Dragon's Fire (16 page)

The wildboar charged toward him, its good eye blazing balefully.

Pellar dodged to the left just in time, grabbing at his knife as he did. The knife wouldn’t dislodge, but that was fine with him: He was hoping to drive it deeper. With a sudden squeal, the wildboar’s legs splayed out from under it and it fell to the ground.

Jaythen rushed up. “Did you kill it?”

Pellar shook his head. Jaythen threw him a puzzled look, which cleared up as he saw that the beast was still breathing.

“You cut its spine,” Jaythen surmised, drawing his own blade and deftly delivering the mercy blow. The wildboar gave one last surprised sigh and collapsed.

Pellar exhaled heavily, carefully wiped his blade, returned it to his boot, pulled out his slate, and wrote, “Hide mine.”

Jaythen snorted when he read the note. “It’s yours,” he declared. He gestured at their kill and said with a broad grin, “There’s a sevenday’s eating here.”

Pellar nodded, smiling in return. Wildboar made great eating.

With a laugh, Jaythen patted him on the shoulder and declared, “
Now
you’re one of us.”

Arella took charge of the carcass as soon as Pellar and Jaythen brought it in. Pellar was surprised to see how deft she was with a knife, even more so when she presented him with a perfectly cut hide. She also took great pains to get as much blood on Pellar as herself, dragging him off to the nearby bathing pool as soon as she’d set the meat to smoking.

Pellar played and cavorted with her but refused to be drawn into anything more serious, pointing to his various injuries. Arella’s angry frown was immediately replaced by a tender look and she insisted on bandaging him when they were done with their ablutions and had returned to the main cave of what Pellar had started to think of as the wherhold.

“So when are you going to arrange these trades?” Aleesa demanded at dinner that evening. Her abrupt manner was as close to praise as he’d ever heard from her.

Pellar held up a hand politely, finished chewing his food, fished out his slate, and wrote, “Eggs.”

“You know I can’t read,” Aleesa told him curtly, sliding the slate toward Arella. Pellar grabbed her hand, caught her eyes, and shook his head slightly. Gently he pulled the slate back and carefully drew three small ovals piled on top of each other. He slid the slate back to Aleesa and gave her a challenging look.

“Eggs?” Aleesa said, glancing at the drawing. Then she glanced up at the letters above. “That says eggs?”

Pellar nodded. Aleesa glanced down at the writing once more, her gaze intent on absorbing and remembering every aspect of the letters before her.

After a moment, Pellar touched her hand and gestured to get the slate back. He carefully rubbed out the letter “s” and two of the three ovals and slid the slate back to Aleesa.

“Egg?” Aleesa guessed. When Pellar nodded, she squinted at the slate, examining it carefully. “That little squiggle at the end, that makes the ‘sss’ sound?”

Pellar nodded, smiling encouragingly.

“That’s the letter ‘s,’ Mother,” Arella told her.

Pellar nodded and gestured for the slate again. Aleesa released it with just a hint of reluctance. Pellar acknowledged her expression and carefully erased the letters and drawing. He wrote the letter “s” and handed the slate back to her, this time handing her the chalk as well.

“You want me to write the letter?” Aleesa asked. Pellar nodded. Aleesa frowned, then bent over the slate, carefully sliding the chalk on the slate. She muttered to herself as she drew and finally looked up, holding the slate toward Pellar with a sour look.

“Mine doesn’t look as good as yours,” Aleesa said.

Pellar held up one finger.

“You’re saying that it’s my first?”

Pellar nodded.

Aleesa pursed her lips, but Pellar’s face burst into a smile as he danced his finger up and down in front of her and cocked his head invitingly. He held up two fingers, then three, four, and finally five.

“You want me to try five more times?”

Pellar nodded.

Aleesa’s lips thinned rebelliously, and Arella smiled at her and mimicked, “‘Five times to learn, Arella.’”

Aleesa frowned and stuck her tongue out at her daughter playfully. She turned back to Pellar, bit back some comment, and carefully drew four more copies of the letter.

When she was finished, Pellar examined her handiwork carefully and then nodded emphatically, not failing to note the slight sigh of relief that Aleesa tried to keep hidden from him.

And so began Aleesa’s education.

In the days that followed, though both she and Pellar found themselves exasperated by their mutual difficulty in communicating—his in speaking and hers in reading—neither one would permit it to sour or break their bargain.

“‘I go soon,’” Aleesa repeated nearly ten sevendays later. She shook her head at Pellar. “Shouldn’t it be: I’ll be going soon?”

Pellar nodded in agreement but pointed at the slate.

“Oh, I see,” Aleesa said. “The slate’s too small.”

“Be sure not to use that drum of yours until you’re far away,” Jaythen warned.

“And be prepared to run—you’re likely to draw every one of the Shunned upon you,” Aleesa added.

Pellar nodded understandingly. They had discussed his plans in detail over the past several sevendays. Jaythen had been the first to point out that if in the watch-wher eggs they had something to trade, they also had something for the Shunned to steal.

“I’m convinced they get a lot of their money from trading in fire-lizards’ eggs,” he had said.

“Hunting birds,” Pellar had written in response, opening himself to a long line of questioning from Aleesa, Jaythen, and Arella in which he explained his encounter with Halla, Tenim, and Tenim’s hawk. Arella had drawn him out, and Pellar had found himself explaining about the flowers and the tragedy at Camp Natalon. Tears welled in his eyes as he recounted how he’d found the small snow-covered mounds.

“Working underground!” Jaythen exclaimed when Pellar explained the expected watch-wher’s role.

Aleesa took on the abstracted look that Pellar had come to recognize meant she was communicating with her watch-wher. “Aleesk says that watch-whers like the dark and would enjoy it,” she reported a moment later.

