by Chris Bunch
"You're Derainian?"
"Yes."
"Named?"
"Kailas." Hal left the title off, thought of substituting Second Class Hero Kailas, decided that might not be the wisest.
"Kailas?" Nizva said. "The Dragonmaster? The one who seems to have disappeared here?"
"I haven't disappeared," Hal corrected. "I've been lying here quietly all the time, letting your potions heal me, as you ordered."
"Oh my gods," Nizva said again, and scuttled up the aisle.
So the easy days were over now, Hal thought. He'd been playing sickling for two weeks, and was far stronger than he admitted to the sisters or the mage.
Now it was time to plan his escape.
6
Hal knew little of the fine art of escaping. There were many classes required of the soldiers of Deraine, from saluting and recognizing your superiors to how to wash yourself.
But escaping wasn't on the list.
Hal growled at that, but realized the subject was fairly out of bounds, since no proper soldier even conceded the possibility of capture.
Nevertheless…
Hal had been told by someone, he disremembered who, that the best time to escape was the soonest after capture. The longer you were in captivity, the farther you'd be taken from your own lines, and, as likely as not, the worse physical shape you were in, since no army has ever fed its prisoners better than its own soldiery.
His wound had kept him from making an immediate break, but now it was healing nicely.
Now that he'd been discovered, no doubt the next step would be moving him into a proper prison.
Best he try to get away from this hospital.
The problem was finding a set of clothes. He had an idea that wandering the roads of Roche wearing nothing but his damned gray nightshirt might make him noticeable.
Shortly before being unmasked, even though he'd not planned his hiding, he had noticed there were some civilian workers in the hospital, no doubt local farmers who were pleased to be getting paid while their fields were being plowed into wasteland by war.
The Roche being what they were, the civilians changed into gray coveralls, almost uniformlike, when they arrived for work.
Hal had realized this when he was up just at dawn, using the jakes, and saw the workers troop in to undertake their tasks.
The day after his uncovering, Hal slid out of bed before false dawn, and crept out of the ward. He was grateful that Nizva and the hospital authorities, whose strength was trying to heal, not play at war, hadn't gotten around to putting a guard on him.
The changing tent was next to the two cooking tents. Hal hid in the flies of a nearby tent as the sky brightened, and the day shift came in.
The night workers left a few minutes later, and Hal went into the changing tent, and looked for a costume.
It took only a few minutes to discover one that fit him quite well, and made him out to be a rural bumpkin, wearing a knee-length smock, short breeches, a hat that had seen better centuries, and a padded coat.
Unfortunately, its owner didn't seem to be that fond of bathing, but maybe that would be an advantage. If he was checked by a patrol, he would wave his armpits at them, and flee in the ensuing disgust.
Hal went out of the tent, and away from the hospital as quickly as he could.
He was pleased to see that his leg only troubled him for a short while; then the muscles loosened up, and he could travel easily.
He wanted to run, knew better, and so strolled along, a straw between his teeth, thinking farming thoughts, in the event some magician might be able to read his mind. That was an impossibility, he'd been told, but wizards were always coming up with new evils.
He spotted a pitchfork leaning against a fence and added that to his costume. In the event, it could also serve as a weapon. Kailas had no intention of returning to captivity without a fight.
He'd quickly oriented himself by the scattering of troops moving forward, and the sun. That gave him compass directions.
His plan, and he thought it idiot clever, was, rather than go directly for the front lines, to head east for half a day, then turn, depending on what presented itself, either north or south for a distance.
That wasn't the direction anyone would expect him to take, and, besides, it could be very chancy trying to creep through the battle zone, where both sides were keyed to kill any strangers.
Once he was wide of the battle area, then he'd turn back to the west, and make his way into Deraine/Sagene lines.
Or so he hoped.
* * * *
Hal's stomach reminded him that he was escaping with his victuals a bit on the nonexistent side.
It was midday, and he'd only stopped twice for water at abandoned wells, and was feeling peckish. Some nice peasant bread and cheese would set right with him, or even some of that horrible broth the hospital had insisted was strengthening.
The lane he was following curved down into a village. Even though he didn't have any money, maybe there'd be a field with… with whatever was ripe. It was summer, so that should be almost everything.
He was halfway through the village, just short of a stone bridge over a small river, when he realized there was something strange about the hamlet. There was no one, not man, woman, child, about. Nor did he see any dogs or animals.
He was about to dart up a side lane, and skirt the rest of the village when a man came out of an alleyway, and shouted, "Halt! Drop that damned pitchfork!"
Since he had a drawn bow, aimed steadily at Hal's side, Kailas obeyed.
"Who're you?" the soldier said, advancing on Hal.
Kailas had spent some time coming up with a story.
"No one," he said, putting on a panicked peasant's fear-babble that wasn't really that much of a put on. "Or, maybe, I'm just named Haifas. Haifas. I went out from my home yesterday, wanting to join up, but they wouldn't have me, saying something about my heart's got an echo to it or something, and I'd probably fall over dead on them, so I guess I'm going back to the farm, and—"
"Silence," the soldier snapped. "You should have seen the sign, back about a mile, saying this road and the village have been sequestered by the army for quartering, and no civvies are allowed."
