Dragon's Trail

by Joseph Malik

He held his breath for a moment, counted to five.

  No alarm.

  Crius was behind him, as was Saril. He waved them inside.

  It took him a moment with his flashlight to kick on the generator in the garage.

  Lights flickered to life throughout the house. The fridge thrummed and heaters whirred. He hadn’t realized how acclimated he’d become to the silence of a world made by hand.

  He had no urge to check Facebook.

  Saril headed directly for the man-at-arms harness. “Holy hell,” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Jarrod. “That’s coming.” He opened his arms locker, and tossed Saril a bastardsword with a green wooden handle in a beautiful leather scabbard. “Keep it.” He gave Crius a riding sword that was close to what the Gateskeep soldiers used, only made of immensely finer steel with an edge they would never be able to accomplish. “For you, my friend.”

  He cleaned out his entire locker, packing six swords into two rifle cases.

  “You’re going to fight the war yourself?” asked Saril.

  “Oh, you’re gonna help,” said Jarrod. “But this stuff will ensure that we win it.”

  He opened his safe, taking out a pair of one-ounce gold bars and a box of hollowpoint ammo.

  He wished he had another gun.

  He wished he hadn’t drained the fluids from the Audi. He wished his phone worked. He could pop up to Vermont and totally stack this thing in his favor, roll into Ulorak with FN-FAL’s and Mossbergs and fuck Ulo over on a Biblical scale.

  But time was ticking.

  Out to his garage, where he had his serious hardware. A rack of rock-climbing gear; three hundred feet of ten-millimeter rope, a harness, a figure-8 device. He threw it all into an ultralight technical pack and tossed it to Saril, who was staring at the charcoal Audi the way Jarrod had stared at Karra.

  “What is it?” Saril asked.

  “Horseless cart,” said Jarrod. “It’s broken right now.”

  What he was looking for took some digging. He found it in his rafters: a streamlined backpack, black ballistic nylon. He opened a couple of pouches and flaps and closed them again.

  “Hell, yeah,” he told Saril. “Got it.”

  He grabbed a second backpack, a towering thing in Multicam, and before they left he emptied his liquor cabinet into it.

  Crius built the portal directly in the doorway. Jarrod set the alarm again, and dragging bags and laden with packs and cases, they stepped through to Sanctuary.

  Crius gave Jarrod the sketches he’d made; as best he could draw them from what he’d seen inside Edwin’s mind. Then he fell over, unconscious.

  Jarrod and Carter arranged him on a moss bed near the fire, and looked the sketches over.

  It wasn’t much to go on.

  Ulorak was built into a mountain, mostly caves with one tower on top. Crius could land them in the road just outside, in the throne room, in a water closet someplace inside, in an apartment high in one of the towers, at the boat launch at the very base of the castle down by the pantry and cellars, or in some sort of meeting room that appeared to double as a formal banquet area.

  “I wish I knew where she was,” said Jarrod, so often that Carter lost count.

  “We kill him,” said Carter, “She dies. He catches us, she dies. He finds out we’re there, she dies. We need to find her, absolute first thing.”

  “We’re going to need to take Crius,” Jarrod decided.

  “They will never go for that,” said Carter. “He’s basically the queen on the chessboard. They’re not going to risk him.”

  “What risk?” asked Jarrod. “He can just teleport right out of there if things get hairy.”

  “Look how wiped out he is,” said Carter. Crius was beyond unconscious, twitching in REM. “We’d have to carry him out of there. There’s no way he can get us in there and then get us out again.”

  Jarrod lay back in the glow of the fire, with Karra rubbing his shoulders and kissing the top of his forehead. “I hope he’s keeping her well.”

  “She said she wasn’t being mistreated,” said Carter. “In fact, the note she sent—wait a minute,” he picked up Jarrod’s big map, and plunked his finger down. “She said something about her view. She could see the Teeth of the World.”

  “Northwest,” said Jarrod, looking at Carter’s finger. He pulled out a lensatic compass and oriented the map.

