Dog and Dragon-ARC (21 page)

Díleas nosed him behind the knee. He’d come to understand that by now. It meant “get a move on, that direction,” in basic overintelligent sheepdog language.

So Fionn did. It involved some trespass in various fields, including one with a bull who felt quite strongly about trespassers. “Next time,” said Fionn to Díleas, surveying the bull, who was now convinced the far corner of his paddock was very interesting and that if he ever saw a trespasser again, he would rapidly retreat to, “Try not to run behind me when you’ve made the bull mad.”

At length they spotted a huddle of buildings and, as the day was drawing to a close, Fionn informed Díleas that they had the prospects of supper and a basket. “If I can find a suitable one, we will try you on being a flying dog. I hope you do that better than you herd sheep.”

The cluster of buildings proved to be a farmhouse, with a farmer’s wife, three small children and another due all too soon, and a sheepdog. The sheepdog was less than pleased to see them. The farmer’s wife was more than pleased to see a man, of any sort.

“My man’s been taken for the army and I’ve yet to get the hay in,” she said, “and there’s two dozen sheep to be crutched and sheared still, and I’ve got the children to cope with. I see you have an eye dog there.” Díleas was staring intently at the other sheepdog. Who was staring just as intently back.

“He’s young yet,” said Fionn. “I’ll help with the hay, ma’am. You can get on with what needs be done here, if you’ll feed me and the dog tonight. He’ll only take food from my hand, and if I am taken for the army, as my lord wanted, well, he’ll starve.” It was too good a story not to reuse.

The woman nodded. “It’s the paddock just behind the hedge. Tom had it scythed, and drying. But do you think they’d give him another day to get in?” she spat. “Damn them and Lyonesse too. Now it’ll rain for sure before I can get half of it stacked. What we’ll do in winter for feed, I have no idea.”

The field had a high surrounding hedge. And days of work, forking the hay into a handcart and gathering it to stack. Days for a man, anyway. Not quite that long for a dragon with talons that did a fair job as four outsize hayforks, and a tail that could wield the actual hayfork. “It’ll ruin my reputation if this gets out,” said Fionn to Díleas. “Why don’t you watch to see if the farmer’s wife—or anyone else likely to be alarmed by a dragon doing farm chores—is coming, and give me warning. It’s that or collect hay in your mouth.”

Díleas seemed to prefer keeping watch.

The job still took a good three hours. Fionn then thatched the rick in the only manner he knew, which was centuries old and cultures away. But it was a fair method for keeping the water off.

He then walked back to the house, with the hayfork, having thoughtfully thrust a few haystalks in his hair.

“You’re not much of a sticker,” said the farmer’s wife. “Three hours’ work and you’ll be looking for me to feed you. There’s still a good bit of daylight left.”

“Well, I’ve done the hay, and I came to see what else you could use a hand with. Looks like the woodpile could use a bit of splitting.”

“You’ve never raked up all the hay!” she said incredulously.

Fionn shrugged. “Come and have a look.”

She did…obviously ready to exercise a shrewish tongue. And gaped at the field and the neat stacks with their plaited caps. “And stacked! Well…well I’ll be…”

Looking at her, Fionn was fairly sure she had been.

“I’ve never seen stacks like that,” she said.

“Old custom in my parts. Holds the stack together and keeps the rain out as well.”

“You’ve earned a good feed, shepherd. That lord of yours was daft to let them take you,” she said.

“I’ll split a cord or so of wood for you. That green wood needs to dry or those babies will get cold this winter.”

Fionn enjoyed splitting wood, so it was not a chore for him. Also he’d been aware of the fear, bordering on desperation, in her eyes for all her brash talk. His Scrap had had something of the same feeling about her when he’d first met her, trying to rob him and nearly getting drowned. Perhaps it was a human thing.

The farmer’s wife had plainly been feeling the isolation as well as the fear. She talked almost nonstop. Partially about the farm, but more about the war.

“I’d like to know,” she said belligerently—a tired woman who had had a little more cider with supper than usual, seeing as she was feeling just a little better about winter and surviving—“just how this Mage Spathos knows when the Ways will open. You ask me…he’s in with them. Letting our men be taken for slaves.”

