by LeRoy Clary
Elizabeth climbed to her feet looking refreshed and ready to travel, party, dance, or climb a mountain. The sleep the Blue Lady had promised had been accurate. Even Tater looked unusually eager as Springer raced in circles and acted like a puppy. Elizabeth took one look at Kendra and turned to me. Clearly, she knew something had happened last night, but let it pass—for now. She would return to the subject when she had time to question us fully.
Kendra helped me with the packhorses, and whispered with a touch of humor, “Now, you’re gonna get it.”
“Am not,” I responded with a brotherly laugh. Once in the saddle, the sway of my horse threatened to put me asleep. I wore a blanket over my cloak to ward off the intense cold. The snow deepened and hid the road, the sky darkened, and more tiny flakes fell. They were more ice than snow.
Tater had to dismount and kick aside drifts to find traces of the path a few times. There were also a few blazes on trees provided by previous travelers. It followed the contour of the landscape. I would have expected my mind to be centered on the events of the night before, but it was not. My brain insisted on considering what would happen in two or three days when we arrived in Mercia and waited at the gates for Lord Kent and Princess Anna, and the servant, Avery to arrive. I looked forward to the confrontations.
The scandal of Lord Kent and Princess Anna traveling alone together was enough to bring down a royal house, so the fact they’d done it openly revealed more. I had no idea of what that might be. Whatever their motivation, it must be important to jeopardize their reputations. No, more than important, it must be critical.
Whatever their reasons, I mentally pictured us waiting at the city gate as they approached on the road and saw us there for them. What would their reactions be? Clearly, they had wished to ride ahead and arrive first. Would their expression reveal fear, anger, distrust, or even, as unlikely as it might be, pleasure?
Bringing my thinking back to the present, it was cold. With a small twitch of my forefinger and a little applied magic, the air under my cape warmed. I sighed with content before feeling guilty at not doing the same service for Kendra and Elizabeth. Tater would never know, but I gave him a small burst of warm air. Not hot air, but warm. Then I did the same for each of the women, only warmer. Enough to stop the shivers. My forefinger pointed and twitched at each of them in turn, and a while later I intended to do it again.
Ahead, Elizabeth felt the sudden warmth and turned. She flashed me a grateful smile. I didn’t have to look behind to my sister to know she felt the same. The short days of winter meant we didn’t have much daylight to travel, so we hurried. A stale biscuit and later a strip of dried, spiced meat with three kinds of pepper became my meal. After that, I wanted to stop and drink, but where streams might flow in summer, only snow and ice existed.
I kept an eye on Tater. As the snow deepened, he’d reached down and grabbed Springer under his belly and brought him to ride in the saddle, sitting ahead of Tater and enjoying the scenery. Now and then, we passed by a small crater in the soft snow where he’d spat.
The horses trudged on, until at last Alexis’s gait subtly changed. We were heading down instead of up. We had passed the crest of the mountain pass and were on the other side. The snow came up to the hocks of Alexis and made the going hard. I stayed in the tracks of those ahead and now and then created another puff of warm air for each of us—even small ones for Tater, of course. I’d have liked to include him with the warmth we enjoyed, but our rule was that I did no magic for any but the three of us. Besides, he now had Springer under the blanket he wore, and the dog would help keep him warm, probably an inaccurate observation. But one I clung to.
The sky darkened, and snow fell harder, the flakes small and hard. I noticed Tater had picked up the pace when I’d have thought he would tire and slow. He must have been worried about getting trapped in deep snow and having to spend the night sleeping in a drift. I glanced ahead to find him sitting taller and his head watching from one side to another, as if listening.
His wariness should have come from the storm about to cut loose on us, but instead, he looked to the sides of the trail. Why? My hand went to my knife. I wished we’d have taken the time to unpack the small crossbows last night. Even a bow would have made me feel safer.
It was not clear if the fear in the air was from the approaching storm or the uneasy actions of Tater. Riding ahead to speak with him would draw attention from the women and possible enemies. From his actions, I believed they were out there, perhaps a bear, or lion. However, I was not powerless.
