The Book of Fire (53 page)

T
he Tinkers will not be rushed. After two idle days of waiting through their prep for the big trade expedition, N’Doch and the baron are getting restless. For different reasons, of course. N’Doch, because he’s picking it up from the dragons, no matter how hard he tries to resist. The baron, because restlessness is his natural state, as far as N’Doch can tell.

Mostly to bug him, N’Doch pretends to relish the long hot days spent mostly within hands’ reach of Blind Rachel’s chill pool.

“You just gotta lighten up some, Dolph. A little r ’n r is good for a man of war like yerself.” He trails his hand in the cooling water, then drips it luxuriously across his bare chest.

Köthen merely grunts, then spits on the honing stone he’s cadged off Luther and sets the blade of his dagger to the dampened surface. “I’ve many times wished for Hal Engle at my side,” he muses, rotating the already lethal steel in small, precise circles, “but now more than ever.”

“What? I’m not good enough for you?”

Without ceasing his honing, Köthen gazes out into the amber darkness of the dusk-shadowed woods. “Hal Engle knows everything there is to know about dragons. He would know how best to kill one, I imagine.”

N’Doch sits up straighter. “Whoa. No one’s said anything about killing. If this ‘monsta’ of theirs is Fire, and he
has
got Air stashed away someplace, killing him ain’t gonna help us one bit.”

“But it might help the local populace.”

“Hey, man, you didn’t even want to be here. What the hell d’you care about the local populace?”

Köthen shrugs, not a thing N’Doch sees him do all that often, since the baron’s not much into either indecision or ambivalence. “They appear to be in need, and they have requested our help.”

“Oh. I get it.” N’Doch nods sagely, wondering how he got so brave, to be talking like this to a man with both a temper and a very sharp blade. “Now I know the kinda guy you are. You think you can fix everything, right? Whatever’s wrong, you’re gonna be the man for it.”

Köthen doesn’t leave off making his neat little circles on the stone. “There’s no success without effort.”

The man’s self-restraint is admirable, N’Doch decides, now that he’s got it back in hand. He’s settling in to his exile with the scary kind of patience that usually portends an explosion of action when the time comes. N’Doch’s never known a man who could make his silences so loud. The Tinkers walk softly around Köthen, but never fail to let him know they’re glad to have him as an ally. “You’re just bored, is what you are. But listen up, Dolph. Don’t you let the girl hear you talk about killing dragons.”

Now Köthen looks up. “Perhaps if I did, it would finally affect the disillusionment I’ve been unable thus far to achieve.”

“Mebbe. I wouldn’t count on it, though.”

An odd crackling off among the trees alerts them both.

“Horses,” says Köthen, with mild wonder.

“Nah, c’mon. Here?” N’Doch gets to his feet, squinting into the dim spaces between the trunks and branches.

Köthen spits on his stone again, listening. “Horses, unshod. No riders. No, they’re . . .” He looks up, frowning, as a crowd of large animals noses its way through the woods to the edge of the pool, followed by several of the Tinker children. “Ah, that’s it. They’re mules.”

“Damn.” N’Doch is impressed, both by Köthen’s ear and the animals’ size. They look strong and tough, if a bit on the thin side.

Köthen sheathes his dagger and stands to make room as the herd lowers their long heads to drink. His hands move over them eagerly, smoothing flanks, assessing leg muscles.

“There’s some skill to breeding a good mule.”

N’Doch stands back. He’s not so easy being surrounded by large hoofed animals. “Wonder where they’ve been keeping them.”

“Yo! Dockman!” Luther calls from behind. He slaps a lagging mule toward the water and ambles over to join them, gesturing at the stone in Köthen’s belt. “Yu dun wit’ dat?”

Köthen nods, offering it back.
“Ja, danka.”

“Time ta pack up, nah. Yu ready?”

“Betcha!” N’Doch waves a hand at the mule herd. “Where’d all this come from?”

