N’Doch can feel the girl’s eyes on him, once the song is ended and the dragon-as-Sedou is busy chatting up the women. She understands a little about him now, must be, since she’s waited until he’s done singing before bobbing up at his side to hang on him like she’s his kid sister or something. Which, he guesses, after all they’ve been through together, she sort of is. He’s surprised she seems so glad to see him, and besides, he’s grateful for a familiar face, so he can’t resist slinging an arm across her thin shoulders and giving her a hug. To his surprise, she lets him, though he knows her well enough to do it quick and back right off again.
“N’Doch!” she beams. “We were so worried about you!”
Her understatement makes him laugh. “Me, too. Not every day a guy gets blown to bits and wakes up to tell about it!”
Her little nose puckers. “Not to bits, really. But it was bad. Blood everywhere! Those gun-things are a dreadful weapon, N’Doch.”
She’s speaking French, he notices. Not Rose’s antique Frankish, but real French. His French. No more need for dragon intermediaries, then. No more excuses for silence or miscommunication between them now. There’s so much he wants to ask about what happened after, that is, after he stopped remembering. About Lealé, and Baraga—in all the confusion, did the slimy bastard get away? And how was it seeing him dead and all? But the moment’s not right, or maybe he’s not ready. Instead he says, “Been keeping up with the language lessons, huh?”
She nods, hunching her thick woolly layers farther up around her neck like some kind of Eskimo. She has tall fur-and-leather boots on now, and the whole outfit looks as weird to him as it did back home, except he reminds himself that this is what people wear here in 913, and probably if he doesn’t get something like it pretty quick, he’s gonna freeze to death. He shivers, remembering that he’s standing barefoot in half a meter of snow, and this long shirty thing they’ve given him just isn’t cutting it.
“Lady Water is just the best teacher of all!” the girl exclaims, with the same precise and literal manner in French that she had speaking German all the while the dragon was translating in his head.
“Nah. You’re just a good learner.” He kicks at the snow experimentally and grins when it flies weightlessly up into the air. “I guess you’re glad to be home.”
“Yes, yes, I am, but . . . it won’t be for long, you know.”
“No. Probably not.” The dragons would see to that. N’Doch wonders again how this young girl, with her whole life before her, could so willingly give it up to serve this infernal “Purpose” that the dragons are so obsessed with. He’s about to ask her that, when she answers one of the other questions he’s been trying to make himself ask. “They went back for Master Djawara as soon as they could, you know. He wouldn’t come with them.”
N’Doch feels at least one of the tensions deep inside him relax a little. “But he’s okay?”
“Yes, he’s fine.”
“Why wouldn’t he come?” But N’Doch is not really surprised. He can’t imagine the old man willingly forsaking his beloved hidey-hole out in the bush, or his pack of mangy dogs.
“Said he had too much important business to tend to,” says his brother’s voice, coming up beside him.
N’Doch starts, then blows out a breath and shakes his head. “Never. Never gonna get used to this.”
The dragon-as-Sedou laughs, a rich and youthful baritone. “Gotta say, though—it’s more convenient than four legs and a tail.”
“Freaks me out,” N’Doch admits, for the first time in the girl’s hearing. “You’re dead, and I oughta be.”
“Look at me, bro.”
Reluctantly, N’Doch meets his brother’s eyes. It’s like staring straight into the sun. Meanwhile, the dragon is speaking inside his head.
I am your memory of Sedou. Nothing more, but . . . nothing less.
N’Doch looks away, swallows. “Right.”
“Okay. So Papa Dja says he’ll be watching out. He sees signs of more activity back by us, he’ll let us know somehow. Says to tell you to keep your head down.”
“Too late.”
“Never too late. Let’s get on in, huh? I’m freezing my ass off!”
The girl giggles. Sedou grins at her, reaches out, and tousles her black curls. “Hey there, kiddo.”
N’Doch sees he’s got some catching up to do. “By the way, remind me to tell you ’bout this vision I had.”
When he sits down at the long wooden tables laid out for dinner in the big room with the fireplace, N’Doch realizes that he’s still the only guy in the place—not counting Sedou, who’s really a she-dragon anyway. He looks around, counts fifteen women of various ages, including the girl. Maybe the men are all out fighting this war she’s told him about. He’s got a well-used platter in front of him, like a big fired-clay plate, and a tall tapering mug of the same material grasped in one hand, already filled with some foamy dark brew. He’s floating on that cushion of unreality again, with the girl seated on one side and Sedou across from him, both ready to translate. The seat on his left is empty until the most beautiful white woman he’s ever laid eyes on plunks a big steaming dish down in the center of the table and settles in next to him. She smiles and says something he doesn’t get, then holds out her hand.
“This is Raven,” supplies the girl from his right.
“Oh. Hello, Raven.” N’Doch can feel Sedou’s eyes laughing already. He takes the proffered, lovely hand and raises it, just like he’s seen in vids, gallantly to his lips.
