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

by M. R. Mathias

  “I am Hyden, eldest son of Harrap,” Hyden said. “One of the kingdom men, a tattooed hunter called Loudin, says he knows you. He has brought something of value he thinks you will want to barter for.”

  Hyden paused to gauge Borg's reaction. He hoped the giant actually knew Loudin and remembered him if he did. The giant’s nod assured him that it was so.

  “The other kingdom man has urgent messages for King Aldar. He carries those and a sword that –” He let his voice trail off there. He wasn’t sure how much information he should divulge. He didn’t want to mislead Borg, nor did he want to betray Mikahl’s trust. He found that he suddenly wished he hadn’t mentioned the sword at all.

  Borg was silent for a long moment. He looked haggard, and worried over serious matters beyond the issue before him. Hyden noticed that there were dark stains all around the base of the giant’s big staff. Some were old, and a brownish black in color, but some were slick and glossy red. A patch of yellow could be seen where a piece of the wood had been chipped or torn away recently.

  “What about the elf?” Borg finally asked.

  “The elf,” Hyden searched for an explanation that made sense, but couldn’t come up with one. He ended up saying the first thing that came to his mind, which was also the least believable of any answer he could have given. “Vaegon is my friend.”

  With a doubtful scowl, Borg seemed to accept this. He let out a deep sigh, and nodded for Hyden to lead him. As Hyden complied, Borg’s spoke from behind him.

  “It is a sign of strange times when any member of the Skyler Clan chooses to befriend an elf, but a bridge between the two races has long been needed.”

  Hyden had to hurry and scramble to stay ahead of Borg’s huge strides. He wanted to ask about Berda, but couldn’t find the words, or the moment, to speak them. He cared deeply for the giantess who had educated him through the telling of her tales, while her husband grazed his big horned goats in the valleys around the Skyler Clan village. He had a feeling that if he didn’t see her while he was here in the mountains, that it would be a long while before he had the chance again. He wanted to ask her about the man named Pratchert, who eventually became the wizard, Dahg Mahn. He wanted her to see Talon, and to ask her what she knew about such a bonding. All of that aside, he just plain wanted to see her, and hear her soft voice, as she carried him away to some grand and far off place for an adventure. It came as a shock when Borg, seeming to have read part of his thoughts, asked him a question.

  “So Hyden Hawk, where is your familiar?”

  Hyden took two more steps, then stopped abruptly, and turned.

  “How do you know about Talon?” His tone was as curious as it was fearful.

  “I talk with the animals as you do, Hyden Hawk.” Borg made sure that his tone wasn’t severe. He hadn’t meant to alarm the boy in any way. “They help me with my duty. Sooner or later, I hear of everything that happens in these mountains. How else do you think I could guard such a vast border by myself? For the moment, you and Talon are the envy of the skies. All the birds are chirping about it.”

  “I can only communicate with Talon,” Hyden said, as he turned and started walking again.

  “You will grow into your power far sooner than you’ll like,” Borg told him. “It’s something that takes time to develop. Usually, necessity brings out the abilities you have happened upon. And I am afraid that using your gift will become a necessity before too long.”

  The giant sighed again, as they continued stalking through the snow.

  “Bad things have been loosed upon the world recently. I think that maybe you and your group may have met one of them already.”

  The idea that there were more things out there like the hellcat that had killed Lord Gregory and half blinded Vaegon, made Hyden shudder. He wondered what sort of things they could be and what they were after. The hellcat had seemed concerned only with Mikahl, or maybe it was that magical sword he wielded. Either way, Hyden was sure that he would find out more about the kingdom men than he really wanted to.

  He was relieved when they finally reached the cavern, and at least for a while, his mind wouldn’t be idle to dwell on such dire possibilities.

  Borg had to duck into the cavern, and ended up sitting cross-legged by the fire, with his head brushing the soot blackened ceiling. Hyden introduced him to everyone and them to him.

  When Mikahl rose and bowed formally, as Westland custom dictated, he got a good look at the massive Southern Guardian. He was shocked, and relieved at what he saw. The things his countrymen had fought at Coldfrost hadn’t been giants at all. He couldn’t picture them as even being half breeds.

