The Wyrmling Horde

It was well past midnight when Rhianna reached the horse-sisters with her treasure of forcibles. The sisters had broken camp and set off to the east, astride their blood mounts, riding swiftly.

It had been a generation since such a cavalry rode. Though they were but forty women with lances, bows, and blades, they were all Runelords, for each warrior had an endowment of brawn, one of grace, one of metabolism, and one of stamina. And each rode upon a warhorse that was both well trained and endowed. In but a few short hours, they had traveled nearly a hundred miles in the night.

The sight of it made Rhianna giddy with hope. It was a small contingent in number, but great in power, and it brought to mind the glory of ages past.

Aside from the horses, there was little in the way of supplies. A wagon carried some food; another carriage of sorts followed bearing the wyrmling girl Kirissa.

Rhianna called out a greeting from the sky as she neared the troops, then swooped and landed in a flurry of wings.

She dropped the cask of forcibles onto the ground, produced a key still smeared with wyrmling gore, and pulled the chest open to reveal its contents. She was breathing hard.

Sister Daughtry climbed down from her mount, pulled off her war mask, and looked narrowly at the forcibles. "We can t use that many. We have people willing to become Dedicates back at camp, but we don t have the resources to care for them. For every Dedicate, we need at least a dozen people to till the soil, weave cloth, act as guards, and otherwise nurse them."

She was right, Rhianna realized. The horse-sisters were fierce warriors, but they never had been large in number. Beyond that, they were spread out over thousands of square miles. It would take weeks just for them to assemble.

"The time will come when we have to look elsewhere for Dedicates," Rhianna suggested. "You re already traveling through Beldinook. We can take endowments here."

Beldinook was a large country and wealthy. But Beldinook had long been an enemy to the horse-sisters, to Mystarria-and to the rest of its neighbors for that matter.

Old King Lowicker of Beldinook had once belittled the Earth King, Gaborn Val Orden, demanding a display of his powers.

Gaborn had proved his powers by summoning an earthquake, one which startled Lowicker s horse, causing him to fall. Lowicker died from the injury, and his daughter Rialla had nursed her hatred for House Orden. Because of her frequent tantrums, people had called her "the Brat." She died only a week into her short reign, and a younger sister, Allonia, took the throne in her place. But Allonia s foul temper exceeded Rialla s. So when the kingdom fell to her, the title "the Brat" came with it.

Allonia was her father s daughter in every way. Once the Earth King had passed away, she struck quickly and in concert with Gaborn s enemies. She managed to carve out a fine chunk of Mystarria in that manner.

Rhianna suspected that Sister Daughtry would be pleased at the idea of taking Beldinook. But Daughtry only frowned. "You would have me become another Raj Ahten, strengthen myself by taking other kingdoms?"

"No," Rhianna said. But the more she thought of it, the more she realized that they would be forced to deal with Beldinook. "Beldinook has long been a torment to all of its neighbors. It boasts the finest steel and the largest cavalry in the world. And with the fall of Mystarria, it also boasts the strongest castles. You will need those castles to protect your Dedicates. That is the one great weakness of the horse-sisters: you love the open plains and your pavilions, but you have few strongholds stalwart enough to house Dedicates.

"More importantly, the Brat of Beldinook will live up to her name. She has always been eager for conquest. If she gets her hands on some blood metal, you know that she would not spare you. It is only by overwhelming this enemy that we can hope to retain power.

"So we must strike first. Your horse-sisters could drain endowments from the strongest lords in her realm, turning their strengths into your strength. Her serfs will take care of your Dedicates. Her steel must become your steel. Her fortifications must become yours.

"Taking them does not make you into another Raj Ahten. He took endowments to gratify his own lusts. We will take them to save the world."

"And what kind of world will it be?" Sister Daughtry asked. "It was perilous enough when forcibles were rare. What will become of it if blood metal proves so common that any man with a pair of dogs can make himself into a Runelord?"

"I can t say," Rhianna replied. "But you and I know what kind of world it will become if the Brat and her allies take control.

