Dragonoak: The Complete History of Kastelir (7 page)

“If yous can't help us on that front, ladies, would you be so kind as to leave those rather hefty bags on the ground here?” the man said, met with a murmur of agreement from behind. “Jeb, if you'd be so good as to help 'em out...”

One of the bandits rushed forward, sword clasped between both hands. Charley was making such a fuss that I had to climb off his back, lest he throw me to the side, and Jeb took this to mean that I was going to comply. Sir Ightham set the record straight by drawing her sword – a steel one; she'd packed the dragon-bone blade away – and swung it in her hand as though it was part of her arm. Not something she could run straight through the bandit.

“Awful bold, ain't ya?” Jeb asked, ducking down low. Sir Ightham hadn't shown any intention of striking, but the bandit was under the impression that it was a formidable fighting stance. I'd drawn closer to her and saw the corners of her mouth tug down, bemused.

“I only wish to warn you of your folly,” Sir Ightham said, grasp still relaxed, unaware that the sword was a weapon at all.

“Boss?” Jeb asked, letting go of his sword with one hand, trying to determine whether or not he'd lose any fingers if he tried to snatch one of our bags.

“Oh, that's right, is it,” the leader mused, rubbing his chin. All of his bandits had drawn their weapons, but Sir Ightham only stared down at the blade of her sword, trying to gleam something of her reflection in the dark. “Reckon you can cut your way through all of us?”

“If I must,” Sir Ightham said, sighing. Her feet remained stuck fast to the spot, and she used the tip of her blade to point at the bandit's allies, one by one. “Your companion here – Jeb, wasn't it? – hasn't the good graces to hold his sword properly. Try it in the
other
hand, boy. This young woman's blade has come loose in its hilt – the tip isn't facing the exact direction her grasp suggests she's aiming for – and the gentleman by her side doesn't think anyone will notice that he's trembling, if he stands back and merely looks threatening. And as for
you
, I've no doubt you
can
fight. But only so well as to appear threatening to unarmed individuals caught unaware and ambushed in the middle of the woods”

Jeb clasped both hands around the hilt of his sword, wincing. The man Sir Ightham accused of cowardice was betrayed by his own torch, flames licking the air, showing how red his face had turned. The leader responded with a snarl that fuelled his movements. Lunging forward, he thrust his blade straight at Sir Ightham's throat.

I recoiled from a strike that didn't land, and Sir Ightham took a swift step back, rendering the blade's reach ineffective. Hand balled into a fist behind her back, Sir Ightham brought her sword against the bandit's three times, forcing him to step back with each clatter of steel. It was the first time I'd seen her fight, yet I knew she could've disarmed him with a single blow. She lashed out in order to startle the other bandits, who mimicked their leader's movements.

“Well?” Sir Ightham asked, when she had seen to it that he'd tripped over a root and slammed his elbow into a tree trunk.

“C'mon!” he spat, turning to his companions. “Useless louts—give us a hand, already.”

There was no strength in numbers. Sir Ightham had already picked out their faults – not a difficult task, when there seemed to be an abundance of them – and no group of wandering thieves could've compared to a dragon. Sir Ightham didn't fight thoughtlessly, though she did fight fluidly; it was over as quickly as it started. She weaved around their weapons, disarming some, knocking others into trees, and she did so without spilling a single drop of blood.

If any wounds had been rent, I would've felt them.

With her point proven, Sir Ightham lowered her blade. For a terrible moment, I thought the leader might've been humiliated enough to put his all into one final strike, but he wasn't so stubborn as to forfeit his life. He grunted, “Back down,” and Sir Ightham let him and his bandits scamper into the woods.

Charley was still panicking. Sir Ightham's horse hadn't reacted in the least, and I tried to follow in his example. If nothing else, I'd managed to stay perfectly still, even if it was fear, not courage, keeping me grounded. My heart raced faster once the bandits were gone, once I had the time to imagine all that didn't happen, but could've.

I put a hand to my face, forehead clammy, and Sir Ightham passed me by, patting Charley between the eyes before climbing onto her own horse.

