Throne of Dragons

Rodry’s friends charged forward then, taking their cue from him, while the soldiers jumped in to support them. He heard the sudden clash of blades, and the screams of the dying. In that moment, everything was chaos, the ambush unfolding around him in one continuous stream.

One of King Ravin’s soldiers appeared in front of him, and Rodry hacked him down with an overhead stroke. He felt a blade bounce from his armor, turned, and kicked another soldier away.

One of the Quiet Men, a woman, had a strangling rope around Kay’s neck, pulling tight and hanging on close as a lover. Rodry lunged forward, plunging his longsword up under her ribs, no hint of remorse at cutting down one of those who had hurt his sister, only satisfaction. Kay turned and nodded his thanks, then barely parried a sword blow in time.

Rodry had no time to help with this foe, because the one with the two knives was there again before him, staggering forward on one leg, cutting high and low. Rodry gave ground, looking for room to wield his longsword in full strokes, but the Quiet Man kept pressing forward, giving him no room to strike the way he wanted to. Rodry had to twist and turn, using the bracers of his armor to deflect thrust after thrust.

Rodry heard the scrape of someone behind him, felt the whisper of something heading toward his head. If he hadn’t spent so long training in the House of Weapons, he might have done the foolish thing and turned to face the new threat. Instead, Rodry dropped to his knees, thrusting up over his shoulder with his longsword. He heard a cry as a curved sword passed over his head, felt the give of flesh under the thrust of his sword’s point. He ripped it out, then struck forward with the pommel of his sword, catching his attacker in the stomach and doubling him over.

Rodry came back up to his feet, half turning as he brought his longsword around in a great swing that hacked through his opponent’s neck and kept going into the dirt. It stuck there for a moment, and the foe he’d struck at over his shoulder all but fell into him. They went down together, neither of them holding their sword anymore, both of them punching and kneeing and grabbing while around them the fight continued to rage. An elbow smashed into Rodry’s face, a knee struck his stomach. He clung on for dear life, because he could feel his opponent weakening, the blood pouring from him thanks to the wound Rodry had inflicted.

Then Rodry saw his foe starting to reach down for a knife at his belt and knew that if he reached it, it wouldn’t matter how much greater Rodry’s strength or stamina was, because he would slide that blade into a gap in Rodry’s armor as easy as breathing.

Rodry grabbed for his foe’s arm in desperation, forcing it away from the weapon. They rolled, and Rodry came up on top, striking down with an armored forearm again and again. He heard the crunch of bone, but kept going, until it seemed that blood filled the whole world, and the foe beneath him went limp. Only then did Rodry dare stand, snatching up his longsword, looking around for another foe to fight.

There were none; his friends and the soldiers with them stood victorious, or most of them did. Mautlice still lay unmoving on the ground, and two of the soldiers who had accompanied them lay just as dead. Rodry wondered what he would be able to say to Mautlice’s father, and he simply didn’t know.

It was worse for King Ravin’s forces. Around them, King Ravin’s men lay dead or dying.

“Take their tunics and their flags,” Rodry ordered his men. “We might need them, soon enough.”

Only one of King Ravin’s forces still stood. One of the Quiet Men stood with his back to a tree, sword out, surrounded by Rodry’s men. Rodry stormed over, pointing to him.

“Where is she?” he demanded. “Which way?”

“I surrender to you,” the Quiet Man said. He dropped his sword. “It is said that you are a brave and noble prince, so you will not cut a man down in cold blood.”

“Which way?” Rodry demanded again.

The Quiet Man said nothing, but his glance to one of the paths was enough. They would find the tracks, would find where Lenore had been taken.

As for this one, who had been part of this, who had done unspeakable things to his sister… Rodry stepped forward then, sword back behind his shoulders.

“You would not,” the Quiet Man said. “You would not murder a prisoner.”

He took one large step level with the tree, letting out a cry of pure rage as he struck in a horizontal blow. The Quiet Man looked at Rodry in shock as the weapon struck home, slicing through flesh to cut deep into the bark of the tree behind him. He tumbled, headless, eyes still staring.

“This is not murder,” Rodry said, spitting into the dirt. “It’s an execution.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

From the moment Odd arrived on the shores of the kingdom, his small boat bumping against a rocky shore, he knew that he needed to head south, to Royalsport. He needed to warn the king of the impending invasion via Leveros, needed to save the kingdom from what was to come.

Maybe that would even make up for some of the things he had done in his life.

No, nothing would do that. Penitence as a monk he had not, even though he still wore their robes, still had the shaved head of their order. No amount of prayer or meditation had brought him peace, and when the attack on the island had come… the man he had been was there waiting inside him.

He shook his head and started walking, up off the shoreline, scrambling up a slope of sandy rocks until he reached the top of a cliff. There were trees in the distance, thick and green and tangled, with only the faintest of paths leading into them. From the position of the sun, it seemed that they were to the south. The right way then.

