Dragon's Winter (7 page)

She touched his face with her hand, like a kiss. “Go.”

Under the trees, he changed. In wolf form he raced through the trees and along the snow-crusted ground to the small meadow. Under the flat black shadows of the spruce boughs he regained his human form and walked into the clearing. The tinker’s hut was a bonfire burning into the sunset. It was ringed with Dragon Keep’s soldiers. They held Tuar and four other men, one of them Rand. Luvia crouched nearby, a little girl in her arms. The child, terrified by it all, sobbed helplessly.

Next to Luvia lay a heap of blankets, pots, clothing, a fishing net, and a smaller pile of shiny objects: rings, pins, a scabbard with gold fittings, a dagger with a red jewel in its hilt. A fair-haired man in a black cloak was standing in front of the hut, head thrown back, watching it burn. The fire gleamed redly on his skin. He wore a long sword across his back, cavalry-style. His face was youthful, but merciless, hard, like steel that can take a blow, and bend, and never crack: a warrior’s face. His hands, despite the cold, were bare.

Wolf moved quietly closer. The man in black said, “Tuar Maw, you are a fool. You were a tinker. Now you are a thief. You know the penalty for thievery in my domains.” His voice was very deep. “You will be taken to my castle, and chained by your wrists to the wall.”

Luvia struggled to her feet. Her clothes were threadbare, and her feet were wrapped in rags, as were the child’s. “No. It’s winter. He’ll die.” She stepped forward. “My lord, I beg you. He thought to sell the things he took, to buy food for us.”

The man in black glanced at her. Wolf thought he saw a softness in the ruthless gaze. “Do you plead for him? He beats you.”

She said, “He is my child’s father. He is not evil, lord, only weak, and easily led. He listened to that man’s talk—” She pointed at Rand. The big man cursed, calling her whore and bitch. One of the soldiers holding him struck him in the face. He thrashed, almost breaking free of their grip.

“I see.” The man in black frowned. “Very well. I will spare his life.” Tuar’s head lifted. “But punishment there must be. Tuar Maw! Which arm will you lose?” The color went from Tuar’s face. “Choose, or I choose for you.” But Tuar could not speak. The man in black drew his sword. It glowed red, like fire. “The left. Stretch him out.” Four men wrestled the tinker down. One of them, Wolf saw, was Marek. A soldier tied a rope to Tuar’s left wrist, and pulled it taut. Luvia covered her child’s eyes and averted her head. The sword swept down, and sliced cleanly through the arm at the elbow. The man in black held the blade against the cut limb. Tuar screamed and slumped onto the snow. There was a stink of burnt flesh.

The man knelt, cleansed the sword in snow, and wiped it with a cloth. Rising, he said softly to Luvia, “If you come to the castle, you can have food, and a bed. You need not stay with him.” But she shuddered, courage spent, and clutched the little girl tight, and did not answer.

Suddenly he looked up, directly at Wolf...
The snow was on fire. There was blue flame all around him, sweeping toward the trees, he was helpless, trapped, he could not escape ...
Then there were soldiers on either side of him, holding him still, and the tip of the sword was inches from his throat. He could not look away.

Dragon.

“My lord,” Wolf said, in a whisper.

A deep voice said thoughtfully, “Who are you to call me
lord
? I never took your oath.” The bright hot gaze was like a vise on his mind. Wolf could not have moved had he wanted to.

He said, throat tight, “My lord, I am Illemar Dahranni, called Wolf. I came from Ujo. I served the Lemininkai for nine years. Kalni Leminin released me from his service two years ago. I live in the meadow below this one with my wife, Thea the weaver.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I thought the hut was burning,” Wolf said simply. “I came to help.”

The raking blue stare broke the sweat out on Wolf’s face. “Release him,” Karadur said. He sheathed his sword. The hands clamped on Wolf’s arms opened. “Bring
them
.” He turned, a shadow moving over snow. The soldiers dragged the four men in his wake.

When they were well gone, Wolf went forward. Tuar was moaning, but no blood seeped from the stump: Karadur’s sword had seared it cleanly as a physician’s knife. Luvia looked mutely at Wolf. Her eyes were hollow with shock. She was younger than he had thought; he guessed her to be little more than twenty, and his heart wrung with pity for her.

