Dragon Weather (11 page)

He looked at his reflection in a half-filled trough and thought that if he had had a blouse and sandals he would be willing to allow himself to be seen.

There were no shoes or shirts to be found in the barn, though. He did fish a handful of dried corn from the bottom of an abandoned trough and carry it away, nibbling it one or two grains at a time.

That first homestead was not an isolated outpost in the wilderness; rather, Arlian realized when he crept out of the barn and looked squintingly eastward, it stood at the end of a narrow road, and other small farms adjoined it. He had crossed back over the line between the forested wilderness and civilization.

He hoped that he had put enough distance between himself and the mine that this would be entirely a good thing. He didn't dare use the road openly, as yet, but instead crept along behind the houses and barns and smokehouses. Staying close to the buildings also served to shelter him from the worst of the cold winds that seemed almost constant.

He fed himself from livestock feed as he went, stealing a handful of grain here, a few dried fruit there; he resisted the temptation to break into a smokehouse or creamery for anything more substantial. He had eaten no meat since the day his parents died, and the scents that drifted from the smokehouses were almost overwhelming, both tempting and nauseating, driving him to hurry past as quickly as he could.

He made his way onward, eastward, for another several days, sleeping in barns or woodsheds, living on animal feed and drinking from untended wells, perpetually cold and hungry, shivering as he walked. Several times he saw people, and a few times he was seen; whenever that happened he veered away but kept walking, so as to appear an ordinary traveler. Twice someone called to him, but on both occasions he ignored the hail and kept walking, and both times the other decided against pursuit.

He passed villages occasionally, but skirted well around them.

On the fourth day after his night in the woods he came across laundry hung out to dry, and took a man's linen blouse, promising himself that someday he would pay the rightful owner back. When it had dried it provided some significant comfort against the cold, but he still dared not let himself be seen—after all, not only was he still suspiciously shaggy and barefoot, but the shirt's rightful owner might recognize it.

On the fifth day he could no longer resist temptation, and stole a ham; he was sick that night as his stomach rebelled at the unfamiliar food.

The next morning there was frost on the fields, and between that and his upset digestion he was somewhat slower than his usual in setting out. He took the time to study that column of smoke that he had followed for so long.

That was no mere chimney, nor even a village, he realized, but the smoke of a great city.

Manfort, almost certainly.

He had always wanted to see Manfort. What's more, if he wanted to find Lord Dragon, to avenge the desecration of his village, Manfort was the logical place to start looking—but he could hardly walk all the way into that famous city in his present condition, wearing nothing but ragged breeches and a stolen blouse so close to the onset of winter.

Well, it was still some distance away, he was certain. He was well clear of the forest now, making his way across gently rolling hills where one farm blended into the next and the next and the next for as far as the eye could see, where the road led from one village to another at intervals never exceeding twenty miles and often crossed or joined other roads in the process, but it was still countryside, and he had yet to glimpse a single watchtower or turret.

Still, he could hardly proceed in his current manner indefinitely; some time before he reached the walls of Manfort he would have to find a way to clean himself up and obtain proper clothes. Then he could present himself at one business or another, looking for honest work, to get himself a living before he began his pursuit of revenge.

He gave the matter some thought as he rambled onward, past farms and villages.

Perhaps, he thought late one chilly afternoon as the sun was reddening behind him, he could simply present himself as a traveler down on his luck, one who had been beset by bandits but escaped, and offer to work for his keep at an inn. He had no special skills, but he had learned to swing a pick in the mines, and he thought that he could use that experience in splitting firewood.

He remembered Grandsir saying that bandits never came this far north, but he could hope that either the old man was wrong, or times had changed while he was in the mine, or whoever he approached might not know as much as his grandfather had.

He blew on his hands to warm them and rubbed the palms together, and decided that the time had come to try. He would have to rejoin the human race eventually, and this seemed the right time.

He was approaching the biggest town he had seen yet, one so large that it could scarcely be called a village, much larger than his own childhood home. He was also nearing Manfort; that thin line of smoke had become a broad tapestry streaking up the eastern sky, and on those rare occasions when he caught an unobstructed view to the east he thought he could see the tops of towers in the distance.

He was not about to march on into the city, but this town seemed suitable. He decided to risk inquiring somewhere within it—but he could not yet bring himself to walk openly down the main streets. Instead he crept into the town through the alleys, skirting the denser areas, looking for the back of an inn—he thought that if he presented himself in the stableyard he might be more acceptable than he would be at the front door.

Then, when he had circled almost halfway around the town's heart, he saw a building some three stories in height, of dressed stone trimmed with carved wood and all roofed in tin, with a dozen curtained, well-lit casement windows. A coach stood by the side door, with four horses yoked to it and a driver sitting impatient at the front, clearly waiting for someone who had gone inside. The yard behind the main building held more horses, rather than oxen or mules, and the whole complex was off to one side of the main highway, outside the town itself.

That was surely an inn, and a very respectable one from the look of it. He crept toward it. He did not want the coachman to see him yet, so he circled around toward the other side, and at last emerged between the stable and a woodshed into a muddy yard.

The inn's back door was closed and dark. He frowned, and looked up at the windows.

As he did, a casement on the second floor swung open, the curtains were pulled aside, and a young woman leaned out, flapping one hand as if to drive away an unpleasant odor.

Arlian stared.

Except for a few quick glimpses from a distance over the past few days, he had not seen a woman since he was a boy of eleven. Many times over the years in the mines, as he grew to manhood, he had been very much aware of this lack, but he had been in no position to do anything about it; since his escape he had been too busy, too concerned with other matters, to give it any thought.

Now, though, all those years of deprivation caught up with him at once, and he stared open-mouthed.