"And the danger is real. I ve seen a mountain of blood metal near Caer Luciare. Who knows how many more there might be? Who knows what new veins of ore might lie exposed within Beldinook s borders-or those of her allies in Internook? Right now, the brutish warlords of Internook may be digging up their own hills of blood metal and dreaming of conquest. Or perhaps in Indhopal some band of cutthroats has already seized a nation and is eyeing a million potential Dedicates in its own realm.

"My heart tells me to move slowly, to be generous and optimistic, to take only as many endowments as we need. But who knows how many endowments we need? The safest course-the only wise and sane course-is to seize the world by the throat while we can."

Sister Daughtry looked dully at the forcibles. Reluctantly, she conceded. "We go to fight an army of wyrmlings. My warriors are strong, but they will need to be stronger still. I see no flaw in your argument. I only wish that such arguments did not need to be made. I fear that children in Beldinook will see what we do, and think us evil. Beldinook is a giant of a nation, a sleeping giant. We wake it at our own peril."

The journey to Castle Lowicker did not take long. Two hours past dawn, the horse-sisters had crossed the leagues, and all too soon the riders found themselves outside a great fortress, sitting on their tired mounts, peering up at the massive walls.

As fortresses go, there was none larger in a thousand miles-at least nothing of human make. Castle Lowicker had been growing for two thousand years, and now it sprawled atop a great long hill in tiers. The imposing outer walls stood a hundred and twenty feet high and were topped with crenellations. At the foot of the outer wall stood a lake.

This was no ordinary castle. It had been erected to withstand the onslaught of powerful Runelords, and thus the outer walls were well plastered, so that even the most powerful lord could not get a fingerhold between the stones. The lake provided safety from siege towers.

Atop the walls, ballista towers had been erected every eighty feet, and the ballista bows were made of fine Sylvarresta steel. The ballistae were made in the style of Toom: a cranking winch would let a man tighten them, and then the whole ballista was mounted upon a seat that pivoted so that the marksman could quickly adjust his aim to the right or left, while the bow itself was perfectly weighted and could be raised and lowered. Thus a well-trained marksman could swivel quickly to take aim on any attacker and send a bolt flying.

Within the outer walls, the city rose in sections, seven walls in all, climbing more than a thousand feet above the plains. At the very crown of the hill stood the lord s tower, where in days of old dozens of far-seers had watched from the highest ramparts, and within the lord s tower was the Dedicates keep; nearby stood a broader, squatter tower-the graakerie, where the castle s messengers were housed alongside their giant flying reptiles.

The walls atop this majestic fortress were alive with soldiers-archers and marksmen by the thousands. Rhianna had never seen so many warriors gathered in one place.

"It looks like an ant mound," Sister Daughtry said. "The troops must have discovered that they have wyrmlings on their border. They re on high alert."

"We ll never breach those walls," one of the horse-sisters said. "It doesn t matter that we re Runelords."

"It looks like a good place to take endowments to me," Rhianna countered.

Sister Daughtry shook her head. "How do you propose that we take it? Those archers will make pincushions of us. I feel very small, squatting out here."

Rhianna studied the walls. Forty Runelords would find it hard to take the place. But the castle had its weakness. It had not been made to defend against an aerial attack. Until now, there had never been a need for such defenses.

"Give me a moment," Rhianna said. She steeled her nerve. Then she flapped and rose into the air, lazily, like a graak gaining altitude. She climbed in a spiral, winging above the outer walls, high above all of the walls, until she was fifteen hundred feet in the air.

She found currents to her liking up there, warm thermals just beginning to rise from the plains, and she rode them like a graak, her great leather wings held taut as she glided above the uppermost tower.

And then she dove, plummeting at eighty miles an hour.

There were no defenses to stop her from above. The archers on the outer wall had steel bows and the marksmen had their ballistae, but there were no defenders atop the lord s tower-only a pair of far-seers keeping watch.

