by Chris Bunch
Hal started to respond, but Yasin cut him off.
"Of course, I don't expect you to agree at the moment, but I wanted to put the idea in your mind. You may take advantage of it at any time you wish."
"Thank you," Hal said. "But I don't think I'll be accepting."
"Of course not," Yasin agreed, standing. "But keep my offer in mind.
"Something else. I thought you might appreciate news of the war. It is not going well.
"For Deraine and Sagene. Your idiot generals are persisting in attacking in the salient they were lucky enough to create.
"But our positions are completely impregnable, and Deraine and Sagene soldiers are being wasted trying to climb the heights.
"They will, no doubt, continue with their niggling attacks through the winter, weakening themselves, and then, in the spring, we'll mount a great offensive, and recover not only the territory we've lost, including Aude and the Comtal River to the sea, but drive a stake into Sagene, and convince Deraine that she has no interest in Sagene's fate.
"I'm hardly confiding any military secrets by saying that."
He went to the door, opened it, and Sir Suiyan came back in.
"I assume Ky Yasin has told you of the danger you're in," Suiyan said. "I can promise you that if I can get any evidence of the crime you committed, I'll gladly see you face the ax… or other forms of punishment that are even uglier.
"For the moment, though, I can tell you that you will not continue to be lodged here."
"Just when I was starting to enjoy country life."
Tutuila's lip twitched.
"You might just be able to escape, and a man of your rank, holding information that Roche could well use, cannot be treated in such a casual fashion.
"Roche has several prison camps that are much harder to escape from.
"And one that is impossible."
Yasin broke in.
"It's far to the east and north, up an estuary. Its name is Castle Mulde. There we've sent prisoners who've successfully escaped other camps, high-rankers such as yourself, and dragon fliers, whose value is incomparable."
Hal suddenly remembered the late traitor Nanpean Tregony, who'd claimed to be in such a camp before making his escape from the Roche, and thought perhaps that part of the man's lies might just have been truth. Or maybe Tregony had only heard of Castle Mulde.
"I could be melodramatic," he went on, "and say that you'll rot there. But that's not the case. Nothing so exciting ever happens. There you can sit and wither, while life—and the war—goes on around you.
"I understand, from captured broadsheets, that you are the favorite of a certain noble popsy," Yasin went on. "I wonder how long it'll take her to find another bedmate.
"Or bedmates.
"I, frankly, have learned never to trust a woman alone for more than a few weeks."
Without bracing, without any giveaway, Hal kicked Yasin in the balls.
Yasin howled, clutched at himself.
Tutuila shouted for guards.
Hal was going after him, rounding the table, when three men burst in.
The one in front was the guard who'd broken Hal's nose.
Hal forgot about Sir Suiyan, and rolled across the table, on his back.
He kicked out, very hard, his feet together, and caught that guard in his chest. Kailas heard ribs crack, was off the table, and stamped on the man's face as he fell.
Then the guards were on him, beating him down.
He went into a ball, dropped to the floor.
Eventually they got tired of kicking him, and dragged him back to his cell.
It had definitely been worth it.
8
They took no chances with Kailas.
When they were ready to move him to Castle Mulde, a wizard and a blacksmith appeared. Black bands were wrapped around his ankles and wrists, and the magician cast a spell that "soldered" them in place.
Kailas was told, cheerily, that none of his escort had any idea of what the counterspell was. Only the mage of Castle Mulde knew.
They chained him to the bed of a wagon, with four guards, plus the teamster and his assistant. Behind that wagon was another, with twelve more guards in it, changed every three hours. Then came a supply wagon.
Twenty light cavalrymen rode in front and behind the convoy.
They set out, from the village Hal had never learned the name of, east, then turned north.
It was still summer, but Hal felt a chill as they continued on. It might have been his imagination.
Twice he saw dragons overhead, and once they were blacks. He assumed Yasin was keeping track of him.
At night, the convoy either stopped in a Roche army camp, or in open country, never chancing an inn or a city.
The head of the escort was a Lieutenant Hoj Anders.
He was solid, big, and his face looked like he'd placed second in several rough-and-ready brawls.
But there was intelligence behind the scars.
And training and experience.
He rode, contentedly, casually, beside Hal's wagon.
Anders was quite talkative, although his eyes never stopped sweeping the countryside and the escort. The slightest mistake by a guard, and the soldier would be ordered off his mount or his wagon, his wrists tied with a long lead to the back of a wagon, and he spent the rest of the shift trying to keep up, stumbling, running, sometimes falling and being dragged.
Anders' conversation was about Castle Mulde, and how incredibly secure it was, Roche's inevitable victory, and how Hal would do himself good by cooperating with the Roche.
"There's half a dozen guards to every prisoner at Castle Mulde," he said. "And they're carefully chosen for intelligence, alertness and patriotism."
"Pity they're not on the front lines," was Hal's reply. "Helping to fight the war, instead of scrounging about the rear."
That got a quick wince from Anders. But he persisted.
