Throne of Dragons

Horns sounded again, and her father’s army charged.

CHAPTER TWENTY

King Godwin advanced with the bulk of his army, men drawn from around the kingdom descending on the bridge below. The other bridges would be fallen now, torn down in accordance with his commands.

The one below… he would command that destroyed too, if he could. The mechanism to do it was there: the pegs in place that could be hammered out, letting crucial poles slide out of place, with the weight of the bridge doing the rest. The whole point of the bridges was that they could be torn away to protect the kingdom.

Yet now, there was no way to do that; not with one of his daughters standing by the bridge, another on it, and his son Rodry somewhere across it. In circumstances like those, even with King Ravin’s armies there upon the span, even with more and still more pouring in on the far bank, until it seemed that it was flooded with hundreds of men, there was only one thing to do.

“Charge!” he commanded. “Hold the bank!”

His knights leapt to obey his commands, Twell and Ursus, Halfin and Lors moving down at the head of a wave of his troops. Godwin charged with them, praying that he would be in time.

Already, he could see the bank being breached, Erin and the strange man in the monk’s robes pushed back that one crucial step to let men through. The soldiers spread out around them, and for a moment, Godwin’s heart clamped tight in his chest at the thought that he might lose both Erin and Lenore in one moment. If the soldiers formed a true beachhead, then there might be no stopping them.

Godwin saw his men slam into the enemy, though, the weight of their numbers pressing in, smashing that beachhead back, cutting off those who had made it to the far side, a wave of armored bodies slamming into their line. Godwin saw Ursus pick up a man and throw him into the Slate, saw Halfin dodge past a spear and slice through a man’s shoulder.

In that moment, his knights were everything that they had ever been. Godwin saw Commander Harr and his men join the fray, pressing King Ravin’s soldiers back, forcing them almost halfway over the bridge. The bridge creaked with the weight of so many men on it, its narrowness crushing them together, leaving only a little room to swing a weapon. On the bank, there was more space, but even that was quickly filled up with men fighting and dying.

Then Godwin was in the battle himself, charging into those of King Ravin’s soldiers who were still on the bank, determined to fight his way to the spot where Lenore still sat atop her horse. He took the blow of an axe on his shield, sliced through a man’s leg, used his elbow to barge another man aside. He took a blow to his armor, but it made no difference, didn’t even slow him.

Not by the hand you think. Grey’s words ran through his mind and Godwin looked around, seeing a spearman charging at him from the side. He struck the spear aside, and then Sir Lors was there, his two swords swinging to bring the spearman down.

“So much for your prophecy, wizard!” Godwin shouted out above the roar of the battle.

No one was listening. Around him, men were pushing and shoving, cutting and killing, the confines of the bridge taking away all room for tactics, all the space that might have provided the chance for some clever ruse or careful plan. There was only the press of the melee, the small fights against those who broke through onto the near bank, and the endless violence of it all.

Even as he thought it, Godwin fought his way forward. He lanced his sword through another soldier’s chest, kicked a second man out of the way. A sword caught him across the side, but the wound was not a deep one, and beside him, Sir Lors was already moving to kill the man. Both swords plunged into him, meeting somewhere in the middle.

Then the soldier grabbed for him as he died.

“Back!” Godwin yelled at the knight, and ten years ago, the man might have been fast enough to do it.

Now though, the soldier got a hold on him, clinging to him as he died, and that slowed the knight enough that another man could step in, a sword slamming into his neck. Godwin stepped close with a cry of anger, cutting that soldier down, but there was nothing he could do to help Sir Lors, and no time in which to do it. He had to keep fighting his way toward his daughters.

He saw Erin in the press of the fight, the strange monk still beside her, the two fighting like two parts of a whole, killing King Ravin’s troops as they came. Godwin was proud of his daughter in that moment, but also scared for her, caught in the middle of the battle like that. Even as he watched, a spearman came at her, but Commander Harr was there, cutting down the man and holding back the enemy for a moment while Erin slipped by, striking out with her own short weapon.

He was just as frightened for Lenore, whose horse was whirling back and forth in the middle of the press of men there. Why hadn’t she run from the bridge to safety? Godwin didn’t know, but he was going to get to her. He forced his way forward, cutting down men to either side, trying to force a gap to open. Sir Twell was there then, holding the line beside him, seeming to see what was needed. His shoulder was bleeding from a sword wound, but he held his place, while Godwin fought his way forward, cutting down a man who was too close to his daughter’s horse, reaching up to clasp her hand in his.

They’d done it. They’d gotten to her. Now, they just had to get her home safely, and that was still going to be far from easy, when the battle was still raging on every side.

***

From his vantage point away from the bridge, hiding behind a low tree stump, Vars watched the battle starting to unfold. He crouched there and he stared, taking in the violence of the battle, the men fighting and dying on the span of the bridge stretching into the distance, over to the south. He saw Erin killing men with that twig-like spear of hers, saw Lenore there on her horse, saw his father fighting his way to her.

He saw men falling, on both sides. A knight went down with a halberd embedded deep in him. King Ravin’s soldiers fell from the bridge like scarlet-coated rain, dropping to sword blows or simply being thrown from it.

He wanted to go down to help, even though Vars couldn’t understand why men would risk themselves like that, why they would throw themselves into a battle where there was no way to avoid the foe, no way to keep back from the blows that fell in a cascade. His father stood at the heart of the fighting, directing it even as he fought, in a way that simply made no sense to Vars.

He wanted to throw himself into the thick of it, even ordered his legs to carry him forward, but they wouldn’t move. They refused, the way a horse might refuse to jump a wall. He… he simply couldn’t do it.

