Dirt

by CC Hogan

  Chapter 3 – If Anger Solved Problems

  “What do you mean, bleeding nothing?” The day was getting worse.

  “Look, son,” Weasel said. “I am tired and I am trying to find some small boat that has been sailing all night with the Easterlies right up its arse. It is probably leagues away by now, heading off to some distant paradise on Bind or to wherever the Prelate’s daughter has stashed her paramour. There is not a chance you are going to find her.”

  Farthing kicked the dirt, scattering a pile of small stones rattling onto the fence the magician was currently slumped against. “I have to find her, magician!” he spat the word out like an insult.

  “Well, go get yourself a boat and drown yourself trying. You might as well for all the good it will do you!” Weasel had found a bottle of something potent in his bag and flipped the cork off.

  “Oh, no you don’t, magician!” Farthing snatched the bottle from the small man’s grasp. “I haven’t finished with you yet and I’ve paid.”

  “And I’ve earned it trying to do the impossible.”

  “You little greasy cheat!” Nine days of muscles earned down a hole in Wead-Wodder’s unforgiving dirt, powered a shower of punches down onto the magician’s aching head.

  When Moppy called, Geezen came out from her room in a lace-covered rush. Standing in the middle of the small atrium was an angry nineteen-year-old with a less than conscious wiry man slumped over his shoulders.

  “What did you do to him?”

  “He told me to give up and go home.”

  “Ah.” Geezen helped Farthing drop the magician onto one of the rug-covered chairs that were scattered around this ornate, hidden world between the rooms of the house.

  “Geezen, I don’t know what you think he can do, but from what I saw, he couldn’t do anything even if you paid him, which I have; which you have!”

  “You paid his bar bill?”

  “How did you know?”

  “He always needs his bar bill paid.” Geezen obviously knew far more about this strange, smelly man than she was letting on. Moppy had gone to open the outer door to let in Barkles and his nattering wife, Hetty.

  “Geezen, what did you do to the Prelate?” Hetty bustled straight in, her patchwork gown still littered with the fine threads of her needlework, and dragged the big woman off to the kitchen, muttering like a swarm of flies. Barkles sat on the large cane chair next to the unconscious magician.

  “Who's he?” He nodded at the pile of rags.

  “He is meant to be some amazing wizard that can help find my sister,” Farthing growled. “So far all he has done is an accurate imitation of a drunken nobody.”

  “Lack of consciousness isn’t helping either,” commented Barkles, inspecting a growing bruise on the magician’s forehead. “One of yours?”

  “That and a few others.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Weadle … no, Weasel. Stupid name.”

  Barkles nodded in recognition; was this Finder known to everyone except Farthing? “Come on, lad,” he said, standing up. “I have two ales in my bag clattering for attention and it is about time you and I had a chat.” Farthing’s chin set stubbornly hard and Barkles raised an eyebrow. “Look, you are stronger than me, son, so if you want a fight you are looking in the wrong place.” Farthing sighed, then stalked out of the door into the narrow street followed by the pieman.

  “Has he gone?” Weasel opened one eye.

  “He has. You want some tea, uncle?” Moppy asked him. The magician nodded. “Well sit up and stop playing stupid and you will get one,” she said. “Otherwise, I will finish what he started!” Moppy slapped the magician right on one of Farthing’s more accomplished bruises and stomped out of the room. Weasel grimaced in pain and gingerly checked the injury for signs of blood.

  “Are you sure she is my niece?” he asked Geezen when she and Hetty came and sat with him.

  “Well, in theory,” Geezen said. “Great, great, grandniece, or so.”

  “Okay, stop with the greats. My head is hurting enough as it is.”

  “I thought you didn’t get hangovers.”

  “I don’t, but that kid doesn’t know what it takes to find a boat in the middle of the Prelates Sea; especially one going so damned fast.”

  Geezen looked at him sideways. “Farthing said you didn’t find the boat. So how do you know it is going fast?”

  “I didn’t, but I found the last trail of its wake.”

  “You didn’t tell him that.”

  “What, and get his hopes up? What is the point of that?” Weasel might have been faking unconsciousness, but the headache was real and he gulped at the tea his many-greats-niece handed to him. She didn’t wait to be thanked but stomped back off to the kitchens. Moppy was good at stomping when it came to an unreliable great-great something uncle.

  “She is your only relative, you know,” Geezen pointed out.

  “I have hundreds of them back at Tepid Lakes. Thankfully, none of them want to know I am still breathing and I have an equally healthy disregard for their fates too.”

