by E. E. Knight
Jessup also served as a foreman on his bridge crew and had seen the whole fight from a hiding spot in a muddy ditch beside the road. He was a man of trim beard with the close-cropped head hair married humans in this part of the land wore, and liked to whistle through his teeth, though he didn’t do so today out of respect for their duty.
“This is his spot,” Rainfall said.
Wistala stood up a bit from the wain. The trees crowned the hill in a half-circle, and within the arms stood a pile of quarried rock, placed so as to make a wide pair of stairs in mirror image facing each other.
“This is the cairn of my son. He loved Avalanche, and Avalanche loved him. It’s only right that Avalanche rest at his feet.”
Jessup said something to Rainfall. One of the words might have been rocks.
“We should get to work,” Rainfall said. A month ago, Wistala would have been happy to dispose of the horseflesh in the most efficient and belly-filling manner possible, but her omnipresent appetite vanished when she looked at the dead horse.
The humans had gathered to do service to their own killed at sunset. Wistala had seen it only from a distance—torches flamed at the spots of their deaths and some kind of priest had passed out powders that the families threw into the torch flame. Puffs of colorful smoke came up, and they marked their faces with fallen ash. Rainfall walked among them, embracing many, but took no other part in the ceremony.
They’d burned the troll’s body.
All that was left was Avalanche. Rainfall showed Wistala where to dig, and she began to work.
Wistala enjoyed the labor. It felt good to score up soil under one’s claws, pull up rocks, tear through thin tree roots. Her body had recovered from the encounter with the Dragonblade’s dogs; even if her spirit was happy at Mossbell, her body craved effort.
She smelled metals under the cairn rocks nearby, and rust bleeding into the soil, a fact she tried to take little notice of. Imagine Rainfall’s reaction to her prying up the cairn-stones of his son and gobbling down a few buckles and buttons! But civilization requires ignoring one’s instincts, as Rainfall liked to tell her in their fireside chats.
Perverse to have such thoughts about a man who’d saved her life.
Earth . . . rock . . . rock . . . more earth. She smelled a mole and extracted it with her tongue.
Rainfall maneuvered the wain so they could roll Avalanche out from the uphill side. He was a wonder with the horses, who didn’t like her smell one bit and shifted nervously whenever Rainfall didn’t stand at their noses to calm them. Once the wagon was in place, Rainfall led the horses into the trees so they could rest and eat with dragon out of scent, out of mind.
Jessup helped by widening the channels she dug. Eventually they had a shallow grave and a pile of earth and rock to go atop it.
Wistala rested after they pushed Avalanche out of the wagon. Rainfall and Jessup placed earth and rocks over him.
With that done, Jessup ate and drank from a meal he’d packed in a bag. Rainfall led Wistala up to the crest of the hill and the ring of trees. The canyon wind took up his willow-leaf-like hair, and he tied it together with a bit of red-colored silk.
“How do you like this spot, Wistala?”
She looked across the gorge. A series of small waterfalls ran down the opposite side, though the wind caught much of the spray and turned it into a white mist.
“There must be good fishing under those falls. Look at the birds.”
“We’re going to have to work on aesthetic appreciation this summer. You’re all gastronomy, my child.
“I’ve ancestors in this ring of trees,” he continued. “One day I’ll come up here and never return, and learn stories older than any book from my fellow trees.”
Wistala didn’t understand much of elvish mysticism. Whether they actually became trees or simply lay down at the foot of one and waited to die depended on whose story you listened to.
“Who’ll take care of the bridge?”
“There’s more to it than just the bridge,” Rainfall said. “The whole Hypatian Order is breaking up. Of course, Starfall, the poet-philosopher, tells us all things must pass, even the mountains and oceans, in time. But I love the Hypatian Civilization: the laws I once upheld, the high and low priestdoms, the ceremonies and the titles that brought out the best in us and held the worst at bay.
“Take the thane. Hammar keeps the Hypatian Law, but twists its intent so that he can live in the manner of a Varvar Despot or an Overking of the Ghioz Golden Circle. Half the people of this land are indentured to him, thanks to civil debts—slaves in all but title, myself included.”
