Song of the Beast

Chapter 9

I wanted to ask the Elhim how he had come to be employed at Cor Neuill, but I had no wish to linger in the valley, and the long trek up the steep path took all of our concentration. The footpath into the lair had been purposely left difficult to discourage casual entry, but the storm had made it even more treacherous. Snow and sleet had accumulated in dangerous, outsloping patches packed hard by the wind and the falling temperatures. The clouds closed in, forcing extra caution, as we didn’t want to walk off the cliff at the end of a traverse. My foot slipped twice, but I managed to keep my balance, left with only a sick lurch in the belly as I looked into the bottomless, swirling clouds beyond the edge.

We were on a particularly steep portion of the path when both of the Elhim’s feet slipped off the track. He scrabbled for a purchase on the icy rocks, all the time sliding sideways, downward, and outward. Knowing that my hands could not hold him and my shoulders had no strength to haul him up, I threw myself across his body, hoping my weight could hold him to the ground until he could find a foot- or handhold to pull himself to safety. I wedged my feet in a shallow depression in the rock and locked my arms around a protruding boulder, so that we wouldn’t both slide off the edge. Against the howl of the wind, he grunted and strained in quiet desperation. It seemed an hour until he squirmed back onto the path and out from under me, but it likely took me longer to get my arm unstuck from the crack between the boulder and the cliff wall.

Sitting with our backs against the rock, we let our heartbeats return to a normal rhythm. The Elhim grinned at me. “The dragons may think you’re too bony, but I think you have exactly the proper balance. Any heavier and I’d be flat. Any lighter and I’d be dead.”

I smiled back at him, then nodded my head up the path. It was too cold to stay still. We got gingerly to our feet and trudged upward.

Not long after that near disaster, I became horribly disoriented. Faint stars peered at an unlikely angle through whipping clouds and encroaching night. Sure I had missed the path and was ready to walk off the edge, I halted, flailing my arms to find the anchor of the cliff face. Once my hand touched the rock and I crept forward a few more steps, I realized that the displaced stars were actually glimmers of lantern light leaking out from around the shuttered windows of the headquarters building. We hurried up the last pitch to the rock platform.

Despite my anxiety to be away from Cor Neuill, I laid a hand on the Elhim’s shoulder as he reached for the door handle. “What are you doing here, Davyn?”

He smiled broadly. “Waiting for you, Dragon Speaker.” Then he yanked open the door and motioned me inside before I could ask him what, in the name of sense, he meant.

The business of the dragon legion continued inside the headquarters, unchecked by the early onset of night. A hard-faced woman, flanked by two warriors with drawn swords, sat at a table dispensing coins to a line of bedraggled drovers and carters. Other men wearing the black and red of the Twelve Families were carrying piles of blankets and crates of supplies out to distribute in the encampment. The local populace might be eating their horses or selling their children to buy half-rotted turnips, but those of the Ridemark would eat their fill and sleep warm if there were stores to be had anywhere.

Alfrigg and the quartermaster were still huddled over their accounts, but to my relief MacEachern was nowhere to be seen. Two empty wine flasks and a third only three-quarters full stood in the midst of the ledgers and papers, which was usually a sign that Alfrigg was in control of the negotiations. The red flask of uziat stood ready at his elbow.

“Master Alfrigg,” I said, bowing when my employer looked up. “I have the information you desire. The Rider Zengal was most helpful. I would venture to say the Riders have no needs we cannot accommodate reasonably. We should be able to send Tarwyl and Jeddile down here tomorrow to begin taking measurements.”

Davyn laid his notes on the table in front of Alfrigg and withdrew while the merchant perused the close-written pages. “Unusual materials? Special designs?”

“It’s all there, sir. Very little different from your estimates.”

“Excellent!” He seemed to have forgotten his earlier aggravations in the flush of success. “Tell this gentleman the same, and that if he’ll agree to our last set of figures, we’ll make our first delivery one month from this day.”

I told the quartermaster what Alfrigg had said, as if he were truly unable to understand the words himself. Agree, I thought, so we can be out of here. Now that I’d had a chance to ask my questions, I wanted nothing but to get safely back to my room in Camarthan, where I could consider what I’d been told. But to my dismay the quartermaster read too much into my words and decided that he should hold out for a lower price, so we entered into two more hours of haggling. Now that the interpreter had returned, the signs and nods and pointing they’d used while I was in the valley would no longer suffice. Every word had to go through me.