"Oh," Hal said. There hadn't been a sign.
"I saw something," he said. "But I've got no schooling. Never learned to figure."
"Ain't no excuse," the soldier said, coming still closer. "And you talk real good for somebody that's not lettered."
He glowered at Hal, and Hal tried to look innocent and doltish.
"C'mon," he said. "We'll go to my warrant, and he'll decide what to do with you."
Hal didn't think that was a good idea.
He snapkicked the soldier under the breastbone, and bow and arrow dropped in the dust of the road.
Before the soldier could recover, Kailas kicked him very hard, twice, in the face. He heard the man's neck snap on the second kick.
Hal dragged the man to the bridge, hoisted him up on the parapet, then bethought himself.
He went through the man's pouch, found a few coppers, one silver piece. He thought about taking the soldier's dagger, or his bow and arrow, but knew that'd be grounds for instant execution if he was caught with them.
He tipped the body over, into the river, got the bow and arrow and tossed them over as well, then took off running.
He hoped that the soldier's warrant and officers would think the man had an accident.
But he didn't think that was very likely.
* * * *
He chanced no more villages, even with his coins, trying to put as much distance between himself and his victim as possible.
Hal skirted villages, going through the fields.
Fortunately, the district had been pretty well cleaned out of civilians, with only a stubborn couple here and there holding to their farms.
Barking dogs alerted him to these.
At dusk, he was exhausted. He found a deserted farm, whose cornfields hadn't been totally s
tripped by foraging soldiers, got half a dozen ears.
He took those to a brook, stripped, washed, then thought about dinner.
He saw a few fish flicker, tried to grab them from beneath, the way he'd been told country boys did it. He had no success at all.
Which left him with the raw corn.
Hal wished he'd learned how to cobble fire up from a bow or sharp rock, but in his travels he'd always paid a few pence for a firespell.
The ears of corn sat there.
Hal realized that, for all his complaining, like all soldiers do, being in the army hadn't been the worst he'd had it.
Before the war, before he found a dragon flier to follow, and had been a wandering laborer, he'd eaten raw corn, stolen or begged from a farmer's field more than once.
And, he reminded himself, had the shits to go with it.
But there was nothing else, and so he ate, rather greedily, the six ears.
It was still light when he curled up. But there was a bit of a wind, and he wished he had a blanket or two to pull around him.
That, also, was missing.
Hal could've felt sorry for himself, but he took deep breaths of the air of freedom and forgot his complaints.
He closed his eyes, sure he'd be tossing on this bare ground for most of the night, but when he opened them, it was false dawn.
Kailas came to his feet, muscles screaking at him, did some stretching exercises after washing and defecating, wincing at the leaves he used to clean himself.
Then he moved on.
At the next crossroads, he decided he'd turn north or south, whichever looked easiest.
* * * *
The area he was moving through must've been a long-term bivouac for the Roche army. The huts had been stripped, their roofs and the fencing around the neat fields used for firewood.
It was a desolation, barren of animals and people.
Hal knew this sort of desolation well—all armies brought that in their wake, little caring how the people of the district would live after the soldiers moved on.
He was about halfway across one such blasted heath when he heard the calloo of hunters.
But there was nothing to hunt around here.
Nothing but Hal Kailases.
The hunters were a formation of light cavalry.
There was another call, and the formation, almost a company, Hal guessed, lowered its lances and came after him.
Kailas wanted to run, but there was nowhere to run to.
He couldn't even put his back to a wall and go down fighting.
Hal waited, hoping the bastards wouldn't just lance him and ride on.
That would be a particularly pointless way to die, forgotten in this forgotten land.
The lead rider, an officer, reined his horse in short feet of spitting Kailas.
"And what," he said, voice mockingly triumphant, "do we have here?"
* * * *
The cavalrymen trussed Hal like a shot deer, threw him over the back of a horse. Kailas bounced along until the horsemen found a camp of infantry, rode into its center, shouting for the unit commander.
When he arrived, they kicked Kailas off the horse.
"Got somebody for you," their officer said. "Either a deserter or maybe that escaped dragon rider everybody's hot after."
* * * *
The infantry took him to the nearest town, turned him over to the authorities.
Two beefy officers frog-marched him into the tiny prison, opened a cell, pushed him inside.
One of them stared at Kailas consideringly, then, without warning, hit Hal in the stomach, very hard.
Kailas caved in.
The man picked Kailas up by the hair, and smashed his face into the stone wall.
That, for some time, was all that Kailas knew.
7
Kailas came to, slumped on one of the jail's iron cots. He sat up, tasting the cold iron of blood in his mouth. He checked his teeth with a probing tongue. The front ones were just a little wobbly, but would tighten up.
His nose… he was sort of glad there wasn't a glass in the cell because it felt like it'd been well and truly mashed. Oh well. Supposedly something like that made people think a man was more rugged.
He heard a laugh, looked up, saw the guard who'd smashed him into the wall.
"Damn Deraine!" the man snarled gleefully. "Ha'n't been for orders, we coulda done a lot worse."
Hal made no answer, just kept looking at him.
