“If it’s so scary, why are you driving a wagon in a forest filled with monsters? Why would you risk bearing the curse?”
“A dozen drivers refused this assignment, preferring to be sent to the dungeon for a fortnight. Then they asked me. I said I’d do it…for triple the usual pay. And pay they did.” Reaching within his shirt, Old Hemly produced what looked like a poultice. “It may stink, but this amulet ensures no beast will bother me and no curse can touch me.” He tucked it away. “Sometimes knowledge is more dangerous than a weapon.”
When they made camp as the sun was setting, Timor was sent to gather firewood. He was sure that, while gone, Old Hemly would tell the others the yarn and instruct them in what to do and say to work Timor into a real fright.
He was determined that they would not succeed. He wouldn’t let them have such cruel fun. He wouldn’t let them create something to ridicule him about for the next four years, eleven months and fifteen days.
Absorbed in such thoughts, he never saw the thin string along the leafy forest floor, but he felt it as his boot triggered the mechanism of the trap.
SUMMER WAS BEGINNING to wane but the heat remained close, held in by the dense foliage. Even after years above ground, exiled by his peers, Bron had not developed an appreciation for all the green, let alone the heat. He would never feel safe in the expanse of a forest with the bright open sky above. Every day he longed to be within the walls of a cool, dark cave.
However, living on the edge of the world of men, he had learned much about them.
When they began felling trees, he knew there had to be a significant purpose—and it was not difficult to connect the gold in his cave as the one thing in the area worth the effort of creating a wagon path. He knew the time to act was coming. Using what he knew of men, he adjusted a certain area to appeal as a campsite.
And then he waited.
But waiting was a wretched thing when one’s hands were idle and one’s mind had nothing to do but wander around the angry landscape of his own head.
He cursed the magician responsible for releasing the enchantment that sealed the mine. He cursed the judges who’d sent him word that, “Due to new information that caused them to reverse their former decision about exiling him,” they had opened his mine and it was waiting for his habitation. Because of the time required to travel back to this area, he was not able to secure the mine against human eyes. Filthy men had discovered his birthright and begun plundering it. They had even gone so far as to expand the walls of their nearby fort to encompass the mine’s entrance.
Reclaiming the ore already stripped from his mine was the first priority. Removing the men from it was second. Only then would his grief be ended and his fury laid to rest.
Having trailed the wagon the whole way, he kept up on foot because their horses plodded along, slowed by the wagon’s weight and the inconsistent ground. In the afternoon, their progress was halted as they had to deal with a tree that had…somehow…fallen to block their way.
They used the wagon team to haul the trunk to the side while the others, suspicious and swords at the ready, remained wary of some enemy about to attack. But no attack came.
The purpose of halting them was to allow Bron time to travel out and around and get ahead of them. It worked perfectly.
As the sun began to set, he was in place when they selected his prepared site for camp. He couldn’t have planned it better if he’d been the one in their party deciding who to send out for firewood—they sent the young one. Soon, his cries brought the men of the camp to their feet. Swords drawn, the sentinels raced into the woodland. All but one of them.
Only the old driver remained behind.
Bron’s cheeks rounded.
THE NET THAT had captured Timor was still swinging when the sentinels arrived—and halted several paces away. “What are you waiting for? Help me!”
“Spread out,” Derk ordered. “Follow the rope and cut him down.”
Timor had already visually traced the rope holding him aloft through the thick branches. “It’s that one there!” They were working their way to it when a strange sound—like thunder but too high pitched—echoed from the distance.
“What was that?” Derk asked.
“The beast of Brock Forest,” one man whispered.
Timor realized they couldn’t have made this trap as part of a ruse to heckle him, they’d all arrived at the campsite at same time. His stomach flopped. Old Hemly’s story had to be true. “Hurry up!”
Remaining cautious, the sentinels finally arrived at the tree with the rope, but they couldn’t reach the lofty binding. Two men dropped down on their hands and knees to allow Derk to stand on their backs and be tall enough that his sword tip could—barely—reach. He sawed at the rope, the distance and angle making it difficult for him to put much pressure behind it.
That sound came again, closer, more screech and less echo.
“Hurry, please, please!”
When Derk had severed more than half of the fibers that made up the rope, they started snapping on their own from the weight and pull of their burden.
Timor fell. His head bounced on the ground. He laid still, dizzy, stunned and hurting everywhere, hoping the sensation would pass.
The strange call came again so loud it resonated along his skin like beats of a drum. Something rustled the trees uppermost limbs. Branches snapped and fell all around them. The men’s shouts mixed into the noise. Timor saw boots race past. He kicked at the net, but his senses seemed all backwards and movements seemed delayed. His vision was stuck sideways. He meant to kick the net off but his true motion must have been more like digging his heels in the dirt. The net wasn’t going anywhere.
There was shouting, roaring, screeching, screaming.
Please just stop hurting. Get up. Crawl away. You have to crawl away from here. This is bad. Your mother needs you, so you can’t just lay here and let this beast rip and burn and devour you.
Then a large shadow darkened the already fading light of the world around him. He feared losing consciousness…then a green-skinned talon with blood drenched claws touched the earth just inches from his nose…and he prayed for oblivion to take him away.
