Chapter 14
Wistala planned her venture all the next week, as the pheasants and rabbits made the transition from the cool room to stews and pies and soups. She brought up the subject to Rainfall as he worked in his garden, mentioning that she’d seen deer tracks in the thickets and had a mind to bring back a tender young yearling.
She explained her plans for the next day to him, all the while hugging her real intent to her breast.
“I’ve found some hollows even the hunters avoid. Stog seems willing to carry a deer home.”
“I’m sure he’d enjoy the exercise.”
“I’ll need a harness for Stog, of course, and a bag of meal.”
“I’ll rise early and put the harness on,” Rainfall said. “If that suits you.”
“You’re too kind,” Wistala said. Her host’s pleasant manner inspired frilly language in return. Though she stifled a prrum only with difficulty, imaging Lada’s arrival at Mossbell atop Stog’s back, and Rainfall’s delight at having her returned to him.
She stayed in the house that night, too excited to sleep, and studied Lada’s sketched portrait by candlelight long after Rainfall had turned in. Finally she sniffed the doll from the little chair under the musical instruments until she knew the odor, then wrapped it in a clean cloth from the larder.
On her way out, she noted that the house looked even more bare, if that were possible. The cloak room was bulging with a last few treasures Rainfall doted on: everything from furniture to rolls of heavy draperies to a jeweled belt his grandfather had been awarded for a victory to a silver music box that played a tune his mate had been fond of. Rainfall was sacrificing yet more of the home’s interior to raise funds to bring tenants and livestock to his lands. Perhaps matters had gone ill with the dwarves.
The doll was hidden in with a few game bags by the time Rainfall entered the stable the next morning. He wished them both farewell and a fortunate hunt.
“All the spits will be cleaned in expectation of a successful return,” Rainfall said as he waved them off. “Rah-ya! for an increase to your summer’s tally!”
Wistala capered around Stog as soon as they were out of sight of Mossbell, trickery and adventure in her blood. “We’re finally off for Galahall.”
“Where I get to show up those oat-stuffed horses.”
“Yes. When we get to the ridge, you’ll have to show me what you can manage. That’s the only path I couldn’t pick for you.”
They passed through the Thickets easily enough. Stog was both strong and sure-footed, following her in and out of the network of thorny hollows with nothing more than a few bitter oaths when a thorn got him. It was a bad place for flies, too, as it turned out. They ignored Wistala, but they clustered around Stog’s eyes, ears, and tailvent.
They paused for grain and water at a muddy hole. The flies grew thicker than ever as Stog pawed up mud to gather drinkable water.
“I was bit by a centipede the size of a snake once,” Stog said, his teeth working in their strange sideways fashion. “Burned like dragonflame. I’ve never much minded flies since then.”
They rested for an afternoon in the shadow of the ridge with its strange line of sentinel trees. It promised to be a fine night, but they couldn’t wait forever. Stog found a path up as the sun set. The other side was steeper still.
“We’ll be crossing this again in a hurry, and at night, so keep that in mind when you pick your trail,” Wistala said.
The soil was summer-dry and tended to slide as they went down and entered the grounds of Galahall. They cut through fields, watched only by scarecrows.
“I remember the smell of this grass,” Stog said as they came within sight of the hall. They stood in a mass of oaks hugging a stream, immature acorns in the boughs above. They rested again until the lights began to go out in the hall’s second-floor windows.
She poured out more grain for Stog. “Wait here. I may be coming back in a hurry,” Wistala said, checking the fitting of her game-harness. “Wish me luck.”
Stog didn’t wish her luck. He was chewing.
Wistala kept low as she approached Galahall, making for the old tower that came close to closing the near circle of buildings. She passed through the foul-smelling moat and emerged slimy with duckweed.
Then she began to climb.
She peeked in the first window, open to the warm night, perhaps three lengths up off the ground. Here Wistala had her first doubt: the window was barred, though not reinforced with crosspieces. Oh, why hadn’t she climbed the tower before!
Through the bars she could see that this floor of the tower looked to be one big room, with a stairway running up the side and a stout door set into the ceiling—or the next room’s floor, depending on how you looked at it. Laundry hung off lines everywhere, and she smelled an odor like boiled cabbage.
The floor above looked more promising from the window: two beds with drawn-back curtains held sleeping figures. She peered carefully inside until her eye adjusted to the gloom. Both had similar reddish curly hair—not Lada, who according to her portrait had straight hair.
