Of Dragon Warrens and Other Traps

by Shannon McGee

Kaleb moved to where Aella stood, and obediently, she took herself off our pseudo practice court. She settled in to watch with her arms crossed over her chest. Bug-eyed, I stared at her over Kaleb’s shoulder.

  “Go on,” she mouthed, gesturing to the taller man. She looked so gleeful that I promised myself, the next time we sparred I was going to give her as hard a time as I could.

  I looked back at Kaleb. He didn’t look so big at this distance, but the man had just under two feet of height on me. I knew that because I always had to crane my neck back if I needed to talk with him. He was also broad chested, and heavily muscled. I wasn’t even sure my fingers would touch if I wrapped both hands around his biceps. I frowned. No man as large as he was had the right to walk as lightly as he did.

  I was stalling. Swallowing hard, I charged at him. When he did nothing to block me, I reached for one of his arms. I’d been right about my fingers being unable to touch. Brushing past that thought, I bent, pulling him over my back as I would have with Aella.

  Or, I tried. I tugged with all my might, but still he did not budge. He was like a tree, rooted into the ground. I heaved once more and then took a step back.

  “I can’t,” I said plaintively.

  “That’s ok. Now I am going to try to throw you,” he said. “All right?”

  “Yes, sir.” I said. Feeling bleak, I backed up to my starting point.

  I hadn’t realized how comfortable I had become with seeing Aella running at me with a weapon. It was obvious now that Kaleb was the one coming at me. A trace of primal fear flared up in my chest, and my heart began to race.

  Trying to work through the unexpected panic, I brought the staff up to ward him off. He blocked it with one arm and swept it out of the way. He caught me easily by my shirt front, and I twisted and turned as I would to get out of Aella’s grasp. However, even as a novice fighter, I quickly recognized the futileness of my defense.

  His reach was longer than mine, and he was plain stronger. When he sent me flying, I hit the ground shoulder first. All the air whooshed out of me in one breathe. It was worse than any time Aella had thrown me.

  I’ve never gone over a foot before, I thought dazedly.

  Aella was at my side as I landed. She must have started moving the second I went airborne. Together she and Kaleb carefully returned me to my feet.

  “Two things then,” Kaleb’s voice was surprisingly soft. His words held the pleasant accent of the south, drawn out vowels and clipped consonants, his r’s just barely rolling. “You are going to need to learn how to throw a larger opponent, and you are going to need to learn how to be thrown.”

  From that day on, when he had the time, Kaleb worked as my “dummy,” teaching me how to face off against a much larger opponent. With him, I learned how to use someone’s size and weight against them, and he never once laughed at me when I went sprawling, or tugged futilely at his arm, trying to throw him.

  He also must have alerted the other second of Twelfth Company to his new project, as Dai joined us in the following training session.

  Lithe with whipcord muscles, Dai was better than just about anyone else in camp at staff work. As I improved enough to spar, he supervised my mock fights with Aella, using the time to improve both of our forms. Dai was more reserved in his praise than Kaleb was, and any time I got a compliment from him it flustered me.

  During one match, I started to block a rapid feint of Aella’s from the right before instinctively whipping my weapon left instead, defending against her true attack. I’d been so excited, I’d promptly muffed my advantage by reveling too long in that small victory. Aella used the opening to disarm me. She then relieved me of my staff twice more in quick succession as I lost confidence in my attacks. The last time, Dai stopped the match.

  “You have good instincts,” he said, returning my spear to me. “Trust them more.”

  At the time I had barely choked back a snort of derision. I wouldn’t have called my instincts good by a long shot. It was nice to think someone thought they were improving though. It was also comforting to think that I wasn’t boring the two of them or disappointing them— and the men did seem to enjoy their work.

  They might chuckle good-naturedly when I groaned over an order to do twenty pushups, or a run through the woods, but they also became excited when I got a block or strike exactly right. Their pride was infectious, and they made even small victories seem big. I had never had any uncles growing up, but I thought it might have felt much the same.

