Bardon started to protest, shrugged, and said, “You’ve become more perceptive during your work among the people of Creemoor.”
“There’s very little entertainment in prison. Listening to people was part of my job. Studying them became my hobby. I learned exactly where they hurt and offered the knowledge of Wulder to soothe their wounds.”
“And,” said Latho in his deep voice, “she was very good at it.” He faced Bardon. “You said you wanted to talk to me.”
“I do.”
Bardon explained the necessity to discover what caused the grawligs to gather and what they were planning to do next. Latho agreed to help.
Bardon’s suspicions mushroomed. “Why do you offer to help even before I ask?”
“Being born a bisonbeck was my curse. Now that I follow Wulder, being a bisonbeck is a gift. I can go where you may not.”
“Let him do it,” urged Leetu Bends. “I keep telling him he doesn’t have to prove to Wulder that he is loyal, but he keeps doing it. He says it makes him feel good.”
“I don’t do these things to show Wulder I am His servant. I do it to show myself that I have this honorable position. I didn’t deserve it. How can it be mine?”
Leetu shrugged. “Just because Wulder wanted you.”
The bisonbeck’s frame sagged. He breathed in and out twice and then seemed to inflate. His head came up, his spine straightened, and he lifted his head. “I will do whatever He asks. He knows I will do this, and I know.”
The bisonbeck charged down the hill toward the seaport.
“Hey!” called Bardon. “Where are you going?”
“I must find who sends supplies to these grawligs.”
Bardon ran to catch up with him. “Grawligs don’t buy supplies. They scavenge from the countryside and farmers.”
Latho clamped a hand on Bardon’s shoulder and gave it a crushing, but friendly, squeeze. “This is why I am the spy. You do not know how the armies of Burner Stox and Crim Cropper work.”
Bardon rotated the arm and shoulder that had been squashed in the big merchant’s grip. “I’ve never even seen Crim Cropper’s troops.”
“That does not surprise me. He has only a token military. The evil wizard enjoys his work and isn’t pursuing ruling the world.”
“But Burner Stox is?”
“Oh yes. I think that was the root of their argument. She wanted him to come out and storm through the country, conquering all. He wanted to do one more experiment.”
“You know this?” asked Bardon, barely keeping the skepticism out of his tone.
“It is a speculation founded in multiple reports, some more trustworthy than others.”
Leetu Bends dashed up beside them. “What are you talking about?”
Latho grunted. “I am teaching your friend. He says grawligs forage food and steal from the farmers. But when you have this many of the oafs in one place, purloining can’t support them. So whichever personage gathered them will feed them. And I will deliver supplies myself to get into their camp.”
“Won’t you stick out as the only bisonbeck in a horde of grawligs?” asked Bardon.
“There will be bisonbeck soldiers there,” Latho assured him.
“No one reported bisonbeck soldiers to me.”
“Still, they will be there. Whoever gathered the grawligs, whoever feeds them, will watch them. I must get there and discover who sends them, where they are to be sent, and to what purpose.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Bardon.
“Me too,” said Leetu Bends.
The bisonbeck stopped and put his hands on his hips. “Why?”
“This situation smells of a major enemy push of some kind,” Bardon said. “It’s not something we can ignore. It may be something that must be countered immediately without the delay of reports gathered and studied. Leetu Bends and I will assess the significance on the spot.”
“And you were worried about me being conspicuous?” Latho laughed and started off for town again. “Come,” he said, “if you must. I shall disguise you as a loaf of bread, a side of beef. No, I have it—as a barrel.”
30
A ROPMA VILLAGE
Kale eyed the ropmas gathered around. Under normal circumstances she would not be afraid of the gentle folk. But these ropmas had been under the influence of Burner Stox. Two of the bigger beasts growled as they glared at the ground in front of Kale.
A small ropma grabbed a dead snake, whirled the carcass around his head like a whip, then with a warlike cry let the creature loose. It landed amongst the rocks. The other ropmas grunted. Kale backed up, closer to her father. The band of hairy beasts turned to watch her.
