King's Dragon

“They are so few, and the Eika so many.”



“How many?” he asked, but she dragged her cart onward and her six children ran behind, faces pinched with fear.



After midday there was no one except stragglers. They came finally upon a deacon, walking like any common woman, her white robe and tabard flecked with mud and grit. Her servants led two mules, one laden with the massive silver Circle which had once adorned the Hearth, the other with a hastily folded altar cloth embroidered with gold thread and with the chalice and holy books, all saved from the church she had abandoned.



“Go no farther, honored ones,” she said to Wolfhere, signaling her servants to halt. “Turn back while you are still safe. Tell the king that Gent is besieged.”



“Why have you not fled into Gent?” Wolfhere asked.



“They are laying waste to the countryside all around.”



She was, Liath thought, impossibly calm in the face of such disaster. “They are everywhere, good messenger. Gent is surrounded. I minister to the lands and estates west of Gent, so I was able to flee once I saw all my parishioners safely gone. East of the city and the river I cannot say, except that smoke has risen for twenty days, as if many fires are burning.”



Hathui inhaled deeply, scenting. “Fresh fires and old,” she said. “And dust, as of a great host moving.” She swung her head to look west, then back to view the eastern horizon. “You see,” she said to Liath and Hanna, “the sky and clouds have a different color. Mark this well, and learn.” She inhaled again. “And another smell, like air too long shut within stone walls. Strange.”



She made a gesture toward Manfred. The young man rode forward, past the deacon and her servants, and took up a station some fifty strides ahead on a rise, surveying farther toward the east. They could not yet see the cathedral tower above the trees.



Liath could only smell the heavy scent of rain coming from the north, off the distant sea. There, clouds lowered gray-black over the land, though patches of blue still showed through to the south.



“The storm comes from the sea,” said the deacon, brushing mud off the sleeve of her robe and then sighing, as if she had just that moment realized it was a pointless endeavor. “I must go, good man. I carry with me a fingerbone of St. Perpetua. Such a holy relic must not fall into the hands of savages.”



“Go, then,” said Wolfhere.



“And you, with my blessing.” The deacon granted each one of them the sign of blessing before she trudged on, her nervous servants glad to be moving again.



Wolfhere’s frown was, if possible, deeper than before. They had not ridden more than two hundred strides farther on when Manfred’s horse, in the lead, shied suddenly and tried to bolt back. Both Wolfhere and Hathui drew their swords the next instant, while Manfred fought his gelding. The other horses caught the scent and began to sidestep, ears flicking back. Liath braced herself on her stirrups and looped her reins loosely around the pommel. She pulled her bow from the bowcase and nocked an arrow.



The road looped past a knoll of trees which formed part of the eastern horizon, fields half grown with rye lying below within the broad curve of a stream that flowed toward the east and the Veser River.



“That’s where they’ll be,” said Hathui, nodding toward the knoll.



Too calmly, Liath thought.



“Ai, Lady, I’m terrified,” whispered Hanna, pressing her horse up beside Liath. She had loosed her spear from its sling and now rested it against the top of her right boot.



“Out into the fields,” said Wolfhere. “In the open, we can outrun them.”



They turned left and started out across the fields. Green rye grass bent under the hooves of their horses and sprang up behind. Liath kept looking over her shoulder toward the knoll, one hand on her reins, one gripping bow and arrow. A misting rain began to filter down, wetting her hair, but she dared not pull her hood up for fear she would not be able to see as well. At once, as the wind shifted, she caught the scent that had spooked the horses.



It had a dry taste to it, what one might taste in a heat made dry by dust and wind. It smelled like stones heated until they cracked or the musk of a cave inhabited by dragons.



“Hai!” shouted Hathui.



There! Out of the trees came three iron-gray dogs—the biggest, ugliest dogs Liath had ever seen. Five Eika loped after them. The Eika held spears and suddenly as with one thought they threw their weapons. Most skidded harmlessly over the rye, but one spear stuck, quivering, in the ground at the feet of Hanna’s horse; the animal bolted back, rearing. Hanna fell from the saddle and hit the ground hard.