by Devin Hanson
He shook out his cloak then, revealing a complex dapple of green on the background of tan. Jules sat up a bit straighter, eyed him a bit then started collecting her own leaves. Hiding a smile, Andrew gathered careful handfuls of surface dirt from the hill, taking care to include moss and dead grass and bits of whatever he found laying around. This mulch he layered over the whole cloak then walked over it, grinding it in with his boots with sharp twists of his heels.
With a last flourish, he shook his cloak out and examined it with a critical eye. It was still too much the store-bought brown, so he repeated the process with more sand, taking care to find pockets of fine white dust between rocks. This time, the cloak was a nice dusty grey with green dappling. Bits of twigs and lumps of grass were still stuck to the cloth and these he left in place. He tossed it over a bush and was pleased at how much the bush looked like another bump of the hillside.
"Okay, gunny, help me with this pulp. I'm not as deft as you at staining my clothes."
Andrew chuckled, taking her sarcasm as the compliment it was no doubt trying to be. "The trick," he informed her absently as he worked the leaves into the appropriate thickness, "is to use local foliage and groundcover. Every mountain is different from its neighbor, so you have to match your climbing destination as close as possible. Sometimes you don't have bushes, so you have to grind out rock powder. That can take hours. We're lucky that our mountain has stuff growing on it. Give me your cloak."
This time, Jules handed it over without a fuss. "Is it really necessary, though?"
"The only time I've seen a dragon eat someone is when he didn't take the time to adjust his cloak properly. So yeah, I'd say it's necessary."
"Or when they panic and run."
"Or then," Andrew agreed complacently. Or when they were bloody idiots and tried to attack one in the sky. Then too. "I'm surprised you didn't know."
"Well," she said and abruptly looked nervous, "I haven't really done this sort of thing before."
Andrew sat back on his heels. "Never? I thought you were a collector."
"Well, yeah." She waved it off. "I am. But I don't raid a living dragon's lair. Tiny gods. I'm not stupid."
"Well, we are now. Stupid, I mean."
"Yeah..." She pursed her lips and looked thoughtful. "Perhaps. But the payoff is too much to decline."
"Money is good..."
Jules nodded.
"But living is better."
"I'd debate that, but regardless. It is possible. I know people who did it."
Andrew finished grinding a second layer of dirt into her cloak and handed it back. "There we go. Now you looks as stylish as me."
Jules rolled her eyes but put the cloak on.
"Hood up."
"Do I really-"
"Yes, really. If a dragon flies overhead, you won't have time to get your hood up. All you can do, and I mean all you can do, is freeze in place and hope it doesn't accidentally land on you."
"You make it sound so charming."
"We are hiding from dragons, after all."
Jules grumbled, but she put her hood up. "Now what?"
"We head for your ridge. Stay off the bare rock, try and stay next to any brush or trees. Even if you have to go far out of your way. It'll take more time, but it will be safer. Keep an eye on the sky as much as you can. Can you whistle?"
"Whistle? Like this?" Jules pursed her lips and let out a musical trill, climbing up and down a scale.
"Very nice. But I mean like this." Andrew folded his tongue between his teeth and let out a piercing blast. Birds shook themselves into flight from a nearby tree, squawking their indignation.
Jules grimaced, one hand raised halfway to cover her ears. "Ow? No. Not like that."
"Well, I'll teach you as we go. For now, though, there are two signals. The one you just heard me make was the ‘dragon nearby' warning. You hear that, you crouch down and tuck the edges of your cloak under yourself. Then you do not move. Do not lift your head. Do not shift your weight. I don't care if you itch, if your leg falls asleep, or if a spider is crawling on your face. You. Do. Not. Move."
Jules made a face, but didn't dispute it. Once Andrew was certain she understood, he whistled again, quieter this time, the two-toned ‘all clear' signal. "When you hear that, the dragon has moved on. It might be a minute. It might be an hour. But understand this: dragons have incredible eyesight and they hunt by detecting movement. If your cloak is flapping in the wind, you're dead. If you get bored and sneak a peek, the dragon will see your hood move and it'll be all over."
