Dragon's Trail

by Joseph Malik

  The trainers were decent to Jarrod, though. He wasn’t the first rider to come from a city, and he wouldn’t be the last. He was getting better day by day.

  No one made fun of the big blue horse. He actually got compliments on owning a roan. That helped.

  On the downside, Perseus required a larger stall than other horses, and he was going to be a logistical nightmare on the road. It would take a second stout pony to pull a cart just with his food, water, and barding; a barrel with a day’s supply of water took two strong men to lift. Christ, my horse needs his own horse.

  He ordered a cart.

  And two good ponies.

  And he started making notes of which stablehands he’d consider bringing along on the road if need be, because damn, once he bought a riding horse he would be traveling with four horses and a cart; his own circus.

  The romantic image of the lone knight crossing the vast and arid wasteland on his trusty steed involved a remarkable amount of artistic license.

  He didn’t see how he’d get Perseus out of the valley. It was half a day’s ride to the far end of the city across the lake and he’d have to stop to feed the damned horse just to get that far.

  They were pals, though. All the bumps, bruises, and false starts were bonding time. He’d find a way.

  When he, Daelle, and Javal arrived at the gymnasium one morning long after they’d all concluded that Jarrod had, in fact, smoothed things over with Urlan, Jarrod found few of the smiles, handshakes, and rock signs he’d grown accustomed to. In fact, the mood overall was quite sullen and apprehensive. He expected that someone had died, or perhaps war had been declared.

  He pressed through the ring to find Albar in the center of the gymnasium with a courtsword. A sharp, heavy courtsword, not one of the oil-slaked, blunted iron practice blades.

  Albar was not in armor. He was, in fact, nude from the waist up, though he had heavy boots on, and loose trousers. Albar was slender and undefined.

  Jarrod took his arm from Daelle and strode out to the middle of the gym.

  “I’d draw, were I you, sir,” Urlan recommended, from the crowd behind Albar.

  Jarrod spoke evenly and firmly. “If you have a problem with me, Sir Urlan, you can settle it yourself. I’m not fighting this man.”

  Albar kicked clear a place in the straw. “Mortal combat is allowed during peacetime. You’ve insulted me, sir. And Sir Urlan as well. I demand you pay for it.”

  Jarrod cleared his throat. “For starters, sir,” he said, “I have not insulted you.”

  “Your very presence,” said Albar, “insults me.”

  “Be that as it may,” said Jarrod, “I have no intention of killing you.”

  “And you won’t, I assure you,” Albar menaced with the blade. Urlan offered Jarrod a courtsword of roughly equal length. Jarrod waved it away, instead snugging down his bazubands and pulling on his gloves, and drew his arming sword. Those in the room who hadn’t seen it before took an apprehensive breath as the blade threw beams into the dust motes across the gym.

  “Seriously, sir,” said Jarrod. “Put that thing away or I’m going to find a new scabbard for it.”

  Big words, but he was glad he had the medical kit on his swordbelt.

  “Alby,” said Javal, “When he kills you, it will make him very unpopular with your future wife.”

  “He won’t kill me,” Albar snorted.

  Jarrod’s voice was level. “Says you.”

  “Jarrod,” ordered Javal, “do not kill the heir presumptive.”

  Jarrod muttered out of the corner of his mouth, “Can I just hurt him a little?”

  “Suits me,” said Javal quietly.

  “This is your big answer, huh?” Jarrod asked Albar from behind his sword. “This just locks it all up for you. You can kill me fair and square and I’ll finally stop embarrassing you in front of your good friends from Gavria. What’s that all about, anyway? You and our enemy, just hanging out, holding hands and strolling in the gardens together.”

  “You die,” growled Albar.

  “Bring it, Skippy,” said Jarrod.

  Javal stepped aside. Albar lunged.

  The courtsword was light, deft, and lethal. Jarrod parried, pivoted, and let him pass, taking the offensive and driving him back several steps at the end of his range.

  Jarrod’s sword was longer, and with the bazubands he had considerable reach on Albar. He kept his parries forward of the balance. He had no intention of getting cut.

