Dragon's Trail

by Joseph Malik

  Jarrod clapped him on the shoulder. “They came to me.”

  It was a black and rainy early morning. On the nights when it rained, it was dark. Jarrod was already used to the moon’s illumination; it soothed the world and his dreams here were vivid and feature-length.

  He was in his kimono and silk long johns, powering through chaturanga and waiting for the fire to warm the room, when he was greeted with a knock at the door to his chambers.

  He tied his hair back and opened the door.

  The girl he’d seen the day before—the dark-haired mind-reader who smelled of lilacs—smiled at him. It wasn’t a toothy, ravenous smile, but an awkward, girlish smile.

  “You’re up early,” he admitted.

  In the firelight, dimpled and coltish, her hair in a sideways ponytail, she looked half-formed and childlike. He was a lousy judge of age and hardly anyone here kept track of their own age anyway, but he figured that, back home, he wouldn’t have been able to date her for at least another year or two. He felt flustered and weird about having been attracted to her earlier. First glances and all that, he decided. Given time, though, she would be a stunner.

  One thing he had noticed was that there were few children here; at least in the castles. He supposed their parents kept them on leashes at home, and, he thought, rightfully so.

  Her voice was lower than he would have expected. “I’m Daelle,” she said. “I’m your language instructor. Is this a good time?”

  Jarrod couldn’t suppress a smile at the degree to which the Universe was putting the whammy on his morning. “Hello, Daelle. Jarrod, Son-Lord of Knightsbridge. Uh, I need to put some clothes on. Please, come in.”

  He walked over to the water barrel, dunked his head and toweled his hair and face, and pulled on his leather pants, shedding the kimono for a tunic and a hooded cardigan. “I guess this will do.”

  The uniform of a royal chivalric off-duty was “warrior blacks,” a short, simple black tunic, normally of silk but alternately made of velvet or wool for colder days, with the silver lord’s brocade at the collar, and trousers of any type tucked into durable boots. Javal had arranged for Jarrod to receive three of these outfits, but the clothes were still at the tailor.

  Jarrod had taken Crius at his word that the Crown would supply him with everything he needed, and commissioned a second pair of leather trousers, but they weren’t finished yet either. Jarrod was also having a fourth tunic, of velvet, made large enough to fit over one of his motorcycle jackets, without the skirt, because he could already smell court intrigue and he wasn’t going to be the one left without a chair when the music stopped.

  “There is no hurry,” she said.

  “There is always a hurry,” Jarrod corrected her, digging through his trunk looking for a belt. “How long, uh, do you expect this to take?”

  “That depends on you,” Daelle replied. “Which do you prefer? We can sit somewhere and I can give you lessons, or, if you’d rather, I can accompany you through your day and help you with translation when you need it.”

  “I’d prefer that,” Jarrod admitted. “I’m kind of pressed for time. I still don’t know my way around, I’ve got fight practice after breakfast, I have to pick out a horse, I’m going for a run at noon—” He managed to stop himself before saying, and I’m kicking your ex-boyfriend’s ass after lunch. Jarrod stared at her for a moment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any disrespect.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “What I was just—wait a minute. I thought you could read minds.”

  There was the laugh again, and the smile. “Not from here. I have to have physical contact.”

  “That’s interesting.” And handy to know.

  “I used to be able to read minds from a distance,” she said. “But I conditioned myself to only read when I’m in contact.”

  “Why is that?” Jarrod wondered aloud, buckling on his swordbelt.

  “There’s much less crying this way.”

  Jarrod looked her in the eye for a moment, then strode over and offered her his arm. She slid her hand into the crook of his elbow, and he smiled at her. “Shall we?”

  “It may not be the best idea, having that girl on your arm all day,” Javal acknowledged. “Sir Urlan is not taking it well, and he’s got quite a temper on him.”

  She was three tables away, and laughing, when she caught Jarrod’s eye yet again.

  Jarrod licked at the head of his beer. “Yeah. He made himself my sparring partner this afternoon, the moment after I walked in with her.”

