Emperor Forged Read online

  Miyasa continued, seeing that I remained silent. “The people here have known us as violent barbarians but do little more than look at us a little oddly. I stand beside a man I thought I was destined to either kill or be killed by, listening to the peace of a village I recently conquered completely bloodlessly. Letters come in from my people, asking for mundane advice on what crops to plant rather than on how best to kill our enemies. I am at a loss. Much of this seems like a dream.”

  “What would you do in your dream?” I asked her.

  “Explore. See the wonder for what it is, because it was unattainable.”

  I held back a wince. That was a harsh answer. It still gave me something to work with. “Well, you’ve attained the unattainable. What will you do to keep it?”

  I sensed that Miyasa was about to change the topic, although I couldn’t quite put my finger on how I was so sure. “Why is it that we have been able to so easily take this territory? Is it not valuable?”

  “Extremely. But we’re striking while the iron is hot,” I answered, looking away from Miyasa and toward the fields again. The supply train was now out of sight, including the tip of the flag. Only bare dirt was visible, where new crops would grow in the coming months.

  Continuing, I said, “We’re not the only people unhappy with the new situation. This new Regency Council didn’t stop at deposing the emperor. It replaced the seven princedoms with six provinces. Aghram took over half of one such princedom. Marshal Otwin is prancing around farther south in a desperate attempt to crush a separate rebellion while we’re marching on his capital.”

  “Surely the Empire can fight a two-front war?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not about whether it can. It’s about whether it should. This is prime land. Any battle held here has the potential to kill thousands in the battle itself and countless more from starvation. Destruction of agricultural land, refugees, the ensuing panic, and loss of law and order—Marshal Otwin no doubt hopes to face me where he can defeat me without regard for any of those consequences. He’s not a monster like Lyria, who would aggressively burn down half her province if it meant ensuring victory over me. His master is playing the long game.”

  The longest game, in truth. Perhaps she had already won, in her mind. I didn’t yet know, but the simple fact that he was a vampire meant he was entangled in her web, and Aghram was her stomping ground.

  “His master… You know him?”

  “All too well,” I muttered, then frowned as I saw something troubling on the horizon.

  Smoke—far, far too much of it—was rising from beyond the hills to the south where the supply train had left my sight.

  Before I could so much as speak, shouts and screams from within the village rose up around me. I cursed my own distraction, reaching out with my magical senses. They weren’t the best, but if there was something out there, then I should be able to sense it.

  Soldiers were running toward the smoke before I could issue orders. Miyasa sprinted toward the griffins’ stables and I joined her, still grasping out for something magical.

  I found it. Oh, did I find it.

  “All companies, form up on the hills,” I shouted, my voice echoing throughout the entire town. “Defensive lines.”

  That should do the trick for now and keep them from futilely rushing to their deaths. Only Miyasa and I had the ability to handle this mess right now.

  Ilsa was already waiting outside the stables with our griffins. She pulled all three by their reins while the stablehands rushed about in a panic and the oni kept them from doing anything foolish. Phantasmal beasts were a little more dangerous than your average horse or donkey, leaving these townsfolk at sea when it came to handling something that could bite them in half if they handled it wrong. The oni kept the poor folks alive.

  “Mykah, can you feel that thing?” Ilsa called out to me, throwing the reins of the other griffins as we leaped astride ours. Zwei let out a caw as I landed on her back. My hands instinctively ran through her feathers to calm her, but my mind was focused further afield.

  “I can. I doubt there’s any mage who can’t, if they try,” I said. This had been a terrible time to be lax.

  “Protect the town first. We’ll double-back when we can,” Miyasa was saying to the oni, her back to us as we began to pull away from the stables. “Nothing matters more than the town. Remember that!”

  I wondered if she had ever found herself saying that to the oni, back in the days of the Nahaum Pass. Had any of my sorties ever scared them enough to make them fear for their farms in the marshland? A long time ago, I had argued against such a scorched earth strategy of using the Empire’s military might to crush the oni once and for all by obliterating what arable land they had.

