Hardt's Tale: A Mobious' Quest Novel

by Gwendolyn Druyor

  Hardt’s Tale

  A Mobious' Quest Novel

  By

  Gwendolyn Druyor

  gwendolyndruyor.com

  Text Copyright © 2017 by Gwendolyn Druyor

  All Rights Reserved

  Table of Contents

  The Landers

  The dTelfur

  Act I (105 – 106 ath)

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Act II

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Act III

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Epilogue

  The Landers

  88 through 90 years after the hike

  ∞

  Hardt was an unlucky baby. He was born in a rainstorm with no midwife to a mother who cursed him for her pain.

  The hard winds had begun early on his birth day and his granddam had said aloud, “We should send for the healer. Nadi is near her time and the winds speak of a great event today.” But her superstition was ignored.

  And so to sound of howling winds and banging shutters, with hard rain spitting in through the broken roof, Hardt’s mother went into labor. Her younger sister ran for the healer, stumbling against the great winds that would push her back to the house. Through the roof the family could see the lightning flashing in the sky. No thunderclaps followed.

  “This is a bad sign, “ Hardt’s grandsire spoke from where he crouched by the fireplace, “when nature will not speak.”

  “Hush Father and build the fire. It’s only a storm. And all nature says is that we should have listened to Mother earlier.” Vyck admonished him and then turned back to her sweaty panting little sister.

  And so, as his younger aunt rushed in with the birth healer, blowing through the door with the rain, wind, and debris of the storm, Hardt came into the world and his weak cry of protest went unheard under the shock of an enormous thunderclap which shook the cottage to its foundation.

  Hardt was a quiet baby, mild and unprotesting when he went unfed. He never cried nor ever cooed. He watched his grandparents, his two aunts, his young uncle, and his mother with great big curious eyes. But he never made a sound.

  His luck improved when he was weaned from his disenchanted mother’s breast and could be fed more timely by his watchful Aunt Vyck. His mother protested loudly that she loved the quiet baby, but carried him around as more of an accessory than a son. He provided amusement as her many lovers vied to know whose child he was. Her coy answer was always the same, “He’s my child.” But the village also knew what Hardt’s granddam believed, “He is Nature’s child.”

  Hardt learned to walk early. No one noticed. Because Vyck had moved out to live with a man so that he could break her heart more quickly, Hardt had to learn how to walk to get his own water and food. He learned to get to the wastehouse on his own. He learned to follow his mother when she left him in town. He walked silently because he had learned not to be a bother.

  By the time he had lived through ten seasons, Hardt had disappeared almost completely from everyone’s notice. And one bright autumn afternoon when he saw his mother leaving the gaming yard laughing arm in arm with a girlfriend, he didn’t follow her. He waited for a while, in case she came back, and then toddled out to find his aunt Vyck’s cottage. A metalscrafter noticed him as he wandered by the smith, but she was busy and assumed he was being watched. Hardt knew that Aunt Vyck lived across the moving water because they always took a boat to go see her. He could hear the water from the center of town so he followed his ears. But where he got to the water there was no boat as by his granddam’s cottage.

  He sat and he thought for a while. He thought that he was hungry. So he found a berry bush and some fallen crushnuts. He pulled up some lace roots as he walked along the river towards the dead fish smell. He smelled something stinkier too, a heavy musky deep forest smell. But that smell he didn’t know as food like the fish. When he got there, the big musky smell had already claimed the beached fish and was gobbling it down.

  Hardt watched the bear without rancor. The nuts and berries and roots had been enough to fill his little tummy. He just liked the taste of fish.

  When she was done eating, the bear dropped to all fours and stared at the quiet human cub for just a moment before ambling on across the river.

  Hardt recognized a mother and he followed her into the rushing water.

