Chapter 21
First Commander Titus Atticus watched as Tythos Tyrannous Rex strode toward him. The man was carrying himself like a king. Backlit by the burning tents of the camp, he walked as if the camp was his, the soldiers his to command.
First Commander Atticus found himself standing straighter, while he watched the man approach. He had never seen Tythos in person before. The reports of a barbaric old man; of a pig farming common dwindling to obscurity on Endelmyer’s northern holding had painted a misleading concept in his mind. The normal signs of age and loss of status were missing. The man wore a beard, and bloodstained simple clothes, but they somehow looked regal as the man strode forward. So much so, he had to look twice to see them. What he saw, was the reason this man was the one who was needed at Ginnung Gap.
The treaty needed to be renegotiated. The gods wouldn’t treat with just anyone, and they held the borders to both monsters and the savages. The savages who came from the darkness beneath the world, lived and breathed war. Until the tower could produce a reliable fighting thaumaturge and put one with every seventy fighting men, they posed a real threat of invasion. The only thing they respected was strength. The man approaching him had negotiated the first treaty, and now First Commander Atticus could see why.
He stepped forward and raised his voice,
“I am First Commander Atticus. Your request of parley will be granted.”
This, of course, was ridiculous. Parley was a peaceful meeting between the commander of two opposing forces, a meeting of equals. He could see however, that the bargaining chip the King’s men should have held over Tythos and already been played. The man had both hands again.
Tythos came to a stop in front of him. The man was a head shorter than he was, but as broad as a horse. First Commander Atticus was the smaller man, and felt the weight of the attention of the camp. He nodded to Tythos, then turned to the giant of a woman who had apparently already managed to screw up her first field command.
“Unit Commander Wellbourn, you will attend me.” He turned back to Tythos. “If you’ll follow me, we can hold our meeting in the command tent.”
He turned and walked to the tent, aware this meeting of parley would raise the camp’s opinion of him, as well as that of Tythos. He wanted to have this man dragged from his presence, tied and taken to Ginnung Gap. He wanted to have Wellbourn flogged and stripped of status for such a colossal failure. What he needed however, was to see if the deal with Tythos that Wellbourn had spoken of was real. If Tythos was not delivered to Ginnung Gap, willing to enter it and renegotiate the treaty, First Commander Atticus himself, would be facing a loss of status. He would lose everything. They would make him a common.
***
‘I swear to the gods,’ Lance thought. ‘If that skinny idiot peeks out and holds up three fingers to begin a countdown, I’m going to feed him to the dragon myself.’
The collapse had helped to spread the fire and the building was now being consumed more quickly. Lance was keeping one of his sleeves over his mouth and nose to try cut the smoke and looking for Peony. His first thought had been that he’d been buried by the burning timbers and Lance used a twitch of power to shift the pile. This had sent the burning timber pile across the room, which had helped spread the fire. He hadn’t found Peony and the room was now filled with smoke.
“Little man,” said the dragon.
The voice cut through the roar of the flames and the snapping of the timbers. Again, it seemed to be coming from all around him. Lance looked back the way he had come, but saw only flames and smoke.
“You’ve come,” the dragon said.
“Shit,” Lance said, and ran for the door he’d come in through.
He burst into the moonlit snowscape. This door faced the road leading to the farm. It was empty. Coughing, Lance walked to the corner and peeked around at the farmhouse and the yard in front of it. There was the dragon, standing in front of the building, gleaming white in the moonlight like the snow. A figure was silhouetted against the creature, walking toward it.
‘I would have preferred a countdown,’ Lance thought.
Peony was approaching the dragon, standing out in the open.
“I’ve come in the name of the King, monster,” Peony said.
Lance goggled at the display. The skinny kid striding toward the Dragon. He looked back, down the road. He should run. Put the building between himself and that man-eater and make a break for the trees. He looked back at Peony.
“Don’t use magic on it,” Lance said under his breath. “Come on, don’t use magic on it. Just eat him, you great white, foul-gorged gudgeon. I’ll slip away while you crunch him.”
“Bow to me,” The dragon rumbled. “Worship me and—“
Peony sang a series of notes and held out his hand. A violent column of flame burst forward, appearing from nowhere. The dragon was completely engulfed. Peony sang another series of notes and held a hand out toward the burning stable.
The building Lance was next to groaned as flames rushed out from the bigger doors in a swirling vortex. They headed for Peony, then made a sudden turn right in front of him. The twisting pillar of flame swarmed forward and struck the dragon, who was still engulfed with the first torrent of flame. With the impact, the flames turned a bright blue, highlighting the dragon’s torso and knocking it backward into the farmhouse.