Back and forth the two men went with the details of their contract, each point to be argued, considered, restated, and argued again: how many, how much, what day, what hour, what conditions ... until I wanted to scream at them to agree or be damned. The noise in the room grew louder as more day laborers came in to collect their pay. A group of officers argued loudly about plans for a mock battle and contingencies for worsening weather.

Two servants stoked the fire in the massive hearth, so that the room grew stifling. A red-faced Alfrigg, already sweating from the wine and the intensity of his financial sparring, loosened his thick outer tunic. “You’d think we were in the belly of one of these dragons.”

I did not respond. A mistake. Irritated at having lost the last point in his engagement with the squint-eyed quartermaster, he took out his frustration on me. “What kind of high and mighty fool stands there in a heavy cloak? We’ve got several more points to discuss before we’re done, so you might as well resign yourself to dealing with us lowly peasants. Take off the cloak and put your mind on our business.”

It was true that sweat was running down my face, and my garments were drenched underneath the wool cloak, but I dared not remove my cloak lest my failure to remove my gloves be noted. “I would prefer not, sir,” I said. “How shall I answer the gentleman’s last query?”

From the bundle strapped to the back of a hollow-eyed woman in the paymaster’s line, the strident, unceasing squall of an infant raked the senses like glass on steel. Everyone was shouting to be heard over the din, and in the midst of all of it, the shutters began to rattle. Smoke billowed back down the chimney until it became hard to see. A number of people, including myself, began coughing. This was not the wind.

The rumbling grew louder and the ground shook, sending a crate of metal cups crashing onto the stone floor, and toppling the wine flasks that stood in the midst of the contract papers. Fearing we would have to start all over again, I reached out with my clumsy hands to sweep the papers aside before they were drenched with the dark red wine. But at the same moment, the dragons skimming the rooftop screamed out their hate. Distracted and nervous, I staggered against the table, forced to close my eyes and try to block out the fire that seared my mind, tore at my lungs, and set my skin blazing, lest I cry out as I had on the path into Cor Neuill.

Two strong hands clamped my wrists to the table. My heart stopped. My eyes flew open in horror-struck certainty of exposure.

But it was only a puzzled Alfrigg, staring into my face with genuine concern as he held down my hands. “Aidan, lad, are you ill?” I would have sworn that the cacophony fell into absolute silence just as he said my name. No one in the room could have missed it. “You look like death.”

“No,” I stammered, cursing the moment’s lapse when I’d told him my true given name. “I’m fine. Why are you—”

“You’ve laid your gloves in the wine. Take your hands out of them or you’re going to drip all over everything.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“Don’t be a fool, boy. Take your hands out of the gloves.”

Of all the ridiculous images that fate could contrive to illustrate mortal danger... There was I, surrounded by my enemies, leaning over the table with my gloves soaking in a puddle of wine, determined not to show my hands lest I be returned to horror and lose my reason. Across from me was the uncomprehending Udema, equally determined that my hands would indeed come out, lest I mar his contracts and cause him to lose face. And there was no possible way to tell him of all he might lose if I did as he asked and was recognized.

“Alfrigg, please,” I said softly, but his iron grip did not relax.

“We wouldn’t want to risk losing all our work. This miser is on the verge of signing.” He spoke through clenched teeth, his face flushed with more than the heat of the room.

With every passing moment another eye turned our way. I had to end it quickly. Only the quartermaster was close enough to see, and for a brief moment I thought the gods had decreed that everything would turn out all right, for Davyn poked his head in front of the squint-eyed clansman, saying, “Excuse me, Excellency. I will clean up this mess.”

The Elhim distracted the quartermaster just long enough for me to yank my wretched hands from the gloves. I drew them immediately into my cloak, but not quickly enough, for the leather merchant’s jaw dropped, his irritation replaced in an instant by curiosity and pity. Alfrigg was a good and kind man.

“Vanir’s fires, Aidan, lad. What have you done to your hands?” Alfrigg’s voice was not designed for intimate conversation. “Here, let me see.” He drew my arm into the light.

“Alfrigg, please don’t,” I whispered, but it was already too late.

The quartermaster shoved the Elhim aside. “Aidan? Was that the name? ‘Aidan’ who has something wrong with his hands?” He peered into my face. “Osmund, summon the high commander instantly. Tell him we’ve discovered something most intriguing about one of our guests.” He slid around the table toward Alfrigg, who held my left wrist in his powerful grip and stood gaping at my misshapen fingers. A smile blossomed on the pinched face of the quartermaster as he gazed on the work of his clan brother. “Derk, Vrond,” he shouted. “Bind these two!”

