Soldier Undaunted -- Chapter 8.1

Eight

Arden stood on a low cliff looking out to sea as the sun set behind him. The breeze had freshened and backed into the east some hours earlier, raising the surf. Now green waves towered up, curled and crashed in white foam. Their spray at times even reached him where he stood some thirty feet above the narrow strand. All along the shore the air was full of the hollow rumble of broken waves rushing in, and the hiss as they slid up the sand and back again.

For hours now he had stood there alone staring out to sea, basking in the brightness and warmth of this late autumn day. Nothing soothed or calmed him like the sea. Though the sea itself constantly changed – shimmering, shining, rising, falling, calm or storming – its beauty was itself unchanging. His heart yearned for it when he was absent for even a short space of days or weeks. He breathed in its beauty as he breathed in the salt air. It brought him a joy that always surprised him.

As he stood there looking seaward, it struck him all at once that he was here for a reason. He was seeking something, but when he asked himself what it was, he realized that he did not remember. This puzzled him, stirring an inkling of trouble in his otherwise tranquil heart. He wondered what he was looking for. Glancing northward along the shore he saw that he was not alone. A young woman stood by the edge of the sea, the foam of the broken waves racing around her feet and legs. Facing into the wind for so long had made his eyes water, and at first he could not see her very clearly. Then she turned and looked at him, as if she had known all along that he was there. It was Sorrow.

Joy burst within him at his first sight of her. He caught his breath and stared at her open mouthed. Then, like a cloud passing between him and the sun, the thought crossed his mind that she should not be there. Why, he could not remember. He began to move, to seek a way down the rocks to the shore. He was anxious to speak to her. Finally he found a narrow, steep path between the rocks and made his way downward.

He hurried across the sand towards her, but it was deep and soft, and his progress slow. She watched him the entire time, and as he drew near she smiled her broad, open, charming smile of delight; her green eyes shone with pleasure. But when he had almost reached her, her gaze shifted. She was looking past him. Her smile was now gone; the light faded from her eyes. He stopped and turned. There, close behind him, but out of his reach, stood his father, who was looking straight at him.

But it was not his father as he had known him. His skin was ashen, the look in his eyes far away. He was covered in blood from large gashes across his chest, like the raking marks of huge and merciless claws. One of his hands was missing, and blood dripped rapidly from the stump. He was dead. Arden remembered the night of horror. Narinen had fallen. His father was dead. And so was she. He gasped as the memory rushed over him.

“You’re dead,” Arden said to his father under his breath. A look was his only reply. A hand touched Arden’s shoulder from behind. It was the hand of Sorrow. He spun around to face her again. But no one was there.

“I’m sorry. I came too late. I’m sorry,” he cried out to the empty beach. He turned back to his father, but he, too, was gone. And Arden was alone once more with the sea that rolled and crashed as it had done before.

Arden woke up. As always, the shadow of the dream left him slowly. Strong at first, it obscured the border between this world and that. But it diminished steadily until before long nothing remained but a scant trace, like a distant echo in his mind that he never stopped straining to hear. All his dreams were like that, and all the dreamlike memories of the better days that he cherished in his heart. At times, upon awakening like this, he felt that the world in which he lived from day to day was in fact the dream. And he had so long nurtured those memories, and listened so closely for that echo, that he would not have been surprised to awaken one fine morning of summer to find himself a lad of seventeen in a world without dragons. He wished it were so, but did not think it very likely; and those better days he cherished were not, he knew, without a grief of their own.

He sat up and swung his feet down to room’s cold, stone floor. It was a small, windowless cell, one of the many kept ready for Rangers whose duties took them away for months or years at a time. On a table across from him an oil lamp burned with a warm glow. Beside it careful hands had arranged a stone basin, a porcelain ewer of water, and a wooden mug. The order and placement of them never varied. At the foot of his cot on a chest were clean garments, folded and placed with equal care. His own had been taken away while he slept to be washed and mended if possible. His boots, already clean, waited just inside the door. The rest of his gear hung neatly from pegs on the wall above them.

After dressing he went down to the kitchen to eat, then down another level to the baths to soak and scrub himself clean. Hot water indoors was a luxury he had been raised with, and had never fully appreciated before the Fall. Until then he had been unaware that most people did without it; and young Rangers in training took cold baths. The shock of the cold was good for the soul, Master Raynall always said, but this morning as Arden reveled in the blessed heat of the water, he suspected that this, like the pointed ears of elves, was another of the Master’s jests.

Telling of the Fall tale usually left him restless and sullen, keen to escape the Valley – where a few always wished to learn more than he had revealed – and to be gone into the wilds again, alone. But today he felt a quiet eagerness. This afternoon, for the first time in many slow years, the Council of the Rangers would meet to discuss the dragons.

“At last,” he thought. “At last.”

Images filled Arden’s mind, the faces of Sorrow, of his father, of the Captain of the West Gate. Beyond hope, Master Mahar strove against the dragon amid shadows and flame. A lone sword jutted up from the rubble, waiting for a hand to grasp it. Jalonn kept watch for hours in the rain over a bloody boy asleep beside three fresh graves. The red dragon laughed at him, and the Masters shook their heads in sad refusal. Thirty years of waiting, thirty years of swords in the night, thirty years of memories, dreams, and nightmares.

He had not always suffered the Masters’ counsels of patience with the best grace, but he had always yielded in the end. For Arden owed them his life. They had taken him in only because Jalonn, supported in time by Raynall, had refused to take no for an answer.

“This boy is dying of his thirst for vengeance, Jalonn,” Galt, Master of the Rangers in those days, had said within five minutes of meeting him. “Bitterness and rage consume him. He is a danger to us.”

In his heart Arden knew even then that Galt was right, just as he later recognized the wisdom of the Masters when they refused to attack the dragons again. That was what hurt so much.

Yet now Evénn was here. Perhaps patience would at last find its reward. Perhaps. The Masters were cautious. For a generation they had husbanded the last strength of Narinen. They would not now spend it recklessly, like young men hot for revenge, or drunk on the glory of the dragonslayer’s return. Evénn would have to persuade them. Jalonn at least seemed to be with them, and his was a powerful voice. Arden felt confident, but if the Masters were not swayed, this time he would not submit. He and Evénn would seek the dragons nevertheless. That much at least was decided. All else rested in the lap of the Council.

An hour’s soak in the heat drained the last weariness and tension from him. It was good to feel clean. Arden dressed and went up to the armory, where he left his sword and dagger to be sharpened. At some point he would have to go see Falimar, the Master of the Bow, to replace the bow he had lost, and Orom, the Master of Horses, about a new horse, but first he wanted to see Jalonn. So he turned towards the fencing chamber, where he knew he would find him. The ring of swords – two quick swords – ran down the long corridor towards him. The blows came so close together that the blades scarcely seemed to lose contact with each other. Every few seconds a flash came through the open doors to illuminate the wall opposite them as the light that spilled through the chamber’s high windows caught the steel of one sword or the other. Rangers ahead of him in the corridor paused for a moment to watch before moving on. Arden could tell they did not wish to go.

Nor could he blame them. It was Jalonn and Evénn, training, and the play of their swords together was a beauty of the world. Master Raynall was also present, as were Niall, Agarwen, and several others whom Arden knew. All eyes were on Evénn and Jalonn, but Raynall spared Arden a glance as he came to join him.

“Good morning, Arden,” he said. “You look somewhat fresher today.”

“Good morning, Master,” Arden replied with a smile and a bow. “Yes, a real bed at night and a hot bath in the morning were two things I sorely needed.”

Thank you for telling your tale last night. I know it holds no pleasure for you.”

The tale needs to be told, Master, or even the memory of Narinen will fade. I see many of our people abroad, and they seem willing enough to forget. Here we cannot. A Ranger cannot be ignorant of history.”

“True, Arden. We are the guardians of what was, and of what will be again.”

“Then you think the time has come?” Arden asked him.

“We will not discuss that here, I think, but at the Council this afternoon. Pardon my reticence, Arden. I know how long you’ve chafed under our decision.”

Arden bowed silently to the Master. Raynall smiled at this gesture and returned it. Together they turned to watch the fencing, but Raynall’s thoughts were running back across the years of their vigil.

Arden had no idea how much Raynall himself regretted the necessity of waiting. Although the Masters always spoke with one voice, their hearts were like the hearts of other men, often divided between wisdom and desire. Thirty seven Rangers died in their two attempts to kill the dragons, the Master of Swords and the Master of Books among them. The five hundred sent beyond the sea to Elashandra never returned. Through two winters after the City fell, and on into the following spring, the Rangers knew only defeat.

It had been on a beautiful, cool morning of that same spring, the day after Raynall was chosen Master of Swords, that he and the other Masters swallowed their passion and their pride, and admitted that no mere steel nor any enchantment known to them could prevail. Old Galt spoke, unhappily for a man of such profound faith, of the need for faith now instead of arms, and for patience under suffering until the day god revealed the means to defeat the dragons. The looks that Keral, the new Master of Books, and Raducar, the new Master of the Bow, had exchanged with him as they listened were still clear in his mind.

“We will wait long,” their eyes had said to Raynall.

And they had waited, fading into the wastelands, forests, and mountains, and tried to guard their people from afar and by stealth. They crept into towns and cities to search for books of enchantments or old histories that might help them understand how the elves had defeated the dragons of old, and that might disclose the secret of the ancient weapons that could pierce their flesh. They gathered many books at great cost from the ruins of libraries. Some volumes were crumbling with dusty age. Others were wet and moldy from the rain that poured through broken roofs. Many others were singed and slashed, rusty with blood. The Masters learned nothing they did not already know.

