So here we were, trudging along in the noonday heat, while Black-Arse was hiding somewhere in the dense pine forest. I was carrying Rose’s enormous basket.
“Why did you have to bring all that rubbish?” I complained.
“You never know when you’ll need a good frying pan,” she said. “But if it’s too heavy for you, I’ll take it.”
Over my dead body. “No, I’m fine.” No way would I admit how heavy the thing felt, or how the straps were chafing my shoulders. I was still wondering how she had managed to get it as far as she had before Black-Arse started being her Parfit Helpful Knight.
There was a drumming of hooves behind us, and I turned to look. A troop of Dragon riders were approaching, galloping at full stretch. Rose and I had to leap aside, into the ditch. Not to hide, this time, but simply to avoid being trampled. The riders barely glanced at us and certainly didn’t slow down any. We were pelted with dirt and pine needles as they went past.
“Damn. Now my feet are wet,” said Rose.
So were mine. It had rained last night, and the ditch was still full of rainwater. And I now had a big brown stain on my shirt where a clod of earth had struck me, right in the middle of my chest.
We climbed back onto the road.
“That was rude,” said Rose, giving the already distant riders the kind of glare she usually reserved for me.
“What did you expect?” I said. “They’re Dragon soldiers.”
“That doesn’t mean they can just trample people.”
I shrugged. “Come on. Let’s get it over with.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Close up, Dracana didn’t look that awe-inspiring. It had walls, but they were nowhere near as tall and massive as those of Skayark. There were towers—one on either side of the river—but they were just wooden, hardly more than crow’s nests meant for lookouts. Yet my heart was definitely beating at more than its regular rate.
“Name?” barked the guard at the gate.
“Martin Kerk,” I lied. It would have been a bad idea to call ourselves Rose and Davin Tonerre. “And this is my sister, May.”
Rose had teased me when she heard what I wanted to call myself. “Martin?” she had said. “Do you reckon that makes you just as tough as the Weapons Master?”
Heat had rushed into my cheeks.
“That’s just a coincidence,” I had said. “Martin is a perfectly ordinary name. It has nothing to do with him.” But it had.
“What’s your business?” asked the guard.
“Work, good sir. We heard there might be work for us here.”
“There might be,” he said, mustering us coolly. “But not for every drifter that comes calling.”
“But we—”
“Save it, lad. It’s not me you have to convince.” He put his head through the door to the guard room and yelled. “Arno! Take these two to the Hire-Master.”
The Hire-Master sat at a desk, writing long lists.
“Name?” he said, not looking up.
“Martin Kerk. But I already told—”
“And the girl?”
“Ro—erh, May. May Kerk. My sister. But—”
“Can she weave?”
“Yes. That is, I—” I nearly said, I think so, but caught myself in time. If Rose was my sister, I would know, wouldn’t I? But we hadn’t had a loom during the year Rose had stayed with us.
“I’m an excellent weaver, sir,” said Rose, very polite, very subservient. I hardly recognized her.
“Hmm. And you, boy. Any weapon skills?”
“A bit, but—”
“But you don’t have a sword?”
“It… got broken. But—”
“I see. You had better be more careful with the gear you are issued here.” The Hire-Master scratched our names on one of his lists and held out the pen to me. “Here. Put down your mark. If you can’t write, a cross will do.”
I made a cross. Most commoners were unable to write, and it was better not to draw attention.
“You report to the Blue Banner just outside the gate. The girl goes to the mill house over there, the door with the green letters on it.”
“But…”
“Yes?”
“I thought… we want to work in the mill house. Both of us.”
“No. They only take women and children there. What is it with you, boy? Too good for the Dragon Force? Or too cowardly?”
A bitter taste was in my mouth, but what could I do?
“No,” I said, trying to look eager. “I’d like to be a Dragon soldier. Sir.”
“Good, then. Dismissed.”
“Damn,” I cursed under my breath, once we had left the Hire-Master’s office. “Damn and blast. I’ll end up on the wrong side of the wall! And in Drakan’s filthy uniform!”
