It was precisely as Koe thought it would be.

The hardest parts of the journey had been the bodies. Souls that deserved rest, and proper burial, dragged behind a pair of horses who were anything but pack animals. Horon's had been the more difficult - and yet they managed to bring him back to Red, armor and all. Horon had never discussed with Koe a preference. That he be buried, or burned, or even receive a water burial. Nothing at all to suggest that he wanted or needed anything after his death. Yet it would have been a cruel sensibility, leaving him in that cavern to rot away along with the creature who had ruined so much of his life. Wrapped in a shroud, with nothing adorning his body save those scales of which he'd been so proud. The sled they'd rigged, out of camp supplies Horon had insisted upon bringing, was holding up well enough.

( Then there was the son. )

Every jagged tooth of the increasingly narrow cavern was a reminder. Koe did not feel he needed those reminders, but they were there all the same, pushing and testing his will. The idea of transforming into a dragon in this cave system was entirely out of the question. Even so small as he was, he would either collapse the delicate network of caves or he would impale himself on the stalactite he did not see. Either would do to end his journey in this world. Magic was a strong thing, and if there were no dragons down here - entirely likely - then there would be no need to transform himself into one. At least, he hoped there would be no need. If there was a need, he would probably find himself dying on gray rock for a vampire's oddly personal battle.

( Well, there were worse reasons to die. )

Nothing about the massive cavern could be called welcoming. Stalactites and stalagmites rowed the mouth of the thing, aptly appearing as teeth might. Koe was amused by the thought. He did not suggest that they search for eyes. There were undoubtedly openings which could be classified as eyes, and that might take this entire experience to a level that no one at all was comfortable with. Certainly none of them - himself, Iluq or Horon - wanted to imagine the mouth of this cave as an actual mouth which some demonic presence would use to devour them. Koe did not believe for a moment that he would in honesty receive an answer to any of the questions he had for Horon. There were some things he did not care about, of course, but there were other things he had to have answered as soon as possible.

( There was not enough time for rest. )

Wind could bite more than the flesh. It struck at memory with harder hands, more lethal weapons, than it ever struck at skin and bone. One mountain was nothing like another. Yet the kiss of pine, the brittle taste of frigid water on your tongue - that stately emptiness in the air, a lack of civilization smelling as pungent as a boon of it - all of it conspired to remind him of the wife he'd known and then alienated. Perhaps it was easier to think that Minaht had estranged herself from him. Perhaps that was easier than facing the truth, most brittle and bitter of all things which confronted him. There were two parties in a marriage, in any relationship, and if one or th eother fell out of step then the march became disorganized. Perhaps not the most flattering terms for a marriage, this idea of a military procession, of a march, and yet that was what it turned in to. Not a dance in which each partner was expressing only joy. A march, which could be filled with the joy of a dance but also the solemn vow of duty. He told himself time and again that he'd done his duty to his wife.

( A bard could weave a lie in any tongue, or any song. )

A journey out of a village had never been so strange. Koe could feel it even as he secured his saddlebags, before they left the stable. Mirram and Horon were involved in a hushed conversation on the far side of these wooden stalls, with carefully laid straw and carefully arranged troughs. Red pushed his head against Koe's shoulder as the dragon worked - but Koe's hand was absent as it stroked the dray horse's face. Whatever they had been discussing was for their ears alone. Eavesdropping was not a gentleman's sort of business. He was a storyteller, not a gentleman, but even with that distinction clear in his mind Koe still could not hear what they were saying. A trick of the wind, perhaps, which was rushing through the stable from one set of open double doors to the other. Or perhaps it was something else and he chose not to think so. Thinking that they were hiding something would have cast a pall over this entire affair. Well. That was nonsense. If he believed it he was lying to himself. Horon was hiding something. The question was simply whether or not that unknown element was going to cause trouble for them. Two dragons and a knight of Bahamut had nothing to fear.

