The Dragon Knight's Soul

by D. C. Clemens

  As for this night, Gerard shook me awake at around three in the morning to begin my watch. No one else happened to be awake to keep me company, so I went to sit by myself on the highest point of the granular knoll. A few puffy clouds hung low in the sky, each being blown by cool breezes in an otherwise warm night. I submitted to the temptation to let my eyes close for a few moments at a time. A distant yowl opened them again.

  If a second cry did not ring out, I would have concluded that the first came from a coyote. However, the human quality in the second cry could not be ignored. I even guessed with confidence that it originated from a woman. Eyes well-adjusted to the dark searched for the source, which sounded as though it came from the west. I waited half a minute, but no other dins of distress gave me further clues. I thus stayed very still and concentrated on finding movement, using the shard of crescent moonlight as best I could.

  There! Scrambling around a hill three hundred yards to the northwest were two human figures. Assuming the shadows did not play with my vision too badly, then I identified three more humanoid figures chasing the other two. The faster pursuers were perhaps half a mile smaller than their apparent objectives.

  I picked up a handful of pebbles. When I ran past my sleeping group, I threw the little rocks at Clarissa’s face. She woke up to see me running down our hill. Once she recognized what she needed to do, the alarmed vampire moved to wake the others. When the group caught up to me, I pointed to the points of interest, which the vampire’s eyes perceived with ease. We raced to the northeast, keeping a trajectory that would have us intercepting the hunted pair first.

  Our targets appeared to be oblivious of us until we reached more level land. They froze fifty feet away from us. I told Ghevont to cast a light spell.

  With the little ball of light exposing us, I asked, “Who goes there?!”

  “Please, help us!” bawled a terrified woman. “They want us dead!”

  With a lame left ankle, the middle-aged woman with short red hair hobbled into the fringes of our light with the help of an older man flaunting long brown hair. A dainty green mantle draped over both their bodies. For the woman it covered a simple blue blouse while the man wore a fine gray tunic underneath.

  “Who wants you dead?” asked Odet.

  “The Homen!” answered the stout, clean-shaven man.

  Closing the distance between ourselves, Clarissa asked, “Why do they want you dead?”

  “They w-wanted our supplies! They ambushed our caravan and killed everyone! My wife… my wife and I barely escaped, but they’ve been chasing us all fucking night. Please, please help us. Can you f-fight them off?”

  Odet and I glanced at one another. Her visage bore a starker severity than mine, so I let her take the lead.

  “They are not far behind you, so it seems we’re involved now. We’ll do our best to help.”

  “Thank you!” said the woman, her legs buckling from pain and exhaustion.

  “Hurry,” said the man, “dispel the light. You can ambush them. Take the murderers by surprise. They’ll just hide in the blasted forest once they realize their plan has failed.”

  “Let us handle them our way. Are you injured, sir?”

  “No, only tired.”

  “Then follow Mercer. Gerard, unburden the gentleman of his spouse. Mercer, go ahead and lead them eastward.”

  The knight picked up the woman while I waved the hesitant man to me. As the husband and I moved away, Odet called over Gerard and told Ghevont to take a quick look at the woman’s ankle. Now I knew the princess was up to something. If she truly treated time as precious, she would not have asked the scholar to do something he could do later. I played the part she gave me and led my charge away from the group.

  Thirty feet later and Odet called for me to stop. She ran up to us and asked, “Sir, how many guardsmen were in your caravan?”

  A gurgled exhale left the man before he answered, “Six.”

  “Your wife said seven.”

  “Oh! Yes, that’s right. I forgot we also brought-”

  “Actually, she agreed with me when I inferred that all Etoc caravans take at least eight protectors. You weren’t part of an official Etoc trading party, were you?”

  “Er, n-no, but why does that matter! They attacked us!”

  “It matters because unsanctioned traders are often swindlers, and if the Homen figured that out-”

  “Then they’re allowed to kill us!?”

