Linsha tore a strip from her linen shirt and tied it over her nose and mouth. She forced her feet to move forward one after the other, and she found that the more she moved, the easier the movement became. Her bruised muscles and battered joints warmed to the effort. She headed toward the Mayor’s Hall in the center of the city with the plan to go on to Mirage and the Legion Headquarters if she could find no one there. More people crowded past her, their panic making them blind and thoughtless to everything but escape. She had to shove and beat her way through several mobs that streamed around her, threatening to carry her with them like floodwaters.
She grabbed one man who bled from several minor wounds to his head and shouted at him for information. From his uniform and weapons she took him for a soldier of the city watch, but he shook her off, threw his sword to the ground, and fled. Linsha picked up the sword. Short bladed and evenly balanced, it sat in her hand comfortably and gave her a small feeling of relief to be holding a weapon again. She pressed on deeper into the city.
Not far from the row of guild houses marking the edge of the Port District, Linsha was forced to stop to catch her breath. She leaned against a stone wall, the linen strip clamped over her mouth, and tried to catch some clean air from a gust that swept in from the sea. She knew where she was now, and it seemed to be the right way, but she sensed a large fire somewhere ahead of her. When the sea gust died, the smoke poured back over the streets, thick and hot and suffocating. She could hear a babble of voices strident with fear and anger and determination.
Then she heard something else-the clatter of hooves. They came from behind her, sharp and staccato, and something about them sounded familiar. She stood upright in time to see a centaur materialize out of the pall of smoke.
“Leonidas!” she yelled, leaping in his path.
The young stallion’s hooves slid on the slick paving stones in his effort to stop. He yanked his javelin out of her way and barely managed to keep his footing without banging into the stone wall.
“Lady Linsha!” he bellowed, swinging around to face her. “Do not do that to me!” And in the next breath, “What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?” she countered. “Shouldn’t you be at the city defenses?” The centaur, she noticed, was sweating profusely and grimy with smoke and dirt.
He gave his equine body a shake, sending a cloud of dust and hair into the smoky air. “I was. But I have to find the Legion. Caphiathus sent me to tell Falaius. There are armed warriors marching on the city. From the west.” He spoke rapidly, in short bursts between gasps of air.
Linsha’s eyes closed, borne down by despair. A menacing fleet in the harbor, a dragon overhead, and now warriors approaching the city. There was not much point in hoping the massed troops were the forces of some ally coming to the rescue them. The city had no allies anywhere near.
“Can you tell whose troops they are?” she asked.
The centaur jigged sideways impatiently and said, “They carry blue flags with gold lightning bolts emblazoned on the centers. My uncle says they are the army of the dragonlord Thunder.” He cast a nervous eye skyward. “Lady, if you are in a hurry to go somewhere, don’t let me keep you.”
“Leonidas, I am going the same place you are, and I would really appreciate a ride,” Linsha replied.
A gust of wind sent a cloud of smoke billowing over them.
“He’s coming around again!” Leonidas cried.
“Down!” Linsha bellowed. “Get down!” To force her point, she grabbed Leonidas’s mane and threw all her weight backward to haul him off balance.
Taken by surprise by her unorthodox movement, he staggered sideways. Normally surefooted, he could have easily scrambled back to his feet, but the form of the dragon darkened the sky overhead and the dragon-induced terror spread before his shadow like a palpable wave. Leonidas collapsed to the ground, his human torso wrapped around Linsha’s, his horse body sprawled on the earth.
The ungainly position saved his life. Had he been upright and moving when the blue soared overhead, he would have been a target too tempting for the dragon to resist. Flattened on the ground, Thunder did not see him or Linsha through the swirls of smoke and ash. With a lazy flap of his massive wings, the dragon passed on to find other victims.
The dragonfear faded, leaving a sick taste in Linsha’s mouth. She raised her head and felt the pain come thundering back into her skull. Her head was taking a serious beating these days. Groaning, she lay back and waited for the centaur to move.
Leonidas heard her groan and, mortified, unwound his arms from her body and scrambled upright. “Lady!” he gasped, his brown eyes wide with embarrassment and shame. “Forgive me. I hurt you. The dragonfear… I didn’t…” His voice faltered to a stop.
She offered him a feeble grin from her place in the dirt. “It wasn’t you. Without you, I might have been caught moving in the open. There is no one, not even my inestimable brother the dragonmage, who is immune to dragonfear.”
Leonidas helped her up and, because he liked and respected her, allowed his fear and his bruised dignity to be soothed. He carefully helped her onto his back and moved out in a gentle trot toward the city center.
“The last we heard, Falaius set up a temporary headquarters at the city hall where he could stay in touch with the watch, the militia, and the Legion,” he told Linsha. “Uncle said to look for him there.”
Linsha sat quietly on his back for a few minutes then smiled. “Leonidas, it’s all right. Just because my head hurts, it won’t crack. You can go faster.”
The centaur cast a worried look back at her, but he took her at her word and shifted his trot into a fast canter.
In less time than Linsha had taken to reach the edge of the Garden District, Leonidas carried her through the streets to the town square where most of the city offices and guild halls were located. They found the buildings and the square itself untouched by the dragon. In the shade of an ancient yew on the green, they found Falaius surrounded by a circle of heavily armed Legionnaires while he issued orders. The spot around the Legion commander was the only quiet place in the square. The rest of the open space was a scene of disorder and uproar as people ran heedlessly by, teams of horses pulled wagons loaded with families and belongings or merchants’ wares along streets already overcrowded with pedestrians and pack animals. Soldiers tried to form ranks to march out, while members of the beleaguered city watch tried to keep some sort of order.
“Lord Falaius!” Leonidas shouted over the raised voices of other messengers who were also trying to reach the new city commander to pass on messages of the utmost importance. He pushed through the crowd right up to the ring of armed Legionnaires and shouted again. “I bring word from Caphiathus!”
His words reached Falaius, and with a gesture to his bodyguards, the commander waved the centaur into the circle.
Linsha stayed where she was on the centaur’s warm back, and as they approached the big Plainsman, she wondered for the first time what her reception would be. She was an exiled Knight accused of murder, a representative of an order that was doing precious little to help. As far as she knew, only Lanther knew the details of her trial and escape, and Lanther was not there. She hadn’t had time to talk to Falaius.
But she needn’t have worried. The Legion commander greeted her with a weary grin and welcomed both of them into the circle of officers.
“Lady Linsha, you are not unexpected,” the Plainsman said. “Although you may wish you had stayed in the Citadel’s dungeon. You would probably be safer there.”
She grimaced at the memory of the framework she had seen in the starlight. “No, sir, I’d probably be swinging on the gibbet by now. Lord Remmik wouldn’t let a small thing like a dragon distract him from his duty.”