DragonCrown Saga - The Grand Crusade Part 26

Sayce swiped at a tear that dripped from beneath her mask. "That was funny, the south being corrupt, especially coming from Chytrine's heir. I don't mean to laughatyou, but, if you believe that... you've led a very sheltered life, haven't you?"

Isaura frowned. "You are making fun of me."

"I am, but don't go. I'm sorry." Sayce returned to her food and finished the soup quickly. "I just want you to understand that, because of your mother, my nation no longer exists. My father and mother, my brothers and sisters, nephews, nieces, and cousins are all dead. I have no family at all, save the child I am carrying, because of your mother or her agents. Your mother has taken from me everything but the will to live, and she'd take that if she knew how."

"That's not true."

Sayce looked up at her. "Does your mother know you are here?"

"No, but this is something with which she should not be bothered. She has more important things to do."

Sayce looked at Hlucri. "You only told Isaura about how my food was being stolen?"

Thesullancirishrugged. "Best done that way."

The Murosan looked back at Isaura. "Why did you want to talk to me? Really?"

Isaura looked down at her hands. "I saw many things in the south. Things that made me feel odd. I love my mother, but things being done in her name were horrible. I don't know. I am confused. I know she is good. She loves me and her people, but I don't understand any of this."

Even as she uttered those words, the place her mother had taken her to came back. The Oromise were pushing her mother to do what she was doing. Her mother had told her of the dragons and how they betrayed the Oromise, but her mother had told her many other things that her time in the south seemed to contradict. None of it made sense.

Sayce's lips pressed into a grim line. "You're not the only one who doesn't understand. Have you lost friends in the war?"

Isaura remembered thekryalniriTribulation. "One. I do not have many friends here. They hate me, like you do, or fear me."

Sayce smiled. "I know fear and hatred. My father was king, so people sought me out to win favor or power, or they slunk away from me, afraid. I was not a person to them, but an object. I was a means to power or a way to direct it. At it could penetrate armor, and even if it couldn't, the force might be enough to knock a warrior down.

While draconetteers could not shoot as fast or as accurately as an archer, neither did they take a lot of training to produce.

Alexia further suspected that the presence of draconetteers was not sufficient to explain the need for so much firedirt. She believed that somewhere just beyond the crest of the hill, the Aurolani had set up several batteries of skycast-ers-short, squat weapons that used a charge of firedirt to loft a missile in a high arc. The missile was itself packed with more firedirt and fused, so it would explode in the air above the battlefield. The resulting spray of iron shrapnel could shred flesh and destroy many a unit.

The Aurolani had arrayed themselves simply. A pair of cavalry battalions formed each wing, with one battalion drawn back in reserve. Similarly three battalions of infantry were held back. A regiment of heavy infantry, including one battalion of draconetteers, occupied the center, while the other two lighter regiments overlapped the center and the two wings. The lighter regiments had a gap between them, which is where Alexia a.s.sumed the skycasters would be located. Once the fog had burned off, she would have a Gyrkyme scout confirm her suspicions.

She carefully arrayed her troops. Two regiments, one behind the other, made up her center. On each wing she placed one regiment of heavy infantry. Behind the heavy infantry each side got two battalions of heavy cavalry. Then, on the extreme right, she stacked three battalions of light cavalry. In reserve she kept some heavy cavalry, and roughly half of her infantry. That infantry was largely made up of mercenaries and untested volunteers, whom she did not want to rely on until she had seen how they would fight.

She tried to project herself into the mind of her enemy, but that enemy was an undeadsullanciri, which made the task very difficult. But while the Aurolani had the superior tactical position, the sheer press of numbers should be enough to drive them back and break them. It would be a victory won with a lot of blood, but it would be a victory nonetheless.

Losing is less of a problem for the Aurolani, since all they really need do is bleed us. The Aurolani hordes seemed able to withstand incredible losses. Alyx supposed it could be all bluff on Chytrine's part to demoralize the south, but to keep coming after having an army wiped out in Muroso was something the south never would have done. The Aurolani just kept pushing, and Alexia could not shake the idea that she was being trapped.

The battle also wasn't arrayed exactly as she had said it would be in her supposed dream, but it was close enough to cause her to wonder what Chytrine was thinking. Getting into her head, however, was even more difficult than understanding Tythsai. From Alexia's perspective, however, the proposition was simple. If she thrust her forces forward, both skycaster a.s.saults and draconetteers would weaken her formation enough that Aurolani cavalry would punch through, and her infantry would then slaughter whoever was left.