  Javal laughed. “Oh, no. How did that go?”

  “He was enthusiastic,” Jarrod had to admit. “He dented my helmet a few times.”

  “Keep your distance from her. You and Urlan will be around sharp implements and doing dangerous things.”

  “What am I, nuts? She can read my mind. Imagine if we—uh, yeah.”

  “Oh, I have,” said Javal. “And I’m sure he has, too.”

  Jarrod waved his hands. “She’s too young for me.”

  Javal peered over at her. “The hell she is. But it’s probably better that you think so. Be careful that his seconds don’t catch you alone some evening and kill you.”

  “For holding her hand?”

  “You need to be very, very careful. He’s a friend of Alby’s, and you don’t need any more trouble from him either.”

  Javal and Jarrod stood at a large and detailed sand table built around a mock-up of High River Keep. Scores of miniature wooden figurines dotted the tiny landscape.

  Javal arranged the Gavrian figurines, painted silver, into a tight phalanx and moved them toward a line of Gateskeep figurines painted black. “Shield wall. Spears behind. Your move.”

  Jarrod arranged the Gateskeep figurines into a long box formation, four men abreast and six deep, and set them against the Gavrians.

  “Correct,” said Javal. “Now, suppose your formation doesn’t hold. What then?” He moved the Gavrians to envelop the box.

  “Send their armor home and pass it on to their younger brothers.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Javal admitted.

  Javal moved up a second formation of Gateskeep forces, arranging them in an inverted chevron. “Call up a second squadron if you have it,” he instructed. “Sometimes, things fail. You can do everything right and still lose men. Formations crack, swords bend, your lead man trips and breaks his leg ten steps short of the shield wall. It happens. You will fail. It’s what you do after you fail that matters.”

  “I know,” said Jarrod. “Believe me, I know.”

  Twenty days' ride to the south, Ulo and Mukul were having their daily walk on the top of the great tower at the Hold of Gavria. “You certainly seem to understand the way of the gbatu,” agreed Mukul. “I’ve fought against them my entire life. We’d have defeated them centuries ago if they were completely useless.”

  “I made that point to the War Council.”

  “Warriorhood is a calling of honor, Master Sabbaghian. You’ll infuriate every man who’s ever carried a sword if you enlist the gbatu.”

  “You make it sound as if I’m offering the snarling little bastards full commissions. I’m saying we distract Falconsrealm, that’s all. They’re cheap, they’re mean, and they’re expendable. We give them second-rate hardware and turn them loose in Falconsrealm and Gateskeep to tie up their forces while we move north.”

  “And what happens after we take Falconsrealm? We’ve got a new country to run, boiling over with armed gbatu.”

  “They’re never going to attack an entire army. They’d never attack a fortified outpost. They’d be skirmishers. As long as we retain superior force of arms, they’re useless. The key is to ensure that Falconsrealm takes too long to learn that they’re wasting their efforts.”

  “Will they be?”

  “If we do this my way.”

  “If, indeed.”

  “Make it happen.”

  “You
know,” said Mukul, “you could make it happen. I’d be powerless to stop it.”

  Mukul wandered away, looking for a windbreak where he could light his pipe.

  Carter knocked Master Gronek’s wooden blade away with his wooden greatsword, hooked him outside his elbow with the pommel, and tripped him to the ground.

  Inside his battered Corinthian practice helmet—a true anachronism, modeled after a design from a thousand years before the Middle Ages but with perforations below the eye-slit—and his hardened black leather armor, Carter was a historical train-wreck, equal parts Roman gladiator and Batman. Engraved cuir bouilli armlets, metal-splinted leather legs with cuisses that wrapped around his hamstrings, and hanging leather-backed steel tassets completed the ensemble.

  But he was kicking ass.

  Argyul rushed in behind a teardrop shield, his wooden sword in a high guard. Carter dropped back a half-step and levered a tremendous blow into the bottom point of the shield, using the momentum to counter over the top and skip the blade off Argyul’s helmet.