Wistala was pretty sure a badger had made a home at the hilltop somewhere. And there were birds’ nests to raid in the cliff side—
“Can’t you petition elsewhere about him?” she asked, realizing Rainfall was waiting for a question or comment.
“That’s been tried.”
“You can’t be the only dissatisfied one. Go burn his house down.”
“I’m no firebrand. A new, worse thane would rise from the ashes, perhaps one who wouldn’t even make a pretense of adhering to Hypatian Justice. Besides, my Lada is in that very hall.”
“Your granddaughter?”
“Yes. He took her as a ward when she was a child. I’ve been in default on my taxes for some years, you understand, and that gives the thane certain powers. He was able to seize her as thanedroit, thanks to his corruption of the high judge and high priest. Thanedroit! Again, a polite name for a terrible usurpation. She’s a hostage to my debts. If I die or quit the estate she inherits, and as she’s untitled and of questionable parentage besides, Mossbell would revert to Hypatia—meaning Hammar would get Mossbell.”
Wistala’s head hurt from trying to see through the hedge of words, but she could see the pain in Rainfall’s eyes.
“You should have quit it while the troll still lived,” Wistala said. “Let the thane inherit troll-blighted lands.”
“Oh, he would have rid himself of the troll quick enough if—” Rainfall stopped, looked anew at Wistala. “You don’t think—Oh, the infamy! Black infamy!”
Rainfall was silent and bitter all the ride back to Mossbell. She stretched out in the back of the wain. Jessup kept looking at Wistala in a sidelong manner.
Wistala, more to break Rainfall from his mood than because the human annoyed her, asked her host to inquire after the purpose of Jessup’s stares.
After some words, Rainfall handed the horse reins to Jessup and turned around. “He didn’t know it bothered you. He said you’re beautiful, and he was trying to memorize your proportions.”
“Beautiful?” She was her same thick-bodied self, with nothing like Jizara’s elegant neck and tail.
“Interested in aesthetics now?” Rainfall asked.
“Has he been in your awful bramble-wines?”
“I agree. I told him he should wait some years, when you have wings. Then he’d behold one of the most perfect creatures in creation. The running horse, the flying frigate bird, the peacock, the fabled Tigers of Ghioz—none of them compare to a dragon with wings held high.”
A messenger waited under the somber figures of the silent fountain turnaround of Mossbell, a down-cheeked boy with a sweated mount. At Rainfall’s order, Jessup kept the wain at a discreet distance so as not to alarm the horse.
Rainfall jumped lightly down from his seat and welcomed the messenger. After inspecting the seal, he read the contents. He stared at the boy, then hurried into the house, where he remained for only a few moments before he returned the paper to the messenger, resealed, along with a silver coin.
Wistala suspected some sort of crisis; Rainfall had very little coin in his hall, unless he kept a secret noseproofed supply.
Rainfall invited Jessup to stay for dinner, but the timberman had to get back to his family and his brother’s widow and children.
As soon as they sat alone, waiting for his bread to cook and drop off the clay-sided oven as a joint sputtered ins
ide, she asked about the message.
“Another of the thane’s humiliations, under a masquerade of civility,” Rainfall said. “He summons me, ta-hum ta-hally to his hall, so that I might fully tell the story of the death of the troll and claim my reward. Of course, it’ll go toward back taxes. The accounting will be announced to all present.”
Wistala turned the handle of the spit, rotating the joint. The turn brought a fresh fall of juices into the gravy pan and mouthwatering smells. “Refuse him.”
“I cannot. There’ll be many a jape about elves not being able to keep two pennies proximate.”
“Let them talk. No one ever lost an eye to a joke.”
“I’ll have to beg some part of the reward that should rightfully go to my crew. Imagine: pleading so that the widows and orphans might see some monies, and the men be rewarded for their courage, when the thane should be bowing to each and opening his purse wide to the survivors!”
“I thought being rid of the troll would solve your problems.”