As she neared the tower, she poured on speed. Five flaps of her wings sent her hurtling through the air at over a hundred miles per hour, faster than a falcon. She banked and rolled, dodging the pair of paltry arrows that assailed her from one of the battlements far below, then stretched her wings to break her fall.

Atop the lord s tower, the pair of old men who apparently still had endowments of sight backed away in terror; one of them grew so frightened that he tumbled over the railing.

Rhianna leapt past the last man, unlatched the portal from above, and leapt down into the tower, dropping forty feet, ignoring the ladder and breaking her fall with her wings.

She hit the floor running.

There were no guards to stop her. They were all down at the lower levels. She unlatched doors and raced through unopposed, and with her endowments of metabolism it took her twenty seconds to reach the queen s apartment.

They re lucky that I m not a Knight Eternal, Rhianna realized. Castle Lowicker is indefensible from the air. Which means that I must hunt the Knights Eternal down and slay them one by one, as quickly as possible, lest they come and kill my Dedicates.

A pair of guards stood at the queen s door. To Rhianna s surprise, in these days when so few men had any endowments, this pair was still strong.

But the battle was brief. The men had endowments, but had not seen a forcible in years. Most of those who had given them grace, brawn, and stamina seemed to have died long ago, so that they had mainly speed to their credit. A well-balanced Runelord needed strength and grace as well as speed. But these men were "warriors of unfortunate proportion."

She took pity on them, and did not slay them. She broke one man s arm when he tried to block a blow from her sword. She kicked the other savagely, smashing ribs, and left them both in a heap on the ground.

Better to leave them alive, she thought. They can vector their endowments to others, and make my people strong.

Inside the royal apartment, Allonia Lowicker was still asleep at this late hour, lying on a great four-post bed that could have slept a harem. Sheer curtains of lavender gauze hung like a net over above the bed, while its sheets and numerous pillows were all covered in whitest silk with lavender trim. The room was overly perfumed.

Queen Lowicker had never married. Rhianna discovered that she had a fondness for young maidens. Half a dozen of the naked creatures graced her bed.

They screamed like children and raced to cover themselves at the sight of Rhianna bursting through their door, with a bare blade in hand.

Allonia Lowicker stirred herself, looked up at Rhianna with puffy eyes. She was a young thing, not yet twenty-two years of age, and she was prettier than Rhianna had expected. Rumors of her older sister s unfortunate appearance had prepared Rhianna for the worst.

"My," Allonia Lowicker said, "aren t you a lovely thing. Are they wasting forcibles on glamour nowadays?"

Rhianna had almost forgotten that she had taken endowments of glamour. She had always had a certain sterile beauty, but now it was much enhanced.

"Queen Lowicker," Rhianna said, "surrender your realm."

"To whom?" Allonia said.

"The horse-sisters of Fleeds."

"Monsters to the east of me and Runelords to the west," Allonia said. "What ever shall I do? Oh, I know. You want my kingdom? Well you can have it."

Those who called her the Brat had spoken truly, Rhianna decided. There was a jarring petulant quality to this woman that Rhianna found disquieting. Almost, Rhianna wished that she could send the queen flying over the nearest parapet.

But the bravado was false. Rhianna could see that Allonia s face was pale, and her heart was beating in her chest like a caged bird. Her eyes were puffy. Obviously she had not slept well. Perhaps she had been up worrying about her kingdom through the night.

"I ll want your endowment as proof of surrender," Rhianna said. "And you must also convince your troops to lay down their arms. Those monsters at your door, they re called wyrmlings, and they re worse than anything you might have dreamed. I can save you from them. I can save your people. But I can t do it if I have to watch out for you over my shoulder."

The two endowments of voice that Rhianna had taken must have done their trick, for tears sprang to Allonia Lowicker s eyes, hot tears that went leaping down her cheeks in a stream.

"I know," she said, as if relieved to be rid of her kingdom. "I ll give it to you, whatever you want. Please, save my people."

