Blood of Dragons - Страница 51

But on his return to the city, he had seen what a dragon’s wrath could do. She had not intended to pock the paving stones with acid holes, nor fill the harbour basin with sunken ships. That damage had been incidental. He had seen the harm that one dragon, fighting on behalf of a city, could do.

He stood on the deck and tried to count the oncoming dragons. He stopped at ten. Ten times dead was very dead indeed. The slaves chained to their oars were praying. He was tempted to join them.

The dragons had flown through the night, ignoring cold and fitful rainfall. Sintara had expected to be exhausted by dawn, but they were not. They had flown on, as the sun rose, and on as it climbed into the sky. They had flown as if they had but one mind, reverting to the animals that perhaps dragons once had been. Mercor led their formation and Sintara had been proud to fly to his right. Blue-black Kalo had taken his left, and then Sestican and Baliper. Those three, she knew somehow, had been a long time with the golden dragon, perhaps swimming with him as serpents once. Quarrel they might among themselves, but now there was a common enemy to fight and vanquish. All differences among them were gone. Even their thirst for Silver had been suppressed. Fifteen strong, they had risen to Tintaglia’s cry for vengeance.

Silver Spit lumbered along at the tail of the line. Copper Relpda flew strongly, her early awkwardness scarcely a memory for her now. And ridiculous red Heeby flew wherever she would, now part of the formation, now trailing it, now flying to one side. Her slender scarlet rider sang as they flew, a song of anger and vengeance, but also one that praised the beauty of angry dragons in flight and painted a glorious victory for them. Ridiculous, and ridiculous that she and the others enjoyed it so. Thymara had complained more than once about how freely the dragons used their glamour to compel their keepers to tend them. Yet not once had she ever even admitted the power that human flattery and praise in song could exert over dragons. She was not the only dragon who flew with her mind full of Rapskal’s glorious images of exotically beautiful dragons triumphing over every obstacle.

They had flown straight, not following the river’s meandering course. Dawn had come earlier for them than it had for the ships on the river’s surface. The tall trees that surrounded this section of the Rain Wild River also blocked the earliest rays of the sun. The dragons had flown over the treetops, feeling the warmth of the sun limber their weary wings, and then, as the trees gave way to the open space of the river, they had seen their enemies in the distance.

‘Vengeance, my beautiful ones, jewels of the day! We will visit death on them, a death so glorious they will die praising you!’

‘Destroy them all! Sink their ships!’ Kalo’s trumpet call of fury rang against the dead grey sky.

Rapskal laughed aloud. ‘Oh, no, my mighty one! There is no need to destroy such useful vessels. Only the killers must die. Leave enough for crew to row our prizes home! Some we may allow to live, as servants, to tend our kine and flocks for us. Others we may ransom! But for now, blaze terror into their hearts!’

The young Elderling glittered scarlet in the morning light, his garments of blue and gold like a battle banner in the wind. He broke into a deep-throated song in an ancient tongue, and Sintara discovered she recalled it of old. When Rapskal paused at the end of a stanza to draw breath, the dragons trumpeted in unison. Her hearts swelled with fury and joy at her own mightiness. They neared the hapless boats and swept low over them.

The ships rocked in the wild wind of their passage. Those few who remembered to release their arrows saw their puny missiles wobble and spin in the dragon tempest. Leaves and twigs from the nearby trees showered down with a shushing sound and even the river leapt up in wavelets. The force sent Hest staggering to the wall of the ship’s house.

‘We’re going to die here!’ he shouted, for he suddenly saw it all clearly. The dragons would circle back and overfly them even lower. But no wind need they fear, for the danger of the acid they would spew down on them would make the wind seem like a friendly pat. Even a falling drop of the stuff would kill a man, eating through clothes and flesh and bone until it emerged from a stumbling corpse and buried itself in the earth. If the dragons breathed it out as a blanketing mist, only sodden wreckage and sizzling bones would remain of them.

Hest screamed wordlessly as the images fully penetrated his mind.

‘Get off the ships! Hide in the trees!’ Someone shouted the order, and a wave of men scrambled to obey. From beneath the closed hatches, screams of terror rose but there was no time to think of anyone except himself. Get off the ship! It was his only possible chance to survive. He rushed to the railing and leapt amid a fountaining wave of other men doing likewise. He was fortunate that his ship was closest to the bank. The water, cold and stinging, closed over his head. He had shut his eyes tightly as he jumped and as he came up he floundered blindly, scarcely daring to open his eyes until he felt the slimy river bottom under his boots. Then he blinked rapidly, feeling the river water sting and haze his eyes for a moment before he scrabbled out onto the muddy, reed-choked bank.

