Revenge.
CHAPTER FOUR
Stupid Old Hag!
Sergeant Balear Platarch woke quickly, helped by some horridly loud banging that turned his almost-a-headache into a migraine in about three seconds. Initially, he thought the sound came from the minstrels’ drums at the feast, but then he slowly remembered that the festival had ended. Also, the musicians’ instruments lay tattered beneath the remains of the chandelier that Left demon had nearly dropped on his head. No, this revolting noise came from something else: an incessant pounding on the door to his quarters.
After a minute with no sign that the banging would cease, Balear sighed and opened his eyes, promptly shutting them again as he realized it wasn’t even dawn yet. He swore. Who would have the gall to make such a racket at this time of night?
He got his answer as the familiar voice of Captain Angustion bellowed on the other side of the door, “Balear! Hop to! Get out of bed and open up at once!”
Balear swore again, but this time only mentally. With a great effort, he shoved himself into a sitting position on his bed, swooning with dizziness as he did so. Stumbling to the door, he unlocked it, opened it a fraction, and answered groggily, “Captain? What are you—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish, because as soon as he cracked the door, Captain Angustion shoved it open all the way, knocking Balear back as he forced his way in. Once inside, he shut the door behind him and blocked it with his body.
“Hurry and get dressed,” the captain growled, “and not in your Castle Guard uniform. Wear civilian clothes, something that will travel well. Bring a weapon, but not military issue. Maybe a bow. Come to the stables in an hour. That’s an order. Iren and I will meet you there.”
He waited until Balear gave a confused affirmative, and then the captain whisked back through the door, leaving the recovering sergeant standing like an idiot in the middle of his room. He remained that way for a long time, trying to process what had just happened, and why Captain Angustion would give him such odd commands. At last, through the fog of his hangover, he started to remember. He recalled, barely, his superior’s speech, the one about a mission, a mission that involved the captain, Balear . . . and Iren Saitosan.
Balear groaned. Today was going to be a very bad day.
* * *
Captain Amroth Angustion, heir to the throne of Lodia, marched swiftly down the corridor, grinning subtly to himself. He’d given Balear quite the rude awakening. He had no doubt, though, that Balear would arrive at the stables on time. Balear’s loyalty, more than his fighting prowess, had won him his position on Amroth’s team. If Amroth gave an order, Balear would follow it, even with a hangover.
The captain entered the castle courtyard, still deserted in the predawn hour. Again Amroth smiled, noting the ease with which his plan was proceeding. Avoiding drinking at the feast to stay focused had proven a smart decision. He’d suspected something like this would happen. Even if Iren hadn’t played his little prank, Amroth doubted Azuluu would ever have agreed to let the boy come. The captain couldn’t allow that. Everything hinged on Iren.
Reaching the stables, he glanced around, confirming no one had followed him. When he’d gone to the Tower of Divinion earlier, he’d sensed that someone was stalking him through the corridors, even though everyone in the castle should have been asleep. He’d checked repeatedly but never seen anyone. He must have imagined it.
Inside the stable, Amroth found the packages he’d brought there after meeting with Iren. While the castle snored, he’d spent the entire night rushing from one end of the fortress to the other, gathering supplies, sneaking leftover food from the kitchens, preparing changes of clothes, and readying three of the Castle Guard’s finest horses. Now they could begin.
* * *
Iren Saitosan arrived at the stables twenty minutes early, his whole body bristling with excitement. Amroth smiled at the boy, but his grin quickly faded.
“I appreciate your enthusiasm,” the captain said flatly, “but we’ll need stealth to accomplish this mission.”
“What do you mean?” Iren asked, confused.
Amroth pointed at him. “You won’t sneak up on many Quodivar dressed like that.”
Iren looked down at his flamboyantly orange and purple motley and shrugged. “I don’t have anything else.”
