by Marc Secchia
We’re holding everyone up.
Hiss!
I’ll go ahead without you …
She made a rude spitting sound between her fangs. Then it was snootily gazing off into the distance, head held high, as if she were royalty and he was a peasant grovelling before her paws! That was about enough of that. Surreptitiously, Keir shucked his laden backpack and took off his thick winter jacket. Brr. Bracing! Right, and –
“Got ye! Claws in!”
Keee-irr! Keee-irr!
He felt a brute, a satisfied sort of brute, as he bundled the dragonet up in his jacket at the cost of a small nick to his chin. Then he pushed off, sitting on a blanket he had tied around his middle. He found the necessary control by copying the Elves ahead in using the tough heels or soles of his Ogre-hide boots to press down either side, or both simultaneously, to reduce the forward momentum. Cool idea! Well, literally. His behind would be frozen solid after this.
Tucking up his legs, he set off in pursuit of Rhyl.
As their confidence grew, one or two of the Elves inevitably came a cropper and slid down the steady slope on their sides or stomachs, arms and legs waving hilariously.
Meantime, he told Auroral Storm Diamond off for her intransigence. At length. He was surprised by how keenly her show of defiance exercised his passions. Exceedingly surprised. After a few minutes of venting, Keir found himself wondering what exactly had sparked his diatribe. Did all parents experience such moments? And decide they had better rediscover their self-control in a hurry and decide to be the bigger person – at least, given the size of those Dragons he had seen beneath the mountains, while he could still be the bigger person? Oof. Interesting notion!
Unbundling the dragonet’s head from beneath the jacket, he fielded a mock bite upon the hand as payment for his bullying. It caused crimson to well up in three places.
Keee-irr? she purred, more contritely.
She smacked her lips at the taste of his blood. Excellent vintage, perhaps?
“Och aye, girl. I’m sorry too. I dinnae ken what came over me back there. In the noo, why dinnae ye actually pretend to enjoy what we’re doing here? Head forward. Chin up.” She licked his jaw before turning to the fore. “Tongue out, like a dog tasting the irdashoon from a window. Look, like this. Here we go!”
Panting and laughing, he raised his boots off the ice. Immediately, they swept forward with renewed speed. A few jarring bounces soon convinced him that he needed to take more solicitous care of his ill-padded nether regions, but the Dragon’s expression as she regarded his delight was a sight to behold. Baffled. Amused. Intrigued. Her eyes beginning to gleam with a new brilliance as she perceived that his delight was partly in relation to her reaction. A soft purring sensation began deep in her body. Her throat worked strangely. And again …
Go on, then. Say what you want, my diamond heart.
Auroral Storm Diamond appeared most discomfited by whatever was happening in her body. She watched the Elves ahead streaming through a small dip and up the other side. The children laughed openly now, as did many of the adults. Even the elder Garamyssills chortled like children playing in the jungle foliage. He had forgotten how much Elves adored the sensation of movement. Born among the heights of the jungle giants, they were inured to the swaying movements of the boughs, especially during the great storms that regularly shook the treetops. So gigantic and unusually warm for the latitude were the jungles, it was said that they generated their own unique weather. The prevailing theory was that this was due to shallow volcanic activity beneath the trees, but since a volcano had never erupted in the jungle, the scholarly dispute had been raging for a handful of centuries at least.
No-one dared to descend to the jungle floor to investigate or take measurements.
There went her throat again. He stroked her neck gently, snuggling the dragonet against his chest. Was this little bundle growing noticeably heavier? How much longer would she even fit inside a backpack?
Keee-irr, she crooned, nibbling fondly at his ear.
Her tongue lolled perfectly. Just like a hound. Its forked tip even fluttered from the corner of her mouth. Her body quivered, over-sensitised, hyper-alert, excited. Perhaps the sensation tickled? Or was it her growing delight as they swooped through that dip and up the far side, stomachs leaping and diving with the terrain, the frigid wind ruffling hair and susurrating over scales with a sound like a hand stroking silk? They both opened their mouths to gobble up the air, panting in tandem now, yelping as an unexpected hollow in the trail followed by a sharp bend sent them spinning off in circles. The sky and the steepening terrain blurred around them.
