Dragon Castle Read online

  It’s Paulek, who leaped at the same moment I did. His right hand brandishes the blades, his left is holding Zatchni just as I am holding Teraz.

  “Even when I didn’t realize she was old enough to be our great-grandmother I knew she was too old for me.”

  His expression is clear-eyed. The moony look returns for a moment to his face. Then he crosses his eyes, grins, and elbows me so hard in the ribs it will probably leave a bruise.

  The old Paulek is back.

  But was he ever gone? Is my brother cagier than I thought? Was he merely pretending to be entranced? Just playing along with the baron until our parents returned or it reached the point where our only choice was to fight? Tactics?

  Was that why he invited them into our castle after seeing how much greater their force was than ours—just to stall for time and avoid any of our people being injured in a siege? Has he been counting on me to find a way to save the day all along?

  One thing is certain. No matter what, I can count on my brother to stand firmly by me in any time of obvious peril. Even though a well-armed phalanx of grim-eyed guards is plowing toward us, I feel strangely happy.

  Part of the reason for my feeling of well-being is that Teraz is so pretty and so close to me. How could I ever have mistaken her for a boy?

  “Je mi luto,” I say to her. “I am sorry.”

  Her response is to elbow me in the stomach with almost as much strength as one of my brother’s bonebruising blows.

  “Blbec,” she says again, “Idiot!” But this time her voice is almost comradely. “Don’t be sorry. Bojus! Fight!”

  Then she turns so her back is against mine and she can see what is coming from behind.

  Right. I bend my knees slightly, roll my shoulders to loosen the muscles. Out of the corner of my eye I see Paulek do the same. As has happened during times of mock combat, my mind is racing ahead so quickly that the attackers, who’ve now broken through the throng, seem to be moving slowly. The first cut will come from that mercenary at the front of their phalanx. Heavily armored like the rest, he’s broad-shouldered, sure of himself. He’s missing an upper front tooth, his nose appears to have been broken more than once, and there’s a large mole with two black hairs protruding from it on his right cheek. Shorter than me by a head, he plans to remove mine with his cocked sword. The look of anticipation in Gaptooth’s eyes tells me he’s done this sort of thing before and enjoyed it.

  What to do? Receive and parry? His greater bulk and the speed of his attack might carry him into me. Try to disarm him with a cut at his wrist? Slash at his legs?

  Thirty feet before he reaches us, something comes sliding across the smooth wooden floor. Twice the length and three times the thickness of a spear, it’s one of the tall iron torch holders from the side of the room. Thrown with perfect aim and timing, it cracks into Gaptooth’s ankles. His head-thudding descent to the hardwood floor knocks loose not only his shield and sword but also an additional incisor. The mass of men behind him, unable to stop in time, trip over his body. Weighed down, made clumsy by their armor, they crash to the floor.

  Conveniently, Gaptooth’s sword and shield both come bouncing toward my feet.

  I drop the dagger. Well, not exactly. Actually, I hurl it at one still-standing soldier who, farther to the side, avoided falling into the groaning mass of prostrate men. My aim with the unfamiliar knife is good. The double blade pierces his left boot—and foot—collapsing him onto the pile of disabled attackers.

  The shield rolls past me like a wheel, but I manage to snatch up the sword. It’s not the best. Its blade is notched, its handle wrapped with wire. But the dark stains near its hilt are not from rust. It’s done the work of death in the past. It balances well in my hand. It will do to defend our front—though I’d feel better if I had managed to also grab that shield.

  To my surprise, the shield appears beside me. I turn slightly, catch the eyes of Teraz as she braces that buckler to cover our left. Her large eyes, brown as those of a doe, have a fine, fighting glow in them right now. She’s no helpless maiden in distress. Fiercely ready to fight, the fire in her eyes is quite striking.

  “Zobud sa! Wake up!” she says.

  A knife comes hurtling at us from somewhere in the crowd. Teraz hardly looks at it as she quickly raises the shield to deflect it.

  “Tam!” she says. “There!”

  What a melodic voice!

  She raises her hand, grasps me by the chin, and turns my head toward the front.

