Brynn stood on the western wall of Avrou Eesa, staring out over the desert to a distant cloud of stirred sands.
She questioned herself re-peatedly, her decision to remain there, to try to sting again before disappearing into the open desert. Was it her hatred of Yatol Bardoh that was driving her? Was she hoping for a chance to avenge her parents' mur-der? And if so, was she risking too much to find that chance?
She took heart that Pagonel and her larger army would arrive on time, as arranged. Given that, the plan didn't seem so desperate, as long as her guess concerning Yatol Bardoh's reaction to the loss of Avrou Eesa proved correct.
She was standing there, mulling it all over, when an unexpected compan-ion walked up beside her. Brynn turned, startled, for she had not seen Agradeleous in his lizardman form in some time. She noted, too, that the dragon was limping a little bit.
"Their arrows sting you," she remarked.
"It will take more than arrows to bring down Agradeleous," the dragon assured her.
Brynn nodded and looked back to the sandstorm. ?Our enemies," she said.
"Our?"
The woman turned and studied the dragon, surprised by the comment, though when she thought about it, it made perfect sense. Agradeleous, it seemed, didn't really care who or what he was destroying.
"I must soon ask you to go out through a hail of arrows again," she said. ?I will need you to convince Yatol Bardoh that we are attempting to flee to the east."
The dragon nodded, seeming unconcerned.
"I plan to draw his line about the city," Brynn started to explain, but her voice trailed off as she realized that the dragon wasn't paying her any heed. ?None of this matters to you, does it?"
Agradeleous' eyes narrowed as he regarded her more closely. ?There is no difference between us - me and my people, and rh Behrenese - is there? ?
The dragon blinked, but did not otherwise respond.
"And if a Behrenese ally had found you in your lair and brought you you would be fighting for them, as you are now fighting for me. Correct?" ' Another blink.
"Or is it that you are not fighting for me?" Brynn reasoned it throu h ?You are fighting for Agradeleous, and nothing more. I offered you a de 1 that you thought acceptable, and so your fires char the Behrenese soldiers " She paused and stared at the dragon hard, waiting until she had his full ar tendon. ?Do you not understand why I wage this war? ?
"I do not understand the wars of humans, nor do I wish to," the dragon finally replied. ?You fight for your freedom." He shrugged, his great mus-cled shoulders rising up almost over his head. ?It all makes so little sense to me, that humans would enslave humans in the first place. You are a curious race, and a lesser race, from all that I see."
Then it was Brynns turn to narrow her eyes.
"You think me a creature of wanton destruction, and to an extent, you are correct," the dragon went on.
"When I care not at all about the crea-tures in the line of my flames, I find it exciting to breathe forth the fire.
And I care not at all about humans."
Brynn noted that there was something less than convincing in that state-ment, some subtle hint from the dragon s tone.
"Behrenese, To-gai-ru... you are all the same. No dragon would think to enslave another dragon."
"So if a Behrenese agent had found you, you might well be flying against me now," Brynn reasoned, and again the dragon shrugged, as if it did not matter.
"Then thank your good fortune," he said. ?Or call it the ultimate justice of fate, the gods themselves shining upon your cause for freedom, if that brings you comfort."
Brynn turned away sharply. ?There is a difference," she stated through gritted teeth. ?A difference between what they have done to us, and what we now try to accomplish."
"Indeed."
"The To-gai-ru have never tried to conquer Behren," Brynn remarked against that sarcasm.
"Because they have never been able to," Agradeleous was quick to point out. ?When you have the power, only then can you measure the relative morality of your peoples."
Brynn wanted to argue, wanted to find some words to deny the logic or the dragon's observations. But in truth, she could not. Would her people have acted any differently, had they been the conquerors? Had they acted Differently in their first large victory, when Dharyan had been overrun? I til she had intervened, the Behrenese had been subjected to many of the e injustices they had shown to the To-gai-ru.
But she had intervened. Brynn had to remind herself at that uncertain ornent, with Agradeleous, of all people, laying bare her conscience, and the Yatol Bardoh and thirty thousand Behrenese warriors coming to de- Str0y her relatively insignificant army.
"You are quite observant for one who does not know humans," Brynn remarked.
Agradeleous gave a rumbling laugh. ?Detachment allows for that." Brynn turned to face him once more, locking him with a serious stare.
"Will you fly out against the archers?" The dragon put on a perfectly awful grin. ?With pleasure."
