Once more he had no sense of time passing and slept until the dragon woke him.
“If you cannot perceive my offspring,” the dragon said, “it is no shame—tell me and I will find another archer. You are now near the outside, but my mouth is closed. You must put your arrows point down in my tongue.”
Stammel realized then that he had a crossbow in one hand and a quiver in the other, yet he had no memory of them. He hooked the crossbow under his arm and knelt, sticking the bolts into the dragon’s tongue; they stood upright, and when he regained his feet and reached down for one, it was at his fingertips.
Cool air rushed in. At once he saw, at some distance he could not estimate, small shapes of white flame. Suddenly a gust of air brought smoke—woodsmoke—and he coughed.
“What did you see?” the dragon asked.
“Small fiery shapes, white,” Stammel said between coughs.
“You did not see the mortal fire, the forest burning?”
“No. Was that the smoke?”
“Indeed. They are burning the forest—not in Lyonya but in Pargun. I cannot put you down close to them, for the mortal fire would burn you.”
“Can you tell me how far they are?” Stammel asked. “I need to know—the bolts do not fly as straight as sight.” Would a dragon understand that? He spanned the bow and set a bolt in the groove. The bolt did not feel hot when he took it from the dragon’s tongue, but he did not touch the point.
“Yes,” the dragon said. “That and the direction and strength of wind. I see one on the edge of the fire … That one I can get you near. But there is smoke.”
Stammel wrapped his woolen scarf around his head against the smoke and put the bolts into the quiver he felt hanging at his side. The dragon set him down on ground that felt cushioned; he scuffed a foot and felt forest duff.
“We are beside a stream,” the dragon said. “The spawn is coming upstream, turning the water to steam for amusement; there is no impediment to your arrow’s flight.” Stammel saw a white shape emerge from apparent nothing. But how far away was it? How fast was it coming? He could not tell.
“Distance!”
“Now,” the dragon said, rather than giving one.
Stammel aimed at the center of the white and closed his fingers on the trigger. A tiny speck of white flew through the space between—the point of his bolt that had been in the dragon’s tongue—and as it touched the white shape, a purple bruise-like shape formed, spread, and the white vanished.
“Well done,” the dragon said. “Come onto my tongue again and we will seek more.”
Stammel had imagined, in that time within the dragon, that they would quickly clear the dragonspawn. After his first success, he was sure of it. But the next hunt proved him wrong. In the back of his mind—as he choked on bitter smoke and ash—he recognized this as another kind of war and, like all wars, longer and more difficult than expected by those who started them.
Despite the scarf, he often could not get his breath; heat from the mortal fires the dragonspawn started scorched his boots; the tangle of burning trees and the fierce winds of the fires ruined his aim. The dragon, he found, had no notion of calculating the movement of hot air and at first reported the bolts as being magically shifted aside from the dragonspawn. Stammel tried to explain, between hacking coughs.
“I do not understand,” the dragon said. “Your arrows are not like birds that indeed are shifted by the winds as we dragons are not—”
“All that flies in the air is moved,” Stammel said. “Light things more; the stones thrown by catapults will not shift for a gust that will move an arrow.” He coughed again, then went on. “A sighted archer will judge the wind and aim a little upwind, according to its strength, but an unexpected gust will still foil his aim.”
“Half-Song aimed straight into the wind,” the dragon said.
“And so the wind would not shift such an arrow aside,” Stammel said. “But in a wildfire, the wind twirls and shifts unpredictably.”
His bolts had struck only one other before he ran out of them. The dragon could not make bolts, nor could Stammel. By then he was exhausted and shaky, anyway. “I need to breathe clean air,” Stammel said. “And eat something—how long has it been?”
“Since we left your king’s palace? Or since you began shooting at the dragonspawn?”
“Either. Both.” Stammel sat down on the dragon’s tongue. “Since the king’s palace, in regard to food.”
“Two risings of the sun and two nights between. It is near sunrising again. We have been hunting all this past night.”
“Humans usually eat at least once between the rising and setting sun,” Stammel said. Knowing he’d fasted that long made him feel even weaker.
“My error,” the dragon said. “I did not realize my substance would not sustain you. I will find you food.”
Stammel felt movement under him and then the slight roll as he was deposited back in the cranny where he’d slept. He dozed off, ignoring his stomach’s demand for food, and woke only when an icy breeze brushed his face.
“We are near a town with a market open,” the dragon said. “Can you stand?”
Stammel rose, breathing in clean cold air. He felt light-headed from hunger but steadier than he’d expected. As soon as he stepped off the dragon’s tongue, the dragon changed into human shape; he could see it as clearly as the other. He tipped his head up; as before, he could just make out a dim light overhead, but nothing more.
“You need other clothes,” the dragon said. “We are summerwards of your lord’s domain, where more towns are, and you still wear that uniform.”
It was all he wanted to wear, but he knew appearing alone among civilians in that uniform would cause comment.
“And it is discolored by smoke,” the dragon said. “By your leave, I will go to buy clothes and food for you.”
