Heritage of Fire Page 4

  Gerd had it ready. The squire slipped an arm through the straps, shrugged to settle the plates on his shoulders, and nodded.

  Master Hawken released Hugo's head and the big horse scraped a hoof on the ground, restless. The Warden turned and unbarred the stable door.

  As hard white daylight began to spill into the stable, Squire Penrose leaned down in the saddle. Gerd stood on tiptoe to hear.

  The Squire's face looked hard and square, and his eyes had gone chill, as if the ice outside had entered into them. "Do not follow," he said, and it was a statue speaking. "I shall return as soon as may be. In any event, obey the word of Master Hawken, to whom I have given the necessary instructions. Farewell for now, Gerd."

  He hauled himself upright in the saddle, clucked, and Hugo began to walk forward. Through the door they went, the squire dipping his lance to clear the lintel, and out into the snow.

  Gerd went as far as the threshold, where Master Hawken's hand on his shoulder checked him, and he looked out after his master and the warhorse.

  A few paces, and they began to trot, Hugo glad to stretch his great limbs, and the trot of such a charger took them rapidly away. The storm had cleared most of the snow from the bottom of the pass, but on either side ice hung from precipice and mountainside, and snowbanks clung to breaks in the slope. A scattering of scrubby pine, stark black against the blinding white, was all there was to break it, looking like letters on a scrubbed vellum page. Gerd could not read these, either.

  The squire turned Hugo to the right, and Gerd could see a trace of road - a track, rather - beaten on the hard ground, and it wound up the sharp mountain. The squire followed it, man and horse diminishing, and then there was a fold of ground, and suddenly they were gone.

  "Where . . .?" Gerd swallowed.

  Master Hawken understood. "The dragon lairs beyond the next turn. She sleeps, for now."

  Gerd shook his head. "I don't understand," he mumbled.

  Master Hawken turned away. "Come. We need to clear from breakfast." Gerd stood a moment, but the Warden called again from the stairs, and he had no choice. He followed. They started to clean the kitchen.

  The job was so like the work that Gerd had done at the inn that he felt right to be doing it, as if it were fated that he should scrape pots and scrub boards forever. It was what he should do, it was all he was fit for. But all the same, he was never to finish it.

  He was up to his elbows in greasy hot water when a bellow shook the house. It was as if the mountain itself had roared, a shout of rage and fury and despair. The dishes on the sideboard rattled together and icicles tinkled down at the window. It came again, louder, longer, and in that sound was the grinding of stones and the roar of avalanches and the creaking of great ice-floes and the rumble of rocks pushed ahead of glaciers. Gerd dropped his brush and clapped his hands over his ears, as the roar went on and on. Shuddering, he fell to his knees on the scullery floor.

  The house resounded like a harp. Plates fell from shelves. The saltcellar danced off the table and landed on the floor, a sharp metal clank that was lost in that all-swallowing bellow. The roof juddered on its beams and began to lift . . .

  And then the noise stopped, cut off as with a knife. Tiny tinkles and ringing sounded in the sudden silence, and Gerd realised that they were the clatter of knives, spilling from a bench top on to the hard floor. Normally they would sound like bells; now he could hardly hear them, so dulled were his ears.

  He could not hear Master Hawken, either, and didn't want to. Gerd rose from his knees, spared not a glance at the disordered kitchen he had been cleaning with such labour, turned, and charged down the stairs. He reached the bottom in a whirl of gangling limbs and ran for the open stable door.

  Just as he reached it, with Master Hawken not far behind, a shadow arose from the line of peaks towards which the squire had ridden. It was huge, dark against the sun, and Gerd jerked his gaze skyward. His eyes refused belief, and told him that it was close overhead, so huge it was, and he ducked instinctively, and then realised his mistake.

  On slow, heaving wings the dragon laboured over them, vast, ponderous, mighty, covering the sky. It glittered like the snowdrifts in the sun, red and gold and iron and purple, dimming the low sun. It ascended, still ascended, although drops of dark blood lolled slowly from a wound in its side, striking the snowbanks with a faint tss.