Later, when Raven gets up to refill the jug of ale she’s just emptied into his tankard, N’Doch no longer cares what century he’s in. These women’s homemade hooch tastes pretty damn good to him and the company couldn’t be improved upon. Now that he’s got the chance, he leans over to the girl and whispers, “So where’s all the men at? They out fighting or something?”
She blinks at him, then wags her head in understanding. “I forgot—you wouldn’t know. There are no men at Deep Moor.”
“None?” He glances around, sees two or three young girls who’ve got to have had a father at some point.
The girl follows his gaze. “Oh, well, just the occasional visitor.”
He grins. Wow. She’s actually making a joke.
“No, really. Like Hal. I told you about him. He helped me escape from the hell-priest after I ran away from my father.” She leans in closer. “Hal is Rose’s . . . well, um, you know.”
“Her husband?”
“Oh, no. He’s her, um . . .” She gestures uselessly with one hand.
“Her brother?”
“No!”
“Her lover?”
The girl blushes and nods.
At first, N’Doch thought she was uptight. He’s come to accept that it’s actual innocence, so he tries real hard now not to let her prissiness irritate him. But he can’t help pushing her just a little. Somebody’s got to teach her the ways of the world. “Go on, say it. He’s her lover.”
She’s even touchier than usual. She glares at him from under her lashes, then bolts up and scurries away. N’Doch hasn’t expected quite this reaction. He’s left with empty seats on both sides of him and Sedou all the way across the room, in deep with the pale-haired healer woman, probably swapping secrets of the trade. But he decides that things are looking up. He’d had a moment of panic at the thought that no men at Deep Moor meant that these women didn’t like men. Now he feels free to entertain his fantasies of luring the spectacular and vivacious Raven into bed with him. Maybe he’s not going to mind it so much after all, being back here in 913. At least, for as long as the dragons will let him. He figures he’s gotta work fast.
Erde escaped the embarrassing conversation with N’Doch and fled to a shadowed corner of the kitchen to wait for her blush to subside. Nervously tracing the stained grout lines between the stove tiles, she wondered why—after all she’d seen of life in the ungentle world of 2013—a certain subject was still so hard for her to talk about, especially with N’Doch. For, though he was like a brother to her, he was still very much a male. In fact, here in her world, he might even be labeled lecherous. But she’d seen how it was where he came from. People just said what they felt, right out, and looked where they wanted to look. There, she’d been the odd one out.
But to be honest with herself, something she was trying harder to be lately, Erde had come to resent the extreme modesty of her upbringing. She envied N’Doch his worldly ease. She was sure he could answer just about any question she might ask about what really went on between men and women, and he’d have not the slightest qualm about filling in all the details. But she could not bring herself to have those conversations with him, no matter how curious she was, conversations she would have had with her mother, had that dear lady not died in Erde’s early childhood. Conversations her grandmother the baroness had been too busy to have. Conversations she could never have had with her father because of the way he’d begun to look at her and touch her in the months before she fled Tor Alte to escape the clutches of the hell-priest.
Ever since she’d begun to grow, men had grabbed at her in one way or another, as if it was their right to lay hands on her without her permission. And this man-right seemed to demolish all class and duty lines, even religious vows. To Erde, it was more than just disconcerting or dangerous. It overturned a very basic principle of her childhood: men were meant to protect the women in their charge. Like Hal. Having tracked her down in the deepest wilderness, he could easily have taken advantage of her. But Hal Engle was a King’s Knight, and true to the oath he’d sworn. And a decent man, besides.
N’Doch, too, had kept his hands to himself from the very beginning, though Erde could hardly call him a gentleman, the way he looked at every other woman who crossed his path. Erde ceased tracing the grout lines and began to pick at a particularly offensive clot of soot. And then there was . . . him. The man who kept invading her dreams, as if she had no choice.
It wasn’t just the dreaming about her enemy that disturbed her, or even that she worried about his well-being. It was that she was so . . . attracted to him.
The very notion brought up her blush again. Erde was not too innocent to notice how consistently any thoughts of what men and women did together brought Baron Köthen’s bright image to her mind, to disturb and confuse her.
“Erde, dear? Are you all right?”
Raven, returning from the beer cellar with a fresh pitcher. Erde hoped the shadows would hide the evidence of her unseemly thoughts. Although, she reflected wryly, Raven would not think them unseemly. She smiled and shrugged. “Just tired. Still so tired.”
Raven circled her free arm around Erde’s waist. “Sweeting, it’s only been three days. Remember what you’ve been through.”
Erde could not think of how to reply. Raven set the pitcher down on a nearby joint-stool and wrapped her in a hug. This helped Erde banish the image of Baron Köthen and find her tongue again. “And think of what’s still ahead, when the Quest resumes.”
“Ah, yes,” Raven agreed, “but you mustn’t worry about that for now . . .”
“No. Not for now.”
Raven let her go and took up her pitcher again. “The young man seems very nice.”
“Who, N’Doch? Nice?” Erde couldn’t imagine such a thing.
