Dragon's Trail

by Joseph Malik

  Sir Durn extended his hand, saying, “Please, sir. Share my table.”

  And Jarrod then sat, excusing himself to the other side of the table where, being left-handed, he could eat with less difficulty. He was sitting beside Sir Durn and before Sir Javal.

  Sir Durn began to snicker.

  “Don’t sit there,” said Javal.

  “What?”

  “He’s a foreigner,” Javal explained, reaching over to slap Sir Durn across the top of his head. He told Jarrod, “It’s—” and then started to laugh, himself.

  “What did I miss?”

  Javal started again. “Here, friends and comrades sit side by side, the better to keep the levels of conversation down.”

  Durn shrugged. “Only lovers sit across from each other at a meal.”

  “Where are we?” Javal asked, inquiring as to the status of dinner. Jarrod shifted over to the other side of the table, red-faced.

  “Third course. You just missed the pastries.” As Sir Durn spoke, a wooden plate and a silver goblet were set before Jarrod by a page, and the goblet filled by a willow-waisted, large-bosomed blonde girl blushing at his stare. She winked and vanished, giggling, into the mayhem.

  “Oh-oh, that’s trouble, that one,” Durn laughed, clapping Jarrod on the shoulder with a beefy hand and thusly shaking him from his trance. “You Northers like your own, eh, boy?” and at that, he elbowed Jarrod in the ribs and laughed, “She’ll eat a man alive.”

  “Indeed,” Javal added with a wry smile, “Barbarians. You’re better off with the bathing girls.”

  “Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that.”

  “You should’ve seen him,” Javal laughed to Durn, “Figured he’d kicked off right to the afterlife.”

  Durn shoved Jarrod, “You have to die pretty well to earn an afterlife like that one.”

  “Okay,” said Jarrod. “Humor me here, because I’m from out of town. But where I’m from, that girl’s father would be chasing me down the street.”

  “Where are you from?” asked Durn.

  “Knightsbridge,” Jarrod answered, and took a long slug of wine. It was fruity, rose in color, and potent. He tasted strawberries somewhere under the alcohol, and the honeyed kick of mead in the aftertaste. Home brewed. Good stuff.

  “Never heard of it,” said Durn. “No offense.”

  “It’s far from here.”

  “Too far for my tastes,” Durn laughed, “If you don’t have bathing girls!”

  Jarrod explained showers and plumbing as best he could.

  “A heated waterfall in your privy? And you do it all yourself? It sounds so . . .” Durn searched for a word.

  “Unsatisfying,” offered Javal. “They have an interesting salute, though. Watch this.”

  Jarrod grumbled quietly as the others at the table learned to throw up the horns. He returned to the subject he was most interested in. “So there are no problems here, with girls rubbing soap into nude soldiers?”

  Javal and Durn shrugged at each other.

  “Sir Durn, if that was your daughter—” Jarrod started.

  “I’d be thrilled,” Durn admitted.

  “I’m gonna need more wine here.” Jarrod motioned for the serving girl to refill his goblet.

  “There’s nothing immoral going on in there,” said Durn. “You’d be a fool to think of doing anything like what you’re thinking. At least, in the baths,” he joked.

  “My people are a lot more . . . private,” was the word Jarrod settled on. Of course, that was discounting internet pornography, popular music, tabloid shows, sexting, racy Facebook pages . . . It occurred to him that he shouldn’t have mentioned it, but the dichotomy suddenly struck him: he was from a society that managed to be lascivious yet very, very private about it.

  “Those girls are on their way to becoming healers,” said Durn. “In the baths, they learn their way around a body. They see injuries from drill and sparring, and sometimes even from the field. They’ll straighten your neck, and tend your welts, and hell, some of them will even stitch you up if they’re far enough along. They’ll call a wizard down to heal you if necessary.”

  “So it’s a professional relationship,” Jarrod assumed.

  “It has to be,” said Durn. “If they happen to catch the fancy of a young rider—or better still, a knight or a lord—in the course of their work, then all the better, I say. It’s not like everyone in the damned village gets to soak in the garrison baths.”

