by Kay Murky
Chapter Five
The combination of the heat and the sunlight alone had not been enough to wake Marteen, but when a deep rumbling vibrated right through him he started to surface. For long moments he simply lay there, trying to orientate himself. Where was he?
Not that he was uncomfortable, though his bruised and battered body still complained against the slightest movement. In fact, he was loath to move at all. Slowly, as the last remnants of sleepiness left his mind, he remembered what had happened and opened his eyes. The sun was high already and he judged it to be just after midmorning. From where he lay he had a good view of the huge Allied camp spread throughout the valley. In the distance large smoke columns were rising, and despite the heat he shivered.
Bodies were being burned out there.
Throughout most of the Platar Empire, by law, the dead were buried within two days. But he had heard, and occasionally seen among some of the back country Essians, that the people of Ranmor cremated their dead. Memory told him that he had heard tales that before the Empire invaded his own country it had been the practice to cremate as well.
The principle of cremation did not bother him. What did was that he had a good idea of the number of bodies going into those funeral fires. Bodies of men he had known, spoken to, joked with, disciplined, shared food with…
Marteen sighed, and his teeth rattled as another loud rumble vibrated through his body. He finally realised what had woken him, and the unexpectedness of it had him chuckling softly.
He was lying tucked with his back against Dani’s stomach, with the dragon partially curled around him.
And the yellow dragon was snoring.
Just his bad luck. From the frying pan into the fire. Not only had he managed to get all his men killed, but he had been rescued, and now apparently kidnapped, by a snoring dragon.
For a long time Marteen just lay there, trying to figure out what his next move should be. Should he try to escape? He did not think he had the strength to walk more than a few paces. As it was, the only food he had had in two days had been the bit of broth the night before, and he was feeling rather hungry. He had the waterskin, but that was practically empty already.
And if he did manage to escape, where would he go?
Having lost not only the skirmish on that hill, but all his men, made it impossible for him to go back to the Imperial forces stationed in Essa. If Lord Rikkelan survived, he would joyously make an example of Marteen, showing other Imperial officers what happened to those who were unsuccessful. If he was lucky, he would be executed swiftly. But if his normal luck prevailed, he would be looking forward to excruciating torture, and then death. Not a sane option, either of them.
He could try and make for the coast, get himself hired on a merchant ship and try to work his way south, eventually getting back home. But he had not been home in what, thirteen years? Not since that time they had taken him to go to school in the city. They kept on promising that next year he would be able to visit his family, but next year never came.
And if he made it home, what would the situation be there? Would The Wise Ones hiding in the mountains still be willing to take him in, tainted as he was by his service to the Empire? It might be his only hope of survival, though.
Or should he just lie here, and wait to see what fate had in store for him.
He was so deep in thought that he had not noticed that the snoring had stopped.
“Or you can trust me.”
The dragon’s voice and words were so unexpected, Marteen nearly hurt his neck as he jerked his head around to try and see the face of the dragon. All that was visible from where he lay was the side of the huge yellow head and one emerald eye, still only half open.
“Trust you to do what?”
“To make sure that you remain alive for now. As for the rest, shall we just see what happens? From your thoughts right now, I gather that you are not particularly anxious to return to the Empire, and getting to your own country might not be possible, right?”
Marteen sighed. “Right.” At the same time, his stomach rumbled.
“You need food, and I need to get to work.” The dragon stood up and stretched himself like a cat, spreading his wings wide.
When Dani moved, Marteen had instinctively rolled out of the way, and he now watched the dragon with appreciation. Under the supple yellow skin well defined muscles flexed, and the wing membranes reflected the sunlight in sparkling points. Whereas the skin of the belly, over the ribs and the chest was soft and smooth, that of the neck, back, tail, and limbs was covered with what looked like yellow armour plating. Still close enough, Marteen sat up and stretched out his hand, gingerly touching one of the armour plates on the leg closest to him. It felt warm, smooth and rock hard, but the edges were knife sharp.
