Draka

For all that I liked Garal, and even Lalia in many ways, I didn’t want them to see what I could do. All they needed to know was that I could get results, and when the dragon wants to have a private chat with a prisoner, the dragon gets to have a private chat with said prisoner. My companions protested loudly, making all kinds of concerned noises when I grabbed Leretem by the neck and dragged her away from the others, but they didn’t try to stop me. Hell, the protests may have been theatrics for the benefit of the prisoners, for all I knew. The prisoner herself stank of fear, and that was before I spread my wings wide and covered her with them, creating a nice little bubble where there were only the two of us.

I got my face right up in hers before I spoke, so that she could feel my breath on her skin and really think about how many sharp teeth I had. “It’s time to talk, Tammy. Last chance before I make you. And I will make you. How were you tracking us?”

She didn’t cry. Nor did she beg. For all her faults she was brave, I suppose, though she started hyperventilating a little. “Company secret,” she told me between breaths. “I’ll die before I tell you, dragon or not.”

“No, you won’t. You’ll tell me anything I want when I’m done with you.”

I didn’t give her a chance to respond. I just took the darkness surrounding her, and squeezed. I’d gotten quite a lot of practice by then, and I hadn’t used my magic much lately. I could keep it up for hours if I had to.

“Listen, Tammy,” I whispered to her when she gasped, then choked. “I’d tell you that I’ll stop if you talk, but people usually can’t speak while I do this. But I’m going to release you at some point, and then you’ll have an opportunity to tell me how you were tracking us. What you do with that is up to you.”

I left her like that for a good thirty seconds before I drew the shadows back. Then she cried. The silent, teeth gritted, heaving sobs of someone who was too proud to cry openly but just couldn’t hold it back.

I gave her a few seconds before saying, “You’re not talking,” and putting on the pressure again. And this time she begged, though her pleas were quickly cut off.

The next time I released her she took a single breath and started babbling. “The medallion! Someone in your group has a tracking medallion, the one we lost when Marg and the others disappeared with Bekiratag. That’s how we followed you, someone has a medallion and we have the other one. Captain Selim has it, he’s— I don’t know, I think he got away, so he should still have it. Please, that’s the truth! By the Warrior and the stars and the City of Rains, I swear that’s the truth! Please don’t— don’t put me in the dark again!” She started sobbing openly at that point, not even trying to hold back. “Gods, the old folks told me but I never listened to them. I never should have—! Please, great one! Please!”

Just over a minute. That’s how long it had taken me to break a hardened mercenary. I was both pleased and just a little bit disgusted with myself. She’d deserved it. I had no doubt about that. She deserved far worse, honestly. But that didn’t stop me from feeling dirty about how eager I’d been, and how satisfied I was about how quickly and effectively I’d done it.

When I dragged her back she collapsed, and curled up weeping on the ground. Kordon stared at me with renewed horror. Understandably so; two minutes ago the woman had been willing to let me take her remaining hand, and now she was a blubbering wreck.

“Tammy. Look at me, Tammy,” I said, and she did, forcing herself up into a sitting position, her stump giving her some difficulty. “Cooperate, and keep your friends from doing anything stupid.”

She sniffled and gave me one sharp nod. “I will.”

“All right,” I said to the others. “One of you has a tracking medallion on you. The same one I gave to Lalia, so I doubt it’s her. Garal? Maglan? Are either of you carrying a silver medallion?”

Garal and Lalia looked at each other, then turned as one towards Maglan.

“You pack your own gear, Mag?” Lalia asked.

“I mean, yeah. Who else?”

“Could anyone have put anything in it without you noticing?”

“Doubt it. I’ve been through it since we started out, bags, clothes and all. I would have noticed by now. All I have that I didn't pack myself is the message. I’m sure of it.”

The two Wolves shared another look, then looked at me. I nodded.

“Maglan, get the message tube out, if you would.”

“Aw, shit, mister Garal, you don’t think—?”

“Just get it out.”

Maglan opened his jacket, showing the leather tube with the message inside. It was about a foot long and an inch and a half wide.

