[Hurog 01] - Dragon Bones Page 5

  “My grandfather was struck from behind by my father’s arrow. My father admitted it once when he was drunk.”

  We’d been hunting, just the two of us, when I was nine or ten. We’d camped up in the mountains, and my father began drinking as soon as we’d set up the tent. I don’t remember what led him to confess, but I still remembered the look he’d turned on me afterward. He hadn’t meant to let that slip, and even then I’d known it was dangerous knowledge. I’d pretended I hadn’t heard him, that his words had been too slurred. It might have been that slip that sent him over the edge, but I’d come to believe his antagonism went deeper than that.

  “He saw me as a rival for Hurog. Time was his enemy, and I its standard bearer.” That sounded like something my hero Seleg might have written in his journals. It also would have sounded better on paper than it did out loud, so I tried for a less dramatic tone. “My father didn’t like to lose battles.”

  I left the bed and went to the polished square of metal hanging on the wall. I looked like my father, not so startling without the Hurog blue eyes, but a younger version of my father all the same. The size came from his mother’s family, but the features were Hurog. “I was his successor, a constant reminder that he would someday lose Hurog. I’m not certain even he realized it, but from the day I first held a sword, he thought of me as a threat. You might recall, if you were paying attention, that the beating responsible for my “change” was not the first time he beat me unconscious. If it had continued, he would have killed me before I was old enough to defend myself. And I had the example of my mother to follow.”

  “When she lost herself in dreams, he didn’t beat her as much. Or visit her bed,” agreed the boy solemnly.

  “My speaking problem made my father think I’d become an idiot, and I decided to take advantage of it.”

  “Why continue it now, after he is dead?”

  I felt my way to an answer. “My uncle rules here for the next two years. Like my father, he was raised to believe that becoming Hurogmeten is the summit of what a man can accomplish. I’m not sure he’ll want to give it back.”

  “You’re so certain he’s a villain? He was a nice boy . . .” Oreg’s voice dropped to a whisper. “At least I think it was Duraugh, but sometimes I don’t remember so well.”

  I closed my eyes. “I don’t know him, only that he has little patience with idiots. The gods know I wouldn’t want an idiot in charge of Hurog, either. We live too close to the edge of survival.” I shrugged and looked at Oreg, who’d somehow come to be crouched at my feet. “I don’t trust him.”

  I’d talked more to Oreg than I ever remember talking to anyone except Ciarra. Speech was still something of an effort, and it tired me. Ironic how honesty felt much more awkward than lying.”

  “Trust your instincts,” said Oreg after a moment. “It will harm none if you remain cautious for a while yet.”

  He left then, not going through the passageway or the door, just disappeared, leaving me to my memories.”

  My instincts, eh? My father was dead, and I didn’t know if I was joy- or grief-stricken. Hurog was mine at last, but it wasn’t. Should I reveal myself? Say, “Thought you’d like to know I’m not really an idiot”? I wasn’t even sure that there was anything left of me but the stupid surface covering the constant vigilance underneath. I would wait.

  I RESTED MY FOLDED arms on the top of the fence rail and breathed the early-morning air while Harron, one of the grooms, told me about the night’s excitement.

  Someone left the gate to the mares’ paddock open, and Pansy was found snorting and charging in the paddock with my father’s best mare (“Who was in season, damn the luck,” Harron said cheerfully). The other mares were safely in their barns, but Moth had been restless. Penrod had thought a night in the field might calm her. He had spoken to my uncle about it.

  As Harron talked, we watched most of the stable hands and my uncle chase Pansy with halters, ropes, and grain buckets. Pansy eluded his pursuers with a flagged tail and a shake of his magnificent head. My uncle saw me and left the stablemen to their job. While he climbed through the fence, I sent Harron to get grain and a halter.

  “Some idiot left the gate to the mares’ paddock open,” growled my uncle.

  It was too good an opening to miss.

  “I checked on them last night,” I lied. “Pansy was in the stallion’s paddock then.”

  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 ou
r 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.”

  MY 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 there—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 b
ody, despite my uncle’s fears.

  Dismounting, I took a handful of earth and tossed it on the grave. Stay there, I thought at the Herogmeten. 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.