“A fair point,” Lythian admitted. Traditionally it had been much more difficult for men of lowlier birth to win their spurs. One only had to look at the likes of Gerald Strand to see that not all Knights of Varin were worth their place in the ranks. “Let me think about it, Sir Hadros, and speak with the king. I have a council meeting to attend shortly. I will try to corner him about this after, though I’m not making any promises.”
The man seemed appeased by that, dipping his lumpen, bristled chin in a bow. “I’d be much obliged, my lord. Now let’s go see this Fireborn, shall we? Wouldn’t want to keep him waiting.”
They reached the encampment a minute later, stepping through the broken barrels and shattered carts, the oddments of armour and charred corpses, the heaps of black tar that had once been mighty pavilions, reduced now to nothing but mulch. From the detritus, scraps had been gathered and made into fencing to pen the prisoners in. There was no canvas roof, no cover at all, not even for the wounded, of which there were many. Lythian took one look at the growing population. “We’re going to have to expand,” he said. “They’ll be sleeping on top of one another soon enough.”
“Won’t be a problem,” said Hadros the Homeless. “Not like we’re lacking for space.”
Lythian ran his eyes over the masses. There were several hundred of them now, born of every nation and island group south of the Red Sea, from Agarath to Aramatia, the Golden Isles to the Twin Suns. Most were common soldiers, little more than fodder for their blades, yet for every thirty of those there was a dragonknight dressed in his black scalemail armour or a paladin in magnificent robes. Fewer still were the Starriders and Sunriders, of which there were only a handful. And now a dragonrider, Lythian thought. Our first.
He spotted Sir Pagaloth across the pen, in conversation with the man in question. A quick glance was all it took. “You know him, then, as he says?” asked Sir Hadros.
“I do. I had the honour of spending time with him in Agarath.”
“Aye, heard all about your travels down there.”
Not all of them, Lythian thought. Regaling the hedge knight of his time in the south was not high on his list of priorities, however. “See that the pen is extended,” he commanded. “Fill the ditch, pull the stakes, and remake it all some ten metres back. And perhaps you’re right about the stench, Sir Hadros. It might be time to begin piling up the enemy dead for burning, if we can spare the men.”
“Plenty of men sitting idle here, my lord. Might as well put the prisoners to work. They are their dead, after all.”
Lythian considered it. His mind had been leaning that way as well, in truth. “Fine. But no cruelty. No lashings and beatings. I do not want to see them mistreated.”
“Not in my nature, my lord. But if I might make one suggestion?”
“Go on.”
He waved a hand to the east, out where the lands were burned and churned. “We pile a few choice corpses out yonder, set up a few hidden shelters in the ditches, and fill them with bowmen, spearmen, lengths of chain. Even a ballista or two if we can roll them out there.”
Lythian understood. Bait. “You mean to catch a few more dragons, Sir Hadros?”
“Catch a few. Kill a few. They come sniffing around the dead again and we add them to these others.” He gestured to the nearest dead dragon; there were at least a dozen of them, rotting outside the walls, and many more within, scattered about the rubble.
Lythian nodded his assent. “See it done. This works, and perhaps you’ll win that cloak of yours.”
“Was hoping you’d say that.” The man grinned, bowed, and stamped away, the weatherworn cloak of a wandering warrior trailing proudly at his back.
Lythian’s own cloak was similarly worn, though all the same, that strong Varin blue shone through all the little tears and scorch marks, the patches of soot and grime. At his neck he wore his captain’s pin, fastening the cloak in place, and beneath it his armour; scratched, dented, and in need of a good polish. The last of those he could do himself, though the others…mending and tending to godsteel armour was the holy realm of the Forgeborn, blacksmiths and armourers derived from the blood of Ilith of whom scant few remained with any great skill. Several of the very best operated at the Steelforge, Forgemasters Merilore, Watling and Wainwood, and the apprentices beneath their charge. If he wanted his armour fixed and restored, they would be the men for the job.
If they’re still alive, he thought. It was possible that Drulgar’s assault upon the capital had extended to the Steelforge as well, striking at the very heart of Varin’s Order. Amron had been hoping to send the bodies of Vesryn and Dalton there for burial, to be entombed in the crypts beside the rest of the former First Blades. Now those tombs might be under a thousand tons of rubble, the Steelforge itself reduced to rock and ruin, their reserves of swords and spears and shields, weapons and armour buried. Elyon had left only hours ago to investigate, soaring away into the skies shortly after his father was proclaimed king. By now he might have discovered the truth of Varinar’s fate. His return, and his report, could not come soon enough.
