by Dave Luckett
They struck west still, keeping the rising sun at their backs. Sometimes it shone warm through the clouds. The land continued to rise, still timbered, but the forest still kept open by the labour of foresters.
A day later, at the first halt they ate bread and cheese while Jane grazed. They had broken out on to a bald hilltop. Around them tongues of trees lapped up the narrow approaches in the valleys. Gerd looked to the west. The hills were higher and more bare, standing proudly out of the tree cover. "Sheep country up there," he murmured, thinking of the journey to Hardrange and past it. He thought of winter, too.
At that moment, he heard the hunting-horn. Nela looked up as he did, staring down at the slope they'd climbed. The horn sounded again.
There were the dogs, at any rate, a mixed pack, but some of them deerhounds. A little early in the season, wasn't it? Though, true, the year was advancing, and already higher in the hills, there was the first touch of autumn. Gerd narrowed his eyes. He'd done a little of everything - anything that would turn a penny - in his old village. Sometimes there were guests at the hall, and he'd be hired to beat the coverts for game. Sport for the gentry.
He couldn't see what they were chasing, but they were on a slot, that much was clear. Here came the riders, a round dozen of them, moving at a steady canter, well-dressed and well-mounted. They came to the fringe of the trees, crossing the base of the hill.
It was Jane they saw, of course. She raised her head from the grass - the lord's grass - and twitched her ears. Gerd got up to make sure she didn't take fright. She was calm enough, generally, and tethered by a bitless bridle to a driven peg, but those were large horses and a lot of noise, after two quiet days in the hills. He didn't want her fighting the tether.
But his movement attracted attention. Three of the riders reined up. At that distance - several hundred paces - Gerd could see no more than a flash of faces as the three stared up at him, and then a momentary gesture from one, pointing at him. He narrowed his eyes, squinting through the misty rain. The man who'd pointed was mounted on a tall, powerful bay, and he rode with the grace the Squire had shown when in the saddle. The other two were dressed alike in green tunics and grey cloaks and were less well-mounted. Huntsmen, clearly.
The party separated. The gentleman touched his horse and followed the hunt, disappearing into the trees; the other two trotted slowly up the slope towards Gerd.
Footsteps and a rustle of clothing sounded behind him. Nela stepped past, between him and the approaching riders. Gerd stood still, but he stared at them, not lowering his eyes. These were the lord's men, wearing his livery, doing his will. Once, he wouldn't have looked important men like these in the face.
The two riders separated to approach from either side. They wore the lord's badge on their tunics, and they carried boar-spears. Probably blades, too, under their cloaks. Jane went back to grazing, unimpressed, and Gerd kept his own hands under his closed cloak.
At five paces, they reined in. Both were bearded, and like enough to be brothers, leathery, spare. Gerd began to nod a greeting, but it was ignored.
"Who are you? What d'ye think you're doing here?" asked the one on the right.
Gerd smiled. "And a very good morning to you, master, and all," he said.
"Don't get smart. What's your business here?" Gerd smiled a little wider.
Nela answered. "We are on a journey," she said. She shot a glance at Gerd. He understood, and said nothing.
"Journey? Where to, and why?"
"Where the road takes us. And why not?"
"Oh, very funny. We got a jester here, Dinny. Well, lass, you're in trouble already. That ass of yours is eating the lord's grass, and here you are, masterless on the lord's land." The one on the right, who'd been doing all the talking, got down. He stuck his spear into the ground, but drew a short blade, to leave a hand free.
The other backed off a few steps, in case he might need the reach of his spear. "So let's have a look at those panniers," said the one who'd got down. "And if you've got the lord's game or fowl or trout there, you're in real trouble."
Gerd said nothing, and seemed not to move, smiling a little foolishly. Nela drew herself up. "I am a master of the Guild in my own right, and have no other master. This is my apprentice. We go where we will."
"Guild?" The two huntsmen glanced at each other.
"Mage am I." Nela had slipped into the pattern of the Ancient Language.
Another glance. The one on his feet hitched his long reins around a bush. "Stand nice and still, there. First word she says in Witch-talk, you pin her, Dinny." Dinny hefted his javelin overhand. Gerd was sure that anyone used to spearing boars as they broke cover would have no trouble putting a shaft through Nela at a range of six paces.
The other glanced at Gerd. "And you just keep your distance, apprentice." But he had clearly dismissed Gerd as another grinning yokel.
He checked Jane, his horseman's automatic movements reassuring her. He looked in the panniers, turned their contents over, snorted. "All right," he muttered. "Now you, missy. Let's see what you've got under that cloak."
"We carry the lord's licence to wood-right and grazing on his lands. I have it here," said Gerd. "We're not poachers." He said it, still smiling, although he didn't think it mattered much.
The other confirmed what he thought, his head twitching to glance at him. "Keep still, I said. I don't care what papers you say you're carrying. I been told to search you and bring you in, and that's what's going to happen." He stepped up to Nela. "Just open your cloak, witch." He grinned. "I'm kinda curious as to whether witches feel different to other women."