  "Inside, stay inside for your life. The touch is deadly." Master Hawken's hand pulled Gerd within the threshold. He still watched, watched, and it was for that time as if there was nothing else to see in the world, as the huge thing diminished in his sight, climbing like a far more mighty eagle on the wind off the peaks, spiralling up, climbing, climbing, turning from a world-covering shadow to a hawk to a metallic fly to a glittering dot in the sunlight.

  South it turned at the peak of the sky, a many-faceted jewel on dark blue velvet, and slid away, a dot that became a fleck that became a point. And then, nothing.

  Gerd stood, still as time. Slowly the things of ordinary earth came creeping back, like servants after their lord departs. The chill of the morning wind, the creaking of the stable door, the whicker and stamp of Hal and Rousset in the stable behind. Master Hawken's step, his hand on Gerd's shoulder.

  "Well, now, lad . . ." said Master Hawken. But what more he would say was never known, for Gerd shrugged off his hand and ran down the icy path, out into the hard snowfield.

  He heard the Warden's call behind him, and cared not a jot for it. He ran on, a clumsy lollop that yet could give a hundred paces in a mile to the next fastest runner in the village, and he turned right at the track and ran on.

  On and on. Past the stand of pine trees, snow drifted up on their windward side. Past the rocky ridge of the fall in the ground. Past boulders, sheeted with ice. Over the next rise. Here. Here.

  Here his master had fought. Here was Hugo, huge, standing unwounded, and here was the lance, broken, twisted. Here was a gout of black blood on the whited ground, steaming still, with the stink of copper and of magic about it. And here was his master.

  He had fallen here, his bright armour blackened, his shield of arms before him, his sword in his hand. Fallen, broken and burned, and Gerd knew, because he had seen the dead before, and he knew the careless sprawl and graceless ease of them. Still he called the squire's name, and he turned him over and called it again, weeping.

  The visor was up, but the face that looked out was a horrid thing, skin and flesh burned away, staring fixedly. Gerd looked, and the horror grew on him, and yet he cradled the dreadful thing in his lap and rocked over it, and he shed the tears and gave the squire his keening, for that was his due, keening that echoed the wind in the pines, and tears that felt both hot and icy as they fell.

  And it was thus that Master Hawken found them when he came with the horses to bear them back.

  4

  After a decent interval, they buried the squire's body, wrapped in his mantle marked with his arms, as deep as the stony soil would allow. They left him in his armour, for it was made for him alone, but Master Hawken unbuckled his sword in its scabbard and held it out to Gerd with a matter-of-fact push that Gerd found himself accepting before he thought about it. He stood there, fingering the hilt uncertainly, as Master Hawken plied his spade. After a moment, he hung the scabbard from his own belt and helped.

  The grave was just below the knife-edge of a ridge that led west, pointing towards the lair of the dragon and overlooking it. Wind wailing from the peaks was the choir for Squire Penrose, and the stamping of the horses on the frozen ground made his passing bell. But Master Hawken knew the prayers as well as the priest of Gerd's village, and there was a certain comfort in knowing that the thing was done properly and in order. At the end, they pressed the stony soil down and left him there.

  "We'd best get on to the lair," said the Warden.

  He said it almost as if asking for Gerd's permission to go. Gerd shrugged his shoulders and leaned on his spade.

  "Why?" he asked, and the w
ind flung his voice against the frozen stones. "What does it matter?"

  Master Hawken put his own spade over his shoulder as if it were a spear. "Well," he said, consideringly, "you might find that it matters later. She will be slow to heal that wound. Years, likely, and dragons have hoards. Gold and jewels and magic swords. Treasure. We might as well go and see." And yet he didn't sound eager for the sight.

