Guile of Dragons, A

by James Enge

  He shook his head and tried to think. That last was the real problem. It wasn’t the hundred dragons burning the fields of Haukrull, or the fact that he would freeze or starve in the mountains, should he ever get there. It was the two dragons lumbering about outside. The problem was insoluble, but that was it; the others would only matter in the unlikely event that he solved this first one. He was safe from them.

  A wild thought occurred to him. If the situation had been less desperate he would have ignored it. But he had no time to reason with his wiser self. The two dragons were approaching the ruin where he was hiding.

  Morlock slipped out of the wrecked doorway, crouching down by the crumpled wall. He hoped none of the dragons still in the assembled guile could see him. Then he spoke, in a penetrating yet directionless tone. (A thainish skill. But he was a worthless thain.) He spoke in a twisted Dwarvish that he hoped would pass for the dragons’ own language.

  “Only one can take the trophy,” he said.

  Their soft shuddering footfalls ceased. Neither spoke. Morlock knew they were trying to judge his location with their indistinct hearing. They were terribly close; he could smell their fire. But he knew they would not act on what he had said so far.

  He spoke again. “Buying and selling—bargaining like Softclaws.” (He wondered what a Softclaw was.)

  One snarled, a terrifying sound: like a tree splintering in a storm. But neither one did anything else.

  Morlock gave it up. His device was too obvious. No doubt the two would quarrel—over his bones. In the meantime he could do nothing that would cause them to fight each other.

  He could only try, then, to make them think he was somewhere else. He picked up a charred rafter-end and hurled it at a nearby building. (Had the dragons already been there? he wondered too late.)

  The ploy was instantly disastrous. The two dragons’ radiant eyes spotted the flying fragment before it reached the top of its arc. One, with a happy roar, leapt into the air, hurling himself into Morlock’s vision like a fiery star leaving the zone of eclipse. The other struck directly through the building, shrugging aside the charred beams like a cloud of ash.

  In desperation Morlock turned and fled. The flying dragon knocked him off his feet as it landed. He went down spinning and saw its long narrow head lunge forward for the kill. It snapped once, prematurely, and the other was upon it, fitting fiery jaws about its neck.

  Fire outlined the serpentine figures as they struggled. Morlock, dazed though he was, understood that this was his chance; there would be no other. He rolled to his feet and ran upslope.

  In the bleak light of Chariot and Horseman, he could see a dark swathe cut out of the glittering mountainside before him. That had to be the maijarra forest that spilled over the valley’s northwest edge. It had to be.

  He heard a dragon die under the claws of its rival. His time, too, was nearly at an end. As he closed on the forest his eyes began to pick out details from the general darkness. The trees looked like withered oaks: the boughs were twisted, ash-strewn, leafless, though this was the maijarra’s growing season. He kept on running, but he had no real hope now. He heard the roar of the victor dragon as it took to the air. Gasping in the thin air he wished that his course was not uphill; years of living in the south had softened his lungs.

  He looked over his shoulder and saw the sky, half-covered with clouds, lit up by a fountain of red stars, increasingly many of them, stark and brilliant against the blue-black night. Alerted by the struggling dragons’ roars, the guile was rising to join the hunt. And, shedding bright smoke as it flew, the victor dragon hurtled down toward him.

  He ran under the eaves of the forest, and the boughs threw a sheltering cloak of darkness over him. The sensation was pleasant but brief. The descending dragon roared, and the darkness rolled back. In the red light Morlock saw his shadow caught in an endless distorted web. He ran over the heavy roots and red-barred shadows, dodging tree trunks as he went. The dragon was over his head, above the branches. It was among the branches. It was upon him. It roared, and the blast, though less powerful than Vild’s, threw him headfirst against a tree. Dazed and unable to move he lay beneath the clouds of steam and venom, awaiting death.

  It did not come. When he was able, he raised his head and looked back. The dragon was struggling, suspended between heaven and earth like a character in the old songs. It was trapped in the dense web of branches—branches that did not burst into flame around it.