“It will take time to assemble decent tenants for the land, and they’ll need roof and stock. I shall have to go beg of the dwarves.
The Wheel of Fire will give me more upfront, but at ruinous rates. The Dwarves of the Diadem are fairer, but only lend a small sum at a time.”
“Wheel of Fire?” Wistala asked.
“Your eyes have gone all hot and tight, Wistala. Have you had dealings with them? Oh—the joint burns! Quick, get it out.”
They extracted the haunch of mutton and took the baking tubers from their metal case. When dinner was laid out—Wistala had learned to eat neatly from the table, but she still had to lift her head to let the food slide down her throat, a gesture that always made Rainfall shake his head—they continued the conversation in what had been the food-servers’ nook, a smaller room off the big, dark, and drafty dining hall, warmed by the heat of the oven.
Rainfall moved on to happier subjects, mostly the chance of seeing his granddaughter at Hammar’s hall, and Wistala put the dwarves out of her mind. The mention awoke dark thoughts and set her griff twitching. She’d promised her father to forget the past and live for another generation of dragons.
Wistala kept herself deep inside Mossbell House all while Rainfall visited the thane. Visitors were traipsing across the grounds to see where the troll had fallen.
Rainfall returned in the company of a small ill-favored horse. Its shaggy coat and hooves were thick with layers of dirt. He put it in the stall opposite what had been Avalanche’s, and when Wistala made sure there was no one around, she approached Rainfall.
“How passed the audience?”
“As predicted. I bowed and begged. He gave me half the reward to distribute to the men, then sent a low priest along to see the money distributed. As though my word wasn’t enough.”
Rainfall brightened. “However, he is keeping his pledge as to taxation. I shall have five years breathing space to turn Mossbell around, thanks to you.”
Wistala bowed; elves took great pleasure in the giving and receiving of bows.
“The only cloud was that he refused me a visit with my granddaughter. She’s living in a room in the fast tower. I should have gone out and shouted for her, but he pulls up the bridge at night.”
Wistala saw an opportunity, and questioned him about this curious feature. She learned much about the thane’s hall, from its almost windowless first level to the small herb garden on the roof. The thane’s hall sounded impressive and extensive.
“Galahall should be fine, for the excises and land tax,” Rainfall said.
That night she made friends with the horse—or mule rather, as the beast was quick to correct her—as Rainfall saw to its hooves. The mule was either too stupid or too sick to mind her smell, and seemed ill-disposed to talk.
“There’s a spot of hoof-sprout in the cracks,” Rainfall grumbled as the mule stamped and swore. “I’ll have to make a paste and bag his feet. What kind of stablemen is the thane keeping?”
“How did you come by this unfortunate?” she asked.
“Yet another of the thane’s jokes. He frowned when I told him of the death of Avalanche, my last source of steady income, thanks to stud-price, and offered a replacement. Stog here was the most wretched specimen in his stables, so the hostler presented me with him.”
The black ears of the mule perked up at the mention of the name.
“Hello, Stog,” Wistala said in the beast-tongue the mule had used in his calumnies. “Welcome to Mossbell.”
“Drop all the two-leggeds,” Stog said to no one in particular. “Left to rot again.”
Rainfall worked long into the night on the mule’s hooves, gathering plants and then mixing them with a white powder he kept in a clay jar. Then he filled four leather-bottomed canvas bags with the sharp-smelling mix and tied them to the mule’s hooves, after fixing a wooden gate around his neck that kept him from lowering his head to chew the poultices free.
“Bug me! That stings,” Stog said, and tried to bite Rainfall as he worked.
Too stupid to recognize a kind turn, Wistala thought, and settled down in her old spot to sleep.
Rainfall was still at work when she awoke. He’d cleaned, brushed, and clipped every inch of the mule, who looked immeasurably better but still angry.
“Ah, there you are,” Rainfall said as she drank from the central cistern. “Could you watch him for a few hours? He’s trying to kick the bags off. I hobbled him”—he pointed at a line between stable and the horse’s rear leg—“but I wonder if he’s out of tricks.”
