Anabelle stayed next to Kate as she waited by the door. She had no idea why Calder had led her here but didn’t risk asking any questions. There was a work board on the wall to her right next to the front doors. She looked over it and saw mostly local work, both offers and requests, on the right half. On the left were more exotic postings: requests for deliveries to outside towns and villages, some bounties on thieves, and listed prices for the heads of monsters wild in the countryside.
“You and my brother had a fight,” Anabelle said quietly, breaking away Kate’s concentration. “Didn’t you?”
“Maybe,” Kate couldn’t bring herself to lie to the girl.
“He’s been sad lately,” the girl nodded. “You should visit anyway.”
The girl walked away and vanished into the back rooms. Calder was still talking with his father. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the man and woman looking at her from the fireplace. She turned to them and they perked up, waving her over.
“Kate,” the woman said.
Her stomach tensed as she walked to the table. She ran through the list of names again and again, desperately grasping for any name that could match the face. Molly? Nettle? Charlotte? Did the woman look like a Charlotte? What does a Charlotte look like?
“Kate,” the woman repeated. She leaned forward out of her chair and whispered, as though what she had to say was a great secret. “What do you know about dragons?”
“I don’t know,” Kate replied naturally, without thought, and quickly followed: “why do you ask?”
“The port at the end of the river was attacked,” the man spoke in a similarly hushed voice. “Gallibank, it’s called. Was called, I should say. It’s not there anymore. Dragon burned it to the ground.”
“Have you ever killed a dragon?” the woman asked, her eyes wide and unblinking.
“Don’t be silly, Rose,” the man said quickly as Kate mentally crossed a name from the list. Her husband was listed below it, marked as a relation. She glanced to the man’s hand and the ring he wore, matching the one on Rose’s hand. She grasped the name.
“There hasn’t been a dragon seen in a thousand years,” the man continued, “let alone slain. Am I right, Kate?”
“Yes, Leo,” Kate said smoothly. “I’ve never killed one.”
Or know what a dragon is, for that matter.
The man looked satisfied. Rose huffed. Calder turned away from the bar and Kate excused herself, meeting him at the door. He had a few rolled parchments in his hand that he offered to her. She cocked her head at him.
“Postings,” he said, bewildered. “My father took the best down from the work board for you, like always. Kate, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Thank you,” she looked down at the parchments in her hand.
“The troll is in there too,” he mumbled. “The Rakestrow farm made the post. Do you want me to come with you?”
“Yes,” she said, and found that she meant it. Rakestrow wasn’t a name on her list and she had seen many farms on her way into town.
“Okay?” Calder looked at her like he had just caught her in a contradiction. She turned before he could ask more, stepping out of the tavern and into the street.
* * *
Kate began to feel sore as she walked. Even holding the sword, it still bounced against her leg. The armor felt uncomfortable and shifted too much with her movement, rubbing her skin through her clothes.
She followed Calder out of town and once again along the river. They passed many fields and farmhouses before coming to the first major fork in the road. The right turn curved along with the river while the left diverted from the water and led uphill. Calder stopped at it and turned to look at her.
“You can make it on your own from here,” he said simply.
She looked down both sides of the road and saw the farms continuing in both directions. There were no signs or name posts anywhere. She nodded.
“Yes, but I’d prefer it if you kept me company.”
He stared at her for what felt like a long time. He took two slow steps along the left road, away from the river, before he stopped again and turned to her. He looked dangerous for the first time since she saw him, confusion masked with fury.
“No,” he spat. “No, you don’t get to have it both ways. You’re not being fair.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, happy to be able to avoid a lie. She had seen the way he had began to walk. She moved passed him now, slow steps, keeping him in the corner of her eye while she appeared to look forward.
“You can’t tell me to leave you alone and then invite me along on the next job like everything is the same. You can’t have it both ways,” he repeated.
“Then leave,” she glanced back at him without stopping.
Once again she counted his steps. Two away from her and then shifting on his heels, scraping the road before rushing back to her. She tightened her grip on the sword’s handle but he made no attack, merely catching up to her side and matching her quick pace.
“I just figured it out,” he said. “It all makes sense now. This charade of yours.”
She felt her chest tighten but she kept her expression as blank as possible. She smiled.
“Really? And what’s that?”
Kate looked from him and to the farms they passed as they continued to walk. He didn’t answer immediately, taking the time to formulate his answer. She raced for some possible counter if he accused her of not remembering anything, or preparing for how he might take advantage of it. She saw that his eyes twitched when he was deep in thought. Several times he opened his mouth and then closed it.
“You’re punishing me,” Calder said finally, in a small voice. “You’re proving that you don’t need me, as if I have ever doubted that for a second. It explains everything. I understand it but it’s cruel, you know. You could have just said that you didn’t want to work together in addition to,” he paused, closed his eyes, and let out a breath through his teeth, “you know, everything else.”
“I’m not,” she said reflexively.
