Seraphina: A Novel Part 17

No, that wasn't clear, but I played along. "Maybe I'm the idiot, for loving him."

He had no answer for that, although I couldn't quite take his silence for agreement, the way he looked off into the distance and frowned.

We turned south onto something more sheep track than road. I began to fret about how long this journey was taking. Today was Speculus, the shortest day of the year; by the time we reached the knights, we'd have to leave almost at once to make it back in daylight. Surely Kiggs did not intend us to ride home in the dark? Maybe that was of no concern to an experienced horseman, but I felt I was barely holding on as it was.

We reached a grim old barn that had caught fire recently; the rear of the roof sagged, the back wall was charred and blistered, and the whole area reeked of smoke. Someone had put it out, or it had been too damp to burn. Kiggs stared at it hard, then abruptly turned off the road toward a thicket. We skirted the thicket, which turned out to be a small patch of forest; what looked like shrubs from the rise above were revealed to be trees once we'd reached the low end of the hollow. Entering from the far side, we rode up the middle of the shallow creek until we reached its source, the mouth of a cave under the hill.

Kiggs leaped from his horse, grabbed his pack, and approached the cave on foot. I was not so adept at the dismount. I had substantial difficulty convincing the horse to stand still. Happily, Kiggs wasn't looking at me. He stood near the mouth of the cave, his hands on his head in a gesture of surrender, crying, "By Belondweg and Orison, we come in peace!"

"Don't pretend you're scared of me." An unshorn, bony-wristed, no-longer-exactly-young man emerged from the shadows with a crossbow over his shoulder. He wore a peasant's work smock, incongruously embroidered with fruit, and wooden clogs over his boots.

"Maurizio!" said Kiggs, laughing. "I took you for Sir Henri."

The fellow grinned like a lunatic and said, "Henri would have been ready and willing to menace you a bit. I couldn't have shot you. Bow's not even loaded."

He and Kiggs clasped hands; clearly they knew each other. I stared at my hands, overtaken by a sudden shyness, wondering whether Maurizio would recognize me as the girl he'd carried home five years ago. I had a nagging feeling that I'd vomited at some point during that journey; I really hoped it hadn't been on him.

"What'd you bring me?" asked Maurizio, lifting his pointy chin and looking not at the pack but at me, half on, half off my horse.

"Er. Woolies," said Kiggs, following Maurizio's gaze and looking at me in surprise. I waved casually. He picked his way back downstream toward me.

"Have you eaten?" asked Maurizio, joining Kiggs in holding my horse's bridle. He turned lively blue eyes on me. "The oatmeal is fine today. Not even moldy."

My feet landed on solid ground just as an old man in a threadbare tabard emerged from the cave blinking. He had liver spots on his scalp and used a nasty-looking polearm for a walking stick. "Boy! Who's this?"

"I just turned thirty," said Maurizio quietly, so the old knight would not hear, "but I'm still called boy. Time has stopped out here."

"You're free to leave," said Kiggs. "You were just a squire when they were banished; technically, you weren't banished at all."

Maurizio shook his s.h.a.ggy head sadly and offered me his skinny arm. "Sir James!" he said loudly, as to one hard of hearing. "Look what the dragon dragged in!"

There were sixteen knights in all, plus two squires, holed up in that cave. They'd been there twenty years and had civilized the place, carving out new rooms for themselves that were cleaner and drier than the main body of the cave. They had scavenged and built st.u.r.dy furniture; at one end of the main hall stood twenty-five suits of fireproof dracomachia armor, black and quilted. I did not know the proper names of the weapons displayed on the wall-hooks and harpoons and what appeared to be a flat spatula on a pole-but a.s.sumed they had some specialized purpose in dracomachia.

They invited us to sit by the fire and gave us warm cider in heavy ceramic mugs. "You oughtn't've come out today," cried Sir James, who was deaf in one ear, at least. "It's like to snow."

"We had no choice," said Kiggs. "We need to identify this dragon you saw. He may be a danger to the Ardmagar. Sir Karal and Sir Cuthberte told us you were the man who knew his generals, back in the day."

