Throne of Dragons

Commander Harr shook away that thought. It didn’t matter how many there were; only that they kept fighting. He plunged back toward the fight.

***

“We’re getting too old for this!” Sir Halfin yelled up, as he hung over the edge of the bridge, held only by Sir Ursus’s grasp.

“You’re getting too fat for it!” Ursus yelled back, and that was probably a good sign. The big man wouldn’t be making jokes about it if he didn’t feel certain that he could pull Halfin back onto the bridge. At least, he hoped not.

“Just pull me up!” Halfin called out. Hanging above the Slate was not where he wanted to be, not with the river raging below him, and the drop enough in itself that it might kill someone.

How had he gotten into this spot? He’d been charging forward, throwing himself through the fight, and then a man had come at him and… and he hadn’t been fast enough to dodge.

He, Halfin the Swift, hadn’t been fast enough. That was a humbling thought, a reminder that all of those who had served the king loyally for so long, were getting older. There were some younger knights, Prince Rodry foremost among them, but the truth was that Halfin and Ursus and the rest were getting past their best. He just had to hope that this wouldn’t be a battle too far for them.

Then Sir Ursus gave a roar of pain, and the head of a spear appeared, thrust through his shoulder from the rear. He bellowed like a wounded bull, and for a moment, Halfin was sure that he was going to drop. Instead though, Sir Ursus roared again, this time with effort, and Halfin found himself being lifted as easily as the other knight had always been able to lift him, throwing him back onto the bridge. Sir Halfin landed lightly as an acrobat, thrusting with his sword as he landed, bringing down the man who had wounded his friend.

He moved to prop up Sir Ursus, the weight of the larger knight almost enough to squash him. In spite of that, Sir Halfin was still able to cut out again, bringing down another of the enemy.

Maybe they weren’t quite done yet.

***

At the heart of it all on the bank, Lenore sat atop her horse, forcing herself to be brave, to not move. She fought to contain the skittishness of the creature, because if it bolted now, there was a good chance that it might plunge her down into the waters between the kingdom.

Around her, men died, blood spraying, the world filled with the clash of steel and the screams of the dying. To her side, the horrendous drop down to the Slate stood, the banks crumbling a little under the weight of so many men stomping and fighting, pushing and pulling at the edge of it. She saw a man’s leg hacked off a few feet away, saw another shoved off the edge of the cliff down into the river. A part of her longed to run, but she couldn’t bring herself to do that, not when her sister was still out there on the bridge, fighting to hold back the tide of enemies.

What would happen if she died here? With so much violence on every side, how could she hope to survive? Fear wormed through her there. What if she’d gone through all of this, if Rodry had sacrificed himself, and Erin had journeyed to the south, just so that she could die in the chaos of the battle that followed?

Only the fact that she was obviously not a soldier seemed to be keeping Lenore safe right then; that, and the presence of so many of her father’s men around her, shielding her with their efforts, killing those who came too close. Her father was there too, huge and armored, and he seemed the comforting presence that he had always been, strong and safe, impossible to defeat.

Yet one look at the bridge told Lenore how fragile that illusion was. She could see it swaying under the weight of so many men, could hear the creaking of it even above the sounds of the dying. She had felt for herself that no one was truly safe, that men of violence could always find a way to hurt, to kill, to do worse…

There were more men on the bridge than she could count, more still approaching it, mere dots in the distance, given the Slate’s width. Even on this bank, there were dozens of pockets of them, spread out and fighting, attacking her father’s men from all sides. How could even her father hope to hold against all that? How could any of them? The battle kept going, but in that moment, Lenore couldn’t see how they could hope to win it.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

King Godwin stood at the heart of the battle, holding onto his daughter’s horse and trying to make sense of it all. That was the most important skill for a war leader; not the ability to wade into the fight, not the ability to inspire men, although both mattered. The ability to step back for a second and just look counted for more than the rest of it put together.

“Are you safe?” he bellowed to Lenore, even over the sounds of the battle.

“I…” She nodded, but there was something about the way that she did it that spoke of pains that she couldn’t voice, not there.

A man came at Godwin in that moment, and for a second, everything was the violence. He smashed the man back, fought his way back to Lenore’s skittish horse, managed to catch hold of it again.

“And what about your brother?” he asked. “Have you seen Rodry?”

This look said almost as much as the last one, and it hurt just as sharply.

“He… he came to save me,” she said. “They killed him, Father. Rodry is dead.”

If he’d been anywhere but a battle, King Godwin would have collapsed to the ground in grief at the news. Even so, the hurt of it burned through him, making him roar out his grief, lash out at the first enemy to come near.

“My son!” he bellowed, as he struck down a man. “You killed my son!”

