. Alas, not me

03 November 2014

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.

_____________________________

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

Soldier Undaunted -- Chapter 7.1

Seven

My father called me early that day. It was the first of autumn, and I was to leave for the scholars’ town of Prisca to begin my studies. Winter or summer he always rose when it was still dark to prepare for the day. So by dawn all of my bags and boxes of books had already been loaded onto a cart for my departure. As I looked out my bedroom window, in the morning light I saw the servants leading the horses out to harness them. The leaves that skipped across our courtyard told me that the east wind which had risen last night after sunset was blowing still. When I came down to join him at breakfast, I asked if he was in a hurry to be rid of me.
“No, son, not at all,” he laughed, “but it is best to begin our journeys early. For we never know what we may meet.”
“Father,” I said, “I have been to Prisca many times and have never yet met an adventure.”
“Ah, but today may be different. In fact today will be different, Arden. You will begin your studies and live away from home for the first time. You will make new friends.”
“I don’t want to make new friends. I like the ones I have.”
“And what’s wrong with new ones? The friends you have today will not always be there. Your grandfather used to tell me that when I was your age. I didn’t believe him either, but he was right, you know. The older I got, the wiser he became. It was uncanny.”
“So you’ve told me.”
“And I’ll tell you again,” he said with a wry smile, then he stopped and looked at me.
“What is it?”
“Your mother would have been proud of you.”
“But I haven’t done anything yet.”
He grinned at me again, with mischief in his eye. Though he meant every word he’d said, he was making game of me. He knew I hated it when he spoke in his fatherly manner. But this morning he was all ‘Old Father Tyr,’ as my brother used to call him whenever he conjured the shades of our mother and grandfather to tell us things he rarely said in his own voice. It was his way.
“If you’re finished,” he said, gesturing at my empty plate, “go check your room. Make sure you haven’t forgotten anything.”
“I have checked,” I said, getting up.
“Humor me,” he replied as he took the last bite of his own breakfast.
“Very well,” I answered.
He was not looking at me now. With his wonted care he was folding his napkin. He laid if back in its place beside his plate, and smoothed it flat, just as he always did before he rose from the table, just as he would tomorrow when I was gone.
Until that moment I had not considered what my leaving meant to him. Young as I was, I had thought only of myself and my friends. Now my heart was full of him. He had married late, lost my mother soon after I was born, and raised me and my brother on his own. Now Alairan was across the sea, and I was leaving for Prisca. After today he would be alone. For the first time I knew I would not have him forever.
“Go check your room, Arden,” he said as he stood up. Our eyes met only briefly. “Life goes on. We must go with it.”
He understood my every thought. He always did. I could never fool him. The few times I tried to lie to him he would just look at me with an expression that let me know he didn’t believe a word I was saying, but he was going to let me say it if that was what I wanted. I went upstairs to look around my room.
I thought I had left nothing behind, but talking with my father had altered my mood. My chair, my desk, my books, even my bed, all seemed different. I had lived in this room all my life, but it had changed and grown as I had. First there had been toys, now put away somewhere, except for two that proudly held the high ground on the shelf above the books that had taken their place. The clothing I had outgrown had been given away to other children my family knew. My first bed was gone, too, replaced five years ago by one more suited to my sprouting years. I felt I would never be here again. I sat down, daydreaming.
“Arden! Arden, come now!”
My father’s shouting roused me slowly. In his voice was a sound I had never heard from him before. It was the voice of a man who suddenly saw that something was very wrong. There was also a terrible urgency. I wondered if the house was on fire.
“Arden!”
He was clearly outside. So I jumped up and ran to the open window. My father was standing on the bluff overlooking the sea behind our home. He was calling servants and issuing orders. They came to him as they went again an instant later, running. Some never even got close to him. As soon as he saw them, he began shouting instructions that sent them on their way. I heard him bidding the stable boys to saddle the horses, now. Amazed, I leaned out the window and was about to call out to him, when the east wind gusted so hard in my face that I had to shut my eyes and turn away.
When I opened them again, he was looking straight at me and pointing out to sea. His eyes never left me as my gaze followed his outstretched arm. Then I saw the ships, men of war, far out to sea but coming swiftly down the wind, their square sails spread wide like dark wings, sharp against the sun and blazing waters. Hundreds of ships of war. For a moment my heart leaped. For a moment I thought our fleet was returning victorious from across the sea, that my brother Alairan was aboard one of those ships.
