“No” said Cyerant. “Trappers have no reason to want to bother us and we know that they can’t see dragons.”
Nearly two hours later the companions spotted the group of trappers. As the two groups approached one another Cyerant held up his open hand as a sign of peace. Then he heard Shira whisper behind him. “One of those dogs they have isn’t a dog. Look.”
One of the hunting dogs with the trappers was actually a dragon and all of the companions could see it. One of the trappers looked at Cyerant and very subtly shook his head indicating that the others travelling with him didn’t know. That trapper must be bonded to the dragon and so he could see the dragons with the companions. While the dogs and dragons all milled about sniffing one another the trappers and the companions traded news. The trappers had seen nothing unusual to the south and they were heading back to their trapping grounds before winter. Cyerant and Veer told the trappers about the forest fire up north and the bands of foreign bandits. Shira managed to wander down the trail a bit and the trapper with the dragon followed her and they were able to talk quietly for a few minutes before both parties parted ways and continued their journeys.
“What did you find out?” Jolss asked as soon as the trappers were far enough away to be out of earshot.
Veer shushed him to make sure that the trappers were far enough away.
Shira looked at Cyerant and he nodded so she began. “He said that there was nothing to the south and I told him what the foreigners were looking for so he is going to head back into the mountains and be very careful with his dragon. He said that there have always been a few trappers who have dragons and they know one another but keep it secret from most folks. They find them in the mountains sometimes. He said that he had never seen so many dragons together and that he only knew about the dragons that help trappers hunt and he’s never seen dragons as big as Drace and Corth. He said in a couple of weeks we will reach the Blacktine River where the Furway ends and we will see the New Range Mountains. Then if we want to go south we can cross on the ferry there or we can book passage on a river boat or we can ride along the river until we get to a city called Deelt. We will see lots of trapper parties coming back up-trail to get to their hunting grounds. And when I told him that something had killed a whole party of foreigners in the night without leaving a single sign he said it had to be elves.”
“Elves?” Asked Cyerant.
“Elves,” said Shira.
The next two weeks passed uneventfully though the companions did have to occasionally take to the wilds to avoid search parties. Jolss was able to continue his studies relatively peacefully while Veer had his sight slowly return to normal and he was able to resume his nightly training sessions at weaponry with Cyerant. Cyerant had decided that they would cross on the ferry and continue south on the Shadow way which skirted the edge of the New Range Mountains the way that the Furway skirted the Dragon Mountains.
All of this time Cyerant paid very little attention to Jolss and seemed to avoid the boy. Jolss was hurt by this and didn’t understand what he had done but assumed that it had something to do with the fire. Veer and Shira also noticed it and said nothing as neither one or the other could figure out what was increasingly bothering Cyerant.
One evening, after two weeks of this treatment, Jolss was starting to read something from the dragon book as he sat by the fire and Cyerant stood up and turned to walk away. Jolss dropped the book and jumped up suddenly dislodging Prin from her perch on his shoulder. The little dragon shrieked and tumbled toward the ground but managed to right herself and open her wings in time to stop her fall and settle clumsily to the ground. The little magic dragon began to let out an angry but tiny roar as Jolss began to yell at Cyerant. “I’m sorry, alright? I didn’t know the fire was going to be that big. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”
“It isn’t the fire,” Cyerant began. “You just look like my little brothers; you look like my whole family.” Cyerant started to walk forward into the dark away from the camp but suddenly his dragon Corth stepped out of the darkness right in from of the young man blocking his way. Cyerant tried to step around the, now small horse sized, dragon but Corth just backed a few steps and remained in front of the young man. Cyerant tried to send a mental command to Corth to move out of his way and was surprised to feel the backlash of refusal from the dragon. It was as if the dragon gave him a mental slap. Cyerant continued, “I had another little brother who wasn’t killed in the fire. He was the second oldest and twelve years ago the family nurse stole him. He was a year old and she just disappeared with him. When they caught her she said that we would never find him. After she died my parents searched but never found any sign of the baby. We assumed that he ended up in a river somewhere. You look so much like him; like them all that it hurts to look at you.”
There was a long silence and finally Jolss quietly said,” oh, I didn’t know.”
Cyerant tried to walk forward again and Corth quietly rumbled in his chest and so Cyerant stopped since the obstinate dragon was not going to move out of his way.
Veer was looking at the exchange between dragon and young noble and he quietly asked. “And?”
Cyerant answered very quietly, “I’ve been wondering some crazy things.” He paused for a moment and quietly continued. “He had a birthmark on his back in the middle of it.” Cyerant, facing away, couldn’t see Shira as she gently raised the ragged tunic that the boy was wearing and looked at his back. “It looked like a little tiny...”
“Bat wing,” Shira finished. “A little tiny bat wing – or a dragon wing.”
Jolss sat down on the ground hard with wide shocked eyes as he watched Cyerant slowly sink to his own knees and begin to shudder. Corth stepped up to the young noble and leaned down to encircle the shoulders of the man with his long serpentine neck.
