Meghan's Dragon (12 page)

Chapter 32

“That was some workout,” Hardol told Bryan, clapping the sweaty young man on the back. “I’m usually the one stuck keeping Rowan in practice but you’re welcome to the job. You’re certainly up to it.”

“I thought my sword would break,” Bryan admitted. “Look at all the notches he put in the edge. Can I get this fixed, or will I need a new blade every time I duel him?”

Hardol laughed and clapped Bryan on the back again. “You’re funny. A few of us are tapping a keg on the second wagon and we’ve been waiting to have a word with you.”

Bryan willingly followed the older man from the impromptu practice area next to the road back towards the wagons. It was the first time Hardol had spoken to him, and he wasn’t going to blow the opportunity to finally get to know some of the former soldiers who had ignored him to this point, even if it meant missing his regular evening session with Meghan and Laitz.

“Did he wreck your sword every time you dueled him?” Bryan asked his new friend.

“My blade is enchanted, same as Rowan’s, though you have to use your own magic to keep the edge. You really are new to the fighting business.”

“Enchanted, I should have thought of that,” Bryan said. “So were all of you soldiers like Simon?”

“Not like Simon. The rest of us got out while we still had all of our fingers,” Hardol replied, but the jest carried an undertone of sadness. “Soldiers in this land are like grist for the mill. You might avoid getting ground up for a while, but if you stay in too long, it always ends the same way. Simon served for more years than any of us, despite the fact he’s not that strong, magically speaking.”

“You must be thrilled that the new kid is giving you a chance to rest up, Hardol.” The man who spoke handed each of the newcomers a brimming tankard, then resumed his seat on the wagon’s tongue. “If I’m not mistaken, Rowan may actually have broken a sweat towards the end there.”

“I thought he was going to chop me in half,” Bryan confessed. “With Simon, I was always worried about accidentally hurting him because I didn’t know what I was doing. With Rowan, I felt like I was fighting for my life.”

“He doesn’t play around,” one of the other men commented, which struck Bryan as bit odd, given that they were a troupe of professional players. “Is it true that you and your wife are on the run from the king?”

Bryan almost choked on his ale, but Meghan had prepared him for the question and he replied, “Not that I know of. I’ve never seen the king, or even a duke for that matter. My wife is the one who knows about that stuff.”

“But you acknowledge the king as your sovereign,” Hardol pressed, fixing the young man with his eyes. The four other men near the freshly tapped keg fell silent, and Bryan realized they were all waiting for his answer.

“I don’t remember voting for him,” Bryan replied cautiously. Apparently it was the right answer because the men all laughed and repeated his words like he’d invented the punch line to a new joke. Somebody took his tankard and tossed it to the tap man to be refilled, and the others crowded around to introduce themselves.

“I’m Grey,” a heavily scarred man only a few years older than Bryan told him. “We knew Phinneas wouldn’t send us a king’s man, but we have to be careful.”

“Jomar,” announced a small man with a mouth full of crooked teeth and a bandolier of throwing knives across his chest. Bryan had seen him casually bring down small game for the communal pot with his knives.

“Theodric,” a large man introduced himself, returning Bryan’s refilled tankard at the same time. “The five of us are the group leaders, but if things get rough, just stick to Rowan for the time being. We’ll figure out where to put you after the festivals.”

Bryan nodded. He didn’t have a clue what it was all about, but he read their body language well enough to realize they had decided to accept him into something, at least provisionally.

“Chester,” the last man said, grasping Bryan’s hand. He was the handsomest of the players, around thirty years old, with piercing blue eyes and a long black ponytail that reminded Bryan of a Hollywood pirate. Meghan had told him that Chester played the lead male role in practically every play the troupe put on. “Now that I’ve seen you fight I’m nervous about playing the captain to your wife’s Elstan. Are you sure you don’t want to give it a shot?”

Chapter 33

Meghan was not a happy camper when Bryan finally crawled into their tent reeking like a brewery. “You skipped our practice to get drunk? How can you smell so bad after I got your clothes fixed for you? Didn’t you hop in the stream after your training with Rowan?”

“It wasn’t training,” he groaned, turning around on his hands and knees and beginning to crawl back out of the tent. “It was that giant beating me down with a sword until I thought my arms would fall off.”

“Where are you going now?” the girl demanded.

“To wash, and then to get something to eat. I’m starving.”

“I stopped at the cook wagon when they were closing down and picked up a pot of leftovers. I’ll warm it up while you jump in the stream.”

