Dragonheart (13 page)

Bowen didn’t. Sighting along his arrow shaft, he pulled the bow back taut and loosed the arrow.

It flew to its target, passing under the dragon’s wing. The beast let out a screech and lurched in the sky. He clutched his chest, grasping the shaft that was protruding from it, and went into a staggering spin, then plummeted into the lake, disappearing below the surface.

The lord excitedly hugged Bowen and the crowd descended on him with jubilant shouts. Bowen looked at his bow. He loved the feel of it in his hands. He had designed it to be longer than most bows; it was almost as tall as a man. He had carved it himself from yew wood, which gave it rare resiliency and range. A special weapon for a special purpose . . . dragonslaying.

Bowen felt as though he had betrayed it.

The dragon luxuriated in the silence of the water, swimming along the bottom of the lake. It had not been pleasant to hear the cheers that had greeted his death. How far man and dragon had drifted from the Once-ways, he thought sadly.

Bowen’s aim had been true. The arrow had passed easily under his wing, where he had clamped a claw on the shaft, catching it in midflight. He had yelped and twisted, making it look as though the knight had scored a direct hit. It was ridiculous, of course, to think that such a tiny little twig could actually fell a creature of his stature. Still the crowd had been convinced, the impression no doubt helped immeasurably by his spinning death dive into the lake. As spectacular as it was, it had also been humiliating; but no more so, he supposed, than Bowen’s loss back at the wheatfields. The dragon knew that this awkward alliance was not going to satisfy either of them for very long. Nor had he ever intended that it should. He only hoped it would last until he could think of something better. But whatever decision he made, he knew it would lead to the same inevitable conclusion.

The water had become cold. He had swum far enough downlake to surface safely. As he broke the water he could still hear the distant shouts of the villagers touting Bowen. Not so distant—in fact, quite close—he heard a confused, “Baaa!” A wayward sheep, having strayed from the herd, grazed along the shore.

“Hellooo . . .” The dragon’s eyes gleamed as his tongue flicked hungrily across his lips . . .

The dragon idly watched the patch of wool he had belched up bounce in the air above him as he floated along on his back, his wings unfolded just enough to catch the current of the wind. He drifted down beside Bowen who tallied the day’s take as he rode through the tall grass of the plain.

“Most profitable, I should have met you long ago, dragon.” Bowen clinked the money back into its purse.

“No compunctions, then?” The dragon tried to make the question sound idle. It seemed to surprise the knight in any case.

“About what?”

“Well, such deception hardly befits . . . a . . . knight of the Old Code . . .” The dragon tried to remain blasé, playfully blowing at the puff of fleece. Rankled, Bowen angrily snatched it out of the air and wheeled on the dragon.

“That’s deba . . .” he began—only the dragon was no longer there. He had floated to the other side of the knight. “That’s debatable,” Bowen said defensively, watching the dragon drift in circles around him. “Fleecing Einon’s lordly lackeys is a service to mankind.”

“Is it?” the dragon wondered placidly. “When you squeeze the nobility, it’s the peasants who feel the pinch.”

Two more puffs of fleece popped out of the dragon’s mouth on the words
peasants
and
pinch.
Bowen swiped them from his face, even as he tried to deflect the dragon’s verbal blow.

“Not my concern.” Bowen sneered. “Why put my neck on the chopping block for people afraid to risk their own? Don’t clutter up a clever scheme with murky morality.”

Bowen’s surly grumble betrayed his feigned indifference. As he spoke the dragon surreptitiously studied him. And suddenly he knew. He knew. This was the one. The one he had been waiting for. The knight had it in him. But how was he to bring it forth? The ragged emblem on his breast was like the ragged scar on the dragon’s own. Old wounds that tore deep.

“So be it”—the dragon shrugged—
“Knight of the Old Code . . .”

The subtle emphasis ignited Bowen’s hot retort. “If I wanted my conscience pricked, I’d have stayed with the priest. And what does a dragon know of the Old Code, anyway?” he demanded.

“ ‘His blade defends the helpless,’ ” quoted the dragon. “ ‘His might upholds the weak; his word speaks only truth—’ ”

“Stop it! I remember the words. And that’s all it is! A memory. Dead and gone. And nothing—
nothing
—can bring it back.”

