The Blood of a Dragon loe-4

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  After some thought, he chose the boat.

  He tripped and very nearly fell on the top step, which would have made for a noisy and painful tumble, but he caught himself at the last minute and made his way gingerly down to the dock.

  When he stepped off the last step and could spare attention to look at something other than his own feet, he looked up and found he was being watched.

  A guard had been posted on theSunlit Meadows, just as on the cattle barge-a man was sitting on a stool on the foredeck, a sword across his lap. He was staring at Dumery.

  “Uh... hello,” Dumery said. He spoke loudly enough to be heard over the chirping crickets and the gentle splashing of the river going about its business, and was horrified at how loud his voice sounded. The crickets and water weren’t making anywhere near as much noise as he had thought; his normal tone sounded like shouting.

  “Hello,” the watchman answered warily.

  Dumery strolled down the dock, trying to look casual. “I was looking for someone,” he said. “I saw him on that boat of yours a few days ago.”

  “Oh?” the watchman asked.

  “Yes,” Dumery said. “Big man, dark brown hair, wore brown leather, came aboard at Azrad’s Bridge.”

  “I might know who you mean.” For the first time, Dumery noticed that the guard spoke Ethsharitic with an accent.

  “Yes, well,” Dumery said, “I’m looking for him. I need to talk to him.”

  The watchman’s hand had crept to the hilt of the sword; now he lifted it and gestured at the eastern sky. “Odd hour to go visiting, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “Oh, well,” Dumery said, “I didn’t want him to slip away before I had a chance to talk to him, you know.”

  “Ah. In a hurry, were you?”

  Dumery nodded. “Yes, I was,” he said.

  “In too much of a hurry to clean up?”

  Dumery looked down at himself.

  His tunic was muddy rags. His breeches were split at the crotch and frayed to threads for much of their length, and his skin was covered with scrapes, scratches, and dirt. His boots were badly scuffed, but still, thank all the gods, sound.

  “I missed the road in the dark,” he explained. “Fell down a couple of times.”

  “Well, boy,” the guard told him, “I’m sorry, but you’re not coming aboard theMeadows like that, and I don’t care if you’re a boy baron in disguise, or one of the gods themselves.”

  “He’s on board, then?” Dumery asked excitedly. “The man in brown leather? The dragon-hunter?”

  The watchman squinted at Dumery. The eastern sky had started to pale; the greater moon had set, but the lesser moon was climbing rapidly, filling out as it rose. A ship’s lantern hung at each end of theSunlit Meadows, shining brightly. In short, there was light, but not enough to read faces easily.

  The watchman decided it wasn’t his problem. “The man’s name is Kensher Kinner’s son, boy-that the one you’re looking for? Anyway, no, he’s not aboard. He’s probably at the Roasting Pig. This is his stop, where we pick him up twice a year, and drop him off on the way back.”

  A great weight he hadn’t known was there seemed to vanish from Dumery’s chest, and his breath rushed in, then out, in a great sigh of relief. “Thank you!” he said. “Then Ihaven’t missed him!” He whirled and charged back up the steps, ignoring the watchman’s shouted admonitions to watch his step and not to say who’d told him.

  He even knew the man in brown’s name, now-Kensher Kinner’s son. Not exactly an ordinary name, by Ethsharitic standards, but not particularly exotic. Dumery had a vague impression that northerners used patronymic names like that more than city-dwellers did.

  He dashed headlong up the boardwalk and onto the verandah, and smacked his hands against the door of the inn, expecting it to open.

  It didn’t. His damp feet slipped on the oiled wood of the verandah, and his nose and chin slammed up against solid oak hard enough to bruise, but not to break anything.

  He caught himself and stepped back, rubbing his injured nose, then reached forward and tried the latch.

  The door still wouldn’t open.

  Dumery frowned. Who ever heard of an inn where the door wouldn’t open? What good wasthat to anyone?

  Well, maybe the owners were worried about bandits wandering in. After all, this wasn’t Ethshar. Dumery looked about for a knocker or bell-pull.

