“Shit,” he muttered.
“What do we do?” Vera asked Bershad.
Bershad rolled the spear across his fingers a few times. The dragon veered to the south and swooped down by the river, screaming overtop the heads of the townspeople. He could hear them shouting and pleading for mercy.
“You four head for the trees,” Bershad said, lifting the horn off his shoulder. “I’ll catch up.”
“Silas,” Rowan started to say. “It’s the middle of the fucking day.”
“Yeah. Vera, you know where the entrance to the pass is. I’ll meet you there.”
“What if you—”
“Then you’ll just have to rescue Kira without me,” Bershad said. “Get her back to Almira and tell Ashlyn I tried to keep my promise as best I could. Now go!”
Bershad headed back toward the city before anyone could argue further. The dragon kept circling as he moved, but didn’t attack. If Bershad was lucky, she’d taken a few bad wounds and exhausted herself. If not, he was a dead man.
When Bershad was in range, he stopped and slipped his hand behind his breastplate to make sure his seashell was there. Then he raised his mask and put the horn up to his lips. There was no risk of enraging the Red Skull any more than she already was, so Bershad blew as long and loud as he could. When his lungs were out of air, he heaved in a new breath and did it again. And again. And again. On the fifth call, the Red Skull snapped her head around to find the source of the horn.
“That’s right,” Bershad whispered, lowering the mask again. “I’m the one making all the noise in your head.”
The dragon bolted upward like a loosed arrow, so high she turned into a black dot in the sky. Bershad found a good bit of ground and the right grip of his spear. The dragon dove.
“That’s it,” Bershad whispered. His heart pounded behind his eyes. His stomach churned with fear. “Come and get me.”
The Red Skull careened toward the earth. Bershad could see every scale on her face. Hear the tendons of her jaws strain as her mouth stretched open. He could have named each one of her dagger-length teeth. He crouched and aimed his spear at the dragon’s right eye, but it was too small of a target. Moving too fast. At the last moment, Bershad saw a long, bloody gash on the left side of her neck. The scales had been scraped off, exposing soft, vulnerable flesh below. He shifted his aim, crouched a little lower.
When the Red Skull’s shadow turned his world black, Bershad dove left. Felt the earth jerk and rumble from the dragon’s impact. Heard the snap of bone and sinew as she plowed into the ground. Then silence. Bershad couldn’t see anything. His mask had gotten twisted when he fell. He pulled it off and wiped the sweat from his face. Tried to get his bearings.
The Red Skull was dead. Bershad’s spear was buried in her neck, although he wasn’t sure that was what had killed her. She hadn’t slowed down at all—didn’t try to snatch him up in her jaws. She’d either been too furious to think clearly, or too tired to care. Luck was the only reason Bershad was still breathing. He walked over to the dragon’s head and touched her forehead.
“Sorry, girl.”
Bershad knew he’d done the right thing. The dragon would have killed hundreds of people. Women. Children. Everyone. But having a good reason to do something terrible doesn’t change the way it feels while you’re doing it.
* * *
Bershad picked up Alfonso’s tracks in the forest and found the others waiting for him by a small creek. It looked like Felgor had just finished throwing up.
“Dragon’s dead,” Bershad said. He turned to Alfonso. “How is he?”
“Tired,” Rowan said, rubbing the donkey’s muzzle. “Scared.”
“Makes two of us,” Felgor said. “Never seen a dragon before. That was quite a first impression.”
“You’ve never seen a dragon?” Yonmar asked. “How is that possible?”
“I grew up in Burz-al-dun.” Felgor shrugged. “We don’t have ’em there. I heard they were dangerous, but I was thinking more like the way a bear’s dangerous. Although I’ve never seen one of them, either. I can’t believe you actually killed that thing.”
“I figured you for dragon shit,” Vera admitted, then smiled at everyone’s look of surprise. “What? So did all of you.” She considered the trees. The forest grew thicker as it rose into the mountains, trunks tangled into each other and underbrush rooted itself between dead stumps and mossy loam. “I’m glad you survived, though. This place has turned to wilderness already. I can see how the others got lost out here.”
