Dragon Sword Series - Dragon Sword Part 26

Alouzon watched until she was out of sight. "Relys?"

"My lady."

Like all the rest, Relys was unrecognizable. The thick-limbed lieutenant had become a sleek girl who looked no more than eighteen. Her eyes were hard, though, set in a face that was incongruously beautiful.

"How are you, Relys?" Alouzon spoke quietly.

She shook her head. "I do not wish to die by my own hand. That is all that keeps me from following my comrades who now lie away from the fire." She ran her eyes over her soft form, weighed a breast in her hand experimentally, dropped it and shook back her hair with disdain. "So much for beauty. A pretty piece I would make on the block in Bandon, eh?"

"Don't hurt yourself, Relys."

"I said that I would not."

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"Your friends used their swords. You're using words. I'll warn you: it's more painful, and a lot slower."

Relys snorted, started to walk away.

Alouzon called after her. "I noticed that Wykla wasn't among those you named."

"Aye," she said, half turning. "Wykla lives."

"Where is . . ." She could not avoid the p.r.o.nouns forever. Nor would it do the wartroop any good to try. Gryylth had to change. Everything had to change. "Where is she?"

Relys looked toward the fire. One of the women stirred. "H-here, my lady," she said.

The speaker was young, pretty, with amber hair that fell well below her shoulders. Her blue eyes were impon-derably sad. She sat huddled by the fire as though she had been beaten.

"Wykla," said Relys. She had named the dead in the same way. "Alouzon Dragonmaster, I go to attend my captain, who inspects the . . . lucky ones."

Alouzon hardly heard her. Her attention was focused solely on the girl by the fire. "Wykla," she said softly. "I'm sorry." She got down from Jia and padded across the gra.s.s to her side. The others watched as she dropped to her knees and put her arms about her. "I'm sorry."

"My lady." Wykla was weeping in silence, but openly, the first tears that Alouzon had seen among the wartroop. The others were impa.s.sive, their faces half blank, half stone. "I ..."

She had to say it. The words forced themselves out. This time, though, she resolved that she would not be lying. "Wykla, it's going to be all right. I promise. One way or another, it's going to be all right." Whatever she had to do, wherever she had to go, she would make good her vow. It would be all right. Somehow.

Wykla listened to her, lifted her small hands as though Alouzon had offered her a cup br.i.m.m.i.n.g with a new life. But abruptly, with an inarticulate whimper, she broke down sobbing, burying her face in Alouzon's shoulder. The grief she expressed was dragged up from deep and bitter wellsprings, and it racked her body as though it 228.

might tear her apart. Crying aloud, she in turn tore unthinkingly at Alouzon's armor, and her tears mixed inseparably with her sweat as she beat herself against the thing that had happened to her.

Alouzon held her, rocking her like a child as she screamed out her pain, pus.h.i.+ng back her long hair when it threatened to choke her. She could say nothing more to Wykla. No endearments, no comforts, no further words of encouragement. The mere thought of such things was obscene, a trivialization of the fury of emotion that ripped and slashed at Wykla, that pushed her through pain, through agony, and into something that was at once both absolute nightmare and starkest reality.

Impaled upon such thorns, Wykla screamed, her cries those of a young woman faced with the unendurable. Alouzon, who had herself twice faced annihilations that were no less consummate for all their dissimilarities, knew that she could be no more than physical being, a simple presence that reminded the girl that the whole world was not white and raw, that held out the promise that the unendurable, accepted, might be endured.

Mercifully, Wykla spent herself quickly. Her cries became feeble, vague, and her grip on Alouzon's armor slackened and slipped away as her mind overloaded and sent her into an exhausted sleep.

With a sigh, Alouzon laid Wykla down on the gra.s.s, propping her head on a bundle of blankets. "Someone get me some water so I can wash her face," she said without looking up.

"I had hoped," came Marrget's voice, "that my warriors could take their defeat with dignity."

She was too worn to become angry. ' 'It isn't a question of that."

"Wykla was always weak."

"Like she was in the Heath?" She looked up at the captain. Marrget stood on the far side of the fire. The angle of the light put her eyes in shadow and turned her face into a mask. Alouzon might have been conversing with a Greek tragedy. "You call that weak? She saved .

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your a.s.s. She's got enough guts to admit that she hurts. Maybe she's stronger than you are."

Marrget motioned to Relys. "Bring the Dragonmaster a skin of water and a cloth."

Relys brought them, handed them to Alouzon. Her eyes were black and hard, but their strength had turned brittle, shallow. For all her protests that she had no intention of taking her own life, Relys was slipping, just like the rest of the wartroop. Even Marrget would eventually reach her limit.

