Meghan's Dragon

by E. M. Foner

  “Then why does it feel like I’m about to cut you in half every time I attack?”

  “I’m old, slow, and missing half a hand. But don’t hold back because you’re worried about getting past my defenses or it will permanently mess up your timing. My wife is a pretty good healer, so as long as you keep that chunk of steel away from my face she’ll be able to fix any damage you do. This leather armor is better than it looks unless you take a thrust from something with a sharp point.”

  “So what happened to your fingers?” Bryan asked with the insensitivity of youth.

  “Somebody cut them off,” Simon answered bluntly. “I had a special hilt made for my favorite sword with leather straps to help my grip, but Phinneas told me I was just begging for death. After he saved my bacon on the field, I decided he was right and got into show business, which was the smartest move I ever made. Look at me now with a wife and grandchildren.”

  “Why didn’t you have the fingers sewn back on?”

  “Sewn?” the old soldier asked. “Gods, boy. You really must be from the backwaters of civilization if they sew fingers onto people. Any folk healer like my wife could have handled the job easy and I’d have been holding a sword again in a week. Well, maybe two weeks.”

  “So why didn’t you take the fingers to a battlefield healer?”

  “Couldn’t find them,” Simon said sourly. “It had been raining for days and the field was all muddy, so one of us must have stepped on my fingers and buried them in the muck. I stopped the bleeding myself, of course. Anybody without enough magic to do that would be insane to take up soldiering, but I’ve hated Fourth Month with all the rain ever since.”

  Chapter 25

  Meghan held the squirming baby boy while his mother, Bethany, was taking care of her business in the woods.

  “So when do you expect the blessed event?” the seamstress in charge of costumes asked Meghan.

  “I knew it,” the baby’s mother said, returning to reclaim her infant. “You’re so good with my Davie.”

  Before Meghan could digest what the women were saying and protest, the seamstress continued. “There are lots of good roles for a young woman with your face once you fill out. Can’t expect the men to throw coppers if you don’t show them a bit of cleavage.”

  “But I’m not pregnant,” Meghan finally managed to object. “We’ve barely been married two weeks.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Bethany said, putting Davie to her shoulder to burp the fussy baby. “I’m sure you’ll have good news for us any day. I guess we all just assumed that Bryan got you in trouble and you ran away from home with him.”

  “You could try a bit of padding,” the seamstress suggested kindly. “With the right dress, it can make all of the difference. They used to throw silver at my daughter’s feet when she played Hilda in The Princess and the Mage.”

  “That’s the part for her,” Bethany agreed. “It works best with a childish face. How old was your daughter when she played it, Brianna?”

  “Fourteen at most. Oh, I’m sorry, Meghan. I don’t mean to imply that you’re a slow bloomer.”

  “I’m seventeen,” Meghan gritted out, kicking the dirt. “I’ll be eighteen in less than two months.”

  “I heard that you’re going to be assisting Laitz with his illusions,” Bethany said, breaking the embarrassed silence that fell over the group of women. “We all tried out for it before he left the troupe to become a court jester, but none of us could see the patterns he was talking about.”

  “I guess I was just lucky,” Meghan replied, happy to talk about something other than her lack of matronly assets. “I lived all my life in a room with an arrow slit, so I’m used to seeing how the light interacts with things in the air.”

  “That must be it,” the first woman agreed. “None of us are castle folk, though we don’t hold it against you.”

  “Do you have anything in mind for a second job?” Bethany asked. “Rowan insists that everybody try acting and the sooner the better, because you never know if you have the knack for it until you get up in front of an audience. But this is a family business, and he’ll give you credit for babysitting if you aren’t up to performing.”

  A vision of herself emptying enchanted diapers for all of the babies in the troupe led Meghan to blurt out the first thing that came to mind.

  “I was thinking of doing a magic show. You know, for children?” she concluded lamely, searching for approval in the women’s blank faces.