Dancing around saying anything permanent was beginning to tire her. She looked ahead and saw the path diverge again. Calder turned off the road and up to the house it led to. She guessed it was the Rakestrow farm and she only needed to buy a little more time. If she could get through finding the troll and killing it without exposing herself, she would have time to read through all of her own history before making a decision. She could decide then if she wanted to banish this man from her life. She didn’t even know what he had done.
“Really?” he said bitterly. “Why else would you be wearing that shoddy armor and that sword? They don’t even fit you right. Hell, Kate, you didn’t even put it on properly. What else is that but a deliberate display that you don’t need me? The great slayer Kate doesn’t even need the right armor or a good blade to kill her targets! You didn’t bring any potions or oil to burn the body! You don’t need them! If you don’t need them then why the fuck do you need me? It’s your cruel way of showing me that I’m not wanted.”
The road continued upward into the hills. There was a fence on either side of them. There were a few goats to the left and many more sheep to the right. The smell was foul and the sound of them bleating grew louder as they walked farther up. There was a higher concentration of the animals closer to the farmhouse. She could see a man near the house in the distance. She stopped and turned to Calder.
“Maybe, but I’m not,” she hesitated, trying to grasp at any other explanation that wasn’t either the truth or something to alienate him permanently. “I’m not,” she repeated and then a scream came from the road ahead of them.
They both turned in unison. The troll was visible in the field and let out another scream. It sounded like something being violently torn to pieces. The monster was massive, made larger by Calder’s insistence that a lone troll was a simple job for her. She had expected something no larger than the sheep around her, a nuisance like
a wolf that was sneaking in on all fours during the night and feeding on the flock. The troll was no such thing.
The creature stood on two legs like a human. Even hunched forward it was over three meters tall and she couldn’t accurately guess its size if it were to stand up straight. Its muscles were long and thin, stretched over its skeleton like its bones had grown faster than the rest of it. She saw no weapons in its hands, but she quickly saw her error in that assessment: its hands were its weapons, long meaty fingers that ended in thick claws.
The sheep scattered away from it and bolted toward the farmhouse. The troll moved faster than any of them, taking long strides and snatching up the slowest of the animals. Its claws pincered around the sheep’s sides and it was lifted up easily. The monster snapped its head down quickly on the sheep’s neck, tearing out its throat and spitting it onto the grass.
“Kate,” Calder said. “Kate!”
She stood still and watched as the creature tossed the dead animal to the ground. It hadn’t noticed the two of them on the road but it had seen the farmer standing near the house. It resumed its chase, picking up speed faster than Kate would have guessed for something so large. It was on the farmer in seconds. He was holding a pitchfork and gave the monster a brief fight, stabbing forward with the tool and forcing the troll to back away for a moment. It tilted its head at him, regarding him as a curiosity rather than a threat.
The farmer lunged forward and impaled the monster with the pitchfork, all three prongs deeply embedded into its stomach. Kate felt a wave of relief before once again feeling sick, watching the troll continue to move forward like it had suffered no injury at all. It pulled the tool from out of its torso, snapped it with one hand, and then tossed it aside. It pierced forward with its own claws, skewering the farmer and then ripping out its throat like it had done to the sheep.
“Fuck!” Calder shouted. “Fuck, fuck!”
The troll heard him. It sniffed the air in their direction before turning. It looked over them and then behind itself at the cluster of sheep that were cowering against the fence as far away from the monster as they possibly could. It shrugged then, throwing the farmer’s body over its shoulder and walking back to the sheep it had killed. It did the same thing to the animal’s body, draping it over its other shoulder and then strolling casually over the field, stepping over the fence without stopping and disappearing into the trees farther up in the hills.
“That wasn’t a small troll,” Calder spoke rapidly. “That wasn’t small at all, right? That was a big one. The biggest I’ve ever seen on its own. Oh fuck Thomas Rakestrow is dead. Fuck, fuck.”
Kate’s hand was holding the sword so tightly that her hand was beginning to hurt. She looked down and saw her knuckles were white from the strain of it. It was enough for her to realize that she had been holding her breath. She exhaled and felt her heart race. She closed her eyes and inhaled quickly.
“You’ve made your point,” he went on. “You’ve made your point, see? I noticed the armor and no potions and the wrong sword. Message received, Kate, now go home and get the proper things. No need to go and try to fight that fucking thing without the proper gear.”
She opened her eyes and took a step toward the farm.
“You’ve made your point!” he repeated.
She didn’t stop until she had vaulted over the fence and was standing on the grass. The sheep were still huddled on the other side of the field even though the troll was out of sight. There was blood on the grass, a trail leading from the house and to where the sheep’s corpse had been. There was a chunk of something in the blood, like a mixture of flesh and bone, a piece of the man’s esophagus that she couldn’t discern from the blood.