Years passed. The Rangers grew older. Their strength dwindled. Raducar died waiting. Those who had been children when the dragons came were now men and women in the fullness of their strength. From these they drew replacements for the lost, but there were never enough. The Rangers now numbered scarcely a third of what they had before the Fall. And through the secret years the people forgot who they were, shunned them from fear, or because they came to believe the lies the dragon’s men told of them. Even some of their own doubted their wisdom and their courage. But if the Masters at times wavered in their private conversations with each other late at night when the candles burned low, their faith endured.

“Arden,” Raynall said, rousing himself from his thoughts, “I noticed you told your tale somewhat differently last night. You spoke openly of the enchantments Strongbow used against the dragon, and of those the dragons used to shift the wind. You’ve never done that before.”

Well, Master, you know I’ve always been doubtful of claims to enchantment.”

“Scornful is the word I would have chosen, but tell me what has changed your mind?” Raynall asked, then allowed his gaze to drift across the exercise floor to Evénn.

“He has, of course,” Arden replied, tossing his head in the direction of the elf. “He healed my wounds and Argos’ so swiftly, as well as the sores on the backs of the enemies’ horses. He also taught me how to do so myself, and explained much I did not know about the dragons and their return.”

“Did he now?” Raynall asked. His manner was as often quite playful, but the look in his eyes grew intense when Arden mentioned the 'return' of the dragons. Arden cursed himself for being careless.

“Yes, and so when I came to Strongbow and the dragon, I mentioned things that I had seen, but long doubted. Everything that day was so far beyond all I had known before, and their duel so like some deed out of song, that I was unsure of my memory of it. Nor, until I met Evénn, had I ever seen any other magic in practice.”

“Hadn’t you?” said Raynall with a smile. Then he laughed and shook back his white hair. “Arden, I have never told you this before, because, as you say, I knew you did not believe. I remember how you scoffed that day in the library when Master Keral said enchanting was a skill a Ranger might learn. Do you think this valley remains secret only because it’s remote, or because the Guardians watch the forests and mountains around us? Enchantment upon enchantment defends us as well. So that those who don’t know we are here cannot see us.”

“Master,” Arden replied, as if ashamed of his former doubts, “I’ve learned much in the past few weeks.”

“So it seems, Arden,” Raynall said, patting him the back of his hand. “Well, we all have much to learn. The man who thinks otherwise is a fool. You should have believed your eyes when you saw Strongbow.”

“At the time I did, but...”

“But when all you loved died, you doubted everything else. You shut the doors of your mind upon it for fear of the pain of true memory. It’s no surprise, really.”

Arden nodded slowly, once, but his eyes were on Jalonn and Evénn.

“Those doors need not always remain shut, you know,” said Raynall.

“No, Master, that I do not know.”

As the Master paused and looked at him, he recalled the heartsick boy whom Jalonn had brought to them thirty years earlier. That child cherished his wounds and grew into a man who was a stranger to all happiness. Skilled, intelligent, clever, learned, dauntless in combat, but also hard, angry, and desperate, Arden feared only himself and his memories. It was not just to teach others what had been lost that Raynall asked Arden to tell his tale from time to time. By forcing the doors of his mind open a little, he hoped to leach out some of Arden’s grief through the passion of his memories, and to imbue the story of Narinen’s Fall with a sense of one man’s loss of homeland, family and love. How much it helped, he did not know.

Jalonn, though also present at Narinen, could not have matched Arden in this. For his was a different tale. An orphan who had grown up hungry and poor in the far south, hundreds of leagues away from the City, from his earliest days Jalonn learned to see the world in a far more calculated way. He weighed advantage and disadvantage against each other, and weighed them again with each passing moment. No shift in the balance was too slight for him. He took them all into account. It was the way of one who had been reared looking first to survival. Although Jalonn had changed much in the forty years since he had come to the Rangers, this way of seeing the world still persisted. It was one of the traits that made him an excellent swordsman, as he was now showing on the exercise floor with Evénn.

“But enough of this talk, Arden,” Raynall said finally. “You’ve learned something, and that is always good. Now let us see what these two can teach us.”

While they were talking, several more Rangers had entered the room. With the folded arms and steady gaze of experts, they were studying the combat before them. The swordmaster and Evénn moved quickly up and down the chamber in an elaborate dance, their feet always moving, their weight always balanced above them. Their swords danced together as well, almost never losing contact with each other, except when one swordsman would leap back or past the other, and the two would each take up a position to prepare to begin anew, like partners in some courtly dance who make their way down the floor together, weaving their way through the patterns they know so well until they come back to the starting point, bow or curtsy to each other, and start anew.

Looking over at Raynall, Arden saw a faint smile on his face and a light in his eyes. He wondered if he was remembering his own matches against Evénn sixty years ago when he was a young man of some twenty summers. He wondered, too, if the old man could see any change in the elf who had outlived two hundred generations of men and women, seeing far more of our lifetimes bloom and wither than any man saw generations of leaves fall. What must that be like? Was there any way for a man to conceive it?

Arden looked back to the elf and the man fencing, and recalled the speed with which Evénn had moved in attacking the men of the dragon. He did not move so quickly today.

“Evénn is holding back, Master,” Arden murmured.

“As is Jalonn. Even so, few could match them as they fight now.”

“True enough,” Arden replied, thinking of his own practices with the swordmaster as well as his combat with Evénn, when the elf had stopped his every attack with ease and held his life in his hands.

“Arden,” Raynall said without taking his eyes off the fencers, “what was it you called Mahar last night? The one foe in a thousand years who had done the dragon harm? I would hear more about that."

"No doubt you will, from Evénn, this afternoon," Arden said, hopelessly trapped by his own words.

Until this afternoon then," the Master said as he stood up and walked away.

“Until then, Master Raynall,” Arden responded.

Just before he left the chamber Raynall stopped.

“Oh, and, Arden,” the Master said, and waited for him to look his way, “Mahar’s contest with the black dragon is a deed out of song. It lacks only a singer.”

Arden turned back to the match, smiling to think what songs the singers he had heard in his youth could have made of Mahar and the dragon. Perhaps one day there would be such singers again. But even without them the deeds were no less great. He was suddenly glad to be reminded of that.

Evénn and Jalonn exercised for another five minutes, then stopped suddenly, each with one foot forward and the tips of their blades crossed. No word had passed between them, but both clearly knew the last movement and position of their dance. They stepped back and sheathed their swords. Both glistened with sweat as they thanked each other for the practice. For a while they stood talking together, gesturing with their hands and demonstrating footwork, discussing attacks and parries.

Eventually Evénn and Jalonn walked over and greeted him.

“Good morning,” Arden replied. “Master Raynall informs me the Council will convene at two.”

“So Jalonn has told me, Arden,” Evénn said. “As we still have several hours, I would like to look in on Moonglow and the other horses, and see if we can find the wolf. Will you walk with me?”

“I will. I was thinking of that myself, but first I must see the armorer. He has been putting a new edge on my sword.”

“That is on the way, I believe? Shall we go?”

“A moment more, if you please. Since you are both here, I would like to ask if I might join you in your training. I would like my skills honed as well as my blade. However the Council decides, I’ll profit by the practice.”

“Further training is always in order,” Jalonn responded. “We’ll begin tomorrow morning at six, if Evénn has no objection.”

“None,” Evénn replied.

“Tomorrow at six then,” the swordmaster said to Arden.

“Thank you,” Arden said. “We shall see you at the Council, Master Jalonn.”

“At two,” he said and walked away.

After watching him go, Evénn said, “He is a fine swordsman.”

“Yes. Master Jalonn spends almost all his free time training, and he supervises the progress of every student. Raynall says that his is the greatest sword the Rangers have seen in many a lifetime.”

“Raynall is modest. His own skills were not slight.”

“No, indeed,” Arden laughed. “Even at his present age, he can best most of us, though he rarely moves much anymore. He just stands quietly and waits for his opponents to begin. Mostly they end up face down on the floor, or find his blade unexpectedly at their throats. It is a good lesson in humility for the young ones who know only the attacks of strength and speed.”

“As it was for you?” asked Evénn.

“Precisely as it was for me.”

“So it was Jalonn who found you and brought you here?”

“Yes, a long and dangerous journey. I owe him my life.”

“You must tell me of it as we go to see about our friends.”

“Very well,” Arden replied, wishing now that he were somewhere else. He did not catch the cunning look Evénn gave him as they went out into the corridor.

---

Across the room Niall and Agarwen were preparing to begin training themselves. As always when they trained together, he began by hefting Agarwen’s sword, which was lighter and slightly longer than his own.

“I still don’t see how this sword of yours stands up to combat with heavier blades,” he said.

“You always say that, Niall,” Agarwen replied, “as if surprised I’m not dead already. My strength is less than yours, and so must my sword be. We have different styles of fighting. I deflect the enemy’s blow and come inside his guard. You can meet the enemy’s force with force of your own. I usually can’t. My style and my sword suffice for me. Obviously, I believe, since they have kept me alive so far.”

“Obviously, and I am glad they have,” Niall said, with his usual flicker of a grin. He held up the sword before him, offering it to her on his upturned, open palms.

“Are you ready then?” Agarwen asked as she reached out for her blade.

“So,” he said abruptly, closing his hands when she touched the hilt, “do you understand Arden better now?”

Agarwen glanced away and back again with a thoughtful frown, then tugged gently on the sword. Niall did not resist.

“Yes, I do,” she said slowly and quietly, “but I don’t know which is sadder, the story of the City’s fall, or the story of his own loss, his father, his friends, and...”

“Gwinlan’s daughter?”

“Yes. He lost her twice, first to the betrothal, then to death. I noticed he never said her true name. If he will not say it even now, the pain must still be terrible.”

“It is terrible,” Niall agreed. “And it hasn’t gotten any better over the years. Arden has just grown used to it. He blames himself for her death. He will not forgive himself for leaving her. He thinks he should have returned sooner. As if he could have.”

“It would have made no difference,” she said.

“Except, perhaps, to him.”

“I wonder what her name was,” Agarwen said, half to herself.

