This was wrong! Something Kadie could recall reading long ago had said that once dragons had tasted metal they would ravage the countryside for days afterward. Perhaps the book had been mistaken, because all dragon lore must be very old, or perhaps someone held these particular worms under very tight control.
Still gaining height, the monsters streamed southward. The heat of their passing was like a potter’s kiln or the face of the sun. Far below them, sweating goblins were cheering again. Already the lead monsters were almost lost to sight in the far, high distance.
Then the cheering faltered. The smaller dragons were obviously more nimble in the air, and one last youngster broke out of formation. As if sensing the banquet of swords and arrowheads waiting below, it came spiraling downwarily, like a puppy approaching a strange cat. Goblins in its path screamed and fled. It was little bigger than a sheep, its scales glowing dull maroon and dirty orange, the colors of a smith’s forge, but even one baby dragon could scatter an army. It sank below treetop height, wings thundering as it tried to hover, snaky neck twisting around, jeweled eyes gleaming this way and that. It seemed puzzled, or perhaps it had arrived too late for the feast and been cheated of its share and was still hungry. The meadow below caught fire, smoke streamed out in the blast. Then the monster changed its mind, or heard a call. It flapped harder, gained height again, and streaked off in pursuit of its fiery relations. Cheering broke out once more.
The ruins of the town still burned, but of the Imperial Army nothing remained at all on the smoking black wasteland where the blaze had ravaged.
Death Bird began making a speech, screaming gutturally to his horde and waving his arms. The cheering kept drowning him out. The chiefs were embracing one another, almost dancing, making the platform rock and creak alarmingly. Kadie sat down and straddled the log she had been standing on. She felt sick. She was still alive. Thousands of men had been charred to nothing before her eyes and she was still alive.
Blood Beak knelt to speak to her, teeth showing in a ferocious mad grin. ”Can hear?” he said. “Are going home! Sorcery on our side! Wardens help! Going back to taiga!”
“It’s a long way to the taiga yet.”
He leered. “Marry you tonight! Waited too long.”
She turned away. He grabbed her chin and twisted her head around, thrusting his head so close to hers that she could see every black dot in his tattoos and the wispy hairs around his mouth and even the shiny drops of sweat on his forehead. “Will have you tonight!” he said furiously. “No magic sword tonight! Will tame Krasnegar girl tonight!”
“No, you won’t.”
His glee made his lips curl back, revealing his tusks. “Good, good! Enjoy struggle!”
“You’re leaving,” Kadie said. She felt quite calm, almost sad. It was all over. “You’re leaving. You have to leave. There’s no food here. You must find a way across that river, to somewhere you can loot, right? And I can’t come. I have no horse now.”
His face darkened, confirming what she had suspected about poor Allena. The horde would start to move as soon as the king had finished his speech. She could not follow. “Run!” Blood Beak said menacingly.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Will have men carry you.”
Breaking free of his grip, she tossed her head angrily. “That’s pretty stupid, too, isn’t it? What will you offer them? Do you plan to let them join in the wedding celebration?”
He flushed olive, furious. Obviously he could see no solution, either. ”Then do it now and leave you!”
Which is what she had been expecting him to say. The goblins were saved, but Kadie was not. Fear was a sick throbbing in her stomach.
Death Bird had finished his oration. The platform rocked and bounced as the chiefs scrambled down to the ground. Blood Beak jumped up to intercept his father, doubtless planning to explain the Kadie problem.
He never even began. Something hid the sun. Men screamed. She looked up in time to see an enormous blackness in the air above her. She recoiled in amazement and lost her grip and . . .
6
“It’s the legions!” Rap sobbed. “He’s set them on the legions! Oh, Gods, Gods!”
Pain and terror flooded the ambience in lurid color, burning nerves, crushing senses. A ship full of sorcerers, Dreadnaught rang like a bell. Anthropophagi had become screaming madmen. Trolls howled like dogs.
