Legacy of Steel

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.

All of them, even the mercenaries, looked around in stunned shock. The picturesque village was nothing more then a burning ruin. The dragons and the knights had destroyed everything. Only the original inn, sitting at the fork of the two trails, remained standing among the charred shells of houses, shops, and stables. Scattered along the paths, in the streets, and among the ruins of their homes were dozens of corpses, some charred and smoldering, others hacked and bloody. There seemed to be no one else alive but the wing from Neraka.

Sara looked ahead and saw a group of officers standing by the inn, Subcommander Torceth among them. Leaving the squires behind, she stormed up to the talon leaders and spat at their feet. "What sort of a 'training mission' was this supposed to be?" she yelled, her fury boiling over. "You were supposed to capture the village. Did anyone say wipe it off the map? What kind of officers are you that you allow your men to lose control like that? What happened to your vows? Where is the Code in an atrocity like this?" She was breathing so rapidly her breath hurt her sides beneath her ribs.

Torceth waved his hand as if swatting away a fly. "Ah, Knight Officer Conby. I see you found the rest of the mercenaries. I understand from the others they were out clearing the trail to Kortal. Excellent work!"

Torceth's total disregard of her questions made Sara all the more enraged. "Excellent work, my dragon's leavings! One of my squires is dead, another wounded. One of our dragons is missing, and while we fought your mercenaries, you were busy slaughtering unarmed civilians!"

Torceth pursed his heavy lips and frowned at her. The other officers took their cue from him and looked at her with disfavor.

Sara didn't care. She couldn't believe what she was seeing around her. Had the Knights of Takhisis sunk so low that they would turn a military objective into a slaughterhouse just for the fun of it? Lord Ariakan would never have stood for this sort of needless slaughter.

"Take your prisoners over there and leave them with those guards," Torceth ordered irritably. "Then return to your post."

Sara took a look at the guards he indicated. Four knights were standing by a blackened stone wall that had once been a comfortable cottage. The men leaned against the wall, chatting and laughing. Their weapons ran red with blood, and a pile of decapitated corpses were dumped close by. Sara shuddered.

"We will return to our post, sir. But I will not leave our prisoners with you. They fought well and deserve better than that." She jabbed a finger at the pile of bodies. "I will turn my prisoners over to Governor-General Abrena and no one else."

Torceth started to say something, but one of the older knights leaned over and whispered something in his ear. The subcommander paled slightly under his heavy beard. "Suit yourself," he growled to Sara. "I will hold you responsible for their care and conduct."

Sara rose on her toes, pushed her face close to his, and said fiercely, "And I hold you responsible for this massacre." She turned on her heel and strode away from them as fast as her legs could carry her before she did anything stupider than berating a superior officer.

The Sixth Talon stared at her in awe.

Derrick took one look at her face and herded the squires and prisoners after her without a single word.

The mercenaries, having seen the murdered villagers in the streets, followed willingly after their captors. They were quick enough to realize that their lives were safer in the hands of this outspoken woman knight.

By the time Sara returned to the clearing where Marika and Kelena waited, Squall and Howl had returned with a very contrite Tumult. Treb took one look at him and burst into a stream of invective that had even Kazar looking impressed.

"That's enough," Sara cut her off. Her patience was at an end with this whole terrible day. "Take the prisoners to those trees, Treb, and you and the dragons watch them carefully. No one is to interfere with them without my permission. Is that understood?"

Treb obeyed, albeit rather sullenly, and she and the dragons marched the prisoners to a large pine and made them sit in the snow. The men huddled as far away from the dragons as they could get, and Sara knew she would not have to worry about an escape.

She did worry about Kelena, though. Marika had stanched the flow of blood, but she had not tried to pull out the arrow. It was embedded too deeply for her simple skills. She had covered her friend to keep her warm and gave her sips of water to keep her from becoming dehydrated. She had laid out Jacson, too, and covered his face with his cloak.

Sara hesitated beside his body. She had not taken the luxury of time to think about what he had done for her. It was too painful. It was impossible to believe that his vibrant energy and talkative soul were gone from their midst. His sacrifice broke her heart. She couldn't think about it, could not accept it, not this soon. There was still much to do before she could try to reconcile Jacson's death with her vision of reality.

Turning away from the dead, she knelt by the wounded squire and took her hand. Kelena's blue eyes had faded to a watery gray. Her freckles stood out like tiny drops of ink scattered across parchment. Her breathing came in ragged gasps through her clenched teeth.

"Get it out," she begged. "Just yank it. I don't care."

Sara gently squeezed her hand. "I can do better than that," she reassured the young woman. "Hang on another minute or two." Hurrying to Cobalt, she found her healer's bag in a pouch on her dragon saddle and brought it back.

"Light a fire," she tossed over her shoulder to anyone who would listen. Derrick and Saunder nearly knocked each other over in their eagerness to obey. Quickly they cleared a patch of earth, built a fire ring, and started a fire using cut wood they found in the yard of a nearby burned-out cottage. Marika took a small cooking pot out of her gear and collected snow to melt for water.

