Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

Aaron had a bad feeling. Which was the sort of irony he didn’t much appreciate, really. He was back on the road, with a reply for Connor from his brother, and a letter for Rose that she’d not asked for, and a few other missives on the state of the kingdom and suchlike that were probably more important. He was about an hour south of the Helland enclave, and more than that north of the next messenger station. He was just about even with the outpost that had been attacked. A few more bends in the road, and he’d be seeing it. The outpost that the dragons had fled from, and there hadn’t been time for reports of where they’d gone, much less to send hunting parties after them.

The outpost that hadn’t been re-manned.

If Aaron were a dragon smart enough to try taking over a remote place like that, then he thought he might well be smart enough to use this temporary break in humanity’s defenses—and sightlines—to do whatever it was he’d been set on doing in the first place.

“I don’t suppose one of you would tell me if I was about to die, would you,” Aaron whispered to himself. But neither his Death nor Markus’ appeared to answer. No real surprise, when his Death had said it wouldn’t be seeing him again until “she sent him away.” Both ominous and unhelpful, that. And Markus’ Death simply hated him, so.

So.

Aaron reigned in his horse. It was a different one than he’d ridden up north. Fresh. And rather confused as to why it wasn’t being allowed to stretch its legs in peace, particularly so close to the start of a route it knew better than its rider.

Aaron slid off, and patted its neck. “We’re going to try a little experiment, you and I.”

The horse shook out its mane. It turned its head, watching as he unclipped the little mail bag from its harness and moved it to his own person. He was already wearing the stag’s cloak. The rules on wearing a thing’s skin weren’t a set thing, but in general, anything he’d normally wear under a cloak seemed to accompany him just fine when he changed. So he checked his daggers, and shoved his pockets full of food, and slung his waterskin over his shoulder and under the stag’s fur. Weapons and food and water and his own two feet. And the mail, which was what he was expected to carry, and was light enough he might as well.

He checked the sky. Which was mostly blue, and wouldn’t have been hard to blend in against, and had too much height to it for a thing he couldn’t use himself. He hadn’t trusted it when he’d first stepped foot out of Onekin, and he didn’t trust it now.

Aaron patted the horse again. It stared back at him, in all its horsey confusion. “I don’t know how to get you moving when I’m not on you. But keep following your usual road, all right? And try not to get eaten, if there’s anything hungry about.”

A good goal, for the both of them. He took a few steps back, and pulled up his hood.

Being a deer was a different thing than the other cloaks he’d tried. Leggier than a wolf in a way he liked, and taller, and his own horse didn’t smell good in a way that put his mind and his stomach at odds. The antlers growing on his head were a bit of a strange weight, but they felt natural enough after a moment. Probably helped that they weren’t all full of muscles he could suddenly move, like a griffin’s wings; the antlers were just there, and he didn’t need to think about them, unless he needed to stab someone with his head. Which wasn’t an unappealing thought. His hooves seemed nicely fit for trampling or kicking or running, too, and a few quick bounds in a neatly tight circle left him rather satisfied with how solid he felt. None of that hollow-boned business. Or the initial-searing-pain business; the stag had no particular magic, and slid over his own skin without complaint. It was a shame he couldn’t fly, but that was the only downgrade.

His horse had taken a few steps away. It was watching him, its ears pricked. Aaron felt a bit judged. He bobbed his head in its general direction—a polite human gesture, now mildly threatening—and then. Well. He hadn’t much liked being out in the open before he’d pulled up his hood, and he certainly didn’t now. Aaron stretched those legs of his, and bounded towards the forest’s edge.

He didn’t actually cross into it, mind. Much as he suddenly wanted to. It would be a safer thing, being among all those trees. And wouldn’t it be more natural, for a deer to be in the woods, instead of wandering the treeline like this? The sun was already too high, the shadows too stark. His stub tail twitched behind him. So did his legs, under him. He kept looking around, and up, because there was many a thing that would eat him if it could, and the stag needed no convincing of that. Though he found himself far more suspicious of flashes of white than was strictly necessary. Every cloud was a griffin preparing to dive at him, until proven otherwise.

