Dragon rider, p.2
Dragon Rider, page 2
Constantine’s lips pursed, but if Ivar noticed, he did not let on. Instead, he rubbed his not-insubstantial belly and gestured at the battle behind.
‘Come now, let us feast,’ Ivar said. ‘Allow this rabble to surrender. See, they already begin to lay down their arms.’
A flick to Jai’s ear from Leonid’s finger turned Jai’s head back to the battle. Indeed, the sounds of combat were receding, leaving only the rattle and chant of the Dansk warriors. The Huddites had retreated from the ordered legion ranks, their tens of thousands milling between the hammer of the Dansk and the anvil of the Sabines.
‘He’s right,’ was all Jai dared to whisper in Leonid’s ear.
Not all the weapons had fallen, but the Huddites had to know that now there was no glorious last stand to be had. Just slaughter, or subjugation as the fettered – forced to work for the empire until the end of their days. Prisoners of war were fair game under imperial law.
Even from afar Jai saw men and women fall to their knees in supplication. A few hundred remained defiant, yanking at those kneeling, trying to convince them to stand. These few would fight to the bitter end, but the rest might be spared to live on as fettered. If such a thing could be considered living.
Constantine cleared his throat and stood from his throne. He approached Ivar, the portly little man looking up at the six-foot, battle-hardened king. Until now, the two men had been rivals. Enemies even, though rarely in direct conflict.
Then, Constantine swept out his arms and clasped Ivar in a hug.
‘Blessed mercy, then!’ he announced, stepping away. ‘To celebrate the union of our two great dynasties. Mercy!’
Leonid grunted with approval and pulled Jai’s ear to his mouth.
‘Keep an eye on these Dansk,’ he hissed. ‘This alliance isn’t sealed yet.’
Chapter 3
The journey back to the imperial palace was one of jostling cushions and cracking whips, as Jai and Leonid travelled the Kashmere Road in the old emperor’s carriage. To Jai’s dismay Leonid had chosen again to keep the curtains of their padded interior closed, and he could do little more than stare at the old man as he snored through the two-day journey from the coast back to Latium.
Jai longed for his books. For real food, rather than the thin but easily consumed gruel that Leonid subsisted on when he travelled – which Jai had to share. But more than anything, Jai longed for a view of the outside.
Almost his entire life had been spent in the Sabine court. In the decade since he had arrived there he had hardly left the grounds of the imperial palace. It was as if he were a prisoner there. And in a way, he supposed, he was.
Jai was a glorified hostage.
When Jai was a child his father, Rohan, king of the Kidara tribe, had allied with the other peoples of the Great Steppe against the Sabine Empire. Rohan became High Khan of the Steppefolk, and he had led his people in a bloody campaign of resistance that ended in a stalemate, with great suffering on both sides. In the end it had come to a final battle. One that Jai’s father had lost. Following his capture Leonid had executed the High Khan personally.
But Leonid was already an old man by then, made more so by the year-long war. Exhausted, he had handed his son Constantine the emperor’s crown on the very same day as Rohan’s execution. Constantine had harboured no desire to invade the seemingly endless grasslands; not with unrest from the many civilisations his empire had subsumed springing up – inspired by Jai’s father’s example.
So, a peace agreement emerged. One where the tribes’ leaders paid a yearly tribute to the Sabines and the warriors already captured would remain fettered.
The leaders also sent their children to be raised in the Sabine court until they reached twenty years of age. Should the khans of the various tribes break the peace or refuse to pay their tribute . . . their children would be slain.
As the third son of his father’s lineage, and born of a nameless courtesan, Jai was as unimportant at the court as he would have been back home. While his two older brothers were treated with a modicum of respect, serving as Prince Titus’s hunting guides and companions, Jai’s lot had been to wipe drool from Leonid’s wispy beard and other even more ignoble responsibilities. His nickname, “arsewipe”, was a cruel one, but not inaccurate.
