Dragonheart (7 page)

“Modesty as well as valor,” Gilbert was impressed. “The code of ancient Camelot still lives.”

At this, the knight jerked his head up with a hostile glare. Then the glare was suddenly tinged with wistful sadness. He seemed to shake the melancholy from him with a sardonic grin and chopped the middle talon off the dragon’s claw with his sword.

“No modesty in it, priest,” Bowen said flatly, retrieving his severed trophy, The talon and wound seeped a ruddy viscid ooze. “I merely hurried this relic of the devil down the path he traveled. Sick and starving . . . Still it’s one less dragon—”

“And meat for a month!”

Both the priest and knight turned at the sound of the intruding voice. A ragged peasant quickly ran past them and leapt onto the dead dragon. Several more, all armed with knives, followed him. Swarming over the dragon carcass like vultures, they quickly whittled away scales and hide and stripped off morsels of flesh. Gilbert found the desperation of the ritual repugnant. But he noticed Sir Bowen was actually aghast and ran to stop them.

“No! Are you mad? You mustn’t! It’s vile!” Bowen warned.

“You’re wrong, Knight.” An elderly man took a bite out of a severed slice of raw meat. The thick dragon blood dribbled down his chin. “It’s good.”

Bowen shook his head in disgust. “Nothing good comes from a dragon.”

Clattering hooves interrupted Bowen’s admonishments. An effete lord in a ridiculous feathered hat rode up on a gaily bedecked horse, flanked by three burly men-at-arms. He shouted at the peasants in shrill contempt, “No gorging until those fires are out, you laggards!” He turned to the brutish minions beside him. “Beat them back to the fields!”

“Yes, Lord Felton.” The man grinned and he and his fellow ruffians descended on the hungry peasants, chasing them off the carcass with whips and sword flats. Other peasants had already rushed down from the village on the hill to fight the fire.

Felton jabbed an imperious, bejeweled finger toward the smoky field. “If King Einon’s wheat burns, you will too.”

The three bullyboys beat the peasants off toward the fire. Bowen approached the haughty lord.

“Don’t let them eat that meat,” he insisted tensely. “It’s foul.”

“Appropriate for their prosaic palates.” Felton smirked at the knight’s concern. “They’re peasants, knight, not gourmets.”

“They can ill afford to be, lord,” Gilbert offered humbly, idly picking up his scrolls. “These are hard times.”

“For some.” Felton yawned. He turned his horse to go.

“For me.” Bowen caught the reins.

“Oh, not for you, Knight.” Felton smiled. “Not with your skill!”

“Indeed, milord. Sir Bowen’s skill is passing rare!” Gilbert exuberantly agreed. Bowen glared at the priest, seemingly unpleased with this trumpeting of his talent. Felton still smiled.

“Sir Bowen, eh? Thank you, priest. I’ll put in a good word for you with the king, Sir Bowen. You’ve done well. Our gratitude. Mine and King Einon’s.”

Again, Felton turned his horse to leave. Again, Bowen restrained him.

“Keep the good words and the gratitude,” said Bowen. “I’ll take gold. Yours or the king’s.”

Felton looked at Bowen’s hand on the reins and cocked an eyebrow. He was still smiling. Unpleasantly.

“Gold, Knight?”

“We struck a bargain. One dragon put down, one pouch of gold.”

It suddenly seemed to Gilbert that the sword within the circle on the knight’s surcoat was more faded than he had first noticed. The mention of this mercenary motive dismayed him. Chivalry was gilded with glories; not gold. Unable to restrain his shocked disappointment, he blurted out, “Your honor has a price, Knight?”

“It has expenses!” Bowen snapped hotly at the pouting priest. “Honor cannot fill my belly. Or shoe my horse. Or keep my sword edge sharp or my armor shiny.” He wheeled back to Felton. “I ask no more than any man. A fair price for a fair skill.”

“The priest is right.” Felton’s thin lips curled from a sneering smile to a smiling sneer. He jerked the reins from Bowen’s grasp. “It is your duty to protect Einon’s vassals as a knight of this realm!”

“Not of this realm! I bend no knee to Einon.”

“Ah! Merely another landless vagabond cluttering up the countryside.” Felton sniffed disdainfully. The smile was gone. Only the sneer was left. “Then he gone before I arrest you for . . . for . . .”

For what? Gilbert waited impatiently, curious. Bowen had done nothing. Felton’s rings sparkled in the sunlight as he jabbed a finger at the dead dragon.