The castle was guarded not only by the visible bars and chains, but by magic as well.
"It has a great magician, who's completely devoted to keeping the prisoners secured."
"Therefore one that's not casting spells against our army," Kailas came back.
He may have been chained, only allowed to walk about for an hour in the morning and evening, when he washed and did his ablutions, but Hal kept fighting.
A broken piece of harness, and Hal would loudly sympathize about the poor quality of the Roche leather, and whether the maker wasn't secretly in league with the forces of Deraine, as so many sensible Roche were.
The soldier who cooked for the formation couldn't, and so Hal would lovingly describe how well Deraine, and especially Sagene, soldiers ate, making up the most absurd menus from meals he'd had with Khiri or Sir Thom Lowess.
But it was hard to keep cheerful as the miles creaked past, and they moved deeper into Roche.
Hal kept himself alert not only by chivying the guards, but by studying and memorizing the land they passed through, mostly farmland, with scattered forests.
Kailas had no idea who or what lived in those forests, but they appeared untouched by man, with never a forester or woodsman to be seen. The soldiers became nervous each time the road narrowed and great trees reached high overhead, a seemingly perpetual wind soughing.
Kailas inquired as to the horrid monsters living in these woodlands. Anders told him to shut up, would say nothing else.
In the open country, they passed many small villages, and, at regular intervals, strongly built castles.
Sometimes someone would ride out from them, and be greeted by Anders, and be warned to stand clear, that there was a dangerous man, the Dragonmaster, in the wagon, and they were entitled to cheer him on his way to a lonely doom.
Few did.
All of them were frantic for news of the war and, when told Roche was holding firm, cheered.
Kailas noted there were few noblemen coming out to greet them, mostly women and children.
Similarly, he saw only
a scattering of men working the fields. Roche had combed the north well for soldiery.
Anders told him they were bypassing the area's cities, "although there are not that many in these northlands.
"The people are Roche now, but they still remember when they were but savage tribesmen, before we brought them the benefits of civilization."
"I don't doubt that," Hal said. "Most people value their freedom. That's why we're fighting you, you know. When the war is over, you'll learn about freedom, and that your ruler doesn't always have to keep her boot at your throat."
Anders grunted, kicked his horse to the head of the column.
That was one small victory for Kailas.
But it was hard keeping his morale up.
* * * *
Hal dreamed, and it was a strange dream, for it was completely real.
He was flying, but he wasn't on the back of a dragon, nor was he suddenly able to fly on his own. He'd had those dreams before, and woke sadly, realizing the limitations of his body.
It took a few moments for him to realize he was no longer a man, but a dragon. A real dragon, for his wing was sore, from a healing injury, and he had other, almost-vanished wounds on his back. He remembered the black dragon that had given them to him, fighting over a collection of stones that man built.
But there were no men on his back now, and he was floating happily in a strong wind.
Below him was the sea, the beginnings of a storm building, the waves white and gray.
He banked, feeling the air, the free air, rush past.
Behind him was land, square fields almost to the edge of the cliffs.
Here and there were small cubbies that Hal, dreaming, recognized as the huts of peasants, huts he thought he'd seen before.
Then there was a huge collection of piled stones, just at the cliff's edge.
Hal recognized it, with a great start.
It was Cayre a Carstares, one of Lady Khiri's holdings on the west coast of Deraine.
It was here that Hal had come to let his wounds heal, where he'd been nursed by Khiri, and where they'd fallen in love.
Hal dove, rolled into a ball, and dropped toward the ocean.
A dim memory came, from the time he was a very young dragon, floating on the current, the storms wailing about him, toward a new land. There had been other dragons around him, young, old.
Now Hal flattened, spread his wings, and the wind coming hard from the sea lifted him almost as high as he'd been.
Again, he was looking out to sea, and he knew what was across a vast ocean, a land where there was death and pain, a land he'd fled when he was a kit.
Then his wing began throbbing, painfully.
Very suddenly, Hal knew who he "was."
He was Storm, his battle dragon, wounded at the siege of Aude. But Storm, the last Hal had seen him, had been recovering from his wounds in a tent across the river Comtal from Aude.
How had he reached Deraine?
But there were more important things, such as a live sheep and some hot mash he had been promised in his comfortable, solitary barn, within the castle walls.
Far below was a tiny dot.
He knew who it was, and dove, then pulled out of his dive, circling.
The dot was a man, a female man, waving at him, and calling.
Hal/Storm brought his legs out, flared his wings, coming in for a landing.
He recognized the female.
It was Khiri, somehow now his keeper and guardian.
Very suddenly, Hal jolted awake in his wagon, feeling silent tears on his cheeks.
He managed to wipe them away, so the bastard Roche wouldn't see them, and mock him.
Hal Kailas slept no more that night, for something in his mind was telling him an obvious lie.
That hadn't been a dream, but for a few moments he'd been Storm, been in his head.
That was quite impossible.
No man could share thoughts with a dragon, nor an animal, any more than a man could read another's thoughts or command his actions.