Jules nodded, her usual brassy certainty replaced by uncertainty with a tinge of fear. "And that's it? The dragons leave us alone?"
Andrew shrugged. "I've been doing this every day for the last two and a half years. It's worked so far, but every day, I expect the dragons to see through my cloak's disguise, and the last thing I'll be aware of is the scent of cinnamon."
Jules hugged herself. She looked younger, somehow, and Andrew wondered just how old she really was. "I hate cinnamon," she muttered.
"But, hey. Look on the plus side, our shadow friend will have an extremely hard time seeing us."
"There is that," she agreed and forced a smile. "I hadn't thought of that."
Chapter 11
Runewords
'Just over the next ridge' turned out to be the majority of the day's hike, with Jules stopping every hour to spend a while scanning the mountain slope behind them. If their shadow was following, he was far more discreet than he had been earlier.
They found a spot leeward that had a large outcrop blocking line of sight back the way they had come and set about making camp.
"This far into the mountains," Andrew warned, "we can't have a fire going that's visible from the air."
"Dragons."
"Yep."
Jules sighed. "Sometimes I wish I had never gone to the Academy and met Trent. I wouldn't be stuck out in the middle of nowhere with nobody to talk to but a bossy gunny."
"Sorry."
"About what? Keeping us alive?" She shrugged. "I'm just complaining. You're right about the fire. Doesn't make me want a hot meal any less though. So, what do you want to learn about runes today?"
It was Andrew's turn to shrug. "I've no idea. I was looking at the scale last night and it seemed like there were hundreds of runewords there. It's not even that big either." He held his hands apart to demonstrate the six-inch scale.
Jules gave a sympathetic grin. "Not so many as that, but it sure seems that way at first. Well, let's do something fun, then. I'll teach you another rune and then we can duel."
"Duel?" Andrew asked uncertainly.
"Yep. Don't worry, it's fun. First though, let me see your scale so I can find a rune you can learn."
Andrew dutifully handed over the scale and Jules looked closely at it for a minute before handing it back.
"Okay, we're going to go with Ad, another protection rune, the rune of warding. Ad is handy, and unique in that it's the only source rune that can be made into a runeword with itself. This one you can write on paper, so I'll give you the rune and you can practice it a bit on your own while I find materials for dueling." She sketched it out, a rather simple double-spiral. "And this is Add, the runeword." Add was just the rune Ad attached to itself. "You can chain them all you want and it's still Add, though some argue that it turns into Add-d-d-d-d. A waste of breath, if you ask me. The result is the same."
"What's it do?"
"Oh, right. Add is called a Warding Chain, and blocks the effects of runewords from reaching the far side of the chain. So you can write Igan on one side of a stick then ward in a circle around the stick and wind up with a torch that you can hold without burning yourself."
"Oh, that is handy."
"Yep. It's one you have to be careful with too. I've seen people get lazy with their Add chains and mess one of them up and not notice. The rune effects leak through and bad things happen."
"Catching on fire."
"That's
one bad thing, yes. There are far worse things, though. But you'll learn about that soon enough. Now, practice your Add and I'll be back in a few minutes."
Andrew got to work practicing Ad and Add, using Jules' original sketch and his scale to verify. After getting reasonably sure he had it down, he wrote Tan in a corner of a piece of paper, tested its strength and found that it resisted his efforts to fold it a little better. So his observation of the scale the night before was correct. He felt a surge of pride then set about making an Add chain around the Tan runeword.
After a few painstaking minutes, he tried tearing the paper and found it ripped easily. Jules wasn't back yet, so he did it again, this time with Igan in the center. The Add circle contained the flames nicely and he admired the spot of fire for a minute before experimenting with how to disrupt the Warding chain. He succeeded on the second try and almost caught his sleeve on fire as the piece of paper erupted in sudden flame and he had to dart in and extend the Igan tail until the fire went out.
