by Robin Hobb
“It’s not like we have an alternative,” Boxter observed.
“Thymara. Do you want help with your gathering?” Nortel threw the question out almost as a challenge.
“If I need any, I have Tats,” the girl replied.
“I can climb better than him,” Nortel asserted.
“You only think so,” Tats responded instantly. “I can give her any help she needs.”
Thymara glanced from Tats to Nortel and her face darkened. For a moment, her scales seemed to stand out more vividly. Then she said flatly, “The truth is, I don’t think I’ll need help from either of you. But Tats can come with me if he wishes. I’m leaving now, while the light is good.”
She stood as she spoke, flowing effortlessly to her feet, and strode off toward the forest without looking back. To Alise, she seemed almost to dance across the floating logs between her and the closest tree trunks. Once she reached one, she went up as quickly as a lizard. Tats followed her, and it seemed to Alise that he struggled hard to match her speed as his human hands found grips on the rough bark of the tree.
As Nortel rose, Greft spoke. “Nortel, we could use you here, to help put the fire raft together.”
Nortel froze. He said flatly, “I intend to go foraging for food.”
“See that food is all you forage for. We are a small group, Nortel. We cannot quarrel among ourselves.”
“Tell that to Tats,” he said and then walked away. He chose a different tree trunk for his ascent, but Alise suddenly feared for Thymara and wished she could go after them. Something had changed in the group, and she wasn’t sure what it was. She glanced at Greft, but he did not meet her eyes. Instead he said, “Today is clear and tonight probably will be as well. But there is no telling what weather tomorrow may bring. We’re uncomfortable enough without being wet. Let’s see if we can make a shelter.”
Alise felt as if she had been plunged into the intimate affairs of an extended family she didn’t know well. There were currents here she hadn’t suspected, and she abruptly wondered what her status was as an intruder. Thymara was the only one she felt she knew at all. She glanced at Sylve; the girl had at least smiled at her. As if she felt the older woman’s eyes, Sylve turned to her and said quietly, “Let’s go build our fire platform.”
“TELL HER TO extend her head toward me!” Jess barked at him. He was perched at the end of the log, holding his makeshift noose open. “I can’t get this around her neck if she doesn’t reach her head toward me.”
The log Sedric was standing on shifted slightly under him, and he felt a moment of vertigo. He looked up at the noose and tried to make a firm decision. Abruptly, he gave his head a shake, snapping himself out of that peculiar drifting state the dragon could put him in. Just end it. She’d be dead, he’d have his mind to himself and a fortune in his pocket. He could have Hest. If he still wanted him after all this.
That last thought shocked him. Of course he wanted Hest. He’d always wanted Hest, hadn’t he? Wasn’t Hest and the love he felt for him what all this was about? He cleared his throat. The love he’d felt…
“Relpda.”
She swung her swirling gaze to him.
Jess shook the noose out larger. Sedric could see his intent now. Noose her, snub the line off, and kill her. It wasn’t going to be pretty or easy. Before she died, she would know he had betrayed her. He’d feel the pain of that, her anger and reproach, right alongside the pain of her death. She’d saved his life. And his thanks to her was that he was going to profit from her death.
The price was too high. Hest wasn’t worth it.
The shock of that realization jolted him; no time to dwell on it.
He reached toward the dragon, mind and heart. Relpda, get away from Jess. Don’t let him get near you. He wants to kill you! He dared not speak aloud to her.
Kill? Alarm. And confusion. She hadn’t understood. The exhausted dragon clung to the log and stared up at her executioner. Her eyes spun faster suddenly, but she made no move to get away. It was too much for her, he’d tried to put too much information in the thoughts he sent her. Keep it simple. And have some courage!
“Relpda, get away! Flee! Don’t let him near you. Danger. Danger from him!”
Danger? Hunter bring food. Run away? Too tired.
He’d tipped his hand to the hunter, and it still wasn’t going to be enough to save her. Jess’s teeth showed in a snarl as he turned toward Sedric. “You damn little fop! I was going to make it quick for her. Well, you’ve spoiled that and now you’ll both pay.”
The hunter was quick. He dropped the noose and shifted his grip to the fish spear. It was a small weapon; it couldn’t possibly hurt her. Please, Sa! “Relpda, get away! Go now!”