I reached out to Tater with the magic of my mind and offered him a slight stimulation, a lifting of his tiredness. He would repay his body for the boost later, hopefully by sleeping well. Magic cannot be created. It is more of a shifting of natural events. Draw a little from here and apply it there. I pulled from his reserves. His body would demand its return.
The droop in Tater’s shoulders was gone. He sat tall and appeared attentive and wary. If an enemy intended to slip up on him, it wouldn’t work. I felt Alexis shudder under me, a sure sign the horse was about worn out. The snow she slogged through didn’t seem any less. A pat on her neck and a few words of encouragement seemed to calm her. No magic, other than that of a man and his horse.
An arrow buzzed through the air just as I sat up, missing me and flying off into the trees to my right. My shouted warning was more of a wordless cry as I leaped to my right, unfairly using my horse as cover. My shoulder hit the snow, and my body rolled, avoiding another arrow.
Whenever there is excitement, my mind slows and considers odd things. Now, it questioned the worth of weapons carried on packhorses a dozen steps away, along with stupidity of them being there instead of in my hand. A glance revealed Tater on one knee, an arrow drawn. He didn’t release it, so must not have seen an enemy clearly.
Behind me were both women, also in the snow, anxiously searching for who or what had attacked. I climbed to my feet and ran to the packhorse carrying the case with the small crossbows. A single slice of my knife and my hand held it as I changed directions. Ten steps took me to Kendra. The fastened straps barely slowed me down, as the case opened, freeing one crossbow. She took it, along with a fist full of bolts.
Moving to the side of Elizabeth, she silently accepted a weapon and cocked it. She loaded a bolt before I had mine ready to fire. Her other hand held more bolts. I grabbed more and loaded my weapon while searching for something to shoot.
But there had only been those two arrows flying at me, no more. We lay still and waited. Patience is often the winner in battles.
Elizabeth snarled, “Use your magic. Find where they are.”
If there had been a bird nearby, I’d have sent it innocently flying. When it flushed in reaction to someone on the ground, I’d know where they were. In this case, I was as blind as the other three.
But not helpless. My voice carried, “Tater. Two arrows. Both came from the direction of that twisted tree.”
My finger jabbed at it as if giving him an order, telling him to move from his position to his right, while I did the same, to the left. After crawling a dozen paces, I grew tired of making myself a slow-moving target for the archer to anticipate where I’d appear next. He could put an arrow in me at his leisure. I leaped to my feet and charged forward another ten steps, then dived head first into the knee-deep snow.
An arrow missed by a wide margin. He’d exposed himself and knelt as he fired, but hadn’t accounted for Elizabeth, who had also moved closer, reaching the cover of the trees and then paralleling me. Tater was moving to my right. When she saw him, she fired her crossbow. It was only accurate for eight or ten steps and lost all power shortly after. However, her rushed shot drew his attention to the unexpected source, and he turned his head to see where the unexpected bolt had come from, a natural enough reaction. It was also a deadly one, as Tater’s full-sized arrow struck the man in his chest with enough power it appeared he leaped backward.
We moved ahead cautiously, scan
ning for more attackers. There were none. After searching the area for footprints in the snow, we gathered around him.
He was perhaps thirty, dead, and wore chest-armor with his blood freezing onto it. Tater’s lucky shot from the side had managed to strike near the front lip of the chest-armor, below the shoulder, one of the few places where it didn’t protect him. The unobstructed arrow only encountered flesh and bone.
Tater knelt, prepared to slit the throat of the man if he still breathed. Then he reverently fingered the armor and looked up at me. “Wyvern skin. No arrow could penetrate that.”
“Good shot,” I said.
“Not good. Lucky. It was aiming at his head. You going to take the armor and sell it for a small fortune?”
I looked at him blankly, not understanding his meaning.