That meant her strategy was pretty clear: she could not advance her troops the way the Aurolani hoped she would.

Alexia, wearing golden mail girded at the waist with her sword belt and bearing the sword Heart, mounted her horse. She rode toward the east and the rising sun, to the point where the light cavalry waited. She reined up at the rear of that formation, then nodded to a signalman. He blew an alert, then the battalion designators, followed by an advance. He repeated the series of notes, and other buglers in the force relayed them throughout.

Because she could not send her infantry forward, she had to entice the Aurolani to come to her. The only real advantage she had over the Nor'witch's troops was that her troops had discipline. They would not break, run, or act without orders. Everyone had been told what the plan was, so they knew their part and were willing to play it. That was especially true if it would keep them out of range of the skycasters.

The light cavalry, led by the Alcidese Queen's Light Horse, raced out and around on an arc from east to north. They splashed through the wet turf quickly enough, then headed up the incline toward the Aurolani left wing. The young sun shone brightly from polished helms. Tabards and pennants of red, green, and white flapped and snapped, and the three battalions raced forward in good order.

The Aurolani cavalry unit toward which they headed had only six hundred members. It begin to shift so the warriors could countercharge. The riders- gibberers mostly, with a fewkryalniriand more human renegades-kept their frostclaw mounts under control with difficulty. The feathered beasts snapped tooth-filled jaws at the oncoming hors.e.m.e.n, and their huge, sickle-shaped claws twitched in antic.i.p.ation of rending flesh.

Alexia's troops knew the effective range of a frostclaw charge was not much more than a hundred yards. While the creatures could cross that distance in an amazingly short time, their nature as pack hunters didn't give them a lot of endurance. Normally another frostclaw would pick up the chase where the last abandoned it and, if allowed to lope, any one of them could chase prey forever. At the end of the charge, however, their strength would begin to flag, and they would begin to look for easier prey.

The Alcidese hors.e.m.e.n reached that range and began to wheel northeast, presenting their flank to the Aurolani troops. The soldiers loosed a flight of arrows from their short horse bows. The arrows flew in a high arc and landed mostly on target. The shots were not aimed, but many found flesh or bounced off armor. A few Aurolani fell, and more than one frostclaw bit at an arrow in its side, but the volley had done little more than hara.s.s.

Then the Jeranese Royal Cavalry executed the same maneuver and hit more of the cavalry with arrows.

Behind the enemy lines drums boomed and banners shifted. Alexia found it easy to imagine the skycasters getting adjusted to cover the left flank. As the Jeranese hors.e.m.e.n completed the curl and headed back around to their lines, the Aurolani cavalry broke into a charge, but without organization. Some frostclaws started, others followed, with six hundred of them coming in waves.

The third light cavalry unit in her charge slowed as the Aurolani charged. Unlike the other two units, the Murosan First Vengeance were not armed with horse bows. They possessed crossbows and released a volley that flew in virtually a flat arc, well aimed. It scythed through the first wave of Aurolani cavalry.

Frostclaws shrieked furiously as the steel-headed quarrels slammed into them or pitched their riders from the saddle. Some warriors found themselves dragged behind their mounts, while others, less fortunate, had their mounts turn on them, gnawing themselves free of their burden. Those frostclaws that went down spilled their riders to the ground. Other frostclaws leaped over the dead and dying and kept coming, but more common were collisions between a charging beast and one thrashing in the throes of agony.

A bugle blew near Alexia, which brought the Alcidese and Jeranese units around to the east again, reversing their retreat. They moved a bit wider, so the Aurolani charge would pa.s.s between them and their own lines. They raked the Aurolani with another volley, then each archer began to pick targets.

Again the shots killed few but p.r.i.c.ked many, and drove the near flank to turn toward the center of the battlefield, causing more confusion.

The Aurolani lead element did hit the Murosan light cavalry and blasted into it hard. Horses reared and toppled, entrails spraying out from slashed bellies. Swords flashed silver one moment, then rose red.

Blood sprayed from severed limbs, and men clutched at cloven faces or at the lances that had pierced their bellies. Frostclaws bit horses across the muzzle, crushing their skulls, though occasionally a steel-shod hoof dented a temeryx pate.

The bugle that had signaled the light cavalry to turn also triggered other activity on Alexia's line. Both light infantry regiments that formed her center began to withdraw, with the front ranks turning and running away, back through their own lines. From her vantage point she could see them reach the back of their own formation and regroup, but to Aurolani eyes-and especially those of the frostclaws-her troops were running.

