Dragon's Winter (13 page)

“My lord,” he said, sweeping the stones into his pocket, and leaping to his feet. “Is he—should I—”

“Help him to his room.”

For four days Karadur kept his distance from Azil. Five days after their encounter in the library, he was talking to Lorimir in the guards’ hall when the spatter and clatter of noise in the room died to a pregnant rustle. Azil crossed the long space. He stopped four feet from them, and drew a deep, steadying breath. The men scattered about the dark stone hall drew back into shadow, watching avidly, all trying to pretend that nothing untoward was happening.

“My lord,” he whispered, and took another breath. “Dragon.”

From then on, Azil Aumson was most often to be found in the company of the Keep’s master. When the Keep’s officers mounted to the tower room to receive orders or to report, they soon grew accustomed to the silent, scarred man in the second chair. Thrice each week, Karadur ate dinner in the guards’ hall. Azil sat near him, and the servers grew used to keeping the quiet man’s wineglass filled. When the dragon-lord joined his men to shoot or race or ride or wrestle, the dark-haired man stood aside and watched.

The younger soldiers nicknamed him Dragon’s Hound, and as much through self-interest as through compassion or respect or delicacy, let him alone. One night, Finle Haraldsen, addled by too much beer, teased Azil lightly on his lameness. The next evening, in the flaring torchlight of the guard hall, he found himself facing the master of the Keep in the wrestling ring. Fifteen bruising minutes later, he was grateful to be permitted to withdraw with a dislocated shoulder.

Late at night, though not every night, in the tower room, with a fire blazing in the hearth and a jug of red wine at his elbow, Azil talked. It was not easy; the words came slowly. But wine helped, and warmth, and Karadur’s methodical questions.

He did not ask,
Why did you betray me?

“Tell me about the ride north. Did you know he meant to go there?”

“No. He said we would have to leave Ippa. I thought we might ride east, to Kameni. But we went over the mountains. Tenjiro seemed to know where he was going. The weather stayed fine for us, clear and windless. There was plenty of game.”

He did not ask,
What did he say, what did he promise, to make you leave?

“He made the mist at Hornlund. It was cold and thick, and voices howled and cried inside it. The ice warriors rode out of it, tall pale warriors on skeletal horses. The villagers fled, and those that did not, or could not, the children, the old, he killed. Once the villagers were gone, he destroyed their houses. When I questioned him, he told me to be quiet. When I would not, he made it so that I could not speak. He did that at all the villages, Ashavik, Narrovik, Unik, others whose names I never knew, all the way to Mitligund. Then he summoned the castle.”

“Tell me about the castle.”

“He calls it by that name you said: the Black Citadel. He said it had been there for centuries, waiting for its master.” Azil shivered, and was still. “It seems very strong: walls thick as mountains, iron gates, spires taller than Dragon’s Eye. Inside it is laced with tunnels and caves, like a giant wormhole. One room in it is filled with cages. He put me in there, after I tried to leave. There was a woman in a cage near me: she was very tall, with golden hair. He had a whip... He thought it funny that I had believed him, trusted him. He would come to speak with me, and laugh.”

“What did he speak of?”

“Magic. He claimed to have unearthed a magic, terrible and wonderful, that had been unknown for centuries. He talked about power, and about darkness. The dark,” he halted, and then continued, “darkness has become his god. There is no sunlight in the Citadel, no natural light, and only coal fires. He hates fire. Only Gorthas uses it, for torment.”

“Who is Gorthas? How did Tenjiro find him?”

“He was there, sleeping in the ice. He is a warg-changeling. Tenjiro woke him when he raised the castle, and Gorthas bowed to him, and called him master, and swore to serve him.”

“Tell me about the wargs.”

“They look like wolves, but they have scales, not fur, and red eyes. They don’t eat, or sleep. They smell like graves.” Azil stared through his half-filled wineglass into the leaping fire. “I don’t know where they came from. Perhaps he made them. Perhaps they came out of the ice, like Gorthas.”

“Does Tenjiro have human servants?”