“Holy shit,” Lance breathed.
With a tearing, thundering crash, the log house finished collapsing with the dragon inside of it. The column of fire dwindled down to a trickle and went out, leaving an orange line in Lance’s night vision. Lance tried to blink away the afterimage and see what had become of the dragon. The fire inside the stable had been sucked away, and gone out, taking with it the extra light it’d added to the night.
“We’re fucked,” Lance said, sprinting forward.
Everything seemed to slow down as Lance dashed toward what was near certain death. If Peony hadn’t used magic on the beast, he could have run. Now he couldn’t leave without the kid.
Using magic on a dragon was a violation of the compact between men and dragons. The compact that kept the dragons out of the cities. Yes, there was division of research in the tower devoted to learning how to kill dragons. Yes, it was the hope that with the development of magical theory that the founding charter could some day be lived up to, and man could live without fear of monsters. This was not that day. Lance was under no illusion the dragon was hurt by the fire.
There would be a reckoning. The histories concerning the dragons were clear on one thing. Dragons delighted in punishment and vengeance. When the reprisal for this came, in whatever form it took, Lance would be blamed. Unless, that is, he could deliver the man who had violated the compact to the tower. They would then hand him over to the dragons and perhaps avert some of the crisis.
Whether the crisis could be averted, or not, remained to be seen. What was sure, was Lance now needed to keep Peony alive, or he was a dead man. The shadow men had him on record for this mission, and would hunt him down.
Lance reached Peony’s side, and looked back down the farm lane, trying to gauge the distance. He needed to get this right. He placed a hand on the kid’s shoulder.
“How much do you weigh?” Lance asked.
Peony was still standing with his hand outstretched, looking at the wreckage of the farmhouse with wide eyes.
“I did it!” Peony said, turning a huge grin on lance.
The farmhouse burst apart, logs and debris tumbling outward as a white shape shot up into the air.
Lance took a guess at Peony’s weight. Peony’s grin turned to a look of panic as he was sucked away, falling in his new downward direction. Lance turned and got a hand up in time to intercept a massive log hurtling towards him. It slapped into his palm, becoming light as a feather. Other debris from the farmhouse crashed around him as he looked up, searching for his target.
Lance spotted a white shape high overhead, and put a hand on the log that was slowly floating to the ground beside him. Lance moved his perspective until he believed he was looking down. Like staring off the edge of a drop, he set it in his mind, allowing it to become so real, vertigo threatened to creep in. He then added the log to this new reality. Lance uttered a low, rising note, careful to hit three points.
The log did more than fall, it fired like an arrow. What Lance had taken from it before, and more that he had saved up, he layered onto it. He’d been saving for months, building up reserves of power to use on this journey. He put it all into the log now. It left his side so fast Lance couldn’t track it. It burned the skin on the hand he’d placed on it.
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There was a thunderous boom, as the log impacted the dragon a moment later. The dragon faltered in the air, its dive turning into a flightless tumble. The log had burst apart into a cloud, and Lance could now see fragments tumbling down with the dragon. The boom from the impact echoed through the valley, rolling off the bluffs in the still, crisp air.
Lance realized that dragon and log flinders both were falling directly towards him. He was spent, completely out of power. He’d pushed himself with what he’d just done. He was beyond any possibility of being able to exert enough control to recharge a stone’s worth of power. Lance turned and ran, trying to get out from under the falling objects before he was crushed.
Lance heard a loud snap overhead and risked a look back. The dragon had halted its tumble and spread its wings. It uttered a building, rumbling growl. Lance continued running. The ground in front of him lit up, as if from the sunrise. The snow reflected a growing red light. Cursing, lance pushed with everything he had, legs churning, then the world behind him exploded.
***
Tythos stood beside Sigrun, facing the first commander across an enormous desk. They were flanked by two armed soldiers. The Commander had proceeded them inside of the tent, and then taken refuge behind the desk.
He now sat looking at them over steepled fingers. Tythos noted that the man’s cheeks were glowing red as if he had just been slapped. Curious. Tythos ignored this detail, it was unimportant. His plan to stall was so far working, he had bought himself three minutes of the ten he needed. He glanced at Sigrun. She was standing at attention, rigid as a board.
The first commander was looking back-and-forth between Tythos and Sigrun as if he didn’t know who to speak with or where to start. Tythos let the commander make up his mind; every moment gained was a victory. After nearly another minute of indecision, the commander finally settled on Sigrun. His brows lowered like creeping thunderheads and he spoke with the authority of a man who knew he was speaking to an inferior,
“Unit Commander Wellbourn, explain to me how exactly we find ourselves in this situation.”
