Dragon's Bluff

by Mary H. Herbert

  Lucy looked at the cards still spread across the table. “Like this game.” She blew out a breath of air. “What do you have in mind?”

  Lysandros moved forward to rest his elbows on the table. “We would like you to be our sheriff.”

  Mutual shock stilled the words in both Lucy and Ulin. They stared as if the woman and the two men had taken a sudden and complete leave of their senses. No one said a word through a long and pregnant silence.

  Ulin was the first to speak. “That’s impossible. We did not come here to stay.”

  Lucy stood up again. “I came to identify my father’s body. We intend to leave the moment I have seen him.”

  “Lucy, please, just listen,” Saorsha implored. “You have seen how much we need help! This need only be temporary. Just a few weeks at best. Until after the Visiting Day festival next month. The tax collector is coming to collect our tribute to the red dragon, and it is always chaotic, for the kender have their picnic and the “Hiyahowareyou” gathering, and the riffraff always get drunk. The citizens resent the taxes, and”—she threw up her hands—“we need someone to keep the peace, to calm things down, to get the collector and his unit of Dark Knights out of here with a minimum of fuss.”

  “We will pay you handsomely,” Aylesworthy added.

  “And do everything in our power to help,” said Lysandros.

  Lucy clutched her tunic with its hoard of coins and stepped away from the table closer to Ulin. “Thank you for your confidence in me, but the answer is no.”

  “You don’t have to decide now,” the old woman pleaded. “Think about it.”

  The captain echoed her sentiments. “Please consider our offer. We need you.”

  The lantern light shone gold in Ulin’s eyes as he turned his head to face the half-elf. “Why don’t you do it?”

  Lysandros flashed a roguish grin. “I am too well known. When the Dark Knights come, I hide.”

  “What he’s saying,” Aylesworthy rumbled, “is there is a price on his head.”

  Ulin thought of his father in the brutal hands of the Dark Knights and stifled a shudder. “I understand your danger,” he said to the captain, “and it is not one I wish on Lucy. She said no, and I agree.”

  Saorsha, Aylesworthy, and Lysandros traded looks of resignation.

  Pease Stubbletoes stepped out of a corner where he had been sitting and watching. He had been so quiet that Ulin and Lucy forgot he was there. “Shall I take them back?” he asked the Committee.

  At their affirmative reply, he took Lucy’s hand and led her back to the round hole in the wall. Ulin followed more slowly. Just before he ducked into the exit, he turned and regarded the three Committee members. “We plan to leave whether you produce a body or not,” he said, his voice filled with steel. “I don’t want Lucy mixed up in this.” Then he vanished into the darkness.

  The small chamber was quiet for a few minutes before Saorsha sighed and climbed stiffly to her feet. “Well, it was worth a try. She has such potential.”

  Aylesworthy glowered at his empty purse. “It was an expensive try.”

  Lysandros’s chuckle drew their attention. “We’ve come too far to give up on her yet.” He held up his left arm and shook it until a flat piece of paper slipped out of his jacket and fell to the table. It was a dragon card from the deck they used. “We still have that other card up our sleeves we can play.”

  “But will she take it?”

  “The gods willing and the creeks don’t rise,” Lysandros replied, using an old expression.

  Aylesworthy shrugged. “We have nothing to lose.”

  “Then do it,” Saorsha ordered, and she blew out the lantern.

  “Where is it?”

  The question, shouted at the top of dwarven lungs, jolted Lucy wide awake. Loud thumps, strange bangs, and a steady muttering of a very annoyed voice echoed through the wall from the next room. Lucy pried one eye open and rolled over on the bed.

  “Challie!” she demanded loudly. “What in the name of the absent gods are you doing?”

  More thumps, a few scrapes, and the sound of furniture being shoved around the room sounded through the wall.

  “Oh, did I wake you?” Challie shouted. “Sorry.” She did not sound contrite in the least. The noises suddenly stilled, and from the hall came the crash of a door being flung open hard enough to hit the wall. “Pease! You sticky-fingered little son of an orc! Where are you?” Her footsteps thudded away.

