“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.”
“They’re not Fireborn,” Emeric said. “They’re dragons.” The distinction needed no explaining. Riderless dragons were not bound by the honour-duels of the Bladeborn-Fireborn clash.
Mooton knew that too. “They fear me,” he declared anyway. “And I can’t blame them. They all saw me behead their brother and now they want no part of me. Ven’s the same, no doubt.” He stopped to pick up a spear staked into the ground, casually hefting it at a passing rider. It was a paladin knight charging through upon a huge barded camel, his silken cloak streaming at his back in shades of white and gold. The spear took him right in the neck and the knight went flying from the saddle. Mooton grunted. “Might have just killed an ally there,” he said. “Hard to know, isn’t it? With these from the empire.”
Emeric stopped to frown at him. “What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? What do you think I mean? Your friend Ballantris has turned his cloak against the Agarathi, that’s what I mean. I saw him myself. Him and that great moonbear of his. He came leading a host of his own against the dragonfolk. Took them in the flank and near scattered them too.” He scratched at his beard. There was blood in the twisting tangles of hair, and bits of bone. He picked out a chunk of skull, frowning bemusedly as he inspected it, then flicked it from his steel fingers with a ping. “Never know what you’re going to find in there,” he said. “That’s part of the fun of having a big beard.”
“The Lumarans have joined us?” Emeric pressed. He was not aware of that.
The big man shrugged. “Don’t know about joining us. But I saw some of them attack the Agarathi, that I’ll swear by. That’s your doing, Manfrey. Whatever you said to that Moonrider must have gotten through to him. You’ll have your lordship back for this, I’ll bet.” He smiled at him, then his eyes flitted to some nearby fighting, and he roared and charged, adding to his tally of kills.
They’d reached a small slope by then, topped with an old stone watchtower. Emeric continued up the rise, beating back any enemy who came near him. The fighting was well dispersed now. Not like the beginning, when the armies had first come together. Back then the press had been so thick it was hard to move, the noise so loud it was impossible to hear the thoughts inside your own head. It was all shouts and grunts and curses and barks of pain, the screaming of dying horses, the howls of dying men, sounds so near they seemed like they were calling right in his ear. He at least had the fortune to be armoured all in godsteel, but that was not true for almost everyone else. How many times might I have died without it? How many swords and spears and axes had come crashing against his armour, only to bounce away, barely leaving a mark?
He pushed aside his guilt for that and continued up the slope. There was fighting at the top, a host of Tukoran pikemen in brown and green cloaks defending the tower against a surge of Agarathi, coming up from the other side. Emeric did not know why they were protecting the tower, other than to give them somewhere to rally, a physical point that they must defend. From the windows, archers had taken their places and were firing down on the enemy host. On the steps outside the thick wood doors, the men held tight together, defending the way in with their lives, thrusting out with their pikes and spears. A man in an emerald cloak and armour was shouting commands, a big ugly bald man who Emeric knew to be Sir Kevyn Bolt, once of Janilah’s Six. That gave him pause. He was one of the prince’s guards now.
Sir Mooton came striding up the hill behind him, a new crop of butchered bodies sown in his wake. His beard had been splashed in a fresh coat of blood which dripped grimly through his smile.
“That’ll be another ten,” he said proudly. When he joined Emeric, he saw the watchtower, the archers at the windows, the violent press around the door. He did not stop long to consider what might be happening. “What are you standing here for, Manfrey? Those are your people dying out there.” He raised his greatsword aloft and gave a mighty roar, shouting, “Blackshaw!” and “Elmhall! and “Vandar!” as he charged.
Emeric followed after him, thrusting and cutting his way through the throng until he reached the tower steps. He pushed his way up toward Sir Kevyn Bolt, hailing him loudly. The man turned. “Manfrey.” He wore the essentials of godsteel armour, the rest castled-forged but strong, his cloak torn and singed. In his grasp he held a blade with a bull-head pommel, one of two he kept at his hip. That was custom among the Six, to have dual blades. Though no longer a sworn sword, he’d served at Prince Raynald’s side, acting as part of his protective escort and had ridden at his flank when first they stormed the field.
The tower, the knight, the desperate defence. It painted a story.
“Where is the prince?” Emeric shouted. The noise was fearsome, the shouting and cursing.
Bolt thumbed at the door. “Inside. He took a wound. The bastards are trying to get at him.” The bald knight looked out; more foemen were coming up the hill in a flood as though sniffing the blood of a prince in the water. Further off a dragon was wheeling around, a big dragon, umber brown with scales of mossy green coming their way with a rider on its back. “That dragon’s coming back,” Bolt said. “Wants to finish the job.” He spat
“We have to get the prince out.” Emeric spun and pushed at the door. It didn’t yield.
“It’s barred,” Bolt shouted at him. “From the inside.”
Fools. If that dragon burned the tower down they’d be trapped. Emeric kicked at the wood. “Open up. It’s Emeric Manfrey. Quickly!”
He heard the bolts go, heard whatever they were using to block it moved aside. The door opened a crack and a pair of eyes peered out to confirm it was him. Then it opened wider, enough so Emeric could slip inside. The roar of battle weakened as the door was pushed shut again.
Emeric took the room in at a glance. Crates and casks sat along the curve of a wall to the right, being hastily searched by a pair of soldiers. To the left a stair crawled around the interior, leading to the upper floors, the tower-top above them. Bowmen were shouting and firing up there, their voices echoing down through the stone drum.
The prince was up against the far wall, holding a steel hand to his gut. His helm rested on the floor beside him, his skin wan, hair wet, mouth bloody. Several men-at-arms were fussing about him. One was a knight that Emeric knew; Sir Ernold Esterling, called Ernold the Shy, another Emerald Guard in the prince’s service. The sobriquet ‘shy’ was ironic. Sir Ernold was anything but.
The man heard him enter and stood to face him. “Manfrey. Bloody good to have you. How is it out there?”
“Not good.” Emeric stepped forward. “The men are overwhelmed and more enemy soldiers are coming up the hill. We have to get the prince out.”
Prince Raynald Lukar groaned, propping a bloody hand to the stone floor to try to stand. He winced and flopped back down.
“Be still, my prince,” said one of the armsmen at his side. He turned and barked to the men searching the crates. “Quickly. Find something, damnit.”
The boy did not look in good shape. “What happened?” Emeric asked Sir Ernold.
“Dragon,” the knight told him. “Tail-blade cut through his armour. Savage strike. He’s got a six-inch gash across the gut. It’s deep, Emeric. He takes his hand away and who knows what’ll come squirming out.”
“I found some,” a man shouted. He stood from a crate and raised aloft a bale of clean bandages, as though he’d won a great duel. At once they surged into action, wrapping the prince up, but it would only do so much. He needed that wound sewn and seared shut, else he’d bleed out, and there was no way he’d be able to fight in his condition.
There was a roar outside, shuddering through the air. Panicked shouts rang out from the bowmen above them. Then screams as the fire took out the men on the roof, shattering the stone summit. Emeric looked up as the stone came down, a shower of debris collapsing through the hollow tower to crash down onto the floor. “Look out!” He shoved Sir Ernold aside as men threw themselves over the prince, stone blocks and shards of timber smashing against their shields.
It all happened in an instant. Above them, fire swirled where the tower ceiling had been breached, and Emeric could see clear sky above. There was a deep thwump of wings as the dragon wheeled about. “We have to get him out!” The tower would not survive for long before collapsing. Sir Ernold nodded and rushed to the door, but Emeric shouted, “No. We go out the back.”
“There is no back.”