“Well, then . . . charming. A little overeager, perhaps. But very lovely to look at, don’t you think? So tall and . . . exotic.”
Erde stared. Was she kidding?
“No wonder his dragon enjoys taking man-form,” Raven went on merrily. “I think she might be just the slightest bit vain, don’t you?” Then she caught Erde’s expression. “Hmm. I see. Well, you and the boy seem fond enough of each other. Comrades-in-arms and all that.”
“He’s not a boy.”
Raven chuckled. “No, and I expect he wouldn’t want to hear me calling him that either. Come, tell—have you not been getting along?”
Erde felt no urge to detail every disagreement she’d had with her fellow dragon guide. After all, he had improved noticeably since she first met him. “He doesn’t know very much about dragons,” she offered instead, realizing only then that of all N’Doch’s irritating qualities, this was the one that bothered her most. “Or the duties of a dragon guide. People don’t even believe in dragons where he comes from!”
Raven smiled. “Ah, but he has a dragon who knows a great deal about men. And from what I observe, she seems to be managing him very well.”
“She does?”
“Certainly. There are other ways of turning a man to your purpose besides ordering him to follow. Lady Water discovered who in his life her destined guide was most likely to listen to seriously. Since it wasn’t her at the moment, she simply . . . became that person.”
“Oh, well . . .”
“No ‘oh, well.’ Think about it. It’s brilliant, and it works.”
“Then what does he do for her?”
“He sings her a human shape. He gives a dragon a way to work in the world of men, as you do for Earth. You just have different ideas of how to go about it. Are Earth and Water the same dragon?”
“Of course not!”
“Then why should they require the same dragon guide?” Heading for the door, Raven glanced back. “Do you think, sweeting, that it might be time to have that little chat with Rose?”
Erde thought about dragons and methodologies for a while. It was true she’d been stubborn about her own assumptions. And it was true that N’Doch had surprised her. He’d come through in the end. Perhaps she was going to have to accept the possibility that there would always be people in the world doing things that she just could not understand. Armed with that disturbing notion, she gathered up her courage and returned to the Great Hall, where N’Doch was taking another refill from Raven’s pitcher, the redheaded twins were clearing platters and tableware, and Doritt was tossing a huge log into the fireplace. Erde prayed that the dragon was warm enough out in the big hay barn, finally getting the rest he deserved. She went to claim the empty seat beside Rose.
She listened quietly while Rose finished up a discussion with Linden, Deep Moor’s healer, about how long her supplies of herbs and physicks would hold out if the snow continued unabated into the true months of winter. Linden’s jaw-length flaxen hair draped like separate strands of spider silk around her white cheeks, hiding her worried glance in the softened shadows of lanternlight. Her long-fingered hands moved restlessly in her lap. Erde found this more worrisome than all the facts and figures of their conversation. She’d come to rely on Linden being a very calm, still person.
“Well,” Rose concluded finally, “we shall do what we must.”
Linden nodded, then offered Erde a small, silent smile and padded away, gathering up a stray armload of dirty dishes as she went.
Rose watched after her soberly. “She fears our medical supplies won’t last past January. Her final harvest is usually in early November, and here it is, just September. Even if we do get a thaw, who knows what will be left alive under all this snow.”
Erde thought of the parched peanut fields around Master Djawara’s home in what N’Doch called “the bush.” “Where I just came from, there’s not enough water. Not anywhere, except the salty oceans. And here there’s too much. And there, they kept saying how it was so much hotter than usual.”
“And here, too cold. It’s all gone out of balance, hasn’t it? I blame this priest and the evil he’s stirred up.” Rose let a pensive moment fall between one thought and the next. “Which reminds me, Raven tells me you’ve had some dreams I should hear about.”
“I guess.” Erde loved Rose, but often found her directness and air of authority intimidating. Even her beloved grandmother, a powerful baroness required to work in the world of men, had been somewhat more . . . feminine in her approach.
“What kind of dreams?”
“Um . . .” Erde found a sudden reason to fuss with the hem of her sleeve. “Do you really think Brother Guillemo has brought all this wrong weather upon us? Is he truly a sorcerer?”
“You know his power as well as I do, child, perhaps better. But we were speaking of dreams. Come on, now, out with it.”
Erde brushed invisible crumbs across the worn planks of the table. “Well, they’re . . . umm . . .”
“If you told Raven, you can certainly tell me.”
“I didn’t tell Raven . . . not really. Well, I told her I’d seen the hell-priest in my dreams, which is true, but . . .”
“But? There’s something more important than Fra Guill?”
Spoken aloud, the priest’s nickname made her shiver. “I don’t know. It’s all mixed up together.” There was a larger significance to these dreams than her own confused feelings, and it was her duty to reveal them. “Fra Guill is part of it, but . . . well, um . . . what would you say if you had dreams, I mean, really real dreams, as if you’d actually traveled there, about someone you knew was your enemy, and he’s there in your dream and you’re almost talking to him and he doesn’t seem like he could really be your enemy, and then suddenly he isn’t, because the real enemy is someone else?”