  “Well, she is here.”

  “That is not my fault. I can’t plan for coincidences.”

  “You couldn’t plan your way out of a coal sack, Weasel.”

  “That is supremely unfair, you know?”

  “I don’t as it happens. So, are you going to help, considering I have paid your bar bill, yet again.” Geezen took the tea off the small magician and made him look into her eyes. He squirmed.

  “I can tell when Truk is away; you become evil when he is not here to keep you in control.” The slap sent Weasel’s eyes spinning back into his head. He slumped in the chair, out cold.

  “Was that wise?” Hetty asked, looking at the unconscious rag pile.

  “It felt good.” Geezen smiled weakly. “But no, probably not wise.”

  “Why do you put up with him, Geezen? You see him what, once every couple of years and then you fight like old spinster sisters.”

  Geezen sighed. “But when the fighting stops and he loses his ‘the world hates me’ attitude, he is the best finder anyone’s ever known, and that has helped many of the lowly around here, whether they know it or not. Hetty, I really don’t know what is going on, but it is worrying me. Two of mine, Rusty and Precious have gone missing. That idiot Gorestop has not only turned his back on his daughter but has ordered Panzy Pepperpot not to do anything, and I have the young brother, who has already tried to break the head of the only person that can help, probably considering hitting the Prelate if I don’t sit on him.” She ground her teeth in frustration.

  “I can make it worse,” Hetty said, looking a touch nervous. Geezen peered up at her. “Gossip says that the boat you are talking about was a slaver.” Geezen groaned and kicked at the pile of rags.

  “What? Waking me up so you can hit me again?” Weasel looked like he had just met the worst day of his life, but then he always looked like that.

  “It’s slavers.”

  Weasel’s exaggerated hurt look vanished in a flash, and his eyes set cold and hard. “I knew it. The boat was going too fast. Only slavers and smugglers have fast boats like that and she wasn’t being smuggled.” He looked up at Geezen. “I mean it, girl,” he said. “I can’t track them at this distance, not across water. There are difficulties with that.”

  “Which are?”

  “Which are things I can’t do anything about. No one can.”

  “So, what do we do?”

  “Why ask me? The one talent I can use can’t help you!” Weasel stood up and sorted out his rags.

  “Sit down,” Geezen said quietly. The man looked at the large woman, realizing how upset she was underneath her big, sometimes overbearing nature. He sat. “What would happen if you were, well, not here? I mean, somewhere else.” She was evading his eyes.

  “What do you mean, somewhere else?” Weasel’s eyes opened wide. “Oh
no, you can’t be thinking what I think you are thinking; we could never catch up to them by boat…”

  “I wasn’t thinking of a boat.”

  Weasel stared at her. “No, you weren’t, were you. And no, Geezen. Just no.” He put his hands up as if warding off the greatest evil.

  Hetty looked confused. “What are you talking about? Where are you going by boat and how do you get there without one?”

  “Taken,” Weasel said. “She wants me to go to the Ilse of Taken.”

  “Taken? But that must be more than five hundred leagues away! What is there?”

  “That is where the boat will be headed; that is what she is thinking. It was going fast, it wasn’t going north around the coast as normal, and it was going straight across the Prelates Sea. That is why I lost it.”

  In this part of the world were two continents, The Prelates and Bind. Between them was the Prelates Sea or the Yonder Sea, depending which side you hailed from. To the north, the two continents converged at a place called the Ice Lands and if you fancied heading all the way up to the north, you could cross between the two continents over the featureless tundra. There was another way, however, and that was straight across. At this latitude, it was a journey of around eleven hundred leagues or more in a straight line, which is one hell of a long way under sail in difficult waters full of some of the worst currents on Dirt, and most traders didn’t even bother. With a full crew in a big old, slow trader, you had to stock up on water and food for anything up to a six or even eight week journey with no one to trade with. So it made more sense to chain the trade around the coast; it might take longer, but you lost fewer ships and could build your profit up on the way. Thankfully, for those who were in a rush and maybe had a small, fast boat, and fewer crew to feed, there was an island, well more of a mountain sticking out of the sea, about halfway across; Taken. And then, there was one other way. A lot quicker, a lot more dangerous and perfect for small goods and messages.

  “She wants me to go by dragon,” Weasel said with a heavy heart.

  “Dragons don’t take people,” Hetty pointed out.

