Draka

Compared to finding a bunch of Nest Hearts all along the border, the Happaran military camps were boring. They were easy enough to find, since they each had multiple fires going and were ringed by torches. A few closer looks revealed that they were all set up according to some common plan similar to that of the Karakani camp, surrounded by palisades and with the largest, most important-looking tents at the center. I didn’t get too close; I didn’t want the Happarans to spot me, and Veretil had asked me to only get a general idea of how many, where, and how large their camps were. My report would be far from perfect, but I did my best.

Their organization was clearly different from that of the Karakani army. “Our” side had its troops concentrated in a single, sprawling camp-town a few miles from the large bridge, with only some small outposts along the rest of the border. In contrast, the Happarans had a fair number of camps of roughly equal size. Another difference was that, judging by the herds of horses I saw surrounding each camp, they must have had far more cavalry. Just two of those camps together had as many horses as the entire Karakani army, from what I could see. I thought about captain Vestem and his eleven subordinates, and I wondered what the hell they expected to do if they had to face the Happaran cavalry. What little I’d learned about the ancient history of war back in school told me that when it came to cavalry, the general idea was “more is better.” I thought about Genghis Khan and the Mongols steamrolling the world, and hoped to God that the Karakani were prepared. Surely they’d be prepared, right? They wouldn’t just think, “there’s more of us and we’re richer, so we’ll win.”

Right?

Instinct gave her opinion: “The only thing humans do better than arrogance is overconfidence.” And while she was one to talk, she did have a point. Another thing I remembered was that history was full of overconfident armies getting stomped.

I forced down my worries. General Sarvalian didn’t give me the impression of an arrogant or overconfident man, and I knew nothing about how either army fought. I’d have to ask Darim about it; she should have at least a general idea of how they expected to beat the Happarans if it came to it.

As a light blush touched the eastern sky I circled back towards the Karakani camp. The night had been clear, but morning brought gray clouds from the north, promising rain. I flew high, following the river, and again wondered how all those Nest Hearts could exist on the south side, and only the south side, of the river. The Happarans had to know about them; I’d seen lots of mounted patrols on their side, even at night. And they definitely had the troops to clear the Nests out. Why didn’t they? Were they part of some plan? Why were most of the settlements here abandoned in the last few years? I felt that there must be a connection, and it felt important, but so far it was a complete mystery to me.

I caused quite a commotion when I flew into the central, fenced off area of the camp. The sun was barely up when I arrived, but the place was already bustling with activity. Soldiers doing morning exercise stopped and looked up and horses whinnied and pulled on their tethers as I passed above them, and in the central section aides scurried away and sentries came to meet me as I landed. The sentries weren’t threatening or anything. They were just there, making themselves known and getting in the way.

Looking around, I saw Darim hurrying up from the corner where our tents were pitched. “Sentry Darim!” I called to her. “Get me a map of the borderlands, one I can draw on. And some writing materials. And tell Tribune Veretil that I’m back!”

She took it literally in stride. She didn’t even slow down; she just gave me a crisp, “Yes, ma’am!” in passing on her way towards the tribune’s tent.

“And someone get me a couple gallons of water,” I said to the gathered sentries. I put all the authority that I could muster into my voice, and started towards our tents without waiting for a response. The two sentries in my way stood staring until I got within ten feet. When I gave them a questioning look and showed no sign of stopping, though, one said to the other, “You heard her! Let’s get a barrel of water!”

They both got out of my way, hurrying off somewhere.

Darim’s small, single-person tent stood open, but the Wolves’ was closed and gave off the soft sounds of sleep. I let my friends rest, settling down on the grass to wait for Darim. She arrived a few minutes later, carrying a rolled up map and a box with brushes, quills, and ink. A second sentry carried a small writing table, a smoothly polished, inclined surface on a stand about a foot high. I had them set them up, then asked Darim to do the actual marking on the map as I pointed with a claw; I didn’t want to risk making a mess of it and having to start over.

It took some time. Despite Veretils’s lessons Darim had to help me read the map, but I got the locations of all the Happaran camps I’d seen, or at least close enough as made no real difference. The scale of the map, which covered about seventy miles from the mountains to the sea, made any exact locations pretty much impossible anyway. We also marked any towns and villages on there that had been abandoned. At some point my water barrel showed up, but I barely noticed.

“Great,” I told her as we were finishing up. “Now for the Nest Hearts.”

“Nest Hearts?” she asked with some confusion.

“Yeah! There’s heaps of ‘em on the Happaran side. Now let’s do this before I forget, yeah?”

There were too many Nest Hearts, and they were too densely packed, to put all of them on the map. I focused on the goblin and valkin settlements, trying to get their locations as correct as I could and to give a relative size for each.

“I don’t understand how you found them,” Darim said as she worked. “Aren’t Nest Hearts made of darkness? And you say they’re all hidden.”

“I mean, yeah. But do you know how at least some magic users can sense the things when they get close?”

