Dog and Dragon-ARC

by Dave Freer

  Meb sighed artistically. “He got it wrong, and now it’s my fault again. I think he is going senile. Or your machine is not right. It’s the second time it has been wrong, and it has nothing whatever to do with me. Maybe he just needs a little more effort or more power. Magic is like that.”

  Medraut looked at her strangely. “You came here, and were granted a place for appearing to have performed a major magic. Yet…you don’t seem to me to understand the rudiments of magic. It can’t be wrong, young woman. The very rules of sympathetic magic are scalar relationships. They are very precise. One grain of weight becomes seven or seventy-seven or seven hundred and seventy-seven. One hair width is multiplied by precisely the same measurements. Not somehow some arbitrary number! Magic would be chaos then!”

  His eyes narrowed. “You’ve claimed to be a worker of magic, but yet you do not appear to know the very most basic principles. What is the law of contagion?”

  “If you get sick it spreads?” said Meb, who honestly had no idea.

  The prince rolled his eyes. “How were we ever fooled by you, woman? I was shaken, I suppose, by Alois. But even the newest of adepts learns the principles of ‘once together, always together.’ You claim to be a summonser and do not understand how the basis of it works. Lady Cardun was right: you are simply a fraud.”

  “I never claimed to be anything,” said Meb. “You all said I was. And anyway that’s not how summonsing works. If I need it and want it badly enough, and can imagine it clearly…it comes.”

  That provoked scornful laughter from the prince. “Yes, that is how the commons think it works. Well, you’ve had a good time imagining you can live as your betters do. And I’ll be first to admit, you were a quick imitator. Well, you seem to have a taste for the neyfs and kitchen trulls, by all reports. You will make an excellent one. But first you can have some time at the posts and a good whipping. Afterwards I will be back to ask some questions and finally get some straight answers.” He gestured to one of his bodyguards. “Methgin. Take the two of them to the posts. And you, Captain, get them to open that gate so we can go and try to establish just what sort of mess we have to deal with this time.”

  The gate swung open and the press of horses rode out. For a mad moment, Meb thought of trying to run with them.

  But Methgin was in the way and she still had Neve with her, and besides, they would have to cross the causeway single file…there was no point in even trying to run.

  Methgin grabbed Neve, roughly with one hand and then reached to twitch Meb’s “stick” from her with the other, plainly thinking two women no match for his burly frame.

  “Haaaa!” he screamed. Fortunately there was still a lot of noise outside. He let go of Neve and clutched his partially severed finger. And found himself staring at the bloody edge of the spatha-axe he had just grabbed. “I think,” hissed Meb, “that I am going to cut you in half right now. I forgot I had my axe with me or I would have cut your prince in half. Neve. Take that sword of his, and his knife. We’re going to walk out of that gate. And if you try anything, Methgin, I’ll kill you.”

  He was a braver man than many. “Where…where did the axe come from?”

  “Magic. Real magic,” said Meb. “Not your feeble magic. It’s an alvar axe. It’ll cut through that armor of yours like thin parchment. You’ve felt how sharp it is.”

  The three of them walked out past the gate…which swung closed behind them. The last of the troop of horses was still about thirty yards away, waiting their turn to ride the narrow causeway path over to the main cape.

  Meb was wondering just what to do, and what to do with the prisoner when Neve solved part of her problem for her. She hit him really hard, two-handed, with the back of his own sword on the back of his head, just below the helmet. Neve was not a large woman, and she’d been sick and was weakened by that. She made up for it in fury. The big man fell like a poleaxed steer. Neve kicked him. “And that’s for trying to kill my lady. He was about to call out, or try something, m’lady. I could see his shoulders tense. What do we do now?”

  They were just outside the gate, with two baskets, an unconscious bodyguard and an axe. There were guards on the gate towers, but presumably, as no one had yelled out, they were watching the horsemen on the causeway. There was no way that Meb and Neve could get across that causeway unseen, though. “Let’s just walk along the wall. There might be somewhere we can sit down until dark or something.”

  “There’s the cave…” said Neve, doubtfully, “but surely they’d look there?”