The man's grin twitched away; then he scurried off.
Hal dreamed of having five minutes alone with the bastard, knew it'd never happen, leaned back against the wall, began planning.
So he was caught again.
The next stage would be a transfer to a prison camp. Or, perhaps, execution, but Kailas thought that was unlikely.
The best time to make another escape would be when he was being transferred, since the warders at a camp would be more experienced at dealing with prisoners of war.
There was a basin of water on the table, and he washed the blood off his face, rinsed his mouth, and spat into the chamber pot.
From somewhere, something he'd read or been told came to him: a prisoner of war is just a soldier in different dress, and it's still his duty to fight back, in any way he could.
Another, rather forlorn thought came, and he counted days. It would be just about today, or maybe the day before, when Khiri would be getting his proposal of marriage.
And then, no doubt, they'd announce he was missing in action. Hal didn't think any of his squadron had seen him once he'd landed in the treetops, and would most likely think him slain.
Poor Khiri.
Now, he thought wryly, what would happen to his estates, since he had neither kith nor kin, his only survivors his parents, far north in the bleak mining village?
Not that that mattered much to him. As tramps, wanderers and soldiers say, "I came into this world without a coin, and expect to leave it the same."
And he'd had nothing before the king's benisons, so what did it matter, anyway?
Now all that he could do was wait, and be ready to seize any advantage.
* * * *
For two days, no one spoke to him, and he lived on the thin soup the jail served its prisoners.
He was the only prisoner of war, being fairly far behind the lines.
The guards regularly beat the other prisoners who came in, but they left Kailas alone. The other, civilian prisoners were whipped jackals or, at best, snapping terriers. Kailas was a crouching panther, and he made the guards—and the other prisoners—nervous.
He forced himself to hide his impatience, never pacing back and forth as his restlessness wanted, not speaking to anyone, trying to get as much sleep as he could, knowing he'd need it when he was out in the wilds again.
He was slightly proud of himself for thinking "when," not "if."
On the third day, he had two visitors.
* * * *
He knew both of them, but in vastly different ways.
The first was a haughty-looking knight, wearing several decorations, who announced himself as Sir Suiyan Tutuila, by the grace of Queen Norcia, Respecter of Prisoners. Hal avoided a snicker. It was clear, from his expression, that Sir Suiyan thought prisoners could best be protected in a sealed dungeon, or, a little better, at the end of a rope.
He was the archetypal jailer Kailas had encountered in his prewar wanderings.
He glared at Hal with pursed lips, said no more for the moment.
The other man Hal knew, first from a card game years before the war, when his gambling-besotted dragonmaster, Athelny of the Dragons, had been euchred out of his flying show, and then his life.
The second time he'd seen him was over the rooftops of Aude, when his black dragon had swooped low, trying to kill Hal. Hal had sent a crossbow bolt into the man's shoulder, cursed at his bad aim.
He was Ky Bayle Yasin, a superb flier, the first, as far as Hal knew, to fly the dreaded black dragons int
o battle, and, unless he'd been promoted recently, Commander of the First Guards Dragon Squadron.
He was slender, a bit older than Hal, and when, before, he'd had the fringe of a beard, now was clean-shaven. Hal noted he was starting to bald.
"Lord Kailas," he said. "It is pleasant finally meeting you."
He refrained from the obvious addition, "under these circumstances."
"And I feel the same," Hal said. "How is your wound?"
Yasin flickered slightly. "Quite healed, thank you."
"Pity," Hal said, in a way he'd heard the word used by a great lord.
"You will be silent," Sir Suiyan said. "It is not the place for a prisoner to jeer at his betters."
Hal didn't respond.
"Ky Yasin wishes to have a few words with you," Suiyan went on. "Privately.
"And of course, I'm pleased to grant a great Ky's wish." He stood, his chair scraping on the stone floor, and went out.
"I wanted to see you for several reasons," Yasin said. "One is disbelief that you allowed yourself to be captured at all. Most of my fliers would prefer to die in battle instead of facing this humiliation."
Again, Hal held his tongue. If he hadn't learned some control at jibes after all this time in the army, he was a fool indeed.
"Another is to inform you that your secret weapon was captured as well, and is being duplicated by our craftsmen. I refer, of course, to that repeating crossbow.
"Still another is to warn you that you are potentially in desperate circumstances.
"There was a soldier killed the same day you made your escape from the hospital."
Hal pretended surprise.
"You were captured wearing civilian clothes. By any tribunal, a soldier so dressed is a spy, and qualifies for immediate execution. If he also has murdered a member of Her Royal Highness's Armed Forces… the penalty could be adjudged in quite a severe fashion.
"Sir Suiyan wanted to bring you up before a tribunal right now, but I convinced him you were far too valuable to die a villain's death. I hope you prove me right.
"Of course you don't know what I'm talking about."
"I truthfully don't," Hal said.
Yasin smiled for a brief instant.
"I came here to offer you the chance of safety and life after the war. If you provide certain information to us—nothing that would cause any of your men or women to come to harm—I can guarantee this murder will be forgotten, and you'll spend the rest of the war in safety, in a rather comfortable detention camp."
