Chapter Text
On the outskirts of Ezrest rose General's Hill. Its name sounded rather fearsome, but in truth it was a very modest little mound of useless rubbish. One had only to stretch one's neck a little to see clean over it.
This hill had not always been there. Twelve years ago, three battalions of the Order of the Knights of Moralis set out on one of their greatest campaigns to the north, to put an end to the barbarian tribes once and for all. It was said that, returning to the capital, they marched triumphantly through all of Ezrest and there cast down their shattered armour, which gathered into a small cairn. Since then, years of sand, wind, and rain had passed, and now that cairn was proudly called General's Hill.
The inhabitants of Ezrest, known for their inclination toward cynicism, would say that it was the only monument the Knights of Moralis truly deserved: a mountain of rusted iron over which drunkards stumbled and children played. Boys staged battles upon the hill, brandishing wooden swords and shouting the names of generals long dead, while old men sitting on benches at its foot shook their heads and recalled how it had all truly been. None of them, however, remembered precisely — the memory of that campaign had worn away as swiftly as the armour heaped in a pile.
Agott rode up to the hill when the sun was already leaning toward sunset and drew the reins. Her horse snorted and shifted from foot to foot, weary after the long march but disciplined; it waited for its rider to dismount or to give the signal to move on. She did not dismount. She simply sat in the saddle, gazing at the heap of rusted metal from which jutted broken blades, dented breastplates, and something that had once, probably, been a helmet but now resembled a flattened bucket. The wind tugged at her cloak, at the crest upon her shoulder: a silver star crossed by a horizontal line, the symbol of those who stand unceasingly upon the border.
The sound of hoofbeats came from behind. She did not turn, but the captain rode past, halting directly before her.
"Remembering?" he asked, stopping his horse beside hers.
"There is nothing here to remember," Agott replied. "I was not in that campaign."
"And a good thing I wasn't," she thought then. Many of those who returned from it forever covered their names in shame, proving themselves nothing short of war criminals. No one in the kingdom had wanted that war; it destroyed not merely one thousand lives, exposing the true state of affairs. Many who came back then from the north met their end in a tavern; some stood before a military tribunal; many families disowned their own sons.
Yes, that was precisely the kind of war it had been.
When it began, Agott could not have been older than seven, and by the time it ended, she herself had enlisted.
"I was there," said Easthis, and all his thoughts at that moment could be read upon his face. "I would not wish that disgrace upon anyone."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because in an hour we shall ride into the city. Do not look people in the eye. They will not bother to distinguish who was involved and who was not; they are still prejudiced against soldiers."
The wind carried from the hill the smell of rust and something else — perhaps old leather, perhaps simply dust.
Agott did not answer. She looked at the rusty hill and thought that the captain was right: no one would bother to distinguish. The people of Ezrest saw a cloak with a silver star and, for them, that was enough. It did not matter that she had enlisted only after that war. It did not matter that her detachment had spent six years on the northern borders, guarding the frontier from what remained after the rout. To the city, she was simply another knight — one of those who had once marched north a hero and returned as something no one cared to speak of aloud.
She turned her horse, and they slowly rode back toward the column. The sunset stained the sky a dirty pink, and in that light the faces of the soldiers seemed carved from wood — just as weary, just as weathered. And Agott knew them all. Not even by their names — but by the way they held themselves in the saddle, by the way they adjusted their baldrics, by the way they kept silent. Over six years on the northern borders, she had learned to read people without words. Up there, words meant very little. Up there, it was actions that mattered. The North did not forgive talkativeness. It was too vast, too empty, too cold to waste strength on empty talk.
The icy tundra, spread to the very horizon, swallowed them all without a trace.
For the last six years, her life had consisted of patrols, watches, and rare skirmishes with the remnants of barbarian bands that still lurked in the foothills. You arrive, you do your work, you return. Sometimes someone did not return, and then their name was entered into the ledger kept by the captain, and forgotten until the next inspection. Agott did not complain about such a life. It was comfortable and comprehensible. There was no room in it for surprises.
And now — a surprise. And what a surprise!