There was no connecting door between the two levels; the lower’s stairs just ran into the upper. She climbed up the outside to the next level. This one had a single bed, with a miniature bed beside that Wistala recognized as a place for hominids to lay their freshly hatched—No, they didn’t hatch; they popped out live in considerable pain and confusion, she corrected herself. There were numerous windows on this floor, all ancient and narrow, perhaps for the firing of arrows. The woman sleeping here was round-faced. She and her infant had fallen asleep together, the child attached to her like a suckling pig. Something about the set of her eyes and nose made Wistala discount this one as a possibility.
She tried to guess if there were two floors above or just one as she climbed.
The next floor marked the end of the stairs. It was cramped and low, with a short ladder propped up at the wall near another hatch. The windows here were round, with one on each side of the tower, and the glass pivoted on a central column to admit the breeze. Wheels edged with gears and pegs stood in a cobwebbed pile on one side of the room, taking up much of the space.
There wasn’t a bed such as she’d seen at Mossbell or the floors below, just a fabric mass on the floor with bits of straw coming out at the seams. Someone slept there under a wool blanket, with an oily-smelling dip beside the bed upon a pile of books. The sleeping figure had drawn the thin covering up to her nose.
Wistala examined the fixture in the window. It would break easily enough; nothing but wooden pegs held it in place. Hooks at either side of the round would help hold it against a wind.
She guessed there to be nothing but a watch-platform above, though one of Galahall’s owners had added a wooden roof. If another one of this Hammar’s wards slept up there, it would be quite cold in winter. The girl in the bed was the most likely candidate, as the others had been eliminated.
She just got her hips through the window, at the cost of a slight scraping sound and a whisper of a creak.
The figure stirred a little.
Wistala took the doll out of its bag and unwrapped it, mindful of the ears at the bottom of the stairs.
Wistala came still closer, feeling her way across rough, dry wood. A washbasin bowl with a little water, a bit glass with a number of dried wildflowers in it, a half-finished woven basket, and a few odd and ends of clothing hanging from some pegs were all the room contained.
A foot with the five ridiculous, almost-useless hominid toes stuck out of the blanket. Wistala gave it an experimental lick.
The figure stirred again.
“Hsssst,” said Wistala, as quietly as she could.
A wide green eye opened.
“Don’t be afraid,” Wistala said in Parl.
The human figure sat bolt upright even as she scooted up against the wall, drawing the covers up with her and bunching them under her eyes. But there was no question, the eyes, forehead, and hair belonged to Rainfall’s granddaughter.
Wistala smiled and bowed. “I bring tidings—”
“Aaaaaaaaagh!” Lada shrieked.
“You don’t—,” Wistala tried, backing away. She held up the doll.
“Heeeeeeelp! Monster! Esithephe, your baby!”
A clunk and a bawling sounded from downstairs. Wistala advanced, tipping the doll right side up and upside down to prove that it was just a bit of craft, but Lada snatched up the waterbasin, and liquid flew.
“Aiiieeee!” the girl—no, young woman, Wistala could see the smallish protrusions wherewith mammals suckled their broods—shouted, throwing the basin. Wistala lowered her head, and it crashed into the pile of pegged and geared wheels, sprinkling her with water as it passed.
Wistala tried again: “No! Your name is—”
A mouthful of pillow cut off that sentence. Lada rammed it home as she fled in a jumble of knees, elbows, and white nightshirt toward the stairs down, still screaming her head off.
The pillow came out of her mouth with a tear, and feathers flew.
Now screams echoed up from the lower levels.
“Lada!” Wistala shouted, spitting feathers.
The girl screamed as she fled down the stairs.
Wistala heard footsteps, shouts from below caught up in a babble of voices and a screaming baby. She considered going after Lada, but a male voice bellowing questions made her turn back to the window.
A heavy tread on the stairs decided her. She squeezed back out the circular window.
Something gripped at her tail, and she pulled it away hard and climbed up the tower.
Up?
She checked herself. She’d instinctively headed toward the safety of the sky. If only she could will her wings into appearing.
She turned around, testing her digits against the rough stones for the climb down. She watched pillow feathers drift, gently turning and rocking as they fell, and realized some of them had stuck in her scales.
A hairy face, pale in the dim moon, looked out the window. The man must have heard her, for he looked up.
She swung her tail down and poked him back inside with its point. He let out a howl.
I must give them an urgency beyond hunting me, if I’m to escape.
She gulped and squeezed her fire bladder, spat a thin jet of flame up into the wooden roof above. She looked across the narrow gap between tower and the south-facing leg of Galahall.
All interior-facing windows were open in the summer air.
She hurried over to the west side of the tower and, clinging rather precariously, extended her neck and spat. Missed—she’d judged the fall of flame badly.
Shouts from the courtyard—she tried again.
