The Ringed City Chronicles: The Dragon Hunt

by Jonathan Schlosser

  It had been just two days walking once she found the road and followed it, not staying on that road but tracing its course fifty yards off in the forest. Slower there, but it meant she was always hidden and nothing could come up behind or before her without her knowledge and she had seen no soldiers or horses. At times tempted to go back to the road, but she'd lived this long by ignoring those temptations and she'd stayed in the forest.

  Now, the road before her fell down through the trees and into the town and she could see it. Logs laid into the track at the steepest places and all else dirt and stones exposed. People moving down there in the dawn. Men walking with axes to the forest and others in the terraced fields and still others at a far-off mill on the river that was itself hundreds of yards below the town and very small with the water wheel turning.

  She looked at it for a long time and then she went down the road to it. A few men passing her in the other direction. A woman with a mule and a cart and a small child in the cart with dirt on his face who smiled at her as she passed and she smiled back and then wished she had not and kept on.

  She didn't come to the edge of it for there were not edges to towns like these. No lines and flat areas where the town could run to some barrier either natural or of its own creation. Instead she just came around one bend and there was a home and behind it a stable with another mule and then around the next bend two more. Then a small shop for a blacksmith and him standing in the yard with a hammer in one hand and scowling at the ground for no reason she could ascertain. Then she went down a steep drop on those half-buried logs that had seen travelers unknown and around another bend and then there were homes and shops on both sides and the road widening out and the sound of water and visible down at the end of this street the river rolling by in the early morning light.

  A cart came up behind her and passed and this one was empty and she looked back and down each street. Here it forked and ran off behind her and everything nestled close to the river where the ground was flat. But down on either side she could see the land dropping or turning into the other hills and the rest of the town laid out like this. The whole village a long and serpentine thing moving with the river and the hills. It would take longer to walk one end to the other than most towns she'd ever set foot in, but there would only be a tenth of the people scattered thusly in the forest.

  She used to wonder in towns like this what made a man stop. And who he was, the first through here. Who sat his horse in a formerly empty place where it would be hard to live and said this would be the place and began to build his home. And others with him. Though farming here meant terracing the land and water meant backbreaking work walking it up the hills and the homes had to be built with stilts on the front or the hill dug out behind to make them level.

  But she had seen it all over the world. In stone and ice and desert and jungle and water itself. Man would live where he wished and he would live everywhere. Hard as it was and the world brutal and unforgiving, he would live. There was no place yet she had found this not to be true and she did not think she would.

  She walked down the road and felt them looking at her and went into the first place she could. Knowing they did not know her but they knew she was someone else. In places like this everyone was known and she could not stay. For they would remember her when the soldiers came and it would always be like this until she was in a city where she could be lost and only then would she be safe.

  The building she'd chosen was an inn of sorts. On the bottom a wide open room with long tables and off on the far side a door and stairs and above the rooms. A fire burning in the stone hearth on the end of the room and another near the back. The smell of smoke but more so the smell of food. Some sort of bread and coffee and meat and eggs. A few who had stayed at the inn sitting at the tables and talking and others walking in the front to take their food in bags and leave with it for what the day held. In the morning and midday this a place for food and at night she could imagine ale and beer and whiskey and music and voices.

  She went over to the far fire and sat near it at a wooden table with her back to it and the wall. Looking at the door and the far end where the owner came out of the kitchen and handed the bags to those coming in or went to the tables to refill the glasses. Two other men sitting near her and one nodding at her as she sat and then turning back to talk of something she could not hear.

  The innkeeper nodded to her also and went back to the kitchen and she watched the door and then he came out again and walked over to her. Standing before her in plain brown clothes with something on them that suggested he was both cook and innkeep and maybe many other things besides. A large man going bald on the top of his head and looking at her pleasantly without smiling as a man, perhaps the only one in this town, who saw many new faces and spoke to many he didn't know and never really would for the string of them was endless and proceeded in only one direction.

  “Just to eat or you need a room?”

  “A room as well.”

  He nodded. “We have coffee and eggs and ham.”

  “That'll be fine.”

  “How long?”

  “For the room?”

  “For the room.”

  “I guess that depends. I need to get to Erihon.”

  “You want to get from here to Erihon?”

  “Or as close as I can.”

  He sighed and looked out the window toward the river and behind him two more men came in and stood by the bar and he didn't look at them but she could see that he knew they were there. He looked back at her. “I don't know but I'll ask. How soon do you need to go?”

  “Soon.”

  “Yesterday then.”

  She smiled.

  “I'll tell you when I hear but I can tell you now you won't get all the way there from here. Might be someone's coming through can take you to Kraeg or up to the Arristone. And you can find someone else there. You don't want to buy a horse?”

