Brother of the Dragon (9 page)

“A slave,” Zannian replied. “We took her on the raid.”

Beramun heard the dragon come closer. She could almost feel his baleful eyes boring into her. She begged all her departed ancestors to spare her from too much pain, to make her death mercifully quick.

Something cold and sharp raked through her hair, and this time Beramun begged her ancestors for the strength not to shriek aloud.

After an interminable time, the dragon said, “All rodents look alike to me. Why bring it here?”

“I would keep her for myself, Master, if you allow it.”

The hovering presence above her withdrew. Beramun’s heart eased its frantic thumping.

“Why this one? Many females have come to Almurk in recent days. What’s special about this one?”

Zannian did not answer immediately, so the dragon repeated the question, his powerful voice rising into a higher register, lending it a curiously feminine tone.

“She’s beautiful, Master.”

“What do rodents know of beauty?” Sthenn sneered. “That frail, thin hide of yours isn’t capable of beauty.”

“True, Master. May I keep her anyway?”

Beramun was certain she’d given no sign she was awake, yet something had alerted the dragon, for he said, “Let’s ask the little squirrel. She’s listening to your plea.”

The dragon’s claws closed around her waist, and she was lifted from the stones. The time for pretense was gone, so she vented her pent-up terror in a loud, ringing scream. Zannian took a step toward her. The green dragon’s slit eyes flickered to the raider chief.

“You wish to help her?” Sthenn asked, chuckling malevolently.

“Master, I —”

Sthenn swung his claw in a wide arc until Beramun’s feet were dangling over the open pit. Her frantic squirming inside his claw only seemed to amuse the monster more.

His black mirth made Beramun furious. “Go ahead and kill me!” she shouted. “I won’t be forced to mate with any man!”

The dragon’s hard laughter echoed off the walls. “Hear that, little Zan? True love indeed!”

“Please, Master,” Zannian pleaded, his face crimson. “Don’t hurt her.”

“And if I told you to choose between serving me and having this black-haired wench, what would you say?”

Beramun saw the raider’s throat work as he swallowed hard. “I will always serve you, Master.”

“Excellent answer!”

Sthenn tossed Beramun onto the upper steps. She landed hard and rolled, coming to a stop against the niter-encrusted wall. Her tumble scattered the loose debris, sending some of it rolling into the yawning pit. She realized many of the “stones” she’d been lying on were actually human bones.

“Take her, boy, and use her as you see fit!” Sthenn cackled. “When you tire of her, bring her to me – though beautiful rodents likely taste much the same as ugly ones.”

The dragon lowered himself backward into his hole. His feculent laughter echoed upward long after his monstrous form was lost from view.

Zannian knelt by Beramun and helped her sit up.

“Don’t touch me!” she snapped.

He withdrew, but said, “Mend your attitude. Those who break the laws of Almurk end up here, as meat for the Master.”

“How can you serve such a monster? How can you feed your fellow humans to him?”

“Sthenn is the source of our future greatness. With him as our master, we will forge a great tribe and conquer the plains!”

Beramun ignored his helping hand and stood, bracing herself against the sticky wall until her knees ceased shaking.

He watched her through narrowed eyes. “You can live as the chiefs mate or die as his slave. The choice is yours. Until you decide, you’ll work like the others in the tannery.”

He indicated she should precede him up the tunnel. She limped past, bruised from her hard landing, and they walked in silence. The long tunnel eventually ended on a blank wall. Looking up, Beramun saw an opening. A ladder made from peeled saplings was positioned in the hole. Weary, her entire body aching, she began the climb up.

When they emerged, she saw it was still night. Zannian pointed wordlessly to the pen where the other captives slept. Head held high, Beramun limped into the low-walled prison.

Tiphan and his young helpers left the valley through Cedarsplit Gap, climbing into the low-hanging clouds as they went. Everything they wore or carried soon acquired a thin coat of ice. Once they crested the pass, they encountered a frigid wind that cut through their furs. By the time the sun rose above the eastern range, all three travelers were numb to the bone.

