Dragon Call (The Throne of the Dragon Queen Book 2)

by Clare Smith

  “I haven’t. One of my lads was captured and saw the sheds they are building to hold the slaves. Before he escaped from the work gangs, someone who knows what’s going on told him what they were and how they are going to burn down the Enclave with everyone in it. He’s a good lad and wouldn’t make something up like that. Besides that, everything fits in; all our people being crowded into the Enclave, every overseer and Superior being in Phillos and even Slug Lodge being pulled down for its wood.”

  Dogavin still shook his head in disbelief. “It’s all just a coincidence and in any case, how are they going to burn down a place the size of the Enclave? It’s just not possible.”

  “I don’t know, perhaps they’ll come in with torches or shoot fire arrows over the walls but believe me, Dogavin, what I say is true.”

  Dogavin shook his head again but Kimeron wasn’t so sure. “So if what you say is true, what do you want us to do?”

  Tingallent smiled; at least he had one person on his side. “We need to gather the people together and fight back, right now before it’s too late.”

  Della gave a cynical laugh. “I suppose you’re the one who is going to lead us like you did last time, and look how that venture ended; men and boys burnt alive, their families evicted, beaten and starved and our lives made harder by the Masters wanting their revenge.”

  “That was last time, Della, this time it will be different, the entire Enclave will rise up against the Passonians when they realise what is going on.”

  Dogavin didn’t look convinced. “I would like to believe that would happen, Ting, I really would, but can’t you see what’s happened here? The people have been starved, abused and beaten down until they have no will to fight back anymore. Once they might have followed you, but your last failure brought so much misery that no one would have the heart to follow you again.”

  “But the Enclave is going to burn with them inside of it,” said Tingallent desperately.

  “That might be so, but on the other hand it might not. In any case, without proof or something to inspire them, they don’t have the strength or the will to do anything about it.”

  “Then let me talk to them so I can whip them up into some sort of action.”

  “No, Ting,” said Dogavin firmly. “All you’ll do is frighten them and they’re scared enough as it is. I’ll get the word around so people can be prepared to put out the fires if they start, but I can tell you now, no one will act unless they have a sign to give them some hope of victory.”

  “That’s not good enough,” said Tingallent, jumping to his feet. “I want to…” He stopped abruptly as there was a commotion behind the line of women and a thin girl pushed her way through.

  “Guards are coming’! ‘Undreds of ‘em!”

  “Disperse!” shouted Dogavin, and people started to run, but it was too late, the guards were already pouring into the area and the best they could do was huddle together out of the way of their weapons.

  Using their swords and spears the guards separated the men from the women and herded them to different sides. Then they began searching the shelters which leaned against the tenement’s walls, smashing them down as they went along. Several men who had tried to hide were dragged outside and forced into line along with Tingallent and Dogavin, and one was cut down for trying to resist them.

  When the guards had finished their search, a Superior walked along the line of men, assessing their size and strength and tapping half of them on the shoulder. As the Superior touched him Tingallent held his breath, certain that he would be recognised, but the Superior seemed to have his mind on something else as he moved on to the next man. He’d barely had the chance to breathe a sigh of relief when the Superior reached the end of the line, turned back and ordered the guards to take those men he had chosen.

  Instantly the guards dragged the men forwards with Dogavin and Tingallent amongst them and held them there at sword point. He thought about attacking the Superior and battling his way out, but there were far too many guards to tackle on his own and he doubted if anyone would come to his aid. All he could do was wait and take his chance to escape when it came.

  The Superior stepped in front of the five men he’d chosen. They were a pathetic bunch, but he’d been ordered to find two hundred Assimusian males between the age of twenty and thirty who still had some work left in them, and these would just about fill his quota.

  “You men have been selected for special attention. If you come quietly you will live and so will your families, but if you cause any trouble my men will kill you and every woman and child here.”

  He gave the guard officer a brief nod and the men were hustled forward and out of the courtyard where more guards were waiting. At the sight of so many armed men, and with the Superior’s words ringing in his ears, Tingallent’s hope of escaping dwindled to nothing. He could guess where they were being taken and what the special attention was likely to be, but desperately hoped he was wrong.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  PART THREE

  Hearts and Minds

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Friends and Lovers

  Ferringar

  “It’s no use, Captain, we’ve done about as much as we can to put her to rights, but without a metal worker to fix her pulleys and cleats, she’s never going to sail.”

  Bassalin looked up at his ship and knew it was true. His crew and the half dozen Assimusians he’d found hiding in the forest had done wonders to get the old lady up onto her keel and repair the few planks which had sprung due to her rough handling. They had caulked her seams using the fibrous plants which grew in the forest, cut away charred wood and pegged new wood across the holes, and had replaced enough of her deck so they could sail her.

  His men had even managed to find and fell a tree of about the right size to act as a replacement mast. They were now in the process of heaving it on board, where it would be lowered into its cradle and held in place with make do wooden pegs and wedges. What they couldn’t do was conjure up a sail from nowhere and forge all the metal fastenings and pulleys which would be needed to raise the sail and turn it into the wind.

