Fortress Draconis (4 page)

Resolute laughed aloud, with just a hint of cruelty. “You’re no prince, boy, not in the least.”

“Oh.” Will suspected they might be lying to him, but he also decided not to let them know he knew. He shrugged his shoulders and stood, wincing at the squishiness of his boots. “Just as well, since a prince will get as soaked in the rain as a thief, but a thief can tolerate it.”

Through the window and out across rooftops they went in the rain and dead of night. For an old man and a big Vork, the two of them moved pretty well. Will followed the paths they picked out, primarily because his knee was still tender enough to make the more demanding route he would have chosen a bit dangerous. He wasn’t so much worried about hurting himself as he was about damaging the leaf, which surprised him.

They descended to the streets and reached a stable where three horses were quickly saddled. Grain and other supplies were loaded on six more horses, then all of them were led out in a string behind Resolute’s horse. Will ended up riding a brown gelding, which seemed to be a docile creature. Will had no complaints about that because the last time he’d tried to ride a horse, the owner had arrived before he’d gotten away and the beast had reared, tossing Will off. Limping back to Marcus had not been any fun.

Crow took the reins of Will’s horse and led it along through the city. The rain slackened to a drizzle, and mist began crawling through the streets. They skirted the southern edge of the Dimandowns, then left the city through the western gate. The guards there barely roused themselves to watch them pass. Resolute flipped them gold-coin lullabies to encourage their return to sleep and forgetting about the trio’s passage.

They rode west for a while, but with the clouds so thick and black, Will could not mark time by the moon’s passage. He only knew they’d gone a long way when they headed off toward the northwest, along a track through hills of tree stumps. In a little valley they stopped at an abandoned woodsman’s hovel and stabled the horses in a cave dug into the hillside.

His two companions saw to the horses, so Will entered the cabin and found a dry patch of floor to curl up on. A little flutter of fear ran through him, but the warmth pulsing out from the leaf-bag kept his worries at bay. Quickly enough he surrendered to a full belly and exhaustion, dreaming of great adventures that evaporated by the time he wakened.

Morning came bright and Will rose with the speed of the sun. Lazily wiping sleepsand from his eyes, he stepped over Crow’s sleeping form and wandered out into the daylight. He found Resolute snarling whispered curses in Elvish, crouched near the cabin. In the field before it, rabbits gamboled amid stumps. They twitched their ears and wrinkled their noses, grazing ten yards away from the cabin, and a yard away from some contraption set in the field.

Will frowned. “What’s that thing?”

Resolute frowned. “It’s a deadfall trap that should catch us breakfast.”

“A rabbit? You can eat them?”

The Vorquelf arched an eyebrow. “You’ve never … ?”

Will shook his head. “S’posed to taste like cat.” He squatted down and fingered some rocks in the dry soil at the cabin’s entrance. “Why don’t you just kill one?”

“That’s what the snare is for, boy. Now keep your voice down. You don’t want to scare them off.”

The youth snorted, then whispered, “Ain’t my voice keeping them away, it’s that thing you made.” He hefted a dark stone. “Me, I’d just throw a rock at it.”

“Would you? Well, then, how about an easy target?” Resolute pointed off at a plump rabbit. “That one, with the white blaze …”

Before the Vorquelf finished his sentence, Will shifted his stance, dropping to his right knee a lot faster than he should have. He whipped his right hand forward, side-arming the stone. It whizzed through the air, clipping the rabbit in the side of the head. The creature flopped over on its flank and twitched, but before it stopped, Resolute had darted forward, snatched it up, and wrung its neck.

Will clenched his teeth against the pain in his knee, determined not to show Resolute any weakness. He was paying the price for showing off, and was damned glad the rock had actually hit its target.If I’d missed…

The Vorquelf glanced at him, then nodded. “Nice throw.”

Will shrugged and rose slowly. “Bigger than most rats, anyway. Hope it’s better eating.”

“It will be.” Resolute jerked a thumb at the field. “Once you collect up some firewood, we can cook it.”

“But I got the rabbit.”

“True, but getting breakfast wasn’t your job. Gathering firewood is.”

“But you never told me.”

“You never asked.” Resolute stooped and drew a knife from his boot-top. “Won’t take me long to skin and prepare it. Once you get firewood and some water, we’ll be ready for breakfast.”