BRON APPROACHED FROM the rear, moving in spurts that took him from bush to bush. The nearby screeches had the horses rightly nervous. They shifted about and nickered as they strained their tethers, nicely covering the noise of Bron’s movements. The old man had taken refuge under the wagon, but otherwise seemed relatively calm.
One more bush and he would be close enough to make his attack. Ignoring the persistent itching in his palm, he drew his dagger and firmed his grip. He scanned the distance to the next bush and while waiting for the next screech watched the old man.
He couldn’t help grinning. Everything was going according to plan.
The roar echoed like thunder. He shot toward the last bush.
But there was one thing Bron had failed to anticipate. He should have recognized earlier that his own reaction to the gold was going to be a problem.
Now, in spite of the thickness of the wood encasing not only the wagon but each of the chests, that precious metal within, that ore that was the very lifeblood of his heritage, was aware of his nearness and aware of its virtually unguarded state, and it called to him…singing an inescapable siren song of doom.
THE SENTINELS WERE all dead. Timor, still bound in the net dared not move, yet he could not stop trembling.
The dragon growled as it drew near him. He shut his eyes.
Oh, mother.
He felt the talon touch his head, slide across his face, and down to the soft part of his belly.
Death be quick. Don’t let it hurt.
The tension in the beast’s talon vibrated and the claws pressed and curled…around the net. With a jerk, the creature flung him from the confines. He rolled across the ground, stopping only because of a stout tree trunk that felt like a kick in the gut.
He meant to be motionless, hoping the dragon wou
ld think him dead and leave him alone, but his forehead was bleeding and running into his eye. He couldn’t help wiping it away. He opened his eyes to a large, snarling reptilian face just inches from his own. It snorted a breath.
Timor squeezed his eyes shut again.
Heartbeats passed. He heard a shifting of leaves.
Daring to look again, he saw the dragon pushing a sword toward him. Put it inches from his hand. Slowly, he sat up, putting his back to the tree trunk.
Take the sword. Die like a sentinel.
His fingers twitched. The strange, catlike eyes before him narrowed. In a swift move he covered his face and cried, “I’m not a sentinel!”
The toothy snout lurched forward to touch the backs of his shaking hands. With a voice like crackling flames, the beast asked, “Then what are you?”
“A boy,” he mumbled pitifully. “Just a boy who wants to be a baker. My father died and now I have to work for the king…the same king who stole from my father.”
REKSIAN SNATCHED THE boy and leapt, propelling them through the treetops and into the air. Wings spreading she soared only a short distance before plummeting down and landing beside the wagon.
Horses panicked and reared. A few snapped their tethers and bolted. Some could not. This did not surprise the young dragon.
What did, however, was seeing her friend Bron on his back struggling to hold off the arms of an old man whose gnarled grip held Bron’s own dagger.
She dropped the boy to the side and dived forward, jaws open to take the old man’s arms off—but she stopped.
A stench that filled her gaping maw which was so repugnant it made her shiver and recoil. Her jaws snapped open and shut, open and shut, but the foul odor plagued her tongue and would not wane.
She had startled the old man, but as she retreated, he returned to his purpose and set about bringing the dagger down on Bron.
Growling, angered by this reaction, and desperate to save the dwarf, she tried again, and again putrid repugnance filled her mouth. This second dose seeped into her skin, flowed up her nostrils, and into her head. She backed up. She stumbled. She dug her claws into the ground, struggling against the sensation that she was clinging to the face of a cliff, about to fall to her demise.
Not far away, the boy wrestled to his feet and staggered toward Bron and the old man. She whimpered and lamented.
The runt of her family and overpowered by her clutchmates, she was regularly denied a share of the meat her mother brought to the cave nest. Though gold was more sustaining, it was unavailable, and they made due on meat…but there was not enough for them all. Poor Reksian had crawled under a crevice to die the morning when King Callos’s sentinels came into the cave and killed her mother and her clutchmates.
In the depth of her grief, she was aware that if not for her weakness, she would have died with them. Only she remained. She could lay there, hidden, and die. Or she could accept an unpleasant option and act.
She crawled from what should have been her grave and ate dragon meat. And she vowed to avenge them.
Bron was the one way she had found that she could achieve that goal. In his gold-rich cave, she would grow large enough and strong enough to destroy a kingdom. Dwarven enchantments kept men—as well as dragons—from finding their caves, but in need of help, he’d agreed to house her in his cave and let her feed on a portion of the ore in exchange for her aid and protection.
It was a partnership she’d expected to be rife with success.
The failure at hand, however, hurt every bit as much as watching her family being slain.
“C’MON AND DIE, you filthy, ragged little dwarf !”
Bleeding and aching all over, Timor managed to lift his head and look at Old Hemly.
“Just you and that coward are left…then the gold’s all for me!”
The dwarf snarled in response. “That’s my gold! Stolen from my mine!”
Timor struggled onto his feet. He stumbled from tree to tree, feeling dizzy and drained, but he knew the beast of Brock Forest was kept at bay by the power of the amulet the old man wore. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was aware that the stinking trinket would protect him as well.