Sedric was already in motion, but he knew he’d never get there in time. He grabbed a stick floating in the water and flung it at Jess. Not even close. The hunter laughed aloud, then drew back the spear and plunged it into the dragon.
A blast of pain shot through Sedric. It stabbed him in the top of his shoulder, and his left arm suddenly went numb. He stumbled and went down, one of his legs slipping between the floating pieces of wood. His frantic snatch at a log kept him from going under completely. He bit his tongue, and strangely the one pain drove the other way. The log bucked, but he got a leg over it and struggled up from the water, looking around wildly. Everything was happening too fast.
Relpda trumpeted shrilly. The fish spear stuck out of her, and brilliant scarlet blood was sheeting over her scaled shoulder. Her wings were half open and she flapped them, splashing feebly as she struggled to keep her sliding grip on the log. The hunter was in the water. One of her flailing wings must have hit him and knocked him in. Good. But he had already caught hold of a log and was starting to drag himself up. In another moment he’d be on the raft with them. Sedric knew he couldn’t fight him. The man was too big, too strong, too experienced. Weapon, weapon! The hatchet! The hatchet by the boat.
Sedric danced across the wildly rocking wood in a frantic race for the boat. If he had not been terrified, he would have crossed the debris raft on his hands and knees. But faced with imminent death, he leaped and dashed like a scalded cat, traversing logs that bobbed and tried to roll, leaping wildly from one to the next. Jess seemed instantly to divine Sedric’s intention. He hauled himself up, cursing and spitting, and hurled himself in furious leaps across the packed driftwood. Twice the hunter went down between logs and hauled himself up again, and still he managed to stand suddenly between Sedric and the small boat, a knife held blade out and low in his dripping right hand. Water streamed from his hair and down the sides of his scaled face as he promised Sedric, “I’m going to cut you and string your guts across this driftwood pack and leave you to die here.”
I’m sorry. Please don’t kill me. I just want to live. I couldn’t let you kill her. His mind flipped through a hundred things to say and discarded them all as useless.
Flee! Flee! the copper trumpeted at him. It seemed an excellent idea and perfectly aligned with Sedric’s own impulse, but he dared not turn his back on the man. If he was going to die, it wasn’t going to be with a knife in his back. He heard an immense splash as Relpda lost her precarious perch on the log and went under. Cold, wet, dark, no air. For that instant, Sedric froze.
Jess dived at him, knife leading the way, and it was the man’s spring forward on the floating log that propelled Sedric’s sudden sideways lurch. The knife, hand, and man went past him, not meeting the expected resistance. It was the impulse of a moment to put his hand on Jess’s back and shove as the hunter plunged past him. The hunter stepped off the log, onto the floating mat of driftwood. For a moment the tangled morass of weeds and wood held him up and then he dropped down through it with a furious shout. He flung his arms wide and splayed them out on the floating branches, twigs, and moss clumps. Somehow he stayed above water, cursing at Sedric, unable to clamber out.
In two steps, Sedric was in the boat. He’d thought it would feel solid under him. Instead, as h
e jumped into it, it lurched and bucked. He fell, knees down, onto the thwarts, catching his ribs painfully. Safe. Safe in the boat. Where was the hatchet? And where was Relpda? “Dragon, where are you?” he shouted. He stood up on his knees, looking all around. To his horror, he could not feel her. And Jess had vanished, too. Was he drowning under the mat? It was hard to feel sorry for him.
Suddenly, like a vengeful water spirit, Jess shot up and out of the water right next to the small boat. He caught hold of the side. As he dragged himself up, the boat heeled over and Sedric cried out in terror that he’d be spilled into the stinging water again. Instead, the big wet man levered himself into the boat. Sedric immediately tried to abandon the small ship, but Jess tackled him around the legs. He fell hard, slamming his ribs and belly against the edge of the boat and the driftwood log it was tied to. The hunter grabbed him by the back of his shirt and his hair, jerked him back into the boat, and hit him, hard, in the face.