Calder was behind her. She was feeling something different rush through her now, something close to when she would have details of a room or a person blaze into her eyes. The man was dead. She closed her eyes and saw it again. The troll’s claws through his chest, probably killing him then, and then the monster’s jaws through the man’s neck and the spray of blood that came with the stretching skin and sinew.
The man was dead and she had stood there and let it happen, after she was the one that the town had gone to solve the problem. The one that the town had thought so skilled and experienced that the job was beneath her, a routine extermination like it was mundane vermin. The Kate she had been before wouldn’t have stood and watched the man be killed. She knew that for certain, not from remembering, but from now deducing why Calder looked at her like she was the one in charge, the one to be respected.
And how when she turned to him now, he was looking like he didn’t recognize her.
“I’m going after it now, before it can kill anyone else,” she said firmly, and only then learned it was true. Someone was dead because of her, because she drank the poison and wasn’t able to live up to her role in the town. They thought her capable of this task and she would prove whether she was or not in the attempt.
Kate once beat up an ogre with her bare hands.
I had forgotten how to use a blade.
“It’s injured” she spoke again, more to herself than to Calder. “It couldn’t have gotten far. I just need to finish what the farmer started.”
“Farmer?” Calder blurted out. “The troll will have regenerated by now.”
She turned and looked at him.
“I remember what you taught me, even if you don’t want to hunt with me anymore,” he said defensively.
She walked forward without answering him. He followed behind her. The trail of blood lessened until they neared where the sheep had been killed, where it stopped in a large pool and then continued on thicker than before. She followed it to the far fence and jumped over where she had seen the troll effortlessly stride over the barrier. The blood continued for a few more steps until it diminished around the first trees of the forest that the farm land had been built toward.
Tracking the troll wasn’t difficult for her, but she wasn’t sure if it was a skill she had retained or that the troll was simply easy to track. She guessed the creature was at least three hundred kilograms and that wasn’t including the fully grown man and sheep it had over its shoulders. The indentations its feet left in the earth were deep and well defined, not to mention the plethora of broken branches and disturbed foliage it had thoughtlessly barged its way through.
She continued to loosen and tighten her grip on her sword as she walked, trying to coax out some measure of familiarity of using the blade. When none of her muscle memories were stimulated, she tried to remind herself that writing had been impossible to do when she made conscious effort. She hadn’t thought of how to read or walk or talk or interpret Calder’s expressions, she had just done it. As she gripped the sword, she somehow doubted the same would hold true for using the weapon.
Calder remained silent as he followed her. He stopped often, seeing something in the trees and bushes that she walked passed. She looked back at him each time and only slowed, not stopped, until he resumed following her.
“You must be determined if you’re passing all of this,” he muttered, barely loud enough for her to hear.
The trees receded for a few paces before the ground began to decline. There was a gentle slope that became more severe near the bottom where the ground leveled out and continued. Kate saw where the soil had been scraped clean as something large had slid down it and then turned after landing, walking to the immediate left instead of continuing forward. She followed the tracks before sliding down, tracing them with her eyes until they stopped at a rock formation to the left at the bottom of the slope.
She kept her balance easily as she descended, hopping the final meter or so and landing comfortably on her feet. Calder stumbled behind her but didn’t fall, bracing himself with his hands when he hit the ground. She walked farther away from where she landed before turning to face the rocks, not wanting to walk in front of them if the troll was waiting. There was an opening, a cave, and the trail led down into it.
“That’s odd,” Calder remarked. “Trolls can’t see well in the dark.”
“I know that.”
“Of course you do,” he said genuinely. “I’ll come in with you.”
“No,” she said. If she was about to find out she had forgotten how to fight, it would be without endangering another. “Wait out here.”
He made a noise, something like a grunt, but Kate ignored it and moved forward. The cave abruptly turned a few steps in and she was quickly out of his sight but also in complete darkness. She stopped and grabbed the sword from her belt and pulled it out. The handle came up with her hand but so did the strap; she had lodged it in too firmly when she had forced the blade through the opening. The blunt part of the blade stayed stubbornly inside until she held the belt down firmly with her other hand. She twisted the blade awkwardly and then yanked it free, causing her to lash out wildly in the dark when it suddenly gave to her strength. The sword smacked into the wall next to her and a violent ringing echoed through the cave, buzzing her ears and she froze in place. She held her breath and could hear only her heart beat as she waited for some reaction from the troll, a screech at hearing the noise. Nothing.
You’re fine. No fatal mistakes yet. Don’t think, just do. Don’t think.
Kate continued forward. Her eyes had adjusted to the little light the cave had but it was still difficult to make out where she was going. She stopped every few steps and listened for anything like breathing, hearing nothing each time. A few more steps and she stopped again. She heard trickling water but nothing else. A few more steps and she flinched as a gust of air brushed passed her, thinking it was the monster’s breath exhaling directly into her face. She stepped forward and saw light. She turned her head back the way she came, foolishly thinking she could somehow see if she had been turned around.
The Wizard And The Dragon Page 28