The D'Karon Apprentice (41 page)

She’d been watching one man in particular
squirm for the better part of an hour. Whenever her tongue flicked
out, either to taste at the air or lazily lick her lips, the man
practically leaped out of his skin. Thus, when the sun was briefly
blotted out by a shadow despite the cloudless sky, her chosen
target reacted with a startled cringe. A few moments later Garr
shook the courtyard with a graceful but forceful landing, producing
an audible yelp from the already tense soldiers. His stomach was
subtly bloated, and his face had the contented ease of a carnivore
after a heavy meal. Clutched in his teeth were the bodies of two
creatures Myn had never seen before. He dropped them and sat on his
haunches, eyes on Myn.

The female looked up at him reproachfully,
then down at the prey he’d dropped. They looked to be birds, but
far larger than anything Myn had seen in the north. Upright they
might have stood as tall as a man, or taller. The heads and long
necks had a sparsely feathered, almost half-plucked look to them,
revealing coarse gray skin. Eyes larger than seemed necessary faced
forward, and a cruelly hooked and serrated beak hung slightly open
beneath them. Their bodies were plump and covered with sandy-yellow
feathers ending in gray-brown ruffles at the tips of both the wings
and the tail. Myn couldn’t imagine such a beast ever soaring
through the air, as the wings were pitiful in comparison to the
body, but the legs more than made up for them by being absurdly
muscular at the thigh and long and bony at the shin and talons.

Myn looked back to Garr, who licked a few
stray feathers from his lips and stared down at her. He stood again
and took two steps closer, straddling the dropped prey with his
forelegs before plopping onto his haunches again. Now looking far
more directly down at her, he released a throaty rumble that shook
the ground with its intensity and put the soldiers even more on
edge. She turned her head aside, ignoring Garr. He dropped his head
low, swinging it between his legs and nipping one of the birds to
drag it forward. He nudged it just under her chin, then raised his
head up again. She looked up to him, sniffed at the bird, then
looked away again. Her stomach betrayed its emptiness with a gurgle
and growl, but she didn’t so much as give the offered gift a
nibble. He nudged the second bird forward to join the first, but
she continued to snub it. Then she heard something strange, a
smooth clack of stone on stone.

This, if only for its novelty, piqued her
interest enough to look to the source of the sound. Lying beside
the meal, glistening in the sun, was a perfectly smooth, rounded
stone about the size of a large loaf of bread. Dust had stuck to it
where it had bounced across the ground, suggesting it had been wet.
Likely he’d been carrying it in his mouth, tucked under his tongue.
A stone so smooth almost certainly hadn’t been lying about among
the dunes or in the dry plains surrounding the stronghold. It
looked like a river stone. Garr must have traveled quite far in the
hour or two he’d been gone to reach a river and return. She gazed
intently at the stone, admiring it. The smooth gleam of its
polished surface enhanced layers of different-colored stone. Fat
lines of cream and yellow marbled the stone, interspersed with
thinner ones of white, rose, and green. Just off center glinted a
bright, shimmering stripe that caught the light with a metallic
gleam. Though there was barely enough of it to notice via an
instinct she’d seldom had use for, Myn could tell it was gold.

Garr interrupted her admiration of the stone
with a soft, gentle rumble in his throat. She looked up to see him
with an almost expectant look on his face, and behind it the
tiniest glimmer of pride. She looked down again, taking in the
beauty of the stone. And it was
that
which struck her most
about the gift. Along the riverbed where he’d found the rock there
were probably thousands of similar ones. Some would have been
larger. Plenty would have had more gold, or been smoother, or been
all one color or another. But Myn wondered if any other stone in
the whole of the river would have been quite as pretty as the one
he’d fetched and dropped before her. She looked again, feeling an
odd flutter in her chest, but hardened her resolve and turned
away.

