Miles Cameron - The Dread Wyrm

The Etruscan boy-he looked like a boy now, with dark circles under haunted eyes-shrugged. “I scarcely did a thing, my lord,” he said. “Cully…”

Ser Gavin managed a hard smile. “Listen to Cully. But think for yourself, too.” He gave the boy a crisp and very real salute, hand to his visor, and cantered off east to find his brother. He still didn’t know if his wonderful, terrible brother was alive or dead.

And only now could he let himself wonder.

Zac had a cordon around the tree, and he’d found the shaman’s feather cloak and the pieces of his axe.

Feeling almost foolish, he said aloud, “Darkness is close. You’re safe for the moment. I have people all around you.” He shrugged, talking to a rainbow. “Your brother has taken command.”

Good. When I let go, the pain may knock me out. There’s some better than remote chance I’ll just die. I’ve made a stupid mistake and I’m out of ops .

Count Zac crossed himself and touched an amulet.

The rainbow of light shimmered and went out. The woods were suddenly darker.

The captain screamed.

When Gavin had the archers-when the knights and squires were together, and the wagon was parked over Father Arnaud, who hadn’t moved-he led every spare man to try and save his brother.

Who was still alive, as could be told from his screams.

It took an hour of torch-lit axe-work to clear enough of the trunk to allow them to make the right effort, and the constant movement of large animals or enemies out in the darkness did nothing to improve Ser Gavin’s sense of urgency.

But he pretended to be calm, and twice, he told archers to take their time.

The steppe woman, Kriax, volunteered to go into the darkness and watch. She slipped from her pony and vanished into the haze at the edge of the torchlight.

“She has cut many throats at home,” Zac said with a shrug. “That’s why she’s here.”

It took ten men and a woman to move the tree. By the time they levered the section of trunk off his brother’s legs, the stars were out in the sky above.

Ser Gavin calculated constantly. Assume that the company is camped a league from where we left them. That’s four leagues from here. An hour for Toby to find them, if something doesn’t eat him. An hour back, and half an hour to raise the force to get it done right.

I should never have sent him alone. I should have gone myself. Or sent Nell and Cully with him to get the message through.

But a wyvern would eat all three of them.

I’ve heard wyverns are blind at night. And that they can see in the dark.

I hate this. Is this what he does every day? What Pater does? Decide people’s lives?

Ser Gavin sat on his war horse, still in full harness, his shoulders straight, and pretended to be a tower of strength and leadership. Like all commanders, everywhere.

When the pole star rose, the archers sung a quiet night prayer and everyone joined in, even Cuddy, who was notorious for his blasphemy. When the prayer was done, Kriax slipped into the fire circle and tossed a toothy head on the fire. She had a grim smile, and Zac had to bandage both her arms, which had been savaged. She never so much as grunted. The squires watched her with something very like worship.

Adrian Goldsmith volunteered to crawl out into the darkness.

Gavin let him go.

They built a second fire-a decoy. They put it up the road, and then they built a third down the road.

The third watch came. Ser Gavin began to despair that he would have to add Toby to his butcher’s bill. His brother wasn’t moving, and neither was Father Arnaud.

Ser Gavin started to pray.

Gabriel was not so much unconscious as deep in his palace-by far pleasanter than screaming his lungs out at the pain from his crushed and mangled right leg. Even as it was, a tidal wave of pain would, from time to time, push him out of the aethereal and into the real. Where he would be painfully aware of his loss of blood, of how cold he was, and how little time he had left to live.

He tried to sort the shaman’s memories-those he’d managed to take. His sublimation of his opponent had been too fast and too thorough. And he’d spent the power foolishly. His shields-his emergency spells-had been far too powerful. He could see, now-too late-the error in design that allowed them to seize every scrap of his power, like a tax collector seizing a poor man’s assets.

He replayed the other daemon’s cut at his head. His unprotected head.

I should have died. But I didn’t.

And now-even now-I should probably be dead.

It occurred to him to work out why he was alive. There was a small, constant feed of potentia coming from outside. He could feel it.

It occurred to him-time was a problem in the palaces-that he should try to find Father Arnaud.

To think was to act.

He stepped across into the chaplain’s memory palace and found himself in a darkened chapel. It was beautiful-the lectern was a magnificent bronze of a pregnant Madonna with her hands crossed over her stomach, standing quietly. A magnificent stained-glass rose window rode over him, set-in the freedom of the memory palace-as a three-dimensional rose roof that rose like a cupola of glass. On the window were portrayed scenes from the life of the saviour, but it was too dark to determine what, exactly, they were.

Indeed, it was very dark, and very cold, and Gabriel’s first thought was that the light behind the window was fading.

“Arnaud!” he called.

To think was to find.

Father Arnaud lay in the midst of his place of power, arms out-flung. He smiled at Ser Gabriel.

“Welcome,” he said. “It might have been better if we had been this way when I was alive.”

“Alive?” Gabriel asked.

“My body is passing,” Arnaud said with some humour. “In the real , I have perhaps twenty heartbeats left.”

Gabriel reached for his link, checking, like any veteran magister, for enough ops to heal.

Arnaud smiled. “No. I will heal you. I will give you this last gift. And as I cross the wall and go into the far country, I leave you this. Save them, save them all. In doing so, brother, you will save yourself.” He smiled, again with pure good humour, and Gabriel could see what a handsome young man he had been. “Please accept these gifts.”

Arnaud’s body gave a convulsion, and light flared, and for a moment-an eternal moment-the chapel was bathed in light. The figures of the rose window leapt into life, and a leper was cured, a blind man given his sight, a dead man raised, and a centurion’s servant saved.

“Arnaud!” Gabriel shouted.

But the miracle of light was declining, and in its wake the cold of absolute void, and the dark.

Gabriel wrenched himself clear of the dying man’s palace and

woke.

The pain was gone. Around the fire stood a dozen men and women and every head was turned to him, and they all looked stunned.

His leg was healed.

Gabriel burst into tears. “I don’t want this!” he shrieked.

And then rolled over and put his hands on either side of his chaplain’s helmeted head. But Father Arnaud was a corpse, and wherever he had gone, his face was calm and wore the gentle smile of absolute victory.

When the flare of power lit the aethereal worlds, Thorn was hovering, torn by indecision, balanced on the knife edge between aggression and caution. He’d followed some of the combat; he sensed the Dark Sun’s injury and depletion but he had a healthy fear of the Dark Sun’s reserves and talent. To project himself across the aethereal could be done but was, itself, fraught with peril. And it would expose him, like an army too far from its supplies, to envelopment. It was too new a talent to be trusted. And his dark master was not available for advice or encouragement.