He has a great army at his disposal," Pagonel reminded Brynn. I 11 Farther north, the winter snows were beginning to relin-?L. - L. quish their grip upon the land, and there near the Moun-tains of Fire, the day was almost uncomfortably warm. ?Yatol Bardoh boasts because he believes himself to be safe."
Brynn looked around at her army, now more than six thousand strong. They were eager, she knew, hungry to be back on the roads that would lead them to the next Behrenese city that would fall before them. And though Brynn had seen much fighting over the winter, she too longed for a great battle, man against man, army against army.
"Do you believe that the dog Bardoh will come out after us, as he has de-clared?" she asked.
Pagonel shrugged noncommitally.
"Do you believe that we might lure him from his city?"
Pagonel shrugged again, and looked at Brynn hard. ?Even if you do, going against that army would be folly, for it is as great a force as is now in To-gai. And Yatol Bardoh..."
He paused as Brynn spat upon the ground.
"He is reputed to be a fine military leader," the mystic finished.
"He is a murdering dog, and nothing more," said Brynn. ?And before this is ended, I will have his head."
Pagonel's expression became even more puzzled. ?You would risk all to go against him?"
Brynn's hard look didn't answer the question in the least, and for a mo-ment, the mystic honestly feared that Brynn would do just that.
"I will get him out of Avrou Eesa and into Behren," Brynn declared. ?Not too far over the plateau rim. I want him to see the smoke from the fires when I destroy his city."
Pagonel had never seen her so grim and so determined.
Brynn said no more, but walked from the encampment and through a pass, to where Agradeleous waited.
She and the dragon had made several journeys back there during the winter months, but this one uj(j be the shortest stay, for that very night, after only a few hours among i.er forces, the Dragon of To-gai was back in the air, flying fast for the north.
They stayed along the plateau rim for a long way, with Brynn taking care-ful note of the terrain, a plan already beginning to form.
Yes, she would lure Yatol Tohen Bardoh from his home, and let him sit up on the plateau helplessly while his home burned.
She found Tanalk Grenk and her To-gai forces right where she had left them, and surprised them indeed when she ordered a split among them, with a portion of the strongest warriors riding south and east, and the rest, accom-panying those who could not fight, fleeing straightaway to the southland.
"Now, with the weather at last breaking, you will get your fight," Brynn told the force that would travel with her, and that brought as many con-cerned murmurs as eager grins. The To-gai-ru understood the power of the Behrenese forces assembled against them, after all.
"We will strike, and we will run," Brynn explained. ?Leading our ene-mies back toward Behren, to the edge of the plateau rim."
"And into Behren?" one man asked.
"We will take them to a point where there seems no route into Behren," Brynn answered. ?Where they will believe us trapped by the plateau rim and where they will likely find allies to strike against us."
More murmurs filtered throughout the gathering, but Brynn, growing more and more confident, merely smiled.
And so it began, with the newest To-gai-ru army, two thousand strong, overrunning an outposter settlement teasingly close to the frustrated Behre-nese army. A week later, a second settlement fell, far to the south and east of the previous. While flying about on Agradeleous that night after the second battle, Brynn noted that the Behrenese army had turned more to the south, and she also noted a line of couriers riding out straight to the east. Yes, her enemies knew where they were, and knew well the terrain.
She was counting on that most of all.
Through it all, the ranger kept Agradeleous in check, tightly reined. She was not willing to reveal him further to her enemies, for all of this, in the end, would come down to his ability to serve her army well. She did fly out to the south, to the Mountains of Fire, to instruct Pagonel to begin the march toward Avrou Eesa.
Two days later, a Behrenese supply caravan was flattened, and the chase continued, and the word continued to spread into Behren that the Dragon of To-gai had indeed returned to the steppes, but was fighting her way back toward Behrenese soil.
Right in the region immediately west of Yatol Bardoh and Avrou Eesa.
The march from Bardoh's city began the very next day, heading for a pass that would bring the glory-hungry Yatol and his fifteen thousand onto the To-gai plateau to the north of Brynn's position, with the second army ] j by Chezhou-Lei Shauntil, circling fast to the south. At that particular juri ture of the two kingdoms, there weren't many easy routes up or down tf plateau, and it seemed obvious to the Behrenese that the Dragon of To-had erred, for Yatol Bardoh would beat her to the north pass, arrivi within a week, and Shauntil had the west and the south already cut off Brynn's To-gai based army continued its flight to the east, seemin I walking into the jaws between the mighty Behrenese forces.
And then, a few days later, they were out of room, with the cliffs of th plateau divide blocking their way to the east, and with south, west, and north blocked by the two pursuing armies.
"Burn your fires bright this night," Brynn instructed her warriors.
"For tomorrow, we will fight and die!" one man called out, and neither he, nor any of the others, seemed bothered by that grim possibility.
