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Wistala craned her neck out as far as she dared, digging her tail into the crevice between two sturdy rocks like one of Rainfall’s fishhooks buried in a trout’s jaw.
A cave marred the fluted sides of the canyon wall, closer to the top edge than the base.
She could imagine what the birds at the base of the cliff were feeding on.
Instincts older than she took over as she evaluated the troll’s home. Fresh water would never be a problem. Enemies couldn’t reach it without a good deal of difficulty, it would take a huge climbing pole or ladder to reach the cave mouth from the river, and anything that walked on two feet would risk its neck climbing down from above. A dragon might like it even better: you could fly in through the river canyon at night, skimming the surface, and escape observation. She imagined there was usually food of one sort or another to be had near a big body of water as the Inland Ocean, just a horizon downriver.
Wistala examined the cliff until she found a ledge thick with mosses and ferns, downwind from the cave. She wanted to get a look at this troll. She climbed down and settled between the branches. It was cool, with the wind whipping up the river valley, but she’d spend nights in worse spots.>Somewhat stiffly she climbed down from the tree to hear Rainfall calling:
“Tala Tala Comeoutfree! They’re gone, and it is safe.”
He hurried to meet her as soon as she extended her neck above the bushes.
“More of the thane’s men?” she asked.
“Better and yet worse, at least for you. It was the Dragonblade and a party of hunters.”
Breath and death, the Dragonblade! Wistala couldn’t help but crouch at the name.
“He said a young dragon had escaped him, blamed the miss over the loss of his beloved pack in the summer. He has to go back to training pups for a while.”
“You fed him and his horses, then?”
“What could I do? He carries a Hypatian Knight-Seal. I’m old fashioned enough to bow to any who carries it, even if he hunts a friend. Though I felt no need to disclose your presence, especially as his line of questioning allowed me to keep my honor and your friendship.”
“What do you mean?”
“The description he gave was laughable. He got your size right, but had the color wrong—lots of talk of wolves’ hides and such. I could honestly say I’d not seen anything like that about the road.”
“Why the road?” she wondered. Of course, they first came upon my scent on the same road near Tumbledown.
“I gave his dogs as vast a meal as I could manage so they’d sleep rather than sniff around the barn. Same with the men. I fear our dinner tonight will be their leavings, little though there are.”
Wistala was grateful for a moment that she hadn’t been hidden in the barn or somewhere closer. There would be danger, yes, but temptation. Men were vulnerable when they took off their armor to sleep. She’d learned the knack of walking silently through the home without letting her claws touch the flooring to save Rainfall’s woodwork.
“Have they gone for good, or will they be back?”
“They’re hurrying south. They believe you to be heading in that direction, but on what evidence, I can’t imagine.”
“I may have left southbound marks crossing it from the old hovels beneath the twin hills.”
“Or perhaps the Dragonblade makes guesses to impress his men. A right guess is long remembered, and there’s always an excuse for a wrong one.”
Wistala spent another cold night in the yew tree that evening, just in case the Dragonblade doubled back.
Rainfall had her observe him carrying out his duties on the road, more as a mental diversion for her than anything else. For two active weeks as the temperature dropped, he and a dozen men went along the road, filling in holes; then they applied pitch to the timbers of the bridge to proof them against ice and snow. This part of the north saw frequent freezes and thaws and snow, thanks to the air currents of the Inland Ocean a few horizons to the west. Even once the labor was done, he bargained with the men a little extra to dig up vegetables and bring in hay and slaughter and salt some goats.
Payment was a problem, for Rainfall had little money. He gave away odds and ends from the vast house in return for their work, anything from candlesticks to cooking skillets. Wistala understood now why the place seemed so bare, save for his high room of books and basement of wine.
Then they settled in for the winter.
Wistala had been installed in what had once been what Rainfall called a “health-room,” a wooden enclosure of fragrant cedar wood, where stones heated in the furnace would be brought so that water might be dripped on them. It had a gutter in the center that made for easy cleaning, and she was happy to find hatchling scales on the floor each morning, with new ones coming in fast and thick owing to a supply of tarnished brass plates and drinking vessels she smelled out buried in the dirt floor of one of the abandoned houses.
Wistala asked about hominid commerce one night over dinner, and Rainfall did his best to explain it. “A dwarf would make it simple, I’m sure. I’ve not much of a head for additions and subtractions and excises and taxes.”
The last in the list seemed to be his chief worry. As she understood it, twice a year he owed his thane an amount of money that had been set at a time when the estate was prosperous, and though Mossbell had the misfortune of having a troll appear and pillage the lands, he was still expected to produce the same sum. No amount of pleading with the thane could alter it.
“What do you get in return for these taxes?” Wistala asked.