“Goodness. Breathe, child!”
Erde realized she hadn’t been.
Rose waited a moment before asking, “Does this no-longer-an-enemy have a name?”
Erde nodded. The hardest part of all was going to be speaking it out loud. Her lips moved uselessly.
“Haven’t we been through this before?”
“No, this is different. It’s not Rainer.” Whose name had lodged in her throat the night she’d thought him murdered by her father’s order, and rendered her mute for months until she had discovered him alive again. “I mean, I can say the name. I just . . .”
“Then just say it and get it over with.”
Rose sat back a little. “Dolph? You’ve been dreaming about Dolph?”
Rose was surprised, but Erde was even more so, to hear Baron Köthen spoken of so familiarly by someone without estates or title. Or perhaps Deep Moor was Rose’s estate. Erde had never thought to ask. Now she nodded and braced herself for ridicule. But Rose pursed her lips thoughtfully. Raven glided past behind them, trailing a fond hand across their shoulders. Rose caught the hand and held it. “You might want to hear this.”
Raven leaned over. “Is that all right, sweeting? Do you mind?”
Erde shrugged. Her humiliation might as well be total.
Raven sat, reaching for Erde’s hand to press it lightly between her own.
“Our Erde has been dreaming about Adolphus of Köthen,” Rose announced.
“Really?” Raven laughed deep in her throat. “Can’t say as I blame her.”
Erde looked down, heat and confusion flooding her cheeks already.
“Raven, please . . .”
“Can’t I compliment her on her good taste?”
“Just listen,” said Rose irritably.
“I don’t understand . . .” Erde began.
Raven squeezed her hand. “Don’t feel badly, sweeting. It’s all rather . . . complicated. Isn’t it, Rose?”
“I think we’ll leave your past out of this for now,” said Rose. “Now, child, when you left for, well, this other place you’ve been, Baron Köthen was in revolt with your father and Fra Guill to usurp the King. So you must have had news of the war since you returned, yes? I mean, about Dolph’s, shall we say, conversion?”
“Conversion?” She needed to hear it again. She needed it confirmed. Beyond all misunderstanding.
“You heard he switched sides.”
The smile bloomed on Erde’s face before she could take control of it. Her dreams had been true. “And is he now leading the King’s armies to victory?”
Rose and Raven exchanged glances.
“No,” said Raven. “Not exactly . . .”
Erde’s heart contracted. They were telling her he was dead. And since her dreams had been true, she knew how it had occurred.
Rose laid a hand on her wrist. “If you’ve not had news, why did you say he was no longer your enemy?”
Now that Baron Köthen’s name was on the table, the rest of the tale came out in a rush. “Because I dreamed it. That’s what I’m telling you. I saw the enemy camp. I saw my father in it. I saw everything that happened: the hell-priest murdering poor Prince Carl and making it look like suicide, then trying to blame it on Baron Köthen, and when that didn’t work, accusing him of witchcraft and heretical practices, so that the only thing left for the baron to do was to flee to the other side! He meant to bring Prince Carl’s body home to the King.” She glanced from one to the other, awaiting their painful revelation. “Did he?”
“Don’t you know?” asked Rose.
“That dream stopped there, and no one has said if . . .”
Raven leaned forward. “He brought the prince’s body to Hal, who he knew would receive him. But few people know this. The official word is that Carl survived to go into hiding, and that Fra Guill is faking the reports of his death to suit himself. No one knows the truth besides His Majesty, Hal, and a few trusted allies, plus Dolph and the men who stayed loyal to him.”
“And you.” Rose tapped a fingernail rhythmically on the tabletop. “You have had a true dream, Erde von Alte.”
“More than one,” Erde murmured. There was still the truth of the last one to be gotten over with. “They frightened me. Sometimes it was like being a bird on his shoulder. So close. I even spoke to him, and once, I think . . . no, I am sure he heard me.”
“In the dream he heard you?” Raven rested her chin in her hands. “What did you say to him?”
“It was in the clearing where he found Prince Carl’s body. The priest had him outnumbered. I told him to run, save himself. I could see how he hated Fra Guill, how he despised my father.”
“His own fault for taking them as allies,” remarked Rose.
“He regretted that.” But here Erde was on shaky ground. She didn’t know that for sure. “So I told him that a true prince might still live, not a weakling like poor Carl, but a rightful heir that he could feel proud to pledge fealty to. But then, worst of all, the priest heard me, too! And unlike Baron Köthen, he knew it was me! ‘The witch-girl,’ he called me. ‘She’s here! The witch-girl!’ And then I couldn’t wake up . . .!” Erde buried her face in her hands with a shudder. The mere memory of her subsequent journey to and from limbo terrified her all over again. She wouldn’t tell that part of the tale just now.
“It looks like poor Dolph has been telling the truth,” Raven observed quietly. “At least, his version of it.”
