Hardt's Tale: A Mobious' Quest Novel Read online

  The mage had arrived.

  If Brower’s bond had love for anyone, it was her rough-hearted, uncompromising bondsfather and she turned on her master with rage as the remains of the house rained down around them. The children forgotten, the sacrifice forgotten, Brower forgotten, she threw all her power at the man to whom she’d given all herself to get that power. Under cover of the ensuing battle, Brower and the children escaped.

  Brower was shamed by his own selfishness. He knew he could have prevented all the loss and injury and death caused by the dragons since that night. But he loved the children. He loved the children even though he’d figured out that night what she thought he’d never know. The children were not his. She had told him that the spell required her master to sacrifice his own blood.

  Getek would pay if ever Brower’s remaining son and daughter found that out. He shifted in the tree and glared down at the guardesman, wondering what he could do to guarantee the man’s silence.

  The man wasn’t sleeping. Getek’s eyes were wide open and staring up at the brightening sky. His hand was gripped about his swordhilt, but otherwise he didn’t move. Following his gaze, Brower looked up and screamed, “Dragon!”

  Sirte was awake too despite the drugs. She’d not slept much at all the past three nights, worrying about where Hardt went each sundown and now she leaped to her feet. “Where’s Hardt!?”

  “He’s gone hunting, northwest.” Getek pulled his boots tight and started collecting weapons. “Frair, Heigna, Gaerel!”

  The other three had been awakened by Brower’s cry and were gathering weapons even as Getek shouted orders. Brower scooped up the torches and lit them, passing one to each as they raced away from camp. The sparks flew from the thicket thorns, but the steady flame of the tar lit their way through the still dark forest.

  “Help me!” Hardt’s voice, distant and desperate, pushed them into a harder run. They changed direction slightly and listened for the no longer visible dragon.

  “Hardt we’re coming!”

  They cut through branches and burned thickets. Frair was the first to whoop, hollering encouragement to the man they all feared was being devoured by a dragon. The rest joined him in the racket, battling their fears with their cries and hoping against hope to scare the dragon away from their frontsman.

  “Aim for its eyes!”

  “We’re coming for you, dragon!”

  “We’ll kill you!”

  “Death to all dTelfur!!!”

  “Call again Hardt, where are you?” Sirte ran fastest of all, a vision of blood and flames stuck in her eyes.

  The strange woman was the most beautiful Hardt had ever seen and her eyes were glued to his even as she grasped the heavy spear sticking out of her chest. He stood frozen on the spot, horrified at what he had done and stunned by this overwhelming passion.

  The woman was small and wasn’t wearing much clothing. The sturdy leather leggings she wore tied at her hips and at her knees and at her ankles left the front and outside of her legs bare. Her breasts were held tight by a leather vest tied up with dyed points which matched the leather strip holding back her straight dark hair. The vest left her arms and shoulders bare and the brown skin was marked with light scars all down her muscled arms.

  She reached a hand out to him and spoke.

  “Ouhar? Oouui’ye? Ighay dTserra.” She looked down at the blood seeping from her chest and brought her hand back to press it. “Ighay iorden.”

  He tried to stammer, “I’m sorr…”

  But she screamed at him, “Ouhar?”

  Suddenly a shadow dimmed the rising sun and all the stillness of the morning exploded into action. In the same moment Hardt heard Brower’s cry of “Dragon!!” followed by Sirte’s panicked, “Where’s Hardt?” he felt the warm pressure of a dragon’s downward wingstroke. At last his mind unfroze and he was propelled into action. Bursting forward, he tore his way through the thicket towards the injured woman who was staring up into the shadow of the low circling dragon, screaming at it and waving wildly.

  Even as he cried to the guarde, “Help me!” he realized the woman was more afraid of his crashing advance than of the dragon darting down at her through the trees and growling at her. The words she screamed were gibberish, her sharp face and skin were unfamiliar, and her clothes were nothing he’d ever seen before. He’d hit her square in the chest and they both knew that she was dying yet she was screaming at the dragon in fierce, unfettered anger, terrified rather than relieved at the sound of the rapidly approaching guarde.

