The Dragon's Prophecy Read online

  The dragon settled into the girl's dreams and began to gently guide them into nightmares. Suddenly, a hooded figure appeared in the Black's own dreams. Fear and anger coursed through her as she tried to flee from him. It was that horrible prophet! He died twenty years ago and yet he still haunted her. Through sheer will the Black took control of the dream again and made him disappear into the darkness, but his appearance at this time left her trembling. She focused on Portia's dreams again and was pleased to note that her own fear had transferred to the girl. She had seen the hooded figure in her dream as well and had been filled with the dragon's fear of him. She had heard his unspoken prophecy of death and assumed that it was meant for her. The Black settled down again and began crafting nightmares for Portia, nightmares of her sister disappearing into the woods and Portia searching for her, nightmares of facing a dragon and freezing in fear as the dragon killed her sister, nightmares of hopelessness and doom.

  Chapter 14

  “Good companions make a long journey shorter, bad companions do not.”

  The Centurion Guide to Practical Advice – Chapter 10: Proverb 4

  Brendan and Father Cardic were packing up the camp as Sir Gerard took the last of his practice shots with his longbow. He unstrung his weapon, recovered his arrows, and packed them away. Brendan had, of course, seen archers before but he had never seen a knight practicing archery.

  "I didn't know that knights carried bows."

  "Most don't," answered the knight, "It isn't considered a knightly weapon. Centurions are all trained in the use of longbows and crossbows because we fight too many enemies in too many different situations. We do not have the luxury of a large army with a variety of different warriors specializing in different arms. We do not have the luxury of picking the battlefield that best suits the strength of our forces. We must be ready to fight with whatever weapon is best in whatever circumstances we find ourselves with whoever is available. It is a rare thing when we get to fight a 'pretty' battle on a wide open plain, in broad daylight, with pennants flying and lines of knights charging against each other. Most of our battles are fought in ugly places, on bad terrain, against enemies using a wide variety of tactics, who must be stopped as soon as possible before they devastate the countryside further. The longbow is only one of many different weapons that you will learn to use before you become a Centurion knight. Now, mount up."

  Sir Gerard had been making Brendan ride more and more. Sometimes he would simply make him sit in the saddle and ride at a walking pace, sometimes he would practice galloping or trotting and controlling Ballista with his knees and his reins under different conditions. It had been a couple of weeks and Brendan was finally able to ride for a couple of hours at a time. When he had first started riding he had been so sore afterward that it had been hard to walk, let alone ride, but now he could push on longer and longer without too much discomfort. He was finally starting to get comfortable in the saddle.

  It was late afternoon and Brendan was taking another shift on Ballista. Unlike most knights Sir Gerard gave everyone the opportunity to ride and they even gave Ballista long stretches without a rider. Brendan was enjoying the view when he heard a couple of faint twangs and nearly fell out of the saddle as Ballista suddenly skittered forward and to the left a few steps.

  “What was that?” He shouted in surprise, gripping the pommel to avoid falling off the horse. The knight and the priest had already ducked down and were surveying the countryside when two arrows flew past where Brendan had just been.

  “Get off Ballista, NOW!” Sir Gerard ordered. Brendan tried to comply but in his momentary panic he got his foot tangled in the stirrup. It was one thing to handle a horse properly and quite another to handle it properly while someone was shooting arrows at you. Clearly, he was not nearly as competent as he thought he was.

  Several more bow shots twanged, and Ballista skittered forward and to the left again. Brendan’s eyes snapped to the right front and he saw several arrows streaking toward him. Three were going to miss behind him, their aim spoiled by Ballista’s movements, but one of the arrows was headed straight toward him. He had less than a second to react and he lacked the horsemanship to instantly spur his mount forward and out of the way. Old reflexes kicked in and Brendan twisted his body out of the way while his hand lashed out and caught the arrow out of the air just before it hit him. He had not had to perform that trick in over a year, but it is amazing how a threat to your life can clear your mind and sharpen your reactions.

  He shook his foot free of the stirrup and threw himself off the horse just as he heard more bows twang.

  “I thought we were almost home,” he muttered as he made his way to the cover of the wheat growing in the field next to the road. “I wasn’t expecting to be attacked here.”

  "Ah yes, if only we could get our enemies to attack us when we are completely prepared,” the old priest muttered back. “I have written several letters to the Hungarian chieftains asking them to do this but for some reason they continue to refuse such a reasonable request. They insist upon trying to surprise us because they feel that somehow it gives them some sort of an advantage."

  Brendan looked down at the arrow that he was still holding in his hand, he had mistimed it slightly and one of the barbs on the arrow had sliced open his palm. He dropped the arrow and let the blood wash the wound clean, he just hoped that there was no poison on it. After a few moments he pulled out a handkerchief that he normally used as a mask and wrapped it around his hand.

  “I’m not complaining about Ballista moving since it saved my life, but he has always been rock steady, why was he now afraid of the sounds of a bow?“

  "The Hungarians are one of our major enemies and they are masters of the bow,” explained Father Cardic. “Like all Centurion horses, Ballista is trained to move at the sound of a bowstring. He moves just enough to spoil the archer's shot but not so much as to move you out of position if you are in a cavalry formation. It’s not fear, it’s training.”