“What do you think, Lalia?” I said. “Wide enough for the medallion, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she agreed sourly. “But we can’t open it. Tampering with military communications — they’ll throw us from the rock for that. Or just cut our heads off.”

“Yeah, bloody tough situation.” I looked at the tube. It had a lid at one end, knotted shut with a leather cord which was itself covered with a wax seal that had to be broken to undo the knots. “You’ll just have to blame the dragon.”

Before anyone could respond I unceremoniously relieved Maglan of first his jacket, then the tube. The strap caught on his neck, pulling him off-balance, and he sat down hard in the dirt. “Maglan resisted. You both saw it,” I told the other two. “Lalia, hit me. If you can knock me out, I’ll give the tube back.”

I didn't need to tell her twice. Lalia hauled back and punched me right in the jaw, hard enough to snap my head to the side. It actually hurt! Lalia, for her part, was shaking her hand. “Mercies and fucking Sorrows, Draka,” she hissed. “What are you made of?”

“She tried to fight me for it,” I told them after working out the ache in my jaw. “I think that about covers your asses.”

I tore through the leather cord with my claws and opened the tube, shaking it into my hand. First came a scroll, but it stuck halfway and from its center a cloth-wrapped package fell into my open palm. I pushed the scroll back into the tube and handed it back to Maglan, who looked at me with open dismay.

I unfolded the cloth. In my palm lay that same damn medallion that Kira had taken off her dead leader when I captured her.

“I don’t know what the fuck Sempralia is playing at,” I growled at the others, “but we’re going to have a long, serious conversation when I get back. ‘Building trust,’ my scaly ass.”

“At least now we know,” Garal said. “And if we get rid of that medallion they won’t be able to track us as easily.”

“It’ll slow them down a little at best,” Lalia said. “There are only so many ways for us to move if we want to keep going south, with all the rivers. And I’d bet that they’ll be back in force. We’ll need to try and outrun them.”

“Or,” I said, “you three take care of these prisoners you wanted so badly, and I go and deal with this right now.”

I channeled some magic into the medallion, and felt it stir. It twitched and jumped in my hand seemingly in one specific direction, and I got the idea to hold it by the necklace. When I did that and channeled more magic it swayed in the rough direction of where the Spurs had come from.

“Draka, please,” Garal said, coming up and laying his hand on my back. “Don’t do anything hasty.”

“I won’t. I’m just going to talk with them. If they don’t want to talk I’ll bail out.”

“You’re going to confront an entire mercenary company? What do you think you could possibly accomplish, doing that?”

“Won’t know until I try it, will I? But I see two things happening in the next few hours. This village will be razed to the ground, and anyone living here will be lucky to survive. And you will be fleeing down the road with four dozen experienced, mounted mercenaries after you, and I don’t know how that’ll end. So I’m going to go talk to them, and I suggest that you get going. Take the prisoners with you, or leave them. It doesn’t matter much to me. Leretem at least won’t give you any trouble.”

Garal gave me a searching look, then an exasperated sigh. “Right. Love, Maglan, let’s get the men on horseback. The unconscious one can go on Melon; she’s a steady girl. We’re moving in five minutes and no longer!”

I gave Tammy a baleful glare, and she ducked her head obsequiously. “You’ll be moving out,” I told her. “Behave.”

I didn’t need to make any threats. “I will,” she told me, and I believed her.

“I won’t be long,” I told the others. “I’ll see you on the road.” Then I took off, the medallion clutched in my hand.

It took about half an hour to reach the Silver Spurs’ camp. Since I didn’t know where it was I had to rely on the retreating survivors to lead me there, and I deliberately stayed low and kept my speed down to make sure they wouldn’t spot me, landing every so often to make sure I was heading in the right direction. Along the way I found the spot where I’d first hit them. Two horses lay dead on the ground, their throats cut, but there were no bodies; I guessed the mercs must have collected their dead or wounded as they passed.

