Crown of Horns

by Alex Sapegin

  “Put a collar of obedience on him and give him to the free settlements,” Zidon advised the warden. “Or throw him back where you got him.”

  “Hey, there’s a thought! Farid, Iriel, pack up!”

  * * *

  “It’s hot,” Farid wiped the sweat off his brow.

  “You can say that again.” Iriel took a handkerchief out of his pocket.

  “Aren’t you just the aristocrat!” Farid laughed, watching the half-elf put the hanky back. “Tma, only half way. Let’s take a rest at Yellow Creek.”

  “Okay.”

  Fifteen minutes later, their troxes perked up and started going faster. The birds could sense water nearby.

  A couple of turns in the forest trail and the guards could see the shore of a wide creek that was named for the yellow sand washed into it from the mountains.

  The catchers led their troxes to the bivouac built by the residents of a free settlement near the shady backwaters.

  “We ought to give that thing a drink too,” Farid said, nodding towards the tied-up shkas. The freak was lying on Mirda’s back like a sack of potatoes, stripped of his will. The collar saw to that.

  The half-elf poked the “cargo:”

  “Hey, you, want a drink?” The shkas didn’t move. Iriel removed his left foot from the stirrups and kicked the prisoner in the butt. “Drink. Do you want to? Why so quiet?” No reaction. “Our friend isn’t speaking to us. I guess he doesn’t want to drink.”

  “Check him out. Maybe he’s passed out from the sun.”

  “Why do I have to do all the dirty work?” the half-elf mumbled. “Now I have to take care of shkases.”

  Iriel jumped down off his trox, grabbed the prisoner by the chin and waved his hand in front of his face.

  “Tma!” he swore, seeing the freak’s glassy, lifeless eyes. “Farid!”

  “What?” Farid called back, undoing the straps of the saddlebags.

  “I have to tell you something…”

  “Out with it. Geez, these things are heavy,” he said, pulling the bags off and setting them on the ground.

  “The shkas is dead.”

  “Whaddaya mean, dead?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “I’m not kidding! He’s cold!”

  “Tma of all the gods!” Farid ran over to the half-elf. “Coming, coming.” He unbuttoned his cloak, retrieved a needle from his pocket, and slid it under the slave’s thumbnail. The shkas didn’t move. A drop of dark blood appeared under the nail. “Do you have a mirror?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Give it here!” The mirror put under the prisoner’s nose did not think of revealing any signs of breath. “Unload him, quick!”

  “Where should I put him? He’s dead!”

  The border guards undid the knots of the fastening belts and lowered the limp body to the ground. Farid took an amulet from the saddlebag and ran it over the prostrate body for a few seconds, then pressed his right ear to the prisoner’s chest.

  “The scanner shows nothing. His heart’s not beating. The brute! Even in death, he’s inconveniencing me. What a fiver!” The guard jumped to his feet and wanted to kick the corpse, but Iriel blocked him with his body.

  “Don’t, you’ll just bring shame on yourself. The dead deserve some sort of respect, and this one’s earned it. Not everyone can escape from two dugarias.”

  “Respect this dung? Just try to add up how much he’s cost us!”

  “Yes, it’s a pity about the rixes,” Iriel agreed. “We’ll save up for some new ones. Mirda will lay an egg soon, and I’ll buy you a pair of pups. Maybe your dogs in the kennel are now grooming a female. A quarter of that litter will be yours too.”

  “Alright, I’m calm,” Farid spit on the sand. “Iriel, do you have any amulets or spell capsules?”

  “It won’t help, Farid. If he were just wounded, that would be different. But the standard set of amulets can’t raise the dead. Or do you just want to singe him with a combat capsule and bury the ashes?”

  “There you go! The beasts will bury him!” the catcher answered, pulling the collar and shackles off the shkas. “Let’s drag him over to the shade. Tma knows when he died. I wouldn’t want him to start stinking and spoil my appetite. Let’s have something to eat, then take him to the woods. What do you think: will Lord Ruigar grab us by the ba…?”

  “I don’t think so. The shkas died of his own accord. Let him scan our memories. We didn’t kill him.”

