Dragon's Trail

III: FUGUE-4

He’d asked Javal about the moon and they’d discussed it at length, but it was difficult; the last few days had been overcast so there was no frame of reference, but also because after a thousand years nobody had ever bothered to do anything more than keep track of what it did.

One thing that it did, which freaked Jarrod out when he really thought about it, was every hundred and four days it would disappear along with the sun, turning the world pitch black for just over six days straight. He'd learned that they called it, creatively enough, The Dark.

These guys, he decided, really sucked at naming stuff.

He stared at the moon while he warmed his aching ass by the fire, wincing as he dabbed tea tree oil into the blisters on his thighs. The canted ring of dust scattered into the starlight and silhouetted the hills on the horizon. The sense of enormity clobbered him.

We’re orbiting that thing, he figured. Or it’s a binary planetoid system. Either way, I will bet what they’re calling the moon is orbiting the sun.

He reminded himself to break out a blank book tonight and start doodling to see if he could figure it out. Then he decided it didn’t matter.

What matters, he told himself, slowing his breathing, is this: you are no longer standing on a dirt clod orbiting a very ordinary star in the Orion Arm of an unremarkable galaxy in the backwaters of the Virgo Supercluster. You are standing on a different dirt clod, orbiting some other very ordinary star, only God knows where, and you have work to do.

He figured he felt much as Coronado must’ve, looking out over the Grand Canyon for the first time; or perhaps Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon.

Neil Armstrong went home again, he reminded himself. The Conquistadors burned their ships.

Plus, Neil Armstrong was first. Somebody else beat you here by twelve years. And he’s a king by now. You’ve got some catching up to do, Sergeant.

He rolled the phrase The Dark around in his head a few times and realized that the words for dark and dead were identical. He needed a drink.

Sir Javal rapped on his door and let himself in. “Are you all right?”

“Overwhelmed, sire.”

Javal handed him a folded black article of clothing, atop which was something small and gold; a brooch in the shape of a horse’s head. “Your cape and rider’s pin. The page will show you to the baths.”

The baths were in a round, one-story building adjacent to the keep. Steam surged up into the night from slits in the ceiling.

This, Jarrod recognized, was where it all came together. A hot bath with mineral salts, and a scantily-clad girl rubbing soap into his hair and massaging his shoulders. Her name was Ryana, and she was one of the tall, willowy types he’d been keen about earlier in the evening. She was marvelously put together, sinewy and doe-eyed with hands like stones and an interest in up-and-coming knights.

Javal was in the adjacent tub. “How long can we stay here?” Jarrod asked, gently kneading the aches from his thighs as the girl poured a bucket of hot water over his scalp and massaged it in.

“At Gateskeep?” Javal’s words slurred. “Just tonight.”

“No, I mean in the baths.”

Javal grinned and splashed water at him. “You’re done. Out.”

Jarrod stood, and Javal stared.

“That’s a hell of a place for a wound!” Javal exclaimed.

Now the bathing girls were staring.

Jarrod looked down at the long scar on his stomach. “I told you I’ve put my time in, sire.”

“Not that,” said Javal, gesturing lower. “That.”

“Oh, that.” His circumcision. “Yeah. It’s a rite of passage among my people.”

“For going through that, I should knight you right now.”

Javal waited with his hands folded patiently outside the feasting hall’s double doors. His hair was still damp, and he was again clean-shaven and looked freshly scrubbed. He wore a V-necked leather jerkin with gold embroidery on the sleeves that matched the silver embroidery on the edges of Jarrod’s cape. Over this he wore a red shirt of what Jarrod figured was either fine hemp or rough silk, a gold horsehead pin prominent on his chest holding his gold officer’s fourragères under his arm. Behind him, the nobles’ hall was bursting its seams with revelry.

Jarrod was clad in drawstring hemp pants and a black cashmere sweater over his black velvet warrior’s tunic and a long-sleeved polypro shirt beneath, with his black and silver cape secured with his rider’s pin, and leather trail runners. It was getting cold, despite being summer. The women he’d seen on his way down to supper were wearing stoles of fur and silk.

