The Blood of a Dragon

Chapter Sixteen

By his third day on the barge Dumery no longer noticed the smell as he worked, nor the stickiness. His feet still hurt, and his back ached, but he was able to do his work without giving it much of his attention, which left him free to admire the scenery-what he could see of it. Most of the time the grassy banks were too high for him to see much of anything from his place down in the bottom of the barge.

Sometimes, though, the river spread out a little, or the land flattened, and he could see farms and fields, pleasant little villages, and, on the western bank, traffic along the highway that paralleled the river. People on foot, ox-carts, even full-sized caravans passed along that road, bound upstream and down.

Since the barge stayed mostly toward the eastern shore, though, Dumery could make out none of the details of these fascinating figures; the wagons were squares of bright color, the people like walking twigs.

Docks were a frequent sight along the river, even where the banks were high.

Some were no more than rotting remnants, while others were large and clean and relatively fresh. Some, Dumery could see, were there to service villages, and those might be individual docks or entire rows of them; others seemed to be alone, out in the middle of nowhere, perhaps serving local farmers or fishermen.

Trails down to the riverbank, where livestock could come and drink, were also commonplace, and every so often one of these would be in use by cattle. The herd on the barge and the herd on the shore were likely to start lowing on such occasions, calling to one another, and Dumery would have to watch carefully for the stamping hooves of the disturbed animals.

There was traffic on the river, as well, of course-boats and barges of every description, from flat-bottomed fishing skiffs that drifted idly by the banks to sharp-prowed express boats that plowed past Dumery’s barge as if it were motionless, leaving behind a wake that thumped rhythmically across the barge’s underside.

And as if these sights weren’t enough, every so often, starting late on the third day, the barge passed a castle, the stone towers and walls brooding heavily over the countryside. Dumery assumed, when he saw the first and finally figured out what it was, that the barge must have left the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, where by the unanimous decree of the ruling triumvirate no castles or other fortifications were permitted outside the walls of the three capital cities.

Dumery decided, however, when he had had a bit more time and had thought the matter over a little more, that although they were at least very near the border, they might not have actually crossed it. He noticed that the castles were always on the east bank of the river, and always set well back from the water. Perhaps the west bank and the river itself were still in the Hegemony.

This came to seem more likely not long after, when the river’s curves found them traveling west again, rather than north. The “east bank” was now on the north, the “west” on the south-that meant the occasional castle was to the north.

Sardiron lay to the north of the Hegemony, as everyone knew. This stretch of river, Dumery thought, made a perfectly reasonable border.

He was encouraged by this. He was eager to get to Sardiron and catch up with the man in brown, but on the other hand there was something rather frightening about leaving the Hegemony, and he preferred to put it off as long as possible.

And the third day passed.

That evening, when the sun was down, the barge tied up to a tree. Each evening it had tied up to a tree or a rock. Even when two of the crewmen had waded ashore to buy more provisions, a mere hundred yards from a village pier, the barge’s towline was secured not to the pier or a dock, but to a great oak. It was on the third night that Dumery finally got up the nerve to ask why they never used the docks.

“Trees don’t charge fees,” Kelder told him.

It was around mid-morning of the fourth day that the barge passed under a bridge, the first bridge they had encountered since Dumery came aboard. The whole structure was built of wood, raised into a great arch above elaborate framework, and the central opening was easily wide enough for two barges to pass-though in fact there didn’t happen to be another in sight just then.

The roadbed across the bridge, Dumery judged, was wide enough for a wagon-but just barely. He wondered what happened if wagons arrived from both ends at once; how did they decide who would wait while the other crossed?

He was so interested in the bridge that they were well out into the lake beyond before he realized therewas a lake.

Dumery had never seen a lake before, and he stared. It was soflat! Large bodies of water didn’t bother him, but he was used to Ethshar’s harbor, where the water was in constant motion, waves rippling in from the Gulf and breaking against the piers and quays. Even the river, while it had no waves, had a visible current.

The lake, though, appeared as calm and still as a puddle.

The barge was hugging the right-hand shore-what Dumery thought of as the eastern bank, though in fact at the moment it was still to the north. After a few moments of staring out at the open expanse of water, Dumery turned and saw that they were passing a dozen yards or so from a stone tower.

He blinked in surprise, and looked more closely.

They were passing a castle, a castle built right on the shore of the lake!

“Hai,” Dumery called. “Where are we?”

Naral Rander’s son looked up.

“Take a good look, boy,” he replied. “We’ve just crossed the border. Welcome to the Baronies of Sardiron!”

