Throne of Dragons

Erin didn’t. She knew that when they reached the end of the bridge, it would be done. She still fought, still killed. She slashed the head of her spear across a man’s leg, thrust the point up into another’s skull. The stroke of an axe jarred her as she blocked it, but she kept going.

They couldn’t hold, though. They would reach the end of the bridge, and then… then, no matter how hard they fought, the sheer weight of men would push them back another few steps. It would mean being surrounded, blades coming from every side…

That was when Erin heard the horns behind her. She thrust her spear into a man’s gut, swept it round to clear a space for her to glance round, and she dared to look…

Her father’s army stood there. There were knights there, and guardsmen, and more. There were archers, who even now were readying arrows to fire down into the ranks of the men on the bridge. There were horsemen standing by, ready to charge. Her father sat at the heart of it all, looking mighty in his armor, unconquerable. Erin couldn’t count the numbers compared to the force that had followed Lenore, and was now struggling to cross the bridge, but it was close, so close…

Horns sounded again, and her father’s army charged.

CHAPTER TWENTY

King Godwin advanced with the bulk of his army, men drawn from around the kingdom descending on the bridge below. The other bridges would be fallen now, torn down in accordance with his commands.

The one below… he would command that destroyed too, if he could. The mechanism to do it was there: the pegs in place that could be hammered out, letting crucial poles slide out of place, with the weight of the bridge doing the rest. The whole point of the bridges was that they could be torn away to protect the kingdom.

Yet now, there was no way to do that; not with one of his daughters standing by the bridge, another on it, and his son Rodry somewhere across it. In circumstances like those, even with King Ravin’s armies there upon the span, even with more and still more pouring in on the far bank, until it seemed that it was flooded with hundreds of men, there was only one thing to do.

“Charge!” he commanded. “Hold the bank!”

His knights leapt to obey his commands, Twell and Ursus, Halfin and Lors moving down at the head of a wave of his troops. Godwin charged with them, praying that he would be in time.

Already, he could see the bank being breached, Erin and the strange man in the monk’s robes pushed back that one crucial step to let men through. The soldiers spread out around them, and for a moment, Godwin’s heart clamped tight in his chest at the thought that he might lose both Erin and Lenore in one moment. If the soldiers formed a true beachhead, then there might be no stopping them.

Godwin saw his men slam into the enemy, though, the weight of their numbers pressing in, smashing that beachhead back, cutting off those who had made it to the far side, a wave of armored bodies slamming into their line. Godwin saw Ursus pick up a man and throw him into the Slate, saw Halfin dodge past a spear and slice through a man’s shoulder.

In that moment, his knights were everything that they had ever been. Godwin saw Commander Harr and his men join the fray, pressing King Ravin’s soldiers back, forcing them almost halfway over the bridge. The bridge creaked with the weight of so many men on it, its narrowness crushing them together, leaving only a little room to swing a weapon. On the bank, there was more space, but even that was quickly filled up with men fighting and dying.

Then Godwin was in the battle himself, charging into those of King Ravin’s soldiers who were still on the bank, determined to fight his way to the spot where Lenore still sat atop her horse. He took the blow of an axe on his shield, sliced through a man’s leg, used his elbow to barge another man aside. He took a blow to his armor, but it made no difference, didn’t even slow him.

Not by the hand you think. Grey’s words ran through his mind and Godwin looked around, seeing a spearman charging at him from the side. He struck the spear aside, and then Sir Lors was there, his two swords swinging to bring the spearman down.

“So much for your prophecy, wizard!” Godwin shouted out above the roar of the battle.

No one was listening. Around him, men were pushing and shoving, cutting and killing, the confines of the bridge taking away all room for tactics, all the space that might have provided the chance for some clever ruse or careful plan. There was only the press of the melee, the small fights against those who broke through onto the near bank, and the endless violence of it all.

Even as he thought it, Godwin fought his way forward. He lanced his sword through another soldier’s chest, kicked a second man out of the way. A sword caught him across the side, but the wound was not a deep one, and beside him, Sir Lors was already moving to kill the man. Both swords plunged into him, meeting somewhere in the middle.