Keir kicked off a large icy boulder to shift back onto the trail, taking a four-foot drop that jolted through his sternum. Whomp! He landed with a dull thud.
Ouch! Like being kicked in the behind by a Troll, he imagined.
Dragonet and half Elf careened around the next banked bend at high speed, overtaking a startled Rhyl who wobbled precariously before regaining her balance.
“Keir! Ye rascal!”
Slow down, Keir-my-heart, his mother began to call.
Aah … He had to thrust hard again to avoid bumping into her, but father was a rather larger target and they thumped into him from behind with a certain lack of ceremony or grace.
“Keir!” he growled.
“Och nae, sorry Dad – but why does everyone keep blaming me?”
“Oh, let me just think a wee moment here. Blessed be! Maybe because yer the root and stem of every blooming scrap of trouble around these mountains, lad?”
He said drily, “Which makes ye the father of the trouble, aye?”
To everyone’s surprise, Auroral Storm Diamond chose that moment to discover her laugh. It was more a high-pitched, burbling chuckle that stuttered the moment it exited her throat, as if she herself could not quite believe the sound that had just emerged. When most of the Elves nearby laughed, the sound popped out a second time.
The dragonet’s ears shot straight up. Keee-irr, wirrit?
She chortled inadvertently again.
That’s your laugh, darling fire paws. Your very first laugh. Aren’t you just a cutie?
Apparently this was occasion to threaten his left nostril with a set of razor sharp talons. Grr …
Cute, with oodles of attitude.
* * * *
The party of Elves ran into the first issue at the base of Tranbyss Pass – namely, a snowdrift over seventy feet tall. Keir had never seen anything like it. It was beautifully soft azure snow on the surface; in fact, so soft that in a number of places individual snowflakes perched atop the powder as if artistically placed for maximum appreciation. Given the Darkfall they had seen, this was improbable. Why would the storm winds ramp up the granddaddy of all snowdrifts but leave this surface absolutely pristine? How could a snowdrift have a near-vertical face?
Lacking answers, the Elves scouted for a way around the barrier.
There was good reason only two trails ran from the capital city to the northern lowlands, and even better reason not to leave the main trail. By evening, they rejoined the proper route, having spent the entire day taking a mere one-mile detour. Dangling over bottomless crevasses. Testing precarious ice bridges. Braving avalanches. This was mountaineering not for the faint of heart, and truly, it was no place for most of the Elven contingent. They were town dwellers and not accustomed to these extremes of cold, terrain and physical exertion.
As they huddled in a cavern that evening unthawing around a tiny fire, Kalar clipped him across the earhole and told him off for being so jolly energetic.
“Mind there, ye!” Rhyl cried. “Ye can snap a frozen ear if yer now’t careful.”
“Aye? Sorry,” his father grumbled.
Shanryssill nodded. “She’s right. I can’t wait for the jungle warmth and a chance to feel my fingers and toes again.”
“I’ll warm ye up, dear –”
“Dad!” Keir complained. “Private cavern for the two of ye?”
/>
“I got the cold ones, I truly does,” Narini said sleepily, meantime, wriggling her toes closer to the fire.
“Careful they dinnae fry like sausages,” Arami cautioned sagely.
“I thought I smelled sausage cooking,” Keir teased. “Yum, what I wouldn’t give for a nice, thick coil of spicy Damask Yak sausage right now, its fat sizzling on these coals …”
Everyone shouted at him.
He flipped a salute at no-one in particular. “Giant reticulated python steaks on a bed of fragrant branch-grown green rice …”
Several people smacked him at once.
Keirthynal-my-soul, let me just check those ears, actually, Shanryssill said, beckoning from across the fire. He strode over and bent toward her. She clipped the back of his head sharply. Behave!
Hey! he yelped, amidst the general laughter.
He should have known where the mischief came from in his family.
