Мэри Кирчофф - The Black Wing

An hour later, there came a shout from the rampart. A nervous guard peered out and saw a white horse, returning alone in the pale moonlight. Tate ran from the stables up onto the wall to see what caused the commotion. He watched with the sentries and knights gathered there as the horse cantered back to the south gate. Guards flung back the heavy wooden doors and hustled the horse inside. Snorting, eyes wide and fearful, the white creature circled through the courtyard and the thronged people there, stopping before Tate, who'd hastened down from the battlement. The courtyard grew strangely still, as if everyone inside was holding his breath.

The apprehensive lord knight began to search the creature for a note or message of some kind concerning Auston's fate. The horse itself provided the answer. Its hairy lips ruffled, and a voice very like Tate's own said through the horse's mouth, “You can't act like ruffians and expect to be treated like ladies.” Tate visibly paled.

“What does it mean, Sir Tate?” Albrecht asked, noting the expression of understanding growing on his superior's face. “And what have they done with Auston?”

“It means no deal,” Tate said numbly. “Auston's dead.”

“The unprincipled bastards!” snarled the usually contained Wallens. “What'll we do now, Sir?”

Tate tried to rub the weariness from his eyes. “See to your stations one last time tonight, then get some rest while you can,” the lord knight said. “Tomorrow promises to be a long, hard day.”

Tate was already walking away from the dazed Albrecht and Wallens, his thoughts on a distant time. Three fingers traced the scars beneath the whiskers on his cheek. Now he knew why the dragon at Shalimsha had seemed so familiar. The witch-woman from the ambush… Tate didn't understand magic well enough to explain how it could be done, but he was certain the human fighter was now a vengeful, black dragon. It was obvious from the message that she hadn't forgotten their encounter, either.

A muscle twitched in Tate's wet cheek. The dragon's quest was nothing compared to the knight's: to avenge his friend, Wolter. She was a worthy adversary as a dragon, he mused, recalling the battle at Shalimsha.

He found it all very curious how their paths had crossed and recrossed.

He wasn't a man to believe in omens, but if ever he did …

The Knight of the Crown felt a sudden, overwhelming desire to pray to his patron, Kiri-Jolith. He'd spent little time in temple since the battle at Shalimsha. Tate told himself he was too busy reorganizing troops and bolstering morale to devote one of every seven days to inactive prayer.

The truth was, without the old knight to steel his resolve, Sir Tate's interest in rising to the Order of the Rose had waned. In a secret corner of his soul, Tate had even dared to wonder if Kiri-Jolith hadn't abandoned him first.

As the lord knight picked his way through the sleeping bodies in the courtyard, he couldn't help thinking that many were taking their last mortal rest. The thought propelled Tate faster toward a long overdue talk with his god.

Maldeev was feeling confident. The highlord sat apart from his four black dragons, who waited restlessly for daybreak on a rocky cliff west of Lamesh. He knew that when the sun crested the horizon to the east, Salah Khan would issue the order for the ground troops to advance on Lamesh's south wall. The second he saw the knights' attention devoted there, Maldeev would lead the dragons in an attack on the west wall. It was a plan the highlord was certain couldn't fail.

The pace of the assault had gone from boring to breakneck in one long night. The draconians, under Horak's watchful eye, had chopped down trees that the ogres turned into makeshift bridges for fording the moat and ladders for climbing crenelated walls.

Maldeev had flown to this vantage point with the dragons late in the night. Though the steady downpour was an uncomfortable nuisance for the highlord, it seemed to act like a mental balm for the black dragons. They'd dropped into sleep after foraging for food in the mountains farther west.

Wound as tight as a spring, the highlord had been the first to awaken, though he wasted no time in rousing the others to draw a crude battle diagram in the dirt. The plan had changed little from the one drawn up at a war council of officers and dragons the day before the march north. Truly, the only alteration was to the role of the dragons, and that was as obvious and simple as the dirt in which Maldeev had drawn it.

“Whoever built Lamesh obviously did not consider aerial attacks,” the highlord said. “It must have been built during the time your kind was banished from Krynn.”

“Technically, we still are,” Khisanth interjected mildly. “The Dark Queen's return to Krynn is the point of the war, isn't it?”

“Yes, I guess so.” Maldeev's eyebrows raised unpleasantly at being openly addressed by a dragon other than Jahet. Perhaps Khisanth had presumed too much from the highlord's willingness to let her respond to the knight's emissary the previous evening. Maldeev had had the messenger slain instantly by Jahet. The highlord had intended the riderless horse to be his answer to the request to let women, children, and old men go free. But Khisanth had insisted that she'd fought the leader of the knights and knew just what response would shake him. Maldeev had allowed it, seeing no harm.

He stood, stretched, and looked again to the sky, which was starting to show signs of dawn between the swollen rain clouds overhead. “Prepare yourselves. It's nearly time.”

Atop Jahet, Maldeev was to lead the dragons. Volg and Horak would direct their ogre and draconian troops forward in the initial southern charge, so Lhode and Shadow would pick them up on the battlefield after the dragons joined the fray.

Since Khisanth had no rider, she stood by, almost idly watching Maldeev pull on the last of his war attire, a pair of tight leather gauntlets that flared at the wrists. He pulled something from a small bag tied to his waist and held it to the light. It was a plain gold ring topped by a smooth, flat circle of onyx. At length, Maldeev placed it over the gloved index finger of his right hand.

“New ring, Maldeev?” Jahet asked idly as the dragon shrugged to adjust the ornate saddle he'd tossed up between her wing blades.

“Yes,” the dragon highlord said quickly, withdrawing the band almost self-consciously. “Andor insisted I take along a protective ring.” He saw Jahet's interest stir. “He is my dark cleric, after all—it's his job to think of such things. I only took it to humor him. You know how I hate magic—didn't even want Andor near this battle.” With a shrug, Maldeev wiggled the ring from his gloved finger.

Jahet shook her head slowly. “You already know what a mistake I think his absence is. Wear the bloody thing, Maldeev,” she prompted. “What will it hurt? It just may come in handy.” Maldeev jammed the black-and-gold ring over the gloved index finger. Jahet looked satisfied, though she wondered at this new, acquiescent side of her soul mate.

“Jahet,” Maldeev called to his dragon, tipping his head to indicate that she should turn her ear to him. The highlord whispered briefly, and Jahet's face lit up.

“I'll ask her,” she said to the highlord. The ranking dragon turned to Khisanth. “Maldeev has suggested, and I concur, that you ride as our wing dragon.” She looked intently at her friend. “This is offered to honor your solo value, Khisanth. It's not an order.”

The younger black dragon felt pride swell in her breast. “It would be my honor,” she said. Maldeev nodded once and strode away to mentally prepare himself for battle.

“Stay close to us, Khisanth,” Jahet whispered to her suddenly, with the highlord out of earshot. “I sense a recklessness in Maldeev I've never seen before, as if he believes he can't lose….”