But for now Lythian had to put it from his mind, to focus on matters he could control. He turned and walked along the edge of the enclosure, circling around to its eastern side where Sir Pagaloth and the Skymaster stood. He nodded to the former, and gave the latter a bow.
“Skymaster Nakaan,” he said, with grace. “It is good to see you again, despite the unfortunate circumstances.”
The ageing Fireborn returned the gesture, inclining his head into a courteous bow. “And you, Captain Lythian. Sir Pagaloth has just been telling me of your adventures together, since you left the Nest.”
“Adventures is not a word I would use, Sa’har. Toils and trials would be rather more appropriate.”
Sir Pagaloth had something of a resting frown-face, perpetually serious and sombre. “I did not use the word ‘adventure’. Skymaster Nakaan is taking liberties, as he knows.”
“Yes. So I am.” Sa’har Nakaan showed his palms, and even raised a little smile, though one shadowed in grief and loss, the smile of a man who had lost it all. He has haunted eyes, as Sir Hadros said, and has aged a decade since I saw him last. The Skymaster had never been a meaty man, but now he was positively gaunt, with sunken cheeks and whitening hair and skin so parchment-thin Lythian could see the bones moving beneath his face. “I’m happy that you made it home, however,” he went on. “I have worried about you…both of you…during my more…conscious moments. To see you both again, safe and unhurt…it is a shaft of light, on a dark and dreary day.”
Lythian had always enjoyed the man’s way with words. “As with you, Sa’har. But tell me, are you injured? You look…well.”
“I look old, Lythian. And a little prematurely so. I had not realised, not until recently, just how much Ezukar’s death had sapped my spirit. To be abandoned by him was hard, though ever there remained a thin hope in me that we would be reunited, one day. Once I sensed his death, however…” The pain was etched upon his face, in the lines about his eyes and mouth, the grim pallor of his skin.
“A terrible loss, Sa’har. You have my deepest condolences.”
“Thank you, Lythian. It is a wound that I will always walk with, a darkening deep inside me that will never be restored to the light. The Fire Father had hoped that bonding me to another would relieve me of my troubles, but no. Bagrahar was not Ezukar, and never could be. To another I am sure he would have been a fine companion, but not me. I am better off without him. That is the honest truth.”
Lythian had not heard the name Bagrahar before. “What happened, Sa’har? Was he killed, during the battle?”
“No, at least not this one.”
“This one?” asked Sir Pagaloth. “Do you mean to say…”
“That he perished elsewhere. Yes, that is what I mean, Sir Pagaloth. Our bond may have been young and unnaturally forged, but I was still attuned enough to his spirit to know when it went dark. It was not the stark despair I felt when I knew that Ezukar was lost, not the same rending of my soul…more a cold feeling at the top of my spine, an instinct that told me he was gone. I mourn for him, as a young dragon with much to live for. He should never have left the Wings.”
Like a thousand others. Unlike most of his northern brethren, Lythian had seen the beauty in the beasts, the nobility and the grace. Many of the dragons would surely have been happier remaining where they were, living out their days on those stark volcanic islands, rather than being summoned by the soul of their maker to spread his fiery will. “He followed Drulgar then? When he flew north?”
The Skymaster put his hands together and nodded. “I regret it is so. I tried to wrest control of him, and in our struggle he threw me from the saddle. As Ezukar abandoned me at Eldur’s behest, so Bagrahar did for Drulgar. Now tell me, Lythian, after all of that…just where should my loyalties lie?”
“To yourself, Sa’har,” Lythian said without pause. “Be loyal to who you are. A man of probity and justice. Isn’t that why you’re here?”
The Skymaster nodded slowly and turned his eyes to the east, to the rent and ruined lands, bathed beneath the dawn. “I landed out there, somewhere,” he started, “when discarded from Bagrahar’s back. I was lucky. The land was soft and churned, enough to break my fall, and we were near to the ground at the time. I escaped without injury. Many others…good Fireborn, good men and women, were not so fortunate. I suppose you saw, did you not? The riders being thrown from the backs of their dragons, to tumble into the tumult below?”
Lythian recalled it all too well. The skies had rained Fireborn and fire both. He gave a nod, and the Skymaster went on.
“I did not move for a time, after I had landed. I just lay there, hoping that some Bladeborn knight might come past and make an end of my pitiful life. What could I offer, after all? I was a dragonrider without a dragon, a man with a darkened soul, a slave in service to a lie. I deserved to die, I told myself. No one would miss an old dragonless Skymaster like me. Yet there is a coward in all of us, Lythian, a shameful spectre who cannot always be subdued. In our weakest moments, he comes. And he came for me that day.
