The Dragonstone

by Dennis L McKiernan

  “But I am innocent,” declared Ferret, attempting to summon up a tear but failing.

  “Ha!” barked the jailor. “Guilty as sin.”

  “Chien haleine bâtard!” snarled Ferret.

  “Guilt or innocence is not at issue here,” declared Arin. “Our mission is vital and she must go with us. Set her free.”

  The jailor shook his head. “I’ll do no such, milady. She’s to hang, and that’s a fact.”

  “This cannot be,” protested Arin. “Take me to the chief warden.”

  “It won’t do you no good,” said the jailor. “He’s got his orders, too.”

  “Even so,” said Egil, “we would talk to him.”

  “Aiko,” called Arin. The yellow warrior had reached the end of the cells on the left. “Hurry. We must see the one in charge.”

  Aiko swiftly came to Arin’s side, and with the warder leading in righteous indignation, they moved back down the corridor.

  As Delon started to follow, Ferret plucked at his sleeve again. “Give me your belt.”

  “What?” He looked down at the gaudy leather.

  “Don’t question,” she hissed. “Just give it to me.”

  As Delon slipped the iridescent belt with its ornate buckle from about his waist, she said, “Where shall I meet you?”

  “Meet us?”

  “Yes, you fool. Where?”

  “Um, we are staying at the Blue Moon, but we have a ship at the docks: slip thirty-four; the Brise.”

  She snaked the ornate belt through the bars. “The ship it is. Go now, before he turns.”

  Delon hurried to catch the others.

  After they retrieved their weapons, the warder escorted them to an office on the first floor. A tall, lean man in his early forties was putting on his hat as the Dylvana entered. He cocked an eye toward the warder.

  “They insisted on seeing you, sir,” the jailor huffed. “Wouldn’t take my word, oh, no.” Nose in the air, he marched away.

  “What do you want?” demanded the chief warden, gazing out the window where the sun lipped the rim of the world. “I am in a hurry.”

  “There is a prisoner we need,” replied Arin. “One who must be set free.”

  The chief settled a cloak about his shoulders. From the corridor there came the tramp of feet. “If it’s a drunk or a debtor, simply pay at the desk,” he snapped.

  “Nay, chief warden, ’tis one about to hang,” replied Arin.

  A jailor stood in the doorway. Arrayed in the hallway behind was a troop of men—swords at their sides, manacles in hand. “We are ready, sir.”

  The warden nodded and tossed him a ring of keys. “Go on up, sergeant. Take those in the first cell. I’ll be there in a moment.”

  The jailor saluted and turned and called out a command, and the troop tramped away, heading for the stairs.

  The warden took up a sheaf of papers. “I’m sorry, but you are too late. I have these warrants to execute. No prisoner to be hanged will be set free.”

  Aiko growled, and touched the wide leather sash at her waist, the belt holding the hidden shiruken, but Arin stopped her with a glance. The Dylvana turned. “I represent Coron Remar of Darda Erynian, chief warden, and am here at the behest of the Lord Steward Revor. He will tell thee that what I request is to be honored.”

  “Have you proof of this?” asked the man.

  “Nay, yet I can get it.”

  “Then do so,” he replied, stepping toward the doorway. “Until I see such, though, the hangings will go on as scheduled.”

  “But the steward has set sail, chief warden,” protested Arin. “I cannot—”

  From the hall came shouts of alarm and the clash and clang of weaponry. Bloodcurdling shrieks and howls of battle rang throughout the building. Horns sounded above the furor, and swarthy men armed with swords and manacle chains clattered down the stairs.

  “Escape!” shouted the warden, but whether his was a command to flee or a statement of fact was uncertain. Regardless, he drew a weapon and charged into the fray, his steel riving.

  Aiko’s own swords were in her hands, and Egil held his axe. Drawing his rapier, Delon looked to Arin. “Now is our chance to save Ferret,” he called above the clangor of battle.

  Gripping her long-knife, Arin nodded sharply, and Aiko led the way. The battle had spilled into the streets, and the way to the stairwell was empty of combat, though bodies lay here and there—some were Rovers, others warders; some yet alive, others thoroughly dead.

  Up the stone stairs Delon dashed, following Aiko’s lead, the bard shouting “Ferret! Ferret!” Arin and Egil came after.

  When they got to the upper floor, they found men dead and dying; and even though one of the slain jailors—the sergeant—yet held the ring of keys, all the cell doors stood unlocked and open, the cages empty, even the drunks and debtors were gone.

