“What’s she called?”

  Sydera looked over to the rail where Martin stood. The boy had joined him in the cockpit, while Janus had scrambled up into the crow’s nest. Kurt had found himself a place to sit, out of everyone’s way at the prow. All about them the crew of the barge went about their duties, or milled about in little groups chatting or watching the world go by, much like the child was.

  “You mean this ship, yes?” Sydera asked. He walked over to stand by the boy, his powerful arms crossing behind his uneven back.

  Martin nodded.

  “It’s a word from my peoples’ language. It loses something in the translation.”

  “I imagine it would,” the boy said with a nod and wry smile. “We don’t whistle and click to get our points across.”

  Sydera laughed and gave the smart-aleck boy a light swat across the back with his tail, as if he were a fly. “We don’t so much speak, as sing to each other, Martin Bauer.”

  Sadness flashed across the human's features briefly. “I know. Eckhart was trying to teach me. I could never sound anything like him,” he replied with a shake of his head.

  “Aye, I’ve yet to meet a human that can speak as we do," agreed the dragon with a nod. "It’s easier for us to speak as you hairy things do," he explained, pausing briefly to shoot the boy a wink. "It’s not nearly as painful, either.”

  “It hurts when you hear us speak your language?” asked Martin, quirking an eyebrow.

  “Only in an aesthetic sense,” the dragon laughed. He watched the shore pass them by slowly, as a hunter might. The guards had been informed to stay on the lookout, but one could never have too many eyes watching for trouble. “When humans try and speak my tongue, it just sounds like someone banging two rocks together. It’s just as bad with dwarves. With minotaurs it’s even worse," he continued, feigning a shudder. "If you really want to torture one of us, though, get a runner to try and speak as we do. It’s agony to listen to.” The dragon's features twisted in proper disgust and the shudder was genuine this time. "I believe you have a similar phenomenon? Something about those deficient claws of yours, and the slate boards your schools use?"

  That drew a chuckle from the boy, and it was even followed by a half-hearted smile. That was good, for it seemed as if this child had been sad and afraid for far too long.

  “If you want a rough translation into something you can say, then call her Mother Mountain, Martin Bauer. It’s where I came from. I was hatched there, had my own children there, and when the time comes I will return there, and close my eyes forever.”

  “How long do your people live?” Martin asked him, then.

  Sydera could only shrug. “We came into this world when the Elves did. None of us were ever allowed to find out just how long we could live, Martin Bauer." The dragon sighed, turning his gaze to the horizon. "I hope it is a long time, far longer than I have wasted dwelling in the halls of my home." He turned back to the human before continuing. "Few of us could ever escape the Elves. They descended on us before we could understand what we were." He paused, and his expression grew contemplative. "Or perhaps we did once, and they purged that from our history?" The dragon shrugged. "Regardless, it was only after they vanished that we began to understand ourselves.”

  “It’s not so different from us,” the boy said with a nod, his sadness returning. “I’ve studied history. Our history, I mean: the history of men. There’s not much before the Elves, but there was something before the Elves. That’s where High Script came from. It was what we all were supposed to have spoken before they came.”

  “We’re all children still really, Martin, trying to stand on our own after our parents have abandoned us.”

  The boy did not seem to hear him. He was leaning over the rail a little, watching the swirls of the water as the ship glided along.

  “Where did they come from, Sydera?” he asked.

  The dragon shrugged. “I don’t know where, Martin. All I can tell you is they came here, they made us all their toys and then one day…they were gone.”

  “Like a bad dream?” suggested the boy.

  The dragon nodded, and watched the shore.

  “Yes, Martin. They were a bad dream. One we cannot ever have again.”

  “Volkard was taking me to the Dead Lands when my father and Janus came to rescue me.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Why?”

  Martin shrugged. “He talked about a city there he lived in, and where he learned to use magic.”

  “How could he have learned magic out there? The dreams make men mad, and there’s no life out there to sustain a person, let alone a single spell,” wondered the dragon.

  Martin shrugged again. “He never explained that part. I want to tell myself that perhaps he was just mad.”

  “You don’t believe that though, do you?”

  The boy shook his head. “He wasn’t mad. He was just evil. I never met anyone like him before. He didn’t care about anyone he killed. He acted like the people he killed were flies. Or worse.”

  “Were you afraid he’d kill you?”

  Martin shook his head eventually. “I don’t think he would have,” said the boy, who suddenly looked nothing like a child to the dragon. “He would have killed anyone who interfered with taking me to the Dead Lands, but I don’t think he would have killed me. It was because he thought I was one of them.”

  “Are you one of them?”

  Water lapped gently along the side of the ship. The crew on watch in the nest above called out directions to the males manning the wheel. A bend in the river was ahead. They began to turn, slowly.

  Martin said nothing. He stared down into the water. The dragon sidled up beside him, and placed a powerful claw on his shoulder.

  “You decide what you are, Martin Bauer. You, and no one else. In the time of the Elves it was different, but those days are gone. Are you, Martin Bauer, one of them?”

  “No,” the boy said, as he stared down into the water. A tear fell into the foam swirling along the ship's hull. “I’d rather die.”

  *

  The wind ruffled his fur as the floor beneath his feet trembled and swayed, reacting to the flow and curse of the waters that carried them off.