Shaking his head, Amroth knelt beside a pile of supplies. “Take these. I packed them for myself, but I think they’ll fit you well enough.” He handed Iren black leather boots, belt, and vest, along with thick, gray woolen pants, shirt, and cloak. Iren stepped into one of the empty stalls and changed. Though a size too big, he beamed as he donned them. Since the castle had learned of his Left heritage, no one had ever given him a gift, certainly not clothes like these that lacked tears and moth holes.
Giving Iren a once over, Amroth crossed his arms and said, “You’ll also need a weapon.”
“What do you suggest?” Iren asked.
Amroth smirked. “Actually, I think I have the perfect blade for you. What do you suppose happened to your father’s sword after he died?”
Iren started. “You didn’t.”
“I did. When I saw it, I couldn’t bear to leave it out in that field to rust. I carried it back, sheath included, along with you. I’ve kept it all this time, waiting for the right moment to give it to you. I believe that time has finally come.”
Amroth bent down and pushed aside a pile of straw, revealing a sheathed sword about three feet long. Reverently picking it up, he passed the blade to Iren, who stared at it, spellbound.
“No other sword like it exists in all of Lodia, I assure you,” Amroth said.
Iren could tell that just by the sheath. It was curved and white with sky blue streaks. The whole thing gleamed in the moonlight. The sheath felt metallic, but it looked like no metal Iren had ever seen. It weighed far less than its size suggested, and despite Amroth’s account of the weapon’s age, it showed no sign of wear or dirt whatsoever. In fact, it looked perfectly new.
The blade’s hilt was even more impressive. Forged of the same strange metal as the sheath, the swordsmith had crafted the hilt into the winding shape of a serpentine white dragon. The hilt was white, save for two tiny sapphires that formed the beast’s eyes. Iren touched the gems delicately, yet with a sense of familiarity. The creature reminded him of Divinion, the dragon in his tower painting.
Three concentric rings of symbols encircled the hilt, and they were so far removed from Lodian writing that Iren couldn’t begin to decipher them. “What do these—”
“I don’t know,” Amroth interrupted. “I can’t read them, nor can anyone I’ve taken the sword to. Come; let’s see you draw it. I must admit I tried to use it when I first came upon it, but that dragon-shaped hilt always felt uncomfortable.”
Iren grasped the sword tightly with his left hand. He didn’t want to disagree with as experienced a swordsman as the captain, but he didn’t find the grip uncomfortable at all. The flowing dragon’s body admittedly made for an unorthodox handhold, but not a bothersome one. As Iren drew the blade, it came free from its sheath easily, as though it had waited all this time for him to claim it.
The young man marveled at his father’s sword. Amroth hadn’t lied; no other weapon in Lodia looked like it. It had a slight curve, with an edge only on one side. As he took a few practice swings, he noticed that the weapon felt almost weightless in his hand.
“Amazing,” he whispered. The blade itself was forged from the same white metal as the hilt and sheath, though it lacked the sheath’s blue streaks. Looking closer, Iren realized that the blade and hilt were actually a single piece. That surprised him, as he’d seen blades getting constructed at Haldessa Castle’s forge, at least until he got chased out at the end of a hammer. Normally, the swordsmith made the blade and attached the hilt later.
“In all my travels across Lodia, the Eregos Mountains, and even the Tacumsah Islands, I’ve never seen another sword like this one,” Amroth said. “It may be a swor
d model unique to the Lefts.”
After that, the captain left Iren to practice. With each swing, the blade grew on him. He had never held a sword before, yet this one felt natural, even organic, in his left hand. He couldn’t explain it, but he had the odd sensation that he and the weapon were made for each other.
Meanwhile, Amroth continued readying supplies and loading up three horses. Balear arrived precisely on time, dressed in traveling clothes and bearing a longbow and quiver in addition to a short sword. Despite his impressive attire, the sergeant looked bleary-eyed, and when he saw Iren armed, he grimaced. Amroth immediately set Balear to work checking that their stores of food would support them on a trip lasting several days.
At last Amroth called Iren over and announced they were ready to go. As the captain began mounting his horse, however, a light, airy voice called out, “Ready to go? Go where?”