  She was screaming at the dragon to leave. Not for her safety, but for its.

  She was dTelfur.

  And the dragon was trying to save her from the landers, Hardt realized. The dragon was trying to save her from him.

  Hardt threw himself over the thicket, forgetting the pain of the thorns and his wounds, tearing his way through to save her. The guarde was almost to them now. He could hear them crashing through the trees at his back, screaming war cries against the dragon and shouting for him to speak again, to answer them.

  He could see the light gray belly of the dragon hanging in the trees, it’s head and tail caught in the leaves so tightly it could barely pump its massive wings. Claws the size of the summer hearth reached desperately for the woman who was trying to make the dragon go away before Hardt killed it too. As a final burst of desperation sent him flying out of the thicket at the dTelfur woman, she beat at him with her remaining strength. Screaming at him, he guessed, to keep away from the dragon, this tiny woman was protecting her massive friend with everything she had left.

  Hardt tore his mind from his desire to know more about her, his fear of the dragon, his despair over having killed her, the need to let her know he didn’t mean to hurt her or her dragon, and all his other tumbling emotions. He called on the self-discipline he’d been struggling to achieve and he reached through her painful fighting, grasped her about the legs, and lifted her up as high as his tall frame could reach. The woman screamed at him in a pitch to burst his ears and bat at the dragon’s claws, but at last, just as the six lander reached the thicket Hardt had just struggled through, the dragon caught her and the woman hung on.

  It pushed hard with its wings and Hardt feared for a moment that it wouldn’t be able to escape the trees, but then it pumped again and caught the wind. It turned, ignoring the woman’s orders, and peeked down at Hardt with one enormous and intelligent eye.

  “Nan’ye.”

  Then the dragon blinked and looked up at the other guardesfolk who had started throwing spears and rocks and flaming brands at it. Inhaling deeply, all the leaves swayed towards it, the huge creature then exhaled a hot strong breath which knocked them all over strewing their weapons across the ground. Hardt picked himself out the thorns where the breath had thrown him and watched with relief as the dragon soared off into the western sky.

  Then, to a chorus of kudos and questions as the dry forest burst into flame around them, the seven raced to break camp and escape the spreading fire. Hardt stung lightly all over from his proximity to the dragon’s powerful breath. His cat claw wounds had ripped open and were bleeding down his chest. A fresh gash on his arm bled where the dragon had caught him with its claw. Bruises were swelling where he’d been hit by several stones badly slung or bounced off the dragon’s thick hide. Where it had dripped from the dying woman, blood stained his hair and face and hands. And as the Stray guarde ran, screaming with adrenaline and the glory of a strike against the vicious dTelfur, Hardt wept for what he had done.

  Seven

  ∞

  Vyck padded softly through the room to the kitchen, wiping her hands on the embroidered cloth Ladamé and her sister had brought over for Hardt. She gathered some vegetables and dried spices and the flour sack up in her apron and crossed back across the room and out the front door to the summer hearth where a stew was bubbling over the low flames. She’d been nervous that the crackling of a fire would scare Hardt, but with all the presents of tamed meat an
d vegetables and river creatures she couldn’t think how to preserve it all but in a stew. So she’d risked a low fire with quiet and dry kindling. He hadn’t stirred.

  He hadn’t stirred when the second and third fronts came by after training on the third day with a new bedroll and an embroidered leather vest. The vest had an extra patch on the left shoulder, where Hardt had been clawed by the snakecat, they pointed out, and an attached guard for the right arm where he’d been scratched by the dragon. She’d tried to wake Hardt but he’d ignored her and she’d thanked the fronts herself and sent them away.

  A breeze picked up as she set the floursack and spices on the low table beside the hearth and went around the side to clean the vegetables. The sun still hidden in the low clouds would keep it light enough for her to get some work done on Firca’s gloves while the stew simmered.