“Couldn’t you just look at me and mutter ‘clean’ or something?”

“Just go,” she told him, adding a playful push on his backside with her foot, but her voice had softened since she realized he was more exhausted than inebriated. Meghan crawled out of the tent after him and decided to reheat the food the simple way, using her own magical fire. By the time Bryan returned from the stream, she had the stew pot bubbling and placed it on the ground to cool a bit.

“Do you know anything about enchanting swords?” Bryan asked, sounding much more awake after his late-night dip in the cold water. “Rowan put so many notches in my blade that it looks like a giant bread knife.”

“Let me see it.” Meghan accepted the scabbard from Bryan and pulled out a length of the blade to examine it. Like all of the men in the troupe, he kept the sword with him day and night now that they were on the road. “I can see why Phinneas gave you this sword. It’s really a practice weapon and it’s made to yield without breaking, but you wouldn’t want to go into battle with it because it won’t hold an edge. I can fix it for now, but we’ll need to get you a real sword as soon as possible.”

“What about the enchantment?” Bryan persisted. He tried to reach around her for the stew pot but she slapped his hand away.

“It’s too hot,” she chided him. “Most enchanted swords are just another form of magical fixing. I’ve never worked on one myself, but I could manage some basic protection that would be better than nothing. You want a blade that stays sharp, of course, but it’s also about not getting broken by other enchanted swords. And I’ll have to teach you how to maintain the strength of the enchantment with your own magic while you fight.”

“Great. Something new to keep me distracted while I’m trying to avoid getting sliced in half,” Bryan grumped. “Are some swords better than others?”

“Yes. There are famous weapons that serve as reservoirs and lenses for awesome amounts of magical energy, but they’re usually wed to a particular family, with successive generations building up the enchantment.”

Bryan lowered his voice and peered around in the dark. He couldn’t make out colors, but with his vastly improved vision, it was like being out at dusk or dawn, rather than the middle of the night.

“There’s something going on with these guys,” he informed Meghan. “I don’t know how they are at acting, but they’re all too good for their jobs. It’s like working in a tavern where the waiters are assassins.”

“Huh?” The girl took a spoon of the stew, blew on it energetically, and managed to swallow it without burning her throat. “It’s ready if you don’t eat too fast.”

“If I’m going to breathe fire one day, a little hot stew isn’t going to hurt me,” Bryan retorted, reaching for the pot. “What’s it like with the women? Are they as tough as the men?”

“They aren’t like castle folk,” Meghan replied thoughtfully. “I’ve been spending so much time with Laitz that I haven’t gotten a chance to know them that well, expect for Bethany, and she mainly talks about her baby. I’ve caught them a few times changing the subject when I approach, but we are new here, and it will take time to win their trust.”

“After I finished getting beaten down with a sword, Hardol took me to meet four other men, who I guess are Rowan’s lieutenants or something. I’ve never been in a military so I don’t really get that stuff, but one of them told me that we should stick close to Rowan if things get rough.”

“What things?”

“Well, the shaman said that the king has patrols out looking for a young couple, and everybody suspects that it’s us,” Bryan managed to reply through a mouthful of stew. “Can you fix my sword while I’m eating and we’ll talk about this later?”

Chapter 34

“They are the most gifted young people I’ve ever encountered,” the shaman answered Rowan’s question quietly. Then he lapsed into silence for a dozen heartbeats while the two men stared up at the stars. “The young man is like quicksilver, he changes even as I look at him, and the girl has a wall around her that my vision can’t penetrate.”

“Phinneas wouldn’t have sent them if he didn’t trust them with his life,” Rowan said. “I put the boy through his paces with the sword. He barely knows the basic forms, yet his speed and strength would give him a chance against an average swordsman. He almost killed poor Simon within days of first holding a blade.”

“His magic is something I’ve never felt before,” Storm Bringer said. “It is not the energy of your people or my people, nor is it a mixture of the two. It’s more like what I sense from a mountain lion or a bear.”

“And the girl is strong enough to block your vision,” Rowan prompted the shaman.

“I don’t believe she’s doing it consciously, though her magic must be strong to maintain the barrier against me. Somebody else must have put the block in place many years ago. We do the same thing with young children whose magical strength grows faster than their understanding, to prevent them from becoming a danger to those around them. The block must be placed by a close relative, usually a parent, and either it slowly dissolves with maturity or disappears when the child achieves some goal.”

“And you’re sure it’s the king looking for them now?”

