Dragonlinks (17 page)

They kept guard all night, sleeping by turns, but although the mailshirt continued to flare up to a faint glow from time to time, nothing larger than mosquitoes attacked them. The mosquitoes put up a spirited attack, however, and even those who were not on guard did not sleep at all well. With the dawn they ate their breakfast of wild nuts, dried raisins and grainbread.

‘The village is about five hours' ride from here,' Jelindel said as she studied the map yet again.

‘I'm for staying there a few days,' said Zimak. ‘I was damn near eaten alive by mosquitoes last night. Tch, look at this now, ants in the dried meat.'

‘It's not the season for mosquitoes,' Daretor commented. ‘I've spent a lot of time cutting wood in the mountains, and this is not the time of year for mosquitoes to bite.'

‘Wonderful, I'll scribe them up a calendar,' said Jelindel sleepily as she scratched at the swellings on her arm.

A hill thrush suddenly swooped, snatching a crust of bread out of Daretor's fingers.

‘Damn!' he snapped, and the other two laughed. Jelindel had been scratching in the dust with a twig. She picked up something and scraped at it with the blade of her knife. Pushing back the sheepskin's sleeve, she compared what was in her fingers to the silvery links of the metal fabric.

‘What do you have there?' asked Daretor.

‘It seems to be a link of mail dropped by someone in times past. It's about one til in diameter, and fits within the links of this mailshirt quite neatly.'

‘I noticed that the mailshirt's links were a bit larger than is usual,' said Daretor. ‘Smaller links give greater density of metal and so more protection. Larger links mean that the mailshirt is completed more quickly, however. This one has larger links, but many are doubled at key places for extra protection.'

Jelindel undid the coat's lacings and began counting the links across the middle of the mailshirt, and lengthways. She did likewise with the sleeves, then scratched some figures in the dust.

‘One hundred and twenty links around by seventy long, all doubled, makes nearly seventeen thousand links. The two arms are fifty links around and seventy long, that's about seven thousand. As well, the shoulders and neck are doubled doubles, and there is the hem … perhaps another six thousand links. I estimate that thirty thousand links make up this mailshirt,' she concluded. ‘The pattern is unflawed, except for one shoulder where five links of the doubled doubles are missing.'

‘Do you feel anything at all while wearing it?' asked Zimak, as he had already done dozens of times over. ‘Any magical aura or somesuch?'

‘Yes, but just a very slight … well, it's hard to describe. The feeling is very distinctive, but unlike any other. It's a prickle and shiver all in one, perhaps.'

‘I've felt nothing, and neither has Daretor.'

‘Are you sure you have felt nothing, Daretor?' Jelindel asked.

‘If every link robbed a warrior of his abilities, then many warriors must have suffered this past thousand years,' growled Daretor, ignoring the question. ‘Innocent warriors robbed of their honestly gained skills. That thing is an abomination.'

‘It may have other properties,' reasoned Jelindel. ‘It could be a force for good. You might be jumping to the wrong conclusions –'

‘No! It's an affront to the honour of every warrior that ever lived. Only the most base of cowards would even think about wearing a link lost by some god and using its powers. It's sacrilegious.'

Jelindel felt the tension in the air and nervously tried to defuse it. ‘A knight who dies by a peasant's scythe dies
in dishonour, but the scythe can still be used to harvest wheat.'

This caught Daretor off-guard. He ran his fingers through his hair, then sat forward with his hands clasped and his shoulders hunched.

‘Tell me then, what else can it do?' he asked.

‘I do not know; I merely suggested that other uses might be possible.'

They ate and talked for a few more minutes. A hill thrush swooped on Zimak and pecked him hard on the crown of his head. He shouted out in surprise and flung a handful of gravel after the bird. Daretor watched with interest rather than mirth.

‘The bird that stole my crust before has just been sitting on a rock ever since, looking at us,' Daretor point -ed out as Zimak sat rubbing his head. ‘It has not taken a single peck out of the crust. From my years as a woods-man I can also say that hill thrushes never attack people.'

