Dragon's Winter (22 page)

She drowsed, and finally, despite the discomfort in her head, slept. When the page woke her it was evening. He pointed her to the guard hall. It smelled wonderfully of roast lamb and fresh bread. The pain in her head was a scant grumble. Laying her bow and dagger with the others against the wall, she found a place near a knot of men.

“Orm,” said one with a near-shaven scalp. He seemed older than the others. The fresh-faced boy beside him told her gravely that his name was Huw. “Gavin,” said another. “Hurin.” The servers brought out platters heaped with lamb chops and bowls of sweet orange potatoes. Hungry men grabbed for their share. The wine went round.

A body slid in beside her: a lean man with a somewhat severe face and an officer’s emblem sewn to his sleeve. He reached across her to spear a chop on the point of his knife.

“Herugin Dol, riding-master. Welcome to Dragon Keep.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m sorry about your friend,” he said gently. “I didn’t know him well. We talked, he and I. His loss is a grief to us all.” The men about the table nodded. Shaven-headed Orm lifted his glass in salute. The others imitated him, and drank.

Herugin said, “He told me he’d served the Lemininkai.”

“So did I. That was how we met.”

“Tell me, do they still run horse races in summer down the avenue beside the castle? I visited Ujo, years ago, when I rode in Erin diMako’s guard. I remember I won ten nobles.”

“They still do. And in September, to celebrate the Lemininkai’s birthday, they run pig races.”

Orm and Huw looked up simultaneously. “Pig races?” they said in unison.

“It’s an old custom. Farmers enter the young boars in the race: they say it’s to celebrate the lord’s birthday, but I happen to know that Kalni Leminin was born in January, and the races are always in September. But after the race the Lemininkai always pays for a feast, and people wear masks, and drink wine through the night, and the next day no work gets done.”

“Are they truly races?” Huw asked, fascinated. “I mean, does someone ride the pig?”

“No one has to ride them. It’s always held at the same place, on a very narrow street, and people stand at one end and beat on pots, and yell, so that the pigs will always run the one way. But sometimes the young men, and the girls, if they dare, try. It’s dangerous: if you fall, you can be injured, or even crushed to death. It’s happened. But they put thick leather collars on the pigs, and wind them with ribbons, all of different colors. The riders grip the collars. People bet on the races. I won two nobles on the Yellow Pig, last year. Fools sometimes throw garbage into the street, to try to distract the other pigs so that the one they bet on will win. It rarely works, but it makes the folks who have to clean the streets furious.”

“I’d pay to see that,” Orm said.

“Would you ride a pig?” Huw asked. “I would. I bet I could ride a winner, too. What do the riders win?”

“The Lemininkai gives a purse to anyone who finishes the race still on top of a pig.”

“Which means that no one does, or not often,” said Orm.

Marek and a man holding an Isojai bow came into the hall. Karadur entered at their heels. A kitchen girl brought him a cup of wine and a clean plate. The man with the maimed hands moved like a phantom at his back.

“Who is that?” Hawk asked Herugin under her breath.

He followed her gaze. “Azil Aumson. He is”—Herugin hesitated—”he was a singer, and a harpist. He owes his life to your friend. Wolf found him wandering naked in the rocks about six months ago.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was imprisoned. He escaped. He doesn’t speak of it.” The brief answer stirred Hawk’s interest, but whatever question she might have asked was never framed. Karadur crossed to their table and sat opposite her. His face was grooved with fatigue, and the sleeves of his shirt were spattered with mud.

The soldiers made a clear space around him. Herugin filled his cup.

He spoke without ceremony, as if he had known her a long time. “We brought the bodies into the house. Thea’s family is standing farewell vigil tonight. They’ll be buried tomorrow. The men may go if they wish.”

“I will tell them,” Herugin said.

“We did not find Shem. But there were tracks of lynx and fox, and fresh ones of bear—and of man. Not your tracks. A big man.” He drank, and set his cup aside. “Did you take Wolf’s talisman? He wore it on a chain around his neck.”

