Dragon Clan #7: Shell’s Story

CHAPTER FOUR

Quester and Shell shook hands, and by mutual agreement headed east in the direction of Bear Mountain and the dragons said to live on the high slopes. Quester took the lead. While Shell normally didn’t make rash decisions, especially those so important as choosing a traveling companion, Quester gave him a sense of friendliness and confidence.

Having someone to travel with provided protection for both, but it was more than that. Quester had been living on his own in the grasslands for two years and was still alive. He possessed a wealth of knowledge that Shell could learn from, and after the experience on the trail where Quester had managed to sneak up and tickle Shell’s ear, Shell had a lot to learn. If Quester had been an enemy Shell would be dead.

Shell said, “You tricked me back there. You intentionally left footprints crossing the path that I couldn’t help but see. You knew I’d wait there watching down the hillside where the tracks pointed, trying to find you while you slipped up on me from behind.”

“I’d been watching you all day. A lesson, if you will listen. Who, what, and how many are following us this instant?”

Shell spun to examine their back trail.

Quester said, “Relax. There are none. I know because I take the time to check behind me. So, should you.”

Shell thought about how silly he must have appeared as he squatted beside the path and remained still as a rock, and watched down the slope, while Quester slipped close behind and tickled his ear repeatedly. It was a harmless lesson that might save his life someday.

“At first, I thought it a simple trick, and I was angry.”

“Simple? Probably, but more than that. I call it misdirection. I convinced you to look in one direction while I used the other to my benefit.”

“You’ve done things like that before?” Shell asked.

“Never the ear tickle, but yes. I’ve misdirected a pair of bandits, a crazy old man who kills and eats people for dinner, a sheriff upset at a lamb I ‘borrowed,’ and a few others. Once I pretended to be a herder and talked to a farmer and his son who were chasing after a thief that stole food from their garden. They wanted to hang him from a tree. I pointed to where I wanted them to go, saying I’d spotted myself over there.”

Shell laughed. The revelations provided insights into how Quester had managed to survive in a treeless wilderness for so long. It sounded like he didn’t hesitate to steal, but if you're hungry, choices have to be made. He said, “With two of us working together, we should be able to find food without having people chase us.”

“With two of us, there will be twice the mouths to feed.”

“If you teach me how to shoot my bow, maybe our hunting will take care of that. Besides, you know how to find plants and food, and I probably know other ways. Between us, we may do well.” He didn’t mention what would happen after reaching Bear Mountain when Shell would continue alone on his venture. Also, the idea of traveling with one who was not of the Dragon Clan felt odd and dangerously wrong. Shell had to watch his every word, as well as keep his back covered. The dragon birthmark on it was not as large as some others, or as intricate, but there was no mistaking it.

“You carry a staff because you’re a herder?” Quester asked, his eyes on the battered staff Shell had carried for years.

“It’s a weapon.”

“My bow is a weapon. You carry a stick.”

Shell kept his temper in check but realized that he’d heard a trace of humor in the voice as if Quester wanted to draw a response. It explained that Quester also had questions about them traveling together. Shell decided to settle the issue. “Your bow is good for hunting and fighting from a distance, but up close a staff is the deadliest weapon ever devised.”

“Ha, don’t they have swords where you come from?”

The humor came easy, but there was no doubt Quester didn’t believe a staff was effective when compared to a sword. Shell held his tongue, but when Quester picked up a small stick from the side of a dry stream and pretended to fight enemies with it as he laughed and mocked him, Shell halted and spotted another stick the diameter of his thumb, the length of a sword. He tossed it to Quester. “A sword. Try it on me.”

Quester snorted with derision, then suddenly attacked, swinging the pretend sword high above his head, waving it from side to side. He charged as he cut and stabbed. Shell casually blocked the moves, his staff always reaching the ‘sword’ before it touched him.

Quester pulled back, frustrated, then attacked again by lunging. When that failed, he swung the stick in wide arcs, but with each move, Shell easily met it with the staff. Shell watched Quester’s feet for the shifts in weight that told of the coming moves, but he also watched Quester’s waist. As his father had taught him, a body goes where the waist does. An enemy can feint with a head or off-hand, but the body will always follow the waist.