‘But some other birds do,' said Jelindel. ‘There were piebalds at home in the, ah, monastery garden. They were very aggressive at nesting time.'

‘Piebalds, weetels and chang-hoos all attack when humans or animals get too close to their nests, but never hill thrushes. Jaelin, look out!'

Jelindel ducked and threw her arms up as another hill thrush attacked. There were five birds perched on the rocks around them now, and others were circling.

‘Magic, perhaps,' said Daretor.

‘There are some enchantments that control animals,' Jelindel agreed. ‘We may be too near the place of power for some hermit mage. The mailshirt could be disturbing his magical auras. It does have a subtle presence.'

‘Time that we were going,' advised Zimak.

They saddled up the horses and strapped on their packs but as Zimak tried to mount, his stallion suddenly reared and plunged, striking out with its hooves. As the three travellers backed away, the stallion herded the mare and gelding back down the trail and out of sight. Zimak began running after them.

‘Leave them! You can't outrun horses,' Daretor shouted.

Zimak shook his fist at the empty trail, then turned and came back to the campsite.

‘Something frightened them, something that only horses could sense,' Daretor concluded.

‘Some enchantment, or a beast?' asked Zimak.

‘I know most beasts of the mountains, and I definitely know all beasts that are big enough to frighten a horse,' said Daretor. ‘I have seen no traces of them, so I can only say that an enchantment is to blame. The nearby linkrider may be a mage.'

They began walking to the next village, but their progress was slow. The trail was steep and rough, with many washaways slashing it and rockslides piled high to slow them.

Whenever they stopped to rest they were attacked by midges, horseflies, ants and birds. They did not reach the village until early evening.

Almeriy was a waystop village in the mountains. Terraced gardens on the nearby slopes provided vegetables, and alpine sheep and goats grazed wherever they could. No more than a few hundred people lived there, including two dozen archers and infantry attached to the customs
fort. There were several inns, all brightly painted and decorated with carvings.

‘Ah, to sleep under a good, solid roof again,' said Zimak. ‘It's like being back in D'loom.'

‘But you slept under a canvas awning back in D'loom,' Jelindel reminded him.

‘We need some rest from birds, ants and all else that has come to plague us today,' Zimak said, ignoring her.

‘The mailshirt glows more brightly than ever before,' said Daretor. ‘Whoever wears the link is growing more bold.'

Zimak considered for a moment. ‘Might we double back and ambush him?' he suggested.

‘Out in the wilderness he would know us for who we are,' Daretor replied. ‘In a village we would be three out of hundreds, yet we could watch the road to the village in comfort. We stay in Almeriy tonight.'

As they entered the village the dogs began barking and snarling, and an ancient parrot on a perch screeched and hurled abuse at them in several languages. They went into an inn named the Highland Dream, paid for rooms and ordered drinks. The people of the village were used to serving travellers, and most spoke Skeltian tolerably well.

‘The dogs are afeared of ye,' said the vintner.

‘I prefer cats,' Daretor replied laconically.

‘None o' them 'round these parts,' the vintner said. ‘The dogs ate 'em all.' He chuckled and waddled off to fetch their order.

‘It explains the number of rats like him,' said Zimak.

‘What is a weapon?' asked Jelindel as they drank from their mugs and waited for the food to arrive.

‘
What is a weapon
?' laughed Zimak. ‘What sort of a stupid question is that?'

‘So what
is
a weapon, then?'

‘Why, a knife, a sword, and, ah …'

‘They
are
weapons. What about a length of wood, or a rock? What about a warship: is it a weapon, or are the weapons the marines, the catapults and the bow-ram? Is the ship a weapon, or a platform of weapons?'

‘A weapon is what defeats your enemy,' Daretor suggested, frowning with concentration.

‘Well then, what of the beautiful spy who seduces a general and learns the secrets that cause a war to be lost. Is she a weapon? What about a herd of elkenharts that are driven over the crops of an enemy, causing them to be starved into submission. Is the herd a weapon, too?'

‘The herd is like a stone or a length of wood,' Zimak replied after considering more carefully. ‘They are not weapons as such, but they can be used as weapons. They require skill if they are to be used to proper effect, more skill than a sword I suppose.'