“Up da hill sum. Dey’s grass deah, sumat.” Luther laughs, a mournful hollow sound. “Didna tink we was gonna haul dem waggins by oursels, didju? Das fer townfolk!”

When suddenly the next dawn proved to be departure day, Erde watched the hitchup with eager interest. The sturdy mules reminded her of Sir Hal’s uncanny beast, and that set her worrying about how matters were in Deep Moor, and with the war. She wished Linden was here, for the youngest Tinker baby was ill with a mysterious ailment that their own herbalist could not seem to cure. Erde considered stealing the child and whisking it off to the dragon in the woods. He thought perhaps he could help. But the mother never left it alone for a minute, and it was still not time to let the Tinkers in on the true nature of their new allies.

It was good to be on the move again, even better that her heavy pack would travel in the wagons instead of on her back. Erde had been able to learn a lot in her two days at Blind Rachel, about the villagers and their dragon worship. The information had only upset her own dragons further, but it had decided them that confrontation was the best course, and that there was no time to lose. The search for Air would take a back seat to the search for Fire. Now both dragons were sure that one would lead to the other.

AND MEANWHILE, YOU WILL REST HERE AND BE COMFORTABLE?

I DO NOT NOTICE SUCH THINGS
.

YOU NOTICE WHEN YOU’RE HUNGRY.

INDEED I DO, AND WE SHALL NEED TO BE THINKING ABOUT THAT SOON
.

The woods around the Tinker camp were nearly barren of wildlife. Certainly there was nothing big enough to keep a dragon fed. Erde found herself gazing at the mules and averted her eyes guiltily.

I WILL BUY YOU SOMETHING FAT AND SWEET WHEN WE REACH THE VILLAGES.

If there is such a thing in the villages. And what will you buy it with, girl?

Leave it to Lady Water to come up with a fuller understanding of commerce. But for her dagger and the dragon brooch pinned inside her shirt, Erde had nothing of value.

I’LL TRADE FOR IT. I’LL THINK OF SOMETHING.

“Of course you will, little sister.” The dragon-as-Sedou joined her, laughter in his eyes. “Don’t mind me. All set to leave? The signal’s been given. Come walk along with me. The day’s just begun, yet I sense we are nearing our journey’s end.”

Earth felt it, too. He said it was like hearing a rumbling in the distance for ever so long, and then finally spotting the thunderhead. And the summons had strengthened again, he said, that silent call that only the dragons heard. Erde was sad to leave him behind again. She welcomed Sedou’s company, since N’Doch had decided to walk with Baron Köthen in the rear. More than half the crew was going along, leaving only a handful of elderly to care for the rabbits and goats and to water the little kitchen gardens, plus a small warrior contingent assigned to the camp’s defense.

But Erde understood why. Listening carefully over the past few days, especially to Luther who did not mince words, had made it clear that this trip was more than the usual “biz.” Despite the beauty of their stronghold and Stoksie’s irrepressible cheer, Blind Rachel Crew’s situation was deteriorating. Their trade stocks were precariously low, their stores of staple foods even lower. Their survival as a community depended on the success of this expedition. At least the continuation of their water supply was now assured,
though none of them knew it. Erde wished she could tell them, to relieve at least one source of their constant anxiety.

She and Sedou joined the line of wagons midway as it rolled out of camp. The road outward did not appear to be a road at all. The first several hours were a trek across crumbling stone ledges and dry, scrub-choked meadows. Erde pointed out to Sedou how both wagons and walkers spread out in a wide fan formation wherever space permitted.

“I believe they hope to leave as faint a trace of our passage as possible.” He circled a hand in the air. “Not even much of a dust cloud raised.”

She nodded, intrigued by the Tinkers’ quiet methods of defense. Her father, Baron Josef, would have built a big stone wall around such a stronghold, then loudly challenged all comers to vanquish it.

