by John Tristan
“I can’t make you a full suit,” Taman said, not quite apologetic. He looked Amon over with a sharp, assessing eye. “Those born with the dragonblood run big, that’s true enough, but you’re a damn sight bigger than most.”
Amon chuckled, looking down at his barrel chest and jutting belly. “Can’t deny that.”
“But we should be able to get you a chest plate, at least, and that’s the most important part. Dragons go for big, easy targets, even the drakelings, and that means launching themselves at the chest and limbs. They ignore the head most of the time, you know. Seem to think it’s not important.” He barked a short laugh and continued measuring Amon with his eyes and with the span of his hands.
“What about weapons?” Emil asked from behind him.
Taman glanced up at Amon. “What can you use?”
“My fists,” he said, in all honesty. “I’ve never been taught anything else.”
“Well, I’ve never seen anyone try to punch a dragon to death. I don’t recommend you try. What about a club? A broadsword’s just a club with an edge on it, really.” Taman grimaced at Emil, who’d made a scoffing noise. “Yes, I know, I was trying to make the boy feel better about it.”
Amon shrugged. “I could use a club.”
“You’ll learn, don’t worry about that. We all learned when we were young.”
“Hah.” He looked away. “I’m not so young anymore.”
“Tell that to my face, sprat,” Taman chortled. “You look plenty young from where I stand, with all my bone pain and creaking sinews.”
They spent the next hour trying different pieces of armor on him, with Taman setting aside the best-fitting pieces to hammer into Amon’s shape. As for weapons, Taman gave him a big, broad-edged sword—and a set of gauntlets, steel rather than adamantine, with vicious spikes between the knuckles. “In case you do feel like punching a dragon to death,” he said, with a chuckle.
Amon thanked him. As he cradled his lethal bundle of gifts, there was a flush on his cheeks, not quite the deep forge heat’s fault, a flush that extended down into his heart.
“Say thank you by being a hunter,” Taman said, all trace of merriment gone from his deeply lined, dark gray face. “Say thank you by helping keep Esper alive.”
He bowed his head. “I will do what I can.”
“That’s all we ask, sprat. That’s all anyone can ask.”
* * *
Night had fallen in the outside world by the time Amon and Emil came back up from the forge caverns, and the little stone village was sleeping. He bid her good-night and carried Taman’s gifts to his room.
Sitting on the edge of his bed, he contemplated the wide blade and comfortable hilt of the old sword. Had it killed any dragons? How many dragonhunters’ hands had it passed through? Overwhelmed and feeling not a little unworthy he set it aside; it felt like his mother’s relics, unearned and heavy with memory.
The gauntlets were different; they had the improvisational feel of so much of Esper’s things, cobbled together by some smith who’d asked “Why not?” He strapped them on and flexed his fingers; when he made a fist, the spikes between the knuckles jutted out like lethal little teeth. He smiled in the lamplight. This, I could get used to.
A low, resounding sound cut through the silence—a horn, calling a single pure note. It was not loud, exactly, but some twist of Esper’s architecture meant it echoed off the stone so it seemed to be everywhere at once. Amon rose from his bed; ignoring it was impossible. It sounded again, and he started running.
They were gathering in the village square, strapping on armor, weapons in hands. There were no children to be seen, but all the rest of Esper was awake—on high alert.
Amon saw Karenna and trotted up to her. “What’s happening?”
“There’s a dragon in the outer cavern,” she said. “It came past the waterfall.”
He sucked in a breath. “Has this—”
“Happened before? Yes. Small ones.” She grimaced. “They don’t seek us out, but if one passes nearby and smells life, they sometimes worm their way in. Hasn’t happened for years though.”
“Just pray it doesn’t come with a pack of drakelings,” Semon said beside her. He was loading dragon-tooth arrows into a repeating crossbow, not looking at either of them.
Amon was still wearing the spiked gauntlets. He looked down at them, then up at Karenna. “What can I do?”