Then I saw them. Huge, winged shapes, swooping and circling against the morning sky, effortlessly, it seemed, but always coming closer, growing larger with each beat of my heart, racing in on the wind. Their outstretched wings must have spanned a hundred feet, and their bodies, from the tip of their snouts to the end of their slender tails, were nearly as long. At first I could not grasp what my eyes so clearly saw, until one stooped on a small sailboat, which was desperately trying to outrun the warships in a mad rush towards a leeward shore. One of the beasts fell from the sky, swift as a stone, but true as an arrow in its path. Just above the boat it snapped out its wings and pulled up sharply. Its head darted forward like a striking snake’s and flames streamed from its jaws, engulfing the boat entirely. The beast did not wait even a moment before soaring upward again. The ruined boat came up into the wind at once, burning down to the waterline. Even the waves that battered its hulk could not douse the fire.
“Arden, now,” my father shouted again, more urgently than before.
I tore myself from the window, ran down the stairs and out of the house. Servants dashed about the courtyard, dispatched in haste by my father. Stable boys and grooms struggled to saddle the frightened horses, who tossed their heads, eyes wide and nostrils flaring, and tried to rear. I saw my father’s horse lift one boy high off the ground, the boy’s legs kicking and stretching to reach the ground as he clung tightly to the chestnut’s bridle. I remember thinking how brave that little boy was. Our dogs raced from one person to the next, barking at the confusion, demanding answers. In the midst of it all the cart with my possessions stood disregarded. I raced through the open gate in the eastern wall and crossed the porch where on spring or summer evenings we used to watch fishing boats and small sloops, men of war and merchantmen, returning to friendly harbors. How different it looked that day.
As I approached my father, I stole another glance at the sea. Since I had left my window, the armada had come visibly closer, driven by that foul east wind; and behind them more sails were crowding the horizon.
“Arden, listen to me,” he said. “The enemy will soon be here. Take the servants, gather up as many of our neighbors’ wives and children as you can and lead them up into the hills –”
“No, I will not leave you. We –”
“Arden, you do not understand. I must go to the city. If we can hold the enemy off for even a little while, some of our people will be able to escape.”
“But –”
“Be quiet. I said you do not understand and I meant it. Today the City will fall and all its defenders with it. If the elves and our men together could not stop the dragons, we certainly cannot. We do not have the power, in men or magic, to hold them off; even if we could, the City is not ready for a siege. We cannot win. We can only buy time for others.”
“I will fight with you.”
“You are not a soldier.”
“Neither are you, father. And I have been trained to use a sword and bow.”
“But you have never killed a man before, Arden, and there will be much killing today. Our servants and friends need you to lead them to safety.”
“Send someone else.”
“There is no one else. Your brother – ”
“ – is not here. And he would want to go to the City with you, too.”
“Yes, but he would also obey me,” he stopped and sighed. “And he is dead. I don’t want to lose you both in one day.”
I had no answer to this. We could only look at each other. A confusion of love, fear, anger, and grief played across my father’s face. He knew that what he had to do would not end well, but it had to be attempted. He suddenly appeared far older than his fifty nine years.
“I’m sorry, father,” I said quietly, “but I will not obey you in this. I choose to be with you no matter what.”
“But by your choice you will die, and leave others to die as well.”
“So be it. I will go with you. We can send the stable hands to round up the others. They will be fine with them, you’ll see.”
His eyes were dark with displeasure and doubt. He was not used to such disobedience from me, and time was pressing him. The ships of the enemy drew closer.
“Will you not obey me?”
“No, sir. I will not.”
“Then I pray to god you are right. Go, get your sword. I hope it’s sharp. You are going to need it.”
As I started to go, one of the servants began shouting, “Look, look!”
Still over a mile out to sea, but high aloft, the dragons were flying in a circle above the leading ships, a circle that grew ever tighter and higher as they went around. At last they were so close to each other that they seemed to be pivoting around a central point; the tips of their wings almost touched. Then one after another they pulled up from the circle and soared upwards in a spiral which expanded as they climbed.
We stood transfixed, watching them and marveling at the beauty of their flight, their wings beating more quickly than any of us could have imagined in beasts so large, their bodies one graceful curve from head to tail. They climbed so high the sun no longer silhouetted, but illuminated them; and their different colors gleamed brightly for all the distance between us. They were red, golden, silver, and black. It took my breath away. I wondered how evil could be so beautiful. Finally, when they had risen so high that they were visible only as a splendor of color and movement, each one broke from the spiral and fell from the heights like shooting stars that never burned out. Now, however, they were no longer moving towards us, but northwards towards Narinen; and as they changed direction, so did the wind and every ship of war beneath them, coming about to starboard in one long fluid movement.