“Once many years ago, when we were both still apprentices, Arden and I were abroad together,” Niall said after a pause. “One night while everyone else slept, I kept watch. Arden must have been dreaming of her, for he murmured her name. He just kept saying he was sorry. Agarwen, you have to know what Arden was like then. He rarely spoke. He was almost always polite, but neither courtesy nor silence could fully conceal his rage. It was like water boiling beneath the lid of a pot. Yet that night his voice was so faint, so soft, so utterly at a loss to find the words to express his regret, that it made me weep. I had to bite my lip to keep from sobbing.”

“Why didn’t you wake him?”

“I was going to. I reached out to take him by the arm. Then I realized that, wherever he was, at least he was with her.”

“He needn’t be alone,” said Agarwen.

“No one could replace a girl like her,” Niall murmured.

“I didn’t mean anyone could,” Agarwen replied, then stopped. She looked hard at Niall, who, like Arden, had grown up in the City. “What do you mean ‘a girl like her’? You knew Gwinlan’s daughter ?”

“Gwinlan was not her father’s name.”

Agarwen stared openmouthed at him. Disturbed, she paced about, slashing the air with her sword.

“You knew her?”

“I was her betrothed.”

“You!”

“Yes, though he and I have never spoken of it. Didn’t you notice that whenever he spoke of her, he looked straight at me? I think he tells that part of the story to me and me alone, no matter how many others are present.”

“You were her betrothed,” Agarwen said each word slowly, carefully, thoughtfully, rolling the idea around in her mind and letting it sink in. “What was her name?”

“Sorrow.”

“No, her true name.”

“If he won’t speak it, neither will I.”

“Did you know Arden back then?”

“No, though I knew his face, and he as it turned out knew mine – we recognized each other the moment we met here. But I was seven years older than he was, and away much of the time, first at school and then with the cavalry. As for her, we met only a few times, but she was remarkable. Thoughtful, intelligent, educated, graceful. Her eyes were green, green as the sea. When she smiled they shone with her pleasure; and the joy that glowed from within her then outmatched the beauty of her aspect.

“The first time I ever saw her was at my family’s house in the City. I had just come home from a long ride with my cavalry company. It was the hour of lamp-lighting when I walked into the house, and there she was sitting by the window with my sisters, lit half by the pale light fading from the sky, and half by the glow of the lamps. The three of them were deep in some hushed conversation. My sisters were still very young, at that giggling age of whispered confidences when girls first begin to realize, without even knowing what they are realizing, that there is more to being girls than they ever imagined. I watched them for some minutes before they noticed me standing there in the doorway, and it was plain that to them Sorrow seemed quite grown up. When my sisters finally saw me, they blushed and burst out laughing. Then they called me over, and between fits of giggling they introduced us. She and her parents were dining with us that evening.

“That was about two years before the Fall. I knew my parents and hers were already discussing the possibility of our betrothal, but I don’t think she had any idea of it yet. We spent several pleasant hours together. She listened while I spoke of my studies and the cavalry, and I listened while she spoke of her friends. The name of Arden was constantly on her lips. I was not so young as to mistake the meaning of that.

“Over the next few months we met several more times. The last was in the early spring at the house Arden described. She was very sad that day because by then she knew. Everyone did. There was reproach and disappointment in her eyes when she looked at me. She didn’t mention Arden once, but I understood her silence just as well. A week later I left for Sufra with my company. Our parents had agreed we would marry when I returned in two years. While I was away we were supposed to write to each other, as a way to get better acquainted. That was the year the dragons came. It was not until after I came here that I learned that the Arden she loved and the young man I had sometimes seen around the City were the same.”

Niall finished with a sigh, and Agarwen looked at him.

“You almost sound as if you loved her yourself,” she said, not quite smiling.

“No,” he said, taken up for a moment by the memory of her, “but I could have.”

With that he raised his sword, and they began their match. For about an hour they trained, with short rests in which they discussed the bout just concluded. Afterwards they left the fencing chamber, climbed down the central stairs, and headed towards the stables. Niall had an afternoon of lessons in horsemanship to teach, and Agarwen was leaving to spend several months among the Guardians of the Forest. Along the way they talked of little or nothing, as if drained of the need to say more, but it was not so: just before they arrived, Niall took Agarwen by the arm and gently pulled her aside.

“Agarwen, please remember that Arden and I have never discussed her. I don’t want to offend him. Despite what lies between us he has always been friendly to me, probably because he knows I have some sense of what he lost when he lost her.”

“I won’t say a word,” she responded.

“Thank you. I’ll make sure you know what the Council decides.”

“What do you think will happen?” she asked him quietly.

“I think the Masters will agree that it is time. If they do, I’ll volunteer to go with Arden and Evénn.”

“As will I. And if they do not?”

“Then I’ll go with them regardless,” said Niall. Seeing her surprise at his words, he continued. “Of course I cannot see how the Masters can disagree, now that the dragonslayer is here. But aside from all the other reasons for this, this quest, if you will, I believe I should be there. In a way I feel I owe it to Arden.”

“You’re full of surprises today, Niall,” she said with a smile, “but I think I understand you.”

“Then you have me at a disadvantage, Agarwen. Fare well.”

“And you.”

In the stable Agarwen found her horse, Bufo, kicking the stall door and tossing her head, eager to be gone. She saddled and bridled the mare, all the while soothing her with a gentle song. As she was checking the cinch one last time, a gruff, short bark behind her and the push of a nose in the back of her knee announced the arrival of Rana, her wolfhound. Agarwen turned, took the hound’s head in her hands, and kissed him between the eyes. A moment later she was in the saddle, and they were out of the stable, out of the yard, and trotting across the open Valley towards the gorge and the forest. Rana loped along beside them with his long, easy stride. Just a few days ago Agarwen had been looking forward to the start of her duties with the Guardians, but as she rode out she found she could think of little but Arden, and Sorrow, and other things that could not be.

For the rest of the day Niall met with his riding classes, then returned home to his wife, Lissana, and the small cottage they shared with their children under the eaves of the southern woods. Beside the fire, playing with the children, Niall thought about how different it was all supposed to be.

_____________________

Chapter 8.2

Soldier Undaunted -- Chapter 7.3

Beyond the fountain a grim, final combat was being waged. Dead men lay on all sides, ours and theirs without distinction, and in the middle of all in the broad space between the eastern side of the stoa and the fountain stood the black dragon. Unlike in the bailey by the Mountain Gate, here he had ample room to stand proudly, wings unfurled, his head high upon his long arching neck, his tail lashing behind him like a whip, his fore and hind legs spread wide. With his long and slender body, his deep chest and brawny shoulders and forequarters, he reminded me of one of the great hunting cats of the south, made to spring suddenly and kill swiftly. But if beautiful and graceful as a god of cats, he was also monstrous, fifteen feet tall at the shoulder, a hundred feet from tip to tail, iridescent black scales tightly clothing sinews that flexed and rippled as he moved, with a serrated dorsal ridge and curving claws in his feet. All black he was, though blackest of all were his eyes, as lustrous as onyx but with a glance as hard and keen as obsidian.

Surrounding him at a distance were several dozen men, our men, armed with spear and sword and bow. Had it been any other beast, any great predator of tooth and claw, I would have said that they had brought him to bay. But it was not so. These men, the last of our defenders, were fighting for their lives, not the beast for his. Having seen what I had seen that day, I marveled at their doomed courage. Yet they fought on, staunch in the end of their strength, constant in love for their homeland, though even the merest flick of the dragon’s tail or blow from his talons meant death. Over and over I saw men rush in to strike only to be flung back by the beast and land in a heap yards away. Even those who came close enough to strike the creature did him no harm. For their weapons scarcely marked his armored sides, and many shattered upon impact. The attackers fell like leaves before a storm, and I wondered how many of those already fallen here had done so in this hopeless battle.

But there was one I saw whose attacks were not wholly vain. He was a bowman, a Ranger clad in gray, who appeared from the southern side of the square with several others after most of the rest had already failed and died. He moved quickly through the shadows and smoke, and took what cover he could find, behind the ruined trees or the columns of the stoa. He loosed arrow after arrow at the dragon, always at the same target, the eyes of the beast. The bowman’s first shot struck his right eye and vanished as it hit home, as if it had completely penetrated the eye. That earned the dragon’s wrath and he turned swiftly to spy out his foe, but the bowman and his companions had already moved to another place of concealment, from which he loosed another shot. That, too, vanished. Now the dragon shook his head, more annoyed than injured, and rushed forward, but his attackers were gone. A third shaft darted from the darkness. Again it struck the right eye; and again the dragon shook his head and advanced, to find no one. A fourth arrow followed with the same effect.

From my hiding place I could see it all, the Ranger and his companions shooting and moving at once, disappearing uncannily into the night, then reappearing to shoot again. The battle shifted back and forth, the attackers moving now left, now right, but more often to the dragon’s right, like a fighter or duelist who always circles to his opponent’s injured side. In this way they moved closer and closer to me until at last I saw the bowman appear, now alone, behind a broken column of the stoa. He drew, aimed, and loosed again.

In the firelight I recognized him at last. He was Mahar of Caledon, Master of the Bow in those years, whom men called Strongbow. Once before, years earlier, I had seen him at a meeting of the Council to which my father had taken me. Afterwards my father brought me up to him, and introduced me to a kind, soft-spoken man who greeted me with a smile.

But this night he was none of these things, and he made the fire and smoke and darkness, the weapons of the dragon himself, his own weapons. All the other attackers had been nothing but sport for the dragon, and he had allowed them make their puny attempts only to bring them closer. But Strongbow, who came and went in the night and somehow could not be found, was hurting him. For, though the beast showed no outward wounds, he shook his head a little harder each time an arrow struck, and then he advanced more aggressively to find his enemy.