“Yes,” said Rose, giving me a quick farewell peck on the cheek—mostly for the benefit of the gate guard, I think. “So it’s a good thing that you brought me along—isn’t it?”
I didn’t see Rose until two days later, a little after sunset.
“Hello, brother dear.” Her voice sounded worn and strange, and at first I nearly didn’t recognize her. Her fair hair was mostly hidden by a black scarf, and she was wearing a gray skirt and blouse I had never seen before. Around her neck was the red scarf that told Black-Arse that everything was all right, but that was the only bit of color on her. Her shoulders drooped tiredly, and she stood holding her elbows as if she were afraid that her arms would drop off.
“Hello, sweet sister,” I said, lowering my own sore arms. In front of me hung what seemed to me an endless row of saddles and bridles, waiting to be cleaned and oiled and polished. Since noon, the Tack-Master had had me under his wing, or, more accurately, under his boot. My shoulders hurt so badly I wanted to scream, and my fingertips were shriveled like prunes and nearly as black. It was not what I had imagined the life of a Dragon soldier to be. But it could be worse. It had been worse. The day before I had had to clean the latrines. Those were the sort of heroic tasks newcomers were given.
“Can we walk for a bit?” she asked, with a tired jerk of her head—away from the camp, away from listening ears.
Gloomily I eyed the mountain of tack still waiting for me. The Tack-Master had said I wouldn’t be allowed to turn in until I had finished, but at the rate I was going, that wouldn’t be much before sunrise. A short walk with Rose wouldn’t make much difference one way or the other.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, let’s get out of here for a bit.”
♦ ♦ ♦
“Dina is here,” Rose said as soon as we were outside the camp. “They talk about her in the mill houses. They are terrified of her, especially the children. He uses her to punish them when they don’t do their work as quickly as he wants them to.”
“Who? Valdracu?”
Rose nodded. “They talk about her like she’s some kind of monster.” She looked at me with anxious eyes. “Why does she do it?” she asked. “How does he make her?”
I shook my head silently. I could not imagine how anybody could make Dina do something like that. She would never abuse her gift like that. Only it seemed she had.
“Where is she?” I asked. “Do they talk about that, too?”
“She is up at the big house, the fancy house Valdracu lives in. I thought… maybe we could get in there one night? Soon? If I have to work much longer at the mill house, my arms will fall off.”
I knew how she felt. I had no desire to spend many more days cleaning tack or latrines. “Tonight,” I said. “We might as well do it tonight.”
Getting past Dracana’s walls was my first problem. New recruits were not allowed in town, I had been told. But if nothing else, my cleaning duties had given me an intimate knowledge of the riverbank—I had had to fetch water many, many times. The walls went all the way down to the river; but if a man was willing to brave the wild waters of the Eidin, there might be a way around them. Always assuming the river didn’t sweep you away and batter you to a pulp against its rock
y banks, which was a possibility I tried hard not to think about. And I had brought a precaution: a long rope I had pinched from the Tack-Master’s stores. I tied one end of it around my waist and the other around the root of a young pine. With the aid of the rope, I then climbed down the steep cliff and lowered myself into the cold water.
I lost my footing immediately. It was as if a great hand of ice caught me and flung me downstream, in the wrong direction. I had thought I would be able to swim—I was a strong swimmer and I had swum rivers before. But this was nothing like the slow silted waters of the Dun back home in Birches. This was a maelstrom, a wild icy current that sucked me down and tossed me about as if I were a dry leaf in a meltwater brook.
Smack! The river threw me against a boulder, and my shoulder grew instantly numb and dead. If I didn’t do something very soon, the rest of me would end up in the same condition. I grabbed the rope and hauled myself back upstream, tug by tug. My fingers were so cold I could barely feel the rough hemp of the rope, and my arms grew weaker and less obedient by the second. I was gasping and puffing like a steer with too heavy a load to pull, but I did finally manage to drag myself out of the water, up the cliff, and back to the pine tree. For a while I just lay there, panting and shivering with cold.