  It was a nice change from some of the others in camp, like Gilbert who could, on any given day, be heard pointedly asking how far it was until The Great Road split—that would be when I left them and continued on my own to the west.

  I looked on that day with growing trepidation. I still had so much to learn, and not just about fighting. When Aella and I worked on our own or when we were sparring with one another, Dai and Kaleb would talk about their upcoming plans. Every day I heard of new places which I’d never even known existed, and each sounded more incredible than the last. Sometimes it was hard for me to remember that I wouldn’t be going along with Twelfth Company indefinitely.

  “I tell you, the first thing I am doing when I get to the barracks is having a long wash,” Kaleb declared, after a particularly arduous ride. The rain had only cleared briefly, and the sun had not peaked out from behind the clouds the entire day. He wiped mud from the dark skin of his cheek and stared at it, resentfully.

  Dai was sitting under the awning of the caravan, which we had decided to train beside. A broad-brimmed hat rested on his head, shielding him further from the drizzle which had begun again, not long after we camped. He lifted his head to be seen from under it. “I will not be happy until we have reached The Southern Desert. This rain is for the ducks.”

  His reply was loud enough to carry to his friend, who was supervising us at a closer distance, but it lacked the sharp cadence with which many of the mercenaries spoke. I’d noticed that about the way they spoke around me. It was almost as though they had noted the way I flinched when Tess and Harold bellowed and shrieked at one another throughout the day.

  As Aella and I tumbled and gathered more muck, the older men talked more about the barracks where they wintered, and the cities to the south that they would likely be touring in the following summer. I couldn’t help but feel less gloomy with them supervising. Their talk made it easy to imagine that I was in the sun-soaked streets of the south, not the rain-drenched forests of the north. I could practically taste rich, hot dishes favored in those cities which bordered Oshkana. If I really focused, crisp autumn breezes turned warm on my cheeks.

  When the rain picked up and Aella and I finally called it quits, we joined in on their conversation. They explained to me what jobs Twelfth Company normally took throughout the year, and what their favorite places looked like.

  I fell asleep that night and was met without none of the nightmares which still sometimes plagued me. There was no smoke or shadows behind my eyes. Only bright sand, and open skies.

  With winter’s fast approach, we found ourselves alone on the road often. Most people of the north knew to do their traveling long before the chill began to creep down from the mountain.

  We only came upon one other large party, on the outskirts of the land belonging to a village called Goatstrack. The plan was to make camp when we reached the riverside village, and spend at least a day there, restocking our supplies. It was close to midday, and if we got there soon it would be our shortest stint of road yet.

  Aella and I were riding on either side of Belinda, playing a game of “I See.” Belinda would pick an herb, and then Aella and I would race to see who could spot it first. It was fun, and though I was well-versed in cooking herbs I was learning a lot of healing uses for familiar plants. When Belinda rather abruptly reined her mount up and Aella followed suit I was the last of our group to catch on.

  Hale whickered at me in disapproval as I dragged too hard at her reins. I patted her neck. “I’m sorry
girl,” I whispered. Looking to Aella, I asked, “Why have we stopped?”

  She didn’t need to answer. Now that I was looking, the cause was clearly an ornately carved carriage, curtained in semi-sheer silks. Following closely behind it was caravan with a small string of mounts attached—a few horses and one pony. We had come upon them from behind, and now with only a yard between our two groups, they had stopped.

  Ito rode at the front of our procession, with the seconds, and Aedith, but I saw him turn in his saddle to look for Belinda. When their eyes met something flashed between them. It was a look of concern so brief I almost thought I had imagined it, except Aella seemed to have seen it as well. She glanced between the two of them, craning in her seat as she tried to catch their attention, but her searching look was ignored. Both mages had closed their eyes.

  “What is it?” I asked again, louder this time, though I kept my voice low enough that the other party would not hear me. Belinda was doing something, and it was making me sweat. I could almost feel her vibrating beside me, though I knew that part had to be my imagination.