“The part he’s willing to let himself understand,” agreed Rose.
Poor Dolph? But at least they were speaking of him in present tense.
“Then . . . he’s alive?”
“So far,” said Raven, “No thanks to his own efforts.”
“Information has been scanty,” Rose added, “what with the weather and our needing Lily and Margit close to home for our own protection. Hal’s sent a bird now and then when he remembers.”
She hardly dared to ask it. “When was the last one?”
“Not long ago. A few weeks.”
Not long, no, but long enough for a man to lie dead and frozen on the field like the others she had seen in her dream. Erde pushed the thought away and let the rugged, able image of a living Baron Köthen fill her mind’s eye. The very image of a leader. “‘Poor Dolph,’ you said? Did anyone doubt him?”
Raven spread her hands. “Inevitably.”
“But they mustn’t! It’s all true! I saw it with my own eyes. I was there!”
“Well, no. You weren’t,” said Rose.
“But it was like I was there!”
“Apparently. And that is the interesting thing.” Rose sat back, rubbing her palms together. “Truth is, I wouldn’t mind hearing what Dolph has to say. We’ll not stop Fra Guill until we fully understand the nature of his power. Another version of this story might just shed some light on that mystery.”
“Dolph is a boy’s name,” murmured Erde, unaware until Raven laughed that she had spoken this thought out loud.
“He was a boy, or very nearly, when I knew him. A beautiful boy.”
“No longer,” said Rose heavily.
Raven nodded. “Bright ambition in the youth can darken to obsession in the man . . . especially if that ambition is thwarted.”
Erde felt she’d lost the thread of their conversation. “But if he’s alive and on our side now, what can the problem be?”
Rose eyed her sympathetically. “I don’t know what he has done to so earn your good opinion of him, but you must realize, dear child, that in one fateful moment, Adolphus Michael von Hoffman, Baron Köthen, went from being the most powerful and respected younger lord in the kingdom, with his hand poised for the throne, to being a fugitive of dubious integrity, under suspicion of sorcery and without lands or forces to call his own. We’re told it’s been hard on him.”
“But what about Hal?” Didn’t he . . . couldn’t he . . . sorcery? She had imagined the two of them, man and mentor, joining forces to win great victories together.
“Hal’s kept him alive and out of the hands of the witch hunters.”
“Whom he’s had so much practice eluding himself,” noted Raven.
“But Hal Engle, as you know, serves His Majesty first and foremost, and even he can’t be sure of where Dolph’s true loyalties lie.”
Erde’s mouth took on a stubborn tilt. “King Otto is old and weak! My father always said so. Baron Köthen only wanted the throne so he could keep the kingdom together. I heard him say so to Hal. You’ll see—when the true prince is recognized, Adolphus of Köthen will pledge to him and help him make the kingdom great again!” If indeed, she added silently, he is still alive to do it. She wouldn’t know, until the next bird arrived.
“Well,” said Rose, raising a doubtful brow.
But Raven smiled. “I guess there’s no doubt where your loyalties lie.”
It isn’t until the three men turn up out of the blizzard that N’Doch comes to and realizes what a fool’s paradise he’s been living in. They ride in out of the storm and bring the cold light of reality with them. He only needs one look at their grim and weary faces.
This Deep Moor place, he reflects, is like one of those fancy damn R&R resorts, where the army sends the battle-crazed recruits to pump ’em up with enough hooch and tail and m.j. so they can send ’em back out to the front again. But then he can’t help but grin. So far all I’ve gotten is the hooch.
The dragons have gone down the valley for exercise, as if the storm was nothing to them. But they come flickering in out of nowhere, bringing the first sighting of the intruders’ approach. The girl bursts out of the house to greet them. N’Doch is out in the yard, now that they’ve found him some serious clothing to wear, learning how to shovel snow. There’s plenty of it to shovel, and he keeps at it while the girl confers with the dragons.
“Visitors!” she exclaims, then hightails it back into the house.
The dogs report in next. N’Doch loves how they bound along, just like the herd of antelopes he saw in a vid once, silent and eager, sailing through snowdrifts as high as veldt grass. They race straight to the tall woman Doritt, who seems to have the same sort of way with them that Papa Dja has with his mangy pack of strays. Some things, he thinks, never change. Like how she squats her odd angular body down among them in the wind-driven snow, patting and murmuring, then gets up and marches into the Big House like she’s got their actual words to convey.
N’Doch likes how the farmstead is always busy, even now, in the midst of a storm. Paths snake through the snow between all the outbuildings. It snowed yesterday and the day before, and now the snow is falling again, a soft swirling mist that whitens the air and fills in the path behind him. He has to work hard to keep up with it. Storm or no storm, there are cows to be milked and chickens to be fed and eggs to be collected. When he really thinks about where he is, timewise, he’s not so surprised that these women have to do everything by hand. He’s learned there’s a bake house, a laundry, an old-time forge, and a potter’s kiln among the many smaller wood-and-stone buildings that circle the big central farm house. And even a man who was blown to bits less than a week ago gets a shovel stuck in his hand or a load of wood to carry.