  “Etoc and Homen laws are clear. They might be harsh, but they’re there to discourage an influx of your kind from disrupting the loose partnership Etoc has with the Homen and their resources.”

  “You can’t let those animals tear us apart!”

  “Odet!” hollered Clarissa. “They’re coming!”

  The man tried to run, but I grabbed his mantle and steered him back toward his wife. I demanded quiet from the man when he started up again, then pushed down his shoulder so that he sat next to his partner.

  On entering my sight, I noted that the barefooted Homen men stood as tall as the tallest people I had ever seen, yet their spidery limbs appeared to belong to people taller still. Two of the three donned vests made from thin animal hides while the third Homen came without anything on his tanned, hairless torso. A cloth skirt covered in large feathers reached their mid-thighs, which on the average man meant it would pass their knees.

  Strapped to their backs was a large quiver holding the thick arrows their bows implemented. The height and trim of the bows equaled the frame of their wielders, so all three being knocked and aimed made for an impressive sight.

  Odet, her left hand partly raised and ready to cast a ward if need be, asked the new arrivals, “Do you speak the shared tongue?”

  “I speak it the easiest,” responded the oldest of the trio, who still did not appear much older than thirty.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Adalmo of the Ebon Tree.”

  “Greetings Adalmo. I am Odet of Alslana.”

  “Are you comrades with these cheaters?”

  “No, we just met. They tried to cheat you?”

  “Yes, yes. They try to trade bad potions for our good logs. They think us unwise, but we find out very fast and so we chase to catch them and their comrades.”

  “How many tried cheating you?”

  “Three more. They have been punished as our laws say.”

  “Dead?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “I understand what your laws say, but three dead cheaters sounds enough for one day.”

  Each bowstring was pulled tauter. “You cheat us like them?”

  “No, but I believe these two cheaters don’t deserve the penalty of death. They shall be punished, but in a way that leaves them alive and which still satisfies your people.”

  Clacking tongues from one of the other Homen recited a language Aranath must not have been familiar with, for he did not translate for me. The older one clacked something back.

  Back to us, Adalmo asked, “Why join them? Why protect their cheating?”

  “A family habit. You see, I can never see one party completely content, for that means a situation did not turn out fairly for another party. The law is on your side, but the gods have guided these two to me, and it’s my habit to protect life. So, is there anything other than death that will satisfy your people?”

  “Blood satisfies.”

  “How much?”

  “All.”

  “Did they spill your people’s blood?”

  “They spit on our wisdom.”

  “And I believe you are wise enough to see that the blood of five people does not equal spit. What will satisfy your people?”

  Now the last Homan clacked his opinion. He and the second bickered back and forth for a moment, stopping right before their snapping tongues overlapped entirely. For the first time since the royal spoke, the Homen seemed to realize the young woman he spoke with was not alone, that they stood outnumbered by armed warriors braced to counter their arr
ows.

  “Hands and tongues,” said Adalmo. “They cannot cheat without hands and tongues. We will take back as proof.”

  The female cheater moaned and squirmed at that statement.

  “One hand from each cheater. That’s enough proof. We have higher priorities, so they will not be in our care once this business is done. They will be forced to find their own way back home, which will be harder to do with a missing hand. Even so, between the wild beasts and heat, there’s a chance they die out here. If the gods yet desire all of their blood, then they will send claw or sun to spill it. Is this acceptable?”

  “You will not defend them from the gods’ justice?”

  “My goal is north, they will head east.”

  “We will see you go in different paths.”

  “Fair enough. Will you consent to letting my scholar deaden their hands before you take them?”

  Lowering his bow, Adalmo nodded.

  Crying beside her already numbed husband, the woman said, “No! Please, d-don’t t-take my hand!”

  “I’m sorry,” said a sincere Odet, “but I will not be able to stop them from taking your life if you resist punishment, understand?” The woman hung her head and cried some more. “Ghevont, make certain they feel as little as possible.”

