The Dragon of Despair (59 page)

“I think you’re with us again,” he said. “You’ve been out for a day’s turning and some.”

Ewen grunted astonishment.

“You fell hard,” Lord Polr said, “and though you’ve made sounds enough that we thought there was sense left, you didn’t seem to know what we said to you. Do you understand me now?”

“Yes,” Ewen said or tried to say, but the sound was more a croak than a reply.

“That’s fine,” Lord Polr replied. “You take it easy.”

He waved his arm, gave orders that the doctor be found and brought over.

“You’ll be pleased to know,” Lord Polr continued, carrying on their one-sided conversation with a certain ease that recalled to Ewen his idea of what the social gatherings of the nobility must be like, “that you have no broken bones—not even in your skull, thanks to the giving of the earth on which you fell. The doctor wants to watch you carefully for the next several days. There remains a danger you bruised your brain, but even that swelling should recede if we treat you with sufficient care.”

Will you?
Ewen thought.

“And we will,” Polr answered, anticipating Ewen’s obvious concern. “Look, man, we’re not enemies, not unless you insist on being so. You and your followers overstepped what the king wished. We have been sent to rein you in. You and your people will be relocated with no stigma, no punishment. If you don’t make a fuss about it, I don’t even plan to report our little disagreement of the other morning.

“If you don’t want to return to the town you left, well, I’ll help you relocate. I have some land. My brother, Duke Gyrfalcon, can always use skilled crafters—and you people have shown both your skill and your willingness to work hard.”

Ewen wanted to spit on Lord Polr’s charity, but his mouth was too dry.

“I’ve heard from your companions a bit of what you all have faced these last moonspans,” Polr went on, wonder shading his aristocratic accents. “Crows attacking, wolves and bears as large as horses stalking your walls, fields stripped by deer and elk who held their ground against arrow fire as if they were soldiers! It’s like a story from the days of colonization. I’d think you’d be glad to get away from here.”

You have land,
Ewen thought, glad his mouth and throat would not cooperate with his will. He was afraid of the things he wanted to say.
You have prospects. You have title. I can go back to swallowing other people’s chaff and sawdust and bowing to your kind. I’d rather deal with the bears and pumas. They at least were honest. They don’t “good fellow” you out of one side of their mouths, but expect you to scrape in the mud when they pass you in the street. Give me honest hate any day.

Lord Polr, of course, knew nothing of Ewen’s thoughts, but went on talking as calmly as if they were seated in some parlor.

“We move out in the morning,” he said. “My soldiers have worked side by side with your people…”

Stop calling them “my” people!
Ewen thought furiously, though all that came from his lips was a strangled grunt that Lord Polr took as a request for water. He carefully tilted the canteen against Ewen’s lips, still talking.

“And the progress has been amazing. His Majesty insisted that we bring the wheels and axles. They were a heavy load, but worth it. No one need leave anything they wish to take.”

Except for dreams and hopes and pride
, Ewen thought.

“We’re also going to pay for the fowl, a litter of kittens, and probably the dairy goats. From what I understand, they were owned by the community as a whole, so the money will give everyone a start-up. I’ve also been authorized to pay for those materials you’ll be leaving behind: the logs from the cabins and palisades, for example. Again, the funds will be split among the adults.

“We’ll use the building materials,” Lord Polr said, interpreting Ewen’s dismayed cry that soon nothing but a barren meadow would remain of their hard labor as a request for explanation, “to construct the rough beginnings of what will eventually be a stone keep at the gap. Even with having to haul the timber—and we’ve enough wheels to make logging carts—the materials should save us considerable time.”

I hope the wolves eat you!
Ewen cursed him.
I hope the crows pluck out your eyes and feast on their softness! I hope the pumas bite through the throats of your horses!

But he knew they wouldn’t. The beasts would be glad to see the settlers leave. They would be glad to see any return west by humans prevented by their own kind.

How would dumb beasts know what is happening?
a mocking voice that sounded remarkably like his own asked.
How would beasts know what Lord Polr intends?

A memory swam before Ewen’s eyes, a sharp-featured young woman with dark, haunted eyes—too scarred and silent to seem even human. She had sat by his fire, eaten his food, played with his children, and all the while she had nursed his destruction in her animal heart. Lady Blysse, that wolf-suckled wench—she would be the one to tell the beasts even, as Ewen now realized, as she must have told the king.

A chill shook him, followed by a tremendous wash of heat. Lady Blysse was his enemy, not this prattling noble idiot with his well-meaning words and utterly hollow heart. Lord Polr might not even know that he’d been a lackey not of his king or his own noble family, but of a flea-bitten traitor to the people who bore her.

But there was no touching Lady Blysse—at least not now. Instead Ewen struggled to find some way to save his role as leader and the dignity of this venture. If that last was lost, all hope that they might someday be permitted to settle the western lands was lost.

He cleared his throat and found that his voice was with him.

“Our dead,” Ewen said softly. “My wife…the others. We cannot leave them.”

Lord Polr’s eyes widened as he considered a new contingency—and recognized that here Ewen had found the means to disrupt this orderly retreat.

