Dragon's Winter (38 page)

And so Tirion stalked it. Far, far it ran, across fields, hills and rivers, and spring turned to summer, and summer to fall, and fall to winter, and still the buck eluded him. But Tirion’s heart burned, and he would not turn back. And on the night of Spring Moon, a whole year from when his hunt began, the dogs brought the black buck to bay against the side of a hill. Full squarely Tirion shot; but his shaft turned to flame as it flew, and his arrows turned to flame in their quiver, and the great buck turned into a great horned man, who fixed the archer with eyes of flame.

And Tirion fell to his knees, for he knew then that the buck he had been chasing was really Imarru the Hunter, to whom all hunters owe fealty. And laughing, Imarru forgave him.

“For never has man pursued me with such a faithful heart.

“And the buck ran free, the buck ran free; the buck ran free as the wind is free!”

The next day, they crossed the pass into Ippa.

It was hard, this climb; harder than it had seemed when they started out, two short weeks before. It was warmer, but the rocks were slick, and the winds harassed them mercilessly. “At least there are no wargs,” Edruyn said. The beasts, relieved of the heaviest load—that of the wood, which had kept them from freezing through wintry nights—moved eagerly up the narrow trail. The men moved more slowly. Hawk cursed steadily under her breath. Huw had cut her a staff from a tent pole. It helped, but the strapped arm and the adjustment which she had not fully managed to make in her sight made her struggle for balance with almost every step.

Just before the highest crossing, Karadur called Herugin to his side.

“I want to give my brother’s body to the winds,” he said quietly. “Will you help me?”

They lifted Tenjiro Atani’s bier between them. A small track led away from the place they had slept. They followed it away from the main trail. It veered east, then snaked south again, and finally ended in five broad flat steps. “Up,” Karadur said. They climbed the stairway and squeezed between two huge rocks to a small, grassy plateau. “This is good,” the dragon-lord said. Kneeling, he raised Tenjiro Atani’s fragile, wrapped body from the bier, carried it across the small sward, and laid it in a bracken-filled hollow.

The wind, like some invisible giant, slapped its palms against the rock. The mountain seemed to shake. High above them, death’s outrider, the black condor, sailed in slow circles. Herugin said diffidently, “My lord, perhaps we should build a cairn.”

“No,” Karadur said. He rose. “No cairn. Let the birds come, and rain, and wind and sunlight, until even his bones are scoured clean.”

They slept that night on the cliff side.

It took most of the day to descend the pass. They reached Atani Castle at sunset. The sentries had seen them coming: the dark square castle blazed with light. Torches lined the walls, and lamps and candles burned at every window. Horn music, lilting and joyful in the crisp air, filled the valley. Shem, from his place on Karadur’s saddlebow, poked his head through the slit in the dragon-lord’s cloak. “House,” the little boy said. “Big house.”

Karadur tousled the child’s dark silky hair. “It is as I told thee, cub, remember? This is Dragon’s house.”

Faces peered from the battlements: guards, cooks, kitchen maids, “Welcome, my lord!” someone called from the ramparts, and Karadur lifted an acknowledging hand. The horns called again, echoing down the hillside into the valley. Bareheaded, sword at his side, Marek Gavrinson stood unaccompanied just inside the gate. He knelt, and rising, reached to hold Karadur’s stirrup. He saw Shem. His eyes widened with astonishment.

“Well, Marek Gavrinson,” Karadur said gravely, “how fares my land?”

The question was ceremonial. Marek said, his tone measured and formal, “My lord, your land is at peace, and as secure as you left it. It waits to welcome you back.” He signaled: a horse-boy ran from the shelter of the outside wall to snatch Gambler’s rein. “How fared your campaign, my lord?”

The folk on the wall hushed, and leaned to listen. Raising his voice, Karadur said, “Our war is ended, and our enemies slain.”

