The Blood of a Dragon

Chapter Seven

He was only twelve years old. He was wearing an ordinary cotton tunic-velvet hadn’t seemed practical for a morning visit to Westgate Market-and woolen breeches, and soft leather boots. He had a cheap belt knife with him. He had a purse with a few bits in copper in it, and down at the bottom a few scraps of string and an old and somewhat dusty honey drop he had never gotten around to eating, and not much else. No blanket, no flint and steel, no enchanted bloodstone, no sword, no pads for the blisters that had formed on his feet, none of the supplies a sensible traveler would have.

And he was about ten leagues outside the city wall and it was almost full dark, and he had never been outside the city before, not for so much as a ten-minute stroll.

The man in brown was still walking, though, still marching on, just as he had all day.

It was too late to turn back. Dumery knew he couldn’t possibly make it back to the city gate until long after midnight, even if he didn’t lose the road in the dark, even if he didn’t meet any wolves or bandits or demons prowling along the way. He wasn’t sure he could make it back at all. His feet and legs ached; he had never before walked anything near this distance. The soles of his boots, which he knew were really still perfectly sound, felt paper-thin and soggy with sweat; every pebble seemed to jab him.

He saw a low ridge ahead, and at the point where the ground began to rise the road forked, the right branch going up across the ridge, the left fork paralleling the slope; a glance at the sun’s fading glow told him that the right fork ran north, the left fork west.

Nestled in the fork was a good-sized building, and with a start Dumery realized that it wasn’t a farmhouse. The farmhouses he had passed all day were never built so close to the road.

Most of them weren’t so large, and most weren’t built entirely of stone, either. This structure ahead had wooden shutters and doors and a thatch roof, but the walls were all stone, right up to the gable peaks, and peculiar-looking stone at that. Even the attached stable was stone.

There was no signboard, but all the same, Dumery guessed it was an inn. The fork was certainly a logical place for one, being not merely at the junction of two highways, but just exactly a full day’s walk from Ethshar.

The man in brown marched directly up to the front door of the inn and entered, opening the door without knocking. Dumery hurried after him.

By the time he reached the building the man in brown was inside, and the door was closed again. Dumery hesitated, unsure whether to knock or just walk in-this place, with no signboard and its door closed, and so big, was not like the inns he was familiar with in the city, and he was uncertain of the etiquette. The dragon-hunter hadn’t knocked, but did that mean nobody did? Or was the man in brown privileged somehow?

Just then the door opened again, and a man stepped out holding a torch. He was fairly tall, brown-haired and heavily built, but nowhere near the size of the dragon-hunter. He was wearing an ordinary woolen tunic and a white apron.

“Oh, hello,” he said, noticing Dumery. “Welcome to the Inn at the Bridge.” He turned and reached up to place the torch in a bracket over the door.

“Bridge?” Dumery asked, looking around and seeing no bridge. There were meadows, and the inn, and its attached stable, and the highway, but no bridge.

“Other side of the hill,” the man in the apron said, turning back and jerking a thumb toward the north fork of the highway.

“Oh,” Dumery said.

“Come on in,” the man said, and he led Dumery inside.

The main room of the inn was spacious and comfortable, with a plank floor and stone walls. At one end was a huge fireplace with a nondescript sheathed sword hanging above it; doors here and there led to the kitchens and stables and other such places. A score or so of customers were scattered at various tables.

Something small and green scurried along the floor; Dumery tried to get a look at it, but lost sight of it among the chairlegs.

He’d been seeing a lot of those things in the last few days, where he had never seen any as of, say, two months before. He wondered what they were for a moment, then turned his attention to more important matters.

The man in brown was seated at a table near the kitchens, chatting with a young woman who was standing beside him; Dumery turned his face away hurriedly so that he wouldn’t be recognized if the man happened to glance this way.

The woman turned and bustled away, into the kitchens, and Dumery saw she was holding a tray-one of the serving girls, obviously. The man in brown looked up when she had gone, and Dumery did his best to not be noticed.

The man in the apron, presumably the innkeeper, told Dumery, “Make yourself at home, and someone will be right with you.” Then he, too, headed for the kitchens.

