Dirt by CC Hogan
Chapter 12 – Captured
Farthing had no warning. One moment they had reached the first rock that Mab-Tok had pointed out in his directions, and the next he knew he was waking up with a crushing headache and a gentle voice telling him to lie still. He tried to turn to see where he was.
“Careful!” the voice hissed. “You are still bleeding!” Farthing looked up at the upside-down face of a young girl with big eyes.
“Mistry?”
“Shush!”
“What happened? Where are we?”
“You’re in a cart, and you were attacked,” Mistry whispered.
“Quiet!” someone with a rough voice shouted out from some distance away. Farthing tried to sit up, but his head was pounding.
“Don’t,” the girl said very quietly. “I have you; you are safe.”
Farthing opened his eyes. He must have passed out again. His head was aching less, but he was feeling sick. He realised he was lying in Mistry’s lap, her hand on his head.
“Such a pretty sight!” The man had a familiar voice. Farthing sat himself up, blinking in the sunlight. Sirrupp. He tried to move his legs, but they were stopped with a rattle of chains. He had been shackled. “My apologies, Mr Goatherd, but I could not have you running away. Such a tall, pretty lad you are, and such a beautiful creature you are with. The perfect couple for the right buyer.” Farthing turned to look at Mistry. She also was shackled, and her clothes torn. Across her face was a vivid red bruise and her eyes were red from weeping. His expression turned to anger. Mistry shook her head in warning.
“Listen to your new friend, Mr Goatherd, she has already learned her lesson. If I have to teach it to you, it will be twice as bad on her. Understand?” Farthing nodded, seeing the fear in Mistry’s eyes. “Now, you look after your new stud, my dear. Your eyes make you worth a reasonable sum, but with him giving you babies, you are worth a pretty fortune. And the more you are worth, the better you will be treated. Make him love you, little darling and you will both be safe. Turn him away, and you will both be punished.” Sirrupp laughed and galloped away to the head of his caravan. Mistry’s eyes were flooding with tears, but her expression was cold.
“He means to sell us as breeders, Mr Goatherd. Slaves giving birth to more slaves, all lovely and beautiful. The perfect investment.”
“Johnson, my name is Johnson Farthing,” he told her, his voice shaking. He sat up and tried to move away from her, give her space.
“Don’t. You have to stay close.”
“But you, you are only …”
“I am nearly sixteen, Johnson, not as young as I look or he thinks I am. In my land, I am old enough to be married off, or will be in a few weeks, not that I am ready for any of that.”
“Where is your father?”
“Dead.”
The girl sat quietly for a moment and then her face crumpled in grief. Farthing felt completely lost, but he put his hand out to the girl and pulled her close, letting her cry. Eventually, she quietened down, but stayed close. He and Mistry were chained up in the back of a cart piled high with provisions so they could not see the driver. They must be the last in the caravan as there were no other wagons behind them. Straining to look over the crates and boxes, Farthing could see several men on horseback but no other slaves. There was no sign of Weasel.
“Where is Weasel?” he asked Mistry.
“Who? Oh, your friend,” she replied quietly. “They killed him, I think. I couldn’t see properly because it was dark, but I saw him attacked and a man stab him. I heard someone say they had skewered him like a…” She set her lip, pushing away the grief. The hope drained from Farthing’s heart.
Weasel stood up in panic, then a wave of pain and dizziness washed over him and he sat down on the dirt. Carefully he felt his side where it hurt most.
“Damn!” he said. “Damn and damn again.” He looked at his fingers; they were covered with masses of blood. He was sitting by the huge rocks on the road under the midday sun. “Farthing? Mr Goatherd?” His voice bounced back at him off the stone.
He staggered to his feet and looked around. No one. He remembered leaving the market and walking down the trail in the dark till they reached the rocks. They had discussed whether to go on, but the next stage of the journey was unmarked and he wanted to be sure where he was heading before just walking out into the desert. He had known something was wrong, felt it, but before he could do anything, all hell had let loose. He had seen Farthing fall first, and he had turned to fight only to be knocked down by a horse. He vaguely remembered hearing a girl scream and then someone had hit him over the head and he had lost consciousness. They must have stabbed him after that. He pressed on his side gingerly and nearly shrieked with pain. It was dangerously deep, but they had missed anything important. He had to do something about it, however, as he was still bleeding.