Watching this unfold filled me with the joy of vengeance, and I cherished the hum of every arrow. It gladdened my heart to see the enemy take some hurt before the end. And I was filled with even more wonder when I saw that Strongbow seemed to sing as he fought. Though his words were lost in the ceaseless howl of the dying city, to a boy raised on the old songs Mahar’s duel became a living poem. Then his next arrow flew, lit from behind by the flames of the Houses of the Republic, and an emerald light shimmered brightly around it the instant before it pierced the dragon’s eye. Mahar was singing an enchantment, fighting the beast with a weapon I had not imagined. For a moment the world changed, and I saw clearly. There was more than the dragon and the darkness here.

The others still alive in the square with me also lifted up their hearts. For they grew bolder and renewed their attacks. Many fell as before, but a few now lived to strike again. One man delivered two heavy blows with an axe to the beast’s right foreleg. Though they did not penetrate the scales, they clearly stung the dragon. Strongbow’s spells were working. With a racing heart I rose and was about to join the attack myself, when I was hit from behind and forced to the ground. I rolled over to strike at my attacker, but he pinned me and my sword arm to the pavement with his body.

“Stay down, Arden, you fool,” a voice I knew shouted in my ear.

“Father!” I cried out.

He dragged me back under the cover of the fountain and briefly embraced me.

“What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you,” I shouted back. “The Mountain Gate has been breached, but a burning building has collapsed and barred the street.”

“It doesn’t matter. The City is lost. You must escape.”

“Not without you I’m not.”

“Arden, you will obey me. Narinen has been taken. The enemy roams the streets, killing and plundering at their pleasure. Even here the dragons merely toy with us. You must go.”

“I will not.”

“Arden, anyone who remains here will die. You must fight another day.”

“No, not without you. I will not leave you.”

“Son, you must. You are all that survives of our family. Your brother lies dead across the sea. You must live.”

“What about you?”

“I will stay here with Master Mahar. By giving the dragon his sport others may yet have time to escape. Use the postern door in the southern wall. Do you remember where it is?”

“But Strongbow is hurting the dragon.”

“Listen, Arden. There is no hope here. No matter what Strongbow does, there are three more dragons. They are all here now, watching this contest. Now go.”

“No.”

“Do as I say, Arden. Do it if you love me.”

With that he dragged me to my feet and shoved me towards the south end of the square. My feet were numb and reluctant, and I was just passing through the colonnade when the dragon roared just as he had back at the gate. Hope unfurled within me as I turned, thinking that Strongbow had dealt the dragon a mortal blow. I ran back towards the battle, drawing the Captain’s sword, my sword.

But the cry of the dragon did not signal his pain or death. It was a roar of triumph. He had at last pierced the darkness and veils of enchantment the Ranger had used to elude him. The two stood face to face. Strongbow’s quiver was empty. He set the large bow against a broken column, and unsheathed his sword as elegantly as any duelist come to settle a debt of honor in the summer dawn. He stood tall before the beast, and strode without fear or doubt to meet death. The dragon crouched back to spring on the one foe in a thousand years who had done him harm. For now blood was oozing slowly from the beast’s eye. My father and the other men were inching towards the dragon, waiting. Just as I arrived, the attack began. Mahar darted forward, his sword held high and glittering.

The dragon leaped to meet him, scorning the rest of us, and bore him to the ground. As he raised his talon, I saw my father duck beneath it, and plunge his sword deep into the dragon’s eye. The beast flinched away in pain, then struck my father aside with the blow he had meant for Strongbow.

I stopped. I wanted to run to my father, yet feared to look away from the beast. I hesitated. To the dragon my indecision was nothing, as I was, as we all were. He ignored our attacks. Pinning Mahar down with one talon, he plucked out my father’s sword with the other. A mist of blood sprayed from his wound. My eyes and face were suddenly ablaze with pain, and even the brightest flames around us dimmed. My sword rang loudly as it hit the paving stones at my feet. I felt myself falling, and heard the dragon howl in triumph once more. The other three joined their voices to his. The sound of all four together seemed to pull my soul from my body. I thought it was all over.

I awoke with an acid taste in my mouth, which drove off the thought that I had dreamt this wretched day even before I opened my eyes. The City still burned, though more quietly; the smoke whirled around me. The rain had ceased. Of the dragons there was no sign. I sat up and tried to spit the taste from my mouth, but I couldn’t. It hurt even to try. I touched my face. On my chin and right cheek were several spots as tender as agony and oozing, burned by drops of the dragon’s blood.

I looked around again, my head still reeling, but there seemed no present danger. I found my sword and sheathed it, then began crawling from body to body in search of my father. All were dead, slain by talon or flame. It was hard to stare closely into those raw faces, searching for some familiar feature. None were my father.

Staggering to my feet I began to search more widely. Nausea and dizziness rebelled against my every step. But at length I found him, leaning on the far side of the broken column against which Master Mahar had propped his bow. Even now my father cradled it in his lap. From the terrible wounds on his face and chest I scarcely knew him. One of his hands was gone, and he was covered in blood. His hair was matted with it.

“Father,” I called out as soon as I saw him, but he did not reply.

“Tyr, son of Alairan,” I called him by his given name, a thing I had never done before.

Slowly his eyes opened, but he gazed at me from far away.

“Arden. You live,” he said, sleepily pleased.

“Yes.”

“I told you to go.”

“I couldn’t leave you.”

At this he smiled so faintly, as if his soul were still barely here.

“It is all right,” he paused, then said with difficulty, “but you must go now. They will find you here. Dawn is not far off.”

“What dawn can there be now?”

“The day will return, Arden, but you must get out of the City while you can.”

“We’ll go together."

“No. I am nearly finished. I’ve lost too much blood. Here, take the bow with you.”

"I’ll carry you,” I protested.

But he died then and I was alone. I closed his eyes and kissed them, ran my hand over his head as he had always run his over mine. Gone. I took the bow from his lap and slung it across my shoulder. Leaving him there was the hardest thing I had ever done. He had taught me to pray for the souls of the dead, but my mumbled words fell flat upon the earth, where he lay, where all my thoughts were. I touched his face one last time and left him.

I made my way south through the streets as quickly as I dared, being sure to get off the main road to the South Gate as soon as I could. Sometimes I had to double back because the streets were blocked by fallen buildings or soldiers of the enemy. Several times I had to avoid roving parties of the dragons’ men. It was then, hiding, sneaking down the backstreets, trying to escape the doom of my homeland, that true fear at last overtook me. Every sound, every breath of air became a terror. But I was determined to live, and return one day to take my vengeance. Strongbow had shown me that the dragons could be hurt, and from the songs I knew that dragons could be slain. To do so was the calling of my heart. But first I had to survive.

So through dark streets and alleys I went, choking on the smoke and ashes the wind scattered before me. I fled from shadow to shadow, from one pile of rubble to the next, sometimes climbing over mounds of bodies in some narrow place where our men had made a final stand. I wondered if the postern door had gone unnoticed, or if I would have to fight my way out. In the Street of the Wheelwrights I stopped beside the corpse of an enemy, and stripped his cloak and helmet from him. Master Strongbow had taught me that the weapons of the enemy could be used against them, and I resolved to imitate him in this small way. Looking like the enemy I might pass unnoticed, or gain a moment’s surprise if I had to fight.

By the time I had covered the mile and a half from the square to the walls, light had begun to penetrate the darkness outside. Above me in brief patches of sky between the fire and smoke, the first colors of morning glowed. The sun would soon rise up from the waves. A day ago I was glad to see the dawn. Today its light could only reveal me to the enemy, and show me more sights I did not wish to see. Once outside the City, even disguised, I would be one lonely figure on foot, heading in the wrong direction through a ruined land. I had to get as far away as I could before it was fully day.

To my surprise the postern door was unguarded. It seemed too good to be true. For several minutes I peered around the last turn, and tried to resist the proddings of my fear. I was about to cross the street when the clopping hooves of a patrol made me draw back and take refuge in the first doorway I could find. With every slow, loud step those horses took the sky seemed to grow brighter, but at length they passed by, and I returned to my corner. From there I watched them until the smoke swallowed them up and the hoof beats faded.

Then I ran for it. The door was closed, but unbolted, and I wasted no time getting inside. Halfway to the outer door a single torch was burning, but the long corridor was empty except for a single body slumped against the wall just inside. It was a man, not as old as my father, his chin sunk on his chest, one hand cupped over his heart. He looked asleep. Only the blood that had welled through his fingers told another tale. Wounded and alone, he had dragged himself here, not to escape, but to die in peace, shielded by the thick oak of the door from the clamor of the streets. For an instant a vision of him came to me: staggering in the door as he fought his wound, pushing the door shut behind him, then leaning back against the wall, and sliding slowly downwards. He was at rest. I begged his pardon as I stepped over him.

My hand was reaching out for the bolts on the outer door when a sound made me jump and whirl around, raising my sword, but it was only the man’s body falling over. I heaved a great sigh. For I thought I’d been caught. I turned back to the door and opened it a little. There wasn’t much to see. The fires outside had exhausted their fuel. Gray banks of smoke scudded past on the breeze from the sea. I stepped out onto the road which encircles Narinen, and walked away as calmly and purposefully as I could, like a man with some minor duty to perform. The arrow I expected in my back with every step never came. Either no one saw me, or my disguise made them hesitate just long enough for the smoke to close around me.

I moved more quickly now, still intent on getting as far away from the City as possible before the sun was high. Unseen somewhere off to my right the road ran down from the South Gate, but that was clearly too dangerous for me to use. Nor did I wish to see at close hand the the remains of yesterday. All my thoughts were fixed on escape and evasion. I had no idea where I was going. No destination, no direction, no home. When I thought of the road, it was as a place of danger and horror, not the once welcome path that led to my door. I did not ask myself if my home still stood, or if any of our people had survived.

