Dragon Venom (Obsidian Chronicles Book 3) (50 page)

"He may not need a wet nurse, nor milk," Arlian said. "He is something more than human, after all."

"A god, you called him."

"I think he is, yes."

"That seems... audacious, even for you, Arlian. He's so tiny—I think he's smaller than his brother or either of his sisters was. How can he be a god? A god, born of man and woman?"

"A god born of man and woman, and of a dragon and the land's own power."

"Is that what you expected, when you gave me the elixir? That my child would be a god?"

"No; I thought he would be a magician, of sorts. It was not until the dragons' own men came to kill him that I began to suspect he would be more."

Brook glanced at the room's one narrow window, which gave so little light that even at mid-morning the oil lamps were still lit. The air was hot and heavy, thick with the odors of smoke and sweat. "I think the dragons will be sending more than men to kill him."

"I am not at all sure how he can be killed," Arlian said, "but I agree—they must certainly know he has been born, but the clouds have not dispersed, nor the weather moderated. This is undeniably dragon weather. They killed the gods long ago, and must intend to kill Ithar in the same fashion. Still, how can they hope to get at him, here in Manfort, behind the city walls? The Duke's catapults are everywhere; a hundred tons of obsidian blades guard us."

Black had entered the room as Arlian spoke, and asked, "But are the catapults manned?"

Arlian turned, startled. "Are they not?"

"They were not yesterday, else the attackers could never have placed those archers on the rooftops without being seen. I doubt the Duke has the manpower to keep even the outer catapults manned on a regular basis; I think he's assuming we will have warning of any impending threat."

"Warning?" Arlian gestured at the window. "Is not that sky warning enough?"

"The Duke's men are searching the city for the Dragon Society's agents, following up yesterday's action," Black said. "I doubt anyone has given the possibility of a direct attack from above much thought."

"Damn!" Arlian turned and almost ran from the room.

He had not yet reached the Citadel's gates when the screaming began; he took one look at the sky to the northwest and turned back, running toward the Grey House. He paused at the gate to order the surrounding cordon of guards to spread the word and man the catapults, then burst in the door shouting, "The dragons are coming!"

The household came alive with shouting and scurrying as Arlian hurried down the gallery toward Brook's room.

Black emerged as Arlian approached the bedroom door. "What's happening?" he demanded.

Arlian still found it slightly disconcerting to see Black upright and active, so soon after his miraculous healing, so his answer was not as coherent as he might have wished.

"Dragons," he said. "Four of them."

"Where?"

"Northwest," Arlian replied, pointing and almost whacking his hand on the stone wall of the passageway as his injured arm failed to obey him properly.

Black blinked at him. "Flying?"

"Yes, flying," Arlian said. "How else would they come?"

"The rooftops of Manfort are covered with obsidian-tipped spears,"

Black pointed out. "Four dragons do not seem so very great a menace when we have those defenses. No, they are not all properly manned, but surely enough will be ready to handle four dragons! I had thought perhaps they might approach by land—the catapults cannot be accurately aimed into the streets, and we would need to fight them with spears."

"They are flying, nonetheless," Arlian said. "And I fear I have less faith in the abilities of the people and machines defending us than you do. I have been fighting dragons my entire adult life, and I think I know something about the job, and I do not care to rely entirely on the catapults."

"And what do you propose to do, then? Were you coming here to ask my son to use his divine powers to protect us?"

"Of course not," Arlian said, startled. "God or not, he's still a newborn babe. And he's also what the dragons are coming to kill—to bring him more directly to their attention would be insane."

"But Ari, you are insane, are you not?"

"By the dead gods, even I am not so mad as that! No, I've come to move Brook and Ithar to the cellars, where the dragons cannot get at them even if they pass the walls and avoid the spears."

Black nodded. "The other children, too," he said.

"A good thought. I'll take Brook and Ithar; you fetch the others."

Then he hesitated, looking at his arm. "No," he said, "you take Brook—

I can't lift her with my shoulder like this. I'll bring the others."

