by Alex Sapegin
THE DRAGON INSIDE
Book two
Wings on my Back
Alex Sapegin
Translated by Elizabeth Kulikov
Copyright © 2017 Litworld Ltd. (http://litworld.com)
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Contents:
Part 1: Andy
Orten: Near the western gates…
Orten: Near the western gates. A little earlier…
Part 2: Bookworm.
The white tower. School of Higher Magic…
Orten. The School campus. Entrance exams.
Part 3. Archivist.
The North Sea. Water near the Wolf islands…
One month later. Kion, capital of the kingdom of Tantre. The Palace grounds…
Orten. The Orten School of Magic. Andy…
Part 4. The old man. A peek into another’s past.
The Light Forest. The Honey Mellorny Grove…
Orten. The Orten School of Magic. Andy…
Orten. The Orten School of Magic. Andy. Two weeks later…
Orten. The Orten School of Magic. The library. Miduel…
Part 5. Harbinger of the storm.
The Marble Mountains. Castle of Crystal Lights. Middle Kingdom of the Rauu…
The Northern Sea. Hag Tur Seaman…
Orten. The Orten School of Magic. Andy, also known as Kerrovitarr…
Glossary
Book recommendations
Part 1.
Andy.
Orten. Near the western gates…
The crowd at the gates stirred with anticipation. The tower bell rang 8 a.m. and the sound of the gate lifting mechanism came from behind the walls.
“It’s time,” Andy thought and followed the peasants towards the narrow bridge. But it was not meant to be. Nobles on horseback of various stripes were the first to enter the city, parting the crowd like nuclear icebreakers breaking pack ice. Genteel and highborn. Surrounded by a dozen body guards, dressed in a light gray riding outfit, an aristocratic taina (the word for an unmarried woman of noble class) rode by on a tall bay stallion. Sitting in the saddle, with one hand she grasped the reigns; with the other she constantly lifted a perfumed handkerchief to her nose, glancing with contempt at the serfs and twisting her plump lips into a grimace. Her eyes lingered on Andy, who stood out like a bell tower among the short peasants. Her nose wrinkled up and her lips frowned once again. Her detest for the plebeian who had dared grow taller than a nobleman engulfed him from head to toe and then the sensation of being watched subsided. “Douche-baguette!” Andy thought. “Stupid woman! It’ll be tough for me at that school if there’s even a couple of people there like that. I won’t be able to stand it. I’ll scarf someone for sure!”
First, the nobles’ children made their way into the city on horses, hasses, or in carriages. Andy surveyed this variegated crowd indifferently. It was as multicolored as a parrot. Camisoles, dresses and capes of various types and façons, feathers in caps, embroidery and lace were intended to demonstrate a nobleman’s place in society. With haughty and contemptuous looks on their faces, little kids and parents of the golden youth accompanied their offspring to their preparatory experiences in the school of magic. And what great disappointment these lords of life endured when the occasional filthy serf was accepted into the school, as opposed to another one of their own overdressed, dolled-up prick-... progeny? True, the percentage of magically gifted people was significantly higher among the gentlefolk than among the rest of society. It was the result of hundreds of years of selective breeding and dynastic marriages, but real natural talents were born more often among the rest.
The city guards, exiting the towers over the gates, began to restore order with shouts, kicks, and spears. They couldn’t let the people trample one another, all the more so since the crowd contained many future students of the Magic School, and mage guilds didn’t appreciate disturbances and inconveniences created by their own, even future, members.
“Step aside! First, let the honorable members of the noble families through!” a fat untidy guard at the gates exerted himself.
“What about us?” Andy dropped the inappropriate question.
“The riff-raff can wait!” the sloppy guard’s obese partner answered, smirking slyly. Spitting at Andy’s feet, he pushed him away from the city gates with the tip of his spear.
