Dragonoak: The Complete History of Kastelir (11 page)

I understood why Sir Ightham didn't want people knowing who she was, in order to move from place to place peacefully, but to be scared out of an establishment by a Felheimish soldier was not as easily explained.

I met two more of them on my way out: a woman no older than I was with an axe at her hip, and a red-headed man with a cloak draped around his shoulders, dragon-bone armour shining through. I almost walked straight into them, almost dropped my bags, but the man – the Knight – placed a hand atop them, steadying me, and said, “Careful now,” as I stuttered my thanks and did my best to stare at the ground.

They didn't suspect a thing, and why would they? I hurried out into the night, cold air washing away any of the toll the ale had taken on my body, and couldn't see Sir Ightham anywhere.

The bags were nearing the point of being uncomfortable to carry when Rán came around the side of the building, hoisting them out of my arms and pressing a finger to her lips. I followed her through the streets, trying to be as quick on my feet as she was, until we reached the stables.

Sir Ightham was already there, leading Charley and Calais out.

“Doesn't mean they know you're here,” Rán said, patting a hand against Sir Ightham's back. She didn't flinch and simply held out Charley's reins to me. “But it's better to be safe than sorry. What's the plan now, dragon-slayer?”

Rán didn't have a horse of her own. She would've crushed one under her weight, and had no trouble keeping up with Charley and Calais.

She ran ahead with Sir Ightham, and they spoke – argued – as we galloped away from Praxis. I tugged on Charley's reins, willing him to catch up with them, but it did no good. They spoke in a rough language I didn't recognise. It sounded far from aggressive, in spite of the way they continued to rebuke each other, both pointing in different directions, each convinced their plan was the only one worth following.

It didn't matter that I couldn't understand them. They could've been speaking Mesomium and I wouldn't have soaked it in. All I could focus on was the fact that Sir Ightham had run from our own soldiers, had run from another
Knight.
I was more tired than I'd been in months, forced awake by the uneven road beneath us, and I began to wonder if she was
Sir
Ightham at all.

She could've killed a Knight and stolen their armour. She seemed good enough for it. Perhaps I'd been wrong to trust Rán so easily; perhaps Sir Ightham had chosen a pane to confide in for a reason, perhaps—

They stopped.

I snapped out of my suspicions and had Charley grind to such a sudden halt that I lurched forward, near-enough winding myself against the back of his neck. He made a gruff sound, apologetic, and I rubbed behind his ear, glancing warily between them.

“What are we gonna do with this one?” Rán asked, tipping her head towards me.

Sir Ightham paused. I didn't try making out anything in her expression. Had the sun chosen to rise a handful of hours early, I still wouldn't have learnt anything.

“... she comes with us,” Sir Ightham eventually settled on, reaching her conclusion because I already knew too much. Or at least enough to help other people piece the whole picture together.

“I'm glad of it,” Rán said to me, placing her hands on her hips and looking around. I imagined she had better vision than any human, for she sounded nothing short of confident when she said, “We haven't been followed. Looks like we're at the mercy of your paranoia, dragon-slayer. What say we rest up for the night, though? The horses will appreciate it, if nothing else.”

Rán was right. We'd left Praxis in a hurry and hadn't had the time to dig bitterwillow out for Charley and Calais. They'd run on what energy they'd recovered while resting in the stables, and they'd eaten too much of the stuff recently to be able to stomach any more.

I wasn't averse to the thought of sleep, either. Things would make more sense in the morning, I told myself. I'd only seen half of the picture and misinterpreted the whole situation; maybe the man I'd seen at the inn was the thief, not Sir Ightham. Whatever doubts I had, I couldn't force myself out of the habit of using her title, even inside my own head.

We were no more than half a mile from the wall. I only knew it was there because the stars were abruptly blotted out along the horizon, and we headed away from it, where there were trees for cover. Trees for bandits to hide behind; trees for bandits to scamper up, once they realised we were with a pane.

No fire was built and Rán settled down cheerfully, curling up on her side like a house cat. Sir Ightham towered over her and said, “I'll keep watch then, shall I,” as I did my best to get comfortable against the ground. The grass grew thin, and every time I swept a stone away, I lured a twig out of the ground, not noticing it until my eyes were already closed.