  A black metal rod hung down just behind the signboard; he hadn’t noticed it before, taking it for a shadow or part of the bracket holding the sign. The upper end vanished into a boxy structure protruding from the wall.

  He reached up and gave it a tug.

  It moved freely, and when he released it it swung back up into place-obviously counterweighted somewhere. He wasn’t sure whether he heard a clunk somewhere when he let it go, or not.

  An unfamiliar voice, oddly hollow, called, “Ie’kh gamakh.”

  Dumery blinked. That wasn’t Ethsharitic.

  It was probably, he realized suddenly, Sardironese. He was presumably somewhere in the Baronies of Sardiron, so that would make sense.

  Unfortunately, Dumery didn’t know a word of Sardironese, and couldn’t begin to guess whether the phrase he had just heard meant, “Welcome,” or “Go away,” or “Give the password,” or “The key’s on the windowsill,” or something else entirely.

  “I don’t speak Sardironese,” he called-not too loudly, as he didn’t want to annoy anyone.

  Nobody answered.

  He stood there, looking about and trying to think what he should do, until he was startled by a scraping sound.

  He spun back toward the door, and there, an inch or two above the top of his head, a panel the size of a man’s hand had slid open. Bleary green eyes beneath bushy white eyebrows were looking out, and from what he could see of them, Dumery thought they looked puzzled.

  “Hello,” Dumery said.

  The eyes blinked, and looked down, suddenly discovering Dumery.

  “Hello?” a voice answered, the voice of an old man.

  “May I come in?” Dumery asked.

  The voice replied, “H’khai debrou... ie’tshei, yes, one moment.” The panel slid shut, metal rattled against metal, and the door swung open.

  Dumery stepped in and looked around, to see what he could see, and discovered that mostly he could see the starched white apron and voluminous red nightshirt of the man who had admitted him. That worthy was standing in Dumery’s way, looking down at him with an unreadable expression on his face.

  “By all the gods, boy, you are a... amess!” the man exclaimed.

  Dumery was relieved to hear the man deliver a complete, coherent sentence in Ethsharitic, even if itwas accented.

  But then, an innkeeper would naturally want to speak several languages.

  “I’m looking for a man dressed in brown leather, going by the name Kensher Kinner’s son,” Dumery said.

  “He is-ie’tshei,is he expecting you?”

  “He’s yetchy?”

  “No, no. Is he expecting you?”

  “Is he here?”

  “I am...ie’tshei, why should I tell you?”

  Dumery was tired. He was, in fact, exhausted, and as a result he was in no mood to deal with obstructions when he was so close to his goal. “Just tell me, all right?” he said. “And what’s that ’yetchy’ mean, anyway?”

  The man glared down at him fiercely, and Dumery realized he’d said the wrong thing.

  “Ie’tsheiis Sardironese for ’I meant to say,’ boy,” the man said. “You don’t make fun of my Ethsharitic, all right? You want to hear me use all the right words, you talk to me in Sardironese. We aren’t in the Hegemony here. Since I was your age, I could speak four languages enough to run this inn. I don’t hear you saying anything in anything but Ethsharitic. You don’t sound so smart to me, boy, so watch your manners.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dumery said, not really meaning it.

  The innkeeper ignored the interruption. “You come in here
an hour before dawn, when I need my sleep, you drip mud on my floors and look like the worst garbage, like someone who takes what the dogs won’t eat, you don’t say who you are, you make fun of how I talk in a foreign language when I’m half asleep, you want to talk to one of my guests who isalso still asleep, assuming he’s here, which I haven’t said... boy, you better have the money to pay for a room and a bath and a meal and new clothes, because if you don’t you go right back out that door. I don’t want you in here like this. You make me look bad.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dumery said again, a little more sincerely.

  “Sorry, nothing. You have money?”

  Dumery looked down at the purse on his belt. Six bits, he knew, wasn’t going to buy him much here. It certainly wasn’t going to buy him any sympathy, let alone new clothes and all the rest of it.

  The innkeeper saw Dumery’s look and interpreted it readily enough.