She gave him a once-over. “Do you have a weapon?”
He held up his hands. “It’s what I can use.”
Karenna nodded. “That’s close-quarters. We’ll put you by the tunnel to Esper proper. If anything comes through, it will be close enough for you to hit. Concentrate on the eyes and the throat. If there are drakelings—and Great Mother willing there aren’t—those spikes might just land a killing blow. If it’s just one juvenile.... We’ll hope to get it before you need to, but if it gets us all, you hold it as long as you can and yell for aid. We always leave a few hunters behind with the children, in case we fall.”
Her command came easy; it was strangely bracing. Any fear in him left at the matter-of-fact tone of her voice. She put a hand on his shoulder, and he felt the heavy cool of adamantine through his clothes.
“Come on, brother,” she said, and he did, following her up through the lantern-lit tunnels.
He heard it halfway up into the outer cavern, a voiceless grinding noise of teeth and claws, the thrashing of something trying to squeeze itself into too small a space. He was trembling with a new and clean kind of rage—a rage to protect, to oust the invader from these caverns, his caverns. His fists were balled at his sides, spikes outward, but when he loped after Karenna she stopped him. “You stand here,” she said.
He made a kind of low, involuntary groan—he wanted to get out there and help them, get out there and kill—and she flashed him a quick compassionate look before turning on her heel and vanishing down the dark corridor.
Battle-sounds. Shouting. A horrid roar of dragonbreath. He couldn’t made out any words in the din, could not even tell which voice was Karenna’s. He held his ground, just as she’d told him to, swaying back and forth on his feet. Then—
“Drakelings! drakelings!” someone shouted. He thought it was Semon. There was another urgent horn blast, then another, and an awful cry of pain.
Hold your ground. Hold your ground. Something was skittering down the corridor, claws clicking against stone, and before the drakeling turned the corner it loosed an experimental gout of bluish flame. Amon’s eyebrows were singed, and the edges of his hair burned away; the next moment he was on it, punching down at its wedge-shaped head, driving the spikes deep into glossy, fire-colored eyes.
The drakeling’s tail whipped at him, and it snapped at his feet; it was smaller than the one the hunters had brought in, the size of a fat toddler, and with another two punches Amon had dropped it into a bloody heap. The spikes of his gauntlets were wet with blood and clear humors. He had half a second to catch his breath before the second one came around the corner, twice the first one’s size.
It knocked Amon to the ground, pouncing on him with forelegs out. It opened its dark maw and for a second Amon saw a flicker of blue flame in the depths of its throat, outlining serrated teeth in terrible light. Then he twisted to the side and punched upward, deflecting the drakeling’s fire so it lit up the tunnel’s roof. Its throat was bare to him; with his left hand he drove spikes deep into the oddly delicate curve between jaw and neck, and blood so hot it felt like liquid fire gushed down onto his face.
Amon made a sound between roar and scream and shook his head madly, bucking upward and throwing the drakeling off. It fell at his feet, still alive, but something had been fatally severed in its neck; it could no longer raise its dark, elegant head. Amon crouched over it, grabbed that head in both hands and pulled hard to the side; the
drakeling fell limp and motionless.
He heard Karenna’s voice somewhere in the dark, yelling—the iron tones of command in it made hope surge inside him. On the heels of that came guilt; someone had been hurt, and if it had not been her that had screamed in pain it was one of the other Esper dragonhunters.
A flash of green-blue light lit the edges of the tunnel; then it was full. Drakelings squabbled with each other in their rush to pour through, teeth snapping, flame gouting. Amon was in the fray, his mind blissfully blank of everything except the killing urge. He waded through dragonflesh with his gauntlets raised, punching and gouging, blood flowing down his arms like burning oil. At one point his arm was halfway down a drakeling’s throat; he felt serrated teeth sink into his shoulder. He closed his fist around something hot and fragile behind its thick working tongue and pulled. The drakeling made a choking sound and yanked its teeth away.