  The border guards dragged the body far away from the rest stop and went back to the bivouac. While Farid prepared a simple lunch, Iriel got undressed and led the birds into the creek. The troxes plopped into the water happily and let the half-elf rub their feathers where the saddles go with a special balm to prevent chafing and parasites.

  “Lunch is ready!” Farid cried from the shore.

  “One minute,” Iriel said. “You didn’t touch my boots, did you?”

  “No, what do I care?”

  “Farid, did you cast a ‘watchdog’ spell?” The half-elf activated the defense and combat amulets hanging around his neck and leaned over the blurry print of a bare foot right where he’d left his shoes and outer clothes.

  “You’re offending me! Of course, I cast the spell, even with a double contour. Why?”

  “Did you set it to exit mode too?”

  “Iri, you’ve boiled your brains in the sun. What happened?” Farid activated his combat amulets, grabbed a short spear, and walked over to his friend.

  “I get the feeling we’ve been had, real bad.”

  “THE SHKASSSS!” the guard hissed, jumping towards the sashes with swords. Iriel dove like a little fish to the saddlebags and in one well-practiced motion grabbed his fire-starter from the side pocket. Swords were good, but a chucker with fire spells in the capsule was better. He didn’t care that one shot would cover a circle six yards in diameter and vaporize everything in that area. That’s why he’d paid twenty weighty pounds for the little “toy.” “The scanner!” Farid cried. The half-elf grabbed it from the bag and tossed it to his partner. “Relax,” Farid said, thirty seconds later. “He’s not here, at least not in a radius of a hundred yards around.”

  Iriel gripped the chucker more comfortably and scanned the edge of the woods with his eyes.

  “Far, check to see what else is missing besides my clothes and boots.”

  “Tma!” Farid saw a gutted bag. “I’ll find you—I’ll kill you! That creature stole my old so-and-so!”

  “Good luck with that,” Iriel barked, getting out his extra set of clothes.

  “What??”

  “Tonight we have to go back, which means right now we can’t make any search efforts. And tomorrow it’ll be pointless to try to find him. Neither the rixes nor the mages will catch a traces of him. Say goodbye to your iron.”

  “There was a belt for it there too.”

  “And your belt… I just broke those boots in… may your toes be callused by them!” Iriel shouted in the direction of the woods and laughed out loud.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Farid said.

  “Quiet, Far. Better be quiet,” the half-elf said, catching his breath. “As far as everyone else is concerned, that shkas died. If they find out in the village that we were given a run for our money, they won’t let us live it down for a century. He made complete fools of us. I can hear it now: we’re washed up, too slack, haven’t been chased by miurs in way too long….”

  “But how did he do it? He was deader than dead!”

  “Have you ever heard of settage?” Farid shook his head. “I have, and I was forced to think about it! What’s more, Far, next time make sure you set the watchdog spell to exit mode. Ah, I can’t believe he took my boots!”

  * * *

  Andy went down from terrace to terrace. For the second day now, he’d been making his way through the endless wood that covered the slopes of a gigantic mountain wit
h its branches. The shirt he took off from the half-elf, on the second day, fell into disrepair because he took it into his head to go straight through the prickly thicket of some low-growing trees. As a result, the shirt got hundreds of small holes in it. The boots and thin leather pants suffered less. The half-blood definitely understood the point of footwear—there were soft, comfortable, and, as luck would have it, fit the little thief just right.

  Not bad, not bad at all. My settage plan worked better than I had hoped. It was a risk, of course, the danger of the hunters wouldn’t be fooled, or would believe his ruse and decide to bury him, cremate him, or do any other ungodly things with the supposed corpse, but it worked out fine. And for a minute, there I was afraid of going into the trance too soon, and then the whole plan would have gone to Targ. If I’d had to play dead for five more minutes, the pretend corpse could have become a real one! Thank the Twins, my “death” was discovered right on time, and those men acted just as I predicted.