“We have?” Dumery asked.

“That’s right; the boundary runs across the middle of this lake-Boundary Lake-from that tower, which is Sardironese, to one on the other side, which is Ethsharitic. From here on we’ll be on Sardironese waters-up until now the river was Ethsharitic.”

“Oh,” Dumery said, looking about uneasily, half expecting to see some difference in the water itself.

There was none; it was still clear and blue.

“There’s a third tower over on the western shore,” Naral remarked, “between the two rivers that flow into the lake-that’s Sardironese, too. The Baronies claim both the rivers going in, the Hegemony has the one going out.”

“Tworivers coming in?” Dumery asked, suddenly seriously worried.

“Certainly,” Naral said, startled by the question. “The Great River, and the Shanna River.”

“Which one are we taking?” Dumery asked.

“The Great River, of course,” the crewman said. “We told you when you came aboard, we’re bound for Sardiron of the Waters.”

“And the Shanna River doesn’t go there?”

“No, of course not-it goes to Shanna.” Naral considered for a moment, then continued, “Or really, it comesfrom Shanna, since we’re downstream here. Not much business out that way, and the river’s not easy to navigate, either-it’s wider and slower and shallower, and you can run a boat aground if you aren’t careful. Even a barge.”

Dumery had stopped listening. He had panicked at the thought that maybe the boat he was on was going to take one route, while theSunlit Meadows took the other, and he wouldnever have a chance of catching up with the man in brown.

He was calming down now, though. TheSunlit Meadows was bound for Sardiron of the Waters; the crewman who chased him off had stated that quite definitely.

The barge, too, was bound for Sardiron of the Waters. Neither one had any business in Shanna. There was nothing to worry about.

He looked around, and realized that they were already approaching the western end of the lake-he could see trees, and something that might have been the roof of the other Sardironese tower, beyond the water in that direction.

An hour later they had left the lake behind and were into the Upper Reach of the Great River, inside the borders of the Baronies of Sardiron.

Not long after that they passed under another high-arched wooden bridge; this one was guarded by a castle on the western shore, just in case anyone had had any lingering doubts as to whether this land was truly a part of the Baronies.

The change of government made little difference; the barge still passed farms and fields, trees and villages, docks new and used. The river was still blue, the sky was still blue, and Dumery still had shoveling to do.

It was late in the afternoon of the fifth day when he glanced up from his shovel, to the east, and saw a familiar boat, tied up at a dock that the barge was passing.

It was theSunlit Meadows, gleaming bright in the sun. He had finally caught up to it.

He looked around, but saw only the cattle and the river and the blue sky above. He wished he could swim; the shore wasn’t so very far away.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t, and trying to get ashore wasn’t worth the risk of drowning.

He waited, biding his time, growing steadily more frantic with the thought that even now, the man in brown might be getting farther away-and even if the man was still on that boat, Dumery himself was now moving steadily farther away from it.

The possibility that the dragon-hunter had gotten off theSunlit Meadows days ago hadn’t escaped him, but he tried not to think about that. At least, if he could catch up to the crew of the passenger boat, he couldask.

For a moment he considered simply asking the crew of the barge to put him ashore somewhere along the eastern bank, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He had signed on for the journey to Sardiron of the Waters, and he knew that the men were glad to have him there to man the shovel; they weren’t likely to let him off that easily.

Particularly not Kelder the Unpleasant, whose goal in life seemed to be to make everyone else miserable. So far he hadn’t bothered Dumery much, since the job Dumery had was already about the worst thing that could be inflicted aboard the barge without interfering with business, but the boy didn’t doubt for a moment that if Kelder knew Dumery wanted off, he’d make absolutely certain that Dumery stayed on the barge.

So Dumery waited, not saying anything about his plans.

Finally, as the sun dropped below the western horizon, the crew called to the sylph. That seemingly tireless creature obeyed, looping the tow-line around a stump on the steep eastern bank.

Dumery breathed a little easier upon seeing that; he had worried about what he would do if they had tied up on thewestern shore.

Not that they ever had yet.

The remainder of the day was torture. He didn’t dare try to slip away until most of the barge’s crew was asleep, and until the man on watch was someone he wasn’t scared of.

The evening repast and the subsequent chatter seemed interminable, but eventually the men were yawning and stretching and climbing into their narrow little bunks below the foredeck.

Kelder took the first watch, unfortunately, and Dumery lay on his own rough perch at the stern, wrapped in his borrowed blanket, trying to stay awake without letting Kelder know it.

