Dragon Sword Series - Dragon Sword Part 20

"You mean, when I asked Kanol to step outside? Nah, that was an act. He hates my guts, and I hate his. But I'll be honest with you, Cvinthil: I can't stand the thought of killing. I doubt that I'll be able to fight again."

His face was a blur in the candlelight. "I ... I am sorry to hear that. I had hoped that you might help Gryylth."

"I'll help. But I won't help like Dythragor helps."

He nodded slowly. "It is well, then." His breathing turned slow and regular, and Alouzon sat with the candle and the moth, pondering.

What she was thinking was utter madness, but she supposed that it was no more mad than magic and Dragons and what she had seen in the Heath. To further the cra-ziness one step more and suspect that the land had existed for only ten years, only since Dythragor had first arrived, seemed an inconsequential act.

Why not? Quasi-archaic English, Celtic swords, British armor, the image of the Grail floating behind it all- it was like an indifferently researched Hollywood movie. And there was no history, no memory of anything that had happened farther back than ten years. Even some of the inhabitants were beginning to notice.

Her head hurt. She was about ready to give up when 177.

she heard the sound of someone on the stairs outside the door. And then, with an audible thump, the door was barred. From the outside.

* CHAPTER 12 *

vinthil," said Alouzon, "I'm sorry to wake you, but I think we've got trouble."

She could hear men moving outside the door, and with her hand on the Dragonsword, her sharpened instincts told her that there were more beyond: on the stairs, and gathered in the main room below. Forty, maybe fifty. Their intentions, she sensed, were not good.

"Mmph?"

"They've locked us in."

At that, the councilor awoke fully. He rolled out of bed, picked up his sword and joined her at the door. Listening, he nodded slowly. His breathing was labored and fatigued, but adrenalin and war training were eking out his strength for the time.

"I heard a bar drop from the other side," she explained. "And I don't like the feel of this."

"Have they said anything?"

"Just mutters. Someone was laughing a minute ago. Kanol, I think."

"That b.i.t.c.h's whelp," said Cvinthil. "I will have his charter revoked if he is doing what I think he is. Bandon can fight the Dremords without the king's protection."

The councilor straightened, pounded on the door with the hilt of his sword. "Kanol! Councilman of Bandon! What brings you to our door in the dead of night?"

Some moments of silence, then Kanol's dry voice spoke up. "We understand that you are unlawfully cohabiting with an unmarried female, councilor. By the terms of our 178.

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charter, you have agreed to abide by our laws while you are here. Therefore we must order you to give her up."

"And what the f.u.c.k do you think you're going to do with me?" shouted Alouzon.

"Cvinthil, tell your wh.o.r.e that she will be treated as she deserves."

Alouzon felt dizzy, sick, but a part of her mind persisted in noting that the councilman still refused to talk to her directly. "Well, at least the son of a b.i.t.c.h is consistent." She looked at Cvinthil. "Is what he says true? Have we agreed?"

"A doubtful question, Dragonmaster," he replied. "One that would cause some lengthy argument at a hearing before the king. As messengers, we are protected. As man and woman, we are not."

The power from her sword was burning up her arm, and her skin was tingling with energy. Suzanne h.e.l.ling could worry about facts, but Alouzon Dragonmaster knew that she had to don her armor and make ready for a fight. "Do we care, Cvinthil?"

He stood, hands on hips, regarding the door. His shoulders were slumped, his head was angled to one side in the manner of a man too long without sleep.

"Will you yield, councilor?" said Kanoi from the other side of three inches of oak.

Cvinthil was still thinking.

Alouzon recognized his dilemma. "I guess I should ask it this way, Cvinthil: Do you care? It's your a.s.s at stake."*

He reached a resolution, straightened, and his voice rang out, deep and pitched to carry throughout the whole inn: "Know you, Kanol of Bandon, that as councilor of Gryylth I declare your actions this night to be high treason, endangering as they do the welfare of the king's messengers in particular, and of the country as a whole. Therefore, your life is forfeit as well as your charter."

