Daughter of Dragons

Chapter 4-1

Chapter 4

The next day saw Lathwi back in the saddle. She was not wholly free of the aches and pains that she had acquired from yesterday’s ride, but she had long since learned to live with such minor discomforts. She did hope, however, that Pieter had not been fooling when he told her that she would not hurt nearly as much after today’s ride.

They rode past a fragrant stand of flowering trees, over a series of hillocks and then into a dirt track which spanned beyond sight in both directions. It was too straight and dry to be a creek-bed; and too broad and open to be a game trail. Lathwi was instantly curious.

“What this?” she demanded.

“It’s called a road,” Pieter said, looking quite pleased with himself. “The road to Compara.”

As they travelled along this road, the surrounding forest turned patchy and sparse. At first, she blamed this thinning on disease or high wind, but then they rode past a stretch of land that was now barer than the bleakest alpine meadow. All that remained of the trees which had once stood there was a crowd of sullen-looking stumps.

“What happen here?” she wondered aloud.

“Looks like there are charcoalers in the area,” Pieter replied.

“What that?” she asked.

“They’re people who turn wood into charcoal.” Before she could ask, he added, “Charcoal burns hotter and cleaner than wood, which is important to people who work with glass and steel. And those who live in the city like it because it’s easier to store.”

She did not understand a couple of the words, but even so, she grasped the basic concept: people were killing trees for their power. Not only that, they were doing it in a very foolish way.

“Cut too much,” she told him. “What happen when no more trees?”

“Look around you,” he told her, gesturing broadly. “The world is full of trees. There will always be more.”

Her draconic memories told her otherwise, but she didn’t want to talk about those terrible, long-gone days and so rode on in thoughtful silence.

They passed another tract of treeless land, then several more. These grounds were dark and freshly turned, as if wild pigs had been rooting here. The air stank mightily of animal dung.

Then the first shack came into view.

It was a wretched-looking thing—lop-sided and flimsy, with a filthy cloth flap for a door and rotting thatch for a roof. Ground-fowl scratched for bugs in the dirt around its threshold; a mangy goat drowsed in its shade. There were at least a score of other such hovels in the immediate vicinity, too, all clumped together like warts on a toad. For reasons which Lathwi could neither fathom nor explain, the sight of this squalid roadside cluster left her squirming inside.

“This Compara?” she asked, fervently hoping that it was not.

“No, Lathwi,” Pieter replied, with a generous dollop of disgust in his tone, “this is only a crude peasant’s village. Compara is much more civilized.”

A series of shouts snared their attention then. They looked toward the sound to see a smooth-faced man with long, honey-coloured hair come running out from between two shacks with a swarm of angry-seeming men on his heels.

“Help!” the blonde man cried, as his pursuers caught up with him. “Won’t someone please help me?”

Prodded by reasons which continued to elude her, Lathwi urged her mount closer. Although she barely noticed, Pieter did the same.

Two of the peasants were holding the blonde man by the arms now; a third was punching him in the belly. The blonde was dirty and grass-stained, and one corner of his mouth was leaking blood, but despite his dishevelled appearance, it was obvious that he was no peasant. His clothes were too fancy; his bearing, too refined.

“Here now,” Pieter scolded, as they approached. “What’s this man done to deserve such treatment?”

“He tried to ravage my wife,” the man who had been doing all the punching snarled.

“That’s not true!” the accused declared. “I would never touch a woman without her consent.”

The swarm jeered, proclaiming him a liar and worse, but Pieter was not so sure. The accused was a handsome man, and well-spoken. It did not seem as if he would need to force a woman’s charms from her. Then again, what men needed to do, and what they wound up doing weren’t always one and the same thing. And not all outlaws were as obvious as Drell and his pack had been.

“What are you going to do with him?” he asked then.

“We’re going to castrate the city-bred pig,” the outraged husband replied, flashing a grin full of yellowed teeth. “If he survives, we’ll set him free; if he doesn’t, we’ll take to our beds tonight knowing that we’ve done the world a favour.

“For a penny, you’re welcome to stay and watch.”

“Please, friend,” the accused begged then. “Don’t let them do this. I swear by The Dreamer that I’m innocent.”

Pieter did not know what to do. While he had no desire to stand between these people and their justice, he did not want to see the wrong man lose his balls, either. He turned to Lathwi. Her expression was distant and strained.

“What do you think?” he whispered.

She did not hear him. Unease had been building within her like a thunderstorm; now it needed only a nudge to break. And until that nudge came, she could do nothing but watch and wait.

Meanwhile, the blonde man’s captors wrestled him onto his belly and tried to bind his wrists. “Dreamer,” one of them swore. “He’s a slippery bastard.”

“Most pigs are,” the husband said, and then strode over to a neighbour’s wood-pile. When he returned a moment later, there was a stout log in his hands. “This ought to hold him down while we tend to business.” Then, as he handed the log to one of his accomplices, he glanced at Pieter. “How about it, Mister? Do you have a penny or not?”

Pieter turned to Lathwi again. She was sitting rigid in the saddle now. Her gaze was locked on the man with the log. As he went to thrust it through the bound loops of the blonde man’s arms, she howled a protest and then urged the bay right into the crowd. Pieter’s astonishment did not stop him from following her lead.