  It was true. Dragons, as dragons liked to tell people, were not like the lumbering hexapod rathen that farmers used to haul their carts to market. They were intelligent, village-dwelling people in their own right and, as a bonus, could easily flatten you if you tried to take advantage of their flying skills.

  “Dragons don’t carry people now, but they used to take the odd person who knew how to fly a few hundred years ago when they and we still got on and didn’t just tolerate each other for profit like today,” Geezen told Hetty. “It all went wrong when a magician managed to upset everyone by buying a saddle for his favourite dragon. Giving a lift to a friend is one thing, being harnessed up is another thing entirely.”

  “So, what makes you think a dragon will take this wreck to Taken?” Hetty pointed at the magician.

  “She might if the wreck actually did what he should have done all those years ago.”

  Hetty’s eyes opened like a kitten who had fallen off a fence. “You mean?”

  “She wants me to apologise to Snowy,” Weasel grumbled.

  “Who is Snowy?” Hetty was losing the thread again.

  “He means, Fren-Eirol, the Dragon elder at the village. And Weasel, she hates being called Snowy.”

  “She used to like it.”

  “Until you tried to turn her into your pet horse!”

  “Look, it wasn’t like that, and there were a lot of other things happening.” Weasel’s defensive tone hinted at a more complicated and bigger truth that was unknown by most humans who did not live long enough, including Geezen.

  Relations between the various intelligent peoples that inhabited this ancient world had been in slow decline for thousands of years as humans had become more and more dominant and less neighbourly. Most of the small communities of dragons and callistons, the large, land-loving creatures, had made homes many leagues from the towns and cities and had nothing to do with humans now. There were a few exceptions, and the Draig Morglas, the sea dragons, had kept some tentative accommodation with humans until Weasel had tried to saddle one of the most respected members.

  Strangely, in the three centuries since, the coastal human communities of Bind and The Prelates had built up a working relationship with the sea dragons and even the odd red mountain dragon, but passenger trips were definitely off the agenda.

  “There are reasons that Fren-Eirol will help,” Geezen said. “But even good reasons will come to nothing if you do not get off your lazy, stubborn, grubby little backside and apologise!” Weasel swallowed and went pale.

  Barkles handed Farthing a second earthenware bottle of ale.

  “I thought you only had two.”

  “I lied so Hetty didn’t know I had more on me.”

  “You lie to Hetty?”

  “Oh, she knows I am lying. She knew I had four bottles with me.”

  “So, why did you lie?”

  “Because she wants me to.” Barkles somehow managed to make it sound completely reasonable. Farthing shook his head, baffled.

  “So, we have been sitting here, staring out to sea, and you still haven’t said why we needed a chat,” he said.

  They had headed out of Thanks to the flowing dunes that ran along the coast like an immotile, stormy sea. They were sitting on a high dune, watching the red sun in its daily decline, and had been for the last half an hour.

  “Oh, we’ve been chatting,” Barkles answered.

  “We have?” Farthing blinked. “I thought we had been sitting in complete silence.”

  “No, definitely chatting.” Barkles nodded like a wise old man and took a good slug of ale. Barkles always had an ale close at hand and it was always good. “We have been chatting about how worried you are about your sister, how angry you get at short notice, how you have beaten up a man who might actually be able to help and how while you have been running in circles your sister has been getting farther and farther away, and you won’t be able to do a damn thing about it until you calm down and get a grip.”

  “Oh.” Farthing looked at his second bottle, flipped the lid back on and handed it back to Barkles. “Sorry.”

  “Keep it, lad. I wager ten pies,”

  “Pastries,”

  “Thank you. Pastries that you will need it before the night is out.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I said I would wager, I didn’t say I knew. Come on. Let’s go and find out.”

  As dragons go, Fren-Eirol wasn’t the biggest, most red dragons were much bigger than she, but compared to the average female sea dragon, she was unusually large. Sea dragons, for the most part, had silver-grey and blue colouring, long necks and long horns that fanned out behind their sleek, elegant heads like a crown. One of the species of hexapods on Dirt, they had two large and strong back legs, two vast, gossamer thin wings and two smaller but capable front arms with clawed hands. Most of them kept the claws trimmed small so they could handle delicate work, and you never heard mothers complaining to their children about chewing nails, unless it was their back feet. There was no such thing as a small sea dragon and most were about four of five times the size of a horse. Fren-Eirol, however, was more like the size of a cottage.

