Dragon's Apprentice

For those of you that check, I'm sorry it's late. It's been one of those weeks. Thanks for your patients.

Part Nine

He pushed through the crowd, inserting elbows into soft midsections where necessary, with three horses in tow. Occasionally he would pause and put one foot in the stirrup of his own horse’s saddle and he would pull himself up to look out over the crowd.
His master was well visible from this vantage point, standing heads above those gathered around him, his long, almost white, blonde hair catching the sunlight and throwing it back. The man stood straight and noble, his eyes fixed on the crude stage that had been erected for the sole use of the barbaric auction his master had gone ahead of him to reach. Perched upon his master’s nose was a strange contraption of brown glass cut into neat little ovals and held before his eyes with delicate silver straps and bands. Skin so white it could have been cut marble made him stand out even worse then his fine dress, odd eye pieces, his master called them ‘glasses’, and waist length, almost white hair, braided down his back.
Estin shook his head to himself, hopped down from this latest move to gain his bearings and elbowed a particularly heavy set man in worn farmers cloths in the ribs and tugged the three reluctant horses behind him as he continued to make his way to where his master stood.
“You just had to center yourself in the crowd, didn’t you?” Estin asked as he at last made it into the five foot space the crowd had left around his master’s tall, lean form. That beautiful, male face turned slowly toward him, though with those infernal - what were they?- glasses it was impossible for Estin to tell if he was actually looking at him.
His master grinned. “I like being the center of attention,” His master said with his usual humor before he turned to look back at the stage. “Did you bring my horse?” He asked though Estin was sure that he had looked.
Estin rolled his eyes. “No. I left the ornery creature about one hundred miles down the road and traded him for a mule. Of course I have him. Do I look stupid to you? No, wait, don’t answer that,” He said and looked away as his master’s shoulder’s shook with silent laughter.
“So…why did I need to lug, not only your horse, but an extra all this way to this boon dock town stuffed in the middle of the gods only know where? Don’t tell me that you actually plan to buy one of these poor unfortunate backward women,” Estin said and preformed the same trick he had used to spot his master through the crowd to get a look at the stage. Sometimes he hated being shorter than the average woman. Other times he didn’t care.
His master turned to look at him and one pail brow arched above the glasses. “You look ridiculous,” His master said in his usual way.
Estin snorted. “I’ll chop you off at the hips and we’ll see if you fair any better for seeing over a crowd of people this big,” He said.
Again his master’s shoulders shook in silent laughter. Estin just ignored him.
“So, are you going to buy one of these poor souls?” Estin asked again.
His master kicked two sets of saddle bags at his feet. “The money’s in here,” He said, “ Now hush. I need to listen for the right name.”
“So, we’re here for someone specific? Does she know we’re coming?” Estin asked.
“Shh!” His master shushed him, the sound somehow half growl.
Estin frowned but held the rest of his comments to himself as a small, angry looking man in purple robes wandered, almost as if half lost, out onto the stage, a gavel clutched in one hand as if he planned to fight the congregation with it. For a moment he faced the crowd and shifted his weight from foot to foot in a nervous, small kind of way, and hopped up and down a couple of times, the gavel lifting higher as if he were about to begin to preach, before, just as suddenly, he turned and shuffled, his shoulders hunched so far forward it looked as if he were trying to disappear, to the podium. Slowly he climbed up the small step stool placed behind it so that he was at least level with the old, wooden podium and faced the crowd again. The look on his face was almost furious now and when he pounded the gavel down in a call for silence Estin was sure that he was going to break it.
With a grumble and a sigh, sure that everyone on the planet was trying to get in his way, Estin pushed a strand of brown hair that had escaped his warrior’s tail out of his face and looked up at his ever patient horse who looked back at him with calm, brown eyes. With another sigh Estin clambered up the animal’s back to drape himself across the saddle. After all, he didn’t want to stand out too much, but he still wanted to see.
The old man behind the podium glared at him briefly, as if Estin cared what some old grump thought of him, before he banged the gavel one last time and began to drone on about something about witches and evil and young women tempted into the arms of the devil.
Estin wished he’d just get on with it and hoped that the girl his master wanted wouldn’t be too far back in the line. He didn’t know how long he could stay comfortable draped across the saddle like so much luggage before he began to loose circulation in necessary limbs.
At long last, after a long dissertation on who knew what - Estin tuned it out less then half way through- the old man banged the gavel one last time and called the name of the first girl.