Daniel Abraham: The Dragon's Path

“Fell out with a woman, did you?” she asked.

“A goddess,” he said.

“Yeah. Always seems like that, dunit?” she said, staring into the fire. “Some new love comes on like there’s something different about ’em. Like God himself talks whenever their lips flap. And then…”

She snorted again, part amusement, part bitterness.

“And what all went wrong with your goddess?” she asked.

The apostate lifted a scrap of something that might have been a potato to his mouth, chewed the soft flesh, the gritty skin. He struggled to put words to thoughts that had never been spoken aloud. His voice trembled.

“She is going to eat the world.”

Marcus rubbed his chin with a callused palm.

“Yardem?”

“Sir?” rumbled the Tralgu looming at his side.

“The day you throw me in a ditch and take command of the company?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It wouldn’t be today, would it?”

The Tralgu crossed his thick arms and flicked a jingling ear.

“No, sir,” he said at last. “Not today.”

“Pity.”

The public gaol of Vanai had once been a menagerie. In ancient days, the dragons themselves had stalked the wide square and bathed in the great fountain at its center. At the perimeter, a deep pit, and then great cages rising three stories high. The dragon’s jade façades were carved with figures of the beasts that had once paced behind the iron bars: lions, gryphons, great six-headed serpents, wolves, bears, great birds with breasts like women.

Between them, pillars in the shapes of the thirteen races of mankind: tall-eared Tralgu, chitinous Timzinae, tusked Yemmu, and on and on. The Dartinae even had small braziers hidden in its eyeholes to mimic the glow of their gaze, though no one lit them anymore. The figures were unworn by time and rain, marred only by the black, weeping streaks where the bars had rusted away—nothing eroded dragon’s jade and nothing broke it. But the animals themselves were gone, and in their place, people.

Sullen or angry or bored, the guests of Vanai’s justice were displayed in their shame for ridicule and identification while they waited for the sentence of the appointed magistrate. Good, upstanding citizens could parade through the square where few bronze pennies would buy offal from a stand, usually wrapped in a sling of rags. Boys would make a show of showering loose shit, dead rats, and rotting vegetables over the prisoners. A few tearful wives and husbands would bring cheese and butter to throw across the void, but even if the gift reached the intended hand, there was no peace in prison. As they watched from the low wall at the pit’s edge, Marcus saw one such lucky man—a Kurtadam with clicking beads in his close, otter-smooth pelt—being beaten for his round of white bread while a pack of Firstblood boys laughed and pointed at him and called out, Clicker, clicker, ass-licker and other racial insults.

In the lowest row of cells, seven men sat. Most had the build and scars of soldiers, but one kept himself apart, thin legs stuck between the bars, heels swinging over the pit. The six soldiers had been Marcus’s men. The other, the company cunning man. They belonged to the prince now.

“We’re being watched,” the Tralgu said.

“I know.”

The cunning man raised an arm in a rueful wave. Marcus responded with a false smile and a less polite gesture. His former cunning man looked away.

“Not him, sir. The other one.”

Marcus shifted his attention away from the cages. It only took a moment to see the man Yardem meant. Not far from the wide space where the street spilled into the square, a young man in the gilt armor of the prince’s guard slouched at ease. A tug at his memory brought Marcus the man’s name.

“Well, God smiles,” Marcus said sourly.

The guard, seeing himself noticed, gave a rough salute and walked toward them. He was thick-faced and soft about the shoulders. The smell of bathhouse cedar oil came off him like he’d been dipped in it. Marcus shrugged the way he did before a fight.

“Captain Wester,” the guard said with a nod. And then, “And Yardem Hane. Still following the captain, are you?”

“Sergeant Dossen, isn’t it?” Marcus said.

“Tertian Dossen now. The prince keeps to the old titles. Those your men?”

“Who, those?” Marcus asked with feigned innocence. “Worked with lots of men, one time and another. Shouldn’t be surprised if I knew men in every gaol in the Free Cities.”

“That bunch there. We herded them up last night for being drunk and causing trouble.”

“Men will do that.”

“You don’t know anything about it?”

“I wouldn’t want to say anything that might get back to the magistrate,” Marcus said. “He might not take it the way I meant.”

Dossen spat into the wide air of the ditch.

“I can respect you wanting to keep them out of trouble, Captain. But it wouldn’t make a difference. War’s coming, and the prince needs men. That lot has training. Experience. They’ll be impressed into the army. Might even get ranks.”

Marcus felt the anger growing, the warmth in his chest and belly, the sense he had grown an inch taller. Like all things that felt good, he distrusted it.

“You sound like there’s something you want to say.”

Dossen smiled like a river snake.

“You’ve still got a reputation. Captain Wester, hero of Gradis and Wodford. The prince would notice that. You could take a fair commission.”

“Princes, barons, dukes. They’re all just little kings,” Marcus said, a degree more hotly than he’d intended. “I don’t work for kings.”

“You will for this one,” Dossen said.

Yardem scratched his belly and yawned. It was a signal that reminded Marcus to keep his temper. Marcus took his hand off the pommel of his blade.

“Dossen, old friend,” Marcus said, “a good half of this city’s defense is hired men. I’ve seen Karol Dannian and his boys. Merrisan Koke. Your prince will lose all of them if the word gets out that he’s impressing professional soldiers who are under contract—”

Dossen’s jaw actually dropped in astonishment.

“You aren’t under contract,” he said.

“I am,” Marcus said. “We’re guard on a caravan for Carse up in Northcoast. Already paid.”

The guard looked across the gap at the incarcerated men, the dejected cunning man, and the rust-streaked jade. A pigeon landed on the carved foot of a gryphon, shook its pearl-grey tailfeathers, and shat on the cunning man’s knee. An old man behind them brayed out a laugh.

“You don’t have any men,” Dossen said. “Those are your caravan guards right there. You and the dog-boy can’t guard a ’van by yourselves. The papers call for eight sword-and-bows and a company cunning man.”

“Didn’t know you’d read our contract,” Yardem said. “And don’t call me dog-boy.”

Dossen pressed his lips together, eyes narrow and annoyed. His armor clinked when he shrugged, too thin a sound for the metal to be much more than show.

“Yes, I saw it.”

“But I’m sure it had nothing to do with those particular men getting rounded up,” Marcus said.

“You’d best come along, Captain. The city of Vanai needs you.”

“The caravan leaves in three days,” Marcus said. “And I leave with it. Under contract.”

Dossen didn’t move, but his face flushed red. Marcus suspected that a member of the prince’s guard wasn’t used to being refused.

“You think you’re above men like me?” Dossen said. “You think you can dictate terms and the world’s going to listen? Wake up, Wester. You’re a long way from the fields of Ellis.”

Yardem grunted like he’d taken a body blow and shook his massive head.