Before the sun was high, the expedition was several leagues from the camp by Erde’s estimation, stretched out in a long, lazy line. The pace had slowed to an odd kind of waiting. But then, at a call from up front, each walker and wagon turned abruptly left from where they were, and moved downslope into a broad stand of sharp-needled evergreens. These young trees looked so thick and healthy that Erde wondered if someone had been watering them, like they did back in camp. Passage between the trunks was so narrow that the rough branches scraped the sides of the bigger wagons. The mules groaned and protested, but on the other side of the grove, Erde saw they had come out onto what N’Doch would call a “real” road, paved like a castle courtyard with that pale seamless stone he called
concrete
. The low, heavy greenery screened their sideways approach to the road as effectively as any big stone wall, or perhaps more so, for the fact of not announcing itself.

Once on the road, though it was cracked and pitted and dotted with tall tufts of weeds, the expedition moved faster. They descended through dusty pine scrub onto more open slopes of thorn brush and brittle yellow grasses that rustled like a woman’s skirts in the hot breezes. Here and there, a few stunted hardwoods clung to the hillsides, bent over with drought and wind. Along one such dry meadow, the Tinkers stopped to rest, by habit or common consent, Erde could never tell. Their decision-making process was often
too diffuse for her even to detect. Two or three walkers left the road and plunged into the scrub, to answer a call of Nature, she assumed. But a wave from one brought another dozen leaping down from the carts and caravans, armed with buckets and long-handled baskets of metallic mesh. Others followed more slowly.

“Bluburry,” announced Stoksie as he limped past, a bucket in each hand. “Real gud trade, bluburry. Be heah a while, den. Yu doin’ okay, nah?”

Erde nodded gratefully, looking to Sedou for help with the English, which she could understand now but still had trouble pronouncing.

“Can we help?” Sedou asked, for them both.

Stoksie handed over one of his buckets with a gap-toothed grin. “Betcha!”

The berries were tiny but sweet. Erde couldn’t resist nibbling a few, but all the Tinkers were doing the same. The picking went quickly with so many pickers, and consolidation produced an impressive crop. Several large buckets were capped and stowed. Watching Stoksie rub his hands in satisfaction, Erde thought,
every little bit helps.

A small noon meal was shared out, with water from the big wooden casks lashed to each wagon. When the expedition moved on, a steady pace brought them down off the higher reaches and into the foothills by midafternoon. It was hotter there, and traces of civilization appeared. Very soon Erde understood Baron Köthen’s dry bemusement at what he called N’Doch’s “ridiculous luck,” for stumbling upon the Tinkers and not someone more dangerous.

Her first hint was the ruins along the road, the crumbling stone foundations of farmsteads long ago deserted. These looked sad and lonely, but with a peaceful aura of having eased gradually back to Nature. After that came less comforting signs: structures more recently inhabited, not fallen back to the barren earth quickly enough to eradicate the high metal fences that had once surrounded them, now smashed and broken, or the wide dark scars of explosion and conflagration.

“Surely there was a war!” exclaimed Erde, after the seventh or eighth burned-out ruin.

The dragon-as-Sedou shook his head. “Mankind is a rabid animal destroying itself from within.”

“No animal would so foul its nest. God set Man apart from the animals, to do His bidding, but Man will not follow His will.”

“It’s humanity’s belief that they’re different from animals that leads to all this.” He gestured across the devastated landscape, his face stony with ancient despair. “Would any true god allow it?”

Erde’s lips pursed. She regretted starting this conversation, for the dragon could talk circles around her. But there were certain perversions of dogma that she should not let pass unchallenged. “As if there could be more than one! My lady Water, you learn this pagan talk from your godless guide!”

“More from his brother, the martyr and idealist whose shape I walk in.”

“A man you’ve never met.”

“Yet who lives richly in the mind of the brother who loved him.”

“Oh, how do you know what’s really Sedou and what’s merely N’Doch’s memory of him?”

“I do not. Does it matter? Why do you say merely? Is it not mankind’s dearest hope to be lovingly remembered when one no longer lives?”

“Mankind’s dearest hope is salvation,” Erde reminded him primly.

“Ah. Salvation.”

She sensed mockery and frowned up at him.