“I’ve heard something like that, I think. But I’ve never seen it.”

“Well, that’s how it is. And I can do the same thing. Just at a much longer distance than your average magic user.”

“Oh.” She looked at me with wonder. “Can you use magic, then?”

I gave her my best enigmatic smile which, by her reaction, must have been terrifying. “I’m a dragon,” I told her. “I am magic.”

I didn’t tell her I could eat the things. I’d keep that in reserve.

Garal and Lalia woke at some point. We were waiting for the ink to dry when Garal got out, half dressed, to say good morning before hurrying off to the latrine. Lalia followed him a few minutes later, looking like hell hung over. When they got back we all talked a little as they dressed properly, and then they took Darim with them to get some breakfast — the three of them carrying off the table, map, and writing materials. By that point the long night and lack of proper sleep was catching up to me, and I got into the tent that had been provided for me. It was a little cramped but shielded me from the morning sun, which was all I needed.

I didn’t sleep for long. Darim woke me about an hour later, telling me that Tribune Veretil would like to see me at my earliest convenience. I stretched, almost knocking the tent down; it was big enough for me to curl up in comfortably, but it wasn’t made for someone as big as I was getting to spread their wings. One of the poles came out, and one of the corners fell in on me. With some annoyance I pushed my way out and stretched there instead, as Darim hurried to right the tent.

Nobody got in my way as I casually retraced my steps from the previous day to Veretil’s tent. I was followed or watched by about a dozen sentries and aides at all times, but nobody tried to stop or slow me. It was a strange but pleasant feeling to just walk around, out in the open and surrounded by strangers like that. They were freaked out by my presence, and probably my very existence, but the fact that no one made a fuss was good enough for me.

I found Veretil’s tent and stuck my head in. He must have been expecting me; he was sitting at a desk with a scroll in front of him, but his pen was safely stowed and he had his hands in his lap, facing the opening of the tent. I wondered if he had been a scout, and had some Advancements improving his hearing or other senses; he did seem to know just about everything about maps and recognizance.

“Ah, Lady Draka!” he said with a false cheerfulness that was betrayed by the way his eyebrows seemed to be trying to eat his eyes. “Good morning!”

“Morning, Tribune.” I entered the tent and tried to sit down in front of him, but I’d forgotten how low the top was and my horn caught on the canvas even though I was bending forward. I carefully got my horn loose and lay down instead while Veretil sat stock still, a wan smile plastered on his face. The wide eyed sentry next to him, a tall, skinny kid who couldn’t have been older than eighteen, licked his lips nervously. He twitched when I rustled my wings to settle them.

“You wanted to see me?” I said once I’d gotten comfortable.

“Ah, yes! I’ve been looking over the map you made — excellent work, wonderful really — and I had some questions. Hoping you could add some detail and such. Do you have time now?”

“As long as I get to sleep properly afterwards I have all the time you want.”

“Of course! Of course! Now, these camps, here and here…”

That night Veretil had me looking closer at the Happaran camps, starting with those closest to the large road and working my way east towards the coast. It wasn’t that he was uninterested in the Nest Hearts, but he was a military man, not an adventurer, and it was the enemy he was most interested in. The tribune wanted my best estimates of the number of soldiers and how heavily they were equipped, as well as the number and types of horses. That required me to land, Shift, and get into the camps, but I wasn’t bothered. It was slow going, but fun.

The night after that I did the same thing, working my way west. I also had Veretil’s feedback on what I should focus on, which I’d apparently only had half right.

During the days I mostly slept or spent time with Darim. Garal and Lalia were doing their best to make nice with the army, joining in on physical training, weapons practice, and even patrols with the army cavalry. And Maglan had precious little time. He’d been returned to his regiment as soon as he’d handed over the message he carried to General Sarvalian, and now the rest of that regiment had returned from their R&R, turning that whole part of the camp into an overpopulated mess. Getting to talk to him was easy enough; I only needed to find where he was, and then I’d interrupt whatever was going on simply by existing. But after the first time a junior officer, trembling either with fear or impotent rage, asked me to please not do it again, and to send for Mag if I wanted to speak with him. Apparently my presence was disruptive. The guy seemed caught between a need to continue whatever they’d been doing and absolute despair at trying to make me do anything, and I felt bad enough for him that I stayed away after that.

Darim was a pleasant surprise, relaxing and opening up once she got used to me. She was a cobbler’s daughter from Parkon, a large-ish coastal town about fifty miles south of Karakan. She loved birds. She was only twenty, and had been assigned to us because she was being considered for a promotion to something called a watch officer.

“As long as I don’t mess this up and let you all get robbed or hurt I’ll have eleven men under me by this time next month,” she told me, then froze and blushed when I snorted and grinned at her. “I’ll have command of eleven sentries,” she corrected herself carefully.

