Of Dragon Warrens and Other Traps

by Shannon McGee

  Aella glanced at me and made a disgruntled noise. “Taryn! Horn!”

  “Right!” I yelped. I let the heavy ax head rest in the dirt as I stooped to pick up the horn. I was blowing into it before I had fully straightened. The strangled high-pitched noise rang unnaturally through the crisp cold and evergreen boughs. I kept blowing as I turned my attention back to the fight.

  I was pretty sure that if she hadn’t been pulling her punches, she might have been doing even better. As it was, Martin was favoring his left leg, and Corey was running after his spear, which she had torn from his grip and thrown.

  Benjamin was giving her the biggest fight. He was taller than Aella by at least three handspans, giving him reach that the others did not have, and his attacks had brutal strength behind them. As I watched, he cut at her, and she stumbled. He thrust again quickly while she was off balance. She twisted on her tiptoes to avoid being skewered, and she fell.

  The horn fell from between my lips as I cried out. I didn’t know what I was doing. White noise filled my ears as the momentum of swinging the ax back into a guard position sent me rushing forward.

  Aella was rolling out of the way of the spears that Benjamin, and then Corey jabbed into the earth where her gut and neck would have been. Suddenly I was between the three of them and her. I caught the next downward swing from Benjamin squarely on my ax’s handle. I flinched as the blow reverberated up my arms.

  “Stop it!” I shrieked desperately at them. My voice was as hoarse as a crow-gryphon’s cry. “Stop it. I’ll go with you but stop it! Please!”

  Martin and Corey had both stopped, spears poised to strike again, but though Benjamin’s hate-filled eyes were fixed on mine, the other two weren’t looking at me. The sound of creaking leather, and many feet on dirt was suddenly apparent behind me. Martin took a hesitant half-step back, and I chanced a glance backward.

  Aedith, her seconds, and about half of Twelfth Company were running to close the gap between us. Beside me, Aella had quickly and quietly rolled to her feet. Taking me by the arm, she backed us both toward them.

  “All right, Aella?” Aedith asked her daughter when they had drawn level with us. I wasn’t taking my eyes off the Nophgrin folk, but if I hadn’t known her better, I would have said there was the faintest trace of fear in her voice.

  Aella nodded curtly. “We’re fine ma—ma’am.”

  “Weapons then. What are you lot waiting for?” Aedith said, her voice now the holding cool detachedness of the commander, and not a mother who had almost watched her daughter get gutted.

  Without further prompting, Cassandra, Victor, and Afua detached themselves from the rest. Behind them, the entirety of Twelfth Company had arrived, making me feel more comfortable with looking somewhere besides the men who had come to take me away.

  Victor, one of the older people of the company, gave me a concerned look as he passed, as though trying to gauge if I was unharmed. I nodded to him, and he smiled at me, the corners of his eyes crinkling deeply. That kind expression turned far grimmer as he moved to divest Benjamin of his spear.

  “Not a nice thing to prey on young girls, laddies,” he chastised them. “Not a smart thing to do either when you don’t know what kind of family they come from.”

  “I know exactly what kind of family that trollop comes from,” Benjamin retorted in disgust.

  Victor reared back in surprise, the fading sunlight bouncing off the sun-spotted crown of his head. “Aren’t you a foul git? Mind your tongue!”

  “We know them.” Afua was a quiet woman, but she spoke clearly enough for the others to hear. “These are men from Nophgrin. Taryn?”

  I swallowed. “Yeah—yes ma’am. That’s Benjamin,” I said, pointing to the man Victor was holding, “He’s Beth’s stepfather. Beth’s the girl Michael attacked. The other two are Martin and Corey.” I pointed to the one in Afua’s grip and then Cassandra’s. “We’re… well we were sort of friends.”

  Corey snorted. “Hardly could be friends with one of the snob twins.” He sneered at me when he saw my hurt look. “‘S what we used to call you two.”