Dani folded his wings and moved a few paces back before he turned towards Marteen and struck a pose; neck arched, balancing on the knuckles of one claw hand and extending the other with the talons spread, as if reaching for something.
“A magnificent beast am I. Look at me and adore me.”
Marteen had pulled his hand back sharply when the dragon had moved, and now looked up at the head that towered above him. The green eyes sparkled with humour and the upper lip had pulled up and away from the teeth, almost as if the dragon was smiling.
“Well, of course I am smiling!” Dani relaxed his pose and dropped his nose until it was only an arm span above Marteen’s head. “All us dragons are horribly vain, but I’m not THAT vain. I was just reacting to the expression on your face. Now if you want to see a truly magnificent beast, you have to see our clan Elder, Danaarvish. He is almost twice my size and solid silver. Or even…” He hesitated and lifted his head to look out over the camp. “Look there, by the green healer’s tents, to the right. See that black monster just landing. That’s Kirosh. He is fourteen years younger than me, and already much bigger. Only black dragon with us right now. They’re rather rare. The young terror is already even bigger than Karragh.”
“Karragh?” Marteen looked, and where earlier he had mostly noticed the people and the smoke, he now saw the dragons that were quietly moving around in the background, or landing at the edges of the camp before they walked deeper into it. The black dragon was apparently still transporting wounded, as two bandaged humans were being lowered from his back.
“Yes. Look there, on the opposite side of the camp. See that clump of big tents? Some have the royal standards flying above them. That’s the General staff. Now look to the left. That golden brown hill there, that’s my friend Karragh. He’s our Fehrarkon Commander. That is what dragons like me, who have no partners, are called. Partner-less – Fehrarkon.”
Dani huffed softly. “But that’s not important now. We need to get you into better shelter, and then I have to go.”
If, before now, someone had told Marteen that a dragon could fashion a shelter from a few bushes and a blanket with his claws, he would have laughed. But he was not laughing once he lay under that shelter, with his back propped against a blanket covered rock, watching the dragon make the short flight to the healers’ tents.
What had he known about dragons before he met this one? What he had heard as a child, was that they were legendary beings who imparted wisdom to the Wise Ones. What he had been told at school was that they were fictitious, which obviously was not true. And then there was what he had been taught at the Military Academy. That they were mindless beasts bred for warfare. Obviously also not true.
So he knew nothing about dragons, except that they apparently had Gifts of magic and healing. He had witnessed that the night before, seeing through Dani’s eyes and lurking in the dragon’s mind. The magic the dragon had used were simple things such as creating a mage light to study a wound more closely or to clear away blood from a wound so that he could see it better. But it had nevertheless been magic.
That Dani was also highly intelligent was obvious.
As he watched, the yellow dragon landed quite close to the black one an
d bent his head to apparently talk to one of the humans nearby. Then he moved in amongst the healers’ tents and disappeared from sight.
For what could have been another time mark, Marteen sat there with his back propped against a blanket covered rock, under the shade of the bushes and the blanket. He fortunately still had a bit of water left, but his hunger was becoming overpowering. All he had to keep him busy was watching the activities in the camp below, and wrestling with his thoughts.
Marteen had not seen anyone leave the camp and had not heard anything, but as time passed he got that prickling sensation one gets when someone is watching you. Slowly he turned his head. About five paces away, among the bushes, a tall man stood watching him.
As most of the men down in the camp, this one was dressed only in trousers and boots. The clothing was of black leather, and the black hair was pulled away from the face into a long braid that hung down the man’s back. He carried a canvas wrapped bundle in his arms, a waterskin over his shoulder, and a bedroll bound with a leather strap was hooked over one wrist.
Now that Marteen had noticed him, he stepped forward, dropped the bedroll and bundle next to Marteen, and sat down on his haunches.
“Greetings.” The voice was deep, cultured, and his Platirri only slightly accented. The man was obviously Onlashian, as none of the other races had either their height, except the occasional Kaadish man, their pale skin or their fine bone structure.
“Greetings.” Marteen answered carefully, not knowing whether to hold his hand out in the Plattiri way, or not. “I had not expected someone to be able to speak the language of the Empire, here.”