Rowan cleared his throat. “I hate to interrupt this little orgy of gratitude, but we don’t have any food,” he said.
Bershad frowned. “None?”
“Lord Grealor over here dropped it all back in Argel.”
“There was a dragon!” Yonmar said.
“You never drop the food,” Felgor said. “Even I know that.”
“What about that sack you cut off the donkey’s back?” Yonmar asked. “What was in that?”
“Extra chain mail and steel slats for my armor,” Bershad said. “Which we can’t eat.”
“Well, can’t you hunt for more?” Yonmar was clearly unfamiliar with details of the hunting process.
“Of course I can,” Rowan said. “But traipsing around this side of the Razors looking for a goat or a deer is a quick way to wind up killed by Skojit or eaten by a Stone Scale lying in wait to ambush me.” He sniffed the air. “Plus, the higher we go the harder it’ll be to find food.” Rowan seemed to add this information up and find a rather unfortunate total sum. “I believe this will soon turn into a bit of an unpleasant trip.”
“Yeah,” Bershad said. “We might as well get started.”
13
JOLAN
Almira, Deepdale
The walls and towers of Deepdale seemed like part of the forest—huge gray stones festooned with moss and thick vines, as if the city had been pushed up from the earth below, rather than built on top of it. The crenellations of the outside wall were decorated with dozens of large stone jaguars, some of them prowling, others carved in lazy postures that made them appear to be dozing atop the city, paws and tails dangling.
“An old Bershad lord had them carved,” Jolan said when he saw Garret eyeing the great felines. “The jaguars.”
“Huh.” Garret grunted. Jolan couldn’t tell if he liked them or not. Garret was a hard man to read.
Morgan had spoken of Deepdale often—he had completed his apprenticeship in this city, years before. The Bershad lords had always been accommodating to the alchemists, and Morgan often bragged about the research he’d conducted under the guise of a useful lesson for Jolan. But he also relayed the history of the jaguar lords, who had worshipped and protected the Dainwood jungle for generations. Master Morgan always sounded a little bitter when he talked about the destruction of their dynasty.
There was a crowd forming along the eastern wall, which didn’t make a lot of sense to Jolan, seeing as the main gate was off to the west. He squinted and tried to see between the shoulders and bodies that blocked his view. When they got a little closer, his eyes widened—he could see a scaled tail now, barbed at one end and almost fifteen feet long.
“Dragon,” he whispered. “They killed a dragon over there.”
Garret glanced over. “Good for them.”
“Let’s go take a look,” Jolan said.
“You’re not worried it’ll spring to life and cut your head off?”
Jolan winced, regretting that he’d told Garret that detail. “Not really,” he muttered. Then he trotted off toward the crowd. If Garret didn’t want to look at the dragon, that was fine by him.
Jolan wormed his way through the crowd until he could see the beast. The dragon had marbled scales of black and white, each one twice as thick as a piece of plate armor. Its back had three warped ridges running toward the tail, and its snout was turned upward like a bat’s. There were dozens of spears poking out from between the scales—it must have taken fifty m
en to kill it that way.
“Ugly bastard,” said a bearded man wearing a jacket of chain mail. “What kind is it?”
If the man didn’t know, he definitely wasn’t a local. This was the most common dragon in the Dainwood.
“Draconis var coruptan,” Jolan said, using the alchemical classification, all of which were written and spoken in Balarian.
“The fuck does that mean?” the bearded man asked, then spat.
“It’s a Snub-Nosed Blackjack, moron,” said a tall man with long black hair that was festooned with silver rings. Definitely a Deepdale man.
“Huh. Well it was a fucking asshole. Damn near bit my arm off.”
“They’ll do that,” the tall man said. “Rynolf’ll probably die, too. His liver’s jelly.”
Jolan noticed a pile of meat and blood near the Blackjack’s snout. He craned his head to get a better look. He could make out the remains of an arm and the shiny, broken remnants of what looked like a gilded breastplate. Jolan thought he saw a piece of torn flesh with a little strip of blue as well.