  He'd given her money before leaving with the parchment with her name on it, but not that much money. She shook her head. “I'd rather not.”

  “All right. Well, I'll tell you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Of course.”

  He turned and went back and the men waiting nodded to him and he went into the kitchen to get what it was he had for them and she looked also out at the river and waited for her food. That waterway a thin black thing here by the town, with rocks and moss in it and a drifted log caught and turned and the wood very bright with the water.

  She'd known she'd not get to Erihon but Kraeg was farther than she'd hoped. From there she could take any number of merchant ships across the Gray Sea and to harbor towns like Raggorie or Calipse or the Whitecrest, the only watchtower the Erihon had built two thousand years ago when they fought the Whispermen and which they still manned. Now the tower more a lighthouse than a fortress, but at least one company on the grounds at all times. Protecting at once the traders' road and the inland portion of the sea.

  The Arristone would work as well, but she had no desire to travel on the River of Blood unless she had no other choice. Many would laugh at her for that but it was who she was and she knew that would not change.

  Let them laugh.

  He came back with the food and the coffee and set them down and nodded when she thanked him and then walked back to the kitchen. She ate and the food was very hot and good and she had to tell herself to eat slowly and could not and finally just gave in and ate it all even though he was watching her do it and she didn't know what he'd make of it. He came back once to fill the coffee and she drank both. It was stronger than she would have liked—she who had been raised on milk and sugar that you drank in the courts or on a terrace as you looked out at the countryside, lounging on pillows in the warm sun hours after those who drank the meaner black variety had already consumed theirs in the darkness for the heat and wakefulness alone and then trod in that dank first light to toil as they would—but it was hot and good and she'd had it like this many time
s on the campaigns and that was enough to make her fond of it.

  When she had eaten she paid for the food and room both and he came back and gave her the key and nodded toward the stairs. She thanked him again and finished the coffee. The main room was still just as empty as it had been but many people had come and gone and no one who had seen her come in was still there. Or at least she thought not. But she kept looking again and again to be sure and knowing it had been too long since she'd played these games. In the end the real risk was of course the one she couldn't avoid and he was carrying her plates back to the kitchen so she stood up and went to the stairs and went up.

  The room was small and looked out at the river. The walls and ceiling and floor all of planks sanded and oiled. A lantern sitting on the bedside table and light coming in from the window. The sound of the river moving over tree and stone. A small basin with water in it and no mirror. She went to the water and washed her face and arms and dried them and stood looking out at the river.

  She felt that at any moment she would die. She had felt this way every time on the campaigns and at first it was horrifying and eventually it fell to the background and became as much a part of the world as light and sound and all else.

  Riding through some dark escarpment once she'd felt it again returning in full and drawn her horse up and heard the yells as they came over the far cliff, a swarming mass of them with their faces painted and behind them the captains on the kralons, great beasts that they rode with claws sharper than any sword since the fall of the Ringed City and some of them mutated with two heads and the armored plates down their spines split up each neck.

  But it was always around her. She felt it when they camped on a snowcovered field beneath a starswept sky with the air cold and silent. She felt it when they stood inside the city gates and clasped hands with men she knew and trusted and the whole of the army surrounded them and offered protection from everything the world had to kill them. At least now with the dragons gone. She felt it always in this life she lived and she felt it now.

  What she did not know was whether her time underground had stripped her of what she needed to live despite it. Bleeding it away a little at a time so that now she would crumble and cower and die when it grew stronger, rather than wheeling her horse and drawing her sword and riding with it raised over her head for the hills where they thundered down on her like the reckoning of some long-forgotten god of war.

  II

  She woke and she knew they were already inside. She could not identify that which told her, but still she knew. Perhaps she'd woken to the sound of the horses in the road, or perhaps it had been boots in the hall or on the stairs. Maybe a voice that sounded as if it were from the city and not this quiet mountain town. She lay in the darkness listening and the moonlight fell slanting across from the window onto the far wall and she heard nothing more.

  She'd slept in her clothes and with the dagger he'd given her lying on her chest and she stood. The bed still neatly made beneath her. Just the imprint in the wool blankets were she'd lain. She pulled one corner to smooth it and went to the window and looked out.

  The river moved darkly in the starlight and she could not see anyone. Had there been enough of them they would have put a man down along the bank or at least on the back of the building to watch the windows, but they had not. That told her either that there weren't many or that they were too confident that they'd be on her before she could run.

  She slowly lifted the window and froze when for a moment it screeched and stuck and she thought it wouldn't move any more. In that endless moment she heard steps and knew it this time and they were coming down the hall. Not quickly. Perhaps another guest simply walking out to relieve himself or leaving some woman's room to slink away in shadows rather than wake with her. But she didn't think so and she pushed the window again and it barked and slid up.