The woman's features seemed impossibly delicate to him, her eyes huge and alluring; her dark hair was long and elaborately curled, hanging in graceful curves around her face. Her arms were bare and slender, her skin fair.

And she was naked—or at least, all he could see of her was. Her exposed breasts were plainly visible in the pinkish glow of sunset, the nipples large and dark.

Arlian's breath caught in his throat; his clothes suddenly seemed to constrict, strangling him.

Then she stopped waving and closed her eyes for a moment, tipping her head back and taking a deep breath of the cool outside air. Her hair fell in sliding coils down her back and flowed around her shoulders, shining in the lamplight that spilled out around her, and Arlian swallowed hard. He was feeling sensations he had no name for, things he had never felt before. He took an uncertain step forward.

As he did the woman opened her eyes and looked down into the stableyard. Arlian froze, but it was too late; her gaze locked with his, and her eyes opened wide in surprise.

Arlian stood, rooted by terror and shame and lust, his thoughts buried in a conflicting tangle of fierce, unfamiliar emotions.

For what seemed forever the two of them stared at each other. Then the woman smiled down at him—not just a smile, but a
grin.
She made no move to cover herself; instead she cast a quick glance back over one shoulder, then leaned out farther and beckoned to him.

Arlian took another step forward, then hesitated—what was he doing? Who was this woman, displaying herself so brazenly? Could she really want him to approach? An urge to turn and run began to build—but at the same time he couldn't tear his gaze away from her.

“Come on,” she called down to him. “Do you like what you see?”

His mouth opened, but nothing came out. He tried to swallow, but his throat was suddenly too dry. His hands clenched into fists.

She was just a person, another human being. He had spoken fearlessly to women as a child; why should it be a struggle now?

Of course, none of the village women had been naked, and so far as he could recall none of them had been so beautiful.

“I like it,” Arlian managed to croak, and he took another step.

“Then can you climb? If you can get to the window I'll let you in, and you can look all you want. You can do
more
than just look!”

Arlian was utterly confused now, but for a moment the desire to get closer to her, and the desire to get out of the cold, completely overcame his shyness and uncertainty; he trotted across the yard and flung himself atop a handy barrel, then jumped for the sill of the open window. His fingers caught the edge, but could not hold, and he slid back down, missed his footing on the barrel, and fell to the ground.

The woman laughed, a musical, watery sound that filled him with a great swelling urgency and a ferocious embarrassment. He leaped to his feet and looked around the yard. He didn't dare look at her; he was certain his face was bright red with shame, and that the tightness of his pants was obvious and offensive.

“I'm sorry,” she called from just above and behind him. “I shouldn't laugh.
Can't
you find a way up?”

He turned and looked up at her. He licked his lips, then cleared his throat and tried to speak.

He got a strangled noise out, then had to stop and cough. He looked down to collect his wits, then back up.

“I take it I can't use the door,” he said, actually getting the entire sentence out cleanly.

“Oh, no!” she said, her smile vanishing. “Not dressed like that! They'd beat you half to death.”

“Ha!” he said, though even then he could not possibly have explained why he would react to such a threat with bravado instead of caution. The possibility that he might be doing something foolish and dangerous occurred to him, but it simply didn't matter; he desperately wanted to get in that window, get at that woman.

At the same time he wanted to run away, but he fought that impulse down. He looked around for something he could use to mount the wall.

Inspired, he ran to the unlocked woodshed and pulled out a good-sized chunk of unsplit firewood, hoisting it up on his shoulder—he realized after he had it up that it was solid oak, or perhaps ironwood, and must have weighed at least fifty pounds, but nonetheless he hauled it across the yard and thumped it down onto the barrelhead, standing it on end. Then he leapt up on the barrel, stepped up onto the log, and thrust himself upward at the window.

This time he was able to get his chest onto the windowsill and his arms through the casement, his fingers clutching at the inner edge of the sill. The woman had moved back at the last possible moment to avoid his lunge, but now she leaned forward and grabbed the back of his stolen shirt, helping him haul himself upward and into the room.

She was not totally naked after all, he saw as he tumbled in, but clad in a lacy white skirt slit up the front, and a golden girdle wrapped around her waist. She was kneeling on a windowseat. An elegant glass and brass lamp on a wall bracket was burning brightly, lighting her face beautifully.

He was lying on a fine parquet floor, looking up at her and at gauzy curtains behind her. The air around him was warm, and thick with a cloying, sweetish smell—and with a confusion of other scents as well, including lamp oil and sweat and several he didn't recognize.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“You're in my room,” she said, with an impish, irresistible smile. She settled into a sitting position, her legs tucked underneath, and looked down at him. “Now, who are you? What sort of desperate creature have I just invited in?”

“My name is … is unimportant,” he said, staring hungrily at her, almost in awe of this gorgeous creature. He had caught himself at the last moment; his name would probably mean nothing to her, but he did not want to risk it. Word of an escaped slave named Arlian might well have spread this far.

She was so small, he thought as he stared—smaller than any of the miners, even Rat. He had forgotten that women were so small and delicate looking. And her skin was impossibly smooth and soft, her face and chest utterly hairless.

She laughed at him.

“Ah, then, Unimportant,” she said, “welcome to my humble home! Might I call you something shorter, perhaps? Trivial, or Minor?”

“Not Minor,” he said. It was too close to terms he did not want to be associated with. He was vaguely aware that he ought to come up with a name for her to use, but he couldn't think clearly enough to suggest one.

“But Trivial is acceptable? Or just Triv?”

“Triv would be fine,” he said, as he untangled himself and sat up. He was breathing heavily, and not entirely from the exertion of getting in the window.

He shifted, but his breeches remained uncomfortably tight.

She shifted her own position, as well, and his breath came out in a shudder.