Startled, the crowd fell back. In the next instant, it surged forward again, swearing and shouting for blood. Hands reached for Pieter, trying to tear him out of his saddle. He drove them off with panic-induced dexterity, rein-whipping or kicking everything that came within range. As he fought, he glanced here and there for the accused, but he was nowhere in sight. Gone, he thought then. And: the bastard had probably been guilty after all.

“Let’s get out of here!” he shouted at Lathwi.

But she was lost to a world where he did not exist. In that world, a black-haired youngling with desperate blue eyes was trying to escape the crowd of peasants that held her. As she struggled, bucking and squirming, somebody bound her arms behind her back. Somebody else set a chain of flowers around her neck. Then, through a blur of furious tears, she saw the log that was to serve as her hobble. It would all but wrench her arms from their sockets once it was in place. She could not let that happen. So she lashed out, again and again and again.

Then something hard slammed into her jaw, surprising her out of her trance. She blinked back a swirl of confusion and tears to find herself being pelted by stones. One caught the stallion in the flank; he squealed a protest and then reared. As she struggled to stay in the saddle, Pieter and his string of horses came racing toward her. His harried look acquired pained ridges as a fist-sized rock struck him in the ribs.

“Let’s get out of here!” he shouted in passing.

Sane again, she gladly complied.

They rode all-out for nearly a league, then slowed to an easy walk so the horses could catch their breath. Pieter was glad for the respite, too, for his left side felt like it was on fire. He fingered those ribs gingerly, feeling for lumps, but they were only bruised, not broken. Then he glanced over his shoulder to see how Lathwi had fared. Aside from a pulpy lip, she seemed to have escaped unscathed. Even so, her look was grim. Was she thinking about the stranger she had saved? Was she, too, feeling like she had been handed the shitty end of the stick? He closed the gap between them to find out.

“How’s your mouth?” he asked her.

She traced her tongue over the swelling, then shrugged to show her unconcern.

“Does it ache you to talk?” When she shrugged again, he felt free to question her further. “Then tell me something, Lathwi—why did you help that man?”

“What man?”

“The golden-haired fellow,” he said testily, in no mood for games. “The one you rescued back there in the village.”

Ah, yes. She remembered now—the one for whom the log had been intended. Coincidence had been his saviour, not her. If those peasants hadn’t tried to hobble him, she would have cheerfully rode away and never looked back.

“Well?” he prompted, pleased for the chance to badger her for a change. “Why’d you do it?”

Now that was a different question. She could still see that black-haired youngling, still feel her helpless rage.

“Hate peasants,” she said.

“Why?”

In spite of her efforts to keep it contained, the memory came surging back into prominence. She described the images as they unfolded before her mind’s eye.

“When I be youngling, peasants do to me the same as they want do to man today. That log heavy, much hurt my arms, but peasants not hear my cries. They drag me to meadow and leave me.”

This admission, so blandly made, shocked Pieter to the core of his heart. No child deserved so cruel a punishment, not even the worst hellion.

“How did you get away?” he asked.

“Mother come,” she replied, smiling now as she relived this part. “Take me far away.”

He regarded her with a mixture of awe and rue. Her life had more twists to it than a gopher-hole. Why would a mother save a daughter from a certain death sentence only to outcast her later on? And why would a daughter still yearn for that mother after such a devastating betrayal?

Those questions hummed in his head like bees, but he did not voice them aloud. He did not want to cause her any more grief, he told himself. And Aunt Liselle had taught him that some things were better left unsaid.

Lathwi did not notice his discreet lapse into silence. She was still soaring through the sky in Taziem’s arms.

G

They made their camp in the forest that night, far from the road and unfriendly eyes. Pieter built himself a little fire, then sat down to a meal of pan-bread and jerky. Opting to go hungry until the morning, Lathwi settled down to sleep. But even as she started to doze off, the bay’s uneasy nicker roused her again. A moment later, a snapping twig and then a steady crunching swept the last sleepy cobwebs from her mind. Anything that noisy had to be stupid, she thought; and stupid things were often good to eat. She uncinched a claw and then hid herself behind a tree.

Pieter appeared alongside of her. His arms were folded over his chest, his eyes were aimed at the sound. She tried to nudge him into hiding, but he did not budge.

“Something come,” she hissed then. “Maybe it something tasty.”

“It’s a horse,” he replied flatly. “And horses in these parts usually come with riders.”

Her stomach grumbled, decrying the theory, but now that she thought about it, the crunching did sound like hoof beats. And moments later, an ochre-coloured horse with a white blaze came winding its way out of the leafy shadows. Its rider was the golden-haired man.

“Hullo!” he cried, as he verged on their camp. “Praise the Dreamer for guiding me here. I was afraid I’d lost you.”

“What do you want?” Pieter demanded.

“I want to thank you and your friend for your help,” he replied, unruffled by the trapper’s hostile tone. “I’d also like to apologize for skipping out during the confusion.”

“Apology noted,” Pieter said. “Now off you go.”

“I was also hoping to share your fire tonight,” the man continued, with a self-conscious smile, “and to tell you my side of the story while we feast—” He patted the yearling doe which was slung over his horse’s withers. “—on this.”

“We aren’t hungry.”

“Really?” The stranger’s eyes grew lively with sudden amusement. “Your friend looks famished to me.”

One quick glimpse confirmed that assertion: Lathwi was staring at the carcass with wolfish intensity. Her nostrils were flared. Her jaws were clenched. There was a thin line of drool trickling down the side of her chin. Pieter knew then that further argument was useless.