Sir James straightened up and raised his grizzled chin. "I could tell General Gann from General Gonn, in my prime."

"All in the midst of general mayhem," chirped Maurizio into his mug.

Sir James flashed him the fish-eye. "Those were terrible times. We had to know who was who, so we'd have some inkling what they'd do. Dragons don't work well together; they prefer an attack of opportunity, like the Zibou crocodile, and they've a devilish fast eye for an opening. If you know who you're dealing with, you know what he's likely to do, and you can lure him in with a false opportunity-not every time, but then, it only has to work once."

"Did you recognize the one that approached your camp?" asked Kiggs, looking around. "And what did it do? Stick its head in the cave entrance?"

"It set the barn on fire. Our third sally port comes out in that barn; there was smoke pouring all the way into the great hall here."

"It's taken two squires a week of dancing around with vinegar-soaked rags to get the smell out of the air," said Maurizio drily.

"Sir Henri went to see what had caught fire. He came back reporting a dragon hunkered beside the barn, and of course we all laughed at him." He grinned at the memory; he was missing a number of molars. "It was getting smokier: the barn burned but poorly, being damp and moldy. We split up. It's been a while since we drilled properly, but you never forget your basic approach."

"You send the squires out first, as bait," said Maurizio.

Sir James didn't hear, or ignored him. "I was upwind, so I was speaker. I said, 'Halt, worm! You are in violation of Comonot's Treaty-unless you have the doc.u.ments to prove otherwise!' "

"Fierce!" said Kiggs.

Sir James waved a gnarled hand. "They're nothing but feral file clerks, dragons. They used to alphabetize the coins in their h.o.a.rds. Anyway, this one neither spoke nor moved. He tried to gauge our numbers, but we'd done the standard numbers bluff."

"What's that, then?"

Sir James looked at Kiggs like he was mad. "You conceal your numbers-harder than you'd think. They can distinguish individuals by smell, so you put men downwind and a distracting stench upwind. We brought decoy torches and two sacks of warm cabbages, and made a little extra noise. Don't grin at me, you young rapscallion! You never let a dragon know how many you are, or where you're all concealed."

"That's a prince of the realm you're calling rapscallion," said Maurizio.

"I shall call him what I like! I'm banished already!"

"I'm awestruck that you had warm cabbages sitting around," said Kiggs.

"Always. We are always prepared for anything."

"So what did the dragon do then?" I asked.

Sir James looked at me, a fond spark in his watery eyes. "He spoke. My Mootya's not what it was, and it never was much, but I'd say he was trying to goad us into action. Of course, we took none. We abide by the law, even if the monsters do not."

That was funny, coming from a banished man who hadn't been banished particularly far. Kiggs met my eye; we silently shared the humor of it. He nudged Sir James back toward fact. "Was this dragon anyone you knew?"

Sir James scratched his bald pate. "I was so shocked, I hadn't considered. He reminded me of one I faced, but where? White Creek? Mackingale oast houses? Let me think. We'd lost our pitchman and fork; we staggered back to Fort Trueheart, when we stumbled into the ... right. Mackingale oast houses, and the Fifth Ard."

A chill coursed down my spine. That was the one.

"A dragon of the Fifth Ard?" Kiggs prompted, leaning forward keenly. "Which dragon?"

"The general. I know they all call themselves General-they're not pack hounds, dragons; don't take orders well-but this fellow really was what we'd call a general. He knew what he was doing and kept the rest 'in ard,' as they say." He rubbed his eyes with a thumb and finger. "His name, though. That will come to me directly after you've gone, I expect."

I wanted so badly to blurt out the name, but Kiggs flashed me a warning glance. I understood; my father was a lawyer. Witnesses can be very suggestible.

"Squire Foughfaugh!" cried the old man, meaning Maurizio, apparently. "Fetch me the old register of ards from my trunk. I don't know why I'm trying to wring water from my stone of a head when I've got it all written down."

Maurizio brought the book. The pages flaked and cracked as Sir James turned them, but the name was still legible: "General Imlann. Yes, that sounds right, now."