  “How do you know that north is north here?” asked Carter. “You’re on another planet, brother.”

  “Physics is physics,” said Jarrod. “We’re still standing on a dirt clod with an iron core. As long as this rock has a stable bipolar magnetic field—which it does, or they wouldn’t know directions at all—we’re good. For that matter, Earth’s magnetosphere is pretty jacked up. You can be off by twenty degrees depending where you stand.”

  “I’m going to have to guess that the guest apartments are somewhat close together,” said Carter. “And that she’s in one of them. On the northwest side. Our best bet to get out of there, though, is the boat launch. The apartments are way the hell up in the towers. If this pic is right, that’s got to be a quarter-mile high. That’s the freakin’ Burj Khalifa. How are we going to get all the way down to the dock without getting lost?”

  “It’s a straight shot,” said Jarrod.

  “The hell it is,” said Carter. “That place was built by miners. It’s going to be tunnels every which way the further into the mountain you go.”

  Jarrod rose, went to the pile of gear, and tossed the small backpack at Carter, who caught it and looked it over. “It’s a straight shot,” Jarrod repeated.

  “Is this what I think this is?” asked Carter.

  “Those who accuse me of never working at my full potential tend to get really nervous when I do.”

  Carter handed it back to him. “I can see why.”

  Jarrod lay back in Karra’s arms. Carter had a long slug of Johnnie Walker and then stretched out near the fire. In moments, he was snoring.

  With a tug at his hands, Karra led Jarrod to his feet, and down a path to a burbling waterfall and a pool glowing heliotrope in the light of the moon. There, she slipped out of what little she wore and pulled him down in a smear of power that tore through the glen like a ghost on fire.

  Much later they lay together among the rubble of armor and clothing, utterly drunk with each other. She played with a lock of his hair.

  “Come back to me when you’ve done this brave thing,” she said. “I’ll wait for you here.”

  Carter was the first one through the portal. It had taken him a half-hour to get into his full field harness, and he had his greatsword in his spike-gauntleted hand, unsheathed.

  He stepped directly through to Ulo’s throne room. There was a momentary step down that he didn’t expect, and he stumbled and crashed to the floor.

  The room was black. The stones were dull black. The torchlight flickered off black rock; the throne, empty, was also black.

  Carter climbed to his feet, knowing full well the noise would bring the entire castle. He reached through his eye-slit to adjust his Oakleys.

  The noise brought one man, in a gray robe over fine mail and a steel skullcap. “Can I help you?”

  He stepped back at the sight of Carter.

  “I have an audience with the king,” said Carter. “I’m expected.”

  “Carrying that sword in your hand?” the man said, drawing his own, which was long, delicate, and had a D-shaped bar for a handguard. “I think not.”

  Jarrod opened his eyes, waiting to have fucked this up. Expecting to see Ulo beside him, expecting to materialize inside solid rock. What if Edwin had been bullshitting, and had only imagined Ulo’s palace? Where would he be then?

  It was an apartment, lit by a single candle. A small bed with a plush throw. A glowing fireplace with bricks of coal.

  His eyes adjusted and he checked his compass. He straightened his sword and checked his belt: pistol, ar
ming sword, med kit. He’d left his armor, and wore his heaviest motocross jacket and a pair of black cargo pants under a black backpack.

  The hallway was wide, carved from black stone, and led to a balcony overlooking a sheer drop at one end, and a stairwell at the other.

  So much for The Silver Palace. Orwellian, much?

  There were four other doors. One of the doors had two guards on it, in plumed, slitted helmets and heavy lamellar armor that hung in skirts to their knees, vaguely Mongol. He checked his compass again. The room they were guarding would not have a window facing northwest-ish. Or at least what his compass said was northwest.

  They turned to him and muttered something he couldn’t make out.

  And then it hit him: he didn’t speak Uloraki.

  He laughed. There was nothing to do but laugh.

  “I’m looking for the princess,” he said.

  One of the guards looked at the other, and said something else but it sounded affirmative. “Who are you?” he asked. His accent was Gavrian, far back in the throat, thick-tongued and musical.