Wit, Rhianna decided. She had to take Allonia s wit. A person who had given grace or stamina might be weakened, but they could still plot against you, still whisper into the ears of would-be conspirators. But a lord robbed of wit was nothing but a burden to those who cared for her-a creature that needed to be diapered and fed and sung to like a child.

"Wit," Rhianna said at last. "I want your wit."

Rhianna tried to demand the endowment stoically, but inside she felt that she was breaking.

I am becoming Raj Ahten, she thought. I am thinking as he thought, acting as he acted.

She knew the danger. She had shed blood before, and been seized by a locus. Fallion had burned the creature up, and said that she no longer had a stain on her soul.

But Rhianna was walking a thin line. She was acting like a wolf lord.

"You can have it," Allonia said. "With what I ve heard about the feeding habits of our new neighbors, I don t want to know what happens."

By midmorning, the Brat had a rune branded on her forehead, and Rhianna had her wit.

Queen Lowicker had several facilitators on staff, and they were quick to press local jewelers and silversmiths into service, preparing forcibles. Rhianna herself took a dozen more endowments each of glamour and voice.

Some women gazed upon her now and grew sick with envy. They looked upon her lustrous skin, her radiant eyes, and they despaired of ever being loved, while men gaped at her and seemed almost beyond restraint, like men who are dying of thirst and are suddenly confronted with water.

Rhianna took a few more endowments from Lowicker s nobles-sight, hearing, and touch, so that she would better find her way around when she breached the defenses of Rugassa, along with more brawn, grace, wit, and stamina.

Near noon, she went to where the wyrmling Kirissa was hiding from the sun. The wyrmling girl was forced to sit in an enclosed wagon, a crude carriage with windows that could be shuttered against the light.

Inside the wagon, Kirissa applied a salve to her sunburned skin. One of the horse-sisters had given it to her. She had not asked for it, and it seemed a great boon. In Rugassa, a wyrmling was expected to bear her pains stoically, as a sign of strength. No balm like this existed.

If the wyrmlings knew of such medicines, Kirissa thought, they would kill their masters and storm out of Rugassa, never to return.

So she rubbed it on the bridge of her nose and on her ears and cheeks and hands, the places where she d burned the most. The burn was a raging fire, but the touch of the balm soothed it instantly.

She prepared to hide the balm under her seat, in the wyrmling manner, to save for later.

Yet something about the salve intrigued her. It was a symbol. She had not asked for it. The horse-sister who had given it to her had done so for no other reason than that she saw that Kirissa was in pain, and the girl desired to help. She asked for no coin in return.

These people bear one another s burdens, Kirissa realized. They do not use others as tools, or seek solely to profit from them.

Kirissa was having a hard time divorcing herself from the wyrmling catechisms. Before the binding, part of herself had lived among the Inkarrans, but that shadow self had never been philosophically inclined.

In Kirissa s mind the whole notion of a society built not upon greed and fear, but upon love and compassion, seemed revolutionary.

Her thoughts began to explode. She could see how simple acts of kindness, multiplied over and over as tens of thousands of people per day made small gifts, might be the foundation for a new world.

In Inkarra, her people had prided themselves on fairness. Yes, elements of fear and greed were used to motivate people, but primarily her society was founded upon fairness.

Perhaps things were different here.

She had heard of the horse-sisters, but Kirissa had lived so far away that the horse-sisters were no more than fables. Legends said that these women had the bodies of horses and the heads and breasts of women, because long ago they bred with horses.

So when the winged woman, Rhianna, came early that afternoon with Sister Gadron to the wagon to speak, Kirissa was eager to get to know Rhianna better. Earlier, Kirissa had been able to ask only a few questions.

Rhianna began speaking through the translator and began to query Kirissa in detail. "When we reach Rugassa, how can we enter without being seen?" she asked.

"You can t," Kirissa said. "The wyrmlings watch by day and night. Many eyes will be following you as you approach."

"How many guards are at each entrance?"

"I don t know," Kirissa said. "I saw a dozen when I left the fortress, but that was the only time I ve ever been through an outer gate."