  The Snowy name she had earned as a child and had been used by her late Bren, her red dragon husband, was no casual affectation. The sea dragon was distinguished by a paling of her colouring to nearly white on her chest and stomach; bright white when lit by the sun. This and her history made her unusually notable among a people who did not readily accede to any idea of hierarchy.

  The unusual colouring of the small bundle of rags that was currently stood in front of her was equally unmistakable.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite hear that,” Fren-Eirol said, keeping her nose very much in the air. Weasel groaned which earned him a kick from Geezen.

  “Get on with it, Weasel, or I will set the boy
on you again.”

  Farthing was waiting to one side of the large courtyard with Barkles keeping watch on him. Their silent chat had calmed and mollified a fractious evening, but had been no miracle cure; Farthing was still nineteen and worried, and the anger was only just in check. Fren-Eirol fidgeted in the delicate, printed cloths that she wore and risked a glance down at the magician that had once been her closest companion.

  “I said,” started Weasel, grinding his teeth.

  “Say it nicely.”

  “I said,” he repeated through a fixed grin, “that I apologise for taking advantage of our friendship and I should have known better than abuse the good nature of one of the dragon people.” Geezen looked at him, definitely impressed.

  “Did you write that for him?” asked Fren-Eirol.

  “Not a word, I swear!”

  Fren-Eirol sighed. “I accept the apology though I am very suspicious why it has arrived now and not several hundred years ago.” Weasel smiled weakly at her.

  “That would be my doing, Fren-Eirol,” Geezen said, more formally than she usually addressed the dragon. “And to explain, I must ask that we can speak privately.”

  Fren-Eirol glanced down at the relatively small midwife. “Alright, drop the thees and thous, Geez, and come into the house.” She looked up at the others. “You all wait here. If you want some entertainment, he needs to be clean before he gets to come in.” Fren-Eirol absently waved a claw at the tatty magician. Barkles looked at Farthing who looked at Barkles and for the first time since the morning he grinned.

  “Grab him!”

  Fren-Eirol had the biggest house in the sea dragon village just outside of the town of Wead-Wodder. Dragon houses were, of necessity, greater than human dwellings, and for the large Fren-Eirol, this was scaled up yet again. The saurian shape of the dragons and a need to accommodate wings and an occasionally rogue tail, affected the interior design, and dragons houses only had the one room. In other ways, dragon and human tastes had merged over the centuries, and Draig Morglas produced fine woven and printed wall cloths and hangings which were often found in richer human houses; Geezen had several. Fren-Eirol settled down on the pile of rugs that she favoured and Geezen sat cross-legged by a low table. Laid across it were two polished horns from a male red mountain dragon; a gift following an unusual and embarrassing accident.

  “You still miss him, don’t you Eirol.”

  “My Bren will always be with me though it is so long since he departed.”

  When dragons took oath with a partner, they were called a Bren and a Fren and those words became part of their names. The bond was for life and was rarely broken, save for the inevitability of death. Bren-Aneirin had been a huge, powerful and wise red mountain dragon, who had been responsible for keeping relationships between dragons and humans working through many difficult centuries. He and Weasel had been inseparable friends and allies even before Fren-Eirol had been born, and Weasel had taken it upon himself to watch over the sea dragon after Aneirin had passed on more than three hundred years before. This had made the slight of the saddle even harder to bear and the subsequent distance between the two had served neither well.

  “So, you are going to explain the apology? In truth, I forgave him about three hundred years ago if he had asked, but he always runs like a scared rat when I see him.”

  Geezen laughed. “I thought as much. It was still necessary. Fren-Eirol, we need your help and it is a kind of help you will not want to give without an explanation.” The dragon looked puzzled. “The daughter of the prelate has been taken, maybe even by slavers, though we are not sure, and with her the sister of the young man out there.”

  “This is sad news,” the dragon answered. “But I do not see what I can do about a human problem.”

  “The boat they were in was last seen heading to Taken on a fast wind and it is vital we try and catch them.”

  “You would need a hurricane to catch a fast slavers boat, Geezen.”

  “This I know, but there is another way.”

  The Dragon tensed. “An apology is welcome, Geezen Truk, but if you think I will use that to break our vow not to carry humans, you have made a huge mistake.”

  “Hear me out, Fren-Eirol, for I do not ask this lightly. I know better than most your society here in Wead and I would not risk dishonouring it without very good cause.” Geezen had stood up and she lowered her head in respect. The dragon let out a long sigh. This human may be hundreds of years her junior, but she was in truth a good friend.

