Katharine Kerr - The Fire Dragon

Nevyn spent much of the wait with Maddyn in his tent. Although the herbs had purged the worst of the contagion, the bard still lay ill, so exhausted he was cold and shivering despite the afternoon warmth. From the vomiting, his lips and the skin around them were cracking. When Nevyn rubbed herbed lard into them, he noticed that his skin had no resilience. Nevyn pinched a bit twixt thumb and forefinger so gently that Maddyn never noticed, but the little ridge of skin persisted rather than smoothing itself out.

Fortunately, near to camp some of the men had found a spring of pure water; Nevyn sent Branoic off with a clean bucket to fetch some back.

‘The contagion has depleted his watery humours,’ Nevyn told him. ‘We’ve got to replenish them.’

Sometimes Maddyn could keep the pure water down, and sometimes it came back up again, but eventually he did manage to drink enough to allay the worst of Nevyn’s fears. Through all of this Branoic hovered miserably outside, glad for every little errand that Nevyn found for him to do.

‘He’s been my friend from the day I joined the daggers,’ Branoic said. ‘I’ll do anything I can, my lord.’

‘Good,’ Nevyn said. ‘He needs water and food both, but he won’t be able to keep down more than a bite or swallow at a time.’

‘If all that arse-ugly pork’s gone, why is he still so sick?’

‘I wish I knew. Men who’ve eaten spoiled food often stay ill for a long time after, but I’ve no idea why.’

Branoic stared wide-eyed.

‘There’s a cursed lot of things I don’t know,’ Nevyn went on. ‘No other herbman I’ve ever met knows them either. Why contagion lingers is one of them, and how it spreads is another.’

‘I see.’ Branoic rubbed the back of his hand against his chin. ‘That’s not what I’d call reassuring, my lord.’

‘Honesty rarely is. Now, go tend Maddyn. I’ve got to make myself presentable for the prince’s council of war.’

In a darkening twilight two of Daeryc’s men galloped in with news. A herald led them to the prince, who was sitting in front of his tent with Nevyn and some of his vassals around him. In the firelight they knelt to him and told their tale. They’d ridden directly east – or so they’d reckoned from the position of the sun. Their shadows were stretching long in front of them by the time that they topped a low rise and saw, some miles further off, a huge cloud of dust drifting at the horizon.

‘It had to be the Cantrae men, your highness,’ one of the scouts said. ‘Naught but an army could raise that dust, and the gods all know there’s not enough men left for more than one.’

‘Just so,’ Maryn said, grinning. ‘How far away were they?’

‘From our camp, your highness?’ The scout thought for a moment. ‘Well, at least a day’s travel for an army that size, but not a cursed lot more, I’d say. We watched for a bit longer, too. The dust didn’t seem to come nearer.’

‘Looked like it were shrinking a bit,’ the second scout volunteered. ‘And I thought, I did, they be settling down for the night’s camp.’

‘Good.’ Maryn stood up and glanced at the noblemen. ‘I doubt me if we’ll see battle on the morrow.’

‘Mostly likely not,’ Gwerbret Ammerwdd said. ‘But I say we should stand ready for it anyway.’

The rest of the noble-born nodded, muttered a few words, and glanced back and forth among themselves. Nevyn was aware of Gwerbret Daeryc, watching him with one eyebrow raised. Nevyn smiled blandly in return. He had nothing to add to the scouts’ report, not at the moment, at least.

Late that night, when the camp lay asleep except for the night sentries, Nevyn went into his tent and summoned his body of light. He rose straight out through the tent’s roof into the etheric plane, where the stars hung down close, it seemed, as huge glittering silver spheres. With the scout’s report to guide him, he travelled fast over the red and glowing countryside below. Eventually he saw on the horizon a strange light, a flickering expanse of yellows and oranges, shot through with dancing reds, that looked just like a wildfire burning across a grassy plain would have looked in the physical world. He knew, however, that here on the etheric he was seeing the massed auras of Braemys’s army.

Although he now had a reasonable idea of their distance, he decided to risk going closer. The army had set up camp on his side of Loc Glas and the river that flowed south from it. He could approach them with no danger from the seething water veils, and Braemys had no dweomermaster in his retinue. Unchallenged Nevyn floated over the horse herd, drowsing at tether in a meadow. The tents lay just beyond. Nevyn rose up high for an overview; while he had no time to count them, he could tell that this force was a good bit smaller than Maryn’s.

Something about the camp struck him as odd. He let himself drift on the etheric flow, hovered like a hawk on the wind while he tried to think. The rational faculties function sluggishly if at all out on the etheric. Still, he studied the camp and stored up images of it before he turned back and returned to his tent.

As soon as he was back in his body and fully awake, he understood what he’d seen. No carts. No packsaddles, either, stacked at the edge of the meadow. With the first streak of grey dawn, he got up and trotted through the sleeping camp to Maryn’s tent. He found the prince awake, standing outside and yawning.

‘News, your highness,’ Nevyn said. ‘Braemys has left his baggage train behind. His men must be carrying what food they can in their saddlebags. He’s marching for a quick strike.’

Maryn tossed back his head and laughed. ‘Good,’ the prince said at last. ‘Today might see the end of this, then.’

‘Perhaps. I can’t help but wonder if Braemys has some tricky manoeuvre in mind.’

The camp went on armed alert. Under Oggyn’s command, the contingent of spearmen assembled the provision wagons, extra horses, servants, struck tents, bedrolls, and suchlike out in a meadow, then stood guard round the perimeter. The army saddled and bridled their horses, then donned armour, but rather than tire their mounts, they sat on the ground beside them to wait. Since the prince had sent some of his silver daggers out as scouts, they would have ample warning should Braemys be making a fast march to battle. In the dust and shouting that accompanied all these preparations Nevyn slipped away from camp. He walked about a mile back west to a copse of trees he’d spotted earlier. The matter of Braemys’s missing wagon train irked him.

In the shelter of an oak he lay down on the ground, crossed his arms over his chest, and went into trance. During daylight the etheric world glowed, pulsing with life, and the blue light shimmered and trembled all round him. The sun, a vast blazing sphere, shot huge arrows of gold down upon the earth. The reddish auras of grass and trees writhed and stretched out long tendrils of etheric substance to capture the gold and feed upon it. In all this confusion Nevyn could barely sort out east from west. He rose up high, where he could comprehend the view and pick out roads and rivers from the general splendour. With the silver cord paying out behind him, he travelled back east, heading for the spot where he’d seen Braemys’s army.

Nevyn was expecting to meet up with the enemy, and indeed, he overtook them some miles closer to Maryn than he’d left them the night past. The army straggled over a long stretch of road, and thanks to this loose formation he could see that not a single wagon followed the riders. He swung north to keep clear of the tangled mass of auras and physical dust, rose higher in the blue light, and saw off on the horizon northward a glow. It appeared as a dome of pale light, mostly yellow, shot here and there with red. On the etheric, with his physical body and its correlates far behind him, he was hard pressed to tell just how close it might have been.