Bowen’s voice was thick with emotion. He turned from the dragon.

“You sound like one who tried . . .” spoke the dragon gently.

“And failed . . . So I no longer try to change the world, dragon, but merely try to get by in it. Just like you.”

“Yes . . .” The dragon could not keep the faint lilt of sorrow out of his own voice. “Just like me.”

The dragon twisted his body and alighted on the ground next to Bowen. The grass swishing in the wind was all that broke the silence as they moved on.

Fourteen

OUT OF THE FLAMES

“I remember now . . .”

Einon drunkenly watched the roasted pig twirl on the spit, the fire crackling its skin. Red, leaping flames prompted red, leaping thoughts. But they flickered and changed as fast as the ever-altering firelight and he soon forgot them. Just as well. He slumped in his chair and turned back to the wrestling match that was going on around him. No weighty matters tonight. He was too drunk and it was too hot. So hot that they had moved the banquet tables into the courtyard; but what with the fire and the torches, it was not much cooler there.

Sweat rolled down Brok’s bare, barrel chest as he knuckle-wrestled two opponents at once. He twisted one out of his chair and the man drunkenly toppled back into the fire with a yelp. The knights and their ladies roared their approval as the servants obligingly beat the flames off the defeated wrestler.

Urged on with raucous shouts and laughter, Brok flung the other combatant out of his chair onto the table. There was a loud crack as the man’s finger bone snapped, and with a howl, he went sliding past the cheering diners, sending food and crockery flying. He skidded to a stop at the end of the table. His head flopped over the edge. He groaned and then passed out, his rolled-up eyes staring vacantly at Aislinn.

Einon laughed. He was not so drunk that he couldn’t appreciate the incongruity of the moment. His mother was the only point of stillness in the rowdy revelry, primly seated at the opposite end of the table, solitarily engaged in shifting carved wooden figures in geometric positions over a board of painted tiles.

She called it chess; another strange ritual of her people. She told him it was a game of war and had tried to teach it to him once when he was a boy. But as far as Einon was concerned, it was nothing like war. This game was rigid and formal and full of silly rules. War was bloody and chaotic and had only one rule: stay alive to crush your enemies. In Aislinn’s game churchmen fought and the queen had more power than any other piece, while the king cowered in the back lines of the board. A game for fools or cowards . . . or dead people like his mother’s. Only Bowen had ever played the game with her, claiming that it taught strategy. But Einon had always suspected Bowen played merely out of courtesy rather than from any true interest.

Now Aislinn played by herself. Einon did not understand how a game for two could be played alone, but then his mother seemed to do everything alone. She would have eaten alone tonight, as she usually did, had he not insisted on her presence. She did too much alone. Like going among the rabble with her medicines and cures. It was unseemly and undignified. She was the king’s mother and he would not have her flouting the official policies of his court. He would not have her secret and quiet and alone.

He shouted down the table at her, gesturing to the drunken wrestler who was sprawled next to her. “Can he continue, Mother?”

Aislinn lifted the unconscious man’s arm off her chessboard by its sleeve and dropped it disdainfully over the edge of the table. She calmly straightened the chess pieces and resumed her contemplation of the board, never even glancing up.

“The field is the indomitable Sir Brok’s, my son.”

While Brok performed a victory dance to the delighted roar of the crowd, Einon spun to Felton, who sat beside him. Nestled drunkenly in Felton’s arms was a buxom blond minx, obviously a peasant, despite her gorgeous robes. Purses and stacks of coins littered the table in front of them. Einon scooped two stacks from Felton’s pile and placed them on his own. “Twenty you owe me, Felton!”

Felton had started to protest feebly, when Aislinn came to his rescue.

“Ten
. . . my son.”

The correction was spoken in a flat calm voice. Einon frowned down the table at his mother, who looked up from her board. She sipped her wine, staring at her son from over the rim of her cup. Weary despair, not age, had caused her beauty to fade. But resilient strength still glittered from her straightforward gaze. It reminded Einon of another gaze, and shaking off this unpleasant memory, he turned his frown on Felton. The golden lushness of the minx’s cleavage nearly popped from her gown as she squashed it on the table, leaning over to slide one of Felton’s coin stacks back toward her. Felton smiled queasily at his king’s displeasure and slapped the girl’s hand off the coins.