“. . . For poaching the king’s wildlife!” Felton’s smile returned. He was pleased with his inspiration. Gilbert was outraged. He stepped forward to protest, but Bowen’s firm hand smacked his chest, slamming him back. The priest watched the knight watch the lord. A tight smile played on Bowen’s lips, as though he were biting his lip to keep from laughing at the ludicrousness of Felton’s trumped-up charge. He fingered the hilt of his sword and Gilbert knew the knight was debating whether to cut this popinjay down to size. But Felton’s thugs-at-arms, through with pummeling peasants, rode up to give their master’s threats weight. Bowen did laugh then and, bowing to Felton, turned and strode to his horse, which was grazing nearby.

“I may yet have a word about you with the king, Sir Bowen,” Felton called after the knight; his tone conveyed the fact that it would no longer be a good word. “You see, I’ve not forgotten your name.”

“I commend your excellent memory. Lord Felton.” Bowen grinned, adding cryptically, “I wonder if Einon’s is as good as yours.”

Gilbert was suddenly startled from the drama unfolding before his eyes by a rustling jolt in the wheat behind him. It was the wayward Merlin, nuzzling the back of his neck. He gathered the mule’s reins and approached Bowen, who was mounting up.

“Forgive me, Sir Knight, for questioning your motives,” he apologized. “Times are topsy-turvy and the world is not as it once was.”

“You noticed?” Bowen’s wry grin seemed to offer pardon for any affront.

“You saved my life,” Gilbert replied sincerely, and dug into one of his saddlebags. “If I could share some of the charity others have shared with me . . .”

He pulled two coins out from between a sheaf of manuscripts and held them out in his open palm. Gratitude in his eyes, Bowen looked at the proffered coins, then at the priest. He leaned over in the saddle, but did not take the coins. Instead, he folded Gilbert’s fingers around them and gently pushed the monk’s hand away.

“I’ve not sunk so low, friar, as to take money from the church.”

Gilbert found himself staring again at the emblem of the sword within the circle. It was not quite as faded as he had thought a few moments earlier. He knew he could not let the knight go. He must talk with him more. There were few enough dreamers like himself. How did such a young man come to embrace such an old ideal?

“No dishonor meant, sir. I’ve some meal and mutton and a fair culinary flair. Please join me in my evening repast.”

“Come evening, I shall be far from here, priest.”

“So shall I. For I am on a pilgrimage!” Gilbert, leading Merlin, trotted alongside Bowen, who spurred his horse and headed up the ridge toward the main road. Gilbert’s belt was coming undone again and it was all he could do not to trip on the dragging hem of his cassock. “Might we travel together?”

“Unless Einon’s taxed it, the road’s still free”—Bowen addressed this last to Felton as he passed by the lord—“and a man may travel which way he chooses.”

His horse broke into a canter and topped the ridge crest. Clambering onto Merlin’s back, Gilbert urged him forward with a kick in the haunches. Passing Felton, he nodded with cool deference. His brows arched in bemused pensiveness, the lord bestowed upon him an indifferent flick of his glittery fingers while he watched Bowen disappear over the hill.

Seven

REDBEARD’S RELEASE

“I am a disobedient child.”

“A road tax. Your Majesty!”

Felton had forgotten the knight’s name after all. But he had remembered something much more important. Encumbered by his hunting gear and the jostling of Brok and his fellow ruffians, Felton struggled to keep pace with the king’s long strides as Einon led the hunting party from the shadows of the portico into the courtyard. It buzzed with workmen and servants. Masons and carpenters crawled about the warren of scaffolding erected against the buildings and walls, hauling beams, angling braces, fitting stones. Einon’s prediction had been right. His castle was greater than the Roman one. And it was not even completed yet.

The coterie of knights followed the king through the hubbub and debris to where the grooms awaited with the horses and the falconry masters attended to hooded birds of prey on perching racks.

Felton hated these bloodletting frolics of the king. A lot of sweaty stalking, squatting on an uncomfortable saddle all day under a broiling sun, reeling from the stench of horse piss, dead animals, and unwashed knights. It all seemed so senseless and silly. After all, what were servants for, if not to go out and provide game for their masters’ tables? Felton bemoaned the rigid customs and politics that necessitated his indulging in activities that were beneath him. He also bemoaned the fact that he wasn’t any good at them. He rarely, if ever, came back with any kill across his horse’s flanks.