Sara sorted through her bag while they worked. She had packed her bag specifically for treating wounds, and everything she needed for this operation was there. Deep inside she found a small package wrapped in soft leather. Within lay three glass vials of a precious liquid Sara had learned to make herself.

Drink this," she told Kelena, pressing the vial to her lips. "It is a special syrup I make from herbs and flowers that will help you rest."

The syrup did its work, and in moments, the squire was asleep. With Marika's help and the concerned attention of Saunder, Derrick, and the others, Sara carefully cut out the bolt, packed the wound with a poultice to help prevent infection, and wrapped it with clean bandages. She saw, thankfully, that the tip of the bolt was not barbed and it had not damaged the bone or the artery in the thigh.

Sara gave her worried audience a smile when she was through. "I certainly miss the clerics' magic at times like this."

"Will she be all right?" Saunder wanted to know. For such a quiet loner, he was very attached to his friends.

"Barring fever, infection, bad weather, avalanches, or blood thirsty knights, she'll be fine."

The others grinned at each other. Even Argathon and Kazar looked relieved.

"She's the first one I've ever seen knock Treb on her backside," Argathon said with a trace of respect.

Sara realized then the afternoon had slowly dwindled to twilight. She put the talon to work gathering firewood and erecting crude shelters from pine branches and whatever they could scavenge. She refused to let them take anything from the destroyed cottages or go anywhere near the corpses that still littered the ground, They could make do with what they had brought. She also had them build a fire and shelter for the prisoners and share part of their food with them.

No one tried to argue with her. It was a quiet and sober group that obeyed her orders and worked diligently to prepare for the night.

While the squires were busy, Sara had a quiet word with Cobalt. The blue's eyes gleamed greenish in the deepening darkness, and as soon as she finished her message, he slipped out into the open and took wing. Where she had sent him, she would not say to anyone.

They divided the watch, built up the fires, and settled back to wait for day. In the woods behind them, embers continued to smolder in the burned buildings, and every once in a while, the talon heard shouts of laughter and revelry coming from the inn.

For the six uninjured squires, the cold night passed very slowly. There was little sleep and much thought among the men and women. Only a few of them had been in actual combat before or faced the prospect of death so personally. They ran the events of the day through their minds time and again and found strength in the fact that none of them had flinched.

It was not so easy to contemplate the slaughter of the villagers. While many of the recruits had seen horrors during the Summer of Chaos, then it had some larger meaning. Few may have understood all that was happening to Krynn that summer, but most knew it involved the gods. This massacre was senseless. It had no reason, no motive, no unseen driving force. It was rooted in the boredom and cruelty and bloodlust of a group of untried knights. More than one of the squires found it difficult to reconcile what had happened that day to the Code of the Knighthood they had worked hard to learn. A few civilian casualties were expected in a take-over, but nothing like this needless carnage.

What would the governor-general think about this?

They found out what Governor-General Abrena thought the next day when she arrived mid-morning astride her blue dragon, Cerium.

The first indication Sara had was Cobalt's return. He landed in the nearby meadow and smugly informed Sara that her message had been delivered and the general was spitting daggers. Apparently Subcommander Torceth had been slow to send a messenger back to Neraka, and Cobalt had arrived before him.

"Where is she?" Sara demanded, the gray fire creeping back into her eyes.

"She and Cerium landed in the field west of here, where the other dragons and part of the wing have made camp. She's reaming out several talon officers at the moment."

The squires had gathered around to listen, and Derrick spoke up. "Do we go to her?"

"No." Sara replied evenly "We were ordered to remain at out post. She can come to us."

Despite her firm words and the sense of righteousness that bolstered her, Sara was nervous about seeing the general. She had disobeyed a superior officer on the subject of the prisoners, and she had blown protocol to pieces by sending her own message to Abrena over the heads of Subcommander Torceth and his talon leaders. If General Abrena was a stickler for discipline, Sara knew she could be in trouble.

Cobalt pricked his pointed ears. Hurriedly he raised his head to peer through the trees. "Here she comes," he hissed.

Sara ordered the talon back to their makeshift camp. Quickly she had them straighten their gear and stand in a line to await the governor-general. The mercenaries, sensing something important, climbed to their feet as well and stood in a ragged group under the watchful eyes of the dragons.

They could hear the general before they could see her. Her commanding voice rang through the woods, telling someone in no uncertain terms that he was an incompetent fool. Then Mirielle Abrena came stalking down the trail, Subcommander Torceth, Knight Officer Targonne, and the other talon leaders following her like a pack of chastised wolves. The general carried her helm under her arm and wore a long, fur-lined cloak. She was sapping her gloves against her thigh as she walked.

"Knight Officer Conby," came the sharp command. "Come here."