  Every man there had offered the shirt from his back and whatever other clothing they had owned and had managed to save from the fire to make a sail. There would have been enough cloth there to make a single patchwork sail which would have held together, as long as the wind didn’t blow too hard, but he’d turned them all down. There was no point taking everything from them if he couldn’t put it to good use.

  The problem wasn’t that they didn’t have enough metal with which to make the things they needed. As a cautious and experienced captain he’d used iron ingots for ballast, and despite the heat of the fire, most were still intact and usable. No, the problem was that when the Devil Fire had ignited, Fellin, their metal worker, had leaped over the side burning like a torch and had never resurfaced.

  He’d hoped that his apprentice, who had been badly burnt, would have at least been able to give instructions and could have supervised the work of others. Unfortunately they’d buried him two days ago after Cobbam had amputated the remains of his leg and the wound had gone bad. Now there was no one left who had the knowledge or skills to work metal, and the few tools they had managed to salvage and repair lay in a useless heap beside Fellin’s grave.

  It was a sad end to his men’s monumental efforts and all his hopes, but there was nothing he could do about it. “You’d better call a halt to the work, Cobbam. There’s no point in the men pulling their guts out to set the mast if we’re not going anywhere.”

  Cobbam nodded in understanding. Since he’d managed to get Bassalin all fired up about saving the Golden Bird and sailing away from Assimus, the man had worked miracles. He’d brought together a shattered and demoralised crew, lifted his ship so she was ready to slip back into the water, and had made every inch of her seaworthy. The Captain had worked day and night with only a couple of hours sleep, and had even led the raiding party into the forest to find men and the right
sort of tree to form a replacement mast.

  More than that, he’d given the men hope that they would sail away from here free men, and not have to give themselves over to the Passonians and depend on their mercy. Then there were the Assimusians they had found who had worked even harder than his own men on the promise of freedom. Now they were going nowhere, and the wretched souls would have to go back to hiding in the forest again.

  They were all going to take it hard and it didn’t seem right to have come so close to success and be knocked down again without something to soften the blow. “I guess you’re right, Captain, and in the morning we’ll have to pack up and find some Passonian to whom we can grovel, but how about letting the men kick up their heels first? It could be a long time before those Passonian buggers send us home.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “Well, we’ve still got those two barrels of grog we found, and we could send some men out hunting for some fresh meat. The rest of us could gather all the wood we have and stack it against the bird’s hull to give the old gal a right good send off. I guess you wouldn’t want her to fall into Passonian hands and spend the rest of her life carrying slaves.”

  Bassalin looked up sharply at the suggestion that he should burn his ship and was going to say something, but then understood what Cobbam was getting at and shook his head. “No, you’re right, the Golden Bird deserves better than that. Would you talk to the men whilst I say my goodbyes?”

  Cobbam hesitated. It wasn’t the First Mate’s job to tell the men bad news, but under the circumstances he supposed he could do it this once. “Aye, Captain, I’ll do that for you, but don’t take too long about it, the men are going to need you with them once they know what the situation is.”

  Bassalin nodded and walked away, wanting to spend a last few hours with the ship which was his love and his life.

  *

  Collia trudged up the sand dune, ignoring the tiredness in her legs and the ache in her back, and reached the top where the sea breeze blew back her hair and took her breath away. As far as the eye could see there was water, miles and miles of water, but with nothing on it. She cursed under her breath and searched again hoping that she’d missed something or the ship she sought had been hidden in the trough of a wave, but the sea was still empty.

  She scanned the horizon one last time searching for a mast, but that was as empty as the sea. Disappointed and downhearted she turned away and wiped the wetness from her eyes, which could have been caused by the wind but wasn’t. If everything had gone to plan, she would have been there on the night of the full moon, but on the second day her horse had put its foot in a rabbit hole and broken its leg.

  There was no way she could just leave the horse there to suffer, so she had despatched it with her knife and then had no other option but to walk. Remembering what Tingallent had told her, she’d left the logging road behind and headed directly north through the forest thinking that would save her time. She’d been wrong though, as she hadn’t taken into account the number of gullies and ravines she would have to negotiate.

  There were also numerous streams running through the deep woods, and whilst most of them were narrow, they were all fast moving so it took time to find a safe place to cross. At least they provided her with water, for which she was grateful, but wished they could have fed her as well. She’d had to leave her small ration of food behind as it was buried beneath her dead horse which she hadn’t been able to move, so apart from a few nuts and berries, she hadn’t eaten for several days.

  When the night of the full moon came she was still deep in the forest with at least another day’s walking ahead of her. She hadn’t given up though, but now that she’d made it to the coast, the ship had gone without her. It would be back again but that would be in a month from now, and she wasn’t sure how she was going to survive that long.

  She knew that there were still rebels living in the forest, as Tingallent had told her that some of them had stayed behind in the old camp when they had left. If she could find them she was sure they would help her, or at least let her stay with them until the next full moon. The problem was she had no idea where she was, as her journey through the woods had left her completely lost.