“They shifted the wind,” my father gasped, amazed.
And it was true. For the wind had veered and now blew out of the south, but more moderately than before, a perfect wind for taking them safely along the shore to Narinen.
“A wind of enchantment, conjured for our destruction,” my father said quietly. “I should have guessed as much. The sea was not troubled enough for that east wind to be real. Arden, get your sword. Now we must hurry.”
I ran back across the porch and into the courtyard, which was still a tumult of activity. I had almost reached the door to the house when I remembered that my sword was packed in the cart, so I could continue my fencing lessons at Prisca. But who knew where? I rummaged through the cart, recklessly casting aside the books and clothing and other articles which were treasures an hour ago. With each moment I became more desperate to find the sword and rejoin my father. Time was pressing. Time and fear. This was a different morning than I had expected.
“Son,” my father called to me as he entered the courtyard, “you must treat your belongings with more respect, especially your books. You will find your sword in the right front corner. I hope you’ve more respect for it.”
I looked up at him astonished. In the midst of all our haste he had grown calm. The anger and confusion of a few minutes ago were gone. It was as if with the shifting of the wind he became reconciled to all that would happen that day, and resolute in his conviction that he must face it as best he could; that nothing more could be expected. He spoke now with the steady voice of the father I had always known, calm, confident, and assured. This return to himself calmed me as well.
“Now get your sword. It’s time to go,” he said.
With that he turned away and mounted his horse, instructing several of our servants to ride across the fields, gather up our friends and neighbors, and help them to safety. But they stared at my father in terror. Some of the houses he was sending them to were only a mile from the City. One of the stable hands protested that it was too dangerous, and would not yield until my father asked him where his sister and her children lived. The man fell silent. For they lived at one of those houses.
On my horse I clattered out of the courtyard behind my father. At the main road we turned north towards the city three miles away, and immediately met a tide of people flowing swiftly in the opposite direction. The riders we passed were not all servants or soldiers on urgent missions, nor were all those in the wagons and carriages women and children. Among them we saw men we recognized – neighbors, friends, men full grown and capable of bearing a sword, men we thought we knew better – fleeing often at a breakneck speed that left their families behind. In fear or shame they looked away when they saw us. Several wagons had overturned; one carriage had lost a wheel. The tide fled on past them. I glanced at my father, who shook his head in disgust as if nothing could be done.
Other, braver, men joined us as we rode. They came through the fields of tall grass, jumping their horses over the hedges and fieldstone fences that divided one holding from another, or down the long tree-arched lanes from their homes to fall in with us. Before we had gone a mile, a dozen gathered around us. Like my father, their attention was on weaving through the mob as swiftly as they could, and if they raised their eyes at all, it was to the walls of the City in the distance. But the dread in our servants’ faces, and the cutthroat haste we encountered on the road, kept dragging my gaze off the road to my right, to search for any sign of the men we had sent to help our neighbors.
At first I thought it would be easy to glimpse them, moving parallel to us on the lush, open green that rolled down to the bluffs above the sea. Many times before when riding along this road I had seen people far off on foot or on horseback. All I desired was one moment’s assurance that our men had not run away, too, but today I saw no one. The fields seemed empty. I told myself we were riding too fast, that the road was too crowded for me to look long enough. With every glance I stole more time in the hope of seeing what I wanted to see.
“Mind your horse, boy,” a harsh voice warned, as my horse bumped the one next to me, and the rider’s crop stung my thigh.
I swerved away, and for a moment rode alone beside the road. I could not help looking again. There, just entering the grove of trees around the home of my friend, Hedále, was a single rider, gone before I could even ask myself who he was. I gasped in relief, and realized I had been holding my breath. My eyes still fixed on the wood, I started back for the road.
Suddenly the red dragon came soaring up over the bluffs beyond Hedále’s. He rose several hundred feet, then turned and plummeted downwards, leveling off just above the grove. Lonely figures of men and women burst from the trees, running alone or in groups of two or three. They scattered in every direction. Above the house the dragon pivoted sharply and paused in mid-flight more nimbly than any bat. His head lunged forward, and the grove exploded into flames. With a snap of his wings he soared upward again, to hunt in the fields of fire. He left none living behind him.
“Arden, ride on,” my father shouted back to me.