  A second group of somewhat more tentative mercenaries is advancing. Having seen that torch holder come flying out of nowhere, they’re looking over their shoulders.

  Who did that?

  I know, of course. But as I scan the hall, I see no sign of our old teacher.

  Paulek leans his head back toward me again. I take note out of the corner of my eyes that he is still armed with one of the captured blades. The other knife is not in his belt. He’s placed it into the competent hand of Zatchni.

  “Black Yanosh never taught us that move,” he says.

  “Ano,” I agree. “Good one to remember.”

  Zatchni punches my brother in the chest. “No time for jokes,” she says.

  Paulek responds by grinning at her.

  “What is wrong with you two?” Teraz asks, her eyes on our adversaries. Her tone is that of a mother trying to get the attention of two slow-witted children.

  How can I explain to her and her sister just how happy I am to have my brother by my side again and, even in this potentially fatal situation, how much I’m enjoying her company?

  That enjoyment may be short-lived. A third, larger group of armed men has entered the hall. They’re advancing, one slow step at a time, from our right.

  Paulek and I stay shoulder to shoulder as we start to move. Zatchni and Teraz retreat with us as we shuffle back and to the side toward the door that leads down to the treasure cave.

  More of the baron’s men, five of them, are heading that same way to flank us. However, they do not see the two large, furry shapes creeping up behind them.

  “Aghhh! Pozri! Look out! Nie!”

  The shouts and gurgling screams are followed by silence, then two satisfied growls.

  Got them all.

  Ucta and Odvaha come to stand at our sides.

  “Our little doggies,” Paulek explains to Zatchni.

  “Our two sweet puppies, who would not harm a fly,” I say.

  “However, armed men are not flies,” Paulek concludes with a straight face.

  We can’t help it.

  Zatchni rolls her eyes, then reaches out her hand to pat Ucta and Odvaha on their huge heads.

  Teraz mouths the word “fools” and shakes her head again. But the side of her mouth curls up a little bit.

  Not surprisingly, the crowd of celebrants has thinned out. The ordinary citizens have all exited hastily and ungracefully out the back doors. Now we can see not only the whole of our great hall but also the dais where Temny stands, his pose that of an emperor. Only Temny’s allies have not seized this chance to depart from the fray.

  “Poor manners,” I say to Teraz. “Not one of those who left stopped to thank us for a good time.”

  This time Teraz laughs out loud. “Prestan,” she quickly adds. “Stop it.”

  I’m ready to make another quick quip. But the baron beats me to it.

  “Hold!” Temny’s command is hard as iron. It halts his men in their tracks.

  He turns to us, stretches out his arms.

  “My young friends,” he intones, his gaze falsely benevolent. “My soon-to-be-relatives.”

  His deep, reassuring voice is hypnotic. I feel his magic seeking a foothold. It’s like the strands of a spiderweb that stick to your face as you pass through a dark hallway.

  Poteshenie stands slightly behind her lord, mouthing something under her breath. Her hands move as if weaving on an invisible loom. Once again, she seems a perfectly lovely girl in her teens, not a mature woman with hints of
gray in her hair.

  “Poor young mad girls.” Temny gestures toward Teraz and Zatchni. His voice oozes pity. “From my small kingdom. Their parents died in a plague. Grief deranged them. They imagine themselves princesses, bereft of a throne they never owned.”

  He pauses, sketches a shape in the air.

  “Poor young mad girls. They imagine me and my . . . daughter as the agents of their woes. Poor young mad girls.” He throws out both hands as if tossing a ball.

  I feel the force of the incantation. It’s meant to catch Paulek and me like a net. I raise my hand as one might guard against a strike from a more solid and visible weapon. The failed enchantment scatters around us in tatters.

  From the raised eyebrows of Temny and the disgruntled grimace on Poteshenie’s face, they didn’t expect this. Temny opens his mouth to say something further.

  “Liar!” Teraz shouts. Her mouth is so close to my ear that she almost deafens me. However, her warm breath washing over my cheek is pleasant.

  “Conjuring beast!” Zatchni adds.

  I raise my captured sword. As I do so, my wrist grazes the object hidden beneath my doublet. It sends a fiery tingle up my arm, an expanding wave of heat that flows to the center of my being. I open my hand. The battered blade clanks down on the boards as I reach into my shirt.