One glance at Nela's face was enough for Gerd. He stopped smiling. "I wouldn't, if I were you." He said it gently. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Dinny switch his attention - and his spear-point - to him. Good.
"You don't tell me what to do, 'prentice," said the other man, grinning, reaching for Nela's shoulder, to strip her cloak away. "I'm the one tells you. I'm the lord's man."
Gerd's smile disappeared completely. He rose onto the balls of his feet. "You lay a hand on her, and you'll be a dead lord's man," he said, softly.
He took a step sideways. It was just the movement Dinny had been expecting for three or four seconds, and to confirm it there was movement under the cloak and the sharp whisper of Gerd's sword clearing its scabbard. Dinny didn't hesitate for a moment. His brother had hold of the witch. It was the 'prentice that was the problem, now. He flung his spear, and his aim was perfect, all the better because Gerd had come chest-on to him to present him with the full breadth of his body as a target.
The javelin hit Gerd just below the breast-bone. If he hadn't been tensing for it, it might have winded him. But mail will stop a thrown hunting-spear, and Gerd didn't bother to check for damage. His sword was out already, and matters had just become far simpler.
Clearly, Dinny was not the brightest button in the box. Well, it had been his brother who'd made all the running so far. But he'd been expecting Gerd to fall to the ground, thrashing, transfixed, and it took him some moments to realise that his target hadn't and wasn't going to. Even then, it didn't change his basic understanding of the situation. He was being braced by a yokel, a possible poacher. If he'd had a few seconds, he might have realised that anyone in a mail shirt with a proper sword was no yokel. He didn't have that much time. He groped for his sidearm, a heavy single-edge chopping knife that he usually used for taking the heads off game, and kicked his horse forward.
His brother spun around. He had told Dinny to look after the girl, so fixing the apprentice was clearly his own job. His sword - a genuine shortsword this, the lord's gift for dispatching a big boar - was already out, and he took three steps, the blade lifting over his shoulder to cut at Gerd's bare head.
Gerd all but snorted. The cut came, he parried it, and slid his blade down the shortsword as he guided it wide. He ran his point into the man's sword-arm bicep and out again on the far side, outside the bone. The huntsman yelped, dropping his
weapon, and he crumpled around the wound, the other hand grabbing it, blood flowing between his fingers. Gerd kicked his feet out from under him, kicked again to send the shortsword flying out of reach, and whirled to deal with the other.
He didn't have to. Nela had been speaking for some moments, and her words were the ancient ones. Light flared, bright enough to make Gerd wince, as if the air was blazing in colours like the rainbow. But this was a rainbow that ended here, in this meadow, and the colours were emerald and sapphire and deep scarlet, whirling up, up, solidifying, shimmering into shape, long, serpentine, with scales larger than shields crowned with golden points, talons like daggers, tipped with diamond-sparkle. The great golden-laced wings opened with a clap of air, and the elegant neck extended as the dragon reared, its terrible head reaching down to the puny man on his little horse.
Even Jane shied, but she was tethered, and so was the riderless horse. Dinny's horse shrieked and reared. Dinny had been groping for his weapon, and he'd been urging his mount forward. Now he recoiled, his eyes wide and white, and he lost his seat in an instant and rolled helplessly over the beast's crupper and flat on his back on the ground, where he hit with a solid and satisfying thump.
His horse turned and galloped for the woods at the top of its pace. Gerd's point gleamed at Dinny's throat, but Dinny was thoroughly winded, and Gerd relieved him of his blade before he could do anything further. His brother was cursing in a steady monotone, hunched over his bleeding arm.
And the dragon shrank, withered, its fell colours becoming the colours of the air and the earth again. Gerd, watching the process, could see that Nela's form had always been part of it, a sort of core, dark against the gorgeous hues.
He kept his point at Dinny's throat. Dinny was the sounder of the two, though even he was gasping painfully. "Can you do anything for our friend, there?" Gerd asked, over his shoulder. "I don't want him to bleed to death."
Nela was leaning on her staff, her hand to her side. Clearly, the dragon had been a major effort. But she moved the three steps to the fallen man, winced when she saw the state of him, and slipping off her pack, began to grope in it.
"Roll over on your face," grunted Gerd to Dinny. "Put your hands behind you. Keep still."
He tied Dinny's hands with the leather thongs that hung from the other horse's saddle, those that would normally be used to hang a deer carcass from a branch to gralloch it. When he turned, Nela had bound the other man's wound and was whispering a chant. The blood was still seeping through, but more slowly.
"It'll do," she said after a moment. The blood stopped. "Keep it bound for three days, and use only clean boiled water to wash it. If there's a surgeon, it could do with a stitch or two, but make sure the needle and the thread is boiled. If it's not stitched, well, you'll have a scar, and you'll be a little stiff in that arm."
