Runt?
The man had calledhim a runt?
He wasn’t terribly big for his age, but he was no runt! He was maybe a little over average height, even. Perhaps a little thin, but he’d fill out, he was sure, in a few years.
“I...” he began.
The man held up a silencing hand.
“Forget it, kid,” he said. “I don’t need an apprentice, I don’t want an apprentice, and I won’thave an apprentice, and I certainly won’t haveyou. I don’t care if your father’s the overlord himself and you’re Azrad the Eighth to be, I’m not interested. And quite aside from any apprenticeship, I won’t tell you anything about dragons or hunting or anything else. I don’t want anything to do with you. Don’t argue-just go away.”
Dumery blinked, but could think of nothing to say.
The man in brown-or the dragon-hunter, as Dumery thought of him-turned away and marched on down the road.
At first Dumery simply stood there, watching him go, but something inside him refused to give up that easily.
The man had called him a runt and had refused him-but what if he showed that he wasn’t a runt, wasn’t as scrawny as he might look? What if he proved he could handle the wilderness, and wasn’t just a pampered rich city kid?
Thenmaybe the dragon-hunter would take him on!
After all, even Thetheran had tested him. He had failed that test, of course, but he wasn’t going to fail this one.
Maybe the man in brown was even doing itdeliberately! Maybe he reallywas testing Dumery, to see if Dumery had what it took to hunt dragons.
Dumery had to follow him.
He began to hurry after the man in brown, but then he stopped, considering.
If itwasn’t a deliberate test, and maybe even if it was, he didn’t want to be spotted too easily. He ducked off the highway, cut through the line of farmers’ wagons, and set out, traipsing across a muddy field, paralleling the road, trying very hard to keep the man in brown in sight.
Maybe, he thought, I can find some way to help him out somewhere. Then he’dhave to accept me as an apprentice, if I saved his life from a rampaging dragon or something.
Awash in dreams of glory, Dumery marched on through someone’s cotton field, stumbling over plants and ditches. He kept an eye on the man in brown, but he didn’t try to catch up; instead he deliberately hung back. He didn’t want to be spotted.
Once they were both well past the outermost fringe of the market, though, Dumery did return to the highway. Pushing through the fields was just too much work.
They marched on. Or rather, the dragon-hunter marched, while Dumery kept up as best he could, maintaining the distance between them. He had to run occasionally, to make up for the big man’s much longer legs, and he often thought he was about to collapse from exhaustion-but each time he reached that state the man in brown would settle down for a rest.
When the dragon-hunter rested, Dumery rested, stopping fifty or a hundred yards away, where he wouldn’t be easily recognized. He would sit, massaging his feet and nervously watching the man in brown, and when the dragon-hunter rose, Dumery would snatch his boots back on and leap to his feet and set out anew.
A brief afternoon shower almost discouraged him, but after some initial dismay he hunched his shoulders and resolved to ignore it. The man in brown pulled a hat from his pack and put it on, but other than that he, too, ignored the rain.
The rain ended in less than an hour, and the sun reappeared, clean and bright.
Through it all, Dumery marched on, westward and then northward along the highway as it curved, keeping the leather-clad man in sight, but never drawing near.
Only when the sun finally reddened and sank low in the west, and the skies began to darken again even though the clouds continued to dissipate, did Dumery realize just what an incredibly foolish mistake he had made.
Chapter Seven
He was only twelve years old. He was wearing an ordinary cotton tunic-velvet hadn’t seemed practical for a morning visit to Westgate Market-and woolen breeches, and soft leather boots. He had a cheap belt knife with him. He had a purse with a few bits in copper in it, and down at the bottom a few scraps of string and an old and somewhat dusty honey drop he had never gotten around to eating, and not much else. No blanket, no flint and steel, no enchanted bloodstone, no sword, no pads for the blisters that had formed on his feet, none of the supplies a sensible traveler would have.
And he was about ten leagues outside the city wall and it was almost full dark, and he had never been outside the city before, not for so much as a ten-minute stroll.
The man in brown was still walking, though, still marching on, just as he had all day.
It was too late to turn back. Dumery knew he couldn’t possibly make it back to the city gate until long after midnight, even if he didn’t lose the road in the dark, even if he didn’t meet any wolves or bandits or demons prowling along the way. He wasn’t sure he could make it back at all. His feet and legs ached; he had never before walked anything near this distance. The soles of his boots, which he knew were really still perfectly sound, felt paper-thin and soggy with sweat; every pebble seemed to jab him.
He saw a low ridge ahead, and at the point where the ground began to rise the road forked, the right branch going up across the ridge, the left fork paralleling the slope; a glance at the sun’s fading glow told him that the right fork ran north, the left fork west.
Nestled in the fork was a good-sized building, and with a start Dumery realized that it wasn’t a farmhouse. The farmhouses he had passed all day were never built so close to the road.
Most of them weren’t so large, and most weren’t built entirely of stone, either. This structure ahead had wooden shutters and doors and a thatch roof, but the walls were all stone, right up to the gable peaks, and peculiar-looking stone at that. Even the attached stable was stone.
There was no signboard, but all the same, Dumery guessed it was an inn. The fork was certainly a logical place for one, being not merely at the junction of two highways, but just exactly a full day’s walk from Ethshar.
The man in brown marched directly up to the front door of the inn and entered, opening the door without knocking. Dumery hurried after him.
By the time he reached the building the man in brown was inside, and the door was closed again. Dumery hesitated, unsure whether to knock or just walk in-this place, with no signboard and its door closed, and so big, was not like the inns he was familiar with in the city, and he was uncertain of the etiquette. The dragon-hunter hadn’t knocked, but did that mean nobody did? Or was the man in brown privileged somehow?
Just then the door opened again, and a man stepped out holding a torch. He was fairly tall, brown-haired and heavily built, but nowhere near the size of the dragon-hunter. He was wearing an ordinary woolen tunic and a white apron.
“Oh, hello,” he said, noticing Dumery. “Welcome to the Inn at the Bridge.” He turned and reached up to place the torch in a bracket over the door.
“Bridge?” Dumery asked, looking around and seeing no bridge. There were meadows, and the inn, and its attached stable, and the highway, but no bridge.
“Other side of the hill,” the man in the apron said, turning back and jerking a thumb toward the north fork of the highway.
“Oh,” Dumery said.
“Come on in,” the man said, and he led Dumery inside.
The main room of the inn was spacious and comfortable, with a plank floor and stone walls. At one end was a huge fireplace with a nondescript sheathed sword hanging above it; doors here and there led to the kitchens and stables and other such places. A score or so of customers were scattered at various tables.