Laz grabbed his boots from the ground next to him, and after a brief struggle got them on. He stood up and looked around him. In the east a faint silver light lay along the horizon, though the stars overhead and to the west still shone brightly. All around him, men lay asleep, wrapped in blankets or lying restlessly on top of their bedding.
Had he really seen the spirit, he wondered? Or merely dreamt the entire incident? They had never exchanged the sigils that would have confirmed a genuine manifestation. Even if she’d truly appeared to him, her comment of “inside there” might have meant the structure he’d glimpsed in his vision, or it might have meant “somewhere on the vast plain.” He would have to wait and see what he could learn later in the day.
It was several hours after dawn before Prince Voran, with an escort of several hundred armed men, rode over to the farm. Laz managed to talk himself into joining Envoy Garin on the excuse that the prince might need a translator. The farm buildings huddled inside an earthen wall—a round house, a barn, a scatter of sheds, all with thatched roofs. As they rode up to the stout wooden gate, three big black dogs rushed forward, barking. From inside the house a woman screamed at them to come back. Slowly, reluctantly, they obeyed.
The woman got the dogs inside then, slammed the door shut. Only the clucking of frightened chickens, back by the barn, broke the silence.
“Halloo!” Voran called out. “We mean you no harm.”
No one answered. Garin urged his horse up beside the prince’s, and they conferred about the best way to gain the farmers’ trust. Laz took the opportunity to scry for the dragon book, only to see nothing but darkness, most likely the inside of the saddlebag. Still, he felt an odd tingling sensation in his maimed hands, as if he were running them over the leather cover. He could almost feel the edge of the dragon-shaped appliqué. Perhaps the spirits guarding the book were trying to send him a message, that indeed it lay nearby.
Laz rose in the stirrups and looked over the farmyard. Off to his right, back near the barn, stood a round wooden shed. He could just discern that a wooden bar held the door shut on the outside. For a brief moment a golden line of light flickered on the roof. It’s there! He knew with an absolute certainty that the dragon book lay inside that shed. But why was the door barred from the outside? To keep the slave scribe in, perhaps?
By the gate Prince Voran and Garin had finished speaking. Voran turned his horse to face his escort.
“Men,” he called out. “We’re pulling back to some little distance. These people are never going to open up with an army at their gate. Envoy Garin and the translator here will parley.” Voran paused to point out five men at the front of the escort. “And you five will stay as guards. Keep your hands away from your weapons unless someone threatens the parley.”
While the main force trotted off some hundred yards or so, Garin disposed his five guards a few feet away. With a wave to Laz to follow, the envoy rode back up to the closed gate.
“Halloo!” Garin called out. “We truly do mean you no harm! I’ve got a good woodsman’s ax here of Mountain workmanship. I’ll exchange it for some information.”
Only the chickens clucked in answer, but Garin and Laz waited, listening to the silence from the house. Finally, the door opened partway. A man slipped out, a tall fellow, dark-haired, dressed in shabby brown clothes. His shirt, in particular, was so near to rags that Laz could see skin through holes in half-a-dozen places. He walked to a spot halfway between house and gate, about twenty feet from the envoy. The way he stood struck Laz as odd, not bent-backed like every other Lijik farmer he’d seen, but straight and proudly.
“Be it I may see this here ax?” he called back.
Garin unsheathed the ax, which had been hanging from his saddle peak, and held it up. In the sunlight the good dwarven steel of its head gleamed, more precious than silver out in this isolated area. While the fellow ambled up to the gate, Laz took the opportunity to study the shed with the barred door. From his distance he couldn’t be certain, but the door seemed to be quivering, as if someone were banging or pushing on it from the inside.
“What be it you be wanting to know?” the farmer said.
“Do you serve the Boars of the North?” Garin said.
“I did once.” The fellow paused to spit on the ground. “Bastards.”
“Do you know where their dun is?”
“The hells for all I care! They did move us out here.” He waved one arm to indicate the plateau. “Then they did ride away, off to the north. I hear tell that they be joining them there Horsekin, but I know not if that be true or false.”
