Dragon's Winter (37 page)

“Boof,” Shem whispered.

In the tent she shared with Bear, Hawk sat motionless on her bedroll. Bear had gone to the cook-tent. Changelings heal quickly; already the wounds in Bear’s throat and side had begun to knit. Hawk’s head was fine, though it, felt strange. She had cropped her hair severely: it sprang from her head in black and silver spikes. She clenched and released the fingers of her right hand, as Macallan had told her she had to do if she wished it to keep any strength. Her ribs had ceased to hurt. If she tried to move quickly, they would. The space where her right eye had been throbbed beneath its patch, but only slightly. Macallan had salved the raw place with a potion from one of his little jars.

The deeper pain was not amenable to Macallan’s potions.

She mostly wanted solitude: a place to hide. But one could not hide in the middle of a war band. Someone scratched at the tent

“Come in,” she said, expecting Macallan with his jars.

It was not Macallan; it was Huw. “I thought you might need something,” he said.

“I’m all right.” She squinted at him. “Your face looks different.”

He flushed. “Got tired of scraping myself raw every other day.”

The faint brown stubble was barely visible. “I like it. It makes you look older.” He grinned. “Where’s your charge?”

“With Dragon. Have you seen?” He waved an arm. “Everything’s changing!” His enthusiasm was moving. Hawk followed him from the tent. The air, which had been icy for so long, was sweet with the promise of spring. On the near horizon, an elk, ribs showing, meandered westward. Its spindly legs seemed impossibly frail and long.

A flock of grey geese, honking in rhythm, soared over the camp. “Those are the first geese I’ve seen in this gods- forsaken land,” Huw said.

Bear appeared. He carried two skewers of meat and a cloth heaped with pan-bread. He held out one of the skewers. “Elk,” he said. Hawk took it. Manipulating the skewer with her left hand was idiotically difficult. Huw, suddenly turned shy, muttered something and withdrew.

Bear shoveled hot bread into his mouth. “That boy’s in love with you, you know.”

She frowned. “Huw? He’s almost a child.”

“He’s young,” the yellow-eyed man said blandly. “So what? I doubt he’s a virgin. Once you heal, you can allow yourself a little fun, surely.” He grinned at her expression. “Do you want this bread, or do I finish it?”

“I want it,” she said, scooping the last hotcake out of the grease-soaked cloth.

Raudri, by the officers’ tent, lifted his horn to his lips, and sounded the trill that signaled Break Camp. The men scattered the fires and hauled briskly at the tents, impatient to be gone from this eerie place. Not very far away, bodies sprawled: the servants of the Citadel, cut down by the Atani war band’s arrows. Hawk ducked into the tent to retrieve her belongings. They were few: a leather pack, which had belonged to a dead man, a spare shirt, lent by Irok, socks, a bedroll. Bear tied the bedroll to the pack and helped her strap both to her back. He looked ready to march. The bandages around his clawed chest lay concealed beneath his vest.

“You’ll have to ride one of the spare horses,” she said.

“I’m not coming with you,” he said. “I go east, into Nakase, and Kameni, if need be.” He opened his hand. A small, cloudy-white quartz bear sat in the hollow of his palm.

“It was my cousin’s. I took it from her corpse,” he said bleakly. “I go to find her family. I will give them this, and tell them how she died. From there I will return to Sogda. Though when Ariana sees me she’ll probably throw crockery at my head.”

It was pointless to argue. “You are hurt,” Hawk said finally.

“Scratches.” He scowled at her, and put both arms about her, careful not to press against her shattered arm. She laid her cheek against his massive chest. “Nothing troubles Bear, remember? You are not to worry about
me
.”

Together they went to tell Karadur Atani that Bear Inisson would not be journeying south with the war band. They found him in the horse lines, with Shem tucked into the circle of his arm. The little boy was stroking the nose of a big red gelding.

