by E. E. Knight
Ileth checked the cases on the saddle. There was a kit with some thread—that didn’t look to be nearly enough for the festoon of wing skin—and a needle. The sooner the bits of skin were joined the better. She set about going to work when Aurue looked down the road.
A long file of people, mostly in brown or gray work tunics, shuffled along, linked neck-to-neck. Ileth, having grown up in the Republic, had never even seen convicts linked in that fashion, but knew it must be the slave train Garamoff had mentioned.
“That’s who we were supposed to find,” Ileth whispered.
Aurue lowered his head and wings. He was the same color as the spring pinewoods and brush. “We have to hide. If they don’t kill us, they’ll run for help and come back with enough to finish us.”
Ileth saw one of the slaves, a little boy with hair in his eyes. He held a woman’s hand with one hand, a bit of tied-up rag that might be a toy or doll, or perhaps just a bit of food, in his other. Could she hide, let him walk by, spend the rest of his life under whips?
Ileth did her best to evaluate them. She wanted to fly reconnaissance, make estimations of the enemy—what could she learn from such close observation?
Well, they certainly weren’t anything like the Rari who’d come ashore in the Freesand, for all the red-and-black they wore. Those had been scarred, heavily armed, dripping with gold. She looked at how they were dressed. Bracers with metal studs. Two were barefoot. Their weapons were whips, clubs, ordinary knives. Rags and cloth to absorb sweat and keep out the wind. One carried a savage-looking boar-spear with a crossbar—that might be a serious threat to Aurue, but more likely it was meant to intimidate a protesting slave.
The one in the lead was heavy; he had a silk scarf and head-wrap and carried a short whip. He had a shining gold necklace with a gem at the center of golden squares, obviously the leader and the only one showing real wealth or status.
Not the fiercest and best of the Rari. These were men who had others win their fights for them, then bought and sold the captives taken.
The Rari like to stop wars as quick as they start ’em.
Still. Six men. Six men were an impossibility, not without help from the dragon. She might get one with her little crossbow, if her nerve didn’t fail. The dragon couldn’t use his flame without striking the line of captives. Still, on a coup board, a single foot soldier with a dragon behind it would not easily be taken. The soldier could prevent the dragon from being surrounded and destroyed, and as for the dragon, it could kill whatever it moved against.
“We have to do this together or it’ll never work,” Ileth said, moving away from the column upslope, staying hidden. For Aurue, “staying hidden” was as much a part of his makeup as his breathing.
“Are you mad? Six paces deeper into the woods. They’ll never see us.”
Ileth unhooked Sifler’s crossbow. She didn’t bother to cock it, just cradled it in her arm in the manner of some of the men she’d seen in camp. It rode easily enough there. She stuck a couple of bolts in her boot—just in case.
They made it to the bend and Ileth climbed onto the road. “Just look formidable. Fold your wings. Just don’t run unless I do, and don’t attack unless they . . . unless they hurt me.”
Ileth took a step down the trail. It wasn’t quite a road, but it had been filled and improved to the point where you couldn’t call it a path. Three men could walk it shoulder-to-shoulder. Could she use Aurue to frighten them back down the road? No, they might fight an attack, or start slitting throats. She needed to play the part of a dragoneer, yet not provoke violence. What sort of dragoneer would the Rari expect, at her age? Some young scion of wealth and power. A valuable hostage, no doubt.
Her attire might give her away. Well, they shouldn’t know a dragoneer from the scarecrow she resembled. She hoped.
The column halted in confusion at the sight of the dragon and its rider blocking the trail at the switchback. The Rari clumped up behind their slaves, using them as a living shield. So they were aware that the Republic was seeking to restore their freedom.
The fat Rari with the short whip—it was as gray as Aurue, so Ileth wondered if it was one of the sharkskin whips the Captain used to talk about—kept his face firm, giving away nothing. The man next to him twisted his fingers in his beard nervously as he spoke into the leader’s ear. The leader held something in his hand, perhaps the size of a stone, but concealed it.
“Does anyone speak Montangyan? You?” Using a crossbow bolt like an accusing finger, she indicated the leader. “You, you must speak it.”
Aurue did his part. He extended his neck toward the man like a dog pointing out a pheasant in a bush.
To his credit—if he was acting, that is—the leader looked confused and a little frightened. He opened his mouth and his hands.
“One of you must speak it,” Ileth said.
“I do,” the man who’d been tugging at his beard said. “What your honorable say for him?”
“The fighting is over.” She tried to put conviction in her words. “You’re safe. My dragon won’t harm you. The fighting is over.”
Several of the minders perked up, ceased crouching behind their captives.
“There are conditions,” Ileth said. “I must take these people from you.”
He passed that along to the heavy man, but by the way his eyes narrowed when she spoke, she believed the leader understood her every word.
The leader said something to his translator. A few of his men shrank away from him.
“Why should men take orders from a girl?” the translator asked.
Ileth thought for a moment. “Your . . . your men are not taking orders from me. They’re taking orders from you.” She pointed again with the crossbow bolt.