"For tomorrow, we will begin our ride across the sands of Behren ? Brynn corrected, and she pointed out over the cliff. ?Down there." She fin-ished with a whistle, and the great dragon Agradeleous rose up over the edge of the cliff, higher and higher, and bearing under him a huge platform, secured to his talons by thick ropes.
They rode like the sandstorm whirlwinds across the open desert, the great storm that was the Dragon of To-gai and her followers. Before Yatol Bardoh and Chezhou-Lei Shauntil had even charged their way out of the steppes and back onto Behren's light brown sands, Brynn and her two thousand had the city of Avrou Eesa in sight.
The woman looked to the south, knowing from the previous night's dragon flight that Pagonel and her main force was still several days away. If she waited for them, the assault on Avrou Eesa would have to happen right before Yatol Bardoh returned, and then they would have to flee wildly, with the Behrenese in hot pursuit.
But Avrou Eesa was a prize that Brynn would not let get away, for she keenly remembered the grim fate of her parents at the hands of Yatol Bardoh.
That night, she went in with Agradeleous, swooping about the city, set-ting buildings ablaze and toppling defensive positions and great catapults, blasting down the many remaining soldiers who came out against them.
And then, from on high, Brynn yelled down to them, told them to flee Avrou Eesa or be destroyed. ?Run down the eastern road!" she cried, claim this place for To-gai. Be gone!"
The response came in the form of a volley of arrows that had Brynn ducking tight to Agradeleous' back and had the dragon roaring in protest at the pestering stings.
"Destroy that group," Brynn ordered, and the outraged Agradeleous was more than happy to comply, tucking his great wings and falling into a stoop that shot him right past the archer battery as he leveled out.
By the time Agradeleous flew out past the Behrenese line, many had died before his breath, others from his wing, and he clutched two screaming men one in each talon. Now he and Brynn went up high over the city, back to their original position, where Brynn repeated her warning that any who did not flee the city would die in it the next day.
To accentuate her warnings, Agradeleous then dropped the two men, one after the other.
At dawn the next day, Brynn and her two thousand charged Avrou Eesa's western gate, with the dragon coming in to support them from the north.
There was little resistance, and when Brynn walked into the conquered citv soon after, moving to the high tower that anchored the eastern wall, she noted the lines of Behrenese who had fled at the onset of the attack, run-ning wildly to the east.
Late that same day, Brynn's scouts came in, reporting that Yatol Bardoh and his forces were coming down from the plateau in the north, and Chezhou-Lei Shauntil and his were coming down along the route to the south.
"We will have the city pillaged before the dawn, then we can flee out to the open sands," one of her commanders remarked.
Brynn shook her head. ?Pillage the city and hide the supplies and the valuables out in the desert," she did agree. ?But we will not run. Not this time."
That brought many surprised looks from those leaders standing about her, all keenly aware that somewhere around thirty thousand Behrenese warriors would soon converge on Avrou Eesa.
"Pagonel is not far," the woman explained.
"We would still be sorely outnumbered," one man observed.
"Only if we fight them as a singular, or even as half, of their force," Brynn replied, a grin widening on her face as she thought of yet another way she might stick a pin into the eye of the Chezru Chieftain and his marauding people, and particularly into the eye of Yatol Tohen Bardoh.
"What do you know?" one To-gai-ru woman asked her.
"We can outride them. We can outrun them," Brynn answered. She turned her gaze to the west, to the line of distant heights that marked the To-gai plateau. If the armies were filtering down the narrow passes out of the steppes, north and south, then she and Agradeleous could catch them m a vulnerable position indeed.
She nodded as she considered that her fighting that day was not done. She had to go out with the dragon, anyway, she knew, to go and inform 1 agonel of his role in the upcoming daring battle.
A large group of the fleeing Behrenese have camped just to the west of us," another scout reported soon after, and beside the woman, Tan 11 Grenk issued a low growl as threatening as any Agradeleous himself K ever grumbled.
"Leave them there," Brynn replied, issuing that order to all of her fi leaders. ?Let them tell Yatol Bardoh of our approximate strength."
"That he might overrun Avrou Eesa with complete confidence?" anoth man asked.
"That he will encircle Avrou Eesa to prevent any escape."
"Your great dragon cannot fly us all out of here quickly enough, as it did to bring us down from the plateau,"
came one concerned reply.
But Brynn only smiled all the wider, thinking that it was indeed time to take a gamble, and time to engage some Behrenese soldiers openly.
As dusk fell over the steppes, the desert already dark behind them, Brynn and Agradeleous saw the long line of torches, winding down from the To-gai plateau along a narrow and rocky descent to the Behrenese floor.
"He force-marches through the night, hoping to catch up to us," Brynn yelled to the dragon. ?The dog Bardoh is angry, and his anger will be his downfall!"
