Of Dragon Warrens and Other Traps

by Shannon McGee

  “Hey,” Aella said softly, her hand touching my shoulder briefly before falling away. I turned to look at her. “Sorry for not waking you earlier. I did come up to get you for dinner, but you seemed so tired. I know the last few months have been the first time you’d ever spent days without a real bed. I thought…”

  I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “So, you were ok? No bad dreams?”

  I bit my lip as I smiled. She could ladle so much concern into her voice. “No. No bad dreams.”

  My meal was only half eaten when Conner, Hamash, and the rest of Seventh Company returned. I excused myself anyway, making room for them to sit, and using the chaos of their arrival to avoid being asked to stay by my own company. My tray and plate went into a large bin by the kitchen doors—dishes were another chore we all took in turns.

  I didn’t know where I was going, only that all the joy in the Twelfth and Seventh Company’s reunion sat sourly in my stomach, and I had to get away from it before I said something nasty to someone who didn’t deserve it.

  My first stop was to my room, where I grabbed my thick wool cloak, and my practice staff. The staff was a poor substitute to my shepherding crook when it came to beauty, but that had remained in Nophgrin. I’d forgotten it in the woods, and it had seemed silly to try to find it to bring it with me at the time. A staff was more suitable for fighting, and it worked just as well for gauging footing in thick snow.

  Deep in thought, I walked without really looking where I was going. It wasn’t long before I found myself out in what must have been the barracks practice yards.

  I halted, stopping inside of the wooden fence that surrounded the yard. At the far end straw and cloth dummies, capped in crude wooden helmets with targets painted in fading red on their chests, stood in one line. To their right, flush against the outer wall to the barracks, were a series of archery targets.

  There were two fenced off areas within the yard. One was longer, with churned muddy earth and hoof marks that bespoke horse-work. The other must have been for combat practice.

  A small shed stood tucked against the corner of two of the barracks great stone walls. I’d have bet coin I didn’t have that the practice equipment was there. The door would probably be locked, but luckily, I didn’t need anything from it. I hefted my staff, eyes back on the practice dummies.

  I had pulled on my mittens before coming out into the cold, but they didn’t precisely lend themselves to staff work. I took them off and stuffed them into the deep pockets of my cloak as I made my way across the hard earth.

  My feet crunched on tufts of grass, covered in thick layers of frost. On top of the snow that was coming down, Forklahke had been snowed on lightly some time earlier in the week. Specific parts of the field had been cleared, as well as paths to them, but little else.

  Even though my legs protested, still sore from their time in the saddle, I forced myself to trot. I punctuated each footstep with a punch of the opposite fist, so that by the time I had reached the dummies, I was warm enough to shuck my cloak. I hung it on the wooden arm of the next dummy over, and without waiting for the cold to sink its talons into me, I dove into one of my drills.

  I began with a combination of strikes and blocks. Those were followed by a move which involved me dropping to my hands and toes on the earth and using my arms to push myself up over and over. The slowly growing layer of snow on the ground was so cold it burned my fingers, but I ignored it.

  Jumping to my feet I started the next combination. These were tougher, as the cold made my fingers stiff. I’d never used a practice dummy before, but I quickly found I appreciated not feeling the need to reel back the force of my blows, as I might have with another person. The clack and whap of wood against wood, and wood against fabric was almost soothing.

  With each strike I imagined I was hitting some imaginary opponent. Strike. A villain. Strike. Someone evil, who would tear apart other people’s lives for the joy of it. Strike. He’d never even see me coming.

  More pushups, and then back to the staff. If I did that—if I destroyed someone evil like that—it would prove it to everyone. They would know that I was as different from him as anyone could possibly be.

  By the time I hit the fourth combination I was sweating, and my heavy breathing fogged in front of me. I paused to stretch, leaning my staff against the dummy, holding one arm across my chest with the other. I turned, twisting my spine… and jumped.