“This is Gambler,” the dragon-lord said. “He is not so clever a horse as Smoke, but he is very well-behaved. We shall ride him today, thou and I.” Gambler laid his ears back. The dragon-lord caught his bridle with a firm hand. “Oy, my beauty, what is it?” He turned toward the changelings. “Cub, dost remember Hawk? I told thee yesterday, she is thy friend. This man is Bear. He is also thy friend.” Karadur’s face was still closed: habit did not change so quickly, and there were marks of grief along his mouth. But through the secret link that bound her to him, Hawk felt the steadfast current of joy.

Shem’s hazel eyes, so like Thea’s, gazed into hers. “Hawk.” He had held her hand the day before. “Hawk not fly.”

It hurt. It would always hurt.

The dragon-lord said, “You look better. Both of you.”

Hawk said, “I am healing, my lord.”

“And you, Bear Inisson?”

Hawk said, “My lord, he comes to say farewell.”

The blue gaze sharpened. “You are leaving us?” Bear explained. Karadur Atani nodded slowly. “I understand. Take what supplies you need from our stores. Do you need a horse?”

Bear shook his head. “I don’t like horses, nor they me.” He looked at the small boy. “Shem Wolfson,” he said gently. “I knew thy father well. I hope we meet again, thou and I. Safe journey.”

“Safe journey,” the dragon-lord said.

Within an hour, the company left Mitligund.

At Macallan’s request, they traveled slowly; the black gelding, though” mending, required frequent rests, and Hawk could not yet endure a quick pace. Sunflower, as if mindful of her rider’s weakness, paced smoothly along the uneven ground. Huw rode at Hawk’s right. It was evident, from his expression, and the way he twitched every time she lifted her rein, that he expected her to fall. She told him curtly to relax.

“I’m an archer. I can ride with no hands, if I have to.”

Behind them, a mule pulled the sledge that bore Tenjiro Atani’s body. It was flanked by three men: one on each side and a third to ride behind it. Edruyn said softly, “Too bad we can’t just drop that thing in a ditch. It makes my skin crawl.” Irok, riding behind him, grunted agreement.

But Orm said, “Best shut your mouth if you want to keep your precious skin. That
thing,
whatever else it may have been, was once your lord’s twin brother.”

For two days, they followed the emblems of their own passage: the black cicatrices of bonfires, scorched like brands into the earth. The grass grew at a stunning pace. By the morning of the second day it was fetlock high. More elk appeared, nosing at the marvelous grass, and skinny, starved deer. The second night, they camped beside a copse of trees.

“I know this place. This is where we killed the wargs,” said Huw.

That night, Hawk dreamed. She was running through a high snowdrift. She could not change. She could see, and in the dream she had two good arms, but it did not matter, whatever shambled after her was coming nearer. It would, she knew, catch her... Her breath burned in her throat. Skin seared with cold, snarling in cornered rage, she turned, to face a misshapen, twisted, red-eyed horror.
Ah, cousin,
it rasped,
there you are
... It leaped for her throat.

She woke sweating and shaking. The tent stank of smoke and salt. Huw’s voice, over and over, whispered her name. He was holding her, very lightly, careful not to jar her arm.

He felt her wake, and started to move.

“It’s all right,” she said, “Stay.”

The morning of the fourth day, Karadur left them. He spoke briefly with the captains. Then he walked past the perimeter of the camp, and changed. He lifted into the pale blue sky with an impossible bound, soared thrice over the camp, circling higher and higher each time, and then shot southward. Shem, sitting on Huw’s shoulder, lifted his small face to the sun. “Dragon gone,” he said solemnly.

All that day, they watched the sky, but saw only grey geese and ptarmigan, and once, a pair of golden eagles. At their midday rest, Hawk was leaning against a rock in the sunlight when she heard a step. She looked up, into Azil Aumson’s dark gaze. “Can you find him?” the singer asked.

She had not tried. As she had before, alone in the Keep, she opened her mind, reaching for a signature of fire somewhere in the distance. Other minds, some human, some animal, brushed hers, but she ignored them. Once she thought she touched Bear’s mind... She rubbed her aching temples. “I can’t reach him. He’s too far away.”

At sunset, they halted. Shem, toddling through the camp with his fingers tightly clasped in Huw’s, pointed southward. “Dragon coming.”

“Are you sure?” Huw asked curiously. “I don’t see him.”