He staggered around to the back of the rock where it was shaded and collapsed on the ground, his back against the stone. He dug his heels into the sand and braced himself. Then he put both hands over his wound and concentrated. He felt his hands heat up, hotter and hotter, and he pushed his mind into his own flesh. The pain shot through him. The magician screamed once, very loudly, and passed out.
It was mid-afternoon when he awoke again. He looked down at his side. It was red and raw and hurt, but the wound had been mostly closed, and he wasn’t bleeding so much. Weasel shook the remaining fog from his head and gingerly stood up. South-east, Mab-Tok had told him. Weasel did not know what had happened to Farthing, but he had a suspicion. More than one had taken an interest in the tall, strong, young man, but one person had taken more of an interest than most.
“Fren-Eirol, you are going to kill me, but I need you,” he said to no one, and staggered off towards the second set of rocks.
Sirrupp chucked a thick rug at Farthing.
“Cuddle up and keep your little mare warm,” he said with a smirk. “Wouldn’t want her getting cold and catching a chill, now. If her value goes down so will yours and I don’t want to be carting useless junk around.” Farthing cursed under his breath and Sirrupp laughed. “You keep your sweet words for the pretty one, stud. Remember, you are a nobody now. Might as well forget your names, you are just the stud and the mare and I expect you to be productive. Make me some real little beauties.” He walked off to the fire where his men were camped, leaving Farthing and Mistry chained to the wheel of the cart. They weren’t going anywhere. Mistry was shivering and Farthing covered her with the rug.
“We’ll get out of this,” he told her quietly. The men were sitting a fair distance away and would not hear them if they were quiet.
“How can we? My father is dead and so is your friend.” The girl looked very young and vulnerable, despite her assurances that she was fifteen. Johnson thought of his sister when she was younger. He had protected her; he would do the same for Mistry.
“I would not be too sure that Weasel is actually dead.”
Mistry sat up a little and looked at Farthing. “Johnson, what were you doing at the market? You weren’t buyers; I could see that much.”
“Looking for my sister and another girl. They were taken from my town in Redust.”
“In the Prelates?”
“We have been chasing them, the four of us.”
“I thought it was just you and, you called him Weasel?” A glint of the cheeky girl surfaced for a moment, but then flickered and disappeared again.
“It was only the two of us at the market; the other two are dragons.”
“What?”
“Those sounds better be you being productive or you can shut up!” Sirrupp’s jibe was accompanied by guffaws from his men. Mistry looked over at them, hate in her eyes.
“Lie down, Johnson,” she commanded.
“What?”
“Lie down.” He did as she said and she lay down next to him. “They won’t disturb us
“One is a sea dragon who was carrying us, and the other one is a small healer dragon called Mab-Tok. We met him at Taken on the way across the Prelates Sea. I am hoping he finds Weasel because then he might be able to heal him.”
“Where were the dragons?”
“They have been up in the mountains. We were meant to meet them tomorrow.” Farthing frowned. “I hope they find Weasel soon if he is alive. From what you said he is badly hurt.” Mistry flopped back down beside Farthing and pulled the rug over them both. It was a lot of ifs and buts and maybes. They might be rescued, but as likely, they faced a life in slavery. They lay in silence until they fell into a troubled sleep.
“Wake up!”
Weasel pulled himself from a pain-filled sleep into even more painful consciousness.
“Weasel, wake up! Where is Farthing?” Fren-Eirol looked at the wiry man with annoyance. Weasel had almost no energy left at all, but he pointed at his side. Mab-Tok looked closely.
“Dammit, Weasel! Fren-Eirol, he’s been stabbed and has tried to heal himself.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Well, bloody stupid at any rate.” The Draig Bach-Iachawr put a hand on the magician and closed his eyes. “He has stopped it bleeding, but he has sealed the infection in. That must have hurt.”
“Why?” Fren-Eirol knew next to nothing about healing, human anatomy, or magician anatomy.
“When you heal a wound, you generate massive amounts of heat. Both a human and a dragon will pass out long before it gets unbearable. Your magician must have forced himself to stay conscious or he could not have completed the healing. And I have never seen healing like this; so complete! Have you a knife?”