  There was another reason why she didn’t want to go back into the forest again. Tingallent had told her there were other people who lived in the forest who were less friendly than him and his men. The forest was home to bands of runaway Assimusians who had turned into brigands, and there were reavers who landed on the coast and travelled inland looking for easy prey. She wasn’t sure if he’d made that up to frighten her and didn’t particularly want to find out.

  Her only other option though was to stay here and hope she could catch enough fish to keep her alive for a month. Living in a country which was made up of small islands had turned the Kallisians into natural fishermen, and whilst she’d never tried fishing herself, she’d seen others spear fish from the beach and set traps in rocky places to catch crabs and lobsters. She was far more intelligent than a common fisherman, so with a little bit of patience she ought to be able to do the same or even better.

  All she needed to start with was something to use as a spear, and when she’d caught enough fish to satisfy her hunger, she could use the leftovers to bait the lobster traps she would make. It meant that she would have to go back into the forest again to find what she needed but that couldn’t be helped. Filled with a new determination she slithered down the sand dune, crossed the flat area where sand grass grew and walked into the forest.

  Most of the trees there were pine or spruce, which wouldn’t be any use for making a spear, but further in she’d seen some birch saplings which, after she’d stripped the bark from them, would be perfect. Moving as quickly as she could through the trees, she crossed a small stream that she remembered crossing before and clambered down a steep gully. The gully was unusual in that it had a flat bottom which was free of shrubs, and a faint track running through it as if it was used by animals which passed that way on a regular basis.

  There were no animals around at that moment, but she needed to be quick just in case one of them chose this moment to return. Without hesitating she crossed the track to where a landslide had deposited a mound of earth in which the birch saplings had taken root. Selecting the thickest, Collia took out her knife and began sawing at the trunk cursing under her breath as the fibrous wood resisted the pressure of her knife.

  It was harder than she thought it was going to be, particularly as the sap was sticking to her knife and trapping it in the wood making it difficult to move one way or the other. She was concentrating so hard that she didn’t hear the rattle of stones from the far end of the gully and would have been taken completely by surprise, if a hacking cough hadn’t alerted her to someone’s presence. Startled, by the sudden noise she looked up and then made a grab for her knife, but the wretched thing was stuck.

  Instead she stood and took a couple of nervous steps back as two men approached her. They were both thin and ragged with long matted hair and beards that were alive with vermin. One had a puckered scar on his face where his nose had been cut away, and the other had a hand missing. They both looked as if they hadn’t eaten in days or seen a bath since the day they were born. Collia held up her hand to forestall them, and they stopped half a dozen paces away and leered at her.

  “Don’t come any closer, I’ve got a knife and I know how to use it.”

  The taller of the two glanced down at the knife and gave a harsh laugh. “No yer ain’t, it’s stuck down there and yer ain’t gona be able to pull it out before I ‘ave yer on yer back wiv me cock inside yer.”

  She glowered at him trying to look as belligerent as she could. “You don’t want to touch me, I’m a Kallisian witch and if you so much as put a finger on me your cock will rot and drop off.”

  The taller of the two gave a bark of laughter. “I don’t care what yer are, I ain’t fucked a woman fer a year and after I’ve done yer I doubt if I’ll fuck a w
oman fer anover year.”

  “No, me neither,” put in the shorter man, “An’ we ain’t ‘ad no meat for months an’ we ain’t fussy what we eat, are we Lab?”

  “No, we ain’t but don’t yer worry lady, by the time we’ve finished fuckin’ yer, yer won’t know much abowt anyfing so yer won’t bovver abowt us carvin’ yer up an’ gobblin’ yer down.”

  The two of them grinned at each other and then turned back to grab her but Collia was already running. She was across the small path and scrambling up the side of the gully sending down a cascade of small rocks and earth before they had moved and was away into the trees before they had reached the side of the gully. She’d hoped that in their half-starved condition they wouldn’t chase her for long, but she could hear them behind her, crashing through the undergrowth, shouting and whooping as if they were hunting a frightened deer.

  They weren’t far wrong as she was terrified of what they would do to her if they caught her, but she had a head start. If she could just make it into the sea she could swim away from them and around the headland where they would never catch her. She was breathing hard now and her two days without food was starting to tell on her, but she was pulling away from them.

  Fairly confident that she could get clean away she glanced around to see how far behind they were and missed the sudden dip in the ground. Her foot went down further than expected making her ankle twist over and she went down with a scream. She hit the ground hard, knocking the breath from her and for a few seconds she lay where she was partly stunned. Then she was up again and moving forwards, but her ankle wouldn’t take her weight, so instead of running she was almost hopping and was just using her injured foot to keep her balance.

  Collia burst through the edge of the trees and hobbled over the sand grass as quickly as she could whilst ignoring the pain in her ankle. By the time she reached the sand dunes she couldn’t put her injured foot to the ground, so she scrambled on her hands and knees up the dune to reach the top. Down the other side of the dune and across the beach was safety, but as she started to slither down the steep bank a hand grabbed her arm, dragged her back and rolled her over.