  “It’s better than standing here.”

  So they walked slowly and calmly along the narrow track directly below the castle wall, along to the seaward side, where the peninsula sloped into the water. Then down over some rough ground and a few scraps of half-rotten shale and down onto the sea shelf. As they walked along this, Meb was trying hard to project “You can’t see us” thoughts at the ramparts above.

  The sea raced and fumed into the dark steep-sided zawn. Above was just cliff, now, and above that…

  “That’s the queen’s window up there,” said Neve. “Poor dear. They were some who said he pushed her rather than that she jumped. I don’t believe it myself, because they say he was a broken man afterwards. Never went to bed anything but dead drunk ever again for the rest of his days. He had lost both his son and heir and her.”

  “We’d better get down in the gully before someone spots us from it,” said Meb. It was a long fall from that window.

  And the water looked deep and cold, and laced with rocks.

  “There are bats in the cave, m’lady,” said Neve, wrinkling her nose in distaste, as they advanced towards the point where the cliff on both this and foreland overhung, to join in a dark hole where the water surged and gurgled inward. They must be under the edge of the causeway now. Someday the hungry sea would eat through here and make an arch, and then collapse the causeway. Right now it offered a dark refuge, if a smelly one. But part of Meb’s apprenticeship with the gleeman-dragon didn’t like it. “It’s the place anyone would hide. They’ll look there.”

  Neve shook her head. “They say there are knockers down there. It’s a place that the haerthmen, let alone neyfs, won’t venture, not without ten of them, and then if they hear a squeak, they’ll run. I wouldn’t go down there myself, except with you!”

  Meb wasn’t sure what a knocker was, but it was a heavy load to bear. “What’s a knocker?” she asked as they walked forward into the ammoniacal gloom.

  “They live underground…”

  Her voice died as they came face to face with the current occupants of the sea-grotto.

  Not all of the Fomoire had escaped or been drowned. A few of them had been left behind. The five broad, huge, shaggy men with their long iron swords came running, whooping, for the bounty that had suddenly walked into their hiding place.

  Meb swung the axe, trying to defend herself, as one of the others was throwing Neve down, and tearing at her skirt. Meb had plainly forgotten to tell it not to look like a stick. The lead Fomoire warrior batted it away with his round whale-hide shield as he tried to both grab her and hold a sword.

  The axe cut through the shield, through the arm and through the hide-coated body behind it, nearly jarring itself out of her hands. She wrenched it free of his body as the other Fomoire—the slower ones—turned and ran. The one who had been about to rape Neve, rolled frantically away, as Meb’s next clumsy axe stroke took the horn off his helmet and a slice off his buttocks. He rolled on and screamed and somehow rolled into a staggering run, diving into the churn of the water after his fellows.

  Something behind them cheered and clapped. Meb turned to deal with whatever this new menace was.

  High on the rock next to a fissure in the wall were a new crowd. They were not tall and aggressive…the biggest was only about two cubits high. There were half a dozen of them, though.

  But the worst thing they were doing was to clap. So why was Neve clinging to her, gibbering in fright, seeming e
ven more terrified than when she was going to be raped?

  “Nnn Na…” was all Neve managed to get out, pointing a quivering finger. Meb patted her, and tightened her grip on the axe.

  The tallest of the shaggy-haired bright eyed dwarfish gang, bounced down. Bowed. “Ah. The Royal House of Lyonesse has decided to pay us a visit,” he said sardonically. “To what do we owe this unexpected pleasure?”

  Meb knew, and had liked and got on with the dvergar back on Tasmarin. These looked similar. “I had heard of the hospitality of the knockers,” she said, for that, she decided, was what they had to be, “so we thought we’d find some refuge with them. Seeing as we’re being hunted.”

  “No orders? No commands? No demands for jewels?” asked the hairy little man. He carried, Meb noted, a mattock rather than a sword or axe.

  “No. I have all the treasure I could desire,” said Meb. “And most people don’t seem to listen when I give them orders.”

