Dragon Bones h-1 Page 5

  My uncle stared at me.

  "I checked on the mare, too," I said earnestly. I'd have to learn to be more cautious. My father saw what he wanted to see, but my uncle might not be subject to the same weakness. If I took every opening he gave me, he'd notice what I was doing.

  "Here ya are, Ward!" huffed Harron, and he heaved a grain bucket in my general direction—up. On top of the bucket was the halter I'd requested.

  I grabbed the bucket and rolled over the top of the fence.

  "They've tried grain, Ward," said my uncle. "They'll get him eventually. Leave them to their work."

  I continued walking but said over my shoulder, "Thought I'd catch the mare."

  Moth, unlike the sex-ruled stallion, was greatly interested in the food. Moreover, she knew and liked me—and my father didn't ride mares. When she realized what I carried, she trotted up to me, dancing a bit with early-morning pleasure and shaking her silver gray mane.

  "Liked that, did you?" I asked her, one conspirator to another. Both of us ignored the grooms chasing futilely after the stallion on the far side of the pasture. "I'd think he might be a little tough on the ladies, new as he is to this. But you have more experience. Looks like you showed him properly." She preened a bit at the admiration in my voice as she munched the treat I'd brought her with dainty greed.

  She allowed me to slip the halter on her. It was too big, but with her, it didn't matter. I gave her a quick once over with my eye, but aside from a rough, dried patch of hair on her neck where he must have nipped her, she hadn't come to any hurt.

  I led her out of the field and into the stallion's paddock, and she, fickle thing that she was, paid no attention to Pansy, who'd finally noticed me stealing his mare and filled the air with frantic bugling. Harron, having seen what I was about, waited at the gate between field and paddock and shut it after the charging stallion was in the smaller enclosure. By then, I'd let the mare out of the far gate and just shut it behind us when the furious stallion struck it with his hooves.

  Grinning, Harron ran up and took Moth. She gave Pansy a coy look, then followed Harron quietly back to the mares' barn.

  "How did you know to do that?" Duraugh asked.

  "What?" I asked blinking at him.

  "How to catch the stallion?"

  I snorted. "Have you ever tried outrunning a horse? I have. Took me most of the day to decide that he was faster than I was." I leaned closer to him and continued conspiratorially, "Horses are stronger and faster, but I'm smarter." His face went blank at this assertion, and I laughed inwardly.

  Penrod had climbed through the fence and come around as I said the last.

  I nodded at the stable master and said more prosaically, "Besides, that's how Penrod caught old Warmonger whenever he got out of his pen—which he did about once a day, eh? Food never worked, but lead a mare in season by him, and he was her slave." Warmonger, the last of my grandfather's mounts, had been almost human in his intelligence and mischief.

  Penrod nodded and grinned. "Damned horse could open any fastening we ever concocted. And quick, he was. Only way we ever caught him was with a mare. Finally, we nailed his door shut behind him."

  I returned his grin. "Then he just jumped his way out."

  So my father'd killed him. I could still see the satisfaction on his face when the last evidence of his father's reign lay dying on the ground. Penrod's humor quickly faded back into his professional mask. No doubt he was remembering the same thing I was.

  My uncle hadn't followed our thoughts; his smile didn't fade. "I'd forgotten Warmonger. He was a grand old campaigner. My own stallion is from his line."

  Would it be so stupid to tell Duraugh the charade I'd been playing? Maybe if he knew me, really knew me, he would like me. Perhaps my uncle could guide me in the task of ruling Hurog. Despite the midnight raids to the library and the unobtrusive, obsessive attention I'd paid to my father's method of governance, I felt ignorant. My uncle had been ruling his own lands successfully for the last two decades.

  I opened my mouth, but he spoke first.

  "The burial is this afternoon. I told Axiel to find you something appropriate to wear from your father's wardrobe. I noticed yesterday that you've outgrown your court clothes, and Axiel told me that you've nothing else suitable. I would appreciate it if you would go in and change. I don't suppose there's any way to get Tosten home in time for the funeral, but tell me where I can find him, and I'll send for him today."

  He slipped it in oh so casually, that mention of my brother.

