under-manned.
Piss poor luck, really, all in all, sitting down for lunch in front of a convenient bit of rock and it happening to have a dragon hiding behind it. Even if it wasn’t a very large one.
They were still pitching the tents when Skie’s servant Toman appeared. Reported that Skie wanted to see Marith Dragon Killer for a chat.
‘Hero’s welcome,’ said Tobias with a grin. Though you never could tell with Skie. Could just be going to bollock the boy for not killing it sooner.
Marith got up slowly. Something like fear in his eyes. Or pain, maybe.
Tobias shivered again. Funny mood, the boy was in.
Skie’s tent was beautiful old leather, well cured, unlike the smelly, greasy cloth things the men slept under, embossed with a design of looping flowers. The colours of the paint still showed in places, even some touches of gold leaf. Looted from somewhere, Marith was certain. Probably part of a lady’s hunting pavilion. Although they usually had a little jewelled flag on the top. Skie’s had a skeletal hand.
Skie himself was a small, thin man, grey and hard, his head bald. A straggly grey beard, which he’d look much better without, a scar across the bridge of his nose. Nothing exceptional, until he moved, and you saw he had lost his left arm at the elbow. Marith looked down at the ragged burns on his own left hand.
‘So.’ Skie fixed him with cold eyes. ‘The dragon killer himself. I suppose we all owe you our lives.’ He gestured to Marith to sit down opposite him outside the tent entrance. ‘Rather more than I assumed you were capable of when I first encountered you, I must admit. Out of interest, how’d you know where to stab it?’
‘I know how to kill dragons.’
‘That seems unarguable. I was asking how you knew. Not a common piece of knowledge.’
‘I’d have thought that was obvious.’
Skie made a snorting sound, possibly a laugh. ‘You’re either a very determined liar or the worst fool I have ever met, dragon killer. And watch how you speak around me, lad.’ Marith shrank for a moment under his gaze. The dark eyes stared at him, measuring him. Mocking him. The look his father used to give him. Judging. Knowing. Scornful. Don’t judge me, he thought bitterly. You’ve not exactly made much of life yourself, from the look of you.
There was a small leather book on the ground between them, very old, battered and ripped in places, the thick leather cover faded to an indeterminate shade of brown-green-grey. Skie licked his fingers, began thumbing through it carefully. Some of the tension between them released; Marith looked at the book with interest, breathing in its musty scent. A memory: curling into a chair with a pile of old books, stories, poems, histories, travelogues. Simple pleasures. Good, honest things. He shook his head and the memory faded. At least the geography might finally start coming in useful, he thought. Almost laughed in pain.
Skie expertly manipulated the book with his one hand until he found the right page. He produced a pen and an ink stone from his pack. Licked the pen to begin.
‘What is it?’ Marith asked.
The grey face creased in an angry frown. ‘You don’t ask questions of your commander, boy. You need to remember that. Speak when spoken to. Otherwise, shut up and obey. It’s a record of the company’s more notable deeds. Battles won, cities looted, that kind of thing. It’s not been written in much in the last few years. “Small village pillaged, two old men killed” isn’t exactly the stuff of legends. The Long Peace hasn’t been kind to the likes of us. But I think a dragon and a dragon killer deserve noting.’
Skie’s writing was blotchy, the careful, uncertain script of a man who was only semi-literate. Though, actually, thinking about it, that was perhaps unfair. Perhaps impressive he could write at all, especially one-handed. Marith’s own hand itched with impatience watching the shaky progress of the words across the page.
‘Lundra, twenty-seven Earth,’ said Skie slowly, sounding out every word. Marith pulled his mouth closed over the misspelling of the word ‘Erth’. ‘On this day, did Marith, the newest recruit to the noble Company, valiantly slay a dragon in the deserts east of Sorlost. Reward: six iron pennies’. Should be a silver mark, but we’re down on provisions and there’s nothing to spend it on out here anyway.’ He smiled coldly at Marith. ‘Certainly nothing that would interest you, boy. Go and see Toman about the money. He might even give it to you.’
I killed a dragon, Marith thought bitterly as he walked back to his own tent. I killed a dragon, you ungrateful old man. You should be thanking all your gods and demons for it. Not laughing at me. There was an itchy feeling in his body, he felt raw and sick. Shut his eyes, breathed deeply. Keep calm, he thought. Just keep calm. Everything will be all right. When he opened his eyes again the light was brilliant, leaving him momentarily blind. Blinked, staring, rubbed at his eyes. It’s all right. It’ll be all right. It’s better than it was. It is. The harsh dun landscape seemed almost unreal. He looked around the encampment. Fires were being tended, more soupy porridge prepared. Someone with more luck than Alxine had caught and butchered a crow and was trading it for tea and salt. Two men sat dicing in the shade of a scrubby thorn tree; another two argued heatedly over the price of a battered cook pot. The six iron pennies were sticky in his hand. He sighed and shoved them into his jacket pocket. There was indeed nothing to spend them on out here.
When he got back to his tent, he found that Alxine had kindly cut him a square of the dragon’s skin as a souvenir.
They marched the next morning, walking fast to get as much distance as possible between themselves and the dead dragon. In the morning heat, it had indeed begun to stink, rotten and rancid and with the dry pungency of boiled metal, and had started to draw crows. Insects. Even a scrub eagle. Small corpses now littered the ground around it.
‘You’d think they’d have some natural aversion to it,’ said Rate curiously. ‘Smelling like that and all. Things round my cousin’s farm know to avoid bad meat.’
Tobias gestured around at the empty landscape. ‘Isn’t exactly too much to eat around here. Probably desperate for anything with blood in it. Meat smells like meat, if you’re hungry enough. Besides,’ – a grin and a wink at Marith – ‘I don’t suppose they’ve encountered a dead dragon very often, them being notoriously difficult to kill.’
Two more men had died in the night from the unfortunate complication of not being able to walk well enough to keep up with the troop. One of them was Newlin. Marith felt rather sorry for him, especially as they’d been sharing a tent, but perhaps it had been for the best. Also the man had been asleep at the time, so it wasn’t like he’d realized what was happening.
Alxine seemed surprisingly upset about it though, his deep copper-coloured face dark with concern. ‘He was a comrade,’ he said repeatedly. ‘We shared a tent. He trusted us.’
‘He wasn’t a comrade, he was a member of my squad,’ said Tobias shortly. ‘And he was a liability, state his leg was in. It would probably have gone bad anyway. Spared him, like.’
True enough. Made more space in the tent, too.
Mid-afternoon, they crested a small hill and found themselves looking down on a small, scrubby village, five houses huddled around a central barn. The largest
