“Then he will walk it off.”
“Stand down, recruit,” Ander ordered.
Tyber straightened up, letting out a pent-up breath, then returned his sword to its scabbard. It wasn’t until he stepped out of the mercenary’s path that he realized that he hadn’t given a thought to slicing off his own thumb as he had braced the scabbard’s locket.
The mercenary reached for the boy. Wanlin scrunched his shoulders around his ears, wrenched his eyes shut, and prepared for a blow. Instead, the mercenary grabbed him by the arm and hauled him to his feet as if he weighed no more than a sack of flour. He barked at the boy, then shoved him forward.
Wanlin fell to the grass with an audible gasp.
Hewart tossed back his head in laughter. The other mercenary joined in.
“You will find that Dragoneer Chanson will back me in this,” Ander said to Hewart. “You know what weight the word of a dragoneer carries in our land.”
The laughter died away quickly. Hewart spoke to the mercenary. The mercenary jerked Wanlin to his feet, dragging him back to his partner’s horse. The men bound the boy’s wrists behind his back.
“You are making a mistake, akacho,” Hewart said with a shake of his head as he turned to Ander. “There is only one way to deal with these beasts. You treat them like people instead of animals, then they come to expect to be treated like people.”
“He is a subject of our king.”
“And a person,” Tyber added before Ander shot him a warning look.
Hewart’s mouth opened, his lip curling with the nasty taste of the words he started to say, and then he turned back to his horse.
“Ute caradan sume hare nomento!” he shouted, casting his hands in the air with impatience.
A mercenary grabbed Wanlin by his smock at the back of his neck and the hem of his leggings and hefted him into the air. He slung the weakly struggling boy across the back of his horse before mounting it himself.
Hewart climbed into his own saddle, glaring at Tyber and Ander, then turned his horse, snapped his reins, and raced back toward the head of the caravan. The mercenaries spurred their horses on to catch him, Wanlin bouncing precariously across the horse’s back.
“Thank you,” Tyber said as he watched the riders return.
Ander let out a big sigh. “He can’t treat our king’s subjects like they’re in Seelia.”
“They would have killed him if we had been on the other side of the river.”
Ander nodded.
“What will happen to him?”
Ander studied Tyber a second. “He will go before the magistrate. He will be charged with attempted theft.”
“And found guilty,” Tyber said.
“He is guilty.”
“The punishment? Lashes?”
Ander turned his attention back to Hewart and the others. A breeze brushed his hair away from his eyes, fluttering the length of his beard.
“He was trying to steal food from the mouths of our people.”
“I know that,” Tyber said, his voice far sharper than he’d intended.
Ander turned back to him. “Lashes are fair. He broke the law.”
It had taken a day for Tyber and the others to fly the distance between the last village and the banks of the Wight river at the border. By contrast, it had taken the caravan several days to travel the same distance on foot.
“How will he get back home?” Tyber asked.
Ander didn’t answer right away. “Actions have consequences, Tyber.”
The proctor walked back to Listico. The red dragon stood patiently among the tall grass, staring at something in the sky.
“Mine didn't!” Tyber called after him. “You let me go.”
Ander looked over his shoulder. “And yet, here you are.”
Tyber blinked, his head shifting back on his neck in surprise as Ander turned back to his dragon.
Chapter 12
Rius lowered her nose and sniffed noisily at the sack in Tyber’s hands. A smile spread across his face as he watched the dragon’s intense study of his efforts to undo the sack’s knot.
“Are you going to feed her the smoked meat?” Ren asked.
Tyber looked over his shoulder. “She doesn’t really seem to mind it.”
“Yeah, like I don’t seem to mind Palacar’s gruel, only because I can’t get anything better to eat. The cattle girls will be bringing steaks around anytime.”
As Tyber opened the sack, Rius flashed her tongue inside, then plunged her nose after it, knocking the bag from Tyber’s hand.
“Rius!”
Ren laughed. “Bad dragon. Bad!”
Tyber patted Rius on the crown of her head. “That’s fine. Let me get it.”
“So what happened today?” Ren asked as Tyber crouched.