  As for the borrowed clothing and short sword, I need them more than they do, and that’ll be a lesson for the hunters. Let the stolen goods be considered payback for the needle under my nail. After Andy had stolen the sword from the bag and the half-elf’s clothes, he crawled to a bend in the creek located downstream and quietly entered the water. For about fifty minutes, he waded along the bed of the creek, then went ashore, and got dressed. The pants and boots were a good fit; the shirt was a little wide. But that was okay—he would put some meat back on his bones. The sword, to be honest, was a piece of crap, no other way to put it. Andy sadly remembered his blades, but no sense fretting over spilled milk. Now, if only he could get his magic back. The stolen sword was made from poor-quality steel. Clicking his finger against the blade produced a short ringing sound, not a long melodious song. What can you do? Beggars can’t be choosy.

  Andy couldn’t say how many leagues he crossed that first day. Trying to increase the space between himself and his possible hunters, he strove onward like a moose in heat. The sun, finally giving up, sank down behind the horizon. Helita came out, and he kept putting the leagues behind him, step by step. He once again offered up a grateful prayer to Jagirra and Karegar for giving him true vision, which also functioned as night vision. The expedition ended at the shore of a forest lake, which he dove into three hours after sunset. Here luck for the second time in such a long day smiled at him.

  As soon as Andy got settled on a wide branch of a huge tree that grew right on the beach by the lake, the dark shadows crawling from the water onto the shore caught his attention. Helita, which had climbed higher than the treetops, illuminated the large turtles. They were ordinary turtles, just like on Earth. Andy almost fell off his branch. His stomach, which had once again started clinging to his spine, woke up and screamed, “FOOD!” Raw turtle meat didn’t sound so bad to the starving guy. He mercifully clubbed a couple of them on the head with his chunk of iron called a sword and feasted. The next morning there was enough leftover for breakfast.

  Perhaps because he’d reached his limit of “fun” adventures, the woods and the powers that be decided to leave the were-dragon alone for once and give him a calm day. That day, he didn’t encounter a single jumping, spitting spider or other hungry predator that wasn’t too picky about the menu. Also noticeably absent were humans, elves, half-bloods, or other intelligent beings, and Targ take them!

  Evening came. Soon the sun would set. It was time to find somewhere where he, too, could lay down his head; his legs were aching. He was still getting over yesterday’s incredible feat. Andy jumped over a narrow stream and froze on the spot. Sooo, … that’s the footprint of some sort of intelligent creature, right under my feet! A path’s been beaten. People, some sort of people, or… something.

  The loud, despairing cry of an adult and a child’s scream interrupted Andy’s thought process and settled the question of what direction the beings who made this path might live in. Without a second’s hesitation, he grabbed his blade from the sheath and threw himself towards the child’s cries. “Idiot!” the belated thought flashed in his mind.

  Literally five seconds later, he heard the sounds of yapping.

  “Targ!” The image of a wolverine formed in his brain. Where is he going? Idiot!

  Andy leaped over a fallen tree and jumped abruptly. Poisonous needles flew under his feet. In an instant, he glimpsed a man lying on the ground with a dozen needles in his right side in one direction, and a large wicker basket that two wolverines were rolling along the clearing in another. The child’s cries seemed to be coming from inside the basket. Another, smaller basket was laying near the man. Apparently, he’d noticed the beasts and managed to hide his child inside the container. Two more predators turned towards the biped dodger who’d intervened in their feast. Andy landed next to the man, grabbed the small box and hurled it at the nearest beast with all his might. The predator was not expecting anything of the sort and was sent careening back along the ground. The other beast jumped aside so as to avoid the box and craned its neck, preparing to fire in that direction, but Andy was no longer there. In the split second, after he hurled the box, he jumped after it to attack. His blade became bathed in bright red blood. Black needles stabbed into a nearby tree. One of the other two, counting on its poison and aim, decided to meet the enemy with needles. Andy jumped straight up as usual letting the “ammunition” fly under him, and then attacked the shooter. It ran to meet him—and with a pathetic cry fell to the ground from a crushing kick to the jaw. Now the one that had been sent packing by the box recovered and came at him, practically at the same time. The pressure of danger squeezed the home-grown superman to the ground. Another batch of needles swept over him as he hugged the ground. Andy then jumped to his feet once more and dashed behind the thick trunk of a tree, which was immediately struck by several long “gifts.” A slant to the side, a quick glance at the beast, and his sword flashed white. The fourth predator’s skull was decorated with an unforeseen ornament. The animal died not having realized that the hunt was over. Left alone with such a dreaded biped, the fourth wolverine decided to make its exit. With its tail between its legs, it disappeared into the thick bushes. Andy came out from behind the tree and pulled the blade out of the dead creature’s body. The whole skirmish lasted no more than half a minute, but it drained his strength as if it were a two-hour battle.