  All below still quiet. Far off a wolf again howling at that full moon and the sound everywhere of the insects in the thick vegetation along the river. A wild and tangled place broken further on by docks and the mill. But no soldiers in their armor or anything else.

  Going back to the door she checked to make sure it was latched and then grabbed the post of the small bed and dragged it across the room. Nothing to wedge it against, but it would buy her a second if she needed one. The footsteps stopped at the noise and then came on quickly. At least two of them.

  She returned to the window and looked out again and the first man hit the door. He tried it without striking and the lock held and she heard him curse and then the snap as he slammed his shoulder against it. The lock still holding, another curse, and sounds in the hall as others woke up.

  It was twenty feet to the ground and nothing between her and it but she looked up and the beams holding the short overhang were rough and open. A beam every two feet running down the roof. She put the knife in her belt and reached out and grabbed the nearest beam and pulled herself into the air. That feeling of everything changing in the world as the support fell away beneath her. Legs swinging forward and a stretching in her arms.

  But she'd climbed that damned ladder of bricks and stones to get out of the prison and this distance was nothing to her and she swung out to the edge of the roof. Lanterns coming on in the windows running down the length of the building. Inside the sound of both men kicking at the door and then the thunderous sound as one shouldered it. The crack of the slide lock breaking free and the clatter as it fell to the floorboards.

  She couldn't remember the slope of the roof or if it was flat and she swore silently. The bed grinding on the floor behind her. Then she knew she had no choice and she had to hope it was flat or die here and she reached out with one hand and grabbed the edge.

  It wasn't flat, but it was a slight slope, and there was a metal brace running along the outside edge. A place for them to stand in the winter when they climbed up and removed the snow. Just a thin strip but enough to get her fingers around. She swung forward with that dark river lurching below her and grabbed the edge with both hands and turned in the air to face the inn – for one moment holding on with just one hand and her heart in her chest and her fingers grinding as they spun – and heard the bed slam into the wall as they shoved the door open.

  Two men, both in black cloaks and riding boots. Not soldiers at all but bounty hunters. Both with short swords in hand and one with a crossbow strapped to his back. Her eyes met the taller one's and he didn't blink but started to shout and his jaw was square and thick and his teeth rotten and then she summoned all the strength she had and lunged up onto the roof. Pulling her body up to her chest and dragging it along the rough wood shingles and her arms screaming. Then throwing herself forward to get one elbow up and swinging her legs after it.

  He got a hand on her boot, but only for a heartbeat. Then she kicked it away and swung the rest of her body up and sideways and rolled onto the roof.

  Below her the inn a cacophony of screaming and yells and she could hear the cook yelling over all else for everyone to be quiet and she wondered how many of them there were in the hall. The hunters alone were silent and she didn't doubt that they were already pushing their way through the hall and for the stairs.

  She pulled the knife from her belt and watched the edge of the roof and waited for his fingers to come over so that she could cut them from his body but he hadn't lived this long in his profession by being stupid and they never came. She forced herself to wait five seconds longer and then rolled to her feet and looked out.

  The roof rose in front of her and gave her cover from the street, but it also pinned her against the riverbank. If he went down there with the crossbow and could shoot worth a damn he could take her off the roof and collect her body from wherever it landed. But no one could see her yet. To her left another building the same height as this one. She could not remember what it was, but the roof was the same. After that a shorter building with a flat roof and then nothing where a road went down to a dock.

  She stood up and ran, bo
ots cracking on the shingles, and threw herself over the gap with that drop below, stretching for the second roof and feeling all the air go out of her and perhaps the world and there was no sound. It seemed even her heartbeat hammering in her ears had stopped. In that moment something stirring within her that was memory but that was also something more and deeper.

  III

  A dark shape twisting in wrath. A light over the far mountains and all below them darkness. Here at this mountain pass her and the others standing and her with a sword in her hand and eyes on the sky and it was then that the very mountain shifted like some foundation deep below of pillars and marble had at long last and in neglected decay began to crumble and this world they knew, built as it was upon the worlds of the dead, was starting to fall into that space with the memory of bones and dust and she lost her balance there as the ground lurched and for one moment could see deep down the long cliff face of sheer stone and that endless drop before her. And then someone had the neck of her chainmail and hauled her back to the path and her sword falling end over end, silver washed in that breaking light, and for hours afterward she had that feeling inside her chest of having nothing below her that man was never meant to feel and instinctively feared above all else.

  IV

  She hit the other roof hard and fell and rolled and pushed herself back up. She knew she was bleeding but she didn't feel any pain yet and that's how it always was. Once she'd killed three men in a church as they were trying to come in through the barred doors and only after everything was done and they were piling the bodies in the street had she noticed the gash running the length of her arm.