Michael Stackpole - When Dragons Rage

“I’m fine now.” Will tried to keep his voice light, but a bit of rawness still came through. “I am.”

“That wasn’t the question Peri asked, Will.” Dranae settled a hand on his right shoulder and drew him back around. “Soup and sleep will help you recover, and you need that. We don’t know what the poison did, or how well you have been healed.”

Will rubbed at the scars on his neck. “There are things that need to be done. The fragment…”

The Gyrkyme shook her head. “Scrainwood’s mages cut that section of the rafter out and have conveyed it to the palace. Tomorrow there will be one final formal hearing before Crow is released. There is nothing for you to do.”

“Well, there must be things you need to be doing. I am fine here. You don’t have to worry about that.”

Dranae lifted up the corner of the blanket and let Qwc free himself. “Will, we are concerned for you, but that is only part of the reason we’re here.”

Lombo stretched, flashing claws. “Kerrigan missing. Will stays found”

The thief blinked. “You’re here guarding me?”

“Not needed. Told them no help needed.” Qwc shrugged wearily. “Not listening, not listening at all.”

Will laughed. “Thank you, I guess.”

“No guessing about it, Will. You are the Norrington. You were very nearly killed.” Peri reached down and stroked a downy finger against his right cheek. “You are the hope of the world. Hope can’t die.”

He rubbed his throat again. “I wish Chytrine shared that opinion.”

Dranae laughed. “She will, eventually. For her, though, it will just come too late to save her.”

Though he sat astride his horse alone, Adrogans could feel the Mistress of Pain clinging to him. She hugged his back to her chest, her claws raking down his chest. Her jagged teeth gnawed at his shoulder and neck. Though her distraction was mighty, Adrogans’ concentration was greater. As she used him, he used her, and he got the better of the bargain.

Around him swirled an early-morning blizzard, and the flakes fell thick and fast. Fading into the distance on either side of the Svar River’s western shore was the forest through which his troops had moved. Below his position, the land sloped down for five hundred yards to the river’s northern ford. The water appeared as a dim black snake, and beyond it lay vague grey-and-white mounds that had once been a small stronghold guarding this important crossing.

Though he could not actually see any movement down there, the yrun allowed him to feel the presence of the enemy. Adrogans could not determine how many there were, for he was too young in his power to do so. All he could tell was that there were a lot of them and that both hunger and cold assailed them.

He glanced left at Phfas. The diminutive Zhusk sat the back of a shaggy brown mountain pony. “Your impressions, Uncle?”

Phfas sniffed at the air. “They will not smell worse dead. Gibberkin, vylaens, hoargoun, and something else.”

“Something else?” Adrogans focused his perception and Pain lanced a hand deep into his side. He blinked, then refocused, using the clarity that pain gave him. He nodded. There, deep in the knot of bodies that were hungry and shivering, there were others.

“I have them, but do not know them.”

The little shaman tightened his grip on the thin woolen blanket he wore over his shoulders. The dark blue and green plaid seemed out of place, though the Guarnin family who gave it to him had been proud he’d carried it with him. Phfas hunched forward in his saddle, as if he were going to whisper to his mount, then slowly shook his head.

“New. A surprise.”

“In one sense, yes.” Adrogans had taken pains to deploy his light units against the raiders that the Aurolani were sending into the highlands. He would have been content, as his troops trained, to do nothing more than deal with the raiders. When Nefrai-kesh showed up in Meredo, however, his plans changed. He learned instantly of the sullanciri’s presence in the Oriosan capital via arcanslata and decided to strike fast—before Chytrine’s general could return to direct his soldiers.

Adrogans raised his right hand and felt his mistress slip her fingers through his to rake agony down into his armpit. When he let his arm fall again, a mounted trumpeter on his right sounded a call. The Jeranese Horse Guards, resplendent in their brown tabards over ringmail, emerged from the forest and began the descent to the river valley. Off to his right the Jeranese Light Horse came down the hills in a column two abreast and on the left the elite Valician White Mane cavalry rode into position. The three cavalry units gave him three hundred mounted troopers and a force that would sweep swiftly over the ford.

Their ride had not been easy because Guraskya lay nearly sixty miles from the ford. They moved out quickly and changed mounts several times on the journey. The cavalry had not enjoyed pushing their horses so hard in the winter, but they were less inclined to squander an opportunity to strike at the enemy.

While Adrogans could not get an accurate count of the enemy via the yrun’s senses, he could tell that the garrison was not that big. He estimated that his forces had a two-to-one advantage, which would have boded well were he not fighting across a river in the midst of a blizzard and attacking a fortified position.

As expected, the trumpeter’s call had done more than summon up the Southlands troops. Dark forms began to stir in the enemy camp. Adrogans studied them, matching what his eyes showed him with what he sensed through pain. Everything seemed to fit save for one rather large anomaly.

“That is a hoargoun down there, yes?”

Phfas nodded solemnly.

The frost giant plodded forward through the snow, dragging a club made from the bole of a tree behind it. Though it moved ponderously slowly, it waded into the river. Water boiled around its broad feet, rising to cover its ankles when Adrogans knew the frigid water would come up to his own knees.

Adrogans concentrated, then shook his head. “I can’t feel it, and that water has got to be cold. It must hurt.”

The Zhusk shaman again sniffed the air. “That one is beyond hurt.”

“Reanimated?”

“Not alive.”

“That would mean some fairly powerful magicks at play.”

“You’re surprised.”

The Jeranese general shook his head. With the frost giant contesting the ford, getting a massed formation past would be tough. That club would crush warriors and scatter horses. Adrogans knew the creature would go down eventually; alive or undead it could be chopped to bits. His concern was for how much damage it would do before it was brought down.

Down below, the cavalry units drew themselves up just two hundred yards from the river’s far shore, which put them outside the effective range of arrows and draconettes. It would put them in jeopardy from a dragonel shot or even the thunderballs he’d heard about from Fortress Draconis. It was a danger he had to accept, because without massing his troops for a charge, he wouldn’t get past the ford. And while that did make them more vulnerable to ranged weapons, for them to spread out would have been a disaster.

Adrogans glanced to his right. “Signal slow advance.”

The trumpeter blared out another call and the heavy cavalry began a slow advance toward the ford. The general urged his horse forward. Phfas followed on his left and the signalman on his right. They pulled in behind the Horse Guards and moved forward.

Adrogans drew his saber. “For queen and country!”

The hundred Horse Guards echoed his call, underscored with the skirl of steel being unsheathed. Horses stamped, blowing out jets of steam. Tack jingled, and the mail of restless warriors rustled. Muscles quivered on man and beast alike, and a hundred and a half yards ahead of them, the hoargoun heaved its club into the air and began spinning it slowly.