  Borg was just a great big human, where those things had been semi-intelligent beasts. The contrast between what Mikahl had expected, and what was before him, confounded him so much that he forgot to ask Borg the questions that had been eating away at him for the last few days. He was so relieved, that he forgot about everything for a while, at least until he caught the giant eyeing King Balton’s sword.

  Chapter 32

  After everyone had been introduced, and all the formalities had been taken care of, Loudin attracted Borg’s attention by carefully unrolling a few feet of the bark lizard skin. The size of the cavern wouldn’t allow him to show any more of it, but he didn’t need the extra room. Like some monstrous baby, Borg crawled on hands and knees over to the roll to examine it closer.

  The horses whinnied as Mikahl, Vaegon, and Hyden were forced to cram against them in the now over crowded space. For a moment, Vaegon thought that the giant’s fur covered boots were going to end up in the fire, and Hyden had a flashback of watching Gerard riding his father’s back around the fire when he was a boy. If any of the group dared to climb on the giant’s back, it would have looked about the same.

  Mikahl, with his hands protectively on Ironspike’s hilt, was still trying to get his breath. The giant was huge, and Mikahl kept comparing him to what he had expected him to be like. The breed giants at Coldfrost, had been eight to nine feet tall at best. Their faces were crude, with wet, slightly upturned noses, jutting jaws, and a single thick brow, that ran unbroken over both eyes and across the bridge of the nose. They were wild and primal, half man, half beast. Borg, even on all fours cooing like an excited farm wife at a cloth merchant’s lace display, was nothing like them at all. He was more like an excited child, an excited human child. Since the giant’s attention had shifted from Ironspike, Mikahl let himself relax, but only a little bit. He absently patted Windfoot’s flanks and watched as Loudin and Borg hogged most of the space the cavern offered, and argued about a price for the skin.

  Borg wanted the thing, that was obvious. He said he would have to take a short journey to fetch the amount of gold, and other items that Loudin wanted in exchange for the roll. He explained to Mikahl that he would take the scrolls to King Aldar, and bring back the King’s responses. It might take him three days to return, but they could wait for him in the relative warmth of the valley beyond this ridge.

  “What of the sword?” Mikahl asked dutifully, if a little reluctantly.

  King Balton had told him to present it to the giant king, but in truth, Mikahl didn’t want to part with it now. He had grown attached to the strength and confidence it gave him. He wasn’t about to let Borg take it. If he had to hand it over, he would only hand it over to King Aldar himself.

  “If my King requires it, he or I will return for it,” Borg said, with his eyes glued to the jeweled hilt. “It is far easier for my people to travel in these lands than it is for you.”

  “Aye,” Mikahl agreed with a grateful bow. “I agree with you completely.”

  He could spend the rest of his days happy if he never saw another snow-capped mountain peak in his life.

  “If King Aldar does have to have the sword, I would only give it to him personally. I hope you understand.”

  “So be it,” Borg replied flatly.

  Hyden interrupted the exchange, and asked Borg if he knew the whereabouts o
f Berda, and a short private conversation between the two of them ensued. Eventually, Talon introduced himself by fluttering down and landing on Borg’s shoulder. The giant smiled broadly and commented on the healthy condition of the hawkling. Soon after, the giant bade them farewell.

  Outside the cavern, a bitter wind howled through the darkness, but inside, it was warm and cozy. Hyden wished he had had the chance to make a kill. Fresh meat would have been a blessing, but dried meat and herbs would have to do this night. While Hyden helped Vaegon prepare the evening meal, Loudin joked with Mikahl.

  “I would only give it to his grace!” the old Seawardsman said, in a mocking aristocratic tone, accompanied by a fancy bow.

  “It’s formal courtesy,” Mikahl defended. “Manners and etiquette – things you’ll never understand.”

  “It’s highfalutin nonsense,” the hunter laughed. “You should’ve just licked his boot.”

  “Bah!” Mikahl waved him off. Then to the others at the fire, he said: “Did you see those skulls on his boots and belt? I wonder what sort of beast those are from.”