The camp I found sat beside a shallow stream which ran south to north between two wooded hills, only easily approached from up- or downstream. It was much simpler than when I’d found them in the western hills, and looked like it was set up to be quickly broken down if needed. This time, when I approached the camp, I didn’t sneak. Darkness and shadow were my allies, but this was no time for stealth. Instead I flew a couple of lazy circles around them to let them get a good look at me, riling up the horses and making soldiers stop to look up, before landing a few hundred feet upstream and striding confidently towards them.

A few of the Spurs shouted orders. Others readied bows or lances or mounted their horses. Most of them just stared.

“I will speak with your commander!” I roared as loud as I could, and the volume of my own voice caught me off guard. I had no idea I could be so loud. I used Tekereteki, my family’s Tekereteki, what Kira called classical; I’d been told that I had a noble accent, and I relied on that and my Command and Charisma Advancements to keep the nervous soldiers from starting anything. Even if the individual mercenaries didn’t understand me, I hoped that their officers would.

It worked beautifully.

Soldiers lowered their weapons, not sure what to do, as a few of them ran to the tent I recognized as belonging to their commander. I wasn’t arrogant enough to march into the middle of the camp where I’d be surrounded, but sitting down tall and proud outside the perimeter and letting them come to me felt like the more regal choice anyway.

It took a few minutes for the commander to appear, flanked by four older-looking mercs. When she did she was fully armored, except that she left her close-cropped head bare. She was a woman in her late forties to middle fifties. While she had the same general features as any Karakani, she would have stood out anywhere by her eyes, which were hard and nearly black, and by her height. She was only an inch or two shorter than Herald.

She showed some impressive survival instincts by stopping well out of spitting range. “You asked to speak with me?” she said. Her voice was strong and steady and her shoulders low and relaxed, but she stood upwind of me, and she couldn’t mask her fear entirely. The camp reeked of it, but every person was subtly different, and I could always tell.

The fact that she didn’t introduce herself annoyed me a little. I already knew from Kira that the commander’s name was Sarahem, but it was the principle of the thing.

“Do they not teach basic manners in Tekeretek? Or are you making some pointless attempt at hiding who you are? Let me make it easy for you: You are the Silver Spurs, a mercenary company out of Tekeretek in the pay of Happar. You have been raiding the Karakani countryside, and on the side you’ve been abducting magic users and sending them back south. Do you wish to deny anything so far?”

“I deny everything,” she said. I thought that she was trying to be flippant, but she only came across as uncertain and bitter.

I snorted at her. “It does not matter. Whoever you pretend to be, I am fed up with you, and I am here to make you an offer. Leave. Release any prisoners you may have, ride south across the border, and do not return. If you do, I will return Leretem, Kordon, and Sergen to you.”

I gathered the shadows around me. In the light of midday it was a pain, but I didn’t gather so much as to make it obvious, only to give off a sense of wrongness and make myself more menacing. As if sensing the mood, my own shadow began to subtly twist and squirm. “Refuse, and I will destroy every soldier in this camp, except for you, Commander. By ones and twos everyone around you will disappear, until there is only you left.”

“You think a single creature, no matter what you are, can frighten us?” I wasn’t sure if the words were for my benefit, for her soldiers’, or for her own. But for all that I despised her for what she’d done, I admired her self control. Her voice, her expression, and her posture all shone with confidence. It didn’t matter, though. No matter what she said, the cloud of fear that hung over the camp grew thicker, her own included. She took my threat as deadly serious, and she was terrified.

“I do. Look around you. Your soldiers believe me. They may be ready to die in battle, but they do not want to be swallowed by the night. They don’t want to turn their backs on a friend for a second, only for that friend to vanish with no trace but a few spatters of blood. They would much rather just go home. Don’t you want to go home, Commander? Wouldn’t that be much better than seeing everyone around disappear, one by one?”