  There was nothing I could say to that. All I could do was watch with a sickly mingling of grim satisfaction and concern as the three men from my home were bound with their own ropes. Corey wouldn’t bend his arms, so they could be tied. Cassandra curled a gloved hand in the hair at the base of his neck. She gave it a good twist and yank until he complied. I caught a wince of pain from Benjamin as well when Victor was a little too rough with his knots.

  “Please.” The gaze of Twelfth Company felt heavy and full of judgment as I turned to commander and spoke a little louder. “Please don’t hurt them. They were only doing what they thought was right, for our—for their people.”

  “We don’t need your help scum-luck,” Martin said sharply. My face went cold and then hot with shame.

  Aedith sniffed, unimpressed. “I don’t give three turns beneath the dirt for intentions. Good intentions don’t excuse bad actions.” She was fiddling with something in her pocket. “I can’t have them oozing about our camp each night, looking for a chance to whisk you off, and harming whomever is in their path.”

  My former neighbors were lucky, I realized with a shiver. If they had truly hurt Aella, “good intentions” or no, I didn’t think they’d still have their heads attached to their necks.

  With that in mind, I took a shaky breath and pressed a little harder. “You’d do the same, ma’am. Begging your pardon.”

  “I would do the same as these three clod-brains?” she asked mildly.

  I met her gaze levelly. “Yes, ma’am. If Aella was nearly killed and you thought one of the people responsible for it had ducked away from their rightful punishment, I believe you’d hunt them down, and extract your own justice.”

  The hand in her pocket stilled, and she drew it out to cross her arms over her chest. “So, what is it you propose we do with them? Give them a lecture, and send them on their way?”

  I looked to Aella for help, but she was staring at me. This was the most I had said of my own volition in quite some time, and I’d chosen an odd place to become chatty. Even if I hadn’t shocked her into silence, she probably wouldn’t have been much help. By her own admission, Aella never questioned her mother’s ability to give orders. She had told me that following under her mother’s command would be easy, as long as I remembered one rule: Aedith always made the right calls.

  I gnawed my lower lip as I thought. Perhaps that was true. Aedith was in charge, and there had to be good reason for that. She was probably well-versed in what to do in these situations— far better than I was, at the very least. And anyway, why stick my neck out for these men in the first place? We had never been close and now they wanted to burn me alive!

  But, another part of me whispered, if the mercenaries hadn’t believed that I was partially responsible for the crimes Michael committed, would we have fled without even trying to clear my name?

  Even I didn’t fully understand what Michael had been playing at. All I knew was he had wanted to make a gryphon into a familiar, and from what Ito, the company battle mage, had explained to me, creatures like gryphons, dragons, manticores and the like were different from mortal beasts. They couldn’t be made into familiars through the normal methods. The mage daring or foolish enough to make the attempt had to resort to more drastic lengths to bind them, including feeding the beast a human heart, and a piece of the mage casting the spell.

  Michael had realized I would work as a substitute for both of those ingredients in one, but he hadn’t figured it out alone. One Master Noland, uncle to the king and ruler of a great estate in the hill lands, had put him up to it. He had even gone so far as to seed some of his own power into Michael, where it festered and warped my brother from the inside out. Only he knew why now that Michael was gone. Dead.

  There was so much I wanted to ask Michael. All we knew had come from his notes, which Ito had quickly skimmed before riding with the rest of Twelfth Company to my
rescue. When I read them, they hadn’t made much sense, and I hadn’t gotten another chance to look through them in the mayhem of our flight. I’d been half afraid of what else would be found in them, and half hoping to spare my parents more pain. Before we left, I’d asked my friend Nai to keep the notes secret and safe.

  Without the key details which Michael’s notes, as well as Ito’s knowledge of magic and Master Noland provided, wouldn’t it make sense that the rest of the village would wholly believe me guilty? The village didn’t know everything that had come to pass, and Benjamin wouldn’t have been the good man that I had always known him to be if he hadn’t tried to hunt me down. What would people back home have said if he hadn’t attempted to save his daughter from poisoned luck and punish all those responsible for her attack? It was what my father would have done.