The translator held up his hands and made a little gesture to Ileth as he spoke. “Slower. Please, Captain.” He spoke again to the one with the short whip. The leader went over to the side of the path and sat on a boulder. He slipped whatever had been in his hand back inside his black tunic and wiped his brow with a scarf of blue silk.
Ileth wondered what the Captain would say if she’d told him a Rari pirate had called her “Captain.” It gave her inspiration to form her next words. “Tell your captain I only tell him information. None of you are in danger, provided you”—and here her tongue aided her as she had to slow it to be sure to be understood—“surrender my people.”
She wondered if she should climb onto the dragon to make a more impressive figure as she developed her bluff. Instead, she made a show of counting them, nodding for each one and speaking the numbers aloud.
“You may keep any weapon a man can carry by himself. You may keep your wealth. You may not keep any slave or hostage; those are to be surrendered.” Ileth was vastly overstepping her authority with this bluff, but she needed convincing-sounding terms, something that would suggest that the Rari had accepted defeat but kept a few conditions plucked out of those histories she’d been wading through.
With pauses so the translator, now squatting at the feet of the short-whip man, could keep up, Ileth said, “Any man who wishes to make a claim about other property will have it examined to see if it shows signs of being used for piracy. Whoever wishes may return to the Citadel with me as well to make his claim. Do you own a ship, Captain? A house?”
The translator practically tore out his beard as he kept up with Ileth’s speech. The leader spoke again.
“My master says he owns a house. It was not yet burned by your—your companions when he quit it.”
“Then he may return with me and those under my supervision and claim it.” Ileth tried to make it sound as though the slaves being turned over to her was already a settled point in this talk.
The man with the boar-spear had moved to the head of the file, ostensibly checking the line of neck-bound slaves and passing a water flask so that the thirsty might drink. But he was c
oming ever closer to Aurue. Could a spear like that be thrown? Perhaps by a very powerful man.
The man with the boar-spear reached the front of the file. He was perhaps a dragon-length from Aurue.
Ileth stood, cocking the crossbow with its lever and laying her pointing-bolt in the groove.
“Far enough!” Ileth said, putting her front sight on the fat seated man. The guard with the boar-spear made no attempt to ready to throw it. If he tried to run at Aurue, he’d get a faceful of fire. The file of slaves shrank away.
Aurue crouched, back curved and tail twitching like a cat ready to spring. His skin had gone a bright orangish-red with hints of dark stripes that reminded Ileth of the Lodger. Ileth felt a sudden pang. Aurue spoke: “I think they were about to break the truce. Do you want me to tear the big one up as an example? Don’t want the rest getting ideas.”
The leader stood up and made placating motions with his hands toward her. He did understand some Montangyan.
She took her hand away from the trigger, showed her palm to the leader. He spoke. The boar-spear dropped with a rattle.
“Tell your captain I want him to cut the line on the first prisoner,” Ileth said, worried that her stutter was making the men think she’d lost her nerve.
The translator spoke and the leader took out a small knife. For a moment she wondered if she’d have the nerve to shoot him if he started cutting throats, but he severed the first of the neck-lines, a strong-looking man, powerful like the lead horse in a team. The freed man tested the cut in the neck-line with his thumb, like he couldn’t quite believe it.
The head Rari glared evilly when the freed captive snatched the knife away from him.
The rest of the group were freed quickly. Ileth heard a few thank-yous and a “The dragoneers did come!” in her own tongue, and a smattering of what might have been Daphine.
“Any of you coming with me to claim property?” she asked the Rari. “Start now. I will follow with the dragon.”
None did.
She risked further delay—delay gave the Rari time to think—and ordered everyone to drink from the Rari waterskins. It was what someone certain of their advantage would order. She told the Rari they could keep the empty skins, but she wanted her people watered for the trip back to the Citadel.
“Go now. Pass the terms to any you meet,” Ileth said.
The Rari moved off up the road. Their leader strode with head held high, as if the loss of his slaves were a matter of indifference. They passed the spot where Aurue had crouched. A couple of them checked the ground. Perhaps looking for dropped scale.
“There’s blood on the ground there,” Aurue said quietly.
The tailmost Rari looked back at the dragon thoughtfully. They ran to catch up with their leader.
“We should get our people moving,” Ileth said.
As the column moved off, she noticed that perhaps a third of the freed prisoners had a serious limp.
“Have you been long on the road?” she asked the powerful man. He had picked up the boar-spear and carried it across his shoulder as though used to having a weapon there.
“We left in the dark this morning. I think he wanted us up by full light, but it was a slow trip because of all the hobbles.”
“Hobbles?” Ileth asked. The man had a Daphine accent, and she wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly.
“Bargun would lame anyone who tried to run away. The Rari put the fear of pain into you. They drown you if you try to steal a rowboat. Look along the lines, you’ll see missing fingers, too. That’s Bargun’s favorite punishment: take off a knuckle or two and burn the stump. I wish you’d shot him.”
“I didn’t . . . I didn’t want to break the peace,” Ileth said. She hurried over to Aurue, at the front of the column. The dragon fascinated the few children among them; they’d hurried right up to his tail and were touching it experimentally.
Aurue said, “The sooner my wing is stitched, the better.”
“Let’s get out of their sight,” Ileth said.
