The rest of the day was spent hunting for a meal. The best I could do was catch a couple of rabbits by hurling my dagger at them. Cooking the first with dragon fire was not very fruitful. Dragon fire doesn’t stop burning something until there is nothing left to consume, and it does it with great ferocity. Even thick branches were treated like dry leaves. Trying to beat the hasty time limit, I put the rabbit on the stick too close to the fire pit and it caught fire, turning my first meal to bony cinders. The second rabbit cooked better in the regular fire pit I made.
The next few days I spent near the creek, which ended in a small pond. I recovered my strength by catching a couple of rabbits, a large owl, and some little fish. Of course, I wasn’t the only thing hunting. I already knew that trolls made their home in these mountains, not to mention the possibility of mountain lions and bears. Aranath told me of a way to keep back most of these carnivores was by circling my “territory” with burnt dragon stones, since few creatures would dare cross into a dragon’s arena. This was how I kept safe in the nights, along with regularly maintaining a large campfire to keep away the hordes of mosquitos. The blood suckers made me miss my shirt and coat.
As for training, Aranath had me begin by working on my illusion spell. Not only did I have to work on the amount of time I held it together and how well I manipulated it, but Aranath taught me that the best way to make efficient use of my prana was to learn what was the minimum amount of prana I needed to activate the spell and then attempt to use less and less prana each time I cast it. Moreover, I needed to learn how to keep the illusion going after it went out of my sight, such as behind a tree or boulder.
I used up almost every hour of every day training and hunting, which I found comforting. A good chunk of me wondered why I even had to leave this place, but any time I looked at my serrated left arm, I was reminded of what my only goal in life was.
It was a week after leaving the mountain when I asked Aranath, “What is the best way to get to the other side of these mountains?”
“If memory serves, going westward is a trip twice as long as going east. The mountain range does curve northward some three hundred miles east, but there is a gap in the range we can use to avoid climbing over anything. Be warned, the gap lies in a tundra with little in the way of food and water. You must be at your most fit when you leave the woods.”
“I don’t feel too far off from being fully recovered. Another week here and I’ll actually start to gain real weight.”
“I would start the trek sooner than that. Autumn is short here, and the winds are already shifting. Unless you know how to make a good coat out of bear pelts, I wouldn’t try being caught in an early blizzard out here.”
Two nights after his assertion, I shivered from a cold breeze. It wasn’t much, but it convinced me to start my journey east on the next day. The first few days of travel weren’t much different from the last week. I found food and water well enough, and the woods themselves stayed an echoing image of the area I had just walked past.
It wasn’t until the fifth evening of travel did I spot something new—a used fire pit. Its size suggested it had been used by a group of people, not just one or two. The only clue pointing to their identity was a small rugged knife made from bone, which Aranath guessed came from a nomadic tribe that traversed the tundra and woods during the warmer months.
“Is this tribe dangerous?”
“They were harmless enough in my time, but who knows what their disposition is now. I would stay away if you see them first.”
“And if they see me first?”
“Don’t try to fight or run. Assuming they didn’t change languages, I can help you speak with them. I’m certain they won’t be hostile toward someone who can speak their tongue.”
Five minutes after moving on from the campsite, I perceived more signs of recent activity. Dried blood sprinkled the ground and on a tree, and there was some torn fur clothing in a shrub. The dirt only had scrambled impressions from footwear and bare feet, with no hint that predators were responsible for the attack on these rovers.
“Any hints as to who did this?” I asked the only being available.
“It isn’t easy ambushing four or five nomads. Whoever attacked them must have either overwhelmed them with numbers or have been deadlier combatants, meaning you should keep your guard up for more than just bears.”
“There’s a blood trail that heads east.”
“Then go north. This attack couldn’t have happened more than two nights ago. There’s a good chance you’ll run into the people involved if you hold your direction.”
So that’s what I did for the next couple of hours. I didn’t want to sleep only hours away from a bloody scene, so I kept moving beneath the moon longer than normal.
When the time came to find a place to hang my drooping head, a large shadow swept over me. A high-pitched screech of a huge bird was then heard far above me.
“Great,” said the dragon with a subtle form of sarcasm. “A jengsing hawk has spotted you. They are known to ally themselves with the Boreal Tribe. Keep still and let them come. Say exactly what I say when I tell you to. At least they won’t be able to sense your corruption.”
“But what if they recognize the fiend’s tail?”
“I don’t even recognize what kind of fiend that tail belongs to. Still, even if they assume such a thing, your relative sanity should preclude a blind attack.”
I walked toward a small clearing so that the moonlight could fully expose me. Here I stood for a few noiseless minutes, occasionally seeing the huge hawk flying equal with the wispy clouds overhead.
“I’m sure they’re nearby by now. Repeat after me, and loudly—Ku ma, Orda kis-ra.”
“Ku ma, Orda kis-ra! What did I say?”
“‘Come on out, children of Orda.’ Now stop speaking like a demented fool. They have sharp ears. Say it again.”