He killed then, one man after another. His knights formed around him, but even like that, it was hard for them to keep up as he thrust his sword through one man, then hacked down the next.

Step back, he told himself, the voice of his reason trying to cut through his grief, step back.

He did it then, shoving back the nearest of his enemies and standing in the clear space that the movement left, staring out over the battle through tear-clouded eyes. He would be strong, had to be strong. He would look at this like a commander, and a king, because to look like a father was to lose everything. Godwin stood there, his heart breaking, and around him, the rhythms of the battle kept on.

He saw the fight on the bridge continuing, the press of men there shoving back and forth to no avail. It wasn’t that King Ravin’s forces were pushing them back yet, although if numbers continued to pour in from their side, the sheer weight of them might force his army back onto the Northern Kingdom’s lands, might leave them running or dying. The parts that worried Godwin more…

There were two. One was that he and his men simply couldn’t win this fight. Even if they somehow fought their way to the far side of the bridge, the Southern Kingdom’s forces could hold his army as easily as he could hold theirs. The best that they could hope for was to fight to a standstill.

The worse fear was for his daughters. He’d lost so much in such a short time, with Nerra gone, Lenore taken, Rodry… Godwin let out a cry of anguish, cast his sword down, and smashed a man aside with his shield instead. No more. He would allow no more of his children to suffer.

“Sound the withdrawal,” he ordered, yelling it out over the battle. “Pull back and hold our side. Not a foot on the bridge!”

His men started to pull back, and Godwin turned to the knights around him. He found Twell, found Bolis.

“Help me collapse the bridge,” he commanded. “We left it standing to get my daughter back. Now… I want it down!”

“Yes, your majesty,” the men chorused, and fought their way forward, through the press. Godwin went with them, snatching up a war hammer from a fallen foe. He struck with it at a man’s helm, parried a blow on his shield, continued to fight his way on.

Out on the bridge, his forces started to pull back. The ordinary men ran for safety, but the Knights of the Spur fought while backing away, giving ground but never exposing their backs. It meant that, where another force might have been cut down in a rout, they were able to withdraw in good order. Godwin saw his daughter and the strange monk among them, leapfrogging one another as they pulled back again to the very edge of the bridge.

Ahead of him, he saw Twell and Bolis fighting to get to the wooden pegs that held the bridge in place. Godwin saw Bolis duck under a blow, only to trip as a body caught his foot. He fell, and a sword came down, too quick to stop. Godwin killed the attacker himself, bringing the war hammer around in a wicked arc that ended in a crunch of bone.

Twell was there, staring down at his fallen comrade. Godwin strode to him, shaking him by the shoulders.

“How do we do this?” Godwin demanded of the knight who was still standing. “You know these things. Where do we strike, Planner?”

He knew what it was like to feel the shock of someone being taken away. He could feel it running through his blood now at the thought that his son was gone. The only way to stop that from consuming everything though was to keep going, to win this fight.

“Where?” he demanded, and Twell pointed. Godwin saw the holding pegs then, smaller than he would have thought they might be to hold so much. Now that the knight had pointed it out though, he could see the way the structure held together, one part holding another, the whole linking together in one interconnected tangle of wood and iron.

He ran to the spot, using his shield to barge a man into the Slate below. He stood there for a moment, watching his troops pull back from the bridge. He saw Commander Harr step from it, saw the strange monk slide away, saw Erin…

A soldier grabbed her, hanging onto her as if he might pull her back onto the bridge. Godwin took a step, as if he might go to fetch her himself, but he didn’t need to. The man in the monk’s robes was there, pulling her away from her foe and cutting him down. Together, they leapt from the bridge.

Godwin struck, hammer slamming down on the peg once, then again. He felt it give, felt it shift. Beside him, Twell cut down a man who came at him to try to stop him. Godwin struck a third blow, hard enough to ring out above the battle.

The peg gave way, tumbling into the water below.

For a moment, Godwin thought that nothing had happened; that Twell the Planner had misjudged it, age catching up with his cunning as it had others’ strength or speed. Then he saw the bridge shift, and twist, and start to tumble.

It came apart like the fall of leaves from an autumn tree, except that every leaf was a span of wood larger than a man. There were men too, in that fall, each one screaming as they tumbled, the red of Ravin’s colors filling the sky as they fell to the enveloping gray waters of the Slate. There was blue among them too, because some men had been so deep on the bridge that there was no chance for them. Godwin stared at those specks, thinking of his son, and all the other fathers who would know the pain he was feeling now.

Around him, the battle continued, but it was a losing thing now for those of Ravin’s men who were on this side of the bridge. There were too few of them to hope to achieve victory, too few to do anything but fall to his knights, or offer themselves in surrender.