Alfrigg looked up to see the two guards running toward us with drawn swords. Immediately he dropped my wrist and went for his own weapon. His confusion in no way hindered his deadly intent. He would kill the man who touched him or me, even if the attacker was a member of the Ridemark clan in the heart of their camp. I couldn’t let him do it.

Using every scrap of strength I possessed, I laid my left arm across the Udema’s head, knocking him against the stone wall. I had no doubt that the blow pained me far more than it did him. But it dazed him long enough for me to grab my dagger from under my cloak, clamp one hand over the other on its hilt, praying I could hold it long enough for my purpose, and press it to his throat.

“You’ll not take me, Udema,” I shouted. “You’ve been MacEachern’s pawn the whole time, haven’t you ... toying with me ... leading me into this trap?”

Alfrigg was mumbling curses. I had only a moment before he gathered his wits and realized he could flick me off him like a fly. Only a few moments beyond that and the others would recover from their confusion and realize that Alfrigg was certainly not MacEachern’s pawn. Before they dared attack him, I had to convince them he was not my pawn either. I hated what I was going to do.

“I’ll not allow it, Udema scum!” I screamed, jamming the dagger into the fleshy part of his shoulder, twisting it enough to ensure there was plenty of blood and plenty of pain, but not enough damage to truly hurt him. “You’ll never get me back to Mazadine!” He couldn’t have heard my whispered apology, as he was roaring a blistering litany of curses and maledictions of such creative grotesquerie that the gods themselves could never have heard the like.

Unable to get enough purchase on the dagger to pull it out again, I left it in him, leaped backward, and ran for the rear door. My chance of escape was so small as to be invisible, but I would not stand still and let them take me. Quickly I retraced my own rapidly disappearing footprints across the snow-covered platform to the gap in the wall. They would assume I’d take the downward path. Beyond the gap the path was dark enough and the wind fierce enough that they wouldn’t expect traces. But I leaped onto the wall itself, and without even thinking how impossible it was, ran lightly along its snow-packed top to the corner where the ice-crusted snowdrift lay piled all the way to the roof of the headquarters.

I didn’t quite reach the roof before the door burst open, spilling torchlight onto the windswept stone. Flattening myself against the mountain of snow, I dared not breathe until the shouting crowd of warriors disappeared through the gap in the wall and down the path. Quickly I scrambled the rest of the way to the peak of the rooftop, just in time to see a second wave of men follow the first toward Cor Neuill, and a third, smaller group fan out in front of the headquarters.

MacEachern soon arrived at the headquarters running, met by the quartermaster at the door. “Where is he?” the commander screamed.

“Bolted. Into the valley. Before we could—”

“You let him go for the dragons? Gods’ teeth, you fool!” With the back of his hand MacEachern bashed the quartermaster in the head, knocking him to the ground. “Incompetent idiots. I should have all of you flogged. What if he—Everlasting damnation!” He stormed through the leather curtain, while the quartermaster picked himself up from the snowy threshold and followed slowly on his commander’s heels.

For half an hour I lay on the roof, the sweat on my face turning to ice, my clothes freezing hard under my cloak. It might have been prudent to wait until MacEachern was finished dispatching his searchers and emptying the headquarters building of the unpaid carters and laborers, but I could stay no longer. I had to go while I could still move. My joints were already so stiff I dared not lower myself behind the roof peak when another party of warriors returned. My gloveless fingers could scarcely bend. So I crept carefully down the pitch of the roof to the corner of the building nearest the stable and the lean-to where visitors’ horses were tethered. Gritting my teeth, I dropped to the snow.

From the corner of the building to the open-sided shelter was twenty-five paces across open ground within plain sight of anyone stepping out of the headquarters doorway. I pulled up the hood of my cloak, crammed my frozen fingers close to my body, praying them to warm up enough that I could convince my horse to do my will, and stepped out of the shadows. Slowly. I fought the temptation to make a dash for it, instead forcing myself to shamble across the snow, as if sent to do cold, unpleasant, boring duty at the stables. The distance seemed as vast as the frozen wastes of Sunderland, where men travel over ice for days on end to reach the next village. Every shout made me cringe, as I expected to see one of the shadowy forms outlined against the campfires pointing a finger my way. Every movement in the swirling snow induced my feet to move faster. But I kept it slow, and with relief passed into the shadow of the shelter, only to come near leaping out of my skin when a hand fell on my arm.

