hated losing another good archer, but the centaurs were the best choice for scouts.
“Of course.” He stamped a hoof, ready to go.
Pleased, Linsha returned to the wagon and climbed back onto the driver’s bench beside Hugh. The party moved on, and a short while later the bay centaur fell back into a cluster of treeless hills and vanished into the eroded valleys between. The wagon and its escort began a gradual drift to the north. By evening they were traveling northwest toward the river but away from the eggs. If all went well, the Tarmaks would follow them to a place that Wanderer and Falaius chose, a place where a battle could be fought and won.
A second wounded man died that night in spite of Callista and Linsha’s best efforts. His wounds had not been bad, but the constant travel in a rough wagon and the cool, wet weather had taken too much from him. They concealed his body in the deep crevice of a large rock outcropping and piled more stones on top. Instead of lightening the load of the wagon, they added rocks to the wagon bed to maintain the weight and the illusion of a load. They pressed hard the next day, knowing there were still many miles to go. Neither Varia nor the centaur scouts returned, and all Linsha could do was worry.
Sir Hugh distracted her for a while by asking for her tale of Lanther and Ithin’carthia, and he told her about his capture, the terrible long march back to the Missing City, imprisonment, and slavery. He had changed, Linsha realized, in the time since he had tried to intervene for her during her trial those long months ago. Was it only months? It felt like years. All sense of boyishness in Hugh had disappeared. He was harder, withdrawn, and more angry. His once muscular body was tempered to lean muscle and bone, and sometimes when he moved, she caught glimpses of scars and whip marks on his legs, arms, and neck. What would he do, she wondered, if he survived this war? Would he stay in the Solamnic Knights? Was it all worth the pain and suffering? She didn’t ask him, but the thoughts stayed in her mind like an insidious weed, and she heard Crucible’s words again in her memory-
By the gods, what was enough?
On the fourth day, Crucible came, winging from the clouded sky to the west. He came without net or eggs, only an expression of satisfaction. His scarred wings backflapped carefully and lowered his bulk to the crown of windy hilltop some distance from the nervous horses.
To prevent the wagon team from bolting in fear, Linsha climbed down from the wagon and ran to join the bronze on the hill. Hurrying to him, she could not help the smile that lit her face.
He lowered his head to greet her and inhaled her scent with pleasure. “I found the volcano,” he said as they walked side-by-side paralleling the moving wagon. “It is an old one, but the cone is still there and I found some lava tubes and an ancient chamber that I rearranged to make a spacious nest. They will be warm in there for a while.”
Linsha was pleased. She knew building a nest for brass eggs would not be a problem for him. He had tamed the ferocious forces of the three volcanoes around Sanction, allowing the city to grow and thrive, so he certainly had the skill and power to manipulate one old, extinct shell. She had just worried that he would not be able to find anything suitable. The volcano had been a gift.
“Do they still look close to hatching?” she asked.
“Too close. I don’t know what those priests used on the eggs, but it has sped up the development by forty years or more. I don’t want to leave them for too long. But Falaius has a message for you, and I could get here faster than anyone else.”
A shiver of alarm chilled her. “Is Varia all right?”
“She’s just worn out by all the flying back and forth. She came to find me, so I left her sitting with the eggs and brought you the message myself.”
An image formed in Linsha’s mind of the small brown, spotted owl trying to sit on nine dragon eggs at the same time. She started to giggle and a breath later she laughed uproariously for the first time in a long dry stretch. “Can’t you just imagine?” she gasped between fits of hilarity.
Crucible laughed with her, but he really didn’t see what was so funny. He hadn’t meant that the bird was literally sitting on the eggs. They were too hot for any avian. Nevertheless, he liked to hear her laughter and see her smile.
She sobered down after a while and tried to breathe normally. “Sorry. I am so tired, some things just seem silly.” She rubbed her face, took a deep breath, and said, “Now, what was your message?”
“Falaius and Wanderer will meet you here.” He scratched a rough map in the earth with his claw. “Here is the river. Here is the volcano, and here about twenty miles north is a low butte in a broad, fairly flat valley. The butte is a remnant of this ridge that stretches toward the river. There are low hills here and here. We will set up a trap in this valley, using the butte as our ‘dragon nest.’ ”
“How do we find this place from here?”
He dragged his claw through the dirt toward the east. “You are already due east of there. Turn west. If you stay on a straight track, you will soon see a string of buttes to your right hand. Stay to the south of those and you’ll find a runoff riverbed. It’s usually dry, but it’s sandy and has some water in it now, so you shouldn’t miss it. I think you’ll be able to get there in two days.”
“Is Falaius there now?”
“His vanguard is. He and his scouts just found the place last night. He is very pleased to hear you are back.”
“Tell him I will see him soon,” Linsha said. “Does anyone know where the Tarmaks are?”
“Not yet. The scouts haven’t come back yet, Varia is too tired from carrying messages, and I have been too busy. We need to find them. Perhaps a quick, high flight overhead? Lanther would expect that.”
She put a hand on his leg and felt the warmth of his sleek, gleaming scales. “He still has the Abyssal Lance, Crucible. Be very careful.”
“My back aches, my wings will never be right, and I still shudder at the memory of that lance. Trust me. I will be careful.”
They said good-bye, and Linsha watched as the dragon took a running leap off the hilltop and glided into the air. She wanted so much to go with him, but she couldn’t. Not yet. She still had her duty.
She jogged back down the hill to catch up with the wagon and told Sir Hugh what was being planned.
They turned the company west and raced for the river and the comparative safety of the Plains army.
Later that evening Crucible came back briefly to report he had found the Tarmak army. As Linsha had suspected, Lanther had gathered every warrior he dared spare from Missing City and sent them into the field. The army was stretched out in a long line and was a scant two days behind Linsha and the wagon.
“Two days!” she exclaimed. The Tarmaks must have run all the way.
“There is a unit of cavalry in the vanguard, and they are closest. They have almost reached the place where you turned north. We will soon see if they believe you have the eggs.”
“What if they don’t follow us?”
“I don’t know. I will talk to Falaius and Wanderer before I return to the peak to check on the eggs. We’ll let you know.”
And he was gone again, flying away into the dusky blue skirts of evening.
The Akkad-Dar did not bother to have his large tent erected that night. He ordered only a small camp tent and sat inside in the glow of a single lamp studying maps while his army gathered around him. He had sent orders down the line that the scattered units were to be moved up without rest until the entire army was together. The enemy, he knew, was coming to meet him, and he reveled in the thought of the coming battle. But he wanted all his forces at his disposal, not stretched across the plains. True, he had pulled this march together very quickly, thanks to the foresight of the officer in charge of the city’s garrison, but many of the
He pored over his maps of the Plains, a legacy from the Akkad-Ur, and wondered for the thousandth time where Linsha and Crucible would take the eggs. He knew the eggs were close to hatching and would need to be nested very quickly. He also knew the dragon could not fly long distances.