  “Good,” said Argyul, stepping back. “Dammit.”

  Carter choked up on the greatsword, falling into a fencing guard using the ricossa as Gronek closed with him again.

  “Aren’t you tired, yet?” Daorah asked.

  Gronek tangled with Carter, who wrapped up the blade with his own and threw him several feet away, then kicked another fighter in the shield, bowling him over.

  “I don’t stop when I’m tired,” he told her. “I stop when it’s over.”

  “Do you stop when you’re hungry?” she asked. “Lunch is ready.”

  The fighters broke for lunch, and Carter pulled off his helmet. “I’m always hungry.”

  “After lunch, you have riding practice. We still have to find you a horse.”

  “I’d rather have a pegasus.” He needled her about it constantly because he knew it got a rise out of her.

  This time, for the first time, she smiled at the crack. “One step at a time.”

  Jarrod ran his hand along the horse’s flanks. “He’s blue,” he said.

  The Falconsrealm heavy saddlers are the size of Friesians, sixteen hands, with thick necks and heavy hindquarters. Jarrod still didn’t entirely trust them. Stories circulated of a stablehand losing an arm to a horse bite two years ago.

  “A roan,” said Javal. “Very rare. And expensive. I’m surprised they gelded him.”

  Jarrod had never seen anything quite like him and he knew for damned sure that nobody else had one. The roan wasn’t exactly blue; he was more charcoal-gray with shadows of black, but the light from the daytime moon gave him a bluish tint, even with the storm growing in the south today. The lighter coat spotlighted the slabs and knots of muscle in a way that a black coat wouldn’t. It made him all the more stunning.

  He was also the largest horse Jarrod had ever seen, as tall as Javal’s great destrier and even thicker through the neck.

  Falconsrealm knights held to two schools of thought in the choosing of a steed for battle. Some knights preferred light, fast warhorses, still bigger than their riding horses but compact and quick with feathered hooves, for skirmishes and quick flanking maneuvers. Others preferred massive, powerful chargers like Javal’s that functioned essentially as heavy armored units replete with steel-shod hooves and blankets of mail and coats of plates.

  Jarrod was going the tank route. He could ride well enough to do a couple of simple stunts, but he hadn’t grown up on a horse and he was fairly sure he’d break his neck on a fast-mover. Plus, he figured that if he and Carter both had someone on their shoulders in a chicken fight, Carter’s team would have the advantage. The concept, he felt, carried through.

  But it raised a question.

  “How the hell would I get up on him in armor?”

  Javal ran his hand over the horse’s buttock. “We’ll get you up there. Look at those hips. Wow.”

  “You’re right about the hips,” said the trainer. “Let me show you something.” He led the roan to the far side of the corral, where two stablehands had hung a pig carcass swaddled in mail from a gantry.

  The trainer lined up the horse with the pig a few feet behind its tail, then smacked it on the ass. “Ho!”

  The horse caught the armored bundle with both rear hooves, sending the rope past horizontal. As it swung back and hit the horse in the hindquarters, the roan jumped forward and kicked again. Organs spilled out through the mail into the dirt as the pig swung back in an arc.

  “Enough,” the trainer told the horse, walking it forward.

  “Buy this horse,” said Javal.

  The trainer brought the horse around again, and they gave him another look-over.

  The simple fact, Jarrod reminded himself, was that most Falconsrealm horses were black.

  He hated the thought of doing something that no one else did; he had a tough enough time adapting already. The last thing he needed was his enemies thinking I can’t believe that asshole is on a blue horse.

  “He’s expensive,” said the trainer. “Not because he’s a roan, but because he took us forever to train. He’s impervious to pain as far as we can tell, and he’s not afraid of anything. Not the whip, not any of us, not even the other horses.”

  “Is he pretty smart?” asked Jarrod.

  The trainer looked at Jarrod, then at Javal, then shook his head. “No.”

  “Really,” said Jarrod, looking into the horse’s eye, which was huge, brown, and simple. “You hear that, fella? He says you’re not smart.”