After I did, there was a whistle behind me. I turned around to see a woman armed with a drawn bow. She wore lightweight leather armor partly outlined by some brown fur. She said something sternly in her language and I retorted with Aranath’s similar sounding words. I next heard a pair of steps to my back and to my right. She spoke again and there was a response from a man behind me. Aranath told me to turn around.
I was now observing a stout man with a long blade made from bone in each hand. I called them swords, as one side did appear to have a sharpened edge, but they really looked better as pure thrusting weapons. He carefully looked up and down my frame, stopping a couple of times at my left arm and the crimson scabbard I gripped tightly on that side. The third nomad, now on my left, said something with harsh conviction. A glance showed me he was not much older than I. His weapon was a shorter sword of bone, which had a sharper edge than the longer example. The apparent leader replied to the young man with a firm tone. Aranath then told me to say something else.
The leader nodded and said, “My family often trades with southern towns, so I can speak the shared tongue if you find the words easier, but how is it you know our old tongue? Few outsiders bother to learn it. What clan do you belong to?”
“By ‘clan’ he means what kingdom you associate yourself with,” clarified Aranath.
“No clan is mine,” I answered. “The words you call your own were given to me in the same way your hawk gives you eyes in the sky.”
“I see. And how does a clanless child of Orda find himself here?”
“Desperation. I assume something similar can be said of you.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You’re searching for members of your tribe, are you not?”
His eyes gained a gleam of urgency. “You saw them?”
“An abandoned campsite five or six miles south, then signs of a fight not far from that. No bodies, but there was blood.”
The nomad spoke in his language again. The other two had their own input.
Aranath said, “They’re wondering if you’re involved with the attack on their tribe
smen. The male child is suggesting that your upper garment is missing because it was stained with blood. The sword is not doing you any favors either. There’s no way out of this, tell them you will lead them to the attack sight and aid them in the search of the true attackers. The leader’s name is Unith, by the way.”
“I’ll lend you my assistance, Unith,” I said in the middle of their yammering.
They quieted down when Unith raised a hand at the others. “That must ultimately be our decision. If you really are not involved in the disappearance of my people, then hand over your weapons to us and they will be returned once your trust is gained.”
Aranath told me to say, “You will not be able to hold my blade.”
I offered the longsword’s hilt to him. He clasped it with conviction, but his fingers were not there half a second before he jerked away his hand. The sword had trembled in my grasp and Aranath had said something in Unith’s language.
With a look of trepidation and a shakiness to his voice that he had to clear, Unith said, “Very well, you may carry your blade, but it means any wrong move will force us to subdue you.”
“Fair enough.”
Unith proceeded to tell the other two something, to which the young man protested to, but a stanch tone from his superior quieted him. To me, he said, “Start heading for the scene of battle. We’ll keep near you.”
I nodded and walked past the receding woman, who never lowered her bow. Unith whistled and I began going at a faster pace. I almost reached running speed before I heard Unith tell me to not go any faster. They all stayed several yards to my flanks. They were good at residing in the shadows and making their footsteps light throughout the expedition. No talking transpired between humans, but there were intermittent bird calls coming from Unith, which were sometimes responded to by the great hawk above.
I slowed down when we neared the place of interest, and when things looked particularly familiar, I slackened to a brisk walk. My feet stopped moving when I saw the edge of the bloodstained area. The younger man and Unith scrutinized the woods for a few minutes as the woman kept her wary blue eyes on me.
“How many are you looking for?” I asked Unith when he seemed to finish his assessment.
“Four, and I count five different sets of prints here.”
“My own, I take it.”
“Yes. Do you still proclaim your innocence, clanless child?”
“Yes. I have no reason to fight your people.”
His male comrade spoke to him with anxiously angry words. I didn’t need to have Aranath tell me that Unith responded by hushing the speaker. Back to me, he said, “Do you see the blood trail?” I nodded. “Do you know where it goes?”
“No, I had wanted to avoid any confrontation with bloodletters, which is why I turned north from here.”
“We’ll follow it, then. What we find at its end will have us see what we do with you.”
“So be it, but before we move on, may I ask the boy’s relationship to those missing? He certainly isn’t keeping a calm head over the matter.”
“He is fearful over all missing, as three of the four are close companions of his, but it is his sister that makes him unlike a true warrior.”
“Any relatives of yours among them?”
“His sister is my niece.”
“And does the woman have any close connections to them?”
“She is my wife, so she is a niece too her as well. Why the interest in our connections?”
“Because I’m innocent, which can only mean that the violence occurred among themselves.”
“We shall see how your theory holds up to more information. Let’s get moving.”
I did my best to follow the erratic blood trail in the quasi moonlight. It stopped completely after a hundred yards or so, but there were still some footprints to follow. Aranath helped me be a better tracker than I otherwise would have been, and the trio of nomads rarely had to point out the correct path for me to take.
After a mile, the tracks turned toward the mountainside, where the air started to get a little fouler. It was here Aranath told me to stop and to look carefully at a rock wall behind a collection of bushes. There was a narrow and deep vertical crack on the face of the wall, which some of the footprints steered toward. The crack went up for twenty feet, but not high enough to open up at the top, meaning their hawk could not look down on it. Getting a bit closer gave me a good whiff of death emanating from within. Unith came up behind me as I stood thinking.
