Dragon's Trail

by Joseph Malik

  “Yeah, me, too,” said Carter quickly.

  “Of course.”

  “Where do I sign?”

  From behind his desk, Crius produced Jarrod’s new rapier in its scabbard. “There’s nothing to sign. You’ll need this, I assume.”

  With a wide grin, Jarrod stood and accepted the weapon and fastened the belt around his waist. He drew it partway, pressed his thumb down on the edge, and squeezed a trickle of blood into his hand, then stuck it out. Crius shook it.

  Carter drew his own sword and did the same, shaking hands with them both.

  Jarrod said to Crius, “I want a tour of the castle. Also, I need to see your forge.” He motioned to Carter. “I want to meet the guy who made that sword. And Carter, I’ll take that beer now.”

  Ending and starting a life simultaneously.

  Jarrod disabled his Facebook and set his email accounts to auto-respond: A one-year gig in Europe, last minute. Working under an NDA. Direct all professional correspondence to Saul Scheinberg, Esq.

  A long conversation with Saul Scheinberg, Esq., involving copious and bilateral use of the word frankly. The trust would pay the mortgage and insurance on his cottage in Connecticut. Saul would also contact the motel regarding a series of strident voicemails about a bill being refused by Visa as “suspiciously excessive.”

  He leaned back in his desk chair and ran through everything he needed to do, scribbling notes, punching out the occasional email.

  Fencing students can pick up with Brandt Buxton over in Hartford, but goddammit Brandt, I want ‘em back in 12 months. Recommend somebody to take the Iceland gig. Somebody who’s not Brandt. Empty the fridge. Shut off the gas. Pawn the damned cat off to my sister at Trinity. Call the alarm company. Get the Audi towed back here. Garage it and drain the fluids.

  Get a dental checkup. Just to be sure. No goddamn way are they coming at me with pliers and brandy.

  Get a tetanus booster.

  Call Siri. Explain. Somehow.

  And then . . .

  Pack.

  The tour of the castle had given him some idea of the local fashions and level of warfighting technology. The visit to the forge had cemented his resolve to go home and get his own gear.

  The smiths had a pretty good grasp on how to produce steel, that infinitesimal and oh-so-magic Goldilocks zone of carbonization between malleable wrought iron and brittle cast iron. He’d seen charcoal-packed iron slowly baking in ovens and bars of cooled blister steel in the smithy, and knew everything he needed to know: simple shear steel.

  The shear steel process made good steel hideously expensive and the realm of only the most elite smiths, who kept their processes of quenching and annealing as secret recipes to retain a competitive edge.

  Because of this, the quality of any steel he’d find in Gateskeep would be hit-and-miss, and some of what they called steel would probably be iron of one type or another. There was really no way for anyone less than a materials scientist to tell how good a smith’s sword was until it either shattered, bent, or successfully took off a hand.

  No, thank you.

  He’d asked the smith a couple of quick questions describing a Bessemer-type blast furnace and might as well have been asking the guy to align the front end on his Audi.

  Never mind. I thought you were somebody else.

  A fifty-gallon military-grade rolling footlocker, waterproof with oversized wheels and a locking lid, would be his arming trunk. It had accompanied him around the world; it would accompany him to another. He spent an hour scraping and clipping baggage claim tags and stickers.

  He intended to stack the deck as egregiously as he could in his favor, and as a professional Medieval weapons expert he was one of maybe a thousand men in the world with the hardware hanging in his living room to do it.

  The swords and daggers on his wall array and in his arms locker were not props, nor stainless steel wall-hangers bought in some tobacco shop at a mall. Jarrod’s weapons were immaculately-balanced artisanal killing tools and works of 21st-Century metallurgical genius.

  From his wall, his centerpiece: a four-foot greatsword, technically a gran espée de guerre, a broad-shouldered, gleaming, deadly son of a bitch with a spatulate tip and a robust edge designed to shatter bones under any mail it might not cleave. At just over three pounds, a two-handed blow with it would split an unarmored human being in half, and a blow to an iron helmet would leave a man playing with blocks and making goo-goo noises for the rest of his life. The sword was so large overall that its burnished leather scabbard had an integrated baldric designed to either hang off his shoulder or buckle around his waist.