Dumery looked about for a chair where the man in brown wouldn’t see him, and as he did the thought occurred to him that although he was ravenously hungry and utterly exhausted, he couldn’t stay here.

He couldn’t afford it.

He had all of six bits in copper, as best he could recall, and that probably wasn’t enough for a meal and a bed. He didn’t know how long it would have to last him, either. If he spent it all here and now, what would he do tomorrow?

If he had any sense, he told himself, he’d go backhome tomorrow. He wasn’t equipped for anything else.

Well, he replied mentally, he obviously had no sense, because he wasn’t going to go home, he was going to follow the dragon-hunter tohis home, even if it took a sixnight.

And that meant he didn’t dare spend all his coins. He might need them later.

Accordingly, when another serving girl, one who looked scarcely older than he was, came and smiled down at him he said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t have any money. Can I work for room and board, perhaps?”

The girl’s smile vanished.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Let me ask Valder.”

She turned and hurried to the kitchen.

A moment later the man in the apron re-emerged and crossed directly to where Dumery sat. The boy glanced over at the man in brown, hoping that he wouldn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, anything that might draw his attention to Dumery’s presence.

“Asha says you told her you have no money,” the innkeeper said, without preamble.

Dumery nodded. “I can work, though,” he said.

The innkeeper shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry, boy, but I already have more help than I need. You’ll have to go.” He did sound honestly regretful.

His sincerity didn’t help any. Dumery asked, “Are you sure?”

“I’m quite sure, yes. Asha herself is here more from pity than because I needed another wench.”

“Oh,” Dumery said. “Ah... but couldn’t I sleep right here, in this chair? I don’t need a bed.” His stomach growled, and he added, “And I have a bit, in copper; could that buy me some scraps?”

The innkeeper sighed, looking about the room as if the furnishings might offer advice.

The furnishings remained silent, and Valder asked, “Do you have any family, boy?”

“Yes, sir, back in Ethshar,” Dumery replied.

“Then what in the World are you doinghere?”

“I’m... I’m on my way to take up my apprenticeship, sir.” That was close enough to the truth, Dumery thought.

“And nobody gave you any money for the road?”

Dumery shrugged and looked woebegone. Given his exhausted condition, that wasn’t hard to do.

The innkeeper turned away, throwing up his hands. “Hai, what a world!” he said.

He turned back.

“All right, boy,” he said, “you can sleep in the stable, not in here where you might annoy paying customers. And I’ll be bringing scraps out after everyone’s eaten. Keep your bit; people farther up the road may not be so generous.”

“Thank you, sir,” Dumery said, relieved that he wasn’t going to be thrown out entirely, but disappointed that he would have to sleep outside and eat table scraps.

He had never eaten table scraps. He’d heard about poor people doing that; in fact, the scraps from his father’s table were regularly left by the street for beggars, which was where he’d gotten the idea of asking.

He looked forward to his dinner with as much trepidation as anticipation.

The innkeeper stood over him for a moment, and Dumery realized that the conversation was at an end and it was time for him to leave. Reluctantly, he got up and left.

The only comfort, he thought as he made his way around the corner of the inn and into the stableyard, was that at least the man in brown hadn’t spotted him.

The front of the inn wasn’t bad, because of the torch over the door, but the stableyard was almost black with the night. The sun was gone; neither moon was in the sky just now, and the stars were obscured by high, thin clouds. Dumery had to find his way mostly by feel.

One thing he felt was that the ground beneath his feet was muddy and slippery; twice his feet almost went out from under him, but each time he managed to catch himself on something.

The stableyard was roughly square, with stalls around three sides-the fourth side was largely taken up with the gate he had entered through. The stalls were under roof, and awash in gloom, while the yard itself was open to the sky and held what little daylight still lingered.

He heard large animals moving around in the darkness along the sides, and glimpsed shadowy forms in the gloom, and decided against trying to get into a stall with one of them. Yes, the stalls would have straw, which would be relatively warm and dry, but he didn’t like the idea of getting stepped on by a horse or ox that failed to notice him in the dark.

