He laughed and stood. “Pardon me, your highness. Tass asked me to keep an eye on you to make sure you didn’t go into fever. Clearly, you’re fine. I’ll leave you.” He headed toward the door of the small room, but turned before he opened it. “And you’re not completely undressed. You’re wearing winter underwear and covered in seven blankets. I couldn’t have seen anything even if I wanted to.”
He left, closing the door tightly behind him. Lana let out a puff of air, half sigh, half growl, and settled back onto the thick, fluffy pillow. She scanned the room. It was much like the one she had spent years in with her friends, but smaller. The bed took up nearly half the room. A pile of clothes was lying in the corner near the chair, and she frowned as she realized she’d have to get out of bed to get dressed. Now that she was awake, her leg had begun to ache again.
Another sigh and she was in the chilly air, pulling her clothes on. They had been washed, she realized, and the tears from the ax had been mended. She also noticed that she was wearing clean, untorn long underwear and frowned, wondering who had dressed her. A wooden cane was propped against the wall behind her clothes and she picked it up, leaning heavily on it.
A mirror hung on the wall above the chair and Lana looked at her reflection. Her face was drawn and held a tinge of gray. She hardly recognized herself. Her hair had been washed and combed, but still hung in scraggly strands. Her eyes looked haunted, dark circles making them look caved in, and she could see her cheekbones. Food was hard to come by when one traveled alone with no source of income, and when she did have access to food, she often couldn’t force herself to eat.
A knock on the door made Lana jump and she pulled her hands away from her face.
“When you’re ready, there’s breakfast downstairs.” Dixon’s voice came to her and she felt herself flush. She hadn’t realized how haggard she looked. She imagined how horrific a sight she must’ve been when she first arrived at the camp. Shaking her head, she made her way to the door.
The healer’s wagon was a large, one-story box. Lana found herself at the far end of a short hall. To her left, two more doors led to the back of the wagon and what she assumed were more bedrooms. A door to her right held a window and showed the camp outside. She leaned against the wall and looked out the window.
A fresh layer of snow had fallen over the Gypsy camp and blanketed the area around the wagons. She could see little aside from the few homes nearby and the trees along the edge of the camp.
“This way, princess.”
Lana turned around, using the cane for support. She glared at Dixon and snarled. “Knock it off.”
“What?” His eyes grew big and he held out his hands in defense.
“The princess stuff. Stop it.”
Lana kept her eyes on the floor and hobbled past the man and into the next hall. An open arch on the right showed a stuffed galley. Lana kept going into the main room and lowered herself carefully onto a large pillow near a low table. Dixon seated himself across from her and poured her a cup of cafe. He said nothing as he nudged the bowl of cream toward her.
As she poured some into her mug and added a few spoonfuls of sweet cane powder, she could feel his eyes on her. He filled a plate with bacon, bread, and eggs and passed it to her.
“Thank you.”
He grunted in response. They ate in silence for several minutes before he cleared his throat. “Why are you so cranky?”
She glared at him, but said nothing.
He pressed on. “What do you have against being called princess, then? Most girls would love to be a princess.”
She took another sip of cafe and set her cup down before meeting his eyes. Hers were hard, unyielding, and she could see him start to wilt beneath her glare. She felt her heart begin to soften, but kept her gaze stern. “I killed the last princess I met.”
He had been chewing a piece of bread and began to choke. When his coughing subsided, he stared at her. “You’re… you… you killed the queen?”
Lana stuffed a rasher of bacon in her mouth and refused to meet his eyes.
“You’re Chelandra Fildur?” His voice held an awe that she did not expect. She had run into people who knew who she was before, but none had mentioned the queen or that they knew Lana was responsible for her death.
Lana glanced up. He was staring at her, his eyes wide and full of admiration. “Maybe.”
“Wow. I never… How’d you do it? From what I heard, she was guarded by an entire camp of Gypsy soldiers.”
