The Doom of Kings_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [151]
Chetiin appeared in Ashi’s chamber. “The bugbear owed too much money to the wrong people,” he said. “It’s nothing more sinister than that.”
“I used my dragonmark in the assembly today,” she told him. “If Haruuc was somehow tapping the power of the rod, it would have protected me. There was nothing.”
“Haruuc has always been able to whip a crowd into a frenzy. People are just excited. Having an enemy creates unity.”
On 22 Rhaan, less than a week after they returned with the rod, Dagii was gone again. He rode north out of Rhukaan Draal at the head of a column of soldiers almost three hundred strong—far larger, Ashi learned, than an inexperienced leader of his rank might normally command. The force was swollen, however, by troops from half a dozen clans, sent by warlords and clan chiefs eager to see the Gan’duur brought down. Most of the troops were infantry. An elite handful were Darguul cavalry, hobgoblins mounted on tigers and goblins mounted on leopards, separated from those officers mounted on horses. They left Rhukaan Draal with as much pageantry as Tariic had displayed on entering Sentinel Tower. Pipes wailed, drums throbbed.
The column marched to battle, however, not just in parade. Ashi remembered the fanciful armor that Tariic had worn when he came before House Deneith, still functional but ornate. In contrast, Dagii wore armor scarred by fighting. It wasn’t the armor that he’d worn on their journey into the mountains, but something older and heavier. The only decoration it bore was the three horns of a tribex that must have been massive in life, mounted one behind each shoulder and one in the small of his back. They rose like banner poles and would mark him out in the swirl of combat, a mobile rallying point for his men.
“It’s the armor of the lord of his clan,” Ekhaas said beside her as they watched the troops pass from the fire-scarred walls of the House Orien compound. “Mur Talaan means ‘horned shoulders.’ His father wore it before him, his father before that, and back through five generations.”
Ashi glanced at the duur’kala. Before Dagii had ridden to the head of the column, she’d seen her approach and pass a small casket up to him. A casket that flashed in the afternoon sun like gold and iron. “Was that the reliquary of Duural Rhuvet you gave him?” she asked. “The one you took from the tower in Karrlakton?”
Ekhaas’s ears bent. “I admire Dagii, but he will need inspiration if he’s to win this battle,” she said stiffly.
“I would have thought it had already vanished into the vaults of Volaar Draal.”
“I haven’t had a chance to present it to Senen Dhakaan yet. We left so soon after we arrived from Karrlakton, and we’ve been so busy since we returned.”
Ekhaas’s voice remained level, but a flush crept into her face. Ashi raised an eyebrow. Ekhaas scowled and turned away. Holding back a laugh, Ashi looked along the street below to where Haruuc waited on horseback at the foot of the bridge across the Ghaal River, his two shava flanking him. Dagii stopped and thumped a fist against his chest in salute. The lhesh said something, and Dagii sat up straight for a moment, then nodded deeply and saluted again. At a glance from Haruuc, Vanii urged his horse forward to stand beside Dagii’s. The two of them saluted in unison and rode on, leaving Haruuc with only Geth behind him.
Ekhaas, it seemed, had not been the only one who thought Dagii might need guidance in the battle to come.
A week after Dagii had led his soldiers away to the north, it was Ashi’s turn to leave.
Messenger falcons brought word that the new lhevk-rhu had engaged the Gan’duur, bottling Keraal up in his primary stronghold. Raiders who had stayed outside the walls to harry the attackers had been captured in a clever deception devised