  "Axiel's my father's man," I said.

  Tosten and I were all that stood between my uncle and Hurog.

  "He's agreed to look after you," explained Duraugh with obvious impatience. "Ward, where is your brother?"

  Iftahar, my uncle's Tallvenish estate, was larger and richer than Hurog, but it wasn't Hurog. No dragon claws had gouged the stone of the watchtowers. I thought that even a man who owned a rich estate might hunger after Hurog.

  "Ward?"

  "I dunno," I said.

  "But you told Fen…"

  "Oh, he's safe," I said. "I just don't know where."

  Father's body servant, Axiel, awaited me in my room, wearing the Hurog colors of blue and gold. He was a small man, tough as boiled leather. My mother, when I asked her, said that the Hurogmeten had brought him back from some battle or another.

  When he drank enough, Axiel claimed to be the son of the dwarven king, and no one was foolhardy enough to gainsay it, because Axiel was as tough as my father.

  Axiel's olive skin and dark hair had, as far as I could remember, looked the same as when I was a young child. Most of Hurog's people, including me, wore our hair after the style of the Tallvens who ruled us, shoulder length and loose. Axiel, who was not a Shavigman at all, wore his hair in the old Shavig style, roughly braided and uncut. The long braid was a disadvantage in fighting. The Shavig of old claimed it as a mark of honor that they were so skilled such a meager advantage was none at all.

  He was a body servant in the Tallvenish style—a rank closer to bodyguard than valet or squire. Axiel's face showed no sign of grief over my father's death, but then he was my father's servant. Doubtless he'd learned to hide what he felt as well as I could.

  "Axiel?"

  "My lord." He said. "Lord Duraugh thought that it would be appropriate for you to have a body servant due your rank."

  I nodded.

  "I've taken it upon myself to ready the Hurog—your father's second set of court clothes for you, sir." He opened the door to my chamber for me.

  There was a small room above the tallest of the shelves of the library behind the decorative curtains that covered the whole of the upper walls. I'd happened upon the little room by chance, and I thought that my father might be the only other person who knew it was more—and he didn't frequent the library. From that room I'd spent many afternoons secretly watching Axiel train with knife and sword. His style was completely different from my aunt's, and I'd found that incorporating gleaned bits of it in my fighting made me a better fighter.

  If Axiel were loyal to me, I would be a lot safer than if he were loyal to my uncle. I stopped in front of the fireplace and looked at the gray remnants of last night's fire. But safe from what? Before my father died, I'd fought for my life. What was I fighting for now?

  "If you would allow me?" Although he sounded as if he were asking permission, Axiel stripped my clothes off of me with great efficiency. While I scrubbed, he trotted over to my bed.

  "My lord?"

  I looked up from washing my face to see the servant holding two sets of clothing.

  "I brought this in from your father's rooms." He held up one of the familiar gray outfits my father favored. "But someone else has been here, for I found this on top of it."

  I took the tunic from the second set of clothing from him. Deep blue velvet, so dark it was almost black, it had the Hurog dragon embroidered in red, gold, and green across the front shoulder. The velvet alone would have cost ten
gold pieces, if not more, and there was no one here, other than perhaps my mother, who could embroider well enough to do the work on the dragon. The undershirt was the color of faded gold, and I didn't recognize the fabric.

  "What's this made of?" I asked.

  "Silk, sir. You haven't seen these before either? It's not from your father's wardrobe nor from anything I saw in your uncle's wardrobe."

  "I'll wear this," I said, running my rough fingers over the undershirt, "if it fits."

  "Fitting for the death of the Hurogmeten," agreed Axiel. "But where did it come from?"

  "Maybe the family ghost," I said seriously after a moment's thought.

  "The ghost?"

  "Surely you know of the ghost?" I asked, slipping the undershirt over my head. It fit as if it had been newly tailored for me. Perhaps it had. His father hadn't wanted any other servants, he'd said.

  "Yes, of course, sir. But why would it choose to do something like this?"

  I shrugged, settling the velvet tunic over the silk. "Ask him." I exchanged my trousers for the loose silk ones that matched the undershirt.