Soon I came to a stream, which of all the things I’d seen in the last day, seemed fair and unpolluted. As I knelt beside it, I meant to stay only long enough to wash the blood and filth from my hands and face, and, once they were clean, to drink away the taste of the dragon’s blood. But those clear waters stopped me. Their touch, their taste refreshed me and gave me strength. For a long moment my mind shook off the darkness of Narinen. I remembered where I was. This was the same stream I had followed on my way to the City yesterday.

And I remembered Gwinlan’s daughter.

Yesterday I had known that war was upon us, but yesterday I had known nothing of war. My innocence told me she would be safe, and I chose to help others. Today I was washing men’s blood from my hands. Today I knew there was no shelter.

“I left her alone.”

I leaped up and ran for the house. Between my dread and my blind haste, between my burning lungs and the stabbing pain in my side, it was like running in a nightmare. No matter how hard I tried, I seemed to get nowhere. It could not be so far, I kept telling myself. Each veil of smoke I passed through revealed only another solitude of withered grass and scorched stones. Then all at once the ruined woods loomed up. Blackened snags and blasted stumps raced past. I came to the garden, and slowed down. Nearly stopping, I drew my sword.

Dead flowers lined the garden path that opened before my feet, guiding me along the once familiar way. No fire had touched them, only the heat of the burning woods. And at the end of the path her house still stood, a ghost adrift in the red haze of morning. Until now fear had urged me on, but now that I glimpsed her house through the smoke it held me back.

I abhorred every foot of that path.

I longed to reach its end, but hated the longing.

Yet all I could do was go on.

Halfway to the house a woman lay face down among the flowers to my right. An arrow protruded from between her shoulders. She looked to have been running for the house when she fell. I caught my breath at first, but her hair was dark. She was not Gwinlan’s daughter. Relief surged within me, until I saw that she was my friend, Loran. She had lived nearby, just across the fields. She had probably fled here seeking refuge.

“Had lived,” I thought.

Only two days ago she and I had watched this same sun rise out of the sea with our other friends. But everything else had changed. Again I tried to pray.

In the dirt at the foot of the porch steps I found an enemy soldier flat on his back, a bolt from a crossbow in his upper chest. There was a very surprised look on his face, and the blood on his lips was still wet and full of bubbles. I reached down to touch his cheek with the back of my hand. It was still warm. But if he’d been alone, there was still a chance for Gwinlan’s daughter. I hurried up the stairs, across the porch, and through the open door.

Just over the threshold Lady Gwinlan rested in her own blood. No book filled her hands now, but a crossbow, and several more bolts were scattered around her. She had defended her home. I stood looking down at her. For all the blood, she seemed as poised as ever, as if death were just another caller to be greeted at the door. Speechless and still, I remembered the kindness of her character, which deserved better thanks than my failure to return in time.

Beyond her, red footprints led down the house’s long, central hallway. They drew my unwilling eyes step by step after them until they reached the morning sun room at the far end. It must have been the sun of another year which shone through those windows that morning. For the room had all the warmth with which I was familiar, but in the midst of this pool of light lay Gwinlan’s daughter, all bloody, with the sunlight shining golden in her red hair. Her face turned blind, green eyes to me; her left arm stretched out an open hand, palm upward, in seeming invitation.

“Oh, no,” I murmured. Grief fell upon me like the sea. Then a sudden voice barked from behind me.

“Here, what are you doing here? Your lot’s supposed to be in the City.”

I turned my head just enough to see him over my shoulder, this gruff sergeant of the dragons’ men. Two more soldiers crowded behind him in the doorway. I had not heard them coming, but my stolen cloak and helmet bought me the instant I needed to undeceive them. My left hand crept to the hilt of my dagger.

“Well, what have you say for yourself?” said the sergeant when I did not reply at once. He was expecting an answer.

“Just this,” I hissed and pivoted to my right, my sword slashing his throat. As he collapsed, I jumped forward through the spray of his blood, and thrust my dagger deep into the belly of the surprised man behind him.

The next ducked under the return sweep of my sword, as his own sword flashed from its sheath. But I was upon him before he could extend his arms, and drove him backwards across the porch. Then the low rail hit him in the back of his legs and he lost his balance. I struck his sword from his hand and kicked him in the chest, knocking him over the railing and into the flower beds six feet below. His eyes grew wide as he saw me leaping down after him. My sword pinned him to the earth.

I rested there a moment on one knee, leaning heavily on my sword, my rage ebbing, my pain returning. But another noise, a boot scuffing the dirt, made me raise my eyes. There was another soldier, a young lad like me, in the middle of the garden not far from Loran’s body. He was staring at me in amazement, and walking slowly backwards. The instant our eyes met, he ran. I unslung Mahar’s bow, walked over to the soldier slain by Lady Gwinlan, and snatched an arrow from his quiver. The boy was already at the edge of the trees, dissolving into the smoke, when my shot somehow struck him at the base of his skull. I heard his body hit the ground. I listened for a while, but the garden was quiet and empty again.

I climbed back up the steps and entered the house once more. She still lay down the hall in the sun room. Nothing had changed. Four more men were dead and nothing had changed. It made no difference. Now all I loved were dead. I knelt beside her, lay down my sword, and gathered her into my arms at last. If other soldiers came, it meant nothing to me now. I was with her. All warmth, all light ebbed from the world. Even before today she had been lost to me, betrothed to another in a politic marriage meant to ally two great houses of the Republic already bound together by generations of blood. But she had been alive, and I loved her.

Hours, it seemed, I knelt and held her. When I finally tried to stand, I found my legs were numb and would not obey me at first. I forced myself to get up and walk. Across the garden towards the sea was a shed, which furnished all the tools I needed, a pickaxe and shovel. Three graves I dug there at the garden’s edge, one for Loran, one for Gwinlan’s wife, and one for his daughter. I carried them each in my arms and laid them down. Linen sheets from the house afforded them shrouds, sewn shut by my clumsy fingers. Each shovel full of earth was heavier than the last, from weariness, from sorrow. It was done at last as the sun set. All the while I heard no sound of bird or beast. The sea lay flat and calm. No wind blew. The only sounds were the shovel and the City burning in the distance.

In the dusk I stole across the fields to Loran’s house, but found only ruins, barren of life and memory. Hedále’s house was the same. From there, had I looked, I could have seen my own house burning. Not a living soul did I meet, no friend or enemy. I returned to Gwinlan’s, and wandered from room to room, sometimes sitting for a moment or two only to rise and walk on. Upstairs was her room, one window looking east to the sea and another towards to Narinen. Had she stood there that long ago morning, and watched the fleet and the dragons come in as I had done from mine?

Throughout the evening the east wind rose steadily, and by midnight the smoke had cleared away. The moon rode high above the black and silver sea. Waves began to break upon the shore. It could have been any night. Was the world as indifferent as it seemed? To the north, the flames of the City again towered into the night. Occasionally dark shapes flew across them. How did god let this happen? Not knowing what else to do, I set fire to her house. As I walked out the door, I took off the cloak and helmet I had used as a disguise and threw them back inside. I lay down on my side by her grave.

“From now on,” I said to her, “I will call you Sorrow.”

When sleep overtook me, I dreamt of the sea.

The morning sun woke me. In that brief time before thought and memory come, when sleep still embraces us and all we are is what we sense, I was almost happy. With my eyes still shut, I listened to the sea, and could almost see the long, green waves glittering and glowing as they rolled towards the shore. Above me I could feel the sun in the blue sky. Its warmth touched me through breeze, which had brought rain while I slept and taken it away again. I caught the rain’s fragrance. I drew it deep into my lungs as I stretched and sighed. Then I smelled the smoke. The moment of not knowing ended. I opened my eyes and sat up. But for her grave the morning was beautiful. The world and its god went on regardless.

I hung my head. Where should I go? If the dragons had crossed the sea to attack us, surely they would move on to the other cities of our land. Was I to go to one of them and wait for other days like yesterday and the day before? Or should I stay here by her grave and wait for more soldiers to come and fight them until I died? I stood and turned towards the City. As I did I saw a man sitting on the ground nearby, calmly watching me.

He was leaning back against a charred fencepost, his naked sword cradled between his shoulder and the arm he had draped casually across his updrawn knee. Though his clothes were filthy with blood and soot, by their cut and their gray color I could tell he was a Ranger. His features were composed, but sad. He let me take a good, long look at him before he laid his sword to one side and stood up. As he started towards me, I stepped back.

“Easy, lad. My name is Jalonn. I am a friend,” he said.

“What’re you doing here?” I asked.

“The same as you. We all have griefs this day.”

“You were there?” I gestured with my head towards the City.

“Aye, at the Sea Gate.”

“I was at the Mountain Gate. The dragon shattered it.”

“It was the same with us. They were too powerful, their soldiers too many.”

“Yes.”

“What’s your name, lad?”

“Arden, son of Tyr,” I answered.

“Your father was the council member?”

I nodded.

“I saw him. He fought well, but I lost sight of him when the enemy drove us from the gate.”

“He’s dead now,” I said quietly. “He died with Master Strongbow, fighting the black dragon”

He paused in reflection, and sighed.

“Is that where you found the Master’s bow?”

“Yes.”

“You did well to take it.”

“My father insisted,” I said, not much caring.

“Is any of that blood yours?” he asked, gesturing at my clothing.

“No.”

“You should let me tend those burns on your face.”

“No. Thank you.”

“As you please.”

We looked at each other awkwardly for a while.

“These people here, they were your friends, your family?” he nodded at the graves.

“Yes,” I said, thickly.

“What will you do now?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Come with me then.”

“Where will we go?”

“To the Valley of the Rangers.”

I stared at the graves. I didn’t want to leave her. But what was left? I sighed. Jalonn came up close behind me, and rested his hand on my shoulder.

“Arden, there is nothing here,” he said.

“I’ll go with you,” I said, but I knew he was wrong.

“We’ll wait here until sunset, then head south. We must travel by night.”

