The Ringed City Chronicles: The Dragon Hunt

by Jonathan Schlosser

  In time she could not breathe and she stopped broken and terrified in a shadowed corner at the end of a street. Marking first her exit over a short stone wall, should she need it, and then crouching and breathing and watching the end of the street. Nothing of note there but still watching each one who passed and waiting for him to throw off his workers' cloak and put down the hood and grin in that twisted way and draw his sword. But they were just workers passing and she watched them and slowly her breathing evened and she could think again.

  She was lost and thought that may be best for how could she be found if she herself did not know where she was? She looked up and there were two tall buildings beside her with open windows and wooden shutters and wash hanging in the breeze and she could not see the castle. The buildings shorter on the other side and running away toward the docks. Now in this waiting she could smell the water again and she stood and began making her way toward it.

  Walking this time. Forcing herself to keep pace. For everyone saw a woman fleeing with wide eyes and bare feet and no one at all saw a woman in old rags walking like the others about her and only one who knew her could put her face with anything else.

  This such a stark difference from the bath and the dress and the court. The cool marble floor, the sconces smoking softly and all that smoke like a river to the vents. The glasses of wine without end and platters of food uneaten.

  She reached a line with clothes hanging and went past and looked and came back and left again and cursed herself and went and took one of the shirts off of the line. Covered the shackles where they still hung with the few links of chain about her wrists. The skin there raw and broken and bleeding. She wrapped the shirt around one wrist and tied it and then clasped her hands in front of her so it covered both and again made herself walk slowly and only half succeeded.

  When she passed a woman walking alone with a basket she nodded to her and stepped slightly in front of her. The woman looking up and blinking as one not accustomed to this or perhaps dwelling in some other thought.

  “I'm looking for a tavern,” she said. “The Golden Head.”

  The woman just looked at her for a moment, then shook her head. “I don't know it.”

  “Thank you.” Trying to leave. Already lingering too long.

  “But it's not here.”

  “What?”

  The woman looked at her and down to the shirt at her wrists and back to her eyes. Pursed her lips. “Nothing around here called that.”

  Arisine watched her go and twice the woman looked back at her and her eyes darting and then she stepped into a small shop and began speaking. About the day's work or the harvest or a prisoner queen in the streets. Arisine hurried on and took the next two turns without reason and looked over her shoulder the whole time and did not see the woman again and never would. But she felt her there behind her for a long time.

  It was two hours walking in the rising heat before she found it. One man knew the street and then another knew how far and she walked it all and stood far down the street near a cart of furs and looked at it. Keeping the furs between her and the road and watching always the street in front of her and once three spearmen rode by and everyone moved out of the street and she turned and busied herself with the furs as if they were hers and listened to the horses and they went on without changing down the street and were gone. Only after long-burning minutes did she step back out and look again at the tavern.

  A small dark building, all of rock on one wall and the others timber. A wooden door at the street and windows with the shutters closed. The road in front heavily traveled. The docks quite close now and most of those going in and out sailors from the ships and some traders and once an old man was thrown out and lay in the street looking about as if he did not know where he was.

  She watched it all for a long time and hoped to see him come and go in and knew she wouldn't and finally a man came for the cart and tipped his head to look at her as he walked up and she knew it was time. Stepping away from the furs and walking down the street and almost going past it and then cursing herself again and turning and going in. The heavy oak door swinging before her and the creak of the old hinges and then the warm and heavy air inside and the smell of ale.

  II

  He was a long time coming in and she had no money and they were watching her from the bar but she did not know what to do and sat looking about as if waiting for someone. No lie in that and yet still feeling as if they were going to come over at any time and stand her up and take a length of chain and bind together the shackles and begin walking her back to the castle.

  But they did not and at last he came in and stood in the door blinking and then looked at her and looked away and went to the bar and sat. The barman came over and nodded and slid down two mugs of ale and he in turn pushed a stack of coins across the bar and picked up the mugs and turned and walked over and sat at the booth facing her. Setting the mugs down on the table and the condensation already dripping on the outsides.

  “God,” he said.

  “I don't know what I'd have done if you didn't come.”

  “God,” he said again and picked up the mug and drank long and heavy and set it back down. An aging man now but still in his build some of the knight that he had been and still was in title. The wars long past and all about his face. A scar drawing down from his temple, the marks from the sun when they'd marched out two weeks from Hai'njal in the desert sand and fought along the dry and dead banks of what had been a river. The gray now moving through hair that had been dark when last she'd seen him.

  He looked at her. His hands cupped on both sides of the mug. She had not touched hers.

  “When?” he said.

  “Today. This is the first place I came.”

  “All these years.”

  She looked at him and remembered that time. It had felt unreal as it happened and even as she knew it was happening. Meeting with him the day before they'd come to her room with swords and waited behind her as she stood looking out over the kingdom and her son had been with them and breathing so loudly in that silence. Telling this man, now the only one she trusted, that they were coming. Him swearing it wouldn't happen and it happening as she had known and nothing to be done to stop it. Too many things in motion already. The great grinding gears of the world.