Sara detached herself from the talon and stood before the general. She leveled her gaze on Mirielle's golden eyes and refused to flinch before their fiery anger.

"I have heard Torceth's version of the attack on the village. Now I want to hear yours," demanded Mirielle.

So Sara told her everything she had witnessed and all that had happened to the talon. While she gave her report, the general's eyes studied details of the trail, the clearing, the prisoners, and the condition of the talon. She took in Kelena, still lying half-asleep on her blanket, and the shrouded figure of young Jacson. Mirielle had already heard Cobalt's message and the dragon's version of the massacre, but she wanted to weigh all sides before she acted.

Behind the general, Torceth fidgeted and shifted his weight from foot to foot. His heavy face grew darker by the minute, as if he wished to dispute Sara's words but was too nervous of the general to interrupt. Mirielle ignored him.

When Sara finished, she saluted the general and stepped back. It was in Mirielle's hands now.

The general did not keep anyone waiting. "Fine," She said abruptly. "Subcommander Torceth, it is my judgment that while you fulfilled the spirit of my orders, you allowed your men and their dragons to go out of control. The fact that they are new to the knighthood does not excuse them. I did not intend for you to destroy the entire village. We could have used the buildings and the people. This also sets a precedent for future attacks. Once news of this massacre leaks out, other locations may fight twice as hard and exact longer delays and higher casualties. Therefore, you will return with me to Neraka for adjudication of a minor violation."

"A minor violation!" Sara shouted, outraged. "He allows his men to slaughter an entire village and you give him a slap on the wrist? What about the knights? Aren't you going to punish them, too? What sort of justice is that?"

Mirielle's eyebrows curled down and her mouth hardened. "mine," she said coldly. "And I will hear no more about it. l am short of knights and supplies. I need this village as a gateway to Kortal and eventually Sanction."

But Sara refused to give up quite yet. "And what about the people who lived here? They didn't have to die."

"No, they did not. But it is too late for them. We must move on. Take your prisoners and your wounded back in Neraka, Knight Officer Conby. Your talon has performed well." She turned to go, her mind already calculating her next move. "Knight Officer Targonne, you will take command of the wing until Subcommander Torceth returns. Tell your father that the gateway between Neraka and Sanction is ours. We will set up a trade route ass soon as the passes are open."

Sara stared at the general's implacable face, and although her body still shook with anger and her mind was in a turmoil, she realized with a cold certainty she could do no more. Governor-General Abrena had given her orders, and unless she wished to jeopardize her position, Sara knew any further arguments were futile. Bitterly she returned to the talon and in tense silence watched the general and her officers march up the trail toward the the inn.

The pensive quiet lasted long after the knights disappeared from view.

"Knight Officer," Argathon said into the hush, "why does the knighthood emphasize the Code so much, then let something like this go unpunished?"

His confusion was shared by them all.

Derrick threw his hands up in a gesture of frustration. "Why didn't the general do something about the knights who caused all of this? It isn't right!"

"Oh, grow up, Derrick!" Treb snapped. "What else could she do? What's done is done."

"I don't know," Sara said quietly, as if she hadn't heard Treb's remark. "I just don't know. This is not what Lord Ariakan had in mind when he built the knighthood. Steel Brightblade and his knights would never have done something like this."

Sara could make such a statement in utter sincerity. Although she hated the Knights of Takhisis, she had never found cause to doubt their strict Code and their discipline… until now. General Abrena seemed to be letting go of Ariakan's dark honor in favor of rapid training and lax recruitment standards to increase her army. This new trend in the development of the knighthood alarmed Sara.

Confused and pensive, Sara set the squires to work preparing to leave. If the general wanted them to return to Neraka, then Sara intended to get them all back to the city that day. She did not want to stay in this place another hour longer than they had to.

By enlisting the cooperation of the four dragons, Sara sent the talon and their prisoners back to Neraka in two shifts. The dragons made the first trip between the village and the city carrying a rider and two prisoners each They returned just before nightfall to retrieve Sara and the remaining squires.

Kelena felt strong enough by that time to ride Howl, so they put a bound-and-gagged prisoner behind her saddle, bundled her in a cloak and gloves, and helped her onto the dragon's back.

Derrick and Saunder helped Sara put Jacson's body onto Squall's saddle. Squall, who had carried Jacson the most, asked for the honor and watched sadly as they tied the wrapped body in the second seat. Derrick climbed into the first seat to escort Jacson home.

At last they were ready to go. Sara had one prisoner with her, a squat, muscular man. But she doubted she would have any trouble with him during the flight. His wrists were bound to the saddle, and he looked terrified to be on a dragon's back.

She gave the signal to Cobalt to take off, and one after another, the four blues launched into the darkening sky for the journey home.

On the western horizon, where the peaks of the great Khalkists reared up like a black fortress against the pale blue light of sunset, a sliver of the silvery moon hung in solitary grace.

A new moon, a new month. A new hope?

Sara doubted it.