Dragon Venom (Obsidian Chronicles Book 3) (6 page)

Wren hesitated, then reluctantly cast aside the blankets and began to unbutton her coat. Arlian watched with unfeigned interest.

Beneath the inadequate fleece-lined coat she wore a green dress with an elaborate bodice trimmed with gold cord; when she turned to drape the coat across a chair he saw that the bodice laced up the back.

She reached behind to untie the laces while still facing away from him.

"Turn around," he said.

Startled, she glanced over her shoulder at him.

"Turn around," he repeated.

"But the laces . . ."

"I don't want to see the laces," he said. "Face me."

Reluctantly, she obeyed, and faced him, her head down as she

reached back to loosen the laces. He studied her closely.

"Stop," he said. "Stand up straight."

She sighed, and obeyed—and as Arlian had expected, a gold ornament at the base of her loosened bodice slipped down, revealing itself to be the hilt of a stiletto.

"Raise your arms," he said, as he rose from the cot and stepped forward, the swordbreaker at the ready. She obeyed, dislodging the concealed blade further; Arlian reached out and plucked it from its sheath, and looked it over while never taking his attention entirely off his guest.

The stiletto's narrow blade was six or seven inches long, ending in a needle-sharp point; the golden hilt was roughly teardrop-shaped and had hung just above Wren's navel, where she could have easily reached it while lying on her back.

"I need to be able to defend myself!" Wren said.

"Perhaps you do," Arlian said. "Perhaps you are indeed merely a girl from Crackstone who happens to own so elaborate a dress and concealed weapon, yet who chooses to become a camp follower; a girl who feels the need to defend herself by such means, yet tries to talk her way into my bed; a girl who does not give her true name, a whore reluctant to disrobe. We are funny creatures, we human beings, and it is indeed possible that you are just what you claim to be." He sighed, and raised the point of the swordbreaker to her throat. "On the other hand, I think it rather more likely that you are a would-be assassin, hoping to collect the bounty the Dragon Society has placed on my head and gain a thousand-year life expectancy. I think that you sought to gain my trust in order to get into my bed while I was unarmed, where you could draw this blade and thrust it into my heart before I would have time to react.

You have undoubtedly heard how difficult it is to simply catch me unawares, as several of your predecessors discovered, and rather than try to stab me in my sleep you hoped to disarm my suspicions and render me vulnerable to your assault."

"I . . . I would never . . . " She stared down at the hand holding the swordbreaker, and tried to back away, but collided with a chair. Arlian stepped forward, keeping the blade at her throat.

"I further suspect, young lady, that you have been cozening Lord Rolinor, and that you were partially responsible for his near-fatal lapse in common sense in the cavern today—perhaps you thought there might be an easier way to obtain the elixir than through killing me.

When you learned that Rolinor had failed in his attempt, and furthermore that we would not be providing another opportunity this season, you decided to kill me after all."

"No!" she shrieked. "I don't know what you're talking about!" Her false accent had vanished, though he could not immediately place her natural tones.

"Perhaps, as I said, you genuinely do not. There may be a simple enough way to determine whether you are a liar, young woman; in the morning we will be leaving this camp and proceeding to Crackstone, which you have said is your hometown. We should be there the following evening, if the weather holds, and we can then inquire of your friends and family, and if you have told the truth return you to their care. If you are not from Crackstone, then we must assume you are indeed an assassin. Now, if you cooperate, I might show mercy—Lord Rolinor will have told you that I sometimes do. If you force us to drag you to Crackstone in chains and pointlessly interrogate the townspeople there, then I'm afraid our resentment will impel us to execute you, and your head will adorn the pike at the rear of my wagon—the skull there at present has had its day."

At that she broke down in tears. The jerking of her head as she sobbed drove the tip of the swordbreaker into the skin of her neck, leaving a shallow scratch, but Arlian held the blade unwaveringly in place.

Arlian waited, and at last she regained sufficient control to say,

"Please don't kill me, my lord. Please, I'll do anything."

"Simply tell me the truth, and we shall see whether your death is necessary."