“Dask did,” Pellar wrote in response.

“Very well,” Aleesa said. “You may tell this Zist of yours that we’ll trade. A winter’s worth of coal for a chance at an egg.”

“Chance?” Pellar wrote back.

“Whoever wants it has to get it from Aleesk,” Aleesa replied with an evil grin. “I’ll let her have the final say.”

“Fair enough,” Pellar had written in reply.

“When will you go?”

“Tomorrow,” Pellar wrote back.

“Tomorrow it is, then,” Aleesa agreed. Beside her, Arella gave a sob and raced out of the main cavern. Aleesa followed her daughter’s anguished departure with her eyes and looked back to Pellar. “She is hoping that when you come back, you’ll stay.”

Pellar nodded.

“And?”

Pellar shook his head sadly.

“It’s a hard life with the watch-whers,” Aleesa said with a sigh. Her eyes twinkled as she added, “It has its compensations, like mating flights, but I won’t deny it’s hard.”

She caught his gaze and held it with her own.

“You could make it better, though,” she told him.

Pellar’s mouth quivered, but finally, he shook his head, wiped his slate clean, and wrote on it, “Shunned.”

Aleesa read it and nodded slowly. “You don’t like putting flowers on graves.”

Pellar nodded.

“You’re a good lad, Harper Pellar,” Aleesa said. “I’ll not force you, but remember this—you’ve a home here if you want.”

Pellar grabbed her hand and squeezed it in thanks, rose, and bowed slightly, then sprinted off after Arella.

He found her outside of the main compound, up near a stand of trees.

“I’m not staying,” Arella told him as he approached. He arched an eyebrow at her. Whether she saw it in the dark or guessed at it didn’t matter. She was crouched on the ground, cradling her knees with her arms, her chin rested on one knee. “I’ll be here when you get back, but I’m not staying.”

Pellar sat down beside her. She sidled up next to him and laid her head on his shoulder.

“One of those coming for an egg will want help, I’m sure,” she said. “I’ll go with him. There’s more than watch-whers, worry, and empty bellies in this world, and I
want
it.”

Arella pulled away from him and stood up. Pellar stood up beside her. She looked at him half-defiant, half-hopeful. He shook his head slowly—no, he did not love her.

“I knew that,” Arella said. But Pellar could hear the lie in her voice.

He tugged at her, gesturing toward the cave. Arella followed reluctantly. Her resistance grew when he turned toward their sleeping quarters, but he waved aside her objections with a hand and begged her with his eyes to wait. Suspiciously, Arella followed him.

From under his sleeping furs, he pulled out a small, perfect drum and presented it to her solemnly.

“For me?” Arella asked, carefully turning the drum over in her hands.

Pellar nodded and wrote quickly. “‘Arella. Emergency.’ I come.”

He had taught her how to drum her name and the emergency signal several sevendays before.

“If I need you, I can call for you?” Arella asked, her eyes gleaming again.

Pellar nodded firmly.

Arella smiled and drew him toward her for a kiss. Not the kiss of lovers, but the kiss of friends who once had been.

Pellar took the most difficult route out of Aleesa’s wherhold: He went straight over the mountains. It took him a full day to get to the far side. He pressed on at first light the next morning and was glad to find himself within sight of Keogh, a minor hold of Crom, before the sun set that evening. He found a good camp but did not wait to set up before unlimbering his drum, checking the bindings of the wildboar hide, and rolling out the quick beat of “Attention.”

A huge grin split his face as he heard no less than three drums return the “Ready” signal.

His grin slipped a little as he sought to compose his message. He finally settled on: “For Zist. Aleesa will trade.”

He would send Chitter on with a longer explanation.

As the drums pounded back their acknowledgment, Pellar spread out his sleeping roll and gestured for Chitter. His note to Master Zist was terse but explained the most of the details.

Chitter waited patiently for Pellar to roll the small piece of paper and tie it onto his harness, but Pellar could tell that the fire-lizard was increasingly eager at the thought of the tidbits he’d find at Master Zist’s table—just as Pellar had hoped.

With a final chirp, the fire-lizard bade Pellar farewell, leaped into the air, and blinked
between
before he was more than head high above Pellar.

Greedy guts,
Pellar thought with a grin as he pulled off his boots and socks and settled in for a well-earned rest.

Chitter was back the next morning with a small breadroll, a note from Zist, and a belly that had clearly been stuffed to the gills.

Pellar merely smiled and shook his head; he intended to keep Chitter working for his food. The fire-lizard caught his mood and did a quick twirl in the air, standing almost on his tail, before returning to Pellar’s shoulder with a satisfied chirp.

At Keogh, Pellar earned his meal and a place to sleep with his pipes and his slowly told tales of watch-whers and watch-wher eggs. He left before first light, certain that on his return he would not only get another night’s food and board, but also at least two holders committed to trade for the privilege of a watch-wher egg.

But Keogh wasn’t his primary goal. He had in mind, instead, the herders he’d met near Campbell’s Field, and some of the wiser traders he’d met along the way.

The herders’ need for watch-whers was obvious, and Pellar felt a small twinge of satisfaction at the notion of arranging things so that D’gan would have no choice but to accept the creatures—he couldn’t argue that they were useless if they were set to protect the very herdbeasts his dragons dined on.

He traveled fast, prepared to get rides where he could and ready to steal them where he couldn’t. Aleesa had told him that Aleesk had already clutched and that it would be only four sevendays before the watch-wher eggs hatched. He planned to be back at least a sevenday beforehand, ready to acknowledge those with whom he’d set up trades and fight off those with whom he hadn’t.