This time the flame passed through the window. Orange light glowed within.
She looked into the courtyard. Shirtless, barefoot men were emerging from doors while female faces, holding gowns closed at their throats, peered cautiously from the windows. She caught the gleam of a sword blade and a pike point. A spike-haired boy pointed up the tower—at her or the growing flame, she didn’t know—and screamed a warning.
Wistala saw a faster route down. She moved around to the south side of the tower and jumped to the roof of the east-running building, and from that leaped down the wooden roof of an exposed stable by the entrance. She jumped once more and hit the ground running, with men shouting and giving orders behind and a growing clamor of excited dogs.
“Horses! To horse!” the booming voice she’d heard in the tower bellowed.
Wistala hurried off into the night. Her muscles began to burn as her dragon-dash gave out. The tree-crowned ridge seemed very far away.
 
Stog had vanished. All that remained of him were some tracks and a little of his feed scattered on the ground.
“Stog!” she called, panting. The run had been a nightmare of breathless rushes from hiding spot to hiding spot, with dogs barking and crying behind when the horsemen weren’t blowing horns at each other. “Stog,” she shouted when she had her wind.
She snuffled around and found the trace of a scent. He’d gone off in the direction of Galahall. Had he seen the flames—the top of the tower still burned like a beacon—and gone off to give assistance? They’d missed each other in the dark, and no wonder: she’d splashed through every ditch she could find to confuse the pursuit. Or had he become frightened at the hunting horns, even now sounding across the wide lands south of Galahall?
Looking for him would be suicide.
She looked up the tall ridge and started up. The slow, steady climb suited her short limbs so much better than the run across the fields. By the time she reached the line of trees, she felt almost herself again. Hunger gnawed at her, but she was nothing like starved. She body-slid down the other side, flying down on chest and tail.
The hunters, if they didn’t give up upon reaching the edge of Galahall’s grounds, would either have to go round either side of the ridge or lead their horses up a very treacherous climb and then down again. By the time daylight came, she’d be deep in the Thickets.
Stog would have to find his own way home.
 
Will they never give up?
The question hardly left her mind as she made her best speed through the Thickets, a sort of sore-footed trot. Winded, thirsty, hungry, scratched at nostril and earhole, under-limb and tween-toe by the endless thorns, even her left eye had been poked, and it hurt abominably.
She plunged into yet another strand of bramble as she heard the clattering noise of the men behind.
The men signaled each other by rapping pairs of hollow wooden pegs, setting up a clatter that might have been designed to drive her insane, as though the thickets were full of maddened woodpeckers. Her mouth was so dry, nothing but cottony saliva covered her teeth, and all it did was catch dust and dirt kicked up by the horses thundering past her hiding spots.
Her one solace was the thought that she’d probably burned Galahall to the ground. What else could cause the thane to summon every man with a horse and boy who could whack two sticks together to this wild and uncomfortable corner?
Wistala listened and then crept up another dry ravine. The soil in this part of the Thickets kicked up a chalky dust, and even the thorn-vines and succulents looked sickly and undersize. Nothing took root at the hilltops, or anywhere the wind could reach. She stayed just below the empty crest of it—no need to create a silhouette for one of the hundreds of pairs of eyes looking for her to see—and took a bit out of a green segmented plant. Its buds were bitter-tasting but juicy enough to at least give the illusion of moisture.
She could see the twin hills of Mossbell in the distance, green and alluring, but she didn’t dare make for them. Who knew what the thane might do to Rainfall if he thought her host had sent her on purposes of possible assassination or proven arson?
Instead she headed for the river, carefully cresting yet another slope. They wouldn’t—couldn’t get their horses easily into the gorge, and it would be a brave rider who’d swim his horse into the rocks of the fast-flowing river.
The beaters must have spotted her tracks, for the noise level rose and several came together clack-tchick-clack-clack-tok-clack, no rhythm at all, just a crescendo of sound driving her on.
A man negotiated the precarious rim of the finger of land she had to cross. He bore a horn of metal, a long tube wound about itself like a sleeping snake. Obscenely close-set eyes surveyed the thorny runs from above a scarf wrapped round to keep out the dust. He bore a short spear with a long, sharp head and tapered tail.
He’d chosen his spot well. She couldn’t cross behind him, not without a climb in the open, though a brief one, perhaps exposing her to the noisemakers in the thickets.
But a good deal of thornbush filled a gentler slope leading up to his vantage. He amused himself by relieving himself into it.
Wistala was downwind, and the odor struck her nose like a challenge, the clattering in her ears a rattle of an enemy drake’s griff. She crept slowly through the densest brambles, sliding around the clusters of branch with their pitiful clumps of earth held tight by roots, until his shadow practically fell on her through the thorny lattice.
