The Rage (12 page)

As a result of his caution, the rolling grasslands of the Vast were simply a line on the eastern horizon, and the Earthfast Mountains just a bump. That didn’t stop Dorn from spending hours in the bow staring at them.

The gray, breezy afternoon of the eleventh was no exception. Dorn had stood like a statue at the port rail since the midday meal of rock-hard biscuits and pickled cod. Eventually Kara wandered up to join him.

Will had made it a point to keep abreast of the progress of their friendship. Someone should, shouldn’t he, considering that back in the Flooded Forest, his comrades had proclaimed the bard a duplicitous and possibly sinister figure. Besides, it intrigued him to see a softer side of Dorn emerging, no matter how the big man himself struggled against it, and while some folk affected to resent eavesdroppers, the practice didn’t bother them unless they caught you at it.

They rarely caught Will. The skills that had once made him the ablest guild thief in Saerloon saw to that. He descended the mast and sauntered forward. Fortunately, the galley carried some of its cargo on deck, including half a dozen crates, stacked two high and lashed down to keep them from sliding just aft of the bow. The metallic contents clinked and rattled when the ship rolled. The pile offered plenty of cover for a skulker as small as a halfling. Will sat down with his back against it, yawned, and pretended to doze.

He picked up Kara’s rich soprano voice in midsentence:

“—wish you were ashore, don’t you? Hunting them.”

“We’ll see you safely to Lyrabar,” Dorn said, as promised” “That’s not what I asked.”

“The voyage is… pleasanter than I thought it might Light work for good wages. But I like killing dragons. We talked about that already.”

The previous dragon flight almost killed you, your friends, and me. We were lucky to escape with our lives”

“Yes. It’s stupid to want to face another one. But if you could find a way to split the wyrms up, pick one off, slip away, regroup, and return for the next…” He chuckled. It was a sound Will had rarely heard. “Easier said than done, I know.”

imagine that if anyone could figure it out, it would be you,” Kara said.

That killed the conversation dead, at least for a moment. Dorn had never known how to respond to a compliment, or a simple expression of gratitude, for that matter.

“I’ve spent a lot of times studying drakes,” he managed at last, “questioning folk who’ve seen them up close and lived to tell the tale”

“Yet you have no idea why they slip into frenzy?” “Apparently nobody does, not even wizards, sages, or priests”

“It must be horrible for them.”

Dorn spat and said, “More like the kind of drunk where hurting people and breaking things seems like the grandest sport in the world. But even if it was awful, who could pity them? Dragons slaughter and pillage even when their minds are clear.”

“I know. You’d slay them all if you could, and considering what they took from you, who could blame you? I just wonder what you’d do afterward”

Will peeked out in time to see Dorn shrug.

“Since it’s not going to happen, why even think about it?” the former gladiator said his iron half-mask gleaming dully in the pale winter sunlight.

“I know you’d find something to do, because I know there’s more to you than hate”

“I suppose I’d just go on hunting. Faerűn would still have plenty of dangerous beasts, and I’d still need to earn a living.”

“Suppose you found one of the great dragon hoards Will is always going on about. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about coin.”

“I’d still hunt”

“To help others?”

“Because it’s all I know.”

“Oh, nonsense. You’re clever enough to learn another way of living. If you wanted to, you could settle down and have the things most people want. A home, perhaps, and someone to share it.”

His rough bass voice grew colder when he said, “You’re mocking me.”

“No.”

“I’ve known only two sorts of women in that way. Those I paid, and those who were curious to find out what it would be like, or if I even could. To discover whether the red drake left me my manhood.”

Some people think that different is the same as ugly and frightening, but not everyone. I don’t. How could I, when I’m different myself?”

“Because your eyes and hair are unusual colors? Spare me. You’re shaking the tree for compliments, and you need to try your luck elsewhere. I never learned to play such games.”

I’ve offended you,” Kara said. “I’m sorry. I’ll leave you alone.”

Will looked out from his hiding place and saw the slender bard, her cheeks ruddy with the cold and her long, straight white-blond hair whipping in the wind, turn to go.

Dorn reached out with his human hand to stay her, almost touching but not quite.