Once he and a servant thumped an arrow into a deer corpse and hid the thing in the woods the night before the hunt. The next day, Felton made a big show of spying a deer concealed in the brush and shooting it. Unfortunately, his masquerade was exposed when he dragged several of his fellows over to the bushes to envy his kill. There they discovered only half a carcass—some scavenger had eaten the other half sometime during the night—and the arrow he had actually shot was still prominently vibrating in the nearby tree it had struck. At the feast that night much was made of “Felton’s magic arrow” that could not only turn itself into two arrows but a cleaver as well and tear half a carcass away.

“Keep that fancy feather out of my face, fop.” Brok swiped at the feather in Felton’s hat and tried to muscle past him to usurp his place at the king’s ear, Felton muscled back as best he could and promptly tripped over his bow. Brok smirked as he slipped by him. Felton cocked an imperious eyebrow at the clod and turned to the king, who had mounted his horse.

Einon had finally grown into his crown, which tightly ringed his ashen-yellow hair. His wispy beard was of the same pale shade, almost transparent against his womanish-white skin. He had cultivated the beard in an attempt to look older than his nineteen years, but it only made him look more boyish. But a very big boy nonetheless. He had grown tall and tough. Eyes sharp. Mouth cruel. He was armed with sword, dagger, bow, and quiver.

Apparently oblivious to his knights’ petty jostlings for position, Einon chewed the insides of his cheeks as he scanned the ongoing construction of his castle. The fingers of his right hand idly stroked up and down his chest, as was his habit in moments of distraction. There was a jagged scar on the back of the hand, an unflattering memento of his youthful victory over the rebels.

Felton watched the royal hand slide back and forth over the royal coat of arms and wondered if the king had even heard his suggestion.

The king had.

“A road tax?” Einon weighed the proposal as he pulled on his hunting gloves. Slipping under Brok’s arm, Felton squeezed forward to fan the flames of his idea.

“They use it. Let them pay for the privilege.” Felton gestured expansively and, once more, got caught up in his bow. Untangling himself, he indignantly flung it to a nearby servant and finished his thought. “And those that can’t, can work it off!”

All waited for Einon’s response. It came in a sly smile. He leaned over and, removing Felton’s hat, playfully thumped a finger on Felton’s skull.

“Ingenious, Lord Felton!”

Felton was pleased that the king seemed to like his idea, and his new hat as well. Einon admired the feather, stroking it between the tips of his fingers. Felton was particularly proud of the feather—it was peacock—his own suggestion. The king smiled and plopped the hat back on Felton’s head, arranging it at a careful angle. “You shouldn’t hide such a good brain under such a bad hat.”

Brok and the others chortled. Felton made a gracious bow and a mental note to get a new milliner. As he struggled out of the bow Brok leaned in front of him and took a falcon from the rack, sweeping it in front of the noble’s face. The bird screeched and flapped its wings. Felton cringed.

“He likes to bring down peacocks.” Brok smirked again. Felton huffed and haughtily clambered into his saddle—or rather tried to. The weight of his equipment hampered his swing in the stirrup.

“Fly, peacock, fly!” Brok grabbed him by the seat of his pants and roughly shoved him astride. The others laughed as Felton clumsily clutched his horse’s neck to keep his balance and, once more, lurched into Brok’s falcon. The bird screeched again and snipped at the feather in Felton’s hat. Felton recoiled with a screech of his own, eliciting more laughter from Brok and the others. Only Einon did not laugh.

“Lord Brok.” The king silenced the revelry with calm command. “Some are good at hunting men. Some are good at hunting
money.
Both have value to me.”

Felton straightened his hat and himself in the saddle, savoring a smirk of his own at Brok. It was, however, a short-lived triumph. Einon snatched Felton’s bow from the servant and tossed it to the startled lord.

“So don’t forget your bow, Felton, You might cross paths with a ferocious coinpurse.” Einon joined the others’ laughter this time. Even Felton forced a giddy giggle out of himself to prove he could take a jest.

“To the hunt!” Einon spurred his horse out the gate. His minions echoed the shout and followed him down the road. Felton juggled his bow and his reins and reluctantly whirled his horse after them. God, how he hated this sport.

Kara adjusted the hood of her tattered cape and, picking up her water bucket once more, made her way through the quarry. In four brief years Einon had carved an enormous cavity into the earth. His castle had required much stone and had left the place an overworked, withered skeleton. Not unlike the half-starved, ragged peasants who toiled in the sun under the bored gaze of their guards.