We’d just had our evening meal on my third day in the camp. Garal and Lalia were out with Vestem’s wing, and Darim had brought her food to our tents to eat with me. The sky was clear and there was still a little sunlight left — a beautiful early evening for flying.

“All you need to do is keep us and our stuff safe?”

“And make sure you get whatever you need, that messages get to and from you, get rid of gawkers so you’re not disturbed, things like that, yeah. Basically make sure that you have a pleasant, productive stay here.” She paused, leaned in and lowered her voice. “Honestly, I’m only responsible for you, but I figured you’d be less than happy if your friends weren’t taken care of. Besides, I like ‘em.”

“Yeah, Garal’s easy to like. And Lalia grows on you when she’s not trying to kill you, I guess.” Darim’s eyebrows shot up in an obvious question, and I obliged. “We didn’t exactly start off as friends, me and Lalia. Let’s leave it at that.”

Darim didn’t leave it. “But you two get along now?”

“Nah, yeah. Lalia’s all right. She’s just really protective. But, hey, Darim? If you just need to look after me, does that mean that you’re free to go with me if I go somewhere? While you’re on duty, I mean.”

“I think I’m technically always on duty. But I don’t see why not.”

“Well, we’ve got a good sky right now. How about it?”

“Hmm? What do you mean?”

“I thought I’d go up for a while. Take a turn around the camp in the golden hour and see everything in sunset colors. Want to come up with me?”

Darim looked at me, then took a sharp breath. “Really? Flying? Right now? I can go flying right now?”

I grinned at her. “I don't see why not.”

Darim was a different kind of companion than anyone I’d taken flying before. She held on tight, but not with Mak’s half-panicked death grip. She was completely quiet to the point that it made me worried, but when I called back to check on her she just answered, “I’m great! This is great!” her voice bubbling with laughter, and then went silent again. That was how she’d been with whatever we were doing, and whoever was around. She’d been happy enough to join in on conversation when appropriate, but she wasn’t one to break the silence. I could only assume that she was enjoying the sights and sensations of flying.

“How’s your night vision?” I asked her as the last sliver of sun disappeared behind the mountains.

“As long as there’s moon or starlight I see normally!”

“Color and all?”

“Yeah!”

Well, damn. That filled me with envy. I told her so and she laughed at me. “I don’t know anyone else who can see color, but we can’t have night blind sentries! People don’t sneak around with torches, you know!”

I stayed up until the light failed and the stars were out. With what she’d just told me it probably didn’t make much difference to her, but I wanted to get a view of the world at night before I returned her to the camp.

“Thank you,” she told me after sliding off my back and getting the wobbles out of her legs. She was flushed and smiling hugely, and with how large her mouth was it was a huge smile indeed. “Truly, from the brightest spark of my soul, thank you, Lady Draka. That was the most wonderful experience of my life.”

“Yeah, no worries,” I told her, a little abashed. “Glad you enjoyed it. Some people don’t like the height and all.”

“I used to stand on the cliffs above the sea north of my home, and watch the gulls sail on the wind. I always wondered what that would be like, but I never imagined I might do the same. You’ve made a life-long dream come true, Lady Draka. I can’t thank you enough,but is there anything I can do for you?”

“Nah, I’m—” I stopped as something occurred to me. “Actually, there is something. Do you know who Maglan is? The archer who arrived here with us?”

“I saw him, yes. I think I could find him if I need to.”

“He’s the lover of someone very important to me. Now, I know he’s part of a regular regiment or company or whatever, but I think he’s got mixed up in something political, together with the rest of us. If you could try to keep an eye on him, I’d consider it a personal favor.”

She looked thoughtful. “I’ll do what I can,” she said after a moment.

“That’s all I ask. I know that you have your regular duties and all.”

She nodded, then said, a little hesitantly, “My lady, I’m sure that you have plans for your mission tonight, but may I make a suggestion?”

“Sure, yeah!” I was going to be looking closer at some of the Nest Hearts that didn’t have settlements around them, to see if I could figure out what kinds of creatures they were connected to, but I was open to suggestions.

“I saw a lot more activity near the river than normal as we flew, and I thought I might have seen some hidden camps as well. It looked suspicious. I’ll be reporting it to Tribune Veretil, even if I have to ask his sentries to wake him, but would you take a closer look along the river specifically?”

“Sounds important. Yeah, I’ll do that. You’ve got good eyes on you!”

She smiled at my praise, and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “It’s my major. I could have spotted a rabbit in the grass at night from as high as we were. That’s part of why they want to promote me.”

Well, damn, I thought for the second time in the same conversation. So that was what the major version of what Herald’s minor did. Herald had sharp eyes and saw well in the dark, but Darim was an order of magnitude beyond that from what she’d told me. Eagle eyes with full color at night? Anyone would be jealous of that!

“All right. You go tell the tribune. I’m heading back out. No point in hanging around here, yeah? Good night, Darim.”

Still smiling, she gave me a fist-over-heart bow. “Good night, Lady Draka. Good hunting to you.”