But the dragon hadn’t harmed him though it could have. Even in the fog of his mind he felt certain that, had he lifted that sword, it would have torn him apart like the other sentinels.
“Help me, lad,” Old Hemly rasped.
He thinks I didn’t hear him. “Help you? How?” Timor asked.
“Just get something and bash him in the head. I’ll do the rest.”
Timor turned around, looking for a rock or a log. The dragon remained several paces away, whimpering. He spied no rock. No log. His gaze shifted to his empty hands. He couldn’t overpower anyone. These hands weren’t meant for bleeding men.
“Hurry boy!”
Stepping around the pair, Timor summoned all the strength he had left. He snatched the amulet with a jerk so hard it choked Old Hemly for a second before it broke. Then he ran.
BRON’S ARMS QUAKED from the prolonged strain and weight of the old driver. Each tremor shook the hope from his heart.
Then the young human drew near.
Never would he have wagered that the lad would betray the driver. Now he had only to hold the old man off until Reksian recovered and rescued him.
It didn’t take long, after the boy reached a certain distance.
One moment he fended off his enemy, and the next there was nothing but forest sky above him.
His arms continued shaking and, slowly, he lowered them, grateful that his last thought would not be a complaint about an old human’s stink.
My gold!
He clambered up from the ground and scurried to the wagon. Defying the complaints his body made, he climbed the spokes of the wheel, hauled himself onto the driver’s footrest, then crawled onto the wagon top. Flipping over the side, he crashed through the window and landed atop a wide wooden chest. The air was knocked from his lungs, but he couldn’t have been more joyous. The gold pulsed rhythmically beneath him and for the first time in many years, he felt a sense of home.
He lay there laughing with what breath he could muster.
Until a human face peered in the other window.
REKSIAN SAW BRON thrust a large piece of glass at the boy, and saw the boy withdraw so fast he tripped over his own feet. Sprawled on the ground, exposed and vulnerable he labored to stand, but he’d nothing left. His shoulders tensed in anticipation of the strike.
“Bron, no!” She leapt and landed with wings spread protectively over the boy.
“Out of the way, dragon!”
“I won’t let you kill him!”
“What do you care? He’s a sentinel!”
“He didn’t draw his sword on me. He could have.”
“So he’s a coward.”
“He’s not a coward. And he’s not a sentinel, either. He’s just a boy.”
“A big boy.” Bron crossed his arms, still holding the glass. “One who knows too much.”
“Like you, he’s only here now because he lost his father.”
Bron spat on the ground, paced away then back. “Dragons aren’t supposed to be sentimental.”
“Sentimentality has nothing to do with it. He has as much reason to hate the king as you do. Better to let a human like that live. Don’t you think?”
Squinting, Bron said, “You know him well for having just met him.”
Reksian told him what Timor had said, and the circumstances that brought it on. “Now, you will give him a brick of the gold and one of those horses and let him go.”
“Why should I reward the cowardice of a human child?”
“You’re rewarding a boy who will remember that a dwarf and a dragon saved him. He’ll take that knowledge with him. And,” Reksian stepped away so as not to be protecting the boy anymore. “He will deliver a message to the king for you.”
He rolled onto his stomach and looked up at her.
Swearing, Bron t
hrew down the glass and clamored back into the wagon. “This is coming out of your share,” he grumbled as he returned and handed a gold brick to the boy whose eyes widened in disbelief.
“Tell the king that by the time he gets this message, every man in the fort will be dead. Tell him to forget it exists, because any man who enters will forfeit his life.”
TIMOR BURIED THE gold under a thorn tree twenty paces off the road and twenty paces within the border of the forest. He broke a low branch to mark it.
Satisfied that his treasure was well hidden, he rode to royal fortress.
When he stepped before his sovereign, King Callos looked him over, assessed the dirty and torn state of his clothes and sneered. “I am told you have a message for me, page?”
Page. I’m so filthy he cannot see the red of my sentinel’s coat beneath the grime. His chin lowered. “I am Sentinel Timor Bolden, son of your tailor, Farric Bolden, and servant in debt to you for another four years, eleven months, and fourteen days.”
Surprise showed only in the marginal lift of his brows. “And what news have you brought, my filthy sentinel?”
The courtiers laughed.
Timor lifted his chin.
He noted the fabric of the sovereign’s clothes was one he had seen before in his father’s shop, his father’s handiwork right before him. The king looked regal, the colors and fit afforded him every detail the appearance of someone just and wise should convey to those who looked upon him. But Timor recognized those threads gave dignity to the man who’d taken advantage of his father. A customer who had not paid and could have. A foe who had made hostages of he and his mother with a few mere words.
Timor’s head lowered again, fighting tears even as his hands curled into fists.
“Speak boy. If you can.” More laughter.
“I was assigned to the wagon from the mine fort, Your Grace.”
The laughter stopped. Silence fell in the hall.
“What happened, boy?”
I may not have the skill to fight with a sword, I may not have the fortitude to charge against a foe, but I can wield words as well as my king.
Brigands (Blackguards) Page 12