Chapter 17: Hunter
WHEN BOTH MIND AND heart brimmed with foreboding, how could a person sleep? Keir had the battle bones. It was as if his marrow burned from the inside. Eventually, he shifted from beneath his blanket amongst the family, where Narini was curled up between his mother and father, and Arami between mother and Rhyl on the other side. He made sure they were all tucked in before he padded over to his pack. Boots. Hat. Gloves. Cloak. The night’s chill would be deep, if he had read the weather right.
Elves preferred to sleep with the family close. He understood that some of the Clans knew no other way; indeed, the entire Clan might overnight together in a single safe tree redoubt, sometimes even sleeping heaped atop one another.
Anyone who slept beneath Kalar the Axe would know about it in the morning!
His father’s eye opened a crack. Ever watchful. Keir made a peaceable gesture and indicated the outside, but rather less peaceably, belted the pair of ska’etaz at his hips.
Auroral Storm Diamond stirred almost the instant he stepped out of the cave. Predictable. It was as if they were connected by an umbilical cord. When it stretched too far, she came awake or became distressed and came in search of him. Usually, this dreadful misbehaviour on his part earned a volley of complaints – although tonight, he noticed how she stole between the sleeping Elves with the intent not to disturb any. In a moment, her muzzle rubbed against his knee and he reached down to tickle her behind the ears.
Good girl.
Was that tone demeaning to an intelligent Dragon?
They slipped out onto the slightly crunchy snow. The waxing Moon cast a frozen light over the landscape, very slightly red-tinted because the satellite Linz was in its full phase. Talaroon was almost invisible, just peeking out from behind the Moon’s bulk. If he held out his palm at full arm’s length, the Moon was twice the height of his fingers and four times the width of his palm. Its face was heavily pockmarked, and toward its lower West quadrant, four parallel dark lines betrayed what people said were immense canyons carved deep into the Moon’s surface – but their regularity had often been the subject of academic and scientific speculation. The superstitious held that these were the talon strokes of Santazathiar himself.
At the dragonet’s quizzical chirp, he described what he had been thinking, pointing out the salient details. They looked for the Dragon’s Head nebula and saw it rising resplendent above the peaks to the East.
She stiffened at once, agog. Keee-irr, wirrit? Wirrit? Wirrit! Zzz-rrrin … whirr?
She remembered their conversation from the last time they had seen the purple nebula! Keir explained again about Prince Zyran. This was followed by the dragonet using all of the names she knew for everyone in their family and close friends, including three new ones – Ja’axu who was ‘grrr-oo’, Narini expressed as ‘nrrr-ooi’ and Arami ‘arrr-ooi.’ He confirmed that they were all present and well. Interesting how she needed to identify and place each person in her tribe. She ran over the names a second time as he searched for and found the guard lurking in the fork of a tree about thirty feet away – Weapons Master Falasynal, clearly on the alert. He waved briefly and the man waved back.
Then, they walked together a short ways around the shoulder of the hill that sheltered their cave, scouting. The night was clear, but on the north-western horizon, a dark smudge obscured the thick stars. Mauve lightning flashed frequently beneath. Could that be at the jungles’ edge? The tremendous heat differential between the jungles and these northern climes often led to turbulent weather, which some Humans called ‘the Elven curse.’ Never mind that the jungles effectively watered their crops and kept the temperatures in this region, once one descended from the mountains, temperate and beneficial.
Prejudices between Elves and Humans abounded – in both directions, of course.
As they stepped out into the full moonlight, her diamond coat gathered the lustre and played it back with incredible, subtle beauty.
Wirrit? she asked, pointing with her left fore-talon.
He dropped to one knee to check the snow. A smudge of blood? Aye, and something had licked at the spot. Good find, lass. Wonder what this was?
Auroral Storm Diamond nosed at the spot. He backed up slightly, scanning for tracks. Shadow wolf. Amongst the mountains’ most elusive predators, these wolves were renowned for leaving only the slightest tracks due to their very large, splayed pads that allowed them to run across the surface of even the softest snow as if they were wearing snowshoes. On this harder-packed area, the wolf had left almost no track at all. It tracked a wounded creature.
With me, Storm. Keep close. Let’s find out what’s out there.
He still had the battle bones.