Lana laughed. “An entire camp? A small camp, maybe. It was easy. Too easy.” She stopped, visions of that night flashing through her mind. “Too easy,” she said again, shaking her head.
Dixon reached a hand across the table and gripped her fingers gently. His hands were well-used and strong. His skin was tanned and she could see a tattoo peeking out from beneath the sleeve of his shirt. She realized she was shaking and tears that she had not felt dripped onto the table in front of her. She pulled her hand from his, rubbing away the lingering sensation of his touch.
Slowly, he pulled his own hand back across the table, his eyes never leaving her face. “You can’t do it all alone, you know.”
Her head whipped up, her eyes stinging and red. “What do you know of it? You can’t know what it’s like to lose the one you love, to lose everything in one brief, awful moment. To have your entire future destroyed in front of you. You…”
She stopped, her head jerking back and forth as she tried to clear unbidden images from her mind. She still held her cup in her hand and it rattled against the saucer. She felt her shoulders, her arms, her entire body begin to shake, and tears streamed down her cheeks. She stared through the watery blur, focusing on the table in front of her. She saw movement out of the corner of her eye and felt two strong arms wrap around her.
“Shh.” Dixon’s voice was low and soft, his breath tickling her ear. He pulled her close to him and she collapsed, unable to maintain her strength any longer. They sat there for several minutes as she sobbed into his arms.
When her shudders waned, he pulled back and cupped her face in his hand. She tried to avoid his gaze, but he gently lifted her chin, forcing her to look into his eyes. “I know what it is to lose the one you love, Lana. I know it all too well. I had a wife… and a son. I lost them both two years ago in an attack by Owen Locke on our village. So when I say you can’t do it all alone, I mean it. I’ve been there. Isolation isn’t the answer.”
She pulled her face away from him and straightened. Using a cloth napkin, she wiped her face, but she could still feel the ghost of her tears around her eyes and on her cheeks.
“You had a wife and son?”
Dixon nodded, but said nothing, his eyes on the table. Lana had known many people who had lost friends and family members, but she had never discussed their losses with them. She was convinced none had suffered as she had. She had held her own pain close to her chest, preferring to express it in action rather than words. Dixon’s admission made her realize that she truly was not alone. Her pain, while great, was bearable compared to his. She imagined what the last six months would have been like had she and Bolgor been something more, had they become parents before the war.
“Tell me about them?” She watched the Gypsy’s face, his gray eyes sparkling with unshed tears.
The man cleared his throat and took a sip of cafe. “Well…” He was silent a moment, a thoughtful look on his face. “She wasn’t my first love. I was a bit of a… I liked to have fun. A different kind of fun, I mean.” He wiggled his eyebrows and Lana rolled her eyes at him, but the corners of her lips pulled up involuntarily.
“Anyway, I wandered a lot as a young man, jumping between camps, going solo quite a bit, stealing to get by. I traveled all over Layr for the most part. The only place I haven’t been is the Flametongue Deadlands. I simply wasn’t brave enough to go there. I hear you and your friends did. I envy you for that.”
He smiled and she smiled back. “I ended up in a small camp of maybe t
hree hundred Gypsies one day. They were having a birth celebration and I happily joined in. I was dancing with a young girl near the fire when my eyes fell on a red-haired beauty across the flames.
“She was watching me. Her nose was turned up and her eyes were pinched, like she was smelling something nasty. I winked at her and she rolled her eyes, much like you do. It bothered me more than it should have. I’d had people judge my actions and tell me I needed to change my ways before, but there was something about her that made me want her approval.
“When the song was over, I tried to find her, but she had disappeared from where she was sitting. I searched all over that camp for the next hour or more. I finally found her near a small orange wagon. She was talking to someone I couldn’t see and I made the decision to go join her. When I got closer, a man stepped forward a few feet and put his arms around her.
“My heart sunk. I don’t know why I had invested myself in this woman whose name I didn’t even know, whose voice I’d never heard. But I knew that I would never be completely satisfied with anyone else.