“I’d be happy to.”
Rainfall extended a hand to Stog’s nose, but he just tried to bite again.
“As you like,” Rainfall said. He left, shoulders sagging.
“You should be grateful,” Wistala said from a high perch in the almost-empty loft.
“Gut-kick gratitude,” Stog said. “Torturing two-leg. He’s burning my hooves right off, I’ll signify.”
Stog spoke the beast-tongue better than Avalanche. Perhaps he was a well-traveled mule.
“He’s kind beyond my ability to tell. It may hurt now, but your feet will feel better soon, I’m sure.”
“So speaks the drakka with her claws all clean and cool.”
This was strange. Not only had the mule identified her as a female, but he’d correctly guessed that she was no longer a hatchling.
“You know about dragons,” she said.
“I know about killing them. I was in the Dragonblade’s mule train.” The long brown face told her nothing, but the ears twitching this way and that suggested that Stog would welcome a fight.
“The last time I saw the Dragonblade, it was just him and his dogs. No mules.”
“You saw the Dragonblade and lived?”
Wistala tried to remain as calm as the mule. His ears were forward with interest. “Big broad man? Black armor like dragonscale?”
“Not like, it is. I’ve borne many a dragon-hoof or hide-scraping on my back.”
“Then why aren’t you still carrying pieces of slaughtered dragon?”
Stog tried to stamp, but the hobble prevented his moving. “The Dragonblade was hurrying north, and I came up lame. I was traded for a shaggy-faced pony and left in the blackest hole of an old stable.
“I waited days and days for him to return. How could he forget his stoutest mule?”
Wistala saw the mule’s ears droop at the memory. Finally his tail swished, and he looked at her afresh as he spoke: “I pulled a trash-sled in snow up to my fetlocks now and then. The stablehands beat me like a muddy rug. Until the hooves started to go. The hostler tried to sell me off, but the clodclutters took one look at my hooves and wised up.”
“So you know the lay of the land around the thane’s hold?”
“Some of it.”
“Tell me more.”
“Why should I do that?”
“To take your mind off your hooves,” Wistala said. “Besides, there might be a way for you to give them
a bite back for their mistreatment.”
“I wouldn’t mind catching the hostler bending over with his back turned. I’d send him through the wall. But even a good stomp would fix me. If you hit hominids on the inside of their hoof just right, they hop about shouting. Most gratifying.”
The moon changed all the way round once, and then to half so fast Wistala hardly knew time passed, save for the changes for the better to Stog’s hooves, healing under Rainfall’s constant attention.
She took to exploring outside Mossbell’s grounds, particularly to a high ridge to the northeast. From the trees on its top, she could see an even higher ridge with a single line of trees and an old broken watchtower that marked the edge of Galahall’s lands, according to Stog. The ground between was little used, as it was poor in soil and water.
She worked on her Parl by asking Jessup about the woods, ostensibly with an eye toward the hunting prospects of the Thickets, as that part of the thanedom was known.
Jessup was working the roadside near the river, sinking a well. He’d laid out a few stones in what Rainfall’s study-books called a rectangle on a flat, firm piece of land. Every now and then he would fell a few trees and place them on the rocks so they could dry without touching the ground, whistling more loudly through his teeth as the pile of lumber grew.
He quit working as she nosed around, and took off his ear-flapped cap to scratch his head. “Hunting? Some pheasant, a gobbler or two. No wild boar or deer left—the thane has hunted them all.”
“I’d like to avoid notice.”
“Then keep to the thorn hollows. Not a problem for you. Your skin should keep them out.” He looked doubtful, then took a step closer. “May I touch?”
Wistala raised her head and turned sideways. “The ones on my back are the thickest.”
He ran his hand over her scales. “Like . . . like cast iron, only rougher.”
Wistala used a saa to scritch at the back of her shoulder, where a few of her hatchling scales still clung. One dropped off, and she flipped it to him with her nose. “One of your own.”
“I may keep this?”
“You may.”