And suddenly they were all shouting, to him, and to the hardened, weary men who followed him. The cheers swelled and echoed, a wild jubilant reverberation that echoed into the hills, and down the sloping fields toward the villages nestled in the lowlands. Women waved their aprons, calling wild welcome to husbands, brothers, sons. Karadur dismounted. Men—the men they had left, and many more, from fields and farms and villages—swarmed from the postern gates to seize the horses’ reins and guide them to the stables. The dogs penned on the other side of the wall barked furious greeting. A mule brayed; the horses whickered and tugged on their reins, scenting the familiar smells that meant rest, food, warmth, journey’s end.

The portcullis lifted. Liam Dubhain emerged from the gate, and clapped Lorimir on the shoulder. Murgain lifted Sinnea off her feet and into his arms. A spare, quiet, ageless woman, her girdle laced with keys, came through the narrow doorway. Azil Aumson slipped from his horse to embrace her. Nestled in the crook of Karadur’s arm, Shem gazed at the excited men and women.

“Dragon coming,” he observed serenely.

Wraith-silent, colorless, weightless as shadow, the shadow-dragon seemed to coalesce out of the dark grey walls. The shadowy head loomed higher than the iron gate. Its eyes glittered like chips of rainbow. A woman gasped, a high indrawn breath of fear and wonder. Marek, face white as chalk, stepped back from it. His mouth opened, but no sound emerged.

“Don’t be afraid. It will not harm you,” the dragon-lord said. He lifted the child to his shoulder. “We are home, cub.” He stepped beneath the iron gate. Silent as the starlight, the shadow-dragon bent its supple neck, and followed him into the torchlit castle.

PART FIVE

24

There was little space for privacy in a castle.

You would think it would be easy, Hawk reflected, to find a place to be alone. Dragon Keep was big, with empty rooms, unused attics, dusty silent chambers that could be entered at odd times, like the middle of the afternoon, when no one would be looking... But somebody was always looking. Maids and pages, guards and grooms, everyone knew everyone else’s business.

A bee droned past her ear, searching for nectar amid the bright heart of the daisies. Her back was stiff. She shifted in the soft crushed bracken. This place—it had once been a buttery—was better than the castle, anyhow. It was secluded, fragrant with daisies and the blowzy yellow roses that twined up the inside of the broken walls and dropped petals everywhere. Bryony Maw, the Keep’s laundry mistress, had told her of it. The roof had gone, and most of the inner walls. But the outer walls were still solid after who knew how many decades.

Huw’s head lay heavy on her breast. She stroked his face. “Mmm.” Opening his eyes, he nuzzled at her neck. The October sun fell across his bare brown skin. He was sweating; they both were. Even in the shade of the wall, the day was hot.

“Gods, you’re beautiful.”

Hawk smiled. She was not beautiful: she was lean as a hound, weathered as a post, and eighteen years older than he was. But he liked saying nonsense like that, and she did not try to dissuade him.

“We’ve been here two hours,” she said.

He kissed her nipple. “I don’t care. I want to stay here forever.”

There was little likelihood of anyone disturbing them. Half the men were down in the villages, working in the farms. “You know we can’t. Get up.” He moved. Hawk sat up, hunting her clothes. She found her underclothes and breeches, and worked her shirt over her head.

They strolled to the castle. The courtyard was hung with drying laundry. It smelled of soap. Edruyn came out of the barracks. He had filled out, since spring, and had lost the puppy look over which he had taken so much teasing.

“Hey. I was looking for you,” he said to Huw. “Elief and I put the targets up. Want to shoot?”

Huw shrugged. “I’ll get my bow.” They walked off toward the barracks. Hawk no longer slept in barracks; she had a room to herself, the same small chamber she had slept in when first she came to the Keep. She had found it cold. It was cold no longer; it was hers: her pack on the table, her cloak on the bed. She washed at the basin. A warm breeze touched her face. The window shutter was open, curtains wide. It was still light. She flexed her right arm, feeling the joint tighten and tighten until it no longer moved. She had written to Tiko in June:
I must be in the north a little while longer
... Karadur Atani had said to her, a week after their return from the ice:
There is a place for you here, if you want it.
She had not answered; her wounds were too deep, the place of her despair too raw and tender. Since that conversation, she had barely seen him. Once, during the worst time, right after the injury, she had felt the link between them flare to life.
Get well, hunter,
the dragon-lord’s thought said.
I have need of you.
But he had mostly left her alone, to find her own healing.

