Margaret Weis - Dragons of the Highlord Skies

Ariakas chuckled. “Would you really have stabbed me?”

“Would you have broken my neck?” Kitiara returned in arch tones.

Both knew the answer was “yes”. They expected nothing less of each other.

“Now perhaps we can turn our attention to matters in Solamnia.” Ariakas walked over to the desk where he had spread out a map. He bent over it.

Kitiara breathed an inward sigh. She’d survived yet another confrontation with her powerful master. Her boldness and daring had pleased him. The day would come, though, when they wouldn’t.

“Did you have a strange dream last night, my lord?” Kitiara asked.

“Don’t try to change the subject,” Ariakas said curtly.

“I did,” Kitiara continued. “I dreamt Queen Takhisis was trying to persuade me to travel to Dargaard Keep to confront the death knight who is supposed to reside there.”

“Soth,” Ariakas said. “Lord Soth. What did you tell Her Dark Majesty?”

He tried to sound casual, but Kitiara knew then that he’d had the same dream.

“I told her I didn’t believe in ghosts,” Kitiara returned dryly.

Ariakas grunted. “Soth is no ghost. He lives—if you can say such a thing about a man who has been dead for over three hundred years. Our Queen wants to recruit him to our cause.”

“Would you do that, my lord?” Kitiara asked.

Ariakas shook his head. “Soth would be a valuable ally, but I could not trust him. He is far too powerful. Why should a death knight call any mortal ‘master’? No, let Soth brood over his wrongs in his ruined castle. I want no part of him.”

Kitiara had to admit his reasoning was sound. Queen Takhisis was often impatient with human frailties and weakness, and she could be impractical on occasion. Kit put the dream aside

“I read your latest proposal for Solamnia,” Ariakas was saying. He picked up a thick sheaf of parchment. “You propose that the Blue Wing seize the High Clerist’s Tower, occupy it, and from there march on Palanthas. A daring plan, Kitiara.”

He took his seat behind the desk. “I am against it. It stretches our forces too thin, but I will listen to what you have to say.”

Kitiara perched her hip on the edge of the table and leaned over to explain her idea.

“My spies tell me the High Clerist’s Tower is manned by only a few troops, my lord.” She put her finger on the map. “The Red Wing is here. You could order the Red Wing north. We could strike the High Clerist’s Tower with troops and dragons from the Red Wing and the Blue Wing. We could easily wipe out the small force holding it, seize the High Clerist’s Tower, and occupy it before the Solamnic knights knew what hit them. From there, we march on Palanthas, conquer the city and take over her seaports.”

“Taking Palanthas will not be easy,” said Ariakas. “We cannot lay siege to the city, not without blockading her seaports.”

“Bah! The Palanthians are soft and pampered dandies. They don’t want to fight. They might break a nail. Once the Palanthians see dragons flying in the skies, they will be so terrified they will piss their pants and surrender.”

“What if they don’t?” Ariakas pointed to the map. “We do not yet control the Plains of Solamnia, nor Elkholm, nor Heartland. You leave your flanks exposed, surrounded by the enemy. What about supply lines? You may take the fortress, but once you are inside, your troops would starve!”

“When Palanthas is ours, we resupply from there. In the meantime, we have red dragons ferry in what we need.”

Ariakas snorted. “The reds will not be used as pack mules! They will have nothing to do with such an arrangement.”

“If her Dark Majesty were to order them—”

Ariakas shook his head.

Kitiara sat back. Her lips pursed, her brown eyes glinted. “Then, my lord, we will carry our supplies with us and make do with that.” Her fist clenched in her enthusiasm and passion. “I guarantee you that once people see your banner raised over the High Clerist’s Tower, Palanthas will fall into our hands like rotten fruit!”

“It is too risky,” Ariakas muttered.

“Yes, it is risky,” Kitiara agreed eagerly, “but there is a greater risk in allowing the knights time to organize and send in reinforcements. Right now, the Knighthood is in turmoil. They have no Grand Master, for no man is strong enough to claim it, and they have two High Justices because two men claim the position and neither will acknowledge the rights of the other. They are running around like sailors on a burning deck quarreling over whose job it is to put out the fire and all the while, their ship is sinking.”

“That may be true,” said Ariakas, “but the Knighthood is still a powerful force in Solamnia and so long as the knights are around, the Solamnic people will never give up. The knights must be utterly destroyed, the knighthood vanquished. I want them crushed, shattered, and so demoralized they can never recover.”

“That will happen if we rout the knights at the High Clerist’s Tower,” Kitiara argued. “If Palanthas falls due to the feeble folly of the knights, the people will turn from them in fury and disgust. The people already distrust them. The loss of the High Clerist’s Tower and the invasion of Palanthas would be the final blow. The knighthood would crumble to dust.”

Seeing Ariakas thinking this over, Kitiara pressed home her point.

“My lord,” she said, “we use the blue dragons to strike like a thunder bolt falling from the heavens. We hit the knights quickly and we hit them hard before they ever see us coming. Give the command and my dragons can be ready to attack within the week!”

She paused to let this sink in, then said quietly, “It is said that the High Clerist’s Tower has never fallen while men of faith defend it. The men guarding the Tower have lost their faith and we must not give them the opportunity to find it. We must strike before the knights raise up a champion who will bring the feuding factions together.”

Ariakas mulled this over. Her arguments were persuasive. He liked the idea of a swift, brutal attack on the under-manned tower. The knights would be demoralized. Palanthas would undoubtedly surrender, and he needed her wealth and her fleet of white-winged ships. The trade in slaves alone would send steel coins flooding into his coffers.

Ariakas was about to agree and then he looked into Kitiara’s eyes. He saw what he wanted to see in the eyes of one of his commanders: the lust for battle. But he saw something else there, too—something that gave him pause. He saw smug certainty. He saw ambition.

She would be lauded and celebrated: Kitiara, the Blue Lady, the conqueror of Solamnia.

He could see her hand reaching for the Crown of Power. She had already, perhaps, removed one of her rivals…

Ariakas did not fear Kit. He feared nothing and no one. If he had thought her daring plan was his only chance for victory, he would have ordered her to proceed and he would have dealt with her when she challenged him. But the more he considered her plan, the more he saw the potential for disaster.

Ariakas mistrusted Kit’s reliance on dragons. Before the Dark Queen’s return, Ariakas had never brought dragons into battle, and while he admitted they had their uses for destruction and intimidation, he did not think it wise to rely on them to take the lead in a fight, as Kitiara was proposing. Dragons were arrogant beasts. Powerful and intelligent, they considered themselves as far above humans as humans considered themselves above fleas. Ariakas could not, for example, give a dragon a direct order. The dragons were obedient only to Queen Takhisis, and even the goddess had to be diplomatic in her approach.

Kitiara’s reckless and unorthodox plan went against all Ariakas’s notions of the proper way to conduct a war, and it wouldn’t hurt her to get smacked down for once—remind her who was in charge.