  Or had Miyasa simply been repeating what she had been saying to the oni up north, where they were desperately defending newly claimed territory from Lyria?

  The griffins ate the ground beneath them with their strides, the hills vanishing from our sight in no time at all. It still took far too long to see what had become of the supply train. Miyasa and I had been talking for longer than I realized. Or perhaps I had been distracted by my memories. A bad habit that I was doing more often of late, now that I was retreading old ground.

  Charred wood and flesh greeted us. Carts and bodies were still ablaze, more than one still moving. In the distance, I saw cavalry harrying a small wall of shields. Far away, partially obscured by the smoke, was the very thing we were racing south to defeat.

  A dragon—massive, scaly, and black. Like a smaller Lyria, I thought, but with fewer spikes. The dragon torched the fields around the road. The fire rolled across the dirt as though it had a life of its own. This was dragonfire, even though it looked like particularly hot flames.

  Dragonfire didn’t actually have a life of its own, but it was still under the magical control of the dragon that spewed it. The way it blew across the fields and ate away huge portions of the acreage was by design. I could feel the strong magical connection between the dragon and its flames, which enabled it to maintain direct control over them. Temperature, direction, shape, size, and supposedly even who was burned was all under the control of the dragon, if it was competent enough.

  “How did we miss that thing?” Miyasa muttered as she unslung her bow. Simple: dragonfire didn’t stand out magically like a dragon’s spells did. If it did, it would have been like an explosion going off in our minds the moment this lizard opened its mouth.

  That was what happened to the dragon once Miyasa fired her bow. The snap of magic behind me was matched by the speed of the dragon’s neck as it reacted to the attack. I felt déjà vu when an explosion ripped through the air, the dragon meeting Miyasa’s arrow with a spell mid-air.

  “I thought you said the dragons were young, General,” Ilsa yelled at me over the sound of the shock wave and the screeches of the griffins.

  I pulled Zwei to one side of the road to avoid giving the dragon an easy time of things. The cavalry was on this side as well, no more than twenty riders by my count. A gesture of my hand had Ilsa following. She sent a trio of magical lances flaring toward the dragon as her griffin raced alongside Zwei.

  “They are, at least in terms of power and endurance. The size… Well, Lyria always had a lust for the forbidden magicks of the old dragon king,” I said.

  The shock wave had died down and it had taken a lot of the dragonfire with it. A roar from the dragon filled the battlefield. Miyasa didn’t miss a beat, unleashing another shot right at the dragon’s open maw. The magical circle that briefly rippled around her hand differed from the others.

  The arrow snapped toward its target. Flames burst forth to meet it. Steel, even magically reinforced, was no match for dragonfire. Miyasa’s griffin had already been racing away as she fired, leaving the ground where she had stood to be reduced to a charred mess. A black lance buried itself into the charred ground afterward. The dragon’s claws continued to glow in the aftermath.

  The dragon’s face w
as marred by a piece of white-hot slag, which began dripping off its face as I watched. Ilsa’s magical lances simply bounced off its scales, the dragon not even deigning to consider their existence.

  Miyasa’s arrows never had a chance against a dragon, and Ilsa’s magic was far too weak. That ruled them out against Lyria. A rune-crafted sword specialized for cutting off Lyria’s head it was, then.

  “Ilsa, deal with the cavalry,” I said, turning Zwei toward the dragon.

  There were a lot of my people lost in the burnt-out husks of the supply train due to this bastard. I wasn’t going to leave it like this.

  Chapter 16

  I rushed forward atop Zwei. The dragon paid me no mind. Flames danced around Miyasa while her griffin tried desperately to create distance as magic pummeled the ground around her. She kept herself alive with the raw power she could bring to bear in her arrows.

  With each passing moment, I felt more and more that I needed to do something. The dragon still had not noticed me.