  “Oh, Geezen, speak on. We have been friends too long for me to take offence quite so quickly.”

  “Thank you, Eirol. I will keep this simple for I am worried about time.” Fren-Eirol nodded for Geezen to continue. “The daughter, Precious Hearting is of a lineage that is all but forgotten and has been kept secret for hundreds of years, and you must swear to keep the knowledge hidden.” The dragon looked puzzled but nodded her agreement. Dragons took oaths to their graves; a nod was all that was needed. “The girl is the Cwendrina.”

  Fren-Eirol looked startled and then narrowed her huge eyes. “Oh, so this is what this about!” The dragon rumbled in anger. “How is it that we sea dragons have the female descendant of the Queens of Dirt right here under our snouts, and we do not know? And who are you to know about her in the first place?”

  “I took the responsibility on from my family. That is all I can tell you.”

  The dragon stood up and snatched at a rug in annoyance. “Geezen, do you realise we Draig Morglas owe her a debt of protection?”

  “I know, but no one would take that seriously now, it has been several thousand years.”

  “Well, you obviously do or you would not have brought it up!”

  Geezen had the grace to look embarrassed. “Eirol, I brought both of them into this world, just as I have helped some of your people. You know I cannot let this abduction go without doing something.”

  The dragon threw her hands up in frustration. It was true, of course. Although Fren-Eirol had no children of her own, Geezen had helped several other dragons with difficult births. They owed her too.

  “Even so, Geezen, I am reluctant. I do not see why I cannot take a couple of my friends to the sky and solve this problem on my own. Why do I need to take that fool?”

  “And the boy, you would need to take both.”

  Fren-Eirol plumped herself down in resignation. “Of course I would. How silly of me. Now, explain!”

  “On a practical note, you will need Weasel because we cannot be sure of where they are headed. Also, I think he is more worried about their speed than he is letting on.” Geezen frowned. “Eirol, Weasel is just a finder, is he not? He seems more astute.”

  “He may be more than a simple finder, Geezen,” Fren-Eirol said evasively. “But I do not know this for certain. My Bren would have known more. They shared many secrets that despite our friendship, Weasel would not pass on to me. He might be a rag of a man, but he takes oaths more seriously than many of your people.”

  Geezen let that one pass. The sea dragons, despite a healthy working relationship with the humans, were still distrustful of them. Maybe they had cause at that.

  “Well, whatever his skills, I think you will need him. Something about this does not sound quite right in my mind.”

  “And the boy?”

  “Johnson Farthing. His sister is Rustina, known as Rusty, and she, like the Prelate’s daughter, Precious, is a redhead.”

  The dragon whistled. “This gets more twisted by the second. How many redheads have you brought into this world?”

  “Two.” Red-headed girls were rare and special. They were seen as a good omen in some lands, a sign of health and great fortune. Geezen looked hard into the dragon’s eyes. She was laying it on thickly, but she needed the dragon’s agreement. It would be impossible without. “Farthing needs to go for several reasons,” Geezen continued. “Firstly, their
parents died some years ago and the two of them have more or less brought themselves up, albeit watched over by a couple of us here. He feels very responsible for her and will be impossible to control if he were left behind. Secondly, he is strong, young, and resourceful; I think you might need him, just to keep Weasel under control if nothing else. Both the Prelate and his ridiculous head of the Redustian Peacemen, seem to want to do nothing, even about the daughter, and Farthing feels that he must do something, whatever they have decided. I think he would try to hire you and Weasel himself had he the coin. He is no fool, despite his age and occasional temper. He needs to do this for himself and Rusty, but he will need and want your advice though he is less convinced about Weasel.”

  “That makes two of us.” The dragon hauled herself to her feet and flexed her wings cautiously. “It is some time since I have carried that much weight, but I can do it. It is a long way to Taken, however, and no sea dragon can do it in one flight carrying two men and their gear, and it is worse carrying humans as it prevents me flying in the highest winds. We will have to stop on any floaters that we find as I can’t keep going endlessly like a boat. We will start at first light. If Weasel has been trying to track that boat over such a distance over water, no wonder he looks tired. He will need his sleep.”

  “Weasel said there were problems with tracking over water.”

  “There are,” said the dragon, nodding. “It’s impossible.”

  “Then how can he do it?” Geezen looked suspicious.

  “Just be glad you found the only person who can, but it is still nearly impossible even for Weasel. He won’t be able to do anything much while we are flying, but at Taken, he can use the mountain if the dragons will let him anywhere near it.”