Dragon Rule

by E. E. Knight

  “Even if I pass the word, it will be some time before I can recall all my forces. The moon will be halfway up.” The Copper flailed about with his tail, managed to strike the mast. He got some semblance of a grip with his tail, for once in his life grateful that his sii had been maimed in the hatchling fight rather than his tail.

  “Just do it,” Shadowcatch said.

  “As you say,” the Copper said, doing his best to get a better view of his opponent.

  He reached with his tail, found a grip. With all his remaining strength he pulled the splintered end of the mast hard toward him, striking the black in the thinner scale of the neck where the tight coils of his own left the scales raised and turned at a vulnerable angle.

  The black bellowed, gave one final tremendous pull—the Copper was sure his spine would snap under the pressure, leaving him to be pulled under by the deadweight of his hindquarters—and reared up to bite.

  A pair of griffaran clawed at the black’s head, not going for his eyes but wrapping their talons around his thatch of horns. Flapping together, they pulled him out of biting range; dragon jaws are strong, their necks less so, and a third member of the Guard whipped under his chin and clawed at his throat, going for the pulsing neck-hearts.

  Shadowcatch released the Copper and used weight and momentum to topple back into the water. One of the griffaran released his hold and flapped away, his companion was caught under the black’s mighty crest and struck water hard.

  Water roiled and the Copper bobbed in the black’s wake.

  “He’s heading out to sea!” the Firemaiden above called.

  “Leave him,” the Copper gasped. He pushed the sodden, dead-eyed bird up onto the wallowing hulk of the ship. The Copper bent his ear to it, heard a faint pulse. Not sure what to do, the Copper tapped it a couple of times with his snout and gave his guard a lick on the display crest between the eyes. The bird was a veteran of many battles; he had painted marks on his beak. The Copper felt he should know his name—Mishi or something like that. Suddenly the bird-reptile’s pulse strengthened and the griffaran blinked.

  “Thank you, my Tyr-awk!” it squawked, taking a deep breath and preening out sodden feathers.

  The rest of the Griffaran Guard made a colorful, taloned tornado above his head as the Copper gladly left the wrecked ship and coursed for the beach, limbs tight to his sides and body writhing like a snake’s. The whole waterfront was alive with flame and cries.

  The Copper pulled himself up onto the beach and shivered, chilled. He must have lost a good deal of blood between the wing and his fights. He made a pretense of issuing orders as reports came in—the overall direction of the battle could be better handled by HeBellereth.

  Someone brought him a dead horse and he managed a few mouthfuls. Digestion warmed him, and he brought the rest of the meal and propped it atop the chimney of a burning building facing the sea wall so it might toast and smoke. He’d lost his taste for raw mammal flesh long ago.

  He took to the air, rather tiredly and painfully, his Griffaran Guard trailing him so close they looked like a colorful extension to his tail.

  HeBellereth had done a dragonlike job of directing the fight. Some fires raged below, small fast ships that might be used to put crews into the larger ships burned and a few houses wore hats of flame. The Aerial Host had spared the warehouses and workshops, fishing boats and big-bellied merchant craft. The wealth of Swayport remained intact.

  Discipline. His dragons knew better than to burn a city. Reducing flimsy human dwellings to splintered fuelwood and charcoal with flame and tailswipe might be fine fun, but it wasn’t the way of the Tyr’s dragons as Protectors of the Grand Alliance. Burning homes meant the exposed humans would sicken and die, a loss of valuable thrall capital.

  Alley fighting sputtered below, brief shouts and clashes that faded into chases in and out of urban gardens, tiny side doors, or narrow staircases.

  The Copper dipped first his right wingtip, then his left, ignoring the newly revived pain as he sought a better look.

  A young human led one of the storming columns off—at least he seemed young insofar as the Copper could judge things. He was fencepost-thin and thickly furred, his thick and shining mane flowed out from beneath helm—even the best older human warrior tended to go a bit thin as they aged. He was a whirlwhind, tearing doors off their hinges, upsetting carts placed to block streets leading to the cliffside fortress, hurling javelins uphill at the fleeing Swayport archers two full dragonlengths and more when he wasn’t leaving crumpled foes like dropped bundles in his wake with swings of a battle-ax.

  The Copper marked that he wore the furs and goggles of one of the Aerial Host. He thought he knew most of the men, but this tall, thin fellow was new to him.

  The storming columns converged. Though the gates had been bashed open by tailswipe and dropped stones, the Swayport soldiery had made a barricade of the rubble, broken timber, and bent metal. The Hypatian soldiers faltered here, and were flung back by desperate spear fighting and pressed shields.

  The young human picked up a fallen Hypatian banner, leaped upon the pedestal of a broken statue in the paved plaza before the citadel’s gates, and swirled the banner. He called to one of the Aerial Host crossbowmen behind, who touched arrow to smoldering match and sent a sparkling signal-bolt into the Swayport crowd at the gate.

