Lord, give me the wisdom to distinguish between unnecessary brutality and brutal necessity. At least some of the time.
—David Warcinsky
Probably the most difficult decision real humans have to make is whether something is necessarily brutal or unnecessarily brutal. I wish there was something funny about that, but there you have it.
—Walter Slovotsky
Wehnest was usually Ellegon's last stop before Home. Partly it was because it was a solid day's flight from any of several of the usual rendezvous locations; largely it was because there were often extra trade goods remaining after the resupply runs, usually consisting of leftover Nehera-made blades that were marketable anywhere.
This wasn't a usual trip; but they stopped in Wehnest anyway.
* * *
The ground rushed up in the dark, more felt than seen; Ellegon's flailing wings battered the air so hard that Jason couldn't keep his eyes open, but he felt the ground coming up as though it was reaching up to knock them out of the sky, until, at the last moment, their downward momentum slowed and the dragon landed with a thump that rattled Jason's teeth.
*Everybody down,* the dragon said.
They all alighted in the dark. By arrangement, Tennetty and Durine slipped off into the trees, on watch.
Everyone was silent for a moment, then Ellegon snorted. *We can light a fire; there's nobody around.*
The clearing that Ellegon had chosen was just short of a thinning stand of tall pines and stumps; beyond the trees, a fallow field stood in the starlight, a ragged rug of weeds proclaiming its idleness. Over the rise in the other direction was Wehnest, but it would be safe to start a small fire anyway; the light breeze was blowing steadily into the forest, and the smoke of a fire wouldn't be visible before daybreak, still several hours away.
Jason smiled as they quickly gathered and stacked firewood. At least he wouldn't have to light it. Karl Cullinane had insisted that Jason learn to light a fire with flint and steel—a laborious and downright boring process. Lighting this fire would be easy, what with Ellegon around, but gathering wood took no less time.
*I still say you should just skip Wehnest,* the dragon said. The purpose of this trip is to pick up Walter's daughters and wife, not to trade in some blades.*
Aeia stooped over a fallen tree, grabbing an out-thrust branch with one hand and neatly detaching it from the tree trunk with three quick chops of her hatchet. "The trouble with that is that we're doing more than one thing," she said. "We're also checking into the Kernat raid."
Jason dropped an armload of wood on the charred spot near the center of the clearing. Aeia was right, as usual. Still, the chances of learning anything in Wehnest were minimal; Wehnest was one of Home's main trading partners, and likely the ground had been gone over repeatedly by Home traders.
But the difference between likely and certain was important; Jason would probably never learn what had happened to the people who disappeared from Kernat village, but he had to try. It came with the job.
*As defined by your father,* the dragon said. *Not every ruler thinks he has to look into everything himself.*
Firstly, it wasn't everything. Karl Cullinane had felt perfectly comfortable in sending Danagar, General Garavar's son, out spying—about this very matter, in fact.
But, secondly, Karl Cullinane had established the point that the Emperor of Holtun-Bieme wasn't going to be afraid to get his hands dirty, and that was rubbing off, much to the better. Bren Adahan was along on this trip only partly to chase after Aeia; he'd long since accepted Karl's notion that a ruler was supposed to be in contact with the world, not sitting in a castle in luxurious isolation.
Thomen Furnael had picked up on that, too, Jason thought with a smile. Although the last time Thomen had tried something clever, Father had sent him home with a groin kick that Gashier had described in glorious detail. The kick had been to teach Thomen another lesson: opposing Karl Cullinane wasn't a good idea.
*All that's true,* the dragon said. *But I don't have to like it. Getting too involved with the world is what got him killed. You Cullinanes aren't unkillable, you know.*
That was true enough. Although . . . there had been a time when it had been thought that Karl Cullinane was unkillable, that nobody could take him on. There were legends that had grown up around Jason's father, about the time that he had single-handedly freed his wife-to-be from a thousand slavers.
And, like all legends, there was a germ of truth in that: Karl Cullinane had freed Andrea. But it had been from a scant dozen slavers, and Walter Slovotsky had been along, softening them up with several crossbow bolts fired out of the night.
Filling a legend's boots was going to be hard. Piling firewood for Ellegon was a lot easier.
