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Trial By Fire Chapter 3
By Teach
Rowan led his horse through the stable door and out into the open, stroking her muzzle and her broad, stout neck, whispering softly to her. “Easy, Gethsemane,” he soothed. “All is well, old girl.” She often became nervous and skittish in the company of other horses, and there were plenty of those here; King Gerald had seen fit to set aside an army of twenty men and their mounts to assist Rowan on his journey.
As he rounded the corner of the house, the cavalry detachment came into view. The lead horseman had dismounted, and at the sight of Rowan, he turned to his men and made a quick, sharp hand-signal in the air. Four of the riders produced trumpets.
“Please, no,” Rowan called, shaking his head and waving his free hand. “Let us not stand on ceremony.” The truth of the matter was, Rowan hated ceremony. He had grown quite weary of all the drums and trumpets and medallions and booming decrees after the Great War. What he longed for now was a simple ‘good morning’, and a nice ride in the dewy grass before the day grew unbearably warm.
The cavalry sergeant blinked stupidly, unsure how to proceed. Never before had a decorated hero declined to be honored with trumpet, at least not in the sergeant’s experience, and he was momentarily at a loss. At last, feeling that he should do something, the sergeant removed his helmet and knelt. “Mighty warrior, Rowan the Brave, I bid you welcome—“
“Please,” Rowan called to him, “Get up. Come on, get up. On your feet.”
The sergeant blinked stupidly again, then rose quickly. He stuffed the helmet back down onto his bullet-shaped head, then held his right arm outstretched with three fingers pointing—-the finger of the Kingdom, the finger of the King, and the finger of the Queen. He brought them smartly to his cheek and flipped them upward in the standard salute.
Rowan returned the gesture half-heartedly as he neared the assembled cavalry. He motioned for the sergeant to get back on his horse, then looked around at the group. “Men,” he began, “know first that this is not a military exercise. We are not riding into battle against the hordes of another kingdom. We go to face an enemy the likes of which none of you have ever seen, and as such, we ride into battle in a fashion much different from what you have known in the past.
“First, we need not salute, nor do we need to blow trumps at sunrise and sunset or to sound the charge. The trumpets will be but added weight on the back of your mounts; I bid you leave them here at my homestead until we return, for they will serve us no purpose on the journey ahead.”
The cavalrymen, especially those four near the front whose trumpets still remained in hand, exchanged uncertain glances. This was unheard of in all the realm. What sort of commander would eschew the standards of war in any battle, even against an enemy so different from the usual ones?
“Further,” Rowan continued, “I am the head of this body, but you will continue to take your commands from the sergeant, here, with whom I will confer when necessary. Do not salute me. Do not call me Rowan the Brave, nor Master, nor Commander. I have been chosen to do a duty, but I am no longer an officer in King Gerald’s army.”
“And that we rue, each and every day, great Rowan,” someone spoke up.
Rowan sighed. “Once more, I ask you all not to treat with me as a hero. The Great War was yesterday. Today is the day we ride north to seek out the dragon. Forget the Rowan of story and song, that we may better keep our senses keen and our heads turned to the task before us.”
“Yes, Rowan!” the cavalrymen shouted in unison.
Then, from beyond a low hill to Rowan’s left, Wendell appeared. He rode on a slow-moving, sway-backed donkey laden with scores of bags and wearing a foppish hat of deep blue on its head. Wendell himself wore a gardening hat and a tunic and carried a two-meter staff over one shoulder. The hat was the size of a small table, and its brim bobbed comically as Wendell’s slow, plodding mount made its way into Rowan’s dooryard.
“Hail Rowan the Brave!” Wendell shouted in greeting.
“Don’t call him that!” the cavalry sergeant admonished.
Wendell stared back, nonplused, his hat bobbing. His donkey brayed once, and then Wendell nodded as if he had understood.
Turning away, a dispirited Rowan climbed onto his mount and urged her forward.
The journey was begun.
Marriel Goode awoke early on the day after the departure of Rowan’s company. She had not risen before Grimbley in quite some time, and was looking forward to making his breakfast before waking him. It would be a nice surprise for the boy, something that might do his troubled young heart some good.
She began by gathering a few vegetables—-a gourd squash and a couple of small, hard tomatoes—-from the small garden spot beside the house. As an afterthought, she plucked three red tongue-snappers (what we might call peppers) to go into the mix. A nice stew and some bungled eggs would be just the right pick-me-up breakfast for a young boy. She wished that she had some jerky left, but they had eaten it all on the previous day. Still, with the exception of perhaps some small fruit, she felt that the menu would suit Grim just fine.
She diced the squash and tomato and dropped the pieces into a pot along with a few fingers of water from a skin. She wasn’t a lazy woman by nature, but it was a long walk down to the stream, and timing would be important. She added just the very tip of a tongue-biter for flavor, then went to the fireplace and hung the pot on the hook above the fire. She broke the eggs into an iron pan and placed it on the hearth, then went to wake Grimbley.
She was quite startled to find, lying atop the blanket under which her son should have been sleeping, a scrap of parchment. It was an old piece, of course; they had no blank parchment in the house, as writing materials were rare and precious in Lorad and throughout most of the Realm. On one side was a long letter from Uncle Stubberfeldt, the sailing merchant who plied his trade all along the coast, taking on goods in one port and huckstering them in the next. The letter promised that the Goodes would all be together again by snowfall. Stubberfeldt Goode and his wife and children had yet to show their faces, although the letter was now three years old.
On the other side of the letter, however, young Grimbley had scrawled a note of his own. It took several moments for Marriel to piece together its meaning—-she was an accomplished reader, but her son still struggled with the mechanics of writing. His letters were ragged and ugly, and his spelling was so poor as to be astonishing, but she eventually managed to get the gist of the note:
Muthre,
Hav dissided I am risponsibal for the Life of Roan an cumpinny so will now go to ade him in Slaing the Draggen. Do not wurrie ovrmuch as I wil be karfel and shud be back hom varie soon at leest in tyme to sher the sheeps and tak the wull to Markit.