“Thank you,” Stammel said. He felt shaky and would have been glad to sit down but did not want to show weakness to the dragon. “And a water bottle, if you could.” His feet crunched on snow; he could melt snow for water if he had a way to carry it.
“I will not be long,” the dragon said.
Stammel found a tree by walking into a snow-covered branch—by the smell, a fir. He licked off a little snow to ease his parched mouth, then felt his way into the center, acquiring an icy lump of snow down the back of his neck as well as snow on his face, some of which he ate to ease his thirst. At the center, as he’d expected, he found a clear area where his boots did not crunch on snow and he could stand upright. It was even dry enough to sit on the soft layer of needles with his back against the trunk. Here the breeze did not penetrate; he felt slightly warmer. He rubbed his hands in the duff to dry them—they still smelled of smoke.
He heard the dragon returning, then caught a glimpse of the fire-shape, but did not try to fight his way out of the snowy branches. “Stammel?”
“Here,” he said, pushing himself to his feet.
“Wait,” the dragon said. “I will come in. I have what you need, and news.”
Branches creaked and snow fell from them in a rush as the dragon came into the sheltered interior of the tree. Stammel kept one hand on the tree trunk.
“Ale,” the dragon said, nudging Stammel’s free hand with something; Stammel took it and found a leather-wrapped jug. “They charge strangers more for water from their wells than for ale, and the stream is frozen.”
Stammel unstoppered the jug and took a sip. Not the best ale, but liquid and refreshing. He stopped after one swallow, pushed in the stopper and put the strap over his shoulder.
“And this is bread,” the dragon said. “Stuffed with meat and cheese, they said.” Again Stammel felt something bump his hand, and he took it. A good-sized stuffed roll … He bit into it. Fried ham, onions, and some spice … He gulped down a couple of bites, then paused.
“Thank you,” he said. “This is very good.” Already he could feel his strength returning; he finished the loaf and drank another few swa
llows of ale.
“I told them in the market that I had a blind friend who had become fatigued and was unable to come so far without food and drink,” the dragon said. “I said we would both come later, when my friend had recovered. It would perhaps be as well for you to spend this day and a night in a human dwelling. There is an inn.”
Stammel imagined an inn—a bathhouse, jacks, a bed less comfortable but more familiar than a dragon’s gullet. “But I have little money,” he said. “I did not bring my savings when we left the stronghold.”
“It is no matter,” the dragon said. “You are with me; it is my responsibility. Now: I bought clothes for you—yours are dirty—and you will need more, for I understand now that if we fly through smoke, you will become stained. Change.”
Stammel stripped off his uniform, all but his socks, and put on the long trousers, shirt, and overtunic the dragon had brought. The dragon described them: gray trousers, blue shirt, brown overtunic, a brown cloak. Stammel put his uniform into the sack the dragon had used for the new clothes. When he had finished the food and felt stronger, the dragon led him to the town.
The town was larger than either Duke’s East or Duke’s West but not as clean, as Stammel could tell by the sounds and smells as the dragon led him through the outer buildings, the market square and into the inn. On this winter market day, he heard people haggling over the price of merchandise in familiar north-Tsaian accents, but in a friendly way.
The inn’s common room, stone-floored, smelled of the same inferior ale, with overtones of onion, garlic, hot bread, wine, wet wool, leather, dogs … drovers, Stammel assumed. The dragon led him on, along a stone-flagged passage.
“In case you want a bath or a place to exhale filth,” the dragon said. “We are facing a courtyard—the filth place is across it; baths to the heart-hand.”
“We call it a jacks,” Stammel said, taking a step forward.
“I will lead,” the dragon said. “I should appear to use it as well.”
“You don’t … do that?”
“I don’t eat your food; I do not need to exhale it.”
Stammel could smell the jacks from twenty paces away; his nose wrinkled. No cohort would be so lax … but this was a civilian town and not under the Duke’s—or Count Arcolin’s—control. Obviously. The dragon guided him to one of the places and, by the sound of it, perched on one beside him. When he was done, the dragon led him across the courtyard to the baths and paid the attendant for a hot tub for “my blind friend.” Stammel was glad to get the smoke smell off his skin and out of his hair; now the clothes felt even better.
“We have a room on the ground floor,” the dragon said. “For your convenience, I told them. Food can be sent there, or you can eat in the common room.”
“My uniform must be smoke-stained,” Stammel said. “I need to wash it.”
“It will bring questions,” the dragon said. “And questions we may not wish to answer here. Food and sleep first, I think.”
At the mention of food or the smell of it wafting from the kitchen to the passage, Stammel’s stomach growled. The rolls had been enough to get him to town, but now he felt shaky again.
“The room,” the dragon said. Stammel heard the creak of a door and sensed a narrower, stale-smelling space. Heat touched him from the heart-side. “A brazier,” the dragon said. “And a warming pan with the handle left where a blind man might bump it.” A scrape of metal on metal. “Now it is safer. Here is your bed against the wall.” Stammel put out a hand and found a rather hairy wool blanket under it. “And a table and chair here—” The dragon turned him about, and Stammel felt the back of a wooden chair, the edge of a table. “Sit there, and I will bring food and drink.”
