King's Dragon (Crown of Stars 1)

The saint had vanished down the stair into the black mystery beyond. Liath dared not follow her, however desperately she wished to. Perhaps, for a moment, she understood Sanglant. Down that road I dare not walk. But that did not lessen the ache.

She shook herself and stepped out of the sinkhole. Groping, she made her way back to the large vault, found the obsidian slab and the little flask tucked forlorn and forgotten up against Biscop Caesaria’s tombstone. Liath unstoppered the flask and took a draught. It was bitter enough to make her eyes sting, but bracing. Thus fortified, she climbed back to the living world above.

Like Sanglant, she did not doubt that St. Kristine of the Knives had appeared to them. But she could not answer the most pressing question: Why to them? And why now?

She reached the steps of the cathedral in time to see Sanglant mount his horse. He received his helmet from the woman, but before he settled it over his head, he glanced up toward the open doors. Their gazes met across the mob that had gathered. The noise in the streets was that of people hysterical with fear and hope.

He did not smile at her, only looked. Then someone spoke, and his attention was pulled away. He settled his helmet on his head and by that means was transformed; he was Prince Sanglant no longer, but captain of the King’s Dragons.

Their gold tabards were as bright as sunlight and his most of all, the black dragon sigil stitched onto gold cloth with veins of silver thread. They looked, indeed, as terrible as their reputation, fierce and unforgiving in iron helms faced with brass; that his helm with its delicate gold dragon was also beautiful only made the contrast between the fine ornamentation and the grandeur of their stark and forbidding strength the more striking.

The prince hefted his teardrop shield on an arm, touched his sword’s hilt, and led the way. The rest clattered behind him, over one hundred, headed down the main avenue to the eastern gate where they would meet the rest of their fellows, those who were already on duty and those still arming.

She ran back to the mayor’s palace. The people on the streets, seeing her scarlet-trimmed cloak and her Eagle’s badge parted to let her through.

Wolfhere waited, pacing impatiently back and forth in the Lady Chapel where the dead Eagle had been laid out. The corpse was now clad in a white linen shift, face decently covered by a square of white cloth; it lay, as was appropriate, at the foot of the Hearth.

“Liath!”

She handed Wolfhere the flask. He took it reflexively, without really noting it, and thrust it between belt and tunic. “I sent Manfred ahead to the eastern gate, to be our eyes with the Dragons. Go there now. If they must ride out, you will watch and report back to me. A horse has been saddled.”

Everything was happening so fast. She checked herself for bow, quiver, and sword; all were there. Then she hurried outside to the courtyard where a horse was indeed waiting, one of Mayor Werner’s geldings, a big handsome bay. His size helped her more than her Eagle’s badge now. The streets were thronged and more and more people spilled out of their crowded homes as word spread through the city of Count Hildegard’s approach.

But the closer she came to the eastern gate the more the crowd thinned; in a besieged town, even with as daunting a force as the Dragons within their walls, the townsfolk chose the path of prudence. A street ran parallel to the river wall. Here she found a group of boys, old enough to be useful and young enough to be fearless and, thus, enamored of the Dragons. She handed her reins over to one, a gangling weed of a boy with a thin face and quick eyes. From this vantage point she could see the ranks of the Dragons, ten abreast, about two hundred of them, lined up in the open space that fronted the gate.

The boys, city-bred and city-wise, showed her a ladder that led up the wall and to the wall-walk. She clambered up, surprising the men of the city’s militia who stood watch there, looking out anxiously to the eastern shore.

The fog had lifted, or most of it, in any case. Out on what had once been rich cropland the land boiled with movement like flies swarming over a carcass. The Eika were out in force. The level ground gave a clear view. After a few minutes of confusion, she began to sort out the picture displayed there like a shifting mosaic.

The Eika were out in force, truly; they infested the ground. She had never seen so many bodies in one place, and all of them mobile. The green and white banner that marked the remains of Count Hildegard and her retainers bobbed unsteadily in a tight mass of horsemen supported by a straggling line of running infantry. Those who could not keep up were enveloped in the mass of Eika that came close behind, swallowed and consumed. The Eika closed in around the count’s force, slowly cutting them off, encircling them. Only one narrow strip of unclaimed ground remained: the road to the river and the eastern bridge to Gent.

It was a race. Liath could not imagine how the count and her remaining soldiers could reach the bridge in time—unless the Dragons sallied out into the very jaws of the Eika army.

This thought hit her with the force of a bracing flood of cold water on a hot day. It cleared her mind. Clearing, her vision clouded, and she closed her eyes and rubbed them with her knuckles. Opened them.

Now, as she stared with horror, the view of the fields beyond the river looked utterly different.

There was a banner, green and white, bearing the blazon that was, probably, the badge of Count Hildegard’s lands and kin. But no human retainers surrounded it. No horsemen rallied to it, no infantry fought desperately at the rear. It was surrounded instead by the ice-white glare of a thousand Eika warriors jogging at a brisk pace along the thin strip of road that led to the stone and timber bridge. That led into Gent.

What she had seen before was illusion.

What she had seen before was what everyone else saw, all the watchers along the wall, the Dragons who had left their horses and gone to the posts above the gate to call down their report to the prince, to judge to the instant the best moment to sally out. What they saw was a vision brought by a terrible and powerful enchantment, brought into being by what skills she could not imagine, only that she was the only one who saw past the enchantment to the truth.

“You are deaf to magic,” Da always said.

Or else guarded against it.

The thought hit her with such force that for one awful moment she simply could not move or think.

But she had to think. What had happened to Count Hildegard and her soldiers she did not know, but she could guess. The count’s army had been utterly destroyed, and the banner wrested from the dying hands of her last loyal retainer to be used now as the lure to draw the Dragons to their death.

And she was the only one who could stop them.

an back to the mayor’s palace. The people on the streets, seeing her scarlet-trimmed cloak and her Eagle’s badge parted to let her through.

Wolfhere waited, pacing impatiently back and forth in the Lady Chapel where the dead Eagle had been laid out. The corpse was now clad in a white linen shift, face decently covered by a square of white cloth; it lay, as was appropriate, at the foot of the Hearth.

“Liath!”