by LeRoy Clary
Bender waited.
Tyler opened the next. “Well, this is good news. We don’t have to open a pub and inn of our own. This paper says the bearer, that’s us, already owns one. It lists the landmarks and describes the building. Seems like a nicer place than we usually drink at.”
Bender eyed the remaining stock of documents. There looked to be a hundred or more. He said, “Taking over these buildings will draw the Cabots out. They won’t like us taking their wealth and making it ours.”
“I was thinking along the lines that somewhere in those documents is a building where they are living . . .”
“Damn, you’re probably right. Their home might be in there somewhere. We might kick them out of their own home.
“And make it ours.” Tyler liked making a point before Bender. Since he sat facing upriver, he made another. “A boat is coming.”
“Just a single person inside, nothing to worry about,” Bender said, relaxing.
“It’s changing course and coming here.”
Without looking at it again, Bender said, “It’s probably Prim. I expected her to follow.”
Neither of them leaped up to help her drag her boat ashore. Tyler had already scooped everything on the blanket back inside his backpack and fastened the belts, not because he didn’t trust Prim, but because it seemed right to keep her out of trouble, in case it came to them. And it always did.
The dragons raced the dog to be the first to sniff her. Tyler had his hand on his sword, prepared to protect her if needed, but they ran around her dodging her hands as she tried to grab one of the dragons, laughing and playing much as the three animals had. Then, they turned and ran off, the dog chasing after the faster dragons.
She came closer, hands on hips, a scowl on her face. “You tried to leave without me.”
Bender nodded, agreeing.
Tyler said, “Listen, you’re too young to be on your own, and chasing after us is bad for you in a hundred ways. We’re going to cause important people trouble. They’re going to fight back, and you need to stay clear, so you don’t get hurt.”
She sat on the edge of the blanket, her face solemn. “It’s the Cabots you’re going after.”
“Our business is none of yours,” Tyler snapped.
“In that case, you would have just told me that it wasn’t them you’re after. So, I conclude it is.” She wrinkled her nose in defiance.
“Bender, help me with this,” Tyler said.
“Sorry, I think we have a new partner.”
Prim smirked and said, “Tell me what we’re up to.”
Bender shrugged as if accepting a fourteen or fifteen-year-old girl as an equal partner happened every day. “Not far from here is the town of Trenton. We recruited the men for the army there.”
“Town? But with all those men is it a town?” Prim interrupted.
Bender smiled. “That’s my question, too. Trenton is the largest town we’ve ever seen, but they say the Cabots live downriver in a place called Aston, which is supposed to be ten times bigger.”
Tyler said, “I heard it was even bigger than that.”
“Can’t be,” Bender said, easily. “There aren’t that many people in the world.”
Prim flashed Tyler a superior look as she agreed with Bender. “Where would they all sleep? What about food?”
“It’s just what I heard; I didn’t say it was true,” Tyler said.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Then you shouldn’t repeat it.”
“Are you always going to take Bender’s side?”
Bender said, “It just demonstrates the wisdom of youth. Children can tell things adults have forgotten, especially those who are smarter.”
She still wore the smirk, but gazed at Bender with adoring eyes, then back at Tyler. “How will we find them in Aston if it is as big as you say?”
“I didn’t say it was that big! I only repeated what I was told. Anyhow, we may find them because of documents I found at the Cabot palace.”
“You must admit that you found them because of looking where I told you,” Bender said.
“Yes, that’s true. But the point is, we may find the Cabots and be able to draw them out.”
“How many of them are there? Cabots, I mean,” she asked.
Bender and Tyler exchanged glances. Bender shrugged and said, “We don’t know. That’s a question we should have asked those survivors at the palace.”
Prim glanced at Tyler, her eyes twinkling. “No matter what’s the truth, some will believe the number is ten times as much as it really is.”
Tyler felt his cheeks burn. Nobody had said life was about to get easier.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
They spent the afternoon on the island, one keeping watch while the others napped. The dragons returned with bird feathers stuck in the dried blood and muck on their necks and chests. Prim attempted to wipe the gore off, and managed to avoid getting bit while doing it. Lucky returned to them, holding a half-eaten fish as long as Prim’s arm. The pair of dragons snatched bites as the dog ran along until little was left for him.
No boats drifted past the island. As the light started to fail, the three of them gathered dry driftwood and made a pile. Prim used a flat piece to scoop out a hole in the sand, so deep water seeped inside the bottom, and then she scooped enough back inside so the bottom was dry.
Tyler and Bender carried larger logs and placed them around the fire pit to prevent people on either shore from seeing the flames. Clouds had settled in, and besides the darkness was falling faster than normal, the air felt heavy, like rain.
“Nothing’s worse than sleeping wet,” Tyler grumbled.
“We should have looked for a farm where we could have slept dry,” Bender said, echoing Tyler’s complaint.
Prim closed her eyes as an expression filled her face that told of her exasperation. Her tone was sharp. “You complain about everything but do nothing about it?”
“I can’t stop the rain,” Tyler said in the same tone she used.
