by Sam Ferguson
“You plan on eating the two dwarves too?” Brinwal groused.
Something about the way Brinwal said it jabbed at Hermean’s soul. The tone, it was so callous and fully apathetic. No, not apathetic, it was condescending and cold. In that moment Hermean understood that Brinwal saw no difference between the viper and the two dwarves. They were threats, possible dangers, ordered to die. Never mind the fact that the snake had been minding its own business on its own land. There was an inherent threat, and Brinwal apparently could not abide that, no matter how small the danger. Hermean had to wonder whether the two dwarves truly posed as great a danger as Brinwal insisted. Or, perhaps they were like the snake. Sure, they might strike and cause some pain, but perhaps if they were left alone they might not be dangerous at all. Maybe they could even benefit them, like the viper hunted vermin. Not that Hermean knew how they might help, but he just couldn’t stomach the callous disregard for life, and he certainly had not come to terms with what he was expected to do now.
In that moment he imagined Brinwal as nothing more than an atorat disguised in dwarf skin. Instead of fangs and claws he held a hammer and wore spiked metal plates. The similarities were more than obvious. Each devoured anything in its path. The only difference was that Brinwal claimed his deeds were done to protect his home and the kingdom. Hermean wasn’t sure he believed that. The violence that bubbled beneath that dead, gray eye spoke of something darker, a bloodlust that could never be sated and would override conscience and logic.
Hermean’s drake flew by then, lighting upon the ground just a few meters away. The green and blue beast shook its head and flexed its wings before folding them in against its body. Its tail curled up and around its right hind leg as it stared out at the expanse before them. Hermean strode up to the beast and patted its head.
“Keep an eye on Brinwal,” Hermean whispered. The drake offered a brief snort and dug a single claw into the ground in front of it. Hermean knew it had understood, and had already been doing so. Hermean patted the head again and turned back to see Brinwal nearing them.
“Well,” which way does your lizard say we should go?” Brinwal asked impatiently.
Hermean let the insult go unanswered. “In the rocks it is nearly impossible to track a dwarf. There are no prints, and I doubt there will be. However, he can track their scent.” Hermean pointed up the ridge. “They definitely went over. We should follow the fastest path.”
Brinwal nodded and stroked the single plait of his beard, stopping and fondling one of the silver rings in it. “There, a path that leads almost directly to the top of the ridge. Do you see it?”
Hermean turned to see a path that started above a slush pile of shale that had fallen long ago and was now faded from the sun. The path looked to be well used, perhaps by deer or even mountain goats. It curved and switched back on itself twice, but it was the most direct, most obvious path to the top without needing to climb up cliff faces or traverse nasty crags. The hunter nodded. “There is another alternative that would be faster,” he said.
Brinwal raised an eyebrow and then looked to the drake. “I doubt it could carry me. I am still wearing my armor.”
Hermean chuckled. “It would help us catch up to the other dwarves if we didn’t have to go the whole way on foot. He could fly us up to the top of the ridge in minutes. If we climb it ourselves it would take a couple of hours to reach the top. That ridge is at least seven hundred meters tall, and we still have to descend into the valley below the hill we are standing on.”
Brinwal nodded. “It would be the logical thing to do.” He looked to the drake and then back to Hermean. “I’ll go first,” Brinwal said.
“Afraid I will leave you behind?” Hermean teased.
“Not hardly. I just don’t want you to tire out the lizard and then have him falter while trying to carry me. Better I ride him while he has all of his strength.” Hermean stepped aside and gestured for Brinwal to mount the saddle. Brinwal moved in and took the saddle horn with his left hand. He then bent this way and that, inspecting the saddle.
“Something the matter?” Hermean asked.
“Isn’t there supposed to be a chain that tethers you to the saddle?” he asked.
“I don’t use them.”
Brinwal turned and shook his head. “This is a bad idea. One false move from your lizard and I crack like an egg on the rocks. I don’t like it.”
Hermean laughed. “Afraid of heights are we?”
