Dragon's Trail

by Joseph Malik

  “I’m sorry, rider,” said Javal. “It’s important.”

  Jarrod tied his kimono, slipped on his moccasins, and met Javal in the hallway, closing the door and shivering.

  “Who’s in there?” Javal asked.

  Jarrod rubbed his arms to warm up. “Eothe.”

  Javal’s brow furrowed. “Eothe, the singer from the banquet? Well played, rider.”

  Jarrod brushed his hair back. “I’m only banging girls from out of town from now on. This way, when their boyfriends want to kill me, I’ll at least see them coming.”

  “I can’t argue with your logic.”

  “What’s up?” asked Jarrod.

  “A report from Regoth Ur. Attacks by sheth.”

  “Okay. That happens.”

  Javal had a note in his hand, and he referred to it. “Your man Carter dragged back quite a trophy: a sheth in a coat of plates and a helmet.”

  Jarrod looked at the note. He couldn’t read most of the words but someone had sketched out the armor. “Well, that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Right.”

  “Are they sure it wasn’t just horse barding, cut to fit?”

  “Boy, that’s good,” Javal admitted, turning the sketch sideways and back again. “According to this, it was armor. Coat of plates, arming jack, everything.”

  Jarrod was now fully awake. His heart raced. “Who the hell would make armor for sheth?”

  “Who’d pay for it?” Javal asked. “That’s a lot of iron.”

  “Well, we know who has iron.”

  Javal looked down the hallway both ways, saw that it was clear, and leaned in to Jarrod to whisper regardless. “This is something new,” he whispered. “This is something you’d know about, yes?”

  “Yes and no,” said Jarrod. “I’m familiar with the concept but I had nothing to do with it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Absolutely not. Can you advise the lord’s council?”

  “When?”

  “After breakfast.”

  “This is brilliant,” Jarrod told Sir Dahl and the others at the Chambers On Nine, a large, lavish meeting room that overlooked the valley and lake far below. “If you want to knock out a militarily superior adversary, you first need to distract them. Get them looking the other way. Classic misdirection.”

  “This is how you fight, where you come from?” asked Sir Dahl.

  “Pretty much,” said Jarrod. “Look, you don’t have big armies here. That’s why you don’t have mooks.”

  “Mooks?” asked Javal.

  Jarrod tried again. “Flunkies. Meat shields.”

  Javal choked on his wine.

  “You have soldiering as a profession, here,” said Jarrod, “Because you can’t afford not to. Your soldiers have to be as effective as possible, as highly-trained as possible, because you don’t have very many of them. In my homeland, countries have armies in the millions. A thousand-thousands,” he offered, since they had no word for millions. “Historically, in my homeland, armies have had units of marginally-skilled, low-paid soldiers whose only job is to absorb damage and hold ground. They’re what we call mooks.”

  Javal let out a breath. “Who gets that job?”

  “People with nowhere else to go,” said Jarrod. “You don’t have that here. You can’t; you don’t have the manpower. But that means that Gavria doesn’t have the manpower either. Unless, of course, they’ve been reproducing like crazy. Anyone been there in the past twenty years?” He looked around the table.

  “Seriously? Nobody?”

  No one said anything. “Okay, look. There’s no way they could possibly have more sex than us, right?” He looked at Daelle, who blushed and giggled. “I mean, come on. Really? We’ve got to assume that their population density is roughly equal. So, what do you do when you don’t have manpower?” Jarrod asked.

  He took a quill, dunked it in ink, and made a dot on a piece of parchment. He dunked it again and drew a circle around the dot. “You augment. We call it a force multiplier. My people do it with numbers. Here in Falconsrealm, we do it with training. Gavria does it with steel. They’re arming the gbatu to try and divert our attention. They have the steel to augment the gbatu and make them into something we have to worry about.” He looked to Albar.

  “Why are you looking at me?” said Albar.

  “I’m asking you, sir,” said Jarrod. “What do you think of this?”

  “I think it’s preposterous,” said Albar. “There’s no possible way this happened.”

  “Do you think Regoth Ur lied about this?” asked Javal.