  No, it wasn’t right for him to be ready to burn me without waiting for real evidence of my guilt. But… it also wasn’t right for him to be punished for reacting the way any good person in Nophgrin would if under the same circumstances.

  Aedith cleared her throat, and I rubbed my achy head. “If we take their weapons, most of their coin, and their food rations—whatever they have left— then they’ll have no choice but to go home. They’re close enough to… to home still that they’ll make it, so long as they have fishing line. It will be rough going, but it won’t kill them.”

  “A thief now too.” Benjamin’s laugh was hollow. “Won’t your mother and father be proud.”

  Victor gave him a shake. “You call her another name and I’ll send your tongue home with you, wrapped nice and pretty in a bow, and dangling from your braid.”

  “I think Taryn’s deal sounds fair. Don’t you three?” Aedith asked. When they merely stared at her sullenly, her frown deepened. “Your families need you. Do not let your pride cause more heartache for them than this autumn has already afforded. Agree like good lads, and show my people,” she signaled to a handful of the mercenaries, including the three already next to the villagers, “where your camp is. Or we do things—”

  “The hard way,” Aella said with a cold look at Benjamin.

  Aedith crooked an eyebrow at her daughter but allowed the statement to rest at that.

  Benjamin, Martin, and Corey shared conferring looks. Benjamin finally spoke. “It seems we have no choice. I’m not about to let these two lads be murdered, and you’re not about to do the right thing. Just know,” he wasn’t looking at me, but I knew he was speaking directly to me, “that justice will be served. You can’t escape from the blood magic you participated in that day. The gods will punish you, even if we can’t.”

  My throat was dry as I watched him and the two younger lads disappear back into the trees. Each was flanked by a mercenary holding him, and a mercenary leading his pony. Were they right? Was my exile not enough to divest me of the wrongness my brother committed? Was it only a matter of time before my true punishment found me?

  A hand clapped my shoulder, startling me.

  “I think I’d like to teach you some staff moves,” Aella said. “It would be good for you to know how to actually defend yourself, if you’re going to make a habit of getting attacked, especially now that we’re headed toward busier roads. I’ll get you so tuckered your mind won’t even have the strength to get bad dreams. Ok?”

  “I think that is a very good idea,” Aedith said. She had been in the midst of turning to follow the remaining mercenaries back to camp, but she stopped to address us. “You should start as soon as possible.”

  “Maybe,” I mumbled.

  She nodded. “And Taryn?” Her tone was serious, “Next time, try to wait to lodge concerns you have with my orders until after I’ve given them. You might find you have less to voice.”

  She didn’t wait for my answer but continued to move out of the clearing. I swallowed hard. Perhaps she was right, I had forgotten my place, but what else could I have done? She was little more than a stranger. How could I have known I could trust her to treat them as I would?

  Aella helped me as I gathered the pieces of kindling I had been chopping before I was interrupted, and I mulled over whether I wanted to take her up on her offer. On the one hand, training to fight seemed pointless. I’d be safely back on a farm soon enough. But on the other hand, I’d thought I was somewhere safe the first time I was attacked. If I had learned anything from that day, it was that nowhere was completely safe. It would be good if I could do more than call for help if I got attacked again. It would be nice to be the one doing the rescuing for a change.

  The mercenaries returned once they had seen to it that the three men from Nophgrin were on the road, headed north. Though it pained me, I hoped against hope that would be the last I ever saw of Benjamin, Corey, or Martin.

  A few weeks later, as I was retiring to my tent after a practice session, I thought I saw a figure standing in the tree-line. It vanished before I got a good look at it, but it gave me the creeps. I half ran to get inside my tent, where Aella assured me I was safe within camp.

  Life took on a different pattern after the day of the attack. Each evening after we had made camp, I had the normal chores that needed attending—sometimes cooking, sometimes mending— but they were no longer punctuated by time spent alone. Aella was true to her word, and she drilled me relentlessly in hand-to-hand and staff combat.