“Come to my house,” he said gently. “All of you. You may sleep there tonight.”

She shook her head. “He would not like that.” She meant, he realized, Tuar.

“You and the child need shelter. It will be dark soon.” She was stubborn with grief. “We stay with him.” He tried to persuade her otherwise, but she refused to move. The child hid its head in her lap.

The next day, Wolf wrote a thoughtful letter to Hawk.

I have met the Dragon of Chingura. We met by accident; he nearly put a sword through my throat. He has hair like the sun and eyes like blue fire, and a grip, so I’m told, that can crack stone. He deals harsh justice. But he is Dragon; I touched his mind, and I am as certain of it as I am of my own nature, or Bear’s, or yours.

A month later, visiting Sleeth, he told Ono what he had seen.

“Aye, I heard about that. Kojiro the Black would have had them all stripped naked and chained on the castle wall for the mountain crows to pick,” the smith said calmly. “But I saw that woman a few days ago, I think it was the same one, at the Red Oak. When are you bringing Thea and the boy to visit us?”

Wolf inquired at the Red Oak. Egain said,
“I’ve got her scrubbing pots.”

“And Tuar?”

“He’s working in my stable. He’s not bad with horses, and they don’t care what his arm looks like.”

“That’s kind of you, considering.”

“What mischief can a one-handed groom do? Besides, I know his mother.”

“Do you know what happened to Rand, and the others?”

“The lord did as his father would have done: he put them on the walls. They died.”

In a far, cold place, in a cage made of ice, a naked man lay shivering. A soft, malevolent voice spoke to him; it seemed to come from everywhere: the air, the ice, his mind; it was inescapable as the cold.

“...
You can never leave,”
it said. “You
believe you can. You imagine that you are free, free of snow and ice, free of torment, free of nightmare..
.” The voice laughed, like ice melting, and cold sweat sluiced down the trembling man’s sides.

“
You are not free, traitor. You are in a cage. Your skin sticks to the bars. Your flesh rips each time you move. You freeze, and you beg, and no one comes to open the door. You cannot get out. You will never get out. The ice runs in your veins, in your heart.

“
You will never be free. You will never be warm...
”

4

That July, as the blistering sunlight settled across neatly planted fields, a dark-haired, plain-faced stranger appeared on foot at Sleeth’s south gate. She bore a dagger at her hip, and a quiver of arrows slung across her back. She carried an Isojai hunting bow.

She was Terrill Chernico, called Hawk, she told the gate guards; she was from Ujo, and had come north to visit a friend. “Is there a tavern nearby where I can get a meal?” she asked. “I hear the beer is excellent in Sleeth.”

The chief guard looked pleased. “Down this street and to the left: the Red Oak. You can’t miss it. Tell them Bjom Skalson at the gate sent you.”

In the Red Oak, the tables were filled with traders from the south, farmers in town for supplies, and craftsmen taking their midday break. At a table beside the door, three men hunched over a keph board. There was an empty chair beside one of them; Hawk sat in it. She was served red ale and a bowl of lamb stew. It was excellent, flavored with onions and dill.

Across the room a chair tipped with a bang as an argument broke out between two flushed youths. A man with a sandy-red beard and no hair on the top of his head hurried from the kitchen, calmed the combatants, and competently eased them both out the door. Hawk lifted a hand to attract his attention.

When he came to the table, she said, “My respects to your cook, and to whomever makes your red ale.”

His experienced appraisal took in the quality of her boots and the silver inlay on her dagger’s hilt. “Thank you,” he said. “We like our customers to be satisfied.”

“I came from Ujo. I am friend to Illemar Dahranni, whom most people call Wolf. I’ve not seen him since he left Ujo. But I know he came north to live, that he married a woman of Sleeth, and that they have a son. Can you tell me, are he and his family well?”