Tyber scooped up the sack of smoked meat. “What do you mean? You were involved, weren’t you? Didn’t you go after the riders on the left?”
Ren shrugged, looking back to the caravan briefly. “Not exactly. Precision flying isn’t Maybelle’s strong suit. I flew over, but I was kind of there to hem everyone in. But you, man, I saw that move. Looked like you were going to land Rius right on top of that guy’s head!”
Tyber stood, fishing a piece of meat from the sack. He held it out for Rius, who snatched it in her jaws, lifted her head, and swallowed it down.
Tyber shrugged. “There’s not much to tell. I didn’t mean to knock him off his horse. I just meant to scare him. Drive him away. That’s what Ander ordered.”
“Fine,” Ren said with a shrug. “But what about Hewart and his goons? I saw it from the air. You drew your sword. And I didn’t see you hold it against the wolf.”
Tyber looked back to the feed sack as Rius tried to stick her nose in. He touched the top of her muzzle as it passed, and she froze, blinking her great eyes as she continued to stare at the sack.
“Hungry today, are you?” Tyber pulled another piece out for her. As she took it and swallowed, he thought of Wanlin’s face, the sharp hunger in it. After he and Rius returned to the air, he watched as the mercenary took Wanlin to the rear of the caravan, still bound and tossed over the back of the horse. The next time Tyber swung around the back of the caravan, he saw Wanlin there, limping, his hands bound before him with a rope tied to the dung cart that marked the very end of the caravan. At no point during the day, as he and Rius sailed around the rear, did he see anyone approach and offer water or food.
“Wow.” Ren stepped forward. “It must have been intense if you are ignoring me now. But I knew that when I saw you pull the feed sack out there. You don’t want anything more to do with Hewart and his people, am I right?”
Tyber offered Rius another piece of meat. “I have my orders.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“I’ll do what I have to do to protect the caravan. Those are my orders.”
A confused look passed over Ren’s face. “Was that ever in question? I don’t get it.”
Tyber sighed as he twisted the sack shut and began to wind the lash around it. “They wanted to execute him. Hewart wanted to run that boy through and leave his body where it fell. Because they think that it will deter others from attacking.”
Ren nodded. “All right. Why didn’t you?”
“What!” Tyber snapped.
“I saw you draw your sword and put yourself between that hired slab of beef and the scrawny wolf. You didn’t think he should be executed?”
“No! They didn’t get anywhere near the caravan. And—”
“One of them loosed an arrow against Ander. That alone would get a man executed.”
“Wanlin didn’t—”
“Wanlin?”
“The boy. The one I knocked off the horse. His name is Wanlin. And for all the sky, Ren, he’s no older than my middle brother. He can’t be more than twelve at the most.”
Ren shrugged. “Parents should do a better—”
“Stop!” Tyber snapped. “Stop. Just stop. I don’t want to hear i
t.”
Tyber jerked the knot on the sack tight and shoved it into the saddlebag.
“I don’t get you, man,” Ren said. “Those wolves—”
“Don’t call them that. That’s what Hewart calls them.”
Ren rolled his eyes. “Fine. Those unfortunately lawless opportunity seekers had every intention of sending the cattle into a stampede. And that’s if they were acting alone. You heard Chanson. They might very well have been scouts—”
“I heard,” Tyber said as he pulled out the bundle of canvas that formed the tent he and Ren shared. He dropped it to the ground.
“Yeah, well, if your brother was still in the mother city, he might have gotten a little less to eat if your thie—opportunity seekers had gotten their way. They wanted to steal livestock meant for our people, Tyber. How can you, of all people, Mr. Hares-For-The-Destitute, defend these scum? I would have emptied his guts onto his—”
“Stop!” Tyber snapped.
“What’s your problem, man?” Ren asked with a sneer. “Listen to yourself. You say you want to be a hordesman—a royal hordesman no less—and here you are defending thieves. Scum. People who wouldn’t think twice to let your brother—all of your brothers and sisters starve. Do you understand—I mean, didn’t you hear somewhere in Master Luremptor’s lectures that our primary duty is to enforce the King’s will?”