  Sir Gerard pointed to a small wooded hill set back about 150 yards from the road, “The arrows were coming from there.”

  The attack made no sense. If you wanted to ambush someone why would you take a chance on such a long-range shot? Even a good archer would have missed a man-sized target half the time at that range and all they did by taking those shots was to announce their presence without doing any damage. Why not wait until they got closer?

  “The father and I will circle around to the left so that we are more in front of them. Brendan, this is your chance to put your thieving skills to good use. I want you to circle around to the right and try to get behind them while we draw their attention to the left. Be careful and do your best to disappear, they will be watching for someone to try and flank them.”

  His dark clothes would be easily visible among the light-colored wheat so he decided to make an especially large detour around to the back of the hill. He quietly drew his dagger and began moving forward on his hands and knees. He tried praying for protection, but it felt very awkward. He wasn’t used to talking to God or asking for things he hadn’t earned. Crawling through a wheat field made him feel exceptionally vulnerable so he kept praying anyway.

  It seemed to take forever but he finally reached the back edge of the little glade and eased himself up behind the nearest tree. Evening was approaching and it was getting quite dark in amongst the woods. The squire and his dark clothes blended into the shadows and he disappeared.

  Creeping forward silently he came upon four men hiding behind trees ready to ambush anyone who came into the woods. They were spread out in a rough line about ten yards apart and facing toward the road which is why they had missed him sneaking into the woods on the far side. The one on the end, whose job it was to watch for anyone trying to outflank them, wasn’t doing his job very well. Most of his attention was focused on watching the wheat move back and forth marking the progress of the knight and the priest. From this vantage point it was impossible to see them directly,
so the bandits probably assumed that all three of them were coming up that way together. The priest and the knight were certainly disturbing enough wheat in the field to make it look like more than just two people.

  Brendan silently eased his way around the men until he was behind the one at the end of the line. By the standards of the average person the four men were well hidden and very quiet, but by Brendan’s standards they were noisy breathers and easy to spot. He also thought he heard a horse tied up at the other end of the line. It would be best not to go down there, the horse might smell him coming, something that the Magyars would miss.

  The squire debated about what to do. On the one hand, to give away his advantage was tactically stupid, he should kill each one silently from behind. On the other hand, a sneak attack from behind seemed to be exceptionally cowardly and not at all the sort of thing a Centurion would do. He was not even sure who they were or whether they should be killed, they might even have important information. Even in his thieving days he had tried hard not to kill anyone. He had always refused to lower himself to the level of a pillaging murderer like the Vikings who had destroyed his village. He knew that was not the Centurion way. He made a decision and silently moved forward, dagger in hand.

  Without warning, the squire stepped forward and hit the would-be ambusher at the end of the line on the back of the head with the pommel of his blade as hard as he could. This was much riskier than killing him, but the gamble paid off as the man dropped like a rock, out cold. The others heard the thud and started hissing at their compatriot trying to determine what had happened in the darkness. Brendan immediately stepped back into the shadows. The next one in line started creeping toward the fallen man trying to determine what had happened. He looked around suspiciously, but Brendan was silent and invisible in the darkness. The ambusher whispered something in a language that sounded like Magyar and poked the unconscious man, trying to rouse him. He bent over to smell the man’s breath to see if he was drunk and the squire struck again. Stepping out of the shadows, Brendan used the pommel of his dagger against the back of the second man’s head and the results were the same as the first time. Another loud thud and another unconscious man.

  Brendan knew he had to move his position, so he stepped quietly back into the shadows but this time he kept backing up. He wasn’t sure, but he thought the men were Magyars, he had heard Sir Gerard say that the Magyars and Hungarians were the same people, so this was his first contact with Hungarians, one of the main enemies of the Centurions. The other two ambushers raced over to their companions only to find that the second one was slumped over the first, both mysteriously out cold. Their eyes strained at the darkness as they looked around trying to see what had taken out their comrades.

  Brendan had an idea. He had once seen monkeys on display in Constantinople and the screeching sounds they made were unlike anything he had ever heard in his life. He silently climbed a tree and then began screeching like a monkey and shaking the branches. The two Hungarians began yelling at each other in fear and excitement. They began firing arrows aimlessly into the darkness and one of them nearly hit Brendan, embedding itself into a branch near his left leg. He redoubled his efforts trying to make his monkey sound completely enraged. He began breaking off branches and throwing them at the men on the ground and then ducking behind the trunk of the tree. The Hungarians began wailing and then broke and ran toward where the knight and the priest were. Brendan chuckled to himself.

  “Here they come!” Brendan yelled after them.

  A moment later there were the sounds of battle which ended very quickly. The squire lowered himself from the tree and eased quietly forward until he could see what had happened. Sir Gerard and Father Cardic were at the edge of the glade, standing over the bodies of their two attackers and the priest was already starting to pull out the bandages. Brendan stepped out of the woods as he breathed a sigh of relief and both men were gratifyingly caught off guard by his sudden appearance.