  From all appearances, the troop had been ambushed and their swords and chains taken by the escaping prisoners.

  As to Ferret, she was nowhere to be found.

  Arin and her companions looked at one another in bewilderment, and through the windows came shouts of alarm and calls to arms and cries of frightened women and children.

  “The ship,” said Delon, “the Brise. Ferret said she’d meet us there.”

  “What?” asked Egil in surprise.

  “She said she’d meet us there,” repeated Delon. “I’ll explain later.”

  “Let us go,” said Aiko. “My tiger whispers of peril.”

  “But the wounded…” protested Arin.

  “Surely someone is even now fetching healers,” said Egil. “Besides, the chief warden is likely to blame the escape on us.”

  “Indeed,” said Delon. “And he’d likely be right.”

  Aiko shot him a glance, then said again and more strongly, “Let us go. Now.”

  Back down the stairs and out they ran, emerging into a madhouse of clamor and chaos, with shouting men, like hounds in pursuit, running this way and that, Rovers fleeing before them.

  “Quick,” hissed Egil, “to the Blue Moon to get our things, then to the ship.”

  They scurried through the streets, making their way along the headland toward their quarters. As they ran, of a sudden Egil stopped. “Adon,” he said, and pointed through the twilight.

  Down in the bay and at anchor stood a Dragonship, and from its mast flew a striped flag: black and orange and gold.

  “’Tis a Jutlander ship,” said Egil. “Come searching for us, I deem.”

  * * *

  “Ar, your friend came looking,” said the innkeeper. “Not a candlemark past.”

  “Friend?” asked Delon, the bard alone, for the others would be more readily recognized by anyone watching.

  “Spoke with an accent, he did,” added the innkeeper.

  “Was he old, one of his eyes white?”

  “Nar. This was a young man with yellow hair. Dressed in black, he was, though his hat was orange and gold. He said, real snootylike, I wasn’t to tell you. Said he and his friends wanted to spring a surprise. Ordered me to keep my trap shut, he did. But I thought you should know; besides, I never did like taking orders from strangers.”

  “Well, if he comes back,” said Delon, sliding the ‘keep a gold coin, “tell him we dine at the caer. Have him and the others wait in our chambers. We will be late returning.”

  Delon turned and, pulling his hat low, stepped back to the street. He walked a few paces along the lantern-lit thoroughfare, then ducked into a dark alleyway. “You were right, Egil,” he hissed to the three waiting there. “The Jutlanders are looking for us.”

  “Rauk!” said Egil, turning to Arin. “Then they must know about the Brise.”

  “How so?” asked Delon.

  “They would have learned the name of our craft from the harbormaster in Königinstadt,” said Arin.

  “And they would have asked the harbormaster here if we had docked,” added Egil.

  Aiko growled. “Then our ship will be under their
eye. Perhaps they even lay an ambush for us, and this is what my tiger whispers of.”

  “Oh Hèl!” hissed Delon. “Ferret’s going there.”

  “Oh, my,” exclaimed Arin. “There is something else.”

  “What is it, love?” asked Egil, his gaze sweeping the street but seeing nothing of alarm.

  “Alos. If they find him, they will slay him.”

  “Damn!” spat Egil. “And it’s not like he can hide—an old, one-eyed man.”

  “We must find him,” declared Arin. “Take him to safety.”

  Aiko grunted. “He is, or was, at a dockside tavern: the Foaming Prow.”

  Egil turned to her. “You know where he is?”

  “I followed him last night when he slipped away.”

  “Well, let’s stir our stumps,” said Delon. “The Jutlanders will be back soon, and I’d rather not be the guest of Gudrun again.”

  Abandoning their meager goods, they slipped away from the Blue Moon and headed for the docks. Full night had fallen by the time they came to the road to the wharves below, and only a handful of lanterns were lit down on the docks. Against the dim yellow light, they scanned the way for Jutlanders coming upward, but none were seen. They scurried down to the piers, and keeping to the darkest shadows, they headed toward the taverns. Soon they reached the Foaming Prow, a ramshackle grogshop much like the Cove in Mørkfjord.

  Once again, since he was the least recognizable—being neither an Elf nor yellow nor having one eye—they sent Delon in to investigate. Pulling his hat down to shadow his face, Delon entered the tavern, while Aiko, Arin, and Egil, weapons ready, waited in the darkness outside.