  One moon later, after a fever and recriminations from the family, after long arguments and accusations, Hardt was woken in the silence of night and spirited away from his mother and his grandparents and his younger aunt and his uncle. He traveled for five suns by boat, by cart, by horse, and by foot during all of which he was held and cuddled and tickled and smothered in kisses. And after five suns he was laid to bed in the tiny cottage which became a happy home where he was loved and treasured by his aunt Vyck. And where his mother never bothered to look for him.

  The dTelfur

  143rd year of Konifer Vize (105ath lander reckoning)

  ∞

  Deg slowly lifted his great head and looked up into the cloudless sky. A good day for flying he thought. He turned his neck a few times to get the cricks out and looked over the village. Well he hadn’t been asleep too long. There was Dorat still mending her pants. And Tcoa still crying over her broken wing despite the telf healer Nyah’s attentions. Just asleep long enough to stiffen his neck. He shifted his body on the eggs and reached his nose again into the air. Yes, there it was, the faint smell of some great fire. It hadn’t been just in his dream. He could smell it, though he could see no smoke in the sky. But then his eyes were failing him. He was an old old dragon.

  He himself couldn’t fathom why he was still breathing the sweet air of the dTelfur mountain but lived he did and breathed. And grew. The other dTelfur went off to shed in the privacy of the deep woods or to ease the itch of sloughing skin in the rivers, lakes, and oceans. But Deg was too big now to go flying off willy nilly. He shed where he was and the others of the village, dtur and telf alike, would scratch him and scrub him and rake the old hide into the hatching sands, marveling as they did at his new hide’s luster and resilience. Everyone was kind to Deg, the oldest and thus largest of all the dTelfur dragons. The two-legged telf hatchlings would beg him to tell them stories of the ancient times as they climbed between his toes and got those hard to scratch recesses. They believed the adults who told them Deg had been alive when the winged dTur and two-legged Telfs were separate species warring for dominance in these lands. But that had been generations before even Deg had cracked shell on these very grounds.

  What had woken him from his dream? Smoke. Yes. A great fire somewhere to the East. Towards the lander peoples.

  So the landers had set themselves on fire. Deg tried to feel some way about this but all he could find in his heart was exasperation. For only the blink of an eye had the Telf-like mammals been on this land. dTelfur travelers used to bring him stories of the landers’ ingenuity. He’d heard repeated tellings of the astonishing live births. Deg observed that this was best, as none of
their species was large enough to sit an egg. He did not understand though how they would be able to regulate their population’s needs. How did Nature know what talents lay in each woman’s child? Did a woman have to carry a child around until it was needed? It seemed to Deg an inefficient system for a sentient species.

  Now though, since the landers had begun attacking dragons, chasing them away, Deg got fewer stories from his friends.

  “Old Mountain, what are you looking at?” Danny, one of the younger dTur who sat the eggs looked up at Deg. Unless they were flying, everyone looked up at Deg.

  “I’m looking at the sky because I smell fire.”

  “Trees are burning. The landers have lost all sense.” Danny laid his head back down over his cache of eggs.

  Deg too curled up again over his own large cache. Pushing one dark egg further under his chest, in the protective curve of his foreleg, he mentioned, “Someone will have to go put it out if it spreads too far. Konifer will know.” And he shut his eyes.

  Suddenly both dTur and the rest of the village lifted their heads and looked East. They all heard the screaming dragon before she came into view. Half the villagers within Deg’s view took off to help. It sounded like Sophie who had gone off, Deg knew, many weeks ago to hunt with dTserra and to shed. He craned his neck higher searching the sky for the pair through the crush of dragons that filled the sky between him and the noise. The volatile Telf, dTserra, was a pet of his and he had an icy fear in the tip of his tail that she had finally gotten herself into irredeemable trouble.

  One of the youngest dTur in flight turned and flew back to Deg. About the same size as his head, she hovered in front of him, scared.

  “What is it, Nahni?”

