Throne of Dragons

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Nerra did her best to settle into life in the refuge. Under Kleos’s watchful eyes, she fit in with groups of others like her, helping to prepare food in the kitchens, and chop wood, and clean the compound. She had never been afraid of work.

The others around her seemed to have come from all over the known world. Several were from spots that meant they spoke no language Nerra understood. More had come on boats from the Northern Kingdom, and when they found out who Nerra was, they looked at her strangely.

She could feel the weight of those gazes as she worked at a well, drawing water. A girl stood beside her, twining strands of wool into cord.

“They’re just wondering how a disease like this can affect a princess,” the girl said. “And how a king would send his daughter to a place like this.”

She was probably Nerra’s age, a little shorter but broader and stronger, with round, almost heart-shaped features. The scale sickness, dragon sickness, Nerra corrected herself, had been particularly cruel with her, not in what it had done, but in what it had left alone. On her left side, this girl was a vision of perfect loveliness, untouched by the marks of the illness. Dark hair fell in waves past her shoulder, while a one-sided smile quirked across her features.

On the other, the black lines of the sickness spread everywhere, leaving only scarred skin on that side of her head, while half of her face was twisted and almost inhuman.

“He didn’t send me,” Nerra said, thinking of all the things that her father had done to try to save her. He hadn’t even been able to bring himself to order her death, the way the law, and his nobles, demanded. “I left myself, and then… a dragon brought me here.”

“A dragon?”

Nerra would have expected most people to scoff at that, or to call her a liar, but most people didn’t have the circling forms in the far distance, over the continent.

“I’m Lina,” the girl said.

“Nerra,” Nerra replied, even though it was clear that the girl knew who she was. “How long have you been here?”

“Since I was little,” Lina said. “My parents saw that I had the sickness, and they couldn’t bring themselves to… to kill me, so they brought me here.”

“They brought you here and just left you?” Nerra asked. “They haven’t come back?”

Lina shook her head. “They send money sometimes, to help Kleos maintain this place. They haven’t returned.”

Nerra couldn’t understand how a parent could do that. Her own parents had done everything they could to help her, to protect her. How could someone just send a child… here?

“You’ve been here all your life?” Nerra said. “And you’ll stay here until… until you die?”

It was the kindest way to put it, because what else could Nerra do? Remind Lina that she might transform into a monster, or that Kleos might eventually thrust a knife into her heart?

“Well,” Lina said, with a surprising smile. “Unless I go up to the temple fountain to drink the waters, of course.”

She laughed as if it were a joke.

Nerra stared at her. “I don’t understand.”

“No one has told you about the temple waters?” Lina said. “It’s an old story here. There’s a temple up on the far side of the volcano.” She nodded to the peaks that dominated the island. “There’s a fountain there whose waters are supposed to be able to cure the sickness.”

She said it casually, as if it were nothing, but the words struck inside Nerra like a hammer.

“There’s a cure?” she asked, her eyes going wide.

“Oh.” Lina’s expression instantly became one of concern, her hands going to Nerra’s shoulders. “Nerra, it’s a story, a rumor. People go and try, but when I asked Kleos, he told me that it wasn’t real.”

Nerra felt her hopes deflate a little. Even so, she knew that she couldn’t let this go. She had to know the truth about the waters. She had to ask Kleos.

***

Nerra found Kleos in a simple wooden hut that seemed to be his own. There was no ostentation here, no display, barely anything at all beyond a bed, a table, and a mat on which Kleos knelt, apparently deep in prayer or thought.

Nerra waited for him to finish, standing in the doorway, trying to remain patient in spite of what she’d heard. Her hands clenched and unclenched, working with the urge to rush forward and grab him by the shoulder. She forced herself to stay still and wait with an effort.

“Yes, Nerra?” Kleos said, without turning round.

“Tell me about the temple fountain,” Nerra said.

She heard the older man sigh. “You’ve heard that story, then.”

“Lina mentioned it,” Nerra said.

Kleos turned to her, looking at her with pity, but also with a kind of determination. “And now you’re wondering why I am not sending everyone here to drink those waters?”

“I… yes,” Nerra admitted. If something like that existed, why wouldn’t everyone know? Why weren’t all those like her being sent to be cured?

“Because the story is not true,” Kleos said. “There is a temple, and there are waters, but those waters are not a cure.”

“But why?” Nerra said. “Why is there even a story?”

Kleos moved back to sit at the table there. “It is hard to be sure,” he said. “It is said that the temple was once intended to be an attempt to cure the sickness, back in the days when dragons were more common outside of Sarrass. It is even said that it worked, although I am not sure if I believe that. I do know that the waters were cursed.”