"What defenses do the guards employ?"

"There are kill holes above each entrance," Kirissa said, "and hidden tunnels behind the walls. Once you enter the labyrinth, you must fear getting lost. There are other defenses. Some of the main tunnels can be flooded with magma if the need is pressing."

Rhianna went on like this for an hour, grilling Kirissa about troop strengths, about the quarters where the Knights Eternal slept, about the habits of Death Lords-asking questions that Kirissa really could not answer. Rhianna asked about other threats-the emperor himself, the Great Wyrm, and the kezziard pens. She asked about other creatures within the pens-giant graaks and things that were stranger still-but while Kirissa had heard tales of creatures from the shadow worlds, she had never seen such things herself.

At the end of that hour, Rhianna began speaking to Kirissa in Inkarran. Rhianna s vocabulary was limited, childishly so, and in some instances she confused the order of words, but the words were precisely formed and Kirissa could understand her intent.

More interestingly, though Rhianna was human, she spoke to Kirissa in her own voice, in the deep voice of a wyrmling.

She learns faster than any wyrmling, Kirissa realized. She has memorized every word that I have spoken in the past hour.

Kirissa stared at her in awe. Rhianna was of the small folk, and her size was unimpressive. But it had been hundreds of years since a human had slain a Knight Eternal.

This is a mighty lord, Kirissa realized, as dangerous as Emperor Zul-torac himself.

But she had little time to ponder the implications of this observation, for Rhianna immediately began to delve into new topics, having the translator ask, "How do you tell a wyrmling to surrender? How do you say, Throw down your weapons."

"I think that it is unwise to ask them to surrender," Kirissa said. "They will only arm themselves again later, and come after you in greater numbers."

Then Rhianna asked her one final question. "If you were to return to Rugassa, what would be done to you?"

Kirissa thought long about that. "They would kill me," she said. "But they would torture me first, in order to punish me."

"Will they take you to the dungeons where Fallion is kept?"

"Yes," Kirissa said, growing worried at her line of questioning.

"If I asked you to do this for me, would you do it? Would you let yourself be captured?"

Kirissa recognized what Rhianna needed. Kirissa would not be able to find her way down to the dungeons. Even if she had known the way, she would slow down a pack of force soldiers intent upon a quick strike.

"How would you know where they take me?" Kirissa asked.

"I m a Runelord," she said. "I have a small tincture of perfume, sandal-wood oil. I would place it on you and then follow the scent. No matter where they took you, I would be able to find you."

Kirissa was afraid to volunteer for such a ruse. The Earth King had warned her long ago that the time would come when the small folk of the world would need to stand against the large, but she had always thought that she would meet her enemy with a good blade in hand-an ax or scimitar.

It was only the Earth King s words that gave her the courage to say, "Yes, I will go down with you. But we may need Cullossax s key if we are to breach the dungeons."

Rhianna gave a meaningful look to Sister Gadron.

"I ll get right on it," Sister Gadron said.

As it turned out she did not have to go far to get the key. A wyrmling s necklace with an ornate key carved from bone had seemed a fine trophy to one of the horse-sisters.

The summer sun shone down with the intensity of a blast furnace as Rhianna came winging to Caer Luciare, its white granite walls gleaming.

She flew over the market streets, with their cobbled stones and quaint shops. The folk of Caer Luciare had favored vivid colors-bold peach, avocado, and plum-but now the gay shops clashed with the macabre decor of the new inhabitants. The wyrmlings had already begun marking everything with their crude glyphs-images of Lord Despair as a world wyrm, rising up. Other glyphs showed the image of the Stealer of Souls, a spidery creature, or of various clan markings that she was just beginning to recognize-the dog s head of the Fang Guards, or the three black skulls of the Piled Skulls clan.

Every cottage and market was somehow defiled. Either windows were shattered or doors caved in, or vile drawings covered the walls.

Like dogs, Rhianna realized. The wyrmlings are like dogs peeing on trees and bushes. There is some inner dictum that forces them to mar or destroy the lands that they take.

