Throne of Dragons

“King Ravin has a hunting lodge in a village a little way south of the border,” Kay said, surprising him. “What? My father used to trade with the south. King Ravin used to make a point of receiving visitors as grandly as possible with wine and…”

“And women,” Rodry finished for him.

Kay paled at that, then nodded.

It was a possibility, and there would be tracks. Years of hunting had given Rodry practice in that, at least. He looked around at his friends.

“I’ll not lie to you,” he said. “I hoped to catch up to Lenore before she crossed the border. Going after her now means going into the heart of the enemy’s lands. It means more danger for all of us. If any man wishes to turn back…”

None of his friends moved. Rodry had known that they wouldn’t, but he had to ask. He turned to the guards who had accompanied Vars, pointedly ignoring his brother.

“You men,” he said. “I think that you are not the cowards my brother is. I think you were misled.”

One of the men, a sergeant, nodded. “The prince told us we were marching the right way, your highness. Otherwise, we’d have been at the princess’s side, defending her.”

Rodry believed him. He wanted to believe that no true man would have shirked his duty, given the choice. It only made what Vars had done worse.

“Some of you will have to stay here to report the truth of all this to my father,” Rodry said. “I want to make sure that he hears all of this. But if any of you will ride with me, I’d be grateful for the help, and so will the kingdom.”

“I’ll ride with you,” the sergeant said.

“And me,” a soldier called out.

More calls came from around Rodry, in a chorus of raised voices and stamping feet that seemed to shake the ground around him. He charged for the bridge, and those men with horses charged with him, leaving Vars standing at the heart of a pitifully small group of foot soldiers, all looking at him with some of the contempt that Rodry felt for his brother in that moment.

He felt more than that though. The old, familiar anger was roaring through Rodry now, fueling his galloping race across the boards of the bridge, down into the Southern Kingdom. He would get his sister back. He would make those who had taken her pay. Anything that got in his way…

…anything that got in his way would burn.

CHAPTER TEN

King Godwin paced the castle’s main courtyard, while around him men rushed back and forth, preparing for war. His every footstep rang with metal as his armor sounded against the stone cobbles of the floor, but it still wasn’t enough to drown out the shouting as men issued commands or ran to be in place among the others there.

“Why have you not gone yet?” Aethe demanded by his side. “Why have you not recovered our daughter?”

His wife looked like a wild thing, as far from the woman Godwin had married all those years before as he could imagine. She had torn at her clothes, while there were gouges in her hands from her nails. Godwin could understand that. She was simply as distraught as any mother had a right to be, when all her daughters were missing. That Erin was safe among the Knights of the Spur meant nothing, when Nerra was banished, and Lenore had been taken.

“We will be going soon, my love,” Godwin promised.

“I’m not your love,” she snapped back. “Not when you’ve lost all my girls!”

“My men tell me that Rodry has gone after Lenore,” Godwin insisted. “They saw him racing off from the city. And Vars… well, there is no word from Vars, but he should be with her.”

“And meanwhile, you sit just gathering men,” Aethe said. She made that into an insult, turning on her heel and heading off toward the interior of the castle. On another day, Godwin would have gone after her, but not today. Today, he needed to finish gathering his men, and set off in pursuit of Lenore.

“Go with the queen,” he said to a pair of his guards. “Make sure that she is safe.”

On another day, he might have sent knights to her, but he needed his knights for this. He could do nothing to help Nerra, and by his own laws could not stop Erin from joining the knights, but he could help Lenore, would help Lenore.

“How much longer until all is ready?” he demanded, as servants and ostlers rand around the horses, readying them.

“A few minutes more, your majesty,” one of the grooms called out. A few minutes? How could he wait any more, when his daughter was in danger the whole time? It was at times like this that Godwin wished that he were like his son Rodry, able to charge off in pursuit of what he felt, unconstrained by the needs of the kingdom.

Instead… instead, Godwin had to do what was right. He understood what this capture of his daughter meant: an open declaration of war by King Ravin. That meant that he could not simply charge down with a few men the way Rodry had done, not when there might be a whole army coming the other way. He had to order preparations, even though every instinct he had screamed at him to simply ride in an attempt to reach Lenore in time.

“Send men to the bridges,” Godwin ordered Sir Lars of the Two Swords. “Tell the men there that I have commanded them destroyed.”

That would not be a hard task. Each of the bridges had the means to destroy it built in, whether it was oiled slats that would burn, or linchpins that could be pulled away to allow it to collapse. For so long, those had been the kingdom’s defense, and they would prove so again.

“All the bridges, your majesty?” the knight asked. “If your daughter has passed to the south, and we are to recover her…”

The king in Godwin knew that he should order all of the bridges destroyed. That this might be the point of Ravin’s plan, forcing him to leave at least one route an army could cross. Even so, the father in him could not even contemplate that. He could not abandon his daughter like that, or his son, because Godwin had no doubt about how far Rodry would go to recover Lenore.

“You are right, my friend,” he said. “Let one bridge stand, one of the minor ones, so that Ravin can’t march an army across unless it’s two by two, but all others are to fall. If this is the precursor to an invasion, we will force Ravin to come to us where he cannot use his whole army.”

That was one part of this that struck Godwin as strange: Ravin was reputed to be a ruthless and cunning king, who had to know how strong the defenses of the bridges were. The North had been safe from the South for generations thanks to the Slate’s roaring rapids, and how easy it was to just collapse a bridge beneath an invading force. What did he hope to achieve by doing this now?

“Perhaps he hopes to lure us to the attack,” Godwin mused. It was the only thing that made sense.

“What’s that, your majesty?” Sir Lars asked.

Godwin shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, just go. Sir Twell!”

The knight was there, assisting with the preparations, ensuring that all was planned well. Godwin would have expected nothing less. Sir Ursus was beside him, lifting the heaviest of the supplies.

“You and Ursus ride to the Spur. Tell the knights there that there is to be war, and bring them south. We will show Ravin our true strength.”

“As you command, my king,” the knight said, sweeping a bow and then mounting a horse. How long would it take him and Sir Ursus to bring the other knights? Days, at least. If Ravin did come in force, could they hold until then if they could not collapse the bridge? Would they be able to get Lenore back before anything worse happened?

So many thoughts were swirling around in Godwin’s head then. He had forgotten what the build up to conflict felt like, forgotten all the ways that doubts could creep in. Still, at least he had one way to deal with that. Stalking off across the courtyard, he set off in the direction of his wizard’s tower.

Of course, he did not get there before Master Grey found him. He was waiting at the second turn of a corridor within the castle, standing there before a statue of one of Godwin’s ancestors as if studying it.

“Why are you not out there, helping me prepare for war?” Godwin demanded.

The magus continued to stare at the statue for a moment or two. “Do you know the story of King Lorus?”

“What?” Godwin demanded.

“Your great-great-great grandfather, I believe.”

“I know who the man was,” Godwin snapped. Why did Master Grey always bring up irrelevancies at times like this? “What about him?”

“He was a man who fought seven times against enemies to the south, allowing them across the bridges so that he could face them,” the sorcerer said. “He won each time, and yet, when hot summers brought droughts, he could do nothing.”

“What are you saying? That Ravin will find a way to affect the weather?” Godwin asked.

The sorcerer gave him one of those looks he seemed to do so well, which said that the king had misunderstood him, or would never manage to see all that he saw, or both.