  Lucy rubbed her stiff neck and climbed very slowly out of bed. She dressed in a clean tunic and her favorite pair of baggy Khurish pants. During the fight the day before, she must have pulled muscles in her neck and shoulder, for any movement there sent fiery pain shooting through her back and head.

  She was trying vainly to pull on her boots when Ulin knocked at her door and came in. He looked as tired as she felt, and she wondered if he had slept at all that night. Recognizing Lucy’s difficulty, he hurried to her and helped pull on the boots.

  Voices echoed down the hallway, and footsteps pounded toward the room. Challie barged in, a kender in her right hand.

  “Where is it?” she shouted, giving Pease a shake. A red flush stained her cheeks, and her brown eyes were thunderous. “Tell me you took it!”

  Pease turned a wide, innocent face to her. “Took what?” he squeaked.

  “My axe, you dunderhead. The silver one. It was my father’s. It’s missing, and you probably took it.”

  Pease’s bewildered sense of innocence was plain, but that meant little in a kender. The small kender were blessed with a lighthearted nature and a childlike spirit and cursed, some said, with an inability to take things seriously and a tendency to acquire things that did not belong to them. They did not steal—never steal—yet small items had a tendency to disappear, only to reappear later in a kender’s pouch or pocket or box of personal treasures. Kender liked to borrow things or save them for later or simply have them to admire, and if asked they would always return what they borrowed or offer it as a gift. The dour, serious-minded dwarves found kender irritating to say the least, but few people had the strength to stay mad at a kender for long.

  Challie was no exception. She knew anger was not really effective against kender, so she drew a deep breath to calm down and changed her tactics. She let go of Pease’s collar and said in her politest voice, “It’s my favorite axe. About as long as my arm with a head of bright steel and a silver haft. I would really like it back.”

  Pease scratched his forehead and shrugged. His face scrunched up in thought. Challie crossed her arms, and her foot began to tap the floor.

  All at once his face burst into a brilliant smile. “I don’t know about your axe, Challie, but I have one like it. I’ll show you.” He bolted out of the room.

  “I thought you might,” Challie said.

  They only had to wait a few minutes before Pease came running back. “It’s my bestest best axe, Challie, and I want you to have it,” he said.

  She took her father’s axe out of his hands. Biting back several harsh comments, she managed to thank him with a modicum of grace as she fastened the axe to her belt. “Now,” she said. “How about a noon meal for Lucy?” She shooed him out the door.

  Lucy straightened. “Noon? I slept until noon?” She went to the open window and saw the truth of Challie’s words. The sun was directly overhead. A warm breeze wavered over the roofs of the town and stirred dust devils in the streets. The road in front of the inn was nearly deserted except for a pair of donkeys laden with broom brush, a few pedestrians, and someone running headlong toward the inn. A pensive Lucy stuck her head out the window for a better view. The runner looked familiar. He raced to the inn’s front walk, skidded onto the walkway, and vanished through the front door.

  “Ulin, I think something’s happened,” she said.

  “I’m not surprised. We can’t seem to get through a day here without some incident.”

  The runner, one of the men who had ridden with the Silver Fox to help the
caravan, hurried to their room, his face sweating and red. “Please come, Sorceress. Mayor Efrim asks for you.”

  “Is it important?” Ulin demanded. “She is not recovered from yesterday.”

  The messenger saw her bruises and her swollen black eye and winced, but he did not leave. “It is the burial detail. They had some trouble, but they found the body.”

  “The gods be praised, they have a body,” Ulin muttered. Belatedly he looked at Lucy and saw the tension in her eyes. He bit back the next sarcastic remark and subsided into a more supportive silence.

  “All right, I’ll come.” Lucy pulled out her burnoose and wound it loosely around her head so that part of it encircled her face like a veil. Followed by Ulin and Challie, she hurried after the messenger.

  The man led them outside into the noon heat and trotted rapidly north past the marketplace and around the harbor to the old barracks. By the time they arrived, Challie was limping again and Lucy’s head throbbed with fatigue and the pain of yesterday’s injury.