Myn heard him stand again and release a
quiet, breathy hiss. She noticed motion out of the corner of her
eye and realized he was moving closer, reaching toward the stone.
Without thinking, she thumped her paw over it and raked it into the
shade of the stable before he could take it back. He backed away
and dropped down comfortably to the ground. When she ventured a
subtle glance in his direction again, his chest was puffed out in
obvious pride and his lips were curved ever so slightly, giving him
what on a more expressive creature would have been a wide
smile.

She tipped her head, feeling a second flutter
in her chest. It was a curious thing. A large part of her saw Garr
and felt a flush of anger. The male was perpetually at odds with
her, an obvious rival. In all of her life there had only
ever
been friends and rivals. Friends were rare, and when
they were lost, they hurt terribly. She didn’t want any more
friends. All she wanted was to keep the ones she had, and for them
to be safe. As for rivals, they were no problem. She knew how to
deal with them, and dealt with them quickly and easily. But Garr
seemed to want to be both. He wanted to show he was as strong as
her, and he clashed with her each time his rider’s will clashed
with hers or Myranda’s. And yet, he fed her. He worked with her to
hunt, taught her better ways to stalk and fly. And he brought her
this stone. Perhaps the rest he had done because it was Grustim’s
will that he do so, but the stone could only have been his own
choice.

The young dragon huffed a breath in
irritation and furrowed her brow. It was frustrating to have
someone dance across what had been a simple line until now. She
wished he would just make up his mind. Choose one or the other.
Friend or foe. Then another thought flitted to the front of her
mind, bringing with it another flutter in her chest so strong it
almost burned. She shuffled backward into the shade of the stable
and looked to where the stone had landed. As she scraped her claw
across its smooth surface she supposed that, just maybe, he
had
made up his mind. And this was his way of showing
it.

Her revelation was cut short when she heard
sudden motion followed by a savage and unmistakable roar of anger
erupt from Garr’s throat. She snapped her head toward the courtyard
and snaked it out to find Garr on his feet. His wings were unfurled
and spread, his tail raised and sweeping. He faced away, his head
angled at the entryway of the keep, but from the second thundering
roar that issued forth, she didn’t need to see his face to know his
teeth were bared and his fiery breath was curling between them.

Another roar shook the courtyard. The
intensity and fury behind it was almost contagious. Myn found her
blood racing and her mind aflame. She looked to the entryway,
finally spotting the source of his outrage. Grustim had been led
out from within, hands tied. On either side was a soldier with a
very sensible look of abject terror on his face. Behind them was
Commander Brustuum. Unlike his men, he was wholly unconcerned. The
commander began to bark orders in a language Myn hadn’t yet learned
to understand. Every syllable seemed to shake Garr with greater
anger, and Myn found any doubt as to which side the male dragon was
on fading. In this moment, Garr wanted nothing more than to roast
every last soldier in the courtyard, and Myn had felt much the same
since they took Myranda and Deacon away. At least for the moment,
Garr and Myn were of one mind.

When Grustim spoke, evidently in response to
something demanded by Brustuum, he spoke in the human language Myn
did
understand.

“Garr,” he said. “The commander, who holds
both the Alliance nobles and now myself as his prisoners, demands
that you destroy the Alliance dragon and, from this point forward,
obey only his commands.”

Myn tensed her muscles and readied her claws
in preparation for a clash she’d moments before convinced herself
would never come. Garr did not move to attack. He didn’t even shift
his penetrating gaze away from Brustuum.

“We are both duty-bound to offer aid to the
Alliance nobles. To do as he orders, you must abandon your duty and
relinquish your loyalty.”

The next words to come from Grustim were not
words at all. At least, not in the way that humans knew them.
Dragons had their own language, one that they seldom had notion to
use thanks to the simple fact that most useful communication could
come from a simple motion or gesture. But when the need arose, the
draconic language could be spoken with all of the same clarity and
specificity of any human language. Even then it was as much about
motion and tone as it was about the sounds made. Grustim had
delivered brief orders in a stunted form of this language
throughout the journey, but this message he spoke like it was his
native tongue.

He lowered his head, shifted his weight, and
croaked an almost silent grinding in his throat. It was short,
simple, and to the point. “In this choice, you are your own.”