  Andy wiped the blood off his sword on the fur of the last beast he’d killed. He then attended to the man, who turned out to be a pure-blooded elf. The savior carefully pulled the needles out and felt the victim’s pulse. He was alive. True vision confirmed this. The elf’s spark of life still shone, dimly, but it wasn’t about to go out. Some sort of magical amulet shone red around the neck of the son of the Forest. A white-haired girl crawled out of the box, looked at the dead beasts with her wide sapphire eyes and wanted to crawl back in, but then she saw Andy pulling the last needle out of her father’s body.

  She immediately forgot all about the box and the dead wolverines and threw herself at her father:

  “Nana, Nana!” She looked at their rescuer with eyes full of tears. “Namiru pata Nana. Pata, namiru vayiti ma!”

  “I’ll help you if I can,” Andy picked the elf up and put him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “Strange language,” he thought to himself. “It sounds a bit like Edda.” “Lead the way! Iv tary vei!” he said in dragon Edda, hoping the girl would understand. She did.

  “Come with me,” she answered with a strange accent and ran along the path.

  ***

  Nelita. Principality of Ora. Astal Ruigara. Border-crossing post.

  Teg Viged was trembling. The warden of the border post was afraid to look at the sovereign Ruigar. His legs couldn’t take it anymore; he needed to sit down, but the dragon’s piercing gaze made him stand at attention and pull his tummy in.

  “Warden, tell me: how many mages do we have at the post?” Ruigar hovered over the man, who was sweating with fear. The dragon didn’t express h
is dissatisfaction at all, but subjects of the astal, the sovereign Ruigar, knew to fear not loud yelling and tongues of fire, but rather a calm, almost affectionate tone…

  “F-f-forty one, s-sovereign,” teg Viged managed to spit out, his teeth chattering.

  “Including you?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “And how many are at the dugaria at any given time?”

  “Fifteen,” teg Viged’s head sank into his shoulders.

  “And you’re telling me that fifteen verified mages didn’t notice anything?” The dragon opened his mouth. The yellow-white daggers of his teeth were visible.

  “N-n-no.”

  “It’s a shame. I’m beginning to doubt the professionalism of the border guards.”

  “My dear,” an emerald dragoness who had flown in with Ruigar said in high Edda. The sovereign turned his eyes away from his guilty subject, who grabbed a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow. “The scent is very old, and the guest could have been covered in defensive veils. I don’t think it is possible to be noticed if you do not want to be.”

  “Old? I was here yesterday and did not smell a thing.”

  “You are scaring this poor man. May I speak with him?” Ruigar lifted his wings and stepped aside, indifferent. The dragoness walked up to the warden and changed hypostasis.

  As scared as teg Viged might have been, the sight of the tall, handsome, golden-haired elf in a tunic made of spider silk made him forget his fear for a moment.

  The woman, smiling enchantingly, extended her hand and grabbed him by the chin. Her sharp nails made him look up and stand tippy-toe.

  “Look me in the eye!” Trying to jerk his head was useless; the dragon was holding it firmly. The man’s mind shields were removed in a moment by the power of her will. “Hm, it is empty. Not a single memory to bring up…” The sharp-nailed hand relaxed. The man, free from the grip, fell to the ground. “You do not have to worry about this one. He does not have the hallmark of betrayal unless you count a couple of petty crimes treason. But we can look the other way about that. It is entirely possible that the guest was incognito here, or we are dealing with someone who has been given a gift of blood, but the ritual has not been done on him.”