For all their arguing, Sir Ightham and Rán must've come to some sort of agreement, even if that agreement was nothing more than leaving the matter until morning. It was almost peaceful. Rán fell asleep within moments, and Sir Ightham's presence became subdued, as though she were a shadow, or one of the trees surrounding us.

Excitement and fear alike faded within the two of them. They were used to this sort of life, while my heart was in my throat, thoughts swirling until I couldn't stand to keep my eyes closed. I was exhausted but unable to sleep, starkly aware that I didn't fit into their world, and yet I never once considered turning back.

When I couldn't trick myself into falling asleep, I moved onto my front, elbows in the dirt. Sir Ightham sat on a tree stump, Calais sleeping behind her, turning something in her palm. A cloud deserted the moon, letting light glint against gold.

It was a pendant of sorts.

“Sir—” I whispered, and her head snapped up. “What's happening? Are you in trouble?”

No answer, not straight away. I waited for her to tell me to go back to sleep, but the longer she kept her silence, the more convinced I became that the answer to that second question was
yes
.

“It's better that you don't know,” she said quietly. “Safer, for the both of us.”

Her answer did nothing to quell my curiosity.

“But that man in the inn was a Knight, too. Why would you run from another Knight?”

Sir Ightham clasped her pendant tightly and raised her voice.

Rán didn't stir.

“A Knight? You're certain there was a
Knight
there?” she asked, and I cringed, cursing myself for not thinking to tell her earlier. It was just that we'd been in such a hurry and... Sir Ightham didn't care for my excuses. “What did he look like?”

“Only Knights get dragon-bone armour, don't they? So he had to be a Knight. And he was older than you. Forty, I think. White, with red hair. I didn't really see more than that.”

But what more did she need to hear, when there were only twelve other Knights to choose from?

Sir Ightham clicked her tongue.

“Sir Luxon,” she said, and she said it in such a way that made an insult of the title. “At least it wasn't one of the Mansels.”

I thought that would be it. She'd got all the information she needed from me, had already said that she wouldn't tell me what was happening for my own good, and once more, I waited to be told to go back to sleep. But Sir Ightham moved from her tree trunk, took a few soft steps towards me, and sat cross-legged in the dirt.

“Your ancestors were from Myros, by the look of you. Mine were from Mesomia. A very long time ago, after the War, they all worked together to create what would one day become Felheim,” Sir Ightham said, and for once, she sounded hesitant. She toyed with the pendant between her fingers, and I quickly realised that she
wanted
to explain herself. She wanted me to listen. “But Felheim is not merely the ground beneath us, or even the cities we've founded. If you were to be given a choice between the dirt and stone of our Kingdom and the
people
themselves, which would you choose?”

I paused. The people of Felheim had only ever been kind to me when I was useful to them and had been quick to discarded me because of what I was, but in my mind, my brother stood taller than any tower, my father was worth more than a tree, more than an entire forest.

“The people, of course,” I said, a little bemused. It hardly felt like a choice at all.

Sir Ightham nodded and said no more, but I felt ashamed for casting her as a murderer, a thief, simply because I didn't understand what was happening. She clearly had no desire to discuss the matter any further and I wouldn't push my luck by prying, but she didn't move away from me.

I thought she might want company while she kept watch, refuge from her own thoughts, and so I reached out, gesturing towards the pendant in her hand.

I don't think she realised she'd been fiddling with it. It took a moment, but Sir Ightham placed it in my open palm.

It was a weighty thing, and I tilted it this way and that, letting the moonlight hit the surface, running my thumbs across it to take in the texture of the metal. It was a beautiful piece, there was no denying it – the craftsmanship itself was worth more than my entire village – but there was a phoenix encased within a ring of gold. I frowned. It was just like her knife.

“Is it your family's sigil?” I asked. Only the elders in my village had sigils worth speaking of, though Michael was determined to trace back our ancestry until he discovered a crest we could call our own.

“No. That was too obvious, too recognisable; I thought it might give me an unfair advantage,” Sir Ightham said. “This is of my own choosing.”