The wide-brimmed hat intended to cover Andy’s face, which he had really only donned for the purpose of this slight disguise, tilted from the sudden jerk and the brim flew upwards, revealing his bright blue eyes with no whites.
“If you’re going to be insolent, freak, I’ll keep you at these gates till next year!” the tubby guard guffawed, self-satisfied, itching his chain mail-clad belly. His fat sausage fingers scratched at the rings, not reaching the source of the itch. “You may have your traveling papers, but I still remember the king’s edict! Got it?”
The chubby man’s breath smelled of garlic and long-since unbrushed teeth. Plus, he stank of body odor and goat meat. Andy winced and thanked providence that it had prompted him to turn down his sense of smell; otherwise, he certainly would have vomited.
“I get it, I get it. What’s there not to get,” Andy turned away from the enforcers. Jerks. The guards in Tantre were like the cops back in Russia—they looked just like them and were just as brazen. Hm, interesting, are they made in the same factory or something? They were from different worlds, but their manners were the same, and their mugs were all vile.
Spitting on the bridge out of frustration, he made his way to the side towards the peasant carts. Not paying any mind to the peasants, who had begun to whisper to one another in fear when they saw him and make gestures with their hands meant to cast away evil spirits, Andy sat down on a log in the shade of a tethering post canopy, moved his hat a bit lower over his eyes, and began to wait until the bottleneck at the gates cleared and he could freely enter the city.
What did he expect? In the countryside, they frightened children at night, telling them scary stories of non-humans, and he happened to fit the description to a T. He was tall and broad-shouldered, taller than many of the nobles’ children, ash-haired, with a strong jaw, a forceful chin, blue eyes with no whites, and sharp fangs that stuck out slightly when he smiled. He looked just like the spawn of some wayward elf and a northern orc or steppe nomad.
The fact that elves and orcs didn’t have eyes like that, that in them the blue didn’t go beyond the iris, didn’t concern the peasants. Orcs were indiscriminately gray or brown-eyed, and elf-orc mixes were gray-skinned or didn’t differ from elves in appearance. But what the heck, what did he expect from peasants who had only seen orcs in pictures? No matter which village Andy might show his face in, the peasant men and women there would begin to wonder what kind of unnatural union he was the result of. Or they could imagine a lot worse! Apparently, the wild and war-loving orc raped the captive female elf during the raid after burning down all the houses of that clan of elves and killing her unfortunate relatives! So that’s why there was no mark of an elf clan on this blue-eyed freak’s forehead! Who would want to take such an obscenity into their family? The guy gallivants around cities and all over, scaring people and playing all sorts of dirty tricks on honest folk. He might send down a curse here, poison the harvest there… but what else can you expect from such a half-blood? Only dirty tricks.
It was strange, but elves were esteemed and respected here. The pointy-eared race really knew how to appeal to people! Girls stared wide-eyed at each elven kite,* and were ready to talk, flirt, and give them a chance. If any relationships came about, and if any of them were fruitful, they wouldn’t consider the half-bloods that resulted to be freaks….
And then there were dwarfs. As they say, they had hogged the whole banking sector and monopolized the trade of “high-tech” weapons. The dwarf chiefs had held Tantre’s guilds of production masters accountable. Even the Royal Informants tried to stay out of the business of these masters of the foothills. They might refuse to make a loan to the treasury, and then the king would treat his servants with the rod.
“But yew not scawy. Hag tol’ me thet non-humans aw scawy with big teeth stickin’ out!”
Lost in thought, Andy hadn’t noticed that a little girl of four or five had walked up to him and was standing a couple of feet away, examining his simple outfit and the visitor himself, not forgetting to pick her nose and wipe her finger on the skirt of her worn gray dress. He had lived long enough to get used to his second appearance and the feelings and senses it gave him, so much so that while in human form, he felt disabled. He hadn’t seen her coming. But actually, the girl managed to walk up to him quite silently.
“And what if I’m very scary and terrible! I’m just pretending to be all white and fluffy?” he answered the little one.
