Dragon Dawn Read online

  Dwyer filled each bowl with stew and passed them to his right until everyone had one. Keverin was so hungry he had to force himself not to start before the others. Elsbet set a basket of bread rolls in the centre of the table and everyone took one.

  “We give our thanks to the god for this day, and for the food before us. And we give thanks for the good company of Keverin and Lorcan so recently met,” Dwyer said, and broke bread.

  Keverin circled his heart and whispered his own thanks to the god for his life and future happiness with Julia. He tore his bread in half before looking back up. Dwyer had seen Keverin make the god’s sign over his heart, and he nodded his approval. For a time then they all busied themselves with eating. Lorcan finished first and another full bowl was pressed on him. Elsbet didn’t have to force the boy. Lorcan took another roll after seeking permission from her, and started eating as if he had not already eaten a full meal. Keverin wasn’t much slower, and he too ate a second bowl full of stew while Dwyer and his family watched.

  Elsbet was a fine cook. The mutton and vegetables in the thick gravy were cooked to perfection, but had she been the worst cook in the land he would still have eaten everything. It had been that long since he hadn’t been hungry.

  The dirty dishes were cleared away and Lorcan volunteered to wash them, but Elsbet shook her head saying tomorrow was soon enough to start earning his way. Dwyer left for a short while, and returned with a jug of ale. With the table cleared and everyone sated. It was time to hear Keverin’s tale. During the meal he had been thinking about this moment, and had decided to tell as much truth as possible without revealing who he was. He couldn’t afford the chance that Dwyer wouldn’t believe him. They needed supplies badly, but more than that, they needed a ten day of good meals to regain their strength. Without either one, they would not reach Elvissa. He would be a crippled guardsman down on his luck. He knew the life intimately and knew he could be convincing.

  “I lost my hand fighting bandits for m’lord,” Keverin began, and Elsbet gasped. “I served him for many a year, and serve him still in my heart, but when I lost my hand I couldn’t stay.”

  “We were happy there,” Lorcan said. “I didn’t want to leave my friends.”

  “M’lord did offer to let me stay…” Keverin agreed, weaving his lies and half-truths, hating the necessity but determined to do as well as a real bard might do.

  * * *

  4 ~ Mirror

  “…as many as three thousand Hasians dead,” Mazel said grimly.

  “Good,” Julia said. “Kumar’s warriors did well in their first battle.”

  Mathius winced at the satisfaction he heard in her voice and glanced at Lucius.

  Julia ignored him. Lucius was using his magic to talk silently with Kerrion and Shelim. Both remained grimly silent to one side of the tent. Julia knew what their problem was. They hadn’t agreed with sending Kumar on the raid in the first place. Kumar was the new Clan Chief of Bear Clan and had insisted upon leading the raid himself for his Clan’s honour. Bear Clan had lost thousands of warriors and their previous chief at the battle in which Julia lost Keverin. Kumar had been a little-known chief of a small tribe back then. He needed a victory to cement his people’s trust in him.

  “What was Navarien’s response to losing so many men?” Lucius asked.

  Shelim shrugged. “He stopped trying to flank us and called his chiefs back to him for a conference.”

  Lucius frowned worriedly. “That’s not good.”

  “Why?” Julia asked. “It means we surprised him. It means he doesn’t know what to do.”

  “No it doesn’t,” Lucius said, grimly. “It means he’s going to change his strategy.”

  Julia cocked her head. “How do you figure that?”

  “I know him, Julia. If he were going to continue as planned, he would simply inform his captains using a mirror, but he hasn’t done that. If he had a plan to overcome us, he would have sent couriers with the details, but he didn’t do that either. Navarien would only recall his captains if he wanted their input in devising new strategy.”

  “That’s… not good,” Mathius said.

  “Why?” Julia’s lips thinned in irritation. “We’ve done all right so far.”

  Mathius shook his head. “We are holding out. That’s not the same as winning.”

