Dance With the Dead by H.P. Mallory

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The Good Daughter

Dragon’s Birthright #1

by H.P. Mallory and J.R. Rain

(read on for a sample)

Chapter One

The Wilderness

I woke when I rolled over onto a rock.

It seemed there was no way the rock was there the night before when I went to sleep or surely I would have noticed it. I mean—why would I go to sleep on a rock? Which left three options: either some mischievous animal was screwing with me, or perhaps rocks led a secret nocturnal existence I knew nothing about, or I simply remained the punching bag of the gods.

Option three seemed most likely. Recently it felt as if my life was a catalogue of ‘if it can go wrong, it will go wrong’ and it was so much more satisfying to be able to blame the gods rather than fate or simple bad luck.

Sitting up, feeling various joints click in a way that a twenty-one-year-old’s really shouldn’t, I looked for the man who had slept beside me, out here in the wilderness under the stars.

“Uther…?”

He was gone.

“Uther!?”

The thick, rough grass was still pressed flat to show where he’d slept but there was no sign of the man himself.

I sprang to my feet, as quickly as I was able, other bits of my body complaining bitterly, and scanned the endless skyline. The wilderness was vast, and it rose and fell in ways that were topographically interesting but very unhelpful if you were trying to find a man who had wandered off.

“Uther!”

No response. I rushed towards the apex of the mound in the lee of which we’d slumbered, still yelling, now in desperation.

“FATHER!”

But that was probably futile; he’d ceased to respond to that name a while ago.

From the top of the mound, I got a somewhat better view, and I cast about desperately. At first, he seemed to have been swallowed up into the constant movement of the waving grasslands, but then I caught a flash of color amongst the dull greens, greys, and yellows.

“Fath… Uther?!”

I ran towards him, calling his name, and as I got closer, I saw him look around mildly, as if hearing me for the first time and wondering what all the shouting was about. He put a thin finger to his lips, and I skidded to a halt.

“Look…” The old man who I used to call ‘father’ pointed at a butterfly.

As he pointed, the insect took to the air and, with a cry of childlike delight, my father chased after it, laughing and clapping his hands.

“Wonderful! Wonderful!”

The sight had a sweetness and innocence about it, yet also a horror that nearly broke my heart. I steeled myself against the tears that threatened; I had to be strong. For him.

“Uther…” I laid a hand on his shoulder and he turned to me.

The beatific smile faded to a frown of confusion as he looked at me. “I know you. Don’t I?”

My heart started thumping in my ears. “Yes. Yes, you do. It’s me—Selena. Your…”

I paused. Several times over the past week I’d tried to explain to him that I was his daughter, that he was my father, but he always became upset or even angry, beating me with his weak fists, screaming at me, calling me a liar and dissolving into floods of tears insisting ‘I have no daughter!’ In fact, he had three daughters, but perhaps I couldn’t blame him for blocking all of us out.

“I’m Selena,” I finished.

“Selena,” he tried out the word. “Yes. I know you. You saved me.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, Selena. I’ll remember you. My name is Uther.”

“I… I know. I know.”

We went through something similar every morning as his disordered mind put itself back together enough to at least recall the previous few days. But his past beyond that remained a tangle that he couldn’t unravel.

“Would you like some breakfast?” I suggested. Our supplies were getting low—we’d have to pick something up the next time we were near a town, and that would come with problems of its own.

Uther nodded. “That would be lovely.”

Yes, I’d started thinking of him as ‘Uther’ rather than ‘father’. Frankly, it made things easier because this vague, troubled creature in front of me was not the father I remembered. That father had been far from perfect, but he was still mine, and to see him reduced to this low state tore at my heart. So, I buried it and told myself this wasn’t my father, just a stranger named Uther.

Breakfast was in fact a long way from lovely because my rations were running low and I didn’t feel like I could leave ‘Uther’ alone so I could go off to do some proper hunting or foraging. There was a real danger of him wandering off or, worse still, talking to strangers. I was sure there were plenty of good people living out here, eking out what meager living they could in the wilderness, but right now, everyone who saw us was a potential enemy, if only because of who they might tell.

Uther didn’t seem to mind a breakfast that was more half-hearted than hearty. I wondered if he tasted it at all, or if in his mind he was eating sides of bacon or thick, rich porridge with honey. It was so hard to tell what was going on behind the vacant stare.

“Horses…”

Though he sometimes seemed immeasurably distant, Uther was right there, it was just that his ‘right there’ was not in the same place as the rest of us. Even so, he heard the approaching hooves before I did and I cursed myself for not paying proper attention.

“Come on.” I grabbed Uther’s arm and dragged him to where a hollow in the side of a hummock created a natural hiding place.