Other than some boyish scuffles, Sedric had never been in a real fight. Sometimes Hest was rough with him, when he was in a mood to take their engagement in a harsher direction and enforce his dominance. In their early days together, Sedric had been aroused by such rough play. But in the last year or so, Hest had seemed to reserve it for times when Sedric had displeased him in some other arena. There had been a few times when the thrill of feeling Hest’s aggression had changed into the dread that his lover would do real damage to him in the throes of his tigerish play. Worse, Hest seemed to relish waking that fear in Sedric. Once, Hest had throttled him nearly unconscious yet had not paused in his own pursuit of pleasure. It was only when he had rolled away from him that Sedric had been able to shift to where he could get a clear breath. With black spots dancing before his eyes, he’d gasped out, “Why?”
“To see what it would be like, of course. Stop whining. You’re not hurt; you’ve just had your feelings ruffled.”
Hest had risen and left him there. And Sedric had accepted Hest’s judgment that he wasn’t truly hurt. The recollection flashed through his mind and with it, the resolution he’d buried shortly afterward. Never again. Fight back.
But Jess’s attack was beyond anything Hest had ever done to him. To be struck so hard in the face shocked him as much as stunned him. He hung in the hunter’s grip, trying to find the strength to lift his hands, let alone make fists of them. Then the man laughed aloud, and the sound filled Sedric with a panicky strength. He shot his fist forward as hard as he could into the center of the Jess’s body, just below his breastbone. Jess let out a sudden whuff of air and sat down hard in the boat.
For half a breath Sedric was on top of the hunter, raining blows on him, but he was dazed and could not put any strength behind them. Jess lunged up and wrapped his arms around Sedric. Then, as effortlessly as if Sedric were a child, he rolled with him, trapping him beneath his weight. Then the hunter’s heavy hands settled around his throat. Sedric’s own hands rose to catch at the man’s thick wrists. They were wet and cold and slickly scaled; he could not get a grip on them. The man forced him down and back across the seat in the middle of the boat, pushing him into the rancid bilgewater as the seat bit into his back. He kicked wildly, but his feet connected with nothing. He clawed at the man’s face, but the hunter’s skin seemed impervious to pain or penetration.
Sedric gave up trying to attack Jess or even to defend himself. All he wanted to do was escape. His flailing hands groped for the side of the boat. One hand gripped it, and he tried to pull himself out from under and away from Jess. But the man’s hands were locked on his throat and his weight pressed him down.
Sedric had never felt so powerless.
Not since the last time Hest had held him down and laughingly told him, “I’ll decide how it’s going to be. You’ll like it. You always do.”
But he didn’t. Not always. And suddenly all the anger he’d ever felt at Hest for not caring if he enjoyed it or not, for laughing at him when he dominated him, rushed through him just as his desperately groping hand found the handle of the hatchet.
It was stuck firmly in the hard dry log that floated beside the boat, but his was the strength of desperate anger. He jerked at it spasmodically. Luck, not intent, decreed that as it suddenly bucked loose, the heavy blunt end of it connected with the back of Jess’s skull.
It startled the hunter more than stunned him. His grip slacked and through a red mist, Sedric saw Jess roll his head to one side as if to look for an unsuspected attacker. Fight him. Fight him. The dragon’s furious thoughts fed him strength. He swung the hatchet again, awkwardly, but with deliberate force and direction. It connected, this time with the hunter’s jaw, knocking it sideways with a loud crack. Jess shrieked. Sedric dragged a deep breath, then half of a second one into his lungs. Jess was making noises, but Sedric’s ears were ringing and Jess’s diction was ruined by the hatchet hitting him yet again. And suddenly Sedric heard himself croaking out, “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you.”
I’ll kill for you. That thought bounced back to him, a reptilian echo.
A last flailing strike hit the hunter between the eyes, and that did stun him. Sedric dropped the heavy hatchet into the bottom of the boat. He pushed hard at Jess and the man flopped off him with a groan, half over the low side of the boat. He was only unconscious for a moment. “You bas—!” he croaked. He drew back his arm, and all Sedric could see was a meaty fist headed toward him.
