Blood in the Valley Read online

  “What is this?” Dodso demanded as the Guardsmen formed a semicircle at the back of the gathering, hands sliding towards sword grips.

  Perspiration beading at his hairline and his eyes bulging as they frothed with maniac light, Aigann said, “Do you think I’d allow a man—not even a man!—who’d disobeyed Imperial Decree take any part in the defense of this city? Master Dodso, I charge you with High Treason. You will be taken into Imperial custody, awaiting trial before the Assembly for dereliction of duty, willful disobedience, inciting populist unrest, and anything else I can think up!”

  Dodso rocked back a step. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “You’re just going to stand there?” Vohl snarled at Ulomo. “Say something!”

  The Legionnaire thrust up his chin. “And you’d have me say what, Citizen Rhenn? The Procurator isn’t wrong in what he says. You, yourself, know it.”

  “You see!” Aigann proclaimed in triumph.

  “Procurator,” Severs of the City Watch pleaded, “please, you must reconsider. Master Dodso is—”

  “Under arrest,” Aigann cut him off, “which is exactly what any of the rest of you will be if you think to intercede on his behalf.”

  Enough of this... His vision edged with red, Vohl glanced at Muddle, who offered him a slight nod and began to pivot to face the Guardsmen.

  “No!” Dodso barked, whirling to face his friends with his hands up. “Please, Vohl, by the gods, do not!”

  “On the contrary,” Aigann snickered. “Please do, Rhenn. I’d like nothing more.”

  “He means it!” Dodso said in a tight voice. The gnome turned to face the Guardsmen and put his hands together, wrist-to-wrist in symbolic offering of himself up to the shackles. “Do what you must, gentlemen.”

  Vohl shook his head, couldn’t believe it, wanted to fight, scream—anything!—as a pair of Guardsmen collected Dodso and led him away, the gnome casting a forlorn glance at him over his shoulder. “I’ll be seeing you, Vohl Rhenn.”

  Shivering with pent-up fury, Muddle spat, “This is madness!” He spun on his heel and stomped out of the chamber, the remaining Guardsmen giving him a wide berth.

  Vohl watched him go, wanted to follow, but something kept him rooted to his spot on the floor, spread-legged, like a soldier anticipating a charge.

  Beaming with the triumph of his mad, vindictive moment, Aigann asked, “Are they are any other dissenters?”

  Vohl glared at Ulomo with every once of fury he could manage. The other man, to his credit, glowered back, a single trickle of sweat glinting along his jawline, but his eyes stony. With a hiss of disgust, Vohl turned back to Aigann. “So just what the Hells do you expect us to do now?”

  “Defend your districts as members of the City Watch.” Aigann cackled. “Follow the gnome’s plan, if you like.” He rose from behind the desk, gathering his robes of office about him.

  “Where are you going?” Vohl demanded.

  “To prepare the Palace defenses,” Aigann replied as he strode away, Guardsmen falling in behind him. “None shall violate its sanctified halls on my watch.”

  Vohl gaped in disbelief as the doors closed behind the retreating Procurator. He glanced at the City Watch men, noted that all their eyes were on him.

  “Defend our districts...” Severs said hollowly. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Vohl looked down and spat on the tiled floor of the office, not far from Ulomo’s iron shod boots. He shrugged. “It means we’re doomed.”

  JAYCE WAITED. THERE was nothing left for him to do. Around him, the goblin noises settled to murmurs and sneering, coupled with the crackle of newly-stoked campfires. In the dark, the shimmer of flames colored swaying branches in crimson. The gulley stank of urine, the nearest group having picked it as their communal sink, and Jayce’s nostrils stung, made holding the spell he’d cast harder than even his injuries and fatigue.

  A reptilian hiss ripped across the sky. Goblinoid conversation stilled. The hiss rose, became a shrill cry. Jayce heard feet scrambling, heard hollers of alarm. Leathery wings beat above then the ground shook as something massive landed. A young tree snapped and fell crashing across the gulley. A roar buffeted the air, acrid stench of half-digested meat gusting over Jayce, and goblins scattered before it, spilling into the gulley with howls of terror.