  “I don’t know,” Aella muttered out of the corner of her mouth. “Probably nothing.”

  The other party surprised me then, pulling to the side of the narrow road. Seemingly they had halted to let us pass. Aedith spurred her horse forward, and the company lurched back into motion a breath behind her. With an incredulous look in my direction, Aella shrugged and kneed her Juniper on.

  As we went by, I looked the procession over. Their mounts were well-groomed and well-behaved; among them was a beautiful cream-colored mare, and the gray pony looked as though it had probably been bred this side of the mountains.

  Hale snorted, leaning over as though considering giving one of them a bite, and I took my eyes off the animals to call her to task. I guided her closer to Belinda, who had yet to open her eyes.

  “You know better,” I whispered to my pony, when she flicked an irritated ear back at me.

  When we drew even with the carriage, the solitary occupant was obscured, but she waved to my row as we passed. I could see only the dark silhouette of her hair, piled high, and her long fingers, which were backlit by the sun on the opposite side of the carriage. I caught my breath, as a rush of pleasure sent my heart thrumming against my chest.

  I glanced toward Belinda to see what she made of such a splendid picture, but though her mount carried her forward as though urged to do so, she did not open her eyes until we had passed the carriage. When she did the strange pressure I had felt rolling off her vanished as though it had never been.

  “So?” Aella asked, drawing out the word, “Are you going to tell us what that was?”

  “It was nothing,” Belinda said, almost before the question had left Aella’s lips. She and I exchanged a disbelieving look, which the older woman noted with an exasperated sigh. “We only thought it was someone we knew, but it was nothing. Let us get back to the game, shall we?”

  I could tell Aella was poised to push the subject, but I hurriedly agreed with Belinda. Whatever the two had been doing had involved magic, and I didn’t want to talk about magic. Not on a day such as this one, which had been so pleasant.

  With no rain and no other people on the road we were seeing more animals, and without gryphons to compete with, there was a wider variety of creatures down here than there was in Nophgrin. In the last few days I had seen only a single flock of sparrow-gryphons. Admittedly, I had been about as skittish around them as Hale, but soon we would be on the far border of their territory and I wouldn’t have to worry about them at all.

  With the influx of new animals, we’d come into the habit of making “I See” count in our evening training, which I loved. If I spotted more animals than Aella—or Dai, Kaleb, or Lucas who sometimes played—or if I noticed a set of tracks that they hadn’t, then Dai and Kaleb would let me off on certain, more painful, drills. If I lost, they’d give me a disadvantage in our sparring sessions. Sometimes I had to pretend I had hurt a leg and couldn’t use it at all; other times I had to keep one eye shut through the whole bout.

  I was strong, but farm work was not the same as combat training. Especially not when the training was as mentally draining as it was physically. Most evenings I fell asleep within moments of tucking into the bedroll and woke the next morning to pains in places I hadn’t even realized I had been working. My mind rarely had the strength to think about anything heavier than when my next meal would be, and because of that I was spending more time feeling happy than I was feeling bad these days.

  A good thing too, because pray though I did to Slarrow, god of dreams, sometimes I still found myself waking in the middle of night, confused. There were still nights when I awoke unsure where I was, or even who I was. If my mind could scrounge up even an ounce of strength in the evening, my sleep was haunted by my brother, and flames.

  Unfortunately, despite my best effort, I could not succeed in getting Aella or Belinda to focus on the game again. It ended entirely when Belinda left our row to join Ito at the front of the procession, and she did not return to us at any point in the rest of the ride.

  That evening, after we made camp, I let Lucas and Aella convince me it would be fun to join them in the village eating house, rather than do our normal training. They were so excited at the prospect of eating a meal indoors that it was contagious. Really though, it was Aella who won me over. She squeezed my shoulders from behind, gave me a little jiggle, and whispered, “Hot. Soup,” in my ear. I was powerless to refuse her.