Will frowned. “Why is that my… ?”

“Out here, boy, there are things I can do that you cannot. If I’m doing your chores, I can’t do mine.” Resolute tossed him a flaccid waterskin. “You want me doing my chores around here. Now get the firewood and mind the frostclaws.”

“Frostclaws?” Will’s eyes narrowed. “There aren’t any frostclaws around here. They’re all up north. And I’m not a child that you can scare with such stories.”

“No? Come here, little boy.” Resolute led him around the side of the cabin, toward the cave where their horses had been kept, then squatted down and stabbed the point of his knife into the ground. “See this track here?”

The youth came over and lowered himself onto his left knee. The Vorquelf pointed to a trio of parallel lines, with the centermost a bit longer and thicker than the other two.

The lines weren’t terribly distinct, just shallow marks in the dirt.

“That’s a frostclaw track? It’s not much.”

“You’ve lived your life on cobblestones, so now you learn something.” The Vorquelf pointed back along the path Will had taken to reach his side. “See your boot print? See how crisp the heel mark is? The ground is still moist from the rain. As that print dries out, the edges will crumble, and the wind will erode it. If the rain comes again, it’ll melt the edges, leaving your heel print just a shallow oval in the dirt. The rain melted the edges of these marks. They’re likely less than a week old.”

“But… frostclaws, they can’t be here. King Augustus, he made sure that wouldn’t happen.” Will shivered, and suddenly realized he was well away from the city where he’d grown up. He was out and exposed and there were horrible things in the wild that he wanted nothing to do with.

“Boy, the world you know is a mosaic, remember? Some pieces are true. Augustus did make the world safe for a while. He kept Chytrine back,for a while. Over the years, she’s gotten stronger, bolder. She sends frostclaws, vylaens and gibberers this far south, testing, probing, searching and scouting. She’ll be coming, and soon.”

Resolute stood and, with one swift knife stroke, gutted the rabbit. “Augustus bought the world a generation in which to prepare for her to come back. If you’re any example of what’s waiting for her, that time has been utterly squandered.”

Will heard the sharp crack of Resolute’s openhanded slap against his thigh before the pain registered. His eyes snapped open. He grabbed for the saddle with one hand, the other tightening down on the rope lead. He steadied himself and raised his head, little pops crawling up his spine bone by bone.

“I’ve got the horses.” He raised his hand to show the rope looped around it several times. “I’ve got them.”

Resolute remained stone-faced in profile, silhouetted against the dimming western sky. “Not the horses I’m worried about, boy. Night’s coming on. Frostclaws will be about.”

Will shook his head to clear it from the logginess his brief saddle-nap had caused. The way Resolute left off speaking told Will that the Vorquelf expected something of him, and expected him to figure it out. He’d been left to do a lot of that over the past three days, amid fetching and carrying, caring for the horses, cleaning up, and learning to memorize every birdsong, animal call, beast track, and plant.

Plants!He’d had to learn them by leaf, flower, fruit, root, scent, taste, and medicinal powers. Will had gotten to hate flowers and trees, and was longing to be back in some civilized place where plants were restricted to parks and gardens. Many times, Resolute had even awakened him by thrusting some plant under his nose and demanding that he identify it instantly.

It hadn’t been all bad. Resolute would let him chewmetholanth leaves to ease some aches and pains—though the supply ofmetholanth was never sufficient, or his pains were overabundant. Every night Will had collapsed exhausted and aching. In the mornings he woke stiff and sore, moving even more slowly than Crow did.

So,what is it the Vork wants now? Will blinked his eyes and looked around. With night coming on they should be seeking shelter. Usually, by this time of the day, they’d have already ridden off the main road to some hovel or cave his two guides already knew about. Those tracks, though, had headed off through forest for the most part, and now grassy fields lay on both sides of the road.

The road itself had widened, and the plants weren’t meadow grasses. They were something else, something Will didn’t recognize, but he could see that they were arranged in rough rows. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he knew it wasn’t natural.And if it ain’t natural, that means…

The young man smiled, discovering that even those muscles ached. “Someone planted these plants. There are people about. Maybe even a village or something.”

Resolute’s chin came up. “And?”