  The priest reacted with blinding speed and swung his staff so quickly that even with the element of surprise in his favor Brendan was just barely able to duck out of the way and avoid being brained.

  “It’s me! Brendan!” He called out before the priest could launch a second attack.

  “It’s your own fault, sneaking around in the dark like that, all silent and invisible,” Father Cardic grumbled. “I knew you were here in the woods somewhere, but I had no idea you were so close.” He paused to eye the young squire suspiciously. “Sir Gerard was correct when he said you probably had a few tricks of your own for us. Are there any others?”

  “Two more, over there about 10 yards,” the squire answered, “both unconscious.”

  “Impressive again!” Exclaimed the knight. “You are indeed a young man of special talents. How did you catch that arrow? I have never seen it done before.”

  “I was a member of a traveling troupe of performers for a while. I learned how to catch all kinds of dangerous things as part of my performance. I can catch arrows, knives, axes, even broken glass bottles. I used to juggle them and catch them when they were thrown or shot at me. Of course, the bow that we used then was only a 20 lb. bow, but it was also fired at a distance of only 20 yards. This bow was a lot more powerful, but it was also fired from a lot further away.” Brendan tried hard to keep the pride out of his voice.

  “That sounds like a more legitimate trade than thieving, why did you give it up?” Asked the priest.

  “Legitimate is in the eye of the beholder, I’m afraid,” the squire replied. “When some tax money went missing the local sheriff accused us of stealing it and started rounding everyone up and hanging them. I was one of the fortunate few to escape before being hung.”

  Father Cardic pressed on, “Did your troupe steal the money?”

  “Possibly, I don’t know. It is just as likely that the sheriff stole it himself and found the troupe to be a convenient scape goat to blame it on. I certainly didn’t steal the money and received no cut if someone else did. Troubadours are often falsely accused of theft, but they are certainly not above thieving either, so it goes both ways.”

  The priest grunted but asked no more questions, the knight merely nodded his understanding.

  “Let’s get these raiders tied up properly and question them,” Sir Gerard said, “It would be good to know if they are on their own or part of a larger force.”

  “And why they attacked us from so far away instead of waiting until we got closer,” Brendan added.

  Brendan found the answer to his question when they got back down to the road. The bowshots from the woods had been an attempt to scare them into getting off the horse and diving into the cover of the fields to avoid getting hit by arrows. A raider lay in the road at the feet of the warhorse, a nasty wound to the head that was delivered by Ballista’s hoof. The priest walked around and scouted the grounds.

  “There were two of them, the other one is gone now, left his friend behind. Something is up though, six raiders and only one horse between them. They were desperate to get their hands-on Ballista and the four in the woods were only a diversion for the other two to steal our horse.”

  “Why not put all six of them down here closer to the road and simply shoot us off the horse? Why such a complicated plan?” Asked Brendan.

  “I am wearing altum mail and plate, which will turn almost any arrow and Centurion priests often wear armor under their habits so Father Cardic may also be well protected,” Sir Gerard explained. “Had they set their ambush close enough for their arrows to have any chance to pierce my armor they would have been close enough in open fields for me to easily spot them and ride them down. They knew that a Hungarian on foot is no match for a Centurion on horseback. I don’t know that their plan was the best one, but the alternatives were not much better. Let’s question them and see what they will tell us.”

  Thirty minutes of questioning didn’t produce any results. Father Cardic’s Magyar was fair, but the Hungarians didn’t respond beyond thr
owing sullen glances and curse words at him. One of the Hungarians reacted to a bit of Greek from Brendan but refused to speak after that. It was decided that nothing more could be gained from the men so the four were delivered over to the local authorities in the nearest town. It was there that they found out that Castle Warrick had been attacked and that these Hungarians might be part of that raiding party. Clearly the castle defenders had driven their attackers off but there was no telling what kind of casualties they might have suffered. For the first time, Brendan saw anxiety on the face of Sir Gerard at the thought of his wife and daughters being under attack while he was gone.

  Father Cardic continued to be his talkative self but Sir Gerard barely responded to him as they all pushed on harder to get home. One good thing did come out of the encounter though; Sir Gerard kept the Hungarians’ only horse as a spoil of war and gave it to Brendan. It wasn’t trained to Centurion standards, but it was used to battle so that was a start. He renamed it Nightwind.

  Early the next morning, Sir Gerard pulled up on the reins and brought Ballista to a stop. He pointed to a black dot sitting on top of a mountain spur.

  "This whole area is Carinthia and it sits in the middle of the Eastern Marches,” he explained to Brendan, “and that is Castle Warrick. We are almost home.”

  Father Cardic and Brendan gave each other meaningful glances. They knew without a word being said that they would do whatever it took to get Sir Gerard home before nightfall. Brendan took to jogging when the other two were riding, and while the priest didn’t jog, he managed to maintain an incredible walking pace when it was Brendan’s turn to ride. Together the three were able to reach the castle just as the sun was setting.