The wolves are close! he realized. They’re rampaging through town.
Suddenly there were shouts outside the door to the ware house, the gruff guard calling, “Who goes there! What’s the meaning of this?”
The old codger raced from his little guardroom in the ware house, bearing his stub of a candle at nearly a run. He reached the front door, swung it open. Draken rose up, saw men in the street bearing torches and axes.
A familiar voice bellowed, “What kind of man betrays his own people to the wyrmlings?” Aaath Ulber reached the broad door, and the two guards barred his way.
“Wise men,” the burly guard said, “men who aren’t so dumb as to piss against the wind. You would do well to join us. . . .”
A crowd drew up behind Aaath Ulber, ringing the guards. Rain stood at his back, her face stern but pale with fright, bearing a torch. At the fringes of the crowd, young men were howling like wolves. Firelight gleamed from naked blades.
“Here now,” the guard said, seeing the mood of the crowd. “Don’t you dare touch us! You kill one of us, and a thousand townsfolk will die. The wyrmlings will raze this whole district!”
Someone in the crowd guffawed. “We’ve already done all the wyrmlings in town, and brought death upon ourselves. I don’t suppose the wyrmlings will give a damn if we poke a few holes in your wrinkled hides.”
“See these men?” Aaath Ulber roared, nodding toward the guards. “They tell you that they’re wise, but I’ll tell you what they are: wyrmlings. They’ve got the souls of wyrmlings. Not all wyrmlings are monstrous to behold. Sometimes the monsters hide inside.”
The burly guard lunged toward the crowd, sword flashing, and struck at Rain. She stepped back, and the blow went wide, slashing a young boy in the ribs.
That was the wrong thing to do. Aaath Ulber let out a primal shout, and his eyes lost all focus as he attacked in a berserker’s rage.
He slashed with a wyrmling’s ax in a great arc, sweeping the blade through the guards, lopping them in half just above the waist. Blood sprayed from the wounds, but before either man could fall, Aaath Ulber leapt forward, throwing his weapon down, and grabbed their torsos.
Holding a gruesome corpse in either hand, he shook the men, screaming incoherently at first, then shouting, “Where’s my wife? Where are you keeping her? Where’s my wife, damn you?”
Blood seemed to rain over the crowd, and the corpses spilled their guts. White intestines, wine-colored livers, stomachs and kidneys, spleens and lungs all emptied. Aaath Ulber hurled the corpses against the door of the ware house and stood for a moment stomping and kicking the offal like a madman, roaring in his rage.
“Here now,” some burly warrior called. “You’ve killed them, I think.” His voice was soothing and calm.
Aaath Ulber stood for a long moment, trembling and shouting, muttering under his breath, until he regained his senses.
As one, the warlords of Internook let out a cheer, then Rain rummaged among the offal, looking for the keys to the cages.
But the townsmen didn’t wait. They rushed into the ware house with axes and fell upon the cages, chopping through locks, bending bars, doing what ever they had to in order to set their people free.
In the aftermath of the battle, Aaath Ulber returned to the arena and quickly began to strip armor from the wyrmlings. The creatures were so heavy that it took three men to get off their bone mail. Afterward, they pulled off the creatures’ leather jerkins to see their chests. Aaath Ulber hoped to learn how many endowments each wyrmling had, and in what mix, so that he might better gauge the danger that they presented.
But a quick survey showed that the wyrmlings did not have the scars left by forcibles on their chests and backs. Instead, the marks were found on the tops of their feet, beneath their iron boots.
The mix surprised Aaath Ulber. Their leader had the most endowments—nine of metabolism, nine of stamina, three of sight, two of scent, two of wit, one of voice, and two of hearing.
It was an odd mix in some ways.
“Where is grace and brawn?” Rain wondered aloud.
“They don’t need brawn,” Aaath Ulber said. “They outweigh humans by six hundred pounds, and a swat of their hand will take your head off.”
“Plus, how much more strength would they get if they took brawn from a common human?” one older barbarian asked. “Not much, I’ll tell you. Nor would they get much grace.”
That was true, Aaath Ulber knew. As far as the wyrmlings were concerned, they wouldn’t want to waste forcibles in taking endowments for so little return.
Each of the other wyrmlings in the group were enhanced only with a few endowments—two each of metabolism, two of sight, and a couple of stamina.
“They need our sight to see in the daylight,” Aaath Ulber reasoned, “and they want our speed and stamina so that they can move fast and run far.”
“Good news,” one of the barbarians said. “They shouldn’t be too hard to kill.”
But Aaath Ulber saw the wisdom in their choice. Most of the endowments that they were garnering were lesser endowments—sight and metabolism. Taking the sight from a man would leave him blind—unable to fight, or to escape from the wyrmling dungeons. And taking an endowment of metabolism would put the victim into a magical slumber from which he could not wake until his lord died.
Such Dedicates required almost no care. Better yet, they presented no risk to those who guarded them.
Taking these attributes was easier on the Dedicates, too. A person had to give up his endowments willingly. He might do so under the threat of death or torture, or even with a sufficient bribe, but he had to give them willingly.
But it is almost impossible to coax an endowment from someone who fears that they might die while giving it. Braun, grace, and wit were thus hard to obtain.
Yet the wyrmlings’ mix left them weaker than they might have been.
One of the young heroes that had freed Aaath Ulber was staring at the dead wyrmlings in shock, horror written plainly on his face. Rain knelt next to him, and asked, “What is the matter?”
“The wyrmlings took no glamour,” he said. “When they took my betrothed, they said that she was comely. They said that they wanted her glamour. . . .”
So the girl is dead, Aaath Ulber suspected. Most likely they wanted only her tender flesh. It was rumored that young women are tastier than men. Like an old boar bear or an aging stag, the meat of an old man takes on an unpleasant musty taste.
“They’ll take her sight or metabolism,” Rain said, trying to convince the lad that his love was still alive.
Aaath Ulber considered the magnitude of the threat that the wyrmlings posed. He’d faced Raj Ahten, who had tens of thousands of endowments of stamina, and dozens of endowments of brawn and grace. After fighting a monster like that, these wyrmlings looked as if they would be easy.
But something in his gut warned him not to celebrate too soon.
There were wights in the wyrmling fortresses, and Aaath Ulber had not even told his family about the Knights Eternal or other dangers posed by the wyrmlings.
The wyrmlings will have their Raj Ahten, he knew.
Aaath Ulber sat in a lord’s hall not twenty minutes later with Myrrima by his side and Draken and Rain at his back. The entire town was astir. Odd shouts echoed up from the market district as folks called orders to one another. The townsfolk were preparing to flee, for they expected the wyrmling reprisals to be swift and vicious.
An old lord sat across the table, Warlord Hrath, a stout fellow with a broad face. His braided hair had all gone gray, and each braid was tied with a bloodied scrap of cloth. Time had chiseled regal lines in his brow and face, and left his skin withered, but otherwise he was firm. There was no weakness in him, neither in his flesh, in his mind, nor in his resolve. “What is it that you need from us?” he asked. “Name it, and if it is within my power, I will grant it.”