N’Doch doesn’t mind the work. It keeps him warm and gives him something to focus on, which is good, ’cause he’s still feeling pretty damn floaty. He likes being part of the bustle. It’s like the village he grew up in where everybody had a function, before things got real bad and his family had to move to the city. Besides, he figures he owes these women something for all they’re doing for him. He can’t remember how long it’s been since he had three safe squares a day and a real bed to sleep in every night, the same bed even, warm and rat-free, where he can sleep without fear of being robbed or murdered for maybe the first time in his life.
But then the men arrive, and it’s like being jolted out of a pleasant daydream. Suddenly N’Doch is wondering how long it’ll be before this war the women all gossip and debate about comes spilling over the valley walls like the proverbial tsunami. He’s sorry about this. He’s just left his own sort of war behind, and he doesn’t wish it on them for a moment.
He leans on his shovel when Doritt comes back out on the terrace with Raven and the girl in tow. Raven squints up at the sky, hugs a heavy shawl around her. Doritt, in tall leather boots, heads for the horse barn. “I’ll get Margit and Lily saddled up.”
“You can’t send them out in this,” Raven calls after her. Margit and Lily are the trackers, N’Doch knows. Margit is also the blacksmith. He likes those two women. They remind him of the girls in his old gang. Lily has promised him a ride out to the Grove if the weather ever clears. N’Doch has never been on a horse, at least not a real one, never touched one in his life, and just this morning, Doritt had him mucking out stalls. Talk about total immersion. He shakes his head in amazement.
“Somebody’s got to see who’s coming in.” Doritt disappears around the corner of the barn.
“I told you, it’s Hal,” insists the girl.
Raven shook her head. “Hal’s got a war to worry about now. He can’t just take off whenever the fancy strikes him.”
“Earth knows Hal and he’s sure it’s him.”
“How close did he get?”
“Not too close, just in case. But . . .”
“It can’t be Hal. There’s three of them. Hal’d never brought a stranger into Deep Moor in his life until he brought you.”
“And there goes the neighborhood,” says N’Doch from the yard.
Both women look at him, but nobody laughs. He shrugs and goes back to his shoveling. But out of the corner of his eye, he watches Raven as she stands, hands on hips, staring across the farmyard toward the snow-shrouded valley as if there was already something to see out there.
Doritt comes back from the barn. “They say they’ll go out as far as the Grove—they’ve been wanting to check on Gerrasch anyway—and escort whoever it is back in, whether they’re welcome or not. Margit says to have the troops ready.”
“We’ve got time. It’ll take them at least an hour from where the dragons spotted them, maybe longer in this weather.” Raven touches the girl’s arm. “Go tell Rose—she’s working in the library.”
The girl jumps like she’s been daydreaming, then races off inside. N’Doch can see she’s worried about something. Doritt does an about-face and strides back to the barn, leaving Raven alone on the snow-swept porch, the white flakes catching in the dark cloud of her hair. N’Doch would like to say something to her. Not a come-on or anything. She looks too sad and worried all of a sudden. Well, maybe a little come-on, just to cheer her up. Raven understands how to play the game. But he speaks no German. She speaks no French. All he can do is smile encouragingly.
Uh-huh, he tells himself. Time to start learning another language.
The storm has blown up into a real howler by the time the three men struggle in. The dragon-as-Sedou stands next to him in the lee-side shelter of the spring house, where Doritt has stationed them.
“Just in case,” she says, shoving stout poles into their hands.
N’Doch uses the pole to brace himself against the wind. He’d prefer his trusty old fish blade that’s gotten him in and out of many a tight scrape. But nothing came back with him through the veil of centuries, nothing but his flesh and bones, in several pieces. Even his clothes were in tatters. He hefts his pole. It’s about two meters long and maybe three centimeters thick. He turns to Sedou. “What d’ya think?”
Sedou’s grin is veiled with snow. “We can take ’em. Whoever they are.”
N’Doch levels the staff at him endwise and feints. Sedou counters with the stick held across his chest in both hands. Instantly, N’Doch sees that’s the right way to use it, like, to ward off a blade. Particularly a real long one. It occurs to him that these guys are probably gonna be carrying swords. His anticipation quickens.
Sedou’s still wearing the same old dashiki and jeans that N’Doch’s song had conjured him in. N’Doch shivers. He can’t remember ever being so cold. Suddenly he feels like it’s him who’s the older brother. “You ought to get some clothes on.”
“Cold doesn’t affect me.”
“Well, it looks weird. People might think you’re showing off.”
“Since when did that bother you?” Sedou raises his staff and takes a stance. “Wanta do something about it?”
They joust a little among the drifts until N’Doch’s feeling warmed up and breathing hard. He pulls back with a laugh. “Do we have to go to all this trouble? Couldn’t you just, y’know, spit fire at them or something? Instant barbecue?”