Brinwal growled. He turned and seized the saddle with his hands and launched himself into position. The drake groaned under the sudden weight, but did not collapse. “Let’s go beast, fly!” Brinwal shouted.
The drake didn’t move.
“What’s the matter with it, can’t fly?” Brinwal asked.
Hermean put his sturdy hands on his hips and in a mock motherly tone said, “You didn’t say please, Brinwal.”
Brinwal spat on the ground and locked his good eye with Hermean’s gaze. When the hunter refused to break, Brinwal relented with a grunt. “Please, can you fly me up to the ridge?”
Hermean nodded to his drake. “Get on up.”
The blue and green drake launched over the side of the hill. Brinwal grunted against the sudden force and held tight to the saddle horn. Hermean noticed that the added weight of Brinwal’s armor did indeed slow the drake quite a bit. It took him several minutes to climb higher into the air. All the while he could hear the brute shouting and cursing the drake.
Hermean thought how much simpler things might be if his drake accidentally banked too steeply and happened to drop Brinwal onto the jagged rocks below. He quickly dismissed the notion though. As much as he disliked his travel companion, he was still a dwarf. He scanned the ridge while he waited for his drake to drop Brinwal off. He saw no sign of life or movement anywhere. He focused on the sky just beyond the ridge. Something in his stomach churned and he felt a sour, sulfuric sting in his gut.
He had never left the boundaries of the kingdom before. He had never even come this close to a border before. Beyond that ridge lay the untamed wilds, other dragon kingdoms, and beasts more terrible than the imagination could conjure. Very seldom did dwarves venture out beyond their bounds. More seldom still did they return.
The drake lighted down beside him and made a clicking noise. Hermean turned to regard the beast and then made his way into the saddle. He sat there, offering a single glance back to his homeland before nudging his drake with the heel of his boot. “Let’s get on up,” he said.
Up the drake went, soaring higher and higher, fighting the wind that ripped at Hermean’s face. His nose soon became red with the stinging bite of the frigid, relentless wind. He leaned down close to his drake. Up they climbed, higher and higher until at last Hermean could see over the ridge and into the neighboring lands. Brown rocks stretched for kilometers before them down the opposite side of the ridge and sweeping into the fields until the azure grasses overwhelmed the brown stones and created the foundation for a beautiful, dense forest of oak and pine that continued to paint the valley green. Little patches of purple and red mingled with the blue grass of the fields. Hermean presumed the colorful spots to be clumps of mountain flowers, but he could not see for certain from his altitude.
“The world has much beauty,” Hermean said to his drake. He patted the great animal and it circled downward toward Brinwal. It landed atop the ridge only a few minutes after launching from the hill below, but already Hermean felt as though an age had passed in the interim. He wasn’t sure what he had expected beyond the ridge, but certainly it was not the brushstrokes of beauty that he discovered.
“Ready to move?” Brinwal asked.
Hermean nodded. “Have you ever seen blue grass before?” he asked. “I mean, I have seen some grass that has a blue tint to it, but this is not the same. The grass is actually blue. It is as if we are standing above a lake.”
Brinwal grunted. “It’s grass. It’s soft enough to make bedding out of, sometimes tall enough to hide snake
s, and it feeds the deer and other game animals,” he said. “Don’t really care what color it is or isn’t.”
Hermean shook his head. “Can you not admit the beauty before you?”
Brinwal eyed Hermean with his one good eye and put a sour frown on his face. “Beauty can be deceiving,” he said. “I once met a red haired lass who could stop a dragon in its tracks with a single smile.” He reached up and pointed to the scar stretched across his face. “She was a spy from a rival tribe. She gave me this when I let my guard down.”
Hermean nodded. “I see. I am sorry.”
Brinwal shrugged. “Could have been worse. Come on, let’s get down to the forest and track them dwarves.”
The drake walked down the slope with them for a while, following close behind Hermean. With each gust of wind the animal would stick its snout in the air and pause until it caught the scent it hunted. Then it would indicate with its eyes the direction they should go. They stopped when they came to a drop off that stretched for as far as they could see.