“They're gone,” she said when I didn't move, as though there was something disagreeable in being frightened by bandits. “—why are you smiling?”

I hadn't realised I was, but I answered easily enough.

“Because—because that was
incredible
!” I said, holding my hands out for emphasis. “You fought off
five
of them, all by yourself.”

“They were bandits,” she said, almost offended by the notion of finding the quarrel worthy of remark.

“They had swords!”

“So did I. Now, might we leave, before we're stumbled upon by more of the same?”

So much for paying her a compliment.

Another mile of woodland stood between us and open fields, and with Charley still skittish, it was light by the time we weaved our way out of the trees. Sir Ightham's compass led us off a road as soon as we were on it, and we headed west, to the border. I'd known a wall stood between Felheim and Kastelir, but in my mind, it had always been like the wall of a house, or the cobbled wall wrapped around the village, little more than waist-high, where it hadn't crumbled.

But the wall that kept the Kastelirians out cast a shadow that seemed to cover half of our Kingdom. Kastelir wasn't a decade older than I was, and had been split into four ever-warring territories before that; the wall had stood for hundreds of years, age evident in its stature. I craned my head up in order to see the top, certain that the clouds drifting by on a slight breeze would crash into it. It was worn by the elements and creeping vines had done what they could to scale the stones, but the sides were too smooth for any person to scramble their way over.

I watched the wall until my neck ached, and returned to what else was strewn across the landscape. We didn't venture too close to any villages or towns, but I saw them from a distance; they looked just like my own village, only misplaced, dropped onto the side of a hill or by a river instead of being nestled in a valley.

My fear of pane was replaced by a fear of bandits, and that fear was washed away by Sir Ightham's presence. We travelled for no fewer than ten hours, exhausting my supply of bitterwillow near the end, stopping a handful of times in order to stretch our legs and eat. Sir Ightham said nothing, responding to questions that were barely worth asking with a grunt or a shake of her head, until I stepped over and tentatively brushed a hand against her horse's mane.

He didn't mind the contact. He leant into my touch, well behaved, but not beyond indulging himself in a little affection. Sir Ightham watched me like a hawk.

“What's his name?” I asked, scratching behind his ears.

“Calais,” she said after a cautious pause, not wanting to spill too many secrets at once.

“Nice to meet you, Calais,” I said to him, and he made the sort of noise that tended to mean
yes, but what are you going to feed me?
when Charley made it. “My horse is—”

“Charley. You already said.”

She said no more, but ran her fingertips across the diamond of white fur on Charley's forehead.

The wall curved with what I thought was the border, but it soon became evident that Praxis was built into the wall itself. From where we stood, leading our horses by the reins in an effort to get through the crowds, I couldn't see where Praxis ended; the horizon cut it off prematurely, towers and spires pressing against the sky. There was more of a jump from Eaglestone to Praxis than there had been from my village to Eaglestone, and I'd convinced myself that the whole world had come to gather within that town.

I was glad of the new clothes Sir Ightham had bought me, though they were already crumpled from sleep and riding. I tried flattening them out as we approached the city, and all those in the crowd around me seemed infinitely finer than I'd imagined the nobles of Thule to be. Their clothing was as vibrant as the city around them, the stone of the streets gleaming as though a thousand pairs of boots didn't press down upon it every hour of every day.

I'd known that Praxis was wealthy, but to me, wealth meant being able to choose what you ate for dinner, what you wore. Here, people were out for the sake of being outside, walking arm in arm with friends, idly chatting and showing off their purchases. All the workers faded into the background, but even they were remarkable; they wore uniforms and donned hats, standing in front of polished glass shop-fronts, ever ready to open a door, or sat on the driver's seats of carriages, waiting for their next passenger to ferry around the city.

People pushed past, heels and canes clipping against the ground, and though I'd survived Eaglestone, pane and all, my chest was too small for all that needed to fit inside it. I realised I'd come to a halt when Sir Ightham placed a hand on my shoulder, guiding me forward. We took our horses to a stable by the gate, and Sir Ightham paid no small fee to have them safely lodged there. I kept trying to get a glimpse of the coins she carried around in her pouch, and almost forgot to bid farewell to Charley and Calais, for all my prying.

