“No, no, you don’t. I never grew up under the threat of Chytrine. She was a monster from the past. She was something used to frighten children. Her minions, the vylaens and gibberers and frostclaws, they were real enough, but rare—so rare that they seemed things lost from an ancient time when we found them roaming our lands. We were unprepared for the threat thrust upon us.”
And you found yourself wanting. Alyx shivered. The man she saw before her had grown bitter and afraid through the decades, but she also knew he had been weak before his generation ever went out to fight Chytrine. She remembered the message his son Erlestoke had asked her to deliver to him, and knew it had been born in a boy’s view of his father—before Hawkins had earned Scrainwood’s ire.
“By the gods, is that it, then?” Alyx began to pace back and forth before the throne. “You, the prince of the realm, are thrust into a conflict for which you are not prepared, and here come Bosleigh Norrington and Tarrant Hawkins and Kenwick Norrington, an obscure march lord of your realm. They’ve found gibberers. They’ve found a magic sword. There is a prophecy concerning them. Your nation is at the forefront of the effort to save the world and defeat Chytrine, and you are not part of it. You go along, of course, but you shy from the work, hiding behind your status as the crown prince.“
“No!” Scrainwood rose quickly, his fists balled, his protestation echoing through the hall. He looked as if he would attack her. His eyes blazed beneath his mask, then he coughed and his eyes tightened.
He sat back down. “I am not now as I was then. It was a different world, and I had been raised to deal with that world. Alliances, secrets, trade… These things I knew and could master. It had been a century since the last invasion, and with each year we allowed ourselves to believe Chytrine had died or lost interest. I knew I had nothing to fear, and then the world changed. My rightful role was usurped and I was shamed by some marcher-stripling.
“But in the death of the heroes, I read the future, Princess. I was back in my realm of alliances and secrets, politics and trade. I was in the world of power, and I could see what would happen if word of Chytrine’s survival, of Chytrine’s threat to the world, were known. Upheaval. Refugees fleeing. What happened to Okrannel happening on a grand scale. I made the others see it. I was truly the one who saved the world, because the mere threat of Chytrine would have destroyed it.”
Alyx shook her head. The logic worked, but it was predicated on a complete disregard for reality. A man who could not rise to the challenge on the battlefield shifted everything onto an arena where he was the master. He had convinced himself—perhaps not wrongly—that he had saved the world. The problem was that he had saved it only for a time—the time Chytrine had granted him. Her return threatened everything, and the truth about Crow and his delivering her warning revealed Scrainwood’s efforts to have been corrupt.
A spark of fury flashed through her, and Scrainwood toyed with his ring. Alyx recalled having been told the ring had an enchantment that picked up the hostile intent of those near him. She smiled. He’d not intuited that his remark made me angry; the ring warned him of my anger. The snake.
She kept her voice calm and even. “There is something you have to understand, Highness. You were not ready for the things thrust upon you a generation ago. I am. Crow is very important to Chytrine’s defeat, and if you thought about it, you would see that clearly. But since I doubt you will think clearly on it, I shall give you something else to think about.”
“A threat, Princess?”
“No, not a threat.” She kept her face impassive. “When last I saw your son at Fortress Draconis, Erlestoke asked me to pass on to you a message. He asked me to tell you that, for the sake of your nation, you shouldn’t live your whole life as a coward.”
The words shook him, but not as strongly as she would have hoped. “There was a time he viewed me as a hero.”
“So, perhaps, what you want to think on is whether or not you can have him see you that way again.”
Scrainwood shook his head. “He’s dead. What he thinks does not matter.”
“If that is what you think, then you truly are in luck.” She nodded to him once. “Against the threat we face, if you are a coward, your nation will perish.
There will be no one left to think on you at all.“
11
I’m dead. Erlestoke harbored no illusions about his chances for survival. For over a month the remnants of the Fortress Draconis garrison had fought running battles with the Aurolani horde. Control of the ruins varied depending upon the time of day. The invaders held sway during daylight and the defenders at night. Sporadic reports of draconette shots and the screams of the wounded filled the darkness as ragged bands of defenders ambushed their enemies.
Erlestoke knew that their strikes at the Aurolani troops were little more than flea bites. The most they could do was pick off patrols, destroy supplies, and otherwise make the occupation of the fortress unpleasant. By day the defenders hid in the warrens beneath the city, and repeated attempts by Chytrine’s troops to flush them out had ended badly for the Aurolani.
Chytrine’s troops never recoiled from employing even the most blasphemous methods to force the defenders from their sanctuaries. Fortress Draconis’ tallest tower still stood. The Crown Tower had been decorated with the skull of a dragon that had died there decades before. To that skull had been tied the body of Dothan Cavarre, the late Draconis Baron, and day by day-carrion birds had feasted upon him.
At least two resistance squads had attacked the tower in futile attempts to rescue the baron’s remains. They had been cut down ruthlessly, and now their bodies hung from the remaining sections of walls. Chytrine meant for that display to intimidate the remaining defenders, but instead the survivors just took it as a challenge.
Erlestoke had stopped his own squad from making a similar rescue attempt by pointing out that their jobs at Fortress Draconis had not changed. The reasons they had been stationed there—men, elves, meckanshü, and urZrethi alike—was to protect the Southlands from invasion and to safeguard the fragments of the DragonCrown. “The best way we show respect for the Draconis Baron is not in saving his bones, but in continuing to perform the task to which he had devoted his life.”
The others had agreed, and their dedication to that mission had resulted in Erlestoke’s current predicament—one that was likely to cost him his life. Prior to its fall, Fortress Draconis had been positioned to prevent Aurolani troops from heading south. The garrison might not have been large enough to destroy any army itself, but cutting off the lines of supply would have been simple. Chytrine had to eliminate Fortress Draconis before any southern invasion could take place.
She had, and her troops streamed southward day and night. Erlestoke’s company watched the troop movements, tallied the information, then relayed it south via arcanslata—a magical slate that would send to its twin any information written upon it. Erlestoke had no idea where the twin of his unit’s arcanslata was—though Jilandessa was leaning toward Alcida or Valicia based on some of the brief replies to their information. His squad only sent troop information and had not let anyone know he lived, for fear that information might cause Chytrine to hunt him down for use against his father.
Two days earlier Erlestoke’s people had taken up one of their usual vantage points to watch troop movements and had seen new banners appearing within the ranks of the Aurolani hosts heading south. They’d gotten used to the large banners proclaiming the identity of a unit, but of late smaller pennants had flown above these. As they were studying the units, a storm had rolled in from the north, bringing with it a quantity of snow, which drove the troops into Fortress Draconis for shelter and sent Erlestoke’s people down into the warm bowels of the earth.