Tiphan consented to a pause in the lee of a promontory for refreshment. Strengthening drafts of Hulami’s best wine got their blood coursing again.

“The wind shouldn’t be so bad on the downslope,” Mara remarked.

“I hope so,” said Penzar, lips blue with cold. “Tosen, now that we’re out of Yala-tene, can you tell us where we’re going?”

In reply Tiphan opened his hip pouch and took out the scrap of Silvanesti map. He spread it on a convenient rock and pointed approximately halfway between the eastern rivers.

“Here,” he said.

Penzar touched the ragged edge of the tom map reverently. “This is elven?”

“Yes. It represents a place, like you might draw a picture of a person you know.” Tiphan drew his knife and deftly scratched a few lines on the rock face behind them with the bronze blade. Mara and Penzar squinted at the image. It was a simple face – round head, eyes, nose, the suggestion of a mouth.

“This might be anyone,” Tiphan said. “So I add —” He scored a curling line from the back of the image’s head. “Now who is it?”

Penzar said, “Mara!” and the girl echoed, “Me!”

“If I drew a three-sided lake with a waterfall at the broad end, you’d know what place it was, wouldn’t you?”

The boy grinned. “Of course, Tosen.”

Mara was studying the crude likeness on the rock. She glowed with her pleasure at having been chosen as the subject of her leader’s lesson, but she quickly resumed her serious countenance.

Standing out from the sheltering boulder, she said, “The wind dies. Shall we go?”

As they crossed the high divide between east and west the wind subsided. It was still freezing and extremely dry – too dry for snow or ice – but the sun was bright, and they made good time. Penzar moved ahead, scouting for hidden danger and game, but he found neither. The mountains were desolate this late in winter, and save for few birds of prey wheeling in the faultless sky, they saw no animals at all.

By afternoon it was Mara’s turn to scout ahead, which she did with her bird stick in hand. If she scared up a covey of quail or a grouse, she could bring down a bird in flight with her carved throwing wand. Unfortunately, she found the rocky crevices as lifeless as Penzar had.

At this height, the sky was clear, blue, and free of clouds. Shading her eyes, Mara looked to the eastern horizon. Slender, thready clouds reached out from the edge of dawn, like long white fingers. It was snowing, possibly raining, somewhere far to the east, but she reckoned the moisture wouldn’t reach them for several days.

The clatter of loose rocks ahead woke her from her reverie. She drew her arm back, ready to throw her stick at whatever was moving up ahead. Listening, she heard something else: the rhythmic fall of hooves.

Mara turned and sprinted back up the trail. Topping an outcropping of rock, she spied Tiphan and Penzar in the distance and ran even harder. When she was close enough, she gasped her warning.

“Tosen! Horses!”

Horses meant nomads or elves. In either case, the trio was in no position to meet hostile strangers. They hastily quit the trail, taking shelter between two boulders. Penzar stood with spear ready as the others peered around the rocks to see what was coming.

Four swarthy heads appeared, bobbing as they came. They had leathery faces and shoulder-length black hair, lank and woven through with vines and leaves. They weren’t elves or humans, and as they drew nearer, it became plain they were not riding on horses. They were horses below the waist.

“Centaurs,” Tiphan whispered.

The four leaders were followed by a crowd of others, all weighed down with baggage – furs, hides, bedrolls, tools, and woven willow panniers. Mara counted twenty-two centaurs in sight, with more coming over the ridge. This was no hunting party. This was an entire tribe on the move.

The lead man-horse reached the spot where Tiphan, Mara, and Penzar had left the trail. In their haste to hide, they hadn’t obscured their tracks, and the centaur saw the signs of their passage. He held up a hand, shouted something in a guttural tongue, and the whole tribe halted. Gray-haired elders cantered forward to confer with the scout. With much gesturing of arms and stamping of hooves, the scout made his point. Bending his forelegs, he knelt and sniffed the stony ground. Slowly he raised his head until he was staring directly at the humans’ hiding place.

“Tosen?” Penzar whispered, gripping his spear.

“Be still. I’ll deal with them.”