Then the soldier grabbed for him as he died.

“Back!” Godwin yelled at the knight, and ten years ago, the man might have been fast enough to do it.

Now though, the soldier got a hold on him, clinging to him as he died, and that slowed the knight enough that another man could step in, a sword slamming into his neck. Godwin stepped close with a cry of anger, cutting that soldier down, but there was nothing he could do to help Sir Lors, and no time in which to do it. He had to keep fighting his way toward his daughters.

He saw Erin in the press of the fight, the strange monk still beside her, the two fighting like two parts of a whole, killing King Ravin’s troops as they came. Godwin was proud of his daughter in that moment, but also scared for her, caught in the middle of the battle like that. Even as he watched, a spearman came at her, but Commander Harr was there, cutting down the man and holding back the enemy for a moment while Erin slipped by, striking out with her own short weapon.

He was just as frightened for Lenore, whose horse was whirling back and forth in the middle of the press of men there. Why hadn’t she run from the bridge to safety? Godwin didn’t know, but he was going to get to her. He forced his way forward, cutting down men to either side, trying to force a gap to open. Sir Twell was there then, holding the line beside him, seeming to see what was needed. His shoulder was bleeding from a sword wound, but he held his place, while Godwin fought his way forward, cutting down a man who was too close to his daughter’s horse, reaching up to clasp her hand in his.

They’d done it. They’d gotten to her. Now, they just had to get her home safely, and that was still going to be far from easy, when the battle was still raging on every side.

***

From his vantage point away from the bridge, hiding behind a low tree stump, Vars watched the battle starting to unfold. He crouched there and he stared, taking in the violence of the battle, the men fighting and dying on the span of the bridge stretching into the distance, over to the south. He saw Erin killing men with that twig-like spear of hers, saw Lenore there on her horse, saw his father fighting his way to her.

He saw men falling, on both sides. A knight went down with a halberd embedded deep in him. King Ravin’s soldiers fell from the bridge like scarlet-coated rain, dropping to sword blows or simply being thrown from it.

He wanted to go down to help, even though Vars couldn’t understand why men would risk themselves like that, why they would throw themselves into a battle where there was no way to avoid the foe, no way to keep back from the blows that fell in a cascade. His father stood at the heart of the fighting, directing it even as he fought, in a way that simply made no sense to Vars.

He wanted to throw himself into the thick of it, even ordered his legs to carry him forward, but they wouldn’t move. They refused, the way a horse might refuse to jump a wall. He… he simply couldn’t do it.

Which just left the question of what he was going to do. Did he stand there, and risk someone seeing him there, hanging back from the battle? Clearly he couldn’t do that. If his father knew that he was there and not lending the strength of his arm, he would be treated as a coward, or worse, a traitor.

Did he throw himself into the battle then, to let people see him in the thick of the fight? That seemed almost as stupid. Even if Vars stuck to the edges of the fighting, there was too much of a risk of a stray sword blow catching him, a thrown spear or a sudden arrow bringing him down. Worse, it would raise far too many questions about why Vars hadn’t been there before.

He tried to work out what he was going to do about that. If Lenore had been lost completely, he could have made up any story he pleased, claimed that he had fought hard to save her. Now, he would need to think of another way to do things.

About the only positive note was that there was no sign of Rodry, or of the men who had ridden off with him, betraying Vars to hurry blindly into the enemy’s lands. Vars felt a small pang of regret at that, at the thought that his brother might be lost completely, but that pang was short lived, and not just because Vars could still feel the bruise from where his brother had struck him.

If Rodry was gone, it was down to his own stupidity. It was because he hadn’t listened to Vars, hadn’t listened to sense. Vars had told him that no good could come of charging across the river. Now, for all those who had gone, only Lenore, Erin, and the strange monk had returned. None of them could say what Vars had and hadn’t done.