I had known it was coming, but I still s.h.i.+vered.

"You're certain it was him?" asked Kiggs.

"No. But that's my best guess, a week later. That's all I can give you."

It was enough, and yet it wasn't. We'd come all the way out here to confirm this, and now that we knew, we were no closer to knowing what to do next.

The knights made tea and chatted at us, asking after their imprisoned comrades and news from town. Maurizio kept joking-that seemed to be his primary function as squire-but Kiggs, lost in thought, did not respond to his banter, and I too sat silently, trying to work out our next step.

No course of action struck me as good. Scour the coppice for him? Search the villages for his saarantras? Kiggs couldn't get enough men out here without diverting them from Comonot's security. Tell Eskar? Why not the Ardmagar himself, and the Queen? Make the authors of the treaty, the ones most invested in the continuation of the peace, sort this out.

"Are we leaving soon?" I whispered to Kiggs when the conversation died down. Most of our hosts had wandered off for a nap; others stared torpidly at the fire. Maurizio and Pender, the other squire, had disappeared. "I'm not eager to ride after dark."

He ran a hand over his head and looked like he was trying not to laugh. "Had you ever ridden before today?"

"What? Of course I-" His look stopped me short. "Am I that bad?"

"You're allowed to ask for help when you need it."

"I didn't want to slow us down."

"You didn't, until it became clear you didn't know how to dismount." He picked at a fingernail, the silent laugh still in his eyes. "Once again, however, you leave me in awe. Is there nothing you're afraid of?"

I stared dumbly. "Wh-why would you even think that?"

He began counting off on his fingers. "You bluff my guards and determine to come out here on your own. You climb on a horse as if you know what you're doing, a.s.suming it will just come to you." He leaned closer. "You stand up to Viridius and the Earl of Apsig. You ask mad pipers to the palace. You fall in love with dragons.... "

I did sound pretty crazy, when he put it that way; only I knew how scared I'd been. Sitting there so close to him was almost the scariest thing of all because the kindness in his face made me feel safe, and I knew it for an illusion. For the merest moment I let myself imagine telling him I feared everything, that the bravery was a cover. Then I would pull up my sleeve and say, Here's why. Here I am. See me. And by some miracle he would not be disgusted.

Right. While I was using my outrageous imagination, maybe I should also imagine him not engaged. Maybe he'd kiss me.

I was not allowed to want that.

I stood up. "Esteemed sirs," I said, addressing our hosts, who had dozed off on their benches. "We thank you for your hospitality, but we really must-"

"You were going to stay for the demonstration, I thought?" cried Maurizio, popping out of a side room. His head now had a helmet on it.

Kiggs and I looked at each other. We'd apparently been so preoccupied that we'd agreed to something without it registering. "If it doesn't take too long," said Kiggs. "It's going to be dark soon, and we've a long road ahead of us."

Maurizio and his fellow squire emerged, clad all in dracomachia armor. "We've got to go out to the pasture to show you properly," said the other squire, Pender.

"Putting ourselves out to pasture," said Maurizio with his strange, desperate cheer. "Bring the horses. You can depart from there."

There was a stirring round the cavern as the old men realized the young ones were about to demonstrate the last vestiges of their ancient pride. Dracomachia was once a formidable martial art; Pender and Foughfaugh may have been the last two able-bodied pract.i.tioners in Goredd.

We followed the old knights down the creek into a stubbly field and made a semicircle around a tumbledown hayrick. It had grown considerably colder while we dallied in the cave; the drizzle had turned to light snow, which clung to the stubble, outlining the broken stalks in white, and the wind had picked up. I pulled my cloak closer about me and hoped this wouldn't take long.

Pender and Foughfaugh carried long polearms with a peculiar hook on each end, angled in such a way that it did not hinder them using the pole for vaulting. They flipped and cartwheeled, leaped and spun, exchanged poles in midair, and viciously attacked the hayrick with their hooks.

Sir James undertook to educate us. "These hooks we call the slash. Now we'll show you the punch. Squires! Harpoons!"

