They sneaked past the Hunt’s encampment well downwind, threading precariously through a high tumble of rocks that had once fallen just short of the gravel beach where the huntsmen slept. Down in the shadow of the boulders, the coals of a hastily built cook fire sputtered amidst a scatter of snoring bodies. No watch had been posted, but Hal pointed out a ring of crude crosses, fastened out of twigs and stuck into the sand around the sleepers.
“They’d do better to fear the living,” he murmured in Erde’s ear.
As they passed by above, the dogs below stirred and whined but did not raise an alarm.
Hal led his party around the crest of the mountain. By dawn, they had descended into the evergreen forests on the far side and felt safe enough to build a small fire of their own in the lee of a rock shelf, just as the sun glanced pinkly off the tall thin spikes of the firs. Erde envied those trees. She would risk a good deal just to stand quietly out in the open sun.
“Exercises tomorrow,” declared Hal. “This morning, we rest. It’s an advantage that they still think you’re out here alone. They’ll underestimate your food supply, the water you can carry, the distance you might travel, everything about us.”
He cut venison to cook for Erde and himself, then apologetically offered the rest of the deer to the dragon. Earth sniffed at it curiously, then curled up like a vast scaly dog and went to sleep.
“Too dead for him. Dragons are not scavengers,” the knight explained as he skewered chunks of venison with lengths of green sapling. He seemed pleased that at least one bit of his hard-won dragon-lore had proven correct. Erde did not offer to explain Earth’s bizarre relationship to his living meals. It seemed far too complicated a subject for the limitations of sand scratchings. “But he’s eaten recently, has he not? He’ll be all right for a while.” Hal offered a filled skewer to Erde, who sat huddled in her cloak against the rock wall. “Come on, girl! Work for your supper!”
She roused herself for the skewer, then settled by the fire with eyes downcast. Their narrow escape from the Hunt had left her drained and feeling newly vulnerable.
“You’re looking rather sad and thoughtful just now, milady.” Hal lowered his own heavily laden skewer into the flames. “I’d rather you ate that up and got some rest, but if there’s a tale you wish to tell, I’ll stay awake for it.”
If only I could tell it, Erde mused. But even if she’d had her voice, the tale she had to tell was of events connected only by chronology, not by any logic or meaning that she could perceive. Not like Alla, or the court bard, whose stories always made sense. Events were not random in their tales as they seemed to have become in hers.
She was beginning to understand that the weight dragging down her feet and her eyelids by the end of each night’s travel was not just exhaustion. There was also the pain she hadn’t faced yet, the true depths of the grief she’d shoved aside in her struggle to survive. Hal’s arrival had eased the struggle. He was a resourceful male adult, and she trusted him. Under his protection, she could be a child again, the child she still was inside. She could feel free to grieve.
She let the skewer drift close to the fire as she brooded, until a log shifted. Sparks flew up around her wrist and the raw meat sizzled. Erde jerked her hand back, aware that her other hand gripped the hilt of Rainer’s sword so hard that it had gone numb. She lifted it out of the cloak folds and dragged it into her lap.
“How ’bout you start by telling me about that?” Hal pulled his meat out of the fire and blew on it delicately.
Erde regarded him with big eyes and shook her head. She wished she could, but it was still too painful. Even in her dreams, her mind shied away from it. Besides, she knew she could not tell the story of Rainer’s death to anyone, not even the dragon, until she understood what he had meant to her.
“Then let me tell you what a fighting man can tell from this stranger’s weapon.” He spread his wiping cloth on the pine needles and laid out his too-hot dinner, then extended his hand. Reluctantly, she placed the hilt in his palm. Freeing it from its linen wrappings, he stood, groaning and complaining of stiffness though he settled into his fighting stance with the grace of long experience. Erde gathered up the wrappings possessively, resisting the urge to snatch back the sword and cover its nakedness. Hal held it level, first balanced on one palm, then gripped and held out in front of him. His eyes narrowed in concentration. He swung it a few times, a long sideways arc, then overhand. Satisfied, he resettled himself in a dappled fall of early sunlight to study the hilt and shaft in detail.
“A well-made blade but plainly presented. A skilled armorer, a day-to-day purpose. A working blade, not a courtier’s, definitely not your father’s, I see that now. Iron Joe would never stoop to such an honest blade.” He turned it in the light like a chirurgeon with an old bone. “A newish blade, not too heavy but on the long side. A tall man, lightly built, probably young. A blade not often bloodied but scrupulously maintained. A responsible young man, a little insecure yet but proud enough of his ability to spend several months’ salary on a better than average weapon, and unpretentious enough to avoid needless decoration.” Hal lowered the tip of the sword until it just touched the ground. “I hope this wasn’t the man they say you struck dead with a witch’s spell at the castle gate. I could use the man who carried this blade. I’d make a fine soldier out of him. Don’t go killing them off, milady—there are few enough around as it is.”
He glanced over at her, grinning, and found her face twisted with grief. He had described Rainer so accurately that it left her breathless. She could almost see him just beyond the fire, sword in hand, fresh from the practice yard, his favorite place, smiling in welcome. For a moment, she hated the elder knight. It should be Rainer sitting across from her now. Why couldn’t he have kept himself alive? At last, the tears came freely. She could no longer hold them back.
Hal knelt quickly and set the sword aside. “Ah, child, you can’t mind the self-serving inventions of a power-mad cleric. I know you have killed no one.”
Erde shook her head frantically, then both her hands, then buried her face in them and wept as she had not been able to since she’d been told of Rainer’s death. Brother or lover, whatever he was, it didn’t matter, she wept for him anyway, and for Alla, her only other friend, and for her grandmother, whose counsel and company and strength she did not feel whole without. And she even wept for Georg, whose life she’d been forced to take, so that her own might continue.
Hal reached across the fire and patted her shoulder once, then let her cry.
She wept long after the knight had banked the fire and gone to sleep. She was unable to stop herself. She crawled over to the dragon’s side, curling up next to him for warmth, but could not keep the sobs from coming. Wave after wave until her brain was dulled with it. Only when the afternoon gloom deepened under the thick pines and the dragon stirred and woke, filling her mind with his curiosity, needing her attention, demanding her response, did she get hold of herself and dry her eyes. Her grief remained as sharp as ever but having finally given in to it, she could put it in its place. She had to. She could not be dragging about like a stone, weighed down by painful memory. She had to be fit and alert. She was the Dragon Guide, and she knew where her duty lay.