“A friend of Wolf’s! Luvia! A fresh glass of ale for this customer. My name’s Egain,” the innkeeper said. “That ale you’re drinking was brewed by Serret, Thea’s mother. As far as I know, they’re both well. Of course, it’s been a while since I’ve seen them; at least a month: it was a bad winter, which tends to keep folks inside, and then what with planting, and the traders coming—” He waved a hand at the crowded room.

“How do I find them?”

“Follow the river. They live north of here, in a meadow above Sleeth. Wolf built the house himself. You’ll see a stand of birches, and a well. Are you on foot? I can lend you a horse from my stable.”

“Thank you, but I need none,” Hawk said.

The meadow was not hard to find. A neat house squatted beside white-trunked birches. A hill sheltered it from the bite of the northern wind. To the east, beyond a dark outline of trees, the river, high now with snow melted from the mountain passes, sang a distant song. As she spiraled down into the small clearing, Hawk smelled woodsmoke—apple wood, by the scent—and heard the sound of an ax. To the rear of the house, a man was chopping wood, and laying it neatly on a woodpile. His black hair was tipped with silver, and he swung the ax in a way that she knew. She saw his face lift to follow her flight.

She landed, and changed. They looked at one another.

“It’s summertime. So you came,” Wolf said. He brought her into the house. “Thea. Here’s someone I want you to meet.” Thea came from the kitchen. “Thea, this is my friend Terrill, called Hawk, from Ujo. This is Thea Serretsdatter Dahranni, my wife.”

The two women gazed gravely at each other. Thea said, “Welcome to the north, Hawk of Ujo. My husband has spoken to me of you.”

“And he has written to me of you,” Hawk said, “and of your son. May I see him?”

Thea brought the visitor to the cradle beside the hearth. Shem lay on his back, strong legs kicking. He was singing softly. “This is Shem,” Thea said. She lifted him from the cradle. He gurgled, and swung a hand at her face. The fine dark hair that had covered his head at birth had fallen off, to be replaced by thicker dark hair. His eyes were wide and light, with eyebrows that swept across his face like wings: Thea’s eyes, Thea’s brows.

Hawk laid her smallest finger against his fingers. “He has a wolf’s grip,” she said, as the infant’s hand curled tightly. He nestled against his mother’s cheek. His questing eyes moved from her familiar face to the face of the stranger. Then he smiled, and reached for a strand of her long dark hair, and held it firmly.

Hawk stayed with Thea and Wolf three days. She slept beside the hearth, on a pallet made of Thea’s softest blankets. For two days, she joined Wolf to weed and water the garden; she piled wood; she fished in the river; she sat with Thea in the upper chamber, silent and companionable, while the shuttle sped whispering across the threads on the loom.

In the evening, by hearth and lamplight, the three of them sat together beside the apple-scented fire. Thea sang Shem a lullaby. “
Bird sleeps, insect creeps, sunshine goes a-walking, Starlight find, quiet mind, hear the night a-talking
...” Wolf brought knives and a wood block from his workroom. Firelight sparked off the blade of his small knife. The block took rudimentary shape: four long legs, a lean arching neck and long-nosed head, a fluid tail.

“What is it?” Thea asked. “Not a dragon this time.” They shared a private smile.

“It’s a horse,” Wolf said. “For when he’s older.”

The third day, Wolf and Hawk went hunting in the hills above Dragon Keep. Hawk soared in the tricky currents over the mountains, while Wolf ran, silent, deadly, through the steep-sided crags and dark, dense, shadowed woods. They flushed, and ignored, grouse, two quarrelsome weasels, and a vixen desperate to protect her month-old cubs.

The hunting is sparse today, my brother,
Hawk said.

So it has been. Do you want to turn back?

Not I.

Late in the afternoon they surprised a tribe of long-legged goats, who bounded in panic from the wolf-scent. Wolf leaped upon a straggling kid, and tore out its throat. In the slanting light, they cooked the meat, and ate, and dressed the kill to bring back to the house. Wolf cut a pole, and they hung the meat from it. Carrying it between them, they made the slow, tricky journey down the trails to the meadow. On the way, they passed the bear cave in which Wolf had slept while Shem was born. The summer stars gleamed overhead; so bright, they seemed close enough to touch.