*****
A lone tall female figure rode south on the Edgeway. Her name was Garisa and she was somewhere in the third decade of life. She had grown up rough and she had learned to fight at a very young age. She had never actually been formally trained to use the sword at her side but she had some considerable skill based completely on experience. She had worked many professions through the years, most of them violent. It made no difference to Garisa, bodyguard, assassin or thief so long as the pay was good.
Right now she was a bounty hunter. She knew that young impostor was heading south and she was determined to find him and collect that reward. She was also determined to see the laughter wiped off of the face of that Sergeant of the Guard. How dare he laugh at her and send her away after only a few days of searching. Garisa had seen the impostor and his friends and had followed them and she knew that they were headed south. That damned sergeant telling her to take her things and leave because she had no more idea about where that boy was than did he or his men after that forest fire had destroyed the trail. The guard knew that the boy was headed south and he just wanted to keep the reward for himself. When she turns that boy in for the reward she will make sure to mention that guard by name and explain how she would have gotten the boy much sooner if the sergeant would have listened to her.
All that Garisa could do now was head south until reaching the end of Edgeway at Deelt. The saying was that all roads from the Dragon Mountains lead through Deelt. It wasn’t true but most roads did converge there on the Riverway. Chances are that at some point the boy and his friends would come through Deelt. And that is where Garisa would be waiting for them. Then watch until the boy is alone away from his friends and take him. Then turn him in for the reward. Calyen Duchy would have to have a business agent in Deelt. Turn him over to the business agent and get her reward. Simple enough plan.
If the boy and his friends keep to the Wall trying to move through the hills they will take weeks to get to Deelt. But if Garisa stays on the Edgeway she knows that she will be in Deelt in a week and a half of hard riding from town to town. Then just get a room at Telfargo Inn across from the main stable near the north gate and wait and watch.
<
br /> The week and a half of the journey went relatively well. Garisa waylaid a few travellers in that time just to make enough money to pay for her stops at inns and taverns to eat and sleep and to build up her purse in order to sustain her when she arrived in Deelt. Just as she had planned, the journey was quick and when she entered through the north gate of Deelt she felt at home. Garisa sold the horse for a little money, it wasn’t worth much in the exhausted condition to which she had driven it over the last couple of weeks. She was even somewhat surprised that the beast had not died and forced her to steal another. Anyway, horses were easy enough to steal when on your way out of a town.
The inn keeper at the Telfargo was neither particularly happy to see Garisa nor unhappy to see her; though as usual he feigned joy. Garisa had always paid her bill in this inn and she had made sure to cause no trouble here in order to insure that there was at least one inn somewhere in the city which would accept her. The Telfargo was just expensive enough to not be a low class dive of an inn but barley so the inn was not quite a middle class business. It also had the advantage of not being down near the docks on the south end where the river sailors were so abundant.
Deelt was just big enough to be considered a city; a small city but a city nonetheless. It was a port city with lots of docks on the south end. But Deelt was a strange kind of port city, not on the sea but on the river or actually on the confluence of the Blacktine and Merris rivers where they joined and formed the West Garee River. All goods and materials trading between the southern and the north western parts of the kingdom went by way of these rivers and so everything came through Deelt. Mostly timber and food on barges headed south really but there were trade goods which came back north. The city made a nice sum from the docks on the rivers. There were the docking fees. And there were the taxes collected and sent south to the capital and there were the other fees paid to avoid some of the taxes.
Yes, Deelt was her favourite city. Just large enough to remain anonymous in and allow her to be able to ply her various unpleasant trades. But being so far to the north Deelt lacked the order and stability of the southern cities so the rule of law was a little less here and often only available for those willing to pay a bribe. Certainly not a lawless den of thieves but also not lawful enough that thieves found things difficult.
Garisa soon fell into a rhythm for her days which involved spending most of the day just sitting on the porch of the Telfargo Inn watching the people coming in through the northern gates. Evenings were spent sitting in the common room of the inn listening to gossip and playing a few low stakes games to pass the time. So now the only things left for Garisa to do is wait and watch.
Over the first few days of watching, Garisa noticed that there were three foreigners staying at the inn who also seemed to take turns watching the main roadway into the city. The three of them spoke with a strange accent and mostly kept to themselves though they would occasionally play a few games and exchange a few coins across the tables with others at night. Garisa figured that the men were also hunting someone and so she decided to play a few games with them and find out who they were looking for so that she would know if they were hunting the same bounty that she intended to claim. It turned out that the foreigners seemed to be more interested in the animals coming through the city than the people so Garisa knew the bounty would be all hers and the only thing that she had to do was to wait until that boy came right to her.
*****
“Brothers, you’re brothers,” Shira said only slightly louder than a whisper. “Jolss is your little brother, Cyerant.” She looked at the back of the young man kneeling on the ground and shuddering as he silently cried. “This is good Cyerant, someone else in your family is alive. Jolss is...”
“Daralce, is his name; Daralce Dwalreez,” said Cyerant, cutting Shira off as she was speaking. The young man turned slowly to look, through his tears at the little brother that he had lost so long ago. “Where?” Cyerant whispered to the little boy. “Where?”