Yor divotid sun,
Grimbley
To her credit, Marriel neither laughed aloud at the atrocious spelling and grammar nor immediately wept for her son. She felt a great deal of pride in him; he was walking into the face of danger because of a sense of responsibility, and in a time when no one wanted to take responsibility for anything. She smiled at the thought of young Grim riding alongside the King’s very finest cavalry, trying to be brave in the most fearsome circumstance anyone could imagine.
She went back to the stew and the eggs; it would not do to waste the food, although she had no more appetite for breakfast. She considered racing after him, but she could not be certain in which direction he had ridden, and he had taken their only horse. And what would she say to him, if and when she caught up to him? Nothing she could say would dissuade him now; he felt it was his duty to accompany Rowan.
So she stirred the stew until the vegetables were tender, then tried to eat a little, all the while wiping encroaching tears from her cheeks.
Such a good boy, she thought. Finally, she could curb her emotions no longer. She put her head into her hands and wept.
Rowan was certain he would not be able to bear another moment.
The previous day had been something of a nightmare. The score of men sent along by King Gerald were, to Rowan’s constant irritation, in awe of him. They cast glances and spoke in low voices, and occasionally one or another of the men would slip and refer to him as “Rowan the Brave” or “Rowan the Good”. The offending cavalryman would invariably avert his gaze and bow his head.
It was truly unbearable.
Rowan rode in silence, Gethsemane moving beneath him with liquid ease. He let the horse lead him, allowing himself to take in the scenery around him. To his left lay a forest broad and dense. To his right was a series of low, rolling hills that would ultimately lead to the East River. Directly ahead, shrouded in a haze of distance, were the Northern Mountains.
The mountains were truly beautiful, and Rowan looked forward to seeing them at close range for the first time. He had journeyed to the south, as far as the sea, and the regiment to which he had been assigned had been charged with patrolling the forests and guarding against sneak attacks by the wooded route. He had seen all of the Realm except for the mountains. He had heard tales, of course, stories of biting cold and creatures that would eat the flesh of men, of wolves so white they could not be seen in the snow until they pounced, of impassable faces as steep as castle walls. The mountains were a forbidding place, a place of anonymity and silence, and Rowan could hardly wait to be there, among the ancient giants of the earth. Mostly he was eager to be small and insignificant and unknown, to stand in a place where no one knew the tales of Rowan the Brave and no one cared.
“Rowan!” Wendell called to him suddenly. “You should see this!”
Rowan slowed and turned his horse about, riding slowly and easily toward where the old man had stopped. As he approached, Wendell dismounted and began rummaging in his saddlebags.
“What is it?” Rowan demanded.
The old man paid him no heed, but instead went on looking through the bags hanging at his mule’s sides. At last, he produced a heavy, leather-bound book. He dropped to his knees and began flipping through the pages, and Rowan was able to see that it was Wendell’s own work, A Compleat History of Dragyn.
“What have you found?” Rowan persisted.
“Look there,” Wendell said, pointing, his eyes never leaving the open book on the ground before him.
“What am I looking for?” Rowan asked, nonplused.
“See the imprint? It’s where the great Worm stopped to rest. And look there, beyond the hedge, there’s bones. Sheep’s bones, I’ll wager.”
“So the dragon stopped here for a quick meal.”
“Then pushed off and flew away north,” Wendell finished.
“How do you know she flew to the north?”
“For one, that’s the way home. Gad, you’re simple! And then there’s the impressions.” Wendell stood and moved quickly—as quickly as his old, bowed legs would carry him, at any rate—and began waving his hands madly over a wide patch of earth that seemed no different to Rowan’s eyes than the patch next to it.
“What impressions?”
“Look here,” Wendell explained impatiently, kneeling on the soft ground. “Toe-prints! She shoved off from this very spot!”
Rowan dismounted and went to Wendell. He knelt at the old man’s side and studied the impressions in the ground.
“Now, you see?” Wendell said triumphantly. “The toes were here, here, here. She was facing north when she pushed off.”
“Pushed off?”
“Oh, aye. A dragon’s got great and mighty wings, but she’s a big girl, for all of that. If she was in a hurry, she’d use her big back legs to get a bit of a lift off the ground, rather than just flapping away to beat the devil.”
“So the dragon...catapulted herself up, in a manner of speaking?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Wendell said, his eyebrows knitting together. “Might also say she pushed off.”
Rowan nodded. “Yes, I understand, ‘pushed off’.”
“Still another way to say it would be that she pushed off,” Wendell persisted.
“Fine, then,” Rowan said impatiently. “A thousand apologies for my failure to use the proper words, and right here in the company of a dragon expert, at that! The great beast pushed off from right in this very spot, and catapulting hadn’t a thing to do with it! Now, pray tell me before I die not knowing, what does it mean?”
“It means,” Wendell said with disdain, “that she flew away from here toward the north.”
“Of course she did,” Rowan countered. “That would be the way home. Gad, you’re simple!”
Rowan stood and strode to his horse, leaving Wendell staring after him in stunned silence. He mounted Gethsemane and urged her forward.
As the group rode slowly past, Wendell caught hold of himself and hurried back to his mule, still dragging the thunderously heavy book along. “That’s grateful of ye, Rowan, aye,” he called out, but if anyone heard, they made no sign.
Feedback is greatly appreciated!
©2004 James Clark
8/18/2004 3:47:18 PM
(Updated: 8/20/2004 7:58:53 AM)
(Updated: 9/10/2004 4:04:12 PM)
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