Sigrun cleared her throat, “Sir. My initial attempt to negotiate with Tythos… went poorly.“
“So I gather,“ the first commander said. “Wellbourn, you were assigned to this mission for one reason. The advantage you held of the hand. You’ve managed to take that advantage and piss it away into a valley full of problems! Do you have any idea how much—“
“Hey!“ Tythos shouted.
The First Commander turned his glower on Tythos, and Tythos met his gaze and gave it right back. As much as he needed to buy time, he hated being talked past, as if he wasn’t there.
“The problems you got right now all fall at your own feet. Sigrun here negotiated just fine, and we were on our way to Ginnung Gap— so some asshole could throw me into it— when the king’s soldiers started killing WOMEN and CHILDREN! That was the point where your plans started to get fucked in the ass!”
Tythos leaned forward over the desk, ready to go over it, when the First Commander nodded and said,
“You’re right.”
He said it in such a reasonable tone, that Tythos lost some of his momentum and remembered he needed to stall, not pick a fight.
“That was not supposed to happen,” the First Commander said. “And the men who did this will be punished.”
Tythos snorted. He was sure this was a lie, but he’d already dealt with all but two of them. They were all about to die at the talons of a dragon anyway, but he had to play his part.
“What assurance do I have, that if I head to Ginnung Gap with Sigrun, that you won’t ride down and slaughter everyone as soon as I’m gone?”
“Oh you won’t be headed anywhere with Unit Commander Wellbourn, she’ll be headed to the capital to be stripped of status and punished. But I give you my word as a king’s man, that if you head to Ginnung Gap as agreed, no more of Seigneur Endelmyer’s property will be damaged.”
Tythos bristled as the people of the valley were referred to as “property.”
“The fuck she will be,” Tythos said. “My agreement is with Sigrun. If she’s not going to Ginnung Gap, then neither am I.” He held up his black hand. “I’ll consider our arrangement completed and walk away.”
Tythos stared the man down. He doubted the significance of the hand being an outline mattered. He had the bargaining chip they’d intended to play. Since this man knew enough to ward against the nightmare, he likely knew that Tythos had no choice but to live up to bargains he made.
“Make a new bargain with me, then. I am authorized to offer incentives in order to ensure success. When a strategy results in failure,” he glanced at Sigrun. “Repeating it, and expecting a different result is a fool’s errand.”
Tythos couldn’t stand men like this. Who thought a superior position of authority automatically made them superior. The way he was looking at them across this desk, ready to end a soldier’s career, who was nothing but loyal. Someone who’d promised to enter Ginnung Gap in order to see duty done.
Tythos reached down into the desk in front of him with the black hand. He could feel the texture of the wood. The pattern of it. The layers of the tree it used to be. He took hold of one of the layers where there was a natural separation and twisted. For a moment, nothing happened. Then with a loud crack, the pieces separated and the desk broke in two. Its own ponderous weight then pulled it apart, each end rolling away from the clean split in the middle, pulling apart the front panel with a ripping sound.
First Commander Atticus jumped to his feet as the desk broke, knocking over his chair in his haste. Tythos took a step forward and stood where the desk had been, getting in the man’s space and also making it harder for the guards to get to him.
“You didn’t hear me the first time,” Tythos said, bringing the black hand up near the Commander’s chest. “I made my deal. I’m not making any more. You wanna punish Sigrun, that’s fine. She’a a little self righteous and hard to endure. However, she has already successfully negotiated my taking the mission into Ginnung Gap. So, what’s it gonna be, Commander?”
To his credit, if the man was scared, he hid it well. He looked disappointed. For a man who’d woken a dragon to destroy everything living in the valley, he held the bluff well. He looked like he was genuinely upset about not sending Sigrun to be punished, as if he he didn’t intend to kill her and throw her to the dragon as soon as Tythos left.
“Fine,” the Commander said. He turned to Sigrun. “Unit Commander Wellbourn, once you have completed the escort of this man and honored the terms of the deal you have struck, you will return to the capital to make a full report. Do I make myself clear?”
“Sir,” Sigrun said.
“Escort these two out of my camp,” the Commander said.
The two soldiers stepped forward. Tythos nearly had everything he needed. He just needed to stall for a little more time. He also needed to not have an armed escort watching him leave.
“I don’t trust you,” Tythos said. “Return Sigrun’s weapon to her and we’ll be leaving on our own.”
First Commander Atticus looking like he was about to start shouting. Then he closed his eyes for a moment and rubbed his cheek with a hand, like a man lost in thought. He opened his eyes and looked down at the broken pieces of the desk. He look up and glared at Tythos like he’d like to put his head on a spike. Tythos smiled at him.