“In the bags up in the forest.”
“We need to get him up there. I have to open the wound and then do the job again.”
“Weasel!” she shouted at the magician. “You have to get on my back!”
“The boy,” Weasel murmured. “They have taken the boy…”
“Who has?” Fren-Eirol snapped in frustration, but the magician had lapsed into unconsciousness.
“Oh, this is ridiculous,” she said. “Get him on my back, Mab-Tok, and wedge him on there by my bag. He can fall asleep without falling off, so let’s hope he can do it when stabbed and half conscious.”
When Weasel awoke, the pain in his side had lessened. He put his hand down carefully and found he was bound with a long cloth wrapped right around him.
“Your skin wouldn’t handle another healing.” Mab-Tok offered him some water. “I had to do it the old-fashioned way.”
“I had tried to heal it.”
“You had sealed the infection in. I had to reopen it a bit to clean it.”
“I had no choice, I was losing too much blood.” Weasel drank a little more of the water and looked around. He was in a glade in a forest and, going by the chill, part-way up the mountain. It was peaceful and a world away from the desert plain. Suddenly he sat up.
“Farthing! The boy; they have taken the boy!”
“We know, Weasel. Fren-Eirol is out scouting.”
“How did you know?”
“You talk when unconscious. Unusual that, you know. Talking when sleeping is one thing, but not when you are knocked out.” Weasel suddenly became aware of a pain in his head.
“How did I get knocked out?”
“I had to clean your wound quickly and you were raving. Fren-Eirol used a very quick method to calm you down. I have never seen a dragon make a fist and punch a human.”
“I have,” Weasel said with a bitter note in his voice. “The last time she punched me.”
Sirrupp kicked Farthing in the leg again and grinned.
“I can keep kicking you in the leg all day, stud, and it won’t stop you fathering little bondees. So, you have a choice; get on with it or I will keep kicking.”
“I am not going to do that with a child!” Mistry might be fifteen, but she looked younger and Farthing could not get that out of his head. Sirrupp kicked him again.
“Fine, I will keep kicking!”
“Stop!” Mistry was crying. “He can’t do it. Not now.”
“He can do it any time I wish, mare. It’s the beauty of young men, they can’t stop themselves.”
“He can’t now. I can’t now. It is the wrong time!” The tears were flowing down her face and she was shaking. Sirrupp’s face darkened.
“Damn the gods!” He turned and kicked Farthing again, hard. “Well, in a few days you will be passed your time and then I start kicking again.” He stormed off in a foul mood. Mistry held Farthing, who was rolling in pain.
“Is your leg broken?”
“No, but close.” He rolled up his trousers to expose the huge welt on his leg. Sirrupp had kicked so hard that he had broken the skin and it was bleeding. Mistry ripped some of her shirt, what little remained of it after being pushed around by the slavers, and covered the wound.
“I can’t keep up this lie for long,” she murmured.
“You mean you are not?” Sharing his life with his sister, Farthing was no stranger to how a woman’s body functioned, but he was useless at telling truth from fiction.
“No, I finished last week, sadly, but he doesn’t know that. Look, Johnson, you are beautiful and strong and everything a girl wants, but I don’t want to. Not here, not like this.”
“I could no more with you than I could my sister, Mistry; you are too much alike.” He meant it too.
“But if we have to?” Mistry looked straight into his eyes. “Johnson, for so many reasons I don’t want to, but I want to stay alive and I want you to stay alive. So, if we have to, will you?”
Farthing looked away. “I don’t know.”
“Well, I will know for you, Johnson. If we have to, we will and it will be on our terms, not those of that vile monster.” She had his face in her hands and kissed him on the cheek. “Promise me, Johnson. No more kicking. I can’t watch you being kicked any longer.” He nodded and she cuddled into him and cried softly. Farthing hurt inside. He was losing his sister and now he and Mistry were slaves themselves.
“That’s better, stud.” Sirrupp had crept up and whispered into Johnson’s ear. “You make her love you, and when her time is finished, you make babies for me. Or I will kick you senseless and my men will do it instead of you; all of them.” He spat on the ground and walked away.