  I looked at the polished metal I used as a mirror and noted that the unaccustomed glory of my clothes made me look dashing and heroic. I was very careful to look stupid, too, before I left the room.

  The funeral was a grand thing, my father would have hated it. But he wasn't there to object. My mother, dressed in gray velvet—her wedding gown—was ethereal and beautiful. My uncle, beside her, appeared strong and stalwart, the perfect man to protect Hurog.

  My sister looked like a lady grown, nearly as tall as Mother. I did some quick calculations and realized that Mother had been married when she was Ciarra's age. Like me, Ciarra was clad in a blue velvet gown, though her dragon was a small embroidered pattern around her neckline. Oreg had been busy.

  Waiting in my place at the open grave on the hillside opposite the keep, I had a full view of the funeral procession, and they had an equally good view of me, their new (and temporarily powerless) lord.

  I'd ridden up here on a good-natured gray gelding who looked particularly well in Hurog blue. Everyone else trudged up the hill on foot. Stala, in dress blues, led the pallbearers behind Erdrick and Beckram, who brought up the rear of the family group.

  Of us all, Stala might be the only one who really mourned my father. Her face, I noticed, was still and tearless.

  I watched, standing apart from the rest of the ceremony as the bearers lowered him carefully into the dark earth, as my father had watched his own father put to rest. Doubtless he'd felt satisfaction as the wooden box hit bottom.

  I looked across the grave at Mother, and I could tell from my uncle's tight face that she was humming again. I had vague memories of a time when my mother had been gay and laughing and had played with me for hours building wooden-block towers while my father fought in the king's wars.

  The Brat watched the box with the Hurogmeten in it settle into the soft earth. She flinched when my uncle set his hand upon her shoulder. I thought of my brother, who'd given up everything to leave my father.

  May the underground beast take you for what you have made of your family, I thought to the dead man. But perhaps being Hurog was enough justification for the gods, too, for no dark beast rose from the shadows of the grave to devour my father's body, despite my uncle's fears.

  Dismounting, I took a handful of earth and tossed it on the grave. Stay there, I thought at the Hurogmeten. Bitter waves of fruitless anger beat at my composure. If he'd been different, I might have my brother standing beside me, to help with the overwhelming task of keeping Hurog alive. I might have a mother who could bear the burden of daily chores and free me to chase bandits and reap the fields. I would not have been standing, half mad, with tears sliding down my face as the pallbearers, men of the Blue Guard, pushed dirt over my father's grave.

  In the end, I think I was the only one who cried. Maybe I was the only one who mourned. But I did not mourn the man who lay in that grave.

  "Does my uncle know about you?" I asked.

  Oreg, who was stretched out on the end of my bed. From my stool, set before the fireplace, I watched him while I sharpened my boot knife. The clothes I'd worn to my father's funeral were hung up in the wardrobe. I wore instead the sweat-stained clothes I'd worn to training with the Blue Guard this evening. Not even the Hurogmeten's funeral interfered with training.

  "No." Oreg closed his eyes, his face relaxed. "Your father never told anyone more than he had to."

  I held the knife up so the light hit it better. I couldn't see it, but I knew the knife had developed a wire edge; otherwise it would have been a lot sharper after all the time I'd worked on it. I bent down and grabbed a leather strop out of my sharpening kit and set to work.

  Oreg rolled over so he could see me better. "A man came here this evening to talk to your uncle."

  "The overseer of the field with the salt creep," I agreed mildly, stropping the knife.

  "Your uncle's wizard didn't fare any better than old Scraggle Beard." I'd learned that Oreg disliked Licleng, referring to him as a "self-aggrandized clerk."

  "There are going to be hungry folk here this winter."

  I ran my stone over the edge a few more times. I licked my arm and drew the knife along the wet area. This time it sliced the hair off cleanly.

  "Yes, but Hurog will survive." I decided to change the subject. There was nothing I could do about the harvest. "Thank you for the clothes. I assume you're responsible for the Brat's wardrobe, too."

  He nodded. "I'm very good with clothing."

  "Did you do the embroidery by hand?" I asked.

