Draka

The next morning we woke to a light, unexpected rain, which a persistent wind brought with it into our simple shelter. Herald had shifted in her sleep so that she was snuggled up against my side, most of her curled up and dry under my wing.

“Ugh, should have put up the tent,” was the first thing I heard that morning, as Herald pulled her knees up to her chest so that she was completely sheltered.

I snorted with amusement. “And a good morning to you!”

She grunted at me, then ran the back of her hand against the leather of my wing. “Better than it might have been. Thank you.”

We stayed like that for a little while as Herald fought to wake up properly. “You grow fast, do you know that?” she mumbled. “You are bigger again. Not much, but you are.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” I said, thinking about how I’d gotten stuck a few days before.

Once Herald actually forced herself to get up she was ready quickly. I made us a canopy with both wings, while she packed her bedroll and finished the cold rabbit for breakfast.

“You have all sorts of uses,” she said light-heartedly as she put on her rain-proofed cloak and made sure that her pack and bags were closed up tight against the weather. Since she had some shelter from the rain she took out a simple map and showed me roughly where we were, south-west of the city, and where the village should be. The village was high in the hills, even higher than we were. The others would have gone there by road through the farmlands, but our route shouldn’t take any longer, especially with Herald riding Melon.

The biggest obstacles would be two small roads and a river that we had to cross, the same river that flowed into the sea through Karakan. We had crossed some smaller streams already, fording them easily, but this one was large and fast enough that Herald and Melon would have to cross by bridge. The roads led to other small communities in the hills and mountains, but those were barely a concern, unlikely to see much traffic. For the bridge we would have to either be very careful, or split up.

Poor Melon would have to bear the weather, though she seemed to take it with the same calm she treated almost everything so far. Her biggest complaint was when Herald saddled her and dragged her away from eating her bedding from last night, though she was rewarded for her patience with one of the small, yellow fruits she loved.

We talked little that morning, and as we travelled on Herald’s mood slowly turned darker. Maybe the rain and the lack of sun did it, or maybe she was thinking of whatever nightmare she’d had that night. Maybe this was normal for her, and I hadn’t spent enough time with her to know yet.

“Draka,” she said as we descended one of the many hills we’d cross that day, “do you think about the men you killed?”

“Sometimes.”

“Me too. I remember their eyes when they understood that they would die. Their spirits haunt me, I think. I dream about them. I cut and stab and they take forever to die.” Her voice became quiet, so quiet I could barely hear it over the rain. “Sometimes they do not die at all. Despite their wounds they just do not stop. Sometimes I cannot hit them, or my sword cannot pierce their skin, or I cannot even lift my sword against them. I hesitate. I am too slow or too unskilled or too unobservant, and they kill, and kill, and kill. Me. Everyone with me. Everyone I love.”

“I was there, Herald. You didn’t hesitate.” In fact, I remembered the wildness, the almost joy in her eyes as the bandits charged her. I doubted she would ever hesitate.

“No, I did not. I killed them. And sometimes I think I hate myself for it.”

“Do you think you could have done anything differently? Without you or the people around you getting hurt?”

“I could have not been there. I could have done nothing, stayed at my inn, and those men might still be alive.”

“And how many others would they have hurt? How many innocent people have you helped by killing them?”

Herald stayed silent for a long time before answering. “Perhaps dozens. Perhaps none.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. It had been almost a week since the two bandits on the road and only a few days since the hideout, but I hadn’t thought much about how Herald would be affected. Maybe I’d been too caught up in my own lack of reaction.

We rode on in silence for a few minutes before I spoke again.

“I think,” I said trying to pick my words carefully, “that it is a good thing that you feel bad.” At the pained look she shot me I quickly continued. “I don’t mean that I like to see you hurting. I hate it. But you killed two men. I think that’s supposed to hurt, even if they were completely rotten. One of those men you killed was going to rape you, Herald, and then who knows what they’d do? The other one sure as shit wanted to kill you. If you feel bad about killing them, then I think you can feel safe that you’ll never kill anyone just because you’re angry, or because they’re inconvenient. It shows that you’re much better than those two.”

Herald didn’t say anything, but she looked thoughtful.

“I wish I felt bad,” I said without thinking about it. If we were going to be open with each other she might as well know.

“I feel worse about the animals I eat than the two men I killed. Do you remember the gremlin I ran down outside the mine, that night before we met?”

“I do.”