I made no reply. He patted my shoulder and left to keep watch. In time I joined him, and we passed a day without words, each of us alone with our thoughts. Several times horsemen passed by on the road to the west of us, but they showed no interest in coming any closer. At length the sun sank to the tops of the Green Hills. All the fields, the white walls of Narinen, and everything we could see were red and brooding as the night came on. In the deep twilight Jalonn rose.

“Time to go,” he said and began to walk away. After a few steps, he looked back at me. My eyes were still on the City, my thoughts on her grave. Jalonn came back.

“Narinen was a great city, Arden, ancient and beautiful, rich in history and legend, but now she is gone.”

“If that world ever existed, we don’t live there anymore,” I answered.

We turned our backs and hastened away.

_____________________________

Chapter 8.1

Soldier Undaunted -- Chapter 7.2

It was nearly three miles across country and around the walls to the West Gate. Even if I had been willing to risk it, the road was now out of the question. So many people were now crowded onto it that they could scarcely move, and I doubted I could even cross it. So, remembering a bridge which carried the road over a small stream not far from the walls, I cut across the fields towards the City. All along the way, I kept my eye out for my father and the men riding with him, but there was no sign of them. I could see no one riding against the crowd.

At last I descended into the stream bed, and began to approach the bridge. In the spring the stream ran swift and strong, fed by the melting snows of the Green Hills just inland, but at this time of year the water was no more than a foot or two deep. Still I had to bend low over the mare’s neck to get through. It was dark and noisy under there. The bridge was groaning with the weight of so many, and the only light came from the shimmer of the sun on the waters. I saw two children and their mother hiding there. The smaller child, a dirty, tiny girl peered at me, and raised her finger to her lips in a gesture of silence. All I could think of when I looked at them were my father’s words to me on the road. I could do nothing for them. I rode on.

Back in the sunlight, I climbed the bank. Narinen rose before me in all its vain strength and beauty. All my life I had admired and loved the City, and on many a fine morning I had traveled there with my father, or brother, or my friends. Until today the sight of the sun upon her white walls and the banners dancing above them in the breeze had never failed to lift up my heart. Those walls were forty feet thick at the base and seventy feet high, topped with round towers and battlements. It had taken over a century to build them and for eighteen hundred years they stood unchallenged. In their ten mile circuit were four gates facing the cardinal points of the compass. The gates themselves were thirty feet tall and twenty wide, made of oak and bound with steel, but hung so perfectly on their hinges that only a few men were needed to shift their great weight, and open or close them. Or so I had been told. For in all my life I had never seen them shut.

From each gate issued a road. Through the North and South Gates they ran to the other towns and cities which lined the coast and drew their life and sustenance from the sea. At the West, or Mountain Gate, the Great Road began its journey across our wide land. After passing through a gap in the Green Hills thirty miles inland, it crossed the Plains of Rheith, then climbed over the Gray Mountains, to end at last at the port of Sufra by the western sea. The East Gate we called the Sea Gate, and from it the road ran for a mile down to our harbor, whence our ships set sail on every tide to explore, to trade, to protect our land. A quarter mile on either side of this road were long walls of stone that protected our link to the harbor, where a forest of masts and spars grew among the wharves and dockyards. Narinen was strong and beautiful to see, and long had it dreamed in peace.

But this morning as I came slanting down towards the Mountain Gate, all the legendary strength and beauty that was Narinen seemed more a myth than the truth I had always known it to be; it seemed nothing but a lie dipped in silver. The South Gate was shut. Steel glittered from the battlements. Four dragons swooped and circled round the City’s proudest towers. A few were already burning. Smoke also rose from the direction of the harbor. The first of the dragons’ ships must be there already, while every moment more rounded the sandy neck which screened the harbor from the south. My heart sank.

I galloped the mare towards the Mountain Gate, which was already half closed. Soldiers stood outside, eager to get in and pull the gates shut behind them, but people were still flowing through them like the tide though an inlet. From the battlements above men called to out me and waved. They gestured frantically towards the last gate.

“The West Gate!” they cried. “The Mountain Gate! Hurry!”

In their voices I could hear joy and desperation. Clearly they had not seen many riding for the City that morning. Their shouting moved along the walls with me as I rode, until finally one of the soldiers outside the gate turned and saw me. He beckoned me impatiently into the gateway just as the last of the mob came out. I passed through the tunnel and stopped.

Across the wide bailey inside the Mountain Gate a barricade of carts and wagons had been hastily improvised, with a single narrow opening at its center. Beyond it, with their backs to me, mounted troops were drawn up, not to keep the enemy out, but our own people in. In the middle of their line the Captain of the Gate sat on his horse, facing the crowd. He answered their clamor with a strong, calm voice, telling them they must stay, that they were safer within the walls. But they would not listen. They insisted on leaving; he insisted they remain. The gates must be shut against the attack which would soon begin. They should take up arms for their land and families and fight, or at least return to their homes.

One burly fellow, whose loud voice carried even above the tumult of the crowd, shouted that they had the right to save themselves, and would not be denied. He called the Captain a fool, and rushed at him with a large hammer. The Captain held his ground, and an arrow appeared in his attacker’s chest, loosed from the guard tower above. The voice of the crowd died with the man. The gates boomed shut and the bolts shot home. The iron portcullis dropped at the inner end of the tunnel with a clang. We were all locked in now.

“Return to your homes now, or go to the walls to fight,” the Captain said gently in the sudden quiet. “Whom shall we fight now in our fear? The dragons, or each other? Shall we do the enemy’s work for him?”

The Captain then backed his horse slowly out of the line of cavalry barring the crowd’s way, and turned away. He had no more to say. Behind him they slowly dispersed, first in reluctant twos or threes around the edges, then in larger numbers. Several dozen volunteered to fight. The Captain looked at me and beckoned.

“Who are you?” he said as I came through the gap in center of the barricade. “We almost shut the gates on you, you know.”

“I am Arden, son of Tyr. I have come to find my father. Do you know where he is?”

“Your father is Tyr, the council member? I see his likeness in you, but he did not come this way. He is probably near the Sea Gate, where the brunt of the battle will be, but there is no time for you to wander about the City looking for him. I need men here, and here you will remain.”

“But, sir.”

“But me no buts, boy. You are a brave lad to come when so many others have run, but today is the last day of Narinen. You can die here as well as anywhere else. Go see my lieutenant. He will assign you a place.”

The finality with which he spoke admitted no argument. I nodded acquiescence. His lieutenant, almost as brusque, sent me to the walls near the guard towers above the gate. A soldier led my mare away as I climbed the granite steps, and took my place in line at the battlements. The greater part of my new comrades were the ordinary folk of the City – mostly men, some quite old, some lads like me, and the first women I had ever seen in arms – but aside from the men of the West Company who kept this gate I saw few real soldiers.

For until recently our land had been at peace, and almost the whole of our eastern army was gone across the sea. Did anyone imagine we would wake up one morning to find the dragons at our gates? I had not. Even the night before I had believed that the Men of Narinen and the Elves of Talor would prevail; and then our brothers and friends and fathers would come home to us, with tales of glory and the wonders of Elashandra. And if the Council had summoned troops from the west to strengthen the City, my father never told me about it.

Now there was little to do but wait. I glanced at the others around me on the wall-walk. Some stood with their heads bowed low and arms clutched tightly across their chests; others were leaning against the parapet, gaping at the sky with eyes blank and mouths open. The soldiers bore themselves with assurance, but even they, I could see, were not unafraid. Only a few endured this comfortless time with grace. I realized how afraid I was. No help would come. We were alone.

The Captain of the Gate called today the last day of Narinen, just as my father had a little while ago. The size of the armada, the splendor of the dragons in flight, their mastery of the winds, and the cruel fire everywhere in the fields – all this made our destruction seem inevitable, as did the horrible certainty which lurked behind our present dread, that the dragons would not be here now, without any warning, had they not swiftly overwhelmed our armies beyond the sea.

So all I had wished farewell when our army set sail two months ago were dead. My brother, his friends, my friends and their loved ones, Gwinlan and his sons, Cal and Loran’s father, Hedále’s father and brother. Dead. And Hedále and the rest of his family were surely dead now, too. His was the first house I saw in flames. Of Cal and Loran I knew nothing, but the fires had burned brightly within the smoke around their home, which lay close to Gwinlan’s. And where was my father?

“Wake up, boy. Stop your daydreaming,” the lieutenant said, slapping me hard on the back as he passed. “We need your mind here with the rest of you.”

“Sorry, sir,” I said and straightened up.

Someone laughed. A very old man was standing next to me. In his hands was a tall, ashen spear, its iron head tipped in rust, which he leaned on like the staff he should have held. He grinned at me.

“It doesn’t bear thinking about, my lad,” he said.

“What doesn’t?”

“The ending of the world. That’s what this is. Aléthen, the old king, Stochas’ father, was a seer, you know. He saw that a day would come when this City would perish, and all our folk with it. He did, you know.”

“Yes. My father taught me that, but I never thought I’d live to see it.”

“Nor I, young man. And I did not think to wield this again,” he said, gazing at the spear as if it held all the strength and memories of his youth. “It’s been fifty years since we broke the gates of Irayan, and we’re both a bit rusty now, but we’ll have to do.”

He was about to say more when a shadow rushed over us from behind. Now the golden dragon dropped down before our eyes, and swept away from the walls and gate and off along the western road. Not far off, not far enough, the last of those who escaped from the City were straggling out of sight into the smoke. Before they knew it, or we could cry a vain warning, the dragon plunged in behind them. A searing line of fire lit the cloud from within, burning true to the road’s plumb straight course. It was all we could see, and all we needed to, but the screams of dying thousands robbed us of our voice. We stared into the unseen distance, mute, unseeing, unable even to look at each other. It was no different elsewhere. Flame traced all roads, west, north, and south. We could only listen. Until it ended.