“I don’t suppose your beast is rested enough to carry us down the rest of the way?” Brinwal asked.
Hermean turned and looked back to his drake. The blue-green nostrils flared wide to show just a hint of the pink insides before emitting a flame with a powerful snort. Brinwal stepped back and smacked at the flame that landed on his chestplate. A hand went for the hammer on his back, but Hermean stepped in quickly.
“He is insulted that you would insist he needed to rest,” Hermean said.
Brinwal arched a brow and shook his head. “Another outburst like that, and he will be resting on a more permanent scale, if you catch my meaning.”
Hermean stifled his urge to laugh and tried to nod respectfully. “He is ready to carry you whenever we require.”
“Then why are we walking down in the first place?” Brinwal groused. “Bend down lizard, and let me in the saddle.”
Hermean almost pointed out that they walked because Brinwal had insisted, but decided better of it. He snapped his forefinger and thumb and his drake bent low to allow Brinwal into the saddle. The drake was obviously displeased. Its tail switched back and forth angrily, and it avoided eye contact with Hermean. It barely waited for Brinwal to be seated before it launched down the cliff. Its descent was so steep and fast that it was all Brinwal could do to hold on, shouting and screaming curses all the way down. Hermean watched in shock as the drake soared out over the blue grass, hovering a couple meters from the ground. Instead of landing, the drake rolled upside down and dropped Brinwal into a patch of what appeared to be red poppies. Then the drake turned up sharply and made its way back to Hermean.
“That is not going to go over well,” Hermean said with a sigh. The hunter expected Brinwal to shout and curse, but instead there was only silence. The hunter watched as Brinwal rose to his feet and brushed himself off. Then he pulled his hammer free and sat the head on the ground with his hands resting atop the handle as he stood staring at Hermean.
The drake landed at Hermean’s left and snorted again.
“Now you have done it,” Hermean said disapprovingly. “If you were going to do that, you should have done it high enough up to knock the lubbering codger out for a day so as to give us a decent head start to run.” Hermean leapt onto the saddle and the drake launched downward.
Hermean held tight, his knuckles turned white and he clenched his jaw. The pair dove nearly straight down for over one hundred meters before the drake flared its wings and shot them out over the blue grass. Hermean’s stomach sank low and his blood drained from his face, leaving a tingling sensation. Then the drake flipped over, plopping Hermean onto the same poppy patch at Brinwal’s feet.
“Umph!” Hermean grunted as he tumbled to a stop beside the menacing war hammer. He blinked a couple of times and then sat upright, catching sight of his drake as it soared ever higher above the field and then peeled off toward the east again.
“Well, at least his attitude is not only directed at me,” Brinwal said finally. The dwarf picked his hammer up and replaced it into the harness.
“He is my drake,” Hermean said. “But he is still dragon kin.”
“And this is his way of reminding us of our place as dragon servants,” Brinwal finished. The gruff dwarf shrugged and pointed to the forest. “Shall we go and find a place to make camp?”
Hermean pushed up to his feet and brushed himself off. It was then that he realized all he had were his two long knives, as the axe was still in its holder attached to the saddle on his drake. He sighed and the two crossed the field as quickly as their bruised limbs and injured egos would carry them. This time, Brinwal motioned for Hermean to lead when they reached the forest. Hermean was surprised to see the large warrior following his every move through the brush and foliage, becoming almost as silent as Hermean. With the exception that sticks and branches squeaked and scratched against Brinwal’s armor very differently than they rubbed against Hermean’s leather outfit. Still, Hermean was impressed by the change in Brinwal’s behavior.
Neither of them said a word as they moved deeper into the emerald forest. They weaved through the intoxicating pines and along fresh earthen trails without a word spoken between the two. So silent were they that they managed to pass within four meters of a herd of deer that ate the soft ferns under the shade of a great oak tree without causing any alarm in the gentile creatures. The two warriors passed through the forest as ghosts, disturbing nothing, and largely unnoticed by anything in the woods. Even the squirrels above continued their anxious chatter as they leapt and chased each other through the trees above.
