by E. E. Knight
He bowed in gratitude.
“Could I ask a favor of you?” Wistala asked.
“I’ve more wealth than my father saw in his lifetime, thanks to you. I’d do my best.”
“I’d like to start bringing home game to Mossbell. Rainfall has been feeding me for so long, I’d like to do the same for him.”
“The master gives too much. He’s . . . he’s noble that way. Go on.”
“I need a sort of harness that will allow me to carry a few birds or a quartered deer. Can you manage it?”
“I’ll see the hidesman and blacksmith a-morrow.” He scratched his close-cropped head again, circling her and cocking his head this way and that in thought.
Wistala bowed. “Thank you. Anything I can do to help—”
“Stand still.”
He took a ball of string from his pocket and measured her, along the back, around her neck, across her shoulders, making little marks on the string with a bit of charcoal. “I expect I’ll have it done by blueberry day.”
“Which is?” The profusion of hominid holidays were all jumbled in Wistala’s head; they celebrated everything from turns of the stars and moon to hop-picking to the ripening of the first plum.
“Eight days.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m the one obliged, Wisssakle.”
“Wistala.”
Jessup did better on the second try. When Wistala nuzzled him and gave a bit of a prrum to congratulate him, his face broke into a grin. “Me conversing with a dragon in its own tongue. Like something out of a bedtime story.”
With the air warm and spring in full bloom, Stog came outdoors. His hooves had been turned flaky and white by Rainfall’s applications, but strong and healthy hoof lived beneath, revealed as the diseased parts fell away.
Wistala took Stog to see Avalanche’s grave, as a final proof of Rainfall’s goodness and the turn of his fortune marked by the mule’s arrival at Mossbell.
Stog snorted. According to the mule, horses got all the glory, and mules did all the work. “We can go twice as far, carrying twice the load, on half the feed as a horse. Up hills they’d break a leg on and down valleys that would mean their necks, too. But where’s the poetry, the statuary?”
“Just wait. I’ll give you a chance to show a pack of horses a trick or two.”
Jessup came through on his harness. It was a clever bit of craft, looping around her neck, tail, and forelimbs. There were eyes here and there in the leather straps, where she could hook game nets (or bags, or waterskins, she thought). She had room in the buckles for her to almost double in size. He took it away almost as soon as she tried it on, insisting on improvements, and returned it with twin linked straps running ladderlike down her back. She found some game nets in Mossbell’s dry attic and learned to fix them on herself.
With that, she told Rainfall she’d be gone a few days and plunged into the Thickets. She did hunt, but her real purpose was a trek to Galahall.
Know your hunting ground, Mother always used to say. As hatchlings, Auron had always ignored that advice and plunged straight into the center of the home cave as if expecting a slug to pop up and ask to be eaten. Hunting took patience, knowledge of game trails and habits, and above all, a feel for terrain, weather, and wind.
She waited for an evening that promised rain to approach Galahall. She sneaked onto its lands, circled wide of its herds and flocks, trotted through ditches bordering its fields, and eventually came upon the Thane’s Hall.
It had grown over the years, ever larger, she guessed by the quality of the stonework. The oldest, blockiest, and worst-laid stones were in a tall square tower that stood at its corner. The tower, higher than an oak, had narrow windows and an overhanging platform at the top. A building had grown up around it, extending first north and then west and then south again so it turned back on itself, with the tower watching a wide courtyard. The north and west buildings were rough-hewn as the tower on their first level, almost windowless, but the level above was fancier and decorated with flourishes that Wistala thought looked like leaves and faces of woodland creatures.
The south part of Galahall had a huge door facing the tower with a grand balcony above, and windows filled with tinted glass bigger than any door in Mossbell. Smaller supports helped hold up the high, smooth walls of that part of the hall, and there were beds of flowers and shrubs in between under the windows.
If Wistala didn’t know better, she would think that a truly splendid fellow lived inside.