She had not thought to look for it. “My lord, I did not.”

“Nor his sword?”

She shook her head. “We did not find them.”

“A grave robber,” Herugin said. “Gods rot his leprous soul.” “When I learn who it was,” Karadur said, with terrible precision, “I will stake him in the snow and cut the living heart from his chest. Orm: tomorrow I want you to bring Bessie and Blackie down to hunt for the boy’s body.”

“I will, my lord.”

The dragon-lord reached within his tunic, and withdrew a folded piece of paper. “We searched the house, looking for the boy. In the back room, behind the kitchen, we found this. It has your name on it.” Automatically Hawk took it from his fingers. Someone moved a candle nearer.

She unfolded it. Wolf’s clear script leaped from the page.

The wargs have killed nineteen people, but Dragons bowmen patrol the rocks and roads and have beaten back four attacks, maybe more... To tell the truth, I would rather stay... I am sure that when Dragon takes his soldiers north, their need will be not for magicians but for warriors... I know you would be very welcome... This war makes it impossible to plan. Nevertheless, I do. This autumn, once the harvest is in, before the storms start, I hope to bring Thea and Shem south to meet my family. Would you like to travel with us?

Her eyes blurred, and her fingers tightened on the page. Carefully she refolded it, and slipped it within her shirt, next to her heart. “Thank you, my lord.”

A server filled her cup. She drank, barely tasting the wine.

“My lord,” she said, “have you room in your army for another archer?” The archers stirred. At her side, Herugin nodded once.

Karadur did not immediately answer. Finally he said, “Are you good?”

“I was archery master to Kalni Leminin for six years.”

“Why did you leave his service?”

It was a fair question. “I was bored with taking orders. I wanted to work for myself.”

“What work do you do now?”

“I make bows,” she said. “I have a shop in Lantern Street. The Lemininkai has been generous enough to be a patron.”

“Who comes to you? Men of the company?”

“Sometimes. Not often. The garrison has its own bow-makers. But many of the wealthy merchants have their own guard companies, and the folk of the noble houses still like to hunt.”

“So do I,” he said. “Though the bow is not my weapon. Your offer is appreciated, hunter. But this is not your fight.”

“You are wrong,” she said. At her elbow, she heard Herugin’s swift indrawn breath. “It is my fight. Wolf was my friend. The man who killed him is my enemy. If you have a place for me, I will ride with you; if not, I go alone.” His soldiers did not speak to him like this, she knew. She felt his anger, like a fire in her head. But she was changeling, and not some unprotected boy. She set her teeth, and endured it.

He said shortly, “Find me tomorrow. We will speak of it then.” He rose, and strode toward the doorway. From where he had been waiting, the maimed harpist moved from the dancing tumult of shadow to walk with him.

As she retrieved her weapons, the grey-haired captain touched her elbow. “Excuse me,” he said. “I know you must be tired. But if you have time—” She followed him into an empty room: the sort of room that messengers were brought to, and left in to kick their heels against the walls while pages looked for the right person for them to talk to.

“It’s Rogys,” the captain said. The candle in the wall sconce threw a fitful, wavering light over his face. “The redheaded lad. You saw him. He’s breathing, but he won’t wake up. He’s got a nasty bruise on his cheek, from hitting the wall. Macallan, our physician, suggested you might know a way to help the boy. It’s been said that changelings have the skill to touch a mind, for good or ill.”

He was not far; he was in the room next to her sleeping room. Torik lay curled like a cat in the hallway. Besides the unconscious redhead the room held a sandy-haired dapper man, and a pretty, round-faced girl on a stool. She was watching Rogys as a snake might watch a mouse.

“Macallan,” said the dapper man. “Thanks for coming. This is Kiala. I’ve told her to watch him, and send Torik to get me if he so much as flutters an eyelash. He hasn’t. Kiala, get up.” Macallan moved the candle over the bed. The whole right side of the redhead’s face was blue and swollen. His eyes were tightly closed, and there was a white tinge around his mouth.

