Theres never any sign of bandits thatre good at their jobs. John signaled a halt for the dozenth time and dismounted to scout, though by order of the Commander of the Winterlands, roads in this part of the country had been cleared for a bow shots distance on either side. In Jennys opinion, whoever had done the clearing had no idea how far a northern longbow could shoot.
Borin said, Really! as John disappeared into the trees, his green and brown plaid mingling with the colors of the thick-matted brush. Every one of these stops loses us time, and
Jenny lifted her hand for silence, listening ahead, around, among the trees. Stretching out her senses, as wizards did. Smelling for horses. Listening for birds and rabbits that would fall silent at the presence of man. Feeling the air as a wealthy southern lady would feel silk with fingers white and sensitive, seeking a flaw, a thickened thread
Arts that all of Jennys life, of all the lives of her parents and grandparents, had meant the difference between life and death in the Winterlands.
In time she said, quietly, I apologize if this seems to discount Commander Rocklys defenses of the Realm, Lieutenant. But Skep Dhû is the boundary garrison in these parts, and beyond it, the bandit troops might still be at large. The great bands, Balgodorus Black-Knifes, or that of Gorgax the Red, number in hundreds. If I know them, theyve been waiting all spring for a disruption such as a dragon would cause to raid the new manors while your captains attention is elsewhere.
The lieutenant looked as if he would protest, then simply looked away. Jenny didnt know whether this was because she carried her own halberd and bow slung behind Moon Horses saddlewomen in the south did not customarily go armed, though there were some notable exceptionsor because she was a wizard, or for some other reason entirely. Many of the southern garrisons were devout worshipers of the Twelve Gods and regarded the Winterlands as a wilderness of heresy. In any case, disapproving silence reigned for something like half an hourGradely and the Darrow boys sitting their scrubby mounts ten or twelve paces away, scratching under their plaids and picking their nosesuntil John returned.
They camped that night in the ruins of what had been a small village or a large manor farm three centuries ago, when the Winterlands still supported such things. A messenger met them there with word that the dragon was in fact laired in the largest of the ravines east of the Skepping HillsThe one with the oak wood along the ridge at its head, my lordand that Commander Rocklys had personally led a squadron of fifty to meet them at Wormwood Ford.
Gaw, leavin who to garrison Cair Corflyn, if they get themselves munched up? demanded John, horrified. You get back now, son, and tell the lot of em to stay put. Do they think this is a bloody fox-hunt? The thingll hear em coming ten miles off!
The second night they made camp early, while light was still high in the sky, in a gully just west of the Skepping Hills. Beyond, the northern arm of the Wood of Wyr lay thick, a land of knotted trees and dark, slow-moving streams that flowed down out of the Gray Mountains, a land that had never been brought under the dominion of the Kings. Lying with John under their spread-out plaids, Jenny felt by his breathing that he did not sleep.
I hate this, he said softly. Id hoped, after meeting Morkelebafter speaking with him, touching him hearing that voice of his speak in me mindId hoped never to have to go after a dragon again in me life.
Jenny remembered the Dragon of Nast Wall. No.
He sat up, his arms wrapped around his knees, and looked down at her, knowing how her own experience of the dragon-kind had touched her. Dont hate me for it, Jen.
She shook her head, knowing that she so easily could. If she didnt understand about the Winterlands, and about what it was to be Thane. No. John loved wolves, too, and studied every legend, every hunters tale: hed built a blind for himself so he could sit and watch them for hours at their howlings and their hunts. Hed drive them away sooner than kill them, if they preyed on the cattle. But hed kill them without compunction if he had to.
He was Thane of the Winterlands, as his father had been. He could no more turn his back on a fight with a dragon than he could turn his back should a bandit chief, handsome and wise as the priests said gods were, start raiding the farms.
Jenny supposed that if a god were to come burning the fields and killing the stock, exposing the people to the perils of these terrible lands, John would read everything he could on the subject, pick up whatever weapon seemed appropriate, and try to take it on.
The fact that hed never wanted any of this was beside the point.
An hour after midnight he rose for good, ate cold barley bannocksnone of them had been so foolish as to suggest cooking, within a few miles of a dragons lairand armed himself in his fighting doublet, his close-fitting helmet, and iron-backed gloves. Jenny knew that dragons were neither strictly nocturnal nor diurnal, but woke and slept like cats; still, she also knew that most dragons were aground and asleep in the hours just before dawn. She flung a little ravel of witchlight close to the ground, just enough for the horses to see the trail, and led the way toward the razor-backed hunch of the Skepping Hills and the oak-fringed ravine.