"I'm not from Crackstone," she said. "No one there knows me. But I'm not an assassin, I swear it! I've never killed anyone."

"I was to be the first, then?"

"Not originally," she said. "I wasn't sent to kill you, but I . . . " She stopped and swallowed, the motion catching the skin of her throat against the point of Arlian's blade. "I didn't want to hurt you," she said, staring helplessly up at him.

"Tell me about it," he said gently. "Tell me the whole tale."

She swallowed again, struggled to compose herself, then said, "I'm from Siribel. I was at the market in Sarkan-Mendoth when the news came."

Arlian's lips tightened. Siribel was a coastal town the dragons had destroyed two summers back, when the town elders chose to side with the Duke of Manfort against the Dragon Society. Black's wife, Brook, had been born in Siribel—and that might mean she would be able to verify the accuracy, or lack thereof, of Wren's story, should it prove necessary.

The lilt of the coastal dialect was in Wren's speech, though.

"My whole family was dead," she continued. "I had no one to help me, no one to keep the slavers from taking me, so I went to Lord Shatter to beg his protection. I tried to shame him, saying the attack on Siribel was his responsibility."

Arlian smothered a derisive snort. "Shatter has never been one to live up to his responsibilities."

"He saved me, though. He took me in and fed me and hired me as a spy. He sent me here, to watch you, and to send word of your intended route. I could not catch your eye, so I seduced Lord Rolinor and coaxed your plans from him, and then reported them to one of Lord Shatter's messengers—but then tonight, when you changed them and said we would turn back to Crackstone . . . well, I had instructions for such an eventuality, and the dress and knife Lady Pulzera had given me."

"So there is an ambush waiting for us on the road north."

"I don't know. Not for certain."

"But you have no reason to think otherwise."

"No. I . . . There is a phrase I was taught. If bandits struck at us, I was to call out to Fate and the dead gods, and I would be spared."

Arlian nodded. "And if my forces prevailed, we would not have recognized that as anything out of place. So an ambush was planned. And what else? What of your connection with Lord Rolinor?"

"He . . . he was at hand, my lord; no more than that. I needed someone in your camp to take me in, and he is comely, he eats well, and he has his own pavilion."

"And the flask of venom?"

"I suggested he do that as if I were teasing, my lord. I told him I could find a buyer."

"Why? Surely Lord Shatter has all he needs."

"If I had the venom, my lord, I would not need to return to Lord Shatter—but furthermore, I do not believe his masters are generous with their elixir. He said he would be glad of any I could fetch to him, and generous in recompense."

"Interesting." For the first time Arlian let the swordbreaker's blade drop slightly. He believed Wren's story, believed that she had indeed told him the truth. The Dragon Society boasted of their access to dragon venom, but in fact he had heard before, from reliable sources, that the dragons had refused to supply their servants with the vile fluid.

So Wren was telling the truth. Now the question remained of what he should do about it.

5

5

The Defense of Ethinior

The Defense of Ethinior

In the end, Arlian decided to do nothing.

He had Wren bound and placed under guard, of course, and put her in his own wagon under Black's supervision, but he made no other changes in his plans. He said nothing more to Rolinor, and resolved to do nothing about the waiting ambush. After all, he had no idea what forces Lord Shatter might have committed to his trap; even with the benefit of the element of surprise transferred from his opponents to himself, he could not be sure of victory should he march up and confront the foe. Better to let Shatter's men sit in the snow and mud, eating their rations and burning their fuel, waiting for an enemy who never came.

For himself, he would return to Manfort, as quickly as he reasonably could. If the Dragon Society was planning to ambush a company of over a hundred men in winter they were growing either ambitious or desperate, and either way, Arlian wanted to discuss it with the Duke in time to make plans for the summer campaign.

The shortest route back to Manfort was not the way Arlian and his warriors had come, nor in fact along any roads that Arlian had ever traveled before; the local camp followers assured him that the best way to reach the city was to take the logging road from Crackstone down to Ethinior, and then the trade road from Ethinior to Westguard.