Tyber’s jaw clenched, his breath hot in his chest as he peered out to the west, toward the city of his birth. He’d met the King once. Ran into him in the hall of the academy before he became the King. He’d made a comment about Tyber being from a family without nobility.
“Excuse me,” Tyber said. He closed the flap on the saddlebag, eyed the stake in the ground to which Rius was tied, then took off toward the caravan.
“Hey!” Ren called after him. “What about the tent?”
“Pitch it!” Tyber yelled over his shoulder.
Although he waited to hear Ander yell after him, the command never came. So Tyber strode on through the grass toward the road and the caravan. A small, furry creature squeaked before him and scurried to a mound of dirt several feet away. He glanced at it, but kept moving, slowing his pace only after his feet met the broken and worn stones of the road.
From there, he slowly weaved his way to the end of the caravan. The raucous noise of the Seelians rolled from the backs of their wagons. Bards spun stories around fires. Most of them spared Tyber no more than a glance as he passed.
He rounded a wagon that leaned to the side and found himself face to face with a mule, its muzzle inside a feedbag. Behind it, the posts of the dung cart jutted into the air, splayed like a large, long-legged insect dead on its back.
Tyber shuffled around the scrawny mule and its cart with sloped sides, like a square funnel. At the back, the cart’s gate hung open as if waiting for the boy who knelt behind it, his elbows on the ground, wrists held in the air by a rope, his brow to the stones.
“Wanlin,” Tyber said.
The boy didn’t move right away, but then slowly lifted his head and stared at Tyber. A welt covered his eye. The tracks of unwiped tears stained his cheeks.
Tyber’s jaw clenched. What an idiot he was. He should have thought to bring a waterskin. Food. Something.
Laughter crackled through the gathering dusk. Tyber glanced back at the rear of the caravan, then pitched himself onto his toes for signs of anyone.
He and Wanlin were back with the refuse, the dung and scraps shoveled and piled in a cart to be sold off as fertilizer.
Tyber drew his sword.
Wanlin flinched, his eyes squinting. He planted his face back on the stones. His chest heaved with sudden, heavy breaths.
“Wanlin, no!” Tyber said, holding out a hand and approaching. “I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.”
The foul odors nearly knocked him down. More than dung, he also smelled the rotting scraps of meals. Bones. The offal from the livestock slaughtered along the way. The cart buzzed with a cloud of flies. His stomach wrenched. Sourness bubbled at the back of his throat and burned.
He placed the edge of the blade against the rope knotted around the cart post. Excited chatter percolated back to them. Someone interrupted with a cackling cry. More laughter blossomed from beyond the cart and wagons.
Tyber lowered the blade slowly, then looked at Wanlin. The boy lifted his face and stared at Tyber with one eye wide, the other swollen shut. The whites of the open eye and the tracks on Wanlin’s cheeks stood out in the dying light.
“If you want your freedom, you have to speak to me,” Tyber said.
Wanlin nodded.
“You can speak our tongue, can’t you? You are of Cadwaller, aren’t you?”
Wanlin nodded again, once. “Yes.”
Tyber’s shoulders relaxed some. “What were you doing? Why did you charge the caravan?”
Wanlin lowered his face and looked as if he was slipping beneath the waters of a river for the last time.
“Wanlin!” Tyber snapped, taking a step forward. “This is my price for your freedom. I caught you. Answer me. Why were you charging the caravan?”
The boy raised his eyes to Tyber and shook his head slowly, side to side. “We didn’t want to hurt anyone,” he said, his voice soft. “Just drive off some cattle. One or two.”
“You wanted to steal, then. Steal the cattle.”
Wanlin lowered his face.
“Look at me!”
Wanlin looked back. His face grew tight, his eyes heavy. Tears gathered behind them.
“There’s nothing to eat!” he cried, his voice rising in pitch. “Our goats are gone! Dragonjacks stole them. They took everything. They killed my brother!”
A sob spilled from him. His head fell forward, his brow smacking the ragged stones.
