Dragon's Winter (23 page)

In the morning, as was her custom, Hawk woke early.

For a moment, she did not know where she was. The feel of the air, pure and thin and cold against her skin, was like the feel of the air in Voiana, the town in which she had been born. Eyes closed, she listened for her sister Ana’s soft breathing in the nearby bed...

Then she opened her eyes, to see cold dark walls, a brazier, a high shuttered window. No, this was not her mother’s house. Rising, she dressed. The Keep was still, though sentries moved on the walls. Smoke from the kitchen rose into the grey dawn sky. She cleaned and oiled her weapons. That done, she went to breakfast. The dining hall was filled with the smell of sausage and the clamor of men. As she entered the big hall, an arm waved at her. She went toward it, and found Huw and Orm sitting side by side. Huw made a place for her.

After the meal, she went searching for Karadur Atani. She went first to the tower chamber, where Derry, the blond page, had told her he was certain to be. He was not. She went next to the barracks, and from there back to the dining hall, and lastly the kitchens.

“Gods above,” said an ill-tempered, balding man with an apron, “why would he be here? Have you tried the stable?”

She tried the stable, and the fields where yelling men charged their horses at each other. “No,” Herugin said, “he hasn’t been here this morning. Did you try the tower?”

As she left the stable, Hawk passed a small training ring. In it a solitary rider was taking a broad-back roan gelding through its paces. She recognized Azil Aumson. His gloved hands lay still on the horse’s withers, barely touching the reins, as he turned the big horse into figure-eights using knees and thighs, as archers must in order to be free to shoot on the run.

On her way back to the tower, she stopped by the second-floor chamber in which Rogys slept. Though his face was still discolored and swollen, his breathing was even and easy.

“Dragon came in this morning,” Kiala replied to her question. “But I haven’t seen him since. Did you look in the library? He goes there sometimes.”

“I don’t know where it is.”

“Torik can show you.”

The library smelled of books, and of a thousand stories caught within scrolls or between leather covers. Hawk stalked covetously through it. Torik trailed her, unsure whether she should even be there. “No one but Dragon ever comes here,” he said nervously.

“I’ll wager the physician does,” she told him, noting a well-used Guerin’s
The Properties of Herbs
on a middle shelf. She found a copy of Netheren’s
History of Ryoka,
bound as she had never seen it; a scroll of Lucio’s
Journeys
lying loose on a table; a complete, though smudged, copy of Leopoldo’s
Annals—
the dusty cover left brown smears on her fingers—and maps, many maps, even star maps. Her fingers itched to unroll them.

Finally she returned to the tower. This time she saw what she had not noticed before: a second door off the little landing. She pushed at it, and it opened.

Sunshine glared off dark stone. She shielded her eyes with one hand. Dark pebbly granite extended into an eternity of sky. Twenty feet away from her, Karadur Atani stood with his back to the door.

He whipped around, blue eyes blazing dangerously, and she braced herself for fire. But he caught it back. “Hawk of Ujo.” He surveyed her. “Do you know what this place is?” She shook her head. “You of all people should be able to guess. Come. Look closely.” He beckoned. She walked forward. The granite was scarred in regular patterns; a repeating scar of five radiant lines, the clutch and drag of huge, diamond-hard talons.

The hairs lifted on the nape of her neck. “The Dragon’s Roost.”

“Yes. I was two, I think, when my father first showed me this place. He lifted me between his hands, and held me in the air. I was very small. I remember the blue sky, and the heat of his hands.” He shook his shoulders loose, like a man about to lift a heavy weight. His tone changed. “So. Are you still minded to join my war band?”

“I am, my lord.”

“Have you met my captain, Lorimir Ness?”

She nodded.

“Let him know that you have signed on. He will tell you what your duties should be.”

She bowed.

“Hunter.”

“My lord?”

For a moment she thought she saw him smile. “You will not find service in my company boring.”