“The legions?” Jalon grabbed the wheel Rap had released. “Why would he do that?”
But Rap could spare no thought for the mundane minstrel. He stumbled to his knees with the effort of wrestling, reasoning, shouting in the ambience, struggling to control his pitiful little army before it rushed into futile rescue. If just one sorcerer broke away and was captured in consequence, then all would be betrayed. Waves of maddening pain poured out from Bandor Field. Five legions! Five times five thousand deaths.
Why? Just to demonstrate the Covin’s power for the benefit of the sorcerers of Pandemia?
“You all right, Rap?” Jalon asked, kneeling down beside him and laying a cool hand on his sweaty brow. Rap unrolled. He was conscious of a bitten tongue, and the hard planks of the deck under his back, still cold from the night. He stared up at the concerned jotunn face above him, the blue eyes an exact match for the early-morning sky behind, so that a fanciful man might assume the minstrel had two holes through his head and the sky was smiling through . . .
“Yes,” he mumbled. “Yes, I’m all right.”
The battle was over, the suffering had ended. No one on Dreadnaught had broken ranks.
“It’s done?” the minstrel asked, helping him sit up. “It’s done. The legions are dead. The worms are heading home.” Every muscle shivered independently.
Five times five thousand men . . . for what? But at least the Covin had held the blaze together and prevented widespread disaster. The power required for that was appalling—which was why it had been done, of course.
SORCERERS, YOU HAVE SEEN! NOW WATCH AGAIN THAT HIS STRENGTH BE MADE KNOWN TO YOU!
”Rap? Rap, now what’s happening? Tell me!”
Rap had reached his knees. He sank back now on his heels. No more! Please no more!
Thrugg answered for him, in a roar that filled the ship from stern to bowsprit. “The goblins! He’s going to kill the goblins!”
Rap thought then of Death Bird, who had been Little Chicken—a very old friend and yet never quite a friend. They had adventured together, almost died together, almost killed each other . . . Long ago.
However Death Bird had led his horde to Bandor, he had made history and probably very bloody history. He was only a savage, born of savages, reared by savages, and yet he had hammered and quenched and forged until he wrought the independent savage bands of the taiga into a nation and a fighting force capable of humiliating the Impire. Had any invader ever done as much?
The Gods had thrust greatness upon him.
And Rap had helped, obedient to the Gods’ will for once. Was the destiny ended now, the adventure over? Remembering their last meeting, at the Timber Meet, he saw how like old men they had become, trading stories of their respective children. Death Bird had bragged about a son who had slain a bear. Was the boy there at Bandor dying with his father, or had he remained behind in the taiga to continue the dynasty? Rap would never know.
Good-bye, Death Bird Tell the Gods that what They find in your soul is what They decreed Themselves.
7
Kadie was lying in the grass, hurting. She vaguely remembered working out that she had fallen, but not the actual fall nor when exactly she’d worked it out, either. Why did everything have to be so fuzzy? Had she been there a long time, or only a few seconds?
There was a terrible amount of noise everywhere: crashing sounds, men screaming, and alien shrieks that certainly came from nothing human. There was something wrong with her eyes, so she didn’t have to believe that the branches overhead were really, truly rocking against the sky like that. She wanted it all to stop so she could rest.
Then someone died quite close. At least it sounded like someone dying—a terrible scream, then a gurgling screech, and a thump. More thumps. Yes, that definitely sounded like someone dying.
She lifted her head and saw two black birds as big as horses. They had their beaks in two men, and were battering them against two trees. She rubbed her eyes and looked again. Now there was only one bird and one dead man. That was better . . .
She was on her feet, reeling in a dark haze of giddiness. Another man was slashing with a sword at another bird. It stood higher than he did, and it was jabbing with its beak, snapping at him, driving him backward. She leaned against a trunk and tried to keep her legs from folding up under her like razors. She was in the middle of a battle. There were goblins everywhere and giant black birds everywhere, and half the time she was seeing two of everything.