  Dai was sitting on the fence of the enclosure to my left. He smiled apologetically, his almond eyes crinkling. Snow had gathered across his black hair. A black and white cat lay on his lap, belly exposed, eyes closed. It was purring so loudly I was surprised I had not heard it before. I forced myself to smile back.

  “Shouldn’t you be celebrating with Seventh Company?” I asked.

  “I have plenty of time for that. I wanted to visit with my outdoor friends before night fell.” A tilt of his head prompted me to look over my shoulder.

  To my surprise, two more cats snuggled together on the archery barrels to my right. One was gray, curled into a tight ball, its elegant tail so long that it covered its entire face. The other was solid black, snow starkly contrasting on its fur. That one was lying in what mother and I had always referred to as “cat loaf” position. With all its limbs tucked beneath it, it looked like a loaf of black bread, with a cat’s head on top. Even from this distance I could see its bright yellow eyes watching me with a healthy dose of suspicion.

  My smile softened. I’d always loved cats, though Nophgrin never had more than a couple strays at one time. Our population of lesser gryphons competed too fiercely with normal cats for them to thrive.

  Squatting down so I appeared small, I rubbed two fingers together, in an attempt to entice the awake one closer. It stared at me, unmoved.

  “You know these lordlings?” I asked Dai, looking over my shoulder at him.

  He nodded and dug into a small purse, procuring a strip of white meat that must have been chicken. “They hunt mice in the barns, but also I feed them.”

  His black and white companion cracked a pale green eye. One white paw raised tentatively to rest against the hand that held the tasty morsel. Dai smiled down at the cat but tossed the piece over to me. It landed a foot to my right. He took out another piece of chicken and gave it to the cat before it could chase after the one he had tossed to me. Not that the cat seemed inclined to move any time soon.

  Feeling silly, I waddled over to the chicken, still crouching. “Do they have names?” Now that I wiggled real bait between my fingers, the black cat perked up considerably, a look of interest in its eyes.

  Dai made a noise of affirmation. “The one I have here is Magpie. Aella calls her Mags. The black one, her name is Raven. The gray one, he is Dove.” I heard the smile in his voice as he listed the names.

  Raven had leaped from the archery barrel, causing Dove to raise his head in displeasure, and I belayed my response to Dai, so I wouldn’t frighten her away. Seeing what Raven’s aim was, Dove kept his head up, eyeing me.

  As Raven came closer, I realized her fur had white strands throughout it; she was older than I had initially thought. Bringing the hand with the chicken close to my chest, I extended the empty one. Raven gazed at the chicken, spared me a shrewd look, and then rubbed against my proffered fingers. A soft purr emanated from her. When she had grazed me several times, I gave her head a brief scratch before letting her have the chicken. Interest piqued, Dove jumped off the archery barrel.

  I stood, making sure to grab my cloak before joining Dai on the fence. Both of the cats followed.

  “Did you name them?”

  Dai shook his head, offering me another piece of chicken, which I took. “Aella did. Mags and Dove were kittens when she first came here. They’ve had kittens themselves since then, but those are wilder.”

  “I can’t imagine a young Aella out playing with kittens,” I chuckled. Raven rubbed against my shin, purring loudly as I fiddled with the chick
en in my hand.

  “She was too young to join her mother in the field when she first arrived, and she was much like you,” Dai said, “always looking for something to do. Wary of other people.”

  “I’m not—” Dove had reached me, and rather than be content with twining around my ankles as Raven did, he sank his claws into my leggings and began to climb, intent on the chicken in the hand that dangled at my side. With a yip of pain, I bent down, pulling him free of my clothes and skin, to cradle him in an arm.

  “Pushy little things,” I said reproachfully, offering him the chicken he had been after. He grabbed it greedily.

  “They have to be. If they don’t go after their next meal with ferocity, they are unlikely to get it. I am not always here, and not everyone loves cats as I do.”

  “But why wouldn’t anyone else take care of them? They do a service for the barracks,” I protested. “They rid it of mice.”