Quester grew peeved that Shell blocked his attacks so easily, and while Quester became winded as he attacked again, Shell had barely exerted himself. Quester finally fell back and said, “Sooner or later you’ll be too late to block me, and my sword will cut you in half.”

Shell shrugged and said, “You have only seen the defense a staff provides.”

“There’s more?” Quester charged him again, swinging wildly.

This time, Shell blocked the first blow, an overhead chop. .Then, Shell advanced, his staff, slashing and swinging, the ends striking Quester time after time, on his upper arms, not hard, but firm, with at least four strikes on each arm. A switch of handholds and Shell struck three firm hits on the outsides of Quester’s thighs. Quester fell back in stumbling steps. Shell made a wild swing with the staff above his head, and his hands slid to the very end, and the next roundhouse swing stopped just short of Quester’s unprotected head, like a woodsman chopping firewood.

A stunned expression filled Quester’s face. His eyes were glued to the staff a handsbreadth from his head. He said, “By the old gods, that was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. If I didn’t know better, I’d think your stick is better than a sword.”

Shell lowered the staff, his breath coming harder with the exertion of the fancy moves, but a lopsided smile sat on his face. “Staff, not stick.”

“Can you teach me?”

“Not with your attitude. Seriously, it takes years of hard practice to do what I just showed you.”

“Yet you carry a bow?” Quester asked.

Shell shrugged and said, “I have never shot a single arrow with it.”

“By that, I suppose you mean you’re the best archer I’ve ever encountered?” The voice was snide as if testing Shell for the truth, and expecting to find Shell was an expert archer. “Like you’re just a herder and don’t know how to defend yourself, so you carry a staff.”

Shell laughed for the first time in days. “No, what I mean is that I took this bow from five highwaymen and a woman who were trying to rob me last night before I burned down their huts. I’ve never even drawn the bow but once, to test the pull. A poor shepherd like me does not have a use for a bow.”

Quester crossed his arms over his chest and squinted, giving Shell an appraising look that lacked any humor. His voice growled when he spoke as if he didn’t fully believe the answer. “I think you should take the lead.”

Confused, Shell shrugged. “Okay, but why?”

“Because you, my new friend, are either much more than you seem, or you’re a damned liar and until I know which, it’s hard to put any trust in what you say. I should watch your every move.”

“I still don’t understand.” Shell took a step closer to speak on a more personal level, but Quester took an equal footstep back, his hand lowering to the hilt of his knife.

Quester said, “You tell me you don’t know how to fight, but then say you can defeat any swordsman with your stick. You tell me you took that bow from five highwaymen? You say it as if you do that sort of thing without effort every day. Five of them against only you? Then you burned their homes? All that as calmly as if you’re telling me what you ate for dinner last night and you wonder why I’m concerned?”

“Concerned? Over me? I guess I still don’t understand.”

Quester hadn’t moved back again, but he still appeared upset. He said, “Maybe we should go our separate ways.”

Shell took a few steps back and sat on a ledge of sandstone, and in sudden understanding. He allowed a smile to grow. “Hold on a moment, Quester. If you had seen them, all five of them, you wouldn’t be so impressed. Hear me out and then leave if you want.”

Quester didn’t move any closer, but he nodded as he said, “This had better be some story.”

“First, there were just two of them to fight. They caught me beside the river after the rain, separated from my staff and belongings. While they talked, and threatened, they sent me to my backpack to get the money for them that they thought I had, and instead I grabbed my staff and broke the arm of one and jabbed the other in the stomach.”

“Earlier, you said there were five of them. And a woman.”

“After I had left those two, I decided they might follow me to take revenge, so I followed them. The first two met with the others at their huts and the other three men left to track me. They were a sorry lot, dirty, poor, and stupid. I waited until almost dawn and burned their huts.”

“That’s when you stole the bow?”

“And waded across the river. I waited there on a stone shelf for half a day to see if they followed.”

Quester relaxed. “You never know who you’re going to meet out here, and for a while, it sounded like you were either a fearless killer or the biggest liar I’ve heard of in a year. Either way, it was time for me to leave.”