  Teraz gasps. Temny’s smile intensifies. He thinks his words have disarmed me.

  “Nie,” my brother shouts. He grabs up the sword and points it at Temny. “You’ll not fool my brother again.”

  Regardless of the fact that I was not fooled before, I am proud of Paulek right now. He looks every inch a hero: tall, strong, and determined. From the expression on her face, Zatchni is just as impressed.

  As my fingers find the pouch, I can see from Temny’s scowl that he knows his attempts at deception have failed. What follows now will be force.

  No more than a few heartbeats have passed since Teraz and Zatchni’s unsuccessful attack on the false pair who loom there above us. But it has been long enough for the word to reach Temny’s ranks outside.

  Even more men than I expected are pouring in through the courtyard doors to our beleaguered hall. Mercenaries are often men of low or no character, ready to do anything for a fistful of coins. Our false baron appears to have gathered every one of that ilk from the twelve kingdoms. A hundred or more swordsmen stand shoulder to shoulder before us. Behind those bladesmen are at least twenty archers. Razor-tipped arrows are fitted to the strings of their longbows.

  Temny points at the archers, then back at us. He raises his mailed fist. When he drops it, they’ll let those deadly missiles fly.

  A hooded figure bursts out from behind the wall hanging. Metal flashes as he darts through the startled ranks of enemy bowmen. Some are so surprised that they let go their arrows before Temny can give the command meant to turn us into pincushions.

  However, the released arrows do not fly through the air, but fall to the ground at the feet of the archers. With his two sharp steels, long blade in right hand, short blade in left, Black Yanosh has severed their bowstrings. Some of those bowmen are now bent over and crying out in pain. Not only did Black Yanosh effectively disarm them, they were also defingered as he spun like a white-mustached whirlwind through their midst.

  Three leaping steps, precise as a dancing master, and our loyal old weapons teacher is with us, adding further protection to our left flank.

  “Dakujem,” I say.

  Black Yanosh raises one perfectly shaped white eyebrow at me, then strokes his mustache.

  “Did I not teach you to never give up your weapon?” he asks, eyeing my empty right hand.

  “Unless, sir,” I reply, looking down at what I’m holding in my left, “I can exchange it for a better one.”

  My fingers have finally untied and loosened the mouth of the brown leather pouch. As I start to reach my hand inside I note that the hundred hardened grim-faced swordsmen are about to attack us.

  The odds are terribly uneven. How sad. For them.

  “We defy you,” Zatchni cries, pointing her blade at Temny.

  “You and that ugly hag at your side,” Teraz shouts. Then, clearly knowing another woman’s most mortal weakness, she adds, “How could anyone ever mistake her for a princess? Look at that ugly dress she’s wearing. I’ve seen finer frocks on a fishwife.”

  Poteshenie snarls and thrusts forward past her husband. Her pinched face is twisted as she raises both her hands above her head and balls them into fists.

  “Smrt,” she shrieks. “Death! We kill you all now.” Her voice is indeed hag- and fishwife-like.

  “Nie.” Temny’s chill voice is like the rasp of serpent’s scales against stone. He grasps his wife’s shoulder and draws her back. “Capitan Mral, Capitan Burka, take them alive,” he commands. “I want their death to be slow, wracked with exquisite pain.”

  Those words bring a happy smile back to his spouse’s features.

  Two cold-eyed, black-armored men step forward. I’ve not seen them before. They must have arrived with further reinforcements for the baron while I was gone. Mral and Burka. Cloud and Thunderstorm. They’re both built like bears, but are likely less civilized.

  Mral lifts his large right hand from the hilt of his sword. He makes a half circle in the air that ends pointing at his own lower legs.

  A dozen new bowmen edge to the fore, step in front of the ranks of soldiers. They nock their arrows, raise their bows, move until they are only twenty feet from us. They aim low. The plan is to disable us. Easier to take an adversary alive once brought down by a shaft in thigh or calf.