“I see.” Garin nudged his horse, who moved forward a few steps up to the gate. The envoy leaned over and handed the farmer the ax. “Here you go, and my thanks.”
“My thanks to you.” The fellow took the ax in both hands and hefted it, then swung it one-handed as if testing the balance. “This be a good thing.” Ax in hand, he began walking back to the house.
Laz and Garin rode off side by side to rejoin the prince, who was leading his escort forward to meet them. Laz turned in the saddle to speak to the envoy.
“Farmer, my arse!” Laz said.
“Umm?” Garin said. “What do you mean?”
“The way he stood, so proudly, and the way he swung that ax like a weapon. His hands were callused, but his fingers weren’t all twisted and deformed from grubbing in the dirt. And his legs—those torn brigga couldn’t hide how bowlegged he was. He’s spent most of his life on horseback, I wager.”
Garin gaped at him.
“He’s not a farmer.” Laz sighed in sheer exasperation that the envoy couldn’t seem to see the obvious. “He’s either a member of the Boar’s warband or, ye gods, maybe even one of the Boars themselves.”
Garin let out a whoop of laughter, quickly stifled, since the prince had ridden up to them. “Hidden in plain sight,” the envoy said.
“Just so.” Prince Voran had apparently heard enough of Laz’s discourse to agree. “You’ve got good eyes, scribe.”
“My thanks, Your Highness.” Laz made a half-bow from the saddle.
“Let’s go back to camp.” Voran nodded at Garin. “I want to discuss this with your avro. There’s plenty of pine trees up on the hill. If we throw a few pitchy torches onto one of those roofs, the pigs should come running out of their sty fast enough.”
And the book will roast with them, Laz thought. He bowed again. “Um, Your Highness? May I have your permission to speak?”
“You may.” Voran inclined his head in Laz’s direction.
“I was thinking that it would be a great pity to burn their stored grains and the like with them. It’s a long ride back to Deverry, and some of the men are growing worried about rations.”
“That’s a sound point, Your Highness,” Garin put in. “Food’s always important to an army.”
“True enough,” Voran said. “Well, I’ll discuss this with Brel and see what he can come up with.”
Brel came up with something quite simple: let the dwarven axemen break down the gate and then have the horsemen ride straight into the farmyard. First, however, as Garin pointed out, it would be best to scout out the second farm they’d seen in the distance north of the first one.
“We’ll probably want to take both of them at once,” Brel said. “Those barns won’t hide more than a couple of dozen swordsmen each, so it should be safe enough to split our forces.”
To convince their prey that they’d believed his ruse, Voran led his men to the second farm. There again, Envoy Garin traded a dwarven steel ax for the information that the Boars had fled north, doubtless to join up with the Horsekin in relative safety while their disgruntled supposed supporters languished in grave danger. This second farmer looked even more like a nobleman than the first.
“Oh, it be a long way to them there Horsekin cities,” he said, “or so I been told, all the way across this stinking rocky plain. Don’t know how we’re going to feed ourselves up here.”
“Then why
not go back to Cerrgonney?” Garin said. “I doubt if anyone would arrest you or suchlike. Cerrgonney lords are always short of folk to tend their lands.”
All the alleged farmer could do was stare wide-eyed at Garin. Laz suppressed a grin.
“It’s their goddess, I suppose,” he said to the Envoy. “Come now, my good man, you worship Alshandra, don’t you?”
The fellow swallowed heavily and glanced away.
“What be it to you?” he said at last.
“Naught,” Laz said. “Shall we go back to camp, Envoy?”
“Just so,” Garin said. “My thanks for the information.”
Voran and Brel decided they had no reason to wait until morning for the attack. They led their forces to a spot midway between the two farms, then split them into two squads of mixed cavalry and axemen. When they marched off, Laz followed the squad targeting the first farm.