Dinner in the hall that night was festive. The men, those not staying with family on farms, had returned from the villages. The harvest was in: “Corn twice as high as your head, and pumpkins
this
big!” The food came around: venison, buttered yams, crisp red potatoes, brown bread firm and rich as cake.

At the end of the meal, the servants cleared the tables. Sigli and Wegen pulled out a keph board. The young men, in high spirits, thrust the tables back to wrestle. There were new, young faces in the hall: many of the men who had ridden north that spring had left Dragon’s service to return to farms and families, and the summer levy had brought maybe twenty bright-eyed, supple youngsters to the Keep, eager to learn to shoot and ride and wield a sword.

Hawk brought her wineglass to Herugin’s table. He was acting captain. Lorimir, for the first time in many years, was gone from the Keep. He had left in September to visit his family in Averra. Huw made room for her beside him. Rogys and Finle, seated across from each other, were arguing hotly over the best way to train deerhounds. Beneath their raised voices, Herugin said softly in her ear, “Did you hear the news? Murgain and Sinnea are to be married.”

She had not heard. “When?”

“Next month. Not many people know. There’s more. He plans to leave the Keep.”

“Leave his position?”

“Even so. He wants to try his hand at farming. Dragon has agreed.”

Suddenly Rogys said, in a tone of delight, “Hoy. Look!” He waved his arms.

Marek Gavrinson threaded his way down the long room to their table. He had left the Keep, though not Dragon’s service: he was living in Castria now, charged with watching the roads and ordering the guard on the market and village gates.

“You’re fat,” Orm said to him.

Marek grinned. “Care to wrestle? Bet I can still put you on your back.” He tossed his riding gloves to the table. “Gods, I stink like a goat, and I’m thirstier than anyone has a right to be.” Huw pushed a glass into his hands. He tipped his head back. “Ah, that’s good. The traders are here; it’s mad in the market. You all look very pleased with life. Done any hunting?”

“Some,” said Finle, who had. Rogys, who had not, feigned a punch at him.

Herugin said, “Marek, most of us have been grubbing in the fields for the last ten days. Drink your wine, and tell us what you hear from the traders.”

Marek sank to the bench. “Ah, the traders. Well, the traders tell the most amazing stories. It seems that Karadur Atani led an army of his men into the frozen wasteland north of the Grey Peaks this summer to storm a wizard’s castle, and capture the enchanter’s treasure chests.”

Rogys said, “I don’t recall any treasure chests.”

“Do you recall an army of goblins? The giant wolves? The standing stones that sang alluringly in women’s voices?”

“I missed those,” Orm said, with mock regret. Finle laughed.

Rogys said, “Does no one know what truly happened?”

Marek said wryly, “Would you want them to know it? All of it?” Rogys went red. “Some do, I suppose. Men talk to their wives, or to their friends. In Chingura and Sleeth and Castria, they know.”

Finle asked, “Do they know what he did? Do they know what he is?”

Marek said, “They have seen him.” The words, and the wonderment behind them, silenced even Rogys. Hawk saw him then in her mind, as she had seen him in the sky at sunset or at dawn, rising from the Dragon’s Roost, with fire in his eyes, and sunlight clinging like liquid gold to the membranous weave of his spread wings...

Herugin said, “You seem well. I suppose all is serene in Castria?”

“All is very well. I left Arnor in charge. I came to make my report, that’s all. Larys, on the gate, said Dragon was gone.”

“He is,” Herugin said. “He should be back by dawn.”

“Can you find me a bed tonight?”

“You can always sleep in the stable,” Rogys said. “What other lies are the traders telling?”

“There’s a story going round about a bull.”