It couldn’t be done. Swimming that river was not humanly possible. At least not here, where the current was forceful enough to drive the many waterwheels of Dracana.
I didn’t know what else to do. I was soaked to the skin, and if I had ever had a chance of talking my way through the gate with some story, that was certainly gone now. Even the slowest of guards would become suspicious at the sight of a half-drowned water rat like me. And Rose was waiting for me. If I didn’t show, she would be anxious. Perhaps scared enough to give the panic signal to Black-Arse tomorrow night.
Could I get past the wall without actually getting into the water? The cliff was very steep, vertical in most places. But perhaps, with the rope… it was only a distance of about twenty paces. It might be feasible.
For the second time I slipped over the edge, this time more carefully. I scrambled for a foothold—yes, there was a small crack in the rock, just big enough for me to dig my toes into. I let go of the rope with one hand and leaned sideways to grab at a tuft of grass growing from another small crack. Carefully, like a crippled spider, I crabbed my way along the bank, upstream, past the walls. I glanced upward. The wall was a massive shadow above me, a jagged black shape against the deep dark blue of the night sky. And at the moment, at least, it was a shape without men on it. So far, no one had seen me.
Suddenly, my right foot slipped, and for a moment I dangled helplessly, clinging to the rock face with rigid fingers. A shower of pebbles clattered into the deep, but luckily the rush of the water was loud enough to cover such small noises. I scrabbled about, found another foothold. If only I had thought to take off my boots before starting the climb. Bare feet would have been better. A mixture of sweat and river water trickled down my face, and I had to blink it out of my eyes. A small shelf to stand on… a sapling willow to clutch. I looked up again. Yes, I was past the walls. Now all I had to do was get back up onto properly dry land.
It sounded easy, didn’t it? But suddenly I was stuck. I couldn’t find purchase in any direction. I raked the rock face with my hands, and got nothing for my trouble except some scratches and a cracked nail. The rope was no good to me now, fastened as it was on the wrong side of the wall, and try as I might I couldn’t find a way to move upward. My fingers hurt, and my shoulders shook from the strain. If I couldn’t find a way to move on, I could only cling here until my strength gave out and I fell. And then I would have to start over—always assuming I didn’t break a bone or two in the fall.
“Davin?”
It was just a whisper, so low I could barely hear it above the noise of the river. I looked up. A face was peering over the edge of the cliff, pale and round in the moonlight. It was Rose.
“Can’t you get up?”
How amazingly observant of her.
“No,” I spat. “If I could, I’d be doing it, wouldn’t I?”
Rose held out her hand, but we were too far apart. And come to think of it, that was probably a good thing. I was a great deal heavier than Rose, and pulling her over the edge too would not have been the smartest of moves.
“Wait,” she said. “My apron… perhaps you can reach that.”
“Tie it to something,” I said, trying to ignore the burning sensation in my fingers. They had become hooked and rigid claws, and I was beginning to think I’d never be able to straighten them again.
Something soft brushed my hand—one of the strings from Rose’s apron. Would it hold my weight? There was nothing for it but to try. I couldn’t cling here much longer. Cautiously I let go of my left handhold and clutched at the apron string. I tugged at it; there was some give to it, but it seemed to be holding. And it was not that far to the edge. I let go of my other handhold as well and clung to the apron for dear life.
“Come on, Davin,” hissed Rose from the edge, and there was such a panic in her voice that I felt sure some guard was approaching. I wiggled and squirmed, clawing my way up the apron, hand over hand. Then Rose seized me by the collar and hauled me onto level ground, like a fisherman landing a flounder.
“Quick,” she whispered, “someone’s coming!”
She didn’t even take the time to undo the knot, she just sliced through the apron string with a quick slash of her knife. Then she took off at a hunched run, nearly soundless in her stockinged feet. Breathing hard, I got up and tried to follow her, but an almighty jerk made me lose my balance and nearly sent me right over the edge again. In my haste, I had forgotten about the rope still tied to my waist.