Their fierce expressions had been replaced by smiles. Kale wondered if the lopsided grins were friendly or menacing.
One stepped forward. “Snakes bad.”
The voice sounded familiar. “Bug?” asked Kale.
The speaker tiptoed gingerly through the dead snakes. “Yes. Bug.” He pointed to himself, then motioned to his friends. “Come, look. I say she pretty.”
With Bug’s hairy, stubby finger pointed at her nose, Kale blushed.
Another ropma hopped through the scattered snake corpses and knocked Bug’s arm down.
Kale smiled at the female. “Are you Rain? Bug told us you cook good food.”
The ropma’s face broke into a grin, and she tapped a fist against Bug’s arm below the shoulder. “Bug eat good.”
With a scowl returning to her face, Rain eyed Kale. She pinched Kale’s arm and felt her brown curly hair, ending her examination with a pat on the cheek. “You skinny. No hair where hair belongs.”
Kale glanced at her father. A smirk on his rugged face told her he enjoyed the inspection she had endured from Bug’s jealous wife.
“Your frown is showing, Kale.” His voice in her thoughts soothed her agitated nerves.
She relaxed the muscles in her face and smiled at Sir Kemry.
He smiled back, a small smile that showed his approval. “Rain likes you. Your skinny body and hairless face will be invited to the village. It’s what we want.”
Rain bestowed a toothy smile on her fellow ropmas, nodding her head with enthusiasm. “Wizards come to our hut. I give food.” She beamed her yellow grin on Kale. “You eat. You sleep.”
Kale quizzed her father with a raised eyebrow. But Bug took hold of her arm, distracting her.
She shook him off. “What are you doing?”
“You come. Go home. Go valley.”
Sir Kemry stepped forward. “You’re taking us to the valley of dragons?”
Bug jerked his head in an emphatic yes.
Rain smoothed the hair on her husband’s arm and looked up at him with admiring eyes. “Bug say we have two wizards. Becks have one. Wizards fight.” She pointed to Kale and her father. “You win. We free.”
Rain and her companions laughed at the plan, and Kale probed their minds. Proud of concocting a design to end their slavery, the ropmas were giddy with relief. The simple scheme reflected their uncomplicated thinking. To them, the end of the long period of terror under the evil wizard’s rule was an accomplished fact. The ropmas’ wizards would defeat the woman wizard. The band of ropmas would take Kale and her father home, feed them, guide them to the valley, and then leave the wizards to wage war against the adversary. Their minds hid no plot to turn the wizards over to Burner Stox.
Her father patted Kale on the shoulder. “A neat plan, don’t you think?”
If it works. They’ve neglected to factor in scores of bisonbecks and dragons who are loyal to the opposing force.
“The dragons are an unknown.”
Some of the ropmas scampered off together. Bug gestured for the two o’rant wizards to follow, pointing in the direction his friends had gone.
“Yes,” said Sir Kemry, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s see where this path shall lead us.”
After a long, arduous walk through rough terrain, Kale looked forward to the plain comfort of the ro
pma village. She only knew of the lower race from a few minor encounters in the past and from what she found in books.
Bardon’s aunt had raised his cousin N’Rae in a ropma community. N’Rae’s insight into the way these people really lived had changed Kale’s perception of the ropmas. Where grawligs were unintelligent bullies, the ropmas were simple homebodies with a knack for caring for beasts like cows, chickens, goats, and sheep. Now it would seem dragons could be added to the list.
Bug led them through twisting, narrow crevasses until the ravine they followed opened into a spacious, green valley. The stunning contrast of the emerald grass and flowering trees against the black rock formations took Kale’s breath away.
Her words came out in a reverent whisper. “It’s beautiful.”
Rain took her hand and pulled her forward. “Home.” The ropma took off, dragging Kale along. Sir Kemry followed with Bug by his side, and the other ropmas hopped about, doing a jig.
