at his worst, though, he had never wanted to
kill any of them.

He tried to justify it. Those Quodivar would
have murdered him. If he hadn’t defended himself, he’d be dead.
That didn’t make him feel any better. Quite the contrary, it made
him realize that to survive this mission, he’d likely have to kill
again. It sickened him. Even the thought of slaying the Quodivar
leader bothered him. Up until last night, he had looked forward to
exacting revenge on the man who had killed his parents. Now he
doubted himself. If and when he finally confronted his enemy, he
didn’t know if he could bring himself to attack.

But Amroth’s look was so kind that Iren
couldn’t stand to let the captain down, so he simply replied, “Yes,
I’ll be ready.”