Stammel sat and after a moment put the bundle with his uniform on the floor. To his surprise he felt happier than he had since the attack that blinded him. Here he was alone with a dragon-man, in a town where he knew no one and had never been before, wearing civilian clothes such as he had not worn since he was a lad, without the coin to pay his bill, and yet … and yet he had been to a palace and met a king and a prince, eaten with them, and killed two dragonlets while riding in a dragon’s mouth. Whatever came next, whether he ever regained sight, he had done things unthinkable in his old life.
“Here, sir.” A young woman by the sound of her voice. “Your friend said you’d eat in here. Let me just put this down …” A slight thump as of a heavy tray, and other thumps that must be individual dishes. Whatever it was smelled delicious. “Do you need help, sir?”
“No, thank you,” Stammel said.
“Well, then. The jug’s to your heart-side, and the plate right in front of you. I’ll be back to pick up the dishes.”
When she left, closing the door, Stammel felt along the table, located the jug, sniffed it—water, not ale—then the mug, and poured himself some. All those days and tendays of practice … he could almost, he thought, have passed for a sighted man eating. When he was done, he wiped his mouth and chin and made his way to the bed, pulling off his boots. The bedding smelled fresher than the room had, and the brazier was warming it. He felt sleepy, but stayed awake until the girl came to take away the dishes.
The dragon returned some time after that. “I brought you more clothes,” he said. “And a pack to put them in. And a stick—you lost your stick in the snow, I explained. The townsfolk are giving me great credit for not leaving a blind man to die in the snow … Several have come to ask me what god I serve who commands such expense for a stranger.”
“I thought you’d said I was your friend.”
“Indeed. But they did not believe it. So I told them what is true, that one man is as much my friend as another.”
Stammel thought about that for a moment. “I would think that meant no man is your friend. Do dragons have friends?”
“I do not know what humans mean by ‘friend,’ but from what I see … no. We do not eat or drink as you do, and much that friends do seems to involve eating and drinking together.”
“Do you understand ‘friend’ as opposed to ‘enemy’?”
“The opposite of enemy is ally,” the dragon said.
“And what do you consider me?”
“An ally,” the dragon said promptly. “It is unusual for a dragon to have any ally but a dragon, but when I met Half-Song on the night of the first attack and saw her bow, I knew at once she could be my ally if she would.” After a brief pause, the dragon said, “Does it worry you that I do not call you friend?”
“No,” Stammel said. “I do not ask that allies be friends, though it is more … more pleasant if they are. But I was correct, then, in my understanding of your statement?”
“Yes, completely. The others, however, seemed to think it was a god’s command that I consider them all my friends. That would be unwise. In any group of beings, some are hostile and some are not.”
“The humans I have lived with consider allies as those fighting against their enemies, and friends as those who care for them—who wish them well, who help them,” Stammel said. “You have cared for me; you have carried me safely through peril, and now you have clothed me, fed me, provided this room for me. I would call that the act of a friend.”
“Did not your commander do the same? Would a commander not care for his troops, see them fed and clothed and housed?”
“Indeed, but …”
“You are a hiresword; I hired you. It is true I offered no payment, but my agreement with your commander was that I would care for you. I would care for any I hired or any who offered alliance.”
“Well,” Stammel said, forcing aside a desire to laugh aloud. “I am glad we understand one another.”
Tsaia: North Marches Stronghold
Arcolin received the king’s response to his report about the dragon’s demands sooner than he expected. He made sure the courier was cared for and then took the message pouch upstairs to his office. Working the ribbons free of their elaborate knots, pulling out the stiff curl of paper, sliding
his thumbnail under the seal, he was conscious only of concern that the king might not have believed him, might have thought the dragon a mere fantasy of his own winter-twisted mind.
What he read convinced him that whatever wisdom the dragon had, it also had a sense of humor. Sir Camwyn indeed! The king had certainly been convinced of the dragon’s reality and now made no complaint about the loss of territory. He granted Arcolin permission to settle the refugee gnomes in the hills west of the stronghold.
For we consulted with the Marshal-Judicar, and hold that Gird’s alliance with the kapristi requires that they be granted stone-right where they will. Your offer was well-made, and we agree to alienate those lands to their use. As for your plans to campaign next season, we must confer. Though the dragon assured me the Pargunese lack both will and power to attack across our eastern borders, I am not as certain, for if a dragon can come, so also can it go. There are other urgent matters as well, on which we would value your opinion. Settle your gnomes as quickly as you may, and come to Vérella.
What else did he have to do? He had taken all the recruits’ oaths already; he had held Count’s Court in three locations; he had met with the entire population of every village and town. They knew him already from his years as Kieri’s senior captain; they were, he thought, all content to have him as their lord, since Kieri was irretrievably lost to them. He had dealt with the crisis of the gnomes’ arrival and the dragon’s demands.
So—how soon could he leave? He had no contract yet, though it was a little early to expect offers for this year. Would anyone hire him after last summer? The Vonjans, he was sure, would talk only of his failures. Well … he could find that out more easily in Vérella, where some Guild League cities had permanent embassies, or in Valdaire than up here, a long way from any news.