She had her answer.

"I would contest your judgment, councilor." Kanol sounded unimpressed.

"On what grounds, traitor?"

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"On the grounds that I have here with me fifty armed men who will do my will. You have yourself and a woman. Need I say more?"

Alouzon saw the fatigue in his eyes when he turned to her. He could not face Kanol and his men alone. "Drag-onmaster? Are you prepared to fight?''

She was already pulling on her armor, trying not to think of Kent, of the dead Dremord, of the feeling that a sword made as it sliced through flesh. The men outside wanted to make a slave of her, and that terror outweighed any qualms she had.

The thought hammered against her temples in time to her pounding pulse. They want to sell me. G.o.ddammit, they're gonna die!

A slow smile touched Cvinthil's face, and he laughed. "Your fate is sealed this night, Kanol. And just desserts to you!"

While the men of Bandon wondered at his words, he settled his own leathers about himself, pulled the straps tight, and helped Alouzon with buckles that she could not comfortably reach. She felt the armor ease in under Cvinthil's skilled hands, and her instincts told her that the fit was perfect, with just enough protection and just enough give. What was left of Suzanne h.e.l.ling fled into the inner recesses of her thoughts, and Alouzon Dragon-master stood, sword unsheathed, ready for battle.

The twenty-foot drop to the ground outside the window was manageable, but they both rejected that plan: there were men downstairs in the courtyard already, and once their actions became known, there would be more.

" 'Twill have to be frontal a.s.sault, Dragonmaster."

"Call me Alouzon," she said. "If you're going to fight with me, then we can at least be on a first-name basis."

He smiled like a shy boy. "Alouzon, then. But the barred door remains a problem."

She examined it. "Probably figured they could starve us into submission." She knew the door was of thick wood, but she sensed that the Dragonsword held more of an edge than ordinary steel.

Steel? She wondered for a moment. High grade steel .

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was as rare in the fifth century as jet airplanes. Who had thought up such a thing as a Dragonsword?

Shrugging, she put the thought aside. Suzanne h.e.l.ling could write a paper about it when she got back to Los Angeles. If she got back.

"The door isn't a problem, Cvinthil. You ready?"

"Aye."

"Where are the horses?"

"Fenced in the courtyard."

"OK, then we'll have to get them. That'll give us an advantage right there."

"But ... the door ..."

"It's not a problem." And, lifting the Dragonsword over her head, she brought it down in a two-handed strike into the door. Wood splintered and cracked as the blade plunged through the heavy planks and sliced from top to bottom. One half of the door fell back, the other sagged for a moment before she kicked it out and sent it slamming into the men on the other side. Several toppled under the impact, and several more went down a moment later as Alouzon Dragonmaster exploded through the doorway, eyes hot, sword flas.h.i.+ng.

' 'Kanol, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d, you 're dead meat!''

She did not see the councilman, but no matter: she would deal with him later. For now, her attention was occupied by the pikemen who were thrusting and trying to trip her. They surrounded her, their footing uncertain on a floor already growing slippery with spilled blood. Cvinthil fell on some from behind and freed her sword for use on the others.

Several men lay dead in the hallway, and the living were retreating and taking up a position at the top of the stairs. Cvinthil was pale as he ran at them beside Alouzon. "Bandon soldiers are soft and stupid," he muttered.

"How so?"

In reply, he skidded to a halt, seized a chair that stood in the hall, and sent it tumbling end-over-end for the soldiers. Unthinking, many took a step backward and found that the top of a flight of stairs was not a good place to stand.

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Cvinthil and Alouzon were on them before they had stopped tumbling down the steps. The councilor's sword was no match for Alouzon's, but he knew how to use it, and it made men bleed and die just as effectively. Swinging as broadly as they could in the confines of the stairwell, the two hacked a path down to the common room.