  “Dread Wolves,” Hyden and Loudin answered in unison.

  “When I was younger, they used to be as thick as the plague in these parts,” said Hyden. “They moved on, or died out after the bulk of them were killed off by the giant herdsmen.”

  Mikahl suddenly remembered that some of the breed giants at Coldfrost had had big savage wolves for pets. One of them had torn Duke Silion, and two of his men, to shreds. Mikahl hadn’t seen it happen, but he had seen the aftermath. The bodies had still been warm and steaming in the crimson snow. A trail of silvery blue innards twisted away from the body of one man, who looked utterly shocked to be dead.

  Mikahl had seen the wolf too. It had looked more like a huge porcupine, with all the arrows and crossbow bolts sticking up out of it. When the King’s guardsmen rolled it over, he saw the thing’s huge head and teeth. A man’s forearm was clamped in those jaws, the hand still gripping a nasty looking dagger hilt.

  “I don’t think they died out,” he mumbled more to himself than the others.

  “You don’t think that Pratchert’s wolf was a Dread Wolf do you?” Hyden asked the elf.

  Mikahl looked at them as if their heads had just shrunken to the size of peaches.

  “Not likely,” Vaegon answered. “Thanks to the giants, there are plenty of Dread Wolves roaming the Evermore Forest now. None of them seem to need to be shaved to survive the summer heat as Dahg Mahn’s wolf did. Pratchert’s wolf was most likely an Arctic Great Wolf, or one of its high range kindred.”

  “Who in the Seven Kingdoms is Pratchert?” asked Mikahl.

  Excitedly, Hyden goosed the elf.

  “Go on, tell him the tale,” he urged. “I’d love to hear it again myself.”

  “Yes Vaegon, tell us,” Loudin encouraged. “I’d be happy to get to listen for a change.”

  “All right,” Vaegon conceded, “but after we’ve eaten.”

  As Vaegon was telling the story, Mikahl often glanced at Hyden. He caught Hyden sneaking glances his way as well. Both of them were feeling a strange connection. Could Hyden be like the great wizard Dahg Mahn? Could Mikahl be the King who would someday need his aid to fight off the dark ones and unite the human kingdoms? On the surface, the idea of it was silly. There was no great evil loose upon the land for them to battle. King Glendar might be a horrible person, but Mikahl did not think he was a servant of evil. Likewise, Hyden couldn’t see himself leading an army of wild animals from the forest to save Mikahl and his kingdom men. Still, there was a bond forming and it couldn’t be denied.

  Earlier, when they had pranked Loudin through Talon, it had been like they were reading each other’s minds. Everything Mikahl had intended, but didn’t say aloud, Hyden had understood clearly. Mikahl had known that Hyden would get the hint. It was strange, and even now as their eyes met, and each of them felt the odd connection gaining strength, they chose to say nothing about it.

  By the time Vaegon had finished the story of Pratchert, Loudin was snoring softly by the fire. Not long after, the others were asleep as well.

  Sometime in the early morning, the fire died out. The cavern was freezing when Loudin stirred awake. After he sat up, and bundled himself in his fur coat, he noticed that Hyden wasn’t in his bedroll. The hawkling and the man’s cold weather gear were gone as well, so he didn’t think much of it. He grunted his stiff, sore body into a standing position, and gave Mikahl’s sleeping form an angry scowl.

  It was as if the boy’s constant joking about his age and condition was the reason he felt the pain and ache of every inch of his body. He liked the boy though, and was glad he hadn’t abandoned him back in the Reyhall Forest. Loudin found that he saw himself in the younger man. He wished he were still as young as these lads. He could tell that their future held many great adventures, but he didn’t know how much longer he would be traveling with them.