The news had come three weeks before, when they were stationed at the northern fort, awaiting supplies before the winter season. A messenger had galloped up on a lathered horse, bearing the royal seal and an order that the captain read aloud before the entire garrison. The order was short and maddeningly strange: to return at once to the capital. Everyone, from all borders. The reason was not stated, but the messenger, while someone bandaged his wounded arm, told what had not been written in the official papers.
A dragon.
Agott had stood then with her back against the wall, arms crossed over her chest, listening to the soldiers whispering behind her. Someone swore. Someone shook their head. Someone said that a dragon was, of course, serious, but to withdraw entire garrisons from the northern borders because of one girl was madness. Agott said nothing. She thought that the girl in question was long past childhood. That she had a name. And that she, Agott, had once known her personally.
But that, she told no one.
The dragon's tribute was a tradition whose roots stretched back into such antiquity that no one remembered how it had begun. Once every few decades, sometimes centuries, sometimes more often, sometimes less, without any discernible pattern — the dragon would awaken and demand a maiden of royal blood. Not gold, not lands, not power. Precisely a maiden, precisely a princess. And for many years, the kingdom had fulfilled this demand without objection. It was not debated; it was obeyed, powerless to fight fate itself. They gave up daughters, sisters, nieces, and went on living, convincing themselves that such was the price of peace. No one knew what the dragon did with them; no one asked.
Those who were given never returned.
This time, however, something had changed. The Queen Mother, who had lost her husband many years before and raised her daughter alone, refused to submit. Refused publicly, before the entire Council and the entire court. And now she was drawing troops to the capital, to defend the princess and, if need be, the entire kingdom when the appointed time came. The appointed time, it was said, was already near. The princess would soon turn twenty-one.
The column moved through the city gates. The streets of Ezrest were filled with people, but no one shouted greetings. The townsfolk simply stopped and stared in silence, wearing that very expression of which the captain had warned. Agott looked straight ahead. She did not search for familiar faces, knowing there were none to be found. She thought that in a few hours she would be in the palace, and all this absurdity — the dragon, the tribute, the princess, the Queen Mother who had defied fate itself — would become real. Something that would have to be dealt with.
Her detachment was quartered in the old barracks by the eastern wall. While the soldiers unsaddled their horses and sorted their gear, Agott walked to the well and spent a long time splashing icy water onto her face. She did not know what would come next. Troops were being drawn to the capital not for a parade — that much was clear. But how did one fight a dragon? How did one defend a princess from something that could not be stopped by a sword?
She dried her face with her sleeve and headed into the barracks. Inside, it smelled of old straw and damp; the barracks by the eastern wall had not been used since the previous winter, and in that time only mice had managed to settle them. The soldiers were making do where they could: unrolling bedrolls, checking weapons, exchanging quiet phrases. No one was noisy. Everyone was tired and wanted to sleep, understanding that tomorrow they would be summoned to the palace, and something none of them were ready for would begin.
Agott took a spot by the far wall. She removed her baldric, laid her sword beside her, pulled off her boots. Her legs ached after the long march. She sat on the hard plank bed, her back against the cold stone, and listened to the sentries calling to one another outside the window.
The very thought of a dragon seemed almost ludicrous. Agott had spent six years on the northern borders, fighting barbarians, hunger, cold, her own body that sometimes refused to obey after thirty hours in the saddle. She knew an enemy she could see. Knew an enemy she could strike with a sword. But a dragon — that was something out of children's fairy tales, out of the stories told by the fireside on long winter evenings. She had never taken the dragon's tribute seriously. Knew of it, as everyone in the kingdom did, from chronicles, from old books, from the talk of old men, but had never thought it would touch her. That it would touch anyone in her lifetime.
And now, it had touched them. Who could have guessed?
She had spent so many years preparing for a painful death by a barbarian spear, in the name of her country, only to end up simply burning in dragon fire. Well, it was probably not quite what she had counted on when she enlisted.
Agott pulled the sweat-soaked shirt from her shoulders, remaining in her undershirt, and hung it to dry over the edge of the plank bed. Her muscles ached; her back was stiff after long hours in the saddle. She stretched out on the bunk, hands clasped behind her head, and stared at the ceiling. There, on the dark beams, someone had carved names with a knife. Agott did not know who these people were, or when they had served here. Perhaps they were no longer among the living. Perhaps they had long forgotten they had ever held a sword. Time in the army flowed strangely: it stretched into endless hours of waiting and simultaneously compressed into moments that no one could later recall, except those who had lived through them.