Mist swirled around the knees of the horses, floated like rags of silk among the heather. They left Borin on the edge of the heath, to watch from afar. Stretching her senses, Jenny felt everywhere the tingle and touch of magic. Had the dragon summoned these unseasonable mists for protection? she wondered. Would it sense her, sense them, if she raised a counterspell to send them away?
For a star-drakes body to be simply of one color, she thought, it must be either very young or very old, and if very old, its senses would fill the lands around, like still water that would carry the slightest ripple to its dreams. But this she did not feel. She had sensed Morkelebs awareness when she and John had first ridden to do battle with the black dragon under the shadows of the Deep of Ylferdun The red horns and spikes and tail seemed to argue for a young dragon anyway, but would a youngster be large enough to be mistaken for something a hundred feet long?
She touched Johns wrist and whispered, though they were close enough now to the head of the ravine to need absolute silence, John, wait. Theres something wrong.
The ravine before them was a drift of gray mist. His spectacles, framed by his helmet, glinted like the eyes of an enormous moth. In a hunters whisper, he asked, Can it hear us? Feel us?
I dont know. But I dont I dont feel it. At all.
He tilted his head, inquiring.
I dont know. Get ready to run or to charge.
Then she reached out with her mind, her will, her dragonheart and dragon-spells, and tore the mists from the ravine in a single fierce swirl of chilling wind.
The slice and flash of early light blinked on metal in the oak woods above the ravine, and a second later something came roaring and flapping up from between the hills: green, red-horned, bat-winged, snake-headed, serpentine tail tipped with something that looked like a gargantuan crimson arrowhead and absolutely unlike any dragon Jenny had ever seen outside the illuminations of Johns old books. John said, Bugger all! and Jenny yelled, John, look out, its an illusion !
The slice and flash of early light blinked on metal in the oak woods above the ravine, and a second later something came roaring and flapping up from between the hills: green, red-horned, bat-winged, snake-headed, serpentine tail tipped with something that looked like a gargantuan crimson arrowhead and absolutely unlike any dragon Jenny had ever seen outside the illuminations of Johns old books. John said, Bugger all! and Jenny yelled, John, look out, its an illusion !
Unnecessarily, for John was turning already, sword drawn, spurring toward the nearest cover. Jenny followed, flinging behind her a blast and hammer of fire-spells, ripping up from the heather between them and the riders that galloped out of the woods.
Bandits. The illusory dragon dissolved in midair the moment it was clear that neither John nor Jenny was distracted by its presence, and the bearded attackers in makeshift panoplies of hunting leathers and stolen mail converged on the cut overhang of a streambank that provided the only defensible ground in sight.
Jenny followed the fire-spells with a sweeping Word of Poor Aim, and to her shock felt counterspells whirl and clutch at her. Beside her, John cursed and staggered as an arrowhead slashed his thigh. She felt fire-spells in the air around them and breathed Words of Limitation and counterspells herself, distracting her mind from her own magics. Behind the spells she felt the mind of the wizard: an impression of untaught power, of crude talent without training, of enormous strength. She felt stunned, as if shed walked into a wall in darkness.
John cursed again and nocked the arrows hed pulled down with him when hed dismounted; at least, thought Jenny, casting her mind to the head of the stream that the outlaws would have to cross to get at them, their attackers could only come at them from two sides. She tried to call back the mists, to make them work for her and John as theyd concealed the bandits before, but again the counterspells of the other wizard twisted and grabbed at her mind. Fire in the heather, at the same time damping the fire-spells that filled the cut under the bank with smoke; spells of breaking and damage to bowstrings and arrows
And then the bandits were on them. Illusion, distractionJenny called them into being, worked them on the filthy, scarred, furious men who waded through the rising stream. Swords, pikes, the hammering rain of slung stones, some of which veered aside with her warding-spells, some of which punched through them as if they had not been there. A man would stop, staring about him in confusion and horrorJennys spells of flaring lights, of armed warriors around herself and John taking effect Johns sword, or Jennys halberd, would slash into his flesh. But as many times as not the man would spring back with a cry, seeing clearly, and Jenny would feel on her mind the cold grip of the other mages counterspell. Illusion, too, she felt, for there were bandits who simply dissolved as the illusion of the dragon had dissolved
And through it all she thought, The bandits have a wizard! The bandits have a wizard with them!
