Amara was thinking the exact same thing. Close, she thought. He is close. Her hope was rising like the coming of dawn, but her stomach was doing the same. She could feel another wave of nausea rushing through her, her guts twisting, and put a hand on the wall to steady herself. Jovyn was still there. “We need to get you to your bed, my lady. Carly, will you help me?”

Before she had gone more than a few short steps, her belly heaved again, and more wine came up. Lillia was utterly bemused. Artibus’s eyes had turned knowing. It was her niece who gave a laugh and said, “You need to stop drinking so much wine, Auntie. Who knows…you might be pregnant.”

I cannot get pregnant, Amara Daecar thought. Then she saw the look on Artibus’s face, and Carly saw it, and Jovyn too, and Lillia, who swallowed her laughter. She stepped in. “Auntie…you’re not…are you?”

“I don’t…I can’t…” She had no words. Cursed, she thought. Vesryn always said he had cursed them, made them barren, due to his betrayals and crimes. But he restored his honour, she told herself. He fought the Dread and died a hero… and…and…

Take care of her, Vesryn had said in the dream. Promise me you will…

Lillia was looking at her with amazed eyes. “Gods, Auntie. Pregnant? You’re pregnant?” She stared at her in a state of shock, then gave a huffing laugh and said, “But you can’t be pregnant. You’re so…so old!”

Amara Daecar could have throttled her dead…

…but instead she curled an arm about her belly, thought of her sweet dead husband…and wept.

53

He opened his eyes to darkness.

He coughed, gasping for air.

A great weight was pressing down on him. Dimly, he could hear the clash of battle, ringing all around him.

It took him a moment to remember. The dragon, he thought. He could smell its leathern stink, the brimstone and the blood. It had collapsed atop him when he cut it though, pinning him to the ground with its bulk. Slimy entrails squirmed in the earth where he lay, massive intestines and bowels as big as a rowboat. The stink was unbearable, suffocating. His stomach heaved and churned.

He was prone, face down. Mud and blood oozed in through the eye-holes of his visor, and he could taste it on his lips. He braced his shoulders and twisted his head to the right. He could see nothing but scale armour and thick bone horns digging down into the dirt. He grimaced, labouring to look left.

Light.

There was a narrow gap ahead, a furrow of earth beneath the beast, ploughed during their duel. Emeric heaved and pulled his right leg up and to his side, his armour scraping against scale, then pressing hard against a horn to propel himself toward freedom. He made it half a foot. His left leg followed the same motion, and he achieved another six inches. Bit by bit, he squirmed his way forward, slithering along like a snake. Blessedly, he still held his blade in his grasp. Without its strength he’d almost certainly be dead, pinned beneath the beast forever.

The battle had been short and fierce, and the dragon had come from nowhere. One moment Emeric was duelling a host of dragonknights with Sir Rikkard Amadar and the next he sensed a great presence come down behind him, and he whirled in time to face his foe. “We take him together!” Rikkard had bellowed. Emeric had nodded and the two of them rushed in.

Then the tail had lashed out, whipping through a drift of smoke, and Rikkard never saw it coming. It struck him in the chest, sending him careening away across the field and that was the last Emeric had seen of him. He’d faced the dragon alone, then, a beast with great curved black horns atop its head, eyes of wild and swirling red, a long and thin crocodilian jaw. From the lower mandible another long spike protruded, and out of its rough armoured hide were a thousand more, all fanning backward toward a long lashing tail that ended in a serrated blade.

Emeric did not recall much of the fight. It was all swirls of smoke and bellows of rage, that deadly tail sweeping from the left and right, the snapping of that long thin maw. But somehow, at some point, he’d managed to get himself close enough to slide beneath it, swinging up in a fearsome arc to open up the beast’s underbelly. The entrails had splashed down, the dragon had collapsed, and that was about the last that the exiled lord remembered.

Until now, as he continued to squirm onward, past scales and horns, dragging and pushing, dragging and pushing. He did not know how much time had passed as he lay entombed, but the light had changed, he saw. Was I under there for an hour? More?

He wriggled his way out at last and stood on shaking legs, leaning his back against his vanquished foe, breathing deep of the open air, suffused with smoke and sulphur, the bitter taste of bloody iron and foul reek of men in death. He was lacquered in dragon blood from head to heel, his cloak sticky and sodden, and it had even sluiced through the thin gaps in his plate armour to coat his padded underclothes as well. It was on his skin, sinking down into his flesh. No bath will ever get rid of it, he thought. I’ll stink of dragon guts forever.

