“They have enough supplies and weapons to hole up in there for months,” Linsha heard someone remark.
“That’s all well enough for them, but it doesn’t help us much,” another voice grumbled.
“It won’t help them much either if Thunder-”
A shadow dark and prophetic swept over their heads, and the wind of the dragon’s passing choked the words in Linsha’s throat.
Wordlessly the observers on the wall watched the huge blue sweep over the harbor and make a lazy circle above the Solamnic Citadel.
Linsha’s throat went dry. The Citadel had been her home for over a year. While the Missing City wasn’t the best assignment she’d ever had, she had grown to appreciate the castle’s amenities and its strengths, and she had come to know many of the Knights and servants who worked within its walls. She even liked a few of them. Neither they nor the fortress deserved what was about to happen next.
Falaius rubbed a hand over his sweating face. “Does Remmik have defenses against dragons?”
Linsha did not take her eyes off the fortress or the dragon. She simply gave a dry laugh that held no humor. “He had one of our sorcerer Knights concoct some spells to protect the walls and the gate. Those might hold since they are a few years old. But magic has been failing all over Ansalon. The Knights have nothing new, and no weapons that will fight a wyrm that big.”
“What was Remmik thinking to build a fortress like that?”
“When he designed it, he never imagined that Iyesta would be dead or that magic would be so unpredictable,” Linsha said.
She didn’t know why she was trying to defend the Solamnic commander. She had often asked the same questions herself. But what Sir Remmik had done was the same thing he had done in other parts of Ansalon-organize a circle, build defenses, and train young Knights into a fighting unit. The only difference here was he had had more authority, more time, and more resources to create his vision of a perfect Solamnic Circle. The problem was he had not taken into account some extraordinary circumstances, and now one of those circumstances was circling overhead and eyeing the fortress with utter malice. Linsha wondered what Sir Remmik was thinking at that moment.
In the blink of an eye, lightning crackled from the dragon’s jaws and exploded on the cap of one of the Solamnic gate towers. The boom rolled across the Missing City. A second bolt of lightning from the dragon struck the tower again, and pieces flew off the tall structure. Smoke wafted from the interior. A third strike curled around a stone column, pulverizing mortar and weakening the structure even more. Without waiting to see the results of his breath attack on the first tower, Thunder concentrated three more bolts of lightning on the second gate tower, then he moved around the walls, systematically attacking each tower until the defenders were dead and the stonework was scorched black. Thick clouds of smoke rose from the interior where fires consumed the buildings, the fodder, and the stores.
The massive dragon slowly came to ground in front of the gates and tucked his wings close to his body. The Brutes watched impassively. For one brief moment, Linsha wondered if the dragon was going to allow the survivors of the fortress to surrender, but that fragile hope shriveled a heartbeat later as Thunder swung his blunt, heavy tail into the base of the gate. The two towers guarding the gateway shattered like cheap pottery. They collapsed with a rumble and sent a cloud of dust and mortar billowing over the Citadel.
The big blue roared with pleasure. Using his front legs, he clawed a hole through the wall where the gate had stood and shoved his massive forequarters into the fortress. More towers on the outer wall fell to ruin; more lightning seared the carefully built stonework of the outer wall. Soon he brought down the entire front section of the outer wall and began to concentrate his cruel will on the inner gateway. There seemed to be no sign that the surviving Knights were fighting back.
“Is there any way for them to get out of there?” Falaius said softly.
Linsha had to swallow hard to get enough moisture into her mouth to answer. “I don’t know. I heard some time ago that Sir Morrec had talked to Sir Remmik about building an escape tunnel, but if it was ever done, no one told me.” She gave a bitter laugh. “It would be like Remmik to have workmen construct a small tunnel from the other end so no one knew about it, then in a crisis he could reveal his planning and forethought and look like a hero once again.”
The faint rumble of a distant crash drew them both back to the destruction of the Solamnic Citadel. They watched as Thunder demolished the inner gateway, doing the damage it would take a human siege party weeks to accomplish. Dust, smoke, and ash whirled around his blue hide. Lightning from his powerful jaws smashed into the barracks and the main hall. Like a creature maddened, he roared and stamped and swung his heavy tail into the walls and the towers until they cracked, shattered, and came tumbling down.
In less than twenty minutes, Sir Remmik’s pride and joy became little more than a pile of rubble. No building remained standing, no tower stood above the heap of broken masonry. Like a victor swollen with triumph, the blue dragon scraped the mounds of rock and smoldering debris into a large rough platform, then he leaped to the top to survey the Missing City from this new height. The Brutes cheered.
“I guess this makes you the new Solamnic commander,” Falaius said. There was no levity in his voice.
Linsha remembered Lanther’s words to her only two nights ago, that her sentence would be erased if the entire garrison were wiped out. The entire garrison. Seventy-two men and women. Sir Hugh, young Sir Pieter, all the Knights she had come to know the past year. Perhaps they had let Sir Remmik have his way too often, but they were good men, and she never wanted their blood to buy her freedom.
She turned her head away without answering and slid down the stone until she was sitting with her back to the cool wall. She rested her aching head in her hands. The new Solamnic Commander… of a ghost garrison.
Trouble at the Gate
18
“Where is Lanther?” Linsha asked. It was a question that had lurked in her mind for some time and only now found a moment to be asked.
Falaius leaned against the stone crenellations of the city wall and gestured vaguely behind him. “I don’t know. I sent him to a militia post near the north gate this morning. Not seen him since.”
Linsha nodded. If the Legion commander was even half as tired as he looked, then he felt about the same way she did. That brief conversation was all she could manage for now. She closed her eyes again and let her muscles relax. She had rarely felt so sore and listless, not even after that sword duel with the Dark Knight assassin.
“Look at that,” Falaius commented softly. “They really want this town.”
Linsha forced herself to stir and turn her upper body around so she could see the streets of Mirage below. It had been about three hours since the city defenders had fallen back on the wall and left the outer city to the mercy of the Brutes. So far, the invaders had shown a sort of brutal mercy to the town and the inhabitants who had not escaped. All the buildings and houses were being thoroughly searched, but none had been put to the torch and few had been ransacked. There was no sign of the expected pillaging, drunken riots, or rape and slaughter. The survivors, including the women, were being herded into a guarded pen of sorts on the beach near the waterfront. Only the wounded had been killed outright and hauled to a growing heap of bodies left piled in an empty lot. The bodies of those Brutes killed in the fighting were immediately collected and carried back out to the ships. They were, Linsha noted, nothing if not methodical and thorough.