“I stood there for a few moments, unsure of what to do. When I saw him take a step back, I turned to go, determining to leave the camp as soon as I could collect my things. Her voice stopped me in my tracks. She was no more than a couple feet behind me, and all she said was hello, but it was like listening to the sweetest music ever played. The skies opened up and revealed all their full brilliance in that one word.
“I remember turning around to face her and it felt like I was hit with a building. She was there, so close I could reach out and touch her. I wanted to, so badly, but I didn’t. I simply returned her hello and introduced myself. Her name was Zetti, short for Rozetti. She spent the next hour or so chiding me for flirting with all the women in camp, especially those who were attached. I apologized profusely, for once actually meaning it.
“Eventually we found ourselves sitting on a log by a nearby stream, the moon and stars shining above us. I told her about my travels and she told me about her love for music. We stayed there by the water talking about anything, everything, and nothing all at the same time.
“From that moment, I knew where I belonged in the world. We were married three months later and had a son a year after that. He was five when Locke came. I was out in the woods with two others, hunting. We heard the screams and raced back as fast as we could, but it was too late.
“We arrived in time to kill half a dozen soldiers who were lagging behind to rape their victims and steal what they could find, but Locke and the rest of his band was gone. Our camp was destroyed. Most of the wagons were burned, our horses stolen. I found the bodies of my wife and child in our wagon. They weren’t burned badly, but they were trapped in a closet. I think they must have died from the smoke. Zetti was holding a necklace I had made for her; she had it clutched in her hand.”
Dixon’s fingers played across his chest and up to his neck. He drew a beaded necklace from beneath and toyed with it momentarily before returning it to its hiding place.
“What did you do?” Lana reached across to grip his hand gently for a few brief seconds.
“We set out after the soldiers. For months, the three of us harried their travels. They couldn’t catch us. We were motivated by vengeance; we were unstoppable. We prevented a few other villages from being destroyed, but there were two we could not stop. From the survivors, we recruited others, and eventually we hooked up with Ania. I’ve been with this group for about four months now. It’s the first time I’ve felt I might be able to have a home and some peace since losing my family.”
Lana nodded and they settled back into eating. She had no words for him, but he didn’t need them. He’d heard everything already. It was enough for both of them to know they were not alone in their grief.
Chapter 11
“Where are you going?”
The sun hadn’t yet risen above the trees when Lana rose from her bed and gathered her belongings. The sky was just showing the first signs of orangish-pink as she tiptoed down the steps and closed the door to the healer’s wagon behind her. Her fingers were still on the handle when she heard Dixon’s voice behind her. Sighing quietly, she turned around.
“I’ve been here long enough. It’s time to move on.”
“You’ve only been here four days. You are not healed.”
Lana could not deny the charge. She still had a very pronounced limp and pain blossomed up her leg with every step. She shrugged. “I’ll be fine. I need to go.”
She started moving and Dixon fell into place beside her. She noticed he wasn’t wearing his usual garb. Instead of the heavy brown sweater he normally had on, he sported a thick winter jacket. He also had a bag slung over his shoulder. It looked very full. He said nothing else, but continued to walk with her.
When they reached the edge of the camp, she stopped. “What are you doing?”
He shrugged, a movement barely noticeable beneath his thick clothing. “I’m coming with you.”
She shook her head fiercely and crossed her arms. She tried to straighten herself, but she ended up leaning to one side when she couldn’t put her full weight on her injured leg. “No. I travel alone.”
“Fine. Then travel alone. I’ll just happen to travel in the same direction.”
Lana growled. “Why do you want to come with me?”
Dixon was quiet for a few minutes before answering. “I can’t stay here any longer. I’m getting stir-crazy. This isn’t my home; none of these people are my family. I help out here, but I don’t have a real purpose anymore.”