A few minutes later the two men were on the stairs leading down from the kitchen into the cellars; Black held Brook in his arms, while she held Ithar. Arlian was leading Dirinan by the hand, while Kerzia and Amberdine wrestled their mother's wheeled chair down the stone steps.

Stammer had gone ahead with a candle.

"At least it's cooler down here," Brook said, as she wrapped Ithar more securely in his blanket.

It was, indeed, cooler in the cellars than in the unseasonable heat above, though perhaps not as cool as Arlian might have expected. As they reached the foot of the stair Arlian paused and looked around. He had almost never been down here before, though it was his own house; the cellars were the domain of the kitchen staff, not of the master of the house. He saw barrels of beer and kegs of wine, racks of bottles, shelves lined with jars, wax-coated wheels of cheese . . .

A sudden queasiness struck him as he remembered once before,

when he had ventured down into his family cellar on a hot, dark summer day, a day when dragons were on the way.

He had been only eleven then, a mere village boy, rather than a man nearing forty. Now he was Lord Obsidian, the warlord, the dragonslayer, the swordsman, the fabulously wealthy dealer in foreign magic, the man obsessed with revenge—but he was still the same person in many ways. He still remembered the dusty black wheels of cheese in his parents' cellar; he had been counting them for his grandfather when the dragons arrived, when his world had disintegrated around him.

He shuddered at the memory, at the remembered taste of his

grandfather's envenomed blood, at the sound of Grandsir's voice shouting at the dragons. He struggled to recall the exact words the old man had used.

"May the dead gods curse you and all your kin, dragon," Grandsir had said. "Your time is over! You have no place in the Lands of Man!"

That had not been true—but Arlian had been fighting ever since to make it true, to ensure that the dragons would never again have a place in the Lands of Man. He glanced at Ithar.

Perhaps the gods were not all dead anymore. He glanced upward, at the stone ceiling. At least for the moment they were not all dead—and he wanted to keep it that way. If new gods arose, beneficent gods, then humanity might be given a new chance, a new world of peace and justice. Brook's baby was the harbinger of that world.

He was not going to trust in anyone else to protect humanity's future. "You stay down here, all of you," he said. Then he turned and hurried back up the stairs, leaving the three children calling after him.

Worried maids were standing nearby when he emerged. "Anyone who wants to leave may go, with my blessing. Any of you who would prefer to take refuge in the cellars are free to do so," he said, as he marched through the kitchen toward a certain storeroom. High-pitched voices, rustling skirts, and running feet behind him told him that his staff was taking him up on his offers of flight and refuge.

Years before, before he had told anyone else of the dragons' vulnerability to obsidian, before he had become the Duke's warlord, before he had supplied obsidian for the spears and catapults that armed the city's soldiers, he had had an assortment of obsidian weapons made for himself. Before that, Lord Enziet, the former master of the Grey House and the sorcerer who had first theorized that obsidian might pierce a dragon's hide, had also attempted to make obsidian blades. A few of these assorted weapons were still stored away. Most of Arlian's obsidian armory had been turned over to the Duke's forces long ago, but a few of the earliest, crudest weapons had been left behind.

Arlian selected the longest spear in the collection; he knew from experience just how far through a dragon's flesh a spearhead had to go to reach the monster's heart. With the weapon in hand he trotted up two flights of stairs, then made his way out onto a balcony overlooking the barren central courtyard. He looked up.

He could hear distant screams, and other sounds he did not immediately recognize—thumps and rattles and rustles. The square of sky overhead was dark with heavy clouds, but he could not see any dragons.

He could see the catapults on the roof—catapults that were not manned.

It would have been pleasant to have blamed the Duke for this failure, but Arlian knew better. This was his house, and he had installed those catapults long before the Duke began his intensive fortification of the city.

He and Black had also assigned Ferrezin and Wolt to see that they were manned, in the event the dragons ever came to Manfort—and Ferrezin was long since departed, while Wolt was recently dead. Black had been somewhat distracted of late, and was now in the cellars with his family, hardly in a position to help.

Arlian had stored a ladder on the balcony for exactly this purpose; he swung it into position and climbed.

