Dragon Castle (7 page)

They'd planned to stay in our castle. But Georgi somehow turned their attention toward our guest lodge. It's a finely built single-story structure of welldressed stone with several large rooms, each with its own fireplace, bed, and furnishings. It's placed just within the walls, where the barracks might be in another castle. But, like all those who occupied Hladka Hvorka before them, from Prince Pavol on down, my parents have never felt the need to keep an army.

“Much more comfortable, convenient to your men,” Georgi explained, tapping his fingertips together and lowering his head subserviently. “More private.”

“Will it do for us . . . my daughter?” the baron said. He turned to the princess, who was studying something that she held between the palms of her left hand.

“Tu je to!
” she said to herself in a pleased voice.

Here it is? What did she mean by that? I wondered.

Then she smiled and her next words made even less sense.

“We are close enough . . . my father,” she said.

Close enough to what?

I could not stay to try to hear more. While Georgi was negotiating their lodgings with Baron Temny and his enigmatic daughter—with no help from my brother, who just kept staring at her—I needed to be busy elsewhere.

First, I made certain that all the outer doors to the great hall of Hladka Hvorka were closed and barred from within to discourage our visitors' troops from tromping in and taking it over. And probably using our furnishings as firewood.

Next, as they led their steeds toward our stables, I ran ahead of them. I opened the door and was greeted—as I had hoped—by the welcome sight of empty stalls.

“
Zmiznite
, disappear,” Georgi had whispered to Jazda and Hreben as soon as the little army poured through our main gate.

They had done their job well. All seven of our horses had been led out the back of the stable to the rear wall of Hladka Hvorka. There, by pressing the right stones, Jazda opened a door in what seemed a solid wall and lowered the small concealed drawbridge that is big enough for one horse at a time to cross. Our herd, watched over by our stableman and his son, was now safe in a field far from the sight of the castle.

“Where your mounts? Where your stable boys?” growled the bald-headed ruffian, the one with the livid red scar on the side of his face.

One of Father's proverbs came to mind. “Let your teeth hold back your tongue.” Instead of answering, I looked at him blankly as if I couldn't understand his question.

The scar-faced man stared at me for a moment, then shook his head in disgust. “
Dumbkopf! Blazon!
Fool!”

He pushed roughly by me to lead his horse into the stable, where he and his band of blackguards had no choice but to rub down their own mounts, feed, and water them without help. Not at all what they'd expected as our honored guests.

Guests, indeed. I shake my head, thinking again of that “invitation.”

The few lines I'd read before Truba smoothly snatched it away had been enough. That brief moment of scanning the duplicitous document was enough to convince me that it had
not
been penned by
my
father. I could never imagine my parents inviting anyone to stay as long as they wanted. They enjoy visitors, but never for more than two or three nights. As Father puts it, “Fish and visitors start to smell after a few days.”

Plus, most tellingly, there were no words misspelled. Quite unlike my father.

I look up at the sun. It's now close to noon. Still the baron has not yet roused himself.

What
are
they doing in there?

The only one of their little party of four to emerge thus far has been Truba. The lanky herald strode imperiously into our castle—likely asking for yet more hot water, food, and drink to be brought to them. Then he returned to our guest quarters.

Temny's men, however, are all too visible. They've been awake since dawn, long enough to raid our depleted hen yard. A dozen of our fattest hens are now turning on spits over cooking fires they've kindled with the firewood taken from the kitchen—without as much as a by your leave to Cook. The greasy smoke that now hangs over our once airy courtyard is a good match for this rabble. Some of them, I note with distaste, are even too lazy to trudge out to the plank over the moat. They're using one corner of our courtyard as a latrine.

The ruffians haven't seen me watching them. They're too busy eating, drinking, dicing and quarreling and making bets as they toss knives at a log they've propped up.

Wait!

Some of their heads are turning—the way the more vigilant in a pack of jackals concealed in tall grass react when an antelope comes to drink from the water hole. What have they seen?