So we rode on, as the countryside ran with flame. That south wind fanned it. Smoke swirled everywhere, choking us and burning our eyes. But as yet the dragon had not attacked the road. When I asked myself why, the answer came crawling from the pit of my stomach. The dragon was herding us like cattle. The road was to be our slaughter pen. Then off ahead of us on the right, a mile or more away in the lonely distance, I saw the house of Gwinlan. It was just visible through the smoke, the last house still untouched. I reined in my horse so hard that he neighed in protest. My father glanced over his shoulder at me and stopped.
“Why are you stopping?” he demanded as he rode up.
“The dragon is driving everyone onto the road,” I cried, but it was the house I could not take my eyes off.
“I know. We cannot help them,” he replied grimly. Then he saw the direction of my gaze, and added, “or our friends.”
“Look,” I said, “the dragons have not yet attacked Gwinlan’s house. Let me go warn them, tell them to hide.”
“Hide? There’s no place to hide.”
“Let me go.”
“No, Arden, no. You will be trapped out here if you do.”
“Please, father, I’ll cross the fields to Gwinlan’s, and cross them again to the West Gate of the City. That will be the last to close. I can make it. I know I can.”
“No, it is too dangerous.”
“More dangerous than the City? Gwinlan and his sons are dead across the sea, father. His wife and daughter have no one but me. She – ”
“Enough. Go.”
With a last look he was gone. I spurred my horse into the smoke. We leaped ditches and fences, and splashed through streams. My horse ran all the harder because almost everything behind us was burning now, and fear of the fire at his back made him keen to escape it. From where I left the road it was nearly a mile to the house of Gwinlan. I had known him and his sons from my earliest memory. His wife had been like a mother to me, always kind and ready to laugh, and his daughter, well, I loved her as only a boy of those years could love a girl.
At last we ran clear into sunlight, but a shadow fell. Above me stretched the monstrous wings of the red dragon. When they beat it was like a clap of thunder shocking the air about me. I shouted encouragement to my horse, but my voice sounded thin and faint, the voice of one someone shouting far off in a storm. My horse began to shy. I fought to keep him headed for the woods around Gwinlan’s house, but the next beat proved too much for him. He stopped short and bucked me over his head. I hit the ground hard. I jumped up, gasping for air, and looked around for my horse, but he was gone. I was confused. He could not have run out of sight so quickly. Where was he?
Much closer now the wings beat. Their wind staggered me, as the carcass of my horse struck the earth not ten feet away. They beat once more, and the next gust threw me down again. When I raised my head from the dirt, the red dragon was there before me, folding his wings along his sides. He crouched like a giant cat, and I was his mouse. His shining head swayed slowly from side to side, turning this way and that. He observed me, contemplated me, despised me. His tail flipped behind him, curling high above, then uncurling as it whipped down again. But it made no sound, so softly did it touch the earth.
I knew from the songs that I should not meet his gaze, lest he bewitch me. At first I tried to avert my eyes, but I couldn’t help myself. And my death was at hand, as I thought, so why not? What use would it be to him to ensnare a boy like me trembling with anger and fear? I looked him full in the face.
His snout was long and slender, covered in small red overlapping scales – like those of a fish or a well made hauberk, but burnished so that they would glow even on the darkest night. His lips were thin. His oval nostrils tapered backwards, flaring with each breath and change of expression. His head widened as it approached his eyes, on either side of which his pointed ears pricked up or swiveled to catch every sound. Like his nostrils they seemed to reflect his every thought. But the eyes, the eyes were crimson, shimmering with life, luminous as blood, yet the black slits of their pupils were dark and bottomless. Even as I lay there on my belly before him, it made me dizzy to look into them, like I was sliding down an undulating slope into emptiness. I fought against it. I shook my head to clear my mind. I struggled to recall my name.
Then his ears came forward and his eyes widened. I could swear he smiled at me, a faint, false grin. He exhaled in a short, thoughtful grunt. My effort amused him. The fire and death around us amused him. The thousands dead, and the thousands soon to die, amused him. This pause with me was just another moment of play. Hatred and wrath flared within me, and I struggled to one knee, my eyes never leaving his. Reaching over my shoulder, I grasped the hilt of my sword. His eyes opened wider in delight, his grin broadened to reveal his teeth.
“Brave boy,” his voice dripped contempt. Then he let loose a single, derisive laugh.
“Ha!”
And with that he sprang into the air, wings unfurling, and was gone.
