The commander’s voice rang rich and deep as a bell across the sounds of terror in the square. The dragon lifted his head. His wings rose and spread like a blue shroud.
“You heard him, General,” Thunder said. “You may release your men.”
Surprised, Linsha looked up again. She saw someone she hadn’t noticed before-a figure seated on the dragon’s back between the wings. A man, perhaps. His skin was blue and a mask of gold hid his features. He carried only a great round shield and a huge ram’s horn. A man. Thunder allowed a man to ride him. Linsha could hardly take in the significance.
At the dragon’s words, the warrior lifted the horn to his lips and blew a great blast of sound that soared over the city. Twice he blew the horn, and at the end of the second blast Linsha heard a reply echoing from the bay.
Thunder’s wings swept down and the dragon sprang into the smoke-poisoned air, carrying his passenger with him. He paid no more attention to the ruin in the square. Rising above the buildings, he angled eastward and flew over the harbor.
“We’re in for it now,” Linsha muttered to the dead man on her hips.
Battle for the City
17
As the dragonfear passed, a heavy silence settled on the square. Everyone who still lived drew a breath, then the quiet disappeared into a cacophony of screams, shouts, cries for help, and groans of the wounded.
Falaius strode among the prostrate officers of his command and urged those who still lived to get to their feet. “War is coming!” he shouted. “Go to your posts!”
(Most clambered to their feet and obeyed. Considering the force of the explosion that shattered the tree, (surprisingly few men were dead or too badly wounded to move. Linsha pulled her arm free and rolled the watchman’s body off her stomach. She found the source of the wetness on her tunic. A large splinter from the yew had impaled the man’s chest, and much of his life’s blood had leaked out of the massive hole.
The smell of blood clogged Linsha’s nose. Dizzy and sick, she tore off her overtunic and laid it over the dead man’s face. Her linen shirt and pants were stained with blood as well, but unlike some barbarian races, she did not believe in running into battle naked. What she needed now was armor-chain mail, a breastplate, anything.
A groan in a voice light and frightened hit her senses like a bucket of cold water. Leonidas!
She found the centaur sprawled on the grass, his body pricked red by a dozen large splinters. He groaned again, more irritably this time, and struggled to an upright position.
“Hold still,” Linsha ordered. Using her dagger and a deft hand, she removed the splinters from his side and withers while he pulled out a few out of his chest.
His teeth clenched, he pulled out the last sliver of wood from his arm and tossed it aside. “I suppose I should be glad it was merely splinters and not the whole tree.”
Linsha shot a glance at the dead man who had fallen on her. Before she could say anything, Falaius approached, his seamed face reddened with rage and iron determination. “Go back to the centaurs, Leonidas. Tell them what happened. Tell your uncle I will send reinforcements if I can. But he must hold out on his own for a while.”
“Where do you want me?” Linsha asked.
The Plainsman looked at her pale face and the blood spots on her tunic. “Are you wounded?”
She shook her head then wished she hadn’t. This was one headache that would not fade anytime soon. “The blood is someone else’s.”
“Then if you are able to fight, I would be pleased to have you come with me. I could use an able lieutenant.”
An expression of disappointment passed over Leonidas’s face, but he bowed to the commander and the Lady Knight. “Fight well,” he said to Linsha, “and we will celebrate our victory together in the streets of the city.”
On impulse, she took his hand, pulled him down until she could reach his face, and kissed his cheek in both blessing and farewell.
He bowed again, turned on his heels, and cantered away to the outskirts of the city. His light form quickly disappeared in the gloom of the smoke.
Linsha went the opposite direction toward the harbor and the city gate. She followed Falaius and what men he could gather of both the Legion and the militia to reinforce the defenders already in place.
Not far from the Mayor’s Hall they passed a burning tannery-one of the many fires Thunder had started. Instead of staying to fight it, Falaius called the firefighters off the site and told them to join his force.
“Let it burn,” he ordered. “The smoke and flames will hamper the enemy as much as it hampers us.”
At the Legion Gate in the city wall, Falaius climbed the guard tower with Linsha and two other officers to view what lay ahead. The sight shook them all to silence. In the thirty minutes or so it had taken the Legionnaires to regroup and reach the wall, the harbor had come alive with small dark boats. Like so many carrion beetles, the boats clustered around the larger ships, then made their way to the ruined docks and the beaches where they disgorged their cargo of armed warriors and returned to the ships for more. Already the first wave of invaders was marching into the storm-damaged streets of Mirage and meeting the first resistance, while the second wave disembarked and formed their ranks on the little crescent beach near the foot of the hill where the Citadel sat.
“What are those?” a Legionnaire gasped.
Falaius was quiet for a moment, then he spoke in a voice filled with dismay. “They are Brutes.”
“Brutes!” another man cried. “They can’t be. I don’t see any Dark Knights. Don’t those things fight only for the Dark Knights?”
“Apparently not.”
Brutes, Linsha thought. The gods help us. The Brutes were known to the people of Ansalon as ferocious fighters who had fought as slaves or mercenaries for the Knights of Takhisis during the Chaos War. After the war and the decimation of the Knightly orders, the Brutes had faded into the background, showing up every once in a while as shock troops for a Dark Knight offensive or as mercenaries for a war lord with enough money to afford them. No one knew where they came from or who they really were, and never in anyone’s memory had so many Brutes arrived together to invade a city in Ansalon.
“Did Thunder organize this?” Linsha said in amazement. She thought she knew the huge blue from Iyesta’s stories and from tales she heard from Thunder’s realm. Never would she have imagined that the hungry, malevolent, territorial blue would have the imagination, the audacity, the courage, and the funds to arrange, plan, and set in motion a massive invasion of Iyesta’s realm. Apparently, she’d been wrong. Not only had Thunder organized his own mercenary forces, he had also hired the Brutes, found a way to slay Iyesta, and devised a two-pronged attack that caught the city in a vise-like trap. She would never have believed it if she hadn’t seen the evidence landing on the beaches and setting fires to the few merchant ships trapped in the harbor. How in the name of the gods were they going to fight an enemy force this big? She scanned the sky over Mirage to find Thunder, but for the moment he was out of sight.
“You might as well wait, Iyesta,” Linsha said to herself. “It appears we might be joining you soon.”
If Falaius had similar thoughts or regrets, he did not show them. He left a detachment behind to strengthen the guard on the gates, then he led the remainder of his forces toward the Legion headquarters. They heard the sounds of battle even before they reached the white, stuccoed building that served as home to the Legion cell.
Falaius moved into a jog, his fist clenched around the hilt of his great sword. He glanced down once at Linsha by his side and noticed for the first time she carried only a short sword and a rusty dagger. They were moving down a street parallel to the street in front the headquarters, and as the troop moved closer to the building, the commander jabbed his weapon toward the back door.