Blood of Dragons

by Robin Hobb

  She looked up at the small houses perched in the branches overhead. In a few more minutes, they’d be at the docks of Cassarick. She had resolved that once they tied up she would disembark and confront her old life. She’d go with Leftrin to the Traders’ Hall, not just to confirm his stories that dragons had left Kelsingra to attack Chalced, but to stand before the Council and demand her wages. She would go with Leftrin when he informed them that he had Chalcedean captives to transfer to their custody, be with him when he handed both Trader Candral and his written confession over to Trader Polsk, head of the Council.

  Several hours ago, the small fishing boats that plied the river had discovered Tarman. Some had shouted greetings and questions, while others had stopped their fishing and now trailed behind them. At least two of them had raced ahead of them to spread the word that the Tarman was returning. Leftrin had responded to each of them in an identical manner: a smile, a wave, and a toss of his head toward Cassarick. Alise knew their curiosity would be boiling over. There would be many questions and interest in every detail.

  With every passing tree trunk, she held tighter to her resolution to face it all squarely. It was time to stop running away, time to prove she had begun a new life on her own terms. As she looked up at the more numerous houses they passed, folk were coming out to point and shout to one another. She had expected their arrival to stir interest, but not on this scale.

  ‘I’m not sure I belong here any more,’ Alise said quietly.

  Tillamon came out on deck and advanced to stand by the railing next to her. Alise glanced over at her. She had gathered her hair back from her face, and then pinned it to the top of her head. Every scale on her brow, every wattle along her jaw-line was bared. She wore an Elderling gown that was patterned in gold and green. Matching slippers shod her feet. Earrings dangled beside her pebbled neck. She answered Alise’s smile with, ‘Hennesey and I are going with Big Eider to visit his mother. Then I’m taking Hennesey to Trehaug to meet my mother and little sister. ’

  ‘And your older brother?’ Alise asked her teasingly.

  Tillamon only smiled wider. ‘Bendir will, I think, be pleased for me. At first. When he and mother discover that I’ve decided to live in Kelsingra when I’m not travelling on Tarman, they’ll fuss. But once I tell them that Reyn has gone off to Chalced on a dragon to destroy the city, they’ll probably forget all about me. ’ She smiled as she said it, and added, ‘For years, Bendir has used our younger brother to distract mother from his ventures. Now it’s my turn. ’

  Leftrin grinned, but her words had turned Alise’s mind to the dragons and their mission.

  ‘I wonder if they’re there yet,’ Alise ventured.

  Leftrin took her arm. ‘There’s no point in worrying. We won’t know anything until they come back. For now, all we can do is take care of our own business here. And we’ve plenty of that. ’

  ‘What do you think will become of them?’ Tillamon nodded toward the Chalcedean captives. They sat on the deck, glumly watching Cassarick draw closer. A length of anchor chain was coiled in a circle, and each man’s ankle was manacled to it. Alise had not witnessed the ‘incident’ that had led to that drastic solution. She had awakened in the dark of night as Leftrin sprang out of bed and raced out of the door. An instant later, she heard shouts and impacts, flesh on flesh and bodies on wood. By the time she had flung on clothes and followed the noise, it had all subsided. A furious Skelly was helping Swarge drag out chains while Big Eider sat at the galley table, head bowed and barely conscious, with a cold wet cloth on the back of his head. Bellin stood, feet spread wide, with a fish club in her hand, glowering at the Chalcedean captives. Several of them showed the marks of her club, while Hennesey, with blood running over his chin, sported a brass fid for mending lines. The former slaves had stood alongside the crew, one of them holding an obviously damaged fist to his chest. The look of satisfaction on his face made little of his pain.

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  ‘We had a small mutiny,’ Leftrin explained to her as he guided her back to their cabin. ‘They thought they could take over Tarman and make the ship their own. Ignorant fools. I can’t believe they thought they could get away with that on a liveship. ’

  The Chalcedeans had travelled in chains on the deck since then, wearing the slave manacles that Hennesey had quietly transferred to Tarman before they departed Kelsingra. It horrified Alise, but she was more horrified by the injury to Big Eider, who had been dazed for several days afterwards. Several of the former galley slaves had stepped forward to help man the ship during his convalescence. The crew had hesitantly accepted their aid at first; now they almost seemed to belong on Tarman’s deck.