  Jarrod put the compass in his pocket and walked up to them, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. “King Ulo sent me. I’m to talk to her.”

  He kicked one’s legs out, threw the other against the wall, kicked them both a few times and stomped on them for good measure.

  Christ, that was a lot of armor.

  He drew the pistol, racked the slide, and tried the door.

  It was unlocked.

  “You have got to be shitting me,” he said, and turned the knob. “Worst evil sorcerer, ever.”

  Jarrod pushed the door open. Adielle was inside sitting on the edge of the bed, brushing her hair and looking up from something she was reading. She stood as he came in. Jarrod holstered the gun. “Highness?”

  It took her a moment. “Sir—Sir Jarrod?”

  “The Merciful,” Jarrod said as she threw her arms around him.

  Carter fought the man back, using the greatsword’s ricossa as a close grip and fencing with the point.

  His opponent was good, but Carter had armor and a lot of it. Several times the smaller sword had skipped harmlessly off his gauntlet or pauldron, completely unable to deliver the necessary momentum to do any sort of damage. The sword had good steel edges that would pierce iron mail or bite iron plate, but against case-hardened steel, it skipped without leaving a scratch. What the guy needed was a pickaxe; what he had was effectively a rolled newspaper.

  There was just no way, no way at all, for the little sword to hurt him unless his opponent stabbed him in the face through the grinning mouth of his helmet. And they both knew it. The man kept trying for the face shot, overextending his lunges, feinting and then lunging for the visor. It wasn’t a bad idea, but it quickly became clear to Carter that it was the man’s only idea.

  Carter kind of felt bad for the guy. He let the next feint smack off his vambrace, beat the smallsword down, shifted his feet, and thrust the greatsword out with one hand by the pommel. The Martensitic edge of the tip punched through the man’s mail, low on the shoulder beneath the collarbone, and sank nearly three feet into his body. The swordsman fell to his knees with the sound of a tire deflating, and Carter kicked the body off his sword.

  “Where’s the king?” he asked the man, who was clearly on his way out.

  “He’s not here,” the man groaned. “Skullsmortar.”

  Carter stomped his foot. “You stupid motherfucker! You make me kill you, and he’s not even here? I didn’t want to kill you!”

  He was talking to no one; the man was dead.

  Carter sagged.

  “I didn’t want to kill you,” Carter repeated quietly. He cleaned his sword on a tapestry, sheathed it, and slung it over one shoulder, then opened the doors to the throne room and hauled ass down the stairwell.

  Jarrod checked the window. It was far too small. He’d never get a good enough launch and sure as hell not jumping tandem.

  “Fuck,” he said.

  Ahead of them lay a wide plain, dusty and black. There were mountains, but they were miles away. And not to the northwest. She hadn’t been looking at the Teeth of the World; she’d been looking at a range of mountains running to the northeast and ending at the Eastern Freehold. Right area, wrong direction. Easy mistake, he was sure, if you’d never been there before.

  And worse, he realized, looking down, he was short.

  He had been counting on a much longer drop. A thousand feet would have been better. A quarter mile—what he’d judged from the drawings, and damn Edwin’s eyes—better still.

  He could see the dock, and rowboats, and if he squinted, a couple of people – Saril and Bevio, he hoped. He judged it to be four hundred feet. A small skyscraper; a five-second fall.

  He led Adielle by the hand, over the moaning soldiers and out to the balcony to the south, where the wind tore at them.

  The gusts on this side had to be nearing thirty miles per hour, beating the shit out of the side of the castle. And here, the mountain sloped away. Maybe eighty feet of free-fall. Not enough for the chute to open.

  The rig on his back was an ultra-low-opening custom job with short lines and an oversized chordwise vent for pressurization at low speeds; a true stuntman’s special built to survive jumps from 300 feet—and even below, if you had the stones for that kind of work.

  The problem was that such a specialized canopy had no sense of humor for adverse conditions.

  “Fuck,” he said again.