  His second choice was the closest thing in his arsenal to what they’d be packing in Gateskeep: a reproduction of an 11th-Century single-handed arming sword with a long blade, a stippled and filigreed handle and crossbar, and an ornate ring pommel. Light and agile, its subtle taper and forward balance made it a smash-and-cutter like the gran espée de guerre. Unlike his big war sword, the edge was razor-honed for use against a man in light armor or none at all. The stippling and filigree ensured a good grip in a leather glove, or in a sweaty—or bloody—hand. An edge sharpened to such a degree would part a silk scarf with a slash, but would roll over if struck against plates of iron. It would be his sidearm.

  He threw an assortment of plastic training weapons, plus a couple of daggers and a set of brass knuckles, into the big trunk, then put two more swords into a locking rifle case.

  Two roundshields; one big, one small. A third—a full-body teardrop—for the hell of it.

  Armor was tough.

  A house decorated with suits of armor on half-mannequins and nothing exactly right; everything from a muscled Greek cuirass to black-and-red fantasy leather with fluted dragon scales, even a custom 15th-Century man-at-arms harness, fully-articulated in engraved case-hardened steel, breathtaking in its detail and painstakingly fitted to him at no small expense.

  Half a morning staring at armor, cup after cup of coffee growing cold in his hand.

  He packed several layers of armor.

  He stuffed a leather and canvas pack with clothing that looked more or less nondescript, ripping the tags.

  An entire overnight bag crammed with medical gear. What little camping gear he owned. An oilskin Stetson. A big, leather-bound, steel flask of bourbon. Two thick blank books and several pencils. Translations of manuals of arms with lots of pictures; something to talk about with the other jocks.

  He’d had a pair of bespoke cigar-colored leather trousers made in Italy. He showered, scrubbing till his skin was red, and dressed in the leather pants, a long-sleeved polypro undershirt, and a black cashmere turtleneck.

  He ordered two grinders from a place up the street and ate both over the rest of the afternoon, swearing, unpacking, looking at things again, and repacking.

  And last, in a locked waterproof plastic case, a four-inch Springfield XD in 9mm with tritium night sights, a paddle holster, and two nineteen-round magazines of 147-grain Federal HST hollowpoints. An ugly, blocky little gun and even uglier bullets, designed to expand under hydrostatic pressure into six-pointed claws the diameter of dimes. They would leave immense wound channels and blow skulls wide open. When all else fails.

  He threw in two boxes of 124-grain FMJ hardball because he had it.

  He hoped to hell he wouldn’t have to shoot a hundred and thirty-eight people.

  He secured the trunk and the rifle case with heavy-duty Master padlocks and secured the keys to everything around his neck with a length of paracord. He fed a second set of keys onto a split ring in a pouch on the arming sword’s belt.

  Jarrod was sitting on the footlocker, the gran espée de guerre over one shoulder, chasing the second grinder with a big glass of bourbon and ice—last meal, after all—when his doorbell rang. He answered it to find Crius Lotavaugus standing in the rain.

  “Please come in,” Jarrod said.

  Crius entered and took a look ar
ound. His eye fell on the man-at-arms harness, still on its mannequin, and he strode over to it. “This is spectacular. Is it steel? It’s steel.”

  “It’s steel,” said Jarrod, omitting any mention of case hardening and high-strength alloy as much as he wanted to gush about the suit’s metallurgy. “Will I need that?”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  Jarrod dropped ice cubes into two glasses and poured three fingers of rye into each. “Do you want to go through my gear?” he asked as he handed one glass to Crius, “I want to make sure I’m not, uh, cheating. Somehow.” The words sounded stupid out loud.

  “You’re facing the greatest sorcerer our world has ever known,” said Crius. “There is no cheating.”

  “I’ll hold you to that,” said Jarrod.

  Crius sipped at the rye. His eyebrows rose and he saluted Jarrod with the glass, swallowing hard.