  Jarrod broke his attack.

  Albar moved through a couple of guards, just out of long attacking distance. He was definitely Argyul’s student, heavy on his feet and deliberate in his motions, and—Jarrod found with a couple of quick, probing attacks—with the same predilection for anticipatory maneuvers.

  Albar charged. Jarrod feinted, enveloped, and slung Albar’s sword far off to the weak side. He placed the tip of his sword at Albar’s eye as Albar recovered, the bigger man wildly out of proportion and stance, Jarrod showing the room—and Albar—that he easily could have ended him, or given him a really great scar.

  Jarrod broke off, struck a guard, and waited as Albar composed himself. “You need to stop this, right now,” Jarrod advised as Albar fell into a guard, grinding his teeth, rattled.

  Urlan drove into Jarrod from behind, knocking him forward with an elbow. Albar charged again, fast and straight, lunging.

  Jarrod parried the courtsword, double-stepped to get his balance, lunged at Albar driving him back, then spun and slashed behind him. The tip of the sword opened a wide hole across Urlan’s shoulder, missing his neck only because Urlan had flinched.

  Albar lunged again, dropping into the same Agrippa thrust that Argyul had used—long and heavy and potentially lethal, but static and oh-so-slow to recover—and Jarrod side-stepped, countered hard, enveloped again, and this time, as Albar slid back to his guard, Jarrod followed him back, got the bind, and punched him in the mouth.

  This was not a boxer’s snappy cross, but a fight-ending overhand whose center of effort lay a few inches behind Albar’s skull. Albar hit the floor hard, his head bouncing off the planks. His sword clattered away.

  Urlan was pinching off the wound in his shoulder.

  “You got any other bright ideas?” Jarrod asked him, menacing with his sword.

  “Nothing comes to mind,” Urlan admitted.

  Jarrod turned his attention back to Albar, who spat a lot of blood carefully into his hands. “Kill me,” he drooled.

  “No chance,” said Jarrod. “But you will quit fucking with me, sir. I am here because I have work to do.”

  Jarrod turned to Javal, and sheathed his sword as four of Urlan’s sergeants leaped on him from behind and took him to the floor. When they were all pulled away from each other, one was unconscious, one was weeping, and another was coughing up blood. Jarrod’s face was a thing of nightmare, swollen and smashed.

  “Come on!” Jarrod roared. “I wanna fight some more!”

  It was Javal and several knights who had broken up the fight. “Show them out!” Javal put his hand on Jarrod’s shoulder. “Jarrod, enough.”

  “Never,” Jarrod rasped.

  IV

  ACCELERANDO

  “Everyone has a plan ‘till they get punched in the mouth."

  — Mike Tyson

  Javal sat alone long into the night, toying with a dagger in his left hand and a pen in his right. A candle, burned to a fat stump, leaked wax off the side of the desk.

  He read over what he’d written. The knife flipped in his hand, twirling and pirouetting with the flame’s light. He harbored no thoughts of harm; he was simply more comfortable with blades than with quills.

  Master Crius,

  Greetings from your eastern neighbor.

  You should trust that I follow your orders, and the Crown’s, unquestioningly. I am honored by being charged with Jarrod’s training. I will fulfill my duties to the best of my ability. I
must admit, however, that I question your judgment in the choice of King’s Rider Jarrod of Knightsbridge for the position he has been promised.

  Rider Jarrod exemplifies such self-destruction and recklessness that I believe he harbors a death wish. I would be hesitant to promote such a man to knighthood, much less a command rank. In his defense, I must admit that he is already an exemplary warrior in his own right. I do not exaggerate on this next point: Jarrod is as skilled in combat as any man I’ve seen, and he is possibly a match for any man alive. However, I believe the consistency with which he puts himself into dangerous situations, coupled with the hesitation he displays in actual combat, would present a liability on the field and

  He bit his lip. The knife crawled through his fingers to balance on the back of his hand, then dropped into his grip.

  “. . . and I don’t know if I can keep him alive that long,” he muttered to no one.