Ileth was neglecting the first duty of a dragoneer, care for her dragon. Weighed on a balance of pure reason, the dragon, even a scaleless gray like Aurue, was worth more to the Republic than any group of prisoners, but Ileth could hardly call herself human if she didn’t want these wretched souls freed.
They passed a ridgeline with a path going down the spur to the signaling lookout with the bombard or whatever it had been that wounded Aurue. Ileth kept her crossbow cocked and pointed at the path. Ileth was tempted to take the dragon down and destroy the thing and the crew, but the Rari might have other surprises in store, and she wasn’t an experienced warrior.
“Difficulty?” the powerful slave asked.
“There was a Rari post down that trail, on an overlook. They shot at the dragon.”
“How many?”
“Two, three, four. I’m not sure,” Ileth said.
“You should be sure, dragoneer. You had a good view. I’ll deal with them, if you want.”
Ileth called a halt. The freed slaves were tiring from the downhill trip faster than she’d thought. Of course, they’d been on the move for the whole morning, probably without anything to eat. She went to work stitching the wing, crossing over the lines, as she’d once seen Annis Heem Strath do on Agrath.
Ileth saw Aurue wince. She started a conversation with the man with the boar-spear to give him something to think about.
“Who were you, before the Rari?”
“Watch Chief Tirut, Daphine Naval Armsman,” he said. “They didn’t get me in battle, but a shipwreck. They pulled me off a reef after a storm.”
“I’m . . . I’m Aurue’s dragoneer. This is Aurue.” She took her time with the stitches, tying off each one with sure fingers. She could still hate the Captain for his shouts and cuffs and thank him for his hours of practice and examination over her knotwork, couldn’t she?
“I should confess something to you, Watch Chief,” Ileth said, quietly. “There’s no truce.”
“Thought it might be a ruse. You didn’t have white streamers on your dragon or a signal flag.” So the Daphines taught their men something of the Republic’s dragoneers. Ileth felt a glow of pride.
With the bleeding stopped on Aurue, they moved the column of prisoners as quickly as they could down the mountain road.
Ileth heard hoofbeats.
“I feared that,” Tirut said.
Ileth felt miserable. “We shouldn’t have stopped.”
Tirut shook his head. “Another two or three marks* down the road wouldn’t have made a difference. No, you did the right thing. Take the children. Ride the dragon to the Citadel. I saw the Republic’s flag above it yesterday. You can at least avenge us.”
He gripped the boar-spear. “They can’t come at us more than two abreast, not on this path. I’ll get a couple before I’m done.”
Ileth stepped next to him, holding her crossbow. Perhaps if she knocked a horse down, others would fall. It might not take much to make the Rari think the slaves weren’t worth the bodies, given what the dragon would do to them.
She saw heads appear above the horizon of the road, bobbing on horseback.
Tirut smiled. “Well, if it isn’t old Bargun come to get his property back. That poor horse.”
Ileth made out the slave-master, looking awkward atop a mountain mule. He was gesturing and shouting at a spearman atop a horse with a basketlike helmet on his head of a type Ileth hadn’t seen before.
“Do you see any meteors or crossbows, Ileth?” Aurue asked. “They won’t be able to disperse on that path.”
“I think they were hoping you would have flown off,” Tirut said, apparently forgetting that he’d just advised her to do that very thing.
Archers dismounted and clambered for the rocks. They meant to get above them on the mountainside.
The former capt
ives began to wail. One asked for Ileth to cut her throat before the end: “You can’t know what they’re like. I won’t go back.”
The archers had the mountainside to contend with. If they stuck to the path, they could stay ahead of them.
“Everyone, get moving,” Ileth shouted. “We stay ahead of those bowmen, we have a chance.”
The column rose to their feet and shuffled into motion.
“Looks like they’re retreating too, Ileth,” Tirut said.
The archers weren’t just retreating, they were running for their horses.
“It’s the reserve,” Aurue called.
Ileth surveyed the sky. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five dragons, almost wingtip to wingtip, were coming in from the sea. They wheeled briefly over the lookout where Aurue had been struck by the bombard. Two dived at it—one was purple, definitely Mnasmanus—and Ileth heard a distant whump of an explosion through the trees. Ileth held her breath until she saw the two rise again.
Three other dragons of the reserve headed for the mountain trail. The sharp-eyed dragons or their riders must have spotted the file of horses.
“Aurue—spread your wings,” Ileth said. “Make sure they see you.”
“I can do better than that,” he said, rising. The retreating bowmen ran a little faster, a couple throwing away their weapons as they scrambled.
Ileth could not think of a more definitive gesture that meant victory for her side.
Basket Helmet whirled his arm around his head and the horses turned on the narrow trail. Bargun shook his fist at the sky in frustration, then turned his mule.
Tirut snatched the crossbow out of her hands. He raised it to his shoulder, sighted, and fired.
Bargun slumped atop the mule. As he slowly toppled off, she saw the shaft in his back. She started to look away, then steeled herself. If she wanted to be a dragoneer, she should harden herself to such sights.
Or should she?
She wished, futilely, that she had the Lodger to talk to. Would he have called that warfare or murder?