‘The links confer skills!' Daretor exclaimed. ‘Skills to wield a sword or throw a knife … or to goad a hound into attacking your enemy!'

Each of them looked from one to the other, eyes shining with the revelation.

‘Ants, birds, flies and dogs,' said Jelindel. ‘Magical training can teach the control of them, but only under certain laws. I have read that a swarm of ants or a flock of birds can be rallied because they move together by nature. Even a pack of dogs can be controlled as one, but not if their combined weight exceeds that of the mage.'

‘And once over that weight?' asked Zimak.

‘Only one animal at a time. One mage may control one elephant, one lion, one elkenhart, or even one dragon. Birds … I have not read how it applies to birds.'

‘Then the link that is making the mailshirt glow now is one that confers the control of animals,' Daretor concluded.

‘Hie! This will be easy,' said Zimak, rubbing his hands together.

The food was plain but plentiful, and the fire was welcome after a day of walking in the cold mountain air. Daretor did not mind the cold, but Jelindel and Zimak had never known anything other than the subtropical heat of D'loom and were quite unhappy about it. Daretor paid two loafers in the taproom to keep a watch on the road for anyone arriving behind them, and they left the inn to take up their positions.

When Daretor tried going outside, the village dogs went into a frenzy of barking and he quickly returned to the inn.

‘The linkrider is controlling those dogs from beyond the village,' Daretor said sullenly, swatting at a mosquito.

‘He has to sleep sometime,' said Zimak. ‘Perhaps then we can get some rest.'

‘That's when we should attack him!' said Daretor fiercely. ‘He is using stolen skills and deserves to die.'

‘Whatever, but we shall need a room for when we sleep,' Zimak suggested. ‘I'll get one.'

‘I want a separate room,' insisted Jelindel.

‘What? That's a high price to pay for vows of modesty,' snapped Zimak.

‘Both of you snore,' sneered Jelindel. ‘It's been hard enough to sleep already, out on the trail. If I can't get distance from you two I'll not sleep at all.'

‘No! There are four bedframes in each room, and besides, we're better protected if we're together.'

Jelindel stayed in the taproom when Daretor and Zimak went up to their room. The last of the drinkers finally left and the fire died down slowly. She gazed into the coals as she lay on one of the benches. She missed books, whether they were in the temple library, her father's library, or the stalls of the marketplace. Because she had initially been discouraged from studying formally, unlike her brothers she had learned to memorise whatever she read that seemed interesting or important.

She had rarely experimented with magic, even though she had read most of the major texts and quite a few of the minor ones as well.

Dour, bad-tempered old Surreanten, her father's house spellcaster, had regularly checked the rooms for traces of enchantment. Her brothers had been caned several times for charm-casting experiments, but for Jelindel the punishment would have been exile from the library.

The untutored use of magic was dangerous. The life-force of one's body was what powered the threads of unreality woven through the real world, and those threads had an enormous capacity to channel life-force. Her eldest brother once told her of a boy at the collegium who learned some words of enchantment and how to poise them, then spoke one to bind a dog in the cloisters. He had spoken it too loud and with an inflexion that made the coils far too powerful.

The dog had been crushed by the blue coils and died instantly, but the coils still gripped its body as tightly as ever. The boy had collapsed, and did not survive a single
hour. As he died the coils released the body of the dog, and although a mage tried to revive the boy as the life-force returned to glow about his body, the shock had been too great.

Without magic, they were at the mercy of all the char-mvendors and mages who might be in their path, yet nobody would be willing to teach it to any of them. Annoyance flared in Jelindel: she would try anyway. Better to die fighting than cowering.

Almost without thinking, Jelindel began the breathing exercises to enhance focus: in – count three, hold – count three, out – count three, hold – count three. After twenty cycles she stood up, crossed her hands over her collarbone and pushed out, left against right. There was a subtle, warm, charged feeling just below her ribs.

She sat down on the bench again. There was a risk of novices fainting during their early experiments. What word to invoke? she wondered. Fearfully she closed her eyes.