Draka

The next six days I fell into a routine. I’d check the lake, then I’d check on Pine Hill. Sometimes I’d hang out by the road and people watch, or go creep on some different village. Sometimes I’d head back to the mysterious gate in the mountain. Nothing ever happened, but the people of the forest became anxious as the days passed, turning to the mountains with worried expressions as they talked in dark tones among themselves.

I saw Lahnie a few times, sitting with the old wood carver or helping adults with various tasks. Once I saw her just stand and look out into the forest, and I wondered if she was thinking about me. I couldn’t help it. I made sure that no one else could see me, then uncurled from where I was hiding and waved to her.

Her giant grin and happy wave back warmed my heart. It really did.

While people-watching I could clearly see the signs of advancements, now that I knew about them. They’d been there before, I guess, but I’d probably dismissed them as one-off things. But now things made sense. People living in small villages in the forest probably went through all kinds of crap. I saw a wrinkly, crooked old lady easily splitting wood for what felt like an hour, stack most of it, then load up a sack as big as she was. She threw it on her back without the slightest sign of effort and brought it inside her home. Nothing off about that. She had a strength advancement, or maybe two. And some endurance, probably. Being strong must be very useful when you’re a peasant, or whatever these people would call themselves.

Two men carrying a giant tree through the village by themselves? Same thing. A woman hemming a dress with the speed and precision of a sewing machine? A speed advancement, perhaps dexterity.

I didn’t see any little kids doing anything extraordinary, but Herald had been incredibly smug about having three advancements at her age, so I guessed most people didn’t get any at all until they grew up a bit. Maybe there was a level of maturity needed? I saw a boy who looked maybe ten years old turning a grindstone without complaint while his dad, or uncle maybe, sharpened axes and knives and shovels and stuff like that, so he must have had an advancement for endurance. Or maybe patience.

What would that do to a society, and an economy? What about technology? Why would you bother developing something like a sawmill when two specialised men could work a saw all day, cutting trees as quickly and cleanly as any machine? People still used wagons, but who would ever bother building an engine when someone with the right advancements could pull a heavy wagon at a jog? They may not get the same effect, and it may not benefit as many people, but would anyone bother trying to solve a problem that didn’t even exist in their eyes? Sure, carts drawn by animals were way more common than hand carts, but that was because people didn’t want to pull their own wagons, not because they couldn’t.

With everything I saw I was surprised that in all those days I didn’t see anyone using magic, or at least none that I recognised. I thought I should be able to see the glow, and was surprised that I hadn’t. Either there was magic that I couldn’t see, or it was more rare, or rarely used, than meeting Makanna had made me believe.

This was going to be hard to get used to.

Despite all that, the most interesting thing that happened was that I saw Guy again. He and his girlfriend were riding with some others that I assumed were mercenaries from their company, and I followed along. They looked tense, so I figured something must be wrong. They kept their eyes sharply on the forest surrounding them, and kept the talking to a minimum. Every so often Guy’s girlfriend would signal one of the other riders, and they would go into the forest for a short while before returning. But nothing happened, and when they reached a village on the road they stopped and rested for a while. Then they headed back towards Karakan, and I went back to the gate. I wanted to talk to Guy, but I was not crazy enough to do it when he was surrounded by armed, nervous people.

On the seventh day, as I made my daily visit to the lake, I found a small silver earring pinned in a crevice on the tree. I dug it out and, lacking pockets, put it in my mouth. I washed myself and filled up on water, as I usually did, and then took off to go to the stone doors again. I had a good feeling about that day, sure that something would happen.

That lasted until I rose above the trees. I saw smoke. A tall, dark cloud rose from the forest, in a long, low valley far west of Pine Hill. Always too curious for my own good, I headed straight for it.

From the air I saw a village in flames. It wasn’t one I had visited before, but it was heartbreaking all the same. Landing nearby and quickly sneaking up to where the forest ended and the clearing began, I could see some people desperately trying to save houses that were beyond saving. Others stood around, watching in shock as their homes burned.

In the village square, in front of the largest home, a woman screamed out her grief. There were two bodies on the square in front of her. She hugged a third to her chest, a small form that hung limply in her arms. A few people clustered around her in silent support, but what could they do? Their village was gone. The woman’s family, presumably, was dead. I wondered what could have possibly happened, and then I started to see the signs. It was so foreign to me that it hadn’t even registered.