As far as they were concerned, he had never been here. If he left now, no one could say that he hadn’t been attacked on the road, ambushed before he reached Lenore. If she disagreed, well… Vars would deal with that when it came.

For now, he was safest well clear of this fight. That much was obvious. So, while the battle raged behind him, Vars very quickly, very quietly, slipped away and started back toward Royalsport.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Odd was slowly falling out of his battle rage. Oh, he tried to maintain it, tried to froth and shout and throw himself blindly at the enemy, but his heart wasn’t in it in quite the same way that it used to be. That didn’t stop him from battering aside a shield, hacking the top of a skull from the rest, but even so, he could feel the fire within him dimming.

Part of it had to do with the many small wounds he’d sustained so far in the battle on the bridge. You could say what you liked about plate armor, but at least it stopped scratches like the one that ran all the way down his forearm now.

Part of it seemed to have to do with the presence of the girl by his side. She fought with her own kind of anger, which seemed more focused, but less completely trained than his. Odd found himself moving across to protect her from sword blows when they came at her, interposing steel in a way he usually didn’t. Normally, his battle madness left him little sense that anyone was on his side, let alone the urge to protect them. With Erin, it seemed to be different, and not just because Odd had worked out exactly who this girl had to be when the king came running for her and her sister.

Part of it, though, was that there was something deeper there, something that felt almost peaceful, in a way nothing had a right to be in the middle of a battle like this. Beside him, a guardsman had his ribs shattered by a hammer, a knight fell into the waters where his armor would only drag him down. Instead of his usual furious laughter, though, Odd smiled beatifically. It all fit. It all made sense, and in doing so, it felt beautiful.

That didn’t stop him from punching his sword through an enemy’s gorget, or smashing the pommel into another’s skull. Those things were as much a part of the meditation as the rest of it. Odd kept fighting, and around him on the bridge, the world turned into the most beautiful hell he had ever seen.

***

Erin forced herself to stay in the heart of the battle, refusing to pull back even though she was sure that half of those there would have liked to see her safe back behind the lines. She thrust with her spear, spun it in a distraction, used it to trip a man’s legs from under him. Here at the edge of the bridge, everything was chaos, with no neat lines now, no sense of which direction the next sword blow might come from. Anyone might be a friend or a—

“Look out!”

Erin ducked on instinct, and a sword blow went flashing above her head. She thrust backward with her spear, feeling the crunch as it entered flesh, then let the soldier she’d just stabbed fall.

She looked round to see Commander Harr standing in the midst of the battle, swinging a great sword with ease. Erin had seen him on the practice field, but this was something different, something deadlier. He frowned at her presence in a way that said that there would be consequences for running out ahead the way she had, but right then there was no time for Erin to think about any of that, only to parry and thrust, throwing herself back into the action…

***

Commander Harr was feeling his age. Around him, he could see men he’d served with for decades in the Knights of the Spur throwing themselves into the fray like young men, but he was anything but young these days. He had to fight carefully instead, conserving his energy, measuring each swing of his blade the way a carpenter might have measured prior to a cut.

He shortened one foe by a head in a single sweep, moved back to avoid a blow, then felt the pain of a dagger finding one of the seams of his armor. Commander Harr bellowed at that, because even a decade ago, no one would have gotten close enough to inflict such a wound. He lashed out in reply, all but cutting the foe who had closed with him in two, then ripped the dagger clear with a grunt of effort.

His eyes found Erin. She fought as he had thought that she might from the training grounds, with speed and skill, but also with a dangerous touch of recklessness. Three times now, he’d seen the man beside her parry blows aimed at her, his monk’s robes flowing as he did it.

Of course, Commander Harr knew that was no monk. There were some faces that even time could not erase, from memory, some sights that were too heavily etched to be unseen. The way this “monk” danced through the fight even within the horrific press of the bridge was a kind of signature in itself, yet there was something different about it too.

There was no time to consider that though, because the battle was still washing back and forth on the bridge, the press of it too great. Worse, Commander Harr could see still more troops pouring in from the Southern Kingdom’s side. How many could there be? More importantly, how could even the Knights of the Spur hope to hold against so many? Even as he watched, men tumbled from the bridge, one man hanging from another’s grasp on the very edge.