“Cursed?” Nerra said. “You don’t believe in healing waters, but you believe in curses?”

“I’ve seen enough evidence of this one,” Kleos said. “The waters are death, Nerra. I have seen dozens, hundreds, try them. All have died.”

“So they’re poisoned?” Nerra asked. Instantly, she found herself thinking of the herbs she knew so much about, and the ways the world held to counter poisons.

“Not poisoned, cursed,” Kleos said. He sighed again. “These are stories out of the oldest days, half-remembered things. Some say that dragons ruled in those days, or those who sided with them, it is not clear. Some say that the Slate River only exists because of dragon fire in the wars to be rid of that rule. Those were days of things that could not happen now.”

“Like a fountain to cure the sickness, and a curse to stop it working?” Nerra said.

Kleos nodded. “The stories say that a sorcerer worked magic on it. That he proclaimed that those who drank would die mad, twisted, torn apart.”

Nerra paused, considering those words.

“And now you’re wondering if the cure might be worth the risk,” Kleos said. He shook his head. “Believe me, girl, there’s no cure.”

“How can you be so sure?” Nerra asked.

“Because I’ve seen all the others who were certain that they would survive,” Kleos snapped back. “Do you think that everyone else doesn’t think they might be special, that they might be the one to break the chain of endless death? They go, one after another. Many of them die on the way, because that way is hard.”

“And the ones who don’t?” Nerra asked. She had to hear it.

“They drink, and they die,” Kleos said. “Their bodies twist into horrific things, and their minds are worse by the end. They die screaming and raging, their own bodies turned into weapons against them. The same way you will die if you try this.”

He made it sound as certain as the sun rising.

“So what am I supposed to do?” Nerra asked. “Just sit here and wait to change so much that you kill me?”

“You’re meant to live out your life,” Kleos said. “To make the most of the limited time that you still have. To prepare yourself for what will, inevitably, come.” He paused for a few seconds. “Do you want to know what I believe about the temple? I believe that the stories of a cure were created for those who could not do that, for the ones who couldn’t find peace. I think the fountain was put there as a way out for them, as a way to think they were helping themselves even while they died. Do not be so foolish. You still have time; live in it.”

Live in it. That was easy to say when Kleos didn’t have the sickness that the rest of them had. When he was the one who killed them when they changed too far. Did he enjoy that part? Would he enjoy cutting Nerra’s throat when the time came?

“Promise me,” Kleos said. “Promise me that you won’t seek out the temple.”

“I promise,” Nerra said, but even as she did so, she knew she was lying.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

As she and Odd came into sight of the largest bridge to the south, Erin barely slowed. She raced toward it, Odd’s mule struggling to keep up in the wake of her horse. She charged down toward the bridge, and it was only as she reached it that she slowed, stopped, dismounted.

Dead men lay around the start of the bridge’s span, wearing the uniforms of her family’s men, clearly cut down before they could react. Erin stared down at them, wondering what it must have been like for them to be cut down so suddenly.

“They came this way then,” Odd said, dropping down from his mule. “There are more tracks, too. A second force went this way afterwards.”

He pointed, and Erin could see what he meant. Although with one of the great bridges, it was hard to truly tell when people had gone across. Erin was more interested in the fact that Odd could pick apart the tracks so easily. He’d mentioned being a former knight, but Erin still didn’t have the first clue who he was. He was just… Odd.

“We need to cross,” Erin said.

Odd nodded. “If that’s where your sister is, that’s where we have to go.”

Erin frowned at that. “No speech about how this is too dangerous, or about how angry the king will be if his knights start raiding across the bridges and start a war?”

“War is coming anyway,” Odd said. “And I… I have a poor record of listening to those I should.”

He set out over the bridge on foot, leading his by now exhausted mule. He paused by one of the slain guards, closing his staring eyes, but also lifting the man’s short bow and a quiver of arrows. Taking her cue from him, Erin did the same with a crossbow.

“A real bow is better,” Odd said. “Crossbows hit harder, but an archer with the skill to do it can send six arrows flying for every bolt they fire.”

“A crossbow is what’s here,” Erin pointed out. Did this strange man think he was her teacher now?

“True,” Odd said, and kept going across the bridge’s broad span.

Erin had never been across the Slate before. The bridge between its shores was wide enough that it seemed to take an age to walk it, its wooden slats creaking beneath her feet. She supposed that she should have felt some security in that instability, in the power of the Slate to keep the two kingdoms apart. Yet, from what Odd had said, even that wasn’t enough anymore.

Who was this man who was not a knight, or a monk, but both and less all at once?

