AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You should be grateful,” Wistala said from a high perch in the almost-empty loft.
“Gut-kick gratitude,” Stog said. “Torturing two-leg. He’s burning my hooves right off, I’ll signify.”
Stog spoke the beast-tongue better than Avalanche. Perhaps he was a well-traveled mule.
“He’s kind beyond my ability to tell. It may hurt now, but your feet will feel better soon, I’m sure.”
“So speaks the drakka with her claws all clean and cool.”
This was strange. Not only had the mule identified her as a female, but he’d correctly guessed that she was no longer a hatchling.
“You know about dragons,” she said.
“I know about killing them. I was in the Dragonblade’s mule train.” The long brown face told her nothing, but the ears twitching this way and that suggested that Stog would welcome a fight.
“The last time I saw the Dragonblade, it was just him and his dogs. No mules.”
“You saw the Dragonblade and lived?”
Wistala tried to remain as calm as the mule. His ears were forward with interest. “Big broad man? Black armor like dragonscale?”
“Not like, it is. I’ve borne many a dragon-hoof or hide-scraping on my back.”
“Then why aren’t you still carrying pieces of slaughtered dragon?”
Stog tried to stamp, but the hobble prevented his moving. “The Dragonblade was hurrying north, and I came up lame. I was traded for a shaggy-faced pony and left in the blackest hole of an old stable.
“I waited days and days for him to return. How could he forget his stoutest mule?”
Wistala saw the mule’s ears droop at the memory. Finally his tail swished, and he looked at her afresh as he spoke: “I pulled a trash-sled in snow up to my fetlocks now and then. The stablehands beat me like a muddy rug. Until the hooves started to go. The hostler tried to sell me off, but the clodclutters took one look at my hooves and wised up.”
“So you know the lay of the land around the thane’s hold?”
“Some of it.”
“Tell me more.”
“Why should I do that?”
“To take your mind off your hooves,” Wistala said. “Besides, there might be a way for you to give them a bite back for their mistreatment.”
“I wouldn’t mind catching the hostler bending over with his back turned. I’d send him through the wall. But even a good stomp would fix me. If you hit hominids on the inside of their hoof just right, they hop about shouting. Most gratifying.”
The moon changed all the way round once, and then to half so fast Wistala hardly knew time passed, save for the changes for the better to Stog’s hooves, healing under Rainfall’s constant attention.
She took to exploring outside Mossbell’s grounds, particularly to a high ridge to the northeast. From the trees on its top, she could see an even higher ridge with a single line of trees and an old broken watchtower that marked the edge of Galahall’s lands, according to Stog. The ground between was little used, as it was poor in soil and water.
She worked on her Parl by asking Jessup about the woods, ostensibly with an eye toward the hunting prospects of the Thickets, as that part of the thanedom was known.
Jessup was working the roadside near the river, sinking a well. He’d laid out a few stones in what Rainfall’s study-books called a rectangle on a flat, firm piece of land. Every now and then he would fell a few trees and place them on the rocks so they could dry without touching the ground, whistling more loudly through his teeth as the pile of lumber grew.
He quit working as she nosed around, and took off his ear-flapped cap to scratch his head. “Hunting? Some pheasant, a gobbler or two. No wild boar or deer left—the thane has hunted them all.”
“I’d like to avoid notice.”
“Then keep to the thorn hollows. Not a problem for you. Your skin should keep them out.” He looked doubtful, then took a step closer. “May I touch?”
Wistala raised her head and turned sideways. “The ones on my back are the thickest.”