  Meghan wondered where that dumb idea had come from, and then she remembered that Bryan had been talking about it when they practiced magic on the road. He claimed that on Dark Earth there were people who pretended to be able to do magic in order to entertain children at birthday parties. It didn’t sound as outlandish as his claims that there were famous magicians who could fill a theatre by sawing a woman in half or locking her in a box and making her disappear.

  “A magic show for children,” a deep voice remarked, and Meghan looked around to see that Rowan had been walking past the wagon just as she spoke. “Where’s the entertainment value in that?”

  “Uh, it’s funny,” Meghan replied desperately. “The magic never works out right. See, like I reach into a hat to pull out a rabbit and instead I get a rattlesnake.” She almost bit her tongue off to punish it the moment the words left her mouth.

  “Snake handling, I like it. Let me know when you have the act ready to go and we’ll give it a try. In the meantime, start learning the lines for Elstan. It’s always a big draw at the harvest festivals.”

  Bethany patted Meghan’s hand and the others looked on sympathetically as the troupe leader continued on his way.

  Chapter 26

  “What’s wrong with playing Elstan?” Bryan asked. “I think it’s great you’re getting a part.”

  “Elstan is a boy. He’s a prince in Old Land who dresses as a girl to escape a siege and bring help, but he’s captured by a captain in the attacking forces who falls in love with him thinking he’s a brave girl. It’s a tragedy.”

  “Sounds more like a comedy. I bet you have fun with it.”

  “But he’s a BOY!” she repeated emphatically.

  “Playing a girl,” Bryan reminded her. “And as long as your baron has a reward out to bring you back, it’s a great disguise.”

  “But Rowan thinks I look like a boy,” she reiterated, stamping her foot and wondering if Bryan had always been this dense. “How do you think that makes me feel?”

  “Well, why did you volunteer to do a snake handling show if you’re afraid of snakes?” Bryan countered. Prior to dying on Dark Earth, his experience with the opposite sex had been limited by his lack of social skills, but he remembered some of the guys on his virtual gaming team complaining about the illogical actions of their girlfriends. The only thing he had gathered from her description of the afternoon was that she was sensitive about her measurements.

  “You’re not helping,” Meghan hissed between clenched teeth. “I need to come up with an act that will make Rowan forget about snakes and get me out of playing Elstan. It’s your fault that I’m in this mess. Tell me what you remember about the magic shows you watched on Dark Earth.”

  “Well, the magicians were usually men. The women were assistants, and they always wore black nylons and skimpy tops, so you could see their, uh…” he trailed off, intentionally looking away from Meghan.

  “Don’t you start in on me about my lack of so-called assets, I’ve had enough of that for one day,” she snapped at him. “And what was that first thing you said the women wore? I didn’t get the word.”

  “Nylons,” Bryan repeated, but her blank look showed that it wasn’t a word covered by Hadrixia’s translation magic. “Uh, panty hose.”

  “You mean skin-tight pants? Only men wear hose.”

  “On Dark Earth, only women wear hose, and they’re kind of see-through.”

  “Now I know you’re making it up. Why would a woman wear see-through pants?”

  “I don
’t know,” Bryan replied in frustration. “Ask a woman. Now that I think of it, I did see a female magician once on a late-night show, but all I remember is that she was nearly naked.”

  “That’s just great. I can go out there in my underwear and then everybody can tell me how much I look like a boy.”

  “Forget about the costume for now and focus on the show,” Bryan said. “What sort of magic do people here laugh at?”

  “Nobody laughs at magic. That would be like laughing at, I don’t know, a dragon.”

  “So choose between playing a boy and snake wrestling.”

  “Wait a minute,” Meghan said, brought up short by her limited options. “How would the audience know that the magician was supposed to pull a rabbit and not a snake out of the hat in the first place?”