She thought about how strangely the world was arranged. Twelve years ago, three battalions had marched north to finish off the barbarians, and returned in disgrace. Six years ago, she herself had gone to that same place — no longer to fight, but simply to stand at the border, to hold what was left. And all that time, while they froze in forts and chased the remnants of shattered bands, somewhere in the mountains a dragon slept. Slept and awaited its hour. And now it had woken, or was about to wake, and all this military machinery, all these garrisons, all these people accustomed to simple, comprehensible wars, found themselves thrown against something they did not understand.
Tomorrow they would be summoned to the palace, and she pictured that summons: the long hall, the echoing footsteps on the marble floor, the councillors who would speak at length and about nothing, and the Queen Mother — a woman whom Agott, to be honest, had never even seen — would be there. It was said she was as hard as steel. It was said she was a woman holy in her kindness. It was said that after her husband's death she had taken the reins of power into her own hands and not released them, even when the Council tried to challenge her authority. It was said she loved her daughter more than the kingdom.
Agott did not know whether to admire her or consider her mad. Perhaps both were true.
Though, she had never had, and never would have, the right to doubt the Crown.
She turned onto her side and drew the blanket up to her chin. The barracks were cold, though it was only the beginning of autumn outside. The stone walls held the damp, and a raw chill crept from them as from a crypt. Agott was used to the cold; in the North it had been far crueller, but the cold here was different. It did not burn; it seeped inside slowly, unnoticed, like water into a leaky boat. She thought that tomorrow, perhaps for the first time in six years, she would put on her dress uniform. The old one had long since decayed somewhere in a trunk, but the captain had said they would be issued new ones before the audience. Would they manage it, she wondered? Or would they go to the palace just as they had arrived: dust-covered, sweat-soaked, with the mud of the road still on their boots?
Thoughts spun in her head like a squirrel in a wheel: if she burned to nothing, turning to ash, who would patrol the northern fort then? Who would watch the pass? The barbarians, of course, were not what they once were, but they were still there. And if they learned that the garrisons had left, they might start gathering into bands again. That would be so foul. Very foul. But the palace, it seemed, was not thinking of that; the palace was thinking only of the dragon.
Though, perhaps that was right.
She did not at all want the lizard to carry off the princess. The princess was kind, cheerful, and noble. Despite the fact that Agott was a nobody and, over the years in the North, had never become anybody, she continued from time to time — or rather, once a year — to receive a personal letter of congratulations from the palace. On every one of her birthdays.
Year after year.
Fine paper, sweet perfume, lipstick smeared across nearly the entire page. The princess, with all diligence, with all tenderness, with feeling, congratulated her so warmly, as though they were friends. Yet what Agott knew for certain was that friends they most definitely were not. Never. That was probably the very last thing one could hope for, having been sent at sixteen to the northern borders, to the icy steppes at the very foot of the Godrey Highlands. To lifelong service, with no right of return and no right to a family.
Agott sighed and turned onto her back. On the beam above her head was another inscription she had not noticed before. Outside, the sentry had been changed. She heard one voice replace another — a younger voice, almost boyish. Probably one of the new recruits, enlisted after her departure for the North. She did not know these people. They did not know her.
She closed her eyes and forced herself to stop thinking.
Somewhere in the distance, beyond the city walls, beyond the battlements of the eastern wall, beyond General's Hill rusting beneath the moon, the wind drove dry leaves along the road. They rustled over the cobblestones, caught in the gaps between the stones, settled on windowsills. In the guardroom at the gate, someone was brewing tea, and the scent of mint reached the sentry on the wall, making him yawn and dream of his watch's end. In the old town, in the bakery on the corner, the baker was already lighting his oven, readying for the morning's baking. Life went on as usual, paying no heed to dragons, or princesses, or weary soldiers sleeping piled together in the cold barracks by the eastern wall.
And only the mountains on the horizon, dark and silent, remembered what everyone else preferred not to think about.
From the memory of the princess, a warmth burned unbearably in her chest.