Oh no! At the far eastern side of the courtyard a slender young woman in a brown dress has just come out of the castle. It's Charity. She's only fourteen years old, the youngest of our serving girls. Her arms are full of clean linens. Meant, I am sure, for the baron and his daughter. Probably what Truba came in to demand. Everything else brought to the baron's party was delivered by one of our serving men. Georgi's been careful not to send a young woman—or a lad, for that matter—out through that dangerous rabble. But this time, perhaps out of boredom or curiosity, Charity has taken it upon herself to do the task.

She was clever enough to not try to cross the courtyard, quietly making her way along the far wall toward the side entrance to our guest lodge.

Unfortunately, she failed to avoid notice. Even more unfortunately. the one whose eye she seems to have caught most is the Scarface. He seems to be Temny's head bully. More unfortunately still, I am four stories above them. I ask myself what I should do. I don't get an answer.

A pleased smile crosses the thick lips of Scarface. He turns his head back to his left toward the guest lodge. Temny himself is standing in the doorway. The baron lifts his left hand lazily, nods, and flicks his little finger in Charity's direction. Then he vanishes back inside, having set the stage.

Scarface looks over at his companion with whom he's been dicing. It's the other of the two flag bearers from yesterday, the blond-haired hulk with a long spade-shaped beard. Scarface holds out his hands, palms up, gestures like a servant offering a bowl of fruit.

Your turn or mine?

“Go, Peklo.” The blond ruffian makes a rude gesture with his fingers. “You get that wench. But the next one's mine.”

Peklo's smile turns into a wide grin showing yellowed teeth. He tosses his knife aside and rises eagerly to his feet.

By the head of the dragon! I turn and dash down the stairs, fearing I will be too late.

In a way, I am. By the time I burst through the courtyard entryway, the scene is playing out without me. Georgi is already here. He must have been watching just as I was. Despite the fact that he's burdened by a large pot and two long cloths slung around his neck, he's managed to place himself between Charity and Temny's men before Peklo could get to her.

Peklo reaches around Georgi to grab Charity's shoulder. However, before Peklo's rough fingers can grasp her, Georgi trips. The steaming contents of the iron pot pour down Peklo's chest. The iron pot lands on the burly man's forward foot.

“Arrgggh!” Peklo roars, hopping on one foot while trying to wipe hot soup from his front.

It's rather an amusing spectacle, but I keep myself from laughing out.

Peklo's companions, though, who saw it all happen and assume it's just an accident, are roaring with mirth.

“Peklo, save some of that soup for us, you greedy beast.”

“First bath you've had in a month!”

Georgi hisses a word into Charity's ear. Whitefaced, she nods, runs swiftly back across the yard and through the servants' entrance to the castle. There's a thud and the rattle of a bolt as she slams and locks the door behind her.

I relax and lean back against the wall. My sword is belted around my waist now. I'm close enough to come to Georgi's rescue if necessary. But I have a feeling my help may not be needed.

“Oh sir, good sir,” Georgi is saying. “
Prepac, prepac
. Sorry, sorry. So clumsy of me. All that fine turnip soup Cook prepared for you and your men.”

“Acchhhh!” Peklo replies, still hopping. “Acchhh!”

His vocabulary is clearly limited by his rage and the pain in his big toe. He reaches out for Georgi like a praying mantis grabbing at an irritating fly.

At this point any other servant who spilled soup all over a violent man would flee or cower down to absorb blows from said scalded ruffian. But Georgi is not any other servant.

“Oh good sir, here. Allow me to dry you.”

Georgi ducks under Peklo's grasping hands, and deftly loops one of those two long cloths he is carrying around the angry brute. Another loop, then another. It pins Peklo's huge-muscled arms to his sides. He's unable to strike, grasp, or strangle.

Georgi holds the ends of that wrapped cloth in place with one hand that is, as I've already mentioned, far stronger than anyone who does not know him would suspect.

“Allow me to clean your face, good sir.”