"Nice one," Jules observed. She had returned mid his experiment and had held back until he succeeded.
"Yeah, didn't think that one all the way through."
"I did warn you. When runing, it's always a good idea to think one step ahead before you put pencil to paper or stylus to metal. What will happen when I complete the next rune? Or, for you, what will happen with I break a Warding chain around an Igan?"
"Lesson learned in fire, and all that."
"Indeed. Let's hope you've really learned it. It's a bad one to forget."
"Consider me chastised," he said, "You were going to show me dueling?"
Jules frowned at him, hands on hips, then sighed. "Right. Dueling. Well, it's a fairly simple concept. I carve Tan on my stick, you draw Tan on a piece of paper. Then I try and poke my stick through your paper."
"Wow..." Andrew said when she finished. "That doesn't sound like dueling."
"I had to improvise, given our current lack of Academy woodworks. There're dozens of ways to duel. Two straps of leather supporting a weight, et cetera. The stick-and-paper duel is a test that closely resembles, say, a spear and a breastplate. Since I don't have the urge to kill you right at this moment, we'll settle for the more genteel approach."
"Thanks."
"No problem." She produced her own stylus, one with a rosewood handle and a metal tip that was a burnished dark grey.
"What's that made of?" Andrew asked, curious.
"Titanium alloy. Or it was until someone made it even harder via Alchemy. I'm not sure what it's called now."
"Not a big fan of Alchemy?"
Jules shook her head. "Too brainy for my tastes. My skills are in my power of observation and manual dexterity. Thus runing is best for me. Maybe once you are declared a Runemaster you can branch out and master Alchemy as well." She set to carving her Tan into a flat spot on the stick made with her knife.
Andrew took a fresh piece of paper and drew Tan as best as he knew in the center. He finished at about the same time as Jules.
"All done? Good, now flip it over. I'm not supposed to be able to see your Tan, and you're not supposed to see mine."
Andrew complied then watched in interest as she placed the stick on the paper and leaned her weight against it. For a moment, nothing happened except the paper dimpled a bit, then Jules leaned harder on it and with a pop, the stick burst through the paper.
"Whew," she said with a strained smile, "almost didn't go through. Your Tan is much stronger today than it was yesterday. I'm going to have to actually try."
"That nuance I found definitely helped."
"I can tell. Now if we had more people, I would test my stick against the next contender's paper. Once my stick broke, the winner would carve his own stick and continue. The last person with a stick is the winner."
"So with just two people, you won."
"I did."
"Now what?"
"Now you study your scale some more. Try and find something else about the Tan you didn't see. Normal rules, you have ten minutes to study then we try again."
They dueled for the rest of the evening, only taking a break to eat a cold supper, until the setting sun robbed them of the light to draw by. Andrew hadn't found any further nuances in his timed searches of the scale, but Jules said his later efforts had provided more resistance.
"It's a matter of practice. You're already very good. Probably a third of the students in the Academy would lose to you."
"Really? I've only just begun. I haven't even started to bend your stick."
"Really, truly. If I were a professor, I'd be using haughty words like ‘prodigy' and ‘natural'. For now, I'll refrain from inflating your head any more than it already is."
"Thanks, I think."
"You'll thank me later. For now, try and find something about Tan on your scale that you didn't notice before. Don't know. See."
Andrew shook his head, sullen, but unsurprised, at his inability to defeat Jules. Later, while he lay in his bedroll, he took out his scale again and pored over it. Further details in Tan remained elusive, but whatever mindset the dueling had put him in let him find many tiny mistakes in the Ig and Igan that Jules had shown him. Why had he never thought to look at Igan for accuracy beyond the last jag? Her sketch had been rough, and his attempts at copying had lost more minute details. Yes, it worked. But with all these minor corrections the strength of the rune would be greatly increased.