“Yes. Not all the folk of the northern lands fled south. Some chose to stay. He promised them gold, great riches, if they would serve him. They hunt for him, and guard the Citadel, and dig the ground for gold and jewels. Some are slaves.” Azil drained his glass, and refilled it. A log shifted. The fire woke crackling in the hearth. Karadur glanced toward it; like a cowed dog, the flames stilled.

“How did you escape the first time?”

“I smashed the cage and found my way through the tunnels. I fell into a hole, and broke my leg. I splinted it, and went on, but the wargs hunted me and brought me back.”

“How did you escape the second time?”

“I pretended to be mad. Perhaps I was a little mad. Gorthas came to see what was amiss, and when they dragged me from the cage, I attacked him. I had a stone... I was very weak, though. I didn’t get far that time.”

“What does he plan to do? Will he try to spread darkness across Ippa? Will he bring an army of ice warriors to storm the Keep?”

Azil said, “I don’t know.”

“Tell me what happened to your hands.”

Azil closed his eyes. His face lost color. He drank more wine. “No.”

That night, Azil dreamed. He was in the cage. He was naked, frozen to the hard ice floor. He tried to move; ice ripped his skin, burning against his flesh. An icy voice, barren as the heart of winter, wrapped itself around his mind.
You cannot get out. You will never get out

Beside him, in another cage, a naked woman lay trapped as he was. Her hair, which had once been pale gold, was long and white. Elsewhere in the still room an unseen man was sobbing. A figure walked toward his cage. It was Tenjiro Atani, triple-thonged whip in hand. His eyes were hollow as night.

Azil woke, then, and heard the noises he was making. The next night, he drank so heavily that Torik had to guide him from the tower room down the unreliable stairs to his own chamber. The following night he took the jug to his room. In the morning, he could not rise. Kiala called Macallan, who came, and took one look, and twitched the jug from under the bed.

“Fool,” he said, not unkindly. “If you must drink, at least water it. This swill will poison your gut and rot your mind.”

“Don’t tell him,” Azil whispered.

But Macallan only shook his head, and walked out whistling. Shamed and sick, Azil was sober by midafternoon. That evening, when he went to join his lord for dinner in the tower room, he found Ferlin posted at the foot of the stair, with orders not to let him pass.

At the riding yard the next day Karadur neither looked at him nor spoke to him. In the guards’ mess that night, he was invisible.

In the guards’ hall, drunkenness on duty was punished by a flogging, public, professionally applied, and over quickly. Finle, who when he was not drinking was neither stupid nor insensitive, watched Azil’s face through the meal. After both men had left the table, he leaned to mutter to the redheaded Rogys, “Imarru’s eyes, I think I’d prefer the whip.”

“So would he,” Rogys said softly.

In that he was wrong; Azil knew his limitations well enough. That night the voice and the dreams returned: thrice he woke screaming into his pillow, with cold sweat coating him like oil.

The second night, he did not sleep.

The third morning, no guard barred his way to the tower. As he climbed the stair, his spine and the muscles of his damaged right leg crawled with tension. Herugin was inside; he could hear the lieutenant’s voice, detailing the sentry assignments. He went in. Karadur glanced at him impassively, and pointed to his usual chair. The table beside it held, as it always did, a partially filled wine jug and a glass. Azil carried the jug into the hallway, where Derry, the towheaded page, kicked his heels against the wall.

“Take this away,” he said. “Bring water instead.”

8

That winter, the wargs came over the mountains.

It was early morning, the day after New Year’s Moon. A cold mist trickled along the snow-capped rocks above the Keep. Clouds laced the sky, and the bright moon slid slyly between them. Moonlight flickered on the stony path. Crouched amid the rocks, the fanged beasts trembled and snarled, drawn by the smell of blood and flesh.

Their master cuffed them to silence.
Go
, he told them.

Flowing with a foul and lethal grace around the walls of the Keep, they sped south toward Chingura. Eyes gleaming crimson through the darkness, he watched their passage until they were out of sight.