“It’s valuable,” he said, after spitting into the undisturbed white snow. “Dragon skin. Moves and gives easily, but no arrow will penetrate it. That thing is worth a year’s earnings.”
“You take it as a reward for helping us,” I said. “You didn’t sign up for a battle.”
“A guide is expected to fight for his people.”
Kendra, who hadn’t said anything as she had approached, kept a watch for other enemies. Her eyes moved all-around nervously she said, “Quit arguing, Tater. The armor is yours, and so is everything else he has. Strip him. If there’s anything we want, we’ll say so. Do it and let’s get out of here.”
Tater nodded. He reached for the man’s bow and quiver and handed it to me. “Carry that from now on.” He didn’t sound very pleased with me, and he was right to talk to me that way. I should have carried a bow from the first. He located a small purse with a few coins we refused, a knife, and a map.
Elizabeth took the map and examined it. She said, “Riverton to here.”
That was enough. Someone had sent this man to the mountain pass by following the map, probably with orders to keep any from crossing. Kendra said, “He must have a camp near here.”
Tater stood and made a slow turn. He pointed to where we’d come from, up along a ridge. “There.”
“You’re sure?” I asked, before realizing how stupid the question made me seem as he answered.
“From up there he can see the crest of the pass and all the way down to here. He probably has another path off the main trail, so he could get down here and conceal himself after he spotted us. I saw a few bushes move a while ago, but assumed it was the wind.”
“Want to go look?”
Tater said, “You go. Meet us back here on the trail. Take your bow in case there were two of them.”
While it might sound like I was brave to obey Tater and search alone, there wouldn’t be another man up there. If there had been two of them, both would have attacked, and if they had it done properly, they would have won the battle before it began with a few well-placed arrows. No, despite the expensive armor made of dragon skin, the man who attacked us was not a professional soldier, and he was alone.
When I backtracked along the path he’d made in the snow, I arrived at his camp right where Tater had indicated it would be. It confirmed my suspicions. His survival skills were minimal, his camp sloppy and poorly constructed, and worse, he was nearly out of food. I searched through it all, trying to find any clue to identify him or his employer. Instead, there were chicken bones so clean they were white and picked as clean of meat as the sticks set aside for a fire. The few other items were empty food pouches and thin blankets.
He had no horse, no other weapons, and what little discovered in his camp was either cheaply-made or worn out. That was odd, considering the chest armor. I made my way back to the others where Tater held the horses and waited for me. “Nothing worth taking.”
Tater held up the breastplate. “’Cept this. Ever see one of these before?”
I hadn’t.
“This isn’t regular dragon skin armor if there is such a thing. This is special. There are tribes down in the brown world that know how to tan dragon-hide like this. First, you got to find and kill a wyvern, so there are not many. Your best arrow would bounce off it, but it doesn’t weigh nothing. The price for this damned thing,” he hefted it into the air for me to see, “is more than all the money I’ve ever owned—and then some. So, my question to you is simple. What was that worthless piece of crap of a man on the ground doing with it? Everything else he has isn’t worth a copper snit.”
“Any idea of who he is or who sent him?” Kendra asked.
Elizabeth, in her way of adding detail to a conversation, said, “He’s been camping here a while. I think he stole it and was hiding. Maybe from his victim.”
Kendra said, “He might have been trying to assassinate you, Elizabeth.”
“Nope,” Tater declared. “He’d been here a number of days, maybe ten. None of us knew we were coming this way, so, how could he? Besides, few even know of this pass, and only idiots try to use it in winter or spring.”
That settled the conversation. I said, “We need to move or sleep in the snow tonight.”
Tater cast me a grin. “When we first met, you were all full of joking and laughing, hijinks they call it at the palace. Where’d that go?”
He was right. The few days of riding had taken away my boyish antics and converted me into a paranoid man afraid of the next bend in the trail. If that change made me better or not was up for discussion. I evaded Kendra’s questions and her stern glances and decided to blame Springer. “Why didn’t the damn dog warn us?”
“I had him on my lap covered up to stay warm. Blame me if you want to.”