The squires exchanged their hooks for a more spearlike weapon, demonstrating its use on the poor, abused hayrick.

"Dragons are flammable," said Sir James. "They developed their flame for use against each other. They don't cook their meat with it, after all. They fear no other beast-or didn't, until we learned to fight. Their hide is tough but it burns, given enough heat for enough time; their insides are volatile, which is how they flame in the first place.

"The key to dracomachia is setting the monster on fire. We've got pyria-St. Ogdo's fire-which clings to them and is not easily extinguished. One good puncture and their blood whistles out like steam. Set that ablaze, and they're done."

"How many knights made up a unit?" asked Kiggs.

"Depended. Two slash, two punch, fork, spider, swift. That's seven knights, but we had pitchmen flinging pyria and squires running weapons ... Fourteen was full complement, although I've taken out a dragon with as few as three."

Kiggs's eyes gleamed. "Oh, to have seen it in action, just once!"

"Not without armor, lad. The heat was unbearable-and the stench!"

The squires clambered up on each other's shoulders, flipping and leaping over top of the hayrick. I found their precision and strength inspiring. Being banished and having little else to do, they'd clearly spent a lot of time practicing. We should all be as dedicated to our art.

"Sweet St. Siucre!" I exclaimed.

"What's wrong?" asked Kiggs, alarmed by my sudden beeline for the horses.

I fished around in my mare's saddle pack until I found the diagram Lars had given me. Kiggs apprehended my thought at once and helped me unfold the parchment against the side of the horse. We stared at the clyster-pipe ballista, then at each other.

"The bladders would be for pyria," I said.

"But how would you ignite it?" puffed a breathless voice behind us, which turned out to be Squire Foughfaugh.

"It would be self-igniting, Maurizio. Look," said Kiggs, pointing to a matchlock mechanism I hadn't understood.

"Clever," said Maurizio. "The squires could have operated that-anyone could have. Put the knights out of a job, almost."

Sir James came to see what the fuss was about. "Humbug. Machines limit mobility. Hunting dragons is not a question of brute force, or we'd be knocking them out of the sky with trebuchets. It's an art; it takes finesse."

Maurizio shrugged. "Having one of these on our side couldn't have hurt."

Sir James sniffed disdainfully. "We might have used it as bait. Nothing lures a dragon like an odd contraption."

The snow was blowing harder now; it was past time to go. We made our farewells. Maurizio insisted on helping me onto my horse. I cringed, irrationally fearing he'd discern my scales. "It's such a relief after all these years to learn that you recovered from your fright," he said in a low voice, giving my hand a squeeze, "and that you grew up so pretty!"

"Were you worried?" I asked, touched.

"Yes. What were you, eleven? Twelve? At that age we're all gawky, and the outcome is always in doubt." He winked, smacked my horse's hindquarters, and waved until we were out of sight.

Kiggs led the way back to the sheep track, and I urged my horse to keep up.

"You appear not to have gloves," said Kiggs as I pulled up beside him.

"I'll be all right. My sleeves almost cover my whole hand, see?"

He said nothing, but pulled off his own gloves and handed them to me with a look that told me I didn't dare refuse. They were prewarmed; I hadn't realized how frigid my fingers were until I put them on.

"All right, I'm an idiot," said Kiggs after we'd ridden a few miles in silence. "I had fully intended to scoff at your fear of riding after dark, but if it keeps snowing like this, we're not going to be able to make out the road."

I had been thinking the opposite: the road now stood out, two parallel white lines where snow filled in the wagon tracks. It was nearly dark, however. This was the longest night of the year, and the heavy cloud cover was working toward making it even longer. "There was an inn at Rightturn," I said. "The other villages were too small."

"Spoken like someone unaccustomed to traveling with a prince!" he laughed. "We can commandeer any manor house along the way. The question will be, which one? Not Remy, unless you want to spend the evening with Lady Corongi and her cousin the reclusive d.u.c.h.ess. If we can make it all the way to Pondmere Park, that would minimize our travel time in the morning. I have duties to attend to tomorrow."