Agradeleous beat his wings more powerfully, speeding them along the plateau line, sweeping down from the north.
Brynn urged the dragon straight across that long and narrow line. The beast banked and swept past, breathing forth his fire, immolating those poor Behrenese who could not flee or find any cover behind the rocks. The dragon's tail thrashed as he passed, splintering stone and sending men flying to their deaths.
Caught by complete surprise, it took the Behrenese a long time to orga-nize their archers up high on the plateau ledge and for those caught along the narrow trail to find cover, or to scramble down among the massing de-fensive formations already on the desert floor.
Brynn and Agradeleous struck hard and struck repeatedly during that time of confusion and tumult. And then, as the organization grew stronger, as volleys of arrows filled the sky and great ballistae prepared their deadly shots, Brynn brought the dragon out from the plateau, and shouted down, ?Avrou Eesa is mine!"
And then she and Agradeleous rushed off to the south, flying fast along the plateau line and repeating the destruction on the second Behrenese force, that of Shauntil. This army, under the crack command of the cunning Chezhou-Lei, organized more quickly and sent Brynn and Agradeleous fleeing fast for safety with little damage done and only a few Behrenese lost.
The ranger and her dragon flew to the south and then to the east, and eventually, they saw the distant fires of Pagonel's force.
There, the dragon set Brynn down outside the encampment, and she went to her allies.
"It seems a desperate plan," Pagonel warned her privately, after the gath-;ng of commanders had dispersed so that the warrior woman and her::end could share some private moments.
"Every movement grows more desperate, with the pursuit growing more aanized," Brynn replied. ?The Chezru Chieftain will send even more out ainst us. A third force will march from Jacintha, and then a fourth, I am "ertain, and they will catch us, and any one of the forces could likely de- trov us, or at least weaken us enough to render us ineffective."
Pagonel nodded grimly. ?You knew from the outset that even if you orga-nized all of To-gai behind you, you could not defeat the Behrenese in force."
Then it was Brynn's turn to nod, and grimly. ?Avrou Eesa has fallen, and Yatol Bardoh will force-march all the way to the broken gates. Let us sting him again - I pray to Joek that I will find the chance to wet my blade with cursed Bardoh's own blood."
"Even if that opportunity costs you the greater war you have waged?"
The question made Brynn back off a bit, quieted her eagerness, and made her consider carefully her current course.
"These plans will work," she said.
"Is it a necessary chance?"
"It is one that seems plausible, and that will afford us a great gain."
"Great?"
"Great enough," Brynn insisted. ?Every victory will become more diffi-cult as we draw the Chezru Chieftain's power out of Jacintha. Let us take every victory as we find it. On my way here, Agradeleous and I struck at both Behrenese forces filtering down from To-gai. We did not kill many - a hundred, perhaps - but likely many more than that now desire to flee the army, for in return for their dead, they got nothing. No kills. No blood for blood. That is the most frustrating thing of all for a warrior."
The mystic nodded his agreement. ?If Chezhou-Lei Shauntil is as focused on his march toward Avrou Eesa as you presume, then he will not see us."
"And then my plan...?"
"May indeed sting the Behrenese once again," Pagonel admitted. ?But we will be sorely pressed, and running fast with an angry army in close pursuit."
"With Agradeleous, we can supply; they cannot," Brynn insisted. ?And To-gai-ru can outride Behrenese. How long will they chase us? How soon will we forge enough of a lead to flatten yet another city?"
"How soon will Chezru Douan send another thirty thousand out against you?"
The question was sobering, because Brynn understood that Douan could do just that.
But Brynn only nodded and accepted the possibilities. ?You understand your role, and the timing?"
"We will be there," Pagonel assured her.
Brynn smiled, and kissed him on the cheek.
Soon after, she and Agradeleous were gone, flying back to the north Brynn didn't strike at Shauntil's force on the return trip, recognizing with a couple of high fly-bys that the Chezhou-Lei warrior had his army ready to strike back hard immediately. But they did indeed hit at the less-prepared army of Yatol Bardoh, swooping down from on high and scattering the final lines of soldiers making their way down from the plateau, for Bardoh had not even kept his earlier forces assembled below to provide cover, instead riding them straight out toward Avrou Eesa.
Agradeleous feasted on the weakened end of that Behrenese line, more than doubling his kills for the night. Brynn took great satisfaction in seeing many other Behrenese warriors turning from their assigned course, fleeing north and south, apparently deserting Bardoh's army.
That was her strength, the ranger realized, the strength of To-gai, for she and her leaders would never have left so many behind in pursuit of a goal. Yatol Bardoh cared nothing for his warriors, beyond the goals he desired; Brynn knew that her own warriors recognized that she did not subscribe to that losing philosophy.