Jack Vance - The Dragon Masters

Twenty miles over the mountains, in the long pale light of the Aerlith afternoon, Ervis Carcolo planned his own plans. “By daring, by striking hard, by cutting deep I can defeat him! In resolve, in courage, in endurance, I am more than his equal. Not again will he trick me, to slaughter my dragons and kill my men! Oh, Joaz Banbeck, how I will pay you for your deceit!” He raised his arms in wrath. “Oh Joaz Banbeck, you whey-faced sheep!” Carcolo smote the air with his fist. “I will crush you like a clod of dry moss!” He frowned, rubbed his round red chin. “But how? Where? He has every advantage!”

Carcolo pondered his possible stratagems. “He will expect me to strike, so much is certain. Doubtless he will again wait in ambush. So I will patrol every inch, but this too he will expect and so be wary lest I thunder upon him from above. Will he hide behind Despoire, or along Northguard, to catch me as I cross the Skanse? If so, I must approach by another route—through Maudlin Pass and under Mount Gethron? Then, if he is tardy in his march, I will meet him on Banbeck Verge. And if he is early, I stalk him through the peaks and chasms.

With the cold rain of dawn pelting down upon them, with the trail illuminated only by lightning-glare, Ervis Carcolo, his dragons and his men set forth. When the first sparkle of sunlight struck Mount Despoire, they had already traversed Maudlin Pass.

So far, so good, exulted Ervis Carcolo. He stood high in his stirrups to scan Starbreak Fell. No sign of the Banbeck forces. He waited, scanning the far edge of Northguard Ridge, black against the sky. A minute passed, two minutes; the men beat their hands together, the dragons rumbled and muttered fretfully. Impatience began to prickle along Carcolo’s ribs; he fidgeted and cursed. Could not the simplest of plans be carried through without mistake? But now the flicker of a heliograph from Barch Spike, and another to the southeast from the slopes of Mount Gethron. Carcolo waved forward his army; the way clear across Starbreak Fell. Down from Maudlin Pass surged the Happy Valley army. First the Long-horned Murderers, steel-spiked and crested with steel prongs; then the rolling red seethe of the Termagants, darting their heads as they ran; and behind came the balance of the forces.

Starbreak Fell spread wide before them, a rolling slope strewn with flinty meteoric fragments which glinted like flowers on the gray-green moss. To all sides rose majestic peaks, snow blazing white in the clear morning light: Mount Gethron, Mount Despoire, Barch Spike, and far to the south, Clew Taw.

The scouts converged from left to right, and brought identical reports. There was no sign of Joaz Banbeck or his troops. Carcolo began to toy with a new possibility. Perhaps Joaz Banbeck had not deigned to take the fidd. The idea enraged him and filled him with a great joy: if so, Joaz would pay dearly for his neglect.

Halfway across Starbreak Fell they came upon a pen occupied by two hundred of Joaz Banbeck’s spratling Fiends. Two old men and a boy tended the pen, and watched the Happy Valley horde advance with manifest terror.

But Carcolo rode past leaving the pen unmolested. If he won the day, it would become part of his spoils; if he lost, the spratling Fiends could do him no harm.

The old men and the boy stood on the roof of their turf hut, watching Carcolo and his troops pass—the men in black uniforms and black peaked caps with back-slanting ear flaps; the dragons bounding, crawling, loping, plodding, according to their kind, scales glinting; the dull red and maroon of Termagants; the poisonous shine of the Blue Horrors; the black-green Fiends; the gray and brown Juggers and Murderers. Ervis Carcolo rode on the right flank, Bast Givven rode to the rear. And now Carcolo hastened the pace, haunted by the anxiety that Joaz Banbeck might bring his Fiends and Juggers up Banbeck Scarp before he arrived to thrust him back—assuming that Joaz Banbeck in all actuality had been caught napping.