As he awkwardly wipes Peklo's face with the other cloth, I cannot help but observe that Georgi is doing an excellent job of getting more of the soup into the bully's eyes.

I fold my arms, keeping one eye on the crowd of toughs at the far end of the courtyard. Not one of them has stirred to assist their leader. They're even more amused.

“Y' look like a baby all wrapped up in his swaddling clothes,” one wit shouts.

“Let your old nurse wipe your bum, Peklo!”

“Oh, good sir,” Georgi babbles in his most servile voice, rubbing boiled turnips into Peklo's ears. “So sorry, sir, so sorry.”

“Volne mi!”
Peklo screams. “Free me!” He staggers back and forth, trying to extricate himself from the cocoon of cloth.

“
Ano,
good sir,” Georgi steps back and pulls hard at the cloth wrapped about Peklo. Peklo spins like an oversize top, ending up on his knees. By the time he rises to his feet, Georgi is gone.

His face red, not wanting to embarrass himself further by trying to pursue a clumsy servitor, Peklo rises and stalks back to his men. They're silent now.

“Something funny?” Peklo says in a deadly calm voice.

He clubs his fist into the face of the one who shouted out that remark about Peklo looking like a baby.

“Any other jokers?” Peklo growls.

Nearly all of them, including the man he struck, now spitting blood and a tooth onto the stones of the courtyard, turn away to avoid his angry glare.

The only one still smiling is the blond hulk, who fingers his beard as he looks up at his companion. He clearly views himself as Peklo's equal. Now that I think of it, when the baron arrived, Spadebeard was the one who stayed closest to Temny's side.

“Where's your lass?” Spadebeard asks with an insolent chuckle.

“Shut up, Smotana,” Peklo snarls. “We deal with them all. Later.”

Perhaps they don't know I can hear them from where I lean against the castle wall, a spear's throw away. My hearing is much sharper than most.

“True enough,” spade-bearded Smotana agrees. “The baron has promised us the lot of them, and our master always keeps his word. But if you like, we could seek out that old bald fool and break his neck now.”

Peklo nods his head. “
Jah.
But I settle the score, not you. I break his bones good.”

I doubt it. Though Peklo may keep his eye out for any glimpse of the fool who dowsed him, there'll be no score settling today. No one is better than Georgi at remaining unseen.

“That lass looked tasty,” Smotana says. “And there's at least one or two more in there, or I miss my guess. How long will it be until we get the go-ahead?”

“When the master and our, ah, young mistress grow strong enough,” Peklo says. His voice is unsettlingly calm now.

“Ah,” Smotana says. He shows his teeth in an even wider grin and nods his head as he continues to stroke his beard. “Of course.”

What little amusement I was feeling at the way Georgi handled Peklo had now left me. I slip back around the corner with a sick feeling in my gut.

Are we all doomed?

ON THE SEASONS flowed. The snows of Zma melted into the sweet promise of Jar, then the long hot days of Leto, until finally again it was Jesen, the time when the leaves turn and fall from the trees, the very season in which the boy now known by all as Pavol had been born.

And like the small trees in the forest, he had drawn strength from the passing of seasons and years. Though he was still slender, there was no mistaking the strength in his arms grown hard-sinewed from the woods work that was his daily labor. His years upon the earth now numbered sixteen and he was taller than most men.

As he had grown and changed, something else in the land had done the same. First as a flicker like foxfire in the night, then as a glow like a flame near burned out, the light of the Silver Lands had begun to show itself again, that fifth direction that had vanished on the death of his parents was returning. Not everyone could see it, but it was there once more.

Baba Marta was the first to point it out to him. Then she told a story of the Silver Lands, how those who lived their long lives there were pleased when humans lived in peace, how they watched the lands of mortal folk but did not interfere—though now and then a lord or lady of Faerie might fall in love, true love with a mortal. Then, if that love was returned, the couple had a hard choice to make. If they would live together, one must pledge to give up all that had been known and familiar before and go to that true love's land to share long life or swift mortality by his or her side.