But it was more than just the paintings that adorned the places. The carnage looked worse than she remembered. It wasn t just the new damage to structures or the sickening graffiti. The wyrmlings had not yet begun to reclaim their dead after the battle, so now their white corpses lay strewn about, stomachs bloating and festering, oozing foul smells that rose up on the thermals. With her endowments of scent, the odors seemed overwhelming.

The dead were not just part of the decor, she realized, they were the centerpiece.

Rhianna dropped to the ledge of a lower wall, near where Jaz had died. She saw bloodstains on the cobblestones that might have been his. His body lay hacked and ruined.

My brother, she thought, look what they ve done to him.

She did not care if the wyrmlings saw her there. She suspected that some were watching from Caer Luciare, from the dark corridors. Certainly there were enough spy holes in the place. But none would dare issue forth in this blazing sun to test her prowess in battle. And if they did, she would be happy to show them a thing or two.

So she stood for a long moment, weeping above Jaz s corpse. "The wyrmlings have a lot to answer for," she said to him. "And I shall make them pay."

But first, she thought, I need a weapon that will kill a Death Lord.

That was what she had come for. She had lost her staff while fighting against Vulgnash, the staff that the Wizard Binnesman had inscribed with runes and magic stones for the Earth King Gaborn Val Orden.

Vulgnash s endowments of metabolism had been too much for Rhianna to overcome. She hadn t been able to even come close to hitting him. And after the folk of Caer Luciare had fled, she d been afraid to return for the staff.

But now she was ready to meet Vulgnash once again.

She turned and flew to the upper wall, where Fallion had taken his wound, and where she had slain a Knight Eternal. She found the mummified corpse still lying on the ground, its crimson robes draped about it. Rhianna kicked the corpse over. Carrion beetles crawled about underneath it, went blindly scattering this way and that, seeking to escape the sunlight.

Rhianna separated the robe from the corpse.

Odd, she thought, that the wyrmlings haven t scavenged from their own dead.

But then she began to wonder. Perhaps that was the point. Perhaps it wasn t out of laziness that the wyrmlings had left their dead on the battlefield untouched-but more out of respect.

These wyrmlings had died on the field of honor, and now it appeared that they would remain-in some sort of macabre memorial.

Rhianna had heard of people in Indhopal who would not touch their dead for three days, as a token of respect.

It might only be something like that, she thought.

She threw off her own robe and draped herself in the cowled bloody red robes of a Knight Eternal.

Flying fast, she wouldn t be distinguishable from one of them.

She flew to the base of the mountain, beneath the parapet where Warlord Madoc had fallen.

The Earth King s staff should be near here, she thought. But she could not find it. Warlord Madoc lay dead and broken upon a rock, his back arched painfully, arms spread wide, his dead eyes gazing up into the sun.

But Rhianna couldn t see the staff.

She hoped that wyrmlings had not defiled the weapon, as they had the buildings. She knew that the Death Lords had tried to curse the weapon, destroy it that way.

But after several seconds, she could not see it.

There were a number of large rocks here, scree from the tunneling in the mountain up above.

Perhaps, she thought, it has fallen under the rubble where I cannot see it. She began to peer around, peeking down under the shadows.

Just then, she heard a noise above. She glanced up to see a large boulder bouncing down from a parapet. She leapt aside as it slammed into the ground, then went bouncing away.

Perhaps the sun is not as great a deterrent as I d imagined, Rhianna thought.

She heard the gruff laugh of a wyrmling coming from somewhere far up the mountain, drifting down. He called out a taunt.

She did not need a translator. The tone said it all: I know what you re looking for. Come and get it if you dare.

Suddenly, she realized how dangerous that just might be.

The wyrmlings have had a night to dig up ore from the mountain, and two full days to refine it and take endowments. Surely they have done so by now.

Their taunts are not idle threats.

Rhianna leapt up and flew away.

I will have to go to Rugassa without my staff, she realized.