Dragon Business, The (6 page)

T
HE THREE COMPANIONS
set up camp in an isolated section of forest. They cooked the salt pork in a pot with some dried beans and ate a satisfying repast, although much inferior to the post-dragon-slaying feast King Ashtok had thrown. Reeger found flavorful herbs to add to the pot along with some wild mushrooms that he and Cullin decided were probably nonpoisonous.

While their meal cooked over the campfire, Dalbry withdrew his fine sword, inspected the obsidian chips in its hilt, lifted it, tested the balance. In slow motion, he swept the weapon from one side to the other. He bent down to stretch his calf muscles, twisted at his waist to make himself limber. When he finished his warm-up, he swished the sword in painstaking patterns, contorting his body to make dramatic moves. He paid close attention to his form.

“I hope you fight with more speed than that in a real battle, Dalbry,” Reeger said. “An opponent could die of old age or boredom while waiting for that blade to strike.”

The knight held his perfect pose. “My father taught me that form is just as important as substance.” He crouched, lifted one foot, balanced there. “This move is called Raven on Corpse.” He lurched forward, pushing the sword in front of him. “And that’s Oxcart Through Mud.”

Reeger sat down on a stump and used a stick to stir the cookpot. “And this one’s called Frog Sitting on Lily Pad.”

Cullin retrieved his practice sword, a workmanlike unadorned blade with a dull edge. Since it mostly remained in its scabbard, the training sword served its purpose. He lifted his own weapon and stepped in front of Dalbry. “Should we practice? If I’m going to be a knight someday, I need to know what I’m doing. Even if I’m not a real squire, I still have to play one in our performance.”

Dalbry lifted his sword, ready to defend himself. “Your move first.”

Hoping to surprise the knight, Cullin charged forward, flailing his practice sword from side to side. Dalbry easily parried, and the ringing sound of metal-on-metal disturbed a group of birds that had settled into the trees overhead. They squawked in annoyance, but Cullin considered it a fair payback for all the times birds had woken him up far too early in the morning.

He swung again, and his practice sword clashed against Dalbry’s blade. The impact vibrated all up his forearm. The older knight just frowned at him. “Swordplay depends on more than just enthusiasm, lad. If you’re trying to startle me or distract me with that clumsy flurry, then you succeeded.”

Cullin stepped back, holding up his sword and trying to imitate Dalbry’s stance. “I was trying to lower your expectations so that you’d underestimate my skill. Then I hoped I might get lucky.”

Dalbry considered. “A valid strategy, though not one that my father ever taught me. He made me learn many accepted standards of chivalrous behavior.” He gave a wan smile. “Some of it sank in.”

They practiced for a few more minutes, but Dalbry didn’t have his heart in it, preoccupied by other thoughts. The older knight wiped sweat from his brow, nodded to Cullin. “You keep practicing with yourself. I’ll watch from here.”

Cullin swished the training sword in the air. “That won’t do any good against real enemies.”

“Think of it as preparation for the day when you have to fight an invisible foe.”

Sir Dalbry sat by the fire munching on dried apricots, slipping each pit into the other sack. His expression was distant and wistful, as if the apricots triggered memories for him.

“In the next town, maybe we should buy some dried peaches or prunes,” Cullin suggested after he had worn himself out fighting imaginary invisible foes. “Just for variety.”

Dalbry shook his head. “No, it has to be apricots.”

“It’s about time you told him the rustin’ story,” Reeger said. “The lad’s been with us long enough. He deserves to know.”

Cullin was surprised. “There’s a story behind the apricots?” He slid the practice sword back into its scabbard.

“Special apricots. The best ever grown on this Earth, from the most beautiful orchard you’ve ever seen, in a fief that is no more.” The older knight heaved a deep sigh.

Reeger said, “Go on, tell the whole thing. If nothing else, it’ll help you get into the role.”

“It’s not a role—it’s my history.”

“And if you want to get your revenge, then you have to play that role.”

Dalbry looked at the fresh apricot pit in his fingers. “I prefer to think of it as balancing the scales instead of revenge, but that’s just a matter of semantics.”

Reeger stirred the beans. “Crotchrust, don’t be so damned honorable about everything! You were screwed, Dalbry. They’re all corrupt—that’s why I never feel guilty about scamming them. They’re gullible. They’re fat, lazy.”

“Not to mention vindictive,” Dalbry added. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Now you’ve really got me interested,” Cullin said. “I know you once had your own fief, but you lost it. If Reeger can make up a story at the drop of a hat about a dragon eating your horse, why are you hesitating now?”

“Because this is a true story, lad—therefore it’s harder to tell. It’s a tale of machinations and treachery, of how an innocent and good-hearted young man was cheated out of everything he owned.”

“Ooh,” Cullin said. “I’m all ears.”

Dalbry was raised as a lord and trained as a knight. From his early years, his father hammered into him a solid sense of honor—not that it did him any good in later life.

