Dragon Rule (Age of Fire #5)

Just behind the vanguard of scouts, the Copper marked some unusually big soldiers. Ghioz men tended to be small and wiry; these were great hulks.

“Who are they?”

“That’s the Grand Guard,” NiVom said. “Five hundred blighters of third generation, raised on dragon-blood. Those are dragon-scale on their shield, too, mine and Imfamnia’s. A project the Red Queen started and I completed. She called them the Queen’s Terrors, but that’s a bit too battlefield-poetry for me.”

“With whose blood?” the Copper asked, astonished at his own mental calculations.

“Mine. It was taxing. But blighters thrive on dragon-blood even better than your demen. And they breed more quickly, allowing for culling and development of promising lines.”

The Copper thought about the grim business of “culling.” Well, there could be no feast without a few bullocks slaughtered.

The expedition snaked through the landscape, an ever-unfolding pavement of bobbing heads, reminding the Copper of a slow-motion King Gran. The power in its coils was latent until they wrapped around you.

NiVom appeared to be displaying to his Tyr just how soundly he could manage an expedition into enemy territory. From the air he pointed out prescouted campsites, chosen for defensible ground and access to firewood and water, and rivers where canoes laden with supplies were crawling in procession so that the expedition might always have three days’ worth of food ready for the eating.

“I doubt even old SiDrakkon could find fault with your preparations and execution,” the Copper said, referring to their perpetually gloomy and irascible commander on the expedition into Bant that they’d served together back in their days of Drakwatch service.

NiVom bowed at the compliment.

“But will the blighters give battle?” the Copper asked.

“I venting-well hope so. All this flying for nothing but a march,” Shadowcatch said. Tchhk tchhk tchhk, added his teeth.

NiVom ignored the outburst. “They’ll do what blighters always do. Divide. Some will take to the mountain passes, and they can be dealt with later. Some will throw in with us and look for the Ghioz order to set them above their fellows. Some will grudgingly accept our presence and sneak sand into the corn and flower baskets when they can. A few tribes will band together and give us one good fight. Were they all to unite, of course, that might give us difficulty, but blighters never seem to manage that.”

“The same might be said about dragons,” the Copper said.

“At other times, of course,” NiVom said.

“Let’s hope so.”

There was something about an army on the march, perhaps all the orchestrated chaos, like an improvised song, that set the Copper’s hearts to beating quickly. He had a weakness for this sort of thing, he had to admit. It was so much more invigorating than dull sessions with NoSohoth in the Audience Chamber. Being out under the sky with an army, especially one as disciplined and well-directed as this was wonderful.

A doubt crept in. This army was well-directed, anyone could see it. Might NiVom be displaying his prowess so that whispers would begin that the Tyr had a rival. There was never any question in the Copper’s mind that NiVom was a brighter dragon than he. The only mark against him was a tendency to fly from difficulty or submit to circumstances. Sometimes a Tyr needed the obstinacy of a cave-caught bear to get results.

NiVom chose what looked like bad ground for the crossing into Old Uldam. The river ran narrow and swift here, and there were high ridges on either side and thick vegetation and driftwood along both banks. It seemed like good country for archers and spearmen.

“It looks like we’re about to fight our first skirmish, my Tyr,” NiVom said. “Our scouts are across the river and into the disputed lands. They say there’s a party of blighters sheltering in the woods behind that ridge. I’m sure they see us.”

“Do you think they mean to contest the crossing?” the Copper asked.

“We have a footbridge in two pieces. You see it ready there. I can swim out and join them, and we’ll be across in no time under a canopy of shields. They won’t be expecting that. Then the bridge can be expanded with rafts to bring the carts across. The river is narrow enough here for lines from side to side to hold the bridge against the current; that’s why I chose this spot.”

“Provided you can hold the far bank. Otherwise your bridge may disappear downriver as fast as those leaves.”

The Copper watched NiVom and his men go through the crossing as though practicing a military evolution. He saw a blighter go loping away from the riverbank carrying what the Copper first mistook for a short, leaf-shaped stabbing sword but turned out to be a fish when he sat the blighter tear it in half with his teeth and throw away the tail.

