The memory of his own dream made him shudder, and Rienne shifted slightly, pressing closer to him. His nerves tingled with the lingering echoes of the pain that had jolted him from sleep, but her soft warmth soothed him. With her at his side, he felt he could face whatever the Time Between held in store for him and whatever horrors would come after. His eyes welled with tears, and he touched his lips to her forehead.
He heard footsteps outside the arch, and then a sound-something between a series of clicks and a throaty growl. He recognized the sound as part of the dragonborn vocabulary of social interactions, though he had no inkling of its specific meaning. A dragonborn figure appeared in the doorway, silhouetted against the moonlit sky. Gaven tensed, stretching a hand toward his sword where it lay nearby.
Lissa’s quiet voice put Gaven at ease. “Gaven,” she said, “can you step outside, please?”
Gaven glanced down at Rienne, sound asleep. Smoothly and gently, he lifted her arm and set it on her own side. Then he lifted her head, laid it on the floor, and got quietly to his feet. Lissa stepped back outside the tiny shrine as he padded out the door.
“What is it?” he said, and then he saw the soldiers. Eight of them stood in an arc around him, wearing plate armor and carrying heavy swords. He wheeled around to the door-he needed his sword, and Rienne-but his path was already blocked by two more soldiers. Total silence, obviously magical in origin, fell around him just as he started to shout.
No matter, he thought. He felt lightning start to surge in his blood, and shadow draped the city as a stormcloud appeared across the moonlit sky. The entire city of Rav Magar would know the fury of the Storm Dragon.
Just as he started to turn, a heavy pommel slammed into his head, bizarre in its silence. He fell against the shrine’s wall but forced his eyes to stay clear. He spun to face his foes and staggered forward a few steps, struggling to focus enough to channel the lightning out from his body. A dragon had joined the soldiers, azure-scaled, with an enormous horn at the end of its snout.
The lightning burst out from his arms and engulfed the dragon, dancing across its hide and sparking at its horn and in its mouth. It stretched its mouth wide in what might have been a mocking smile, and its own lightning danced over its tongue and teeth. Instead of sending a return strike at him, the dragon leaped into the air and clapped its wings, and a concussive blast of air buffeted Gaven-like thunder without the crash. He fell to his knees, motes of light dancing across his vision. Two more hard blows smashed into the back of his head, one after the other, and the blackness swallowed him.
CHAPTER 23
Cart couldn’t tear his eyes from Caylen’s tome where it lay on the ground. When a worg growled to his right, he reacted too slowly-it came in low and bit at his leg before he wrenched his gaze away from the slender book. He swung his axe down, but the creature sprang back out of his reach and howled.
Two voices joined in the howl, and a renewed surge of fear rose in Cart’s mind.
I am steel and stone, he thought. My fear just fuels my fury.
Roaring his answer to the beasts’ howl, he advanced on the worg and slashed his axe low across its chest. The howl died in its throat.
The two remaining worgs had Tesh caught between them, but he was holding his own. Just as Cart rushed forward, Tesh felled one of the two, and Cart intercepted the last one just before it pounced on Tesh’s back. Caylen’s spell had weakened them, clearly, and it was just a matter of finishing them off. Cart wiped the gore from his axe on the rough coat of the last worg.
Cart turned slowly to face Caylen. He saw the tome first, one page flipping over in a soft breeze. Then his gaze fell on the wizard’s body, and he walked slowly to stand beside it.
“I’ll take care of it, Captain,” Tesh said.
Cart waved him off. Caylen had been in his care, and he would extend that care to the dead man’s body. He kneeled on the blood-soaked ground, closed Caylen’s eyes, and lifted him over his shoulder.
“Get his tome.” Cart pointed at the book.
“You-” Tesh hesitated. “You’re not going to leave him here?”
Cart stared at the soldier. He sometimes wished he could achieve one of those glares that Haldren used to make soldiers quail, but that required muscles in the forehead and around the eyes that Cart simply lacked. Even so, the simplicity of his unwavering gaze, set in his expressionless face and accompanied by a pointed silence, often had the same effect.
Tesh lifted the book-a little gingerly, Cart thought-and led Cart back to the camp.
Haldren berated Cart, as Tesh had done, for burdening himself with Caylen’s body when there was still a risk of attack, then went on to reproach him for sending Verren off alone-although the scout had returned safely-and for returning with only a sketchy estimate of the number of worgs they faced and any defenses that might lie between the camp and the mouth of the canyon.
Cart found that his impassive stare was also effective when Haldren blustered. Cart stood at attention, unflinching before the Lord General’s tirade, impassive to his criticism, and eventually Haldren ran out of steam. Part of Haldren’s enjoyment, Cart knew, was in seeing the fear and shame in the faces and bodies of the soldiers he chastised, and he didn’t like to give so much energy without getting anything in return.
Despite its imprecision, Cart’s report at least suggested that the worgs’ defenses were too strong for such a small party to breach. Haldren would wait for the soldiers who were marching from Fairhaven, even if it meant a three-week delay in their mission. Better a delay than their reinforcements arriving to find Haldren’s force destroyed, the mission a failure.
Two soldiers had died in the first worg attack, and Caylen’s death meant that three of their original fourteen were dead. Like Tesh, the other soldiers showed no grief over the wizard-none of them knew him at all. To a soldier of the Last War, the death of an acquaintance of a few days was not cause for mourning.
Cart stood over the young wizard’s gore-splattered body, lost in thought. He barely noticed Ashara coming to stand by his side, but her presence was a comfort.
“I can’t understand it,” he said after a moment. “Why should it bother me so much?”
“Why shouldn’t it?” Ashara said gently.
“It took me days to remember his name. Haldren thought he was incompetent and I thought he was a coward. Why should his death mean anything to me?”
“He was part of your team.”
His team? Haldren’s command kept echoing in Cart’s mind-Keep those two soldiers alive. Haldren didn’t care a bit about Caylen, but Cart had extended the Lord General’s command to include the wizard, and then failed in that self-imposed responsibility.
“And that’s the other thing,” he said, grasping for words to express the doubt nagging at his mind. “Haldren didn’t see him as part of the team-he didn’t care if Caylen died. Does he care whether I keep myself intact or not?”
“Of course he does.”
“I’m sure he does, as long as I remain competent. But how many times do I need to fail to make him as… as callous about my life as he was about Caylen’s?”
Ashara didn’t have a ready answer to that question, and her silence only strengthened the dread that was growing in his mind. She couldn’t argue with the fact that Haldren was a heartless bastard.
“I’ve always believed that my purpose is to obey, to be a good soldier and carry out my orders to the best of my ability. I’ve only disobeyed Haldren once.” The memory of Starcrag Plain was almost physically painful-while Haldren watched his plans crumble in impotent fury, Cart left him to go fight alongside Gaven instead, to make himself useful in whatever way he could.