Draka

I asked Rib and Pot to circle the refugee camp. I didn’t want any surprises. As I waited among the trees with Ardek and Kira, the sisters approached the refugees.

A ripple of fear passed through the small camp when Herald and Mak strode up, armed and armoured and grim faced. For all the lack of rancour that they had expressed for the people here, the sisters were determined to establish the pecking order firmly from the start.

They had approached the larger half of the camp, and they made no secret of it. Some of the refugees were probably out hunting or foraging or things like that, but everyone there stopped what they were doing to watch the sisters approach, with the children being shooed into a tent and out of sight.

“Who is in charge here?” Mak called out and turned her gaze to the other half. “That includes you in the other camp. Come out. We need to talk.”

A few people slowly drifted in, with the members of each camp making two distinct groups that eyed each other suspiciously. There was a clear nervousness, however, that was shared by both groups.

“I assume that some of you are away,” Mak said. There was a hard edge to her voice that I wasn’t used to. It suited her. “That doesn’t matter. I recognise one face here at least, so I know that I have the right people. You, there.” Mak pointed to one of the men, no older than herself, with her spear, holding it straight and steady. “Come forward!”

The man hesitated, and when he began to move he was stopped by a woman’s hand around his arm. I guessed that they were probably the two I’d listened to earlier.

“I promise that we mean you no harm,” Mak told them, “but you were with the group that attacked us. We want to talk to you. Now!” The last word was barked with a force that made some of the small crowd flinch. The man gently removed the woman’s hand, kissed her on the forehead, and approached the sisters, stopping a dozen feet in front of them.

“I’m Jekrie,” the man said, his voice unsteady but loud enough for everyone to hear, “and I speak for these people as much as anyone. We have no leader, but you’re right I was in the group that attacked you. For that, I’m sorry.”

“Where are the others?” Herald asked, her hand resting on the hilt of her sword.

“Hunting, miss,” Jekrie answered. “We have little food.”

In the trees, Ardek leaned in and whispered, “They had two archers, but they were right shit shots. I don’t know how much luck they’re likely to have.”

“You injured my sister gravely, and terrified our companions,” Herald said. “You have angered our patron. Why?”

“Your patron, Miss?” Jekrie shuffled his feet, but continued when the silence dragged on. “We were desperate, miss. We still are. The woman you killed, Madalie her name was, it was her idea. And Torkel my brother, the man, he was her sweetheart, and he went along with it. And they convinced the rest of us. We could tell that you had so much more than us and we… I’m sorry. I am sorry, and I am shamed. We’re desperate, and that is all.”

Somewhere in the camp a baby started crying, and the woman who had tried to hold Jekrie back looked at him desperately before ducking into the tent behind her.

Herald and Mak looked at each other, and Herald spoke. “You are fleeing something,” she stated, “and you have children with you. The woman who instigated the attack, and your brother, who injured my sister, are both dead. Our patron… she is not without kindness or mercy. She is willing to forgive you, so long as you swear that no one in this band will try their hand at banditry again, and to answer all our questions completely and truthfully.”

There was a visible shift in the mood of the refugees. Some, but not nearly all of the tension slowly relaxed, the fear changing towards fragile hope. From where I waited I even thought that I saw some careful smiles.

But all was not well, that much was obvious. The immediate threat might have passed, but there were still two armed fighting women standing before them. Back where I’d come from a large group might have easily been able to overpower two experienced fighters, but here advancements were a large, unknown force multiplier. And these two women were still making demands of them.

The half dozen from the other half of the camp especially were talking softly among themselves, thought that might be because they were already bunched together. What bothered me was that I couldn’t quite figure what the problem was. All Herald had asked for was information. She could have demanded reparations and been well within her rights to do so. Silver, food, their weapons, none of these would have been unfair, but she hadn’t asked for anything like that. She had only asked for honesty, and that, for some reason, was still a problem.

One that needed to be dealt with, and while I trusted the sisters to do what they thought best, I wanted this dealt with my way.

“Go to them,” I told Kira, “and tell them that I want to talk to Jekrie.”

She looked anxiously towards the camp, then nodded to me and walked out. There was some murmuring from the camp when she walked out of the trees, and despite the fact that she was unarmed and dressed in simple clothes the new tension remained. Perhaps because while they had probably known that Herald and Mak were not alone, now the refugees could see that with their own eyes. In this newly nervous atmosphere Herald turned to Jekrie and said, “You are coming with us. Our patron wants to speak with you.”

A voice, strong but with a tinge of fear called out, “Why?” The question came from Jekrie’s woman, who’d come out of her tent with their baby in her arms. “Why does he need to go anywhere?”