Fionn subtly found out a little more about Mage Spathos, who it appeared was driving war preparations and recruitment to fever pitch. He was based in Goteng, and lived very well.

Later that evening the farmer’s wife indicated that there was other work the farmer wasn’t doing.

Fionn had to wonder at his desire to get too closely involved with this species. Fortunately they weren’t interfertile, even if other dragons had mixed with them. The thought of dragon-human crosses with the proclivities and abilities of both was quite alarming.

He left early the next morning, before cockcrow, with the deep hop-picking basket he had bought from her the night before. He left a little extra silver on the table, because winter would probably be harder and longer than she guessed, and having a baby seemed to be something humans found harder than dragons found laying fertile eggs.

***

A few miles down the road he came upon a placard nailed to a tree. Obviously they had some sort of rudimentary printing press now in Annvn. Fionn was all in favor of cultures learning to print. It meant more books, which he found entertaining, and it tended to make for a broader, more entertaining society in time.

He didn’t approve of it being used to reproduce pictures of himself and Díleas, and offering a reward.

The farmer’s wife could have earned a lot more than the paltry amount of silver he’d left her.

Paid by one Mage Spathos.

“It’s time,” said Fionn, removing it, “for us to experiment with flight and dogs. I suggest you climb into the basket, and I will try a short, low hop. Try to stay in the basket. Climbing out while we’re flying will probably kill you, and I am trying to avoid that. Your mistress would get upset with me, and against all logic I am becoming fond of you myself.”

They did a very short few hundred yards of quite hard work—wing muscles and magic and no thermals, keeping very low and slow, in which Díleas decided that sitting up in the basket was a bad idea and curling uncomfortably into the bottom was a better one.

The landing, where the basket touched ground first, spilled Díleas out into a somersault or three. The sheepdog did appear unhurt, but very unimpressed.

“Yes. All right. A slower landing and keeping the basket up. And stop looking at me like that. I’ve seen you do somersaults when chasing your own tail. I’m sorry, right? It’s just going to be faster and safer. And I think putting some distance between here and us is called for. Now, exactly which direction are we going?”

Díleas showed him with his nose.

“Well, it wants a half hour to sunrise. It’ll be hard work, but fast. Into the basket again, young dog. We’ll go a fair bit higher this time. And I’ll take great care, setting you down.”

They took to the wing again. Fionn noticed a poacher fleeing the woods, dropping his pheasants. Too bad. He probably would talk and wouldn’t be believed. And it was good to be above the world again, where a dragon belonged, watching the sun lip the far horizon.

They flew for less than half an hour, as Fionn wanted to set down in a good spot, where they could land unseen. And there was a town not half a league ahead, so Fionn picked a field and actually slowed to a hover before setting down the basket as light as thistledown.

Díleas did not emerge from the basket. Fionn peered anxiously into it. Had he dropped the dog without knowing?

Díleas was there. Shivering. Uncoiling from his tight ball slowly. “By the First…I had forgotten how sensitive to cold you mammals are. I was generating lots of heat, flying.”

Fionn took the basket and the dog at a run to the edge of the woods. Dragon breath kindled a fire. He could even make rocks burn, if need be. He cradled Díleas against his still-flight-hot body and in front of the fire. Gradually the dog emerged from his tight ball and stretched.

“I am sorry. It was more complicated than I realized. It’s cold up there, and the basket lets the wind through. And you couldn’t exactly tell me you were freezing.”

Díleas stuck out his tongue and licked Fionn on the dragon nose. They sat there. Then Díleas got up, stretched, shook himself and did a little tentative bounce.

Never had a dragon been so glad to see a dog bark at him. “Yes. All right. We’ll walk though. And I will change my appearance, which is harder work, as I am used to the Finn visage. Blond and a beard, and a little shorter and broader, I think.”

Díleas watched intently as Fionn’s visage and appearance changed. “I know you’re an eye dog, but this staring is quite disconcerting,” said the new Fionn, tousling the dog’s fur. It was a good thing, he thought, that it was so thick. It had probably stopped him from actually freezing up in the cool thin air. Fionn would never have forgiven himself for that.

They walked on to a minor road, heading towards the town. A pair of bored soldiers were checking papers as people crossed a bridge, but as Fionn had heard them well before, he and Díleas were able to go around and swim the river. It was deep and fast, and fairly cold. Not, as Díleas’s look informed him, anything like as cold as flying.