  “No money,” he said. “Out, boy. Out.” The man put a hand on Dumery’s chest and pushed gently.

  Until he felt that hand it hadn’t really registered with the lad just how big the innkeeper was, which was very big indeed. Dumery doubted very much that this particular innkeeper had ever had to hire anyone else as his bouncer; he was clearly capable of handling the job himself.

  Unwillingly, Dumery stepped back out onto the verandah, and the heavy door slammed shut an inch from his face.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Despite the discomforts of his hiding place in the bushes along the riverbank, Dumery kept dozing off, only waking when he started to fall forward, branches scraping his face.

  Each time he would jerk himself back up to a sitting position and stare wildly about before settling back down to watch the door of the inn.

  Finally, about mid-morning, the man in brown, the dragon-hunter, emerged. He was wearing his brown leather outfit again, not the more ordinary clothes he had had on when he had left the Inn at the Bridge and boarded theSunlit Meadows.

  He stepped out, turned to his right, and marched across the verandah to the steps at the north end. He trotted down the steps without any hesitation, turned again, and strode off to the east, down the main road of the tiny riverside village, away from the inn and toward the mountains.

  Dumery scrambled from concealment and followed.

  He had had enough of secrecy. He had every intention of running right up to this Kensher person and announcing himself, and then demanding an apprenticeship. After all, Dumery had followed the man all the way from safe, familiar Ethshar out into the wilds of Sardiron-didn’t that prove his resolution? Didn’t that show how determined he was? Wouldn’t that be enough to impressanyone?

  Dumery tripped over a branch and fell sprawling. He picked himself up quickly and looked ahead.

  Kensher was already well down the road, almost out the far end of the village-if the tiny collection of buildings qualified as a village; being a city boy, Dumery was not sure just how small a village could get and still deserve the name.

  The dragon-hunter was walking along quickly, in the brisk, determined stride of a man who knows exactly where he’s going and who wants to get there. Dumery broke into a run.

  Tired as he was, he couldn’t sustain it, and after a hundred feet, when he was scarcely past the inn’s stables, he slowed to a stumbling trot. Halfway through the village, as he passed through the rush of warm air from the smithy, that became a walk.

  Well, Dumery told himself, he’d catch up eventually. The man would have to stop and rest sometime.

  Stopping to rest sounded like an absolutely wonderful idea, but he knew he didn’t dare do that.

  But maybe just aminute wouldn’t hurt.

  But he didn’t dare lose sight of Kensher!

  He trudged on, and on, out of the village, out of sight of the village, past the farms that lined the river, up into the hills and forests where the road narrowed to a trail, and when at last, despite the best his tired legs could do, hedid lose sight of Kensher, he collapsed in a heap by the side of the road. Promising himself he would only rest for a moment, the better to run on and catch up to the dragon-hunter, he immediately fell asleep.

  When he awoke, he sat up and looked around, puzzled.

  Wherewas he, anyway?

  He was sitting in a pile of dead leaves in the midst of a forest, beside a trail that seemed to wander aimlessly through the trees. The ground was uneven; it sloped in various directions. The air seemed unseasonably cool. The sun was sending slanting light down through the leaves, leaves that spattered the ground with shadow, and Dumery, upon consideration, decided that the sun must be in the west.

  That gave him a sense of direction. The road ran east and west; to the east it sloped up and over the crest of a hill, while to the west it sloped gently downward and, by the look of it, into a valley.

  Dumery’s mind gradually cleared, and he remembered the little village by the river, the desperate chase after Kensher Kinner’s son, through the village and into the forest and all along that valley and on up here, to where the road had wound up and over the hill and out of sight and he, Dumery, had finally collapsed.

  There was no sign of Kensher, of course.

  Frustration and lingering fatigue caught up with him, and Dumery burst out crying.

  When that was over, he stood up, brushed himself off as best he could, and thought about what he should do.

  Back down the valley lay the village and the river, and somewhere downstream-a hundred leagues? More?-lay Azrad’s Bridge, and the road back to Ethshar and home.

  Up the slope lay-what?