The girl ignored his attitude. She pointed to the larger of the two boats. “The three of us can drag that up here by the fire and flip it over. Let one rim of the boat sit on a log. All six of us can sleep dry underneath the upturned boat.”
Bender laughed as he stood. Tyler didn’t laugh but also stood. They did as she said, and then she used the flat driftwood stick to dig a trench around the boat, and then one from there down to the edge of the river. She glanced at them. “To make the water stay away.”
They moved their blankets underneath, and all three crawled under to sleep, a trick Tyler was sure to remember. Not long after he went to sleep, a crack of lightening woke him to the sounds of rain pattering on the bottom of the boat. It quickly turned to a downpour.
“Glad we’re not out there,” Prim muttered before going back to sleep.
One more word about it and I may send you out there to sleep. Tyler closed his eyes and slept dry and comfortable in the soft sand. The next time he woke was because of a stagnant smell not much different from that of an old, overused outhouse.
“Oh, God,” Prim muttered, gagging and covering her nose and mouth, and refusing to breathe.
Bender said, “Is that dragon fart?”
With a whimper, Lucky crawled out from under the boat and slept the remainder of the night outside in the rain, well away from the boat. When another gassy fart sounded, Tyler held his breath as long as he could and considered joining the dog. But before he could decide, both dragons suddenly crawled out and ran away into the rain. The dragons reappeared when dawn broke.
Shortly after, they carried the boat to the water’s edge, and the two boats were soon floating down the river, a small rope connecting them. Lucky chose to ride with Prim.
The northern edge of the town of Trenton came into view, the familiar docks and piers, the buildings rising on the hillside one wooden building after another, almost touching each other. Many were painted, with white the most common color, then gray and
green. Some were left to weather a natural color.
Tyler said, “How can that many people live in one place?”
“What can they do that keeps them so confined?” Bender asked.
Prim watched and finally said, “It looks dirty and smells like dragon farts.”
The three of them laughed at that description while drifting past. But, she was right. That many people living in one place created filth and stink. They’d noticed some of it on the earlier trip, but after the heavy rainwater had flowed down the streets carrying anything that floated, the stench drifted out over the river. Tyler preferred dragon farts to that of drifting sewage.
A few people took the time to watch the two boats float gently past, but nobody waved or acknowledged them in any manner. A few stared with dull eyes. Very little conversation filled the wet morning air. While a few men worked on the piers or streets, the town was strangely inactive, more than the heavy rain could account for. If any of the three had wished to stop, the urge fled with the odd behavior.
“How far to the city with endless people?” Prim asked from her boat. “This one is too scared to visit.”
“Why scared?” Tyler asked.
“Just look at the people. They jump at small sounds; nobody is smiling. All of them look around before moving. Something happened here. Something bad.”
She was right. It hadn’t been like that a few days earlier. Tyler said, “Aston is the city we’re heading for. We’ll reach it before dark.”
Prim sat with her back to them and watched Trenton recede for a while before saying, “I’m sorry to tease you, Tyler. Aston might be larger than Trenton, but it’s so hard to imagine. But, Trenton was also hard to believe.”
“We’re all learning new things every day,” Bender said.
Prim continued, “If there were ten Cabots hidden within all the people back there in Trenton, how would you go about finding them?”
Tyler said, “A good question, but we’re going to make them come to us.”
“And then we’ll kill them.” Her tone left no room for argument.
Tyler said, “We’re going to take this one step at a time.”
She didn’t speak for a while again, and Tyler was learning that was when she did her thinking. She lifted an oar and pointed it at them. “This isn’t your fight. Not really. The Cabots would have made you into slaves, but didn’t. Then you destroyed their whole operation so they should be mad at you, but not necessarily the other way around.”
Bender, who had been quiet for a time, said, “She’s right.”
“No, she’s not.”
Bender said, “How did you and I become the people who have to right all the wrongs of the world? If we had any sense, we’d just float our boats down the river past Aston and find a nice place to make a home.”
“Where there are plenty of pretty maidens and smooth ale to drink,” Tyler added. “Where the sun shines every day, and it only rains at night.”
“And there are games of Blocks, but nobody plays as well as us, and we become richer,” Bender laughed.
Tyler hadn’t laughed and still didn’t. He said softly, “But, that’s not what we do, is it?”
“Listen, we got ourselves free of the army and have the money to set ourselves up with great lives. Why do we have to chase after the Cabots?”
Prim said, “Bender is right, you know. I must avenge my mother, father, and brother, but I can do it alone. Give me a copper penny to buy a good knife, and I’ll slit the throats of at least one of them. It is my revenge to take, my obligation to my family. You are fighting for different reasons, ones I don’t understand.”
“I have a question for you,” Tyler said, turning to face Prim. “Why is it that you sound like you’re ten-years-old one time, and a minute later, you sound twenty? Thirty?”
“Why is it you sound like you’re ten most of the time?” Prim snapped back. “Listen to what I mean, not what I say.”
Bender said, “One day she’s going to turn into a woman, and then both of us will have a trial until we find a fool to marry her. But she’s also right. She has good reasons to go after the Cabots, but you and me? I guess we just know what’s right and what’s wrong.”