  Leftrin looked over the captives and shook his head. ‘Traders don’t execute anyone,’ he said. ‘They’ll be condemned to work off their crime, possibly in the excavations. Cold, hard work that grinds a man down. Or maybe they’ll be ransomed back to Chalced, with extra penalties for being spies. ’

  Alise looked away from them. Not executions but death sentences, she thought to herself. It wasn’t fair, not for men forced by threats to do as they had done.

  ‘Looks like they have room for us at the end,’ Hennesey called back to them. He was standing ready with a mooring line as Swarge guided Tarman in. Alise craned her neck and saw that substantial sections of the old dock had been replaced with new planks.

  ‘Let’s tie up,’ Leftrin grumbled, and then he left her side, and she and Tillamon moved up onto the roof of the deckhouse to be out of the way of the crew working the deck. The two Jamaillian traders were already up there, as well as the other merchants. The remaining members of the impervious boats’ crews had been pressed into service for the journey down, and worked alongside Tarman’s crew and the former slaves. Alise was well aware that the liveship needed little help from humans when travelling with the current, but as Leftrin had observed, ‘A busy sailor has less time to get into mischief. And there isn’t a man among them who hasn’t dreamed of working on a liveship. Maybe we’ll find a lively one or two to take back to Kelsingra with us, to crew the keepers’ vessels. ’

  Trader Candral was there, too, looking pale with dark-circled eyes. He had been an especially unpleasant passenger, weeping or complaining how he had been tricked into his treachery and once trying to bribe Leftrin with promises of later riches if he would just let him off the ship without ‘betraying’ him. Alise found it hard even to look at him. It had been a crowded journey, and she was looking forward to having them all off Tarman’s decks.

  A sizeable crowd had gathered to meet them. Alise recognized Trader Polsk, and perhaps a few others from the Traders’ Council. Several were dressed formally in their Trader robes; all watched them approach gravely. Others seemed to be just gawkers and bystanders, drawn down to the dock for whatever spectacle the Tarman might offer.

  Skelly jumped from the boat to the docks with the first mooring line and quickly made Tarman fast. She caught the second line that Hennesey tossed, and in moments the liveship was secured. The Council members surged forward to meet them and at once the Jamaillian merchants began shouting that they had been kidnapped and held against their will and their investment, a lovely impervious ship, had been stolen from them. Trader Candral joined his voice to theirs, exhorting them not to believe a word of what Leftrin or anyone else said of him: he had been forced to pen a false confession.

  In the midst of the general cacophony, Alise saw the Chalcedean prisoners come to their feet, lift the length of anchor chain that joined them, and begin their dull shuffle to the gangplank. Their heads were bowed. One man was muttering something in a low voice, perhaps a prayer. As they neared the gangplank, one at the end of the line began shouting frantically and trying to pull away. The other men looked at him, grim-faced, and then two of his fellows seized him and dragged him along.

  ‘Sit down. Not ready for you yet,’ Hennesey told them irritably. His lower lip was still bruised and s
wollen, and his tone plainly conveyed his dislike for his charges. But if they understood that he spoke to them, they gave no indication. If anything, they stepped up their pace. Trader Candral was now shrieking almost hysterically that it was all a lie, he had never betrayed the Rain Wilds, while the Jamaillians were trying to out-shout him with their badly accented accusations of piracy and kidnapping.

  Alise divined their intention a moment too late. ‘Don’t let them!’ she shouted, even as the first four Chalcedean captives stepped up onto the gangplank. And then off, into the river.

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  Connected by their chains, the others followed them, some willingly, others not. Hennesey and Skelly caught hold of the last two, but the weight of the chained men and the pull of the current snatched them out of their hands and into the water. The grey river closed over the last man’s scream, cutting it off as if it had never been.

  Silence cloaked the dock.

  Skelly stared, stricken, at her empty hands and scratched wrists. The last man had not wanted to go into the river.

