He considered the change in the tone of the whispers and tried to sort them out. He fled from Dun Mare on their advice, but now they insisted he break out on his own. Leave Tom, if he interpreted them correctly, but that couldn’t be right. Tom helped him. Tom understood how to flee from the Brotherhood and how to survive. He knew the ways of people and how to hide among them. Perhaps Gareth’s dreams and fears brought on the night whispers like other people had nightmares after eating too much. The whispers came from within his mind. It made sense.
He opened his eyes and watched the eastern sky begin glowing with the new light of the day. He didn’t get up. His mind churned with doubt and uncertainty. After considering the situation he found himself in, and of not knowing what to do, he decided to continue walking on the road until contacted by Tom. He’d walk all the way to Drakesport alone if necessary. The best thing to do was stick to their slim plan until told otherwise. If Tom had been able to safely contact him, he would have. Gareth felt alone and scared, not a new experience. Most of his life he’d been alone and scared, but this affected him in a different manner. Once you have something and lose it, you miss it. But you cannot miss what you’ve never had.
With a start of comprehension, he understood part of his problem. He sat up and glanced around the campsite. In the dim light of morning, the goat looked back at him. He looked further.
The dragon was gone. That’s what he’d missed. A dragon.
He leaped to his feet and stumbled to the goat, fearing the worst. His sudden movement startled the goat, and it pulled away in fear, but as Gareth searched the campsite the dragon was nowhere to be found. The goat looked fine, despite the dried blood on the leg. Turning a full turn and not finding the dragon, he called, “Where are you?”
The little black creature appeared out of the depths of the tall wheat, eyes alert and wild. It snorted and hopped from one foot to the other, then raced to his side and settled near his feet, eyes fixed on Gareth as if they were going to a hunting party together.
“Monster, what have you been up to?”
The dragon leaped a few inches and the small wings spread and fluttered in excitement. They seemed longer than only a day earlier, and more substantial. Fresh blood dripped down the front of the creature. The smell of older blood had turned foul. The dragon ran to the blanket and slipped underneath, immediately becoming still as it curled and tried to sleep. Gareth viewed it as a small mound of disgust. He didn’t want to share the blanket with it again, or the fresh blood smearing its chin and chest. God knows what animal the dragon had slain during the night. He went to the goat and used a gentle hand and felt the wounds on the rear hip as he examined them. His probing must have hurt, but the goat seemed to sense Gareth was trying to help and watched with large, soft eyes.
The blood on the goat’s leg had dried and crusted, but his probing fingers felt twin depressions the size of his thumb where the dragon had gouged out mouthfuls of fur and flesh. “Don’t worry I’ll keep him away from you.”
The goat didn’t look convinced.
He threw an arm around the goat’s neck and attempted to hug it, but the animal pulled away as if he had tried to choke it.
“Time to go,” he laughed. Gareth pulled the spare blanket from the lean-to and discovered most of the food he’d stored in the bedroll was gone. The dragon must have smelled it during the night and devoured the strips of dried meat along with everything else. Gareth would go hungry for breakfast.
The dragon was fast asleep under the blanket. Gareth wanted to shout angrily at it, but without a name, the dragon couldn’t be properly addressed. He considered giving it a name, but that implied attachment. He intended to rid himself of the dragon at the first chance. Blackie. The name appeared full blown in his mind without reason, but he rejected it immediately. Too obvious and it sounded like the name a small child would use for a puppy. He pulled the blanket off the dragon and woke it before slipping it into the shoulder bag. The bag would soon be too small. The effort for him to carry the weight of the growing dragon would soon drain him, so there had to be another solution. Had the animal already grown so much larger, or was it his imagination? Is it only two days old?
How long did it take a dragon the size of a chicken to grow so large it carried a deer in its mouth while flying? It had to grow incredibly fast, doubling in size several times over, which meant it had to eat an enormous amount of food to fuel the growth. If dragons were similar to most animals Gareth knew, the bulk of their growth came at the beginning, slowing as they neared full size, but he knew little of dragons, and they might be different.
The goat’s halter in hand, he tugged and pulled her to the road and walked, slowly at first. As the sun climbed higher, he found himself moving faster and his mood lightened until he found himself humming a sprightly tune. The goat limped along behind. Gareth couldn’t account for his good feelings, but allowed them to wash over him like a welcome wave of cool water. He didn’t know many songs, but there was one bawdy tune he’d heard often enough at the inn in Dun Mare, late at night after the children were asleep. He liked the melody as well as the suggestive lyrics.
The words passed his lips softly at first, and then without thinking about it, his voice grew louder and more confident. He sang aloud and smiled inwardly when he saw a pair of teachers gliding in his direction. Walking side by side, their attention lay elsewhere if their vacant eyes were a good indication. Stopping his singing might draw their attention, so he kept on, but slurred words and sang through his nose as Tom suggested.
The teachers glided up to him with their curious gait, their eyes looking past as if he was not walking on the same road, and that indifference irritated Gareth. They acted so superior. One of them spoke to the other, so softly Gareth couldn’t hear the individual words so he assumed they were talking about him. Still, neither acknowledged him. When only ten steps separated them, Gareth tipped his straw hat and called, “Mornin’ sirs,” before continuing singing the song and repeating the bawdy refrain in a louder voice.
Neither responded with as much as a twitch.
Despite knowing he shouldn’t push the subject, Gareth was about to make a rude comment fighting himself to maintain control. It was no time to act the fool. He turned to check on them one last time. When he did, he saw the head of one teacher spin around to stare directly at the crusted blood on the hip of the goat. The stride of the teacher didn’t break, but the inquisitive action put Gareth on edge, and any words he was about to sing stuck in his throat.
He watched the teacher, expecting him to return and ask about the wound on the goat, but the teacher turned away, and they continued down the road. The Brotherhood looked ahead for as long as Gareth watched.
Hustling on, he reprimanded himself for being so stupid. It would only take one tiny slip to alert the teachers he was not the farmer boy he pretended to be. Rounding a bend in the road a short time later, he saw Tom’s wagon a fair distance ahead. It stood still in the center of the road, the mule loose in its harness, head hanging low. Tom sat high above in the wagon seat. Beside the wagon stood four men wearing leather armor in the king’s wine and white colors. Each wore a sword. Their attention centered on Tom.