He had no purpose, both in this court and back in the Great Steppe. He was a footnote in the annals of history. And Jai liked that just fine. He just wanted a peaceful existence in a place he could call home . . . though sometimes he wondered if he could even call the Great Steppe his homeland when he did not remember it.
‘Do we near home?’
Leonid’s question disturbed Jai from his thoughts. The old man lifted his head, and Jai was swift to support the old man’s neck and bring a gourd of water to Leonid’s lips.
‘Soon, I hope,’ Jai said. ‘If I could look outside, I might give you a better answer.’
Leonid looked up at Jai, searching his face. Did he see Jai’s mixed heritage there? That paler skin from his mother that stood him apart from the other Steppefolk. Or did Leonid just see the Steppeman, like his father, in the black of his shoulder-cut hair and the hazel of his eyes? Certainly everyone else did.
After a moment he grunted his approval and Jai grinned as he gently pulled open a chink in the curtains, careful not to blind the elder with the new light.
He pressed his face against the glass, watching the rolling hills of the Sabine heartlands. To another, it might have appeared boring, for there was little to see but dense fields of wheat stalks waving in the afternoon sun. But to Jai it was a sight unseen, one he’d only read of in Leonid’s extensive library, or heard about when the old man reminisced. He wondered how different his homelands might look from these hills and searched his memory.
His memory of where he came from was all a blur. After all, he had been four years old – hardly weaned from his wet nurse’s breast – when he had been sent away. Though he had flashes of memory.
Of men and women, sitting in circles, oiling and braiding each other’s hair. Of food that burned his mouth yet left him feeling warm and alive. And, most galling, scents he could not name and tastes he only savoured in dreams.
Poor roots for a prince of the steppe.
Were it not for Balbir, the woman sent to care for him and his brothers, he might not have had any knowledge of his people at all.
Even she was kept from him now, working for a noble family in Latium’s merchant district. On the rare occasions he was allowed to leave the palace, Jai would do his best to see her, but it was rare she could do much more than exchange a few words as she scrubbed the front steps, before Balbir was shooed inside by her mistress.
‘Well?’ Leonid asked.
Jai sighed and let the curtain fall back.
‘I see only fields.’
Leonid nodded wryly and nestled deeper into the cushions.
‘We are close,’ he said. ‘The city has always been surrounded by fields. Any attackers could be seen long before they reach its walls.’
‘Raiders?’ Jai asked. ‘This far south?’
Leonid chuckled.
‘In the old days we had many enemies. And rebellions, uprisings. It’s not a problem anymore. Now, only the Dansk remain.’
Jai shuffled closer.
‘Remain? Still? You asked me to watch them for you. Why?’
Leonid sighed and rubbed his eyes.
‘For decades they’ve raided our coasts and the northern reaches of our empire. Ask me, Jai, why I have not crushed them like all my other enemies?’
‘The dragons, obviously,’ Jai said.
Leonid cackled and the laughter turned into a hacking cough. Jai lifted him upright and rubbed the old man’s back until it was over.
Dragons. Even in a land like the Sabine Empire, where the wilds were populated by many dangerous creatures, the very word struck fear and awe into all who heard it. Legends still told of when these predators haunted every sky across the world. Now, but a few dozen remained, flying where they willed but returning each year to breed in the icy mountains of the Northern Tundra, hunting narwhals and seals in the Silver Seas.
Leonid’s cough came to a shuddering stop, and he gulped down some more water.
‘Dragons. Pah! The Dansk would like to think so,’ Leonid rasped. ‘But our Gryphon Guard would match their dragons if it came to it. Numbers, my boy. We’ve a hundred or more gryphons to fight their dozen dragons. A fair fight.’
Jai’s heart pumped a little faster at the thought of the emperor’s personal protectors, riders of their own great beasts. Gryphons were smaller and weaker than dragons, true, but Leonid was right that there were more of them – and all bonded to a military guard. Dragons, as far as he knew, were only soulbound with the upper echelons of Dansk society.
‘So why, then?’ Jai asked.
Leonid pulled a fur across his legs and winced as the bones of his shoulder clicked at the motion.