But those moments of freedom, when he was Storm the dragon, with no rider, no one his master, stayed with him as they traveled on.
* * * *
For the first time, they entered a smallish city, but moved directly through it to the docks. Here, amid fishing boats, light transports and a scattering of pleasure boats, they boarded a single-masted, large wherry.
There were staples in the deck, an overhead for his shelter. There was a cuddy forward and another overhead at the stern, around the long tiller.
Hal was unchained from his wagon, and his manacles refastened to the wherry's deck.
There were ten sailors, and half of the escort, including Lieutenant Anders, on the boat, when the mooring lines were brought in and the wherry slid off into the sullen waters, letting the current carry it north.
They raised a sail in midriver, let that move them faster toward the sea.
The river, named the Zante, felt hostile to Kailas, brooding, angry, and the small villages they passed were filthy.
Hal noticed, the farther north they traveled, that the villages had palisades around them, but were open to the river. Then the palisades had guard towers at them.
Kailas chanced asking Anders.
"I told you the people of this region were once Roche's enemies. Now, those who've become sensible are regarded as enemies by their once-brothers in the wilderness, particularly when these peaceful peasants are prospering under Roche rule, and are frequently attacked by the savages."
Hal didn't think the villages looked that prosperous, said so.
Anders snorted.
"Perhaps not by your nobleness's standards… but they're doing very well compared to the forest barbarians."
"Would you believe," Hal asked, "that before the war I was a destitute commoner, no more than a wandering farmworker?"
Anders gave him a look that said, very clearly, he certainly wouldn't.
Hal went back to studying the terrain around them as the boat rode downstream toward the sea.
There were marshes, or, once away from the river, heavy forests that seemed to stretch on forever.
The river grew wider, then wider still, almost half a mile from bank to bank.
Once an arrow arced out of the wilderness and splashed down close to the boat.
The soldiers pulled on their armor, and crouched behind the wherry's high bulwarks.
But nothing came out to attack them.
* * * *
"We shall reach Castle Mulde tomorrow," Anders said.
"A pity," Hal said. "I could travel like this, an endless vacation, forever, in the charming company of you and your fellows."
Anders gave him an odd look.
"By the way," Hal asked innocently, "how far is the castle from the sea?"
"A day's sail," Anders said, then caught himself. "But you do not need to be knowing anything about the castle's surroundings, for you'll never see, until we are victorious, anything but its stone walls.
"Or unless," he added, "you decide to accept Ky Yasin's generous offer."
"How could I ever forget," Hal murmured.
* * * *
They sailed all that night. Anders said the shores were most hazardous.
"Particularly since," he said with an unpleasant grin, "we pay fifty pieces of silver for any prisoner captured alive, a hundred for one dead."
"Silver, eh?" Hal said, seemingly undisturbed. "Too cheap to afford gold?"
* * * *
At dawn, they rounded a bend. The Zante River divided into two channels. In the center, a stone island stood five hundred feet above the water.
From its cliffs rose Castle Mulde.
A high curtain wall, with a balustrade along the top, circled the inner wall.
Inside the keep, a central building, six stories high, with peaked roofs jutting here and there, stood.
Three towers rose from the keep, and there were guards posted atop them.
Hal saw w
arders pacing the wall, at close intervals.
All was gray, dripping, lifeless stone.
This was a place that could erode a man's soul, make him give up his courage, his allegiance, maybe his life.
Hal glanced at Anders, who was staring up at the ominous castle. For once, he didn't chide Kailas about the impossibility of escape.
He didn't need to.
The sailors manned the wherry's oars, and rowed it out of the current, to a small dock, where they tied up.
Two soldiers struck off Hal's chains, and helped him onto the dock.
Steps led upward, to the castle's heavy gate.
Hal took the first step, and a gong rang across the valley.
He started, looked at his guards.
They, too, had heard it.
Hal took another step, and another, more dissonant gong came.
Then a third and a fourth.
The instruments, if that was what they were, sounded, booming across the river, at each step as he walked to the gates of Castle Mulde.
9
And then the spell broke.
Raucous laughter rang down, and grinning faces peered over the battlements. The men, and a scattering of women, wore motley, or the remains of Deraine/Sagene uniforms.
"A proper greetin' for the Dragonmaster," a shout came.
Then came a BRRAAACCCK as someone blew a typical flier's welcome through his lips.
Hal recognized the man, vaguely. He'd been one of the dragon fliers lost, feared killed, during the Aude siege.
There was another familiar face, and a third, and then fuming, sputtering Roche guards were muscling the prisoners away from the walls.
There was the rattle of chains, and then a door was unbolted.
Half a dozen Roche soldiers rushed out, surrounded Hal, and bustled him into Castle Mulde.
His escort was taken in another direction, and he lost a chance to throw a final insult at Lieutenant Anders.
A rather large, white-bearded man, wearing the carefully kept, if tattered, uniform of a Derainian general, stood there, flanking a stone-faced Roche officer.
