Christopher Rowley - Bazil 05 - A Dragon At World's End

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A Dragon at World's End by

Christopher Rowley

Prologue

It was a wet day, and cold due to an incessant wind off the sound. The

crowd was heavy, all the way up Tower Street, despite the rain. Folk from

all the provinces had come to stand there. Aubinan grain farmers,

fishermen from Seant, and sheepmen from Blue Stone, they were all cheek

by jowl with the natives of the white city under a mass of dark gray

umbrellas, come to welcome the army home.

In fact, the Legion had landed two weeks before, but this was the

official welcome and march of remembrance, to consecrate the memorial

to the dead that was to be built on Tower Hill. It was an opportunity for

the common people of Marneri to show their support for the men and

dragons that had been sent so far—halfway around the world, in fact—and

asked to risk their lives for the greater good of all mankind.

Up the hill, to the tap of the drum, came the dark columns. Serried

spear points packed the wide street and the ranks that went by were filled

with the trained, professional soldiery of the Empire of the Rose. The

hearts of the people could not fail to be uplifted at the sight. No better

troops existed in all the world. But of the units that had gone to Eigo, the

ranks were thin and the uniforms under the blue capes and freecoats were

tattered. With this sight came the rendings of heartbreak, for there was

scarcely a village without loss from this mission.

The regiments came on steadily through the expectant hush, long files

of men followed by squadrons of dragons, each with his dragonboy

marching alongside. The dragons loomed in the rain like terrifying

apparitions, true monsters of war, with their enormous swords riding on

their shoulders, their helmets glistening in the rain. In their lumbering,

steady progression they seemed to embody the Argonath's determination

and strength. With heavy-footed, swaying tread they passed, and men

from villages far and wide were left grieving at the losses among the

dragons, too.

Folk from the village of Quosh, in Bluestone, a dragon village with a

long record of service, had come up to pay their respects. Farmer Pigget

and his family were there, as were most of the other leading men, like Avil

Benarbo and Tomas Birch. When the 109th Dragon Squadron hoved up,

following at the rear of the 8th Regiment, Second Legion, their eyes fixed

sadly on the empty space left for the Broketail dragon. There were sobs

from a few. The dragon, originally known as Bazil of Quosh, had been the

proudest issue of their line of Legion wyverns. He would never be equaled.

Also noted was the absence of dragonboy Relkin, the village's most

honored son, even though he was a bastard with no known father or

mother. Raised for dragon service since birth, he had gone on to win the

Legion Star and become the youngest recipient ever of the highest award

in the Legions. Farmer Pigget and the others grieved for Relkin as well as

the dragon. Quosh had lost part of its identity with the deaths of the

Broketail dragon and his boy. Their hearts were heavy as they joined the

crowd walking up the hill behind the regiments.

"A sad day for us, Tomas," said Pigget to Birch.

"Aye, Shon Pigget, that it is. Broketail dragon won the village tax

exemption three years straight."

"He was the best we've ever hatched."

"The boy was a rascal, but never malevolent, as I recall."

"Yes, Tomas, as usual you fit the cap on it very tight."

At the top of the hill they found places in the crowd that filled up the

rear of the parade ground laid out in front of the Tower of Guard.

At a balcony on the fifth floor of the tower, old General Kesepton, now

retired, stood watching the regiments come on up the hill. With him was

General Hanth, newly appointed to the Legion Supply Office in Marneri.

Kesepton noted with pride that there were no visible puddles on the wide

expanse of the parade ground. Not on his watch, he thought. Then he

remembered that his watch was over. It was someone else's problem now.

"A damned fine sight," he said.

Hanth sighed. "Dearly bought, General, very dearly bought."

"Indeed, but the witches say they won a victory."

"So they do. It is hard to know anything for certain, so little

information was made available, but we are assured that one of the Five

was destroyed."

"Yes, they have made a big fuss about that. Everything else, though…"

"Is secret, I know. So much secrecy, damned witches are everywhere, no

one will talk."

"They also serve, General Hanth."

Hanth shrugged. "Oh, I suppose you're right. It all just seems like

hocus-pocus to me sometimes. We needed such myths as witches and

magical power once, but surely we're beyond that now."

"Ah!" Kesepton bit his tongue. "Well, if you say so, General, if you say

so." Kesepton looked down with a trace of a smile on his lips, but the smile

was tinged with sorrow.