  “As you wish.”

  The rest of us retreated from the impending scene. I even told Clarissa to stay upwind so she didn’t get whiffs of tantalizing blood up her sensitive nose.

  Sitting on a hump of grass, Odet said, “It seems even away from civilization there’s dictating to be done.”

  “I learned that a long time ago,” I said. “Why did you even bother? The law apparently supports them paying with their lives.”

  “Aye, but I couldn’t help trying to save them. It’s admittedly a low standard to judge a husband, but if he wanted a higher chance to live, he would have left his wife behind after she twisted her ankle. Not doing so urged me to take it as a sign that they weren’t a hopeless case. Does that make me naive?”

  “A little.”

  Gerard sat next to Odet. He took her hand and said, “Being a little naive is far better than being completely cynical.”

  “Not if you’re alone,” I said. “But since you’re not, I don’t mind being the cynical one.”

  “You would have let them die?”

  “Don’t, Gerard,” insisted Odet. “Reality is subjective enough, let’s not bring in the hypothetical.”

  “Then don’t talk to Ghevont,” I said. “Anyway, you must have a little cynicism if you knew they were lying.”

  “I didn’t know they were lying, but I do know a thing or two about the laws of Alslana’s trade partners. For one, traders looking to do business with the Homen need to wear white so that the forest people can easily spot them from afar. All the same, others in their convoy might have still followed the trading custom, so I had to find out if they belonged to an official transaction another way.”

  “Hence the-”

  The woman’s stifled shriek broke anymore thought of conversation for the next few minutes. Her weary weeping continued for a long while, going over the sound of her husband’s wounded grunt when his turn came. Ghevont dressed their stumps. Afterward, the princess handed the resigned couple a waterskin and a pouch of food. We watched them start their journey east, the Homen keeping their eyes on us in turn. With the predawn light springing forth, they made sure our group went northward.

  We used the old-fashioned way of travel for half an hour before I summoned our main means of exploring, leaving fate to figure out what happened to those beholden to the ground.

  Chapter Fourteen

  On reaching the densest region of the forest, Aranath’s instructions were to not fly far from the mountains, as their cliffs would have to be his perch when fatigue forced us down. Moreover, the bare bluffs and overhangs promised to impede intrusion from the woodland loving Homen. Luckily, while the forest hugged most of the range, its width did not exceed four hundred miles, with many areas being half as extensive.

  Morning mist spilled down from the mountains, spoiling a pure view of the canopy for a couple of hours. Ghevont thus had to keep a close eye on the nismerdon crystal during this fragment of time. When the fog cleared, it allowed us to take in the haughty sight of the upstanding plant life. Even though we flew closer to the clouds than the ground, they did not look so far away.

  Each mature tree, or brogdin, as Ghevont called them, owned four hundred feet of the sky and nothing else grew a hundred feet around its trunk. This would have been enough space for the dragon to land on if thousands of branches were not in the way. The bark of the bigger brogdins had a smoother sheen to it and a darker shade of russet than its younger counterparts. Most of the younger ones still towered over the ordinary trees residing in the woods.

  To avoid the fog, the next day of our search started later. Going deeper into the forest showed us ancient brogdins dozens of feet taller than those growing closer to the fringes. We also saw more smoke veins rising from larger Homen camps. Our exploratory flight took us near the middle of the woods, but no evidence of a life sucking spell could be found. For the sake of thoroughness, we spent another day flying north, where smaller and less clustered groves of brogdins ruled.

  As soon as the brogdins stopped growing so consistently, I decided we had spent enough time searching for nismerdons above this place. Not that I was eager to fly over a marsh. Maps drew the marshlands as taking up thirty or forty percent more space than the forest, implying that we had to sleep in a summer bog for a couple of gods-awful nights. The first step, or, in our case, flap, was to get over the Yuroks. Fortunately, as far as mountain ranges went, the Yuroks did not stand so high or stretch too wide compared to the others I’ve beheld and climbed.