  Maijarra! They were all around him. Fire had withered their leaves and flowers, but maijarra wood did not burn, even in the deep furnaces of the dwarves.

  Morlock got to his feet. He watched the dragon writhe among the branches. Then he turned away. The maijarra forest stretched for miles into the mountains. If he lost himself in it the guile would be unlikely to find him. It seemed altogether likely that he would live long enough to starve or die of cold in the mountains.

  He laughed out loud and ran uphill, deeper into the woods and darkness.

  It snowed heavily that night, dimming but not altogether silencing the sounds of the pursuing dragons. The snow was, perhaps, lucky for Morlock. If it weren’t snowing, he might have been tempted to sleep no matter how cold it seemed. But the discomfort of the wet flakes in the cold air forced him to recognize that sleep would be pleasantly fatal.

  Although the trees protected him from the wind, the seemingly endless night was cold indeed. It was an achingly long time since he had eaten, also, and for long moments he found he must stand shivering convulsively, in a senseless outburst of misdirected energy. But when he was able he kept moving over the slush-covered root-crossed ground.

  When the light began to return to the sky, the snow ceased. Shortly after that he reached the crest of the long steep slope he had been climbing, which on the far side descended more gradually. The slope now angled down to his right, still more gradually. To his left, through a screen of white-etched black branches, he saw the peaks Gramer, Groja, Wyrtgeorn, Jess, and Fell: the mountains of Haukr. They stood almost mystically clear in the deep blue predawn air, snow lying far down along their shoulders. Ahead of him, he guessed, was the Ruined Mountain—the place where maijarra had collapsed part of the mountain ridge. The forest did not extend any farther than that into the mountains. Nevertheless Morlock felt he would find any cover he needed among the rocks and twisting passages of the Ruined Mountain, until he reached the Thains’ Northtower. He did not suppose this would still be standing, but he hoped to find some provisions (and perhaps some clothing) amid the rubble.

  As he walked downslope the trees began to grow farther apart. Although this, like the growing light, increased his danger, he could not fail to welcome the open spaces. It was invigorating to see the peaks of the crooked close horizon blaze with white light. The light filled his eyes and his heart; he felt he could go on forever.

  As the day grew warmer and the cold loosened its painful numbing grip upon his limbs, Morlock found himself increasingly bored and irritable. It was a little surprising to find himself cursing tree roots that he stumbled over and dimly hating the trees they belonged to when a half a day before (that is, one long dark night before) the forest had certainly saved his life.

  Toward afternoon the forest began to grow more dense again, and the slope turned slightly uphill. Perversely Morlock’s mood changed, and he began to feel exhilarated. Everything he saw was outlined in light, even the shadows. Little of last night’s snow was left. The next snow would surely last, he predicted to himself happily. They were on winter’s threshold, and winter never kept the north waiting long. A fragile but intense feeling of strength filled him, and he leapt up the root-woven slope with new eagerness.

  In the late afternoon the slope fell away jaggedly and the forest ended abruptly at the verge. Morlock stepped out cautiously into the unbroken sunlight, making his way down the ominously unstable slope of broken stones. The hulk of the Ruined Mountain rose before him as he descended. It would not be wise, he felt, to attempt to
scale it after last night’s snow and today’s thaw had loosened the rocks.

  Fortunately he could turn west here. He saw a crooked path leading away from the base of the slope, south and west, through the stones. Yes, he could take that.

  Not yet, though. He was not sleepy (fortunately, because he could hardly afford to sleep yet), but he was a little tired. He’d been walking all day and all night . . . and all the previous day, too. And then, he observed hazily to himself, there was everything else.

  He sat down on the edge of a flat stone that caught the eastering sun. He was a little surprised that he was not sleepy. He was surprised, too, by the warmth of the sunlight. It was extremely warm. The contrast with last night was welcome, but a little cloudy along with everything else. Still.

  He slept.

  He awoke to gnawing hunger, darkness, and deadly cold. For a moment he thought he was still in the woods, or even back in Haukrull, only having dreamed his escape. But he felt the flat stone under his hands, now numbingly cold in what must be (a glance at the stars told him) the second hour after sunset. Reality returned to him swiftly. He noted that both the major moons were visible in the eastern half of the crystalline clear sky.

