Michael Stackpole - When Dragons Rage

“With profound admiration, I am, Nefrai-kesh.”

Caro stared at him. “That cannot be what it says.”

“Read it for yourself.”

The Alcidese general frowned. “We won because we dared push at a time when she had her troops elsewhere?”

“A fiction. The dragonels used at Lurrü or Porjal could have been shipped from there to here in five days, easily. The same for troops. It has been nearly a month since we took the Three Brothers. This city should have been teeming with gibberers.”

Caro sighed heavily and stared out the window that overlooked the wall. “Why the pantomime? At the bridge he could have hurt us. Here he could have hurt us. Why?”

Phfas reached over and pulled the leg off what appeared to be a chicken. “Does why matter? The witch has lost the city.”

“You’re wrong, Uncle. She didn’t lose it.” Adrogans frowned. “She traded it to us. But for what?”

The Zhusk shaman shrugged. “Time will tell.”

“It will.” Adrogans shivered. “I just don’t think it’s a tale I want to hear.”

In some way, Erlestoke reflected, it was unfortunate that the Aurolani arrow had not been poisoned. It had taken him through the right thigh. Jilandessa said it hadn’t done too much damage, so he didn’t let her do more to it than stop the bleeding and close the flesh. Her skills were needed elsewhere, on more grievous wounds, and he was able to limp along as he was.

But had the arrow been poisoned, he’d be dead. That would mean his nose and cheeks, ears, toes, and fingers wouldn’t be burning with frostbite. He’d not be consumed with fear about the DragonCrown fragment falling into enemy hands. He wouldn’t feel hungry and tired or any other of those things that differentiated the living from the dead.

Their escape had not been without casualties. Jullagh-tse’s plan had functioned well, and they’d made it into the trickle tube easily enough. As they started to exit, though, Verum volunteered to stay behind. Erlestoke still heard shooting when he left the tube, so he allowed himself to imagine that, somehow, the meckanshü might still be alive somewhere in Sarengul.

Jullagh-tse Seegg led them through the mountains on a course that ran south and a bit west. She was angling for a pass with a chasm spanned by a rope bridge. It had been years since she had gone that way, but all of the landmarks remained in place to guide her. The chasm literally split one whole duchy in Sarengul, and if the Aurolani were going to use the internal tunnels to get ahead of them, they would have to go far out of their way to do so. They all hoped that the Aurolani forces had not yet penetrated that deeply into Sarengul.

To fully escape pursuit, all they would have to do is reach the bridge and cross over, then cut it behind them. Jullagh-tse had also described the chasm as being huge and bottomless. In the back of his mind Erlestoke considered it a possible dumping place for the DragonCrown fragment.

The Aurolani did pursue them, and relentlessly. At dawn the Aurolani had ambushed them—killing three and wounding four, though none of the wounded was crippled. His group had gone from a dozen to seven, which, given all they had done, was rather remarkable. Still, being tired, falling into that ambush, and losing people so close to their final escape took the heart right out of him.

Wind whipped through the mountains, driving snow south. Erlestoke much preferred the wind at his back, but it made watching their back trail painfully difficult. Out through the shifting sheets of snow he could see gib-berers. Some were on the ground, following their path directly, while others moved up into the rocks. The wind neutralized arrows, but that didn’t stop the Aurolani from launching them.

And, as always, trailing them, came the cloaked figure. It walked awkwardly, but kept advancing. The wind tugged at its scarlet cloak, but it never stopped. It never hunkered down against the wind, nor raised a hand to shield its face. What seemed worse to Erlestoke was the nagging sense that what had been a severed arm two days previous had, in fact, grown back somewhat.

Jullagh-tse pointed south and then to the right. “There, you can see the opening to the canyon. Not far now.”

“So they will have to make their move if they don’t want to be cut off, right?”

“Yes.” The urZrethi looked down. “Highness, I am best equipped in the mountains…”

“Yes, of course.” Erlestoke made to shrug his way out of the harness that held the DragonCrown fragment. “Take this and head out, fast.”

She laid a brown hand over his mittened right hand. “No, Highness, what I mean is that you should move quickly and let me hold them off.”

“It’s not happening that way.” He looked back at the others. “Let’s move fast now. Speed will be our friend. Once we’re over the Ijridge, we’re safe. Rys, Finn, go!”

The two elves led the way through the narrowing canyon and off on the twisting crosscut that would lead to the chasm and their salvation. The wind muted the cry of a gibberer high on a point, but others heard it and began to come on faster. Other cries came from the high rocks, and Erlestoke surmised that more Aurolani troops had arrived from inside the mountains.

Jullagh-tse helped him limp back as best he could. He held his quadnel in his left hand and had his right arm draped over her shoulders. His right leg wasn’t working that well, so his foot dragged along, leaving a long, serpentine trail.

A couple of black arrows fell here and there. Ryswin snatched one up, fitted it to his silverwood bow, and returned it to one of the gibberers.

Onward they raced into the western canyon. It narrowed to twenty yards at the tightest point and twisted back and forth twice, making it easy to hold off pursuit, even if for only a moment. Inside the canyon itself the wind died. Erlestoke could hear the crunch of feet on snow and the hissed grumbles of his wounded comrades as they worked their way west. Anticipation grew as well, for the canyon began to widen and took one more grand, sweeping turn to the south.

There they would find the chasm and the bridge.

They did—but things were not quite as predicted.

The chasm itself was much as Jullagh-tse had described it. The canyon sloped slowly down to it, barely five hundred yards distant. When she’d seen it last, it was in the summer, with meadow grasses providing a verdant carpet dotted with the reds, yellows, and blues of flowers. Grey stone showed where ice and snow now clung in frozen sheets. The chasm itself, which was easily two hundred yards across, had its own coat of snow and ice on the edges, almost suggesting a dark trough between two snowdrifts.

Erlestoke looked over at Jullagh-tse. “When you said you’d not been here in a while, exactly how much time were we talking?”

“Seventy years or so. At that time they were only talking about doing this, and they’d been talking about it forever.” Her flesh lightened to a streaky tan. “I had no idea.”

The rope bridge that was to be their salvation had long since been replaced by a strong, proud arch spanning the gulf. Heavy blocks had been used to create it, and marble to finish it. In the urZrethi tradition, it was decorated with wonderful running sculptures and tableaux. Though snow did cling to portions of the span, the majority of it remained clear. Wide enough to let four horsemen ride abreast, it featured welcoming stone sentinels who greeted the travelers with broad smiles.

Erlestoke shook his head. Even using every last ounce of firedirt they possessed, they couldn’t have loosened a single block. “And it’s too wide to defend against what is pursuing us.”

Ryswin, who had stopped twenty yards on, looked back at him. “What do we do?”