  Moments later Delon emerged, with Alos draped over his shoulder, the old man dead drunk and passed out.

  Now they made their way back in the direction of the sloop, this time with Arin and Aiko to the fore, the Dylvana’s keener eyesight probing the darkness ahead, the Ryodoan at her side, a sword in each hand.

  “The peril grows,” hissed Aiko.

  They stashed Alos behind a great number of bales of flax waiting to be laded aboard a ship. Then they crept onward through the darkness, using shadows and kegs and crates and bales to conceal their progress.

  Of a sudden, Arin stopped, Aiko with her. The Dylvana turned and pulled Egil and Delon close. “There,” she breathed. “In the darkness nigh the slip. Jutlanders. Seven—no, eight altogether.”

  “Splendid,” hissed Delon, peering in the direction Arin pointed. “That’s but two apiece. Yet I see nothing but darkness where you say they are.”

  “Elven eyes see well at night,” murmured Arin, “by lantern or starlight alone, even in shadows.”

  Egil touched Delon on the shoulder. “Neither you nor I can see them, yet recall: the Jutes wear black.”

  Delon nodded, still unable to make out the foe. “What now?”

  Aiko looked at the bard and Egil. “Let us turn the tables.”

  “How so?” asked Egil.

  “Waylay those who think to waylay us,” she replied. “Lead them into a trap of our own devising.”

  “Is there no other way?” asked Arin.

  “Perhaps a thousand, love,” said Egil, “yet we must act now ere Ferret comes.”

  “She may already be here and their prisoner,” sissed Delon.

  Aiko said flatly, “They are skulkers, set to kill us. Your mercy is misplaced, Dara.”

  Egil scanned the docks. “I can decoy them. Get them to run past here, where you could take them from behind—that would cut down the odds quickly.”

  Aiko nodded in agreement and hissed, “Subarashii! Remember: take them from behind!” and before any could move she sheathed her blades and stepped out into the light of a distant lantern, and, singing a Ryodoan song, she swaggered down the dock toward the waiting ambush.

  “Rauk!” spat Egil, but then turned to the others. “Make ready.”

  They watched as Aiko sang her way toward the Brise.

  “What if they have bows?” sissed Delon.

  “They don’t,” said Arin.

  As Aiko neared the sloop, armed men in black moved out into the dim light. “Aufhalten!” rang out a command.

  Aiko looked up as if surprised. “Oh!” she squeaked, quailing back.

  The Jutlanders moved toward her, and shrieking, Aiko turned and ran back the way she had come.

  One of the men shouted, “Ergreifen Sie sie!” and they thundered after her, their longer legs eating up the distance between.

  Up the docks she came, the men gaining, and in the darkness Egil’s knuckles were white upon the helve of his axe, as were Arin’s on her long-knife and Delon’s on his rapier.

  Aiko ran some yards past their position, then whirled, drawing her swords. Now she shouted, “Kuru! Ajiwau hajgane!”

  The pursuing Jutes skidded to a halt, for suddenly the victim had grown fangs.

  “Vorsicht!” warned one of the men, and just as they began to spread wide to take this yellow woman from all sides, from behind the trio struck: Egil’s axe hewing down a man with a single blow; Arin’s long-knife sliding under a shoulderblade to pierce through another’s heart; Delon’s rapier thrusting into a third Jutlander only to become lodged against bone. Men in black whirled, facing these new opponents, and one raised a horn to his lips to sound a call. But ere the trumpet belled a single note, from the blackness there flashed a dagger tumbling through the air, and the blade sprang full-blown in the man’s throat, and dropping his horn and clutching his neck the Jutlander fell gurgling. In the fore, Aiko slew one man and then another, while Delon’s blade was wrenched from his hand as the man he had killed fell to the pier, taking the lodged rapier down with him. Delon looked up to see a Jutlander blade swinging at his head, and he sprang aside as another dagger flashed out of the dark to pierce his attacker’s breast. The man staggered backward and fell over a slain comrade and did not rise again. Egil’s axe took down the last Jute.

  They looked at one another panting, and a figure stepped out of the darkness.

  “Where have you been?” she demanded, a brace of throwing daggers in hand.

  It was Ferret.

  “Ferret!” exclaimed Delon.

  She ignored his greeting. “The kingsguard will be down here soon, looking for escaped Rovers, any that got away, that is, for they’re likely to try to steal a ship.”