"I think that's about enough," Jason said, dropping a final armload on the pile. He stood back. Ellegon's cavernous mouth opened fractionally, and then a quick tongue of flame issued forth.
The wood only broke into a smoky smoulder; Ellegon tried again.
*It's too damp,* the dragon said with a petulant sniff. He raised his head again and exhaled a huge mouthful of flame that not only set the stacked firewood burning, but sent flaming embers shooting off into the night, some of them threatening to start minor fires which could, if unchecked, quickly grow into a major blaze.
Aeia stomped out one incipient ember; Kethol and Durine, both giggling incongruously, pissed on a second and third, while Jason ground out a fourth.
Nice going, Ellegon, he thought.
*I can't control everything,* the dragon said.
Still, it did make a good campfire.
Tennetty and Durine had first watch; Jason slept like a dead man.
* * *
The first thing to do the next morning was to head into Wehnest and get some horses. While Wehnest was smaller than, say, Biemestren, it was spread out, and some of the places Jason wanted to go to were a fair walk from each other.
Besides, it gave him the chance to look up a friend. Of sorts.
Pistols close at hand but not in evidence, Tennetty, Kethol and Durine spread out, watching the street, while Jason, Bren Adahan and Aeia walked up to the stables.
He heard a distant mental question from Ellegon, and sent back reassurance. Everything was fine. The stables were better kept than they'd been the last time he was here; the straw covering the dirt floor was freshly changed, and while the place reeked of horse piss and horse shit, most of it seemed to emanate from the exercise yard outside, not the stables themselves.
The hostler was bent over, busy examining the left front hoof of a small brown mare.
"I'll need the use of half a dozen horses for two or three days," Jason said, slapping a silverpiece on the railpost. It rang brightly, a musical tone that announced that it was too much money by an order of magnitude.
The hostler, surprised, dropped the hoof and straightened, looking him in the face.
He was a short, fat, bald man whose eyes held traces of fear and pettiness, perhaps, but no cruelty. Or maybe Jason was just projecting; he had reason to know that the man wasn't cruel, was in fact more softhearted and sentimental than a hostler, or anyone else in this world, had any business being.
Maybe.
"Taren," Vator the hostler exclaimed. A smile broke across his face. "Taren, boy," he said, clapping his hands to Jason's shoulders. "Or should it be Jason?"
Bren Adahan stiffened, but Jason held up a hand. There was no reason to worry. Jason had fled as word spread that Karl Cullinane's son was on his own in the Eren regions, alone and vulnerable. He hadn't expected his cover to fool Vator then, and he certainly hadn't expected the cover to be intact by now.
As Walter Slovotsky would have said, you can't be just a little bit exposed.
Jason eased his rucksack from his shoulders and then, practiced fingers undoing the knots in the leather drawstring, drew out a winesack.
"A drink for luck," he said, straightening, uncorking it. "Jason Cullinane, heir to crown and throne of Holtun-Bieme, wishes you well." He tilted back the skin. He hadn't drunk out of a wineskin for too long; some of the lukewarm liquid ran down the side of his cheek, down his neck, into his tunic. He handed the skin to Vator.
"Vator, the hostler, of Wehnest, wishes you well," Expertly the fat man tilted back the wine, then handed it to Aeia and Bren Adahan, who introduced themselves and drank.
"Now," the hostler said, "you want some horses?"
Jason nodded. "And saddles. Just for two days, maybe three," he lied reflexively. It would be one day at most, that was all the time they'd need, but it made sense to let even someone as trustworthy as Vator think that there was plenty of time to arrange a betrayal.
The hostler nodded. "The silverpiece will be fine," he said, tiredly, as though announcing his resignation to a long session of bargaining.
"Agreed," Jason said.
The hostler looked every bit as disappointed as surprised, but he turned to the stables, calling out, "Gachet, Gachet, where are you? Are you sleeping again?"
"No, master, no I'm not," floated down from the hayloft. "I was just cleaning up here."
"I should flay you within a handbreadth of your life, but just saddle six of our best—yes, yes, the white gelding, I said the best, didn't I?—just saddle six of the best and I'll forget it all, I'll forget it all."
A man in a ragged tunic and black iron collar clambered down from the hayloft and disappeared into the stables.