“Go in,” said the nomadic leader.
“Something’s wrong,” I said. “It feels too much like a trap.”
“If it is, you will help spring it and earn my trust.”
“But don’t you understand? If this is a trap, who was it for? It couldn’t have been for me.”
“Whatever your thoughts, none of my people will enter first.”
“Have it your way, but then you must do me a favor.”
“If it’s a reasonable request, I may grant it.”
“Listen, if I’m right, then this trap was probably meant for one of your people. My request is for you to make sure that no one gets behind you.”
He looked surprised. He also looked as if he might say something to rebut me, but he held that specific statement and instead nodded toward the crevice. As he withdrew into the shadows, I moved forward, really not liking that I was heading inside a mountain again.
The crevice was just wide enough for me to walk into without going in sideways. I quietly unsheathed Aranath when I stepped into total darkness. I next picked up a random rock and threw it in. Its impact was distant and created several echoes that signaled an open space. I waited a moment to hear if anything moved or breathed, but nothing happened. Still not convinced nothing was there with me, I swayed the sword back and forth to better judge the width of the path in front of me.
Fifteen feet in, where the crevice had gotten a few feet wider and would only continue to do so, I pulled out a dragon stone. I lazily lobbed it to make sure it remained within my twenty foot activation range. I then knelt to summon an explosive stone. Grabbing it, I activated the dragon stone and immediately prepared to cast my illusion spell. The illumination of the stone showed a small cave that had a dead boar in the corner, but I stopped paying attention when I sent in my illusion running into the cave. My trap set off the one I was expecting. Two nomads jumped out from their hiding place next to the cave entrance and attacked my illusion with excited shouts and bone swords. The instant the illusion was dissolved by their first strike, I threw in the explosive stone.
Braced for the effect, I was able to land some hard blows on their confused heads, disorienting them further. I could have killed them, but I was still unsure what the consequences of that would be. The scrawnier one I knocked out with a single blow with my elbow and his natural impact with the hard ground. The other required a strike to the head with my sword’s pommel followed by taking his head and slamming it to the floor. Not a second later, a woman screamed outside. The hawk screeched at the end of that same second, making my next move clear.
Reaching the open air again, I heard someone yelling a war cry as they ran deeper into the woods. This I headed for. A few yards in and I witnessed the outline of another running figure to my right. Focusing on it told me it was that hotheaded youth. He saw me coming and yelled something at me, to which Aranath translated as a threat to keep out of their business.
“Fuck that,” I said to resolve myself. “If he gets away with whatever he’s doing, then I’m their next target.”
I used prana to propel my legs to take longer, faster strides. Seeing this, the nomad ran toward me and cast something that glistened in his hand. He then fired this as a projectile. On evading it, I saw that it was a thick icicle. It seemed well made, but the next icicle that came at me confirmed that he wasn’t launching them with dangerous speed, at least not dangerous to me.
The distance between us closed quickly. He brandished his bloody short sword. No fear e
manated from him, so I knew he was an idiot. I wouldn’t even need a distraction. Like an idiot, he started a swing of his short-ranged weapon far too wide, allowing me to predict its arc. I leaned backward to dodge the swing. Again, killing wasn’t my goal just yet, but I cared nothing for limbs. His sword wielding wrist provided little resistance to my upward swing. His scream was cut short when I bashed the pommel to his face, knocking him down where his sword now laid. No longer a conscious menace, I moved on from him.
I didn’t move far when I heard another shriek from the hawk inducing a woman’s scream. I followed the auditory cue to the sight of a man-sized bird pinning a young woman to the ground with its talons. On my left was Unith standing over a dead man. He raised his weapons when he noticed someone approaching, but lowered them on identifying me.
“Did you see my wife?”
“No, but I knocked out the two in the cave and wounded the boy.”
“Come with me.”
To the red feathered hawk, he whistled a few bird calls. The winged creature responded by chirping and tightening its grip on the girl’s back, who squealed from the pain. I took Unith to the spot I had beaten his nephew. I had evidently not hit him hard enough, as he was awake and attempting to run away, though he stumbled too much to make a good effort at it. We summarily caught up to him and Unith began yelling at him. When the answers weren’t satisfactory, Unith punched him in the stomach, sending him on his knees.
“Can you watch him?” he asked me.
I nodded. He then began searching and calling for his wife. There was never an answer. The night became silent for a few moments when I couldn’t see or hear Unith anymore.
It was still quiet when Unith reappeared holding his limp wife in his arms. He laid her body nearby, strolled up to his nephew, grabbed his hair, and slammed his fist into the youth’s jaw. I heard it break. Unith next drew one of his swords, said a few words, and sliced the throat of his enemy.
“You say the others are still alive?” he asked me as he looked down at the dying young man.
“Yes. Are you going to kill them all?”
The Lone Dragon Knight Page 7