The Eyes of the Dragon

62

As a child Ben Staad had been a slim, blue-eyed boy with curly blond hair. The girls had been sighing and gig-gling over him since he was nine years old. “That’ll stop soon enough,” Ben’s father said. “All the Staads make handsome enough lads, but he’ll be like the rest of us when he gets his growth, I reckon-his hair’ll darken to brown and he’ll go around squintin’ at everything and he’ll have all the luck of a fat pig in the King’s slaughtering pen.”

But neither of the first two predictions came true. Ben was the first Staad male in several generations to remain as blond at seventeen as he had been at seven, and who could tell a brown hawk from an auger hawk at four hundred yards. Far from developing a nearsighted squint, his eyes were amazingly keen… and the girls still sighed and giggled over him as much now, at seventeen, as they had when he was nine. As for his luck… well, that was another matter. That most of the Staad men had been unlucky, at least for the last hundred years or so, was beyond argument. Ben’s family thought that Ben might be the one to redeem them from their genteel poverty. After all, his hair hadn’t darkened and his eyes hadn’t grown dim, so why should he not escape the curse of bad luck as well? And after all, Prince Peter was his friend, and Peter would some-day be King.

Then Peter was tried and convicted of his father’s murder. He was in the Needle before any of the bewildered Staad family could get their minds around what had happened. Ben’s father, Andrew, went to Thomas’s coronation, and he came home with a bruise on his cheek-a bruise his wife thought it might be prudent not to speak of.

“I’m sure Peter’s innocent,” Ben said that night at supper. “I simply refuse to believe-”

The next moment he was sprawling on the floor, his ear ring-ing. His father was towering over him, pea soup dripping from his mustache, his face so red it was almost purple, and Ben’s baby sister, Emmaline, was crying in her high chair.

“Don’t mention the murdering whelp’s name again in this house,” his father said.

“Andrew!” his mother cried. “Andrew, he doesn’t under-stand-”

His father, normally the kindest of men, turned his head and stared at Ben’s mother. “Be quiet, woman,” he said, and some-thing in his voice made her sit down again. Even Emmaline stopped crying.

“Father,” Ben said quietly, “I can’t even remember the last time you struck me. It’s been ten years, I think, maybe longer. And I don’t think you ever struck me in anger, until now. But it doesn’t change my mind. I don’t believe-”

Andrew Staad raised one warning finger. “I told you not to mention his name,” he said, “and I meant it, Ben. I love you, but if you say his name, you’ll be leaving my house.”

“I’ll not say it,” Ben replied, getting up, “but because I love you, Da’. Not because I’m scared of you.”

“Leave off!” Mrs. Staad cried, more frightened than ever. “I won’t have the two of you bickering this way! Do you want to drive me insane?”

“No, Mother, don’t worry, it’s over,” Ben said. “Isn’t it, Da’?”

“It’s over,” his father said. “You’re a good son in all things, Ben, and always have been, but mention him not.”

There were things Andy Staad felt he couldn’t tell his son-although Ben was seventeen, Andy still saw him as a boy. He would have been surprised if he’d known that Ben understood his reasons for striking out quite well.

Before the unfortunate turn of events of which you now know, Ben’s friendship with the prince had already begun changing things for the Staads. Their Inner Baronies farm had once been very large. Over the last hundred years, they had been forced to sell the land off, a piece at a time. Now fewer than sixty reels remained, most of that mortgaged.

But over the last ten years or so, things had gradually im-proved. Bankers who had been threatening first became willing to extend the outstanding mortgages, and to even offer new loans at interest rates so cheap they were unheard of. It had hurt An-drew Staad bitterly to see the land of his ancestors whittled away reel by reel, and it had been a happy day for him when he was able to go to Halvay, the owner of the next farm over, and tell him that he had changed his mind about selling him the three reels Halvay had wanted to buy for the last nine years. And he knew who he had to thank for these wonderful changes, too. His son… his son who was a close friend of the prince who also happened to be the King-in-waiting.

Now they were only the unlucky Staads again. If that had been all, only a case of things going back to the way they had been, he could have stood up under it without striking his son at the dinner table… an act of which he was already ashamed.

But things weren’t going to go back to the way they had been. Their position had worsened.

He had been lulled when the bankers had stopped behaving like sheep instead of wolves. He had borrowed a great deal of money, some to buy back land which he had already sold, some to install things like the new windmill. Now, he felt sure, the bankers would take off their sheepskins, and instead of losing the farm a piece at a time, he might lose it all at once.

Nor was that all. Some instinct had told him to forbid any of his family members to go to Thomas’s coronation and he had listened to that inner voice. Tonight he was glad.

It had happened after the coronation, and he supposed he should have expected it. He went into a meadhouse to have a drink before starting home. He was very depressed by the whole sorry business of the King’s murder and Peter’s imprisonment; he felt that he needed a drink. He had been recognized as Ben’s father.

“Did yer son help his friend do the deed, Staad?” one of the drunks had called, and there had been nasty laughter.

“Did he hold the old man while the prince poured the burnin’ pizen down his thrut?” one of the others called out in turn.

Andrew had put his mug down half empty. This was not a good place to be. He would leave. Quickly.

But before he could get out, a third drunk-a giant of a man who smelled like a pile of moldy cabbages-pulled him back.

“And how much did you know?” this giant had asked in a low, rumbling voice.

“Nothing,” Andrew said. “I know nothing about this business, and neither does my son. Let me pass.”

“You’ll pass when-and if-we decide to let yer pass,” the giant said, and shoved him backward into the waiting arms of the other drunks.

The pummeling then began. Andy Staad was pushed from one to the next, sometimes slapped, sometimes elbowed, sometimes tripped. No one quite dared to go as far as punching him, but they came close; he had seen in their eyes how badly they had wanted to. If the hour had been later and they had been drunker, he might have found himself in very serious trouble indeed.

Andrew was not tall, but he was broad-shouldered and well muscled. He calculated that he might be able to dust off any two of these idlers in a fair fight-with the exception of the giant, and he thought that perhaps he could give even that fellow a run for his money. One or two, possibly even three… but there were eight or ten there in all. If he had been Ben’s age, full of pride and hot blood, he still might have had a go at them. But he was forty-five, and did not relish the thought of creeping home to his family beaten within an inch of his life. It would hurt him and frighten them, and both things would be to no purpose-it was just the Staad luck come home with a vengeance, and there was nothing to do but endure it. The barkeeper stood watching it all, doing nothing, not attempting to put a stop to it.

At last they had let him escape.

Now he feared for his wife… his daughter… and most of all for his son Ben, who would be the prime target for bullies such as those. If it’d been Ben in there instead of me, he thought, they would have used their fists, all right. They would have used their fists and beaten him unconscious… or worse.

So, because he loved his son and was afraid for him, he had struck him and threatened to drive him from the house if Ben ever mentioned the prince by name again.

People are funny, sometimes.