  I can get behind this place, Jarrod announced to no one, and raised his goblet. “A toast to the garrison baths.”

  Durn laughed, clapped Jarrod on the shoulder, and reached for a meat pastry, which he plopped on Jarrod’s plate. “You need to eat,” he said, grabbing Jarrod by the bicep. “Not bad, actually.” Jarrod bent his arm and flexed, and Durn slapped him on the back as the muscles shoved against his hand. “You’ll do. So, in Knightsbridge, what gods do you pray to?”

  “Here he goes,” another at the table groaned.

  “We have one big god who handles everything,” said Jarrod. This brought a roar of laughter.

  “Might leave him too busy to answer your prayers, huh?” said Durn.

  “Yeah,” Jarrod agreed, “He gets busy. What about you? Who do you pray to?”

  “We have many gods, but they’re busy, too,” said Durn. “I pray to the soul of my father.”

  “My grandmother,” offered another. “A wise woman and a great wizard.”

  “My grandfather. Died in battle.”

  “My grandfather, died on his grandmother,” joked another, punching the knight next to him, who shoved him in return.

  “Relatives,” Jarrod acknowledged.

  “Why not, eh? They know the answers, now. They like us—we hope. Wouldn’t steer us wrong, and they’re always watching.”

  “What about you?” Jarrod asked Javal. “Who do you pray to?”

  Javal grunted, “No one listens.”

  They talked and joked and ate late into the night, until Jarrod had so stuffed and pickled himself, he opted to make his exit while he felt he still could.

  And once outside the hall, the many flights of stairs loomed ahead of him.

  He stared up at them for quite some time, judging exactly how he was going to do this.

  “Hmm . . .” one step, then another, and there was the handrail. “Oh, that strawberry wine,” he told no one. “Holy ship, am I wrecked,” he muttered, completely giddy that the pun carried on his new tongue. He panicked momentarily as a pair of hands—soft, small hands, he found—wrapped around his waist, and gave him a heave up to the next step.

  “Ah, oh, it’s you.” It was the Northland girl, the wine server with the spectacular bazongas he’d been sporadically flirting with all night. “Hey, I can do this. . .”

  “No, you can’t,” her voice was a stern, sober contralto, all the opposite of her giggling demeanor from an hour ago. “Let me help you.”

  “Damn fine idea. You wanna just g—” get under my arm, yeah . . . Can I just get to the handrail? he begged silently. I’ll be okay once I get to the handrail. No, the handrail’s over there . . . ah, hell. “Okay, I give up,” he slurred. “Have your way with me.”

  She sounded slightly amused, saying only, “You’ve outdone yourself, sire.”

  “Haven’t I, though? Hey, are we here, already?” he wondered, looking behind him at the stairs spiraling into darkness as they stopped for a moment on a landing.

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  “Here, make a right.”

  “Where we goin’?”

  “We’re going to bed.”

  “No, no, n—” he shook his head and nearly fell, “No. My bed, is way the hell up there,” and he pointed obliquely toward the roof and pursed his lips and nodded.

  “Perhaps,” she admitted, “but mine is right through here.”

  Jarrod staggered into the nobles’ hall for breakfast a good
bit after dawn, squinting and cringing at the din. Javal whistled for him, and Jarrod stumbled through the breakfast bedlam and took a seat on his mentor’s left. Crockery clapping on tables rang like gunfire through his head.

  Someone poured him a cup of dandy, the roasted dandelion-root coffee. He stared at it, saying only, “What a night.”

  “I’ll say. You enjoyed yourself?”

  Jarrod only grinned. Grinning, though, made the din louder. “I feel awful,” he admitted as his grin faded.

  Javal cut off a big slab of ham and helped himself to it. “Good.”

  “You’re just cranky ‘cuz you didn’t get laid last night.”

  “As far as you know,” the knight admitted. “Ah, what wouldn’t I give to be twenty winters again.”

  “Twenty-eight winters, pal. And it’s been a great couple of days. Can we talk?”

  “We’re talking.”

  “I was pretty drunk, but she, uh, she said something about the moon taking care of, you know.”