  Nahni tried, unsuccessfully, to dip her head in respect while maintaining her altitude. In her distress and struggle to regain a balanced hover her tail twitched in control of her emotions rather than her will. The awkward hatchling hit Danny in the eye before whacking her tail into her own left wing. She fell.

  Danny caught her on his snout. Another good reason the youngest had fur on their bellies, such rescues.

  “Relax Nahni, I’ve got you.” Danny murmured gently so as not to disturb her precarious balance. “Give Deg your news.”

  Deg dipped his head to a level with Nahni, “What is it little soul?”

  “dTserra was hunted. Sophie says you’re to meet them on the riverbank.”

  Nahni spread her wings suddenly to catch herself as Danny pulled back in shock. What reason could there be to ask Deg to move? Deg hadn’t moved farther from the hatching ground than the fertilization ditch in almost half a century. The old dTur was just too big. He exercised his wings at night and on hot days, but Danny couldn’t remember seeing him in the air since well before Nahni had hatched.

  “Nahni, go tell them I’m coming.” Deg turned his head to speak to the Telf healer Nyah over by the grove. “Nyah, get to the riverbank and help them. Danny, find a couple of dragons to sit the eggs while I am gone.”

  He took one deep breath, crouched up on his hefty forepaws, curled his tail under for an assist, unfurled his marvelous wings, and sprang into the sky. For one moment he hovered at the height of his leap, fearful that his cold wings would fail. Then he felt for the currents and brought his wings down in a great beat against the air. And soared upwards.

  Deg arrived at the riverbank, escorted by a frantic Sophie darting about, torn by a need to protect dTserra from the crush of curious dTelfur and dTserra’s demand that she fetch Deg. As he landed a careful distance from the dying hunter, Deg watched some telf healers saw a spear end from dTserra’s chest while she refused an anesthetizing drink, barking orders at those around her at the limit of her considerable pitch. The healers packed the wound with cloth and conferred quietly over the impossibility of removing the spearhead without causing more damage.

  “I know how a spearhead works!” dTserra snapped at the whispering healers, the pain blinding her to Deg’s approach.

  “Well, you have finally made me fly.”

  She turned unapologetic eyes to the old dTur, “You know you need the exercise.”

  Sophie lowered her head into the conversation. “Deg is old enough to know what is best for himself.”

  “No one is ever old enough…”

  “dTserra,…”

  “Shut up Sophie. Deg, and I…” dTserra hesitated. She looked down at the growing puddle of blood at her side. “I’m going on.”

  Deg hummed assent over Sophie’s dismay. “Nahni said you’ve been hunted.”

  dTserra smirked and looked off at the sky, “Ha. So that’s why. Well, it’s fair.”

  The two old dragons let her stare off at the gathering crowd while the color drained from her face and her eyelids drooped. Deg ignored Sophie’s tail flicking at his. He lowered his head to the ground and whispered to his dear pet, “Is there anything you need to say, dTserra?”

  Her eyes opened, “Yes. One of the eggs you’re sitting now, my egg, the dark mottled one, that…”

  He murmured, “I know the one.”

  “It is of Konifer. Name him ‘Mobious’.” She slowly turned her head to her friend and partner, “Sophie, when I’ve gone on, take me to the forest and leave me for the beasts. It is their turn to feed on me.” She reached up and put a hand on each muzzle, “I am hunted.”

  She lived a few hours as the sun rose over the motionless crowd. But spoke no more.

  Act I (105 – 106 ath)

  One

  ∞

  Black clouds rolled across the sun, darkening the already chilly forest as Hardt, hands torn with hemp splinters, struggled through the underbrush to reach the middle tree. This time the trap would be secure. He’d tied ropes off at waist high and as far over his head as he could reach not only between the two trees as his aunt Vyck had instructed, but to a third as well, creating a triangular bluff so if the buck veered off again he’d still be trapped. The two rope heights would keep him from spreading his stunted wings and gliding over the trap this time.