Sedou sobers. “Not me. That’s my brother.”
For an instant, N’Doch is confused. Then he says, “Oh, that brother. The big guy can do that? No kidding.”
“I meant the other one.”
Right. The other one. N’Doch recalls it well enough, pounding hell-bent down that long tunnel in Lealé’s mystical house, pursued by a roaring gout of flame, breathing in the searing heat, sure he was about to be incinerated by a dragon he’d never even met. Come to think of it, his vision of running was a lot like that. His two dragons had gotten all excited when he described his vision to them. Earth made him repeat every detail of the burned-out, ruined landscape.
Water had asked: Is it a fix?
Earth had replied: I THINK IT IS.
“The other one,” N’Doch says now. “I remember. The one we gotta go after.”
Sedou nods. “And soon. But only when you’re ready. When your body is healed.”
N’Doch flexes his shoulders, wrinkles his nose to the snow and wind. “Feels pretty good right now.” In fact, too good. The suspicion is growing that he feels not only different but better than he ever did before. “Say, listen, did you guys . . . did you, like, put in any improvements when you worked me over?”
But the dark man opposite him just smiles back at him blandly, a distinctly un-Sedou smile. N’Doch can see the dragon in his brother’s eyes and knows this question won’t get a straight answer.
That’s me, all right. Just a poor dumb soldier on R&R, kickin’ back, enjoying myself, while a coupla dragons shape me up for the next big battle.
Later, he hears the sharp halloo of the dogs escorting the intruders in. But the snow is flying so thick in the gathering dark that the riders are halfway into the farmstead before N’Doch can pick them out. The snow muffles the sounds of their approach, but the alert has already been downgraded. Lily has ridden in ahead to give the okay to light the lanterns and call the watchers in from their posts. One of the riders, at least, is known to her. N’Doch figures it must be this Hal they all talk about. The women have gathered in the yard. Doritt and the twins warm their hands at the flame of a tall torch they’ve uprighted in the snow. N’Doch thinks it looks festive, but he can feel the tension beneath the women’s cheerful chat and banter. It’s not normal for visitors to show up unannounced in the middle of a blizzard. There might be something wrong. Rose waits on the stone terrace, bundled up in a bright woolen shawl, all reds and rusts and oranges, as if she could banish, with bold wielding of the spectrum, the approaching gloom of night. Her often stern face is lit with a womanly anticipation, and N’Doch recalls that according to the girl, this Hal, if it’s him at all, is Rose’s lover. The girl is there next to her, front and center to greet him, but she’s still looking worried. Even more so than usual.
He hears a soft rhythmic chink, metal against metal. The riders fade into view at last, darker shadows rising up through a field of darkening gray. They are hooded, and wearing epaulets of snow. N’Doch realizes he’s gripping his stick as if his life depended on it. He relaxes his fingers inside his gloves, but not his stare. Margit rides ahead, then two men abreast and one behind. Reflexively, N’Doch susses out the power structure: Margit, of course, the guide. Then the Chief Honcho, the tall guy on the left, alert but relaxed. To the right, the challenger. He decides this due to the tense, forward jut of the guy’s chin and the angled slope of his shoulders. And then behind, erect and on edge, the Bodyguard. N’Doch thinks this one looks less sure of himself than the others, but all three of these guys look as tough as any gang leader he’s ever known. For that matter, so does Margit. He can almost smell the aura of blood and gunpowder they bring with them. Well, no, probably not gunpowder. Not yet. He looks for weapons, sees none. Now he wishes he’d taken Papa Dja up on some of those history books he was always offering. He’d like to know what to expect.
They pull up in the center of the yard. Margit vaults off her horse and the dogs fall silent, like this is some sort of signal. The women crowd around immediately, reaching for bridles and reins, calling out greetings. The horses are steaming. Ice stiffens their manes and tails, mounding up in the straps and buckles of the tack. A laden packhorse straggles in out of the gloom and is led aside.
The tall man on the left swings stiffly out of his saddle. He shrugs back his hood, brushing snow from the folds of his cloak. In the glow of lantern light, N’Doch catches a metallic glint in the wide cuffs of the man’s gloves, and in the close-fitting headgear worn under his hood. Curious, N’Doch steps in a little closer, until he can make out the fine steel links meshed together, and understands that the man has on body armor. Chain mail. The term floats up from some memory of an ancient history vid. Wow, N’Doch marvels. I’m seeing knights in armor.
The Honcho wears a tired, apologetic air. But he calls over his shoulder to the Bodyguard in the low kind of voice that carries, casual with command. “You may uncover, Wender.”
“Yes, my lord.”
My lord. N’Doch’s never heard anyone say that for real before, and it might strike him funny if this wasn’t clearly such serious biz. The musician in him relishes the addition of a few bass notes to the symphony of women’s voices he’s listened to for so many days. And he notes approvingly that Margit has been sensible about security. Before shoving off his hood, the Bodyguard yanks down the blindfold he’s worn for the inward journey and lets it hang knotted at his throat. He blinks and looks around.