  Once we were in the eating house, I felt instantaneous regret. I’d never been a fan of crowds, even before the incident. As it turned out, I liked them even less now. Between the noise, and the smoke, and the people, it was all too much for me. I did my best to grin and bear it, but ultimately…

  “Aella?” I had to lean in next to her ear to be heard over the din. When she inclined her head closer in my directions I said, “I’m not feeling well. I’m going to duck out, ok?”

  She put her spoon down and looked at me. “Want me to come with you?”

  “No. You stay and finish this.”

  I left a coin to pay for my own unfinished meal and returned to the tent alone. When I went to sleep the clearest nightmare yet crept easily into my restless head.

  I was my brother, but wherever I was seemed to me to be a mess of present and past and I couldn’t make much sense of it. I was in a tent, or perhaps it was a caravan like the mercenaries drove, because it did not feel as though I was laying on the ground. Under me was a thin mattress, resting on a wooden platform. Around me were shadows and hanging shelves full of jars, the contents of which I could identify only a few.

  I was angry. I knew that much. It burned in my gut and radiated down through legs which were too painful move. But another emotion ghosted underneath that anger. I was also afraid. Outside I could hear Benjamin speaking urgently. He was talking to someone just on the other side of the wall of canvas surrounding me. If he found me, I knew he would kill me, and there was nothing I could do about that. I hadn’t even the strength to stand.

  “Calm down,” a woman was saying. I thought it was some dream version of Aedith at first, but that wasn’t right. There was an undercurrent of steel will in the voice, but it was too sweet and sympathetic to be confused with the commander’s voice. “I promise you, we will find those responsible for your loss and we will bring them to justice. I have powerful forces on my side. Do you trust me?”

  When I woke inside Aella’s tent she had not yet come back from the eating house. The scent of smoke was so thick in my nose I had to crawl outside to get a fresh breath of air.

  After that night, something else started happening. On the evenings when we got into camp too late, or when it rained or sleeted, and no one wanted to train, that buzzing feeling I had felt in my scars came back. It was like an internal alarm letting me know that if I didn’t do something to distract myself a nightmare was coming.

  It didn’t happen every time, but it was
often enough, because in those times that it did happen the buzzing wasn’t a small discomfort, like the first few times. It would spread to my head until I felt like hornets were nesting in my ears, and it would grow from there until it traced my veins, all the way down to my legs. I couldn’t make it stop, and when it happened it took everything in me not to scream from the feeling of being overwhelmed.

  Aella knew about the nightmares—I couldn’t exactly hide those from her—but I didn’t tell her about the buzzing. I didn’t tell anyone about that part. To explain away the nights when I would act like a recluse, I claimed I suffered from intense headaches. That wasn’t exactly accurate, but it was as close to what it felt like as I could describe without letting on that it was something more.

  The truth was too strange, and anyway, what else could be done about it, other than what I was already doing? The lessons were the only thing that helped, and they were already doing that. I couldn’t ask them to do any more.

  Ridding myself of nightmares, and bonding with more members of the mercenaries aside, the lessons had another bonus. The training had awakened a realization inside of me. A sense of purpose.

  When my parents had given me over to the care of the mercenaries, it had been the only way we could think of to save me from the pyre. They had intended for me to split off from the mercenaries once we were far enough south and then to head west toward the capital. Once there, I was to stay either with distant acquaintances of theirs or see if my aunt and her family would take me in.

  I had never met any of those people, but the plan had been a good one. I was proficient at farm work. To return to work in fields much like those I had grown up on would be as easy as breathing.

  Except, the more time I spent training with Aella, Dai, and Kaleb, the more I knew that that was not the life I wanted. Well, truly, I had begun realizing it as far back as when I had rushed to Aella’s aid.

  It had felt good to be saving someone else for a change, and the training had changed since the first day. When I’d first started learning, I had thought there was no way I’d ever get good enough for the work to be worth it, especially not with how short the amount of time I had with Twelfth Company had felt. But these days, how I felt about my training was no longer some abstract thought that “maybe I could learn a couple fighting moves.” Now I looked at my fighting abilities as… something real… something I could really use.