Dalbry’s father was himself a great knight who had fought in six wars and earned just the right amount of praise and respect. When his leg was injured in a great battle and he had to hobble with a walking stick, Dalbry’s father was granted a permanent fief, a manageable domain with thick forests and arable land. He built a cozy castle—words that don’t usually go together. He married a pretty woman who made him happy, and they managed to make the castle into a home.

Dalbry’s father planted an apricot orchard and tended it. Because the retired knight had a good heart and because the land was blessed, the apricot trees produced a wealth of fruit. All year long Lord Dalbry, his wife, his young son, their servants, and everyone else in his fief ate apricots and more apricots. They stuffed themselves on the fresh fruit before it spoiled, then they ate dried fruit and apricot jam, roast pig with apricots, apricot tarts, apricot bread spread with apricot chutney. Life was good. And the apricots made Lord Dalbry comfortably wealthy.

The old man died when Dalbry was twelve. After all of the great battles he had survived, the monsters he had killed, and the villains he had slain with his sword, Lord Dalbry had succumbed to an infection in his finger after scratching himself on a rusty nail.

Thus, young Dalbry found himself in charge of the fief, aided by a freelance regent who offered his services and presented a long scroll of references. In order to “streamline the leadership,” he suggested that Dalbry’s mother be sent to a nunnery, where she wouldn’t interfere with the regent’s advice; she was content enough to do so, for by now the very sight of apricots made her weep.

Even at the age of twelve, Dalbry was proficient with a sword as well as his letters. His wise father had ingrained in him that a knight should help other people, show mercy whenever possible, and be generous. Though the fief was relatively small, as fiefs went, young Dalbry had not explored it all.

One day, a bedraggled man came to the cozy castle, claiming that his small village on the far side of Dalbry’s fief had been devastated by a flood, the hovels washed away, the fields ruined, the livestock drowned. The village was in terrible shape and needed to rebuild, and the poor suffering people required help to survive the coming winter.

Dalbry’s heart was torn by the anguish on the man’s face. The story struck him to the core.

The freelance regent bent close to advise him. “My Lord, what these people need is money from the treasury. Gold will help them establish their homes, rebuild their paddocks, buy new livestock, and replant their fields. Think of the children!”

Since he had been raised to think like a knight, Dalbry was generous to a fault. He requisitioned enough gold from the treasury to rebuild the village and sent the bedraggled man away with it. The man thanked him profusely, bowing and weeping. Dalbry thought he saw a glance pass between the freelance regent and the flood victim, but he thought nothing of it. At the time.

As soon as the new Lord Dalbry’s generosity became known, other supplicants arrived: people whose villages suffered from a deadly fever, houses blown down by storms, crops wiped out by a mysterious blight. Since Dalbry had helped one flooded village, how could he say no to his other subjects? It was not for him to choose whose plight was worthiest. And so he gave each supplicant an equivalent amount of gold.

Then the freelance regent reported that the adjacent principalities were showing signs of war, and he strongly advised that Dalbry defend his borders. Since the young lord did not know how to do that, the regent brought in a group of his outside friends, mercenaries who were eager to “help.”

The brotherhood of mercenary knights demanded in the name of Dalbry’s father and the honor of their order that he grant them hospitality. They moved into the cozy castle, taking over the rooms, kicking out the servants, emptying the larders. Young Dalbry didn’t know what to do. The brotherhood of mercenary knights boasted about their fellowship with old Lord Dalbry, telling stories of great battles that did not sound familiar at all to the young man, although his father had told him many war tales.

The regent talked about funding the defense of the fief, and he rode off with a donkey and a cart filled with gold. As the young lord rode around his fiefdom to inspect the results of his charity work, poor Dalbry learned that there had never even been a flood, nor a fire, nor a plague, nor any of the disasters for which he had funded relief.

By the time he grew suspicious enough to question what they were doing in his castle, it was far too late. When he returned to the cozy castle, Dalbry found out that he was bankrupt and that the mercenary knights had taken over the castle, the grounds, everything. Laughing, they ran him out of his own castle and seized his property.

But because he was the son of a knight, they dubbed young Dalbry an honorary knight as their special gift before he left. They let him keep his father’s sword and armor as well as his name.

As he was driven from his own home, he watched the mercenary knights chop down the apricot orchards and use the wood to build wagons and siege machines, which they trundled off to war. . .  .

As he finished the story, Dalbry popped another dried apricot into his mouth. The magic sack looked nearly empty now. He carefully stored the pit in the other sack.

“I don’t even like apricots anymore,” he admitted, “but they remind me of my cozy home, my heritage, and everything I lost. I keep these pits in hopes that someday I can plant another orchard of my own.”

“Bloodrust and battlerot, I always get angry when I hear that story,” Reeger said.

Dalbry seemed resigned. “Nevertheless, the experience taught me a valuable lesson and set me on my path in life. Not the path I would have chosen, but . . .”