“Not this time, you won’t, Mr Sirrupp,” Farthing whispered. He gazed at the speck that was spiralling slowly and gracefully down from high up in the sky above. Closer and closer it came, the great blue-grey wings spread out wide, the huge white-chested body almost invisible against the bright, pale sky.
“What are you planning, Johnson,” Mistry whispered in his ear. She was all but sitting on his lap, terrified by the very real threat meted out by their tormentor.
“I am planning nothing, but when I say, we roll beneath the wagon as far as we can.”
“Why?”
“Just hold on and do as I say.” He felt Mistry’s body tense. “We are about to be rescued.”
Weasel crouched on Fren-Eirol’s back, his knife in his hands and his side bound as tightly as Mab-Tok dared. Above, Mab-Tok followed them down, quietly and smoothly. Gone were Fren-Eirol’s flowing, gossamer silks and in her hands, she carried two long, sharp staves carved for her by the magician. The three were hardly the fighting force from hell, but dragons are dragons, and even small ones like Mab-Tok were hugely stronger than a man. And then there was Weasel, the wiry, annoying magician that had somehow managed to stay alive for centuries in a land where some hunted his kind just for the hell of it, and who had managed to survive being skewered like a kebab just a couple of days before. No army from hell, perhaps, but the group of slavers would rue the day they stole their friends.
Sirrupp was in
When Fren-Eirol attacked the slaver, Weasel leapt from her back, his small frame rolling into a ball as he landed on the ground to come up facing the shocked slavers, his long knife in his hand and death written clear across his face. Mab-Tok landed behind him and the two marched on the slavers, half of whom simply turned and ran. Those that moved fast enough would be lost to the desert, the others who turned and fought with wicked sabres were crushed by the dragons or sliced by the magician. There was no parley here; the slavers gave no ground willingly and only their deaths would end the battle.
Beneath the wagon, Farthing clung to the terrified girl and both of them shook at the violence played out in front of them. Eventually, it was over, and Fren-Eirol walked a short way into the desert and threw up.
“I hate the smell of blood!” she cried out and then sat on the ground, swearing. Weasel left the usually peaceful dragon to her grief and unchained the two young humans, picking the locks expertly like a thief. They crawled out from under the wagon and Weasel coughed and turned aside. Farthing looked at Mistry; her shirt had finally given up covering anything. Quickly, he took off his own shirt and wrapped it around her. She mouthed a thank you, still too shaken and scared to talk properly. Farthing took a step forward and fell, his leg giving way.
“Help him!” Mistry cried out to Weasel, finding her voice. “They have been kicking him because he wouldn’t do what they wanted!” Mab-Tok strode forward and looked at the young man’s leg.
“It's badly damaged, but not broken,” the small dragon said. “The muscles are torn and it is bleeding. I need to wrap it in something” Mistry pulled loose the tattered remnants of her old shirt and handed it to the dragon.
“Here, it is what I have been using.”
Mab-Tok thanked her and worked on Farthing.
“Weasel?” Mistry looked at the magician who smiled weakly at her.
“Yes, I am no Horseman, any more than he is a Goatherd. What were they trying to get him to do, girl?”
“Mistry, Mistry Jinx. That’s my name.” She looked almost shameful. “They wanted him to, to do … to do me.” She stumbled to a halt as the large form of Fren-Eirol loomed over her then slowly lowered herself to the girl’s own height. The matriarchal dragon simply held out her arms.
“Come here, child.” Mistry rushed into the dragon’s arms and was picked up and hugged like a baby. Farthing sat up and held the remains of Mistry’s shirt while Mab-Tok tied it off. He looked up to Weasel.
“I didn’t do it, Weasel,” he said as if he were pleading his innocence. “I couldn’t. She reminds me of my little sister.”
The magician nodded in understanding. With all they had been through it was easy to forget that this tall, powerful man was little older than the girl. During their journey, he had often seen the boy, but it was the man that Weasel saw sitting in front of him now.
They flew back to the mountains, to the forest glade, to work out what they did next. Weasel and Farthing on Fren-Eirol, and Mistry on Mab-Tok. She hung on so tightly that Farthing thought she was going to throttle the small dragon, but he seemed not to notice. Farthing reminded himself that though Mab-Tok was dwarfed by the sea dragon, he was still as big as a horse and had managed to carry Weasel on Taken.