‘The cold,’ he said simply. ‘The Dansk live in near-perpetual winter and their kingdom is scattered across hundreds of remote villages. Not to mention their warriors excel at ambushes – ask any of our border militia. We’d bleed our armies and supply lines dry to invade and then pay a pound of flesh to hold it. And for what? A hardscrabble land where crops hardly grow? Pah!’
He spat with annoyance once more.
As always, Jai listened with care, learning all he could. It still amazed him that Leonid deigned to speak with him in this way. It amazed him even more that Leonid’s relatives, and indeed even the nobility of the Sabine court, ignored their elder. The old man had outlived all his peers. The man had seen almost a hundred harvests.
Leonid’s son, Constantine, hardly saw his own father, preferring to carouse with his entourage of sycophants. As for his grandson, Titus had a fascination with the ex-emperor’s legacy, but hardly ever visited him, taking after his father. The palace was grand enough that months could go by without any of the royals crossing paths.
‘Do you agree with this marriage?’ Jai asked. ‘I didn’t even know it was happening.’
Leonid cackled.
‘I was not consulted, but I knew it was coming. It’s a clever move by Constantine. He is a peace-time emperor, but not without his own wiles. The marriage will allow us to stand down our legions on the northern borders, which in turn bolsters our coffers. But most importantly of all, when Titus’s future son takes the throne, the Northern Tundra will become part of our empire.’
Jai nodded along, but he’d known the old man long enough to tell Leonid was not speaking the whole truth. He kept his voice light. ‘But they cannot be trusted?’
Leonid arched an eyebrow. This was more conversation than Leonid usually indulged Jai with, for the retired emperor was more often interested in recounting past glories. Now Jai was straying into the politics of today’s court. But finally, the old man inclined his head.
‘They landed a hundred longships on our coast and marched an army across our sovereign lands. Had the Gryphon Guard not caught sight of their approach and warned our coastal defences to not engage them, fighting might have broken out on their arrival. It was reckless of them, and all for a petty show of force. A reckless enemy is a dangerous one. Unpredictable. It was why Rohan gave me so much trouble.’
He caught sight of Jai’s downcast expression at the mention of his father and cleared his throat. Even after a decade, the topic was one they avoided.
Thankfully, the thud of their carriage driver’s fist upon the roof interrupted the awkward silence.
‘Five minutes!’ the muffled voice called.
Jai twitched back the curtains of the window once more, eliciting a tut from Leonid. He was willing to risk Leonid’s displeasure for this. Now, for the first time, he saw Latium from the outside.
A cliff jutted from the countryside – a giant ramped incline ending in a sharp drop on its opposite side. But this oddity of geography was overshadowed by the sprawling marble palace built upon its slopes, punctuated by bronze-capped domes and ziggurats. Pleasure gardens were interspersed throughout the white buildings, yet Jai’s eyes were drawn to the high spire of the Gryphon Guard’s eyrie, as he sought out a glimpse of the greatest warriors of the empire returning to their roost. None could be seen. They were likely in the air behind them, keeping an eye on the Dansk army, which was marching some miles behind the royal train.
‘Seen enough?’ Leonid asked with an edge.
Jai let the curtain fall, returning to darkness once again.
‘I don’t know how you expect me to watch the Dansk,’ Jai muttered. ‘You hardly ever leave your quarters.’
Leonid chuckled drily.
‘Titus and his new bride Erica will be hunting in the morning. I will join them . . . and so will you.’
Chapter 4
Upon their arrival, Jai had hurried Leonid back through the palace, dodging frantic servants as they rushed to arrange a feast, one that had not yet been planned due to the Dansk’s early arrival. Even though they had all night and the morrow to prepare, they would be hard pressed to have everything finished on time.
Leonid tutted impatiently each time Jai slowed his wheelchair to weave around a harried servant, until they were finally through the great doors to Leonid’s chamber.
Jai was swift to tug a small rope beside Leonid’s bed, summoning attendants with buckets of hot water. The old man wished to wash away the dust of the road before bed and, despite the onset of dusk, Jai found himself going through the motions of his morning routine.