Some people were hurt, but not because of the fire. They’d been beaten. All the homes were burning at once. That doesn’t happen by accident. And then I saw the blood. I hadn’t smelled it because of the smoke, but it was there, around the dead bodies in the square and on the grieving woman and the child she held. Her torn dress was soaked in it. There was so much blood. They hadn’t died from the fire. They’d been killed.

Someone had attacked this village and torched it. They had killed three people. One of the victims was a child. My mind went numb at the realisation. I felt like I should be sick, but my body didn’t react at all. The dragon didn’t care. It just watched.

I understood what people had been so nervous about all these days. And why the mercenaries on the road had been so tense. I knew this. I’d heard about it. There were bandits in the forest. They robbed travellers and extorted villages. That’s why the mercenaries were here. Bandits had even attacked Guy and his people when they were camped by the lake.

And now they had burned a village. I thought of Pine Hill and Lahnie, and my gut clenched.

I was angry. No, I was properly pissed off. I had been furious before, but that had mostly been the dragon. This time it was a completely human fury, a moral outrage at the injustice and the stupid cruelty of what I saw, and at how impotent I was to do fuck-all to help.

But maybe I could do something.

This must have happened very recently. There hadn’t been any smoke when I flew out to the lake that morning, and I hadn’t taken that long checking on Pine Hill.

There was a small road leading from the burning village. I could see fresh hoof prints in the dirt. Not caring if I was spotted, I took to the air. I followed the small road north to a larger east-west one that would sooner or later join the main road to Karakan. The tracks of the horses led towards the mountains, so that was where I went, flying low and fast and watching the road for any sign of riders.

I found none. Landing, I confirmed that there were still fresh tracks on the road. I went on in long hops, searching from the sky, then checking the road. On one landing, there were no tracks.

Right.

I backtracked until I found tracks again, then went forward until they disappeared. In one place there was a confusion of tracks, as though the horses had milled around for a while. I looked around, but didn’t see any signs of where they might have gone. So I used my nose. There was a strong animal scent here, hopefully the horses. I sniffed around the edges of the road.

Jackpot! The scent led to a narrow path into the forest. It was hidden by thick overhanging bushes, and led north-west towards the mountains. I had accepted that I wasn’t going to catch the bastards, so I stayed low and slow, stalking through the forest as I followed both the trail and my nose. I followed that damned track for ages; I couldn’t go fast and sneaky, so I chose sneaky. I got into the foothills proper, but they were more densely forested than further south, so staying hidden was easy. I lost the smell of horse after a while and had to rely on the visible tracks, but then it picked up again, together with new smells: unwashed humans, and smoke.

The bandits had good taste in dwellings, at least. The hills were terraced, consisting of diagonal bands of naked rock bearing small trees and scrubby brush, and at the base of these the bandits had turned a natural cave with a large overhang into an improvised fort, with a wall of wooden stakes surrounding it. Naked rock walls extended on each side for as far as I could see, making it tricky to circle the place, and they had cleared away the trees for about fifty metres around the wall. As far as I could tell it was a solid hideout, well hidden and defensible. The only way in without going through the gate was if you could come down from the overhang somehow, or if you could fly.

I could smell cooking fires roasting meat. Unwashed people and sweaty horses. There were voices, lots of voices, both men and women and many of them laughing cheerfully together. It all felt very wrong, after what they'd done. The atmosphere should have been oppressive, the laughter hard and cruel. They had destroyed a village and abused its people, killing at least three of them. Why were they happy? How dare they be happy after what they had done? It just didn't fit into my understanding of the world.

The dragon understood them. I was sure of that, but it stayed quiet.

I wanted to get closer, so I could get a head count and listen in on them, but the risk was too great. The fury was long gone, I was sure that they'd have guards, and there was no way I could take them all on. I wasn't even sure if I could bring myself to kill a human if it came to it. But I had to do something. I’d make sure they didn’t hurt anyone else ever again. There would be, if not justice, then retribution.

Wiping these bastards out was the mercs’ job. So I needed to let the mercs know where they were, and that again brought me back to Herald and the gang. Luckily, they wanted to see me already. I would just have to hope that the villains would be satisfied for a few days, and didn’t torch any more villages before anything could be done.

Before I left for the lake I got some distance away and got back in the air. I did my best to remain unseen and memorised all the landmarks I could around the place. Then I made my way back to the road where the path branched off and did the same, and again where that road joined the main road to Karakan. Like hell was I going to forget how to find the hideout, and with any luck I’d even be able to describe how to get there. I tried as hard as I could until I was sure that I couldn’t get it down any better, and only then did I head out to wait for my meeting with the adventurers.