The storm swept in across the blowing sands, thirty thousand strong, led by riders waving the huge curved swords favored by many Behrenese war-riors. They charged at Avrou Eesa's western gate, and for a brief moment, Brynn's heart sank in the fears that Yatol Bardoh would abandon all caution and just overrun his conquered city.
But then the lead riders broke, left and right, their horses thundering about Avrou Eesa to encircle the wide city. With the discipline of a superbly trained army, the Behrenese soldiers filtered to their appropriate positions. By late afternoon, Brynn and her army were fully encircled, the enemy line secured like a hangman's noose, and with the devastating war engines al-ready assembled out to the west of the city.
The bombardment began soon after dusk, with balls of pitch soaring in to smash walls, splattering all about.
Brynn's warriors let many of the ensuing fires burn, for they had no de-sire to save any more of Yatol Bardoh's city than those sections they needed for defense.
The first charge came soon after, with infantry marching in from all sides, shield to shield.
Brynn knew that Bardoh was trying to draw her out, to see how much firepower she and her warriors could throw back at him. And so she did not disappoint, lining the walls, particularly the eastern one, with archers and meeting the charge with volley after volley of arrows.
And then she went out, upon Agradeleous, sweeping first to the south, scattering the terrified Behrenese before her, then turning to the east, where that line broke almost immediately and rushed back to the cover of their own archers.
Brynn banked Agradeleous sharply, putting the dragon in fast flight right over the city and beyond, sweeping to the west, flying right over the sur-prised Behrenese infantry and right over the reserve cavalry, all fighting to hold their terrified horses steady, and right through the hail of arrows th Behrenese archers launched their way.
Agradeleous bore down on the war engines with a vengeance, setting a cata pult ablaze, then banking up to hover beside another, his great tail srnashin hard against the supporting beams.
"Fly away!" Brynn cried out frantically. ?Agradeleous, fly away!"
Too excited and enraged, the dragon didn't even hear her, and so his sur-prise was complete when a ballista bolt smashed hard against his side knocking him from the sky.
The Behrenese warriors cheered and charged, long lances flashing in the firelight.
"Up!" Brynn commanded. ?Up and back to the city!"
The dragon spun about and charged into the coming line of soldiers, tak-ing hit after brutal hit, but giving out killing blows with great claws and chomping maw, beating others aside with his great wings and launching still more far away with his deadly tail.
Brynn kept urging him up, as more and more Behrenese soldiers charged in fearlessly.
The woman's respect for her foes increased dramatically in those few minutes.
Finally, to Brynn s great relief, the dragon leaped up into the air, his great wings beating immediately to send him flying back toward Avrou Eesa's western gate. The pair set down in the courtyard just beyond the gate, Brynn leaping down from the dragon's back to inspect his greatest wound, where the ballista spear had hit home.
The warrior woman winced, more at her own thoughts than at the wound - for she had allowed herself, for a brief moment, to hope that the wound would prove fatal. In the end of all this, whether To-gai was free or not, Brynn Dharielle would have to deal with the fact that she had been in-strumental in letting a dragon loose upon the world, and though she had exacted the necessary promise from Agradeleous, she was not sure that it would hold.
"How bad?" she asked the dragon, moving around to face him directly.
Agradeleous growled and reached for the ballista spear with his foreleg, then tore it out. He reared on his hind legs, roared defiantly, and hurled the bloody spear across the sands, into the midst of the still-scrambling Behre-nese far beyond the gate.
Then came the bone-crunching sounds as Agradeleous began his trans-formation to his bipedal form. All about him, To-gai-ru warriors blanched and retreated, as fast and as far as they could run.
But Brynn stood right there, before the dragon, grateful to him for his sacrifice that night. A necessary sacrifice, and one that had turned the Behrenese charge into a fast retreat.
Lookouts on the walls were even then calling down that their enemies had broken off, all about the city, had returned to the encircling perimeter and were striking camp.
"I will need you again in the morning," Brynn whispered to the dragon. ?When Pagonel arrives."
The dragon growled, and nodded.
Brynn took a deep breath and headed away, cursing herself silently for her moment of selfishness, when she had hoped the dragon would die.
No, it wouldn't be that easy. For the sake of To-gai and all her dreams, it couldn't be.
The timing could not have been better for Brynn and her companions. Dawn broke over the city of Avrou Eesa, bright and clear, and the Behre-nese began their charge, their perimeter collapsing inward. And at that same moment, Brynn saw the flashing signal out in the distance beyond the westernmost Behrenese cluster that told her of Pagonel's arrival.