  ‘No one could have stopped that,’ Hennesey told her. ‘And it was probably a better death than they would have faced back in Chalced. ’ A muttering began from the shore. Before it could rise any louder, Leftrin stepped to his ship’s railing. ‘Dragons are on their way to attack Chalced, to punish them for hunting dragons! Send word to Bingtown that they must be braced for retaliation. ’

  A breathless quiet followed his words.

  Tillamon shocked everyone when she lifted her voice. ‘And perhaps Cassarick and Trehaug may wish to consider well what happens to cities that harbour dragon-killers!’

  Day the 21st of the Plough Moon

  Year the 7th of the Independent Alliance of Traders

  From Kerig Sweetwater, Master of the Bird Keepers’ Guild, Bingtown

  To Erek Dunwarrow of Trehaug

  Erek, old friend, this is not an official notification. It will take the Guild Masters here a month of dithering before they can decide to take the action, but I am sure it will be approved. Your name is almost the only one that has come up to fill the recently vacated post of Keeper of the Birds at Cassarick. Kim had risen to control his own coop and oversee those of his journeymen. There will be fewer birds and journeymen under your supervision than in your Bingtown post, but I feel it will be every bit as difficult a task. It is a large responsibility and to be honest, you will be stepping into a shambles of dirty coops, unhealthy birds, poorly kept records and undisciplined apprentices.

  So, of course, I consider you precisely the man for the job!

  But if, by any chance, this is not something you would take on, please notify me immediately via a Dunwarrow carrier, and I shall withdraw my advocacy of you.

  Not likely, say I!

  With pride in my former apprentice,

  Kerig

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Chalced

  Reyn felt slightly queasy. He took a deep breath, reached for his water-skin and took a sip. It helped. A little. This mode of travelling by dragon was, as he had hoped, much different from when Tintaglia had once carried him clutched in her claws. Back then, his fear and worry that Malta was already dead and the clench of the dragon’s powerful feet on his ribs had distracted him from the actual flight. This time he rode high, between her wings, the wind in his face; and always aware of how high above the ground he was and how much his seat swayed with the motions of her flight. His back ached and his stomach was very unhappy.

  He tried not to think of how old was this contraption in which he sat. Tried not to wonder how strong those peculiar straps and buckles were, and if it had been built more for show than strength. It was too late to worry about such things, and still too early to worry about the war they were bringing to Chalced. Far below him, the world was spread out like a lumpy carpet. The first day they had flown over rolling meadows and forested hills. Then they had crossed a region of swamps full of fronds and reeds and sloughs of still brown water with dead trees jutting from them. There had been a river they’d crossed, running shallow over its rocky bed, its face broken by white plumes of spray. Beyond the narrow river there had been a range of flatlands and broken hills, with trees and rushing streams in gullies. He knew by the rising of the sun that at least twice the dragons had made sharp course corrections. They were not flying directly to Chalced, but following some incomprehensible dragon route, probably one that maximized hunting opportunities and places for landing and resting. It made sense. It would have made more sense if the dragons had deigned to discuss it with the humans. Since their council of war, they’d been remarkably uncommunicative with the humans, with the possible exception of Rapskal.

  Or perhaps it was only Heeby who made no barrier between herself and her keeper. Whatever the reason, Rapskal had started to irritate Reyn with his martial airs. Late last night, he had put his finger on the source of his annoyance. It was that Rapskal spoke and carried himself as if he were a man older and more experienced than Reyn. Some of the keepers seemed to have accepted him in that role. Nortel seemed to have attached himself to Rapskal as his lieutenant, passing on his tolerantly received orders about how camp was to be set up and nightly weapons drill. Of the other keepers, Reyn felt that only Kase and Boxter had fully fallen in with Rapskal’s insistence that they must now begin to conduct themselves as dragon-warriors. The four of them spent much time of an evening sharpening knives and polishing armour and checking dragon harness.

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  Today Reyn looked down on a harsh, rolling, brown land with upthrusts of rock and random patches of dusty green brush. He’d never imagined such a place and knew that it appeared on no map he had ever studied. Chalced might claim to rule the lands right up to the edge of the Rain Wild River, but these regions, he would wager, had seen little of men in the last hundred years.