The frostclaws that had turned toward the center read nothing but prey behavior in the retreat, so they sprinted toward the opening. Mud and tufts of gra.s.s splashed up, soiling their white feathers. The soft ground slowed their charge, but it mattered little. The riders could not control their mounts, and their mounts wanted prey.

The infantry retreat, however, opened a gap that allowed a pair of heavy cavalry battalions-the Alcidese Iron Horse-to charge into the center. As the frostclaws left the swampy part of the battlefield, the heavy cavalry, with armored knights hunched behind stout lances and thick shields, slammed into their line straight on.

Frostclaws flew, with b.l.o.o.d.y feathers drifting down to mark their flights.

Lances transfixed the creatures and were abandoned. Swords came to hand, hewing and chopping. One valiant Aurolani warrior raised his unit's standard to rally his comrades, but two Alcidese Iron Horse cut him down and brought then ine-skull banner back with them to great shouts from the rest of her army.

The Iron Horse continued their charge and screened the Murosans, letting them retreat. Some of the draconetteers in the Aurolani center shot, but at that range their attacks were little more effective than the long bowshots by the light cavalry. Alexia's light infantry surged forward in the wake of the charge, finishing off what was left of the Aurolani cavalry. Off to the right, the light cavalry reformed forward of the swamp line, ready to play the hara.s.sment game once more, while the Iron Horse trotted back around to take their position again.

After less than an hour of battle, the Aurolani had lost one cavalry wing, she'd lost less than five percent of her cavalry, and the skycasters had not been used at all. Because of their lack of discipline, the Aurolani troops had literally been decimated.

Alyx nodded to the bugler, who blew a holding order. The waiting began. Tythsai could clearly see that Alexia was not going to advance and fall into her trap. The skycasters would have been effective against slow-moving troops, but not cavalry-not unless the battlefield was arranged such that a charge had to be channeled into a killing zone where the skycasters could be preaimed and ready to go. Alexia's study of Saporicia indicated there were only a couple of places where that sort of thing was possible-the closest one being the pa.s.s at Fronosa. If Tythsai advanced, she risked having her troops mauled by Alexia's. The southern force had more people, and they were better disciplined. Alexia had enough troops that she could entirely envelop the Aurolani formation. Such an overwhelming victory would be expensive in terms of casualties, since no quarter would be asked or given. It would also risk the capture of the skycasters and regardless of what happened with dragonels in Okrannel, Alexia was pretty certain thesullanciridid not want to lose those weapons.

The sound of drums on the other side shifted and the light infantry divisions began to move back. Alexia looked at her bugler. "Call our cavalry back, please." He did as she bid him, and her light cavalry retreated through the marshes. The Murosans quitted the field last and the army cheered them mightily.

The battle might be being fought in Saporicia, but everyone in the force felt the Murosans deserved to draw blood, and were happy they had.

They'd also left people on the battlefield. Those bodies would be recovered, life masks would be carefully borne away, friends would be mourned, then the warriors would prepare to march out to the next battlefield.

Alexia rode back toward the center and her pavilion. Arimtara took the reins of her horse as she dismounted. The dragon studied her for a moment, then half lidded her eyes.

"You could have let me become my true self and incinerate great chunks of that force."

"I could have, but I didn't."

"Why not?"

Alexia pointed to the troops arrayed in the field. "Two reasons. The first is that I want to use you to the best advantage, and that will come later. I don't know when, but you have the ability to turn the tide of a battle. Moreover, you can oppose a dragon, and I don't want Chytrine to send one against us too early.

I want you to surprise her.

"The primary reason, however, is because the army needs to feel unified. This was not much of a battle, but everyone did what they were supposed to do. They all felt the fear, they all feel the exaltation of victory, and they all have lost friends. If you had destroyed that host, it would not have beentheirvictory, it would have been yours, and they'd not be coming together the way I will need them to if we are to win in the final battle."

Arimtara nodded, then c.o.c.ked her head to the side. "You were clever enough to plan a battle that cost them cavalry. Could you not have planned further and cost them more?"

"Possibly, but it would have cost me heavily." The princess looked across the battlefield toward where Tythsai's banner was shrinking away. "Right now she is thinking that I am tricky and a coward, since nothing I did here had the scent of boldness. I could have had the light cavalry go after her flanks again and again, but I was content to let her retreat. She will always expect that I will let her disengage, which is good, because the one time I don't, the one time I press forward, this army will be through her force faster than gra.s.s through a goose. If I'm going to destroy that army, I need its leader thinking I'll never do anything of the kind. Once she is convinced of that, we'll kill her again."

