Lar is left alone
Lar glared.
“I couldn’t sleep either,” Dartesas smiled sheepishly.
“So you come to prevent me.”
“You’re not even trying! You haven’t even removed your boots.”
Lar swung his booted feet off the bed and down onto the floor. “I’m expecting a summons any moment now,” he muttered.
“The elf Dre isn’t here, you know,” Dartesas said, feigning cheerfulness. “He might not come for weeks yet.”
“I think he will come. He will want to know how we fared.”
“Oh. Perhaps. Well, Larl, you know he’ll come the moment you take your boots off and get undressed for bed, so if you simply sleep with them on tonight…”
“That’s your plan? I never take my boots off again?”
“Well…”
“Why don’t you help me decide what I’m going to tell him instead?”
“Well…”
Lar snorted. “You see?”
“Well, to be honest…”
Lar rose from the bed and immediately flung himself down in a chair. “Start there,” he said.
“I don’t know what to tell him, Larl,” Dartesas said softly, twisting his fingers together. “To be honest, I don’t know what happened out there.”
Lar did not answer, so Dartesas pulled out a chair and sat across from him at the little table.
“I don’t know what his – ” Dartesas was about to say “orders”, but he knew Lar could not stand to be reminded that he was ever “ordered” to do anything. “His idea was…”
“I told you.”
“But you had another one.”
Lar snorted. “You might say.”
“Why didn’t you tell us, Larl?”
“Why? So you could stop me?”
“But shouldn’t we have?”
Lar sighed and hid his face in his hand. “You couldn’t have.”
“Why not?”
“Because I didn’t have an idea. I just did it.”
“Why?” Dartesas asked softly.
Lar rocked his head back and forth in his hand. After a while he croaked, “Don’t I tell your boys not to say ‘I hate, I hate’ all the time?”
“But they only say they ‘hate’ to eat fish, or they ‘hate’ to practice with swords.”
“Isn’t that how it begins? Didn’t I use to ‘hate’ to get up in the mornings?”
“And to go to bed at night,” Dartesas chuckled.
“Still do, that,” Lar sighed.
“So you killed her because you hated her?” Dartesas asked gently.
“Her? No. I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking of her. I was thinking of him. I was thinking of what it would do to him to find her.”
Dartesas ducked his head to peek under his friend’s hand. There was that malignant half-smile that always made his heart ache and his stomach turn.
“I thought I had finally found a way to hurt him, despite all his magic,” Lar murmured.
“Do you think he’ll be the one to find her?”
“He’ll be looking. He must have heard her scream.”
“But he’s blind.”
“Then he’ll never know. And that’s worse.”
“I know, Larl.”
Dartesas reached a hand across the table to touch his friend’s arm, but Lar jerked it away in time and tipped back his chair to lean his head against the wall.
“So tell your boys that hate makes you weak because it makes you act foolishly.”
There was nothing remarkable in the words, but something about the phrase seemed prophetic. Dartesas said uneasily, “You tell them, Larl. You know they never listen to anything I say.”
“I will, if I see them again.”
“Don’t say ‘if’!”
“Dasi, the elf Dre said there will be a new leader for you if I fail.”
“Never! We will always follow you, Larl,” Dartesas whined. “He’s not our leader. We all will follow you.”
“That’s why I think he plans to kill me.”
“Never! Lar!”
“Shhh!” Lar held up a hand to silence him, and he slowly tipped his chair forward again, settling its front legs on the floor with a faint thunk. They were both listening to the two pairs of boots coming down the corridor.
“It’s not the elf Dre,” Dartesas whispered.
“Shhh! He doesn’t come himself!”
When the door creaked open, a familiar voice murmured, “Lamps are lit. Told you.”
The twin pairs of boots came down into the room, one sauntering and the other plodding. It was only Imin and Llen.
“Dasi here too?” Imin cooed. “How cozy!”
“Couldn’t sleep either?” Lar grumbled.
“Who wants to sleep on such a night?” Imin laughed. “Why are you two so glum? Wishing you had took your time?”
“Shut up and tell him,” Llen growled.
“How can I tell him if I shut up?” Imin giggled.
“Tell him and then shut up.”
“Tell me and get out of here!” Lar barked.
“Right!” Imin said. “So I just stepped outside for a moment, to see if I could find another one, and – ”
“Outside?”
“Nobody saw!”
“I thought I had made myself clear the last time.”
“Let him tell you,” Llen said. “You can growl at him for going out later.”
Imin rubbed his hands together. “Right! And if I hadn’t gone out, you never would have known what I saw. So you’ll be thanking me later.”
“Just tell him,” Llen groaned.
“Right! I saw the dragon.”
Dartesas had been watching his friend’s face. Only thirty winters had passed their leader by, but the weariness of years of fruitless struggle tugged the corners of his mouth down into thirty-five, and despair wrinkled his forehead into forty, and experience and sorrow made his eyes seem anciently wise. But when he had an idea that represented some hope – or even an idea that could be twisted and forced into some shape they could use – his face would soften and his eyes grow bright, and then he seemed the clever little boy and the ambitious young elf Dartesas had known.
“Saw it – where?”
“Flew right over my head, almost. Just a little to the north. And flew out across the lake over to the hills on the other side.”
Lar let out his breath as if he had been punched in the belly. “Not where we left her?” he croaked.
“I don’t know. It was too dark.”
Lar put his hand over his eyes. “O Sacred Mother…”
“What do you think it means?” Llen asked.
“I certainly hope that dragon wasn’t some friend of hers,” Imin chuckled.
“Do you think it has something to do with the elf Dre?” Dartesas asked.
They all waited for their leader to say something. After a while he dropped his hand and said, “I think not. Three winters passed between the last sighting of the dragon and the arrival of the elf Dre.”
“So do you think it has something to do with… what we did?” Dartesas murmured.
“Why?” Imin smiled. “We’ve done it before.”
“But that girl was a Scot girl,” Lar said.
“And?”
“And… I don’t know. But the elf Dre wants a half-elf child from the Scot girl and the Scot man.”
“What about the woman Ragnhild? She wasn’t a Scot woman.”
“No…” Lar murmured. “But her child’s father was a man. I suppose that was different.”
“So…?”
“I don’t know,” Lar sighed, and he was his weary, sorrowful, despairing self again. “I need to think. All of you, go home to your wives.”
“My wife won’t be thanking you for that!” Imin laughed.
“Be kind to her, please.” Lar’s body swayed with weariness.
“How do you want me to do that? You should have seen the fit she threw when she saw me come in with blood all down the front of me. Why do you think I went out again?”
“Should have told her we took a deer,” Llen said.
“On the night-dark-moon? Anyway, then she’d be clamoring for the meat.”
Llen nodded. “True…”
“I wonder what Scot girl meat tastes like?” Imin giggled. “If I didn’t tell her…”
“Get out before I puke all down the front of you,” Lar growled.
“Fancy explaining that to my wife!”
“Out.”
Lar could, with a single, softly-spoken word, command both respect and obedience. Dartesas hoped the elf Dre would recognize the worth of such an elf. They had been leaderless before him, and they would be leaderless after him. Or worse – with the elf Dre as leader over them, returning them to the very life of degradation and cowering submission they were trying to escape.