The dragonet raised her muzzle to indicate that she wanted to be picked up. Still a baby, he supposed. Lowering his shoulder, he chuckled almost soundlessly at the sensation of deft paws upon his left arm and shoulder as she poured upward, then curled her body around the back of his neck and settled herself in for the ride with a slight grunt.
Perfect neck warmer, you are, he chuckled.
She made a derisive gurgle deep in her throat. Her Majesty sat upon her throne, did she not?
As he stalked forward lightly, tracking the wounded animal and its pursuer, he reflexively checked the location of his leaf-blades. He had left his bow back at the cave to be used for defence if needed. Not quite the path of wisdom considering that wolf’s presence, eh?
The substantial moonlight was plenty for his half Elven sight to work with, so he was able to pick out the trail with minimal trouble, trailing the animal through chest-high mountain scrub encrusted in azure snow. He barely disturbed a twig as he ghosted around a pile of boulders and skirted another short but wide crevasse, testament to the instability of the Bulwark. Now he moved beneath a thicker stand of evergreen mountain olive trees, which could be relied upon to bear a bitter but edible fruit most of the anna around. Many an explorer had been saved by these trees, not to mention families in remote mountain valleys cut off by Winterfall snows.
What was that? He peered intently into the deepest shadows. At the same instant, Auroral Storm Diamond gave a sibilant warning hiss between her fangs.
White fangs flashed around the mounded hindquarters of a downed mountain oryx. Keir palmed both daggers and struck out at the same instant as the dragonet launched herself off his shoulder. There came a thunderous growl and a wild yelp of pain, followed by a blurred kerfuffle as he and his Dragon, linked, somehow tore into the huge wolf without themselves being shredded. It was a close affair. Sharp fangs snagged twice upon his heavy winter jacket and once, he and the wolf clashed pugnaciously as the little dragonet rolled beneath it, rending with all four paws and fangs.
She flared brilliantly. Kerack!
In a half-second’s flash as bright as any perfect afternoon, he perceived the full size of the shadow wolf – chest-high to him. Blood seeped from several brutal cuts around its muzzle and beneath its belly. Perhaps real lightning proclaimed her too much of an opponent to deal with. Presenting a bushy, coal-black tail to them b
oth, the shadow wolf turned tail and fled, yipping wretchedly, into the darkness.
Keir stopped Auroral Storm Diamond from chasing after the wolf with a quiet word. We don’t know if it’s a loner or if there’s a pack out there. Best we deal with this quickly.
No wolf took kindly to being chased off its intended kill.
The oryx had somehow tangled its spiral horns into several branches in the underbrush, but the real story was that it was gravely wounded – an arrow buried deeply in its right flank, which had unfortunately not struck anything vital. The animal must have suffered for days, perhaps, judging by the dried blood upon its belly. This was why the shadow wolf had been about to attack. The animal was desperately weak, but still lucid enough to put up a show of defiance when he approached. Keir warned the dragonet to steer clear of its hind legs. She had a tear in her left wing and a single puncture wound on her upper lip, but apart from that had come out remarkably unscathed.
Decent team effort! Never had they fought together so closely.
He approached the oryx with a soft word in Elvish, hoping he might just be able to work his mother’s type of magic. Quietly thanking Santazathiar for his provision, Keir punctured the jugular with a convulsive thrust of his blade, and then continued to speak soothingly as the oryx slumped upon the snow.
He checked the arrow. The fletching was Amarinthian in origin – perhaps even his own handiwork, he judged. That meant there must be soldiers this side of the Dragon Kings, far away from Garrikar Town. Why would that be? Could his battle bones have sound reason to be itching and aching?
Well, enough worrying for the moment. The Elves needed to eat. This bounty could not be ignored.
Lapping at the red-dappled snow, the dragonet watched as he removed his belt and fashioned a tie for the oryx’s legs. Then he laboriously tried to pick up the animal. Possible, but he immediately sank up to his knees in the snow. Some areas on the way back would be much deeper still.
He snorted out a steaming breath. No way.
Frrr-neee, the dragonet noted, humorously agreeing with his assessment.