“I seldom get an opportunity to try it out.” Was that a ghost of a smile on the still face? The man seemed around his own age, roughly in the mid twenties, but had obviously seen more than just this battle. A vicious looking scar, long healed, ran from his left temple over his cheek to the corner of his mouth. However it did not detract from the young man’s aristocratic look.
“I have brought you a bedroll, some clothing and food.” The long fingers deftly untied the bundle and passed over a smaller bundle wrapped in what turned out to be a clean square of white linen. “There’s travel bread, cheese, and some fruit. You will have to wait for warm food until you get to Lowrin, as I agree with Daninackin that you should rather avoid the Tunlati, for now.”
The man looked up briefly, then down again at what he was doing, and Marteen caught only a brief glimpse of the intense blue eyes. It took all his will power not to start eating immediately.
Once opened, the bundle revealed trousers, boots, a belt and a linen shirt; all in a very nondescript brown. That was good. He did not want to draw attention to himself. Marteen waited for the man to say more, but he stood up and only said, “Eat.”, before he busied himself replacing the blanket Dani had used for the shelter with the canvas the clothing had been wrapped in.
Silently Marteen ate, while watching the man’s graceful movements as he worked. Above the black eyebrows rested a circlet similar to the one that the Healer Commander was wearing. Except that it only had three thin lines of lacquer on it, blue, red and silver. It did have the pointed V resting between his eyebrows, though. Now that he thought about it, almost all of the Onlashians he had seen through Dani’s eyes the day before had been wearing those circlets, but most of the others had all been just plain circlets, with one or two that had the V pointing upwards.
That was something he should ask Dani about. If he remembered.
The man finished and looked down at Marteen in silence for a moment as he ate, which caused Marteen to nearly choke from discomfort. As if realising this, the man looked away, then sat down on a nearby rock, studying the camp. Only once Marteen had finished eating, and washed the food down with some water, did the man finally speak again.
“You are not from Platar. You also do not look like most of the other citizens of the Empire.”
“No.” Marteen pondered for a moment whether to tell this man the truth, or not. Then decided he had no reason to try and hide anymore. In his current circumstances, truth was the only possible way to stay alive. “Although technically we are part of the Empire, my country has only been ruled by them for the last three hundred years. We are considered backward by them, but occasionally they come and take the brightest of the children…”
Concisely he told the story of how he had been removed from his parents’ care as a child.
“… they promised me that I would be trained as a healer. Then instead, when I graduated from their schools, they came and took the top ten students of the year, and transported us to the Military Academy in Latziria, the Emperor’s capital. We were ‘drafted’ into the army. It is a forced service, from which the only way to escape is either to die, be executed, or reach retirement age of seventy.”
There was silence, and Marteen, who had been looking at his hands as he spoke, looked up to find the strange blue eyes staring intently at him.
“And you managed to hide your gifts all this time.” The voice was soft, and it was a statement, not a question. “It must be hard for a born healer to kill.”
“Kill or be killed. As long as your shields hold, you survive.”
For a few more moments the man looked at him, then nodded, and stood up.
“I will leave you now. Dani should be back just after sunset. Tomorrow he is going to be assigned to return to Lowrin with some of the patients. He will take you with him and take you to the head of his clan, who is also there. Aghtiro Hammar will be expecting you, because we will tell him about you. Be honest with the Aghtiro and everything will work out well.”
There was a slight hesitation, then the man looked down at him again. “Marteen? Don’t be afraid to look into Dani’s eyes. You will not regret it if you do.”
Marteen still wanted to ask what the man meant by that, and what the word ‘Aghtiro’ meant, but as quietly as he had arrived, the man walked a few paces away, then just disappeared.
Later in the afternoon Marteen thought he saw the man walking from the healers’ tents to those of the officers, but he was not sure. There could be many Onlashians dressed in black, and they all had dark hair, worn it in those ridiculously long braids.
With his stomach full, it was easy to drift into a light sleep again.
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