Commander Harr shook away that thought. It didn’t matter how many there were; only that they kept fighting. He plunged back toward the fight.

***

“We’re getting too old for this!” Sir Halfin yelled up, as he hung over the edge of the bridge, held only by Sir Ursus’s grasp.

“You’re getting too fat for it!” Ursus yelled back, and that was probably a good sign. The big man wouldn’t be making jokes about it if he didn’t feel certain that he could pull Halfin back onto the bridge. At least, he hoped not.

“Just pull me up!” Halfin called out. Hanging above the Slate was not where he wanted to be, not with the river raging below him, and the drop enough in itself that it might kill someone.

How had he gotten into this spot? He’d been charging forward, throwing himself through the fight, and then a man had come at him and… and he hadn’t been fast enough to dodge.

He, Halfin the Swift, hadn’t been fast enough. That was a humbling thought, a reminder that all of those who had served the king loyally for so long, were getting older. There were some younger knights, Prince Rodry foremost among them, but the truth was that Halfin and Ursus and the rest were getting past their best. He just had to hope that this wouldn’t be a battle too far for them.

Then Sir Ursus gave a roar of pain, and the head of a spear appeared, thrust through his shoulder from the rear. He bellowed like a wounded bull, and for a moment, Halfin was sure that he was going to drop. Instead though, Sir Ursus roared again, this time with effort, and Halfin found himself being lifted as easily as the other knight had always been able to lift him, throwing him back onto the bridge. Sir Halfin landed lightly as an acrobat, thrusting with his sword as he landed, bringing down the man who had wounded his friend.

He moved to prop up Sir Ursus, the weight of the larger knight almost enough to squash him. In spite of that, Sir Halfin was still able to cut out again, bringing down another of the enemy.

Maybe they weren’t quite done yet.

***

At the heart of it all on the bank, Lenore sat atop her horse, forcing herself to be brave, to not move. She fought to contain the skittishness of the creature, because if it bolted now, there was a good chance that it might plunge her down into the waters between the kingdom.

Around her, men died, blood spraying, the world filled with the clash of steel and the screams of the dying. To her side, the horrendous drop down to the Slate stood, the banks crumbling a little under the weight of so many men stomping and fighting, pushing and pulling at the edge of it. She saw a man’s leg hacked off a few feet away, saw another shoved off the edge of the cliff down into the river. A part of her longed to run, but she couldn’t bring herself to do that, not when her sister was still out there on the bridge, fighting to hold back the tide of enemies.

What would happen if she died here? With so much violence on every side, how could she hope to survive? Fear wormed through her there. What if she’d gone through all of this, if Rodry had sacrificed himself, and Erin had journeyed to the south, just so that she could die in the chaos of the battle that followed?

Only the fact that she was obviously not a soldier seemed to be keeping Lenore safe right then; that, and the presence of so many of her father’s men around her, shielding her with their efforts, killing those who came too close. Her father was there too, huge and armored, and he seemed the comforting presence that he had always been, strong and safe, impossible to defeat.

Yet one look at the bridge told Lenore how fragile that illusion was. She could see it swaying under the weight of so many men, could hear the creaking of it even above the sounds of the dying. She had felt for herself that no one was truly safe, that men of violence could always find a way to hurt, to kill, to do worse…

There were more men on the bridge than she could count, more still approaching it, mere dots in the distance, given the Slate’s width. Even on this bank, there were dozens of pockets of them, spread out and fighting, attacking her father’s men from all sides. How could even her father hope to hold against all that? How could any of them? The battle kept going, but in that moment, Lenore couldn’t see how they could hope to win it.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

King Godwin stood at the heart of the battle, holding onto his daughter’s horse and trying to make sense of it all. That was the most important skill for a war leader; not the ability to wade into the fight, not the ability to inspire men, although both mattered. The ability to step back for a second and just look counted for more than the rest of it put together.