“Shem sure,” the boy said confidently. “Dragon come.” They waited. The great golden form swept silently over the savanna. The sun ran like molten copper along the vast sweep of his wings. He landed and changed. His men greeted him with a certain shyness, mindful of the immense, alien presence that shimmered behind his eyes.

That night, most of the men chose to do without tents. Karadur and Azil sat side by side in front of a fire. The sky, clear as water, was hung from edge to edge with stars.

A heavy footfall made them turn their heads. It was Huw, with Shem in his arms. “Excuse me, my lord,” the archer said. “He is fretful. He would not sleep before he had seen you.”

Karadur held up his big hands, and Huw set Shem between them. “So, cub, here am I,” the dragon-lord said gravely. “What is it? Art frightened? Art cold?”

The child shook his head. “Shem warm.” He had begun to speak more readily, now. “Dragon gone. Where Dragon go?”

“Dragon goes far away, cub.” Karadur ran a finger through the boy’s now-shining hair. It fell nearly to his shoulders. “But I will come back, always.”

The little boy pressed confidingly against the dark- cloaked man’s shoulder. “Dragon go,” he said firmly. “Find Papa.”

The three men exchanged quick glances. Karadur said softly, “I am sorry, Shem. I cannot bring thy father to thee, cub. He has gone far away, farther than even a dragon flies.” The child’s face whitened. “Leave him with me,” the dragon-lord said to the archer. Karadur wrapped his cloak around the child. “Listen, cub. Shall I tell thee of the place we are going? It is a big house, Dragon’s house. Thou hast seen it before. Thou madest friends with the cooks, and slept in a big kettle. Dost remember this?” Light, wide eyes stared into his. Softly Karadur told the tense, silent child about the stables, the dogs, the eating hall with its bright tall fires, the kitchens filled with wonderful things to eat... Shem’s eyelids closed, and his rigid muscles relaxed.

But in the middle of the night, Shem woke. The cloak that wrapped him was warm, and warmer still was the man beside him, the deep-voiced, shining man with fire in his hands:
Dragon.
It was night, but bright fires burned nearby. Overhead the stars made a great white arch like the line of Huw’s bow. But there was an empty space inside him, as if the cold had crept inside him. Mama was gone. The red-eyed monster who had hurt him had hurt her, too, and made it so that she would not get up again. He had seen her lying in the snow. But his father had fought them, and his father was strong, stronger than any monster...

But his father was gone. He felt the empty place inside him swell and swell until he thought he might crack.

The following morning, the fields around the camp were burnished with apricot-colored butterflies. “Look,” Karadur said to the hollow-eyed child. He swung the boy to his shoulder and strode toward the field. The butterflies fluttered upward, surrounding man and boy in a great orange cloud. Where they had been, thousands and thousands of tiny white flowers spread over the earth like lace.

All that day, Shem was withdrawn and silent. “He needs to weep,” Azil said.

But Shem would not weep.

Late that day, they came upon a scene they had encountered before: the sprawled bodies of three children. Karadur called a halt, and sent men out with shovels. They dug a grave, and gently lifted the rigid bodies into the softened earth.

The following day they halted in a burned village. The blackened spars were limned with green: clusters of meadow rue and fireweed had taken root everywhere. Here, too, they had a burial to attend to. South of them, jagged mountains rose above the plains, with three tall peaks clearly higher than the rest: Whitethorn, Brambletor, and tallest of all, Dragon’s Eye, its crown shadowed in cloud. All day they rode toward the mountains. At last they halted, in Ashavik, the village in which their dead waited. The horses had been ravaged, but the wrapped human bodies lay almost undisturbed. Grim-faced, the men of Herugin’s wing set to with shovels.

That night, Azil sang: no dirge, but an old song: it told how Tirion the archer went hunting on the night of Spring Moon, and came upon a great black buck, the finest and most majestic animal he had ever seen. Calling his dogs, he stalked it and each time he thought he had trapped it, it escaped, and fled from him.

And Tirion vowed, “I will take the black buck, before the night is done.

“But the buck ran free, O the buck ran free; the buck ran free as the wind is free!”