“Let’s talk while we walk,” Shell suggested, still a bit confused and miffed at the attitude. A change of subject might help. “Tell me about your mountains to the west.”

“You’re interested in mountains of any sort, it seems.”

The statement didn’t offend Shell, but he decided to be honest with Quester, up to the point of admitting he was Dragon Clan. There were limits. “No, not all mountains, but you bring new possibilities that may help my family. I know people of the plains who have traveled west, and none has ever mentioned mountains in that direction. I’m not saying they don’t exist, but they must be so far away that people never go there.”

“People you know may never go there, but I lived in a village of a hundred, and on the other side of those Blue Mountains are cities that they say have thousands of people.”

“The other side?” Shell had never considered that across those mountains would be more people, perhaps, even more, grasslands like his home, or even another ocean. And beyond that could be more. “Is there a king?”

“At least three. And beyond there are more. I don’t know much about them.”

“Why didn’t you go that direction instead of crossing the grasslands?”

“A good question. Raiders came to our village. I was out hunting. When I returned, our village was burned, our farm too, and our animals slaughtered or missing. I was careless and searched for my family, but left plenty of footprints and tracks for them to follow.”

“They came back and found them?”

“And chased me,” Quester said without emotion.

“What about your family?”

“Dead. All of them, and almost everyone else I knew in our village. I took off on foot with three of the King’s men on horseback chasing after me. I headed into the mountains where others joined them in hunting me down.”

“Then you slipped away to the grasslands and kept going?”

“Close enough. I lived with other people a short time, and there were a few other things that happened, but that’s the basic story.”

Shell found it hard to believe someone could live in the grasslands without water, and the animals living there were few, so hunting was scarce. He said, “Water?”

“The Grasslands turn into the Drylands five or six days walk west of here. The food was scarce, but water is critical and harder to find. I made arcs.”

“What are those?”

“Whenever I found water I set up camp. Then I made half-circles to the west and explored, always careful to never move so far I couldn’t return to the water before I ran out. The next day I went in a larger arc and did that again until I found more water. When I did, I returned to my last camp and gathered my things and moved west, always west.”

“For two years?”

“Well, some places had only a seep of water, and I moved on quickly, but others had a pond or small lake, and even a few small streams. At some places, I stayed until the local game became scarce, more than two months at one pond.”

Shell nodded as he allowed his imagination to fill in blanks, but again he’d already learned from Quester. Never travel beyond the ability to return to your source of water. If you must return, you can always search for water in another direction. For Shell, who had traveled away from home only one time, and then on a well-known road, the information both cheered and depressed him. Yes, he had learned something new, a simple survival skill. But what else had he not learned?

That was the depressing part. Shell needed to impress upon himself how much he didn’t know. It amounted to the justification of why he agreed to travel with someone not of the Dragon Clan, but still, such a small item as the lack of knowledge of locating water indicated the vast amount he needed to learn if he was to survive.

Quester had again taken the lead. The mountains to the west that had seemed so close two days ago were no closer in appearance, other than that the peaks were more slightly more defined. Their progress was a fast walk across rolling hills covered in dry brown grass with few obstacles. Remembering Quester’s warning, Shell watched behind constantly, and as he turned once, he saw a where the grass waved in the breeze to the south, all but in one small place.

“Quester, I something’s sneaking up behind us and to our left. I don’t think it’s the highwaymen I fought with, but I can’t be sure.”

“Okay, don’t stop walking or let him know you spotted him. Look out of the corner of your eye, so you don’t give yourself away that you’re looking for him. Now that we know we’re followed let’s wait and see what we have back there. Good eye.”

“You already knew he was back there, didn’t you?”

“For a while,” Quester said.

“Maybe we can lay a trap?” Shell asked.

“More likely get ready to run.”

“That’s your plan? Running away like a coward?”

“Running, like a live coward. Fighting is always my last option,” Quester said. “I’ll set a trap when I can, but I never fight unless I know I’ll win.”

“A warrior fights for what he believes in,” Shell said, puffing out his chest and growing angry at Quester’s self-centered attitude.