In Johns words: bugger, bugger, bugger.
Jenny didnt know how long they held them off. Certainly not much longer than it would take to hard-boil an egg, though it seemed far longer. Still, the sun had just cleared the Skepping Hills when she and John first saw the bandits, and when the blare of trumpets sliced golden through the ruckus and Commander Rocklys and her troops rode out of the hills in a ragged line, the shadows hadnt shortened by more than a foot. Jenny felt the other wizards spells reach out toward the crimson troopers and threw her own power to intercept them, shattering whatever illusions the rescuers would have seen and attacked. Rocklys, standing in her stirrups, drew rein and fired into the thick of the outlaw horde; Jenny saw one of the leaders fall. Then a great voice bellowed, Out of it, men! and near the head of the ravine a tall man sprang up on a boulder, massive and black-bearded, like a great dirty bear.
John said, Curse, and Rocklys, whipping another arrow to her short black southern bow, got off a shot at him. But the arrow went wideJenny felt the Word that struck it asideand then battle surged around them, mist and smoke rising out of the ground like dust from a beaten rug. The spells shed called onto the stream were working now and the water rushed in furious spate, sweeping men off their feet, the water splashing icy on Johns boots and soaking the hem of Jennys skirt. Then the bandits fled; Rocklys and her men in pursuit.
Curse it, said John. Balgodorus Black-Knife, damn his tripes, and they had a wizard with em, didnt they, love? He leaned against the clay wall of the bank, panting; Jenny pressed her hand against his thigh, where the first arrowhead had cut, but felt no poison in the wound.
Somebody who knew enough about dragon-slaying to know wed have to attack it alone, together.
Maggots fester itow! he added, as Jenny applied a rough bandage to the wound. Anybodyd know that whos heard me talk about it, or talked to someone who had. Anyway, it wasnt me they was after, love. He reached down and touched her face. It was you.
She looked up, filthy with sweat and soot, her dark hair unraveled: a thin small brown woman of forty-five, flushedshe was annoyed to notewith yet another rise of inner heat. She sent it away, exasperated at the untimeliness and the reminder of her age.
Me? She got to her feet. The rush of the stream was dying as quickly as it had risen. Bandits slain by Johns sword, or her halberd, or by the arrows of Rocklys men, lay where the water had washed them.
Youre the only mage in the Winterlands. John tucked up a wet straggle of her hair into a half-collapsed braid, broke off a twig from a nearby laurel bush and worked it in like a hairpin to hold it in place. In the whole of the Kings Realm, for all I know. Garthat was the Regenttold me hes been trying to find wizards in Bel and Greenhythe and all around the Realm, and hasnt located a one, bar a couple of gnomes. So if a bandit like Balgodorus Black-Knifes got a wizard in his troop, and we have none
Wed have been in a lot of trouble, Jenny said softly, had this ambush succeeded.
And it might have, mused John, if their boy
Girl.
Eh?
Their mage is a woman. Im almost certain of it.
He sniffed. Girl, then. If their girl had known the first thing about star-drakes, beyond that they have wings and long tails, you might not have twigged soon enough to keep us out of the jaws of the trap. Which goes to demonstrate the value of a classical education
Commander Rocklys returned in a clatter of hooves, Borin at her side. Are you all right? She sprang down from her tall bronze-bay warhorse, a lanky powerful woman of thirty, gold-stamped boots spattered with mud and gore. We were saddled and ready to ride to your help with the dragon when Borin charged into camp shouting you were being ambushed.
The dragon was a hoax, John said briefly. He wiped a gout of blood from his cheekbone and scrubbed his gloved fingers with the end of his plaid. Better if it had been a real drake than whats really going on.
Rocklys of Galyon listened, arms folded, to his account. It was a rare woman, Jenny knew, who could get men to follow her into combat; on the whole, most soldiers knew of women only what they saw of their victims during the sack of farmsteads or towns, or what they learned from the camp whores. Some, like John, were willing to learn different. Others had to be strenuously taught. Though the women soldiers Jenny had metmostly banditstended to gang together to protect one another in the war camps, a woman commander as a rule had to be large and strong enough to take on and beat a good percentage of the men under her command.