King's Dragon (Crown of Stars 1)

“Lavastine’s riders are coming! Turn round! Turn round and face them!”

Ai, Lady! What had Hathui said? An unhorsed Eagle is a dead Eagle. The frater, and her horse, were long gone. Still clutching her spear, Hanna ran for the shelter of the wagons.

4

THIS is what it had all meant, of course. Alain saw that now with a clarity obscured only by the screaming of men and the milling of soldiers lost, frightened, and running, or caught up in the brutal and numbing work of slaughter.

Henry’s soldiers—those caught by the guivre’s glare— were like so many trussed pigs, throats slashed while they squealed. This was not battle of the kind sanctified by the Lord of Hosts, who did not falter when He was called upon to wield the Sword of Judgment. This was a massacre.

Alain knew it was wrong, knew it in his heart. The guivre screamed in rage, trying to break free, beating its wings frantically. Sabella’s first rank of horsemen moved steadily up the hill, their progress slowed because it was so easy to kill Henry’s soldiers, because they had to scramble over the dead and dying and over horses collapsed onto the grass. On the far right flank, a melee swirled, back and forth, but the standard of Fesse wavered and began to move backward.

Above, about half of the century of Lions had begun to march forward to meet Sabella’s army. The rest either could not or would not march. And behind them Henry sat on his horse, unmoving. Was he waiting and watching? Or was he already caught in the guivre’s eye?

The mounted soldiers opposite Lavastine’s forces were trying to turn Lavastine’s soldiers back so they could punch in to aid Henry’s center. Alain ran, fought his way through the back ranks of archers and spearmen who had fallen back after the first skirmishing. He shoved, and Rage and Sorrow nipped and bit to make a passage for him, toward their sisters and brothers, the black hounds who attended Count Lavastine.

Alain reached the count, who was sitting back from the front lines, waiting and watching the progress of the battle. Alain grabbed his stirrup and pulled hard. Lavastine stared down at him. There was no sign in his eyes that he recognized Alain.

Desperate measures for desperate times. He prayed for strength to the Blessed Lady. Then he grabbed Lavastine’s mail coat and tugged as hard as he could.

Because the count was not expecting it, he lost his seat. Alain shifted his grip to the count’s arm and pulled him right out of the saddle. Lavastine fell hard and lay still.

And a spear pinched Alain between the shoulder blades. He dropped to his knees and fumbled at his neck as he turned his head to look up and behind.

It was Sergeant Fell. “You know me, Sergeant!” Alain cried. “You know the count is acting strangely. This is wrong! We shouldn’t be here!”

Fell hesitated. Lavastine’s captain fell back from the front lines, seeing the count unhorsed. All at once the hounds surrounded Alain, growling and driving everyone back. No one dared strike them. Alain found the rose and drew it out.

“I pray you, Lady of Battles, come to my aid,” he breathed. And he brushed the petals of the rose over Lavastine’s pale lips, just below the nasal of his helmet.

Beyond, he heard the clash of battle. Here he was protected, caught in an eddy, surrounded by a black wall of hounds. Sorrow licked Lavastine’s face, and the count opened his eyes. He blinked and passed a hand over his helmet as if feeling it there for the first time. Then he sat up. Alain grabbed him under the arms and the hounds parted to let Sergeant Fell through. Together, Alain and the sergeant pulled Lavastine to his feet.

“What is this?” demanded Lavastine, staring at the chaos around them, his front rank of fighters pressing against the fighters from Saony. Fesse’s banner was retreating. In the center, Sabella’s banner moved up and farther up and came against the banner of the Lions. The guivre shrieked. The Lion banner toppled and disappeared from view. Henry, surrounded now only by his personal guard, did not move.

The captain pressed his horse through the knot of hounds and men, who parted to let him through. Sergeant Fell let go of the count and grabbed his horse’s reins before it could bolt. The guivre made all the horses nervous, and they shied at every harsh call and scream.

“We are marching with Sabella, against Henry,” said the captain.

“We are not!” cried Lavastine. “All of my men, withdraw from the battle.”

This command raced through the ranks like wildfire. Lavastine mounted his horse and pulled back, and step by embattled step his soldiers withdrew from the battle until the captains of Saony’s line realized what was occurring and, at last, let them go.

But Henry’s center was broken. Sabella was halfway through the Lions and still Henry had not moved. As Lavastine’s soldiers cleared the field, Alain stood his ground and their retreat eddied around him and ebbed until he stood among the dead and watched Saony’s cavalry wheel and turn to aid their king. He watched the guivre twist and turn, still battering against the wind and against its shackles, watched its baleful glare sweep across the ranks of Saony’s soldiers. Watched as half of Sabella’s company split off to strike at this new threat.

A few arrows and spears cut through the air from the ranks of Fesse’s troops to slide harmlessly off the guivre’s scaly hide and fall to the ground. The grass was empty around the guivre; Sabella’s soldiers, though protected against its gaze, gave it a wide berth. Not one soul had come within reach of its claws, circumscribed by the length of the chain that fettered it to the iron cage.

Slowly, Henry’s soldiers were cut down or retreated up the hill toward the king—for their final stand.

The rose fell from Alain’s suddenly nerveless fingers. He could not stand by and watch anymore. He could not judge the rightness of Sabella’s grievance against Henry. But he knew it was not right that she win by these means, as horrible as they were. Lackling had been murdered to gain Lavastine’s support. Henry’s soldiers could not fight, so as to pit honest strength against honest strength, but were scythed down like wheat.

He ran across the field, stumbling on corpses, jumping over men who writhed or struggled to drag themselves to safety. He ran toward the guivre, and paused only once, long enough to take a sword from a noble lord’s slack and bloody body. He did not even register the man’s face.

But another figure reached the guivre before he could. Someone else, riding a dun-colored horse. The man flung himself off the horse and slapped it on the flank. The horse bolted away.

And the frater—for it was Frater Agius, Alain saw that now as he ran, knowing suddenly that he would come too late—walked without fear into the circle of the guivre’s talons.

Its cry was as much delirium as fury, but it stooped and plunged. Half-starved and long since driven wild by captivity and the torment of its wasted and suffering body, it took the food offered it.

Agius vanished under a flurry of metal-hard wings and sharp talons. The guivre lowered its head to feed.