  Flying over the western slopes proved refreshing, though Clarissa had to bury her face on my back to keep the unclouded eastern sun from berating her face. Getting to the eastern side had us seeing the dark green plain of flat marshland extending to the horizon and another horizon beyond that.

  The blood from the waist up amassed in my skull when Aranath suddenly dove toward a cliff. I tried looking for the reason for his abrupt act, but found nothing. When he gained a stable grip by the edge of the cliff, I asked Aranath the obvious question.

  “The scent of a feral dragon hangs in the air,” he answered.

  “And your reaction is to stop flying?”

  “I must declare my presence first. If my intentions and dominance are made clear, then we should avoid an altercation. His hunting grounds also likely spread well into the marshes, so it’s doubtful we could enter unnoticed.”

  “Then declare away.”

  “Buttress your ears.”

  A whistling gulp of air was followed by the loudest fucking racket I ever heard. None of Aranath’s previous roars matched what this higher-pitched achieved. Despite sitting still, the prolonged thunder-screech had me feeling as though I straddled a bucking horse neighing in panic. As for my eardrums, they sloshed within their canals as the dragon swept his head from the south to the north. Anything inside fifty miles must have surely heard him. Nullifying the blast of sound an octave was Odet’s shield forming a bubble around us.

  The headache inducing bellow ended five seconds later, but the tolling in my ears lasted for another minute. During that lull, Aranath waited for a reply. He got one. Far in the eastern sky rumbled a roar that might as well have come from a clucking hen when comparing it to the one I just experienced.

  “Well?!” I asked over the tolling in my head.

  “Sounds like an old female. The scent is of a younger male, possibly her child. Since he did not answer, I assume he is still too young to challenge me. They will present no trouble.”

  “How old is an old dragon?” asked Odet.

  “That is dependent on the race. My kind can often live upwards of two thousand of your human years. For the klirihm I smell, old is closer to nine hundred, or close to the age I am now.
”

  “Let’s get going, old brute,” I said. “Let’s try to get out of dragon territory.”

  “As you wish, fledgling brat.”

  “Play nice, boys!” said Clarissa. “We don’t need to make the flight any bumpier than it needs to be!”

  Aranath was already letting himself drop by the end of the vampire’s words.

  Our dragon’s glide soon took us over the soggy, stinking plain. Blotches of trees and shrubs grew in the higher portions of the waterlogged ground, but drab green grasses growing in the muddy ground otherwise made up most of what we saw. Still, the occasional field of reddish or bluish grasses broke the visual tedium.

  Concerning animals, there were lots of birds, packs of huge rat things the size of large dogs, and different species of boar, many of which looked larger than a rotund pony. During our last rest period, the scholar warned that these animals were preyed upon by gigantic snakes and crocodilians that swallowed men whole, at least according to the descriptions he read. If we did not want to find out whether these predators ate human-sized chunks of meat, it was important I periodically ignited dragon stones so that their smoking scent deterred attacks.

  Not long before we had to land, a rapid manifestation of rain clouds poured its contents over an area too large to escape. I welcomed the rain for its power to suppress the marshland’s odor. It continued to rain when Aranath found a bump of narrow grass sticking a few inches above the quagmire. A higher piece of land popped up not too far away, but it grew no trees to provide firewood. Training on this winding band restricted our movement, yielding a chance to mimic a fight inside corridors or on city roads.

  After helping us train, Ghevont spent his time gathering plant life and insects, not minding stepping into the muck to do so. Since my burned stones could be overwhelmed by the bog’s stench, the scholar likewise worked to protect us against cold-blooded hungers by raising blocks of compressed mud around our bump. The blocks were not going to be strong enough to stop persistent predators, but their breaking would create a loud squelching sound that would act as a warning to their coming.