“Hold! Hold!” said the ferocious whisper as I raised my arm to use as a bludgeon again. “My skull is not half so thick as the Udema’s, and it would be a shame to crush it after saving it only two hours ago.”

“Davyn!” I sagged limply against the thick timbers of the shed.

“Well done,” he said. “Using the roof. They’re sure you’ve gone to steal a dragon, so they’ll search the whole valley before they figure out you’re still up here. And you’ll be far away by then.”

Yes, get away ... My limbs felt like dough. “My horse,” I said thickly. “I’ve got to get going.”

“Not your horse. If anyone found it missing, your ruse would be spoiled. Besides, your horse doesn’t know the way and would get you lost and frozen.”

“The way?” I felt dull and sluggish. I hadn’t even considered where I could go. Of course Camarthan was no longer safe.

The Elhim led me into the stables and past the line of nervous horses, most of them still skittish from the passage of the dragon flight. But in a corner box stood a smallish roan, peaceably champing at a bucket of oats until he caught sight of the Elhim and whinnied agreeably. “Hey, ho, Acorn,” said Davyn, patting the horse’s nose and producing an apple that the beast happily snuffled off his palm. “Acorn will carry you,” he said, noting my skeptical assessment of the undersized horse. “I promise your feet won’t drag the ground. And he’s carried heavier men than you. Give him his head, and he’ll bear you safely.”

“In the dark ... ?”

“... and the storm. He’s an intelligent horse. He knows where to take you.”

“Yours?”

“He allows me to ride him, and he will allow you. Now be quick.”

Davyn held Acorn’s head as I mounted, and he spent a goodly time whispering in the horse’s ear before stepping back. “Give him his head, and don’t be concerned. You’ll be met by friends. Tell them I’ll be along as soon as it can be done inconspicuously.”

“But I—”

Footsteps crunched beyond the stable doors. Davyn pressed his fingers to his lips and laid a hand on Acorn’s nose.

“Don’t touch me, you creeping ferret.” It was Alfrigg. “You’ll not hold me here another moment. I’m going back to Camarthan and search out the egg-sucking, flea-bitten Senai pig. I’ll nail his hide to the walls of my shop. I don’t care what he’s done. I’ll gut him with his own bloody knife, I will.”

A quiet murmur was identifiable as the quartermaster’s high-pitched voice, but I couldn’t catch his words before Alfrigg broke in again. “No, I don’t need a guide. I was riding these roads before you were whelped. And in worse weather. Why did I ever think I needed a Senai tongue-flapper? Tell your commander the deliveries will commence as soon as one or the other of us has slit this highborn bastard’s throat.”

Never had I been so glad to be despised. From the vehemence of Alfrigg’s curses, I was reassured that I hadn’t hurt him too much, and, as they were letting him go, I must have done enough for the moment. “I need to warn him,” I said softly. “They’re letting him go now, but—”

“The Udema will be warned that a rival merchant in one of his new territories has sworn an oath to eliminate him and his family. He’ll be on his guard. And he’ll be watched.”

As the hoofbeats died away, the Elhim led Acorn to the end of the stables farthest from the headquarters. My relief had warmed my blood, and I motioned for him to give me the reins. “Wrap them around,” I said, as he looked dubiously at my gloveless hands. “Yes, I know ... give him his head. But I’ll feel better with something to hold on to.”

“If he falters, tell him thanai. It will remind him.”

Thanai—home. “Davyn ...” I tried to etch the Elhim’s likeness on my memory so I could recognize him if we ever met again. Broad shoulders for an Elhim. Fair skin stretched over fragile bones. A deep cleft in his chin. Laugh lines about his eyes that hinted he was far older than the twenty or so years he appeared. The curl of pale hair that was forever drooping over his left eye.

“Perhaps next time you’ll believe it when someone offers you help. Now, be off. I’ll be missed soon.” He whacked Acorn’s rump, and the horse ambled slowly out of the stable, immediately turning away from the camp and into the whirling wilderness of snow.

In the matter of moments the camp was swallowed by the night. I could not tell whether we were heading east or west or over a cliff or upward to the stars that I trusted were still sparkling somewhere above the storm. Strange. For the first time in six months I was not afraid. There was something reassuring about going blind into the storm, as if I were indeed resting in the palm of the eyeless god.