Behind his killing rage a cold calculation was ticking: there were too many of them. Karenna had told him to call for aid, and he tried, but his mouth produced nothing but dry coughing sounds. The dragons’ flame had seared the air so he could barely breathe. Something snapped just in front of his face and splashed him with warmth—dragon spittle. One of his gauntlets had been torn from his hand; it lay in a melted slag heap on the blood-slick floor.
There was a pressure on him and a sense of growing heat, then it was gone. He blinked in the fire and shadow, gasping for breath. Something was moving among the drakelings, quicker than his eye could track. He blinked again, hard, clearing the haze from his eyes.
It was Caedian.
He had gotten a sword from somewhere, a long narrow sword like the dark needle Amon had seen in the forges. It moved through the heated air of the tunnel in a blur. He sank it deep into one drakeling’s eye, then lashed open another’s throat.
Amon dragged himself half-upright, leaning against the wall. His left hand, where the gauntlet had been torn away, was a mess of blood and charred skin. He was bleeding from wounds on his face and chest, and his right knee was swelling and stiff where a drakeling had kicked him. All of that he ignored, and he followed Caedian down the stone hall, watching him carve a trail of swift carnage through the writhing herd of drakelings.
“Cae—Caedian,” he croaked, and the elf half turned, drawing his sword out from the twitching head of a small drakeling.
“You’re hurt,” he said, the first words he’d spoken in what felt like an age.
“I’m all right.” Amon cradled a wound he had only been half-aware of taking, a claw gouge to his upper thigh.
For a moment they stood silent, looking at each other, dragon gore and corpses piled high at their feet. Then there was another long scream from the outer cavern, and the thick whoosh of heated air rushing down the tunnel.
Without another word Caedian turned on his heels and ran. Amon cursed under his breath and followed him. Abandoning your post, came the thought, but he cast it aside.
The others had cornered the dragon against the waterfall. It was just large enough to have forced itself through the narrow crevice, creeping on its belly, and had reared to half its height inside the cavern; the pouring cold of the waterfall steamed as it hit its scintillating skin.
There was a kind of terrible beauty to it, all sinuous muscle and folded wing, its scales a black rainbow of colors even in the dark. Semon was on the ground, his body twisted to the side of his head, a deep, bloody gash opened in armor and flesh. He was dead—Amon could tell that at a glance. The rest of them were holding off the dragon with sword and crossbow, Karenna at the spearhead, slicing her broadsword across its black, exposed belly. She was covered head to toe in its steaming blood.
None of them noticed Amon and Caedian enter, not even the dragon, which was roaring and boiling the waterfall with its gargling fiery breath. Amon was staggering, one hand raised, but Caedian was moving like lightning across the cavern, his progress so quick it seemed almost a series of flashing images. He leaped across Semon’s corpse and scaled a wet wall; then he was standing atop the dragon’s heaving shoulders, one foot on either side of its pointed skull. He cried out something in elvish, or a languge Amon thought was elvish, and pierced the dragon’s rolling fireball of an eye with his sword, sinking it in up to the hilt.
The dragon snorted greenish fire, then made a thick gargling noise. Its other eye swiveled madly; with a toss of its head it dislodged Caedian and threw him to the ground. He landed sideways and slid along the wet ground; Amon let out a cry and stumble-ran in his direction. As he did, the dragon swayed and listed and began to stumble, wings folding and unfolding reflexively. A splash of cold water deflected off its dark wings and sprayed over the hunters.
Then it scrabbled its claws against the stone, slid sideways and fell.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
By the time the falling dragon hit the stone with a ground-shaking thump, Amon had made it to where Caedian lay. He was curled into a fetal position, eyes open and unseeing. Amon turned him gently on his back, then cupped his cheek and pressed their foreheads together. “No,” he said, in a hoarse, scorched-throat voice.
Caedian blinked slowly. He licked his lips. “Is it dead?”
Amon laughed—a single, rollicking note—and kissed Caedian on the forehead. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, it’s dead, you killed it.”