  “I do?”

  “The whole kid thing.”

  Javal waved it off. “It’s decent of you to be concerned.”

  “Yeah, where I’m from, that doesn’t work so good.”

  “You don’t have to worry.”

  “Uh—”

  Javal appeared impatient. “Trust me on this.”

  “And that works?”

  “Do you see me with children in tow?”

  Jarrod looked around. “I haven’t seen any children at all, come to think of it.”

  “This is the palace,” said Javal. “This is not a place for children.”

  “Good,” said Jarrod.

  “You don’t care for children?” asked Javal.

  “Not particularly,” Jarrod admitted. “Man, these women are gonna kill me.”

  “They might,” the knight agreed.

  A handful of small speckled eggs were placed on Jarrod’s plate. “Meaning?”

  The knight cocked his head and chewed thoughtfully. “Pick your companions carefully. If word of your excesses gets out, a dear friend of one of your casual acquaintances may be waiting for you with a dagger some night. It’s unlikely, but it’s been known to happen.”

  “Ah,” Jarrod wiped his nose with his palm. “This is a weakness.”

  Javal shrugged. “There are worse weaknesses. Were I you, I would stay off the liquor. It’s a hundred times more dangerous than debauchery. Besides, it rots your liver, sharpens your temper, and softens your reflexes.”

  “So, I can quit drinking so much, and still—?” Jarrod made the more explicative half of an obscene gesture.

  “Certainly. I do.”

  “So, what’s on the agenda for today?”

  “I spoke with Crius this morning.”

  “Crius? He’s here?”

  “Not exactly. You and I have a great deal to discuss.”

  “Such as?”

  “Let’s finish breakfast and suit up. I’ll tell you on the road.”

  The sun rose over the fog-shrouded great tower of the Hold of Gavria, and cast feeble rays through the east-facing window of a lavish apartment in the uppermost floor. On the sill, a raven’s grating caw disturbed the sleeping form of Ulo Sabbaghian.

  He rolled over with a snarl. His eyes, nuclear blue under a tangle of black hair, flicked to a paperweight from the nearby desk. It flew across the room, smashing the bird off the window sill.

  He found that this expenditure of energy served only to wake him further, and he shoved the quietly snoring form of his bedmate. His voice was slow, grating and inhumanly deep. “Get up.”

  “Milord?” asked the girl, rubbing her eyes.

  “Close the shade,” he hid his face in his armpit. His skin was toffee stretched taut over ripples of muscle, scarified into a quilt of patterns and symbols. “Then go, and tell the Chancellor I want a larger shade for that east window by nightfall. Go!”

  Three sons and fourteen daughters had been born to Lord Sabbaghian, but the inherent gift of their father’s magic ran strongest in Ulo’s veins. Banished to Earth shortly before birth, Ulo Sabbaghian had learned that he could accomplish magic at an early age, and spent the better part of twenty years developing his tricks—the press had called them gimmicks—until he could build a meager show business career with a devoted cult following.

  Arriving in the Gavrian outlands—arguably the Eastern Freehold, depending on whom you'd asked at the time—and summoned by a pair of neophyte sorcerers on a dare, of all ridiculous things, he’d learned of his father and his true lineage. More, though, he found himself suddenly and immensely powerful. He brought and dispelled storms, saw through animals’ eyes, and communicated without words across distances to others who also held the gift. He carved a small fiefdom out of the wasteland that had once been his family's hold.

  Refugees from a border war, given haven in return for work, rebuilt his father’s castle with the dark rock that had composed half his lands at the outset. They were decent, rugged people, and he’d been good to them. He could inflict pain as easily as he relieved it; knock a house down with the same effort as he could bind its mortar with blessings. His people loved him, for he blessed their homes with strength and their animals with health, and the crops had been excellent year after year. Perhaps it was truly his magic. Perhaps the spirits of his ancestors smiled upon him.

  Perhaps—and he personally thought this the case—he was just one wily son of a bitch who had stumbled into a power vacuum with three thousand years of knowledge to his advantage and the loyalty of several tribes of hard-working and likeable people.