  Gerd shrugged. He had lost his master. That meant that he had lost more than a roof and three meals a day. He had lost a protector and a place in the world. He was back to being a nameless foundling whose life was nobody's concern. Almost, for a while, he had begun to think of himself as a gentleman's servant. Perhaps - mad thought - someone who might learn to be a gentleman himself. Squire Penrose had taught him that it was more than birth and manners. It was a way of looking at things.

  But Master Hawken had turned, and was descending the slope, the spade still over his shoulder. Gerd stood a moment, and then followed. Behind him, the horses blew frosty breath in the hard air.

  At the bottom of the slope there was a cleft, and a stream would flow out of it in spring; but now the water was a sheet of ice, with veils of it hanging from the rocks, and long thick icicles like spears racked ready for use. Gerd caught up with the Warden half-way down the slope, his longer strides carrying him further than the smaller man's. Gerd rather thought that Master Hawken would keep going longer, though.

  It was time that he had answers to the questions he had been holding in. He drew in breath against the wind. "What's it like, being neighbour to a dragon?" he asked.

  Master Hawken rolled a considering eye up at him, a glance out of the depths of his hooded cloak. Gerd had asked the question almost lightly, but with a bitterness in the depths. The Warden nodded, slightly.

  "It's all right in the winter," he replied, slowly. "During the winters, they spend their time asleep, mostly. And in the warmer weather, they roam. South to Tamar; west over sea to Loriso and other places I can't even guess at. North to Denedale and Gleddis."

  "But not to your house, a half-mile up the pass. Not to your house, to burn it about your ears."

  Master Hawken hunched his shoulders, as if Gerd had put a load on them. "What would it profit the Carrine dragon to burn down the watch-house on the pass? I have no treasure."

  "Yet you entertain knights and cavaliers who come a-hunting the dragon. Is this not unfriendly to your scaly neighbour? Does she not resent it?"

  "Perhaps. But it was always thus. I watch the way. Those who pass pay a toll. Or else they face the dragon."

  Gerd let ten paces of rock and snow pass. He craned his neck to inspect the innocent sky. "Do you mean," he said at last, "that you collect money for the dragon, so she leaves you alone? Or do you mean . . ." he took a firmer grip on his spade . . . "that you use the dragon as a pet, a threat to collect money for yourself?"

  Master Hawken stopped and turned. His face was grave, and yet a fugitive twinkle showed in the deep-set eyes. "A dragon is no man's pet. I ask you, if I were such a one as to be accepted as a partner by a dragon, do you think I would be walking with you in the wind now? Or cleaning my house myself, or cooking my own meat pies for my own guests?"

  Gerd lowered his eyes at that. He had just been reminded that he owed his host respect and courtesy. He flushed, and stopped trying to sound like Squire Penrose.

  "I beg pardon, Warden," he said, stiffly. "But is it true that you collect tolls for the dragon's hoard?"

  "No. Not even that. It's not so black and white."

  "Then tell me what it is."

  Hawken turned and stumped on. After a while, he spoke, as if to himself: "I am the Warden of the Carrine Pass. I maintain the way and the watchhouse, as my father did before me. I give guesting to travellers and I feed them and I stable and groom their horses. If they get lost, I search for them and bring them in, out of the snow. For this, there is a toll, and I collect it. Am I to do these things for nothing, not even for so much as I need to live?" He glanced at Gerd as he said that, but Gerd made no reply, walking beside him, the wind moulding the cloak to his back and whipping its tails before him. "And if a dragon should think that the pass belongs to her, only because she has lived here as long as many men's lifetimes, shall I deny her the same rights? Could I, even if I wanted to?"

  "So travellers pay toll, or fight the dragon?"

  Master Hawken nodded, shortly. "If you want to put it that way. It's true that none who have fought have needed to pay."

  Gerd cast a glance back at the grave. The low mound was already lost in the wind-driven snow. "My master will not be paying toll," he said.