“Nope,” she began, and again brought her finger to her nose, but thought the better of it half way there and patting the hem of her dress, went on. “Yew fangs aw small and yew not foaming at the mouth! Besewks aw always foaming at the mouth. Aha!”
“My fangs are small but sharp, but I don’t look like a berserk, since there’s no foam. Where’d you come from? Are you an expert in berserks or something?” Andy looked at her face with interest. The girl pouted and looked down, lowering her toe-head, which gave her away as a native of the north. The old gray… no, at one time blue dress, re-sown in the shoulders, a hand-me-down. Her worn buckskin booties, the twisted copper coin amulet hanging from her neck—it all pointed to the far-northern isles of the Half-night Sea.
“Myra! Where are you?” a tall light-haired man came out from behind a cart. “Oh! There you are, you little fidgety one. Come over here! I’ve been looking all over for you. I’ll take a switch to your backside, that’ll teach you to run off! Geeze, what were ya thinkin’?”
“I found an owc! Hag, I found an owc!” Myra cried joyfully; Andy found her inability to pronounce the “r”s cute and amusing.
* Kite (lit. leaf) — traditional male outfit among Forest elves, something like a Scottish kilt.
The man stopped across from Andy and began to look him up and down, without a hint of fear, contempt or hatred on his face. He only showed an academic interest and curiosity. Andy lifted his eyes and in turn examined the northerner. There was no doubt it was a northerner. He wore an undershirt embroidered with dragons on the collar, leather pants and tall goat-skin boots. His belt, covered in decorative plates with designs and a straight blade hanging from it, tugged at his tucked-in shirt. The intricate pattern of a hirdman tattoo stood out on his left cheek. A plethora of small scars on his strong muscled arms testified to the fact that he could wield a sword, and often did, and not just for training purposes. That is, mainly outside of the training stadium. And he stood in such a way that he could grab the blade and strike with it at any moment, should Andy suddenly decide to lunge at him or the girl. He was a strong, experienced warrior, who had been through the furnace more than once, with a tattoo on his cheek — that gave the distinct impression that crossing him might be a lethal mistake. The presence of a single tattoo could mean a lot to someone who knew what it meant, but Karegar had given Andy detailed instructions, cramming them into his head with a pat: these people are not afraid of devils or demons, are excellent swashbucklers (far beyond elves), and skilled sailors. Provoking them is a drawn-out form of suicide.
The staring contest lasted a couple of minutes. Hag took his gaze away first, looked at the girl, silently made a decision, apparently on how to behave towards the non-human, and suddenly extended his hand towards Andy greeting him with an open palm:
“Hag Tur, Seaman!”
“Kerrovitarr, Dragon!” Andy introduced himself, shaking the northerner’s hand mechanically, noting that it was a good firm handshake, and that the skin on Hag’s palm felt like a big callus or sand paper. Yep, this hand held an oar more often and longer than it did a lady’s rear end. Strange, Hag didn’t mention a clan, tribe, or what city he was from. He certainly doesn’t trust me! What’s the point in making acquaintances then? Andy, too, had limited himself to the nickname that had been given to him at home in the valley.
Home…. He had long since realized that he considered the valley, the cave, and Jaga’s house his home.
“You don’t look like an orc, Kerovitar Dragon. Oh, no resemblance at all. Although, you don’t look like an elf either!” the northerner frowned.
“Kerrovitarr,” Andy corrected his pronunciation.
Hag smiled, pressing his lips against his strong white teeth. “Strange, what’s so funny?” Andy thought, looking at Hag with a questioning expression on his face.
“You’ve got a funny name!” he explained, glancing at the perplexed look on Andy’s face, then went on:
“Kerr, in Elvish, is ash. Vitar is an Orcish name, it means killer, and also warrior, but that depends on the time and season of his birth. Such names are given when warriors undergo their rite of passage and when the applicant passes the test and goes through initiation by the shamans. Put it all together, and you get the Ash Dragon Killer, well, or the Dragon who Kills with Ash, or perhaps, the Dragon Ash Warrior!”