Instead he worked his way to a back corner and curled up there, huddling miserably, trying to ignore the mud and the dirt and the heavy animal stink.

Was it really worth it?, he asked himself after a few minutes. This seemed like a lot of hardship to put up with just to get an apprenticeship, even in a trade as exciting and exotic as dragon-hunting.

Maybe he should go back home and pack proper supplies and put on proper traveling clothes and borrow a reasonable amount of money, and then set out anew.

Of course, the problem with that was that the man in brown would be long gone by then, and picking up his trail might be impossible. Dumery had no idea how often he came to the city, either, so he couldn’t rely on finding him at the Dragon’s Tail again; if his visits were annual, as many tradesmen’s were, then by the time he came back to the city Dumery would be too old to be apprenticed.

His stomach growled loudly. He was not accustomed to going this long without plenty of good food.

Something ran across his foot, and he started, looking about wildly, but unable to make out, in the darkness, just what it was that had startled him.

He settled back again and sat there, waiting.

After a time, he found himself wishing he had some way to send a message home to his family. They were probably worried about him; he had, after all, vanished without warning. His mother was probably sitting up, sewing to keep her fingers busy while she got more and more worried.

Well, it wouldn’t kill her, and at least she would catch up on the mending.

And his father might not even notice his absence until his mother or one of his siblings pointed it out.

And his siblings probably wouldn’t miss him.

Even if they did, they would survive, he was sure. They would all survive, even his mother, and he would get word to them eventually, let them know he was safe.

He wasn’t going to think about that, he decided. Right now he had enough to be miserable about in his own situation without worrying about how miserable he might be making others.

It seemed hours later-and in fact may havebeen hours later-when light came spilling suddenly into the stableyard. A door in the wall of the inn had opened, at the back of a narrow passageway that Dumery had mistaken for just another stall, and a figure was standing in it, lamplight pouring out around him.

“Are you out here, boy?” the innkeeper’s voice called.

“Yes, sir,” Dumery replied, getting stiffly to his feet.

“I’ve got the scraps for you. Leave the bowl on the step when you’re done. Sleep well.”

Before Dumery could say anything, the figure stepped back and closed the doorway.

Dumery hurried to the doorstep and found a large wooden bowl, full of something he couldn’t see at all. It smelled of grease.

He dipped in a hand and came up with a crust of bread, soggy with congealing gravy; he ate it eagerly.

It took some chewing, and as he worked on it he ambled back through the short passageway to his corner of the stableyard, where he settled down, cross-legged, with the bowl in front of him.

He began picking through it, working by smell and touch, dropping back the pieces he considered unfit to eat.

Unfortunately, most of it he considered unfit to eat.

He was pawing through it, trying to find something edible, when his hand hit something unfamiliar. He tried to pick it out, to see what it was, but it pulled away.

He blinked, startled, and peered through the gloom. Was something sitting there on the other side of the bowl?

Yes, something was, something about the size of a kitten, but more or less human in shape, with its hands in the bowl of scraps. He stared.

It was sitting cross-legged, a pot-belly slopping across its lap, and it was staring at him with outsize, bulging eyes. Dumery couldn’t make out much more than that in the darkness; he had no idea of its color, or what any features except the big white eyes might look like.

“Gack,” Dumery said, snatching his hand away.

“Gack?” the thing replied.

Dumery suddenly guessed that this was probably one of those little green things that had been running about Ethshar lately, tripping people and getting in the way.

That didn’t tell him what it was, though.

“What areyou?” he asked.

“Spriggan,” the thing said, in a squeaky little voice. “Hungry,” it added pitifully.

Dumery looked down at the bowl; even in the dark he could see that the thing had both its arms thrust into the scraps almost to the elbows.

“Oh,” Dumery said. He gently pushed the bowl away, toward the spriggan.

“Here,” he said. “Help yourself.”

He had lost his appetite.

As if eating garbage weren’t bad enough, he was supposed toshare it with some vile little monster? A monster that had shoved its dirty little paws into the bowl like that?

That was simply too much. He wouldn’t stand for it. He turned away, huddled up against the stableyard wall, and tried to go to sleep.

Given his exhausted condition, that didn’t take long.