She took two steps closer, marked the route she’d use in the final dash—
He saw her approach too late and extended his hand, not the one holding a weapon, but rather to show some kind of talisman.
Wistala exploded out of the thorns, touching rock once as she leaped onto the hunter. She struck high, throwing her weight into his chest to knock him off the narrow crest of the hill.
They tumbled off the hill and down the other side—the direction she needed to go anyway. She dug in with her claws and shut her eyes to keep out the dust. Down—they both broke against a rock, its impact harder on her lighter body but bloodying the unprotected skin on his arm—and she went for his neck.
Vertebrate prey were most vulnerable there. If you got a good grip, you opened windpipes and blood vessels, and they couldn’t bite or gore you back. Her teeth closed, and she tasted blood and heard a strange high wheeze. The man’s hands raked at her face but found a nostril instead of her more vulnerable eye or ear holes.
He went limp.
She dropped the crushed neck, the man’s eyes dry and empty. She opened his gut with her saa to make sure of him, and his body gave a reactive twitch. . . .
The corpse twitched again as she found his liver.
Tearing the oblong organ loose, she raised her head and let it slide down her throat in two big gulps. She sucked blood from the wound, and saw something in his hand shining in the sun. Tarnished gold or brass—either would be welcome. She nibbled it free from the leather thong fixed to it that the man had wrapped about his wrist.
It was a thin round device of hammered heavy metal, a hominid figure in a circle. Hominids had strange superstitions and believed in invisible forces that attracted or repelled evil or good. Was this some kind of proof against dragons?
She licked it. No sharp taste of poison, just the thick metal-saliva. Satisfied, she sent it down her gullet to join the liver, where it would gravitate to the pocket of her innards that absorbed metals.
Smelling, listening, she picked her way south.
All the way across the next flat, the terrified, dead eyes of the man stayed with her. She’d killed a hominid from ambush. Rainfall might call it murder. While hungry, she wasn’t starving, and attacking him had been a foolish risk.
The fact of the matter was, she’d let her temper get the better of her and killed to spite the beaters behind.
She heard a faint, wailing horn. The beaters had probably come across the body. Two more blasts, some kind of signal?
The wind out of the southwest whistled as it cut through the thick thornbushes all around her. The gorge must be near; she couldn’t see any more hills to the south.
A faint and rising sound of hoofbeats came across the wind. Wistala found a rock and climbed near the top, keeping to the shadow side so light wouldn’t reflect off her scales.
Riders! A dozen at least, traveling in pairs, their horses and legs garbed in some sort of leather tenting, perhaps to keep out the thorns, trotted through the brambles, lance-tips sparkling in the sun.
All moved to cut her off from the south. She heard howling; they had dogs with them. Even if the riding men blundered past, the dogs would smell her out.
The thane’s men no doubt wanted her hide in return for some burned shingles and draperies! From Rainfall’s description, Hammar wasn’t the sort to leave an account unsettled.
Wistala gulped, the blood she’d wetted her throat long since caked over by the dry dust she breathed. Her thoughts felt slow and thick as her blood. The men would probably . . .
Dry!
She came off the rock, spat one jet of flame into the tangle right, then trotted a few steps and started another fire left.
The thin branches supporting the thorns caught fire easily, and the wind pushed the flame northwest.
She’d set up a signal to every beater in sight.
But the men would keep from downwind if they knew what was good for them.
Wistala walked along between her two columns of conflagration, nostrils held low to keep out the smoke. At new thickets, she helped spread the flame with another torf or two.
Horns, more confused signals from beyond the smoke. But most of the noise was well behind her.
Now the fire raged so she couldn’t hear anything but its crackling. Her scales reflected the worst of its heat, but she still panted, trying to see through the smoke. A stand of pine, a little above the flat, was burning, and she made for it.
The flame had already consumed the dropped needles; only the tops of the trees burned now. The tough old pines would be green again next spring, but if she wished to be breathing in a year’s time—
Wistala took a deep, lung-filling breath from below the smoke layer, picked a gap, and dashed. She felt flames licking at her flanks. The betweens of sii and saa burned in the hot soil, and she instinctively closed her digits, and she was through, coated with nothing but a thick layer of soot.
And suddenly she breathed cool, dry air, the inferno behind eating its way northwest under a mountain of smoke. From far to the west, she heard more calls as the hunters searched in smoke and confusion.
Wistala got her bearings, noted happily that the sun had fallen almost to the horizon, and moved toward the river.