  In the lanternlight they could see bandoliers of daggers crisscrossing her chest. She stepped to two of the slain Jutes and retrieved her knives, cleaning the blades on the dead men’s cloaks. “These bastards were waiting. I thought them kingsmen. I didn’t know they would attack you. Fortunate I stopped to get some of my things, eh?”

  “Come,” said Arin. “Ferai is right: kingsmen will soon be here to stop pirates from stealing ships, to say nought of other Jutlanders searching for us. We must flee.”

  “What about these bodies?” asked Delon.

  “Let be,” answered Egil. “We will be gone in less time than it would take to hide them.”

  “I will get Alos while you ready the ship,” said Aiko, and she started back toward the bales of flax.

  “Alos? Who is Alos?” asked Ferret, stepping into the shadows to emerge with a small satchel.

  “He’s one of the one-eyes in dark water,” replied Delon without elaborating. “Now come on, let’s get out of here before the warders or more Jutlanders arrive.”

  As they hurried toward the ship, from a pocket she fished out his belt and handed it to Delon. “Thanks. The buckle tongue makes a suitable lockpick for cell doors.”

  Delon laughed and took the belt and fastened it about his waist.

  Now they came to the Brise. As Arin and Egil began raising the sails, Delon said, “Help me with these lines, Ferret.”

  “These Jutlanders: they were the men in black?”

  “Aye. Men in black, with orange and gold hats on their heads. They’re after us.”

  “Hmm, Jutlanders after you, kingsguards after me. I’d say it’s time to fly.�
��

  “Sooner than you think, lass,” said Egil. “When it occurs to the Jutes to come and see about the ambush, we need be long gone. Their Dragonship is faster than our sloop.”

  “Hsst!” hissed Arin, “someone nears.”

  They peered through the shadows along the docks. A figure came carrying a burden.

  It was Aiko, and draped over her shoulder was Alos, the old man dead to the world. Bearing him like a sack of grain, she clambered over the wale and headed for the cabin as Delon and Ferret shoved the sloop out from the slip, vaulting on board as they did so.

  And with all now aboard they sailed away into the sea underneath the glimmering stars.

  CHAPTER 44

  When the bark Red Hind had just passed the midpoint of her journey across Hile Bay—the ship being some ten nautical leagues out from Pendwyr, with nine leagues yet to go—Lord Steward Revor startled awake from a sound sleep in the dead of night.

  The elusive thought had been captured at last.

  He fumbled about on his bunkside table to find the lanthorn striker. Moments later yellow lamplight filled the tiny cabin.

  He dragged the saddlebags from under his bunk, and he searched among the documents. At last he found the list he was looking for, and there on the slate of names of those to be executed was the one that gave him pause: Ferai.

  Can this be the ferret Dara Arin is looking for?

  He gazed out the porthole. Black night slid by.

  Not likely, for Ferai is a thief, and what would a Dylvana want with a thief? Still, there is a slim chance.

  Lord Revor sighed and looked at the list again.

  In any event, it is long past sundown and entirely too late. She is dead by now. Still, if I hadn’t been so pressed…

  Lord Revor slipped the papers back into his saddlebags and slid them beneath the bed. Then he blew out the lanthorn.

  He sat on the edge of the bunk in the dark for a while, then finally he lay back down.

  Sleep was a long time coming.

  CHAPTER 45

  Just ere dawn, riding an all but spent horse with an exhausted remount trailing after, the kingsman galloped into the streets of Pendwyr. Past the Blue Moon he hammered, where in a suite of rooms a group of Jutlanders waited impatiently for the mutilators and slayers to return. The rider did not know that men in black and gold and orange lay in ambush within. Nor did he know of the kingsguards who even now were patrolling the docks and searching for more pirates, brethren of those who had evidently slain a group of honest Jutlanders and had stolen a ship—the sloop Brise, according to the harbormaster—for who else would have done such a dastardly deed as to slaughter these innocent visitors and just leave their corpses lying about for the wharf rats to gnaw upon. The critical thing the rider knew was that he bore a message from High King Bleys to be delivered into the hands of the lord steward at the caer. He had traveled some twelve hundred miles in twenty-six days, a remarkable journey all told, though he would have arrived sooner had he not lost one of his remounts, and had he not been delayed by illness. Nevertheless, he at last had come to Pendwyr, and now the caer was in sight.