  He crumpled up the parchment, pulled another, dipped the pen, began to scribble furiously.

  In a moment he stopped and read, and the knife began its dance anew.

  “Crius?”

  Crius was still awake in the front room of his chambers, tinkering with a spell mnemonic and a glass of brandy.

  General Daral was an old warrior from the north, wiry and scarred and wearing his white and yellow beard in braids. He sat tiredly and took off his cap. “We need to talk, you and I.”

  “Please.”

  Crius poured him some tea.

  “Thank you. Do you remember Sir Daran of—oh, I forget. Sir Javal’s second from two summers ago.”

  “I do. Met his end with a sheth on a hunting expedition, yes?”

  “Five sheth,” Daral corrected. “Sir Javal saw his end coming, a year before anyone else. He told you, remember?”

  “I do. This is regarding Jarrod of Knightsbridge,” Crius assumed.

  An ugly quiet drove itself like an adze between them.

  Crius yanked it free. “That was a fair fight. Albar challenged him.”

  “And lost.”

  “Yes.”

  “Jarrod of Knightsbridge is dangerous,” said Daral. “He’s uncontrollable. And unpredictable.”

  “All the more reason we need him.”

  “Explain.”

  “I agree with Sir Javal’s assessment: Jarrod suffers from an appalling hubris; nearly an expectation that the world be laid at his feet simply because he is a skilled warrior.

  “But that same hubris, from my observation, affects everyone in Jarrod’s homeworld.

  “The son of Sabbaghian is going to be commanding the Gavrian forces, likely with the same abandon we see in Jarrod. To understand Sabbaghian, we need to understand Jarrod. When we can anticipate Jarrod, we can anticipate Sabbaghian. So we need to watch Jarrod. We need to learn from him. You don’t think we’re going to give him any real command on the field, do you? Sir Javal is teaching him so we can learn what someone from his world might do with an army. We have Sorenson in Rogues’ River, under tutelage from Commander Daorah Uth Alanas, for the same reason. We will compare notes and cross-reference with Sorenson’s mentors as the summer progresses. Come fall, we will have at least a cursory profile of Sabbaghian’s patterns and processes. We will put them in advisory positions, and we will use them to beat Gavria.”

  “So we are not teaching him,” Daral’s brow furrowed. “He is teaching us?”

  “Precisely. And we will be in his debt for it.”

  “That makes much more sense to me,” General Daral said. “How is Javal with all this?”

  “Sir Javal wrote me a wonderful letter the other night. He has sworn to fulfill his obligation.”

  Jarrod awoke in his bed, in his chambers. His ribs had been clamped with bandages and his right eye was swollen shut.

  “So when it really comes down to it,” said Javal, pouring two goblets of wine on the bedside table, “You’re a coward.”

  Jarrod squinted at him through his good eye. “How do you figure that?”

  Javal handed him one. “You hesitate.”

  Jarrod rose to a sit with considerable effort. “I didn’t think I did.”

  “You did. You could have disarmed Alby and beaten him unconscious. You should have. Maybe given him a good scar or taken an eye, too. And you should have killed Urlan for what he did.

  “Loth, as well. You threw him down, you waited to see if he got up, to see if you’d done enough. I should have known it, then.”

  “You told me not to draw against Loth.”

  “I was wrong. You should have killed each of them, right there. This is the right thing. This is what a warrior does.”

  “It’s not what I do,” said Jarrod.

  “No!” Javal shouted. “It’s not! That’s the problem,” he hissed. “You’re either lazy, or you’re afraid.”

  “I’m not really sure I’m up to getting my ass chewed right now. Could you come back later?”

  Javal wasn’t amused. “You are a war horse, Jarrod. As fine and strong and brave as they come. But when someone threatens you, you fight like a little baby goat, shoving people around hoping they leave you alone. Quit being a child about it. You’re going to get us all killed.”

  More quietly, he continued, “You have a greatness inside of you. Men like Albar, men like Urlan, they see that greatness, and they hate it, because they haven’t figured out that greatness in others doesn’t diminish greatness in self.”