  The knocker chief grinned, teeth white in a dark face. “Eh. I see the treasure. Dvergar work. Worth a good few kingdoms.”

  So he could see the necklace. No point in denying it then. She nodded. “It’s made of dragon gold, and has eyes of wood-opal, made with the cunning and virtue of the dvergar. It was made for me by Breshy, also sometimes called Dvalinn, at the order of his father Motsognir.”

  The knocker nodded. “Names of powerful cousins. Not us. We’re just miners for silver and tin. And how did you make them give you such a talisman? Or did you steal it from them?”

  Meb looked at him crossly. “Breshy is nice, not like you. Anyway only a fool steals from the dvergar. It was a gift. I wished for him some fish when he needed them. Finn said he would get them.”

  “Finn?”

  “He…he’s a dragon. Called Fionn sometimes.” They were non-humans themselves.

  “A black dragon. We’ve not seen him for many centuries,” said the knocker. “Nor any other dragons, mind you. Not a bad thing. Fionn was something of joker, but he usually paid for what he took.”

  Meb’s heart leapt, just at a mention of the dragon. “He always paid, just not always in the coin you expected,” she said defensively.

  That actually got a snort of laughter. “Sometimes in mayhem.”

  “That’s…fair enough,” admitted Meb. “What is your name, knocker?.”

  “Names are tricky things. But you can call me Jack.”

  The others seemed to find that funny. “And we’re all Jack, too.”

  “I am called Meb,” said Meb, thinking to not even start the Anghared business. “Now we need to hide or get away from here. Could you show us where to go?”

  “Getting away from here at your size, by our ways, that could be a bit tricky,” said the chief Jack, tugging his beard. “You’d be like a stopper in most of our tunnels. We could widen them, but it would take time. And the only human audits would not be taking you away from the castle. Mind you, the human tunnel would be a fair place to hide for now, at least in the entry to it. It’s hidden from human eyes, it seems.”

  “That’ll do. Thank you.”

  “Polite too,” said the chief Jack. “Well, well. Come along then.”

  It was near low water, and they walked along a splashing path, part of which must be underwater at high tide. The knocker Jacks lit their lanterns and led them deeper into the grotto, to where the sea and the back wall came to join each other in a gurgling corner.

  “Just to the side there,” said the chief Jack.

  Meb saw a small door, and beside it, a coracle.

  “Where does it lead?” she asked.

  “Where does what lead?” asked Neve, still clinging to her.

  “The door,” said Meb.

  “What door?”

  “That one,” said Meb, pointing.

  “But…that’s just a rock.”

  “It’s bespelled,” said the chief Jack, chuckling. “Leads to the tide caves for the great machine above.”

  “Can we go in?” asked Meb.

  “It’s locked,” said the knocker, shaking his head. “We can break it open, but that’d tell the mage. And we’re banished from in there. It’s part of the castle and we can’t go there anymore. Will you set that to rights? It was ours before it was theirs.”

  “Um. How?” asked Meb.

  “Now if we knew that, we’d be doing it ourselves,” said the chief Jack. His smaller fellows bobbed their heads in agreement. “But you could sit on the doorstep with the little round boat and be hidden with it.”

  “I still don’t see the door,” said Neve.

  So Meb led her up to it.

  “I can feel it…but not see it. It looks like you pushed my hand into a damp rock,” said Neve, incredulously.

  “There’s a cockle shell of a coracle there too,” said Meb. “Here. Come closer.”

  “Oh. I can see it now,” said Neve, puzzled.

  “’Tis because you’re inside the illusion,” said the chief Jack. “Anyone coming down here would not see you.”

  It was chilly, clammy and dark. And, Meb thought, quite difficult for anyone but Aberinn to find. This must be his bolt-hole. She looked at the coracle. “Could we use that to get across the gully?”

  “At low water, probably,” said the knocker.

  “Well. Our thanks, again.” Meb wished she had some kind of payment, some small gift to give them. Her time with the dvergar had taught her that that could pay handsome dividends. Well, the dvergar had loved to watch her juggle. And it would help to pass the time and keep her warm. “Would you like me to juggle for you? A small entertainment in thanks for your help?”

