King's Dragon (Crown of Stars #1)

King's Dragon (Crown of Stars #1) Page 184

But they needed no weapons, not this time. The wagons did indeed belong to Mayor Werner. They lurched and careened over the two ruts that served as road. The mayor himself, red-faced and flushed with weeping, sat in the front of a wagon driven by—

“Wolfhere!” Liath leaped out and ran forward, jogging—almost dancing—beside the wagon as it pitched and jolted the rest of the way up the hill, coming to rest at last beside the two poor huts of the oat farmer.

Wolfhere swung down, looked her over carefully, then beckoned to the farmer. “Show these servants where they can build a fire. Somewhere out of the way.”

“And alert the Eika?” the man protested.

Wolfhere made an impatient gesture with a hand. “They have found better prey today than the poor pickings they could scavenge here.” The farmer retreated obediently.

“I saw Gent,” said Liath. She could not take her eyes off Wolfhere. She could not believe he was alive. “It’s burning.”

“So it was when we left.”

“How did you get out?” She stared back, hoping to see—

But there were no Dragons in attendance, only servants from the palace, about thirty of them walking alongside the ten wagons. A pale, pretty woman drove in the last of the wagons and, dry-eyed and grim, began to rub down the horses. Liath recognized her: She was the servingwoman who had, everyone knew, been carrying on an affair with the prince. Would she weep for her lover? Or was she only glad to be alive?

A man came up beside her to aid her; in the wagon’s bed a girl-child raised her head weakly to look around. It was the pair she had saved from the streets, father and daughter.

Refugees from the tunnel swarmed forward, surrounding Mayor Werner, drowning him in questions and pleas and demands. “Where is my husband? Do you know what happened to my mother? Has my brother been seen? What of the mint? My father guarded there. Does the biscop yet live?”

And on, and on. Like a coward, she thought bitterly, the mayor had saved himself rather than die in the defense of his city. That duty he had left to Prince Sanglant and the Dragons.

“My good people,” he cried, wiping tears from his cheeks. How she had come to hate his voice, filled with self-importance and a trace of the whiny, indulged son he had been. “Pray, grant me silence. There is no time to waste. We must begin to march. It will take many days to reach Steleshame, and most among us are weak or young. We have emptied the stores from the palace. This must serve us on our journey. Listen to my words!” Now, finally, the ragged band of refugees had quieted and drawn closer while yet others still emerged, in ones and twos, from the cave mouth.

“Let the elder children shepherd the younger, and let the children be divided into groups so there will be no confusion and none left behind. Let those who are strong enough carry food on their backs, so there may be room in the wagons for those whose legs grow weak. We will pass out bread now. In one hour we begin our journey. We dare not wait longer than that.”

With that he turned and began directing his servants. The pretty servingwoman pulled back the heavy cloth that had been draped over the foodstuffs in her wagon, and she began distributing bread with the efficiency of long practice, aided again by the father. Deacons began to organize the children into groups of ten, each under the command of an adolescent. A woman, sobbing quietly, nursed her infant while another child clung to her skirts. One of the slender acrobats came up cautiously to the woman and offered her and the child bread. At the cave’s mouth, more refugees stumbled out into the noontide glare. Now, however, there were servants to guide them to food and a place to rest until the next stage of the journey began. Now, one in five of the refugees were adults with wounds or singed clothing; there were, perhaps, eight hundred people in the oat field. She judged, by measuring the height of the sun with her fingers, that she had emerged an hour or so ago. Would the Dragons never come?

But of course they would not. Prince Sanglant would not leave the city until every last soul was safe or dead.

“Liath.” Wolfhere beckoned. She followed him back behind the hut where the farmer had built a fire in an outdoor hearth. It blazed merrily, a lattice of sticks that collapsed as those at the lowest rung burned to ash. The farmer set more logs on the fire and, at a sign from Wolfhere, retreated, leaving them alone.

“We must look,” said Wolfhere.

“How did you get free?” she asked. “Did any others—?

Where is Manfred?”

He shook his head. For the first time she saw his mouth tighten, concealing heart’s pain. “We loaded the stores into the wagons and made our way to the western gate. Others fled the city by that gate as well, though many died at the hands of Eika. Some may have escaped. But we came later. By that time the battle that started at the eastern gate had grown until it engulfed half the city. So we were able to get away with less trouble. We lost only one wagon, and that because its axle broke. And we met Dragons—”