  Or perhaps her own pride then too much to allow her to flee. That pride at least broken and left under the earth, in that dank room with her husband's bones.

  “I need to get out of the city,” she said.

  “We'll get you a boat.”

  “They'll watch the boats.”

  “They'll watch everything. Better a boat than the damned gate. The roads.”

  “No.” A boat just another cage, this one of lashed wood and tar and sails. She could already see herself cowering in some hold and praying for the rocking as they pushed off from the dock but instead the sound of shouting and boots on the planks above her head and horses huffing and her son yelling something and the boots coming down the stairs and her sobbing there in that darkness as it ended.

  “Then what?”

  “Get me a horse.”

  He picked up the mug and drank again and finished it and looked at hers and she nodded and he slid it over to himself. Perhaps knowing all along how it would go and what he needed from it.

  “I'm telling you,” he said. “They'll find you faster on a horse. They're on the roads already.”

  “You've seen them?”

  “No, but I know how this goes.” He drank again, set it aside. “I know how it goes and I know how it ends.”

  “You think.”

  “I know.” He looked back toward the door and she saw how he was now a part of this and all the things in his head and for the first time she wondered if he'd said he'd meet her when still he thought it would never happen and where loyalties went at times like these. A man always loyal to the crown, but perhaps she just mistook that as loyalty to herself from a bodyguard who was and had been loyal to on
ly the crown.

  But she could do nothing for it. If he wanted her, he had her and there was nothing else.

  Then he looked back at her and nodded. “Go at dusk, when they change the guard. Take the Trappers' Gate. Do you know it?”

  “By the river.”

  “It's smaller and so is the road. But get off of it as soon as you can. Go through the vineyards and up through the forest and go as fast as you damn well can and get into the mountains. He'll only hold the net for so long and if you're through it, you may live. He'll come looking, though. He'll hunt you.”

  “I'll figure something out. Where can I get the horse?”

  “He'll be at the gate.”

  She reached out then and touched his hand. The shackle coming free, rattling on the table like a dead thing. “He's going to war.”

  His eyes widened at that. The knight he'd been still alive within him and those words the cry of his blood he'd heard all his life. “With who?”

  She shook her head. “I don't know. Anyone he can.”

  He cursed, took up the second mug again and finished it. Scowling now and his teeth not as white as they had been and the scar turning the skin by his eye. “We'll be slaughtered. Erihon's standing army is ten thousand companies and the Island Kingdoms control the seas. Everyone thinks the Whispermen are ghosts, but they'll rally if needed and no one knows how strong they are. They haven't fought a war in five hundred years. Any way he turns, we'll die.”

  “I know,” she said. “I know.”

  “And you've told him.”

  “It's past that.”

  “He's a damned fool.”

  “I know and that's what I told him.”

  He leaned forward with his elbows on the table in the heavy leather and his sword swinging at his side to clank against the table leg. “What'll you do?”

  “I don't know yet, but I have to stop him. I have to get the word out and tell the people what he is.” She shrugged, the task sounding so simple and yet enormous and impossible when she thought of the size of the land and the people within it and what they'd believe.

  “You have some time,” her old bodyguard said. “He'll have to drum them up. Nationalism, patriotism. Some damned thing. You don't tell people to go to war. They'll never follow you.” Scowling now as a man who knew too much and hated what he knew and knew it anyway. “You make them want to go to war and then you simply lead them to the field.”

  “How long?”

  “Depends how he does it. Months at least. Winter will fall and he can't fight then. The soonest he'll field an army—a real army, not the standing one—will be next summer. Maybe the spring if the people are behind it and he has to march.”

  “It's not as long as it sounds.”

  “I know.” He sat back then and looked at her. “How'd you know I'd still come here?”

  She smiled. “I didn't know. But I know you. So I came here and I hoped. And here you are.”

  He laughed. “Makes me sound like an old drunk who used to be a knight.”

  “Then it's an old drunk that I need.”

  “I hope so,” he said. Standing then and nodding to her. “Don't worry about the shackles. Just get to the gate at nightfall. The horse will be there. Ride hard and where I told you. He's going to hunt but you can get beyond him and he can't hunt you and rally the people both. Make him choose and hope he chooses his war.”

  “He will,” she said. “He's a damned fool.”

  III

  She sat in the tavern ten minutes after he'd gone and held the mug with just the smallest trace of ale so it'd look like she was drinking and then got up and went out the back. Down the alley, across a short stone bridge, up a twisting street with on both sides the close walls of homes and the doors shut. No one walking here now and all the sound down toward the water. Her footfalls loud and hollow on the stones.