“Oh,” I said, biting the inside of my mouth. I handed it back to her, but told myself that it didn't
mean
anything. Phoenixes were just phoenixes, there were a thousand reasons why a person would take one for their sigil. “... my brother said they were already making preparations for the Phoenix Festival, before you arrived. It's not until Paren, two months away, but it was all anyone was talking about at market.”

I was rambling, and Sir Ightham responded cautiously, saying, “It's to be expected. This year marks the fifteen hundredth year since the exodus.”

Fifteen hundred years since the Bloodless Lands were formed, since the end of the War. The festival wouldn't be any different. Bigger and louder, perhaps, but nothing about it would change: everyone would gather together over food and drink, talking about the fall of the necromancers, about Kondo-Kana, who'd been chased across the land and drowned in the sea.

“It doesn't have to mean what you think it does. I—” Sir Ightham started, and then paused. I wanted her to continue, wanted her to tell me that she didn't bear the sigil of the phoenix because they'd burnt away the necromancers, but she only shook her head. “Come now. We're about to wake Rán, and you ought to sleep.”

My elbows were sore, and because her voice wasn't hard, I did as she said. She hadn't turned me away because of my necromancy yet, and maybe there really was another explanation for the phoenix engraved on her knife, cast in gold and silver on her pendant. I'd ask her at a better time, when we weren't running from Knights, or the mere thought of them.

I awoke unable to tell when I'd closed my eyes. Rán was crouched by my head, grinning toothily as she leant over me. She must've seen me stirring and decided to give me a fright. It worked, but I would've started at the sight of Sir Ightham standing over me, too.

“Morning, yrval,” she said, holding out a hand.

I took it, clinging to two fingers with my fist, and she helped me to my feet without having to stand. She remained crouched as I stretched out, eyeing the food left out atop one of Sir Ightham's bags.

I snatched the bread, deciding it must be for me. It wasn't recently deceased enough for Rán's liking.

“Where's Sir Ightham?” I asked through a mouthful of bread as I made my rounds, saying good morning to Charley and Calais. Charley grunted, turning his head from me for fear I'd try feeding him more bitterwillow.

“Down by the river, I reckon,” she said as she stood, rising up and up. “You might want to be taking a trip down there yourself, yrval. We've got a long trek ahead of us and you'd be wise to be making the most of this lull while it lasts. Who knows when the dragon-slayer's gonna go charging off again?”

I saw Sir Ightham in the distance the moment the words were out of Rán's throat, and hurried off to meet her halfway. It couldn't have been any later than six and once again, I hadn't slept for very long, but it was that quiet, timeless part of the morning that seemed to promise peace, in spite of what the day might actually hold.

How long had I been away from home? A handful of days. In my place, Michael would've spun stories out of those armfuls of hours for the rest of his life, and I couldn't help but feel the weight of them, with all that had happened. In that way, I imagined time must've been stretched out in my village, too. My father and brother felt every second of my absence, and yet there I was, allowing myself to be blindly led anywhere but home.

“Good morning,” Sir Ightham said, once I was close enough to see that her hair was almost brown with the weight of water.

“Morning, Sir,” I said with a nod, peering over her shoulder. There was a wall of trees behind her, so I pointed in the direction she'd come from and asked, “Straight ahead for the river?”

“Don't take long,” she said, nodding. “Ten minutes at most.”

We carried on our separate ways, but I didn't get far. I came to a halt, turning and saying, “Sir—?” before I realised what I was doing. I would've shaken my head and said it was nothing, if not for the fact that she'd actually stopped and looked around at me. “At the next town we come to, do you think you could... help me write a letter?”

I should've asked Rán, but I still couldn't imagine her forming words small enough to fit on a piece of parchment. Sir Ightham didn't scoff, didn't give me any reason to cringe at my own shortcomings.

She only said, “If we have time to spare,” and inclined her head towards the river.

I ran the rest of the way. The river was a shallow one, barely reaching my knees, surrounded on all sides by trees and shrubs. I stripped off quickly, placing my clothing on the safety of a large rock, and hurried to rinse myself, face plunged under the surface.