Stammering just a bit, a confused looking Jolss began to answer. “It was an orphanage farm where they take care of orphans and we do all of the work around the farm until we are old enough to sell off as apprentices.”
“I know how orphan farms work, I want to know where the orphan farm is,” said Cyerant.
“Just inside the lands of Calyen,” answered Jolss.
“Calyen, isn’t that a large duchy in the east?” Asked Veer.
“Yes,” answered Cyerant. “It’s the largest duchy in the kingdom. It’s so large that the Duke there wants to become a king himself. He has been quietly claiming more and more lands for himself. Those guards that are following me are from Calyen.”
Shira looked at Jolss and asked. “How did you get this far west to the little village that we found you in?”
“A trader,” Jolss answered. “I was sold to a trader as an apprentice. But he kept stopping at places and buying other apprentices until he had a dozen of us. No trader needs that many apprentices. And he said that we were going over the mountains and that we would be worth a lot to him. We just kept heading west toward the mountains until one night I sneaked away and then just ran as far as I could. I knew that there were larger cities to the south so I just followed the trail south until in got bigger and bigger and I moved through little villages begging for food or helping some people do some work for food and a place to sleep. But I never stole anything like that shopkeeper said. I just wanted to get to the cities so that maybe I could find a job or something.”
“What did the orphan farmer tell you about how you got there?” Asked Cyerant.
“He said I looked to be about a year old when I came,” responded Jolss. “His wife told me that I was found with the body of a man who had been attacked by robbers on the road and killed. And they just left me there with him. An old farmer found me and he didn’t need anymore children so he took me to the orphan farm and they named me Jolss.”
Cyerant finally stood and said, “I have to walk.” But there was a dangerous edge of anger in his voice as he glared at the dragon that had been blocking his way earlier. Corth, finally stepped aside and let the young man pass.
Jolss looked panicked trying to figure out what he had done wrong to make is brother walk away and his eyes began to tear up as he asked. “Why is he angry with me.? I can’t help what happened to me.”
Shira was still kneeling on the ground just behind Jolss where she had lifted his tunic and she just reached forward and put her arms around the shoulders of the boy and pulled him into a hug leaning back against her. “He isn’t angry at you. He loves you. But this is a lot of news to take in at once. He thought that his whole family was gone, and now he has you back.” As Shira said this she looked over the shoulder of the boy and made eye contact with Veer and then glanced toward the spot where Cyerant had gone into the brush. With a tiny nod Veer quietly rose and followed in the direction that Cyerant had gone. Shira continued. “Veer will talk to him and it is going to be ok. So tell me about the orphan farm I’ve heard that they are terrible places and they work the kids really hard and beat them.”
“No not our farm. The farmer and his wife were nice people who had a big farm but didn’t have kids of their own. So they started taking in orphans to help on the farm. We all had lots of chores to do because it was a farm but we had really good fresh food and clean clothes and a warm dry place to sleep. We worked every day but not like slaves.”
“Did they beat you?”
“No, they didn’t beat us, well sometimes if you did something really bad you might get a hiding but just like a normal kid gets.”
“Who taught you to read?”
“The farmer and his wife did. Every night after supper we would have lesson time before bed and we learned to read and to do calculations. I’m really good with calculations.”
“Were there a lot of kids there?”
“There were always about ten of us. Occasionally a new little one would arrive and there was always one
or two who were going off to become apprentices or sometimes the girls would decide to get married. Because we could read and do math it was easier to find something for us.
Veer soon caught up to Cyerant who had only walked far enough way to be out of sight but was close enough to still hear the conversation between Shira and Jolss. Veer said nothing and just stood there next to his friend the both of them listening to the conversation back at the camp.
After about 20 min of silent listening Cyerant turned and looked at Veer and with a nod slowly led the way back to camp.
The next week of travel passed uneventfully with Shira and Cyool doing the scouting so that there would be no surprise encounters though they did pass parties of trappers headed north nearly every day now. Each evening Shira, with the help of Cyool, would quickly have something to roast over the fire. Cyerant and Jolss had a lot to talk about as they got to know one another and Cyerant insisted on calling the younger boy Daralce now.
Finally an evening came when as Cyool scouted up and down the trail a final time Shira saw the end of the Furway through the eyes of the dragon. Shira said, “the Furway ends soon. We should be there by midday tomorrow. There is a river and a ferry to cross it. It will be nice to be out of the hills for a while since the nights are starting to feel like winter is coming and the leaves are really starting to turn now”
“Well, then that’s that” said Cyerant. “We get up early and by noon we are across the river and out of the hills, then we can head down to Verat City and I can speak to the new king about what Duke Vrayah has been doing and what he did to my family.”
Just like every night for weeks now Cyerant and Veer picked up their practice swords and walked a little ways away from the camp to train. Veer had become so strong now that his attacks were like a tidal wave but somehow Cyerant had become faster and more graceful and so he was able to meet the force of the powerful attacks like a whirlwind. Shira would sit and watch them from the fireside for a while and then she would practice with her fighting knife.
Dragons of Summer Tide (The Dragons of Hwandor) Page 17