  “What’s the hurry? The man’s dead!” Ulin snapped to the messenger as he helped the women sit down on the stone steps of the city hall. “Why didn’t you tell us we had to come this far? They could have ridden the horse.”

  “A thousand apologies,” the man said, looking contrite. “I did not know you had a horse.” He hurried indoors and soon returned with Mayor Efrim and a pitcher of water.

  The mayor poured the water into cups for the three. “I’m sorry, Lucy,” he said, handing her a cup. “I didn’t realize you were feeling ill.”

  “She wasn’t until now,” Ulin replied, since Lucy was too busy drinking water to answer for herself.

  The mayor flapped a hand, his seamed face deeply concerned. “I do apologize. The men we sent to retrieve the body ran into a spot of trouble. Two were injured, and this was as far as they could go. Actually, I was hoping one of you had training as a healer.”

  Lucy stared over the rim of her cup. “What sort of trouble?”

  “Do you mean this town doesn’t have a healer?” Ulin said at the same time.

  The mayor shrugged his thin shoulders and tried to answer both questions. “A couple of hobgoblins, early this morning. Unusual this close to town. And not anymore. The best we can do is a midwife or Notwen.”

  “Notwen? The gnome?” Ulin exclaimed. “You’re joking.” He considered gnomes to be a nuisance at best, a menace at worst. One with a desire to practice first aid sounded truly frightening.

  “Not really. Notwen is not your average gnome. He tinkers with everything. One month it’s machinery, the next it’s construction, the next it’s alchemy. This month it happens to be healing. He’s had no training, but he tries.”

  “Where are your men?” Lucy asked.

  “Inside. They came from the north road and made it this far.”

  Everyone trooped inside. The double doors opened into a wide corridor that passed a short row of offices on either side and led into a large hall. The hall had been recently renovated, but even new roof rafters, some bright wall hangings, and a thorough scrubbing could not completely remove the scorch marks of an old fire or camouflage the smell of fire-heated stone. A long table sat in the middle of the room near a huge fireplace that was empty and cold. Daylight gleamed through long, slender windows on the north side of the hall.

  The four diggers of the burial party were by the table. One sat on a high-backed chair, one lay on his back on the floor, and two stood by a wrapped bundle, the length and width of a human, laying at one end of the long table.

  “I sent for the rest of the council,” Mayor Efrim told them. “They should be here any moment.”

  Lucy and Ulin spared only a glance for the corpse as they hurried to the wounded men. The man in the chair, an old Khur by his swarthy skin and black hair, held his hand clamped over his face. His teeth were clenched shut and sweat stood out on his skin. His other hand gripped the armrest of his chair with a strength that could have torn the chair to pieces if he’d tried. A long, bloody gash stretched from his wrist to his elbow and went through the muscle almost to the bone. Beside him stood Notwen.

  Notwen held a steel needle and a long trailing length of thread in one hand, and with the other ran his finger along a line of text in a huge tome that lay open on the table beside him. He read a few lines, nodded, and stabbed the needle into the man’s arm. Despite the man’s clenched teeth, a whimper of pain escaped him.

  Ulin stared at the gnome, aghast. He had been forced to learn rudimentary healing techniques on his journeys, but he had never seen anyone try to stitch a gash with three feet of thread and no notion about what they were doing. He jumped forward and snatched the gnome’s hand from the needle. “What in the name of Mishakal do you think you’re doing?” he shouted.

  The Khur started like a wild horse. His eyes flew open and he stared pleadingly at the mayor.

  Notwen gazed up at Ulin through a pair of large spectacles perched on his wide nose. His blue eyes were intent and filled with concern. “Oh, are you a healer? Could you help? I am trying to learn the basic skills of first aid, and no one around here is willing to show me. I have this book I found in my library, but it’s so much easier to learn through hands-on experience, don’t you think?”

  “Unless you happen to be the patient,” Ulin pointed out.

  The Khur nodded his agreement.

  The gnome stroked his beard. “True. I guess it’s fortunate that one was passed out.”