  Kensher’s home camp might be just across the hill; why not? After all, this was a Sardironese forest; wouldn’t there be dragons around?

  That was a disturbing thought, and Dumery immediately reconsidered.

  No, there wouldn’t be. He was still too close to the river, the village, and civilization in general.

  All the same, he owed it to himself to go on. Surely, it couldn’t be much farther! And to come all this way and then give up-that would be ridiculous.

  His brothers would never let him live it down.

  At the very least he should take a look over the summit, he told himself.

  He wiped his eyes, looked around, and, seeing nothing dangerous, he marched on, up the hill.

  At the crest he stopped and looked. There was the road, winding down the other slope-to a fork. Dumery stared at it in dismay.

  Which way had Kensher gone? Which fork had he taken? Was there any way to tell?

  These questions got Dumery thinking, and he realized that he didn’t know whether Kensher was still on the road at all. The man was a dragon-hunter, and therefore he was surely an expert woodsman and dweller in wilderness. He wouldn’t need roads. He might have gone off the road anywhere.

  Dumery would probablynever find him, then.

  But if one dragon-hunter worked in this area, maybe others did, as well. At the next village he came to he could ask, or if he found no villages, then a house or even a camp-somebodylived out here, or there wouldn’t be a road, let alone a fork. The locals would know about dragon-hunters in the area.

  He didn’t need to apprentice himself specifically to Kensher;any dragon-hunter would do, really.

  And he might yet catch up to Kensher. If hehad stayed on the road, maybe there would be some way to tell which fork he had taken. The ground around the fork in the road looked soft; there might be footprints, and Dumery hadn’t seen any sign of anyone else on the trail.

  He made his way down to the fork, where the earth was, to Dumery’s delight, damp. Then he knelt down and studied the ground.

  The left fork, which led eastward, showed fresh footprints in the soft, moist earth; the right fork, which veered off to the south, did not.

  Dumery took the left fork and marched on, over the next hill.

  And the next hill.

  And the next.

  And there, at last, he came across a house.

  It was a rather peculiar
house, by Dumery’s standards, being built entirely of heavy, tarred timbers, with no plaster, no stonework, no fancywork of any kind. The hinges on doors and shutters were simple iron straps. It was set back from the road, among the trees; behind it Dumery could see a few small outbuildings built of grey, weathered planks, and a gigantic woodpile. There were no signs of life.

  Still, it was a house, and Dumery was delighted to see it. He quickened his pace-not to a run, he couldn’t manage that, but to a brisk walk-and hurried up to the door.

  He knocked, and waited.

  No one answered, and he knocked again.

  “Setsh tukul?” a voice called from inside-a woman’s voice.

  “Hello!” Dumery called. “Is anyone home?”

  The door opened, and a woman looked out-not an old woman, by any means, but one past the full flower of her youth. Her hair was light brown, with no trace of gray, and her skin was still smooth, but there were lines at the corners of her eyes and a certain hardness to her face. She wore a plain brown skirt and a tan tunic, and held a heavy iron fireplace poker.

  “Kha bakul t’dnai shin?” the woman demanded.

  “Do you speak Ethsharitic?” Dumery asked.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Ethsharit?” she said. “Ie den norakh Ethsharit. Ha d’noresh Sardironis?”

  Dumery could make nothing of that, but he correctly concluded that in fact the woman didnot speak Ethsharitic.

  Surely, though, she might know a few words.

  “Dragon hunters?” Dumery asked. “I’m looking for dragon hunters.”

  She glared at him. “Ie den norakh Ethsharit,” she said. “D’gash, d’gash!” She gestured for him to leave.

  “Dragon hunters!” Dumery repeated. “Please!”

  “D’gash!” She pointed angrily at the road.

  Desperately, Dumery tried, “Kensher Kinner’s son?”

  She paused, peered down at him. “Kensher?” she asked. “Kensherfin Kinnerl?”

  Dumery nodded, hoping that she meant the man he was looking for, and that he hadn’t accidentally spoken some inappropriate Sardironese phrase.