The Sword and the Dragon (The Wardstone Trilogy Book One)

by M. R. Mathias

  “Last night, while the King lay dying, the King’s Squire, a boy called Mikahl Thayne, made ready for a sizable journey, and then fled the castle,” Lord Brach explained.

  Thayne, Fairchild knew, was the name given to bastard born children. Thayne was the god of the needy, the protector of the lost and alone. The Duke filed that bit of information away and continued listening.

  “He left sometime in the night after assaulting this man.” Lord Brach indicated the stableman with a look of extreme distaste. “We assume he left through the Northroad Gate. It was the only one open throughout the night.”

  Duke Fairchild, at that point, knew what his duty was. He was, after all, a hunter and interrogator. He was glad he had brought Tully and Garth with him on this most fortunate of errands. They were both experienced and loyal men, men who understood how to track and kill the sort of prey they would be after. A look of eagerness and longing crept over Duke Fairchild’s face. The expression was lustful and predatory, like a hungry beast with the scent of blood finding its nostrils. Pael, who had been silently studying the Duke, read the intent in the man’s countenance, and found that he was pleasantly surprised.

  “Learn what you can from the stableman, and then dismiss him properly.”

  Fairchild hadn’t needed the emphasis on the word “dismiss” to understand his Lord’s meaning, but he nodded for the benefit of the wizard, and the hidden spectator. Lord Brach continued:

  “We want this squire alive, if at all possible. His manner of departure, and the timing, suggests that he was involved, and is possibly carrying a message to an unknown party. We would like to know who that someone is, no matter what the cost.”

  “Bring him alive!” Pael commanded then, his eyes conveying an intensity that Fairchild understood completely. “No matter what his condition is, if he is alive and can speak, I will be able to leech his mind of the knowledge we seek!”

  “I understand,” Fairchild told them, with more than a little eagerness showing in his voice. “If it pleases milord, can your man escort the stableman back to the stable? I would do so myself, but it seems that time is of the essence here. I have other preparations to make, and men to round up and outfit before I get to him.”

  With a nod, Lord Brach granted the request. Duke Fairchild was turning toward the door to leave, when a voice he recognized right away, caught him short.

  “Your diligence in this matter will be well remembered,” Prince Glendar said from the shadows. Duke Fairchild smiled to himself. King Glendar, he corrected his thought, and continued on with his duty with that much more fervor.

  After he had exacted what information he could from the stableman, and cleaned the blood and skin from his dagger, Duke Fairchild met his men at the Northroad Gate. The trio of night watchmen his men had cornered seemed annoyed at being rousted this early in the day. They grew quite cooperative, and obedient, however, after the Duke threw all ten of the stableman’s bloody fingers in the dirt at their feet.

  No one had left through the gate after dark, they all agreed. And only a single wagon, and later a lone post rider had entered. Duke Fairchild knew from experience that the watchmen were telling the truth, so he left them and moved on.

  The next morning, on the Northroad, just south of Crossington, Duke Fairchild found a farmer who had heard, but hadn’t seen, two horses galloping towards the crossroads two nights previous in the pre-dawn hours. The Duke split his men then, and sent them to all of the farmhouses that were close enough to the road to hear a passerby. By midday, the first man’s story had been confirmed by a man who claimed he had seen a post rider, with a pack horse, galloping eastward on the cutoff road away from Crossington. It was no post rider Fairchild knew, and for the first time on this new hunt, he felt like he had the true scent of his prey.

  Duke Fairchild didn’t believe in luck, he believed he was a favorite of the gods, so he credited them as the cause of his recent good fortune. When one of the two extra men he had hired in Crossington was relieving himself at the side of the Midway Passage Road, and heard the distant sound of a man groaning, the Duke’s faith in his gods was confirmed.

  They found a trail leading north into the Reyhall Forest that was as obvious as a cobbled road. They found a dying bandit there, who confirmed that it had been a King’s man who had pig stuck his inner thigh and left him for dead. After torturing the man for all the information he was worth, Duke Fairchild slit his throat, and ordered Garth, Tully, and the two extra men he hired to get rid of the two bodies. He then lit a fire and camped in the same place Mikahl had only nights before.