  “No,” said Albar. “I think this is a fluke, a freak occurrence. If it was happening at the scale you’re proposing, we’d have seen it, here.”

  “Oh, no,” said Jarrod. “That’s the thing, sir. We wouldn’t see it. Look out the window. You’ve got this mountaintop that we’re on. Below here is the lake, in this deep valley with cliffs on all sides, and a town on each end. There could be an army of sheth on the other side of those hills behind us, or even right down the road, and you wouldn’t see it from here.”

  “He’s right, you know,” said Javal.

  “And what?” asked Albar. “They’re going to lay siege to us? The gbatu? They can’t even fight in a line.”

  “They don’t have to lay siege,” said Javal. “They just have to tie up our forces and stretch us thin. While your best knights are running down armored sheth in the corners of the mountains, Gavria marches right up the road and knocks on the door.”

  “That’s what I would do,” said Jarrod. “I’ll tell you what, sir,” he said to Albar. “If you start sending patrols deep into the mountains around here, they’ll run across sheth in Gavrian armor within a week.”

  A couple of war council members grumbled.

  “That is one thing we will not do,” said Albar. “If we start hunting for phantom sheth knights, then we will certainly be left undermanned. I will not see that happen.”

  Jarrod ground his teeth and let a long breath out through his nose.

  “Nothing changes,” said Albar. “We never speak of this outside this room. The last thing we need is panic. Or more, as you say, misdirection.”

  The Gavrian War Room was a bedlam. Men jumped from the table, yelling and pointing.

  “Enlisted the gbatu?” Loth shouted, lunging at Ulo. Ulo stood, and with a sweep of his hand knocked Loth over from five steps away.

  The room settled. Loth rose.

  “Anyone else?” Ulo asked.

  No takers.

  Ulo looked to Mukul, who rolled his eyes and threw up one hand.

  When the room had settled, Ulo sat, and sipped his tea, treading carefully. “I’ve been driving those little bastards out of my lands since the day I arrived. Gbatu, by their nature, fear an even fight. They fight us only when they outnumber us.”

  “Idiot!” Loth added.

  “That’s how you win,” said Ulo.

  “You’re mad,” Loth grumbled. “And you’re a fool.”

  Ulo sipped his tea. “By your logic, perhaps.”

  “By any logic!” Loth shouted.

  “By arming the gbatu in Falconsrealm, giving them rabbits to chase while we move northward? Your problem is solved.”

  “What about Hillwhite?” asked Marghan. “We were of the impression that you were working with him.”

  “I am. Hillwhite likes this plan better. His hands are off this. Nothing leads back to him.”

  “So we take the risk,” said Kaslix.

  “And we get the reward,” said Ulo. “Falconsrealm and the Shieldlands, as part of Gavria. Ruled by . . . I don’t know. You decide. I don’t care.”

  The room went quiet.

  “How long have we been at war with gbatu?” Ulo asked.

  Loth spoke. “Since the world began.”

  “And they’re still a problem, right?”

  This brought hesitant agreement.

  �
��Why?” asked Ulo.

  A long moment passed with no one saying anything.

  “Numbers?” someone ventured.

  “Resourcefulness,” offered Loth. “When they’re cornered—when they must fight—they can be fearsome.”

  More nods and beard-pulling.

  “So we arm them,” said Ulo. “We armor them. We turn them loose in the far quiet corners of Falconsrealm—the deep places—and when Albar sends his legions to rout them, they’ll have to fight. They’ll fight hard. Falconsrealm already has a war on its hands, though it doesn’t know that, yet. While their troops are occupied we move north, through Ulorak, along the Teeth of the World.”

  “The Eastern Freehold will never—”

  “The Eastern Freehold,” said Ulo, “Won’t raise a hand. I’ve got a champion watching those passes from a throne made of their generals’ skulls.”

  Hanmin made a religious gesture. “You’re mad. He’s mad,” he told the room.

  “No,” said Marghan. “I want to hear this.”

  “We buy off the lords of the Shieldlands,” said Ulo, telekinetically picking up several troop markers and sliding them across the great map on the table. “We skip Axe Valley, we skip Longvalley. We stage at friendly towns and keeps, and when the weather clears, we cross the mountains and walk into Falconsrealm.”

