Part 16 (1/2)
”Aye. And even Kyria had no idea what it was.”
Yelps, suddenly. Howls. A sentry at the edge of the firelight screamed as he fell beneath a beast that glowed leprous yellow. ”Sandyhl!” Manda cried. She grabbed her sword and ran to help, but the hound was already tearing at the lifeless guardsman, and others were bounding in behind it.
The side of the encampment closest to the lake was under attack by a large body of hounds that had come charging up out of the night before the sentries could raise an alarm. But the men on watch were armed and skilled, and they held off the worst of the attack while the sleeping members of the phalanx awakened, seized weapons, and formed up for a counterattack.
Manda led the charge, hewing through the glowing flesh, snapping out orders to her men. At her command, the phalanx circled up and bunched the hounds together, limiting the number that could actively attack. It was well that they did, for Wykla estimated that there were at least fifty of the beasts.
The warriors pressed in against the hounds, driving them together, killing those at the periphery. But phos- phor flowed sluggishly and pooled on the ground, and when several Corrinians slipped and fell in it, the corrosives immediately began eating away at their flesh.
Those nearby turned to help. ”We can hold the hounds,” Manda shouted to them. ”Take them to the lake and wash them.”
The men started off, and as the beasts surged towards the thinning 'of the Corrinian ranks, Wykla leaped to plug the gap, spitting one hound, slas.h.i.+ng into the throat of another. Looking up, though, she noticed that five of the beasts had managed to get past the screen of warriors and were following the men who were heading for the lake.
”Manda!”
The maid killed a hound, turned. Wykla pointed. ”Aye,” cried Manda, her voice nearly drowned by the shouts of men and the baying of hounds. ”You and I, Wykla.”
Leaving the butchery of the pack to the phalanx, they ran after the five hounds, but the beasts suddenly wheeled and turned on them. One leaped directly at Wykla, but it received a sword blade in the throat. Another tried to attack Manda, who first cut its lower jaw loose with a well-placed slash, then followed up with a thrust directly between its eyes.
The other three turned again and ran. The women followed, but they stopped suddenly when they realized that the hounds were making directly for the s.h.i.+mmering apparition on the sh.o.r.e. Milling, tumbling over one another in their haste, yipping in fear, the hounds approached the gap, hesitated, sniffed, then plunged through and vanished.
Manda and Wykla ran to the edge and peered in, but they could see nothing but faintly glowing swirls and points of light that might have been stars. Cautiously, Manda stuck her sword in, withdrew it, examined the metal. It was unmarked. Even the hounds' blood showed no change.
But there was a beating behind them suddenly, and a presence, and they looked up into a pair of yellow eyes. Wings as large as trees blotted out the sky, and a voice thrummed about them as though the air were a struck bell.
Follow.
Wykla stared. Silbakor hovered above them, black body limned in red, eyes glaring with pa.s.sionless emotion.
Follow. Quickly.
The Great Dragon was torn and rent, and it bled darkness into the dark sky. Its eyes were pained and glazed.
Follow. Quickly. Alouzon is in danger.
Wykla stared at the Dragon, then at Manda, then at the s.h.i.+mmering blotch. ”A-Alouzon?”
Manda pulled herself out of her surprise first. She checked on the men under her command, and, satisfied that they were handling the hounds, she nodded to Wykla. ”Come, then.”
”O you G.o.ds of Gryylth!” Wykla was already running for the star-filled gap, screaming. ”Alouzon!”
Without hesitation, they plunged into a region where s.p.a.ce and perspective seemed to have no meaning, where suns glowed blindingly as though a stone's throw away, where disks like moons hung in an endless night like apples in a fertile orchard. The ground under their boots was not stone, or gla.s.s, or anything they had seen before. It simply was.
They ran. Worlds and endless planes spun and tipped in the surrounding darkness, clouds swept across regions of utter nothingness, lights pulsed and flowed like water.
And then, ahead, another gap, another s.h.i.+mmer. Redoubling their speed, Wykla and Manda burst out of the door side-by-side and found themselves running across gra.s.s. A short distance away were trees and a small lake. The air was fetid, the sky was blank and washed out, and odd patches of light hung in the air.
But, at the water's edge, there was a splas.h.i.+ng and a snarling of hounds. In the glow of the lights, Wykla saw a flash of bronze hair amid the foam, and as she watched, a brown arm holding a familiar sword lifted from the frothing waves and aimed a stroke at the glowing beast that was wading in to attack.