  He shook his head. "Magic work. But I do sometimes, when I have the time. I…" He closed his eyes. "I often have too much time."

  I stretched out and threw another log into the fire, which was getting low. Even in the summer, the old stone building got chilly in the evenings.

  3—WARDWICK

  I was caught in the web I'd spun. Instead of breaking free, I tried to convince myself I was safer there.

  "At least he can fight," I heard one of the men mutter to another. I couldn't be sure who it was just from the voice, and my eyes were occupied with my opponent.

  "One on one, when he doesn't have to remember orders. But in three years, he'll be giving the orders. I'm gonna be gone by then." No mistaking the oddly nasal tenor of Stala's second. In the three weeks since my father's death, I'd been treated to several variants of this conversation.

  A muttered curse from my opponent brought my attention back to the fight. Ilander of Avinhelle was new to the Guard, and this was the first time he'd drawn me for all-out pairs.

  The Blue Guards drew fighters from four of the five kingdoms: Shavig, Tallven, Avinhelle, and Seaford. If a man lasted a few years here, he could expect to be first or second in any guard. There weren't any Oranstonians because fifteen years ago, the Blue Guards under my father's command had been instrumental in putting down the Oranstonian Rebellion.

  Ilander might have been new, but he understood that my aunt had trained me since I picked up the sword, so he shouldn't have assumed I'd be easy. Still, he'd watched me all week in drills after Stala had announced the participants in the weekly slaughter. But drills were drills, and all-outs were battle. During drills, I regularly «forgot» the patterns, especially if Stala changed them very often. I slowed down and refused to use all my strength against an opponent who was just interested in getting the swings right. Was it my fault Ilander thought that meant I was slow and clumsy? Ilander, who thought that playing tricks on the stupid boy was really funny.

  I smiled at him sweetly as I gave an awkward twitch of my sword in a feeble-looking attempt to parry his deadly slice. It made him look really bad when my parry worked. He growled and swung overarm in the mistaken impression I couldn't hit his body with a killing stroke and still catch his blade before he lopped something important off—like my head.

  Stala called it with a shrill, two-fingered whistle as soon as
the tip of my sword whipped across his belly armor, but it was my blade that stopped his sword. In a serious fight, he would have been dead. If I hadn't caught his blade, I would have been dead, practice or not. He wanted to continue; I could see the rage in his eyes as I met his gaze mildly.

  "Good fighting," I said earnestly, stepping back and letting his sword slide off mine. "It was good fighting, wasn't it, Stala?"

  Stala snorted. "Ilander, you're not a boy. You should know better than to get angry with your opponent. When you're facing someone who has already proven stronger than you, not to mention faster, it's the height of stupidity to pull a move like that overhand. You're lucky you didn't really get hurt."

  "I'm sorry I made you mad, Ilander," I said, giving him my best cow-eyed look. "I won't do it again."

  Ilander, who'd been flinching under the sting of my aunt's tongue, returned to his earlier state of rage. His face flushed, and his nostrils flared whitely. "You—"

  "Careful," barked Stala, and Ilander shut his teeth with an audible click. When she was satisfied he wasn't going to say anything more, she relaxed. "Go wash up. You're off for the rest of the day. Lucky will take your place on guard duty."

  Lucky's position in the circle of guards was just behind Stala and to her right. Being a relatively intelligent man, he stiffened apprehensively. She didn't even look at him, keeping her eyes on the dirt in front of her. "I told you to quit fleecing money from the fledglings, Lucky. How much did you take him for?"

  "A silver, sir."

  "Betting that he couldn't beat Ward."

  "Yes, sir."

  "You know what? Sometimes I can work magic better than Licleng. Watch me. Poof!" She raised her hands in a theatrical manner. "That bet didn't happen."

  He thought about arguing, opened his mouth to do it twice. "Yes, sir," was all he got out.

  Lucky taken care of, Stala turned her attention to me. "Ward, you haven't even worked up a sweat."

  I frowned thoughtfully, decided sniffing my armpit would be overkill, then nodded my head.

  "After everyone else is through, you and I will have a go of it, eh?"