“Was that the dragonslayer?” Jolan asked.
“Aye,” the tall man said. “Starkland … Stuckland. Something like that.”
“Stravalund,” the bearded man corrected.
“Whatever. All the soft-palmed lords from Floodhaven are the same.”
“I’m from Floodhaven,” said the bearded man.
“Good for you.”
“What did he do?” Jolan asked.
“The same thing every dragonslayer does,” the bearded man said. “Pissed off Hertzog Malgrave.” He let out a breath. Threw a worried glance around the group. “Don’t suppose I get a pass here, seeing as the dragon’s dead.”
Jolan realized the bearded man must have been the dragonslayer’s forsaken shield. That meant he was supposed to follow the exile down the river today.
“The law is the law,” the tall man said. He gave the forsaken shield a look. “But in the Dainwood we go our own way. We’ll get you a belly full of rain ale first, at least. Who knows, might be we lose track of you before you lose track of your own head.”
“Careful with that,” said another local. “Grealor’s in the city. His wardens don’t abide exceptions.”
“Fuck Elden Grealor and his bear-masked assholes.” The tall man spat. “They don’t hold sway over me.”
Someone put their hand on Jolan’s shoulder. Clamped down.
“Seen enough?” Garret said.
Jolan wanted to watch them field dress the dragon. The people of the Dainwood had their own unique way of slaughtering the great lizards. They cut each scale free and set it aside so the fat at the root could be shucked off. Then they removed all the organs and meat instead of letting them go to rot inside the carcass. They’d eat everything that could be eaten except for the heart, which was left inside the rib cage to fertilize the site of the bones. No other people in Almira, or the entire realm of Terra, bothered with such effort. Jolan could already see a few men squatting near the dragon, sculpting figures from the mud and adding totems. It was bad luck to leave the gods out of a dragon kill.
But Garret’s grip and eyes made it clear that he wasn’t willing to wait around.
“Yes,” Jolan said.
“Good. Let’s go.”
* * *
At the city gate—which was a massive portcullis so wide four carriages could pass underneath at the same time—Jolan and Garret were stopped by a fat guard with a lazy eye.
“Business in Deepdale?” he asked without a hint of interest in the answer.
“Givin’ the boy up fer apprenticeship,” Garret said, slipping into a surprisingly good Almiran accent.
“Uh-huh.” The guard spat to his right. “Which trade?”
“Whichever one’ll take him.”
“Ha!” The guard clapped Garret on the shoulder, brightening up a little. He gave Jolan an appraising glance with his one good eye. “Bad apple, eh? Give ’im to a chimney sweep, that’ll show him.”
The guard waved them through and turned to the next person in line.
“Why’d you tell him that?” Jolan asked as they headed into the heart of the city, walking on the edge of a wide avenue that was busy with carts and horses.
“Everybody needs a reason to enter the city.”
“No,” Jolan said. “Why did you tell him that, about the apprenticeship? We could have told him anything to get through.”
Garret glanced down at him. “The best lies are the ones you carve out from truth. You’ve been sold into an apprenticeship once before. I figured you’d know how to act if we got more questions.”
“Oh.”
Jolan knew that he probably shouldn’t have gone to Deepdale with Garret. He should have kept moving through the hill country on his own, like he’d planned. There was something very unsettling about the man he’d found in the woods with a dragontooth in his arm. It wasn’t just the shifting accent and secrecy. Garret had a quiet, calculating look about him at all times, like a fox who could sense that he was in a dangerous spot, but continued hunting anyway.
Jolan was curious about him, though. He wanted to know where he was really from, and what he was doing in Almira. But in the back of his mind, he also wondered if it was the same kind of curiosity that Morgan had had about that Needle-Throated Verdun.
They found an inn on the western side of town called the Jaguar’s Mask. A gentle, misty rain had begun to fall while they moved through the city, and the inn had several small streams of water flow ing off its slate roof by the time they arrived. Someone had set up three large stoneware buckets to collect the water.