Myn did not understand why Grustim had spoken
in such a way that she could understand, nor what the underlying
meaning of his draconic phrasing might have been, but the very
instant Garr heard the final command, he acted. Turning sharply to
face Myn, and thus put his back to Grustim, he glared at her. She
stood, not certain if he would obey the wishes of the commander,
but not yet willing to trust that he wouldn’t. There was scarcely
room enough for her to crouch within the stable, so when she stood,
she tore through its lightly built roof like paper. A pair of
startled falcons burst from within, soaring off into the sky, and
Myn stood ready to react to whatever came next.

Now it was Garr’s turn to speak in the dragon
tongue. Like Grustim’s, it was a short, simple command.

“Down.”

Both Myn and Grustim instantly obeyed. In
Myn’s case it took her back below the level of the wrecked walls of
the stable. In Grustim’s case it dropped him to the ground between
his escorts. The male dragon belched a rush of flame at the stable.
It easily ignited the desert-dried wood. The attack was far too
high to strike Myn directly, certainly by design, and the heat of
simple burning wood was of little concern to Myn as she remained
crouched inside.

As he was incinerating the top half of the
stable, Garr swept his tail at waist level. The scything motion
struck both soldiers squarely in the chest, knocking them
forcefully against the wall of the keep. The commander managed to
stumble back far enough to avoid the strike, and bellowed an order
to his men. Though Myn didn’t understand the words, she knew he was
ordering them to attack. A dozen soldiers, every last one
available, readied their weapons. The boldest of them rushed at
Garr, heaving pikes, firing arrows, and swinging swords. They may
as well have been gnats. Swords struck his armored hide and bounced
with barely a notch to show for it. Pikes splintered or fell
harmlessly away after meeting their targets. Only the arrows did
any good at all, all sticking tight into his scales and two piecing
through.

Garr didn’t pay any mind to the attackers. He
turned and stalked forward, straddling the still-grounded Grustim
and focusing on the entryway of the keep. The commander had dragged
himself inside. The dragon thumped his head against the arch of the
doorway, stout horns turning the stone to powder. Myn observed that
the strike showed considerably more strength than he’d been
displaying when they’d tested one another during Myranda’s
unauthorized healing. He swiped his tail blindly behind him,
bashing a few of the swordsmen.

When the rest retreated and swapped melee
weapons for ranged, Myn decided she’d waited long enough. She’d
been told to remain inside the stable, but there was no longer any
stable to remain in. She charged out and placed herself between the
soldiers and Garr. The men must have assumed the blast of flame had
been enough to end her, as her sudden appearance and earsplitting
roar startled them even more than Garr’s sudden turn. Desperate to
put at least a moderately safe distance between themselves and Myn,
the men scattered and retreated. Once they were on the move and
slipping quickly toward panic, Myn found it simple enough to keep
them from becoming a threat again. It would have been easy to
trample them, roast them, or otherwise dispatch the humans, but Myn
knew that Myranda would never forgive her for taking the life of a
human she didn’t have to, and senseless death didn’t appeal to her.
Keeping them on the run was more than enough, and stoking their
terror into a frenzy was deeply satisfying in light of their
behavior.

#

“Listen, you will stop talking or I will
personally gag you,” growled the Tresson soldier guarding Deacon’s
cell.

The flickering light from a dim oil lamp
caused the shadows of the bars to dance across Deacon’s face as he
listened to the impatient order of his keeper. A floor removed from
the surface, the air was a good deal cooler here, but that did
little to improve the mood of the guard.

“Naturally I apologize if I’ve overstepped my
bounds, but a brief incarceration while our respective
representatives come to an agreement is no reason to curtail the
diplomatic exchange that was to be a very valuable result of this
mission.”

“You are a
prisoner
in
enemy
territory.
You ceased to be a diplomat the very moment your
people attacked ours!”

“But we need not be enemies. The woman who
attacked you is a mutual adversary. Surely your king and his
advisers have policies in place for dealing with external threats
common to both the north and—”