Talon wondered at that, wondered how many more Inkarrans might be bound into the wyrmling horde, wondered how many of them Gaborn might have tried to sway.
"We saw your handiwork on the road a hundred miles back," Talon said. "Good job, that. Did you get many forcibles?"
"A few thousand. I couldn t let them reach the wyrmling horde."
"Some got through anyway," Daylan said. "We saw Knights Eternal flying north not an hour ago, carrying cargo. We must fear for the worst."
Rhianna bit her lip.
"We ll release the wyrmling girl," she said, "a few miles from the fortress. She can go to the doors, beg for mercy. The wyrmlings will take her to their dungeon for torture. I can track their path by smell. I promised that I would go in for her in less than an hour."
It did not seem like much of a plan to Talon. She wanted things locked down better, more secure. But it was the first and only plan that had been introduced so far.
Daylan Hammer said, "And once we get into the fortress, what next?"
"We kill anyone who stands in our way," Rhianna said, all business.
Talon could not help but hear the ghost of the Bright One s warnings. Erringale had told them to spare the enemy, be as lenient as possible, lest they stain their own souls.
Almost Talon thought to object to the plan.
But why should I bother? she wondered. The wyrmlings have been a scourge upon the earth for far too long. They ve all but destroyed my people, and if left to their own ends, they will exterminate us. We are strong. The six of us could wipe out the whole wyrmling horde.
She looked to the Cormars, saw that they grinned, their smiles obscenely identical. There was a glint of madness to their eyes.
Yet Talon couldn t imagine engaging in slaughter. There were innocents among the wyrmlings too, children and babes. There might be more wyrmling girls like the one that Rhianna had found, people who longed to be free and who were willing to fight for it, to die for it.
"I go to Rugassa to free my friend," the emir said, "not to wash in wyrmling blood." He said it in Rofehavanish. His accent was thick, his words unsure, but he managed to say it. Talon was surprised that he could speak the tongue at all given their short conversation. Then he switched to the tongue of the warrior clans. "Take a life if you must, but only if you must." There was rage on his face, a temper barely under control. "We are in dire straits," he said, "but I swear, if any of you take an innocent life, you will have me to deal with."
Daylan Hammer translated his words for Rhianna, then gave him an appreciative look and added, "And me."
Talon admired their courage. "And me."
The Cormar twins peered at them with glinting eyes, and Talon could read their thoughts. We could take them, they were thinking. We could kill them all, and then kill the wyrmlings.
Suddenly they both laughed, each chuckle precisely synchronized. Daylan glanced at Talon, giving her a look of warning.
They ve lost themselves, Talon realized. Somehow in twinning their minds, they ve lost themselves. We should go to battle now, before they go completely mad.
"Let s not argue," she said. "We ve got a job to do."
So they plotted their attack. Rhianna related what intelligence she could, telling of her bargain with the horse-sisters and her overthrow of Beldinook. She told of the dangers she had faced at the Courts of Tide, and her hopes that the warlords there might form a diversion. She repeated reports of reavers surfacing near Carris, and relayed how the horse-sisters scouts warned that they were marching in a northeasterly direction. She told how the wyrmlings at Caer Luciare had begun taking endowments, and described where she had hidden the forcibles that she d stolen from the wyrmlings-news that was important, should she fall in battle.
Talon related all that had happened to her, including Erringale s vision of Borenson sailing to their aid upon a white ship.
It seemed as if they spoke for an hour; but all of them had taken endowments of metabolism, so in truth not five minutes had passed before Rhianna leapt into the air and flew north to meet the horse-sisters.
Then the company began their race again, sprinting down the broken road to Rugassa.
Holding a blanket over her head to protect her bleary eyes, Kirissa scrambled down out of the forest and over the uneven black paving stones into Rugassa, a fortress built into a tall volcanic cone of black basalt, smoothed on its slopes so that one could see where hundreds of towers and walkways and air shafts had been carved.
She had hoped never to see the fortress again, but the Earth King s words resounded in her mind.
The time was coming when the small folk of the world would have to stand up to the large.
But he didn t say that I d live through it, Kirissa realized.
She stumbled, her toe catching on an uneven stone, and fell to one knee, then climbed up carefully.
The defenses of Rugassa were all underground. From the outside it looked as if you could just walk in. There were no tall walls with guards walking them, as you would see in a human castle. The wyrmlings didn t like being so exposed. No, the defenses were all inside, underground, so well concealed that those who managed to breach them never got back outside to tell how far they had gone.
So Kirissa walked across the dark stones with the sun blazing above her, a bit of sandalwood perfume upon her heel, until she reached the south tunnel.
Deep within its recesses, fifty yards from the entrance, guards were waiting. A great iron door stood closed before her, and the guards peered out through a slit, so that she could see only their white eyes.
They did not ask her questions. They only opened the door, winching it slowly, until the guards stood before her, great brutes in armor of bone.
One guard lunged for her, grabbing her in a stranglehold, then threw his weight against her so that she fell to the floor. He landed on her ribs, forcing the air from her sharply, so that she could not breathe. Two other guards grabbed her from behind and began feeling through her clothes, ostensibly searching for weapons.
One of them hissed, "I would have thought that you would be smart enough to stay gone."
"I came back," Kirissa grunted, "to serve the Great Wyrm. I was wrong to leave. I know that now."
"Oh, she knows that now!" her strangler mocked. The others laughed harshly as his grip tightened on her throat. Kirissa gasped for air and struggled for all that she was worth for fifteen seconds.
As her lungs began to burn, she went limp, feigning unconsciousness, but the guard kept strangling.
Don t let me die, she begged the Powers. Please don t let them kill me now.
Talon and the heroes waited on a pine-covered hill with the horse-sisters of Fleeds, a fearsome company of women upon blood mounts, red warhorses with red eyes, their flanks painted with mystic runes.
Though the horse-sisters armor was light, consisting of boiled-leather cuirasses enameled in green and gold, their lances were sharp, and they wore fantastic enameled masks over their helmets-images of stags with antlers, and boars with tusks, and bears with long fangs, and the green man with leaves for hair-so that they looked more like fearsome beasts than humans.
The forty women were four miles from Rugassa. The pines grew thick around them, but not so thick that the company couldn t see the entrances to the fortress from here.
They could not go to battle immediately. They needed to give the wyrmlings time to take their prisoner into the dungeons.
If they take her to the dungeons, Talon thought.
There were no guarantees. Rhianna had warned that the guards might kill her outright.
Talon said, "That girl is showing great faith in us."
"Let us live worthy of it," the emir agreed.
It was early afternoon, a perfect time to strike.