“No! Rowe . . . Ros . . . my pet!” he stuttered, and scooted the coins back into Einon’s pile. “The spectacle of Sir Brok’s prowess is worth double the wager, sire!”

This elicited a hearty laugh from Einon, and his courtiers followed suit. Felton stroked his pouting minx’s cheek and giggled giddily along. Einon reeled to his feet, snatching up a flagon to pour more wine. It was empty. He banged it on the table, grabbing the arm of a nearby serving girl.

“More wine, wench! The king’s thirst must be slaked!”

The girl whirled on him, an upraised dagger in her hand. “Slake it with blood, Piglet!”

The knife plunged down. Einon jerked the flagon up. The blade rattled into its hollow, piercing the bottom of the vessel before it got stuck, stopping just inches away from Einon’s eye.

Growling, Einon wrenched the flagon back, jerking the knife from the girl’s hand, and slammed her down to the ground. She fell before the fire, her red hair flying out from under her shawl, A half-dozen swords also flew out, ready to stab her to death.

“No!”

The blades halted at the king’s command, Einon staggered forward, the glow of the fire and the glow of the girl’s hair flickering in his sobering gaze, lighting the elusive memory in his brain. He leaned down and pulled her up by the loose leather band that was tied about her throat. “I know . . . you . . .” Recognition emerged from the crimson fog of wine, and it too was red. “The quarry! The blind dog’s whelp!” Einon laughed. “Family devotion! A fine thing!” He whirled to the queen. “Isn’t it, Mother?”

Only Aislinn’s resolute, unwavering gaze responded to his sneering question . . . or accusation. The queen’s eyes were filled with quiet admiration for the girl. Einon turned his sneer back on his would-be assassin.

“First you beg mercy for your father’s fate. Then try to avenge it.” He paused. “And now you’ll share it.”

But the conviction in his words was fleeting, and even as Einon’s sneer fled he realized it had not been a trick of distance or of the firelight that day in the quarry. The girl was, indeed, beautiful . . . even as she spat in his face.

“In your kingdom, Einon, there are worse fates than death.”

In one motion, Einon wiped his face and slapped the girl across hers. His sneer was back.

“I’ll think up one for you! Lock her up!”

Brok and some others grabbed the girl and dragged her off. Einon gazed at the dagger, still stuck in the flagon. He tore it free and the pitcher clanked to the courtyard stones. With the dagger, he carved a hunk of meat from the pig carcass on the spit and brought it to his mouth to tear off a bite. But suddenly he hesitated. The girl had called him Piglet. Someone else had called him that once. He flicked the meat off the blade and it went sizzling back into the fire.

Einon turned to see his mother watching him in inscrutable silence. She slid her white queen over the chessboard and took the knight guarding the black king.

“Check,” she muttered, her eyes drifting back to the game.

Einon distractedly hacked at the scaffolding cross brace with the girl’s dagger. Still in his night robes, he stood amid the construction rubble of his half-built tower room. The morning sun streamed through the arched portal of the single erected wall. The view was spectacular. The room would be magnificent when it was finished. Einon jabbed the knife into the brace again.

Workmen discreetly scuttled about him. Their tools banged and rasped and scraped in counterpoint to his violent whittling; the noise becoming louder in his head, swirling and jarring, overwhelming his mind and memory with other sounds . . . sounds of battle . . . clanking metal . . . ringing swords . . . crackling fire.

Einon’s eyes suddenly sparked with a ferocious light. He flew down the stairs, through the castle halls, scattering servants out of his path, flinging open doors before the guards who were stationed nearby them knew he was there. He stalked across the courtyard with determined purpose, through the debris of last night’s feast and the ashes of the cookfire. Then bolting through the grated doorway of another building, he charged down a passage and barged into a small, hot room, startling the red-haired girl who was chained against the wall.

The trickle of sunlight from the narrow window fell across her face as she stared into Einon’s intense, unnerving gaze. He slid the dagger between the folds of his robe and idly stroked his chest with it.

“I remember now,” he said, pressing close to her. “The blind man . . . your father . . . the redbeard who killed my father . . . and you gave me this . . .”