  Mazel agreed with a sharp nod. “We are losing too many warriors. For every one of Navarien’s that fall, two and sometimes three of mine fall.”

  “People die in war,” Julia said, fast losing patience. This was the same argument they always ended up having and she was sick of it. “There’s a saying on my world: death and taxes, neither can be avoided. Everyone dies, we just have to make good use of the time we have.”

  “If Navarien has a new strategy it won’t be good for us, you can be certain of that,” Lucius said. “More to the point, we won’t know what it is until we are attacked.”

  Lucius’ words came to haunt Julia later that day. A few candlemarks after their meeting in Mazel’s tent, there was a commotion to the north of the camp. Cries of woe and lamentation were raised as a party of warriors rode in. Julia was in her tent experimenting with a spell she hoped might end the war. It was a simple spell, designed to do one thing—shatter the bonds that made matter solid. Everything contained energy; rocks, trees, soil, even people. If she found the trick of sustaining the chain reaction, she planned to use it to liberate all the energy contained in an area of ground—an area directly beneath General bloody Navarien’s boots.

  Darnath scratched at the tent flap and stuck his head inside the tent. “You better come, Julia. Kumar is back but most of his warriors are missing. He brought back less than a quarter.”

  Julia paled. Less than a quarter meant he had lost the greater part of four thousand warriors. She scrambled to her feet and followed Darnath through the crowds of hurrying people. Mazel and the other chiefs were already talking with a weary Kumar. He had dried blood on his clothes and a nasty looking cut over one eye. Julia pushed through the encircling crowd in time to hear the last of Kumar’s report.

  “… straight through us,” Kumar said.

  “He’s coming here?” Mazel asked. “Straight here and you didn’t try to stop him?”

  Kumar looked guiltily away. “We couldn’t stop him. Nothing can. His entire force was with him and they aren’t stopping for anything.”

  “Where are your shamen?” Kerrion said, just then arriving. “I need to talk to them.”

  Kumar shook his head. “Dead. They stayed behind to give us time to escape. They were very brave, Kerrion. They knew they would die, but they stayed anyway. I regret what I said before. They had the hearts of warriors.”

  Kerrion nodded sadly. “They died for their people. No one can ask more.”

  “We have to get ready,” Lucius said. “Navarien won’t stop now that he has the advantage. All your warriors are here, Mazel. There’s nothing between him and the camps.”

  Kumar shook his head wearily. “I’m sick of these hills. I’m sick of seeing my friends die. I’ve seen enough blood to last me two life times. Let us go home, Mazel.”

  “Coward!” Julia hissed and voices around her fell silent. “You run at the first sign of danger!”

  Kumar’s eyes blazed in anger. “I should kill you for that!”

  Mathius stepped between them. “I wouldn’t like killing you, Kumar, so please don’t make me.”

  “Enough!” Mazel roared. “We don’t have time for this nonsense. We have to decide what to do.”

  “What’s to decide?” Julia snarled. “We have to fight!” Mazel looked away and Julia clenched a fist. “You too?” She looked around at the other chiefs and saw varying reactions to Kumar’s news. “What about you Petya?”

  Petya shrugged. “It’s not my decision. Ask Allard, he’s my Clan Chief.”

  Julia turned impatiently to Allard of Eagle Clan. “Well?”

  Allard looked nervously at Mazel. “I… well, I think we should spl
it up.”

  Julia scowled. “Oh that’s a fine strategy. We can’t beat him with thousands of warriors, so you propose to beat him using a few hundred. Very good!”

  “That’s not what I said! I meant we should disperse our people, give Navarien nothing to aim for, nothing to attack, and then hit him from all sides.”

  There were murmurs of surprise from the crowd. Such a tactic sounded feasible at first glance. Julia looked around uneasily and realised they were really considering Allard’s plan. Julia found another well known face in the crowd.

  “What about you, Cadell?”

  Cadell was chief of Cricket Clan, the smallest clan on the plain. Conversely, he was one of their best warriors. Julia was sure she could count on him to do the right thing. She was wrong.