  Jayce remained where he was, motionless as a monstrous shape stomped to the edge of the gulley then leapt over it. Wings folded at its back as it landed on the other side and a sinuous tail flopped into sight, a goblin thrashing in its coils. The tail flexed, lifting its unfortunate morsel as the creature’s long neck wound around, a head that was more knobby bone and fangs than any kind of face snaking towards the catch. Teeth sank into the goblin, ending its cries with a wet crunch. Gore spurted as the monster tore its kill in half and began to chew half-heartedly.

  Jayce stood, forgetting stealth, confident in the success of his spell-craft. Wyvern, he thought. Not exactly what I had intended.

  The wyvern paused in mid-chomp, tiny eye-slits catching the gleam of the campfires in yellowy creases. It half-turned to present its front to Jayce, head hovering unmoved atop the swaying shaft of its neck.

  “Creature,” Jayce called, “you have come for me.”

  The wyvern’s mouth opened, allowed the torn goblin to drop as its tail loosened to do the same with the remains of the slain brute’s lower body. It stiffened, muscles rippling with tension under its jet scales, and its eyes narrowed. A low hiss escaped through borne fangs.

  Something was wrong.

  Jayce’s moment of prescience saved him. He caught the momentary bunching of muscles at the monster’s shoulders and dove to his left just as the wyvern lunged, planted its face in the spot Jayce had occupied a second before.

  Jayce scrambled up the side of the gulley and turned to keep the tree he’d hid under between him and the wyvern. How? Did I miscast? “Hear me, creature!” Jayce barked imperiously. “I am the one that has summoned you! Heed my command!”

  The creature tore its mud-smeared muzzle free and bellowed as it came on, stumbling into the gulley then scrambling for purchase on the other side. Jayce backed away, putting more trees between them. The monster hefted itself out and growled as the taloned tips of its wings snagged in the overhanging canopy. It tore free but Jayce was on the move again.

  Goblins scrambled before Jayce, abandoning hiding places as the monster pursued him. One stumbled and fell, couldn’t rise again before the wyvern’s foot planted on top of it, crushing the life from the brute with a crackling wheeze.

  Jayce started to run. The campfires faded, the night closing in around him, alive with scrambling feet, yelps of terror and the shudder of the wyvern’s hammering stride. In the gloom, he stumbled and fell, tried to get up while simultaneously casting a look over his shoulder. He didn’t see the next tree and crashed into it, stars jolting across his vision. He fell again. The wyvern’s foot falls tore the undergrowth behind him.

  Wheezing, he regained his feet. His lungs burned and his limbs fought his mind, throbbing weights that dragged and caught in the brush. He was tired, so damned tired, and panic began to give way before resignation. He was going to die here, in this forgotten, benighted corner of the world. After having survived so much, he was going to end up in the belly of a beast he should have been able to control. Pain and fatigue mocked his efforts to even care.

  The ground dipped unexpectedly ahead and he went down again, landing on already skinned knees and sliding face-first into a shallow trench. He rolled over and tried to sit up, but the shadow of the wyvern was already over him, its bulk shaking torn branches and leaves free to patter down upon his face. It leaned forward, jaw opening impossibly wide as fangs dripped blood and mucous.

  Gods... It didn’t seem real. I am going to be eaten alive.

  A deep roar shook the air. The wyvern’s neck coiled to draw the head above the ditch, eyes narrowing. Jayce heard a mighty, indrawn breath. Another roar came, lit the forest with
a torrent of brilliance that stunned Jayce’s eyes and forced him to roll over to shield his face from flesh-shriveling heat. The ground shuddered. Trees groaned and split and inhuman throats bawled fury. A wave of scorching heat washed over him. Then was gone.

  And, somehow, Jayce was still alive.

  Groggily, Jayce dragged himself to the top of the trench. Its edges flickered with small fires casting plumes of acrid smoke that burned in his nostrils and throat. By their illumination, he watched as the wyvern backed away from the trench, chased away from it by another, slightly smaller, leaner reptilian shape. The newcomer had wings, too, spread slightly at its spiny back, but its tail was shorter, lashing the ground in terse strokes as it stalked its foe with a half-stooped stance. Its neck dipped low, kept its broader-jawed skull partially shielded between the wings. A pair of arms, absent on the more serpentine-built wyvern, folded close to its broad, crimson-scaled chest, clawed hands opening and closing in anticipation.