But my eyes would not leave him. I stood there, expecting him to circle back and blast me from the earth. Instead he flew off towards the road. The people there battled to escape him. They knocked each other down; they trampled on the fallen; carriages, carts, wagons swerved, collided, turned over; men screamed. At the last instant the dragon shot upward into the gray veil above the road. I did not breathe. The fugitives on the road paused. Every eye sought to penetrate the cloud. In the still, silent ordeal of waiting, even the wind made no sound. It brushed my cheek, bent the tall grass near me, and rolled the smoke down the fields. But the dragon did not return.
Suddenly a shout came from the road, and set the whole mob moving again. I turned and ran for Gwinlan’s house. Despite the smoke the trees and the garden beyond were still green and calm, just as I’d seen them on many another morning, but the house itself seemed deserted. I hunted through the empty rooms for Gwinlan’s wife and daughter, calling their names. No one answered. It was like finding yourself in a dream in which you are searching for someone you cannot find, though you know she is there somewhere, just around the next corner. Nothing seems wrong, but everything is.
As I stepped out onto the porch on the east side of the house, my gaze swept across the garden, from the stables on the south, along the low brow of a wooded hill, to the gardener’s shed at the northern end, and back again. It was the wide open stable doors that drew my eye. Then a calm voice spoke close at hand.
“Arden. What are you doing here?”
Down the long porch to my left, in a corner enclosed and deeply shaded by roses entwined on trellises were Gwinlan’s wife and daughter sitting on a bench. It was Lady Gwinlan who addressed me. She perched on the edge of her seat as if it were yesterday. Her head held high, her back straight, her legs tucked beneath the bench and crossed at the ankles. She wore her silver hair pulled back from her round face and gathered at the back of her neck, not the finest wisp astray. As always she cradled an open book in one hand on her lap. With her other hand she marked her place on the page. Beside her sat her daughter, equally straight, but excitement and fear shone from her eyes as we looked at each other. She smiled.
“Arden, are you going to answer my question?” Lady Gwinlan said. Her lips were pursed and her eyebrows raised. She was expecting an answer.
“Sorry, ma’am.” I replied as I walked towards them. “I’ve come to warn you. The dragons are herding everyone out there onto the road. They’re burning everything on either side of it. I fear they mean to –”
“Yes, I take your meaning,” she said, stopping me from saying too much. “Well, what would you suggest? Plainly we cannot sit here forever with a war going on.”
“Yes, ma’am. I believe you have deep, stone cellars beneath your house, ma’am? That is the safest place I can think of. You can lock yourselves in until...”
She raised her eyebrows again in polite inquiry.
“…until my father and I return from the City for you.”
For the only time in my life I saw Lady Gwinlan close to losing her composure. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Then her daughter burst out.
“Arden, you can’t go to the City,” she cried, jumping to her feet and taking a step forward.
“Please, sit down, my dear,” said Lady Gwinlan, recovering herself. “Arden, we shall do as you suggest and await your return.”
“Mother, no,” her daughter said. “We can’t let him go.”
“My dear,” she said again, more firmly, “do sit down. Arden must go if he is to reach the City before the gates close.”
Her daughter remained standing.
“I suppose you have a horse, Arden?” Lady Gwinlan asked.
“Actually, ma’am, I lost him on the way here. The fires spooked him and he threw me.”
“Then take one from the stables and be on your way. No one here will need them.”
“Your people ran away, ma’am?”
“Yes, one of those hideous creatures flew over the house and they all ran. Now go, Arden. You are wasting time.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I turned to go, but her daughter rushed forward and took me by the hand. We looked at each other. We waited for words. Another moment and I could not have gone.
“I must go,” was all I could say.
“Come back,” she said.
“I will. God will see me through. But others need me now.”
I squeezed her hand. As I turned my back and hurried away, she whispered “come back” behind me. In the stable I found a horse already saddled, abandoned in the panic caused by the dragon passing overhead. Like almost everything else at the house of Gwinlan that day, the mare seemed deceptively calm. I mounted and urged her to a gallop, cutting across the garden. Lady Gwinlan was right. There wasn’t a moment to be lost. The gates would be closing soon.
As I rode past the porch, I raised my hand in farewell and tried to look cheerful, but neither of them saw me. Lady Gwinlan held her daughter’s bowed head to her shoulder and stroked her hair. All her attention was devoted to her. I bit my lip and went on. The garden ended, the woods passed by, and the horse carried me back out of the dream and into the fields of fire.

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