“It was not his fault, either,” I admitted, allowing my eyes to slowly scan the area in case we’d missed something. In contrast, Elizabeth’s eyes darted from one place to another, like those of a blue jay looking for a treat to steal—or a cat sneaking up on it. There was the tilt of her head as she listened. When mounted on Alexis again, I slipped an arrow from the quiver and nocked it. The small crossbow was loaded and cocked, ready to shoot. It rested on a leather loop fastened to the horn of my saddle for quick access. If someone leaped from the side of the road, too close to use my bow, the little machine would give him second thoughts.
I mouthed to Elizabeth, “Anything?”
She shook her head, but as she rode past me to take her place behind Tater, her back was straight. I could see the stiffness and tension in her every move. Kendra fell in behind me, leading the string of packhorses again. Both were upset and worried.
Tater set a pace that was hard to maintain. He ordered us to hang back a hundred paces while he rode alone and checked for ambushes or signs of enemies—which would be any men not riding with us. He went bravely into danger first, and I intended to reward him for it. Another guide would travel with us or abandon us because of the danger.
All we had to do was remain alert and follow the trail his horse broke in the snow and of brown spittle he left, the color of the dried leaves he chewed. There seemed no explanation of why, but I liked the man, his bravery, and his insights. Of course, that didn’t include his constant spitting and my dodging the flying wads.
The sun was sinking fast, heading for the peaks in the west when the air cleared, the snow quit falling, and it turned from knee-deep to scattered patches of white, usually under the shade of evergreen trees. The ground became soggy with many puddles, and we continued riding. Nothing is worse than sleeping on, or better said, in the mud. Even sleeping on hard, bare rock is preferable.
Tater found no recent sign of travel on the ground. Every so often, he’d pause and examine something, and once he climbed down and knelt beside the path as he studied a possible clue. I, of course, examined any place he did and saw nothing unusual. Not a thing. That explained why we’d hired him instead of relying on my skills. However, my arrow was ready to fly and my eyes wary.
The high mountains near the snowline were eerily silent. There were no birds, chipmunks, or noisy insects in winter. The wind was still. The air cold. The sucking sounds of Alexi
s pulling one hoof after another from the muck were accompanied by the softer sounds of the same from the other horses that were farther away.
Neither of the women spoke, which was unnerving in itself. We were all cold, scared, and tired. Conversation was out of place, a distinct difference from the constant chatter between the three of us at the palace.
Tater pulled up and dismounted. Elizabeth paused too, which meant the horses behind did too. He didn’t act upset or frightened but moved with caution. He waved us ahead.
“Hard, dry ground. We’ll camp here before dark.” He turned and climbed on his horse and said, “Gather firewood.”
“And you?” Kendra asked, with more than a little huff in her tone.
“Sun’s almost down. I’m going to ride ahead and make sure we’re on this mountain alone.” He turned his head and spat as if that action ended another conversation.
After he disappeared around the next bend, Kendra said, “Rude.”
To my surprise, Elizabeth responded before me. She said softly, “Yes, and yet there is no man I’d rather be here with.”
She’d said it all.
We climbed down and gathered the low-hanging, dead branches off evergreens while Elizabeth staked out the horses where they could eat the meager green tufts of new grass poking its way into life. Kendra broke frozen sap from a tree and smashed it into a fine powder that ignited with the first sparks. When Tater returned, we already had blankets spread and a roaring fire to welcome him.
No sooner had he settled down to eat from his pouch of traveling food, than Kendra stiffened. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and her features slackened. Her head tilted upward slightly, and I knew a dragon was about to fly past. I drew the attention of the others by standing and quickly asking, “When will we reach the main road again?”
“Late tomorrow,” Tater replied. “Easier travel from here on, all downhill. Two days, maybe the morning of the third to reach Mercia on the shore of the Dire Sea.”
Elizabeth watched him as he spoke. Behind him, where only I could see, flew another dragon. It continued on its way, and Kendra’s eyes focused again and found me.