“The first few days it was just the people from her castle out for the reward money, to make her a prize for one of the baron’s sons,” Storm Bringer related matter-of-factly. “Then somebody got their messenger pigeons mixed up, and all of a sudden the king became involved. My agents don’t know the precise instructions of the king’s men, but the reward is fifty gold rings, so you’re going to find out pretty quickly if all of your people are loyal.”

“Fifty,” Rowan groaned. “There’s men and women who would sell their own children for that much. The king wouldn’t offer enough to buy a productive farm on the off chance that the girl was as powerful as some rumors make her out to be. He’s a greedy man but not a fool.”

“I agree. If we can find out why he wants her so badly maybe we can use it against him. If we don’t act this winter the opportunity may be lost for another year.” The two men sat in silence for a while, and then Storm Bringer added, “I think I’ll break with tradition this year and offer to help Laitz with his illusions.”

“That’s a good idea, get closer to them,” the big man nodded. Then he barked a short laugh. “But not too close or he may swallow you whole. That one makes me look like a picky eater.”

Chapter 35

“Why do we need a stage?” Bryan asked. “If the audience sits on the slope so they’re looking down at the play, what’s the point of raising it up again?”

“First of all, not all of the festivals have a natural amphitheatre space,” Hardol told Bryan, grunting as the balance of the timber he held shifted when the younger man hoisted his own end off the ground. “Second, some plays need the trapdoors, and the stage holds the frames in place for the curtain and backdrops.”

“It’s got to take at least a day to build a stage,” Bryan argued, adjusting his hold on the heavy timber to make it easier to walk. “I know that Meghan went with Laitz and some of the others to perform in the market area and try to drum up a crowd for tonight. Won’t the farmers be home in bed by the time we’re ready?”

“We’ll have it all put together well before supper,” Hardol said. “Rowan hired a shipwright to build the stage so the joints all fit perfectly. You see the lines cut into your end?”

“Three of them,” Bryan affirmed.

“The dirt crew leveled the corner sleepers and put the posts in place while we were unloading the wagon and laying out the timbers. Line up your mortise with the tenon at the back corner as I do with mine.”

“My what with the what?”

“The rectangular hole you have your fingers in is a mortise. Take your fingers out of it and slide it down over the piece sticking up there, the tenon.”

“Why didn’t you say that in the first place,” Bryan mumbled, moving his hands and lowering the timber onto the belt-high post. “Hey, if we’re building it up off the ground like this, won’t everybody be able to see underneath?”

“We hang skirts all around. Save your critique until it’s finished.”

Theodric and Bryan returned to the stack of timbers for the next structural member, passing three other two-man teams carrying their own beams on the short trip. In less time than Bryan could have imagined, he found himself climbing the pegs on one of the vertical members at the front of the stage, trailing the rope that would help him haul up the narrow top-beam. Before they finished hanging the lightweight curtain, the group of boys who were installing the planking on the stage completed their task.

“I guess you’ve done this before,” Bryan said to Hardol. He couldn’t help admiring the solidity of the structure and the speed with which it had come together without any tools, other than the mallets used to drive in the pegs that held the floorboards in place. “I can’t believe it will come apart as quickly as it went together, though.”

“It takes a little longer,” the older man acknowledged. “The peg holes go all the way through so the boys have to drive them out from the bottom, but there are only two per board, so it doesn’t take long. The fit is what makes it work. That shipwright Rowan hired specialized in building small boats that could be broken down and stored in the hold of a bigger boat for use in shallow water. Imagine the skill it takes to build boat kits that don’t leak.”

“Will you be performing tonight?” Bryan asked, as he headed back with Hardol to move the now empty wagon to their camp area.

“I couldn’t act my way out of a sack,” the ex-soldier admitted. “Half of us work crowd control at festivals. There are always men in the audience who drink more than they can handle, and then the costumes the women wear set them off. Have you seen Juliana and Nesta dressed as elf princesses?”

“The tall, blonde girls with the…?” Bryan made a lifting motion in front of his chest.

“Don’t let Rowan see you do that,” Hardol cautioned. “They’re his daughters. Fortunately, they inherited all of their looks and acting talent from their mother. I’ve even seen noblemen throw gold on the stage, not that the girls would ever look to see where it came from.”

“Noblemen throw gold on the stage?” Bryan repeated is disbelief. “Hey, if you need a volunteer to crawl under there and, uh, work the trapdoors or something, I’m your man.”