Lorimir assigned her to Murgain’s troop. The plump man was a fine archer, and a patient teacher, though a little soft with the younger ones, permitting more horseplay than Hawk ever had among her soldiers. But Orm, his sergeant, was not soft, and he missed nothing.

The first three days she trained with the others. Though each of the captains had separate troops, all the soldiers were expected to know how to ride, mount a charge, use a spear on horse or foot, shoot—though some of them, goddess knew, shot very badly indeed—and handle a blade. Hawk had never enjoyed sword practice: the wooden training weapons were always too long for her, and men who accepted that she could, and did, consistently outshoot them, could not endure the thought that they might lose a sword bout to a woman, and came at her with rage. She ended up disarmed, bruised, angry, and, as most of her instructors had gently or caustically pointed out to her, theoretically dead.

The fourth day, Murgain told her at breakfast that she was excused from sword practice. “I want you to teach the short bow.” He jerked a thumb toward the men sprawled along the benches. “Take them to the field and let them show you what they can do. Choose the ones with talent, and let me know who they are. I’ll send Orm with you, if you wish, to keep them in line.”

She said quietly, “I’ll keep them in line. I don’t need Orm.” She pointed: “You, you—get up. Move!” The command snap, which she could summon without raising her voice, made them hop without thinking. “Huw, take some men with you and draw ten Isojai bows, with quivers and arrows for each of them. Meet us at the range.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Huw said. He dragged Amor and Gavin with him.

“Let’s go,” she said. She looked hard at the others. By the time they reached the range, Huw and his assistants had arrived with the arrows. “Targets. Finle and Stark, set them up close.” Stark sauntered toward the round, tied discs of hay. Finle followed, more slowly. With elaborate care, like men in a dream, they rolled the targets against the wood frames. The other men watched her, wondering what she would do.

She waited patiently until the malcontents halted their provocative fussing, and then called, “Finle. Stay there.” She strung her bow, and, taking five arrows from her quiver, handed them to Huw, fanning them out as she did so, steel points turned away from her. “Hold them so,” she told him. Taking the first of them from him, she nocked her bow, and raised her voice. “You will find the pull on the short bow surprisingly strong. You will want to flex your left elbow—so. Finle! Lay your hand on the center of the target.” She saw him check, and extend his hand. “Splay your fingers.” He obeyed. “Don’t move them.”

She said casually to the entranced observers, “Accuracy and speed are a matter of practice, of course, just as they are with the longbow.” She shot the first arrow hissing into the straw beside Finle’s thumb. The sweat sprang on his face. The second arrow fell into the gap between his thumb and second finger. Coolly she sent the last three arrows into the straw between his fingers. “Few of you can do that with the longbow.” She raised her voice again. “Finle, come in now. Bring the arrows.”

She gave Murgain a list of names, fifteen in all. Orm and Huw were both on it. “Finle’s not on here,” he said, surprised. “He can shoot anything.”

“He doesn’t want my teaching.” Though outwardly docile, he had handled the little bow clumsily, deliberately fumble-fingered, glancing at her sideways to confirm that she’d noted his ineptitude. “What’s wrong with him?”

“His friend Garin was killed the first time the wargs attacked. They grew up together, close as brothers.” He peered at the list. “Irok’s not on here either.”

She had watched the little hunter shoot. “There’s nothing I can teach
him
.”

The fifth afternoon, Rogys returned to barracks. No one commented on his swollen face; his friends, with unexpected delicacy, behaved as if he had never been away. At dinner that night, he laughed and talked, shoulder to shoulder with his fellow horsemen.

After the meal the men pulled the tables back. A troop of four ringed and beribboned jugglers had ridden up from Castria. Bare-chested, shining with sweat in the torchlight, the jugglers tossed plates and knives and lit torches back and forth in a spinning storm. Half-hidden in the shadows, Karadur Atani leaned against a wall to watch them. Azil Aumson stood near him. Hawk had heard the name the soldiers gave him. They rarely spoke of him: he was Dragon’s business. That night, leaning on the ramparts beneath the splendid stars, she tried again to find Bear. Still, there was no answer. She had asked Irok how long it would take a man to go from Dragon Keep to Mitligund. He had shrugged. “Clear weather, plenty food, no holes in the snow, no wolves, no bears, seven, eight days.”