“Wanlin,” Tyber said, stepping forward and lowering himself to a knee. “You had horses.”
“They’re not ours!” Wanlin cried.
“Shh!” Tyber admonished, holding a hand out to him. “Quiet!”
He peered over his shoulder. Nothing stirred, not even the usual restless breeze.
“My father,” Wanlin said through a sob, “knew a man.” He drew in a breath through gritted teeth. “He said he would give us some meat. We just had to ride his horses.”
“You can’t steal—”
“There’s nothing to eat!” The boy’s voice rose into a screech.
“Quiet!” Tyber pleaded.
“Arrows are gone,” Wanlin gasped. “Father can’t… He can’t hunt. There are…”
His shoulders heaved and the boy fell forward onto his face again, his hips writhing side to side as if trying to slither beneath the stones of the old road.
“Wanlin,” Tyber said and placed his hand on the back of the boy’s head.
The boy grew still.
“I will set you free. But there is a price. You must make me a promise.”
Wanlin lay still, not even bothering to try to lift his head.
Tyber pulled his hand away. “Look at me.”
Wanlin raised his head.
“You must promise me. You must swear on the dreams of your mother—Do you have a mother?”
Wanlin didn’t move, didn’t speak.
“Who do you love more than anyone in this world?” Tyber asked.
Wanlin blinked at him.
“Quickly! A name!”
“Farf.”
“Farf?”
“My dog.”
Tyber sighed. “You must swear on Farf’s…” He paused as he recalled a dog he’d seen in True Gate once, sleeping on her side beside an open door. She had twitched and fidgeted, letting out muffled woofs and looking for all the sky as if she were dreaming.
“You must swear on the dreams of Farf that you will never steal another thing again. Will you do that?”
Wanlin nodded.
“Then do it. Do it now. Say it. Actions have consequences. You were caught stealing. The price to pay is that you must swear to me, and swear on Fa
rf’s dreams, that you will never, ever, ever steal again. No matter how bad things get. No matter how hungry you are. You cannot steal. That is your punishment. Understand?”
Wanlin shuddered, gasped, and nodded.
“Do it!”
“I swear,” Wanlin said. “I swear. Please. I swear. Let me go.”
“To whom? What do you swear?”
“I swear to you! I swear to you, hordesman. And I swear on Farf’s dreams. Under the eyes of the gods, I swear on his dreams!”
Tyber nodded once, then pushed himself up. He swung around to the cart and swept the sword through the rope with a grunt. The blade buried itself an inch in the wood of the dung cart with a thump.
Tyber looked back. The rope lay limp on the ground. Wanlin crawled onto his knees and heels, his hands bound before him.
“Go,” Tyber said. “The gods saw you promise. Carry it until the end of your days. That is your punishment.”
Wanlin staggered to his feet, began to gather the rope, but then turned and ran, disappearing as quickly as the small rodents that built their mounds in the cover of the grass.
Chapter 13
Tyber tugged at the hilt of his sword. The blade shifted slightly, but remained stuck in the wood of the cart.
“For all the sky,” he spat, then braced a foot against the cart and yanked the sword. The blade popped free. He stumbled back a few steps, clutching the sword out before himself, not only afraid of accidentally lopping off a limb but also clanging the steel blade against the stones.
He stopped, then peered over his shoulder. The grass stood still. Wanlin was gone as if he’d never been. Tyber examined the blade of his sword. There wasn’t enough light to see if he’d damaged it by slicing through the rope and cutting into the wood. Master Vark had stressed that a sword was not an axe, and a man who treated it as such would find that he had nothing better than a woodsman’s axe when it came time for a fight.
He would clean and sharpen the blade as soon as he got back to camp. It’d keep Ren at bay, too. He always complained when someone took a whetstone to a blade.
But first, he had to get back to camp.
He returned the sword to its scabbard, then peered around the side of the dung cart. Chatter peppered the night. Walking down the middle of the road, weaving through the wagons and carts wasn’t a good idea. It would be better to stick to the side of the road, even walk out through the grass, just far enough to remain outside the light of campfires.
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