  "Nor any of the others who fought, lad, for the same reason. But I'll tell you this: your master, who was my friend, was as close to a match for the dragon as any champion that ever was. She will be long licking her wounds. Here."

  The last word was matched with a wave. The mouth of the dragon's cave loomed black before them.

  "We'll need light," said Gerd. He broke off. Master Hawken had pulled a lantern from under his cloak, from where it had hung on his belt.

  "Give me a lee," he ordered, gruffly, and Gerd spread his cloak to shelter the Warden from the worst of the wind as he struck a spark into punk and lit the wick. Then he handed the lantern to Gerd. "You should lead, I think," he said.

  Why me? thought Gerd. But he took the light and held it high. It was a mirror-lantern, and the yellow beam lit the cave entrance and a few paces within.

  The opening was worn and smooth, the stones by the entrance showing the scrapes of steel-hard scales. Soot stained the roof, as if fires had burned there. Gerd lifted the lantern, oddly reluctant to move. Yet it was quiet, nothing but the drip of water within, where it must be slightly warmer.

  "Only one dragon?" he asked Master Hawken.

  The warden's face split in a grin. "If there was another one, lad, you'd have known it by now."

  Gerd snorted and walked forward, holding up the lantern.

  The cave opened in the light. A passage went on, deeper into the mountain. Rocks had been cleared from the floor, which was sanded. The rounded walls were polished in places, as if planed off. There was a scent, acrid, biting, smoky. Not unpleasant, and like something he knew, but couldn't place. The way forward opened into a larger cavern, around a bend. Gerd held the lantern high and moved on.

  The lantern wasn't strong enough. Its beam was narrow, and in that faint cone of light things gleamed for a moment and disappeared again. Rocks, smoothed and burnished so that they shone. Water, dripping from the roof, or trickling like a glaze over stones. The sound of water was in the air, air that was indeed a little warmer than the raw bite of the outdoors.

  And there, around the corner and down a little, something shone. A wink, not of water gleaming, but warm, buttery yellow. He felt his way forward over stones and a floor that sloped in all directions. The beam played across stone and pillar and rockfall, and another twinkle answered it out of the gloom. Gerd jerked the lantern across, and there it was. The dragon's hoard.

  Gold there was, in piles of coins and in plate and chains and nuggets rough as they had come from the earth. Medallions with the heads of long-forgotten emperors. Jewels and boxes and brooches and rings and buckles and earrings and arm-bands, worn and old, or brightly new. Odd bits of armour, some burned out and rusty, others still gleaming softly with rich enamel and gold inlay. Gems lay like points of strange-coloured fire, scattered like seed on ploughland.

  It lay in a rough heap, not deep, but scratched together like a cat's bed. Gerd stared at it for a long time, and felt the tug of fascination, the callings of greed, for this was wealth beyond dreams. Certainly so far beyond the dreams of a village foundling as to be simply unreal. It meant nothing to him, yet still he felt the power of it.

  Master Hawken stumped up beside him. Gerd heard him, but didn't move. The Warden pushed back the hood of his cloak and stared, also.

  "Well," he said, after a time, and in the word was a question.


  "Take what you want," said Gerd, breaking his gaze at the dragon's treasure with an effort. "It was bought with my master's life. I want none of it."

  "But he wanted you to have it, lad, if this should happen," said the Warden. "That much he told me as he laid out his own purse, and instructed me that I was to use it to help you. Will you set his wishes at nothing?"

  Gerd frowned, turning his head to regard the Warden. "Why do you tell me this?" he asked. "You could have it all. What would I do with such a treasure?"

  Master Hawken laughed, a short bark. "Despite what you think of me, Gerd, I am an honest man, and your master is - was - my friend. To answer your other question, I think you will find that your training will be very expensive."

  "Training." Gerd did not speak the word as though it were a question, but flatly, with no emphasis.

  "Training. Now you can do as your talent leads. So much was your master's wish." Gerd only shrugged. The Warden eyed him. "What will you do?" he asked.