Weasel was going through their belongings and sorting them out. Fren-Eirol and Mab-Tok had flown back to the slavers camp to get what else they could since the slavers had taken whatever Farthing and Weasel had been carrying. Farthing had limped into the forest to deal with business and dig for roots. The magician could feel Mistry staring at him. She had done that a lot since the rescue.
“Why are you alive?” she asked.
He smiled at her evasively. “I prefer being alive, generally speaking.”
“I mean, why did you not die when the slaver attacked you? I saw him and I heard your scream. He was the same man who killed my father and was a killer. So, how did you survive?”
“He missed the important bits and Mab-Tok is a healer and saved my life. It is nothing clever. I have always been lucky like that.”
“But you are a magician.” It was almost an accusation.
“Yes, sorry about that, but I was born that way.” He looked at her again. “It doesn’t make me special, just different. Farthing would tell you that if you asked.”
“Why?”
“Because he beat the shit out of me when I couldn’t magic his sister back.”
“Oh, and you let him?”
“He is very strong and I was sort of drunk. There wasn’t a lot of letting involved. Ah, here it is!” Weasel had fished out a small packet from his bag and threw it over to the girl. “Can you sew?” She nodded. “Good. You can’t prance around in Farthing’s shirt all day, however sweet. It is far too long to start with. There is a roll of Fren-Eirol’s clothing in there,” he pointed at the big bag the dragon used. “I suggest you make something your size and warm. It gets cold up there.” He pointed upwards.
The girl looked up into the sky. “I have to get back to my home. I have to tell my brothers about my father.” A tear was rolling down her cheek, but Weasel could see her strength. A couple of years older and he doubted Farthing would have been thinking of her as a sister.
“Where do you live?”
“Tharkness.”
Weasel twisted his face in thought. “Where is that?”
“That way.” The girl pointed east. “About three hundred leagues. It is in the shadow of the Black Hills.”
“I know where those mountains are.”
“It took us weeks to get here. We trade our way here and trade our way back. Our cart will still be back at the market; if I can get it and our horses, I can go home.”
“You can’t go back to the market, Mistry,” Weasel said in a tired voice. “We saw Sirrupp on the way into the market and he had a large contingent of slaves and men with him. What you saw was but a few of them. The rest must be still back at the market at the sales. Damn, but this my fault.” He cursed under his breath.
“Why?”
“Because he was sizing up Farthing even as we arrived. I just passed it off as a bad joke. I should have seen this coming.”
“Nobody can see the future, sir!” Mistry was feeling out of her depth with these strange friends of Farthing’s and didn’t know what to call them.
Weasel just grunted. “Well, either way, you are stuck with us for the moment, but we are still chasing the two girls and they may be heading roughly in your direction. At least, we can get you part of the way much faster than you could on your own; safer too.”
“I know one is Johnson’s sister, but who is the other?”
“The Prelate of Redust’s daughter. Two beautiful redheads and a puzzling mystery that I cannot work out.”
Farthing appeared from the forest with a skinned and cleaned rabbit just as the dragons returned. They had rescued clothes for Farthing and Weasel, their small stock of dried beans and a little sack of Mistry’s cheeses. Fren-Eirol took the girl aside to help her create some travelling clothes and Farthing knelt by the fire to make tea and cook the rabbits.
“Do you want help with that,” Weasel asked him.
“Actually, no. I need normal right at this moment, and cooking supper is what I often did at home. This is about as normal as I am going to find, I think.” Weasel smiled quietly. The boy was coping like a man. Mab-Tok, however, was being very quiet.
“Nothing to say, dragon
“I am concerned about the girl,” he said quietly. “She can’t go back to the market.”
“Not in a million years!” Farthing said abruptly.
“But what does she want to do?” Mab-Tok asked.
“She wants to go home,” Weasel told them. “That’s weeks away on her horse which is back at the market.”
“That is a problem,” Mab-Tok pointed out.
“Where does she live?” Farthing asked. “She told me, but I had no idea where it was.”