  Janus closed his eyes, and let the cool air caress and play with him. He took in a deep breath, and let it out with a loud sigh. His clawed hands held tightly onto the rail of the crow’s nest. He swayed as the ship did. He had been on river boats once or twice when he had been apprentice to Klara, and had harboured fantasies of running away from her and spending his life on them, travelling up and down rivers of Sturmwatch, but it had never happened. He had always made some excuse about why he wouldn’t.

  They had all been lies, really. He had feared Klara, who was the biggest human female he had ever met. He had feared how his people might react should he return to them, after they had sold him off to the stupid witch hunter with her stupid ways and the stupid people she wanted to train him to protect. He had served her, and tried to learn her ways for a year and a half. So much wasted time... All he had to show for it, other than the star stone on his chest, was the strange, sad friend he had picked up the day he quit. Him, and now his strange, dangerous son.

  Janus leaned down over the rail to stare down at Martin. Sydera, the fearsome brute, was standing at the pup’s side, and the runner could not help but feel uneasy at such the scene. For all his generosity, Janus did not like the dragon man. The scaled he had encountered back when he had been among his own kind had been crafty merchants who would occasionally come to the edge of the wood to trade furs of animals killed by the tribe for wine and beer. They had done their best to imitate smiles, but there had always been something about the whole transaction the youth he had been then had neither understood, nor trusted. Only when he had come out of the woods and into the world beyond had he truly understood how cheaply the efforts of his people were being repaid after visiting some of the tailors of Gozer. The scaled were a greedy people, always coming up with schemes to get their hands on gold, which made them as bad humans to the runner, barring an exception or two.

  He turned his attention then to one of the exceptions.

  Kurt was sitting at the front of the ship, staring forward, though he did not really seem to be seeing where they were going. The bearded, heavy man had a look on his face that the runner was becoming fast familiar with. The man he watched was on the boat, but lost in his thoughts. Sharing a campfire with Kurt, and hearing him mutter in his sleep the same name again and again had taught Janus just what was in the human’s head and heart most of the time. He knew males and females like that back home. They were seen as folks touched by the gods, who had allowed them to feel a love few felt, a wonderful wholeness with another that became the quiet envy of their neighbours. Then it was taken away, as the gods had always intended, so they could enjoy the terrible suffering of those sorry few they had taken an interest in.

  Kurt had understood this better than most, when the runner had tried to explain the truth about the creators of the world. He had insisted it was awful, as Klara had done, but unlike Klara, Kurt’s scent betrayed the lie he told, and the truth he must surely have known with the loss of his mate. If he had not known it then, now the loss of his friends and home and means of survival had surely made him aware. Kurt Bauer seemed to have attracted the attention of a particularly sadistic deity. He would need to learn defiance of the gods and whatever other agonies they planned for Kurt and his son, before they were tortured forever in the afterlife. Janus had resolved to teach his friend this, for happiness and success was how one defied the gods, at least for a little while.

  *

  Before him lay mountains and trees that swept down their sides to the ragged, rocky edges of the banks. Some of the higher peaks were capped in snow, and he could just make out it topping the tips of the highest firs up there. His attention drifted down to the wide river they floated along at a steady pace. Kurt could hear the large sail at the centre of the barge ripple, and snap when an especially strong breeze overtook them. It was all so peaceful, and well ordered. It was hard to imagine just a few days behind them they had been escaped a dead city that was once again probably full of dead people. Just like his farm.

  Kurt sighed, and looked away from the vista before him. Working had been good for him, despite the ache of his limbs from such heavy labour. He had been busy, and had something to focus his attention on. When he had come back to the camp he had strength enough to eat dinner and chat briefly with Martin and Janus about their days. Then he'd collapsed onto his bunk to a wonderful, dreamless sleep. If not for the fact they were probably already being hunted again, Kurt might have been tempted to stay there and see if it was possible to start a life mostly lived over again. It seemed to suit Martin, and now they were running away from it.

  The water lapped gently against the prow of the vessel, and for some reason it made Kurt think of soft hands touching a strong chest. Sabine was by him then, leaning on a strong, young shoulder that was still big now but nowhere near as defined. Neither of them had ever seen the sea, but both had dreamed and talked of what it might look like. It had represented something dark and mysterious to them both, a place of adventure and hidden monsters that waited just under the surface. Martin would be curious about it, and probably excited at the prospect of something so big and alien. Kurt knew he should be too, but his thoughts kept turning back to all that he was leaving behind. Sabine rested in the earth of their farm, the place they had built together. His friends and employees were there now too, resting under the dead trees they'd tended. Kurt felt sick at it, but he couldn’t turn away from it. It required more strength then than he could muster. So many were gone, and what had they done to deserve it? What he had done to deserve going on? It was a question that would not leave him alone when he paused and began to brood. He wanted to talk to someone, but the only man he could trust was Janus, and his perspective on the world really and truly frightened Kurt. It made sense to the broken man. Far, far too much sense.

  The ship creaked, and Kurt wondered briefly if that had to do with the weight of their cargo, or something else that could potentially go wrong. What would it be like on the sea, with nothing but water surrounding them? What would they do if something went wrong? How big even was the sea? Would it take them long to cross it?

  And if we do…what then?

  Kurt didn’t know. Even though this nightmare was more than a week old, it still felt to him as if things were happening too fast for him to take a moment and think things through. What would they do if they crossed the sea? Would they still have to run, or could they hide? How far were the people who wanted his son willing to go, and what did they even want him for?

  Kurt couldn’t begin to guess. He turned his attention back to the river, and the mountains and trees that lined the banks. They had no plan, but now he had a little time, at least, to consider one.