They dried off and then walked on. The town offered a chance to relieve a thief of some loot—a merchant who had thought to doctor his scales—and to use some of it to purchase some black hair dye, and a loaf of good bread, a sheepskin with the wool still on and a couple of fine blankets. It was amazing how easy it was to spend other people’s money. And there were plenty of posters and several agents of the local military in plain clothes, looking for draft dodgers. They were rather obvious and inept at it, to someone of Fionn’s experience, and so it was his pleasure to pick their pockets and acquire their papers.

Fionn was quite skilled at altering documents subtly.

He left the walled town cheerfully just after curfew, by means of a little private door from the house of ill repute. Some things are very predictable.

Díleas was very impressed with the sheepskin basket liner and the warm thick blankets for sleeping on that night. Less so with the idea that they might be used to keep warm in flight. But he braved that again, somewhere the wrong side of midnight. They did not fly so long or so high, and Díleas was actually panting a little from heat when they landed, gently, to have another snooze before dawn. And walked on again…

There were more wanted posters.

These showed a blond man with a beard, and a black and white sheepdog. And a reward, payable by Mage Spathos.

Dead or alive.

CHAPTER 16

The knockers had all slipped away into a fissure in the rock, far too narrow for humans. Meb gripped the axe, and they waited. There was nowhere to run.

The search party from Dun Tagoll was twelve strong—and by the way they pressed together, swords out, lanterns held high, they felt they were still twenty too few.

They came on cautiously. Soon they were shining their lights onto Meb and Neve, sitting huddled, holding their breath…

And were not seeing them. “Well, we can get out of here,” said their leader, relieved. “It wasn’t to be thought they’d really still be here.”

“But by the dead Fomoire and the blood trail to the sea, she must have come that far.”

“Did you see what she did to that one? I’m glad we didn’t find them. I don’t care what anyone says, the prince made a mistake.”

“Shut your face, Hwell,” said another warningly as they began to walk away.

“I reckon that the Fomoire must have had a boat and taken them. It’s a pity. She was a good lass, and that Neve was a gamesome little kitty. I fancied her.”

Neve snorted, but they did not hear.

***

A little later the knocker Jacks came back. “Ahem. Lady Meb,” said the chief Jack. “We…we was wondering…if you’d mind doing a few more tricks for us? A couple of the younger ones will fetch the little ones. It would be something for them to see, I reckon. It’s not entertainment that has come our way before.”

Meb had seen Fionn work the crowd before. She smiled. “I’d love to. But look at poor Neve. She’s so cold and hungry. I’ll have to hold her to keep her warm. And I am so famished I might fall over if I tried. Besides, they might come looking for us again.”

“We’ll post a watch, and give plenty of warning. Anyway, the tide is coming in. They won’t be able to get here without getting their feet wet, soon enough. Besides we’ll pelt them with rocks. Drop a piece of the roof on them. And we’ll bring hot soup and hot food and hot apple wine and honey for you. And a good blanket of mink fur for the young lady.”

Meb smiled. “Bring them.”

She really enjoyed the next hour or so. She stretched herself a little too, performing a trick Fionn had done—but she’d no idea how he’d done. She cheated and did it magically—making the juggling balls glow as if lit internally by different-colored lanterns. The knockers—at her order—put out their lanterns, and watched, spellbound, the dance of the lights, as she made patterns in the darkness with them. She noticed, in the light of the balls, that Neve’s face was every bit as delighted and rapt as the smallest knocker child.

“Ach, it’s better than a piskie dance!” said the chief Jack, when she had finally stopped, lanterns had been lit again, and the clapping had stopped. “You’d best not tell them I said that, though. They’re inclined to be spiteful.”

A smaller Jack popped his head out of a fissure. “There are men coming along the sea trail. They got dogs a-smelling.”

“Illusions won’t hide us from dogs,” said Meb, worried.

The chief Jack laughed. “But the water will. Tide’s in enough. And so will we. Lend us your shoes…and we’ll lead them there. If the dogs smell us and try and climb into our holes, it’ll be the worse for them.” The expression on his face said that the dog that tried to eat a knocker was going to regret it for the rest of his life.