Iren and Balear simply looked around in confusion, but Amroth became suddenly tense. He stared in the direction of the voice. It had come from inside one of the horse stalls. Iren heard shifting straw, and then the stall door opened from within. Exactly who or what Iren expected to emerge, he couldn’t say. What did appear, though, wasn’t it.
An old woman with long, flowing hair of pale silver stumbled drunkenly through the doorway, her face adorned with glazed-over emerald eyes and a wide, almost stupid-looking grin. Five feet tall at most, the diminutive crone had a frame so light Iren thought he could probably knock her over if he so much as tapped her.
Balear scoffed, probably at the old woman’s clothing, which, if at all possible, was worse than Iren’s former outfit. Her shoes looked like she’d fished them from a trash heap. Multiple holes made her tan woolen shirt and pants look little better than rags, and they were so oversized they billowed around her. She was armed, though only with a dagger with a round wooden handle that hung from a moldy rope tied around her waist. Poking out of her right sleeve, which was so long it obscured her hand, was a bottle of what looked like red wine.
While Iren continued staring dumbfounded at the odd, drunken elder, Amroth recovered from his momentary shock. Regarding her, he noted dryly, “The stables are an odd place to take a nap.”
The old woman shrugged nonchalantly. She kept her expression in the same broad grin, and when she spoke, her words slurred. “I had a lot to drink last night. I knew I’d made a smart move, coming into the castle yesterday. Azuluu always holds a feast when you return from a mission. That means free food and booze for me.” She paused and tapped her bottle knowingly. “Guess I did overstay my welcome a bit though. When did they start barring the gate?” She hiccupped and took a swig.
Amroth cocked an eyebrow.
“Anyway,” she continued, “since I’m here, I might as well go with you.” She stretched her arms above her head. A loud crack filled the stable, and the woman fell backwards on the straw. “Ow, my back!”
Sighing, Amroth said, “You can’t come with us. Where we’re going is dangerous.”
In what seemed too fast for a drunken crone who had just popped her spine out of alignment, the woman climbed to her feet. “I know; that’s why you’ll need my help to rout those nasty Quodivar! Balear there looks too hung-over to stay on his horse, and what you ever saw in that young Left is quite beyond me.”
The crone didn’t as much as glance at Iren while she spoke those words. In fact, she hadn’t looked at Iren once since coming out of her stall. He clenched his fists. This drunken bird was just like all the others. “Stupid old hag,” he growled under his breath.
The woman didn’t miss a beat. As if by instinct, she retorted, still without looking at him, “Monstrous brat.”
Infuriated, Iren opened his mouth to shout at her, to call her any of a half-dozen names he’d already thought of for her, but Amroth’s next words silenced their exchange cold.
“You don’t need to pretend, Rondel. I told him everything.”
Recognition flashed through Iren. This was Rondel Thara, the old woman who’d helped Amroth seventeen years ago. She didn’t look like someone who would welcome strangers with babies into her home. In fact, she didn’t look like someone who even had a home. She looked like a bum.
As Amroth spoke, Rondel’s smile faded. “He knows about seventeen years ago?”
The captain nodded. “Yes, and that’s why he’s coming with me. No one else can kill the Quodivar leader.”
For the first time, the woman’s eyes fell on Iren. It seemed to require a great deal of effort for her to focus on him, and even then, she wouldn’t look him in the face. Instead, her gaze settled upon the now sheathed sword sitting at his right hip. “You gave him the . . . I mean, his father’s sword?”
Iren perked up at that. The? The what? Did this stumbling bat know something about his father’s sword?
Amroth didn’t respond verbally; he just gave her a smirk and then turned away to face Iren and Balear. “Let’s go. Rondel, we don’t have the supplies to take you with us, even if you wouldn’t be a liability against the Quodivar.”
The crone’s grin returned and got, if possible, even bigger. “Well then, good thing I happen to have everything I need for travel right here! What a coincidence!” She ducked back into her stall and began making an awful racket. “By sheer luck, I happen to always have my things ready to depart at a moment’s notice!”
