Michael Stackpole - When Dragons Rage

“Will did as well, and Crow.” Sayce looked down, and her voice became wistful. “I heard whispers of you all before I came to Meredo. The raid on Wruona. The evacuation from Fortress Draconis. I imagined a band of heroes, but not the way you are. It’s less a band than a family. It hurts you to be apart from Crow, doesn’t it?”

That question surprised Alexia more than the duke’s suggestion. “I don’t like being separated from him, no.”

“He is all right out there, isn’t he?” Sayce glanced sidelong at her. “You would know if he wasn’t, wouldn’t you? Love is like that?”

“I feel I would, yes, and he would know if I were in danger here.”

“I’d know the same about Will.”

Alexia kept her face impassive. Sayce’s comparing her feeling for Will with Alexia’s for Crow made no sense. Sayce might say it to engage Alexia’s sympathies, but to what end? They were both trapped by the same army in the same city, with enemies outside the walls and vipers within. Any differences they could possibly have would be rendered insignificant by their situation.

The only reason that makes sense is…Alexia felt a chill run down her spine. “You really do love him, don’t you?”

The Murosan Princess looked up, then nodded quickly. “My sister was supposed to go to Meredo and seduce Will to get him to come to Muroso. I hated that idea, so I went myself. I was prepared to offer myself to him if need be, but I wanted to convince him to come of his own accord. I thought he would be so different: like his half brother in form, with Resolute’s brash attitudes. He wasn’t any of that. He was quiet and funny—and so very kind when he came and sat with me as I recovered. I hadn’t expected…”

She brushed away a tear, then smiled, though the corners of her mouth quivered. “Listen to me, I sound like a girl with her first crush. But I dream of him, you know, and I worry. The past several mornings I have woken up positively sick. And now that they are heading into Sarengul, I don’t know what to think, what to hope.”

“What to fear.”

Sayce nodded. “That’s the worst.”

“I know.” Alexia slid her left arm over Sayce’s shoulder. “I think we fear what they fear. Yes, never seeing us again, that’s a big one, but greater is dishonoring them with failure. I know Crow won’t let that happen.”

“Will won’t, either.”

“So then that fear is useless.” Alyx hugged her across the shoulders. “As for not seeing them again, well, the only people who will prevent that are the army out there. And that’s good enough reason, as far as I am concerned, for making sure they don’t succeed.”

With the new morning, Adrogans forced from his mind the incongruity of the previous day. The food provided by the Aurolani had been a bit plain but filling. The wine had been very good, much of it rescued from cellars in Svarskya or shipped in from Sebcia. Adrogans disliked drinking the spoils of battle, but toasts had been raised to the Aurolani defeat. As Caro had noted, better they drink it than any Aurolani troops and he found himself unable to argue with that logic.

Morning had come early and painfully—though not because of any hangover. His mistress, having slept the previous day away, now rode him with claws and spurs. There would be much discomfort meted out in the coming battle. If he did not concentrate, pains would impale him and cut at him, as they would countless others.

But concentrate he did, for his task was not a simple one. The ways into the inner city were limited. Two breaches in the walls had been created during the original siege. Barricades had been raised to block them using timbers and other debris from Svarskya. The one to the west of the main gate was impassable. To the east debris formed a causeway to a wide hole. The barrier there seemed less well built. Whether that was intentional, to be used as bait to lead them into a trap or not, he had no way of knowing.

That breach, however, was the weakest point in the inner city’s defenses.

The main gate stood open as its massive doors had been smashed down decades before. More debris had been arranged there, forming a series of small walls across the main road. While the soldiers stationed there would not survive long, the presence of the walls meant troops would have to slow to cross them. This would leave them very vulnerable to archers and dra-conetteers.

Adrogans also wondered about skycasters, thunderballs, and boombags. Their judicious placement would devastate his force, but he had no way to discover or disable them. And if he approached cautiously, as if they existed, and they did not, the assault would take far longer than it should. Yet, if he went in recklessly and they were employed, his force would be slain. There was no middle ground.

I must win with blood what I would have preferred to take with strategy.

Nor was it a good day for battle. Before dawn a cold north wind had begun to howl through the streets. Snowflakes started to fall. Though not thick, the wind drove the snow south, so his men would be marching against the wind. Worse yet, their arrows would be shot into it and, worst of all, the clouds to the north crept toward the city, promising much more snow.

“Signal the advance.”

The signalman blew the advance and other buglers picked it up and repeated it. Above the battlefield his remaining Warhawks flew. They dove repeatedly at the wall above the main gate. Their firecocks exploded brilliantly, their spears and arrows skewering soldiers. Burning oil sent fiery streamers down the wall and his men cheered as if that were an omen of victory.

Onward the soldiery marched. In thick, swollen ranks the infantry advanced. Aurolani troops at the main gate rose and shot arrows or threw spears. Some men went down, but the arrows and spears that flew back scattered the opposition. Those who could retreated and scrambled back toward the inner city, and the front ranks of the Helurian Imperial Steel Legion reached the first wall. They crossed it and pressed on, though another hail of missiles tore at them.

Over to the east, Beal mot Tsuvo led her clan’s dozen companies in a suicidal charge up the causeway to the breach. Adrogans had not wanted to give her the honor of that position. He viewed it as dubious, especially in light of the fact that the first troops in there would almost assuredly die, but she demanded it. While her role in the march to Svarskya had been vital, she and her troops had been spared in major engagements and their highland blood demanded the chance to prove themselves.

There, arrows flew thicker than snowflakes. Warriors rushed upward, round shields raised and festooned with arrows. People slipped and fell, some never to rise, others to struggle up and keep moving forward. As the Guranin warriors drew close, grapnels on ropes flew, catching on the barricades. Stout warriors grabbed the ropes and pulled, though the arrows that greeted their effort killed many. As a gap opened in the barricade, warriors surged forward. They leaped over tumbling timbers and batted aside thrown rocks, then fell among the gibberers opposing them.

Adrogans waited for a boombag to explode, reducing the clan warriors to meat and ghosts, but nothing happened. Then he waited for dragonels to blast, splitting the morning with thunder and bright light. Scattershot would rip through his troops, anointing that gap with blood.

The infantry had drawn closer to the main gate. The Jeranese Crown Guards had slipped through the thinned ranks of the Steel Legion and driven forward. They’d taken the second wall and the third, with one remaining before the barrier at the main gate. There, or deeper in, or just on the other side, dragonels and archers could rake his troops. Boombags could leave smoking craters where they had been.