The minor dragons cheered at both the physical beauty and happy spirits. They flew in ever-widening circles to examine everything they could see. They sent Kale a barrage of images. She shielded her mind from too much sensory input and concentrated on enjoying what her own eyes could see.
In the distance, nestled under pink and yellow flowering bingham trees, twig huts fashioned like upside-down nests stood in the shade. One round circle close to the ground provided an uncovered entry, and three smaller round holes, erratically spaced, allowed light and air into the homes.
Bug trotted ahead with Kale and the others following. They passed through what looked like an area where the homes had once stood. Evidence of a fire showed through sprigs of new green grass. Next they passed by some decrepit huts that leaned precariously or had collapsed.
Sir Kemry explained what she saw. “The first settlement burned down. By accident or because of an attack, I can’t determine. These huts are the old town.” He pointed at the ramshackle homes.
“Ropma don’t construct sturdy dwellings. When their home begins to deteriorate, they abandon it and move to the other end of the village, which is set up in a rather linear pattern. They leave behind the hut, which returns to nature by the process of decay.
“The men and women in the band build a new habitat for the displaced family in exactly the same manner as the others. All this takes place in a rather celebratory attitude. The home is new, the area clean, pristine. And neighbors have changed so that the group remains fluid in the relationships between families.” Sir Kemry sighed with a wistful expression on his face. “I would love to study the process.”
Out of the newer huts, the entire village came to greet them. The ropmas hugged their returning friends and eyed Kale and Sir Kemry with guarded expressions. Those returning whispered in the ears of those who had stayed. Excitement replaced the troubled look, and the ropmas came closer.
A dozen young children approached by folding their hairy limbs over their stomachs and rolling in smooth somersaults until they bumped gently into the visitors’ legs. The ropma ball sprang open to reveal a giggling child sprawled on his or her back at the wizards’ feet. The youngster hopped up, ran away, and repeated the greeting over and over, sometimes rolling into one another or their parents instead of their target.
The force of each impact made Kale stagger, even when she saw the approaching child-ball. She grasped her father’s arm and tried to avoid getting knocked over like a piggledy pin. Even though she laughed at their antics, she grew tired of the game. Kale called to her minor dragons to help distract the ropma bas.
The colorful dragons swooped through the clearing, attracting attention with their chatter and aerial acrobatics. The youngsters ceased the rolling sport and began an impossible chase of the dragons in the air. By design, the dragons lured the children away from the others. Still their laughter and shrieks filled the twig town.
When their exuberance settled to a quieter frenzy, Sir Kemry spoke to the older crowd in general. “We will do all we can to help you. Paladin wants us to be your servants. Wulder cares for your sorrow.”
The ropmas hushed, the children quit their game, and puzzled expressions replaced the happy countenances of the villagers.
Kale lifted one ropma child who had stayed at her feet into her arms. “We will help,” she said to those gathered around. “Paladin will help. Wulder will help.”
The ropmas nodded solemnly. The child squirmed, and Kale handed him to a mother who came forward with arms outstretched.
Kale glanced at her father. Why would the mother not let me hold her son? What is the current I can’t quite put my finger on?
“Something evil has happened here, and there is a warning to keep outsiders from discovering the event.”
Sir Kemry gestured to the gathering. “I have seen bas this big.” He held his hand low, indicating the height of most of those who had rolled into them. “And I have seen big bas.” He pointed to the fringe of the crowd where adolescents hung back, observing rather than participating. Sir Kemry moved his hand to show the height of a child in between these two age groups. “Where are the other children?”
In an instant the friendly chattering ceased. With eyes closed and faces screwed into masks of misery, the ropma men, women, and children pulled air into their lungs and let out a keening wail.