  There was a swift, almost noiseless movement on the dark slope above him. Morlock rolled to his feet and saw an equine silhouette, darker than the sky itself, standing over him. He saw the translucent spiral of the single horn, radiant in the light of the major moons. Its eyes, too, seemed to emit a silver light. Morlock met that gaze and lost long moments in strange timeless communion that was not communication.

  At last the contact was broken and Morlock stepped back on shifting ground. He looked downward while regaining his balance, and, when he looked up, the unicorn was gone. Off in the night he heard a few light noises, as if rocks were rattling against one another briefly in the windless night. These soon ceased.

  Morlock was left wondering. He had rarely seen one of the Swift People so close before, although they lived in the Northhold, as in all the mountains of the Wardlands. But he had heard that blacks were as rare among them as albinos were among the lower animals. He wondered if the meeting was accidental or purposeful, and whose purpose . . .

  The Swift People were dangerous; he knew that much. Not so long ago he had seen the corpse of a unicorn hunter in the thickly wooded slopes of the Grartan Range. In ancient days, when the Wardlands and the land of Kaen were contiguous, unicorn-hunting had been a high adventure for the Kaeniar—all the more adventurous for being routinely fatal. And tradition was so powerful in that sun-drenched rocky land that even now a few young aristocrats would cross the Narrow Sea to hunt unicorns among the Grartans. So it had been with this one, whose body Morlock had seen on a patrol from the Lonetower. His poison-tipped lance had been shattered and his chest riven by the beautiful deadly horn he had coveted.

  Yet Morlock’s pulse was racing not because he had sensed danger. He felt a kind of exhilaration in the apparition’s strangeness and, paradoxically, almost a sense of kinship. Unicorns were formidable, and he guessed they might be enemies of dragons. The thought, a comforting one, was new to him.

  That comfort didn’t alleviate cold or hunger, though. He set off through the dark stone path he had spotted in sunlight, taking his bearings by the stars and his memories of the place. He expected it to be difficult, but in fact it was easier than negotiating the Runhaiar.

  He had just left the rubble surrounding the Ruined Mountain when he looked up to take a sight on the stars and saw the Thains’ Northtower before him. It was not, as he expected, a dark ruined silhouette; it was whole, and the many windows glittered with lamplight.

  Astonished, he made his way toward it, trying to keep either moon from casting his shadow on open ground. He moved toward the tower by a twisting laborious route through rocks and stunted bushes. He was half convinced that this was an illusion or a trap.

  There was someone standing slumped against the doorpost in a stance that Morlock knew well. It was one way to catnap on a night watch. When your knees gave way under you, you woke up. It was hard on the knees, though.

  Morlock walked up to the door, still believing it was all an illusion. At that moment the thain on watch slumped down farther and then leapt tall in sudden wakefulness. “Who’s that?” he cried. “Watchmaster? I—”

  Then he bit off his explanations and bent his head forward to peer at Morlock. He was only a shadow in Morlock’s eyes, but in the light of the open doorway he could see Morlock well.

  “Oh! So it’s you, Crookback. With Bleys, were you?”

  Then Morlock knew it was no illusion. He almost wished it were.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Voices

  “Come in, Crookback. You look a little chilly!” The watch-thain was someone Morlock had known slightly when he first came to the Lonetower. Morlock did not remember his name, nor he Morlock’s apparently.

  “How many people are within this tower?" Morlock demanded. “Don’t you know the Guard has been broken?”

  “Dragons. We know it well enough. We knew it before most.” The thain’s expression, like his voice, was fatuously self-congratulatory.

  “You might have shared the news,” Morlock observed bitterly. He thought of Almeijn, of the dead rokhleni at Southgate, of the huntresses trapped and killed on the mountain heights when the dragons attacked.

  “We’ve been busy enough without that. Like the Watchmaster says, it’s not easy to organize a response to a crisis of this magnitude.”