“And?” Will shrugged, his shoulders sagging forward. “And, and…”

“Think, boy,think”

“We can take shelter with them?”

“No, no, no!”

“We can’t?”

Resolute turned in his saddle and waved away Will’s question with the flick of a hand. “This is hopeless, Crow. I accepted that we might have to train him, but he’s incapable of learning.”

Crow chuckled as his horse trotted forward and drew abreast of the two of them, trapping Will between them. “You learned these lessons, my friend, of necessity, at a younger age. You’d not been raised in the Dimandowns. He’s not a stupid lad, just a tired one.”

“I’m too tired to be tired.”

Crow patted him on the left shoulder. “The fields have you thinking ahead, Will. That’s good, but you also need to think back. What do the fields tell you?”

“I’m going to have a harder time finding firewood?” Will shook his head. Something else niggled at the back of his mind.

“You see, Crow. He focuses on himself.”

“Easy, Resolute. Why is that, Will? Why will finding firewood be harder?”

“No trees.” He sighed heavily, then it hit him. His head came up. “No trees because someone cut them down for firewood. No trees means no forest. No forest means no frostclaws because they like the forest.” Will glanced over at Resolute. “You tried to trick me by telling me frostclaws would be about.”

“How do you know they won’t?”

The youth frowned, started to point at the fields, then snarled. “I don’tknow, but it makes sense. Is that wrong? Are they going to be around?”

Resolute shrugged. “Some, yes. There will be sheep about, some goats, cows, chickens, and horses. That’s what they will be going for.”

“So I wasn’t wrong?”

“Not completely, but it took you far too long to figure it out.” The Vorquelf tapped his own skull with a finger. “You have to always be thinking, always be aware. The world would just as soon see you dead as not, and legions would like to be doing the killing.”

The Vorquelf touched his heels to his horse’s flanks and trotted ahead along the road. Before them, it curved between two low hills, then started a descent into the valley. A little breeze came up from that direction, bringing with it the hint of woodsmoke, confirming the presence of a village nearby.

The youth looked over at Crow. “Why is he so hard on me? I didn’t do anything to him. I got him the leaf, remember? He should be thanking me.”

The man’s eyes glittered with the last of the day’s dying light. “Remember how he said life was a mosaic?”

“Hard to forget when he says it all the time. ‘Here’s another piece to your mosaic,boy’”

“You almost sound like him.” Crow scratched at his bearded chin. “For Resolute, you’re a piece in his mosaic, but his mosaic is a map, a map to a goal. He wants to make sure you fit. He hopes you do—becauseif you do, he’s that much closer.”

“Okay, I understand that, but shouldn’t he be careful with me, not being all…” Will wanted to say “cruel,” but he flashed back on thrashings Marcus had given him for little harmless things. “I mean, he’s being hard, you know?”

Crow nodded slowly. “Always has been. When I first met him he wasn’t any easier on me. For Resolute, that piece of the mosaic has taken on a shape in his mind. He wants you to fit that shape. You weren’t quite what he expected, so he’s doing what needs to be done.”

“But what about what I want?”

The man laughed aloud. “Have you ever gotten what you want, Will? Do you even know what you want, beyond a bed and a full belly, maybe somemetholanth or a cup of watered wine?”

“Yes, well, no, but…” Crow’s question shot through him and echoed around inside, emphasizing how hollow he felt. Then the warmth of the leaf slowly trickled in to fill him. “I want the leaf.”

Crow leaned to the right and dropped his voice to a whisper. “The care you take with that leaf, and the fact that Predator couldn’t see it there on your belt, is probably what has kept Resolute from using you as frostclaw bait. You want that leaf because the leaf wants you.”

Then the white-haired man straightened up and asked a series of quick questions, forestalling any questions Will might have asked in return. “Now, the things that you’ve learned here, have they hurt you or helped you? Has the labor been that hard, or just different from what you’re used to? Is Resolute any harder on you than your former master?”

Will answered each question in his mind the second it was asked, and he didn’t like the answers. The stuff he’d learned … Well, just knowing aboutmetholanth was a help; and the other stuff would make it easy to figure out what to steal from a herbalist. Getting water and wood, cleaning up; those chores weren’t as hard as ones he’d outgrown in Marcus’ family. And Marcus as a taskmaster, well…