The weight of sorrow almost pushed Kale to her knees. She placed her hands over her ears to protect herself from the physical assault and blanketed her mind to stop the flow of utter despair coming from the villagers. The children ran back to stand beside their parents and joined the strident lament. The minor dragons flew to seek refuge in the pocket-dens of Kale’s moonbeam cape. She cradled the unhatched eggs with one arm wrapped around her middle.
Sir Kemry raised his hands in the air and shouted, “We will help. We will help,” until the noise subsided with only a few sobs and sniffles breaking the silence.
Kale’s father let his arms sink from an expression of command to one of supplication. In a softer tone, Sir Kemry said, “Let us help.”
Lowering her hands from her ears, Kale gazed into the eyes of each ropma, sending them a message of reassurance. Yes, she and her father would help. Ignoring the ropmas’ plight was unthinkable.
Kale looked at the gentle creatures and could not imagine anyone harming them. But the images she gathered as she communicated with the band of ropmas told her otherwise.
In their recent past, they had endured the cruelty of Burner Stox as administered by her army of bisonbecks. Grawligs had ravaged the small settlement, beating the populace and destroying their property. Bisonbecks ambushed the band and carried off their children.
In their abortive attempt to flee, Burner Stox herself had come to the valley. Standing before them with a staff in her hand that shot out a stream of pain-inflicting energy, she had explained her demands. The ropma slaves would do as she said, or their children would die.
Her instructions: seek dragon eggs and bring them to the Greenbright Valley. Capture smaller dragons and give them over to her men. Locate larger dragons and keep watch as one runner went to the valley to bring warriors back to trap the dragon.
Stox with her brutal warriors had bestowed upon the ropmas a heartrending situation. The becks allowed the youngest ropmas in the village to remain because they were too much bother to keep alive. The warriors left the adolescents to help with the capture of dragons and the gathering of eggs. The middle-aged youngsters were held hostage to keep the ropmas from fleeing or rebelling. Old enough to forage for themselves and not be an additional burden to Stox’s army, the children were kept in Greenbright Valley to tend the dragons.
When Kale tried to get an inkling of how long this servitude had been enforced, she could not interpret the images in the ropmas’ minds. She looked to her father for an answer.
He shrugged, answering her unspoken question in the same manner she had communicated it. “In one form or another, I believe Stox has been accruing this dragon force since the days before Joffa a
nd I were trapped in the sleeping chamber.”
That could be a very large number of dragons subjugated to a horribly evil woman.
“I think we have been handed quite an impossible task, my dear.”
What should we do?
“Go on, of course.”
Of course.
31
ON THE HUNT
Bardon and Leetu Bends rode with the bisonbeck merchant through a pass between two high hills and into a valley. At the bottom of the incline, Latho stopped to hide his two passengers, not disguising them as barrels, but stuffing them into two barrels designed to carry dried longfish. The containers stank, and the rough insides scraped against them in spite of the thick blankets Latho had given them to wrap up in. But the staves had gaps between them, sufficient enough for them to breathe easily and to peer out. The wagon bumped over every hole and rock in the road.
When they got to the camp, Bardon heard harsh voices loudly inquiring about Latho’s business.
“We aren’t expecting supplies until next week,” hollered one.
“Have you got papers to verify this shipment?” asked another.
Latho was correct, thought Bardon. These men are bisonbecks, not grawligs.
“Can you see anything?” asked Leetu Bends.
Not a thing.
“I have one tiny crack, but I’ve picked some slivers of wood out of it to make it bigger.”
The wagon jolted and moved.
I guess they accepted Latho’s papers.
“He’s also known among the soldiers. Some of them show a great amount of disrespect for ‘the bisonbeck coward.’ Others have just heard his name, because it’s so unusual for his kind not to be in some type of fighting force.”
The wagon lurched to a stop.
“Now we’ll see if this plan works.”
At Leetu Bends’s words Bardon’s mind leapt to the last time he’d seen Kale. Her mouth had puckered in a pout, her eyes welled with tears, and she’d looked altogether adorable in a spoiled-princess sort of way. Wulder, give me the chance to make her smile again.