  High falls are done in zero wind. Period. When the winds kick up, guys who jump off buildings for a living head to the nearest bar.

  With winds like this, and only four hundred feet of drop, he’d have no time to adjust. An off-heading opening would leave a long smear across the side of the mountain.

  There would be less wind on the northeast side. He didn’t know how much less, but anything less was acceptable. It would have to be.

  He looked up.

  They were near the top of the tower. The stairs at the end of the hallway probably led to the roof. He was sure there was a roof. And it would give him another fifty feet.

  He grabbed her hand and they ran to the stairwell. She started down, and he pulled her up.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “The roof,” he said.

  “There’s nothing up there,” she said.

  “I know. Trust me, Highness.”

  He strained to keep his voice professional, but he had to bite down hard on the rise in his throat.

  A dozen soldiers in heavy lamellar armor pushed past Carter, running up the long stairs. No one gave him a second look.

  How do you not notice a guy my size in this kind of armor? Carter had to wonder.

  He remembered, then, that Ulorak was a trade crossroads, and a lot of men made their fortunes as guards for trade caravans in and out of the area. Big guys in outlandish armor probably weren’t a unique sight.

  What was unique, though, he figured after a moment, was how nice this place was. The stairs were clean, cross-ventilation carried the smoke from the torches and removed the smells of people and must, and he hadn’t seen a single mouse or bug. The castle, although monstrous, was immaculate, as if Ulo had teams of Moonies scrubbing it down in shifts.

  And damn, the guards were on it, he noted. Lots of guys, going upstairs really fast, now.

  Lamellar. Small overlapping plates sewn onto overlapping sheets of leather. Heavy, tough stuff. And spectacled helmets with cheekplates over aventails. He thought he saw flashes of mail beneath the lamellar. Were he their size, their armor would have outweighed his.

  He hadn’t seen lamellar here until now.

  A few more rushes of men up the stairs and he found himself on a landing above the great anteroom, fifty feet high and a hundred yards across, lit by oil lamps set in great chandeliers. The main doors stood open, looking out onto the great southeastern plain that led to more mounta
ins, then Gavria and eventually the Eastern Wilds.

  Bevio, Saril, and Peric were down at the docks on the far side, preparing boats for the getaway.

  The problem was, Carter wasn’t sure how to get down there. The place was a snakes’ nest of tunnels.

  He skipped down the stairs and stood at the great doors. The wind was gusting from the southwest, right along the mountains. Assuming Jarrod made it out of the building in one piece, the winds would carry him northeast, and probably pretty far.

  He wasn’t going to the docks.

  This is where you pull out your radio and say something cool, like, “Primary extraction zone is a no-go. Switching to secondary.” But, lacking a radio, he hoped they’d figure it out.

  Ulorak didn’t have a barbican or a gatehouse. The massive stone doors opened directly onto the plain.

  Fifty great steps led down to the gritty black soil, and that was it. He looked behind him to see the enormous tower built into the rock face, matte black engraved with yard-wide silver tooling vanishing into the sky. “Wow.”

  He straightened his sword on his back and strolled down the mighty front steps, nodding to the guards. They nodded back. One waved.

  Dozens of people were coming and going. Many smiled and nodded.

  “What a nice place,” Carter said quietly to himself. Humming to himself, he struck out to the northeast, moving with a purpose.

  Up two flights, and there was a ladder built into the rocks, disappearing into a vertical tunnel. Jarrod clicked his flashlight upwards, saw a trapdoor at the top, and two minutes later the pale pewter skies were right above them, the winds hammering off the plain.

  This place, he had to admit, was gorgeous. A lovely, acre-wide rooftop garden sported statues and benches and ivy and small fruit-bearing bushes in pots. A couple of elevated observation points looked out over the valley at each end. The ringed moon braced two mountains, spectacular as hell. The clouds tore by overhead.

  He had brought an extra carabiner in case he’d needed a static line hookup; he used it now to secure the hatch. With a knurled locking ring on the haft, he hoped it would take anyone quite a while to figure out how to open it.