  The castle went up quickly.

  He used the rock to build roads and bridges through the muddy wastelands that bordered his keep, eventually reaching farming villages claimed by no lord.

  He instituted the concept of civil service, employing the locals to build and maintain the roads as part of their feudal duties.

  Within a year, the roads from the villages reached the mountain passes that connected the Gavrian outlands and the Eastern Freehold. Roads brought trade. Trade brought wealth enough to gild the black palace in silver, gleaming in the sun, a beacon to traders clear to the Eastern Freehold. Wealth brought men to guard commerce as traders traveled the black roads for a fare. Mercenary guards became a paid police force, who became lords, whose forces became the foundation for an army, and he himself became a king, ruler of the new nation of Ulorak.

  The Eastern Freehold had moved on him five years ago, but he’d used the small army he’d built, hiring retired Gavrian soldiers to train a large, if rudimentary, militia. With sheer overwhelming numbers, some clever leadership, and the ability to control the weather, he’d handed the Eastern Freehold its ass. At the deciding battle, the Freeholders had been forced to slog uphill through torrential rain and knee-deep mud, reaching Ulo’s forces exhausted before a single blow had been landed. The ensuing slaughter was so massive and one-sided that the people in neighboring villages had used Freeholders’ bones to build their fences and tilled the bodies into their soil, which became some of the most productive on the continent.

  Ulo had handed control of that province to his commanding general, a blood-under-his-nails type named Elgast who’d had the outpost at the battle site rebuilt with Freeholder skulls mortared both into the outer walls and into a beautiful throne made of the dark black rock. Lord Elgast of Skullsmortar, atop his grisly throne, drank liquor distilled from fields fertilized with Freeholder corpses and kept the neighboring militaries lying awake at night.

  Ulo thought it was all a little heavy-handed, but had to admit the man had a knack for getting his point across.

  Word traveled of the powerful sorcerer in the silver palace bordering the Eastern Freehold—as well as his Lord Protector on a nearby throne of skulls—and the Gavrian Parliament decided that his fledgling nation of Ulorak was in fact a state of Gavria and demanded back taxes.

  He’d met their emiss
aries with a delegation of his own, bearing not only his back taxes in gold, but also a contingent of nubile whores and several casks of Skullsmortar Whisky as an apology for his oversight.

  It had been twelve years since Ulo had first arrived, twitching and shitting his pants in a thaumaturgic triangle in a forgotten corner of Gavria, and he was about to receive appointment to Lord High Sorcerer. Not bad work if you could get it.

  The girl, a concubine reserved for visitors and nobility, stooped to pick up her gown, to which he snapped, without looking, “Don’t dress. Your work here is hardly done.”

  “Yes, milord.”

  “Hurry back,” he ordered, and shoved his face further into the bed as she dropped the gown, tied down the shade, and scampered from the apartment. He knew that once he awoke, he would have much work to do. He pulled the feather pillow over his head and swore softly.

  “Ulo, son of Sabbaghian, Lord of Ulorak,” a huge voice accompanied an intrusive blow against the doorframe. It seemed to Ulo to only have been a moment, but in fact, it had been some minutes since his companion had left.

  “Enter,” Ulo growled. He’d been King of Ulorak until just recently.

  “My lord, I am General Loth, Lord of Hwarthar.” The visitor was a bull-necked, ponytailed warrior dressed in the crimson tunic and black jerkin of a Gavrian soldier. He knelt in the doorway, his head bowed in respect. “I am a High Warlord of the forces amassing here in Gavria, and am assigned as your personal retainer by His Eminence, King Xaxarharas.”

  Ulo opened one eye from under the pillow. “Bullshit. Where’s Elgast?”

  Lord Loth was still. “I await your orders, my lord.”

  Ulo’s voice was sour. “Where is Lord Elgast?”

  Loth arose, effectively blocking the doorframe. “Lord Elgast has been relieved, and is returning to his lands. I am your retainer while you’re at court, my lord. So it is ordered by King Xaxarharas.”

  Ulo lifted the pillow. “The king?”