Javal opened the door to the bedlam and let Jarrod through first, and there, spanning the hall, were perhaps a hundred people, some brightly dressed, some looking quite plain, the majority in every shade of regalia in between.

The food was coming in plates and piles, and the myriad smells sent Jarrod’s feet wandering. “So, where do we sit?”

“There’s a member of our order over there,” Jarrod didn’t see where Javal was pointing, but it was of little matter, because Javal steered him down the stairs and through the tables. “Privilege of being my sergeant,” Javal said at that point. “You get to eat with the nobles.” He flashed such a self-satisfied smile that his teeth gleamed. He raised his voice above the flute and drum, “King’s Rider Jarrod, this is the gallant Knight Lord Sir Durn.” Javal stopped before a bald, bearded, beady-eyed gorilla of a man who rivaled Carter in height and exceeded him considerably in mass. Jarrod guessed him at six and a half feet tall and the fitter side of three hundred pounds. College lineman big. Professional wrestler big. That guy would pound me into the ground like a fence post.

Sir Durn extended his hand, saying, “Please, sir. Share my table.”

And Jarrod then sat, excusing himself to the other side of the table where, being left-handed, he could eat with less difficulty. He was sitting beside Sir Durn and before Sir Javal.

Sir Durn began to snicker.

“Don’t sit there,” said Javal.

“What?”

“He’s a foreigner,” Javal explained, reaching over to slap Sir Durn across the top of his head. He told Jarrod, “It’s—” and then started to laugh, himself.

“What did I miss?”

Javal started again. “Here, friends and comrades sit side by side, the better to keep the levels of conversation down.”

Durn shrugged. “Only lovers sit across from each other at a meal.”

“Where are we?” Javal asked, inquiring as to the status of dinner. Jarrod shifted over to the other side of the table, red-faced.

“Third course. You just missed the pastries.” As Sir Durn spoke, a wooden plate and a silver goblet were set before Jarrod by a page, and the goblet filled by a willow-waisted, large-bosomed blonde girl blushing at his stare. She winked and vanished, giggling, into the mayhem.

“Oh-oh, that’s trouble, that one,” Durn laughed, clapping Jarrod on the shoulder with a beefy hand and thusly shaking him from his trance. “You Northers like your own, eh, boy?” and at that, he elbowed Jarrod in the ribs and laughed, “She’ll eat a man alive.”

“Indeed,” Javal added with a wry smile, “Barbarians. You’re better off with the bathing girls.”

“Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that.”

“You should’ve seen him,” Javal laughed to Durn, “Figured he’d kicked off right to the afterlife.”

Durn shoved Jarrod, “You have to die pretty well to earn an afterlife like that one.”

“Okay,” said Jarrod. “Humor me here, because I’m from out of town. But where I’m from, that girl’s father would be chasing me down the street.”

“Where are you from?” asked Durn.

“Knightsbridge,” Jarrod answered, and took a long slug of wine. It was fruity, rose in color, and potent. He tasted strawberries somewhere under the alcohol, and the honeyed kick of mead in the aftertaste. Home brewed. Good stuff.

“Never heard of it,” said Durn. “No offense.”

“It’s far from here.”

“Too far for my tastes,” Durn laughed, “If you don’t have bathing girls!”

Jarrod explained showers and plumbing as best he could.

“A heated waterfall in your privy? And you do it all yourself? It sounds so . . .” Durn searched for a word.

“Unsatisfying,” offered Javal. “They have an interesting salute, though. Watch this.”

Jarrod grumbled quietly as the others at the table learned to throw up the horns. He returned to the subject he was most interested in. “So there are no problems here, with girls rubbing soap into nude soldiers?”

Javal and Durn shrugged at each other.

“Sir Durn, if that was your daughter—” Jarrod started.

“I’d be thrilled,” Durn admitted.

“I’m gonna need more wine here.” Jarrod motioned for the serving girl to refill his goblet.

“There’s nothing immoral going on in there,” said Durn. “You’d be a fool to think of doing anything like what you’re thinking. At least, in the baths,” he joked.