“But… Horses…” Uther protested, pointing back. He wanted to see the horses. He’d always liked horses as a boy. I remembered him teaching me to ride, so proud when I wasn’t scared of the horses that seemed so huge to me. I remembered how jealous my sisters had been.

“You need to be quiet.” I pressed a finger to his lips. “It’s a game. Understand?”

His eyes lit up at the word ‘game’ and he clamped both hands over his mouth.

Leaving him, I crawled through the long grass to peer around the edge of the hummock across the broad, uneven landscape of the wilderness.

At first, I saw no one—that was the problem with the wilderness; it was good for hiding but that cut both ways. Then, from behind one of the more prominent hillocks, a quintet of horsemen road into view. Even at this distance, I could tell they were soldiers, and the bright, armorial colors they wore identified them as coming from Gaunt. Not that their origin mattered that much right now; Gaunt, Latran, or even Wincham, soldiers of any stripe equaled bad news for us.

The horses stopped as their riders, armed with pikes, stood up in their stirrups to survey the landscape. I ducked back down, my head nestled against something prickly that I hoped was vegetable rather than animal, as vegetables won’t bite you.

When I dared to look back up again, the horses were already trotting away. I wondered which way they were heading. By night I could get my bearings by the stars and by day the sun was a useful, if limited, guide, but knowing what rough direction we were heading was not the same as knowing where we were going. Though I’d grown up in Wincham, I hadn’t lived here for five years and even when I had, I hadn’t immersed myself in the wilderness much.

Now, it all looked the same. To those who lived here, its rough contours were like signposts and they could navigate the wastes like a salmon finding its way home. But to me, no—it all looked alike. I knew there were towns and villages out there—some surprisingly large—but I had no idea where, so the best I could do was chart a course for the mountains and hope we arrived before we ran out of food.

The mountains represented safety.

Actually, that was absurdly optimistic; the mountains truly represented not so much safety, but less danger, and that would have to do for now.

“Did we win?” hissed Uther with childlike excitement.

“Win?”

“The game. With the horses. Did we win?”

“Oh. Yes. Yes, we won.”

My father beamed, happy even if he didn’t understand why, or perhaps because he didn’t understand why. It was horrible to see my father, who in his youth had been thought the quickest mind in the kingdom and even as he grew older had remained sharp, reduced to this. On the other hand, he did at least seem happy, and I wasn’t sure when I’d last seen that. Not for five years, of course, but not for some time before that either, not really happy anyway.

We struck out through the wilderness, always keeping the mountains ahead of us, which was a nice big target to aim for but I wanted to head specifically for Greville’s Pass, and at this distance, I couldn’t be sure if we were going the right way. It could mean a long detour if I got my bearings wrong. Complicating matters still further was the topography of the wilderness; it was impossible to go in a straight line. We kept getting side-tracked while wandering around the steeper humps, and those we climbed always seemed to descend at a different angle, throwing us off course.

And of course there was Uther himself, easily distracted by wild dogs or a soaring buzzard. After lunch (another meager affair) I turned my back a moment to pack things up and when I turned back, he was off gathering wild flowers by the armful.

“For you,” he said, smiling as he handed me the bundle.

I hid my tears. It was a nice gesture, but he didn’t know who he was giving the flowers to. To him, I was just some woman called Selena, nothing more. Still, it was a nice gesture. In fact, it was a lot nicer than many of the things he’d said and done when he still knew who I was. We hadn’t spoken at all for the last five years, and that parting had been… well, neither of us had come out of it well.

As the sun declined in the sky, I saw a small town nestled into the landscape as if the hills had been built around it rather than vice versa.

“Let’s have a proper meal this evening,” I suggested, smiling. “Real food for once.”

“And a bed?” asked Uther hopefully.

“We’ll see,” I replied, cagily, hoping he would forget asking. Yes, sleeping so roughly was no good for his old bones, but spending a night in town made us more vulnerable to discovery. Even a meal was a risk, but a quick in-and-out seemed a risk worth taking when our supplies were so low.

Uther looked at me. Alongside the childlike joy that was the main symptom of his distraction, there was also an uncomfortable melancholy. That melancholy probably occurred as he struggled to get his mind back—this was the time when he was most aware that there was something wrong, something missing. In that respect, I supposed it was a good thing as it showed that the father I’d known was still in there somewhere. But it was almost unbearable to witness.

“Are you… Are you Cara?” He looked at me, sure he was wrong but unable to get the name out of his head.

“No. I’m Selena. Remember?”

“Selena. Of course. Selena.” He frowned. “Where is Cara?”

My mother had died when I was still very young, and though he’d put on a brave face for his children, I’d grown up knowing that my father felt my mother’s loss every day.

But I couldn’t say that to him now; I would just be forcing him to relive the pain.