  “The funny magicians talk all of the time, and they never look at what they’re doing,” Bryan explained. “You’d say something like, ‘I am now going to pull a rabbit out of my hat,’ but instead, you’d pull out a snake and not even notice. Imagine you were looking at the audience and telling some story about how you’ve had the same rabbit for years and how he saved your life by nibbling on your ear to wake you when the room was on fire. While you’re talking, you pull enough of the snake out of the hat for people to see a rabbit-sized lump in its belly.” Bryan stopped and laughed at the scenario he’d described.

  “That’s not funny. How can anybody laugh about a poor loyal bunny getting swallowed by a snake?”

  “People aren’t laughing at the bunny. They’re laughing at the magician.”

  “So you’re saying, it’s really me they’ll be laughing at and not my magic?”

  “Right. You said yourself that magic isn’t funny.”

  “I wonder if I’ll have to cut my hair to play Elstan,” Meghan said mournfully.

  Chapter 27

  “Why don’t we stop at any of these villages?” Bryan asked Simon as they walked along behind the props wagon that doubled as the stage master’s home.

  “Delay would cost us more than the profit. By the time we set up, put on two shows and break down, you’re talking about losing at least two full days. Half of the audience in these villages is kids who get in for free, and the adults with coins to spare save them for visiting the festivals. Besides, the villages get plenty of bards and minstrels, and it wouldn’t do to poach on their living.”

  “Rowan said that we’d move south ahead of the snow, but it looks to me like most of the fields we’re seeing have already been harvested. If we arrive at the festival tonight and play for a week, we’ll never get to the next one in time at the rate we’re moving.”

  “The northernmost festival is the only one that really starts right after the harvest,” Simon explained. “New Land doesn’t have the population to support enough players and merchants for everybody to hold festivals all at once. By the time we get to the southernmost dukedom in the kingdom, it’s two months since they brought in the corn. We do a week on the road and a week at each festival, so with the difference in latitude, we get to all five of them. Some of the farmers blow all their money at the local castles before the festival reaches the south, but most of them wait.”

  “So the harvest festivals aren’t really about farming, they’re about business and entertainment.”

  “There’s always plenty of trade in livestock,” Simon corrected him. “Farmers also exchange seeds, sell the animals they don’t want to feed over the winter, and buy oxen and draft horses they’ll need for the spring planting. The only thing you don’t see much of at harvest festivals is selling the harvest because that’s all done at the local castle markets.”

  “Were you born on a farm?” Bryan asked.

  “Born and raised. But I had three brothers ahead of me to take over the farm when my father was ready to call it quits, and I had bigger things in mind for myself in any case. I took the king’s silver and went for a soldier the day I turned sixteen.”

  “I thought the soldiers all belonged to the local barons.”

  Simon turned his head to look at Bryan. “Are you sure Castle Trollsdatter is part of the kingdom?”

  “We’re way up north,” Bryan said, improvising an answer he hoped the man would accept. “Beyond the Five Lakes nations.”

  “Ah, so you’re actually under the authority of the Old Land king,” Simon said, nodding. “I heard there were a few baronies up there with independent charters that never joined the new kingdom. The barons down here all swear fealty to the five dukes, and the dukes owe their loyalty to the New Land king. Each castle maintains its quota of soldiers for local defense and sends regular allotments to their duke. The dukes provide men for the king.”

  “If they’re all on the same side, why do the barons fight each other?”

  “They’re only on the same side if the king declares war against the natives, and that hasn’t happened in my lifetime. Otherwise, the barons fight the other barons, and once in a while, the dukes fight the other dukes. It keeps everybody in practice and makes spaces for the new recruits.”

  “Why don’t the dukes set up their own kingdoms?” Bryan asked.

  “It’s been tried, but the king and the other dukes put a quick end to it. You’d have to get two or three of the dukes to agree to a new king to make a contest of it, and for the ones who are going to remain dukes, what’s the point?”

  “How many battles have you been in, Simon?” Bryan asked.

