Soulwoven

Chapter Nine

~9~

Len Heramsun’s eyes snapped open. The air smelled of damp smoke. Cold mud stank beneath him, and he could see the colorless gray of the sky just before dawn through a ragged old curtain in front of his eyes. The sleep sounds of human children drifted gently through the air from his left.

I am coming.

He touched two fingers to his forehead to soothe a sudden ache. Twice in three days he had seen the dragon’s face, heard its voice. And these children said that the Heart Dragons of Mennaia had been destroyed.

Dark, such dreams, such rumors.

The tangy, metallic smell of the axes near his head gave him comfort. The thinly runed blades and the worn smoothness of their grips had been his companions for thirty years. They had made good company.

Now he was saddling himself with a bunch of human children.

That fact did not bother him.

The reason he was doing it did.

They would not be much use. Maybe the one with the swords on his hip and the eye of a nobleman, maybe the soulweaver, but the others were unimpressive. They would slow him down.

But the little one reminds you of Raest, doesn’t he? And the girl of Maegan.

Len Heramsun had learned to recognize his own foolishness years ago. He had yet to learn how to fully control it.

A small skin of water lay next to his bedroll. He sat up and squeezed its chilly contents over his head, gently scrubbed his face and beard clean while the curtain before him grew lighter with the coming dawn. The children had given him an idea of where D’Orin Threi might be headed. They would draw attention away from him once they reached Aleana. And, unless Alphaestus and Ereldite had changed during his years away, the fenuan would be glad he had brought them when he arrived.

Surely, that was enough to justify traveling with them.

Len’s arms felt heavy, and he stood and stretched, working his way from the muscles in his forearms through his shoulders, then down his back to his feet and up again through his neck. There was just enough left in his skin of water to provide him one swig for breakfast. It was the last of the clean stuff—the last he had brought in from outside the city.

After placing the skin atop his bedroll, he swept past the curtain to find the boy they called Cole wrapped in a gray blanket just a few paces away. The brown-haired human was facing his direction with his chin on his chest, fast asleep. As Len watched, the boy twitched and shivered and clutched his blanket.

Len frowned. You’re getting old, Heramsun, he told himself, and he sat to wait for the dawn.

The sun was up within a quarter of an hour, and the boy woke when its first red light struck his face. Len sat in front of him, eating a bowl of potted meat and vegetables he had purchased from the Red Fist the night before. The boy yawned, stretched, seemed perplexed by the blanket around his shoulders.

Then his body jerked forward. His eyes raced to Len’s and settled there.

Len nodded brusquely and grunted, “Good morning.”

The rest of the children appeared shortly. As the sun rose higher above Sentinel Hill and wrapped the slums in red light and long shadows, they packed their gear under the direction of the one they called Quay. The boy had an imperious attitude about him, and Len had pegged him as nobility. He wondered if the other children were sworn to his family, retainers of some kind. “My prince,” he thought he had heard one of them say.