  Much conversation.

  “It could work,” said Loth.

  “Once we have Falconsrealm,” said Mukul, “we’ll have the rest of the Shieldlands. We won’t even have to fight for them.”

  “It will work,” said Marghan. “And now, it seems we have no choice.”

  “We use my ore to continue to arm the gbatu,” said Ulo. “My iron, my smiths. Hillwhite buys the arms from me, at my prices. You tax me on it.”

  “Done,” said Hanmin.

  “I’m heading back to Falconsrealm in the morning.”

  “What for?” Loth demanded.

  Ulo smiled. “It turns out the Hillwhites are just as resourceful as the gbatu.”

  In a straw-strewn corral, barefoot and filthy, his feet frozen and knuckles swollen, Jarrod circled Rider Henck of Blood River.

  “Come on,” Jarrod said. “Keep your hands up.”

  He healed quickly here. Organic food, lots of sleep, daily massages. And magic. Sweet, sweet painkilling magic. His bruises had faded and he was strong today. Still a bit sore when he moved wrong, but he was having a pretty good morning.

  It surprised Jarrod that a martial people such as Falconsrealm would not have developed a distinct style of unarmed combat. Very few of these men wrestled better than schoolboys, and those who did employed only the most rudimentary forms of catch wrestling; not one of them knew how to employ any manner of advanced throw, bar, or sweep. Nor did they box, nor use their feet for more than occasional kicks to the shin or groin. When they grappled, they were strong and they fought dirty—butting heads, kneeing, and clawing—but they had no technique to speak of past headlocks and brute-force takedowns. Quick boxer’s jabs, snappy blocks, hip throws, and leg sweeps vaulted Jarrod through wrestling practice—here, any sort of unarmed combat was called “wrestling”—and quickly earned him an even greater level of respect. He’d known it was only a matter of time before he’d be asked to teach.

  Every now and again he’d whip out la savate and really give them something to ooh and aah about. Kicks to the face, he’d discovered, were really cool to Gateskeep fighters. As was the rear naked choke.

  But at the moment, he was teaching Henck to keep his hands up.

  Jarrod popped him with a quick jab. Henck pawed his hands out and pulled his head back, and Jarrod hit him three more times, lightly, moving around him.

  “Parry, dammit,” Jarrod growled. “Don’t engage the punch. Keep your head down and your hands up. Tuck your elbows in and get your weight on your back foot. Your arms are your shield. You don’t reach out to catch a sword with your shield, do you?”

  Henck made a lunge and Jarrod dodged it as the pain from his ribs, still tightly bound, sparked through him. He threw a knife-edge kick up into Henck’s guard, something Henck could parry easily if he did it right.

  Henck’s tight guard and upright facing absorbed the blow, and he moved in, a grin splitting his dirty face.

  “Excellent,” Jarrod commended.

  And just like that, overconfidence consumed Henck. He charged at Jarrod, hands outstretched, and Jarrod stepped aside, ducked low, and drove a heavy left hook into Henck’s side that left him on his knees in the straw holding his stomach and gasping. The onlookers laughed, and more than a few feigned the injury.

  “Don’t get cocky,” said Jarrod. “Who’s next?”

  “Maybe you can teach me something,” came a voice Jarrod recognized far too well.

  It was Javal, stepping over the fence and peeling off his shirt. The other fighters cheered, and Javal tossed his boots aside and rolled up his trouser legs.

  Jarrod beamed. “Welcome, sire.”

  Javal bowed. “Rider.” He kept his hands close, his feet a little inside his shoulders. He moved on the balls of his feet, cat-like, and his weight seemed to float three inches off the ground.

  “I never thought a dancer could teach me how to fight!” jeered someone.

  “You’re going to have to face me in a moment,” Javal warned the faceless heckler.

  Jarrod smirked from behind his left fist. “Don’t count on it.” This brought catcalls and hoots.