Gerd was untying the other horse, after securing the huntsmen's various weapons. A slap on its rump, and it was cantering down the slope and away. Dragons clearly frightened it, too. He watched it depart, and then turned to the huntsmen.
"Now, gents, you have a bit of a wait, if you choose to wait. From the look of those horses, their stable is a couple of hours ride, at least. They'll find their way back, most likely, but nobody there will know where you are until the hunting party returns, and that won't be until nightfall at least. Maybe tomorrow, if they decide to camp out. So you can wait, or you can start walking. Up to you. Me, I wouldn't risk opening that arm up again, blundering through the woods."
"You're not getting away with this," growled Dinny's brother, still nursing his arm.
There's gratitude for you, thought Gerd. Aloud: "Maybe not. Of course, I could help our chances by cutting your throats right now and burying you in the woods. Then it'd be days before they found you, and we'd be well away. Think about that. And ask yourself whether you really want to be in a hunting-party that's going after a dragon. Be a bit different from hunting a buck, wouldn't you say?" He let that sink in.
Then he turned and nodded, almost bowed, to Nela. "When you are ready, lady," he said, in the Ancient Language.
She straightened, placed her pack on Jane's back, and walked away towards the hills. Gerd nodded to the huntsmen, clucked, picked up the tether, and followed, Jane ambling behind.
19
"We must go north," said Nela, as soon as they were under the cover of the trees. "Can you do anything about our trail?"
"There'll be a beck at the bottom of this slope. We'll follow that for a while, going upstream. As we get into the hills, there's certain to be stony ground. I think we can lose them, even if they use dogs, or at least we can outpace them." He moved on at a steady walk.
She nodded, and seemed as if she would say no more. Gerd let that pass, for a while.
"That was a seeming, of course," she said, two hard miles later. "Not a true shapechange. It's only an illusion."
"I doubt whether those two would know the odds," said Gerd. "They don't strike me as being learned in the Art, like what I am."
"Please." Nela's voice showed strain. "I know why you’re joking, but please don't. This is no joke."
"No. We seem to have made trouble for ourselves."
"The trouble was not made by us." She stepped carefully over a tangle of roots that jutted into the stream bed. Then: "Thank you."
"Thank you, in turn. That dragon-seeming saved my life. I couldn't have taken both of them at once."
"I think you probably could have, you know. No, that's "certainly". I know nothing whatever about such things, and yet I think you certainly would have." Her voice was quiet. "All I could really do was distract them. I wouldn't have been able to stop them from doing what they willed. And where that would have ended, I can't say."
No. Gerd could not have said for sure, either. But he remembered the last night at the inn, and Dan Miller. He let another half-mile fall behind them. They were walking along the pebbled bed of a shallow stream that splashed its way down from higher in the hills. The rain had persisted, and that was good. It would wash away their scent and blur their trail.
They left the stream to walk around a pool. That had happened before, and it was also to the good. If they were pursued, and if their pursuers found the place, they would have to cast wider to make sure that the quarry hadn't left the stream there, which would waste time.
"Jane leaves a clearer trail, of course," said Gerd, in a considering tone.
"I'm not leaving her behind," said Nela grimly.
He smiled. A little further on, the stream-bed turned to flow more from the south, but there was a steep, stony slope above them.
"This'll do," said Gerd. They left the stream at a substantial flat rock and moved up the slope, heading for the bare crown of the hills. At the first height they changed direction along the hard ridge, heading generally north.
Nightfall found them in a little cleft between two long bare fingers of stone. It was still raining, and the stream in the depths might yet rise, so they climbed the further slope in the dark, and found a reasonably flat place further up. Gerd had been cutting forage all day for Jane, nipping a bush here and a tussock there, making it look ragged, as if nibbled by chance. He cleaned out her hoofs and groomed her, after he'd off-loaded.
For the first time Nela roused out the tent and she had it staked out before he finished. It was the sort with a sloping cord for a ridge, the high end of it tied to a pole, or in this case, to a spindly fir sapling.
Gerd had been prepared to risk a fire, but Nela clearly was not. She went down to the stream, and he waited, and when she came back went to wash himself. He returned, carrying his mail, to find her already lying in her covers in the tent, filling one half of it. His bedroll filled the other half.
"Come in," she said, and no more.
He crept in, carefully not encroaching, and folded his cloak under his head. He rolled on his side, facing away from her.
"Tomorrow, north," she said.
He had to ask. "Why north?"
"It's safer."
He turned over to face her, not realising that he was about to do it. "I think it's about time you told me."
"What about?"
"The war."
"What war?"
Gerd waited, staring at her. She was compelled to continue. "It isn't a war."
"Oh? What do you call it when one group of people is trying to destroy another and vice versa, so that everyone else has to choose between them? Even if both sides are using proxies, it's still a war."
"Everyone is not being forced to choose."
"As you were not today, for instance? Well, I suppose. You could have allowed yourself to be raped instead of choosing sides. Only does it still count as rape, I wonder, if you choose to allow it?"