The battle, such as it was, ended quickly. The axeman broke down the gate. The prince’s riders poured into the farmyard. When armed men rushed out of the farmhouse and the barn, the front rank of swordsmen cut them down with an efficiency that reminded Laz of slaughtering sheep. The man who’d posed as a farmer in the parley ran out a back door and headed for the wall, but riders chased and caught him. They dragged him back alive, more or less, to face Prince Voran when his highness returned from the second raid.
When the swordsmen dismounted, they began to loot the farm, as methodically as they’d slain its defenders. Laz rode round to the shed. He dismounted, ran to the door, and lifted the bar free of its staples. He was about to open it when it swung wide, pushed from the inside, to reveal the portly pale-haired fellow with the brand on his face. He was clutching a leather saddlebag to his chest. He stared at Laz, tried to speak, but only stared the more.
“I’m not a lovely sight,” Laz said, “but we’re rescuing you all the same. You’re a free man.”
The fellow began to weep in two thin trails of tears. His head trembled, shaking no, no, no, as if in disbelief. Laz caught him by the arm with one hand then took his horse’s reins with the other. He led them both around the looters and out of the compound to safety.
By then Prince Voran had arrived with some of his men—the rest were stripping the other farm—and other prisoners as well, two men and a woman, to join the pair captured at the first farm. Voran had Bren and a raft of servants brought from the army’s camp, the servants to deal with the captured supplies and livestock, Bren to identify the prisoners. Four of the prince’s riders made the prisoners kneel in front of Voran, who dismounted to look them over.
Laz and the freed slave hurried over to watch. At first the prisoners glared at the prince in cold defiance, but when Bren rode up, the men swore and the women began to weep, clinging to one another. Bren dismounted and trotted over to kneel at the prince’s side.
“That fellow there on the end,” Bren said. “He’s Lord Burc himself. The other’s his brother, Lord Marc.”
“And the women?” Voran said.
“Their wives, Your Highness. Truly, they all lived little better than farmers, even in that dun where I found you.” Bren shot Lord Burc a look of sheer contempt. “Some king you are now, eh?”
For a moment Burc seemed to be about to speak, but he shrugged and kept silent, as did his brother.
“Very well,” Voran said. “I promise you that your women will come to no harm, Burc. I’ll find them a place of refuge. But I’m taking you and your brother back to Cerrgonney to answer the charges of reiving and murder laid against you there.”
“And just who be you, then?” Burc said.
“Voran, Prince of the Gold Wyvern, Justiciar of the Northern Border by the command of the High King himself.”
Burc turned his head and spat onto the ground. The Wyvern men hauled the prisoners up and dragged them away in the direction of the army’s camp. Prince Voran mounted again and led the rest of his escort after them, leaving the servants to deal with the booty from the farms.
“So much for that.” Faharn had come up behind Laz during the questioning. “Ah, this must be the fellow with the book.”
The freed slave turned dead-pale and began to tremble.
“Here!” Laz said to him. “You must understand the Gel da’Thae language.”
“Yes, I do.” The scribe stood a little straighter and glared at him. His voice, however, was as high as a young boy’s despite the fierce edge he gave it. “I take it I’m still a slave.”
“No, you’re not. I’m an outcast from the cities, myself, a scribe and loremaster, and this is my apprentice, Faharn. My name is Laz Moj.”
“I’m truly free?” His voice squeaked on the word “free.”
“You’re truly free, and if you go back with the prince, he’ll find a way to return you to your true people out in the Westlands. What’s your name?”
“Pol, just Pol will do. What do you mean, true people? Horsekin raiders destroyed my village when I was a child.”
“Village?” Laz blinked at him. “The Westfolk are wandering nomads.”
“Then, alas, they’re not my people.”
“But—wait!” Laz remembered old legends about those who’d fled the Great Burning. “Do your folk live near the sea?”
“Yes, between the mountains and the Western Ocean, or up in the foothills, where it’s easier to hide from the raiders.”
“Then I’ve got somewhat of great interest to tell you, Pol, and you’ll have a tale and a half for the Westfolk when you finally meet them. Come with us. If naught else, you deserve a decent meal, and I see that Faharn has snagged us a chicken.”