  A dragon had come to challenge its distant kin for the prize.

  The beasts circled. Jayce could see now that the dragon was either a juvenile or a runt, small enough to survive on what sparse game was still available in the Valley and to evade vengeful humans. Dirty, yellow-black smoke frothed about its muzzle and Jayce knew it was readying another breath of flame. Apparently realizing this, too, the wyvern made the first move, lunged low for one of the dragon’s legs.

  The dragon skipped back then dove, catching the wyvern’s neck in its teeth and clenched for its throat with its claws. But the wyvern jerked back, neck flexing and carrying the dragon with it. The dragon flopped, forced to release, and spun head over heels into a tree that splintered with the impact.

  The wyvern dodged the falling tree and lunged again. Its teeth sank into the dragon’s shoulder but the dragon fought on, hammering the sides of the wyvern’s skull with its fists. A shudder ran up the wyvern’s spin and it flinched away. The dragon drew another breath and, as the wyvern tried to back off and found its retreat blocked by trees, it bellowed forth another jet of fire.

  The wyvern screamed as the dragon breath feasted upon its face. It stumbled backwards and crashed onto its side then flopped back to its feet, lashing the forest around it with its tail, beating its wings vainly, tearing the air around it. Sulfuric-tanged smoke bled from its charred eye sockets.

  The dragon hung back, waited, and then sprang when the wyvern’s thrashings offered it an opening. It landed on its foe’s back, arms wrapping around the base of the neck while its jaw sought the wyvern’s throat, found it and snapped down, fangs parting scales with a grating like rocks split. The wyvern’s head tossed, trying to twist impossibly behind it to tear the dragon. The pair twisted and spun in a tangle of scaly limbs and slamming wings. One of the wyvern’s knees gave with a pop of hyper-extended joint and they fell together with crash like a hacked-down tree.

  Stunned, Jayce couldn’t move for a few seconds. Finally, his own safety remembered, he crawled free of the trench and began to stagger into the protective gloom of the woods. He was near breakdown, he knew, vision speckled with flecks of fiery afterimages and fatigue. He got a few more dragged steps and dropped to one knee, panting.

  Silence at his back felt like a physical thing. Darkness settled over him and he knew something towered at his back. Broken past the point of terror, he turned to look at his doom.

  The dragon stooped over him, smoking muzzle blackened from its fiery work, scales slick and darkened with wyvern gore. It drew in a long, shuddering breath. Jayce tensed, waited for the last, hellish blast that would char him to cinders.

  But death didn’t come. The dragon bowed its head to the earth, wings folding at its spine, hands flattened to hold it prone and quiescent before Jayce.

  Jayce chuckled, a hoarse, papery dry sound that couldn’t be his own voice, bordered on the edge of hysteria. He understood now: his spell had both failed and succeeded.

  The wyvern had come for him.

  The dragon had come to serve him.

  Chapter Seven

  Eredynn Besieged

  The night shuddered around Eredynn with the celebration of the horde anticipating victory and plunder.

  Lonadiel stood at Satayebeb’s side atop one of the knolls facing the main gate of the city. To either side, blocks of hobgoblins waited in clenched-jawed silence, a contrast to the jeering masses around them. Further down slope, lit by torches and the glitter of the smoldering shanties, a mass of goblins waited for a signal from the heights, just beginning their “uuh!-uuh!-uuh!” war chant while weapons pounded shields.

  In the smoky dark Lonadiel couldn’t tell for certain how much of the rest of sprawling horde was as wound up as the mob before him, but the chorus of battle cries answering them—the infernal noise—set his teeth to grinding. He noted the flicker of lanterns passing behind the battlements of the city and wondering what it must look like from their side. The end of the world, he figured.

  Sateyebeb glanced to the sky. Dawn was probably still an hour off, though the stars of eastern horizon were already fading. “Any sign of the giants?” she asked.

  Lonadiel shook his head. “Still, they trail behind.”