“Please,” he said. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I don’t understand why you say some of the things you do, but I know it isn’t out of meanness.”

“I often don’t know why I say them either,” she said with a smile. “Perhaps simply because I’m afraid, and it makes me babble.”

Once again, Dorn didn’t appear to know what to say. Just kiss her, thought Will impatiently. You’ll both enjoy it, and with any luck, it’ll gripe Pavel’s arse.

Pavel had an amorous nature, and since he served Lathander, who was, among his other attributes, a god of love, nothing in his creed or vows constrained him from indulging it. At the start of the voyage, he’d spent several days making subtle romantic overtures to Kara, hints and invitations she’d ignored. Will hoped it would irk him to learn that where the handsome, loquacious priest had failed to strike a spark, his scarred, surly comrade had succeeded.

The moment stretched out, the two humans standing close together, gazing into one another’s faces.

Then Raryn bellowed, “Got you!”

Naturally, everyone, the half-golem and singer included, turned to see what was happening.

Bare from the waist up, his skin sunburned the angry looking red that evidently caused his kind no more discomfort than did the winter chill, the arctic dwarf was standing on one of the rower’s benches a short distance aft. The muscles in his burly arms bulged and knotted as he hauled in a line. At the end was a harpoon embedded in the plump, glistening gray body of a tuna nearly as big as himself. The fish thrashed and flopped about the deck until he pounded its head with the butt of his bone-hafted ice axe, fitted with a new blade since the ooze drake’s corrosive slime had ruined the old one.

Afterward the dwarf recited the prayer-like formula he intoned after killing any game animal, apologizing to its departing spirit and promising its body wouldn’t go to waste. Then he gave his shipmates a grin, the flash of teeth almost indistinguishable inside the tangle of white beard.

“Fresh tuna filets for our supper,” said Raryn. “There’s nothing tastier.”

He wrenched the harpoon from his catch, drew his knife, and crouched down to clean it.

Having determined what the fuss had been about, the sailors went back to their duties. Will peered up at Dorn and Kara, then frowned, perplexed. Unlike everyone else, the bard wasn’t turning away. She stared as Raryn’s blood-smeared fist hitched the knife along, shearing away slabs of moist pink flesh.

It didn’t make sense. Surely she’d seen someone dress out a freshly killed animal before, so why the fascination? Will couldn’t believe she was squeamish and thus transfixed with horror. Back in Ylraphon, she’d maintained her composure with smashed, shredded human corpses scattered all around. Yet she still couldn’t take her violet eyes off the tuna.

Dorn saw it, too.

“Kara?” he said. “Kara?”

She didn’t answer. She took a step toward the companionway leading down from the bow, paused, then took another. Will had a sudden premonition that he didn’t want to see what she’d do if she made it all the way to Raryn and his catch. It would be… disturbing. Maybe worse than that.

Kara wrenched herself around, and staggered to the very front of the bow, seemingly putting as much distance between herself and the dwarf as possible. Panting, she clutched the rail as if she lacked the strength to stand without a prop. Or maybe as if to anchor herself in place.

Dorn followed her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Shaking her head, Kara replied, “Nothing. I felt faint for a moment, out it’s passing. Perhaps it was just hunger. Maybe I should have eaten my share of the cod, repulsive as it looked.”

Dorn peered down the length of the ship then shouted, “Pavel!”

The shout brought the priest hurrying forward. Will fell in behind him, and they clambered up into the bow.

“She’s ill,” said Dorn.

“I’m not,” Kara replied.

“I’ll tell you whether you are or not,” said Pavel.

His tone must have convinced her resistance was useless, for she submitted to an examination without further protest. He gazed into her eyes and mouth, held her dainty wrist between thumb and forefinger to take her pulse, and cast a divination. Apparently it revealed nothing helpful, for he then proceeded to ask the usual questions physicians trotted out when they hadn’t a clue what ailed the patient, and lastly to inspect the wounds he’d first treated in the wererats’ lair. As far as Will could tell, she’d healed up nicely, with only faint scars remaining.

“Well?” asked Dorn.

Pavel directed his answer at Kara. “You seem fine.”

“I told you so” She adjusted her mantle and gown to cover her shoulder and added. “I would like to find a spot to lie down, though?