“That gremlin was the first thing I ever killed that wasn’t an animal, and I just… I felt nothing. I told myself that hey, its buddies had tried to hurt you guys, right? And it was probably going to bring more buddies to finish the job. So I had to. I was justified. Same thing once we were down there. They were going to hurt you guys, so they needed to go. Never mind that I didn’t even really know you. The strongest feeling I had about killing them was feeling bad because I wasn’t feeling bad. You understand?”

“I think so.”

“And then on the road I killed that guy, Pike? Pak? By then I knew that I liked you. I thought of you as a friend, and he and his partner were going to hurt you, and they were part of a group that hurt a lot of other people, so they needed to go, yeah? He was the first human I ever hurt worse than a slap, and I didn’t even hesitate. I killed him and I felt nothing but anger. No regret, no remorse. I looked at him afterwards, and I was annoyed that there was blood on his money pouch.”

I had felt hungry, too, but that was more than I was willing to let on.

I sighed, and decided to tell her something that had been gnawing at me for nearly a week now. I needed someone to hear it. “Do you know what the worst thing is?”

“No,” she said, her voice low and tremulous.

“I don’t know if it’s me or this new body,” I confessed. “I want to think that it’s being a dragon that changes how I feel, but what if it’s not? I want to tell myself that yeah, I’m a dragon now. My brain works differently. That would be such a nice, convenient explanation. But what if that’s not true? What if I was always some sort of sociopath who could hurt and kill people and not feel anything about it? Sure, I’ve felt bad about hurting people before. You know, emotionally. But was that because there were consequences?” I looked at Herald, hoping for an answer that didn’t come. “How can I know?”

“I cannot tell you. But I think that you are far too worried about being a bad person to truly be one, if that is any comfort.”

Crossing the river was uneventful. I flew far upstream to cross, then returned and set up in a spot we'd picked so that that Herald knew to look for me and signalled for her to go ahead. A few miserable travellers used the bridge in that time, but no one stopped in the rain to question a young woman riding alone. About an hour after that we reached the road that would lead us west, higher into the hills and to the abandoned village. We hadn’t seen another living soul for a while, probably thanks to the increasingly heavy rain, but decided to stay off the road, just in case.

‘Unimpressive’ was the kindest way I could think of to describe the tiny village. Less than twenty houses crowded together near the bottom of a grassy valley, surrounded by open pasture and a few fenced-off fields. The stream that ran down the channel of the valley might have been calm and clear on any other day, but with the heavy rain it was a torrent, running fast and hard.

It might have been rustic, or quaint, even idyllic, but instead of the charm of the villages I’d seen in videos from Switzerland or Austria this place just felt sad. Perhaps it was the rain influencing me, but the place had an aura of poverty and desperate survival.

Something moved in the village.

“Down!” Herald hissed, quickly dismounting and leading Melon behind the knoll we’d been looking from.

“Goblins,” she said as we crept back up, looking into the abandoned settlement. “Damn it! I wanted to look through the village for signs of where the others might be.”

At first I didn’t see anything, but now and then small shapes would dart from one house to another, sometimes holding something over their heads to keep the rain off. I couldn’t tell anything about what they looked like, though, being too far and hidden by the rain.

“Are goblins a big problem?” I asked.

“They can be. These are either living in or plundering the village, which means that the others may have either avoided this place, or the goblins are likely to have ruined their tracks.”

“Makanna said that you can negotiate with goblins. Couldn’t she and the others have talked to them?”

“Perhaps. The ones on Mallin prefer not to fight. They have a culture of making deals. They may not always make them fairly, but they will honour them.”

"Wait. Mallin?"

"Yes?"

"Where's Mallin?"

She looked at me like she didn't understand the question, then smiled slightly. "I am sorry. I keep forgetting. Mallin is the island that we are on."

"We're on an island?"

"Yes? A large one, in the Sea of Sareya. Please, can this wait?"

I shut up. She thought for a moment, then came to a decision. “Stay here, I am going to talk with them.”

“What do you mean stay here? If you’re going I’m coming with you.”

Herald shook her head inside her hood. “Goblins talk to each other, and they talk to humans. Better to keep you hidden as far as possible. It is better if I go alone.”

“Are you sure? Is that safe?”

She thought for a few seconds. “I will take Melon. If anything happens I can ride away and we will have to think of something else.”

“Alright,” I said, not liking it but feeling that I needed to trust Herald. “But don’t hesitate to get out of there. And I won’t hesitate to go in if I need to.”

“I am counting on it,” she said, reaching out and patting me just above one wing.

I stayed in place on the knoll while Herald got back on Melon. She headed down to the road and approached the village that way, riding in the open and giving the goblins plenty of time to see her.