  “We should break camp and head west. Now, immediately,” Cadell said. “We need to get out of these cursed hills to somewhere we can see them coming.”

  There was a great deal of agreement with that, but it was the wrong thing to do. Jihan had been coaching Julia in what to advise the clans. Fighting in the open where sorcerers could see you was not a good idea.

  Julia turned in place to survey the chiefs. “Kadar?”

  Kadar glanced at Shelim. “I know what shaman can and cannot do. They can’t fight what they can’t see. If we leave these hills, Navarien’s shamen will slaughter us.”

  Julia sighed in relief and nodded.

  “We cannot leave the hills,” Evan of the Falcons said. “Kadar is right about that. I too have seen what the outclanner shaman can do. We cannot leave and we cannot sit and wait. Let us cross the river to the east.”

  East? Julia frowned and glanced at all the puzzled faces. The river was wide—a half mile across at least. There was no crossing it, not to the east or anywhere along its course for many miles north or south. What was Evan thinking? Julia gathered from the puzzled murmuring of the chiefs that no one else knew either.

  “…no one can cross that! It’s not possible,” Allard was saying. “Speak plainly, Evan. Say what you mean.”

  “I mean what I have said. The river is wide and deep. Navarien would not follow easily. I doubt he would even try if we gave him a way south to Deva.”

  Julia glared. The traitor was going to give Navarien a way into Deva in exchange for his safety. Julia was about to shout him down, but Lucius made her lose the opportunity when he grabbed her arm and shook his head. Kadar stepped in to question Evan.

  “If the river cannot be crossed, how do you expect to do it?”

  “I've learned much that I once thought impossible,” Evan said blandly. “My shaman tell me that the river can be bridged.”

  “Bridged?” Mazel said faintly. “A half mile across and it can be bridged? With what? We have nothing to make such a thing and no time!”

  Evan turned to Kerrion. “Tell them, Kerrion. Tell them what you told me.”

  “Tell us what?” Mazel glared at Kerrion and then at Julia, but Julia was in the dark too. She looked to Kerrion for his explanation.

  Kerrion sighed and shook his head at Evan. “I told you not to tell them, Evan. You have done an ill thing here today.” He turned to Kadar. “I had good reason not to tell you. I have seen the outcome of this, and yes, many other things besides. I cannot advise you to take this course. We cannot survive by running away.”

  Kadar frowned. The thought of running was not a comfortable one. “You still should have told me,” he said and turned to glare at Shelim. “I asked you about crossing the river. I specifically asked you if it could be done and you said no. You lied to me!”

  “I didn’t lie,” Shelim said hastily. “You asked if there was a way across, and I showed you the river in my mirror.”

  Kadar waved that away angrily. “Lying by saying nothing is still lying!”

  Julia shook her head as the argument escalated. “Wait!” she yelled. “I want to know more of this. If the river can be bridged, how does that help us? If we can do it, Navarien can.”

  There were murmurs of agreement from all sides.

  Kerrion sighed and muttered something under his breath. “There is a way, Julia, more than one in fact. Using the linking magic you taught us, we could make a bridge out of nothing but air if we wanted to. We have more than enough power when linked to do it that way, but I have seen another way it can be done.”

  “In dreams?” Julia asked. “You said nothing of this dream to me.”

  “Not all my visions are happy ones. Most are not. My dreams are terrible things… terrible things,” Kerrion said wearily. His face looked haunted as he remembered them. “I have never seen victory for us except here in the hills or…” he broke off with a frown of worry.

  “Go on, old man,” Mazel said. “Here or?”

  “Very far south, in Deva itself.”

  Mazel drew a sharp breath. They were barely in Camorin as it was. To abandon it altogether was anathema to all clansmen. “We cannot go further south!”

  “And if we stay here we will be overrun!” Kumar shouted angrily, glaring at his fellow chiefs. “We have the women and children to think of! I… I will lead my Clan home this night under cover of darkness.”

  Pandemonium!