NiVom sputtered and gasped in the current, but with some difficulty and the aid of his tail joined the two ends of the wooden raft bridge with metal pins extracted from behind his ear. Fleet-footed linesmen secured it on the other side to thick trees and brawny axmen moved driftwood out of the far landing under NiVom’s attentive direction.

NiVom’s Grand Guard crossed first, interlaced shields layered together like oversized dragon scales held over their helms against a rain of arrows that never came.

Archers and crossbowmen followed. Artillerists dragged a cart across and set up some kind of war machine that NiVom claimed could hurl clusters of long, dartlike throwing-spears over the top of the ridge.

The Copper took his word for it. NiVom was a clever engineer.

“That was the tricky part. We shall be safe, now. Downriver is a landing for the canoes. We’ll move there and be established by nightfall; the rest of the march will be irresistible once the base is secured.”

Frantic activity on both sides of the river held the Copper’s interest for a little while, but his stomach began to growl. He was just wondering how to properly phrase a request to one of his Griffaran Guard to go and get him a fatty joint from the soup pots, when a bump appeared at the ridge above the crossing.

The bump resolved itself into the outlines of two dragons, walking to either side of a tall blighter carrying a taller banner on a staff.

The Copper recognized the banner—the knotwork-and-goat-tracks design of the Grand Alliance. It gave him a turn for a moment: Was this some scouting party returning?

No, there was no mistaking that gray dragon with the re-grown tail. His brother AuRon. And that near-orange-striped fellow, DharSii. He’d turned up unexpectedly again, like the musked stone in a game of Nose-Hunt.

What sort of game was his brother playing?

He forgot his empty stomach, called the Griffaran Guard, and flew to the other side of the river. He alighted just behind NiVom.

Some blighter elders, a few walking with the aid of sticks or staffs, stood behind the banner of the Grand Alliance. AuRon and the DharSii fellow both bowed.

AuRon cleared his throat. “On behalf of the Grand Alliance, we’d like to welcome Tyr RuGaard to Old Uldam and the foothills of the Bissonian Scarpes. You should have sent messengers; we weren’t able to prepare a proper reception and a feast worthy of our Tyr.”

“Here in the borderlands I won’t stand on ceremony. What’s going on here, AuRon?” the Copper asked.

“You’re looking at the new Protector of Old Uldam,” AuRon said. “The blighters of the Bissonian Scarpes asked to join the Grand Alliance. I accepted, as I think you’ll find them worthy allies—provisionally, of course. King Naf has already spoken in favor of it. It’s up to the Tyr and our friends the Hypatians to further cement the alliance, of course. If you so choose.”

The Copper spotted AuRon’s daughter, Istach, standing protectively at her father’s exposed flank. Every time he looked at her face, his heart gave a thump, thinking Jizara had somehow returned.

One of the blighters extended a bundle of wheat and another a piece of honeycomb to him, yammering something in their tongue as the griffaran circled close overhead.

Well done, AuRon. A terrific joke.

The whites of NiVom’s eyes showed up against the red at the center, but he kept his griff still. Old habits of the Lava-dome, no doubt.

“AuRon, you already have an Uphold to manage. As I told NiVom when this expedition set off, it’s too much territory for one dragon to cover. You’d forever be flying. No, we must have someone else.”

“Perhaps CuRemom. He’s a bright Ankelene,” NiVom said.

“No, blighters need someone robust and energetic. CuRemom is energetic enough, but only in his workshop. No. AuRon, what do you say to your daughter Istach taking the position?”

Istach, who seemed to be going out of her way to avoid notice by hanging back behind DharSii, popped her head up like a startled turkey.

“Me?” she squeaked.

“My Tyr, we hardly know her.”

“Her parents do, they’re just a long day’s flight away. They can help her along.”

“We came all this way for nothing?”

“It was a splendid exercise,” the Copper said. “Surely a commander as careful as you has a path of retreat selected. I look forward to watching you follow it.