“I’ll walk with y—” Dorn began.

“Don’t trouble yourself. I’m all right.”

Once she was out of earshot, Will sneered up at. Pavel. “Baffled and useless as ever,” the halfling said.

“Go eat a toadstool,” Pavel replied. “If she is sick, no other healer could have diagnosed the problem, either.”

“Do you think she is?” asked Dorn.

“I don’t know,” the cleric answered with a shrug, “but I find myself remembering that when we first met her, we mistrusted her. Now we like her. Considering that she risked her life to cover the retreat from Ylraphon the same as we did, how could we not? The problem is, our fondness doesn’t make her any less of a mystery.”

After that, no one else had much to say. In time, Will climbed back up the mast, where he remained while the sun sank toward the horizon. The elevation should have allowed him to see farther than anyone else onboard_ Still, it was Raryn’s keen eyes that first spotted the threat, and Raryn who raised the alarm.

“Dragons!” the tracker shouted. “Flying out of the west!”

Raryn’s cry jolted Dorn out of his out of his fretting over Kara and made him snatch for his bow. The problem was he

didn’t have it.. Like most of the rest of his gear, it was packed away to protect it from the damp salt air.

He hesitated, torn between the desire to rush to his baggage and the equally compelling urge to find out more about what was going on. Then, yielding to the latter impulse, he leaped from the bow and scrambled down the deck, through the jabbering crewmen, to join Raryn at the rail.

“Show me,” he said. •

The dwarf pointed. The setting sun burned in the western sky, and Dorn had to squint against the glare. Finally, though, he made out two specks. They were still far enough away that it was amazing even Raryn had spotted them.

The captain tramped up, his tattooed face twisted in a scowl of concern, and said, “You claim to know about dragons.”

We do,” Raryn said.

“Are those two chasing us?”

“It’s too early to tell,” said the dwarf

“Suppose I order all hands to the oars?”

“It wouldn’t help,” Raryn said. “You can’t outrun dragons, and I guarantee you, if we’ve spotted them, they’ve already seen us as well. My advice is to break out whatever weapons you’ve got stashed away. My friends and I will tell you how to use them to best effect. Though I hope it won’t come to that. A ship under sail is a poor place to fight wyrms. You can only maneuver the length and breadth of the deck, and if they feel like it, they can drown you just by knocking a hole below the waterline.”

The captain frowned and said, “Surely we can do something.”

“We told you what to do,” said Dorn. “Loan ns your spyglass, and go do it. We may only have a few minutes left. When Raryn and I know more about the wyrms, we’ll tell yon”

From the way the mariner glared, he plainly didn’t like being ordered around on his own vessel. Still, he surrendered the telescope, strode off, and started barking commands in his turn. The crew scrambled to obey him.

Dorn peered through the spyglass, then cursed.

“With the sun behind them,” he said, “I still can’t make out the color.”

“It could be the swamp dragons again,” Raryn said, “except there were more than two.”

“Considering that it may have been a whole different bunch of wyrms raiding along the eastern shore, the gods

only know what’s coming,” Dorn replied. “We’d better arm ourselves while we still have time.”

Kara found Dorn when he was fastening up his acid scarred brigandine, buckling the flaps that made it possible for him to don the reinforced leather armor despite the girth and protrusions of his metal arm. He felt a twinge of relief that she looked tense but composed, not strange and entranced as she had before. Maybe she really had just needed a nap.

“Do you have spells prepared?” he asked.

“Always,” she replied.

“Good, but if we have to fight, wait for the proper moment to throw them. Wyrms will almost always target a spellcaster if you give them a chance”

“I know,” she said. “You be careful, too. You look more dangerous than the average sailor. The drakes will want to eliminate you quickly, also.”

“Maybe so…” Dorn faltered.

He had more he wanted to say to her, but didn’t know what, and in any case, they were running out of time. He turned to the mariners who’d lined up to take spears and bows from the mate who was passing them out.

It turned out the majority had seen combat before, fending off the raiders of the Pirate Isles, which put them one up on the militiamen Dorn had led in Ylraphon. Marginally encouraged, he divided them into squads and gave them their battle orders.