I got annoyed. It was obvious that she was just worried for, presumably, her husband. The father of her child. But I just wanted the whole situation to be over so that I could focus on other, more important things, and I was annoyed. And Mak snapped.

“Because he,” she said, punctuating the word by pointing at Jekrie with her spear, “watched his brother cut my guts open! And now my patron,” she pointed back my way, “needs to make her mind up if you all are free to go on your way!”

“But why must he go? If this woman is watching us, which she must be, sending someone to speak to you, why can’t she just come out and talk to him where we can see them?”

“Tinir–” Jekrie pleaded, but Mak cut him off.

“You don’t want that,” she said darkly. “We are here because she does not want to deal with you. She is already annoyed. Don’t push her further!”

“But–” the woman started desperately. The whole camp fell silent when Mak started marching towards her. I was becoming increasingly fed up, and that clearly fed into Mak’s own annoyance.

Jekrie quickly got in front of her, backing up with his hands up and careful not to touch her. “Please, miss! She worries for me! I’ll come and make no fuss. Please don’t–”

At the same time Herald came up and put her hand on Mak’s shoulder, stopping her. She said something to Mak that I couldn’t hear, then louder, to the woman Tinir, “He will be back. Unharmed. You can believe me, or not, but I swear it.”

Tinir didn’t protest any more, but nor did the anxiety leave her eyes. Jekrie turned back to her for a moment, then came with Herald towards where I was waiting. Mak brought up the rear without a word, but I could see the irritation on her face.

I knew that she could feel what I felt, and that it affected her. She’d told me as much, and I’d seen it myself. But from the way she’d reacted just then, almost on the edge of violence just because a worried woman had questioned them, that was a little extreme. We’d need to talk about that… sometime. At the moment I had this Jekrie to deal with.

I walked a little farther away from the camp, leaving Ardek to show them which way I’d gone. I found a nice little clearing not too far away, where I climbed a tree and waited. I didn’t try very hard to pick one where I’d be well hidden, and I didn’t bother with one I could climb in shadow form, either. I picked one of the ridiculously tall ones, where the branches began fifty feet off the ground and I had to either fly up or climb it by claw, hand over foot. I’d made it about two hundred feet up – I could climb pretty damned fast if I wanted to – when the humans walked into the clearing and Herald and Mak, knowing me, stopped and looked around.

And I, obviously, pushed off from the tree, letting myself drop for a hundred feet before I braked hard. I hit the ground a little more heavily than I might have liked, but it caused a satisfying thump that probably made me seem larger and heavier than I was.

Jekrie gaped. Then he tried to back away, but Mak held his arm in a firm grip and dug her heels in, and despite her size he could not escape her. Well, if he really strained he could have probably lifted her off the ground; no matter how much stronger she had become, she was no heavier than she’d been. If anything she was a lot lighter, from all the healing she’d done. But it looked like just the act of holding him back was enough for him to stop struggling, and in a moment he just stood, struck by fear and awe.

Meanwhile, I sat up to my full height and opened my wings a little, for the sake of drama. I waited until he’d gone still, then spoke.

“Jekrie,” I said, and he jerked in Mak’s grip. “You’ve attacked my people with no provocation, and wounded one so gravely that only the efforts of two healers saved her life. I know your reasons, and I sympathise, to some degree. I am willing to put all of this behind us, and leave you to mourn your dead with no further consequences. All I ask is that you answer some questions. Can you do that for me?”

“You… are you a forest demon?” Jekrie stammered.

That annoyed me, which annoyed Mak. She tightened her grip on Jekrie’s arm, and he stifled a groan.

“I am not a demon,” I growled. “I am a dragon. I’ll leave it to you to decide if that’s better or worse, but it does not matter. Will you answer my questions, or will you keep wasting my time until I stop being nice?”

“Dragon,” Jekrie whispered, staring at me as though he expected what he saw to change.

“Take your time,” Herald said. “Just not too long. She has been rather annoyed lately.”

That snapped Jekrie out of it. Rather than answering my question, his approach was to fall to his knees in the leaves and raise his hands in supplication. “Please,” he said. “My people. They are innocent. They–”

“Are safe,” I told him bluntly. I couldn't deny that I enjoyed seeing him crawling in the dirt before me, but I was just done with the whole business. “As are you, as long as you just do what I tell you and answer a few simple questions!”

“Yes. Yes! I will tell you anything you want to know!”

“Good!” Finally we were getting somewhere. “Why were the other group – the Sweet Creek people, I guess – why were they so unhappy about you answering some questions?”

“We…” Jekrie hesitated. All that and he still hesitated! But a look at my unamused face was all it took for him to spill.