  There was a moment’s silence. Almost breathless. Then the chief Jack said: “Indeed,” followed by a chorus of “Yes,” and “Yes, yes!”

  So Meb dug out her precious tasseled balls and lost herself in their rhythms. She made her strange audience gasp and she made them laugh and clap.

  And then the chief Jack held up his hand. “They come.”

  In the silence Meb caught the sound of men’s shuffling feet. “I swear I heard something down here,” said a nervous voice.

  “Maybe the rest of the Fomoire,” said another, sounding no less nervous. “That one was barely cold. Not more than two hours dead, I’d reckon.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Fionn was back to following the dog. It was something he was used to doing by now. The trouble, in a way, was that the dog was intent on the straightest line to his goal. Fionn had a slightly wider world view, which included being able to see obstacles which they could not simply go through. Where it might be faster and easier to go around. Unfortunately, all he could work about “where” was somewhere more or less directly in front of the dog, because the dog will follow a path or road…if it didn’t deviate too much. Díleas was bright enough to know that straight was not always fast.

  Obstacles, like meals and drinks, were Fionn’s responsibility to deal with.

  “I think we’re going to need to try some flying, young dog. At night, perhaps. This country is as stirred up as a hornet’s nest,” said Fionn as they emerged from the ditch where they had just watched a troop of soldiers—and a troop of new-pressed recruits—pass. “If they’d been less noisy calling step, we might have walked into them and they’d probably have wanted me to join the army, which seems odd, because I have never wanted the army to join me. Also, I don’t think they take dogs and they were going the wrong way, and they’d object to my not going the wrong way with them. Sometimes it would be very convenient not have this inbuilt prohibition on taking intelligent life. Unfortunately, that is the way I am made.”

  Díleas nosed him behind the knee. He’d come to understand that by now. It meant “get a move on, that direction,” in basic overintelligent sheepdog language.

  So Fionn did. It involved some trespass in various fields, including one with a bull who felt quite strongly about trespassers. “Next time,” said Fionn to Díleas, surveying the bull, who was now convinced the far corner of his pa
ddock was very interesting and that if he ever saw a trespasser again, he would rapidly retreat to, “Try not to run behind me when you’ve made the bull mad.”

  At length they spotted a huddle of buildings and, as the day was drawing to a close, Fionn informed Díleas that they had the prospects of supper and a basket. “If I can find a suitable one, we will try you on being a flying dog. I hope you do that better than you herd sheep.”

  The cluster of buildings proved to be a farmhouse, with a farmer’s wife, three small children and another due all too soon, and a sheepdog. The sheepdog was less than pleased to see them. The farmer’s wife was more than pleased to see a man, of any sort.

  “My man’s been taken for the army and I’ve yet to get the hay in,” she said, “and there’s two dozen sheep to be crutched and sheared still, and I’ve got the children to cope with. I see you have an eye dog there.” Díleas was staring intently at the other sheepdog. Who was staring just as intently back.

  “He’s young yet,” said Fionn. “I’ll help with the hay, ma’am. You can get on with what needs be done here, if you’ll feed me and the dog tonight. He’ll only take food from my hand, and if I am taken for the army, as my lord wanted, well, he’ll starve.” It was too good a story not to reuse.

  The woman nodded. “It’s the paddock just behind the hedge. Tom had it scythed, and drying. But do you think they’d give him another day to get in?” she spat. “Damn them and Lyonesse too. Now it’ll rain for sure before I can get half of it stacked. What we’ll do in winter for feed, I have no idea.”

  The field had a high surrounding hedge. And days of work, forking the hay into a handcart and gathering it to stack. Days for a man, anyway. Not quite that long for a dragon with talons that did a fair job as four outsize hayforks, and a tail that could wield the actual hayfork. “It’ll ruin my reputation if this gets out,” said Fionn to Díleas. “Why don’t you watch to see if the farmer’s wife—or anyone else likely to be alarmed by a dragon doing farm chores—is coming, and give me warning. It’s that or collect hay in your mouth.”