“Unit Commander Wellbourn,” the First Commander said. “Has this man agreed to accept the orders of the commander stationed at Ginnung Gap, and enter it if commanded to?”
“Yes Sir,” Sigrun replied.
“Good. Then allow me to inform you of what your future holds. You will be sent back into that hell-scape. From the reports, it’s only gotten worse since you left. You’re going in to renegotiate the treaty. Somehow I doubt those savages will be happy to see you again. Didn’t exactly deliver on the last promise you made them, did you? As long as you’re here, allow me to add my own incentive to you achieving a favorable outcome. This is not a new deal, this is a promise from me. Come back with a new treaty in hand, or I’ll personally see to it that not only every common in this valley is put down, but every common north of the capital who knows your name.” He turned to the soldiers, “Get Unit Commander Wellbourn her equipment and see that these two leave my camp!”
The Commander glared at Tythos as he and Sigrun left the tent.
‘That went better than I expected,’ Tythos thought.
The threat the commander had made rang strange in his ears though. Why would a man who thought they were about to be eaten by a dragon bother with a threat like that? It sounded like he really did want Tythos to go to Ginnung Gap.
Tythos shook his head. Another mystery he wouldn’t have time to solve. He was about to kill himself to activate a ward, to try and save the valley from a dragon.
***
Tythos strolled through the camp beside Sigrun. He wanted to make sure he exited the camp on the safe side of ten minutes. He also did not want to appear like he was running.
Sigrun’s sword had been returned to her. The men who were guarding them in the tent still had ahold of it. Having her equipment returned to her had not bought him any extra time. It may have gotten him an armed guard, though. He leaned close to Sigrun as they walked.
“When we get out of here,” Tythos said. “I’m going to need to do a bit of magic. It is vital that I am not disturbed while I do this. I’m trusting you to watch my back.“
Sigrun looked at him; raised an eyebrow; shook her head.
“Magic?”
“Yeah, a little insurance I’ve cooked up for our friends here.“
“Insurance of what?“
“Insurance of us doing what we need to do.“
Sigrun studied him as they walked. She seemed unconvinced.
“That’s the truth, take it or leave it, but we will fail our mission if I get interrupted while I’m doing this.”
Tythos expected her to argue, instead she asked,
“Why are you covered in blood?”
“Had to get someone’s attention.” He said.
“Did it work?”
“We’re walking out of here, aren’t we?”
She walked in silence for a moment, a conflicted look on her face as she thought.
“You haven’t answered any of my questions. I know, you don’t lie, but you talk in circles. Give me one straight answer…” she looked at him.
He shrugged.
“I can’t make a promise before you ask.”
She thought this over, then seemed to accept it.
“Why do you care so much for a few commons? Performing your duty for the king should be your primary concern, not risking your life bargaining for a handful of common people.“
Tythos stopped walking. Sigrun kept going a few steps, then turned and looked back at him.
“At least you called them people. That makes you better than the First Commander we just walked away from.” He was silent for a moment, studying her. “I do it because it’s right. You’ve got to help the people that are right in front of you, not the people that you might meet someday, or the people that have enough money to be important. If you don’t do what you can with what’s right in front of you, you’ll never do anything.“
“But what the king wants you to do at Ginnung Gap is important. You heard First Commander Atticus. You’re needed to renegotiate the treaty. If you die before accomplishing that, it could cost thousands of people their lives. This is why there’s honor in duty. When we do our duty in service of those with greater vision than ourselves, that’s when we do the most good with our lives.“
“And if their vision is wrong?“
Sigrun opened her mouth, then closed it, shaking her head.
“And if yours is?”
“Then at least I can see who I help. I don’t have to take someone’s word for it. I’ll die happy.”
Tythos resumed walking. Sigrun fell in beside him. They walked in silence for several beats.
“Will this magic of yours hurt anyone?“
“No, the magic itself is harmless. It will just ensure the people in the valley get to live. You know, like you promised to help me do. Help me do this one thing, and I will consider your end of the bargain—to help the people in the valley— upheld. Once this is done, I will do everything in my power to go to Ginnung Gap with you.“
Sigrun shook her head.
“You’ve backed me into a corner where I have to agree with you. Fine, I’ll help you. But your explanation sounds like another circle, where you’re deliberately avoiding telling me what’s going to happen.”
Tythos grinned at her without any humor.
“You got your straight answer already, quit complaining.” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Gods! It feels good to be able to do that again. Now let’s go see if this camp has been surrounded by the bones of all the people I’ve slain.”
Sigrun stopped short. Tythos kept walking.
“What?” She asked, jogging to catch up with him.
***