“We are outlaws,” he said heavily, then quickly added, “For no crime of our own! Our forefathers refused to pay the council’s tax, and when the collectors came they fled north. Council did nothing for us, why should we give a single coin, you see? And we were fine, living in peace outside the law. But now the monsters are growing more numerous, and bolder, and we… we lost so many. So many.”

“Since when? And what kind of monsters?” I asked brusquely. Since he didn’t seem to respond to patience and gentleness, I chose to be harsh.

“Only animals, to begin. Some months ago they began to come far south in numbers like we’d none of us seen or heard. Then goblins. Fresh ones, and wild, not like the tribes we’ve dealt with before. They steal and destroy, and make no bargains, and we think there must be a nest somewhere near our village, perhaps more than one.”

“So the goblins were what drove you out?”

“No. We could have handled them. There were more of us, and some of us skilled hunters and fighters. But then…” Jekrie’s voice shuddered, “then the trolls came. That was a week ago, I suppose. Some of us tried to fight, but all who stood before them died. Sweet Creek they laid to ruin, and my village, Piter’s Clearing, they made that their home. The rest of us, we took what we could and ran. A brave few of us came back the next night, as they slept, and took a few more precious things. Then we went south.”

Mak, Herald and I shared a look. Trolls. The ones we had encountered had been far south, according to my companions, and that was many miles north of the farthest known human settlements.

“How far north of here is Piter’s Clearing and Sweet Creek?” I asked.

“I honestly can’t tell you sure,” Jekrie said. “The going was hard, with so much baggage, and the children, few though they are. We had little food, and hunting and foraging along the way was necessary. We would have been lucky to make ten miles on the best day, and far from all of that southward. If I were to guess… forty miles, perhaps forty-five, if you pardon my ignorance.”

Trolls. First the scholars, then a big fuck-off bear, and now this. More Trolls. Big, stinking bastards who collected shiny things like magpies. Forty miles or less north of my mountain, and possibly moving south. “God dammit!” I growled. I wanted to rage. I wanted to disembowel Jekrie for bringing me this news, and throw his corpse into the camp to show how displeased I was with their very presence and what it represented. I wanted to fly north and find the trolls, and fight them and kill them, now, without delay. I wanted to destroy, to lay waste to the countryside until the council brought me the Night Blossom in chains to vent my anger on until whatever fueled it was sated.

I did none of these things. I spread my wings and growled and did… something, something that caused Jekrie and Herald to fall to their knees and Mak to grit her teeth until her jaw creaked, but I stayed where I was. I did not rush off like a lunatic. I did not kill the person I had promised safety. Instead I sat where I was, closed my eyes, and said slowly, “I just want to deal with the Night Blossom. I want to take her gold, display her shredded corpse in the main square, and fly back home to spend the rest of the year just relaxing with my now very wealthy friends. Is that so much to ask? Why do I have to deal with these constant goddamn interruptions?”

I staggered as a spike of pain smashed through my head, accompanied by a wave of fatigue and nausea. This happened at about the same time as I noticed that we were all shrouded in darkness in the middle of the morning. I had not meant to do that. It had just kind of happened, and that just angered me further. Things outside of my control kept throwing me off. Now I was having trouble controlling myself, and it was infuriating.

The darkness around us deepened. “Draka,” Herald groaned from her knees. “Please!”

That made me realise what I was doing. Herald. I was hurting Herald! I released my shadows, snatching my tendrils back. I would have been forced to do so in a few moments anyway, when either the pain grew too strong or I passed out from exhaustion, but I did it consciously. And like that, everything went back to normal.

Well, the light came back, and Herald slowly got to her feet. Mak, however, was looking at me with what I could only call adoration in her eyes. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d fallen to her knees next to Jekrie. Jekrie, who had completely prostrated himself before me, his head in the dirt as he fought for words. I liked that. My head was pounding, but that display of fear and respect, that… oh, that was good.

When Jekrie found his words, what he said was, “Please! Great one! I beg you. For myself, for my family, for all them who is with us. Great one, mighty dragon! I beg you for your mercy and protection!”

And through the haze of fatigue and lingering pain, all I could think to say was what was in my flattered heart, which was, “Yes.”

Something fell into place inside me, a feeling of wholeness and rightness. And while I couldn’t tell if Jekrie knew what he had done on behalf of his group, I did, and as I grinned I could see on Mak’s face that she did too. There was apprehension there, a worry about stepping into the unknown, perhaps, but also a satisfaction that mirrored my own.

There was no walking this back, for either Jekrie or myself. Whoever this little band of humans had been, and whoever they were now, they were mine.