"Eastern wall!" she cried, and more than half of her warriors ran that way, launching arrows out at the charging Behrenese, though they were still too far away for any effective barrage. As the warriors bent down behind the wall, they propped helmets in place, decoys to make it look as if they in-tended to hold the wall.
And then they abandoned their posts, running to their waiting mounts, who were assembled in the western courtyard before the gates.
Brynn, meanwhile, went to Agradeleous. She sent the dragon flying away to the east, dropping down to attack the Behrenese advance. As the lines broke apart, the eastern gates of Avrou Eesa were thrown wide and many horses charged out.
Riderless horses. Captured Behrenese horses.
From her post on the western wall, Brynn took hope as she saw the Behrenese lines beginning to veer toward the west. Yatol Bardoh had an-ticipated a breakout, and following logic and the dragon's strike, he ex-pected the breakout to be to the east.
But Yatol Bardoh did not know that a second To-gai-ru force, thrice the size of the one he had contained within Avrou Eesa, was just to the west of him.
The city's western gates flew wide and out came the charge of Brynn and her two thousand warriors, bearing down on the main Behrenese force west of the city.
And then came the battle cries and thunder of the second To-gai-ru force, charging east, bearing down on the same enemy positions.
Caught between the vise, the Behrenese forces scrambled to find some defensive posture.
Brynn drove her charges in hard, her sword all ablaze, Runtly answering her every command and improvising when necessary. The To-gai-ru earn through like a swarm of locusts caught on a fast wind, slashing the Behre nese ranks, forcing soldiers to dive aside or be trampled.
They did not stop to engage, though, but continued their charge until they had linked up with the larger force, moving west to east with similar brutal efficiency.
And then they turned, as one, to the north and the open sands, riding hard and outdistancing the surprised and confused Behrenese.
By the time the main numbers of Yatol Bardoh's warriors had come around to the western line, Brynn and her warriors were a dust cloud on the northern horizon.
They left behind a field of carnage, of many fallen Behrenese and more than a few fallen To-gai-ru, as well.
But the breakout had worked - another devastating blow to the Behrenese morale, and a lightning fast battle that claimed the lives of ten times more Behrenese than To-gai-ru.
And then came Agradeleous, just to accentuate Yatol Bardoh's embarrass-ment, sweeping past the Behrenese field, accepting the volley of hundreds of arrows and returning a strafing line of killing fire, and even managing to catch up a Behrenese warrior in his tearing claws.
And then the dragon, too, was gone, flying fast to the north.
Coming from his position east of Avrou Eesa, where they had expected the breakout, Chezhou-Lei Shauntil did not arrive on the true battlefield until long after Brynn and her minions, including Agradeleous, had long departed. The warrior found his commander, Yatol Bardoh, leaning on the wreckage of what had been a catapult, staring vacantly to the dust cloud ris-ing in the north, and suddenly looking all of his sixty years of age.
"Yatol," the warrior greeted, snapping a curt bow.
Yatol Bardoh's head slowly turned, that he could regard the man, but then swiveled back to the north, his face a mask of blank horror.
"Hunt her down and kill her," he said.
"She is a gnat, Yatol," Shauntil replied. ?She flies about us while we swipe futilely at her, but her stings are not lethal. We have missed thus far, but one hit - "Hunt her down and kill her."
"Yes, Yatol. She is a cunning foe, and she has not erred of yet. But while her perfection of tactics has kept her alive, it has not truly wounded us. When she makes her first error, it will be her last."
"Hunt her down and kill her."
"It will be done, Yatol," Shauntil assured him. ?We learn more of her with each movement. It is her dragon that allows her army to run about the open desert, supplying her forces, perhaps even flying them at times, as surely it must to have escaped our vise at the plateau divide. But we are see-ing the limitations of the beast - it was almost brought down this very day, and every city will become more prepared to deal with it, should it arrive. Once it is gone, this woman and her armies will be no more."
Yatol Bardoh's head swiveled about again and he fixed Chezhou-Lei Shauntil with the coldest and most determined stare the warrior had ever seen from the man - from the man who had murdered hundreds in his years of terror in To-gai, the man who had lined the plateau divide overlooking this very region with the crucified bodies of a hundred To-gai-ru women.
Yatol Bardoh said slowly, without emotion, ?Hunt her down and kill her."