At dawn, the watch on the Keep’s wall changed. Finle Haraldsen, coming late to relieve his friend Garin, who had the post on the west wall, found it deserted. Untroubled, he strolled along the wall to the protected space behind the kitchen chimney, expecting to find Garin curled against the warm brick, asleep. Though it was forbidden, on cold nights the man assigned to the west wall sometimes tucked himself into that warm corner, out of the blowing wind.

He found Garin in shreds, his intestines ripped open, his eyeless face a chewed ruin, his legs shattered. The first man to hear Finle’s shouts went racing down the stairs to find Lorimir. The second sped toward the lord’s bedchamber. When Lorimir reached the wall, Finle was slumped against the blood-splashed wall, sobbing. Azil, who had been awake most of the night, was dressing when he heard Finle’s shouts. His limp slowed him on the stair.

In the chimney corner, Karadur knelt beside the dying soldier. His face held no more expression than the unyielding stone. He spoke gently to the stricken man. “Garin, do you hear me?” Garin’s ravaged face stared blindly into the rising sun. His wheat-colored hair was red with blood. He breathed in long, agonized drags. Blood trickled in a steady stream from his smashed mouth.

Macallan puffed up the stairway. The merciless light, strengthening, limned Garin’s injuries. Macallan knelt. In a moment, he met Karadur’s eyes, and shook his head.

Karadur said softly to Garin, “The litter will be here soon. Lie easy.” Sunlight glinted off the dagger in his right hand. Azil looked away.

When he turned back, Karadur had thrown his cloak over Garin’s face. The dragon-lord’s right hand and sleeve were bloody. Methodically, he cleaned the dagger on his shirt. Men with a litter between them were negotiating the stairs. Herugin, below them, issued terse orders.

A guard approached Karadur, holding a notched sword. “Lord, I found this behind the chimney stack. It’s Garin’s. Is he—?”

“He’s dead,” Karadur said. Lorimir took the sword from the guard. The soldiers lifted their friend’s body onto the litter. Finle shivered, still slumped against the wall.

“I thought he was asleep,” he whispered hoarsely. “Oh gods. I thought he was asleep.”

Lorimir said, “Finle, go down. You’re off duty.”

“I’ll take him,” said Herugin. He turned Finle about and drew him to the stairs.

Karadur said, “Macallan, what do you think made such injuries?”

The physician said, “Nothing human, my lord.”

“Cat?” suggested Lorimir. “Bear?”

Macallan frowned. “No cat or bear would be so vilely selective.”

“Warg,” said Azil. Lorimir and the physician both looked at him in puzzlement. “My lord, they hunt in packs.”

Karadur said, “Lorimir, double the watch. No man stands sentry alone. Make sure one of each pair is a decent bowman, and that both have bows, and arrows with heads that can stop a moose. Arrange for Garin’s body to go to his family for burial. Where is he from?”

“Castria, my lord. His family has a farm just outside town.”

In the tower room, the maids had built the fire, and brought pork sausage and fish and brown spiced bread for breakfast. Derry stood by the door. His eyes went wide at the smell and sight of blood. “Go get a towel and basin,” Azil said quietly to him.

Boots stamped in the hallway. Lorimir came through the doorway, with Larys, one of the Keep’s guards. The captain pushed the young man forward. “My lord, you need to listen to this.”

The soldier was breathing hard, and his boots and clothes were mud-spattered. Karadur filled a glass with wine and extended it to him. “Drink.” Larys gulped the wine, choked, and recovered. “Larys, is it not? Stand easy, man. What have you to tell me?”

“I was on the road to Sleeth, my lord, coming from Chingura. I had just passed Rometh, when a beast with red eyes and four clawed feet sprang from behind a tree and knocked him down. It had a wolf’s head and body, but instead of fur or hide, it had scales, I think, like fish scales, only thick as plate. I shot at it, but my arrows bounced off its side. Its nostrils smoked, not like smoke from a fire but something foul. Rometh—after it knocked him down it tore his throat out.” Tears ran down the side of Larys’s nose. “I’m sorry, my lord.”