He looked into her eyes, holding her gaze. He was pleading with her, she realized. He needed her. The thought rocked her back on her heels. She nodded and beckoned toward the path. “Let’s go, then. I guess I can deal with company for a little bit.”
He snorted a laugh and they started off into the woods. Silence fell over them for several slow miles. Lana’s leg hurt worse than she realized and she found herself lagging after the first hour. She waved a hand at Dixon and headed off the well-worn path into the woods. She found a small clearing a safe distance away and settled onto the ground beneath an evergreen.
“Your leg?” he asked as he knelt beside her.
“Yeah.”
She smacked his arm as his lips quirked into a told-you-so smile. He put two fingers from one hand to his mouth and blew. The song was loud and piercing and mercifully short.
Lana glared at him. “What was that for?”
Dixon raised his eyebrows and hands in a plaintive gesture. “What was what for?”
Her glare deepened. “What are you up to? Why are you here?”
“Shh, princess. It’s all under control.”
Lana fought back the urge to slap him and turned her face away as she tried to loosen the splint on her lower leg.
A few minutes later, she heard the cracking of a twig and reached for her bow. Dixon’s hand on her arm stilled her and she looked at him curiously. He pointed through the woods toward the path. A flash of pale green could be seen through the trees. They watched the dragon moving slowly and cautiously. Her nose was to the ground as she picked her way gingerly along the trail Lana and Dixon had taken. She raised her head a few moments later and spotted them. Her head swiveled one way, then the other as her nostrils flared before she joined them.
“All clear,” she said as she settled down between two trees.
Lana noticed that she was smaller than Ychthorn, a fact she had missed when last she met the dragon. She narrowed her eyes at the reptilian creature. “Have you been following us?”
“Yep.” Neth seemed unconcerned about the accusation and settled the pack she had strapped to her neck into a more comfortable position.
Lana looked between the dragon and the Gypsy expectantly. Neither acknowledged her unspoken question. She let out a frustrated sigh and started to stand.
“This isn’t going to work. You two go your way, I’ll go mine.” She pressed her back against the tree, trying to give her
self more leverage, but she was having definite trouble gaining her feet.
Dixon took her arm and helped her up. “Not going to happen, princess. We’re with you for the long haul. Or at least until you can walk on your own.”
“Did you plan all this?” Lana felt betrayed, annoyed, and confused. She knew nothing about Dixon, but he seemed to know more about her than she did.
“We knew you were leaving. We just didn’t know when you’d make your move. Neth and I have been talking since we freed her. She spent her life cooped up in a cage. She didn’t want to spend the rest of it trapped in a village. And I needed to get out, too. I get restless. We were talking about you when you came back to camp, and it just made sense. You need help, and we can help you. In return, we get to travel, and maybe get a bit of revenge.”
Lana shook her head in defeat. She knew she wouldn’t win an argument with them. “Fine. Let’s get going before anyone else decides to join us.” She turned to Neth. “Or do we need to wait for someone else?”
“No. It’s just me. I left Gilly back at camp. She’s not the traveling type. She needs stability and peace. She’ll be happier there.” Lana remembered that Gilly was the yellow dragon Neth had been caring for after the raid.
“Good. Let’s go.”
The woman had started hobbling back toward the path when she felt a tug at her shoulder. She paused, looking back, only to find herself hoisted into the air. She flailed her arms and legs momentarily until she came over top of the dragon. The pack Lana had seen on the creature’s chest was attached to a small saddle on her back. Lana settled in, biting back protests, and the small group set out through the woods again.
“So why are you heading north?” Dixon asked half an hour later.
Lana glared down at the Gypsy walking beside her. She pursed her lips, debating with herself for several silent minutes. “I’m going to find the Rimers.”
Dixon’s sputtering laughs brought a scowl to her face and she crossed her arms in front of her. Her pinched face lightened momentarily when Neth’s tail whipped around and tripped the man, sending him sprawling across the snowy path.
Winds from the North: An NA Epic Fantasy (Blood of the Dragon Book 3) Page 6