Then the golden dragon burst from the wall of smoke, and flew with increasing speed back up the road towards the Mountain Gate. Many of us just kept staring, others dissolved in fear, their limbs shaking. None of us moved. Suddenly the dragon pulled up sharply.

“Down, down, everybody down,” I could hear the Captain and the lieutenant crying.

I threw myself face down on the hard stone and rolled up against the battlements, drawing my knees against my chest and covering my head. But not all were so quick. The blast from the dragon’s jaws struck the gates like a storm wave hitting a breakwater. The walls shuddered beneath me, as the flames rolled up and over the battlements, passing close above me. I covered my mouth and held my breath, trying not to inhale the scorched air. When the walls finally stopped trembling, I opened my eyes and rolled away from the wall. The dragon was now past us, sailing above the rooftops towards the center of the City, idly setting buildings on fire along the way. I could see the other three doing the same, converging on the heart of Narinen.

Around me men and women were screaming, some burning, some with their skin charred black. The old man lay dead. Figures constantly appeared and disappeared through the black smoke. A few of us tried to help the wounded, struggling to put out the flames. Some crawled on their hands and knees, retching from the stench and the terror. Others were running away, down the steps and into the City. One man leaped to his death over the battlements. Many just shrank back and cowered. We all wept. I still remember the sharp taste of salt in my mouth.

The Captain of the Gate, however, came sweeping down the parapet, a pair of sergeants behind him. The lieutenant was not to be seen. The Captain had words of encouragement for all he passed: raising men up from the still warm stones on which they sat or crouched; commending us for withstanding the first assault; checking the wounded and assigning men to carry them – and the dead – away; giving orders to others to fetch bandages and water; bidding us to resume our posts. Our eyes met. He clapped me on the shoulder, gave me a good word and a smile. But despite his brave and resolute manner, his face was grim and his eyes empty of hope. I thought of the words of the king, of which the old man had only just reminded me: our day had come.

And still it was not noon. The dragons returned again and again, but none could predict their coming. Five minutes or a reluctant hour might pass between attacks, and it was never the same dragon twice in a row. Though the gates and walls withstood the flames, their defenders did not. It was hardest on the ordinary folk, many of whom died in the first attacks. Unlike the soldiers, they were too slow to obey the Captain’s orders. Some volunteered to help carry away the dead and wounded, and never returned. By the middle of the afternoon very few of us remained on the walls, and a sergeant now escorted anyone who left them.

Then the dragons turned their minds from us to our City, and a rain of fire began. We became spectators again, impotent witnesses to a new horror. Within an hour all of Narinen was one mighty conflagration. Above the heavens were clothed in a low, dark pall, supported by columns of smoke tinged red by the savage light. Below ash drifted like snow, choking us and soiling everything it touched. Worst of all was the roar of the flames, so loud that it silenced our world. The wounded and dying still screamed, the broken sobbed in terror, the Captain shouted orders, but all without voice. Even when by some caprice of the wind the air cleared enough for us to glimpse the center of the City, and we saw a building we knew totter and fall, no sound of its collapse reached us. When the smoke swirled in again like a curtain closing on a scene, we wondered if any of it was real. The soft, summer rain that started falling an hour before sunset availed little against the flames; and the rain itself, black and greasy from the soot in the air, only drenched us in filth and weighed down our guttering spirits.

Someone grasped me by the arm and shook me. It was the Captain. He pointed out across the fields, and leaning close, shouted in my ear. Even so I could barely hear him saying that the enemy’s forces were in motion. As I turned to look, I could see others along the wall behind him gazing outward in the direction he pointed. The Captain had been working his way down the parapet, telling each of us in turn. Outside in the distance I could just discern in the firelight a large body of men, several thousand strong close to the Mountain Gate, but still out of bowshot. Then I gazed south and glimpsed the widespread glitter of flames on steel, no doubt another similar detachment beyond the South Gate. They had no battering rams or siege engines that I could see, and that morning I would have said that even with our depleted numbers we could have kept them out. For the fire had scorched but not destroyed the gates. They were still strong. But today I had seen sights I could not have imagined the day before. Nothing seemed beyond the power of the dragons.

The attack would come soon, the Captain cried in my ear. We must hold this gate to protect the rear and flanks of the other three. The main attack would surely fall upon the Sea Gate. That was where the bulk of the enemy was mustering. We must hold them back, make them pay, take our vengeance. He asked me if I understood, and I nodded. We all understood. We tightened our grip on our weapons and prepared ourselves. He clapped me on the shoulder, and moved on to the next man. I wondered where my father was. Did he still live? Was he even now giving the same orders as my Captains was to other young men as frightened as I was.

Then the enemy began moving, marching slowly in a long column towards the gate. Soon they were nearly within bowshot and what few archers we had on the walls took their bows from beneath their cloaks, where they had tried to shield their bowstrings from the rain. As the enemy came on, the archers kept bending their bows to wring any water from the strings. Finally they notched their arrows, raised their bows, and began shooting. Arrows also flew from the guard towers, far more than I would have guessed. The front ranks of the enemy thinned as men fell, but others moved up to fill their places, stepping over their fallen comrades. More fell the closer they came, but still they kept coming.

Without warning the black dragon plummeted from the darkness to land on top of the nearer tower. His lashing tail and claws quickly cleared the platform of living men. Then he leaped the fifty feet to the farther tower and began killing once more. A second dragon appeared, the red one I had seen that morning. As before he flew in low over the road and straight at the gates, but now with much greater speed. He passed directly over the heads of his advancing soldiers, and once he did they broke into a run. I thought he would fly headlong into the gates, but at the last instant he rose up slightly, spread his wings to break his momentum, and drawing his hind legs up before him, he crashed feet first into the gates of oak and steel. They splintered at the impact. The iron hinges were wrenched from the stone pillars which held them. Masonry collapsed around the entrance. The dragon beat his wings forwards, rose up and was gone. The way into Narinen was almost open.

The column of men surged ahead. They charged through the shattered gates and into the tunnel. Yet the portcullis at its far end barred their way. Led by the Captain we hurried down the stairs into the bailey. There we took up positions behind the barricade, which only that morning our soldiers had made to keep people in. From here we could shoot at the enemy and choke the near end of the tunnel with their dead, while they struggled to raise or break through the portcullis.

But again we had reckoned without the dragons. For the black one still crouched motionless atop the further tower, his wings furled, his long tail wrapped around his forefeet, like some gigantic cat serenely waiting to pounce on his sport. Serene but intent, he watched us from above. The flames of Narinen were mirrored in his scales. One by one we felt his black eyes upon us, and we trembled at his attention, knowing that our death smoldered in the furnace within him. Then he threw back his head, and loosed a cry that pierced even the din of an entire city in flames. Beginning as a low growl, it soared upward to end in a shriek of cruelty and triumph.

But in his malice he did not destroy us as he might have done. He sprang from his perch down into the bailey. With one talon he grasped the portcullis, wrenched it from its moorings, and tossed it lightly away. For a moment he let his gaze linger on us before turning to consider his own men. He seemed pleased as he hurled himself aloft into the night. I understood then that the dragon’s malice and his pleasure were one: though he could have slain us in an instant and cleared the way for his own soldiers, he preferred that we battle each other on a field of blood.

The instant the dragon was gone, his men burst like a torrent from the end of the tunnel; some of our people, even the soldiers, broke and ran. The sergeants behind our line wielded their pikes, forcing as many as they could back into line at the barricade, but more were fleeing than they could stop. Then the enemy was upon us. At first we held them back, thrusting over and through the barricade with pikes and spears, slashing and stabbing with our swords at those who tried to climb over it. But no matter how many of them died, more came flooding through the tunnel every second; and within a few minutes their numbers and their mass pressing upon the barrier began to tell. The barricade itself began to be slowly shoved backwards and we could only give ground with it. But, oh, we made them pay for every inch they gained. We slew so many that their bodies formed a ramp for their comrades to use.

Until now the advantage had been ours to strike at them as we willed, while they had to expose themselves in order to attack us. Far more of them had fallen so far. Yet soon they began to break through our makeshift walls off to my left and to drive our men backwards. The balance had shifted. We would soon be overwhelmed if we stood our ground. I hurried to the center of our line and grabbed my Captain by the shoulder. He looked at me. I pointed down the line to the breach. He took it all in at once, then in a voice louder than any I have ever heard, a voice that carried over the violence of fire and battle, he cried out for us to fall back. Men looked to him, surprised. Several times he repeated the call and those who could obeyed, running for the opening of the street behind us at the inner wall of the bailey. Three of our sergeants were already there, pikes in hand, and they pushed and shoved the men into formation. Those who could not break away from the struggle at the barrier bought the rest of us time to form up. Many of our staunchest soldiers died there, swiftly outnumbered by the enemy who swarmed up and over our abandoned defenses. Without them we would have all perished there and then.

As we fell back, enemy soldiers broke through one by one and came rushing after us. Our Captain turned to meet them. Several of us tried to go to his aid, but the sergeants wouldn’t allow it. They seized us from behind and dragged us back, shoving us into our place in the ranks. The Captain had no need of our help. Alone before our line, like some hero, he cut down each of his opponents in turn. Then he stood there, just waiting for the rest of the enemy.

A moment later they all came. Their mouths were open and their eyes blazing as they shouted their battle cry. I could not hear it, but seeing them, I felt how raw my own throat was. I was screaming, too. When their front rank collided with ours, the immense weight of their numbers thrust us back on our heels, and compelled us to withdraw step by step.

For the moment we had one thing in our favor. Only one street led from the outer bailey into the City, and it was but twenty five feet wide. Thus, though our numbers could not match the enemy’s, we could fill this narrow place entirely. They could not get around us or outflank us as they could in the bailey. But with every step we retreated, we came closer to the first cross street sixty yards behind us, a broad avenue more than twice as wide as the street we were on. Even if we held out that long, at the crossroads they would overwhelm us at once. We had too few men and no hope of more.