If Alouzon had forgotten how it felt to kill, she was remembering now. But she had, at present, no regrets. Trapped in her room, the object of contempt, the subject of proposed slavery, she looked on the men she slashed and stabbed as having already determined their fate and their guilt. She was unconcerned with theories of pacifism or nonviolence, for she knew what these men wanted and knew that she would not give it to them. There was no choice, there was no question.

Her responses, instincts, reflexes were automatic, as though she had trained for this from childhood. And for the first time since she had lifted a sword in Gryylth, she was unutterably grateful, and she let the hot power of the Dragonsword do whatever it would with her body. With calculated precision she threw herself into a soldier who blocked her path, smacked another to the floor with her steel cuff, brought her sword hilt into the face of a third before she whipped around and slew the first with the impact of a blade powered by the full force of her hips and shoulders.

She marked his expression as she had marked others: an uncomprehending blankness that shaded quickly into certainty and pain, and then oblivion. But she looked only for an instant. Others were lifting weapons against her and moving in, and Cvinthil had been backed into a corner.

And we 're not even out the door yet.

"s.h.i.+t!" She dropped two by cutting their legs out from under them-forehand, backhand-and seized one of Cvinthil's a.s.sailants by the hair, planted her elbow against his neck, and snapped his spine with a sudden jerk. White faces were turned to her, and Cvinthil found an opening in which to plant a sword. In an instant, the soldiers had .

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panicked, and they withdrew, leaving the councilor and the Dragonmaster in control of the common room.

"We're not done yet," she said.

"No, but we have made them fear us." He was shaking, Adrenalin could do a great deal for a fighter, but when it was all that was keeping one upright, it was not the best ally.

"Can you make it?" she said.

"I have no choice."

He was already stepping for the door. They heard Kan-ol's voice promising money to the man who killed the Dragonmaster.

"Better he should give money to the survivors of those the Dragonmaster kills," Cvinthil said. She wondered why his words did not make her wince. Once, they would have done just that. "A hard time we will have of it," he continued. "a.s.suming that we can reach the horses, the town gate will be manned against us."

"The horses are penned?"

"Aye."

"Tethered?"

"Nay, Alouzon. A call will bring them leaping. And they are warhorses: they can themselves fight. And they will." His hand was on the ring that served for a door pull. "Shall we?"

' 'Hang on." She caught her breath for a minute. Kanol was still exhorting the soldiers. "Isn't there some other way out of the inn? Something that's closer to the horses? I mean, they're expecting us to come out right in front of them."

He nodded, picked up a fallen man's spear and thrust it through the ring. "I should have thought of that. You are wise, Alouzon.''

"You're just tired, Cvinthil."

"Shh. If I begin thinking of beds and sleep I will be useless for anything save pike practice."

In the darkness, they found their way down a corridor that led to the rear of the large, rambling building. The owners, the help, and the other guests had apparently been warned of KanoPs plans, for the inn seemed de- 184.

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serted. Cvinthil's labored breathing and their hollow footsteps were the only sound.

Odors: roast beef, musty vegetables, cheese. "We're in the kitchen, I think." She tried to remember what she could of the layout of fifth-century kitchens and came up with mere sc.r.a.ps. Layc.o.c.k and Chadwick had not excavated and a.n.a.lyzed sufficiently.

"Big f.u.c.king help/' she muttered as she barked her knee on a wooden tub. "We're going to have to make this quick, Cvinthil. They'll be wondering about what we're doing."

"Aye." Feeling in the darkness, the councilor had found a door. With Alouzon's help, he slid the bar aside silently, cracked it open, and peered out. "We are about a score of yards from the horses," he announced in a whisper. "There are two guards on the horses, but they are more concerned with what their fellows are doing at the front of the inn."

" Hmmm. You 're right."

"Right?"

She grinned. "Bandon soldiers are pretty stupid,"