Part 11 (1/2)

But the unformed thoughts roiled in the back of his mind, refusing to be banished by the sunlight and the spears and the swords. He wished that Silbakor were around: some questions needed to be asked. But to summon the Dragon for no other reason than for advice smacked of weakness. No, he would see this matter through . . . himself.

The land rose and fell in soft, feminine curves, and the road was straight and paved with stone. The wartroop made good progress, and though Marrget and Dythragor seemed to be interested in haste, they both appreciated the needs of men and animals. Toward noon, they called a short halt by a river.

Alouzon appreciated it also. Everything she had heard about the Blasted Heath indicated that it was no place to enter unrested. Mernyl's expression the night before had 104.

BRAGONSWORD.

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hinted at even worse possibilities than she had imagined, and she looked toward their destination with the same queasy feeling with which she had approached her first clash with the police in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., when she and others, angry at the continuing slaughter in Vietnam, had protested Richard Nixon's election and the war in what they termed a ”counterinaugural.”

She had had a purpose then, cloudy and dead-end though it may have been, and it had given her the strength to sleep among strangers in an empty church miles from home, and to face the billy clubs after making a meager breakfast of peanut b.u.t.ter and jelly sandwiches. Today, she had no real idea why she was riding toward the Heath. She had no idea why she was even in Gryylth. Without even the comfort of a calendar or a year, she ate bread and dried meat with the men of the wartroop, washed it all down with warm beer, and cared for her horse.

She found herself grooming the beast with the same inexplicable yet intrinsic knowledge that had characterized her handling of weapons. Unlike her swordwork, though, rubbing down her horse did not make her sick. She erred upon occasion, when she thought too much about what she was doing, but the animal looked under-standingly at her. She patted its neck. ”I don't even know your name,” she said.

Marrget was behind her, and he startled her with his loud voice. ”His name is Jia,” he said. ”A gelding.”

She made a wry face. ”It figures.”

Marrget patted Jia with surprising gentleness. ”A fine steed,” he remarked. ”From the king's stables.” He turned to look piercingly at her. ”A great honor.”

Alouzon returned the look. ”I seem to keep getting honored around here,” she said, ”and it seems to do nothing but get people riled at me.”

Marrget grinned slightly, his face softening not in the slightest. ”Well, Alouzon Dragonmaster, what do you think of Gryylth?”

”Ask me later. I probably still won't know, but at least I'll have a fighting chance.”

He laughed, but he stopped suddenly. ”I may come to like you in spite of myself.” He shook his head. ”I do not know if I will accept that.”

Alouzon nodded. To receive anything less than open hostility from these men was more than she could expect. Women stayed at home. Only the midwives, by necessity, had some control over their own lives, and their field of expertise was tightly circ.u.mscribed. A woman, Cvinthil had told her, could not sew a garment that might be worn into battle. She might not even touch a weapon. A woman armed was unthinkable. ”I understand.”

He stood, watching her, as she finished with Jia, brus.h.i.+ng out the silky mane until it shone like the sunlight itself. ”I heard that you saved Dythragor the other night.”

”Yeah ... I did that.”

”A brave deed.”

”I didn't want Dythragor to get killed. But I didn't want to kill that man, either.”

He looked at her as she had seen him look at Wykla, the youngest man of the wartroop. What can I make out of this? he seemed to be asking. Is this fighting material? She hoped that she was not.

”We will see how you fare against the Blasted Heath,'' he said in a tone that she could not read. He turned and strode away to his own horse. His voice rang out: ”Mount!”

They continued north, and the road went on, straight and disdainful of the natural curves of the land. Alouzon had seen this before, also: the work of Rome. But no one mentioned Rome here, and she knew that Rome was as far away as UCLA, or Los Angeles. Gryylth . . . there was something about Gryylth.

What did she think of Gryylth? She thought that it looked like a painting by Turner, with the trees and roads and hills arranged just so, a delight to the eye, but a little too well planned. And behind it all was the same sense of unreality that she had noticed before, as though Gryylth, with all its hills and mountains and trees and rivers, were a backdrop that could, at any time, be rolled 106.

Gad Baudino .

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up to reveal stagehands, props, rope ladders and dusty memorabilia from previous plays.

Marrget, still polite, pointed out and named some of the landmarks. To their left, the Camrann Mountains formed a high curtain wall that separated the central from the western parts of the land. Farther north, the captain explained, the wall split into the even more ma.s.sive West Range and the placid slopes of the Cotswood Hills.

”Mernyl the sorcerer lives in the Cotswoods,” he added.

She nodded, but had hardly heard him. She found the sight of the mountains disquieting. Night before last, in a sheltered clearing in the foothills, she had killed a man.

Marrget excused himself and moved off to speak with Relys. Dythragor had been watching her.

”No need to take it so hard,” he said blandly. ”You can always bow out. The Heath isn't a pleasant place, and I'm certain someone would be glad to escort you back to Kingsbury.”

”I wasn't thinking of the Heath.” He did not listen. ”Wykla, for instance. I don't think he's much concerned about his reputation right now.”

Involuntarily, she glanced back. Wykla was trailing the wartroop by two horses' length, and his face was set and drawn as though he were riding to his execution.

”He's just a boy,” she said. ”Do you always have to use boys for your cannon fodder? ”

”He's seventeen, and big for his age,” Dythragor returned. ”He's wanted to join the First Wartroop all his life, and now he's gotten his wish. He'll make a fine soldier ... if we can whip some of that woman's soul out of him.”

Alouzon bit back her words, managed to say calmly: ”You like Gryylth, don't you?”

”Like it?” He smiled as though appreciating the air, the road, the men who followed him. ”I love it. I don't have to be bothered with trivia here. Everything's cut and dried. The Dremords are murdering scoundrels, and we have to get them out of the country. And I can do something about it. I can do a lot of things.”

”Like killing people?”

He turned in his saddle, his young face lean and defiant. ”There's a war on, girl. Or maybe you've forgotten? Funny, you've been bragging enough about that Dre-mord.”

She looked away quickly. ”It was self-defense,” she said, wis.h.i.+ng that she could believe it.

'Erst commt die Fressen . . . ” He snorted and turned away. ”Things aren't what you're used to here. War isn't a matter of politics, it's a matter of survival. You know that now. Why don't you admit it? If we don't kill the Dremords-”

She was not about to let him off, nor was she willing to listen to a lecture. ”The whole thing wouldn't have come up if you'd patched up that truce ten years ago.”

He was obviously taken off guard. ”Who told you about that?”

”Cvinthil.”

”And Memyl, too, I suppose.”

He was trying to turn the conversation. She ignored his words. ”So how come you wanted to keep fighting? Mernyl had it all wrapped up, I hear.”

”Mernyl was a fool. He actually trusted the Dremords to abide by a settlement, when all they wanted was a chance to entrench themselves even further. The ink on the treaty was hardly dry when they started another battle. If a soldier hadn't run all night to warn Vorya and the wartroops, they would have woken up with their throats cut.”