From the center of the village rose a cacophony of shrieks and shouts and cries of agony. Dragons continued to roar through the trees and sear the remaining huts with their lightning breath.
"A knight must not engage in combat with an unarmed opponent," Sara hissed under her breath.
"What?" Kelena asked, her voice trembling.
Sara repeated the line from the Code for them all to hear. Then she yelled it with all her pent-up anger and frustration.
Tumult abruptly loosed a thundering roar and pounced out of his hiding place. He was a young dragon, and the smell of blood and the killing roar of other dragons was too much for him. In a frenzy, he bolted into the smoke toward the center of the village.
Sara spat a curse. She grabbed Treb's arm. "Come on! We have to bring him back! He has no business in there!" and she pulled the young woman out of their cover. Treb stood for a moment, looking confused, then she hefted her sword and started up the trail.
"You shouldn't go alone," Argathon cried. "Let us go with you."
Sara refused with a peremptory jerk of her hand. "Stay in position. Watch the road. I'll take Cobalt."
A sudden noise from the path made Sara whirl around. A large party of heavily armed men dashed up the road from the direction of Kortal. Their crossbows were already drawn, and even as Sara recognized their intent, they raised the stocks to their shoulders and fired their first volley at the squires and the dragons.
A tremendous wave of noise rolled over Sara: shouts and bellows of angry dragons, and the sizzling crackle of dragon lightning. Through it all, she heard one clear voice yell, "Sara, look out!" Then something crashed into her and knocked her to the ground. Her head, still healing from the attack days before, hit a tree root, and for a moment the sky seemed to fall in on her, and then all turned sickeningly black.
19
Sara came to with a start. A heavy weight lay across her chest and face, making it difficult to breathe and impossible to see. Metal pressed against her nose and cheek, and something hard dug into her chin. A panicky jolt of fear galvanized her muscles, and giving a tremendous heave, she pushed the bulky weight off and reared upright. Her eyes flew open; air rushed into her lungs.
She brought her gaze to focus on the thing she had pushed off. Metal armor, a leather tunic, and a slender back met her eyes. Worst of all, a crossbow bolt protruded from a bloody hole just below the figure's shoulder blade. Her heart filled with dread.
"Oh, no. Oh, no," Sara cried softly. She thought she knew who it was, but to be sure, she turned him over to his side and carefully unfastened the helm with shaking fingers. The visor slid away to reveal an all-too-familiar face, already slack in death.
The youngest member of her talon would grow no older. Noisy, energetic Jacson lay limp and silent beneath her hands.
All at once Sara became aware of a clamor of noises around her. Someone groaned in pain close by, swords clashed in a desperate struggle somewhere out of her sight, and overhead, Cobalt hissed and steamed his fury and stamped his frustration into the trembling earth.
Climbing to her feet, Sara rapidly assessed the situation. Kelena lay an arm's length beyond her in the muddy snow,clutching at a bolt in her upper thigh.
The remaining squires, Treb included, stood shoulder to shoulder across the trail, locked in a desperate hand-to-hand struggle with a large party of mercenaries.
Four bodies lay strewn across the trail's clearing, two of them scorched and smoking from dragon's breath.
The other dragons were nowhere to be seen.
Cobalt, however, held his position. He had not yet noticed that Sara was on her feet, and he continued to hiss and stamp while he watched the melee and waited for a chance to help. At that moment, he could not aid the talon with his lightning breath because they were too close to the enemy, nor did he want to leave Sara until he knew she was alive.
"Where are Squall and Howl?" Sara yelled up at him.
Cobalt lowered his head, delighted to see Sara unharmed."Derrick sent them after Tumult," he growled.
"Come on, then. We'll help Derrick." She bent down and sadly squeezed Jacson's arm before she drew her sword and dashed out of their vantage point and into the path.
Cobalt lumbered after her. Anxious to help, he plunged into the midst of the struggling fighters and knocked them all sprawling. His hind foot pinned one mercenary to the ground, and his tail swept Sara off her feet. As the attackers cowered back from the big dragon, he lifted his horned head and let out a thundering roar that shook snow from the trees and resounded through the smoking village.
The mercenaries dropped their weapons and groveled in the snow, paralyzed by dragonfear.
"Quick, get their weapons," Sara ordered as she struggled to stand up and get out of the dragon's way. Cobalt's tail swished by her again, nearly knocking her over a second time.
Derrick, Saunder, and Kazar scrambled to obey. Quickly they gathered crossbows, swords, daggers, and axes and piled the weapons beside a tree. Cobalt kept the soldiers flat on the ground.
"What do we do with them?" Treb wanted to know.
Sara took a moment to answer. First she checked the six squires to see if they were injured. To her intense relief, they had only minor cuts and bruises. "The men are our prisoners," she finally replied. "We'll keep them here until we can turn them over to Subcommander Torceth."
Saunder stood panting, glaring at the prisoners as if his eyes could strip the flesh from their bones. "They killed Jacson! They deserve to die!"
Sara strode over to the rangy squire. He refused to meet her eyes until she grabbed both arms and shook him hard. Only then did he turn his grief-stricken gaze to hers. "Listen to me," she said vehemently. "A knight will not engage in combat with an unarmed opponent. A knight will honor an opponent's surrender. Do you understand? It is from Lord Ariakan's Code of Honor that he adapted from the Solamnic Knights. Sometimes I think honor is the only difference standing between a beast and a Knight of Takhisis, and except for Jacson, I have seen precious little of it here today!"
Derrick and the others stared in surprise at her last heartfelt exclamation. No one knew what to say. A strained silence settled over the group.
Beyond the trees in the village, the sounds of the attack quieted to occasional shouts and the crash of a burning building. The dragons had ceased their roaring, and the screams that had torn the quiet of the day had faded into a dead calm.
Sara stepped back, her gray eyes like storm clouds. "Marika," she ordered. "See to Kelena. Derrick, you, Kazar, Saunder, and Argathon guard these prisoners. Treb, go find your dragon."
"Officer Conby!" a voice hailed her through the trees.
They all turned to see Knight Officer Targonne come striding down the trail toward them.
"Torceth sent me to check on you… . Oh, you found them!" he exclaimed when he saw their prisoners. "We've been turning the village upside down looking for the rest of these mercenaries."
"Was it necessary to do it by destroying the place?" Sara demanded. She could feel her anger building inside her. Anger at the needless killing, anger at Jacson's death, anger at the officers who had sent them on this so-called training mission.
To her fury, Targonne only shrugged. His cool expression never changed. "The men got a little carried away. They're new at this. But the village is ours, and that's what's important." He turned away from her, effectively cutting off any further argument. "Bring your prisoners to the inn. Subcommander Torceth will want to see them." He left the way he had come.
"And I want to see him," Sara grated. Leaving Marika to tend to Kelena and stay near Jacson's body, she led the remaining squires and their prisoners, about twelve in all up the trail into the remains of the village.