Slowly, Alouzon cleaned the salt and saliva from Wyk-la's face. The girl murmured in her sleep, and one hand plucked nervelessly at her short tunic, her smooth thighs, as though, even unconscious, she sought reconciliation with her body.

Alouzon wanted to sleep, to crawl under warm blankets in her own bed in Los Angeles and lie inert for hours, days, until Gryylth was far in the past. But nothing was ever in the past-Kent State, Dallas, Gryylth, whatever-for the past lay beneath the present, an underlayer of history and recollection that colored every thought and deed with the indelible hue of memory, whether sunlit or blood-spattered.

And the only way out was through.

' 'It's not a question of dignity anymore,'' said Alouzon. These were her friends. She would not let them die. Somehow, she had to find the right words. "It's not a question of dignity, or honor, or valor, or anything else.'' She wrung out the cloth and stood up. ^'What we are talking about, captain, is survival."

Marrget regarded the sleeping girl as though she stared into a mirror and saw there an overly honest reflection.

' 'How long do you think you can keep up this stiff-upper-lip c.r.a.p?'' Alouzon pressed. She allowed an edge to creep into her voice.

"I do not understand you."

"How long are you giving yourself before you join your friends over there?''

"We ... will live."

"Like h.e.l.l you will. Wykla let it out. She beat herself 230.

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senseless in front of you, and you didn't do a d.a.m.ned thing. You just judged her. And, you know, she's probably going to do that again and again until she fights her way through to some kind of sanity. But I think she's got a chance. You, though ..." She shook her head. "You're so f.u.c.king petrified right now I'm surprised you don't crack in two."

Marrget's mouth forced itself into a thin smile. "And so what are we to do, Alouzon Dragonmaster? Weep for our lost manhood? Wail like bereaved wives? Leam to accept our status as women, and bow and simper to our menfolk? Will you teach me now to braid my hair so that I can be properly debased?"

"It doesn't have to be like that."

"That is what women are."

"Bulls.h.i.+t."

Marrget spat. "You know it as well as I."

Words would not suffice. She needed action. She had to do something, and if she could not pull Marrget back, she would follow the lesson she had learned and force her onto the same path that Wykla had found: she would push her through.

"All right, Marrget," she said, stepping up to her. "You can get away with a lot, and you have so far. But when you start badmouthing women, you're badmouthing me, and I don't like it. That sort of garbage might have worked when you were lording it around in Hall Kings-bury, but it doesn't wash here. Right now, you're on my turf, lady, and you'd better get used to it."

Behind her, one of the other women was sobbing. Alouzon cringed inwardly at the sound. She was taking a terrible risk, but everything was a risk now. And, yes, Wykla might make it. But she was far ahead of the others, and not even finished with the worst yet.

She waited. Marrget was silent for some time, and her eyes were fixed on Alouzon as though she held a sword and were picking a place for her first thrust. ' 'If I have offended you, Alouzon, friend," she said, composing herself with an effort, "I am heartily sorry. I beg pardon. I can do no more."

"You'll have to do a lot more, little girl."

Marrget's fists clenched. "By the stars, what? What else is to be taken from us? In the span of a day we are defeated, emasculated, and made outcast. My trusted friend runs from me as though I carry plague. What now?"

"You're a captain of Gryylth, Marrget. Your land is in danger. The Corrinians will be back."

"I doubt that. It seems that the Dremords have but to wait and our army will disappear like a puddle in the sun."

"That was then, before we heard about your trusted friend's fun and games in Corrin. They might have been satisfied to wait before, but do you really think they're going to sit tight after their towns have been burned and their wheat destroyed? Really? What would you do?"

"I would ..." Marrget stood, deliberating. She pushed her hair off her face slowly. "I would come for revenge even if victory were a.s.sured by waiting. And if they have no food ..."

' 'How long do we have?''

She lapsed into mental calculations that had become instinctive. "One, two days."

"So you're going to have to fight." Alouzon realized that she was counseling in favor of war, but there was no choice: driven by revenge and by the need for winter food, Corrin could well slaughter everyone. "Vorya's not going to have much of an army soon. You're all he's got."

' 'Very good.'' The irony had not left Marrget's voice. "The ideal warriors. What more have we to lose?" She snorted. "But you misunderstand, Dragonmaster. Women are not warriors."

"Yeah. You're right. I don't understand." Alouzon's vision was blurring with fatigue, but she shook it off. It had to be tonight. Anything might happen before morning: more suicides, madness, a bleak despair that could be worse than either.