“Come on!” Rose hissed furiously from the shadows, and now I too could hear the tread of booted feet. I cut myself free, tossed the rope over the edge, and ran after her as silently as I could.
DAVIN
A Family Outing
Among all the dark wooden buildings, the white walls of the big house glowed like pearl in the moonlight. The windows were dark, though, and I devoutly hoped everyone there was tucked up in bed and sleeping very soundly.
“Do you think there are guards?” Rose whispered.
“Can’t see any. They guard the mill houses and the forges, and of course the storehouses, but maybe they don’t think anyone is stupid enough to try to rob Valdracu’s personal residence.”
We were crouching behind a woodpile by the end of the stable. Above us an elder tree spread its branches, and the smell from its white flowers tickled my nose, sweet and bitter at the same time. It made me feel like sneezing.
“Well?” said Rose. “Do we go in?”
I hesitated. “We don’t know where they keep her. We might end up opening every door in the place just to find her.”
“Do you have a better plan?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Well, come on then.”
“Wait a moment,” I said. “I want my boots off, at least.”
I pulled off my slopping wet boots and hid them behind a few logs. The earth felt cold and damp beneath my feet, but barefoot I would be able to move more silently. Bad enough that I left a dripping trail like some forest slug; I didn’t have to be a noisy slug. Should I take off the wet tunic of my Dragon uniform? No, at least it was black. With my pale chest I would light up the dark like a ghost.
There were some wide stone steps in front of the house, but sauntering up to the main entrance seemed a bit too foolhardy.
“There,” I said. “The door at the end.”
It was Rose’s turn to hesitate.
“What do you think they’ll do to us if they catch us?” she asked, a slight tremor in her voice.
“How would I know?” I said a bit more sharply than I meant to. “These are Drakan’s people. We had better not get caught.”
Rose muttered something about being able to figure that one out for herself. I didn’t catch all o
f it, but the word numbskull stood out quite clearly. Strange—somehow it was almost comforting to bicker with Rose in the middle of all the danger and tension; it was almost like home.
“Wait here,” I told her. “I’ll see if it’s locked.”
I poked my head out from behind the woodpile, looking left and right. Not a soul. Taking a deep breath, I dashed across the cobblestones on my bare feet and ducked into the shadow cast by the gable wall of the big house. I lifted the latch and gave the door a very gentle push. It opened. No locks, no bars. I suppose if you have half the Dragon Force guarding your doorstep, locking the doors seems unnecessary.
I slowly pushed the door all the way open. At first I could see nothing whatsoever, but once my eyes got used to the darkness, vague shapes began to appear. None of them looked like people, and the only sound I heard was a slow, wet dripping. Tentatively, I moved forward—and took a nosedive. I slammed facedown onto a very hard floor with enough force to rattle my teeth. I didn’t even have enough breath to curse with. Who the hell put stairs inside the door instead of outside? Whoever built this house, apparently. I had fallen down three worn steps onto the smooth, cool flagstoned floor of… of what? There was a soapy, wet, and slightly mildewed smell. A bathhouse? No, a laundry cellar. I could see the huge coppers now, big basins that one could light a fire under so that all the sheets and linens could actually be laundered in hot water. A bit more fancy than taking the washing down to the stream the way we did at home. But then, the whole house was a far cry from our cottage. Had I ever been in a house this big before? Only Helena Laclan’s came anywhere near it.
Suddenly I remembered the chamber at Baur Laclan so vividly that I might still be in it. The chamber, and Callan staring down at his feet and telling me that they would drag the pond at first light. I could feel tears prickling at the corners of my eyes and blinked furiously. How stupid to sit here nearly bawling when I knew Dina was alive and not drowned, that she was here, in this house, and that I would soon find her. I wiped my eyes on my wet sleeve, climbed to my feet, and went out to get Rose.
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