“I’m sure she’ll be waiting for us when we get where we’re going.”

That probably wasn’t a very helpful thing to say either. But Uther nodded and was quiet again, though the tortured expressions passing back and forth across his face showed that he was still trying to put the broken fragments of his mind back together, and still failing. When we got back and Cara wasn’t there waiting for him, then I’d have to tell him the truth. I’d break my father’s heart all over again and run the risk of shattering his fragile mind still further.

The madness could be cruel as well as kind.

***

The town’s name, according to the sign on its outskirts, was ‘Casper’s Relief’, presumably an allusion to some local figure of history or legend. All the wilderness towns seemed to have names like ‘Drake’s Hideout’, ‘Mary’s Repentance’, and, most intriguingly ‘Roger’s Shaft’—names that told a story. Even when the original story was lost to time, they were names that invited you to make up a new story.

Casper’s Relief was pretty typical of wilderness towns; a market that had grown up over time to become a permanent home for those who serviced the nomads and herders who traversed the steppe. There were blacksmiths to get your horse shod, tailors to get your clothes mended, bath houses where you could get a bath (with a happy ending if you slipped a coin to the right girl), tanners, butchers, dairies and, of course, taverns.

The herders spent long months out in the wilderness with nothing but sheep, goats, or the hardy longhorn cattle for company. When they came back to town, they wanted three things, two of which they could get at the ‘bath houses’, and the third was a drink. The wilderness taverns sold dreck, the sort of drink that makes up for months of nothing but water and goats’ milk by knocking you out cold with one draft. They said that if you left the dreck in the tankard too long, it started to corrode the metal. It was a wilderness rite of passage that a young herder would take his first sip of dreck at the end of his first stint—if he was still able to see the following morning, then he was judged to be a proper man.

“Put your hood up,” I whispered to Uther as we passed through the bustling throng—every day was market day in a place like Casper’s Relief.

“Is it another game?”

“No.” Sometimes it was better to be clear—to let Uther know this was serious.

Uther nodded and pulled the hood of his woolen robe over his head. The robe had been woven for him specially and when new, had cost a pretty penny. It had been a gift from my mother and Uther had worn it until it was worn almost through. He’d never let it go—even now it seemed to mean something to him, even if he could no longer explain why or what that something was.

Hooded and, hopefully anonymous, we wandered, looking for a quieter tavern—with so many, there surely had to be one. Occasionally people would look in our direction and my whole body seemed to tense and contract at the feel of their eyes on us, but it was always no more than a glance. No one was looking too closely.

Truth be told, even if anyone had gotten a good look at Uther’s face, it was unlikely that they’d recognize him, because what would he be doing here? In a place like this? They’d write it up as one of those coincidences—everyone is said to have their doppelgänger.

“Here looks alright.”

‘Alright’ might have been stretching—what the tavern looked like was quiet, which was my main criteria, although you did have to wonder what was wrong with it when every other place seemed to be heaving the seams. Still, beggars could not be choosers, so we went in.

Even with hoods up, Uther and I stood out among a clientele that was overwhelmingly male, between the ages of sixteen and sixty, and drunk.

“What’ll it be?” The barman gave us a funny look but had apparently seen enough not to ask questions.

“What’s good to eat?” I asked.

“I don’t know about ‘good’ but I’ll tell you what’s on.”

“Okay.”

“There’s goat stew,” announced the barman as if beginning a list, but then fell silent.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Well,” I shrugged. “Two goat stews then please.”

“Excellent choice. And to drink?”

I looked at the row of tankards along the bar and the row of faces wavering above them in varying shades of red.

“What’s not lethal?”

“Milk,” advised the barman. “Steer clear of the dreck, young lady—it’ll have you off your feet and then one of these reprobates will have you on your back. And you sir, stay away from the water. There’s not a well worth shit in these parts. Someone offers you water then he’s a liar. Either that or it’s liable to get up an’ get outta the glass by itself.”

“Two milks.”

We found a table, and we ate and drank. At first, we attracted more attention than I was comfortable with as an anomaly, but pretty soon the novelty wore off and the drinkers returned to killing their brain cells with dreck.

All bar one.

There was one man on the far side of the bar who kept looking our way. He seemed to be with a group of rowdies who stood out themselves, but our observer was different. While his friends made merry, he sat quiet, watching us.

He noticed me looking back and gave me a roguish smile that made me blush and return my attention to the goat stew (which was actually pretty good—kudos to the goat).

After a while, I chanced another look and found the man still watching. There was something about him that…

He was quite handsome in a rough sort of way (again, ‘rogue’ was the word that came to mind), but that wasn’t it. There was something in his eyes that made me think back to…

It was an odd connection, but I found myself remembering a day five years ago.

The day my life changed.

The Good Daughter

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