  He was looking at a wall of framed pictures of Jarrod: accepting a fencing trophy before a huge crowd; delivering a spectacular kick in a savate ring; young and beardless, holding a Golden Gloves belt with his face beaten all to hell; smiling with his friends in armor; and a few framed magazine covers including a collage of teen tabloids featuring Jarrod with a starlet he’d been dating at the time. Crius spent a long time staring at a framed Sports Illustrated cover with Jarrod’s face beside the handle of a sword.

  Crius swished the rye around his mouth slowly, smiling. He motioned to the Sports Illustrated cover. “What does it say?”

  Jarrod clenched his teeth. He’d been toying with taking that fucking thing down for two years, now. “It calls me ‘The Deadliest Man Alive.’”

  “Are you?”

  “Arguably.”

  Crius nodded and took another sip. “Good,” he decided.

  “Bring what you think you’ll need,” said Crius, finishing his drink. “And if something remains here that you require, we can always send you back for it.”

  Jarrod downed his drink. “I’ll hold you to that as well.”

  “As you should.”

  Jarrod took his glass.

  “Are you ready, Son-Lord Knightsbridge, King’s Rider of the Order of the Stallion of Gateskeep?”

  Jarrod slipped the bottle of rye into his pack and lashed down the top, and wondered with ice in his gut what Carter was bringing.

  “I’ll never know.”

  III

  FUGUE

  “It is of the highest importance to know how to wrestle, since this often accompanies combat on foot.”

  — Baldassare Castiglione, 1528

  Crius, you’re jesting!” the knight cried from the next room. “Me?”

  Jarrod listened intently. It sounded as if the knight had a good argument going. “You know of my track record with sergeants. If he’s of any value to you . . .”

  Three pages loudly set Jarrod’s arming trunk, shields, and duffel down in a room across the hall, and nodded as they headed out.

  And Crius’s rebuttal: “He’s to aspire to knighthood, and command. His Majesty has admitted him to the Order of the Stallion as a King’s Rider, and therefore, he is your charge.”

  At this point, the two strode back into the anteroom, the knight throwing up his hands, professing his helplessness. “I don’t need this, Crius. Give him to Ilywyn!”

  “He’s a capable warrior, and a crafty thinker, and you’re one to talk, Sir Javal!” Crius finally accused, grabbing the man by the arm and spinning him around. He shoved a folded letter into Javal’s hand. Javal broke the wax seal and read it, his eyes flicking back and forth to Jarrod.

  “You’re jesting,” he said. “Or the king is fucking with me.”

  Javal was rail-thin and tall, Anglo-European in appearance with dark hair and gunmetal eyes. Jarrod figured him for a fit forty, for though his movements were quick with the strength of youth, his eyes and mouth harbored intense lines.

  He was clad in black woolen trousers with cross-garters to high on the thigh, and a drab linen tunic with the sleeves shoved up to his elbows. His face was angular and clean-shaven and quite handsome, with a challenging jaw that could have merited a Gillette endorsement. His hair was black and wiry and for the most part clipped above his ears, though its cut was so ragged it looked as if he’d done it himself in a tantrum. His posture was ramrod; his hand gestures broad and foreign.

  And what hands, Jarrod thought: broad, scarred fists and thick forearms crossed with red and pink tracks of wounds long healed. All four knuckles and the wrist bone of his right hand were freshly scabbed over and a bit swollen, as if he’d been in a fistfight just the prior evening.

  “Of all people, I know you hate taking on a new sergeant,” Crius continued, quite sympathetically, “We need a knight to train him who is loyal to the crown, and none is more loyal than you. Make a rider out of him.”

  Javal kicked his heel. “All right. But look at him,” he turned fierce eyes on Jarrod. “For hope’s sake, look at how small he is!”

  Jarrod straightened to his full height and nearly said something.

  “This matters?” Crius asked. “You were knighted at fourteen winters. Or have you forgotten? Dreaming of a lifetime of chasing dragons and maidens, how many suits of armor did we have to build you as you outgrew them? How old was Sir Morgan when you led —”

  “Hey!” Javal snapped. He stiffened, regained his composure.