Caedian put a hand on Amon’s shoulder and pulled himself to a sitting position, wincing. “I feel like I’ve...been thrown through the air by a dragon, actually.” There was a halting and rehearsed quality to his voice, as if he was reading from a book, but he was smiling, and alive, and speaking. Amon could ask for nothing more.
The others only now seemed to have noticed that the dragon had fallen; they stood around with weapons still raised, slack-mouthed and blinking in the cooling air. Karenna was the first to move, making her way to where Semon lay. She bent down and touched his face a moment. “He’s dead,” she said, matter-of-fact tone covering over a deeper tremor in her voice.
Amon had helped Caedian to his feet; they leaned against each other in the dripping dim. Amon felt the catalog of pains he had ignored starting to clamor for attention, from burned hand to claw wound, but there wasn’t time for that now.
“We have to—” Karenna said, and she bit back a sob. “We have to check the entrances, make sure there’s not more coming. Then we should start clearing away the corpses.”
“Karenna,” one of the others said, and she shook her head fiercely.
“Listen,” she said, “we need to get the dead cleared away. Dead dragons draw others, remember? Stragglers looking for a cheap meal. I don’t—I don’t know about any of you, but by the Great Mother I don’t want any more of these monsters in my home. Understand?” Her voice cracked on the last word, and she looked away. “Understand?”
“Yes, Karenna,” they said in ragged unison—even Amon joined in.
Caedian leaned away from him and made his way toward her with lurching steps. He offered her his arm. “What can I do?” he asked, very softly.
She looked at him a moment, as if trying to make sense of what she saw. Then she clasped his arm and dragged herself upright. Still holding on to him, she looked him in the eye. “You probably saved lives here tonight,” she said. It was a statement of fact, no more and no less.
“I—I am sorry about your companion.”
She shook her head and released him. “No time to mourn now. But if you and Amon can carry him back to the houses, I would be obliged. If something else does come through, I’ll be damned if it’s getting its teeth in him.”
Caedian nodded and looked back over his shoulder at Amon. He stepped up, lifting Semon’s limp form under his shoulders while Caedian took his legs. Pain screamed in Amon’s arms, and a fresh spurt of blood ran from the wound in his thigh. It dripped down his leg, mixing with dragonblood as they shuffled down the t
unnel. Neither of them spoke, and in the darkness—the lanterns had been snuffed, sometime during Amon’s fight with the drakelings—he could barely see Caedian’s eyes.
Emil was waiting for them in the square, along with near everyone else who’d not been out in the waterfall cavern fighting the dragon. She was in piecemeal armor, holding a crossbow; when she saw them, she set it down it with a gasp of half horror and half relief.
“Semon!” She ran toward them, half hobbling, as if injured. “Oh, Mother...Semon.”
They put him down on a low stone bench. Amon looked down at him, breathing hard. He’d been told, by people whose skin was brown or olive or deep pink, that the gray of his own looked like a corpse; seeing Semon dead below him showed how stark the difference really was.
“There are drakelings dead in the tunnel,” he said, his voice still scratchy and hoarse. “Caedian—Caedian brought down a dragon in the outer cavern. I mean, he struck the killing blow.”
“Brought down?” Emil looked up, her eyes blurred. “You mean it’s over?”
He nodded. “Karenna and the others are making sure of that.”
Caedian stood a little to the side, cradling his ribs in one hand. The sword he’d left behind, stuck in the dragon’s eye. Emil closed Semon’s empty eyes with a gentle stroke of her hand then looked back at them. “You need looking after,” she said.
Amon shook his head. “There’s work to—”
“There will still be work when you’ve been patched up, believe me.”
He did, and the truth was he wasn’t sure how much longer he could stay on his feet. There was a swaying imbalance to his every step, and the edges of the world were going gray. Every few seconds he thought he could see the multicolored flash of dragonfire, but it was only afterimages swimming across his drooping eyelids.