  “You have this. . .” here, he searched for a word, and failed, “. . . thing, a gift, inside of you. You are, with a sword, what King Sabbaghian is with his magic. We’ve never seen anything like it. No one has. A man like you comes along once in an age. And for some reason, you hate this thing that makes you great. And that makes men who lust for greatness even more furious because you have what they want, and you don’t want it.”

  “I screwed up with it,” said Jarrod. “I used it to kill a man, who didn’t deserve to die.”

  “That’s not a judgment you can make,” snapped Javal. “He drew a sword on you, yes? Over a woman? This man? This is the man you speak of?”

  “Yes,” said Jarrod. “He lost his footing. He hit his head and he died.”

  “So he killed himself,” said Javal. “He should have been ready. He should have had his feet under him.”

  “He did. It was wet.”

  Javal shrugged. “Did he know you? Did he know what you were capable of?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then he knew the consequences of fighting you. He came at you—you, of all men!—with a sword. He was prepared to die. Maybe he wanted to die, and needed you to do it for him.”

  “Jesus,” said Jarrod. The thought had never occurred to him. “Suicide by Jarrod,” he muttered.

  He let a moment pass, muttering under his breath in English.

  “It took everything,” he told Javal then. “It destroyed my life. It destroyed my career. The woman I loved left me. My father still doesn’t speak to me. I became a—” they had no word for meme, “—a national example of failure.”

  “A man with your gifts? A failure, for killing a man in a fight?”

  “My people don’t understand,” said Jarrod. “Most of us don’t fight anymore.” He suddenly remembered a thirty-year-old man, bearded, tattooed, learning to box in his gym, who’d broken down sobbing the first time he’d caught a heavy punch to the face. “We’ve forgotten this part of ourselves. We don’t value it. Our world only has a handful of warriors left.”

  “That’s a tragedy,” said Javal.

  Jarrod downed his wine. “You have no idea.”

  “Your gift didn’t ruin your life,” said Javal. “The man you killed did. And your nation’s misunderstanding did. And look, you’re here, now,” said Javal, gesturing around him. “The greatest warrior in the world, with no one disputing it. Not even me, and I was the greatest warrior in the world until you came along.”

  “Sorry.”
r />   “There you go again. Don’t be sorry! What do you have to be sorry for? Wine, adventure, the king’s own two hands propping you up, beautiful girls wetting their linen when you walk by, an entire nation shitting itself in fear over you. This is a bad thing?

  “That man you killed did us a favor,” Javal said. “If you hadn’t killed him—or if your nation had at least the brains of a horse between them and made you the hero you should have been—you wouldn’t be here, now.”

  “I never really thought of it that way,” said Jarrod, refilling his goblet.

  “You should,” said Javal. “Because it’s true. We need this thing that you have. We need you to use all of it, right now. It’s not enough for you to kick ass in the courtyard, to teach us to swordfight and wrestle. It’s not enough for you to punch a man like Albar, and to let an asshole like Urlan blindside you, or to let a man like Loth live. We need you to be big. Bigger. Do you understand? The stuff of songs.”

  “Epic.”

  “Epic. Yes. Be epic, damn you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Javal picked up his goblet. “Consider that an order. Now get some rest. Swords win wars. I need you whole as soon as possible.”

  Jarrod awoke in candlelight. Someone was dabbing at his eye with a damp cloth that felt like an ice pick in his brain.

  He grabbed the hand and pushed it away. “Please don’t do that.”

  “I am so sorry,” said Daelle, whose hand it was. “Jarrod, I am so, so sorry. I didn’t mean for you to—” She took a deep breath.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he groaned, closing his eye. “I need a good ass-kicking every once in a while.”

  “It took four of them to do it,” said a large knight wearing an Order of the Stallion pin. He stood at the door, one hand on his sword.

  “Sire,” said Jarrod.

  “Pleasure,” said the knight. “We figured that bag of shit would be coming for you while you slept. It seems like the only way it would be a fair fight.”