Lohikäärme: The Dragon's Descent (Revised)

Chapter IV - Aethelgard

Chapter IV - Aethelgard

"We made it."

Leaving the physicker and Prancer gnawed at me until now. I just couldn't believe that we had to abandon the physicker who had examined me for years. He cared about me, about me and Daree Redthorne. How could I bring myself to do that?

"Aw, don't be so hard on yerself, Safia. It wasn't yer fault. You'd no choice." She grabbed me by my shoulders and dragged me out of the dragonswood. She groaned. "Now don't burden me with yer dead weight. Me arms are hurtin'. And we still have a long walk in the plains before we reach that castle over there." She was right. I shouldn't burden anyone with my mourning. "The physicker told me about the castle we were going to, so we'd know where to go if he couldn't make it." She laughed. How could she laugh? "Good thing, I'm a talker. If I'd kept to myself, we'd be stuck in the dragonswood to die."

Leaving them wasn't the only thing that troubled me. It was the idea of forgetting about his death and living on that made me restless. In the stories my mother used to tell, they always held a ceremony for the dead. Didn't our kind have a ceremony like that? Or was it only in the stories? The idea of recognizing a man who died sounded well. It gave his life more closure.

"No closer!" yelled the lookout from the turret. "Who dares approach the castle?"

"Daree Redthorne!" she answered back in a yell, "and Safia. We come from Fisher's Bend and the Southern Isles, and seek refuge in Aethelgard, the home of our kind."

The man gave no answer, only studying the two of us drenched in sweat and exhaustion. No proof I could give would convince them that Daree and I were indeed one of their kind. Then I heard hooves trotting, and a girl's voice arguing with a man in another turret. "The one called Safia. She's the girl with the strange sight," she told the man. "Let them enter."

"Raise the portcullis!"

The grille that protected the gateway ascended, and out rode a comely girl on a garron much larger than Prancer. "Which of you is Safia with the strange sight?"

Daree glanced at me. "Her."

"Very well." The girl offered her hand to me and helped me up to her horse. "And you are Daree Redthorne, with what talent?"

"Me arms and hands heat up and glow red when I get too excited or nervous." The girl nodded and offered her hand to her as well, but Daree snorted at her hand, crawled up the horse, and sat herself behind the two of us without the girl's help. The girl chuckled and drove the horse back inside the castle.

"If you are found to be common people, you'd be left to the crow cages," one of the lookouts hollered from above. "Same goes for deserters."

I was about to ask what the crow cages were when I looked up and saw people, or people's bodies, in large cages with crows feeding on them, pecking out their eyes and skin. Some of them were still alive, moaning, wishing for death to come and take them. The crow cages hung from the drum towers' walls. There were two drum towers built into the main stronghold's walls, the left one larger than the other. Both were covered with cages.

"Here we are." She swung down the horse and landed properly with such grace and boldness that I was stunned. She wore a long-sleeved tunic under a woolen surcoat, with common trousers covering her lower body, but she looked comely because of the air of confidence around her. I was astounded, to say the least.

"Koshka!" screeched a small old woman, stomping towards us. Her hair was braided into four parts that bounced with every stomp of her feet. She had a round face and large, circle eyes that turned into lines when she narrowed her eyes at Koshka. She was probably in her seventies, but she was full of a fiery spirit that gave her the strength to scream and shout at everyone. The flame brooch on her dress was no longer necessary. Anyone with eyes and ears would know that she was a fiery woman. There was something unhinging about her voice, like the feeling of fingernails scraping rocks. "Koshka, what are you doing in the courtyard? You said you wanted to join the raiders today, and now you're wandering in the bloody courtyard when the whole pack is assembling by the postern gate at the other side of Aethelgard."