The whole of Galahall was surrounded by a wide ditch filled with water, bridged under the tower. She approached the moat and sniffed at the water. It smelled faintly of sewage, but the bottom-feeding fish living in it didn’t seem to mind.
She paid close attention to the windows of the tower. Unless the rooms were very small, each level of the tower would probably have only one room. The stairs must be on the inside.
With that, she left, angling for the ridge marked by its single line of trees.
She came home to Mossbell with her bags full of pheasants and rabbits, and her mind full of paths and stream-crossings, thorny runs and thick stands. Crows followed her intermittently on her way home, as if hoping that she’d drop a tidbit, but she arrived at Mossbell with a week’s worth of dinners and stews to receive hearty words of welcome and praise from Rainfall.
Even Stog seemed pleased to have her back in the stable. He trotted up to her on healthy hooves. “The mice and rats ran wild while you were hunting,” Stog grumbled.
“Next time you’ll come along. We’ll see if you’re a match for the thane’s horses.”
Chapter 14
Wistala planned her venture all the next week, as the pheasants and rabbits made the transition from the cool room to stews and pies and soups. She brought up the subject to Rainfall as he worked in his garden, mentioning that she’d seen deer tracks in the thickets and had a mind to bring back a tender young yearling.
She explained her plans for the next day to him, all the while hugging her real intent to her breast.
“I’ve found some hollows even the hunters avoid. Stog seems willing to carry a deer home.”
“I’m sure he’d enjoy the exercise.”
“I’ll need a harness for Stog, of course, and a bag of meal.”
“I’ll rise early and put the harness on,” Rainfall said. “If that suits you.”
“You’re too kind,” Wistala said. Her host’s pleasant manner inspired frilly language in return. Though she stifled a prrum only with difficulty, imaging Lada’s arrival at Mossbell atop Stog’s back, and Rainfall’s delight at having her returned to him.
She stayed in the house that night, too excited to sleep, and studied Lada’s sketched portrait by candlelight long after Rainfall had turned in. Finally she sniffed the doll from the little chair under the musical instruments until she knew the odor, then wrapped it in a clean cloth from the larder.
On her way out, she noted that the house looked even more bare, if that were possible. The cloak room was bulging with a last few treasures Rainfall doted on: everything from furniture to rolls of heavy draperies to a jeweled belt his grandfather had been awarded for a victory to a silver music box that played a tune his mate had been fond of. Rainfall was sacrificing yet more of the home’s interior to raise funds to bring tenants and livestock to his lands. Perhaps matters had gone ill with the dwarves.
The doll was hidden in with a few game bags by the time Rainfall entered the stable the next morning. He wished them both farewell and a fortunate hunt.
“All the spits will be cleaned in expectation of a successful return,” Rainfall said as he waved them off. “Rah-ya! for an increase to your summer’s tally!”
Wistala capered around Stog as soon as they were out of sight of Mossbell, trickery and adventure in her blood. “We’re finally off for Galahall.”
“Where I get to show up those oat-stuffed horses.”
“Yes. When we get to the ridge, you’ll have to show me wh
at you can manage. That’s the only path I couldn’t pick for you.”
They passed through the Thickets easily enough. Stog was both strong and sure-footed, following her in and out of the network of thorny hollows with nothing more than a few bitter oaths when a thorn got him. It was a bad place for flies, too, as it turned out. They ignored Wistala, but they clustered around Stog’s eyes, ears, and tailvent.
They paused for grain and water at a muddy hole. The flies grew thicker than ever as Stog pawed up mud to gather drinkable water.
“I was bit by a centipede the size of a snake once,” Stog said, his teeth working in their strange sideways fashion. “Burned like dragonflame. I’ve never much minded flies since then.”
They rested for an afternoon in the shadow of the ridge with its strange line of sentinel trees. It promised to be a fine night, but they couldn’t wait forever. Stog found a path up as the sun set. The other side was steeper still.
“We’ll be crossing this again in a hurry, and at night, so keep that in mind when you pick your trail,” Wistala said.