Faharn held the fresh-killed brown hen up by its yellow feet and grinned, all fangs.
The entire army ate well that afternoon, except for the prisoners. Faharn drew the hen, then encased her in wet clay from the streambed, and roasted her whole in their campfire. He also collected grain from the servants and made a porridge of sorts, which they ate while waiting for the chicken to cook. Once the clay covering had baked as hard as pottery, Faharn pulled the ball out of the embers and broke off the clay. The feathers came with it, and they divided up the meat.
Between bites Pol told Laz about his people—refugees from the Great Burning who’d fled west rather than east out to the grasslands. There were, he thought, perhaps two thousand of them at most, scattered in little villages and farms, living always in fear of the Horsekin. Pol’s clan had been fishermen, and their exposed village on the coast far enough south for them to feel safe—until the ships came.
“We didn’t know that the Horsekin had boats,” he finished up. “But these did, just a raiding party, yet there were enough of them. They came when the men were out fishing and slew the village elders before they took the rest of us as slaves.”
“Bastards!” Faharn remarked.
“Just so,” Laz said, “and cowards as well.”
“I thought my ancestors were the only survivors from the old days,” Pol said, “but now you tell me there are others.”
“A great many others, actually,” Laz said. “They live as Westfolk out in the grasslands, and then I was told that there are towns in the Southern Isles, far away across the Southern Sea, and that the People from there are slowly returning to the plains.”
Pol digested this information along with his share of the hen while Laz considered the problem of the dragon book. He’d not rescued this unfortunate man only to steal from him, though admittedly he’d stolen plenty of other property in his day. Those days are over, he told himself. And that was a matter of survival. He considered any number of plans before the obvious occurred to him. He could simply ask.
“The book with the dragon on the cover,” Laz said. “Is that a great treasure to you?”
“Not any longer,” Pol said. “I knew that the writing had to be in the language of my ancestors, even though I couldn’t read it. It was a connection to my lost home and clan, well, of a sort, and the only one I had. I saved it when one of the servant girls back at th
e dun was going to use the pages to light fires.”
Laz nearly choked on his mouthful of chicken. “I’m cursed glad you did,” he said when he’d stopped coughing. “I’m a loremaster, as I mentioned, and I’m most curious about the book.”
“Do you want it?” Pol laid his empty bowl down. “I’d be honored to give it you out of sheer gratitude. If nothing else, you rescued me from that wretched hut. I was terrified that the prince’s men were going to set fire to the compound, and I’d be roasted alive in it.”
“I saw the door moving as if someone were banging on it,” Laz said, “so I thought I’d best go see. Are you sure you can part with the book?”
“Of course.” For the first time all day Pol smiled. “I don’t need it now.” His soft boy’s voice quivered with joy. “I’ll be returning to my people.”
“I’ll ensure that you do.” Laz rose to his feet. “Let me just see if I can have a word with the prince.”
Laz found Voran sitting on a folding stool in front of his tent. Brel Avro sat nearby, and the dwarven warleader looked as pleased with himself as a cat with a stolen fish cake. When Laz knelt before the prince, Voran gave him permission to speak.
“Your Highness,” Laz said, “today my apprentice and I rescued a man who’d been enslaved by the Horsekin. He has Westfolk blood in his veins, and he fain would return west to his people.”
“The fat fellow?” Voran said. “I take it that the Horsekin unmanned him.”
“I fear me they did. I was wondering if Your Highness might grant me a boon, that you’d take the poor man under your protection and see that he gets home.”
“Easily done. We have extra horses, thanks to the Boars. But here, won’t you be returning to Cerrgonney with the army?”
“I fear not, Your Highness.” Laz suddenly realized that he needed a good lie to explain why he’d been leaving the prince’s service in the middle of nowhere.
“I offered him a position with us.” Brel Avro saved him. “We need to learn the Horsekin language. He and his apprentice know it.”
“So they do.” Voran swung round and scowled at the warleader. “Which is why I gave the man a position with me.”