“They’re for rain ale,” Jolan explained happily, even though Garret hadn’t asked. “It’s a special drink in Deepdale, can’t find it anywhere else. They use forest hops and rainwater to get the flavor.”
Garret didn’t respond. He just pushed the oak door open and went inside.
There was a large common room with half a dozen round tables set up by the hearth. Two staircases on either side led to the rooms above. Garret spoke to the innkeeper—an old man with a white beard that extended down to his belt buckle—and then pressed a small stack of coins into his hand. He motioned for Jolan to follow him into the common room. They took a seat close to the fire, and after a few minutes an old woman emerged from the kitchen.
“What’ll it be?” she asked, then burped. Jolan was pretty sure she was drunk.
“As much food as the boy can eat,” Garret said, true to his word. “And two rain ales.”
Jolan smiled.
They sipped their beers while waiting for the food.
“What do you think?” Jolan asked. “It’s kinda like those bitter ales you Balarians like, right?”
Garret licked his lips. “Fresher hops.”
Jolan smiled again. Wider this time. Garret hadn’t exactly admitted Jolan was right about his homeland, but he’d come close.
Half an hour later, Jolan had eaten an entire chicken, three pork sausages, several thick slices of ham, two warm rolls, and a bowl of root stew. Both he and Garret were on their third rain ale, and Jolan felt dizzy and carefree for the first time since Morgan had been killed by the dragon.
“It all seems like a long time ago, now,” Jolan said after talking about his apprenticeship for a few minutes. “Used to be I’d spend weeks doing nothing besides grinding down herbs and boiling water for Master Morgan. But life outside the apothecary moves much faster.”
Garret took a sip of beer, looking like he was giving the comment careful consideration. The drink hadn’t changed his quiet demeanor, but his body was a little more relaxed.
“Traveling has a way of making the past seem further away,” he said after a while. “Something about all the miles underneath your heels plays tricks on your mind, I think.”
“You’ve traveled a lot?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the farthest place you’ve ever been to?” Jolan asked, taking a sip of his own beer. It w
as almost empty, and he wondered if Garret would buy him a fourth.
“I did some work beyond Taggarstan once. Out in the free nations of Juno.”
Jolan fiddled with one of the chicken bones for a moment, debating whether he should ask his next question. The beer gave him courage. “What work do you do, exactly?”
Garret’s eyes flicked from his beer to Jolan’s face, but there was no malice in them. No anger. His gray eyes didn’t seem to carry any kind of emotion—they took the world in, but gave nothing back.
“You should get some sleep, Jolan. The featherbed was expensive.”
14
BERSHAD
Ghalamar, Razorback Mountains
Felgor and Yonmar struggled with the mountain.
The Balarian thief continued to vomit sporadically, but eventually he had nothing left and just heaved air onto the ground and followed it with globs of phlegm and spit.
“Fucking dungeon,” he muttered while hunched over. “Turned me soft.”
Yonmar may have dressed himself in prim travel clothes of supple leather, but he was sticky with sweat before midday and walking slower than Felgor by the afternoon, despite the thief’s frequent breaks to empty his stomach.
“First adventure?” Bershad asked Yonmar when the group stopped to take water. Yonmar had removed both of his boots and was sitting on a rock, inspecting his feet for blisters. He glared at Bershad but said nothing.
“You’ll get used to it,” Bershad said. “Or you’ll get eaten by a Stone Scale.” He untied a goat’s bladder from the side of Alfonso’s pack. It had been filled with wine, but Bershad had emptied it and filled it with water from the first creek they passed. He took a long drink, holding the bag high above his head and letting the liquid pour down in a long stream.
“You drink like a Papyrian,” Vera observed.
Bershad swished the water around in his mouth a few times before swallowing. Offered her the skin. She took it and drank in the same graceful way, then passed the skin to Yonmar, who sucked from the spigot like a pup nursing on his mother’s tit. He passed it to Felgor when he was done, who ventured a small sip. When that didn’t cause him to retch, he took several much larger ones.
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