  A weapon. I needed a weapon to fight this thing. I wasn’t going to stall here like I had up north. Warped plate armor and shields, blackened and twisted from the blaze, littered the wreckage. Something here had to be of use to me.

  Racing among the ruined carts, I shut out the moans of the wounded and dying. There had to be something here. Steel that hadn’t melted or warped. Maybe a spear or spare oni war bow that was still intact. I had sorcery to spare, runes I could punch into something capable of bearing them for even a moment, yet all I could see was destruction.

  Something flapped in the wind. A flicker of flame on that low wall by the edge of the road. A charred mess burned at the end of a long metal rod.

  A flagpole. Only a clumped mess remained of the flag. It had melted to the end of the pole. I felt it symbolic that the most solid thing remaining of the supply train was the very symbol that made it so easy to pick out.

  I hefted the flagpole into the air, holding it like a javelin in one arm as I signaled Zwei to pull into the field. Symbols were powerful in more ways than one, although I doubted this one would survive what I was about to put it through. It certainly wasn’t dwarven steel, but it certainly had something special coating it.

  The dragon was still holding itself aloft, its wings not even beating as it relied entirely on its innate magical ability to hover. Its claws glowed softly as it projected volleys of magical lances at Miyasa. It tried to herd her closer so that it could unleash its dragonfire again. Evidently, word had spread about her ability at range. The flying lizard wasn’t moving about and letting her power up her shots to the level that they could punch through scales.

  That gave us an opportunity, in my mind. I was busy tracing runes on the flagpole, my finger leaving red-hot scars that did not fade. Prismatic light drifted off each rune I drew. These runes wouldn’t last. Proper rune-crafting required me to actually beat the concept of the rune into the object so the world supported the magic. What I was doing was ephemeral rune-crafting, which was even more esoteric than my usual art. There weren’t even books on it. I had stumbled upon it out of desperation in battle.

  I drew my greatsword in my other hand. Racing out to where Miyasa was struggling to hold her ground, I eyed the distance between me and the dragon.

  It suddenly noticed me. A blast of fire followed me, as I expected. I wheeled, runes lighting up along my sword.

  “Miya, aim for its right wing,” I shouted. The barrage of lances had stopped. I was the dragon’s target for long enough.

  Fire came for me, and this time I had no shield to protect me. Zwei screeched in fear, but I pushed her hard to hold her ground. Only her trust in me kept her still.

  I swung my sword, magic pumping into it from my body. Pumping into one rune in particular. The flames slammed into the sword and struck the rune-encrusted steel with all the fury they could muster. The scream the dragonfire let out as it tried to pour its destruction into the world was almost deafening.

  Like a whirlpool, the flames simply poured into the sword. The rune glowed brighter and brighter still, burning my nerves with an intensity that matched the scream of the flames. My sight cleared and all I could see was the dragon and the dim glow of a single rune on my sword.

  The dragon seemed dumbstruck and simply hovered there in silence. Such was the power of a well-crafted dwarven rune.

  Before it could recover, I slammed my other arm forward with all my might. The flagpole exploded toward the dragon and my arm nearly followed it. A crack accompanied it, along with the snap of Miyasa’s magic. The dragon recoiled, roaring, as the two attacks burst against its wings.

  I was racing ahead before I even knew it, Zwei reading my intentions with a triumphant screech. The dragon plummeted. Explosions rocked its hide as Miyasa peppered it with more arrows. The dragon’s roar was almost shrill now, like that of a dying animal. With a massive leap from Zwei’s back, I went for the kill.

  Claws shot up at me. Fire blasted from my sword in response, my rune unleashing the dragonfire captured within it earlier. The blast knocked me back but not far enough. A claw slammed into me. It hurt. Some of my ribs had almost certainly broken with the impact. I heard a scream before I crashed into the ground.

  My sword hummed as I pulled myself up. The dragon was half on its feet, scales punched out from Miyasa’s arrows all over its back and its face partially melted from its own flames. It roared, and I instinctively pumped magic into my sword.