  Once Borg paid him for the skin, and he gave Mikahl his share, he had a mind to build himself a little cabin and retire. He would clear a spot in the Reyhall; maybe just use that clearing by the pond where they had killed the big lizard. He would grow a garden and make a trip into Locar a few times a year to buy supplies. He could hunt for his meat. Maybe he would get lucky and find himself a woman that hadn’t had the dowry to get herself married off in her younger years. With his half of what Borg was bringing back, he would want for nothing. He might even get a place in one of the smaller towns, open a trading post, or something. He wouldn't need to turn a profit; it would just be something for him to do with his time. The possibilities were endless.

  The only thing he knew for certain was that Mikahl was right. He was getting too old to traipse around the woods all the time, and he was forgetting little things here and there. How long would it be before he forgot something important, something that put him in harm’s way?

  Something Loudin had heard while playing a high stakes game of Rune Discs on the Isle of Salazar, kept coming back to him. A Harthgarian Sail Master had just won half the markers at the table, and was counting it up to cash out. One of his mates asked him why he didn’t stay and try to win more. The man chuckled, and shook his head. “If you don’t leave the table while you’re winning, then you don’t win.”

  Loudin was winning now and he knew it. He would follow those words of wisdom, and with his prize, he would be able to live to a ripe old age in relative comfort.

  “If I don’t freeze my fargin arse off first,” he grumbled under his breath.

  He had to laugh then. He knew he would’ve never said those words aloud had Mikahl been awake to hear them. He would never hear the end of it. He leaned against the cavern wall for support as he pulled on his boots, then went to see if he could find some wood for the fire pit. He didn’t want to hear the spoiled castle born lump whining about the cold he told himself, but deep down he knew the truth was that he really wanted the boy to wake up warm.

  Hyden had always loved the hunt, so much more so now with an elven crafted longbow to loose with, and Talon’s sharp vision to see by.

  Hyden understood that Vaegon had lost his depth sight. The elf had to be deeply pained by the loss. Hyden understood, at least he thought he did. He couldn’t imagine how it would affect his mind if he lost his ability to aim properly. When Vaegon had offered him the bow, he had almost refused it. Something, some odd intuitive feeling, made him think better of denying it though, and graciously he accepted the gift.

  The elf’s smug and superior attitude had all but disappeared, but that change had started before Vaegon had lost his eye. Vaegon wasn’t himself anymore. His wound wasn’t just of the flesh, and Hyden had spent a lot of time on the trail, and by the fire, thinking of ways to cheer his elven friend. It was the least he could do to repay Vaegon for the wonderful gift he had given him.

  Vaegon was spending more and more time scribbling in his little journal, and it worried Hyden. He wished he could think of something suitable to do for his friend
, something that would fill at least part of the void the loss of his eye had created. So far, nothing he thought of seemed even close in comparison to his gratitude towards Vaegon and his sorrow over his friend’s loss.

  “Life is not kind, nor is it fair.” Hyden repeated the words he had recently heard his uncle Condlin grumble under his breath. “Sort of like now.”

  A few hundred yards away, a ram was leading two of his females up the mountainside, completely unaware of Hyden and Talon’s presence. Through the hawkling, Hyden had watched the animals come up out of the distant valley and slowly make their way towards him. He could’ve killed one of them long ago, but had decided to wait. As long as they were moving towards him, he would let them come. If they started changing course, he would try to herd them his way with Talon. The swooping hawkling might be able to frighten them right up into the cavern entrance. It would take a while, but it would be faster, and far easier than having to drag one of the carcasses all the way back. If Talon couldn’t keep them on track, and they started moving away, then he would just have to kill one, and move it in the old fashioned way.

  While he watched and waited, he found himself thinking about Pratchert again. The story was fresh in his mind, and the strange question kept forming in his head.

  In the story, the wizard and his wolf had stopped at the Summer’s Day Spire, and a dragon had come. They had had a conversation that supposedly lasted several days. What kept nagging Hyden’s mind was the subject of that conversation. What would Pratchert have had to say to a dragon, or a dragon to him, and for days, no less? Hyden couldn’t imagine what he would want to say to or ask a dragon if he were given the chance. Knowing himself as well as he did, he figured he would ask the dragon to tell him a story.

  What sort of story would a dragon tell? Maybe that’s what dog man had done. It would’ve had to have been an awful long story to last for several days, but then again –