From Westguard, of course, Arlian knew the way to Manfort very well indeed; he owned property in Westguard. He had no objection to a route that would allow him, purely for his own self-interest, to inspect it.

Accordingly, once the camp had been cleared away he led the long line of wagons down the trail to Crackstone, where an assortment of women and boys were restored to their families or turned out to fend for themselves. Since the expedition had been planned to last another few weeks there was no real need to resupply, but a portion of the remaining contents of Arlian's strongbox was spent in the local markets as much to maintain goodwill as to equip the journey home.

The company stayed the night in Crackstone, and in the morning headed southward down the logging road to Ethinior.

Arlian estimated that a lone rider could have made the trip in three or four days; it took his little army almost a fortnight before their wagons rolled onto the ancient cobbles of Ethinior's town square. Keeping Wren safely confined became first a nuisance, then a routine.

News of her presence, and that she was a Society spy, gradually spread through the company, and Arlian knew that his men were curious as to just what he intended to do with her.

He was curious about that himself; he had still not decided her fate when they reached Ethinior.

That arrival was interesting; naturally, the company was spotted well before arrival, and there could be no mistaking it for anything but soldiery. The spears and other weapons were plainly in evidence and far too numerous for a caravan, and no ordinary caravan would have approached down the logging road without hauling lumber.

The identity of the soldiers, and their intent, was far less obvious, and apparently no advance word had reached Ethinior from the three tiny villages Arlian's party had passed through on the way.

Accordingly the streets of Ethinior were deserted, the windows tightly shuttered, when the wagons rolled past the ancient and empty guard tower at the outskirts of town. Arlian was certain that dozens of eyes were watching, but at first he could neither see nor hear a single living soul other than his own party.

But then word of the Duke's arms and livery, the obsidian spearheads, and the general lack of signs of hostility must have circulated.

Hard-story shutters opened a crack; faces peered cautiously down.

Then upper-floor windows were flung wide, and the townspeople leaned out, calling and waving, and by the time the wagons rolled into the square and Black reined in the horses a heroes' welcome was under way. Crowds gathered in the side streets and children ran alongside the wagons, and the air echoed with singing and cheering.

Arlian adjusted his hat and sword, then climbed down from his wagon and looked about. As he had expected, an official emerged from the crowd to greet him—a plump man wearing a gray woolen cloak and a hat with the brim pinned up on one side, his breath clouding in the cold air.

The two exchanged bows and introductions, and Lord Obsidian

found himself discussing accommodations with Monifin, Lord Mayor of Ethinior. The men were tired of sleeping in tents and wagons, and Arlian inquired about finding rooms, or at least beds, for them in the town's houses and inns. Lord Monifin was optimistic that arrangements could be made.

Arlian also, however, discovered a misunderstanding about the nature of the new arrivals.

"We have three old stone towers that should be your initial construction sites," Monifin said. "Of course, we know that won't be sufficient. I understand catapults can be mounted on ordinary rooftops, though—are your men equipped for this?"

Arlian paused before replying, then said, "My lord, I fear you misjudge the situation. We are not here to build catapults. We are merely passing through on our way home."

Monifin cast a quick look at the wagons, then turned back to Arlian.

"But surely, my lord . . . "

Arlian held up a hand.

"My lord," he said, "while the Duke most certainly does send troops and equipment to fortify towns against the dragons, such work is generally not undertaken in winter, when most towns have enough difficulty in feeding their own without being asked to supply hundreds of soldiers.

No, this is a company of dragon-hunters—we have rid the world of three lairs this season, for a total of nine dragons slain. This task can only be accomplished in safety when the weather is cold and the dragons are sound asleep, and thus, unlike the Duke's other armies, we are abroad in the snow."

Monifin blinked in surprise. "You have slain dragons?" he said.

"A good many of them, yes. Most recently we disposed of four dwelling in the ridge a dozen miles above Crackstone. However, we are done for the season, and on our way home to Manfort. Ethinior is not our destination, but merely a pleasant stop along the way. My sincere apologies for my failure to make this clear immediately; I plead fatigue from the journey."