The bags seemed heavier than ever, what with the promise of finding somewhere to stow them. I tried not to think about it, sure Sir Ightham would delay the process indefinitely, but she cut across a river of a street, heading for a building that looked like all the others surrounding it. Everything in Praxis was made up of precise angles, buildings pressed perfectly together without being crammed and wedged awkwardly into spaces.

She knew the city well. The front doors of the building were opened for us by what looked like guards, at a first glance. Weapons hung from their belts and they wore a uniform, but it was unlike that of the guards I'd seen in Eaglestone, or outside Praxis. Sir Ightham gestured for me to head over to the counter, from where I could see rows and rows of safes the size of coffins lined up behind an iron gate.

“Can I be of assistance?” a woman asked from behind the counter, knowing to speak to Sir Ightham, not me.

“I need to store two bags, and I can't say when I'll be back,” Sir Ightham said. “How much for, say, a year?”

The woman bowed her head, as if apologising for the answer she was going to give.

“That'd be a mark, I'm afraid—fifty valts each, judging from the size of them.”

Just to be safe, Sir Ightham slid four golden marks across the counter. It was such an unreasonable amount of money that I wanted to beg her to let me carry the bags, if it meant not throwing the coins away. Still, I placed a bag on the counter when Sir Ightham gestured for it.

One of the establishment's guards took a ring of keys from her hip and unlocked the gate. The bags were taken through and placed in a safe, and upon doing so, the woman Sir Ightham had paid brought her a small silver key back. Sir Ightham took it, thanked her for her help, and placed it on a chain around her neck.

We headed back out into the street, each carrying a single bag. One contained her dragon-bone armour, and the other, I supposed, was full of parchment for her letters, food, and whatever else we needed for the road.

“Where to now?” I asked. I assumed I wasn't to call her
Sir Ightham
in Praxis, either, and she almost didn't hear me over the way she was so busy keeping her head down, the rim of her hat casting a shadow across her face.

“We'll find rooms for the night,” Sir Ightham said. “I've business to attend to.”

I brightened at the suggestion of taking rooms. I'd nothing against sleeping under the stars and certainly wasn't sick of it after a single night, but I'd never had reason to sleep in a bed that wasn't my own. I'd been to the Marmalade Lodge a few times, when travellers who'd come in search of my aid couldn't quite make it to the apothecary’s, but that was work. This was something different indeed.

The city opened up as we came to a square, surrounded on all sides by cafés and restaurants, tables and chairs spilling out onto the patio. There were statues in the centre, statues on pedestals taller than I was, and I hurried over to them, not waiting for Sir Ightham to catch up.

I stared up at the statues – a man and a woman, both of them fifteen feet tall – and grinned, rocking on the balls of my feet when I saw Sir Ightham out of the corner of my eye. She stood there, arms folded over her chest, far from impressed, but I didn't let that dash my spirits.

“We're really in Praxis!”

“We are,” she agreed, not pointing out that we'd been in Praxis for close to half an hour.

There was more excitement in the word
Praxis
than there'd been in all of Eaglestone.

“I never thought I'd come here. Never thought I'd go
anywhere
, but especially not here. I've heard so many stories about Praxis that I was starting to think it was just that—but look at it! It's bigger than my brother said it would be.”

“And yet it has taken us less than two days to reach it. So much for stories,” Sir Ightham muttered. “You'll soon see that the whole world is a lot bigger, a lot more
everything
, than can ever be gathered from books.”

I was inclined to agree. I wished Michael had been there, just to see his jaw drop at the suggestion that books weren't the be all and end all of human experience.

“Who are they?” I asked, pointing up at the figures. I was fairly certain the statue was a likeness of our King and Queen, for the price that had to be paid to shape such a monument out of metal, but wanted to be certain.

“Read the plaque,” Sir Ightham said, nodding towards it. She'd taken to rummaging through her bag, trying to find
something
. I didn't answer. I just keep looking at her, shoulders hunched, and when Sir Ightham glanced up at me, she pressed her lips together tightly and said, “You can't read.”