This time I didn’t need to rely on scent. I could see her falter; the way she tensed subtly, the uncertain set of her eyes. My audience of four dozen stood spellbound, and I gambled. I took a lazy step forward, then another, gathering more shadows around me as I went. I stopped ten feet ahead of the commander, close enough that when I raised my head high my shadow fell on her. I let it wrap around her, and as her eyes widened and her breath grew shallow I said, low enough for only her and her escorts to hear, “And if you do not believe me, Commander, you should know that this is not the first time I have seen you, though there were a lot more of you in that wooded gorge in the hills. Remember? Before Bekiratag disappeared? Do you need me to tell you what the inside of your tent looks like, Sarahem? Which books you keep by your bedside? Do you need me to map your scars for you?”

The commander’s breath hitched, and she took a step back from me.

“There is no need to answer. You have until sunset to act. All you need to do is release your prisoners, leave, and not harm anyone else. Do that, and I will return my captives to you. Fail, and your people start dying. I’ll be watching.”

With that I leaped into the air and climbed as fast as I could, before someone grew a set of gonads and took a shot at me.

I hurried back to the others. They’d made it a few miles down the road, most of them walking while the still unconscious Sergen and Kordon with his healing leg were tied to the backs of Melon and Maglan’s mare. I quickly informed my companions of what was happening, then left again to watch the Spurs.

By the time I returned to the mercenaries the camp was already half struck. Half an hour later they were moving south, leaving a small group of lost-looking prisoners behind with some clothes and a small package of food. I decided not to approach the released prisoners; I didn’t want them scattering and losing each other, leaving only one of them with anything to eat.

After sunset I brought the mercenaries Sergen. He’d come to during the afternoon, but even with a healing potion in him and a day’s rest he was still a mess. It turned out he was the one I’d used to knock one of his companions out of the saddle; the target had probably taken most of the force and died on impact. Tammy had explained things to him, and he’d behaved himself well enough, riding Melon in sullen silence.

Sergen did not like me, and he did not like flying, but it wasn’t like he’d have been able to resist me even at perfect health.

I spent the night watching the mercenaries’ new camp, about ten miles south of where I’d originally found them. I’d nap, then move somewhere else, and nap again; if they were using the tracking medallion I didn’t want them to ever be sure of where I was.

In the morning, as they were breaking camp, I brought them Kordon. He was less wriggly than Sergen in the air. More like Kira, in that he was first rigidly terrified, then went entirely limp once he accepted that he had no control over the situation.

The Spurs made it about twenty miles that day, an impressive distance considering most of it was through fields and pastures rather than on roads, and as the sun was setting I brought them Tammy.

Tammy hadn’t wanted to go.

“Please,” she said, on her knees before me. “Can’t I stay with you?”

“I have no time or place for you,” I told her. “Now stand and get ready to fly.”

She did as I ordered. Of course she did. She’d broken faster and more completely than anyone except possibly Mak, and I’d been far harsher, less controlled, with Mak. She stood and faced me with tears in her eyes, her arms out the way I’d instructed Sergen and Kordon before her, and she asked me again, with tears in her eyes. “Please. I never belonged with the Spurs, not really. Please let me serve you!”

I considered it. I couldn’t deny that I wanted to keep her. She was mine, after all, and I didn’t like to part with anything that was mine. The fact that I despised her as a murdering sack of crap didn’t even figure into it. But this was a time to be reasonable and responsible; not only would she be a burden, but I’d told Sarahem that I’d return her soldiers. If I went back on even part of my word she and the Spurs might become a problem again, and that would be a pain in the ass.

But perhaps Tammy could be useful after all? “If you want to serve me,” I told her, “return to your company, if they’ll still have you. See what you can find out about all those prisoners you’ve been sending south, and if you can learn anything about the prisoners someone called the ‘Night Blossom’, or possibly Parvion Tarkarran, has been selling to Commander Lakatekete.” I looked at the stump where her forearm ended halfway. It had scabbed over and was healing closed, but was still wrapped in bandages. “And see if you can find a healer who can regenerate your lost limb.”

“As you wish, great dragon,” she said, smiling through her tears.

“Draka,” I told her. “My name is Draka.”

One minute, I thought. One damn minute to reduce a hardened soldier to this.