There was no answer to that, so Erin kept leading her horse. She was most of the way across when she saw figures emerge from the trees on the far shore. There was a chasing cluster of horsemen, dressed in the colors of King Ravin, but Erin was more interested in the figure riding out in front of them, racing ahead of the chasing pack for her life.

“Lenore!” Erin called out. It was too far for her sister to hear her, but Erin shouted it anyway. She started forward toward her sister, horse moving at a flat run now, Odd following in her wake.

The distance between them closed quickly. Erin could see every detail of her sister’s face, see the fear there, but also the determination. She saw one of the chasing pack of riders getting closer, breaking from the pack. She raised her crossbow and fired it, saw the bolt arc out and slam into the man’s chest. He toppled, and Erin kept riding.

She reached Lenore and wheeled her horse, all three stopping for a second. Lenore was staring at her, in obvious shock that her sister was there, but where else in the world would Erin be when Lenore was in danger?

“Erin? How… how are you here?” Lenore asked.

“I’m here to help you,” Erin said.

Beside her, Odd raised his bow. He fired once, nocked another arrow, then fired again. Horses toppled among the chasing pack.

“We need to go,” he said. “Reunions later.”

“We could hold here,” Erin said. “Give Lenore time to—”

“No,” Lenore said. “That’s what Rodry did!”

“Rodry?” Erin said.

“Rodry…” Lenore looked pale, shaking her head in grief. “He came to save me. He fought to get me out, and… he’s dead, Erin. He’s dead.”

Grief hit Erin like a punch to the stomach. She felt as though she might fall from the saddle, the whole world starting to curl inward around her. She sat there blankly, not comprehending…

Then Odd slapped the side of her helmet, hard enough to make it ring. “There is no time for this,” he yelled at her. “No time for grief, no time for hesitation. No time even for me to ask why your entire family seems to have the names of King Godwin’s children! We need to go.”

Erin nodded, and wheeled her horse back toward the bridge, alongside Lenore and Odd. They galloped at full pelt, but a single glance back over her shoulder told her that the men there were closing, even though they were almost at the bridge. Erin could feel the slats of the bridge under her horse’s hooves now, but the men didn’t stop. One was ahead of the others, an axe raised…

Odd was there, sword in hand, intercepting it and knocking the man from his saddle, off into the waters below. Erin saw Odd leap down, letting his mule keep running.

“We need to face them,” he called. “We can’t run fast enough over the bridge. They’ll just cut us down.”

Erin dropped down beside him, onto the slats of the bridge, turning to face the onrush of enemies.

“At least you didn’t tell me to keep running,” Erin said, as she readied her spear.

“And face all those alone?” Odd countered, nodding to the horsemen approaching, slowing as they came to the bridge. “I might be called mad, but I’m not stupid.”

Erin looked at the group there. There had to be twenty of them, but the bridge was narrow enough that only a few of them would be able to fit onto the bridge side by side to fight.

“How do we do this?” Erin asked.

Odd frowned at her. “What’s to understand? We fight them, we kill them, we back away step by step until we cross this thrice damned bridge.”

Erin looked at the slow advance of the men there. “Why aren’t they coming faster?”

Odd shrugged. “No one wants to die first.”

That didn’t last long though. The riders came forward, the first of them obviously confident that they could ride down a girl and a monk with ease. He swung at Erin and she turned the blow away, thrusting up with her spear into his ribs and toppling him into the waters beyond the bridge.

Another was already striking at Odd. He swayed back from the cut, dragged the man from his saddle, and killed him with a downward thrust of his sword before backing away a few more paces.

They came on foot then, obviously realizing that without the advantage of space, horses wouldn’t work. They came in tight formation, three wide, thrusting and cutting with swords and spears while Erin and Odd gave ground.

Erin blocked one blow, kicked at a man’s knee and stepped back. Odd hacked a man’s head from his shoulders, pushed another by his shield into the water. Erin caught another blow that was aimed at his heart as he did it, and he grinned at her before cutting open a soldier’s throat.

Erin glanced back to see how Lenore was escaping. She saw her sister waiting at the far shore now, clear of the fight but making no move to keep moving further back. She clearly wasn’t going to just run and leave them—

Odd caught a sword blow just in front of her face. “Focus! Unless you want to lose your head?”

Erin stabbed another of the attacking troops in answer. It was getting worse now, because she could see a whole cluster of infantry coming in from the trees now, too many to ever fight. All she and Odd could do was keep killing, and keep giving ground.

