Limits of Power (75 page)

The first man over the lip of the cleft got a crossbow bolt in the chest … and the next man, red-faced in a rage, ran toward him, his short pike aimed at Stammel's chest. It was the end. Stammel grinned at the man, as he had always grinned at the enemy, as the point went home.
Thank
you,
he thought through that last pain.

T
he man who killed the old fellow on the ledge wrestled his pike free of the body, then tossed the man's crossbow down to his fellows below and searched the body. No money, of course. A ring on a thong around his neck—he yanked that off. “Hurry up, Tegar!” someone called up to him. The crew was moving; Tegar left the corpse for the carrion eaters and climbed back down as quickly as he could. One man, to kill so many—he must have been a soldier once. Tegar looked at the ring he'd taken. A foxhead seal. Fox Company
here
? Or just one of their veterans? He shrugged and jogged up the trail to catch up with the others.

With the rest he climbed the last stretch to the village, but had no breath to call out about his find. He took several steps more, coming close to the captain. Silence. No more horn calls; no more bolts from the rocks. No doubt the villagers had fled, but they would have left behind what villagers always left behind.

In the crooked lane between two crooked rows of houses a man stood, dark in the brilliant sunshine glaring off pale rock walls. The air shimmered with noonday heat. “I found a ring,” Tegar said, when he could speak. “It has a fox—”

“Shut up,” the captain said. He was staring straight at the man in the lane, and Tegar could read the tension in the captain's shoulders. “Who are you?” the captain said to the dark figure in the lane. “Are you the headman? Tell us where the gold is and I might let you live.”

“You killed him,” the figure said. Heat waves rose off the stone; an incongruous smell of hot iron, like a forge, stung Tegar's nose.

“If you mean that crazy old fool with the crossbow, certainly,” the captain said. “I don't know what he thought he was doing…”

“What he always did,” the figure said. “His duty. Tell me: are you wise?”

The captain gave a harsh bark of laughter; Tegar felt a sudden cramp, a twisting in his mind as painful as a twisted knee.
Don't laugh,
he wanted to say, but he could say nothing. “Wise?” the captain said. “That's for fools to think on; I don't need wisdom. I have swords at my command—”

Flame blossomed in front of them: impossible flame, a spear of flame brighter than the sun, and it pierced the captain and all directly behind him. Only the fourth man had time to scream, and only briefly. Through the flame, Tegar saw the dark figure of a man change to another, much larger shape shimmering with heat, and could not move. Such things came in tales—they did not exist—could not. As one after another of the crew, touched by flame, became fire as well, Tegar stood as if his feet had grown into the rock.

“You,” the voice said. Tegar shivered as if in cold, but sweat poured from him. “You took—”

Tegar threw the ring; he heard it clink on the stone.

“—his life,” the voice said. “That was not wise.” And before Tegar could beg for his life or cry out, the flame wrapped him round. He never saw the dark man with the oddly patterned skin and the yellow eyes pick up the ring and one particular unburned crossbow and swallow them.

A
lready the carrion eaters' wings made a column over the place of death, and some were feeding below; three strutted boldly toward Stammel's body, but they scattered with alarm cries as the shadow of much larger wings moved over the rocks and settled on the end of the ridge above the trail down to the sea. The dragon shape ignored the bodies below, those beside the trail, and those in the cleft of the rock. One only interested the dragon, who put out a long questing tongue and tasted.

“It was a chance,” the dragon said aloud, as if the corpse were still a live man. “I did not know they would come, and your commander will rightly blame me that you had no help. You hid your thought from me until too late; I was too far away. But you were faithful, and they will know.” The long tongue wrapped around the corpse and drew it slowly in.

The next morning, the wizard appeared at the entrance to the cave where the villagers were hiding. “He is gone, and so are the pirates,” the wizard said. “Come down.”

“He is dead,” Cadlin said. “I wish—”

“He saved you,” the wizard said. “And as a reward, he was taken away.”

“Away?”

“I found blood. I found bloodied weapons. I think the gods took his body.”

“He knew,” Cadlin said.

“Possibly,” the wizard said. “But it was his choice.” They were near the village now. “I cleaned up a bit for you. There were bodies in the street; there are others below. These here I burned.”

The scorch marks and a faint smell of burned meat were obvious. “Where do you think he was killed?” Cadlin asked. The other villagers were moving in and out of their houses.

“I know,” a boy said. “I know where he was; he played a game with us, and he said up on those rocks—”

“That's where I found the other bodies,” the wizard said. “Below those rocks. And on top, a dead man who wasn't Matthis and … his blood.”

“I wish he'd come with us,” Cadlin said. “I'd rather we lost every house in the village than him. He was a good man.”

“Yes,” the wizard said. “He was. But you are safe now, for a while at least, and I must go again. Fare well.” He turned and walked up the trail away from the village, past those still streaming in with their bundles and jugs and children.

Tsaia, North Marches Stronghold

The dark-skinned man with flame-colored eyes waited outside the stronghold gates—the sentries being wary of strangers—and Arcolin knew without a doubt who it was and why he had come. He bowed.