  “Oh, maybe forty, if you include the small ones. You have to figure on at least two a year, and I was twenty years in the service before Phinneas convinced me to quit.”

  “And how many of the young men who joined at the same time as you stayed in longer?”

  Simon shook his head. “You should have asked how many of the young men who didn’t quit after a year or two survived. I lasted longer than any of the boys I joined with who tried to make a career of fighting.”

  “Even with all of the healers? I’m sorry if I sound stupid, but we just didn’t have many battles at Castle Trollsdatter. There wasn’t anybody to fight, other than, uh, native raids.”

  “Healer can’t put a man’s head back on his shoulders, fix an arrow through the eye or a spear through the heart,” Simon explained. “Healer can’t uncook a man’s flesh after he’s been roasted by a war mage’s fireball, or repair his chest after a catapult projectile crushes it in. Healers are best at broken bones and stab wounds that don’t kill you on the spot. A really good healer can handle belly wounds and reverse the flesh rot if you get help in time.”

  “You said you stopped your own bleeding when you lost your fingers. Can all soldiers do that?”

  “A man would be crazy to go for a soldier if he couldn’t do that much, but stopping the bleeding from a lost finger isn’t the same as healing a deep wound. When things get bad, there are never enough healers to go around, and since the serious cases take more time and magical energy than the easy wounds, the healers concentrate on the men they can get back into the battle line.”

  “So how does a man like Phinneas last so long?”

  “He’s practically a war mage,” Simon replied. “I’ve seen him stop an arrow a hand’s-breadth from his face, and his counter-fire technique is as good as it gets. If he had a little more natural capacity he’d be a mage, but he makes up for it with his soldiering skills. You know the king wanted him for war master.”

  “I heard he turned the king down because he’s loyal to the baron.”

  “Is that what they’re saying?” Simon laughed and clapped his hands several times. “Phinneas doesn’t care one bit for the baron or his family, but he positively despises the king.”

  Chapter 28

  “You should practice strengthening magic,” Meghan told Bryan as they pitched the two-man tent from the troupe’s seemingly endless supply of camping gear. Everybody except for Laitz had assumed a lover’s spat was at fault when the two slept in their separate pack-tents their first night on the road with the players. After Rowan jok
ingly awarded them with the “honeymoon” tent, they both understood that pretending to be married required pretending to sleep together.

  “Why? Simon says I’ve already got more endurance than anybody he’s trained.”

  “However strong eating twice as much as the other men is making you, you never know when you’ll need more. Along with good blood clotting, strengthening magic is an absolute requirement for soldiers.”

  “I can’t see myself being strong, so how can I learn it?”

  “Just pick up a flour barrel and pay attention to how your muscles feel as you lift it. Repeat it a few times and say, ‘strengthen’ or ‘strong’ as you do it to help fix the feeling in your memory. Once you get good at it, saying the word and drawing on your magic will add that much power to whatever you’re doing for as long as your capacity holds out.”

  “I don’t say anything when I bring out my fire or levitate the ring,” Bryan protested. “And I haven’t seen other people muttering to themselves when they do magic, except for you.”

  “Well maybe you’re just smarter than I am,” Meghan retorted angrily, turning her back and ducking into the freshly erected tent.

  “I didn’t mean it that way. I was just saying.” Bryan stepped back from the tent and tried to look busy as a few of the troupe’s women walked by with buckets of water on their way back from the stream.

  “Isn’t that cute,” one woman said to the others in a stage whisper. “They start fights before bed just so they can make up.”

  Bryan waited until the women were out of sight before cautiously lifting the tent flap. “Simon was explaining to me today about how the kingdom worked and I didn’t understand any of it. Do you know who any of these dukes are?”

  “Are you going to sit and pay attention if I explain, or are you going to be looking for an excuse to escape, like I’m a spider who’s trapped you in a web?”

  “I want you to teach me,” Bryan said, trying his best to sound sincere.