He turned his eyes around, trying to get his bearings. He could see Rustbridge far to the west, its towers burning, great pillars of black smoke churning and chugging to the skies. Dragons wheeled about it like crows above a corpse, diving and plunging, belching their flame, as the ballista bolts flew out to meet them. East the world was aflame as well. He could see the woods in which the enemy had made their camp blazing in a great conflagration, greasy smoke swirling upward in great roiling columns to coat the sky in tar.

South and north he saw pockets of men clashing amid the flames and the smoke, which puffed up from a thousand fires spread wide across the field. The dead were innumerable. Tens of thousands. Men and horses, camels and cats, wolves and dragons. The dying were an even stronger force, and the noise they made was wretched. Everywhere grown men were crying out for their mothers, weeping as they crawled through the mud. Some were aflame, running amok in their agony, red streamers moving through the smoke before falling down dead. Others dragged themselves along, missing arms and legs. A man was knelt over in the filth, scooping up his own guts as they slipped and slithered through his bloody muddy fingers. Another was moving around in circles, armless, searching for his missing limb.

Emeric Manfrey drew a long breath. He had never seen anything like it, not by half, not by a quarter or a tenth of a hundredth. It was his first true battle. This is hell, he thought.

He took a step forward, looking left and right, wondering where Rikkard had gone. Could that blow have killed him? More likely he’d returned to find the dragon dead and never knew that Emeric was under it. The dead were thick here where the dragon had fallen. Emeric picked through the corpses, moving through a banner of smoke that came swirling from a nearby blaze. He turned his head, coughing. His chest felt tight, his lungs burning.

“Tukoran,” said a voice.

He spun. A dragonknight was charging him with his dragonsteel spear, three others coming in behind. One was hefting his spear to throw. Emeric shifted to one side, stumbling as he did on the trailing leg of a dead horse. A spear came whistling, missing him by inches as it burst into the horse’s flank with a wet crack. Emeric rolled and stood, setting his feet, then surged forward in Rushform.

The dragonknights were skilled and quick. The first man thrust with his spear; Emeric swung, deflecting it with a crisp ring. The others came in around him, spreading to make room. “He’s a dragonkiller,” one said, in Agarathi, but the exile understood. “The blood…”

“Kill him.”

They rushed as one. Emeric squatted and leapt, vaunting over them to escape the circle. Curses barked into the air. Red cloaks whipped and snapped as they turned. The one who’d thrown his spear retrieved it, pulling it out of the horse with a burst of blood and bone. He was tall and lean, spattered in blood. All of them wore black armour of dragonscale, but this one had fine dragonclaw clasps that marked him as their captain, a dragon maw roaring from the crest of his helm. He shouted something Emeric didn’t hear and suddenly there were more of them. Emeric glimpsed them arriving through the smoke. Another two, three, four. He turned a full circle, counting them out. One was limping, blood leaking from a wound to his calf. Another moved exhaustedly and would not pose much threat, and a third had a savage cut that raked across his eye, blinding him. Emeric understood how to fight when surrounded. Target the weak. Break the circle.

He lurched for the limper, feigning one way and then the other. The man was too weak to push off that leg and his defence was slow. Emeric hacked down through his attempt to parry, and his godsteel blade cut deep into his armour where the shoulder met the neck. He heaved back, blood swishing, flesh parting. The man gave a grunt of pain and collapsed to a knee, and quick as that, Emeric punched the tip of his blade through his eye and out the back of his head.

He whirled out of the circle once more, but the other men were already regrouping. Dragonknights were some of the best-drilled soldiers in the world, skilled and brave, their formations honed and adapted to defeat and overwhelm Bladeborn knights in combat, and their dragonsteel weapons were capable of deflecting godsteel where other common blades would shatter. The armour, too, did not yield so easily when struck by Ilithian Steel.

And Emeric was tired. The battle had taken it out of him, and not just the bout with the dragon. He’d been fighting long hours before then, dragged this way and that across the open field and he knew not how many he’d killed. Fifty men might have died by the edge of his steel. Or double that. Or more.

It did not serve to think about it. Add another seven, he told himself, as the dragonknights moved and closed in. One and then another and then another. Pick them off. Choose the weakest.