Tiphan stepped from the crevice. The centaurs spotted him and began an excited babble. Four of them galloped up, flanking the Sensarku leader.

“Mara! Penzar! Come out,” he said evenly. “Penzar, leave your spear.”

“But Tosen —”

“Do as I say!”

Mara emerged from the cleft in the rock and stood confidently by her leader. Penzar came out more slowly, eyeing the fierce-looking centaurs with obvious suspicion.

One centaur, whose hair was liberally streaked with gray and whose dark horse’s body was likewise dappled with silver, approached Tiphan. He scrutinized the Sensarku and uttered a short sentence in his own tongue.

Back in the rocks, Tiphan had thought he recognized this centaur. Now it was time to test his memory.

“Miteera?” he ventured. “Miteera?”

The centaurs pranced and muttered, obviously startled to hear the word from human lips.

“Miteera,” said the gray-dappled centaur. “Your face I not know.”

“I am Tiphan, Konza’s son. Peace to you, Miteera, and to your people.”

“Know you me... how?”

“I know many things,” Tiphan said, smiling. “I am chief of the Sensarku, the Servants of the Dragon.”

“Ah!” Miteera turned to his people and gave them a rapid explanation in their own tongue. To Tiphan, he said, “From Arku-peli?” Tiphan admitted they were. “Your chief Arkuden?”

The smile faded from Tiphan’s face. He forced it to return. “Yes, the head of our village is the Arkuden,” he said. “What brings you and your people to the high mountains, Miteera?”

The old centaur’s face darkened, his gray eyes narrowing. “Pushed out eight suns ago. By B’leef.”

It took Tiphan a moment to realize Miteera was saying “Balif.” To be certain he asked, “The Silvanesti drove you out? The elves?”

Miteera nodded and spat on the ground. “Old Ones with fire and metal drive Miteera people out. Many die. We go to sunset. Leave B’leef.”

With a few more questions, Tiphan pieced together the rest of the story. For some time, the Silvanesti had been systematically driving the centaurs from of the woodland between the two branches of the Thon-Tanjan. Eight days ago, Miteera’s tribe had fought a pitched battle against Balif’s army and lost. Many centaur warriors were killed. All that remained of Miteera’s tribe was now fleeing west to escape the conquering elves.

“Long’go, Arkuden save Miteera from yevi. Arkuden friend. We find Arku-peli this way?” asked the old centaur.

“Yes, the high trail will take you to the Lake of the Falls,” Tiphan replied.

“Where you go? To sunbirth?”

Tiphan admitted they were heading east. The centaur shook his head and twitched his long, gray-streaked tail. “Bad. Bad to go,” he said. “You meet Old Ones. Meet death.” He mimed a sword thrust into Tiphan’s gut.

“We go on the Arkuden’s business,” Tiphan said. Mara arched an eyebrow at her leader’s easy lie. “Would you lend us one of your warriors, to go with us and help us avoid the elves?”

Miteera looked doubtful, but he put the question to his band. Several centaurs seemed willing, and the chief chose a youthful one with a russet-colored horse’s body and like-colored hair, who stepped forward from the crowd.

“Elu,” said Miteera, “most brave and strong. He go with you.”

“Why does he want to go?” Penzar blurted, suspicious still.

Miteera pointed a gnarled finger at Mara. “Elu like two-leg girl. He go for her.”

Mara blushed, and Penzar sputtered, “Tosen, you can’t —”

“We humbly accept your help, Miteera,” Tiphan said, silencing his acolyte with a glare. “Welcome, Elu.”

“Him not talk,” Miteera said. “You point, he know.”

Elu shouldered his bundle of belongings and took his place at Tiphan’s side. The rest of the centaur band trotted past the humans. Miteera remained until the last of his people was gone then bade the humans good-bye. To Elu, Miteera addressed an elaborate farewell, which involved much stamping of hooves and clasping of arms. At last, the chief cantered away. Elu raised his club in salute.

Keeping his voice level, Penzar asked, “Tosen, why did you ask for this savage to accompany us?”

“Isn’t it obvious? A centaur is the next best thing to a pack animal.”