Resolute raised a hand to stop the others behind him. He slowly crouched on the woodland trail and peered through the woods. The Grey Misters who had joined him might well have been quiet enough to sneak around Yslin, but in the forests of Loquellyn they made as much noise as a herd of cattle- complete, in some cases, with lowing complaints about thirst or blisters. A few even sported wounds from the engagement with Aurolani troops several nights back, but those Vorquelves tended toward stoicism and remained quieter than their brethren.

Resolute turned his head slightly to the left and saw Qwc perched on his shoulder, his spear at the ready.

The argent-eyed warrior pointed off north-northeast, then nodded, and the Spritha took flight. He darted between trees with the angular precision of a dragonfly in flight.

He returned quickly and flashed enough fingers to communicate the fact that nearly a score of individuals waited in the brush. Resolute nodded his understanding, but the Spritha did not stop. With his spear held in his lower two hands, the upper pair pantomimed settling a crown on his head. Resolute raised an eyebrow, Qwc nodded enthusiastically, and the Vorquelf actually managed a smile.

He stood and cupped his hands around his mouth. "Trawyn, Princess of Loquellyn, you need hide no more. Those who were hunting you are dead."

His call got no response, but he'd not expected one. "We have met, Highness, when you welcomed a Gyrkyme into the palace at Rellaence, not yet a year past." Resolute tried to use his best Elvish to speak to her, but among the Vorquelves eloquence had eroded. He dimly recalled a time when he liked weaving words into patterns and formal sequences, but much blood had run between that time and this.

Resolute started down through the trees in the direction Qwc had flown. "I am coming to you. You will see me before I see you, and you may decide what to do then."

As he moved down the needle-and-leaf-strewn slope, he sought signs of the elves' pa.s.sage. He thought he would see wet leaves showing from beneath a layer of dry, or a plant stem crushed underfoot. He even watched for threads caught on thorns, but until she stepped from the brush before him, and two archers with nocked and drawn arrows flanked him, he'd seen nothing.

"You're Resolute, but you could be one ofhercreatures."

Trawyn was not as he remembered her. Her auburn hair had been long and flowing free, but now it was hacked off to less than a finger length. Her left eye was still a pure blue, but a b.l.o.o.d.y rag hid the other socket. In Rellaence she had worn gowns, but here her clothes were more the castoffs peasants would give to beggars. Dirt and blood smudged her cheeks and hands, and her one eye had a dark circle beneath it.

Resolute instantly dropped to a knee. "I am Resolute, and I would never in life become one of her creatures."

Trawyn raised a hand, then lowered it, and the archers relaxed their pull on the arrows but did not take their hands from the bowstrings. "You said the things chasing us are dead?"

"Oversize gibberers and some lizard-dogs?" Resolute shifted to Mantongue as Qwc lighted on his shoulder. "They ambushed us several nights ago. They got more than they bargained for."

The elven princess shook her head. "Are you arrogant, Vorquelf, or do you seek to scourge me with the fact that you, a child, have fared better than we have?"

The pain in her voice, along with the wearied accusation, indicated how close to the breaking point she was. Another time he might have risen to the bait, but he refrained. "I referred to Kerrigan, not myself.

Bring your group, join with us, and tell me what has happened. We've been sent here to Loquellyn to see if you will help oppose Chytrine. I'll a.s.sume you'll decline, and I would like to know why."

Trawyn's party numbered seventeen. All of them were wounded, and two very seriously. In their flight from the capital, they had trekked up the a.s.sariennia River. Pursuit was relentless, and intensified when they got into the mountains. Her people had been days without anything beyond winterberries picked in haste and water drunk by the handful, whether fresh or stagnant.

Resolute led the group back to the Grey Mist camp, where the healers, including Kerrigan, set about doing what they could. The human mage took a look at Trawyn's right eye and cast some spells, but could do nothing more than shake his head. "I would heal it if I could, Princess, but there is nothing there to heal."

She nodded. "One of theturekadinegouged it out, and I was obliged to slice the eye off the stalk because its hanging on my cheek distracted me."

Resolute authorized the building of fires, which the surviving Grey Misters took to gladly. Water was hauled and set to boiling, first for*ea, then to turn roots, berries, and dried meat in a soup the refugees could consume without gagging. The Vorquelf set out pickets in pairs, and the Grey Misters took that duty very seriously. Those who did not have immediate watch spoke with the princess' party and learned all they could about the events in Loquellyn.