  Crius let it go, having made his point.

  “Now, I want you to take him with you when you leave today for castle duty at High River. You will groom him for command. He’s to be an adviser to the king.”

  “Yes,” said Javal. “I read that part.” His voice was incredulous as he looked Jarrod up and down.

  “He is his nation’s—and possibly his homeland’s—finest swordsman.”

  Jarrod shrugged in response to the look Javal gave him just then. “And at the moment,” Crius continued, “the king has made him a King’s Rider, and the Crown will present him with anything you think he needs. He goes with you, for a year.”

  Javal’s shoulders sank. “A year.”

  “Jarrod, you are to take orders from this man. He is your superior, and your mentor. And Javal, Jarrod is not a squire, he is a King’s Rider and your acting sergeant. Your actions today disappoint me.”

  Sir Javal mumbled an apology. Crius harrumphed, wished Jarrod good luck, threw him the rock sign, and bowed out of the room.

  Sir Javal looked Jarrod up and down. “What’s that, your salute?”

  “Pretty much,” Jarrod had to admit.

  Javal made the sign and looked at it, turning his hand over and grunting.

  He handed Jarrod the letter. “This makes you a member of our order. Keep it safe.”

  “Sure,” said Jarrod. He tucked it into a small purse on his swordbelt.

  “Give me your sword.”

  Jarrod shrugged the gran espée de guerre off his shoulder, cleared it from its scabbard, and handed it over, hilt-first. Javal stood the massive weapon upright in his hand and struck the pommel, checking the balance and the fitting. He let out a low whistle. “Solid steel?”

  “We don’t make our steel the way you do,” Jarrod told him, and held out his hand to have the sword back. He set the tip on the wooden floor and carefully put his weight on it, bending the blade past a 45-degree angle, then let it snap back to true and handed it back. “We can harden the spine differently from the edges.”

  Javal eyed down the edge and muttered something profane. “Can you use it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you care to qualify that?”

  “Gladly,” Jarrod said. “All the nations of my homeland hold a competition every four years. I was selected to represent my nation at the most recent one.”

  “Did you win?”

  “I was disqualified for killing another competitor outside of the match.”

  Javal finally looked impressed. “Over a woman, I hope.”

  “In fact
, yes.”

  “So you’ve already killed a man. That’s good. That’s one less thing I have to worry about. And now? What do you do now?”

  “I teach future competitors. You could consider me my nation’s master trainer.” It wasn’t far from the truth. He had a former student who was up for an NCAA saber title and he’d taught Zera, Barbarian Queen everything she knew.

  Sir Javal sighed. “We’ll see what we can do with that. Do you ride?”

  “Not by your standards, I’m sure.”

  Javal leaned back and tapped his head against the wall three times, swearing.

  “So, in my homeland,” Jarrod trod carefully, “We have many orders of knighthood. There is ceremonial knighthood, royal knighthood, orders that work as professional military guilds or fraternities, if you will, and we have even had orders that have functioned as their own private armies.”

  “And?” Javal asked.

  “Well, which are we?”

  Javal stared at him for a moment. “You don’t know?”

  “I just got here,” Jarrod said. “I was told that I would be admitted to this order. I’d kind of like to know what it is.”

  “Look—uh, Jarrod,” he began, clumsily. He sat down on a wooden chest and leaned his head against the stone wall and closed his eyes.

  “The Order of the Stallion,” he began again, “has, well it has the highest—how do I say this?—turnover rate, of any of the orders. What I mean to say, is that a knight of the Stallion has absolutely the shortest life expectancy of any of the chivalrics.

  “We are Gateskeep’s wandering servants, the king’s eyes and ears.”

  “A royal order, then,” Jarrod deduced. “A military order.”

  “Indeed. We are, in our own right, the swift hand of the king, above and beyond the embodiment of the ideals the other orders are sworn to. We fight on all fronts. Part of our pledge is to weed out evil within the ranks of the other orders, and we are sanctioned to do anything—anything—our quests, and our oaths, require.”