Impossibly, the man extended a hot red tongue and plucked from his throat first a crossbow, which he laid on the ground, then a ring, and then—with a curious sort of gulp, spat forth a shape that expanded and became a corpse; he held it in his arms like a beloved friend.

“Stammel,” Arcolin said.

“Yes. It was his choice. He died saving those among whom he lived.”

Rage as hot as the dragon's tongue rose in Arcolin's heart.

Before he could say anything, the dragon said, “Your anger is just. I did not know in time; I did not protect him.”

“Why?”

“I do not know, other than he chose to act alone; he did not call on me. He sent away those who might have aided him. I saw once, from a distance, that he was training them … I thought for war, but they told me after it was to run and hide.”

“He chose death, you mean.”

“He chose not to risk the others,” the dragon said. “If he had chosen death, he could have died before.” He held out his arms. “Will you take him?”

Arcolin felt tears running down his face. “Yes,” he said. Stammel seemed heavier without life in him; Arcolin almost staggered under the weight. The dragon picked up the crossbow and the ring and put out an arm, just under his own, and together they walked back to the gates.

They cleaned the body and dressed it in uniform once more—the uniform Stammel had sent back over a year before. Arcolin fitted the foxhead ring on Stammel's heart-hand, and they laid his body on a plank to carry it out to the Company burial ground. Arcolin sent word to the villages, where veterans who had fought alongside Stammel now lived. Solemn-faced recruits who had known Stammel only from veterans' tales stood at attention in the courtyard when his body was carried past.

As they came through the gates, Arcolin saw in the distance a shining helm glinting in the sun and a red horse galloping toward them beside a road already crowded with people from Duke's East. Arcolin held up his hand, and they all halted until she rode up.

“I hoped you would come,” Arcolin said.

“How—?” she began, and then shook her head. “Afterward,” she said.

With the veterans, she sang the “Ard hi Tammarion,” so long the traditional death song of the company that Arcolin had never considered changing it. The dragon-man came forward and looked Paks in the face but did not ask if she was wise.

“Sister and daughter,” he said. “Blessings.” Out came the tongue. “Honor me, if you will.”

“Blessings,” Paks said, and touched her tongue to the line of fire with no hesitation at all. Arcolin heard gasps from the others.

The dragon did not stay after the funeral rites but changed, there in broad daylight, in the sight of all. Then he rose into the air and glided away on dark wings.

“Dragon wants everyone to know dragons are back in the world,” Paks said.

“It is not the first time you met,” Arcolin said.

“No—but how did you know?”

“It did not ask if you were wise,” Arcolin said. “As far as I know, that is what it asks everyone on first meeting.”

“It called me, summer before this last,” Paks said. “I thought it was the gods' call at first. I left the Marshal-General staring after me when I rode away. Maybe it was … but what I met was Dragon.”

“You don't know its name?”

Paks shook her head, still looking into the bright sky where the dragon had been. “If it has a name, as we know names, it is not a name we can say. And I do not know why it called me, what that meeting was for. Nor do I know why Dragon calls me sister and daughter, though … it feels almost like family to me. And yet I know—” She scratched her head. “I know my father is a sheepfarmer up above Three Firs and my mother is the daughter of another sheepfarmer. My brothers and sisters are their children, as I am.”

“Um. Perhaps Dragon considers all paladins as family?”

“Perhaps. But please, Captain, tell me what happened to Stammel.”

“I know only what Dragon told me,” Arcolin said. “I should never have let him go—and yet I could not refuse him what he wanted.” He told her of the dragon's earlier visit, the offer of a job, and Stammel's decision to be the dragon's archer. “I thought he would come back at the end of it, truly.”

“I did not even know he was blinded,” Paks said. “I wish … perhaps I could have…”

“I hoped you would come,” Arcolin said. “We thought—I thought—after the Marshals could not heal him, that perhaps a paladin could. But…”

“But Gird had other plans for me,” Paks said. “Nothing so important as Stammel, to me. If I had known, I would have come.” She sighed. Arcolin looked at her closely. Were those silver hairs among the yellow? It had not been that long. “And perhaps that is why I was not given to know,” she said.

“You will stay for a night at least, will you not? I would have you meet my wife and son.”

“As the gods allow,” Paks said. “I would like that. It was none of my business, but I never thought you would marry—and you have a son—a babe?”

“Her first husband died; Jamis is this tall—” Arcolin held his hand out. He led her into the inner courtyard and up the stairs. Calla was supervising Jamis's daily stint of study—the boy was just beginning to read—and Arcolin made the introductions. Jamis's eyes widened. “You're a … a
paladin
!” he said. “And your mail really is shiny!”

“Jamis!” Calla said. “Be polite.”

Paks shook her head. “I was a big sister long before I was a paladin, milady. Jamis, would you like to see my horse?”

Jamis bounced off the chair, then looked at his mother. “Go along,” she said. “But come back quickly; I'm sure Paksenarrion has other things to do today than play big sister to you.”

Arcolin went back downstairs, watching Paks chatting with the boy—listening, rather, as he shed his shyness and began telling her everything about his life as fast as he could. Her horse stood quietly in the courtyard, bare now of saddle or bridle, with a worried groom standing nearby.