The name rubbed Andy the wrong way; it was really a “funny” interpretation, especially the first part.
Hearing this carefree interpretation, the peasants standing nearby, who had been listening to the conversation quite enthusiastically, suddenly recalled some unfinished business they had to attend to and, like a school of frightened pike minnows, shoved off in all directions. Targ take ‘em! It’s not worth the trouble, standing next to non-humans like me. Only Myra stared at him and even jumped up and down with excitement.
“Wow! Kewwovitaw, you have such a scawy name! Is it weawy awesome?! I want one too! Hag, I want another name, like Kewwovitaw!” Myra tugged at Hag’s pants and shook him as hard as she could. It seemed like Hag’s soul would be shaken out of him, so many amulets and weapons jingled on him, creating a beat, a soundtrack in rhythm with the shaking.
It was an interesting sight: a non-human and a hirdman, as if he were having a seizure and shaking his head, and a small girl flying around the two men like a spinning top and managing to tug on both of their pants one after another every second. By now, their pants were getting lower because of this activity, threatening to come down completely and expose their business to the world. Before it was too late, Hag grabbed his plated belt with his left hand to keep his pants up, caught the little whirlwind, who was by some strange twist of fate called Myra, with his right, and held the little girl to himself with a death grip.
“Calm down, dragonfly!” he said to her. “What are you doing?! You almost took my pants down! What about your uncle’s dignity? What would the warriors say if they saw me drop trou? It would be the scandal of the north! The orc hevds* would have a field day calling me Tur of the Bare Buttocks! And all because one hysterical little girl wanted to change her name! Learn to control yourself please!”
Despite the harsh tone of voice the northerner used to rebuke the girl, it was obvious he loved his niece and was wrapped around her little finger.
After this scolding, Myra quickly stopped, straightened her little dress and, with eyes lowered, whispered:
“Sowwy, uncle, I won’t anymowe. It was bad. Will you let me choose my own punishment?”
Oh la la! Andy saw his new acquaintances in a new
light! Northerners weren’t simple deer, but wolves from the Seeonee pack council at least! Judging by how a child reacts to an adult’s comments, there was obviously a governor or tutor involved at some point. A mentor or momma wolf…. Thoughts began to swirl about in his head like leaves blown from a tree by the wind.
“Oh, crap!” Andy swore under his breath. “The dragons on Hag’s shirt! The belt with the designs! I’m a dolt. I’m such a dolt! He’s probably a chief of the Dragon Clan! A traveling sea-king! That’s why he fake smiled when I called myself a dragon! A guy like that could chop me into a meaty grig* for one insulting word, and he’d have the right to. True, he’s probably a normal guy based on his reaction, although, who knows when it comes to these northerners? It’s like Alice said: ‘Curiouser and curiouser.’ A high-born northerner shook my hand. No, something seems off here. Was he testing me? Or are non-humans well-liked with that crowd? I don’t see any reason we would be…. They’re constantly fighting the hevds of gray orcs, constant rabble, noise from both sides—they’re Vikings, the scoundrels. They even take the elves with the Long fjords for money. On the other hand, constant scrapes with orcs and the pointy-ears is a way to spread your seed among foreign races. Other tribes wage war a lot and, therefore, a lot of mixed-race individuals are born. The laws of war still stand. The enemy burns your city, kills the men, and rapes the women and girls. And so it goes, round and round. For several generations or a couple hundred years. He didn’t classify me as either an elf or an orc, although he had a really good look: there are mixes of all types there. The north is bubbling up like a kettle.”
While Andy considered the twists and turns of the developing situation and how to back out of the new chance acquaintance, Hag allowed the girl to choose a punishment for herself from a wide variety of choices he listed for her.