“I do want to finish this,” Tyler said.
Bender nodded, all traces of humor gone. “Me too. At least, we’ll try, but remember, this is not the reason we came here. We deserted, and we went in search of a home, not fortune, fame, or revenge. Not unless we run into that Lieutenant we had in the army. Then we can take out some revenge.”
“Yes, that’s the reason,” Tyler said heatedly. “But the real reason we’ll land in Aston and look for Cabots is different, and I understand that, too. If we find them, or not, we can always buy or steal another boat and float on down the river to the next town, or the next.”
Prim said, “Then it’s decided. We’ll stop in Aston, first. I may decide to remain longer if the two of you go on. That isn’t a threat. I’ll know where you went and will follow when I’m finished with my duty.”
Tyler turned to watch the shoreline, as well as keeping an eye the filthy dragon that insisted on edging closer and getting his clothing dirty. Despite spending a good portion of the night in the rain while hunting, it had crawled under the boat again, and when he woke the thing had been curled up next to his leg. He’d looked around and found the other sleeping next to Bender, and Lucky next to Prim.
But they had slept relatively dry thanks to the upturned boat and Prim. The rain had apparently softened the scabs on Lucky, and he’d put on weight in the last few days, so his ribs didn’t show as much. Prim had groomed him as much as possible, and while still appearing fearsome, he didn’t give the impression of dying or being sick. But the missing ear and multitude of scars told people he was no stranger to violence.
The river joined another and ran slower and wider. It now carried trees, stumps, sticks, and branches. Bender pointed out that the storm may account for the debris, or it may be from the log jam they’d set free. A settlement sat at the confluence of the two rivers, but it was far too small to be Aston, so they continued past. The land grew flatter, and the only mountains were in the far distance. Farms stood alongside the banks, most with houses and barns set well away from the shallow banks where floods wouldn’t easily reach them. The few built closer were on poles or stilts, telling of the changes in the river.
Prim said, “You’re going to make the Cabots come to us? How?”
“Not at first,” Bender said.
Tyler continued speaking for him, “Before any battle, we learned to check out the lay of the land, scout the enemy, and figure out how to proceed, not that we were an officer or in-charge. We just learned from them and apply that to our lives.”
“How do you do that?” Prim asked.
Bender said, while pulling harder on the oars because of the sluggish flow of the river, “We never jumped into a game of cards or Blocks until we knew who the players were, their routines, how they cheated, and any changes in the regular rules of the game.”
“Cheated? Did you play with cheaters? That’s stupid.”
“And why we only played with them after we knew how they did it. Once we knew how they cheated, we could use that against them. For instance, there was one sergeant who only played while another stood behind his opponent and gave him signals, telling of the block he controlled.”
“I’m assuming you didn’t gamble against him,” she said.
They laughed, remembering the game. Tyler said, “Bender played, lost a little, but not much. Then, the pot built for one hand and I rushed up to the cheater passing signals and told him the Captain wanted to see him right away. I told him that I was supposed to escort him to the Captain. We left the game while they played.”
Bender said, “During the commotion of Tyler shouting about how bad the Captain needed him, everyone looked away from the board to watch them. I retrieved a single block that I needed for a winning hand.”
Prim smiled. “B
ut the other guy had already been told by the cheater that he had the winning hand?”
“The betting went back and forth for a good while,” Bender said.
“So, the cheaters got cheated?” Prim said. “Good. I think more of you for that.”
Bender passed a look at Tyler that told him to change the subject or shut up. Tyler guessed Bender was willing to allow Prim to maintain her conceptions about their gambling, and her thinking more of them because of cheating a cheater, which was not always the case.
“What’s that?” Tyler asked, jutting his chin ahead to the smudge of gray in the sky ahead.
As the boats got closer, the smudge turned into a vast cloud of gray, then they smelled smoke, of an odd sort they hadn’t smelled before. The air stung their eyes. Tyler wiped his hand down his arm, and it streaked, gray, almost black. The sun faded to a disk of dim light.
The dragons turned their heads and looked to the sky as if they didn’t like what they found. Lucky licked his paws to clean himself.
Bender said, “It’s like smoke that sticks to you.”
“I don’t like it,” Prim added. “It tastes bad.”
The air continued to darken until it became similar to a thin fog on a fall morning. Out of the dimness ahead rose buildings, row upon row of them. Then, even more buildings came into view on the other side of the river, and finally, a great stone bridge spanned the river, tall enough for even large ships to pass under. The city of Aston was so large that it occupied both sides of the river, and ten times the size of Trenton seemed to underestimate it.
The idea of mentioning that to Prim and Bender crossed his mind, but Tyler was too involved with what he saw. The buildings continued as far as the eye could see until they became lost in the gray haze of distance. Tyler believed there were more beyond what he could see. Those on the right bank appeared mostly smaller, not generally as tall, and shabbier. The older piers and docks leaned, were missing pilings, and empty of ships, while those across the river were vibrant with activity, and ships of every sort could be seen at a single glance.
