King's Dragon (Crown of Stars 1)

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.

4

LIATH practically slid down the ladder, she moved so fast. Splinters sliced into her left hand, but the pain was only another goad. The boys who held her horse stared after her as she sprinted toward the Dragons, whose attention was entirely on the men who stood watch above the gate.

“Let me through!” she cried. “I must speak with the prince.”

They let her by without demur. Sanglant sat his horse at the front of the line, in conference with others: an elderly militia man, a dismounted Dragon, and his chief attendant, the scarred woman.

Sanglant caught sight of Liath; perhaps he had heard her voice. He lifted a hand to silence the militia man, who was speaking.

“But my lord Sanglant!” the man protested, misunderstanding the prince’s intent. “There are too many of them! It would be foolish to sally out into such numbers. If Count Hildegard can win through, we will open the gates to receive her.” Then he saw Liath and stuttered to a halt.

“You can’t!” Liath cried. She took the reins of Sanglant’s horse out of the hands of a Dragon, as if by holding his mount’s harness she could control the prince’s decision. “Count Hildegard isn’t out there at all. It’s an illusion. There’s magic—”

Sanglant was off his horse at once. Without waiting for her or anyone, he ran to the wall and took the steep steps three at a time to the lookout over the gate. She scrambled after him. Manfred stood here with two Dragons and a cluster of city militiamen. He motioned the others aside so the prince could come forward. Liath pressed up beside Manfred; surely he would believe her, if the others could not see. There, on the parapet, protected by a timber wall covered by animal skins soaked in water, they stared out at the far shore.

She saw so clearly now. There must be more than a thousand Eika, two thousand perhaps, a vastly greater number than those who defended Gent. The barbarians jogged forward at a steady trot, the banner swaying in their midst, a prize of war. Their enormous dogs loped beside them, muzzles lifted to the wind. There was rank after rank of blue and yellow shields with their menacing red serpent blazon, the dark line of their weapons, held at the ready; their bone-white hair gleamed in the new sunlight as the fog dissipated along the shore of the river. How could anyone see this as the remnants of Count Hildegard’s army? The Eika called out, too, in words she could not understand, only that they sounded like taunts in her ears. The dogs ran silently which was, perhaps, worse. The river streamed on, oblivious. Drums beat to the time of running feet.

They came closer, and closer. Liath could make out the details in the green and white banner: a boar on a white field. She could see the long flanks of the dogs, saw their tongues lolling out. The Eika had come so close, first rank almost on the bridge itself, that the prince had possibly twenty breaths to make a choice.

“Don’t you see?” she cried.

Sanglant narrowed his eyes.

“Manfred!” She grabbed Manfred’s arm and shook him, hard. “It isn’t Count Hildegard at all! It’s only Eika! Look harder. You’re an Eagle. You must be able to see with true sight.”