  To either side of him, in front of him and behind him, dragons flew, some with riders and harnesses, some bare of any adornment. Despite Rapskal’s posturing in Kelsingra, he and Heeby did not lead the way. Ranculos was out in front most often, though sometimes it was Mercor, and for a time it had been Tintaglia. All the dragons seemed to know whence they were bound, whether from ancient memories or from shared thoughts, he did not know. Reyn had thought that IceFyre, as the eldest dragon and the one hottest for vengeance, would lead the dragons. Instead, he was uncomfortably aware that both IceFyre and Kalo constantly vied for a spot just behind and above Tintaglia. He suspected he knew the significance of that, for several times Tintaglia had caused him to roar with terror as she folded her wings to drop down and then come up behind both of them, or suddenly put on a surge of wing-beats that carried him up so high that he felt he could not breathe. He knew from conversations with Davvie at night that the drakes’ open rivalry for that position terrified him.

  ‘IceFyre knows he scares me. He overflies us so closely that I can scarcely draw a breath in the wind of his wings. Or he goes very high, and then sweeps in right in front of Kalo, so that he must either dodge or collide with the old bastard. And if I get frightened and beg Kalo to let IceFyre fly where he wishes, Kalo becomes annoyed with me. ’

  ‘I could ask Sestican if you might ride with me,’ Lecter offered, but Davvie had shaken his head.

  ‘No. That will just make Kalo angrier with me. He wants me to shout insults at IceFyre. He says he will not dare to attack us, but how can he know?’ After a moment, he added quietly, ‘Thank you all the same. ’

  Their camps at night often seemed oddly festive to Reyn. He felt the old man among such youthful Elderlings. They quickly fell back into the routine they had obviously shared before. Every day, as afternoon began to approach evening, the dragons descended, demanding to be rid of riders and harness so they might hunt. Once they had dismounted and the dragons had been launched, the keepers commenced gathering firewood and setting up a camp. The dragons gave little thought to the comfort of th
e humans they were abandoning for the hunt. The keepers might find themselves in a hillside meadow one afternoon and on a rocky mountain ridge the next. Reyn watched in admiration as they quickly arranged their bedrolls and set out to look for water and meat. Sometimes they found neither, but as often as not, one of them would bring down a rabbit or a wild goat to share. They all carried hardtack, tea and dried fish, so even when the hunting was scarce they did not go hungry. Spring was upon the land, and at one stopping point, Sedric amazed them all by teaching them to gather dandelion greens and watercress from a stream. So they shared food and a fire and conversation every evening.

  The first two nights there were jests and songs and some mock swordfights as some of the keepers experimented with their Elderling weapons. Rapskal tried to give them advice on stance and grip for their weapons, but soon gave up when it turned into good-natured rough-housing. Reyn watched the younger men measure themselves against one another, and was relieved when a shout that food was ready broke up their exercises.

  Shared hot meat and cold water seemed to content all of them. They told him stories of their journey up the river and he recounted how Tintaglia had carried him in her claws to search for Malta, and dropped him into the sea when they found her. Pirates and rescued slaves and a Chalcedean fleet opposed by liveships seemed only a wonder-tale to them, and he feared that his small effort to convey the terror and horror of that war only made it seem a glorious adventure.

  Sometimes Rapskal told stories, too. He spoke with a strange cadence, and sometimes he groped for words, as if the language of his birth did not allow for names of weapons and manoeuvres. He spoke of dragon wars, when Kelsingra had had to defend itself against raiding parties of dragons seeking to make a claim on the Silver seeps in the river. Reyn was heartsick to hear him speak of Elderlings battling one another on the ground as their dragons fought savagely in the air. Even worse was to know that the dragons’ and Elderlings’ enmity with Chalced reached back, not decades, but possibly centuries. The keepers sat in rapt silence when Tellator recounted stories of Elderlings captured and tortured by Chalcedeans, and the vengeance taken on their captors. There were times when Reyn thought that perhaps Elderlings were not so different from humans after all.