The small wounds he’d suffered on the island ached now, but he kept walking, because if there was one thing the monastery had taught him, it was patient endurance. With every step, he could feel the movement of his sheathed sword at his back, long and slender, enclosed in a covering of black leather for now. It was an unfamiliar feeling after so long in the monastery, but at the same time the most familiar feeling of all. There had been a time when he hadn’t felt alive without a sword in his hand, the thrill of battle running through his veins.

The abbot would not approve of that, if he was still alive. Odd suspected that he was not, when his whole plan had been to offer himself up to the soldiers as a kind of sacrifice. He suspected that any monk who had remained on the Isle of Leveros would be slaughtered now; King Ravin’s men were almost as bloodthirsty as…

…as he had been.

Images came to him, of villages sacked, people slaughtered. Many had been the armored forms of worthy foes, bandits and rebels, but many more had not been. The faces of women and children mingled with those of others he had killed, and the worst part was that Odd couldn’t even make out specific ones. He hadn’t been watching closely enough for that when he’d been Sir Oderick the Mad, consumed by battle rage, consumed by the love of the fight.

“I am not him,” Odd told himself aloud, as if the certainty of that would make the words true. There had been a reason why he hadn’t brought his noble’s clothes, or his armor.

Yet who was he? Not a monk, not a knight, not… anything. At best, a messenger, whose sole purpose was to warn the kingdom of what was coming on the flank they didn’t know about. That was a purpose, though, and Odd would fulfill it, whatever it took.

He kept walking.

How long he kept walking, Odd didn’t know. At one point, he came to a crofter’s hut, pieced together from aged planks and turf squares for a roof. The crofter’s wife came to the door, offering him a bowl of soup, clearly seized from an already bubbling bowl.

“You could stay for the night,” she said. “A monk in the house is said to be lucky.”

“I am anything but lucky,” Odd assured her, and pressed a coin into her hand before he kept walking. Somewhere in his walking, day might have turned to night and back again, but it was hard to tell under the canopy of the trees. He lit a candle and kept going, until tiredness forced him to stop.

In the morning, he knelt in meditation, the way he had for so many mornings now. His mind would not still itself though, and if he had prayers within him, he could not bring himself to say them. Odd rose instead and continued on his trek. In the midmorning, he came upon another hut of forest folk, and along with a little bread and cheese, these sold him a mule they had grazing behind the house.

Compared to all the mounts he’d had in his time, it was easily the humblest. Sir Oderick the Mad had ridden stallions and war-trained chargers, not dappled mules that seemed to snort with every step as if in contempt of the world. His saddles had been finely wrought, not blankets laid simply across a beast’s back. Still, it meant that he could move south quicker, and that was all that mattered.

He sat upon his mule and tried to use the jolting of it as a different kind of meditation, but somehow the beast managed to move without even a consistent rhythm, jarring Odd from his thoughts every few steps as it seemed that the mule found bones in its back Odd had not suspected a steed could have. He knew he must look ludicrous like this, a far cry from the noble he had been, and Odd laughed at the foolishness of it all, long and loud.

“What’s so funny, priest?” The first man to step from the forest was a bear of a man, huge and broad shouldered, dark-bearded and dressed in rough clothes suitable for a day of felling trees. Scraps of leathers serving as armor said that his days held more violence than that though, and the axe he held was a thing of war, not just work.

The second man was smaller, hard faced and armed with a long, single-edged knife, a nail hammered into the hilt to serve as a cross guard. Together, they looked like the kind of men who were farmers or foresters some days, bandits others, drifting back and forth across the line to lawlessness. Odd had seen many men like them before.

“I’m not a priest,” Odd said, stepping down from his mule. “I was a monk, but my abbot told me that I was no longer welcome. As for what’s funny, I suppose that’s just how far I’ve fallen.”

“Things can always get worse,” the big one said, fingering his axe.

“True,” Odd said. He didn’t reach for his sword, not yet.

“How about you give us what you have, and they won’t?” the smaller one said.

Odd laughed again, and if these men had known him, they would have known the strange, mad edge in that laugh. “Really, boys, is that the best you can do? I mean, yes, good, menacing approach, but if you’re robbing someone, you should make more of an effort.”

“How about I make the effort to split your head open?” the axe man suggested.

Odd’s laugh wouldn’t stop now, not even when the big one swung the axe at his head. He was still laughing when he sidestepped, still laughing when he kicked the thug in the knee, sending him sprawling. He didn’t draw his sword yet, but took it from his back, sheath and all, using it like a club to smash the long knife from the other one’s hands. Odd spun and kicked him square in the stomach, sending him to the ground alongside his friend.

Idly, Odd noticed that his mule was at the side of the path, chewing grass as if nothing were happening. The madness in him found that as funny as all the rest of it, so that he laughed even while he drew his sword.

There was no blood on it yet, but his mind’s eye supplied all the ways that blood could run through the etchings on the steel, all the ways that redness could fill in the dips and furrows of it, picking out the knots and the whorls on the surface. He stood there, holding back the urge to kill only with difficulty, smiling at the two would-be robbers like the demented thing he was.

“Best run, boys,” he said. “I’m a little out of practice, but two on one is hardly even worth the effort.”