  Dai lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “And if they are doled out consistent meals, do you picture them hunting in a cold barn for scrawny mice? Besides, as you’ve seen, they are not the most congenial animals.”

  “Well they don’t mean anything by it. Do you?” I began to coo only to have a strangled noise of pain come out of me instead. Dove was clawing my arm, a signal that he wanted down now that the chicken was gone. I let him spring from my arms to land daintily in the snow. On Dai’s lap, Mags continued to purr without opening her eyes.

  “It is their nature.”

  “It’s not.” I shook my head sharply, gesturing at Mags. “She can behave well enough, and she was raised right along with Dove. So why does one claw and behave badly, but the other lies content on your lap?”

  Dai gazed at me, unblinking. I was the one to look away first. At last, he spoke, so quietly I almost didn’t hear him. “I thought we left this back on the road, but perhaps I merely trusted that your engagement with your training meant you were embracing this new life. Perhaps that was nearsighted of me.”

  My heart thudded, and I couldn’t help but look at him, startled by his bluntness. I almost lied. I was getting good at it. It would have been a simple thing to laugh and shake my head…but I couldn’t. Dai was more than just a second to my commander. He was my teacher, and he was my friend. He had saved my life, not just in the fall, but each evening since then, by forcing me to stay in the present moment.

  I studied my hands. My fingers were red from the cold, and chapped, worse than I could ever recall them being back home. Deliberately slow, I took my mittens out of my cloak and began to pull them on, relishing their warmth from being close to my body.

  “I have embraced my new life,” I said. “I wouldn’t have asked you if I could stay if I hadn’t. It’s just that… on the road I was becoming ok again. Or, I thought I was. But now that I’m here everything reminds me of what I’ve lost. It’s more than my home. It’s my history. You all, you can say ‘remember this,’ or ‘remember that,’ and someone will laugh and nod. No one here remembers who I am—who I was—but me. Now all I am is a girl with no family, who can’t even pay for her own meals. I used to be someone else.”

  “Some people crave the opportunity you’ve been given.”

  I jerked my head up to scowl at him, “The opportunity I’ve been given? Having my life robbed from me?”

  “You’ve been given a chance at a new life. You can be anyone you want to be.” His voice was too kind.

  “Except who I was.”

  “Only if all you were was a shepherd.”

  “And a sister,” I sneered.

  “And a sister,” he acknowledged patiently. “But were you not also kind and diligent? Were you not also strong? Did you like your tea a certain way? Those things have not changed.”

  I forced myself to breathe. To think about what he was saying, since he was clearly trying to help. The pause made me realize that I was starting to feel cold. The wind had not let up throughout our entire conversation, and though my boots had been weatherproofed a few months prior, the damp of the ground was leaching through. Hesitantly, I climbed onto the fence beside Dai, and sat facing the opposite direction.

  He was right, and he was wrong. I felt comfortable owning to being diligent. I didn’t know any other way to be. Kindness though? Wasn’t being amiable now just self-preservation? To purposefully endear yourself to those your life depended on? Was that goodness? I didn’t know. As to strong? The events of the last few months had proven that I had been anything but strong in the past. I had been stupid and cocooned in a blanket of protection. That ripped away, I was forced to adapt. So I was strong now, but it was a new thing to me.

  “I like my tea without milk now,” I said.

  He inclined his head. “When I was younger I ate fried grasshoppers. I would still, but they are not available to me. In the summer I love to swim, but in the winter I refrain.”

  I hugged myself. “I see what you’re saying, but it’s not the same. I feel like the person I was is gone, Dai, and I liked that person. I don’t know this new me.”

  “Changing is part of coming into the greater world. You may like this new person yet.”

  “But will I ever stop feeling lost? Was Benjamin right? After what my brother did… do I deserve to?”

  He shook his head. “I have no more right to tell you that than he did.”