The two dwarves stopped only when the light began to fade. This time they chose a spot near a small, but deep, stream. A large boulder, with an overhang near the stream, offered them shelter and a trio of fallen pines promised enough wood for a decent fire. Brinwal gathered the wood and Hermean went to the stream. He took a long, straight branch and carved a forked spearhead into the end. Then he moved to the stream and sat at the edge, waiting patiently and scanning the waters.
A trout swam lazily in an eddy just out of reach. Hermean watched the fish for several minutes, until it rose to the surface to take an insect that flew too close to the surface. Then the fish disappeared from the eddy and swam out beyond Hermean’s sight. It was quite some time before any other fish came by, but Hermean waited patiently. In the end, his endurance paid off. A large trout came up to the surface nearby, investigating a water-skipper just in front of Hermean. It tore through the surface and snatched the bug, only to have the forked spear rip through its body just behind the head.
Hermean lifted his catch. He had to squeeze the spear tight against the fish as it jerked and wriggled violently on the end of his spear, slinging cold water onto Hermean’s face and arms. The hunter brought the fish back to the camp. Brinwal was rummaging through his rucksack and cursing under his breath. Finally the dwarf shoved the sack away and growled as he slapped his knees and spit on the ground.
“Something wrong?” Hermean asked.
“My tinder kit is gone,” Brinwal snarled. “Must have happened when that stupid lizard dropped me on my head.”
Hermean approached the wood pile and bent next to it. “He can still hear you,” Hermean said.
“Why should I care what that slimy serpent hears?” Brinwal whispered menacingly.
The hunter stuck the butt end of his spear in the ground next to the wood pile. “Because I don’t carry a tinder kit,” he said. “Never needed one, what with a drake assigned to me at all times and all. So, unless you have a spare, which I am guessing you don’t, you might want to apologize to him.” Hermean sat upon the ground and crossed his legs. “Otherwise, we are going to be eating raw fish.”
“No,” Brinwal said. “I have my own food that I brought.” He leaned forward and angrily snatched his rucksack from the ground and began rummaging through it again. “Son of a horned goat!” he cursed. He pulled a small piece of flatbread from the sack and anxiously looked arou
nd. “This is all that I have left!” He chucked the bread into the stream and cursed again. “The food is gone too!” Brinwal eyed Hermean, who was busy biting his tongue so as not to laugh. “You did this!” Brinwal shouted. “You made your drake do this, didn’t you?”
Hermean held his hands up. “No, not me. I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Brinwal waved a hand and then picked up his sack and moved to a large rock jutting out of the ground and sat upon it. He went to a side pocket and reached his hand in to remove his tobacco. “Well, at least I have this,” he said. He turned the pack over to reach into a separate pocket. The dwarf froze. He clenched his jaw so tightly that Hermean heard Brinwal’s teeth click and pop as they ground against each other. The black bearded dwarf’s face turned red, and then purple. A vein popped up in his forehead and the foggy, dead eye started to twitch. The warrior pulled up a closed hand, but Hermean couldn’t see what he held. Brinwal extended his hand out in front of him and looked directly at Hermean. When he opened his fingers, three pieces of what had once been a cherry wood pipe fell to the dirt.
Hermean looked from the broken pipe to Brinwal’s face and then to the fish. “I don’t suppose…”
Brinwal shook his head. “No, I don’t want any of yer cursed fish.” He rose to his feet and kicked the rucksack aside. “No camp tonight. We move on.” His hands twitched and his voice quivered with rage. “Something dies tonight.”
If Hermean had been unnerved by Brinwal before, now he was terrified. The dwarf had a look in his eye that had not been present before. The hot, savage bloodlust had manifested itself. Brinwal ripped his hammer from his back and stormed off into the woods, quieter than the first day, but still breaking his own path rather than melding in with the forest.
Hermean glanced again at the fish and sighed. He pulled it from the spear and quickly sliced open the belly with his knife. Then he laid the open, smelly fish on a stone. He clicked his tongue, but his drake did not come. “Well, something will eat it,” he said. Then he went after Brinwal.