“My people are a lot more . . . private,” was the word Jarrod settled on. Of course, that was discounting internet pornography, popular music, tabloid shows, sexting, racy f*******: pages . . . It occurred to him that he shouldn’t have mentioned it, but the dichotomy suddenly struck him: he was from a society that managed to be lascivious yet very, very private about it.

“Those girls are on their way to becoming healers,” said Durn. “In the baths, they learn their way around a body. They see injuries from drill and sparring, and sometimes even from the field. They’ll straighten your neck, and tend your welts, and hell, some of them will even stitch you up if they’re far enough along. They’ll call a wizard down to heal you if necessary.”

“So it’s a professional relationship,” Jarrod assumed.

“It has to be,” said Durn. “If they happen to catch the fancy of a young rider—or better still, a knight or a lord—in the course of their work, then all the better, I say. It’s not like everyone in the damned village gets to soak in the garrison baths.”

I can get behind this place, Jarrod announced to no one, and raised his goblet. “A toast to the garrison baths.”

Durn laughed, clapped Jarrod on the shoulder, and reached for a meat pastry, which he plopped on Jarrod’s plate. “You need to eat,” he said, grabbing Jarrod by the bicep. “Not bad, actually.” Jarrod bent his arm and flexed, and Durn slapped him on the back as the muscles shoved against his hand. “You’ll do. So, in Knightsbridge, what gods do you pray to?”

“Here he goes,” another at the table groaned.

“We have one big god who handles everything,” said Jarrod. This brought a roar of laughter.

“Might leave him too busy to answer your prayers, huh?” said Durn.

“Yeah,” Jarrod agreed, “He gets busy. What about you? Who do you pray to?”

“We have many gods, but they’re busy, too,” said Durn. “I pray to the soul of my father.”

“My grandmother,” offered another. “A wise woman and a great wizard.”

“My grandfather. Died in battle.”

“My grandfather, died on his grandmother,” joked another, punching the knight next to him, who shoved him in return.

“Relatives,” Jarrod acknowledged.

“Why not, eh? They know the answers, now. They like us—we hope. Wouldn’t steer us wrong, and they’re always watching.”

“What about you?” Jarrod asked Javal. “Who do you pray to?”

Javal grunted, “No one listens.”

They talked and joked and ate late into the night, until Jarrod had so stuffed and pickled himself, he opted to make his exit while he felt he still could.

And once outside the hall, the many flights of stairs loomed ahead of him.

He stared up at them for quite some time, judging exactly how he was going to do this.

“Hmm . . .” one step, then another, and there was the handrail. “Oh, that strawberry wine,” he told no one. “Holy ship, am I wrecked,” he muttered, completely giddy that the pun carried on his new tongue. He panicked momentarily as a pair of hands—soft, small hands, he found—wrapped around his waist, and gave him a heave up to the next step.

“Ah, oh, it’s you.” It was the Northland girl, the wine server with the spectacular bazongas he’d been sporadically flirting with all night. “Hey, I can do this. . .”

“No, you can’t,” her voice was a stern, sober contralto, all the opposite of her giggling demeanor from an hour ago. “Let me help you.”

“Damn fine idea. You wanna just g—” get under my arm, yeah . . . Can I just get to the handrail? he begged silently. I’ll be okay once I get to the handrail. No, the handrail’s over there . . . ah, hell. “Okay, I give up,” he slurred. “Have your way with me.”

She sounded slightly amused, saying only, “You’ve outdone yourself, sire.”

“Haven’t I, though? Hey, are we here, already?” he wondered, looking behind him at the stairs spiraling into darkness as they stopped for a moment on a landing.

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Here, make a right.”

“Where we goin’?”

“We’re going to bed.”

“No, no, n—” he shook his head and nearly fell, “No. My bed, is way the hell up there,” and he pointed obliquely toward the roof and pursed his lips and nodded.

“Perhaps,” she admitted, “but mine is right through here.”

Jarrod staggered into the nobles’ hall for breakfast a good bit after dawn, squinting and cringing at the din. Javal whistled for him, and Jarrod stumbled through the breakfast bedlam and took a seat on his mentor’s left. Crockery clapping on tables rang like gunfire through his head.