Then an immense splash rocked the boat. Relpda’s head and shoulders shot up out of the matted debris to tower momentarily over the boat. Hunter food! she announced and bent her head. Sedric had never really seen the inside of a dragon’s maw before. She opened her jaws impossibly wide, and he could see inside, see the immense swallowing muscles at the sides of her throat, and the row of sharp teeth that curved inward. Her mouth came down over the hunter’s head and shoulders like a poacher popping a sack over a rabbit. He had one brief glimpse of Jess’s eyes so wide that the whites showed all around them. Then Relpda closed her jaws.
There was a sound, a sound between a shearing of bone and a crushing of meat. Relpda’s head rose, and she pointed her muzzle at the sky. Her head jerked twice as she swallowed.
Jess’s bloody hips and legs fell into the boat beside Sedric. He kicked at them in reflexive horror and the pelvis flopped over the side, followed by the legs. Relpda gave a squeal of protest and dived after them. The wave of her passage rocked the boat wildly. Blood and water mingled in the bottom of the boat, sloshing back and forth around the dropped hatchet.
Sedric leaned over the side of the boat, staring after them. “That didn’t happen,” he slurred. He lifted the back of his hand to his mouth and then took it away. Bloody. He turned his head and looked at the hatchet in the boat’s bilgewater. Blood streamed from it in tiny threads and mingled with the water. There was hair on it, too. Jess’s hair. “I killed him,” he said aloud. The words came strangely to his ears.
Delicious.
THE AFTERNOON PASSED without incident. Thymara and Tats didn’t talk much. She didn’t have much to say, and keeping up with her left Tats short of wind. She made sure of that.
The way her feelings about him vacillated bothered her more than her actual emotions. When she was around the others, it was easier to pretend that nothing had changed between them. Did that mean that perhaps nothing really had changed? Was she angry at him or not? And if she was, what was the reason? Sometimes, she could see that she had no real basis for her anger. There had been no mutual understanding between them. He had not broken any promise to her. Surely he was free to do as he pleased, just as she was. She could be dispassionate about it. He’d mated with Jerd. That was their business, not hers. And now that Jerd was with Greft, it had even less to do with her.
But then her hurt would break through, and she’d feel indignant and slighted all over again. The least he could have done was let her know sooner. If Rapskal had known of it, how private could it have been? Why had he let her be ignorant of it so long? It made her feel
so stupid, so naive. My pride, she thought. It’s my pride that’s broken, not my heart. I’m not in love with him. I don’t want an exclusive claim on him. I don’t want him to claim me. We are just friends, friends who have known each other for a long time. And he kept a secret from me and made me feel stupid. Just her pride. That was all.
It might be true, but it wasn’t what it felt like.
Spurred by emotion, she climbed higher and more swiftly through the trees than she usually would, making Tats struggle to keep up with her. She found food and by the time he caught up with her, she had gathered most of it. Tats had fashioned his shirt into a crude carry-sack. As soon as he arrived, she packed whatever she had found into it and moved on. Other than discussing what food she had found and what they might next look for, there had been little conversation. She could see that Tats was aware she wasn’t really talking to him, but he seemed content to leave the situation alone.
They returned to the floating morass that was their current sanctuary just as it became too dark to see under the trees. On the river, there was still some light from a distant sunset. The others had been successful, both in raising a small shelter on their raft, and in creating another platform for their floating fire. The yellow light it cast was cheering. As Alise had suggested, it was tethered to their sleeping raft in such a way that it could be quickly shoved away if the fire began to spread. For now, the welcome light and warmth it gave off cheered everyone. Boxter and Kase were tending it, stripping branches of leaves and tossing them on the fire to create a haze of smoke to drive insects away. Thymara was not certain that she preferred eye-watering smoke to stinging insects, but she was too weary to argue with them about it.
The dragons had returned for the night. It was somewhat comforting to see their hulking silhouettes braced against the trees that barred them from entering the flooded forest. They were becoming more adept at capturing their own timbers and hooking their rib cages over them to float. She wondered if they had come back because they missed the humans, or only because they knew their keepers would help shore them up and keep them afloat for the night. Sylve and Harrikin seemed to have devised a technique for trapping several logs under a dragon’s chest. The dragons were not thrilled with their night’s lodgings, but it was better than treading water. The acid-killed fish had proven both a boon and a liability to the dragons. They had eaten to satiation, but their bulging bellies were uncomfortable, and more so when braced against a log.