The soil was summer-dry and tended to slide as they went down and entered the grounds of Galahall. They cut through fields, watched only by scarecrows.
“I remember the smell of this grass,” Stog said as they came within sight of the hall. They stood in a mass of oaks hugging a stream, immature acorns in the boughs above. They rested again until the lights began to go out in the hall’s second-floor windows.
She poured out more grain for Stog. “Wait here. I may be coming back in a hurry,” Wistala said, checking the fitting of her game-harness. “Wish me luck.”
Stog didn’t wish her luck. He was chewing.
Wistala kept low as she approached Galahall, making for the old tower that came close to closing the near circle of buildings. She passed through the foul-smelling moat and emerged slimy with duckweed.
Then she began to climb.
She peeked in the first window, open to the warm night, perhaps three lengths up off the ground. Here Wistala had her first doubt: the window was barred, though not reinforced with crosspieces. Oh, why hadn’t she climbed the tower before!
Through the bars she could see that this floor of the tower looked to be one big room, with a stairway running up the side and a stout door set into the ceiling—or the next room’s floor, depending on how you looked at it. Laundry hung off lines everywhere, and she smelled an odor like boiled cabbage.
The floor above looked more promising from the window: two beds with drawn-back curtains held sleeping figures. She peered carefully inside until her eye adjusted to the gloom. Both had similar reddish curly hair—not Lada, who according to her portrait had straight hair.
There was no connecting door between the two levels; the lower’s stairs just ran into the upper. She climbed up the outside to the next level. This one had a single bed, with a miniature bed beside that Wistala recognized as a place for hominids to lay their freshly hatched—No, they didn’t hatch; they popped out live in considerable pain and confusion, she corrected herself. There were numerous windows on this floor, all ancient and narrow, perhaps for the firing of arrows. The woman sleeping here was round-faced. She and her infant had fallen asleep together, the child attached to her like a suckling pig. Something about the set of her eyes and nose made Wistala discount this one as a possibility.
She tried to guess if there were two floors above or just one as she climbed.
The next floor marked the end of the stairs. It was cramped and low, with a short ladder propped up at the wall near another hatch. The windows here were round, with one on each side of the tower, and the glass pivoted on a central column to admit the breeze. Wheels edged with gears and pegs stood in a cobwebbed pile on one side of the room, taking up much of the space.
There wasn’t a bed such as she’d seen at Mossbell or the floors below, just a fabric mass on the floor with bits of straw coming out at the seams. Someone slept there under a wool blanket, with an oily-smelling dip beside the bed upon a pile of books. The sleeping figure had drawn the thin covering up to her nose.
Wistala examined the fixture in the window. It would break easily enough; nothing but wooden pegs held it in place. Hooks at either side of the round would help hold it against a wind.
She guessed there to be nothing but a watch-platform above, though one of Galahall’s owners had added a wooden roof. If another one of this Hammar’s wards slept up there, it would be quite cold in winter. The girl in the bed was the most likely candidate, as the others had been eliminated.
She just got her hips through the window, at the cost of a slight scraping sound and a whisper of a creak.
The figure stirred a little.
Wistala took the doll out of its bag and unwrapped it, mindful of the ears at the bottom of the stairs.
Wistala came still closer, feeling her way across rough, dry wood. A washbasin bowl with a little water, a bit glass with a number of dried wildflowers in it, a half-finished woven basket, and a few odd and ends of clothing hanging from some pegs were all the room contained.
A foot with the five ridiculous, almost-useless hominid toes stuck out of the blanket. Wistala gave it an experimental lick.
The figure stirred again.
“Hsssst,” said Wistala, as quietly as she could.
A wide green eye opened.
“Don’t be afraid,” Wistala said in Parl.
The human figure sat bolt upright even as she scooted up against the wall, drawing the covers up with her and bunching them under her eyes. But there was no question, the eyes, forehead, and hair belonged to Rainfall’s granddaughter.
Wistala smiled and bowed. “I bring tidings—”
“Aaaaaaaaagh!” Lada shrieked.