“The soldiers at the garrison can make the appropriate offerings,” he said, but it was clear from his inflection that Lord Polr knew this battle was lost even before it was joined.

The people of Hawk Haven revered their ancestors, saw them as their continuity with the past, their protection for the future. If anything, the nobles were more devout in this respect than the commoners.

They have to be,
Ewen thought bitterly.
Everything they have rests upon the deeds of those who bore them.

He didn’t say this. He didn’t need to. All he did was moan, softly, persuasively, his voice as loud as he could make it:

“Dawn.”

THE SETTLERS FELL
in so rapidly with Ewen’s muttered exhortations that he realized how almost by accident he had tapped into their own sense of failure and betrayal.

Yes, they wanted to leave this besieged place, especially now that a new and more direct opponent had entered the field. Yet to go like a cowed apprentice beneath the master’s whip—they who had dared so much to make a place for themselves where they might prosper by their own work—that hadn’t pleased the bolder of New Bardenville’s settlers one bit, especially when the soldiers’ bows were unstrung and the immediate threat of attack removed.

Ewen’s plea had found a way for the settlers to regain their lost self-respect, a way they could retreat with dignity, if not triumph.

Before long the word had gone round, and the settlers were dragging their heels, no longer so hard at work destroying what they had built. One by one, sometimes in little clusters of two or three, they came to visit Ewen, to tell him how glad they were that he was looking so well, telling him that they had heard about his hope to bring Dawn and the rest of their dead home with them and that they approved.

Some bright mind had carried the matter one step further and now it seemed that the remains of Prince Barden’s people must also come home again. Never mind that the grave was communal—for the members of Earl Kestrel’s expedition had found only scattered bones—and therefore none could be returned to specific families. The settlers had adopted these forerunners as their own ancestors, and as such must bring them home.

Many looked to Ewen for direction, but though he was feeling much stronger, he stayed meek and docile, directing each to Lord Polr as the one in charge.

By midday, Lord Polr had capitulated. The boards that had not yet been hauled away were set aside to be transformed into rough coffins. A few of the more hearty men went willingly to work disinterring the dead.

Courteously, Lord Polr tried to salvage some of his dignity by offering a few of his own soldiers as laborers, but that offer was curtly refused. This task, ugly as it was, belonged to the people of New Bardenville.

Ewen Brooks lay on his pallet, sipping spring water freshened with mint, and felt well pleased.

MELINA LOOKED
at the letter, at the blocky childish print so unlike the graceful New Kelvinese script that had been her reading matter of late, yet she couldn’t escape the feeling that this was the most important thing she had ever read.

Dear Mother,

I am here in Dragon’s Breath. I am living with Lady Archer, Lord Kestrel, Lady Blysse, and some people I don’t think you know. They are very nice to me, but I can’t wait to see you. I hope you will let me come visit.

Your obedient daughter,

Citrine Shield

The news of this little group’s arrival was not new to Melina, for Melina had spies posted at the major crossing points between Hawk Haven and New Kelvin.

Indeed, one of these, Kiero, had sent an express message announcing the company’s arrival to her—and had taken it upon himself to arrange an incident that should have removed that nauseating Lady Blysse from the country. Kiero’s plan had failed, and Melina thought his removal to Urnacia was only fit. She really couldn’t understand why he kept sneaking messages out to her. Did he expect her to reward failure?

No. The group’s arrival was not news, but Citrine’s membership within it was news indeed. Why had her spies not mentioned this?

Melina unlocked the carved wooden box where she kept her more private correspondence and checked the appropriate missive.

No, Kiero had said nothing of Citrine being part of the group. Had the girl been kept hidden? That was likely or could she be…

Melina reviewed the list of those included in the expedition, pausing to dwell on a single sentence.

“Hired as guide is one Jalarios, a cripple with a small son, also called Jalarios or, more usually, Rios.”

Small. How small? Small enough to be a nine-year-old girl in disguise? Now that she knew to look, Melina thought this might indeed be the case. This Jalarios merited attention as well. Either the Hawk Havenese were paying the man a considerable fee to insure his silence or they knew something about him that would guarantee his cooperation or…

Something touched the edge of her mind, and she reached to make it solidify. A New Kelvinese…associated with…a man who would be an ideal guide…

Grateful Peace?

It was too likely a possibility to ignore. Kiero had seen this Jalarios. Easier to ask him what he thought than to raise suspicions. He would be eager to prove himself after his time at the glass furnaces.

Melina reached for pen and paper.

It looked as if Kiero would be getting out of Urnacia, and Idalia might be getting a surprise.

Melina looked down at her daughter’s letter again. Could she use Citrine against her annoying associates? It was certainly a possibility.

There were other possibilities, though, ones that didn’t rely upon a nine-year-old. Melina had met with what seemed to her an astonishing amount of resentment from some sectors of the New Kelvinese population. Perhaps she could turn this to her advantage.

Ink blotted outward from the tip of her quill while she plotted. Then Melina swept the stained paper to the floor and, placing a fresh sheet before her, began very rapidly to write.