Something about the way she said it made Iren seriously doubt that luck had anything to do with it.
Rondel emerged moments later heavily burdened with a pack and bedroll. On each step, her bundle clinked with the sound of numerous glass objects rubbing against each other. “So can I come?” the old woman asked innocently. She kept on smiling, but a subtle edge crept into her voice as she went on, “You’d best let me. Imagine what might happen if you left me here to tell the king about how you snuck out of the castle in the middle of the night, taking a criminal sentenced to death with you.”
Amroth had already opened his mouth to rebuke her, but he stopped short. The old hag might be a homeless bum, Iren thought, but at least this time, she’d outsmarted the great captain. With the subtlest of nods and an audibly irritated, “Humph,” he leapt onto his horse and rode from the stables. Balear followed, glaring at both Iren and Rondel.
Iren approached the nearest horse, but it shied away from him. Tentatively, he reached a hand out, but the ornery creature simply snorted and turned away. “What’s the matter?” Rondel asked, looking incredulous. “Don’t you speak horse?” Iren shot her a withering stare.
The crone ignored him. Throwing a saddle on the mare nearest her, she whispered, “Kuylet, trempiot.” Iren’s brow furrowed. If those were words in the Lodian tongue, he’d never heard them. The mare apparently understood, though, because she bowed her head and allowed Rondel to climb onto her – backwards.
“Onward!” the hag cried, and then the horse bucked and ran out of the stables, Rondel swearing as she bounced around in the saddle.
Iren couldn’t decide if Rondel was a fool or not. All the same, he now stood alone in the stable, and his horse had decidedly no interest in allowing Iren to ride him. With nothing to lose, Iren shrugged and tried what he’d heard Rondel say, “Kuylet, trempiot.”
At first he felt idiotic, falling for Rondel’s stunt. The annoying witch had probably made up the ridiculous phrase. “Speak horse, I bet,” Iren muttered. A few seconds later, however, the stallion lowered his head and whickered. This time, he allowed Iren to get in the saddle with no trouble at all.
Iren was just thinking how amazing it was that Rondel’s trick had actually worked when the stallion’s nostrils flared, and he shot out of the stables. The energetic horse bolted right past the others, all the while Iren shouting, “Stop! Stop please!”
As his horse cavorted around the courtyard, and the drunken bat Rondel sat backwards on her steed, Iren couldn’t help but wonder how this absurd group would ever defeat the most skilled bandit force Lodia had ever seen.
CHAPTER FIVE
; Departure
“All right,” Amroth began once Iren’s horse calmed down. “Before we leave, there’s one last thing I need each of you to do.” The captain held up several pieces of parchment, ink wells, and pens. “This mission is different from any other. I cannot order any of you to participate. If you come, you do so of your own free will. Under Lodian law, if you died on such a mission, I, as your commander, would become responsible for paying restitution to your survivors. I have neither the means nor desire to do this, so you will each have to write a waiver noting that you understand the risks involved.”
Iren found the concept rather silly. He had no survivors in any case.
“What do we need to write, Captain?” Balear asked, chirping like a bird.
Amroth pulled out another sheet, which had a flowing, elegant script written on it. “I’ve already completed my waiver, so you can just copy what I’ve put down.” He motioned to a table near the entrance to the stables. “When you’re finished, sign and date your waiver and bring it to me. I’ll leave them with the king’s legal assistant. He’ll understand well enough.”
The last thing Iren wanted to do was dismount his horse; getting on it once had given him enough trouble. Amroth would not relent though, so he reluctantly got down and joined the others at the table.
Legal nonsense, Iren decided of the waiver. “I, Iren Saitosan, do here absolve Amroth Angustion, my Great King and Leader Azuluu, and all agents of the government of the Nation of Lodia and City of Haldessa of any responsibility should I perish on this dangerous mission. I recognize the task’s extreme peril and small window for success, but my desire to bring justice to the Sneaky and Monstrous Enemy of Lodia, the Quodivar, is unquestionable.”
The Wings of Dragons: Book One of the Dragoon Saga Page 4