  The fire never came. A massive blast of air signaled the end of the battle.

  Looking up, I saw the dragon flying away. It spat spurts of flame in the distance as it indiscriminately torched fields and villages. A scorched-earth strategy endorsed by its master. One that was intended to break us.

  “Mykah!”

  I looked around, my hands against Zwei’s neck as she butted her head against my chest. Ilsa and Miyasa raced toward me. In the distance, I saw a handful of riders fleeing, as well as what could be no more than forty survivors of the supply train in a huddle. They looked tired, but alive. At this point, I’d take what I could get. I wasn’t going to get much more.

  Lyria had joined the southern front. All of my plans had gone awry.

  Chapter 17

  The map being on fire would appropriately sum up how badly Lyria had cornered us. Reports were pouring in almost every minute of supply trains being attacked, villages being burned to the ground, and forts being besieged. The trail of markers and flags on the map along our all-too-thin western flank in Aghram looked too peaceful. This was the end of our campaign unless we handled this situation right now.

  I slugged down another coffee, my adjutant promptly refilling it. He nervously fiddled with the magetalk device to one side and wrote down everything that came through. Vasi had just contacted us through it moments earlier, reporting that Lyria had not launched any offensive up north. It confirmed that Lyria had been preparing this assault since the beginning. My staff was kept busy by a steady stream of reports from commanders across my supply lines.

  Most of my present officers were bickering over the map. Yasno and Aaron patiently added new markers and flags with each new report. It was almost midnight, but the inflow did not cease. Delayed messages were the most likely cause, rather than new attacks. The time it took to confirm the loss of the supply trains was not insignificant, even with magetalk.

  “Nothing has gotten south for almost three days now. Food, weapons, horses, soldiers—the attacks are indiscriminate,” Aaron summarized. “They’re torching everything they pass, killing everyone they see, and cutting us off. We’re stretched too thinly and they’re moving too fast for us to stop them. Even if we turned our army around, there’s one big problem we still can’t deal with. Well, more than one…”

  “So far we have confirmed reports that suggest anywhere between four and nine dragons,” Yasno said, flicking through his personal notes. He and Aaron seemed to be the only ones who could keep things straight right now, even if it was through their shee
r volume of notetaking.

  Meanwhile, Miyasa and Hish buried themselves in talk of how to take the fight back and defend our supply line. Ilsa remained silent, as she had for some time. I hoped it was the sort of silence that bred brilliance, like the unspoken thoughts Ilsa had supported me with so far. If it was instead a silence that led to a breakdown, I feared that I wasn’t in a position to provide her with personal support right now. Lyria outweighed any mental issues. She would end us all at the first opportunity.

  “How large are the dragons?” I asked.

  “All about the same size. You saw them up north.”

  “It’s possible it could be nine, but I doubt it. Put it as four or five,” I said. “Whatever Lyria is doing to enlarge her dragons, it must require substantial magical investment. The Empire has a mere handful of dragons old enough to naturally be that large.”

  A mutter ran through the officers. Hish was the one to speak up. “Really? I thought the Empire made use of loads of dragons? I remember the stories.”

  I wondered what stories the oni knew of that involved the Empire’s ancient history, when dragons had been commonplace. “Centuries ago, maybe. Back before the time of Kaiser Lucius and the Decline. Lyria is the only adult—sorry, the only dragon—over two centuries old in the Empire. Even dragons who have reached their final stage of growth at just half a century could be counted on both hands, the last I knew.”

  Briefly, I had foolishly assumed we were dealing with one such dragon up north. Lyria had the influence to attract dragons that old and powerful. If she was experimenting on young dragons, she might have lost some of that influence. Perhaps that was why she was a marshal rather than anything greater following the emperor’s death. I had expected to find her in the Regency Council, orchestrating this new Empire.

  Yasno let out a low whistle. “So we’re dealing with one of the biggest, baddest dragons in the Empire. And she’s burning down half of Aghram.”