The Dragon's Doom - Ed Greenwood [90]
"All hail the Great Serpent," a weak voice husked from nearby. The overdukes turned to see the priest Craer had felled earlier lying on his side, with the fire-serpent reflected in his dying eyes. The man swallowed, struggled to speak as blood welled from his mouth, and then managed a single word: "Auncrauthador!"
As the two overdukes traded grim shrugs of foreboding, they felt the prickling of magic, and then the cold weight of hostile regard.
Some Serpent-lover was watching them from afar. Probably from yon hilltop, because now they could also hear-as if borne on a faint wind, but against the breeze sighing over the battlements from behind them, blowing toward the hill-chanting… a hissing chant: Serpent-worship.
Sudden shrieks arose in the castle yard below. Hawkril and Craer looked down, and saw cortahars and Storn folk stabbing each other with blades, clawing each other barehanded, and running wildly here and there.
Two strides took Craer to the dying priest. He slapped the man's face, and those dull eyes flickered. "What's causing this? This butchery and fighting? Hey?"
Bloody lips trembled to shape a last smile, and the priest whispered gloatingly, "Blood Plague. The Blood Plague is come at last."
12
A Surfeit of Plague
Fire leaped up in the night. Flaeros Delcamper stared at it-and then at another tongue of flame, shooting up to scorch the stars some distance away, probably at the next village. He frowned. "T'isn't festival time. What's going on?"
There were only three other paying passengers on the trade barge. One was asleep, but the other two were gawking at the flames just as he was. "What's going on?" he demanded again, but one of them-the trim-bearded Sirl merchant in green-just shook his head in silent bewilderment.
The barge crew had been rowing steadily against the steady flow of the river, keeping the barge to the most placid bankside shallows, but they'd seen the nightfires, too-and their response, without waiting for orders, was to stroke more swiftly.
For a moment the barge moved raggedly, and then settled into a new, faster rhythm. The breeze was quickening, too, and for the first time those afloat heard faint screams and shouts.
Flaeros strode toward the barge captain, sitting on his high perch and staring into the night ahead. Several of the hired Sirl guards moved to block his way, but the captain said a single quiet word and they drew back to allow the bard through.
Master Rold did not halt his ceaseless scanning of the way ahead as Flaeros approached. He'd caught up a double-ended metal spear from somewhere, and was holding it ready across his lap.
Even before the bard could open his mouth to repeat his queston, the master of the Silver Fin gave him a flat stare and said, "I don't know either, sir bard-but I'd much appreciate it if you'd stand quiet and just watch and listen, until I tell you different. Panic aboard makes our tasks no easier. So look sharp for archers or others on the banks who could menace us, and otherwise…"
"Keep my jaw shut?"
The barge captain nodded once, and resumed his steady scanning of the waters ahead and the banks around them.
Flaeros sighed, then said, "Very well. I agree if you'll tell me one thing- full truth, mind. I promise not to share your answer with…" He waved his hand to indicate the other passengers, now pacing nervously as new fires sprang up in the night-strange tall, narrow pillars of flame. The sleeping man had awakened, it seemed, and was going about asking very much the same thing Flaeros had been.
The barge captain watched those askings, sighed, and said flatly, "Ask your one thing, Lord Delcamper."
"Why are we on the water? Silverflow barges don't normally travel by night, and I remember us tying up and bedding down. When I came awake, there were one or two of these fires and we were under way again. Why?"
The breezes brought them more screaming; the folk doing it sounded terrified. "Is Aglirta at war?"
The barge captain shrugged. "As to war, the shouting and the