  Julia staggered as everyone surged forward. Everyone shouted at once. Julia saw swords bared and fights began to break out. Kerrion shouted something to Mazel who nodded.

  “Silence!” Mazel bellowed. His voice, enhanced by Kerrion’s magic, thundered out over the crowds and stunned them to stillness. “Stop acting like fools and listen to me! Let us go to the council tent! We need to discuss this, not fight among ourselves!”

  The chiefs started pushing their way through the crowd leaving Julia and her friends standing alone. She watched them troop inside the tent and debated gate crashing the meeting. She decided against it for now. They would be in there all day and probably all night as well. She would get her chance to talk to them, but first she wanted to know what to tell them.

  “I’m going back to my tent. I need to talk to Jihan.”

  * * *

  A woman’s screams were a terrible thing, Jihan thought yet again. There was nothing like it in the world to make a man feel more useless. He wished he dared enter Ahnao’s bedchamber to see for himself what was happening, but he had been forced out by her ladies just moments ago. He tried not to read anything into his forced departure from the room. It didn’t have to mean there was anything wrong. Women had been giving birth to babies since… well since forever obviously. They knew what to do. He tried to remember what he had heard just before they forced him out. Something about Ahnao being too small? What in the God’s good name did that mean? Ahnao was a strong woman. She was as strong in her way as Julia was in hers. It was just a different kind of strength that’s all. Being small didn’t mean anything.

  “AEiii!” Ahnao screamed almost stopping Jihan’s heart.

  He spun on his heel and hit the door running. It smashed open and rebounded from the wall, but he didn’t notice. He was by Ahnao’s side stroking her hair away from her sweaty brow before it closed.

  “I’m here,” Jihan said. “I won’t let them shut me out again.”

  Ahnao grunted and squeezed her eyes shut against the pain. She fumbled to take his hand and squeezed it hard as she bore down. “Ahhhh… God it hurts!”

  Jihan bit his lip and tasted blood. “I know, but it will be over soon.”

  Ahnao eased her grip as the contraction passed. “Don’t ye be so sure. A first babe can take all day.”

  Jihan looked worriedly at the healer and midwife where they hovered at the other end of the bed doing things to Ahnao. The healer smiled at him, but the midwife frowned just as Ahnao’s ladies were doing where they clustered on the far side of the room to watch. They didn’t like it that he was here in attendance like this. Not traditional at all, they thought, but they thought wrong. It was a tradition in Jihan’s family, one only his hated father had broken, for the Lord of Malcor to attend the birth of his heir. In
the past, so many of Malcor’s lords had died childless that any birth within the fortress was considered important. The birth of the ruling lord’s firstborn child, however, was a very important event for everyone, not just for the lord and his lady. Jihan’s heir represented his people’s future as much as their own children did.

  “…must cut her,” the midwife was saying. “It’s the only way.”

  The healer nodded. “Do it then, I’ll be ready after.”

  The midwife stepped up beside Jihan. “The babe is coming, but it’s too big, lady. I must cut you to let it pass. It will hurt, but you will feel better once it’s done.”

  Ahnao looked worriedly from the midwife back to Jihan. “Maybe you should wait outside, Jihan. I don’t want you fainting like you nearly did that time on the road.”

  Jihan grinned weakly at her jest. “I’ll be all right,” he said and held her hand tight.

  Ahnao looked up at the midwife. “Be quick.”

  “I shall,” the midwife said nodding in approval at Ahnao’s courage.

  The midwife was as good as her word. Ahnao cried out when the woman wielded the knife and nearly crushed Jihan’s hand, but the more natural pain of childbirth quickly took her attention. Ahnao bore down and panted with exertion. Jihan muttered encouragement and cooled her cheeks and brow.

  Ahnao’s prediction of a day-long labour proved false in the end. It was less than a half candlemark later, still mid-afternoon, when the lusty cries of a baby sounded throughout the women’s quarter of the fortress. The midwife performed her duties as she had hundreds of times before, and then laid the swaddled child in Jihan’s arms.