Jason felt the smile fade from his face; he looked the hostler over coldly.
Vator seemed taken aback for a moment, but then he shrugged.
He didn't have any reason to be afraid; while Home warriors were almost always willing to take on slavers, slave-owners were a different matter. Home couldn't afford to take on every slave-owner in the Eren regions; the policy was to not free slaves in the hands of private parties, unless the private parties were acting on behalf of the guild.
Aeia's smile seemed genuine. "Jason never mentioned that you were doing so well when he was through here."
Vator smiled weakly. "I arranged a trade, when some guildsmen came through here, looking for the boy from Home. I gave them his direction and they gave me a slave. An acceptable deal, eh? Of course, there was the problem of telling them where you'd gone. I had no intention of putting them actually on your trail, so I sent them toward the Healing Hand Tabernacle."
"Which is where I told you I was going," Jason said.
"Yes, yes," Vator said, with a nod, "but I knew you were lying." He gripped Jason's hand tightly. "I'd not betray you, Jason, then or now. —Let me help Gachet saddle your horses."
* * *
Their first concern had been the possibility of slavers in town, but there weren't any; the slave trade was at a virtual standstill around Wehnest, as the cost of hiring labor was so much lower than buying it.
And, since there was no sign of fresh slaves, there was therefore no sign of any slaves who had been taken in the Kernat village raid. That part of the mission was, so far, a failure.
Still, the Nehera blades had gone for a nice price, Jason thought, hefting the small bag of silver and listening to the coins tinkle pleasantly. He'd have to tell Nehera first off, once they got to Home; the dwarf would be pleased that authentic Nehera blades were still so valuable.
"It could be Ahrmin," Durine mused. "He was always tricky."
"If that little bastard was behind the Kernat raid," Tennetty said, the index and middle fingers of her free hand drumming a random tattoo on the front peak of her saddle, "it's not impossible that the people they seized were simply killed."
"Then why take them at all?" Kethol asked.
Jason nodded. That didn't make sense either. There was some Other Sider's principle that Walter Slovotsky had told him about, something about not making explanations any more complicated than necessary to fit the facts. Somebody's . . . knife, was it? No, not knife. But something similar. Knife, blade, sword, dagger, razor, cleaver. Cleaver. That sounded familiar. Beaver's Cleaver—that sounded about right.
"We don't get to understand it all," he said, as they rode back to the corral outside Vator's stables, dismounting one by one.
Gachet, Vator's slave, ran to take their reins and led three of the animals into the corral while Jason, Aeia and Bren Adahan led their own horses.
Jason's skin crawled. He hadn't had much experience around slaves—the only kind of slaves in Home and Holtun-Bieme were former slaves—and he didn't like it much. He remembered the Slavers' Guildhall in Pandathaway, and the crack of whips and parting of flesh.
Inside the corral he let the reins drop and dismissed the horse with a light slap on its solid flank. Not quite the animal that Jason's big gelding, Libertarian, had been—but not a bad mount, at least for the day.
The slave led the horse away.
Slave. . . .
Jason's fist clenched.
*Jason.* The distant voice held concern and alarm.
I'm fine, he sent back.
There was nothing he could do about it, then or now. Wehnest was neutral, and there were no slavers here; he could hardly take Gachet away from Vator.
That was the trouble, he thought, as Vator walked over to him, concern creasing his sweating brow. "Is there a problem, Jason Cullinane?" the hostler asked.
Beyond Vator, a few children and an overweight, stooped woman were working in the stables. The woman mucked out one of the stalls while one of the children brought fresh hay for the horses and another helped Gachet unsaddle and wipe down the horses.
It wasn't the same thing as in Pandathaway, Jason thought. Vator was the sort who would threaten to beat the slave within an inch of his life, but he wouldn't do it. He didn't mean it. Vator's wife and children probably worked every bit as hard as Gachet, and Vator himself surely worked harder.
"Gachet," Jason heard himself saying, "do you want to be free?"
The slave paled. He looked from Vator to Jason, then opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and then closed it again.
Over in the stables, the woman bent down to whisper to one of the boys, who took off down the road behind the exercise yard, bare feet pounding on the bare dirt.
Kethol looked over to Jason, as if to ask, Do I chase him?
