Michael Stackpole - When Dragons Rage

The prince frowned. “But the fact that the gate has not been retaken, and that we see no signs of recent fighting, is not good. I don’t really want to think about what it took to open the gate.”

Ryswin pointed at the gate with his bow. “Strong as it would have been, enough pounding by a dragonel would have opened it.”

“Might be,” Verum offered. He pointed toward the high sides of the canyon. “By the same token, the Sarens would have emerged up there and slaughtered troops on the ground. That means the Aurolani took to the heights, ambushed the Sarens, then pushed on in. If they had urZrethi help…”

Jullagh-tse shook her head adamantly. “No urZrethi would betray his homeland.”

“Don’t need Sarens to do it, Jullagh-tse. You remember the old stories about the urZrethi left behind in Boragul forming an alliance with Chytrine?” Ryswin shook his head slowly. “They’d know what sort of defenses had been set up. They lead troops to the right places, and ambushes will succeed.”

The urZrethi hesitated, then nodded reluctantly. “If that is true, if they had Boras to lead them and help plan, things could have gone badly. If the Boras came claiming to be escaped slaves, they would have been welcomed and could have worked from the inside to cause more trouble.”

Jancis Ironside looked over at Erlestoke. “What is your plan, Highness?”

Erlestoke unslung his quadnel from his shoulder. “We’ll leave fewer tracks in there than we will out here, and going through the mountains is preferable to going over them. The state of affairs in Sarengul is also going to be important to assess. We will need to send a report on it via arcanslata . They need to know down south what is going on.”

The elven archer narrowed his blue eyes. “Given what we carry, is entering a realm where the enemy might be in control a wise idea?”

“Probably not, but moving through the mountains is even less so.” Erlestoke looked around at the company. The three elves and one urZrethi had weathered the two-hundred-mile journey fairly well. Jilandessa had clearly had the toughest time of it, but that was because she was doing a lot to keep everyone else healthy. The others—old and young, human and meckanshü —had been sorely tested by the trip. Erlestoke could barely remember when he’d last felt warm, and he couldn’t recall when his muscles didn’t ache. Discussions over cold meals had become centered on hot ones, and spirits in the company had slowly begun to ebb.

The prince pointed his draconette toward the dark hole in the mountainside. “We’ve been running for over two weeks. We’ve been lucky in avoiding our pursuit, and Sarengul is going to give us a good chance to leave them behind. If we are able to kill some Aurolani and help the Sarens, I have no trouble with that. If they choose to help us in return, we are far better off than struggling through the mountains. We go in as a team, as we have done throughout.”

The elf nodded. He and Finnrisia, the other elven archer, moved to the fore, stepping lightly over the snow and leaving no tracks Erlestoke could read. The rest of the company crunched after them, unlimbering quadnels. They fitted lengths of slow-match cord to the firelock, then let Verum ignite the ends so that the weapons were prepared for use.

The two elves mounted the steps to the opening, then Finnrisia ducked inside. After a couple of seconds Ryswin joined her. Jullagh-tse quickly entered after that, then the urZrethi reappeared in the opening and waved the others through.

The light reflected from the snow illuminated the hall, revealing small drifts and a few bodies frozen in death. Erlestoke spotted a couple of gibberers, a vylaen, two urZrethi, and a crawl, as well as enough debris scattered deep in the hallway to suggest that a dragonel or a charge of firedirt had been used to open the gateway.

As Verum directed warriors to secure cover, Erlestoke turned to Jullagh-tse. “Any suggestions for where we go from here?”

She pointed along the main hallway, which headed east. “This route will connect with one of the grand corridors. It will head north and south. I’ve been on part of it, but only coming up from the south. There it connects with the other major route that runs northeast-southwest, from Muroso to Nybal. It will be the most direct route, and the most likely place for us to meet resistance.”

“Are there alternate routes?”

She nodded. “All along the grand routes there are villages and towns. Some have the grand routes running through them, so they are built all around them, above and below and to all sides. Other villages are removed from them, with their own roads. There are routes down to the mines, or to the springs. The mountains have a web of trails that are known, and probably an equal number that are hidden.

“The problem is this: invaders could move through the grand route without ever having to see any of the outlying villages, and those villages could block a tunnel so that it would take forever for an invading force to open it. With access to stores and water, a village could survive a siege for months, if not years, and would always have a route out to the skyside.”

The prince rubbed a hand over his new-grown beard. “If someone decides not to let us pass, we could be trapped. Worse, we could be lured into a trap. Seems moving along the larger routes and seeking smaller if we need to is going to be our best bet right now.”

Jullagh-tse nodded. “The heartening thing is this: we have not seen Au-rolani reinforcements heading this way. Chytrine must think she has the Sarens defeated or contained. The Aurolani troops think there is no one coming in behind them, else they would have left guards. If we are cautious, we might get through this.”

“It is something to hope for, yes.”

The prince stood and signaled for everyone to move out to the east. He took pride as his soldiers moved from point of cover to point of cover, with the elves going first and the urZrethi bringing up the rear. As they moved deeper into the mountains the amount of light faded, such that elven vision was very helpful. The others moved up smartly, investigating homes and halls as they went.

The devastation could be easily seen. Dark bloodstained walls, and the stench of death permeated the air. Jilandessa used a little magick to see what she could learn about some of the victims, but all her spells told her was that they had been dead for a long time—not quite as long as her people had been on the road, but close.

The injuries inflicted, and the victims, testified to the savagery of the attack. Children had died clutched in the arms of mothers. One child had been killed by the same draconette shot that slew her mother. As had been the urZrethi tradition, the dead lay where they fell, but Erlestoke was fairly certain that the Aurolani assault would have made it impossible to recover bodies, even if that were the urZrethi way.

The Aurolani had not invaded with impunity. Bodies of their dead littered the hallways, but not nearly enough to make Erlestoke take heart. He’d kept a rough tally in his head of urZrethi warrior fatalities to those of the enemy, and the ratio proved depressing—overwhelmingly so when he factored in the civilian bodies. The Aurolani forces had come through, and an orgy of butchery had followed.

Once they reached the intersection with the north-south route, the numbers of bodies shrank appreciably. Erlestoke guessed that once the gate had been breached, alarms had gone out, and the people who lived around the grand routes were evacuated deeper into the mountains. By doing that the Sarens could avoid casualties and, if they were lucky, let the Aurolani pass through.

Late in the afternoon they found a small complex of rooms that had been abandoned. While the Aurolani had looted it, they had been haphazard. Jullagh-tse located some stores of wood, food, and wine, and they were able to seal the door. That night they enjoyed a hot meal ana“ managed to get some rest in warmth.