  It was not hard to become lost in this place, if that was what you wanted, and she fell from sight. Taking the small street to a long and gnarled stair that ducked into darkness and came back out again and everything the same. A ladder with iron rungs set into the stone wall before her. Sitting for a time on a roof looking out at the water and the little boats coming and three soldiers riding down the street and the leftmost one scowling and kicking at a child who got too close. Crossing the rooftops and jumping down when she thought no one was looking and going through a market square. No money on her at all but the smell of the food driving her to something close enough to insanity that she never wanted to know the real thing. Garments hanging on strings outside shops, people coming and going.

  Always stepping aside at the sound of horse or boot. She had not been out like this in years and still she fell back into it easily. Always able to tell when they were coming for they thought it unnecessary to hide themselves and made no effort and she had found that often it was the one who made the effort who ended up the victor. Regardless of skill or any other advantage. This true in many pursuits and this game they played just one of them.

  Working her way always toward the gate. For she had to give him time, but she knew how sharp that time was. Like the blade of a knife. Too soon and the guards would see, too late and the horse would be found. Either way she'd hang and these same people would come to see her with her legs jerking in the hot afternoon air and none would remember her now as she passed them in the street. Or perhaps they would and they'd say nothing for fear of joining her and feeling how coarse a rope was.

  She came to it at last as dusk fell and she could hear the boots and talk on the wall. Always the guards from the day switched with those for the night. There wasn't much to be done, but there was enough. Lighting the torches atop the wall, checking the chains for the main gate, talking about the quiet. The system of shifts the only thing that kept them alert, but also their weakness. Not for an army or ambush, but for one trying to get out. In those few minutes, she could move through and out and perhaps, perhaps, not be seen until she was riding hard and near the forest.

  There she could lose them in land she knew, land she'd seen many times. Outside the gate the road ran down along the river for a short distance and then went up into a low, thick forest. To her left the water and on her right the open fields and then the short foothills. A break with no forest or cover where she'd have to ride hard. But then the hills and the true forest and in there she could lose herself and never be found.

  She crouched and looked at the low stone arch. One of the oldest gates in the city and seldom used now for trade as it had been. A forgotten passage of weathered stone and iron doors left open now for years. Closed only in times of war. He should have closed them when he knew she was gone but he was a fool and thought he would have her either way. Or perhaps he'd ordered them closed and the guards had forgotten or the order had not come down. Or maybe a certain knight had countered the order and a frightened foot soldier hadn't stood up to him. There were many ways it could have played out, but she looked now and they stood open.

  Not wanting to think it, but unable to stop herself. Perhaps he didn't even know she was gone yet. All this running in secret just time wasted when she could have been on the road and riding hard for hours.

  But that was already gone. If she'd thrown it away and it killed her then she'd already done it and she was dead. Little reason for the dead to dwell on their own deaths.

  She closed her eyes, listening for the guards. Wondering if the horse was truly on the other side or if she would run out and find that he'd been caught and killed and his head twisted on a spike and no horse there at all. Her son waiting with his sword drawn and bloody. But she swallowed it because she had to and then she opened her eyes and trotted for the gate.

  Not fast enough to draw eyes. But fast. Feeling each footfall. Pushing on the balls of her feet in the loose dirt and the falling dark. Listening for the guards above her and hearing nothing, every step so damned loud.

  She went through and the horse was there. She stared at it for a moment and then looked
around for him and didn't see him. Just the brown horse standing in the mud with a worn saddle and the reins down and wrapped about a post. Looking at her with huge glass eyes. Behind it the river moved in the red sunlight and the ripples broke that tapestry of blood and carried it down and away from this city of stone and iron and war.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I

  He woke the next morning and the city was burning. The smell of it in the air and over everything a light haze and he drug himself cursing from his bedroll. The others still sleeping and the morning barely new with the sun cracking the horizon. He threw aside the blankets and took his sword from the belt strapped to the horse as he stumbled shirtless to the top of the hill where he could see out over the plains. Sweating and freezing both over scars and grime.

  It was far off and still he knew the whole city was ablaze. A smoking crater across that grass sea with the dead billowing up as ash. The flames around the base churning and licking at wood, straw, cattle and men. Burning and melting the stone itself. Above, the smoke rising in an endless dark line into the cloudless sky until it was lost in the remaining night, some vile hangman's noose about this city and choking the life out of her as those within died in the streets.

  The dragon had come in the night and it was gone now. This not a fire that needed any longer to be stoked. A blaze caught full and raging on its own. About the city a ring of fire slowly spreading away as the grass caught and that outer circle of dark smoke, thin and unforgiving.

  He could hear nothing for it was too far. It was like watching something burn that was not real. At this distance the movements slight and everything like a painting or a mosaic or some infernal tapestry etched and hung upon the wall to celebrate a death long over. A peaceful, motionless death. But the smoke was all about them and the horses were prancing and there was nothing in the world more real to him in that moment than Cabele burning to the ground in dragonfire.