“Tharkness,” Weasel replied. “It is up in the north-west and I hope that is the direction the girls are heading. For the moment, she can come with us.” Farthing looked relieved and Weasel turned to him. “Don’t think this is the safe option, lad,” he said. “They are many leagues ahead of us and we might end up at the most unforgiving mountain range on Dirt. Remember, they also have a dummerhole.”
“They have a calliston?” Fren-Eirol returned with Mistry now dressed in some of the dragon’s beautiful gossamer cloth and no longer looking like a young girl. Even Mab-Tok went quiet. Mistry blushed scarlet. “You didn’t tell me they had a calliston, magician!”
“Sorry, Eirol. We saw the tracks back at the camp. I couldn’t tell if it was an old or young one, but either way, they are a long way ahead.”
“What is the difference?” Farthing asked. Mistry came and sat close to him and cleaned the wild roots he had foraged.
“Young ones go faster,” Fren-Eirol explained, “but are less predictable. An older dummerhole won’t go so quickly, but will keep going all day. I hope it is a young one, but I wish it weren't one at all. I didn’t know there were any anywhere.”
“How fast are they?” Mistry looked up from her cooking. “We could do ten leagues a day on good ground with the team.
“They will go three or four times that,” Weasel said. “It is not that they are fast, but they just don’t stop. If it is a big dummerhole, they can be huge. For some reason, dummerholes grow a lot larger than normal callistons.”
Farthing had heard of callistons, the land-based distant cousins of the dragons. There was an isolated but talked about village up in Mudlands to the north of Redust. But he did not realise the dummerholes were that big. He did some quick maths in his head. “If they left five days ago, that means they are most of the way to the mountains, doesn’t it?”
Fren-Eirol looked at him closely. “But that is not to say that we won’t catch up with them or not rescue Rusty and Precious, Farthing. You must hang on to that. Remember, we are flying. We start first thing in the morning when both Mab-Tok and I are fully rested. She turned and faced the small dragon. “You are with us on this I take it, Mab-Tok. I am a little tired of your evasiveness.”
Farthing saw a moment of respect cross the face of the small dragon. There was a hierarchy among the apparently unpolitical beasts that went far beyond matters of size, and Fren-Eirol had just put her seniority on the table.
“Yes, I am with you, Fren-Eirol,” the dragon said with a slight bow. “All the way. On my oath.” Fren-Eirol nodded once. No dragon broke an oath without good reason, and no one broke an oath given to Fren-Eirol, ever.
Farthing sat on a log a little way away from the others, thinking quietly about his sister. Mistry came over and sat on the ground at his feet and leant back against his legs. For several minutes, the two, thrown together into a forced intimacy that had scared, offended and embarrassed them both, sat in silence.
“What you said earlier,” Mistry said to Farthing quietly after a while, “about me being like your sister. Did you mean that?” Farthing looked down at the young girl, looking small and yet so beautiful, just like his sister did when upset.
“Yes, I meant it.”
“Good,” the girl said and rested her head against his knee. “I need a brother at the moment.”
Weasel looked over at the two, young people from the fire where he sat with the sea dragon. Mab-Tok was sound asleep.
“Trouble?” he asked Fren-Eirol.
The dragon laughed softly. “No, no trouble, little man,” she said, using the affectation she had in a long distant, calmer time. “Farthing is lost in the world of sisters and that is the only way he will ever think of that young lady. You never did get the hang of human relationships, did you?” Weasel shrugged. As Fren-Eirol had often said when she had been younger and they were building a most unlikely friendship after the sudden death of her Bren, people were a mystery to the magician sometimes. “Though I am not sure what he will think of Precious Hearting if we catch up with them. You have never met the daughter, have you?”
“No.”
“She is feisty and flirty and stunningly beautiful, and I doubt Farthing has met anyone like her.”
“This Precious Hearting, she reminds me of someone by that description.”
“She does? Who?”
“You, Snowy. You.” Weasel turned back to the fire, hiding his grin. The dragon sat in silence for a moment. Only two people had ever called her Snowy since her childhood; her Bren and this annoying little man sat by her feet for whom she cared more than she would ever tell anyone else. She hesitated for a moment longer, then slapped him hard around the head anyway.