The casualties from the Eigo disaster were still being digested around

the Argonath. They were terrible, thousands of men dead, lost, swallowed

up in the heart of the dark continent. The stories told by the survivors

were met with disbelief. Monsters, plagues, savage warriors who thought

nothing of death, great empires of black peoples, and ultimately a battle in

which stone eggs were hurled from the sky by terrible birds. So many

fantastic tales, in fact, that folk hardly knew what to believe, but the

casualties were very real, whatever else was true.

Thanks to the Goddess, thought Kesepton, his grandson Hollein had

been spared. The young Kesepton had been sent to Eigo, but had been

detached and sent on a diplomatic mission before the Legions marched

west into the unknown interior. He had returned from Eigo a month or so

before the rest, coming on a frigate with a message from the kings of Og

Bogon and Puji. Real peace could take hold in the whole region. General

Kesepton recalled the immense relief he'd felt when he saw Hollein once

more, alive and unharmed, standing in the door of his apartment in the

tower. Old Kesepton had known from the outset that a mission such as

that sent to Eigo would suffer stupendous casualties.

Kesepton also recalled how Marian Baxander had broken and wept at

the news of her husband's death. Such a battle the Legions had fought that

it had killed both generals in command, along with forty percent of the

officers. If this was victory, it was victory with the bloody costs of defeat,

and it brought anger in its wake because the mission had been cloaked in

such secrecy. Most people couldn't really comprehend the distances

involved, nor imagine what threat the witches had found so far away that

required such a sacrifice in blood. But, so the witches insisted, it had to be

this way.

Out on the wide plaza below the Tower of Guard the regiments

measured themselves out in crisp parade-ground array. At the command

they dressed to the right, regiment by regiment, each with dragon squads

at the rear. In their place behind the Eighth Regiment stood the 109th

Marneri. There were wide gaps in the formation, but still they stood there

with pride in every ounce of their massive selves.

Out in front was Dragon Leader Wiliger, still, but he was greatly

changed. Something had gone out of his eyes since the last battle with

Heruta, on the volcano isle. Nowadays he hardly spoke and was often

found staring vacantly into space. It was rumored that he had applied for

a compassionate discharge from service.

Behind him stood the dragons and dragonboys. At the right front there

was the leatherback Vlok, with Swane beside him, then came pale green

Alsebra and little Jak. The rest of the front row was empty. In the second

rank stood Roquil, with dragonboy Endi, then old Chektor with Mono, and

the enormous bulk of the Purple Green of Hook Mountain and dragonboy

Manuel. The rest were gone, from Aulay to the big brasshides Finwey and

Oxard. Dragonboys were missing, too: little Roos, decapitated at Tog

Urbek, and Schutz, whose body was broken to pieces there. And, of course,

there was the empty space for Bazil Broketail of Quosh, lost with his

dragonboy in the volcanic doom of Heruta.

The Legion was all present and ready. General Wegan nodded and the

cornets sounded to bring the Legion with a crash to attention.

There was a long moment of silence. The queen was helped up the steps

to the top of the reviewing stand overlooking the wide parade ground. On

the stand were several generals: Admiral Cranx, and representatives of the

great institutions of the citystate, Fi-ice the Witch of Standing, and Ewilra

of the temple.

Their faces were set in rigid masks of disapproval. The queen was

drunk. She had been drinking heavily for a year now and any stressful

occasion was likely to send her to the brandy bottle. Standing there on the

reviewing stand, General Wegan of the Second Legion could barely

restrain his anger. Wegan had been on the frontier in Kenor for most of

his career.

"You don't know how things are in the city," whispered his friend Major

Looth, who headed the Legion Staff Office in Marneri.

"You're right, I don't, and from what I can see, I don't want to find out."

The queen lurched to her place and did her best to stand tall. Behind

her stood her current "companion," a handsome cavalry officer from the

Talion Light Horse assigned to Marneri. Whenever she wobbled too

obviously, he steadied her.

In a shaky voice Queen Besita read out the proclamation of the

establishment of the memorial to the fallen. When she'd finished, someone

shouted, "The queen is a slut!" And another voice called out, "No more

blood for the witches!"

Tension hung in the air for a long shocked second. The wind snapped at

the pennons and guidons, but no more insults came. Many men stared

around themselves, hot-eyed, gripped by vague, unfocused rage. As much

as they hated what the queen had become, they could not accept any

insults thrown at the crown of Marneri. The crowd murmured. Besita was

oblivious. She never heard the insulting words. She was thinking of

nothing except escape from this place and this gloomy business. When

she'd finished reading the proclamation, she stood back and would have

retreated to her carriage prematurely if her cavalry officer had not held

her firmly in place.