But Carcolo reached Banbeck Verge without challenge. He shouted out in triumph, waved his cap high. “Joaz Banbeck the sluggard! Let him try now the ascent of Banbeck Scarp!” And Ervis Carcolo surveyed Banbeck Vale with the eye of a conqueror.

Bast Givven seemed to share none of Carcolo’s triumph, and kept an uneasy watch to north and south and to the rear.

Carcolo observed him peevishly from the corner of his eye and presently called out, “Ho, ho, then! What’s amiss?”

“Perhaps much, perhaps nothing,” said Bast Givven, searching the landscape.

Carcolo blew out his mustaches. Givven went on, in the cool voice which so completely irritated Carcolo. “Joaz Banbeck seems to be tricking us as before.”

“Why do you say this?”

“Judge for yourself. Would he allow us advantage without claiming a miser’s price?”

“Nonsense!” muttered Carcolo. “The sluggard is fat with his last victory.” But he rubbed his chin and peered uneasily down into Banbeck Vale. From here it seemed curiously quiet. There was a strange inactivity in the fields and barracks. A chill began to grip Carcolo’s heart. Then he cried out. “Look at the brooder, there are the Banbeck dragons!”

Givven squinted down into the vale, glanced sidewise at Carcolo. “Three Termagants, in egg.” He straightened, abandoned all interest in the vale and scrutinized the peaks and ridges to the north and east. “Assume that Joaz Banbeck set out before dawn, came up to the Verge, by the Slicken-slides, crossed Blue Fell—”

“What of Blue Crevasse?”

“He avoids Blue Crevasse to the north, comes over Barch-back, steals across the Skanse and around Barch Spike . . .”

Carcolo studied Northguard Ridge with new and startled awareness. A quiver of movement, the glint of scales?

“Retreat!” roared Carcolo. “Make for Barch Spike! They’re behind us!”

Startled, his army broke ranks, fled across Banbeck Verge, up into the harsh spurs of Barch Spike. Joaz, his strategy discovered, launched squads of Murderers to intercept the Happy Valley army, to engage and delay and, if possible, deny them the broken slopes of Barch Spike.

Carcolo calculated swiftly. His own Murderers he considered his finest troops, and held them in great pride. Purposely now he delayed, hoping to engage the Banbeck skirmishers, quickly destroy them and still gain the protection of the Barch declivities.

The Banbeck Murderers, however, refused to close, and scrambled for height up Barch Spike. Carcolo sent forward his Termagants and Blue Horrors; with a horrid snarling the two lines met. The Banbeck Termagants rushed up, to be met by Carcolo’s Striding Murderers, and forced into humping pounding flight.

The main body of Carcolo’s troops, excited at the sight of retreating foes, could not be restrained. They veered off from Barch Spike, plunged down upon Starbreak Fell. The Striding Murderers overtook the Banbeck Termagants, climbed up their backs, toppled them over squealing and kicking, then knifed open the exposed pink bellies.

Banbeck’s Long-horned Murderers came circling, struck from the flank into Carcolo’s Striding Murderers, goring with steel-tipped horns, impaling on lances. Somehow they overlooked Carcolo’s Blue Horrors who sprang down upon them. With axes and maces they laid the Murderers low, performing the rather grisly entertainment of clambering on a subdued Murderer, seizing the horn, stripping back horn, skin and scales, from head to tail. So Joaz Banbeck lost thirty Termagants and perhaps two dozen Murderers. Nevertheless, the attack served its own purpose, allowing him to bring his knights, Fiends and Juggers down from Northguard before Carcolo could gain the heights of Barch Spike.

Carcolo retreated in a slantwise line up the pocked slopes, and meanwhile sent six men across the fell to the pen where the spratling Fiends milled in fear at the battle. The men broke the gates, struck down the two old men, herded the young Fiends across the fell toward the Banbeck troops. The hysterical spratlings obeyed their instincts, clasped themselves to the neck of whatever dragon they first encountered, which thereupon became sorely hampered, for its own instincts prevented it from detaching the spratling by force.