Quester continued walking, never once turning his head to look behind. He said, “I have no family, home, or belief to fight for. I fight for myself. If I fight against one enemy fairly, I suppose I’ll win half the time and die the other half. If I run away, I don’t die half the time. I like that option.”

“Those words sound like the words of a coward.”

The other snorted and turned to look over his shoulder, as if looking at Shell, but his eyes were focused in the distance. Squatting for a rest, Quester said, “It’s nothing different than you did with those idiot highwaymen. When they first attacked, you didn’t fight until you managed to get your staff in hand, right? Your staff and your skill gave you the advantage to fight and win, so you did.”

“Advantage, yes, but I didn’t run away.”

Quester shrugged and said, “What if those two highwaymen had prevented you from getting to your staff. Would you have attacked them with your bare hands?”

“That’s silly.”

“Of course it is. You would have run away. Just like me. I could go on and ask why you didn’t attack when there were five of them, or why you waited until they were asleep to light fire to their huts, or why you laid in a hollow half a day watching your back trail.”

“It seems different somehow,” Shell answered slowly, choosing his words carefully. It seemed that Quester managed to turn and twist them—or perhaps just offered realities Shell had never considered.

“If they had followed you to that hollow, would you have stood and fought all five as a true warrior? Or run?” Quester stood and began walking again.

Shell knew he’d have run in a similar situation. He had chosen the hollow partly because it left a way to escape unseen, a back door. But he didn’t like Quester saying as much. His eyes shifted to the grass a few hundred steps behind and saw a smooth ripple like a wave on a lake moved, but across the land. In one place, the size of a man didn’t ripple. It was not that he saw someone out there, it was that if a man was there, that’s the way the grass would react. He’d watched the wind in the grasslands his whole life and protected his flock by spotting similar dangers.

“Still watching us,” he said.

Quester said, “I know. Keeping pace with us, but I don’t think it’s a man.”

“Why not?”

“The grass out there is too short to hide him unless he’s on his knees.”

That observation meant a creature stalked them, and Shell couldn’t get the idea out of his mind. He’d never been stalked. Now and then he caught a glimpse of movement or a subtle shift color, but more often he only saw the grass move where there should be no movement or the other way around. The color of the creature blended in with the browns of the parched grasslands so well that it couldn’t be seen at a distance.

When they paused for a break, nothing in the grass moved, and as soon as they continued, the movement resumed. Shell muttered, “Stalking, or following us for sure.”

“There’s a difference?” Quester asked.

After a few more steps Shell said, “Yes. Following us might be innocent or curious.”

Quester barked a sour laugh. “Animals are not guilty or innocent. They can be interested in us, smell out food, or think we’re food. But following can become stalking, right?”

“We’ll keep an eye on it,” Shell had said, trying to end the conversation. Whatever was following them might be a danger, but he thought he might know the creature. Much shorter than a man, moving through the grass with flashes of brown described the dog that used to herd his sheep and goats until it became too old and slow, the old dog he’d petted as he left home. It would be just like Max to follow Shell.

Late in the day, the grass gave way to shrubs and taller plants. At a wide stream, Quester said, “Why don’t we make our camp here tonight?”

“Fine. I have a confession of sorts. I caught a few glimpses of that animal following us, and I think it might be an old dog that used to watch my flock.”

“Oh, that would be much better than what I had in mind. How sure are you?”

Shell shrugged. “I’m not at all sure. I’ve been thinking about it, and I convinced myself it was him, but now that you ask, Max is old and probably couldn’t keep up with walking all day.”

The bow slipped off Quester’s neck as if by itself, and he slid his backpack off his shoulders and let it fall to the ground. Stringing the bow, he said, “I’ll go back and see what it is. Do you mind making a fire for us?”

“Not if you don’t shoot my dog with an arrow,” Shell muttered, more to himself than to his new friend. He placed his staff within easy reach and put his bow and quiver beside it. If it was Max back there, he didn’t know what would be the right thing to do. Leaving Max in the wilderness ensured his death, but he couldn’t go all the way back and return him to his family. It was too far. Then he changed his mind. If needed, he would do it. Taking a slow old dog along with him across the mountains didn’t make sense.

Quester, ready to leave, asked, “Are you sure it’s not your dog?”

“Maybe.”