  The Duke started growing confident then: the gods had smiled upon him again. They continually led him in the right direction. It was like Coldfrost, he mused, when all those feral half breed giants had confessed to the things he needed them to confess to. Lord Brach and old Lord Finn had praised him. His victims always told him what he needed them to say when he pressured them properly. It never occurred to him then, or even now, that the tortured almost always end up saying what the torturer wanted to hear, if only to quicken their own death.

  Sitting there in the woods at Mikahl’s camp, the Duke had become so confident, that he never even questioned how a lowly squire could’ve killed two hardened road bandits all by himself. Garth, Tully, and the other two men wondered about that though. In their mind’s eye, their prey suddenly seemed a little more formidable than merely a simple spoiled castle boy.

  The next afternoon, when they came into the clearing where the half eaten carcass of the giant skinless lizard lay, they were attacked by a greedy pack of wolves. One of the men’s horses was dragged down, and while he was pinned beneath it, the wolves set upon him. Tully killed two of them with his well placed arrows. The Duke killed two more with his sword, while trying to save the pinned man. He rode into the fray, fearlessly hacking and slashing, with little or no concern for his own safety, but it was wasted bravado. The hungry wolves tore the man to pieces. Garth had to run down the other hired man when he tried to flee, but he still managed to trample a wolf under his horse’s hooves as he did so. The dozen or so wolves that remained, reluctantly scattered, and skulked away. One wolf turned and growled at them, as if to rally his pack-mates for another attack, but one of Tully’s arrows nipped it, and sent them all darting back into the forest.

  Duke Fairchild wiped the blood from his blade, and sheathed it. He dismounted his horse, dragged the hired man out of his saddle, and knocked him to his knees, with a brutal blow to the temple. He almost killed the man then and there, but to Garth and Tully’s disappointment, he made the man gather up all of the arrows from the area around his half eaten comrade.

  Tully went with him, and filched the dead man’s pockets and pouches. The man’s saddle bags were next. Tully stopped pilfering only long enough to waggle one of the corpse’s severed hands at the craven man.

  Garth and Tully had been reminded of their liege lord’s strength and fearlessness, when he rode into the pack of wolves without a care. They were then reminded quite brutally of his ruthlessness, when, after the craven man handed Tully back his arrows, the Duke ran his sword through his stomach and rode away, leaving him to die slowly in the field. He would still be bleeding out when the wolves returned. Garth and Tully would’ve had full confidence in the Duke’s plan to catch up to, and overtake, their prey, had they not found the old sword protruding proudly up out of the huge, dead lizard’s throat. It shone in the sun like a cross rising out of a sea of reddish brown death. After confirming that it was standard Westland issue, they decided that the lowly squire they were after might be more of a predator than Duke Fairchild himself.

  The three of them made good time then, because the trail wasn’t all that hard to follow. That night, Garth and Tully took turns leading the horses on foot by lantern light. The next morning, they learned just how close they were to catching their quarry, when they came upon a newly deserted camp. They started stalking then, gaining on the squire slowly. The Duke decided to wait
until the boy made camp that night. They would take him in his sleep. They learned from the tracks at the camp that there were two men. Duke Fairchild hoped that it was the squire and the conspirator that Lord Brach and King Glendar wanted to learn more about.

  Thoughts of praise and grandeur carried the Duke through the long day, but he was never distracted from the scent of his prey. He felt certain that the gods had led him to this very moment in time. A place where he could do what he loved to do, while raising his standing with his liege lord, and gaining the favor of the new King of Westland. He had no doubts that when the boy and his companion finally bedded down for the night, he and his men would overtake them; but as nightfall came and the darkness deepened, he began to wonder.

  They dared not light the lantern. They were too close now. The Duke didn’t want to spook his quarry. Knowing that the squire couldn’t move any faster through the darkness than they could, they pressed on. Fairchild had Tully dismount and lead them on foot. The Duke was still reveling in the greatness this capture would bring him, when Tully stopped, and bent down to retrieve something shiny he saw on the ground. The horrible, primal yell the man made when the iron jaws of Loudin’s trap snapped shut on his arm, carried a long way through the forest night.