Odd fought with speed and power, but also a seeming lack of care. He didn’t hide behind his defenses like many warriors, but threw himself into cuts like a whirlwind. Erin found herself fitting into the rhythm of his attacks, striking in the spaces that he left, trying to cover any openings. Her armor protected her as a sword glanced from it, her buckler took a blow from an axe. Both of them took wounds though. Erin felt the impact of every blow that landed, even if her armor stopped her from being cut in half. Odd seemed to be bleeding from a dozen places, even though at least that many men lay dead in his wake.

They both gave ground, step by step. They were running out of ground to give, though. It should have been a good thing that they were getting closer and closer to the Northern Kingdom’s shore, closer to home, and to safety. The problem was that, for now, the bridge was safety. The bridge was the thing that meant that the soldiers before Erin and Odd couldn’t surround them, couldn’t spread out and overwhelm them with their numbers.

“We’re running out of room,” Erin said, with a nervous glance back at the end of the bridge.

“So we hold them back at the edge of the bridge and kill all of them,” Odd said, as if it were the easiest thing in the world. Did he actually believe that? Did he actually think that they could stand there and kill King Ravin’s armies one by one?

Erin didn’t. She knew that when they reached the end of the bridge, it would be done. She still fought, still killed. She slashed the head of her spear across a man’s leg, thrust the point up into another’s skull. The stroke of an axe jarred her as she blocked it, but she kept going.

They couldn’t hold, though. They would reach the end of the bridge, and then… then, no matter how hard they fought, the sheer weight of men would push them back another few steps. It would mean being surrounded, blades coming from every side…

That was when Erin heard the horns behind her. She thrust her spear into a man’s gut, swept it round to clear a space for her to glance round, and she dared to look…

Her father’s army stood there. There were knights there, and guardsmen, and more. There were archers, who even now were readying arrows to fire down into the ranks of the men on the bridge. There were horsemen standing by, ready to charge. Her father sat at the heart of it all, looking mighty in his armor, unconquerable. Erin couldn’t count the numbers compared to the force that had followed Lenore, and was now struggling to cross the bridge, but it was close, so close…

Horns sounded again, and her father’s army charged.

CHAPTER TWENTY

King Godwin advanced with the bulk of his army, men drawn from around the kingdom descending on the bridge below. The other bridges would be fallen now, torn down in accordance with his commands.

The one below… he would command that destroyed too, if he could. The mechanism to do it was there: the pegs in place that could be hammered out, letting crucial poles slide out of place, with the weight of the bridge doing the rest. The whole point of the bridges was that they could be torn away to protect the kingdom.

Yet now, there was no way to do that; not with one of his daughters standing by the bridge, another on it, and his son Rodry somewhere across it. In circumstances like those, even with King Ravin’s armies there upon the span, even with more and still more pouring in on the far bank, until it seemed that it was flooded with hundreds of men, there was only one thing to do.

“Charge!” he commanded. “Hold the bank!”

His knights leapt to obey his commands, Twell and Ursus, Halfin and Lors moving down at the head of a wave of his troops. Godwin charged with them, praying that he would be in time.

Already, he could see the bank being breached, Erin and the strange man in the monk’s robes pushed back that one crucial step to let men through. The soldiers spread out around them, and for a moment, Godwin’s heart clamped tight in his chest at the thought that he might lose both Erin and Lenore in one moment. If the soldiers formed a true beachhead, then there might be no stopping them.

Godwin saw his men slam into the enemy, though, the weight of their numbers pressing in, smashing that beachhead back, cutting off those who had made it to the far side, a wave of armored bodies slamming into their line. Godwin saw Ursus pick up a man and throw him into the Slate, saw Halfin dodge past a spear and slice through a man’s shoulder.

In that moment, his knights were everything that they had ever been. Godwin saw Commander Harr and his men join the fray, pressing King Ravin’s soldiers back, forcing them almost halfway over the bridge. The bridge creaked with the weight of so many men on it, its narrowness crushing them together, leaving only a little room to swing a weapon. On the bank, there was more space, but even that was quickly filled up with men fighting and dying.

Then Godwin was in the battle himself, charging into those of King Ravin’s soldiers who were still on the bank, determined to fight his way to the spot where Lenore still sat atop her horse. He took the blow of an axe on his shield, sliced through a man’s leg, used his elbow to barge another man aside. He took a blow to his armor, but it made no difference, didn’t even slow him.

Not by the hand you think. Grey’s words ran through his mind and Godwin looked around, seeing a spearman charging at him from the side. He struck the spear aside, and then Sir Lors was there, his two swords swinging to bring the spearman down.

“So much for your prophecy, wizard!” Godwin shouted out above the roar of the battle.

