7.4

Leandro knew the northern ways.

Not just the winding routes and roads that kept almost entirely to the sun facing high-passes as most could take. But paths that the old dynasties had carved and hewed from crevices in the deep earth. When their empire had reached over all the known world and its realms.

The dark under ways where the reliefs and signs still seemed fresh under lantern light.

He was not alone among the trade guild for this knowledge.

But his peers in this were sparse.

So when a contract came to see a herd of cattle through into the north in good time and paying especially good fees to the guild, Leandro was the only one available. Of course it was not only cattle that he would be taking.

His counterpart playing herdmaster up from the countryside had known this and eagerly had stocks to hand over for good silver and even gold now that his leg of the journey was done.

Leandro happily took the olive oil and some bundles of even further flung spices.

He would shuffle what crafts were fine for towns and villages.

Simple peddling en route for the final delivery.

But mostly he watched the cows.

And that business was certainly something familiar and wonderful. As a boy growing up with his father walking between the sun blessed pastures he always enjoyed listening to the wise philosopher bulls. Some folk would insult the beasts or dismiss them as such and Leandro pitied them for what their arrogance cost them. The Bulls did not speak to those without respect.

As a boy for the price of simple patience or a handful of grain he had heard epics of the kingdom of the solar dynasty, The Odyssey of Homer and from it the fall of troy. And wept at the sorrow sung for the sinking of ancient minos and her unnamed sister island.

Those that insulted the bulls were denied their wisdom and songs. Denied from attending their festivals and the feasts of their sacrifices.

Denied to eat the flesh of the wise.

Leandro had earned that, though he was not a priest or highborn child. Just a simple peddler's son. He earned by his patience and kindness the right to attend the feast of one bull’s sacrifice. He’d been allowed by the command of the bull himself to be there. He’d watched as the knife struck and the blood spilled.

Witnessed the life end of a wise bull, and in his death calling forth the descent of a god in full daylight. Blood turned to light as it was supped on by the divine and then heart and organ further taken up in it.

Leandro ate the strip of sacred meat scorched and salted as the god of the harvest declared his life well lived and his strength a blessing upon the land.

And now he was here as an escort for another bull.

He could not even imagine what kind of price had been paid to the pastures for such an esteemed animal to make the journey so far.

“It is not my place to question you ver and your ways with us, but my patriarch told of a herd far north needing in the gift of wisdom. With but one last cow to speak for them. I am still young and strong enough to travel so far. Where others are too old and near their time to surrender to the gods.”

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The bull spoke like a priest, with the holy word of the old cantor as spoken in temple, not the common words of traders, court folk or villages. A language which opened doors simply by the knowing of it and could have gotten him a place as an apprentice priest if he’d wanted.

Another gift that Leandro the child owed them. For where else would a merchant’s son have learned the language of the long dead empire?

And so this was what Leandro thought might be the most bittersweet journey he had ever made.

Leandro knew the northern ways. But he did not like them.

He was never overly pleased by spending two days in the dark of an underway, of the fiddling needed to never let the embers go out lest you suffer the consequences. To risk being trapped blind by utter darkness a day’s walk underground. Even though on this road he knew how to find the blessed carved wall which even without light could guide an unfortunate traveler to sunlight.

Leandor was not overly fond of how the realm northward had a too shallow skyvault which made even the height of summer chilled and cold feeling. The way that night could bring frost even in autumn.

And he honestly detested the strange people with their suspicious eyes.

He hated their stories and rumors, of monsters in the dark woods. Talk of Children that were torn apart by their mothers. Of horrifying starvation where men eat one another, Of the tales of the deadly winter wind, the vampire, the zephyrvam which could roll down the mountains and slay men and beast where they stood.

He hated how mercenaries hired here would insist on carrying all their water for days of travel. How they looked at you if you did not. Like you were a man already dead for the foolishness of simply taking a drink.

The superstitious distaste they had of any unknown well. The way they would feed it to dogs or birds before daring to drink themselves.

The way they glared at him.

There was a lot to dislike about the cold, dreary, foreign lands of the Ridgetail mountains and the wide rolling expanses of forest and farm. Viznove’s whores were practically priests or monks for how they hid themselves away!

Leandor had long years of familiarity with this northern route and he was wise to the pitfalls that other merchants from home might stumble into.

But that did not mean he liked it.

However the bull Celsus made this particular northern trip all the better. He had tales and poems to share, and thanks to the need to feed him mostly on grain rather than what grazing the mules found most nights (except in the underway when they were foddered like the mute cattle) on a diet of grain Celsus had far more time to speak then his kind normally spared.

Now though this long bittersweet journey which had taken Leandor back to his youth was coming to an end.

The wondrous animal which had been his charge was going to be left here.

In some random backwater village, surrounded by armed soldiers from the countess of viznove herself so even the errant thought of simply failing to make the trade was curtailed.

Celsus was going to live out the rest of his days here.

In a frigid sky smothered and star cursed land filled with literal biting winds and insane women devouring their own children. Leandor was going to have to abandon a wise, kind and far too noble beast as Celsus to join a herd of base cattle so that some noble barbarian could enjoy the novelty of talking beasts on their lands.

They probably didn't even have the proper gods to sacrifice the bull too when his time came.

Leandor schooled his face, focusing hard not to let his ire show.

Northern nobles could be mighty vicious even for nobles.

It was best not to insult this one when they arrived.

His hired swords bracing themselves drew his eye to the road.

It was time to do his job and make his silver.

But the sight of the looming beast trailing behind what was certainly the lord of the land in his oh so ‘northern’ black armor froze him to the spot.

Leandor felt a vague memory of news and rumor flutter loose from the edge of the fog of the forgotten.

Oh.

So there actually was a Dragon!