Every morning, the old man had to be washed, groomed and dressed, which meant drawing him a bath, combing his hair and the long process of picking out robes he would find acceptable. Never mind that Leonid almost never left his chambers and hardly anyone would see him.
Next Jai set the fire in the crackling hearth that he often had to maintain at all hours – Leonid liked it to be warm, such that he might be reminded of the years he campaigned in the tropical south, carving out the bulk of his empire.
Jai had a wiry strength to him now, after so many years of hauling logs from the palace sculleries. A silver lining, or he’d likely have run to fat long ago.
The constant carrying and reorganising of books contributed to Jai’s build too: Leonid’s room might have been confused for a library were it not for the enormous bed at the room’s centre. Every wall was lined with books, and the old man’s favourite pastime was sitting by the fire reading over his old journals, often making amendments and additions in the margins.
Though Jai would never admit it, it was one of his favourite pastimes too. The life stories of not just Leonid but every other military mind through history were contained within this room. It was, Leonid told him, the source of his success.
Many a night had Jai fantasised about leading his own men into battle, even riding a gryphon at their front. It was a joy to daydream, trapped in the confines of that dusty room. While he remained, his mind could soar with any flight of fancy that took him.
He had read most books in these rooms at least once, but one section remained untouched, gathering dust upon a low shelf in the corner. The ragged journal of Leonid’s wars with Jai’s father. He could not bring himself to read that tome.
It wasn’t because Jai held some deep love for his father – though by all accounts Rohan had been a good ruler, who had loved his people and fought with honour. Indeed that was all he was to Jai, for he did not truly remember what the man looked like. His mother too was but a fleeting memory – a pale face that stroked his hair and hummed lullabies. Even Balbir did not know what had become of her.
No, it was the shame of it. For within those pages lay the reason men spat at him in the streets or cursed the colour of his skin. He needed no reminder of his people’s supposed inferiority beyond the fact that Steppefolk made up almost half of the fettered in the empire. He did not need another reason to hate the old emperor. It was hard enough serving him as it was.
‘A game of tablus,’ Leonid called, clapping his thin hands. ‘While I bathe.’
Jai grimaced. It was not that he did not enjoy the game. Indeed, on the rare occasions that Jai was able to leave the palace he’d always stop by the city’s main plaza to play a few games with the old men there, winning most.
No, he liked the game well enough. He was just sick of losing to Leonid, who he had never beaten. The man’s eyes might be clouded but his mind certainly was not.
Jai only wished there was someone else in the palace that might play it with him. But few servants would even meet his gaze, let alone strike up conversation. He was, and always would be, a savage oddity. A royal and a servant. A Sabine Steppeman. An enemy and an ally. A contradiction best avoided. He was trouble and certainly most considered his friendship not worth the ire of the many who hated Steppefolk. Rohan’s raids on their border towns were not yet forgiven.
Jai sighed, the truth of this made more apparent by the servants who avoided his eye as they hauled buckets to fill the gold-clawed bath in the chamber’s centre.
‘Thank you,’ Jai said.
They hardly met his gaze and were soon gone, leaving Jai to remove Leonid’s robe and lift his frail body from his wheeled chair into the steaming water.
The old man groaned and Jai set up the chequered board and a stool beside the bath, staring at the pieces. It was not dissimilar to the battlefield they had seen that morning. Infantry pieces on the front row, with horsemen on the edges. And behind, the more useful pieces, made up of the rare beasts of whatever land the board originated from. As it was a Sabine board the pieces were gryphons, chamroshes, manticores and the like. In the Northern Tundra, Jai knew the pieces included cave bears and dragons, while his own folk used mammoths and khiroi. Still, whatever the creature, the pieces moved in the same way.
‘Come now, I’ll let you make the first move,’ Leonid wheezed, settling deeper into the steaming water.
Jai shrugged and moved the first piece. A common opening gambit: a tentative foray from a shielded legionary. Leonid still managed to find fault in it, tutting beneath his breath.