  Ulin and Lucy took a close look at the unconscious man on the floor. His pant’s leg had been cut away to expose a laceration on his upper thigh, probably caused by a slash from a sword. The wound hadn’t been bandaged yet, and in its present condition, Ulin doubted it could be. The gnome had stitched it closed, and while his unpracticed stitches were close enough together, he had tied them off in a tangled weave of knots and ornate bows the likes of which Ulin had never seen.

  “Could you redo these knots?” he whispered to Lucy. “I’ll try to help the Khur.”

  She nodded, her expression struggling between sympathy and laughter. She beckoned to Challie, and they put their heads together over the prostrate man.

  Ulin turned back to the gnome and the Khur. Patiently, he showed Notwen how to cut a workable piece of thread, wash the needle in strong alcohol, and clean the wound.

  The gnome watched avidly and did his best to help. While he worked, he talked in a fast, enthusiastic stream of comments and questions. “This book says to use horse hair in an emergency, but there weren’t any horses nearby, so I used this thread we make from cotton. Can you really use spider webs to stop bleeding? And marigolds to make an astringent? Why are you stitching his muscle together before you stitch the skin? Do you make bows, too? Do you need some wound powder? I made some following a recipe in this book. It called for the mold on old bread. It’s supposed to stop infection. Have you ever trained with the Mystics? Do you know how to use the power of the heart? I don’t, but I’d like to try.”

  Ulin tried to follow his monologue and answer questions when he could, but after a while he lost track of the gnome’s endless conversation and focused on the Khur’s arm. The wound had been bound shortly after it happened and there was little swelling to worry about. The skin went back together fairly well. By the time he was finished, he thought the Khur would have a scar but would retain most of the use of his muscle—as long as the hobgoblin’s weapon that caused the slash was not poisoned.

  When he finally sat up and cut the last knot, the Khur sighed with relief. “Thank you, Friend of Sorceress. You have my lasting gratitude.”

  Ulin laid the needle down. “It should heal well,” he said. “There was little swelling.”

  “How fascinating!” murmured Notwen, peering closely at the closed wound. “If it does become gangrenous, will you allow me to watch the amputation?”

  The Khur’s groan was lost in a commotion at the entrance. Saorsha and Geoff Aylesworthy arrived at the same time, both breathless and agit
ated. The innkeeper was dusty from a hurried ride back to town from his small brewery. The elderly woman still wore an apron and smears of flour from her baking. Their eyes went directly to the wrapped body on the table, then they huddled with Mayor Efrim in a close, fast-talking group. Challie joined them.

  Ulin and Lucy wiped their hands clean. They exchanged a brief, searching gaze of silent support, then Lucy clutched the small knife she had used to cut the thread for the stitches and walked down the length of the table to stand by the silent form lying so still in its dirty shroud. The two quiet guardians inclined their heads to her and backed away to a respectful distance, leaving room for Ulin. The council fell quiet, staring at Lucy with an obvious intensity.

  Ulin watched Lucy’s hand poised over the cords that bound the chest. He glanced up and saw with a start of surprise they had a much larger audience than he expected. People in twos and threes slipped in the door and gathered quietly around the room. He recognized members of the Vigilance Force, the blacksmith, and people from the market and the common room at the Jetties. Apparently, quite a few people in Flotsam wished to see if Lucy recognized this corpse. He returned his gaze to Lucy and saw her hands shaking.

  Notwen trotted up beside her, his small face alive with interest, and he climbed up on a chair to see better. “It’s all right, Miss Lucy,” he said soothingly. “The body still stinks, doesn’t it? But it should still be identifiable. He died from the force of the explosion before the fire.”

  Ulin stiffened in his place by the table. “No one said anything about an explosion.”

  The room remained breathlessly silent.

  Lucy’s eyes narrowed, and as Ulin opened his mouth to say something more, she forestalled him with a quick slash of her knife against the binding cord. “Let’s see who this is, then we’ll ask the questions,” she said.

  Ulin subsided back into his watchful pose while Notwen leaned forward to help Lucy. Together the gnome and the woman severed the ropes and unwrapped the rotten stained strips of cloth that encased the body.