  The bone chilling scream frightened every living thing to silence, but the sound that threatened to scare the trees up out of their roots was the low, menacing growl of rage, that rose up from deep inside of the Coldfrost Butcher.

  Chapter 15

  Hyden hovered over Little Condlin’s wounded body to shield him from the arrows that were still raining down on them. As strange as it seemed, the three elves formed a protective ring around them as well. One of the elves voiced his displeasure at the deed, but complied with his peers anyway. Condlin’s squirming struggle underneath him let Hyden know that his cousin was still alive.

  Talon had narrowly missed being crushed when Hyden had dived on Little Condlin. He was trying to fly away from the mayhem, but his untrained wing muscles weren’t cooperating with his will. He was half flapping, half hopping his way across the turf. Yells and screams, and the sound of battle, could be heard breaking out all around them. The sound of steel clashing on steel and wood was unmistakable, even to Hyden, who had never so much as touched a sword, save for one in an armory shop along the Ways.

  “The arrows have stopped,” the elven archer with the blood streaked face said, as he knelt down to look at Little Condlin’s wounds. Hyden would’ve tried to stop the yellow eyed creature from touching his cousin, but the elf’s tone, and the gentleness of his movements, belayed his objection.

  Hyden glanced around them. His father, and Uncle Condlin, were both charging toward him. Anger and fear showed plainly in their eyes. Beyond them, Hyden could see Little Condlin’s mother on her knees with her face in her hands. In the last few weeks, she had lost one son and seen another crippled. Hyden couldn’t imagine what she must be feeling, after seeing another one of her children being struck by an arrow. It appeared as if the Redwolf soldiers were torn between joining the growing battle around them, and protecting those few who were still on the tournament grounds unarmed. There were enough of them present on the archery range that the attackers, and the other angry people seemed weary, and were staying away from that particular area.

  Hyden felt it in his blood, like a gritty tingle, before he saw the elf’s magic working. It was such a sudden and powerful thing, that he was drawn to it reflexively. The elf had opened the top of Little Condlin’s shirt, and was pulling the arrow slowly out of him with one hand. The other hand was making a slow, circular motion over the boy’s chest. A place, deep inside the child’s skin, was glowing a reddish orange color. The glow moved along the arrow’s path, out towards where the shaft protruded from his collar. They eventually could see that it was the arrow’s sharpened steel tip that was glowing, and it was still glowing when it came free of the flesh.

  Harrap and Uncle Condlin shouldered their way into the huddle forcefully. Talon was nearly crushed, and went hop flapping into Hyden’s lap for protection. Little Condlin was staring with a wide eyed, terror-filled grin, and looking up at the elf that had just magicked him.

  “Thank you,” he managed to get out of his mouth, before his worried father scooped him up into his arms. Tears of loving relief streamed down the Elder’s face as he wordlessly toted his boy back to his mother. Seeing that his son was also all right, Harrap went back with the others. His terrified people needed him more than Hyden did at the moment.

  Some of the Elders of the Skyler Clan began negotiating with a knot of Redwolf soldiers. The Elders wanted the clansmen to be protected, and their possessions guarded, while they gathered up their belongings and prepared to depart the festival. They also wanted a safe passage guaranteed, at least until they were in the foothills of the Giant Mountains. The guards wanted to comply. The amount of gold the clan offered them was more than sufficient, but the Wildermont soldiers were far too honorable to shirk their duty for handfuls of coin. They did, however, send a man to find a certain commander, who was greedy enough to agree to such a quasi noble and profitable undertaking. The Skyler Clan was asked to wait there, where there was little fighting going on, while a few of the Redwolf guardsmen went with some of the Elders to protect the clan tents and other belongings. The rest of them huddled together on the archery range amid the Wildermont soldiers while around them chaos ran rampant.