  With many hours of an unlucky hunt behind him, Hardt’s thick dark hair lay matted about his head with sweat. He wore little clothing which clung tightly to his tall form to keep from catching on the thick trees and brush of the deep forest, the bos. The smell of his exhaustion was unnoticeable beneath the cow dung he and his aunt had spread over each other early that morning to mask their human smell from the prey and to help them blend into the brown death of the late winter foliage. With nearly seventeen frseason, sixty-six seasons, Hardt had just grown taller than his formidable aunt and the broad shoulders and strong body he’d inherited and improved with a life of hard physical labor made him an attractive and imposing figure. He would have been quite popular if he ever allowed anyone to see the heart behind his dark and distant eyes which were usually, as now, focused single-mindedly on the task at hand.

  Satisfied with his knots, Hardt circled around to the west of the third tree where he whistled the signal. Vyck would know to drive the kyirghon east of his voice. He heard her commotion and readied his spears praying they would bring it down this time. They’d been playing games with the creature since well before dawn and now, with the approach of evening and thunder rolling overhead, Hardt was beginning to think the people of Stray should let the stunt-winged kyirghon have his way and just move their homes out of the bull’s newly claimed territory.

  A crack of lightning split the sky and the kyirghon veered. Whooping and screaming, Hardt leaped from his hiding place and scrambled west circling as quickly as he could to run the beast back at Vyck’s stoning. The buck was only briefly spooked by the new apparition in front of him before another sharp stone hit him in the rear. It ran on. Hardt could hear Vyck altering her chase, circling to drive the kyirghon east again with her stones. Already searching the ground before him for any missiles he could use, he heard her screaming from the other side of the stampeding beast, “Throw something! Hit him!”

  He felt the first drop of rain
on the back of his neck and stumbled, looking to his right as the kyirghon burst through the brush, heading straight for him. Falling to the messy, wet, and painful forest floor he threw with all his might the spear he’d forgotten in his left hand. The ground hit him hard as the Kyirghon spread its little wings and soared over him followed closely by Vyck who raced to the wounded beast, slit its thick throat and leapt out of the way of its great rack of antlers thrashing about in agony as it quickly bled to death.

  Hardt slowly sat up, a hand to his aching head as Vyck, looking up at the great crocodile drops falling slowly from the black sky, sat herself down on the stone her nephew had just barely missed cracking his skull on.

  “Nice throw.”

  “I shouldn’t have let it get so close.” He resurveyed the scene with a rational eye.

  “Ah, you still think you have to see it to hit it. You’ll figure it out.”

  Hardt looked up at her, confused. “But you don’t like using magic to hunt.”

  “Don’t use magic,” she paused to take a swig from her canteen. “Use your ears.”

  Vyck looked away at the poor creature struggling for its final breath and spilled a sip of water over the dirt, thanking nature for the kill and the beast for its sacrifice. “Not that you didn’t give us one hell of a fight,” she added as the rain began really pouring down. “Ah well, at least our job is done for now. Give that horn a toot and the Mytree family clan can come and drag the beast ashore.”

  The buck had been bothering the west lying cottages of the newly and loosely organized countryshale of Stray for three quarters of a moon. The Kyirghon, a normally reticent deer-like creature with vestigial wings and a nasty airfoil tail on the male, had attacked and badly wounded Badren, a western living hermit, as he was leaving his cottage for the full moon meeting.

  Badren’s shouts were heard by several families also headed for the gathering and by luck, their sheer numbers and noise drove the buck off before he’d done any fatal damage. The rescuers tended the goring as best they could and carried Badren to the center clearing to be seen to by Gaerel, the closest thing the shale yet had to a healer. Jaydee, matron of the indomitable Mytree clan, invited Badren to stay at the family’s compound while he healed, but with the thought of Jaydee, Garce and the six young and equally wild Mytree racing about in all minds, her offer was supplanted by more quiet refuge. The question remained; what to do about the beast?