  Noah would come by then to tell her news of the shale and look in on Hardt. She’d told him to come by earlier, round dinnertime when Hardt was sometimes awake but the kid was a wiser soul than she. He said when Hardt wanted company he’d wake up and find it. By coming at the same time each evening, he was providing Hardt with the opportunity for company if he wanted it. Vyck suspected, as she was sure Noah did, that Hardt was awake for their visits. No one could wake, eat, and sleep so quickly after they were old enough to crawl.

  She piled the vegetables back into her apron and took them to the table for dicing. Garce had cobbled her a stool which rocked as she worked. It cured her back of the cricks and pains which usually kept her up at night. She considered as she rocked, slicing the peppers, asking him to make some kind of kneeling rocker for her tanning work. The vegetables, clean and chopped went into the stew with the cow and the mudbugs and slithers. Vyck sat by the pot and stirred, rocking, gently enjoying the smell of a cooling summer evening.

  Hardt had been sleeping for eight suns. He woke to eat, relieve himself, and randomly to hug her. He’d find her and hold her and then go back to bed. One afternoon he’d run out the door and off into the northern woods. But by sunup he was in his bed again, dead to the land. Vyck kept food at the ready and tried to squeeze back as tightly as he wanted but she didn’t know what else to do for him.

  Every day more strangers came by with small presents for him. Sirte had come by a few times just to check on him. Gaerel too. He left salves for the shoulder and arm, a cream for the burns, and a pain reliever to be slipped into his food. She applied the salves and cream while he ate and asked if he needed the pain killer. He’d said no. She stored it for later. Jaydee came by once or twice with fresh kill because she knew Vyck wouldn’t want to leave for a hunt. But word had gotten out and soon the sparsity of food was amply compensated.

  The thirteenth sunup after the front had left on the hunt, Vyck had returned from a quick trip to the river to find Getek in bed with Ker, snoring lightly and Hardt passed out cold in her bed. She’d gone about her business, wondering. Ker snuggled in with his sorely missed father till midmorning when he grew restless and started hollering for him to wake up. It hadn’t taken two words from Vyck to get Getek back to sleep. Hardt never stirred.

  Ker and Vyck played games outside for the rest of the day. She put Ker down for a nap on the winter rabbit fur and worked on Hundred’s jacket till Jaydee, Garce, and Marce came by to check on Getek. Frair had gotten home and woken them for an abbreviated and mostly unintelligible account of the hike before falling unconscious onto his food and they’d expected to see Getek at the shack before long.

  They’d peeked in at the two, marveled at their paleness and Hardt’s bruised face before telling Vyck that from what they could understand the front had battled a dragon and Hardt was some kind of hero. The kyirghon were going west according to Frair but the boy hadn’t seemed at all concerned about them.

  Shortly before the sun went down that first night, Getek stumbled through the doorway looking for water and somewhere to dispose of water. When he’d been liquidated and rehydrated, Vyck fed him a light meal. She approved his slow, small bites and his restraint with the water. After the food, he would have gathered his things and his son and trekked back to the Mytrees but Vyck doubted he had the strength to go so far, much less with Ker. She invited him to stay and to sleep himself out in the morning.

  “Thank you very much, Vyck,” he demurred, “but I don’t want to impose on you.”

  “I won’t insist you stay. But if you go, I’m keeping Ker. You know you’re too tired to take him.”

  Ker, sitting on Getek’s lap where he’d been for the whole meal put up such a fuss at losing his daddy so soon that Getek had to agree to stay just to get him to quiet down before he woke the comatose Hardt.

  Vyck led the guardesman to the high-back porch chairs where they could watch Ker show off on the grass and where Vyck wouldn’t have to endure his beautiful hazel eyes.

  “Can you tell me,” and she kept her voice low, “what happened out there?”