( Nothing at all. )

There were details that you noticed about a place in one situation that you would not notice in others. Such as the number of windows. There were fifteen windows, at last count, from the inside and the outside. Not that they would need windows - but at the same time, Koe did not want to think that it would come to that. What he'd told Iluq was the truth. He did not trust Horon, but he did believe that Horon was telling the truth when he said he would not betray their secret. Whether or not it counted as a betrayal if he told this person, or that one, was a question for someone more intelligent by far than Koe. These were distinctions that it was important to make - because just as there was a difference between trust and believe someone was being honest, there was a difference between perhaps arguing with Horon and being forced to fight him to the death.

( Obviously, Koe did not want to pursue the second option. )

Koe woke from his slumber to find himself in the middle of a bright, clear day summoned from some place other than the miserable weather they'd endured on their journey here. What was the name of this village? He wished he could remember. His skull did not precisely ache, but it did not rest comfortably within his flesh, either. Perhaps a cause for concern. He'd given himself worse injuries than this simply by enjoying the product of fruit which man seemed to value and cherish above many others. In short, he'd consumed far too much wine, and now his body was informing him of his error. Or so it seemed. Within a few moments of rising he thought he would be all right. Or so it seemed. Iluq was nowhere to be seen. Yet he knew that he'd fallen asleep with her body cradled against him. Far more cunning than he'd first believed, if she'd slipped away without being noticed.

( She would bear watching. )

Dark walnut suited this room. From the wood panels that coated the walls, to the circular spot of a table, to the high-backed chairs, to the bed frame. All of it stained as dark as could be, rich in color and deep as the night's sky. Koe thought the wine was rapidly ruining his sense of verse and rhyme. A child could have announced that it was deep as the night sky. With an annoyed sort of grimace at the pitcher - still half-full despite his impaired state of being - Koe hefted it, and poured more into his goblet. Wine was the sort of thing that could affect a dragon - if it was a dragon, full and entire, drinking from a horse trough. If a dragon shaped as a man took to drinking, he had all the same difficulties as a man of similar height and weight might have. Which was to say, he began to grow extremely intoxicated.

( Koe had not been intoxicated in some time. )

They made a strange party - of that, Koe had no doubt. What concerned him was not the fact that there was no traffic on the street, so late at night. What concerned him was the absence fo any signs of life at all. When you peered through the cracks in a shutter you saw no light. When you made your way through the town to the square, you found nothing but a fountain that did not flow. Red made not a sound - he was used to approaching something or someone in the dead of night - but Koe could not keep his hands from shifting uneasily on the reins. In the dead cold of mountain winter his leather riding coat was stiff in the collar, in the shoulders, so every movement gave a loud creak that announced him to the world. Breath misting on the air and Vedette's presence behind him were the only company that Koe had. And though he tried not to let his nerves show, he was beginning to grow anxious regarding the whereabouts of this place's citizens.

( Perhaps just asleep, or perhaps in a dragon's belly? )

"You must be joking," Koe mumbled.

He had not counted on these fellows being minor lords. Raised from the cradle to be even more pompous and arrogant than normal lords because the lacked the finances and manpower to be menacing without trying, these stuffed shirts pranced about on show ponies with swords already drawn, half the time driving their skittish creatures into chaotic canters just by yelling at the sight of a hawk. Koe wanted to point out that no dragon would fly that high unless they had no other choice. Koe wanted to point out that if you were trying to sneak up on a dragon, war whoops were not helpful things to solicit from your colleagues every pair of seconds. Koe wanted to point out that he would chronicle nothing but a feast for a scaled creature. He could say none of this without being offered a duel on the spot. Not since this morning, when the terms of their arrangement had become exceedingly clear and altogether wasteful.

( Master Bard, indeed. )

There were a great many things on the wind. Whispers of death to the south, war to the east, gold in the west, and a dragon to the north. Dragon, Vedette could hardly believe her ears when someone spoke of a dragon. Humans had such a strange idea about them, and sometimes she wondered if any had ever seen one. In this tavern, The Grain Mill so named for what it used to be, there was so much talk that Vedette had a hard time concentrating on one line of conversation before she shot to the next. Some said listening in on people was rude, Vedette found such things interesting. Especially when they whispered about dragons. Oh the stories humans had, of Dragons that swooped over villages and stole the virgin daughters of farmers for their meals. Of Dragons which burned whole fields of grain for the fun of it.

( They never did mention ice dragons, maybe it was just those red ones that were feared. )