He had dozed off, but started awake at the sound of voices. Kelder was rousing Naral for his shift.

Dumery tensed, but lay still.

He heard Naral complaining about having a particularly pleasant dream interrupted, and Kelder snarling that he was too tired to care, and then, over the steady breathing of the sleeping cattle, he heard scuffling and scraping as Kelder climbed into a berth.

Naral’s footsteps sounded as he climbed up to the foredeck and settled onto the stool there. Dumery lifted his head and peered across the length of the barge, over the cargo.

Naral was sitting on the foredeck, yawning and rubbing his eyes.

Dumery slipped out from under his blanket and crept over toward shore.

The barge was tied at the bow, and the stern had been left to drift until it bumped gently against the bank. Dumery knew that in the morning, if the sylph could not tug the barge away because it had snagged or run aground, the cattle would all be herded over to the left-rather, portside, though in fact the barge usually tied up along the starboard-and the barge would be rocked free.

He reached the starboard corner of the stern and got to his feet, casting a cautious glance toward Naral.

The man hadn’t noticed anything. If he did happen to look up, he would probably just assume Dumery was answering nature’s call.

Dumery looked down; the barge was not hard up against the bank. A couple of feet of dark water, catching occasional flecks of light from the greater moon that rode high overhead, swirled along between the hull and the grass.

He reached out, but he couldn’t touch the bank.

It had looked vertical, but it wasn’t, really, it sloped away. Dumery glared at it.

He took three steps back, then ran and jumped.

His hands and knees hit the bank, and he discovered that it isn’t easy to grab hold of a steep, grassy, dew-covered slope; he slid down until his feet and legs were in the chill water of the river, almost up to his knees.

Naral, Dumery was sure, must have heard the noise. He lay there on the bank, his feet in the water, waiting to see what Naral would do, whether he would come to investigate.

No one came, and after what seemed like hours Dumery turned his attention to climbing.

It could be done, by digging his toes into the sod with each step, wrapping his fingers tightly around the strongest tufts of grass, sometimes inadvertantly pulling them out and jamming his fingers into the hole they left.

He began to worry about whether he would reach the top before dawn, but the night seemed to go on forever, and by the time he was finally able to stretch his arms out full-length onto nearly level ground and pull himself up onto his feet he was more concerned with whether the dawn would ever come at all. Had the sun burned out, was it gone forever? Surely it had taken himyears to climb that slope!

Everything looked normal enough, though. He was at the edge of a farmer’s field, and had to climb over a split-rail fence.

Once inside the field he looked up at the stars and moons, then back at the still-dark eastern horizon, and decided the sun was just late. The lesser moon had just risen in the east, almost full, while off to the west the greater moon was still in the sky, a broad crescent, horns upward, like the smile of a small god looking down at him.

Something looked odd about the east, though, and Dumery looked again.

The horizon was in the wrong place. It was too high. The lesser moon’s light gleamed pinkly on hilltops that seemed to be halfway up the sky.

The hilltops looked awfully steep and pointed, too.

Mountains, Dumery realized suddenly. Those were mountains. He was looking at mountains.

There were no mountains anywhere in the Hegemony of Ethshar, any more than there were castles. A shudder ran through Dumery at the thought that he had, beyond all doubt, left behind the only civilized land in the World.

He was truly in the Baronies of Sardiron, the cold, wild northern land, where the evil taint of the ancient Empire still lingered, where the people had deliberately turned their backs on Ethsharitic civilization, choosing chaos and brutality over order and sanity. Castles and sorcerers, stone and snow and fire-that’s what those mountains promised.

He shuddered.

Then he grimaced wryly. The mountains might be alien and frightening, but they weren’t the real problem. The real problem was mostly that his feet were wet.That, he told himself, was why he was shuddering. He needed to get warm and dry.

A glance at the dark farmhouse in the distance was not encouraging. Visitors arriving in the middle of the night were not likely to be made welcome there.

Walking would dry his feet and warm him. He stepped up onto the bottom rail of the fence and peered back over the bank he had just climbed, back down at the river.

The barge was still there, and Naral was still perched on his stool on the foredeck. He appeared to be asleep.

Sleeping on watch, if discovered-well, Dumery didn’t know just what that would entail, since he had never been trusted enough to be put on watch, but he was sure it wouldn’t be pleasant.

Maybe Naral would replace Dumery in wielding the shovel. Somebody would have to, certainly.

Well, whatever happened to him, it wasn’t Dumery’s problem. He hopped down, turned left, and began walking downstream, toward the dock where theSunlit Meadows had tied up.