"We are women," said Marrget.

"So what?"

Marrget shrugged, turned away.

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The captain was breaking off the exchange. Alouzon was losing her. But she caught sight of the pile of weapons that lay at the edge of the firelight, cast off by the wartroop in an almost automatic response to the ingrained mores that said that women could not bear arms. "Then again ..." She edged slowly around so that Marrget was between her and the arms. "Then again, maybe you're right. Maybe that's all you are. Women. I suppose you're built a little differently in Gryylth."

Marrget's brow furrowed.

Alouzon started her drive. "Come on, Marrget. You're just scared. You got a bellyful of battle and you finally gave up. You all gave up. You didn't become women because Tireas did it to you. You changed because that's what you all were inside. That's why you all picked on Wykla so much: you didn't want to admit it. Now you've got the right plumbing. Satisfied? t.i.ts and a.s.s, a sweet little p.u.s.s.y, and the whole thing. Relys was right: you'd make a pretty sight on the block at Bandon. Or maybe you'll want to make it legal and crawl off and get yourself a husband. I'm sure there's some big Dremord farmer out there who'd love to get between the thighs of a girl who used to be the captain of the First Wartroop."

She stepped in. Marrget stepped back, her face contorted. "You . . . dare!"

The other women were staring in shock. What she was saying might break some of them, but she had to take the chance. Marrget was strong, with more innate pride and valor than anyone in Gryylth. She could make it. And if she did, the chances were excellent that the others would follow. "Yeah, I dare. You always were a coward, Marrget. You stayed well out of the trouble in the Heath until Dythragor pushed you by telling you what you were. He saw it. I saw it too."

Marrget, seething, darted a glance back at the pile of weapons.

"You don't scare me, Marrget," Alouzon taunted. "Your arms are too weak to swing a bread knife, much less a sword. Hang some bangles on your wrists. Maybe you'll get up some strength if you work out with them .

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enough." She grinned mockingly. "And don't forget to braid your hair.''

It was enough. Marrget flinched as though struck. "Dragonmaster," she snarled, "you are a dead woman."

Whirling, she seized her sword. The metal shrilled as it slid from its sheath, and she brought it over her head in a sweeping arc. There was no lack of strength in her arms-the blade responded as though it were a willow wand-and with the cunning of years of combat and the calculated anger of a skilled warrior, she drove in for the attack.

* CHAPTER 16 *

/will not go back there. From his seat before the king, Tireas could see, in the near distance, the glow of the Tree in its wain. It had grown since it had left the loose, friable soil of the Heath, as though the diet on which it had fed-energy, pa.s.sion, men's lives and souls-had fattened it like a carrion bird.

/ will not go back.

One of the souls it had devoured, he knew, was his own. He was a sh.e.l.l now, something that went through the semblance of life's motions, ate and slept, spoke and defecated, wept and ...

. . . laughed? Had he really laughed once? It seemed a strange thought. Laughter was something for men, for people who could say Dig up this Tree, or We will have to leave Flebas behind. It belonged to someone who could feel a bite of conscience at the rending of flesh, the crack of bones, the slippery convulsion of viscera dumped brutally on the ground and trampled by frenzied horses. It had no place in the heart of one whose compa.s.sion had been stripped away by the elemental desire of pure change, who could experience nothing beyond a cloudy discomfort at the abrupt transformation of an attempt to avert more bloodshed into the white, fetid heat of ma.s.s slaughter.

Tireas wrapped his arms about himself and rocked back and forth like a child struggling with a nightmare. He would not go back. He would not put his hands on the Tree again. There was nothing that fate or the G.o.ds could 234.

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do that would move him. He had given everything to Corrin and to the Tree. He had nothing more to surrender, not even himself.

But it seemed that he would not be asked, for Tarwach was hearing reports from his forces, and there was nothing said that did not indicate that Gryylth was finished. Captains, soldiers, scouts who had ridden ahead and peered at the Gryylthan encampment as the evening light had died in the west-all brought variants upon the same message.

"Simply, my king," said a tall commander, "Gryylth does not have enough men to continue to fight. And what few there are left are deserting."

And Tireas rocked, listening with only half of his attention to the drone of voices.

"You saw them deserting?"

The soldier, short, young, ill-at-ease in the presence of his king, bobbed his head emphatically, like a bird. "With my own eyes, my liege. They were gathering their weapons. Packing up, if you will. They went off westward."

"Could you hear their speech?" Tarwach asked another, a scarred old veteran with a mouth set in a perpetual grimace.