 
She negotiated the gorge and swam downriver to the bridge and the landing where they’d tried to smash the troll. The river refreshed after the heat, ash, and dust.
The burns between her digits were painful, made more so once she climbed up the rough stairs from the landing when the blisters burst, but she’d learned a valuable lesson that would outlast the pain about her body’s resistance to fire. Next time she’d close up her toes, she thought as she passed over Mossbell’s road wall.
A dim light glimmered from the stone-flanked skylight to the library. Perhaps he was still up, reading. She smelled horses in the turnaround by the old fountain.
Wistala decided that the stable might not be the best place for her to sleep. She climbed up her yew tree and made herself as comfortable as possible in the branches.
Exhaustion allowed her to sleep.
She found Rainfall out the next day, gathering blueberries into a satchel that smelled of strawberries, acorns, hickory nuts, and onions.
“How went the hunting expedition, Wistala?” he asked with his back to her. Perhaps he smelled her approach—he had a sensitive nose.
“I . . .” She groped for the right Elvish word. “I’ve misspent your trust and lost Stog.”
He turned, his countenance a foggy morning. “I heard a most curious story from one of the thane’s riders. Two nights ago, the most astonishing creature crept into Galahall.”
“Yes—”
“According to the eyewitnesses, it was bluish, had two heads on long necks, one at either end, feathers all about the face, and shot flame from its glowing eyes. Half the country is rooming with their sheep as men stand guard with fire buckets. I don’t know what to think. Should I be on my guard that a two-headed featherface come to burn down my hall?”
Wistala’s mouth opened and then shut again.
Rainfall suddenly laughed. “Rah-ya! I’m sorry, Wistala—I shouldn’t torment you. Come inside and have a little soup and what’s left of those rabbits. I wish to hear this story.”
Wistala fought the urge to nuzzle his cheek against hers—she could just reach if she stood on her hind legs—and instead turned a quick, happy circle.
“What?” he asked as they walked. “You thought I’d be cross with you? Ever since I dragged you out of the river, there’s been excitement. Save for the awful loss of Lessup, and, of course, our Avalanche, I’d say those old tales out of the East about dragons being omens of good fortune have been proved. And don’t worry about the mule; Stog will turn up. He’s smart enough to find his way home.”
They went into the house, and he passed her a platter that held the remains of his stew and grease-fried entrails.
As she ate, she told the whole story—save for the death of the hunter. She didn’t feel a bit sorry for the damages to the thane’s Galahall, but relating the loss of Stog made her miserable, as well as her confession that she’d failed to return with his granddaughter.
“I wish you’d have discussed this adventure with me before you’d set out. I would have saved your claws the burns and wear.”
“But it’s not right.”
Rainfall poured himself a little more wine and juice squeezings. “Had you come back with her, I would have taken her in both hands. But then I’d have escorted her straight back to Galahall.”
“But you could conceal her, as you did me—”
“Tala, how can I make it plain to you? The thane misuses the law, certainly, whether he breaks it in his misuse is not for me to say. But that doesn’t relieve me of my obligation to live by it. Laws stand only by common consent; enforcement can do only so much.”
He paused and waited until she nodded, then went on: “The thane at least keeps most of the Hypatian traditions, which are just as important as laws in their way. In other provinces, there are thanes who rule like the despots of old. I’ve heard of thanes who force their landholders to will their estates over to him, lest they be labeled traitors and executed, then find an excuse to execute anyway once everything is set down in writing. All quite legal on the face of it, but appallingly against the Hypatian tradition. Hammar will die or go into his dotage eventually, and Hypat will appoint a new thane.”
“Someone like you should be thane, then. An elf is better than any man.”
“Oh, that racial rubbish. Have you been listening to the soldiery? There was a time when Hypatian citizenship was what counted, not the shape of your legs and angle of your shoulders.”
Wistala took a last mouthful of fried entrail. “So you’re content to let those blighters in Galahall rut about your granddaughter, and not see her again?”
“What’s that? Rut?”
“That tower. There were babies in it. Well, a baby.”
Her host’s face writhed. “How young? Perhaps he’s warded a child. . . .”
“I’m not sure. Still suckling at his youngish mother, anyway.”
Rainfall passed his hand through his hair, dropping a long, thin willowlike leaf or two. “He wouldn’t. Not wards of the thane! Oh, if only I’d been more provident with my gold plate, I could sell it or melt it.”
A thought struck Wistala. “The form of the wealth doesn’t matter?”
It took a moment for her words to register. “Well, the thane is entitled to assess the value of anything that isn’t Hypatian coin. What do you have in mind?”
“Another expedition.”