“You don’t—,” Wistala tried, backing away. She held up the doll.
“Heeeeeeelp! Monster! Esithephe, your baby!”
A clunk and a bawling sounded from downstairs. Wistala advanced, tipping the doll right side up and upside down to prove that it was just a bit of craft, but Lada snatched up the waterbasin, and liquid flew.
“Aiiieeee!” the girl—no, young woman, Wistala could see the smallish protrusions wherewith mammals suckled their broods—shouted, throwing the basin. Wistala lowered her head, and it crashed into the pile of pegged and geared wheels, sprinkling her with water as it passed.
Wistala tried again: “No! Your name is—”
A mouthful of pillow cut off that sentence. Lada rammed it home as she fled in a jumble of knees, elbows, and white nightshirt toward the stairs down, still screaming her head off.
The pillow came out of her mouth with a tear, and feathers flew.
Now screams echoed up from the lower levels.
“Lada!” Wistala shouted, spitting feathers.
The girl screamed as she fled down the stairs.
Wistala heard footsteps, shouts from below caught up in a babble of voices and a screaming baby. She considered going after Lada, but a male voice bellowing questions made her turn back to the window.
A heavy tread on the stairs decided her. She squeezed back out the circular window.
Something gripped at her tail, and she pulled it away hard and climbed up the tower.
Up?
She checked herself. She’d instinctively headed toward the safety of the sky. If only she could will her wings into appearing.
She turned around, testing her digits against the rough stones for the climb down. She watched pillow feathers drift, gently turning and rocking as they fell, and realized some of them had stuck in her scales.
A hairy face, pale in the dim moon, looked out the window. The man must have heard her, for he looked up.
She swung her tail down and poked him back inside with its point. He let out a howl.
I must give them an urgency beyond hunting me, if I’m to escape.
She gulped and squeezed her fire bladder, spat a thin jet of flame up into the wooden roof above. She looked across the narrow gap between tower and
the south-facing leg of Galahall.
All interior-facing windows were open in the summer air.
She hurried over to the west side of the tower and, clinging rather precariously, extended her neck and spat. Missed—she’d judged the fall of flame badly.
Shouts from the courtyard—she tried again.
This time the flame passed through the window. Orange light glowed within.
She looked into the courtyard. Shirtless, barefoot men were emerging from doors while female faces, holding gowns closed at their throats, peered cautiously from the windows. She caught the gleam of a sword blade and a pike point. A spike-haired boy pointed up the tower—at her or the growing flame, she didn’t know—and screamed a warning.
Wistala saw a faster route down. She moved around to the south side of the tower and jumped to the roof of the east-running building, and from that leaped down the wooden roof of an exposed stable by the entrance. She jumped once more and hit the ground running, with men shouting and giving orders behind and a growing clamor of excited dogs.
“Horses! To horse!” the booming voice she’d heard in the tower bellowed.
Wistala hurried off into the night. Her muscles began to burn as her dragon-dash gave out. The tree-crowned ridge seemed very far away.
Stog had vanished. All that remained of him were some tracks and a little of his feed scattered on the ground.
“Stog!” she called, panting. The run had been a nightmare of breathless rushes from hiding spot to hiding spot, with dogs barking and crying behind when the horsemen weren’t blowing horns at each other. “Stog,” she shouted when she had her wind.
She snuffled around and found the trace of a scent. He’d gone off in the direction of Galahall. Had he seen the flames—the top of the tower still burned like a beacon—and gone off to give assistance? They’d missed each other in the dark, and no wonder: she’d splashed through every ditch she could find to confuse the pursuit. Or had he become frightened at the hunting horns, even now sounding across the wide lands south of Galahall?
Looking for him would be suicide.
She looked up the tall ridge and started up. The slow, steady climb suited her short limbs so much better than the run across the fields. By the time she reached the line of trees, she felt almost herself again. Hunger gnawed at her, but she was nothing like starved. She body-slid down the other side, flying down on chest and tail.