  Just a few hundred paces away, a sizable battle raged on. Hyden watched as swords, fists, daggers, and even farm tools were used openly to kill and maim. Men were dying right there, in the rich, green grass of the sacred Leif Greyn Valley. A lot of the kingdom’s folk were involved. Hyden saw the Golden Lion of Westland flying from a flagstaff amid one group of engaged fighters. A small band of Valleyan horsemen displayed their kingdom’s shield and stallion on their breasts proudly, as they tore into the Westland flank. An organized troop of Seawardsmen, with the rising sun emblem of their kingdom painted on their shields, was tangled in with the rest of the mob. The bulk of the combatants were common folk though. They were fighting right there among the trained soldiers, and dying in droves. Hyden realized then, that he didn’t see the Blacksword banner of Highwander anywhere anymore. He scanned the area around the tournament field, paying special attention to where those first arrows had been fired from. He didn’t see the banner anywhere. They had started all of this, or at least tendered the spark to flame. Now, they were nowhere to be seen. Hyden realized that other than the one time out on the Ways that the two Highwander men had harassed him, he hadn’t seen any people from that kingdom at the festival at all. He searched his mind for another instance where he had seen the Highwander men, but could only come up with the large encampment his Clan had spotted south of the festival grounds on their way here from the egg harvest.

  It occurred to him then, that Shaella’s group had been camped very near that area. She was the one who had sent the two rude Blacksword soldiers scurrying away in the Ways. Had Willa the Witch Queen started this? He asked himself. Or was it something else? Hyden knew very little about kingdom folk and their strange ways, but he knew that spilling all of this blood on the sacred ground of the Leif Greyn Valley was a violation of some ancient pact that all the races of the realm had made with the dragons. At least that’s what Berda the Giantess had told him once.

  “I am Vaegon,” The elven archer said. The elf put his hand out and placed his palm over Hyden’s heart.

  Hyden recalled that the gesture was the elven equivalent of the kingdom men’s handshake, and mimicked the action.

  “Hyden,” he said, as he held out his hand. He was confused by the events taking place around him. The elf’s strange eyes, yellow, where a human’s were white, unnerved him as well. He had never looked into the eyes of an elf from this close before, and was surprised by how wild they looked.

  “Hyden Hawk!” Vaegon corrected, with what might have been a smile on his fair face.

  One of the oth
er elves gently picked up Talon and offered him to Hyden.

  “This is my father Drent.” Vaegon nodded towards the elf that was holding the hawkling. “And this is my brother Deiter.” He indicated the third elf.

  Hyden placed Talon on his shoulder, and then made the stiff arm greeting gesture to the other two elves in turn. He noticed that Drent, the father, looked as young as either of his sons. The only discernible difference Hyden could see, was that his hair was a silvery blue, the color of deep ice, where the two brothers’ hair had a tint of gold to the silver. All three of the elves were a hand span shorter than Hyden was, and though they were a bit on the thin side, they moved with an obvious strength and grace.

  “I am honor bound to you now Hyden Hawk,” Vaegon said, as if the words tasted slightly bitter. “You saved my life. I am at your service.”

  Behind Vaegon, Drent nodded proudly at his son’s acceptance of his honor debt. Deiter’s expression showed plainly his disgust at the idea, and Hyden couldn’t meet the elf’s frightening narrowed gaze.

  Not sure what was happening, Hyden fumbled for his words. “You…Uh…You saved my cousin’s life. You…You owe me nothing.”

  “Your cousin wasn’t going to die, Hyden Hawk,” The elf said, matter-of-factly. “I merely quickened his healing, and saved him the pain of having the arrowhead removed with a blade.”

  A gurgling scream rose above the surrounding clamor and drew all of their attention. The number of people still fighting near that end of the archery field had decreased dramatically, but only because so many now lay dead, or dying, on the grass. At one end of the battle, a blood soaked man in merchant’s clothes was on his knees. He was clutching what looked like a young girl’s broken body. Another man stumbled aimlessly around the carnage, carrying a severed arm in one hand, and a small dagger in the other. His head and face was covered in blood, and he appeared to be lost. Some of the Redwolf soldiers waded in, braving the smaller numbers of combatants, to try and separate the fighting groups, but the effort seemed futile at best.