”Gryylth!” she cried, and, with Manda, she fell on the two hounds from behind. In moments, the water was exploding in violent bursts of steam from the phosphor that gushed into it.
Kicking the writhing bodies away, the two women grabbed Alouzon and dragged her to the sh.o.r.e. The Dragonmaster looked dazed. ”Thanks,” she gasped. ”Thanks both of you. I thought I was a goner. That old drunk over there got it good and-” She broke off, stared at them. ”Wykla? Manda?”
Wykla nodded. ”Silbakor sent us.”
”You're here?”
”Aye, Dragonmaster,” said Manda. She glanced about nervously. Off in the distance, a wailing started up and began to approach. ”Wherever here is.”
Alouzon struggled to her feet. ”Silbakor? Sent you?” Abruptly, she started to laugh, a deep, sobbing merriment that was tinged with hysteria. ”Into MacArthur Park?” She cast her arms about the warriors, hugged them tightly. ”That's the weirdest f.u.c.king thing I've ever heard!”
* CHAPTER 13 *
The war went on with dismaying pointlessness. It was indeed a war, but though Helwych called it such, he had, weeks ago, lost track of any objective beyond self-preservation, and the grandiose plans of power and rule that he had once cherished had been effectively submerged in a mire of day-to-day survival.
The Specter materialized Grayfaces, planes, and weapons in Gryylth at will, and as fast as Helwych was able to turn portions of all three to his own use and allegiance, more appeared. Like boys with bottomless sacks of toy armament, the sorcerer and the Specter fought battle after inconclusive battle, spreading the conflict from Crownhark in the south to Ridge-brake forest in the north, from the Camrann Mountains in the west to the remains of the Great Dike in the east. But whereas boys would have scrabbled shal-lowly in the earth and then gone home, there was no going home for Helwych, and the battles he waged with increasing desperation left the landscape deeply scarred by bomb and napalm and defoliant.
The crops, where they had not been uprooted or withered, grew unkempt and overgrown with weeds. The cities and towns were crowded with refugees, their streets congested with fragile shelters and overflowing with filth. But it was the only way. For their own protection, non-combatants had to be herded off the fields. In order for Helwych to win the war, both the land and the people had to change from what they had once been into something else.
But he was not sure what that something else was, nor was he at all certain that the war could be won, or even that the Specter wanted anything more than what it had gotten: a prolonged and pointless conflict that was slowly turning the countryside into a waste of bomb craters and bare soil.
By the beginning of August, most of the fertile lands to the north of Kingsbury had been reduced to ashes and dead vegetation, and the women, old men, and children who huddled in overcrowded houses or bedded down at night in the open air or in the rude shelters that lined the streets of the towns were finding the food supplies growing short.
Helwych could do nothing to stop it. ”The people should be grateful that they wake up in the morning,” he said to Dryyim when the captain spoke of his growing concerns about the refugees. ”Would they like to go back to their steadings?”
”My lord,” Dryyim said carefully, ”some have said that very thing. It is becoming difficult to persuade them to stay.''
Helwych's hands tightened on the arms of the king's chair. ”Anything outside the towns is an enemy. I want them kept in.''
”I understand your feelings, my liege, but-”
”Keep them in, Dryyim.”
”But-”
Helwych pointed a finger in Dryyim's face. ”If they try to leave,” he snapped, ”I order you to kill them.” Did his concern stem from a desire to keep the people safe, or a reluctance to have the damage left by his battles known by all? He was not sure.
He realized that Dryyim was frowning. And the other men who stood in Hall Kingsbury this afternoon s.h.i.+fted restlessly. Helwych had not rea.s.sured them.
Dryyim considered his words for a moment. ”You are telling us to kill our own people, lord.”
Helwych stood his ground. He had raised Dryyim up from a peevish boy to the rank of captain. The whelp would learn who gave the commands. ”If they disobey me, then they deserve it. They would die out in the country in any case.”
”I see.” Dryyim's voice was flat.
And what was Dryyim thinking? How restless was he? Was Lytham? Was Haryn? Helwych examined their faces as they stood, watchful, and he could read their feelings: for this they had played so loosely with their loyalty to their king?
Helwych shuddered. He needed better guards. More trustworthy guards. Guards whose allegiance was indisputable.
He rose. Beyond the door of the Hall, the afternoon sunlight was hot and bright. The beginning of the month would normally have been spent in celebrating, the first of the harvest festivals, but there would be no harvest this year. There were hardly any crops left.