The Honcho hauls off a glove and combs back his mesh headpiece, revealing cropped gray hair, a damp, weathered face worn thin with travel, and a flash of red within the darkness of his cloak. N’Doch studies him. An older man, not old. Still strong and vital, but with a lifetime’s hard messages revising his features. Raven has come forward to meet him and is holding his horse’s bridle. His smile speaks mostly of relief as he bends to plant a quick kiss on her cheek. “Can’t fight worth a damn in this weather. Thought we’d come visit.”
N’Doch wonders if the Honcho’s easy informality is an artifact of dragon simultaneous translation, or if he’s got a few more expectations to dump. In the vids, knights in armor always spoke real stiff. He’ll never know for sure till he can speak the language for himself.
“Strange company you’re keeping,” Raven murmurs.
“Isn’t it?” The Honcho straightens, his eyes scanning the little crowd until they settle on Rose, standing still as a statue on the terrace, smiling.
“Rosie,” he murmurs. “Forgive the unannounced intrusion.” He strides across the hard-packed snow to take Rose in his arms.
Rose says, before her rich voice is completely smothered in his cloak, “It’s just as well you’ve come. The dragons have returned.”
He lays a finger to her lips, tossing back a quick nod at the men in the yard. But his face lights with boyish wonder. “Dragons? There are more than one now?”
With the Honcho for sure identified, N’Doch turns his attention to the Challenger, who’s remained slumped and silent on his horse. The women seem awkward with him. They haven’t gathered around to greet him like they did the Honcho, like he’s a stranger, or maybe it’s something else. It’s too dark to tell, but N’Doch senses a glare smoldering under the shadow of the guy’s hood, and a tight-sprung readiness to him, even in his current posture of total disregard which N’Doch reads as a sullen fiction. The Bodyguard dismounts, giving his horse up to one of the redheaded twins with a grateful nod. He comes around beside the Challenger’s horse. He’s big, this Bodyguard, almost as tall as the Honcho but younger and broader, the very definition of muscle. N’Doch would not like to meet him alone in an alley. But his manner is clearly deferential as he shoots a quick glance up at the hooded rider.
“My lord, if you will allow me . . .”
The Challenger lets his horse dance a little, and looks away. N’Doch decides this guy is gonna be the trouble.
Pulling off his own gloves, the Bodyguard, who the Honcho has called Wender, clamps them between his teeth, then reaches up to the front of the guy’s saddle to untie a long piece of red cloth. N’Doch is interested to see that they’ve bound the Challenger’s wrists. Wender pulls the cloth free, then grabs the horse’s reins at the bit to steady it so the rider can dismount. The man does not move. Wender looks like he’d rather not plead. “My lord baron?”
“Let me,” says Raven, easing up beside him. The big man looks down at her, then bows a little and stands back. Raven lays a familiar hand on the rider’s calf, still neatly stowed in his stirrup. Again, N’Doch spots the dull gleam of mail. “Hello, Dolph,” said Raven. “Aren’t you coming in?”
The man raises his hands, shakes his wrists out. Slowly, as if making a big ceremony out of it, he reaches to loosen the blindfold that had been invisible under his hood. Then he turns to stare down at the woman beside his knee. He lets out a little snort of disbelief. “Christ Almighty! Raven?”
“Yes, it’s me, Dolph.”
“Dead? Well, that was the general idea.”
“Where am I? Why are you here?”
“I live here. Finally found my proper calling in life. My, haven’t we both grown up a lot since I saw you last . . .?” Raven smiles up at the guy, and N’Doch feels just the faintest stirrings of jealousy.
The guy studies her. He looks like he’s gonna say something, then thinks better of it. Instead, he flicks his boot out of his stirrup, swings the opposite leg up and over his horse’s neck and is out of his saddle, upright and ready on the ground before N’Doch can take a second breath.
Now that he’s down, N’Doch sizes him up: not tall—both N’Doch and the bodyguard are taller, and the Bodyguard is broader. But the Challenger is solid enough, and fast. He’ll be the one to worry about in a knife fight. His hood has fallen back, and N’Doch sees he’s also a handsome dude, if you like the blond, rugged type. He wears a neatly trimmed beard, probably to make him look older than his men, since he can’t be a day over thirty. His eyes are dark for a blond, though. He has that sort of intense gaze N’Doch has seen on hungry fish hawks. Even without looking in his eyes, N’Doch can feel the reined-in anger radiating from him like heat. He’s surprised the snow doesn’t just melt right off the guy.
Raven seems to expect some further greeting, but she doesn’t get it. The guy throws a quick glance at her, an even swifter punishing glare at the bodyguard, then lets his eyes sweep the darkening farmstead, the yard, the outbuildings, the Big House itself, and the little crowd of women who are now watching him, awaiting his next move. He takes his time—N’Doch admires his control—before he locks eyes with the tall man up on the terrace and growls, “Heinrich, where in hell have you brought me?”