Watching this with a degree of horror in her heart was Lagdalen of the

Tarcho, former assistant to the Great Witch Lessis and former adviser to

the queen. With Lessis's restraining influence on the queen removed, so

was any moral suasion possessed by young Lagdalen. The queen had new

advisers, smooth young men from Aubinas and Arneis, men who talked of

money and fresh markets for Marneri grain.

Thus, Lagdalen did not watch from the reviewing stand, but from the

stand occupied by the noble families of the guard, which included the

Tarcho clan. Lagdalen's role in the addictive drama of power had been

reduced. She was now just a crown attorney, in charge of the endless case

against Porteous Glaves, the grain magnate. She was also a mother and

hoping for a second child. Her husband, Captain Hollein Kesepton, was

also present, and was currently stationed in the city, attached to the

Diplomatic Corps. He'd been to Eigo with the Legion and survived, and for

this Lagdalen was supremely thankful, although Hollein was torn by odd

feelings of guilt. He had been detached on a diplomatic mission and

missed Tog Utbek.

Lagdalen, of course, had seen the battle at the field of Broken Stone

firsthand and would never forget it. Much had been lost there, including

the sure knowledge that an Argonath army was unbeatable in the field. So

many had died that day. She was simply glad in her heart that Hollein had

lived. She consoled herself with his presence when the dreams were bad

and she woke up terrified and sweating.

Hard as those moments were, what Lagdalen could see happening to

the queen was worse, because the effects were so vastly more widespread

than her own troubles. Besita was floundering, losing her moorings. She

refused to work; she refused to accept the duties of being a queen. As a

result of her intransigence, the line of the Bestigari clan was coming under

perilous scrutiny. The kings and queens of the Argonath city-states were

subtly monitored by the witches. Royal arrogance, mania, bloody

perversions, and destructive impulses were not allowed to run on for long

before poison or an "accident" intervened. If Besita were to die, the throne

of Marneri would move to a new family. Such an event would involve the

danger of civil war among the clans and provinces.

Lagdalen was left to wish that Lessis was still among them.

The Witch of Standing, Fi-ice went up and gave the blessing for the

memorial. Her voice was high, brittle with tension, but still it carried and

the words took effect. Men came down off the balls of their feet. They

composed themselves for prayer. She read a short, familiar passage from

the Birrak and then led them in a short series of prayers. When finished,

she stepped back amid complete and utter quiet broken only by the wind

whipping across the parade ground in gusts, snapping at the flags.

General Wegan stepped forward and in a crisp voice, clearly audible

across the parade, he called for a minute of silence. Nothing was heard

thereafter but the patter of the rain and the flap of flags. The minute

lasted well into ten minutes and then to twenty before by general consent

it came to an end and the units were dismissed and broke up and drifted

away, mingling with the crowds. The hush persisted and the crowd started

back down Tower Street in relative silence.

Dragons lumbered to the dragonhouse, followed by the dragonboys.

Small groups of soldiers were gathered here and there, most in motion as

the parade broke up and dispersed.

Dragonboys Swane and Jak were leaving together when they crossed

paths with Captain Kesepton and Lagdalen. The boys immediately came

to attention and snapped a salute.

Kesepton returned it. "Well met, my friends from the fighting 109th."

Lagdalen greeted each of them with a hug, but their pleasure at

meeting again was dampened by the somber echoes of the service.

"It's a hard day, Lady Lagdalen," said Jak after a moment.

"I know, Jak. It is for me, too. For all of us."

"Hard sometimes to believe they're gone, all of them," said Swane.

"Damned hard," said Hollein Kesepton, who'd served many times with

Bazil and Relkin. "They were a great pair and their song will be long sung

in the Legions of Argonath."

"Tell me, Lady," said Jak. "How is the Lady Lessis? Do you see her?"

"No, Jak, I don't see her anymore. The lady has gone to her home in the

isles and she says she will never leave them again. She took the losses in

Eigo to heart, you see. She told me one time afterward that she didn't

think she could ever order men to go to their deaths in battle again."

The dragonboys were saddened further by this news. Their lives had

been made pretty turbulent by the demands of the Gray Witch, but they

wouldn't have traded them for quieter times in camp at Dalhousie. They

had been halfway around the world in service with Lessis and had seen

things that no one would believe. They had gone to the very edge and

confronted the great enemy in his abyss, and still they would have had no

other life. They had survived and been hardened in the process.