Yes, it would be so much smarter, more natural, more reassuring to step between the line of rocks, into the Lord of Seasons’ forest…

Which Aaron was definitely not doing. He pulled himself away, to a less tempting distance. And then he started moving south, with many wary glances about and the occasional stop to graze, to make it a little less obvious that he wasn’t a real deer.

His horse stood a few minutes more behind him. Grazed a little itself, at the roadside. Then it looked about for a rider that wasn’t coming back, and did what it knew best: it started on its route south again. At its own pace, for the first time in its life.

They reached the unmanned outpost at near enough the same time. The both of them stopped, the horse in the road and Aaron off some distance in the high grass outside the forest, both with their heads suddenly raised to the gusting coastal wind.

He knew the smell of salt well enough, now. And the smells of the grasses brushing against his belly, and the darker, loamier scent of the forest to his left. What he didn’t recognize was this new smell: dry and crackly, in a way that made him flare his nose and stare straight at the base.

His horse bolted back the way they’d come. Reassuring, that. Aaron kept standing, and sniffing, because something in him was quite sure that staying still would make any unfriendly eyes pass him straight over. To be fair, tucking himself into a corner and freezing had worked for him plenty well as a human. He just… didn’t have a nice defensible corner, here. Or any cover, without making his own dash for the forest, which would both put him in the forest

and require him to move in the first place. He compromised at lowering himself slowly down, tucking his legs under him, letting his tawny fur blend with the remnants of last year’s dried grass that still stuck out taller than the tender new growth beneath. The only part of him he didn’t tuck away was his head, because he still wanted to see.

…The antlers were not very helpful, for this part.

He was not waiting very long.

A deer’s nose, it seemed, was far more alarmed by the smell of predators than the griffin’s had been. Or perhaps a sunny day hiding in grass was simply better sniffing conditions than a rainy battlefield. Which was to say: a dragon was peeking its nose above the guard station’s roof. It turned its head to look both ways along the road, like a child about to cross a street at market. Then it finished the climb, and changed its scales from the lichen-speckled grays and blacks of a seaside cliff to an impeccable sky blue. It took off, flying low over the forest, where one would have to be very near at hand to mark its passage.

Another followed, a few minutes later. And another. Aaron tore up a hank of spring grass for chewing, and tried to work out if there was a set time between them. Because he’d rather like to get himself anywhere else but here now that his curiosity had met reality. He was no patriot, and he needed to stop getting himself in positions where he could be confused for one.

There were doppels about, too. The dragons crawling up over the cliff might have been, too, but. These definitely were. Given that they currently looked human, and were keeping up their own watch of the road from inside the guard station. He could see them moving now and again, through the arrowslit windows. Probably they were giving some sign on the building’s cliff-facing side, to signal the next dragon to climb. He couldn’t see from here. But he had an excellent view of the door on his own side opening, and a woman stepping out to stare in his direction.

A real deer would have bolted at the first scent of dragon, wouldn’t it? Probably.

…If they’d been keeping watch this whole time, they would have seen a riderless messenger horse approaching, wouldn’t they? Almost certainly.

“We’re not stupid, Late Wake,” the woman said, after a long moment. She sounded almost disappointed in him. “Come over. Get a closer look. You’ll stand a better chance telling your Lady what you’ve seen, if you get yourself a dragon’s wings to flee on.”

Well. That was certainly one way to get a fellow thinking of doppeling.

“Or should I come over—”

People generally didn’t expect a fellow to run off on them mid-sentence. There was sort of an unspoken rule about these things, an ingrained nicety it was hard to shake: people didn’t interrupt the speech of a person aiming to kill them, didn’t turn and bolt while an enemy was talking. It really did feel rude, every time Aaron did it.

“Hey,” the dragon shouted, in startled insult.

Aaron ran into the Lord of Seasons’ forest. It was not ideal. And probably a lot ruder than anything else he’d just done.