  My hand is now well inside the leather pouch. It is deeper than it looks. But my fingers are touching something solid. Before I can get hold of it, Paulek surprises me again. He pushes me to the side and lunges forward with the speed of a diving hawk. Each swift stomp of his forward foot is accompanied by not only a great heroic shout but an effective slash or thrust of his blade.

  “Raz! Dva! Tri!”

  His quick attack is as tactical as it is effective. Most of that line of bowmen have been felled or had their weapons cut in two before he retreats back to us as quickly as he advanced. Zatchni and Teraz look thrilled.

  In truth, I’m not as pleased as are they. Paulek’s lightning attack has not just wounded, but fatally felled some of those who stood before us just a few breaths ago. The edge of his blade is stained from tip to hilt with the lifeblood of men who will never rise again. I know my brother well. I’ve seen him climb trees to return small fallen birds to their nests. If we survive, the realization will come to him that his actions meant some mothers will never see their sons again—even if the dark deeds of those men earned them such a fate. Seven of those he attacked look to be dead or gravely wounded.

  Two others also fell, but not at my brother’s blade. The knife I’d thrust into my belt is gone. That’s another reason Zatchni and Teraz are exultant. They contributed to the tally of fallen foes.

  Mral was one of them. So surprised—or contemptuous of one young woman daring to confront a man in full armor—he stood unmoving as Zatchni ran at him. His armor did not stop her swift stroke to the side of his throat.

  Burka had swung at Teraz with his sword. But the buckler she carried absorbed the blow.

  “Svina!” she’d shouted, “Pig,” as the quick thrust of her double blade slid into the narrow chink in the side of his armor and her narrow knife reached his heart.

  “That was the one who killed Mother,” Teraz says, tears in her eyes.

  Zatchni squeezes her sister’s shoulder. “Neither will ever murder another child as they did our little cousin.”

  Black Yanosh’s back bumps against mine. “The back stairs,” he says in a low voice only I can hear as he turns to face the raised podium. “Now.”

  I know what’s in his mind. It was one of his first lessons to us.

  When fighting a snake, strike at its head.

  My hands are occupied again with the pouch as I fish around tryi
ng to find that elusive circular shape again. I can’t stop Yanosh as he turns and leaps like a leopard toward the dais where the authors of all this evil stand.

  His long steel is aimed at Temny’s black heart. His short blade is raised like a dagger to stab down into that vulnerable space between neck and collarbone where a killing strike may sink deep. So sudden, so beautifully lethal is his attack, that it seems for an instant as if it might succeed.

  “Cierny vietor! Black wind!” Those two words explode from Temny’s mouth in a harsh cough of breath that expands into a dark-tendrilled cloud. It ensnares Black Yanosh in mid-leap.

  Our old weapons master tries to escape, but cannot. The thick dark wraps itself about him, pinning his arms to his sides. He’s still holding his blades, but his struggles are to no avail. The inky mass squeezes its charcoal coils tighter, an endless headless serpent.

  Temny laughs. Our old teacher’s ribs are as stout as oak staves, but under such pressure even strong bones will crack.

  Poteshenie holds up her hands, curled as if grasping an invisible ball. Small sparks flicker between her fingertips. She’s also about to release something sorcerous.

  Something finally comes—as if of its own accord—to my grasp. I yank my right hand from Prince Pavol’s pouch and lift the eagle feather that found its way to my questing fingertips. As I raise that plume, it seems too large and perfect to have been in so small a sack.

  Pavol’s silent voice speaks two words to me.

  Jasny vietor!

  I repeat them aloud.

  “Jasny vietor! Clear wind!”

  The feather bends in my hand. A buffeting gust bursts forth as if from the wing-stroke of a great bird. It peels the suffocating mass from Black Yanosh, tears it into thin strands of smoke that dissipate and disappear. That same blast, filled with the cleansing scent of a spring breeze, strikes the baron and his wife.

  Temny takes a step backward, but braces himself and barely manages to stay upright. Poteshenie, though, is bowled over. She tumbles back, rolls head over heels, and ends up under the great table in an ungraceful heap.

  Rather than assist his partner in treachery, Temny ignores her and her inventive string of curses as she struggles to her feet, trying to comb back with her fingers the rat’s nest of disarranged hair that has fallen across her face.