“Are you safe?” he bellowed to Lenore, even over the sounds of the battle.

“I…” She nodded, but there was something about the way that she did it that spoke of pains that she couldn’t voice, not there.

A man came at Godwin in that moment, and for a second, everything was the violence. He smashed the man back, fought his way back to Lenore’s skittish horse, managed to catch hold of it again.

“And what about your brother?” he asked. “Have you seen Rodry?”

This look said almost as much as the last one, and it hurt just as sharply.

“He… he came to save me,” she said. “They killed him, Father. Rodry is dead.”

If he’d been anywhere but a battle, King Godwin would have collapsed to the ground in grief at the news. Even so, the hurt of it burned through him, making him roar out his grief, lash out at the first enemy to come near.

“My son!” he bellowed, as he struck down a man. “You killed my son!”

He killed then, one man after another. His knights formed around him, but even like that, it was hard for them to keep up as he thrust his sword through one man, then hacked down the next.

Step back, he told himself, the voice of his reason trying to cut through his grief, step back.

He did it then, shoving back the nearest of his enemies and standing in the clear space that the movement left, staring out over the battle through tear-clouded eyes. He would be strong, had to be strong. He would look at this like a commander, and a king, because to look like a father was to lose everything. Godwin stood there, his heart breaking, and around him, the rhythms of the battle kept on.

He saw the fight on the bridge continuing, the press of men there shoving back and forth to no avail. It wasn’t that King Ravin’s forces were pushing them back yet, although if numbers continued to pour in from their side, the sheer weight of them might force his army back onto the Northern Kingdom’s lands, might leave them running or dying. The parts that worried Godwin more…

There were two. One was that he and his men simply couldn’t win this fight. Even if they somehow fought their way to the far side of the bridge, the Southern Kingdom’s forces could hold his army as easily as he could hold theirs. The best that they could hope for was to fight to a standstill.

The worse fear was for his daughters. He’d lost so much in such a short time, with Nerra gone, Lenore taken, Rodry… Godwin let out a cry of anguish, cast his sword down, and smashed a man aside with his shield instead. No more. He would allow no more of his children to suffer.

“Sound the withdrawal,” he ordered, yelling it out over the battle. “Pull back and hold our side. Not a foot on the bridge!”

His men started to pull back, and Godwin turned to the knights around him. He found Twell, found Bolis.

“Help me collapse the bridge,” he commanded. “We left it standing to get my daughter back. Now… I want it down!”

“Yes, your majesty,” the men chorused, and fought their way forward, through the press. Godwin went with them, snatching up a war hammer from a fallen foe. He struck with it at a man’s helm, parried a blow on his shield, continued to fight his way on.

Out on the bridge, his forces started to pull back. The ordinary men ran for safety, but the Knights of the Spur fought while backing away, giving ground but never exposing their backs. It meant that, where another force might have been cut down in a rout, they were able to withdraw in good order. Godwin saw his daughter and the strange monk among them, leapfrogging one another as they pulled back again to the very edge of the bridge.

Ahead of him, he saw Twell and Bolis fighting to get to the wooden pegs that held the bridge in place. Godwin saw Bolis duck under a blow, only to trip as a body caught his foot. He fell, and a sword came down, too quick to stop. Godwin killed the attacker himself, bringing the war hammer around in a wicked arc that ended in a crunch of bone.

Twell was there, staring down at his fallen comrade. Godwin strode to him, shaking him by the shoulders.

“How do we do this?” Godwin demanded of the knight who was still standing. “You know these things. Where do we strike, Planner?”

He knew what it was like to feel the shock of someone being taken away. He could feel it running through his blood now at the thought that his son was gone. The only way to stop that from consuming everything though was to keep going, to win this fight.

“Where?” he demanded, and Twell pointed. Godwin saw the holding pegs then, smaller than he would have thought they might be to hold so much. Now that the knight had pointed it out though, he could see the way the structure held together, one part holding another, the whole linking together in one interconnected tangle of wood and iron.