The physician said, “That swelling’s a simple bruise; I’ve been icing it intermittently. His jaw’s intact. His heart’s strong, and he can swallow: I got a sweetrose-and-salica mixture down his throat, it’s good for internal bleeding, if there is any, and it can’t hurt him if there’s none.”

Hawk nodded. Lightly she laid her palm over the red-haired soldier’s heart; not to feel his pulse, but because physical contact lessened the shock of the link. As smoothly as she could, she extended her awareness, like a fisherman spreading a net. She met darkness, over which her own perception spread like a shining silken web, darkness,
fear, grief, confusion,
and then
fire!
searing through synapses, twisting mercilessly through the unprotected mind like a jolt of lightning. It was only memory, but she withdrew quickly, feeling Rogys’s pulse race and his limber body tighten under her hand. “...Hurts,” the boy whispered, and then lay still again.

She looked up to meet anxious eyes. “It’s not an injury, I think,” she said. “He’s caught in a memory of the pain.”

Macallan said, “Can you help him?”

She looked down again. “I’ll try.” She spread her fingers on the boy’s chest, and linked again. Slowly, she let her own thought permeate Rogys’s defenses.
Let it
go, she soothed, making that inner voice solicitous, warm, loving as a mother’s,
let it
go,
the pain is over, the pain is gone, let it go...

“He’s breathing easier,” said Macallan.

Hawk sat back. The delicate, unfamiliar effort had made her head ache. She watched the tension leave the muscles around Rogys’s mouth. “Let’s see what happens now,” she said. “He should improve.”

Before sleep, she pushed aside the frayed curtain over the window, and cracked the shutter, letting in light and a cool wind. They had given her a brazier. One coal glowed red in the darkness, a one-eyed toad crouched by the bed. Somewhere, on the other side of the tall hills, a red-brown bear was forging steadily north. Ignoring the light headache beating through her temples, she opened her mind, narrowing focus as she had been trained to do, reaching across a white wilderness to locate one familiar mental signature, like a melody within discord. She touched elk and badger, goose and goat, and once a solitary human hunter, but not the mind she sought. Finally she gave up.

She woke in the middle of the night. Someone was weeping. The harsh, broken sound had dragged her from slumber. As she woke, it receded, until she could hear it only at the very edge of her perception. It was not next door: Rogys was asleep, and mending. Not your business, she reminded herself, and thrust her head beneath her pillow. But the weeping did not stop.

She sat up, irritated with herself. Nine years sleeping in barracks surrounded by a hundred dreaming soldiers: surely she had learned enough to ward off the nightmares of some homesick youngster... But this was not a young voice calling in sleep. This was a man’s desperate anguish. The image slid into her mind of a lean, still face, framed by dark hair, hardened by some great ordeal: Azil, the harpist, whose hands would never pluck the strings again. Someone had hurt him, deliberately, horribly. She felt a dreadful cold, a miasma of hatred and cruelty that seemed to fill the bedchamber like smutty smoke. A voice whispered across a great distance:
You will never be free, little traitor. I have your soul in my palm; I need only close my hand to crush it... You will never be free. You will never be warm.
The perverse light whisper ran like a knife through her bones.

She flung a vehement command to the man in bed:
Wake up!

The demand jolted him from sleep. He lay shivering, covered with sweat. Shuddering with revulsion and pity, Hawk pulled her awareness back. Kicking free of the quilts, she crossed to the window and flung the shutter back. The frigid night air rushed in. The sky was clear. She gazed at the star patterns, naming them in her mind: the Dagger, the Lantern, the Boat. That one, with two red stars low in the sky, that was the Lizard. She watched the stars until the sickness left her mind. At last the cold and the need for sleep drove her back to her pallet. With a fervent prayer to Sedi, the goddess of dreams, that Azil the singer’s nightmares would not return—not that night at any rate—she drew the quilts around her head.

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