He was one of the first ashore. Behind him, all was chaos on the boats and in the waters between them. Men had jumped haphazardly, some on the river side of the vessels, to be swept away in the stronger current there. Others were trapped between the ships, half-blinded and stunned by cold water and terror. They yammered and shrieked as the dragons swept back over them. The wind of their passage rocked the vessels, and the cries of the drowning men were submerged by the ear-splitting roars of the dragons as they passed. Hest was stunned by the sound, staggering and covering his ears. A full knowledge of the majesty and power of dragons suddenly filled him and he fell to his knees, weeping to think that he had dared defy such magnificent creatures. All around him, men were doing the same, begging for forgiveness and promising lifelong servitude if only they were spared. They knelt or prostrated themselves in the mud. Hest himself stood, his arms uplifted to the sky, and suddenly realized he was shouting praise to their beauty. In the distance, the dragons were beginning a wheeling turn. He knew two things with certainty: this time they returned to kill, and then, with an even greater clarity, he knew that the thoughts and feelings of the past few moments were not his own. It’s like a dream, he told himself. A dream in which I do and say things I would never do or say in my waking life. This is not me; this is not of my own will. Then, as the dragons approached, all rational thought fled.

Every human who could flee the ships had. Sintara was vaguely aware of men wailing in trapped dismay. Some were jumping about, heedless of how they damaged themselves as they fought chains that secured them to rowing benches. Humans evidently confined humans. Why, she could not guess and did not find it intriguing enough to puzzle about. It did not please her when Mercor led them to land in the shallows of the river and then wade ashore, but she sensed his purpose. The humans were now cut off from their ships. A few, she knew, fled mindlessly into the forest. They would die there, tonight or tomorrow. Humans were not able to live without shelter and food.

But others crouched in the grasses or hid behind trees or simply prostrated themselves, sick with terror. Not one had been killed by tooth or claw or dragon’s breath. Those who had perished had wrought their own deaths, their little minds unable to stand before the terrible glamour of a dragon’s wrath and majesty. As the dragons waded out of the river, some of their captives wailed in terror. Then Heeby spoiled their grand procession out of the water by skidding to a halt on the mud bank, sending muck up in a spattering spray over the cowering humans. Sintara snorted in disdain.

She noticed that Rapskal did not leap down from the scarlet dragon’s back until she had moved to a less marshy site. Then he hopped down, his gay Elderling cloak aflutter about his shoulders. Those few invaders who were capable of a response other than terror gasped in awe at the sight of him. Grudgingly, she had to admit that he looked far grander than the squat humans in their murky clothes. Tall and slender, he was a fitting companion to the dragons. He looked about, a grim smile on his face, and then flung his cloak back over one shoulder. She felt almost proud of him as he strode forward and ordered the humans, ‘Stand up! Come forward! It is time to be judged by those you have wronged.’

They obeyed. Even as the dragons eased the glamour that held them, the humans obeyed. Pulverized by terror, they had already been defeated. Wet and shaking with cold, they came forward to stand in a huddle. They were a motley assortment. Some were in rags, thin and scarred. Others were attired as bowmen, with leather on their wrists and close-fitting shirts, and there were those in the finery of noblemen. Of old, dragons had known all these sorts of men, and found that, stripped of their fabrics, they were all soft-skinned shrieking monkeys.

Hest found himself obeying the command to come forward for judgment. He had found a small corner of his mind to call his own, so even as he stepped forward to join the others in a kneeling row, he recognized that the awe and terror he felt were not entirely rational. He dared a quick glance at the faces of his fellow captives. Some looked as blank as sheep facing slaughter but in others, he saw the struggle in their eyes. He knew a moment of consternation that some of the Chalcedean’s rowing slaves were more cognizant of their own minds than the nobles who had commanded them. Then there was no time to think of anything, for a tall scarlet warrior was striding toward the line. Hest had never seen such bright garments as he wore. He walked with a fighter’s stride, but wore no armour nor carried any weapon. Perhaps he needed none.