  “But if there was a scale, weighing me—”

  “Only the gods possess such a scale. It would be even more precise than that which is in the king’s treasury. No human can claim to know the true value of another.”

  “No. Sometimes you know for sure what it is that a person deserves.” I said firmly, thinking of Master Noland.

  “Sometimes.” He nodded. “But those times get less as you get older. There are too many gray areas. There is too much time in a life for small things to add up. When you were younger, you might have believed that purification by fire was always the way. Yet now, you might feel differently. That it is too hasty a method.”

  “No,” I said, even stronger than before. “Michael deserved to burn. I am grateful for escaping the fire myself, but I know that keeping my life will mean ill fortune for Beth and for my family. I regret that.”

  “Taryn, no matter what the men who came to retrieve you believe, even your parents know that you cannot be blamed for a crime committed by your brother. I wish you would see it too.”

  I made a noise of frustration. If they hadn’t believed it, why else would they have sent me away?

  “I was connected enough to my brother that his ritual would have worked. That must mean that I am connected enough to his luck that I was poisoned by what he did.” I stroked a temple braid, half talking to myself now. “If I become strong enough, and if I stop enough evils, I might fix it. Perhaps someday I can even go home again, and the town will have heard of my deeds, and they will know that I’ve balanced my luck.”

  It was a hope so small, and so painful that I had not even told Aella of it. I glanced sidelong at Dai from beneath my lashes, trying to read his expression. Immediately, I wished I could pluck the words back from the air. He looked at me with what I couldn’t discern as anything but pity, his eyebrows pulled softly together, and his mouth pursed ever so slightly. The hand that stroked Magpie had stilled. He seemed to be formulating a reply.

  In a flurry of movement, I turned back around on the railing, and pushed off, making a beeline to my staff. I did not want him to tell me that going home was impossible. Tearing off my mittens, I touched my bare fingers to the corners of my blurry eyes, disgusted to find my eyes were wet—now of all times to cry! I scrubbed them, and then began to strike the dummy. Whack!

  “The path of the company will never cross with Master Noland, Taryn.”

  WHACK. That strike reverberated up my arms, and my frozen fingers spasmed so that I dropped the staff. It sank into a small drift, and I had to dig my fingers through the snow to get it back.

  “Perhaps,” I said, leaning the staff back against the dummy
and wiping my fingers under my armpits to dry and warm them. He had seen into my heart. The wish I had barely admitted to myself.

  “We’re mercenaries, not heroes. You may find your own redemption, but it won’t be along that path. You won’t find vengeance through us. If that is what you’re seeking, then you should not go with us come spring.”

  I massaged my fingers, trying to get them to work properly. His tone was stern and clipped. It was the closest he’d ever come to rebuking me. Still, I couldn’t look at him.

  “I will tell Aedith you are unsuitable for the company. If I have to.”

  I whirled on him. “You can’t!”

  He leveled me with a stare and the rest of my protest dried up in my mouth. “I can, and in fact, it is my duty to. The protection of my people comes first. It is one thing to disagree with a job. In fact, that will happen, and at times, Aedith will listen if you object. She values those who do so, as you saw when dealing with those three men from your home. However, your morals will not always dictate your work as a mercenary. You must accept that. I like you Taryn, but if you have plans to redeem yourself, or go after a man who would have us killed as easily as taking a breath… then you are a danger to my company.”

  I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t. He was right. I wanted to do good deeds to make up for the evils Michael had committed, the evils that I was so closely entwined with, but it was more than that. I also wanted Master Noland’s head. The feeling had been slowly building within me. Sometimes I almost thought I could really feel where he was—an inexorable pull somewhere to the south.

  But those feelings had nothing to do with the roles of a mercenary, and if I were to be a mercenary, if I were to accept these people as my new family and their lives as my new life, I would have to give up those aspirations.

  “I can understand that,” I said aloud, so he knew that I did.

  He nodded. “So, you see why what you are feeling now concerns me.”