  Javal, Jarrod noticed, had been paying attention these past few weeks. He led with a flurry of punches and low kicks. Jarrod stayed close and met each with a sharp block, amazed at the musculature of Javal’s forearms. It was like blocking an iron pipe. Javal threw reaching punches that had a swordsman’s shoulder-thrust behind them, which left him overcommitted, but his fists were fast enough and hard enough to make Jarrod cautious.

  Jarrod returned, and took a few hits about the face and ears and a handful to the body, but backed Javal sufficiently away that he could throw a spinning back kick to get range. He left the ground, driving it a bit too hard, showing off, and Javal stepped in and clobbered him with an elbow dropped across his ribs which left Jarrod lying in three inches of mud.

  “Ow.”

  “Get a healer,” Javal ordered anyone. “Jarrod?”

  Jarrod rolled to a crouch. “Fine. I’m fine. Damn, that hurts.”

  Javal’s voice was low enough that Jarrod doubted the others could hear. “If I ever see you trying that in a real fight, I’ll kill you myself.”

  Jarrod groaned, straightening upright. “Shall we continue?” he asked, formally.

  “Are you well enough?”

  Jarrod shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Javal bowed again, and struck his guard.

  “Captain? King’s Rider Jarrod?” the voice was dense with authority; Jarrod turned to see a thin, clean-shaven, serious man in fine golden clothes—a royal chamberlain, he recognized—standing at the edge of the corral. “Present,” Jarrod announced. Javal saluted wordlessly.

  “Clean up and report to the Chambers On Nine.”

  Jarrod arrived at the Chambers On Nine with Daelle to translate—it was a matter of state, after all—and Javal was waiting for him at the door. A meeting was well underway from the look of the table, which was cluttered with parchments and half-empty wine goblets. Jarrod recognized a few faces around the table—Albar, Chancellor Pitney, and several men he’d seen before at the Nobles’ Hall. He wasn’t quite sure why he and Javal had been requested to the meeting until his eyes fell upon the hooded figure in silver and black at the head of the table.

  Ulo.

  The man who was undoubtedly Ulo had a knight in silver armor standing on either side of him. Their helmets were of Gavrian design which Jarrod had seen on Loth’s seconds so long ago: spectacled half-helmets hung with mail from cheeks to chest like massive silver beards. Their cuirasses were long vests of plates—steel, he bet;
not iron—connected with bands of riveted heavy mail. They wore simple but large iron pauldrons and mantles and all their armor was heavy, beautifully-crafted, and expensive. Their forearms and upper arms were covered in red leather.

  However cheap iron might have been in Gavria, Jarrod deduced, they didn’t have forges, either; at least, none capable of producing sheets of steel big enough to make breastplates or pauldrons.

  But that didn’t change the fact that Gateskeep was going to take it in the shorts if they had to fight these guys. A pissed-off man in that much steel and iron would be a real pain in the ass.

  He regretted not bringing his man-at-arms harness.

  He was exceptionally glad, however, that he’d brought his war hammer. It would work wonders against Gavrian armor, especially the pick side. And the gran espée de guerre would be able to break an arm or a rib under that armor, or possibly knock the guy out with a clean headshot.

  It would take a lot of effort, though. Yow. He would get tired really fast if there were more than a few of them. He made it a point to start running more.

  Loth was apparently not on this trip.

  Daelle quietly informed him that these were Gavrian dignitaries, discussing the season’s upcoming trade.

  He remembered hearing that this meeting was coming. From the bleary eyes and sets of grinding teeth he observed around the table, he could tell that it wasn’t going particularly well.

  “Ah, Captain Javal, King’s Rider Jarrod,” announced Pitney. “And . . .”

  “Daelle,” said Jarrod. “My translator.”

  “I’m glad you could join us.”

  “I know little of trade,” said Javal.

  “You’ll fit right in,” grumbled one of the Falconsrealm nobles.

  “Allow me to introduce,” said Pitney to the Gavrian side of the table, “Sir Javal, Son-Lord of Ravenhurst, Knight Captain of the King’s Order of the Stallion, the senior field officer of our forces. And his sergeant, King’s Rider Jarrod, Son-Lord of Knightsbridge.”

  Javal and Jarrod saluted, fists over hearts.

  “Captain, our guests have asked specifically that the two—ah, three—of you dine with us.”