  The demon-goddess sighed. “Regrettable. But we may not need them.”

  “What of the wyvern?” Lonadiel asked, having noted the creature had not yet returned from its curious midnight errand.

  Satayebeb’s lip twitched. “The wyrm had business elsewhere. It will return. But I think we won’t need it, either.”

  Lonadiel opened his mouth to ask what she meant by that but stopped, noticed his breath frosting in a sudden chill. His skin crawled as silence swept through the horde from behind. The hobgoblins, stoic and motionless in their almost reverent anticipation of the attack, began to shift on their feet, an obvious ripple going through their formations as individuals shuffled to get clear of something and nudged comrades in the process. Hushed curses began, warriors batting the air.

  Something zinged past Lonadiel’s ear, was followed by something else skittering across his cheek. He smacked his face and brought his hand away to regard a crushed fly. Already, hundreds more were warbling about his head. Then the smell hit him and the chill, the involuntary quivering in his bowels, made sense.

  The walking dead had arrived.

  Satayebeb smirked. “It’s time we delivered our terms to the city of Eredynn.”

  WITH A HELPING HAND from Muddle, Vohl hefted himself up onto a table dragged out onto the Loving Imp’s patio. He stood with his legs spread, staring across the gathering of citizens that were nominally his to command. He couldn’t help but snort to himself. The City Watch appointment had been—as it was for most of the other commanders—more of a ceremonial post, given to swell the egos of the self-important. He’d never expected to actually do anything with it; even in his left-behind Legion days, he hadn’t been able to hold on to a battlefield promotion to file-closer for long.

  Torch- and lantern-light flickered across faces turned up to regard him, a sea of scared, taut visages carved with the teetering hope that in him they might find some reassurance. Eredynn citizens crowded closest, sprinkled with Edonites from the Expedition and centaurs waiting at the fringes of the crowd. The Andenburgers had rallied together under their own leaders and been allocated to other parts of the wall. In a way, Vohl was relieved; the weight of those pledged to him was already enough to crush his own shaky confidence.

  I wish Dodso was here, Vohl thought, mopping perspiration from his brow as he fumbled for something to say. The little twerp always loved this part of the job. This wasn’t like his impromptu harangues delivered to the crew of the Imp. The silence of crowd dragged into maddening infinity.

  He cleared his throat. “I’m not going to give you all some tripe about me being bad at speeches, because I think you can all tell.” Some muted chuckles at that. “I serve drinks and occasionally bust heads.”

  “Where is Speaker Dodso?” a voice asked from the crowd.

 
Vohl glanced at Muddle, felt a rivulet of sweat dribble into his eye to sting. “He’s with Procrator Aigann.”

  “Is true that there are ten thousand goblins out there?” another voice asked. Murmurs began as did the shuffling of bodies against each other. Near the edge of the gathering a child started to cry and was quickly silenced.

  “Some of you have already been to the walls,” Vohl said. “And you know what faces us out there. But I’m here to tell you; there were thousands of barbarians come out of the north at Graystone Glade, and the Expeditionary Force sent half of them screaming to their ancestors and the rest running all the way back to the Glittran Wastes!”

  Someone—an Edonite, Vohl guessed—let out a cheer that was joined half-heartedly by others. It wasn’t much, but Vohl felt something, a kind of undercurrent in the crowd, working its way in his favor. “It’s not even men out there now, and yes, I know there are thousands of them. I won’t lie to you. But we’ve got walls, this time. And more, we’ve got each other!”

  Another cheer followed, this one lasting. He noted Teelee and Daneah, as per his instructions, distributing ale liberally. Free drinks—gods!—I’ll never see an end to the debt. He pressed on. “Fight for each other! Fight for your neighbors, your friends, your homes! Fight for your families—our families—and, by the Gods, we will hold those walls!”

  The cheer that erupted at his words rocked Vohl back a step, shocking him with its mingling ardor, fear, and rage. He let it drag out, was grimly amused to hear his name chanted a few times. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Muddle smirking. Part of him wanted to kick the half-breed’s fangs in, but mostly he simply wanted to stand, even stinging with the flush of embarrassment, and drink in the moment. I suppose I see what Dodso likes so much about this.