Trawyn huddled beneath a blanket as night began to fall. The fire crackling before her danced shadows over her face. She cupped a bowl of broth in her hands, but stared past it into the flames. "They came without warning, Resolute. It wasn't the way they'd come for Vorquellyn. They didn't have that number of ships, and our fleet stood ready to oppose them. No, they came stealthily, and were among us before we really had any chance of opposing them."

A shiver ran down Resolute's spine as she spoke. Part of it was from the returning memories of when his home was overrun by the Aurolani. s.n.a.t.c.hes of mayhem backlit by fires, b.l.o.o.d.y faces, pieces of limbs, screams that ended abruptly-all of those came to him. They tried to overwhelm him, but could not, because for every Vorquelven scream, he had torn dozens from the throats of gibberers. For every hacked limb, he had harvested legions. What the Aurolani had done to Vorquelves in a handful of nights, he had avenged over a century.

What truly wormed its way into him was the despair in her voice. She was far older than he, and bound to a homeland, but she sounded so lost and distant. He'd heard such tones in the voices of men, but never in one of his elders. He'd come to think such hopelessness was the province of the short-lived.

Hearing it in her voice unsettled him, disrupting what he had thought was a fundamental truth. That an immortal could despair made him question whether or not he would prevail in his quest to free his homeland.

Trawyn's eye half shut and her shoulders hunched forward. "They took our ships first. I did not see it, but one of our number had been a sailor. He survived the destruction of his ship only to die on the run.

He said a great hole in the ocean opened up, and his ship was drawn into a maw studded with teeth. The beast crushed the ship, and he would have been swallowed but somehow he was expelled through the gill slits and made it to the surface.

"Those same beasts, or some just like them, then came into harbors throughout Loquellyn. They beached themselves, smashing quays and ships. They opened their mouths and from them rushed nyressanu-in Mantongue you'd likely call them demon-frogs or fright-toads. They had slick, leathery flesh, mostly black but decorated with stripes of brilliant red, green, and yellow. The slime on them burned if you touched, them. Their webbed hands and feet had claws, and they were capable of prodigious leaps. For all that, though, they were able to move quietly and quickly into the cities, slaying guards."

She slowly shook her head. "After that came torpid old ships-creaky barges, nothing more, loaded withturekadineand their little hunting beasts, theslur-riki. They brought the slaughter you saw on Vorquellyn. You've fought them; you know they are bigger and stronger than gibberers. We fought back as valiantly as we could, but thenyressanuhad slain many warriors."

Kerrigan sank to his knees near the fire and held his hands out toward it to warm them. "So Loquellyn has fallen as Vorquellyn did?"

"No." Trawyn blinked and looked at the human mage. "I remember the adults from Vorquellyn and the pain they were in when their nation was conquered. We did all we could for them, even giving them tinctures of dreamwing, but it did nothing. The Aurolani did not come to conquer Loquellyn. Their troops have already withdrawn in some cases-into Muroso by the coast roads."

Resolute nodded. "They came for the DragonCrown fragment we left with you. Did they get it?"

Trawyn shook her head. "No."

"Where is it?"

"I don't know."

"I don't believe you. Highness."

She snorted. "Good of you to add my t.i.tle. It softens the fact that you say I am lying."

"Tell me what you know. It is still in Loquellyn?"

Trawyn shrugged-which clearly had taken much effort. "We had stored the sapphire fragment in the palace vaults. It was as secure a place as we could find."

Resolute arched an eyebrow. "The Rellaencecoruesciwould have kept all away from it."

"All but those bound to Loquellyn." She bared her teeth in a feral manner. "We could not have been certain that someone might not have been compelled or induced to enter thecoruesci. Aside from that, having a fragment stored there would have been disruptive. Thecoruesciis a place for peaceful reflection and isolation from the outside world. Ensconcing the fragment there would have destroyed the peace, so we put it in the palace vault."

The princess' voice softened. "They had captured my mother and my sister. I watched the Aurolani begin to torture them. I listened to their screams and I could stand it no longer. I led the Aurolani to the vaults and opened them. I saw the fragment was no longer there. This is when they began to a.s.sault me, out of fury and anger. I pa.s.sed out, and when I recovered, I was alone, with deadturekadinesurrounding me. I made my way from the palace, found others and fled, only to find ourselves hunted."

Kerrigan frowned. "So the fragment is still out there?"

"I do not know."

The Vilwanese mage looked at Resolute. "If the Aurolani are hunting it, we need to get it first."