We all knew all this fact, I’m sure, though I don’t remember thinking so at the time. Yet our ferocity with the enemy at our throats and our deaths imminent bore witness to our sense of it. We fought until our swords broke and our spears splintered. We fought with daggers and fists and teeth after that. We pulled the swords of our foes from our comrades’ bodies and turned them on their owners. And always before us stood the Captain. No single foe who assailed him long survived. Three or more would leap at him, and he drew his dagger and fought them two handed. You could see they feared him, and only the weight of the men pressing them from behind forward kept them from hanging back.

Yet for all our ardor and all we slew, there were always more of the dragons’ men. The more ground they took, the hotter the battle became. For we felt the open spaces of the crossroads like an abyss at our backs, into which we would soon fall forever. My eyes stung with sweat and the fine, salt spray of blood that saturated the air. The smoke was thick and heavy in my throat. At some lost hour the sun had set, leaving only the fires surrounding us to shed any light. Our ranks thinned. Men fell on every side. How did I not stumble over their bodies when I stepped on them, or lose my footing on the slick cobblestones? How was I never wounded?

At last out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed a sign hanging above a doorway just to my right. On it was painted a lamp with a warm, welcoming glow. We were outside the oil merchant’s shop, which stood two doors in from the corner. I’d known it all my life, but I didn’t have time to think about the fire and smoke I saw rolling out of its upper windows, or the smaller fires visible inside through the windows on the street. I had no time at all. This was it. We were here. Maybe three dozen of us were still alive. We kept fighting, but it was all about to end. I resolved that if I was going to die, I would do so by my Captain’s side, and I tried to fight my way closer to him.

But before I could reach him, the barrels of oil within the shop grew so hot they exploded. Driven by the force of that blast, glass from the windows sped through the air, followed by a rolling wall of flame. Friend and foe alike were cut down. Like the dragons, the fire made no distinction between us. It was my fortune that a half dozen men were then between me and the explosion. This saved my life. For their bodies shielded me from the glass and took the brunt of the force, which hurled them into me and us all across the street, smashing me into the door of the shop opposite the oil merchant’s. I was stunned by the impact and buried in the bodies and debris which fell over us all.

I lay there for several minutes, surprised to be alive, able to hear nothing but the roar of the flames, to feel nothing but the weight upon me and the roasting warmth of the oil fed fires. I struggled to free myself from beneath the pile, and in time I wriggled free and sat up. I was sitting inside the doorway of the shop on top of its door. It had given way when we hit it. This again was my fortune. For as I looked through the doorway into the street outside, I discovered that with the explosion of the oil the entire shop, and much of the building next to it, had collapsed, filling the street with rubble and flames.

I remember smiling to myself to think that the fire blocked the path of the dragon’s men into the City. But I rued that thought as soon as I saw that no one but me had survived. The few bodies I could see burned or smoldered. Here and there an arm or leg or hand was thrust up or out of the rubble. Nothing but the fire moved. It was the only living thing before me. Every man and woman I had stood and fought beside, every enemy that stood against us and sought our lives, lay dead in that street in the ruins of that building. My Captain, too, lay there, I thought. His courage had sustained us throughout the day and into the night, and if I lived still, my life was owed to him. Without him, no one would have been at the gates to hold the enemy back until the building fell and gave us one small victory that day.

I did not and do not know his name, but the sword I bear is his. I found it right outside the shop door. The sword I had been wielding, seized from the dead hand of an enemy, was lost in the blast. When I ventured out to look for it, I found instead my Captain’s sword, standing hilt upright in a pile of smoking rubble. The blade and hilt were clotted with blood, but in the pommel at the hilt’s end, was set a green jewel, whose polished facets caught every spark and flicker of the blaze. I remembered seeing his hand rest upon that hilt as he had faced down the unruly crowd that morning, an age and more ago. With no weapon of my own, I took his sword and begged his pardon. I had need of it and he had none.

In the street I saw that the fire and fallen building had also cut me off from the rest of the City. More of the building crashed down while I stood there, forcing me to retreat into the shop behind me. Knowing that every shop has a back or side door, a place for carts to be loaded and unloaded, I began searching. In a kitchen at the back I came upon some jugs of water and at once realized how parched my throat and lips were. I drank again and again; and when I was done poured that blessed water over my head, rinsing off some of the sweat and blood and soot, washing off the gore that covered my hands. Then I slipped out the back door into an alley parallel to the street we had been defending.

At the alley’s end was the cross street we had fought so hard to keep the dragons’ men from reaching. It was broad and empty. There was no sign of fighting. The thought came to me as I looked down that street that I had no idea what to do next. Doubtless fighting raged across the City. The other gates had surely been breached by the dragons just as ours had been. At the Sea Gate, directly across the City from the Mountain Gate, our men had been facing the main force of the enemy, so my captain had said, and they would have been lucky not to be attacked from behind if the North and South Gates had fallen. Though my father was on the Council, he had of course never told me of any plans there might have been for defending our City. Its walls had never before been breached, and we had been at peace for more than two generations. All I wanted to do now was to find my father. So I had to cross the City to the Sea Gate and head for the thick of the battle.

The quickest route was to travel along the street we had been defending, which ran between the Mountain and Sea Gates. At the corner I looked back westward at the fallen building. No danger could come from that direction for some time. But the path before me was walled with fire and the smoke obscured my vision. It would be all too easy to stumble upon an enemy that had overwhelmed the defenders of the other gates and penetrated the City. The further I went, the more likely I was to meet an enemy. But it was all I could do. I gripped the Captain’s sword more tightly and began running east. At every street I stopped to peer around every corner, trying to see the enemy before he could see me. I kept close to the buildings where I could, guessing that anyone else in the streets would likely do the opposite, to avoid the flames. The closer I drew to the center of the City, the worse the fire and smoke became. Before long I found I could no longer run. Breathing the smoke made my head light and my lungs ache. And the passion of the battle at the gate had left me. I began to realize how hungry and weary I was. Breakfast with my father that morning took place in a different world. And I was no longer the boy with all the books, who did not know where to find his sword.

The dead were everywhere: vile, charred bodies, still smoking; crushed bodies, half buried in the collapse of buildings; bodies maimed by steel or broken in leaps of despair; bodies of children robbed of time. It is their empty faces that crowd my thoughts now, but the streets were not as deserted of living souls as memory makes them seem.

Outside a tavern I saw a small group of soldiers and townsmen, drunk, staggering about together and singing with grand gestures, or slumped quite unconscious against the building. The tavern door had been forced open. Two doors down a group of looters, not even soldiers of the enemy, eyed me suspiciously as I passed by. Halfway to the center of the City, I paused to watch two men, both my father’s age, dueling in the courtyard of a burning house, determined to settle a long cherished grudge before the dragons cheated them of their last opportunity.

Figures stepped unexpectedly out of the swirling darkness right in front of me, hurrying, always hurrying somewhere, and eager to be gone. We’d hesitate, then dart past each other without ever looking back. Once I nearly killed a woman who appeared from a dark doorway right in front of me. Startled, I raised my sword. She shrank back, clutched her child to her breast, and vanished back into the gloom within. I was hurrying, too.

In the last, long block before the great square at the heart of our City I took two of the dragons’ men by surprise. They were on their knees stripping the corpses of soldiers of ours whom they and their comrades had killed. Scores of dead men from both sides lay from one end of the street to the other, some still grappling with each other or gripping broken swords. These two were the only survivors. I cut them down before either of them saw me coming.

Fearing that more soldiers of the enemy were nearby, I concealed myself among the corpses, pretending for a time to be dead myself, while I peered across at the square. It was a half mile across, and the most important buildings our people lined the street that ran around it. On the north rose the ancient Hall of Kings with its two elegant towers of stone; on the south was the Hall of Counsel where my father spent many of his days in debate with the other elders and officials of the City and Land of Narinen; to the east, beside the Hall of Equity, stood the Houses of the Republic, which men still called the King’s Museum and the King’s Library; to the west, on either side of me, were the College of Healers and the King’s School where many of the men and women who guided our Republic had studied.

In those days the streets that ran from the gates entered the square through huge arches, fifty feet tall, placed in the middle of each side. Beyond them the streets became gravel walks bordered by cool, green lawns beneath the trees, which were planted throughout the square, from the arches to the fountains at the corner entrances, and inward along the paths to the circle, itself a quarter of a mile across, which occupied the center of the square. An open colonnade of white marble was built along the perimeter of the circle. Benches sat between its columns, and tall plane trees stretched their boughs over its roof, furnishing a shady place to rest on a hot summer day. Gray octagonal blocks paved the open area between the colonnade and the fountain at its center.

But tonight, as I rose to cross street, flames were pouring upward from the windows of almost every building, blackening their white facades with soot and smoke. All along the side of the square closest to me, the trees were down and smoldering. Along the north side one of the towers of the Hall of Kings was broken. And perched calmly atop that tower was the red dragon wreathed in flame. I ducked into the shadows beneath the arch when I saw him, but his attention was elsewhere. He was watching something directly across the square from me, something which the blowing smoke and the stoa and fountain in the square’s center kept from my view.

By now I had seen him many times today, but he was even more fearsome at this hour than he had been when I met him face to face in the morning light. For fire, darkness, and destruction were his element, and I was alone. Though still and silent on the distant tower, he seemed more alive and menacing. Yet the way to the Sea Gate and my father lay across the square. I swallowed my fear and left the dubious shelter of the arch. I forced myself to run for the fountain, my lungs aching from the smoke that felt thicker with every stride I took. I managed to make my way – unobserved or disregarded – to the central fountain. It still ran despite the destruction surrounding it, but the water was black and oily. Concealed behind the rim of the fountain’s basin, I crawled slowly around the south side, trying to keep out of sight. Halfway around I discovered what held the red dragon’s eye.

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Chapter 7.3