No one was listening. Around him, men were pushing and shoving, cutting and killing, the confines of the bridge taking away all room for tactics, all the space that might have provided the chance for some clever ruse or careful plan. There was only the press of the melee, the small fights against those who broke through onto the near bank, and the endless violence of it all.

Even as he thought it, Godwin fought his way forward. He lanced his sword through another soldier’s chest, kicked a second man out of the way. A sword caught him across the side, but the wound was not a deep one, and beside him, Sir Lors was already moving to kill the man. Both swords plunged into him, meeting somewhere in the middle.

Then the soldier grabbed for him as he died.

“Back!” Godwin yelled at the knight, and ten years ago, the man might have been fast enough to do it.

Now though, the soldier got a hold on him, clinging to him as he died, and that slowed the knight enough that another man could step in, a sword slamming into his neck. Godwin stepped close with a cry of anger, cutting that soldier down, but there was nothing he could do to help Sir Lors, and no time in which to do it. He had to keep fighting his way toward his daughters.

He saw Erin in the press of the fight, the strange monk still beside her, the two fighting like two parts of a whole, killing King Ravin’s troops as they came. Godwin was proud of his daughter in that moment, but also scared for her, caught in the middle of the battle like that. Even as he watched, a spearman came at her, but Commander Harr was there, cutting down the man and holding back the enemy for a moment while Erin slipped by, striking out with her own short weapon.

He was just as frightened for Lenore, whose horse was whirling back and forth in the middle of the press of men there. Why hadn’t she run from the bridge to safety? Godwin didn’t know, but he was going to get to her. He forced his way forward, cutting down men to either side, trying to force a gap to open. Sir Twell was there then, holding the line beside him, seeming to see what was needed. His shoulder was bleeding from a sword wound, but he held his place, while Godwin fought his way forward, cutting down a man who was too close to his daughter’s horse, reaching up to clasp her hand in his.

They’d done it. They’d gotten to her. Now, they just had to get her home safely, and that was still going to be far from easy, when the battle was still raging on every side.

***

From his vantage point away from the bridge, hiding behind a low tree stump, Vars watched the battle starting to unfold. He crouched there and he stared, taking in the violence of the battle, the men fighting and dying on the span of the bridge stretching into the distance, over to the south. He saw Erin killing men with that twig-like spear of hers, saw Lenore there on her horse, saw his father fighting his way to her.

He saw men falling, on both sides. A knight went down with a halberd embedded deep in him. King Ravin’s soldiers fell from the bridge like scarlet-coated rain, dropping to sword blows or simply being thrown from it.

He wanted to go down to help, even though Vars couldn’t understand why men would risk themselves like that, why they would throw themselves into a battle where there was no way to avoid the foe, no way to keep back from the blows that fell in a cascade. His father stood at the heart of the fighting, directing it even as he fought, in a way that simply made no sense to Vars.

He wanted to throw himself into the thick of it, even ordered his legs to carry him forward, but they wouldn’t move. They refused, the way a horse might refuse to jump a wall. He… he simply couldn’t do it.

Which just left the question of what he was going to do. Did he stand there, and risk someone seeing him there, hanging back from the battle? Clearly he couldn’t do that. If his father knew that he was there and not lending the strength of his arm, he would be treated as a coward, or worse, a traitor.

Did he throw himself into the battle then, to let people see him in the thick of the fight? That seemed almost as stupid. Even if Vars stuck to the edges of the fighting, there was too much of a risk of a stray sword blow catching him, a thrown spear or a sudden arrow bringing him down. Worse, it would raise far too many questions about why Vars hadn’t been there before.

He tried to work out what he was going to do about that. If Lenore had been lost completely, he could have made up any story he pleased, claimed that he had fought hard to save her. Now, he would need to think of another way to do things.

About the only positive note was that there was no sign of Rodry, or of the men who had ridden off with him, betraying Vars to hurry blindly into the enemy’s lands. Vars felt a small pang of regret at that, at the thought that his brother might be lost completely, but that pang was short lived, and not just because Vars could still feel the bruise from where his brother had struck him.

If Rodry was gone, it was down to his own stupidity. It was because he hadn’t listened to Vars, hadn’t listened to sense. Vars had told him that no good could come of charging across the river. Now, for all those who had gone, only Lenore, Erin, and the strange monk had returned. None of them could say what Vars had and hadn’t done.

As far as they were concerned, he had never been here. If he left now, no one could say that he hadn’t been attacked on the road, ambushed before he reached Lenore. If she disagreed, well… Vars would deal with that when it came.

For now, he was safest well clear of this fight. That much was obvious. So, while the battle raged behind him, Vars very quickly, very quietly, slipped away and started back toward Royalsport.