A bear loping through drifts of snow moved faster than any man. But even Bear could be slowed by storm, and he would need to hunt. “What’s the hunting like?”

“Four years, three years ago—good. Elk, deer, goose. Now terrible.”

“Why?”

“Wizard. Makes ice.”

Suddenly everything began to happen very quickly. Telchor Felse, the smith, brought every sword and spear in the armory into the light, sharpening the dull ones, examining each for loose rivets and nicks that could weaken a blade in battle. Upstairs, Macallan did the same with his little knives.

Hawk took one of her boots to the leather-workers, and had them replace a loose heel. She sharpened her dagger and her arrowheads. Ten men were detailed to make torches, winding pitch-dipped cloth around wood splits.

“What are we going to do with fifty torches?” Huw asked.

“Wait and see,” Orm said, stretching. “That’s the last of them. Gods, my back’s sore.”

The horses were rested, and exercised, and rested again. Edruyn, riding too fast on slippery ground, lamed one of the mares. Herugin took him back of the stables and thrashed him, though not so harshly that the boy could not ride, or fight. One of the ten pack mules destined to go north sickened, and had to be replaced. Telchor Felse examined the hooves of fifteen mules and eighty horses, and spent three days replacing worn or ill-fitting shoes.

Two nights before the April full moon, Spring Moon, Karadur ordered a feast. Ambrosial smells floated across the fields all day. The men in the training hall, under Lorimir Ness’s stern eye, moved through their swordwork as if drugged, or in love. By sundown, it was impossible to concentrate, or even to think about anything except food. When the dining hall opened, the men swarmed in to find waiting for them a meal fit for a midsummer feast: salmon steaks and roast goose and glazed honeyed ham, onions and beans and bread, sweet potato pie drizzled with sweet cream. They cheered the cook, and ate as if they expected it to be their last meal.

Hawk sat with the archers, a wine cup between her palms. Huw, beside her, was steadily devouring his second—or was it his third?—piece of pie. She closed her eyes, and then opened them, jolted by sudden noise. The men at Dragon’s table were pounding on it with fists and empty tankards and the hilts of their daggers.

The hard, strident drumming spread to the other tables. Dragon let the clamor continue for a few minutes. Then he rose, and raised a hand. Pitching his deep voice so that it filled the long hall, he said, “A warrior’s trade is war. It is what he studies, and what he longs for.”

The drumming hilts responded:
Yes.
Yes.

“In two days’ time, your schooling ends. In two days’ time, you march north. You have an enemy there: a cruel, ignoble enemy. His wargs have taken life from your comrades and children and friends. You have the right to vengeance, and you will take it utterly.

“Your enemy has a stronghold in Mitligund.”

In Mitligund
, the daggers cried.

“He calls it the Black Citadel. You will destroy it. He has men who fight for him.”

Who fight for him, for him, for him.

“You will kill them. He has wargs who do his bidding. You will hunt them as they have hunted your friends, and you will kill them, too.”

The young men sat upright, cheeks flushed, eyes shining. Karadur lowered his voice a tone. “Now I must command a favor of you, a favor which some of you will hate me for.” The men sat straighter. “A small force must remain at the Keep, to hold it, and to keep the farmers and villagers vigilant while the war band is gone. Marek Gavrinson. Stand up.” At the center table, the bearded man rose. “I wish you to govern this force. As proof of my trust, I promote you to lieutenant, and raise your pay commensurably. I know,” the deep voice continued, “that at this moment you would prefer to be a foot soldier in the war band, and that you are damning my wishes to the deepest hell you know. But I also know that you will obey me. The following men will fight in your command. Tallis. Arnor. Rogys. Sigli. Ilain. Wegen.” He named twelve altogether. “Into your charge I give my castle and the lives of those who depend on it. Yours is a place of honor. I know you will not fail me.”