He went for the man with one eye. The knight was ready for him, expecting him, and backtracked at once as the rest rushed in from all sides. Emeric skidded to a stop and swung his eagle-blade in a full arc, deflecting spears and swords. One got through, a spear tip prodding hard at the flank of his breastplate, juddering to a stop. Emeric tore out his dagger and swept the spear away, launching himself at the nearest attacker. His cut was quick and savage. It hacked at the dragoknight’s arm, strong enough to part armour and leather and flesh, jarring into bone. The man let out a throat-splitting cry. Emeric tore the blade away and hacked again in a blink, frighteningly quick, right at the same spot, and the man’s arm went spinning into the filth.

The exile turned, just as another spear plunged hard into his gut, but his armour was more than a match for it. It would leave a dent, no more. Emeric drove his dagger into the neck of the assailant. Another two dragonknights hacked down at him with swords. He swung, deflecting, and pirouetted back out of the circle.

Five, he thought. Another was dead and the armless man was no longer a concern. He’d die of loss of blood soon enough. The rest moved back around him, more cautious now. Their captain was bellowing orders in Agarathi, a language Emeric understood well enough, but spoke poorly. It was the tongues of the empire he’d mastered, those of sand and sun and star, not the dragon-tongue. Another bark from the leader and the five closed in. Emeric kicked out at a body. The corpse went rolling over into the legs of the nearest knight and the exile followed right in. He thrust too quickly for the dragonknight to counter, taking him in the gut. A burst of blood spat from the man’s mouth. The rest roared and rushed.

Then there was a great bellow behind him. “Stop toying with them, Manfrey! There’s better prey to hunt than these!”

Emeric caught a glimpse of silver armour, enamelled brown and black at the shoulders and chest, a great thicket of beard atop a neck so thick the armourers had baulked when it came time to make a gorget to fit it. Mooton Blackshaw was a fearsomely large man, but that neck…there was nothing like it. He gave a laughing bellow as he entered the fray, monstrously quick for such a brute, a huge smile splitting his wild hairy face. The first swing of his greatsword took a dragonknight at the waist, cutting right through him and parting top from bottom. The second came down so hard and true it parted the captain lengthways instead, from crown to groin. Emeric watched as the body peeled apart, right side and left side falling opposite ways as gore and organs tumbled out, steaming, to splash bloodily into the mud.

“Ha! I’ve wanted to do that all my life. Usually they move, but that one was just right.” The Beast of Blackshaw laughed thunderously at his success. “You’ll remember that one, Manfrey. I want you telling everyone when the battle’s done.”

Emeric wasn’t going to fast forget it. Nor the two remaining dragonknights who had seen a losing cause and run. Mooton snorted. “Cowards. Too many cowards out here.” He took Emeric by the shoulder with an enormous paw, and shook him. “So? How many have you killed? Not more than me, I’ll bet. I’ve probably killed a thousand men by now.”

As ever, Mooton Blackshaw was given to hyperbolic exaggeration. “I’m not keeping count.”

“No, you wouldn’t. You’re too well-behaved for that, but us Blackshaws…” He paused to give him a look up and down. “You’re covered in blood, Manfrey.” The big man leaned in, sniffing. He gave an ugly cringe. “Dragonblood,” he spat. “It’s all over you.”

There was worse than blood all over him. “I killed one,” Emeric told him, without pride. He motioned into the moving smokes. “Back there, somewhere.”

Mooton did him the honour of believing him. “Ha! Well good for you. I hacked the head off a beast myself. Like the King’s Wall did in the last war. You know that story? How big was yours?”

This was hardly the time to compare notes. “Where are the others, Mooton? I haven’t seen anyone for a while.”

“Damned if I know. I lost track of Torv and the Barrel a while ago. Might be a mile away. Or two. It’s crazy, isn’t it? This battle. Gods, I feel alive!” He laughed and thumped his chest with a great clang of steel. “Come, let’s find them. Just listen out for a man bellowing for Vargo Ven and we’ll track Borrus down soon enough.”

If he’s still alive, Emeric thought. There were no guarantees of that, even for the formidable Barrel Knight.

They stepped away through the battlefield. Here and there men clashed around them, but Mooton paid them no mind unless they got too close. When he saw a dragon flying overhead, he bellowed out, “Fight me, devil-spawn!” raising his blade in challenge. “Come fight the Beast of Blackshaw!” But the dragon soared right by, and just like that it was gone, swallowed up by the billowing smoke. Mooton snarled in disdain. “They’re all like that. They don’t engage like they should.”