A moment later he stepped onto the tile roof, then up onto the narrow platform below the catapults. The wood sagged slightly in places, and he suspected that the underside was partially rotted—he had not thought to ensure proper maintenance.

From this new, elevated post, Arlian looked out over Manfort.

To the north and slightly east stood the Citadel, which despite its name was a palace, with broad windows and wooden galleries; around it, and all through the Upper City, were more manors and mansions, built in a variety of styles and of a variety of materials. Many of these elegant homes were now topped with elaborate frameworks, most of them ugly mismatches for the architecture below—catapults with long throwing arms and hanging counterweights, equipped to fling obsidian-tipped projectiles at approaching dragons. Most of these devices, alas, were not manned.

Some of the mansions were already ablaze, the flames lighting the sky orange and adding black plumes of smoke to the unnatural overcast.

To the south and west lay most of the city, the lower, older areas built entirely of gray stone, the streets paved in stone; there was little there that would burn, little that a dragon's venom could penetrate. The Upper City, though, had been built during the Years of Man, the long centuries when the dragons slept in their caverns, bound by Enziet's bargain to emerge as rarely as they could tolerate; the buildings there had been designed for appearance and comfort, not fire-proofing.

The breeze blew from the Upper City and smelled of smoke—not

the normal odor of cook-stoves and hearths, but the reek of wood smoke and charred tiles.

The Grey House, on the edge of the Upper City, was the oldest mansion still standing, dating back to the previous Man-Dragon Wars; it was as fireproof as anything below, and considerably more defensible than most, as well as having the oldest catapults in Manfort, each ready to shoot four ten-foot spears.

Arlian paid little attention to the city itself, though; he was looking at the sky above it.

He had seen four dragons approaching before; two of them were still airborne over the Upper City, spraying flaming venom on the rapidly emptying streets below, but three or four spearshafts dangled from one monster's flank. As Arlian watched, more catapults thumped and more projectiles flew around the beasts without striking.

A third dragon was sprawled across a mansion roof, perhaps a

quarter-mile away; one of its wings had apparently been torn apart by a volley of black-tipped missiles, and it lay wounded, spouting flame and smoke. Arlian could not see the details at such a distance.

The fourth dragon had vanished, presumably slain.

That did not seem so very dreadful, but then Arlian looked out beyond the city walls, and saw more distant black shapes, almost invisible against the clouds.

More dragons. Those first four had been only the vanguard; now the main body was approaching.

They were soaring nearer, moving swiftly, black against the dark clouds, coming from every direction. He began trying to count them, but then quickly abandoned the effort as they veered back and forth, passing in front of one another, or slipping out of sight behind towers and rooftops.

He remembered that at the end of his last hunt he had estimated the total surviving population of dragons at forty-six, and a bark of bitter laughter escaped him. There were more than forty-six in sight. There were many more than forty-six. His quick estimate was that perhaps two hundred dragons were approaching—and who knew how many more

might be lurking beyond the horizon, or still safe in their caves? Exterminating the dragons was a far greater task than he had realized—but he had no intention of abandoning it.

For now, though, he was primarily concerned with surviving the coming battle. He lifted his spear in his left hand, and his right reached for the release lever of the nearest catapult.

47

A Sky Black with Dragons

A Sky Black with Dragons

Waiting until the last minute increased the chances of a killing strike, but it was perhaps the hardest thing Arlian had ever done, standing there holding the lever as the first dragon swooped down at him, talons outstretched, spraying a flaming cloud of venom. He ducked down, avoiding the flames, feeling the heat singe his sleeve but keeping his hand on the release.

And then the monster was right on top of him, a great black figure towering into the sky above him, and he pulled the lever down.

The latch slipped free, the weights dropped, and the throwing arm snapped forward, launching four heavy bolts at the dragon. Arlian did not pause to see the effect; he was already running to the next catapult The dragon screamed, and Arlian risked a glance back in time to see the creature flailing its wings wildly; three of the four bolts had struck its chest, clearly wounding it deeply.