Lagdalen could see the changes in little Jak. Although still diminutive,

his face was creased with lines and he radiated a new sense of strength.

The boyishness had gone out of his eyes, he was a soldier now. Lagdalen

had seen the same thing happen to Relkin. It changed you, to be tested

like that, on the anvil of war.

"How are the dragons, Jak?"

"They are well, Captain. A bit down, as you'd expect. Especially the

Purple Green—he's taken it hard. He and the Broketail were close from the

beginning. From before I joined."

"Bazil Broketail was the reason the Purple Green joined the Legions,"

said Swane.

"So it's a little difficult. They get sulky pretty easily."

At this point a tall shape loomed out of the crowd and called to

Lagdalen.

"Uncle Iapetor!" she cried.

Old Iapetor, a sea captain for many years, greeted the others warmly.

"A day for grief, a poor day to meet, perhaps, but I am honored. Any

friend of Relkin of Quosh is a friend of Iapetor of Marneri."

"Very pleased to meet you, sir."

Swane was about to make their excuses when two more figures, these

wearing the long military cloak, appeared, and he glimpsed gold stars on

their collars. With a nudge to the ribs he hissed "Generals!" in Jak's ears.

Both dragonboys cut a salute as tight as any they had ever made before.

General Kesepton returned the salutes, but not casually.

"At ease." Old Kesepton extended a hand toward his colleague.

"This is General Hanth. He's taking over supply operations here in

Marneri. General, this is my grandson, Captain Kesepton, with his wife,

Lagdalen."

"Delighted, Captain, Lady."

But General Kesepton had examined the two dragonboys now and

noted the number in shining brass on the peaks of their caps.

"And, General, we have the honor of saluting two members of the

fighting 109th Marneri."

Hanth looked up. "We do?"

"Yes, General Hanth, this is Dragoneer Swane and Dragoneer Jak. Jak

tends Alsebra, the sword-skilled freemartin."

"Ah, yes, who hasn't heard of her? I am honored, boys, honored. The

Broketail dragon was your friend. Be assured that all Marneri is suffering

with you this day."

"Yessir!" said Swane and Jak, reacting to the presence of general

officers with parade ground manners.

Kesepton smiled broadly, at a memory from thirty-five years before,

and asked Hollein to dismiss them and send them on their way. He moved

on to the old friend he'd seen standing beside Lagdalen.

"Ah, Iapetor, you old fox, how are you?"

Iapetor and Kesepton clasped hands firmly.

"The quacks are after me, General, but I keep 'em at arm's length."

"A sad day."

"And a bad one, old friend. The Aubinans will use this, you know they

will."

Kesepton nodded heavily. The grain magnates of Aubinas sought

independence from Marneri for their rich province. The struggle to sway

public opinion was ongoing, but the forces of Aubinan independence were

gaining the upper hand.

Both the older men also knew that Lagdalen was now in the front lines

of this struggle, and she was but a girl in her twenties. Still, by virtue of

her personality and the power of her position as the assistant to Lady

Lessis, she had become the crown attorney for the prosecution of the case

against Porteous Glaves. This case had become a cause celebre for the

Aubinans, who claimed that Glaves was being persecuted by a vengeful

Marneri government.

Kesepton saw the tightening in her face when Iapetor mentioned

Aubinas. He thought to spare her on such a mournful occasion. She

carried too much of a burden already.

"The Broketail dragon was a legend in his own times. We don't see that

sort of thing very often."

But Iapetor could not be deflected. "The Aubinans will try to blame the

queen, and the witches."

"Ah, well."

They both turned to Lagdalen, who kept her face purposely as blank as

possible. The case could not be discussed casually and she was annoyed at

Iapetor for bringing it up. She would not be drawn.

"We face difficult times, good sirs," she said. "And these losses make

them harder to bear. But we will not give up. We will never give up."

On that note they parted, hunched against the rain and the wind,

which was colder than before. Workmen began to dismantle the parade

stand while a couple of stonemasons took measurements where the

monument to the fallen was to be erected.

Chapter One

Two predators slipped silently through the ancient jungle, eyes and ears

alert for the slightest signal of either prey or danger. Hunger gleamed in

their eyes, while starvation showed in their shrunken bellies and haggard

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Christopher Rowley - Bazil 05 - A Dragon At World's End

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