  I was bad at fighting. Truly terrible. My mind wandered, or I’d get tired, and then I’d get struck on the fingers, or on a limb or my skull. The worst part was that the more I was hit the more likely it was that I would get hit again. I was used to carrying wood and walking long distances. I was not used to weaving rapidly to avoid being struck or anticipating someone else’s movements. Not to mention, sparring with Aella in particular had its own distractions.

  One evening as we trained, I spotted an opening in her defense, not through luck, but through a real breakthrough in understanding how she fought. Grinning, I lunged in to hit her, and I thought I probably would have made contact… except she caught my eye, and she smiled back at me. Maybe she had meant the smile to be encouraging, but in that split-second of distraction where I marveled at how a person’s eyes could look so like leaves giving over to autumn, she swept her own staff under my legs. I went sprawling.

  “Ouch,” I wheezed, rolling over so that I was staring up at the stormy clouds rolling across the sky.

  Her face appeared above me, still wearing that gods-cursed smile. “That’s all right,” she said, “That still happens to me sometimes too.”

  “That makes me feel so much better,” I muttered sarcastically.

  To avoid looking at her, I rolled onto my side, and brushed a few crisp leaves off the arm I had fallen on. I was grateful that Aella had lent me some of her training gear to pad the blows and take on the dirt from my frequent falls. I didn’t have enough of my own clothing that I could afford for any of it to be wrecked. Though, in the beginning a large part of me had wished she didn’t have any to spare. It would have been so much easier to stop if I’d had an excuse.

  Gradually that feeling was lessening, as I became used to this new life adjustment. Aella was patient, in ways I had not expected from the fiery mercenary. No matter how tired we both were, she would take time after each session to give me advice on how my grip or stance could be improved to prevent whatever mistakes had tripped me up in a bout.

  “You charged in with your front half, just then,” she explained when I had forced myself to sit up and take a sip of water from my canteen. “So, it was easy to take you off balance. You want to keep yourself solidly planted, as much as possible. Ok?”

  Frustrated, I almost snapped that I’d never get the hang of it, but I held back. I certainly wouldn’t get better if I didn’t learn what I was doing wrong, and if I didn’t get better, I would remain just what I had always been— an easy quarry for whatever predator looked my way. That got me. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Ok. So how do I get close to you without going off balance?”

&n
bsp; She grinned. “Stand up and try again, and I’ll show you.” She extended a hand to me. I took it, suppressing the urge to hang on, even after she had pulled me to my feet.

  Little by little, her teachings began to sink in. My body began shifting almost automatically through the attacks and blocks. Rather than dreading practice, I found it becoming my favorite part of my day. I liked the budding feeling that I might be able to fight off anyone who thought of me as an easy target, and I enjoyed the rhythm Aella and I fell into when we worked with one another. My mind focused totally on the movements and nothing else, she struck; I blocked. She told me to strike; I did. It was simple, and there was nothing in it that tasted of who I had been in the past.

  As the weeks passed, we drew the attention of the company’s two seconds in command. We were in the middle of one of the sessions which had me feeling as though I actually knew what I was doing. I had managed to block Aella the whole time and land two out of three of my own blows. Aella had tried to throw me and I had just managed to dodge it, when a smooth voice called for us to halt.

  “A moment.” I jumped as Kaleb came around from behind me. Was everyone in Twelfth Company as quiet on their feet as a lesser gryphon on the wind?

  Aella straightened from her defensive position. “Yes Kaleb?”

  He strode between the two of us, his expression thoughtful. “You gave up on that throw too easily. If you had pushed yourself a little harder, you might have had her. And you, Taryn?”

  “Yes?” I asked nervously.

  “Aella is a good partner for sparring, but you should also be practicing throws with someone larger than you, as most people are.” He grinned at me, and then a thought seemed to occur to him. “I will help you with that. Here. Aella, you clear off. Taryn, come at me as you would Aella.”