"It's your play," Tennetty said. "Call it, Jason."
Durine looked from Jason to Tennetty to Kethol, and then nodded.
Bren Adahan took a step toward Jason, but stopped when Aeia grabbed his arm. "Leave it be," she said. "Pick us up, and hurry," Aeia muttered.
*Don't do anything stupid,* the distant voice said. *I'm on my way.*
Vator faced him. "There's no glory to be won here, Jason Cullinane, unless you can find some honor in six of you cutting down one unarmed man." He spat on the ground between them.
"Perhaps we don't have to do anything to the one unarmed man," Bren Adahan said. "Perhaps you will simply free Gachet of your own will."
For a moment, just a moment, Jason thought Vator was going to back down. It would have been the logical, the reasonable thing to do. Resisting didn't make sense; they had him outmanned, and Vator was no warrior.
"You'll not take what's mine, Jason Cullinane," Vator whispered. He had a knife in his belt; anyone who works around horses and stables finds a hundred daily uses for a knife. His hand dropped to its hilt.
Tennetty cocked a pistol with an emphatic click. "Don't even think about it." She extended the pistol and sighted down her arm.
"Lower your gun, Tennetty," Jason said. He was the center of everything, but he couldn't hold it all together. It was all falling apart, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Except try for a way out.
Come pick us up, and hurry.
*Hang on, please,* the distant voice said. *Just a few more moments.*
"Sure, I'll put the gun down. Soon as you draw your sword. I'm not going to have to tell your mother that I let him stab you to death while you stood there with a scabbarded sword."
"She's right, sir," Durine said. "Get your blade out. Please."
Compromise. There had to be a compromise.
Jason drew his sword. "Change your mind, Vator. Let him go, of your own free will."
"Go into the stables, Gachet," Vator said quietly, his eyes never leaving Jason's.
"As you are," Bren Adahan said, as he and Aeia each took one of the slave's arms; Gachet didn't resist as they moved him away.
"Dur—around the other side," Kethol said, breaking into a sprint for the stables. He came out a moment later; dragging Vator's wife by one arm and holding a crossbow in his free hand. "She was trying to load this."
Vator's eyes never left Jason's as a dark form rose above the trees. With a flurry of wings and a gout of flame, Ellegon's massive form appeared over the stables and hovered momentarily, sending dust and leaves swirling into the air before the dragon dropped heavily to the ground.
Vator's wife screamed; tearing her arm loose from Kethol's grasp, she fled for the stables.
*Let him go, Vator,* the dragon said. *There's no shame in being defeated by an overwhelming force.*
Vator's eyes never left Jason's. "You'll not take what's mine."
"Get aboard, everyone," Jason said, "Kethol, help Gachet get aboard."
"Let's move it, people," Tennetty said. "I can hear the hoofbeats from down the road, and even if they don't have dragonbaned arrows, my hide isn't as thick as Ellegon's."
Vator shook his head. "Not this time, Jason Cullinane. Not this time." He drew his knife and lunged at Jason.
"No!"
Two guns fired at once. One bullet missed entirely, another smashed into Vator's knee. The fat hostler opened his mouth to scream, but the blade of a thrown knife flew past his lips, becoming a hideous metal tongue.
The hostler fell dead at Jason's feet. A stench rose into the air as his body voided itself, leaving him without dignity even in death.
There was no need for it. Jason might not have been the swordsman his father had been, but even Jason could take on an overweight hostler wielding a utility knife. It wasn't necessary.
*We have to get going,* the dragon said. Tennetty scabbarded his sword, and then Durine half-helped, half-carried Jason up to his seat.
*Fasten yourself in. Now.*
Distant fingers buckled him into place.
"Let's get out of here, Ellegon," Tennetty said.
Wings flapping madly, the dragon leaped into the sky. Gachet screeched as the ground dropped away, stopping when Tennetty told him to shut up.
Below, a young boy, standing over the dead body of his father, looked up into the sky.
They flew in silence for a few moments, until Tennetty snorted, briefly. It could have been a laugh.
"What's so funny?" Aeia asked, her irritation audible.
Tennetty sighed. "Reminds me of the old days, that's all. Just remembering something the dwarf once said in the old days, about how we seem to leave most towns just ahead of the cops."