The next small figure to run into the open came from the largest, central house. It spotted her, stopped, then ran back into the house it came from. Herald continued into the centre of the village, then stopped and waited. She didn’t have to wait long. Soon a group of goblins emerged from the house, a few of them running to other houses and bringing out more. Of the main group, one was obviously the leader, singled out by the fact that a few of its companions were holding a table over its head as a cover from the rain.

Herald held her hands out to the sides. I assumed that she was talking but it was impossible to hear anything over the rain. Most of the goblins seemed to have a weapon of some sort, though they didn’t hold them in a threatening way. It was more like they were showing that they had them.

God, I wished that I could hear something. I could see both Herald and the goblin leader gesticulating, but I couldn’t tell the mood of the conversation at all.

Then things began to go wrong. I could see a small group of goblins sneaking around from the sides. They were trying to surround Herald, and the leader was gesticulating more and more. Herald had to put her hands on the reins to control Melon, who was prancing and pawing, and she was turning to flee when the surrounding goblins started closing in on her. Still not openly threatening, but clearly showing that she wasn’t going anywhere.

That shit did not fly with me. I moved, but unlike last time, at the bandit camp, I was in full control. Two bounds and a leap and I was in the air. A few flaps of my wings and seconds later I landed heavily in front of the leader, spreading my wings and roaring in its face at the top of my voice. I really only needed to make an opening for Herald to get out, but I chose shock and awe.

The goblins panicked. If they had stood and fought they might have had a chance with their numbers, but they didn't. Most of them, including two of the four holding the table over their leader, simply ran. The remaining two under the table were both on the same side, and the heavy piece of furniture dropped, hitting the wide eyed leader and knocking it on its arse. A quick look over my back showed Herald with her sword out, menacing the surrounding goblins while spewing curses to make a biker blush.

When I looked back the goblin leader was trying to crawl out from under the table, away from me. I took a flapping leap and twisted in the air, landing sideways in front of it. The leader yelped and started scrabbling backwards instead. I could have killed it. It would have been so damned easy. But these little bastards might know something that could help Herald.

“Stop!” I ordered. “Give up!”

The goblin’s eyes went somehow wider. “You talk!” it squealed.

“Do I need to repeat myself?” I growled as I stalked forward. “Give! Up!”

“Yes! Yes!” The goblin exclaimed, followed by a rapid mass of words in a language that I didn’t understand and had no chance of following. The other goblins, those that had not run away yet, backed off with obvious relief and dropped their weapons. Oddly, they seemed suddenly almost comfortable with the situation, relaxing visibly and beginning to talk with each other in that fast language the leader had used.

“We negotiate, yes?” the leader said hopefully.

I looked at it and decided that it was probably a female. It was wearing a simple, full length dress that I assumed must have been meant for a child, but it was completely soaked through with rain and the chest bulged more than I’d expect from a male. She, if that was right, was maybe 120 cm tall and seemed average compared to the others, with arms and legs that would have looked proportional on a human child but with slightly larger hands and feet. She had a wide mouth set in a wider face, smiling nervously and showing teeth that were surprisingly like a human’s, though she had a lot more of them than I’d ever had. Along with that she and the other goblins had pale brown skin, wide, narrow eyes, and a small yet bulbous nose with large nostrils, as well as large, pointy ears. All in all, the goblins looked far more human than the gremlins had.

“Sure,” I told the goblin. “I offer to let you live. What can you give me for that?”

“If I can make a suggestion?” Herald spoke up before the goblin had a chance to reply. “As I was saying before, we are looking for three humans, two dark like me, one paler. We also want to know what happened to this village. Before, you wanted my horse and my weapons. Now, the situation has changed. Draka, if they answer all of our questions truthfully, will we be satisfied?”

I made a show of thinking about it, trying to look unhappy as I said, “I suppose so.”

“Then, Nallekka of the Slanted Hills tribe, we offer this: You will answer all of our questions. You will tell the truth and you will not hold anything back that might be of use to us. You will not try to harm us or my horse. And you will certainly not tell anyone, human, goblin, or otherwise, anything about my companion! In exchange, neither she nor I will kill any of you, and we will all leave each other in peace. Are these terms acceptable?”

The goblin Nallekka looked from Herald to myself, still smiling nervously, then back to Herald.

“Yes!” she said, nodding vigorously, her ears flapping. “Good terms. No one loses. I accept for Slanted Hills tribe.” She gestured to the house she had come from. “We talk inside?”

“After you,” Herald said and dismounted. She led Melon under the extended roof of the house where she would be out of the rain, and then we followed Nallekka inside.