  Getek took a deep drink of water, looked out at the trees, and began. “Your nephew is a hero. He was a solid provident and kept watch well, for it being his first experience with keeping watch. We were all the rest of us gone from camp the one time he let his thoughts carry him away. In the brief moment when he lost his focus a snakecat ran the kyirghon into him. In the chaos he saved the dam by killing the cat. The kyirghon escaped, but he had wounded one of them and its blood led us to it.” He paused to applaud his son for some feat of acrobatic mediocrity. “We found a dragon had been drawn to the creature as well and we let it have the kyirghon and snuck away, thinking it hadn’t seen us. But we were wrong. The dTelfur tracked us.

  “I should not have allowed Hardt to go out each night alone” Getek flexed his hands thoughtfully, “but as it turned out, he saved us all. He was hunting by himself and the dTelfur must have decided to take him down first, easy prey. They sent a dragon to watch the camp, thinking us all asleep, while a dTelfur warrior attacked Hardt. By the time we reached him, your nephew was battling the dragon and the warrior. We drove the dragon off but as it left, it breathed on us and set the forest afire.

  “Our camp was burning when we reached it. We gathered what we could and raced south and east, away from the flames exploding the thickets all around us and leaping from tree top to tree top and scrambling down the trunks. From sunup to sundown, through bondstar setting and on to sunup we ran ahead of that fire. Near bondset the next night, we finally reached a river and swam across, washing the ash from our clothes. We rested on the far bank until the smoke drove us on at sunup. By the next bondset we were out of the worst of it. After that it was two solid days of hiking. Hardt ran ahead with Heigna, finding quick food for us so we could waste little time between walking and sleeping. He kept most watches too. He must have been pretty frightened. He hasn’t spoken a word since we found him fighting off that dragon.”

  She’d left him to Ker then and gone inside to clean the dirt and ash out of the bed. Running an eye continually over Hardt as she worked, she wondered what it was about the tale that bothered her. Of course, she’d never been attacked by the dTelfur she’d seen on her hunts. But perhaps the kyirghon were special to the dTelfur, similar as they were to the dragons.

  Hardt’s eyes drifted blindly open while she was searching for two clean sleepskirts for the men. She’d found one of Hardt’s and of course there was the sleepskirt of cool, smooth fabric Ker insisted on dragging about with him. It was Getek’s own, certainly, but it was filthy. She’d like to offer him something clean. She let Hardt alone until consciousness joined his open eyes. Throwing the clean sleepskirt over her shoulder she went to his side and helped him out through the jointed piece on the back of the cottage to the fallow garden. She let him retreat behind the wall by himself but helped him change into the cool cotton sleepskirt when he’d done. She dumped his travelling clothes by the honing wheel before they went back inside.

  Vyck grabbed some food and a pitcher of water from the kitchen. She had planned to take it outside to the table, but Hard
t had already climbed back into her dirty bed. She brought him the food, which he ate in silence and she cleaned his face and torso with a wet cloth from the bowl waiting beside the bed for that purpose.

  When he had eaten his fill, he set aside the plate. He took her hands from where she was unwrapping his bandaged shoulder, squeezed them to his chest and begged her in a whisper. “Don’t ask.”

  Without question she replied. “I won’t.”

  He crumpled into her chest then and she rocked him like he was a little boy again, afraid of his dreams. When his hands lost their fierce grip on hers and fell to his lap, she laid him back down on the piled hides and pulled the covers up.

  Returning to the front yard she found Getek and Ker curled up in the scoop back chair, both of them sound asleep. Ker was easy to pry from his father’s arms. She washed the boy and changed him into his filthy, silky, twelve-sizes-too-large sleepskirt and tucked him onto the rabbit fur lain at the foot of the clean bed.

  A bowl was sitting beside the bed, the second with clean wet cloths which she’d prepared earlier. She took it out to the front and knelt by Getek. As she had her nephew, she cleaned his hands and face and removed his leather vest. She pulled him forward to lean on her shoulder so she could pull the filthy shirt over his head as she’d done with Hardt a million times when he was a little boy. That done, she set him back into the chair and pulled the shirt from his arms. She started momentarily at the white scars criss-crossing his chest, but the shock passed and she took her clean cloths to his torso and arms, trying very hard to not enjoy the feel of his body.