  Morlock frowned. He was hungry and tired—perhaps he wasn’t thinking clearly. The other thain didn’t seem to be making any sense. Response? Crisis? Why hadn’t they raised the alarm? Why weren’t they hiding in the woods or fighting the dragons in the valley? What were they doing in this indefensible place?

  “You’ll have to see the Watchmaster, Crook. He wants all refugees to report to him in person.”

  “Watchmaster? Who’s the senior thain?”

  “The Watchmaster. It’s a handier title. Wait a moment.”

  The watch-thain pulled a whistle from under his tunic and sounded it three times: two long blasts and a short one. The stones rang with echoes. Morlock fought an impulse to crouch down in hiding.

  The watch-thain looked at him and laughed. “A little . . . nervous, eh? Don’t worry. You’re out of it now. The dragons haven’t dared to attack this tower, you know.”

  “What?” Morlock said sharply. But another thain had come down the entryway, and the door-watch explained to the newcomer that Morlock was to be taken to the Watchmaster. Morlock was suddenly struck by the fact that both thains had green straps sewn into the shoulders of their capes.

  “And it’s petitioning day, too,” the newcomer was lamenting.

  “Prioritize it. Watchmaster’s special orders override Watchmaster’s standing orders. Don’t let those silverbuttons get in your way.”

  The newcomer smiled nervously. “Yes, sir!”

  Beneath Morlock’s weariness and hunger a dark anger was kindling. He wordlessly allowed the guide-thain to lead him down the lighted corridor within. They went up several flights of long winding stairs. They passed a great number of people sitting on the steps. Everywhere there was the sound of voices, drifting down the access corridors and air shafts, speaking in many dialects of Wardic. The Thains’ Northtower was thick with inhabitants. All the survivors of Haukrull must have gathered here, along with any survivors from Lernaion’s party.

  They finally came to the top of the tower. The corridor at the head of the stair was crowded with people, most of them townsfolk from Haukrull with a few thains mixed in. The heat and smell of the crowd were like body blows to Morlock, already dizzy with weariness and hunger. The guide-thain glanced at Morlock with distaste, seized him by the arm, and began forcing his way through the crowd as if they were sheep, shouting “Make way, petitioners! Priority! Watchmaster’s orders!”

  There were a few muttered comments at this, but the air in the corridor was as
thick with despair as with moisture. Few even complained; no one tried to bar the way.

  Suddenly a clear familiar voice spoke out. “Morlock, Tyr’s son, or it’s not? Hey, Elder Brother—that your face, ugly?”

  Morlock turned toward the voice. It belonged to Trua, oldest of Haukrull’s Women Old. “Trua Old!” he laughed. “I thought you must be dead!”

  The old woman laughed in turn. “You look as if you went to find out! You’ve come from where? With Lernaion you were not.”

  “Come along,” the guide-thain said impatiently. “No time for talking with petitioners.”

  “Yes,” said Morlock, “come along Trua Old. I’m going to talk to the senior thain. You must have a thing to say to him.”

  “As you say, Elder Brother,” the Woman Old agreed.

  The guide-thain began to argue against this, but Morlock and Trua simply left him behind in the suddenly uncooperative crowd.

  “Why did you come to this death trap, Old?” Morlock asked.

  “We were hungry, Morlocktheorn.” She shook her head toward Morlock, suggesting that he shared the condition. “Food the Guardians had; none had we. But the townsfolk’s rations again now have been cut—to less than a quarter a watch-herald’s. Live for long on that we will not.”

  They had come to the door that closed off the end of the corridor. A thain, with a rough silver circle pinned to the left shoulder of his cape, was standing before the door, holding a long wooden pole with his hands.

  “Stand and wait, petitioners,” he said, barring the way.

  The guide-thain came up behind them. “Priority, Lieutenant Sel. The special order on refugees.”

  “Acknowledged, Watchman. Dismissed.”

  The guide-thain turned and made his way back down the corridor. The “lieutenant” rapped his pole on the door behind him, and it was opened from within.