Which just left the question of what he was going to do. Did he stand there, and risk someone seeing him there, hanging back from the battle? Clearly he couldn’t do that. If his father knew that he was there and not lending the strength of his arm, he would be treated as a coward, or worse, a traitor.

Did he throw himself into the battle then, to let people see him in the thick of the fight? That seemed almost as stupid. Even if Vars stuck to the edges of the fighting, there was too much of a risk of a stray sword blow catching him, a thrown spear or a sudden arrow bringing him down. Worse, it would raise far too many questions about why Vars hadn’t been there before.

He tried to work out what he was going to do about that. If Lenore had been lost completely, he could have made up any story he pleased, claimed that he had fought hard to save her. Now, he would need to think of another way to do things.

About the only positive note was that there was no sign of Rodry, or of the men who had ridden off with him, betraying Vars to hurry blindly into the enemy’s lands. Vars felt a small pang of regret at that, at the thought that his brother might be lost completely, but that pang was short lived, and not just because Vars could still feel the bruise from where his brother had struck him.

If Rodry was gone, it was down to his own stupidity. It was because he hadn’t listened to Vars, hadn’t listened to sense. Vars had told him that no good could come of charging across the river. Now, for all those who had gone, only Lenore, Erin, and the strange monk had returned. None of them could say what Vars had and hadn’t done.

As far as they were concerned, he had never been here. If he left now, no one could say that he hadn’t been attacked on the road, ambushed before he reached Lenore. If she disagreed, well… Vars would deal with that when it came.

For now, he was safest well clear of this fight. That much was obvious. So, while the battle raged behind him, Vars very quickly, very quietly, slipped away and started back toward Royalsport.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Odd was slowly falling out of his battle rage. Oh, he tried to maintain it, tried to froth and shout and throw himself blindly at the enemy, but his heart wasn’t in it in quite the same way that it used to be. That didn’t stop him from battering aside a shield, hacking the top of a skull from the rest, but even so, he could feel the fire within him dimming.

Part of it had to do with the many small wounds he’d sustained so far in the battle on the bridge. You could say what you liked about plate armor, but at least it stopped scratches like the one that ran all the way down his forearm now.

Part of it seemed to have to do with the presence of the girl by his side. She fought with her own kind of anger, which seemed more focused, but less completely trained than his. Odd found himself moving across to protect her from sword blows when they came at her, interposing steel in a way he usually didn’t. Normally, his battle madness left him little sense that anyone was on his side, let alone the urge to protect them. With Erin, it seemed to be different, and not just because Odd had worked out exactly who this girl had to be when the king came running for her and her sister.

Part of it, though, was that there was something deeper there, something that felt almost peaceful, in a way nothing had a right to be in the middle of a battle like this. Beside him, a guardsman had his ribs shattered by a hammer, a knight fell into the waters where his armor would only drag him down. Instead of his usual furious laughter, though, Odd smiled beatifically. It all fit. It all made sense, and in doing so, it felt beautiful.

That didn’t stop him from punching his sword through an enemy’s gorget, or smashing the pommel into another’s skull. Those things were as much a part of the meditation as the rest of it. Odd kept fighting, and around him on the bridge, the world turned into the most beautiful hell he had ever seen.

***

Erin forced herself to stay in the heart of the battle, refusing to pull back even though she was sure that half of those there would have liked to see her safe back behind the lines. She thrust with her spear, spun it in a distraction, used it to trip a man’s legs from under him. Here at the edge of the bridge, everything was chaos, with no neat lines now, no sense of which direction the next sword blow might come from. Anyone might be a friend or a—

“Look out!”

Erin ducked on instinct, and a sword blow went flashing above her head. She thrust backward with her spear, feeling the crunch as it entered flesh, then let the soldier she’d just stabbed fall.

She looked round to see Commander Harr standing in the midst of the battle, swinging a great sword with ease. Erin had seen him on the practice field, but this was something different, something deadlier. He frowned at her presence in a way that said that there would be consequences for running out ahead the way she had, but right then there was no time for Erin to think about any of that, only to parry and thrust, throwing herself back into the action…

***

Commander Harr was feeling his age. Around him, he could see men he’d served with for decades in the Knights of the Spur throwing themselves into the fray like young men, but he was anything but young these days. He had to fight carefully instead, conserving his energy, measuring each swing of his blade the way a carpenter might have measured prior to a cut.

He shortened one foe by a head in a single sweep, moved back to avoid a blow, then felt the pain of a dagger finding one of the seams of his armor. Commander Harr bellowed at that, because even a decade ago, no one would have gotten close enough to inflict such a wound. He lashed out in reply, all but cutting the foe who had closed with him in two, then ripped the dagger clear with a grunt of effort.

His eyes found Erin. She fought as he had thought that she might from the training grounds, with speed and skill, but also with a dangerous touch of recklessness. Three times now, he’d seen the man beside her parry blows aimed at her, his monk’s robes flowing as he did it.

Of course, Commander Harr knew that was no monk. There were some faces that even time could not erase, from memory, some sights that were too heavily etched to be unseen. The way this “monk” danced through the fight even within the horrific press of the bridge was a kind of signature in itself, yet there was something different about it too.

There was no time to consider that though, because the battle was still washing back and forth on the bridge, the press of it too great. Worse, Commander Harr could see still more troops pouring in from the Southern Kingdom’s side. How many could there be? More importantly, how could even the Knights of the Spur hope to hold against so many? Even as he watched, men tumbled from the bridge, one man hanging from another’s grasp on the very edge.