Mindful of the Guild's policy of keeping nuances to oneself, he didn't mention the discrepancies to Jules. Maybe she had shown him the rune as best she knew how. It wasn't his position to correct her. Besides, maybe he would give her a pleasant surprise on the morrow.
And what did she mean by 'don't know, see'? Cryptic nonsense. Typical female. He rolled up in his bedding and awkwardly threw his cloak over him, wary of a low-flying dragon during the night. He turned his head to warn Jules to do the same, and found she was already covered and snoring softly.
Sleep came slowly that night.
When Andrew had left Andronath as a gunny for the last time, he hadn't really been paying attention to where the wagon had gone. There were few good roads that led north into the mountains, and all of them petered out to a dirt track within a few miles of the city. The horses were bred for sustained trotting with a load and with the wagon built as light as possible from airon and other like materials, it wasn't unusual for the wagons to travel thirty or forty miles from the city.
Andrew could tell which road northward they had taken by how long they stayed on the smooth main road before the ride in the back of the wagon became too rough to doze. On that day, Ivan had taken them up the second of the four main roads, and that's where Jules and he had ditched their follower.
If Jules had let them follow the track, Andrew was fairly certain he could have led them to the right mountain fairly quickly, in maybe two days. Instead, Jules had insisted they cut cross country and bushwhack their way to their destination. This was their third night since leaving Andronath, and they had covered about half of the distance.
Jules shook Andrew awake and held a finger to his lips when he opened his mouth, giving him a look to tell him to remain silent. The look wasn't necessary. Any argument Andrew was going to make had fled from his thoughts on first contact.
After seeing that Andrew wasn't going to start shouting questions, she lifted her finger and pointed toward the rising sun. Andrew squinted, and made out the smoke from a fire rising fitfully.
"Who is mad enough to light a fire?" Andrew whispered.
"It's a signal. See how the smoke has those clear breaks in it? Someone is reporting in."
"Do you know what they're saying?"
Jules rolled her eyes. "No. But I can guess. We need to move. We'll have company soon." She turned to her bedroll and started rolling it up.
Andrew scrambled out of his and put his boots on after checking inside them to make sure nothing had taken up residence overnight. "I thought we lost them," he said.
> "We did. It bought us a little time. They have an alchemist with them, whoever it is that is following us. Given the necessity, an alchemist can nearly always find you."
Andrew had discovered the hard way that pushing for more detail than Jules was willing to give out always ended poorly for him, so he quashed his curiosity and focused on getting the last of their campsite packed away.
"That smoke will draw a dragon," he commented as he worked.
"A necessary risk." Without lighting a fire, Jules had somehow managed to produce a mug of hot tea, and was sipping it while she watched him work. Her pack was already put together and on her back.
"What I meant was, there has got to be a better way to communicate over long distances than smoke columns."
Jules smiled. "You're assuming the man at the fire is an alchemist. Likely, whoever is trying to follow us hired a few dozen trackers to comb the mountains looking for us."
Andrew swung his pack up onto his back then fastened his cloak on over the top of it. "Ready."
Jules poured out the last of her tea and stowed the cup. "Alright." She got to her feet and together they left their campsite behind.
"What's the plan?" Andrew asked. His specialty, avoiding dragons, was of little help in avoiding humans tracking them through the wilderness, especially with an alchemist to assist them. Jules was the authority on that, so he deferred to her.
"They have our trail now," she said, "but it could take them hours to catch up. We continue as before, but keep an extra eye out. We don't want to get ambushed."
"What will they do if they catch us?"
"When they catch up," Jules corrected, "They will try and convince us to tell them where we're headed."
"Isn't this all a bit much, though? I mean, how could they know we're trying to track down a brooding dragon?"
Jules shrugged. "They don't know. But I have something of a reputation. I've had more than my fair share of luck in locating valuable fluxes. If they get only a single scale from all this, it will repay their expenses many times over."