  “I’m not gonna lie to you, sir. He’s dumb as they come, maybe the dumbest horse I’ve ever met. But if you’ll beg my pardon, you don’t want a smart horse. You want a simple horse. A smart horse will see a battle and tell you to go fuck yourself. Because you guys are all crazy, and a smart horse knows that. It takes a dumb horse to do the things you ask him to do. With all due respect, sir.”

  “That might be the worst sales pitch I’ve ever heard,” Jarrod admitted.

  “I don’t want you to come back here asking for your money back, telling me your horse is stupid. I’m telling you now. This horse is stupid. But he’s as brave and as tough as I’ve ever seen. He will carry you through the gates of hell if you ask him to.”

  “If you don’t buy him, I will,” Javal told Jarrod, walking around the horse the other way, “I’d have to sell my summer home, though, I’d bet.”

  “You might, sir,” said the trainer. “We’ve got a lot into him. He just took so long to train. He’s ten; we’ve had him five years, sir. Five years. The plus side, though, is that he’s good on all his commands by now. But we’re not letting him go cheap. A couple of border lords have their eye on him, but they can’t quite cough up the money just yet.”

  “Money’s no object,” Javal assured the trainer. “This man is a King’s Rider. Jarrod, buy this horse. Right now.”

  “You’ll take a promissory note from the crown, I trust?” Jarrod asked.

  “With pleasure, sire.”

  “Done,” said Jarrod, and shook the trainer’s hand. “I’ll send a man around this afternoon with it. What’s his name?”

  “Horse,” said the trainer. “You want to give him a name, we’ll start working him with it.”

  Jarrod looked the horse in the eye. He didn’t care if the roan wasn’t smart. He could use some dumb luck, anyway. Able to kick a man in half, and completely clueless about the amount of danger he’d be in. They clicked.

  “Call him Perseus,” said Jarrod.

  Over the next two weeks, Jarrod kept a professional distance from Daelle and made it a point to talk to other girls around the castle, which he found was no problem, being a foreigner and the best swordsman in recent memory.

  He put in long afternoons getting to understand Perseus.

  He’d had some instruction in horsemanship back home; as a stunt coordinator for sword and sorcery films he at least had to know how they worked. Now, however, he got into t
he finer points not only of horsemanship, but of caring for, saddling, and armoring an animal that weighed three quarters of a ton.

  For the first week, he was terrible at remembering everything—a strap not cinched again after Perseus blew out, mail barding or the coat of plates not tied in just right at an arming point—and he’d have something fall off the damned horse ten seconds after getting into the saddle and kicking him into gear. Real tough to look badass with your horse’s armor dragging in the dirt.

  Of course, that was when he could get up into the saddle at all. Perseus was so tall that when Jarrod ordered his own custom war saddle with right-side frogs for his warhammer and gran espée de guerre—the first thing he’d done after leaving the royal stables having agreed to buy Perseus—he also ordered it built with knotted leather braids that dangled down the flanks from either side of the saddle horn. He had to grab one of these in both hands to pull himself high enough to get a foot into the stirrup.

  He also had to mount his horses from the right side, opposite everyone else, so as not to tangle up his arming sword. Perseus didn’t seem to mind but many other horses did, some going so far as to side-step while he tried to swing up.

  The war saddle had a short coat of plates integrated fore and aft over the skirt and it strapped in two places around the belly, with iron rings at each corner to tie into barding. More than once he’d forget to snug something down and end up pulling the damned saddle sideways, busting his ass. A few times he’d brought fifty pounds of armor or more down on himself.

  At a weekend course in horsemanship at the Hollywood Stunt Academy, Jarrod had learned to do a flip into, and out of, a saddle, but on a fourteen-hand Arabian that was one thing; it was a fool’s errand in thirty pounds of armor on a horse the size of Perseus. The seat of the saddle was above his head. They were impossibly huge animals. A knight leaping into his saddle was Hollywood bullshit.