  The Copper marked that one of the attacking dragons passed low. The dragon altered course, swooped for the gate, and executed a neat spin to dodge a harpoon fired from some concealed war machine in the fortress.

  Alert fellow to mark the signal and attack so quickly. He’d get a new laudi dyed to his wing for that.

  The dragon landed atop the rubble and turned into a biting, clawing fury. Swayport soldiers were tossed through the air or fled the the dragon’s fighting madness. The dragon leaped into the sky again as missiles rained down from the tower. A boulder struck him hard across the back and he fell.

  The lanky young human, howling the raaaaah! battle cry of the Aerial Host, ran forward, armed only with the Hypatian banner. Soldiers of the Lavadome and Hypatia streamed behind.

  The Copper watched in satisfaction as the storming column flowed over and through the gates, axmen foremost to break down doors. The mass of men divided, flowing off into riven portals and up the fortresses’ ladders and stairs to reinforce the men still fighting at the tower tops.

  With that he watched the sun come up, while the wounded and the booty-laden returned to the waiting barges.

  The resistance, what there was of it, was broken-backed by the time the last tower fell, threatened by his Aerial Host men who’d been dropped onto the higher levels and spry young drakka climbing the sides and fighting drakes from below—with the usual competition for glories and honors and tallies of bitten-off heads between the males and females, of course.

  Many of the Pirate Lords had run away by secret paths, only to be rounded up by hunting Firemaids, but a few stewards and captains remained to plead with the dragons to leave the rest of the city unburned—for a city it was, a much more impressive one than the old maps based on memories of his aged warrior showed.

  They’d won a rich prize indeed. The Copper had half-formed plans to carry off the valuables and leave nothing but piles of broken stones as a warning to others who might defy his emissaries, but his Hypatian allies must have their colony back.

  The Copper snorted when he learned the Pirate Lords had hired three dragons to guard the skies above their cities, only to have two take flight when they looked up and saw the array of approaching dragons. The Copper wondered if the dragons had been paid in advance for their services. Only the black, cursing, took wing toward their foes.

  They held a celebration, and a memorial service, the next night in the conquered fortress. The men enjoyed wines from half a world away, the dragons feasted on skewers of organ meats discreetly collected from the dead and sliced into unrecognizable hunks. The men of the Aerial Host were rather hardened to dragon tastes and appe
tites, but surrendered potentates of Swayport might be provoked into foolish violence.

  It had been a terribly busy day for the Tyr and he was eager to fly back to Hypatia—and his mate in her fastness—but the proprieties had to be observed. Under the broken battlements the dragons gathered, awards were announced and names and deeds read into the Song of the Aerial Host that would describe the war against the Pirate Lords, as soon as a fitting one could be composed by one of the more talented dragons.

  The fallen young dragon who had answered the signal-bolt at the gate was broken-backed and unconscious. HeBellereth judged he’d never fly again, or even open his eyes to receive his justly won laudi. His rider, as was the custom for the fallen in foreign lands, dispatched him with a quick spear thrust under the right sii.

  The humans then lowered the head and opened the neck heart.

  “Only one loss. FeMissanith, an Ankelene who fought like a Skotl. Sorry to lose him, we don’t have many Ankelenes in the host, and he was a good example to others. Until the end. Young and foolish, alighting like that in the thick of them.”

  “I recall a young and reckless dragon serving in the Bant with me. Chance favored him, he recovered from his wounds, and he rose high.” The Copper nudged HeBellereth.

  “Seems a waste to let all that dragon blood be spilled for nothing,” HeBellereth’s signalman-rider drawled.

  “Quiet, now,” HeBellereth drawled. HeBellereth, who always bristled and sparked before a fight, spoke rather slowly and thickly afterward as he attended to his duties. The rest he could leave to his lieutenants, but he always looked after the hurt and fallen before consuming a barrel of wine and some marrow bones and sleeping the strain off.

  “He’s right,” the Copper said. “Our men deserve a victory toast of dragon blood. They’ll need it for the work of loading compensation. Save us from having to open a vein.”

  Someone snorted. The idea of bleeding the honored dead rankled, but the Copper needed his men’s and the Hypatians’ energy for the work of setting Swayport in order ahead, and dragon-blood would do the trick. Besides, hadn’t their allies just feasted on human corpses? “Speaking of victory toasts, I’ll offer my own blood to that young human who led the storming column in from the sea. I didn’t know him.”

  The Copper hoped he had enough to spare. But he’d always had a strong constitution and was used to veins being tapped by his bats.

  “That’s old Gunfer’s son,” HeBellereth said. “He was the first human boy born to the new Aerial Host after you became Tyr. Gunfer’s too old to do much but sharpen weapons and fix buckles before we fly into battle and tend wounds after; his years take him back to the glory days of that cursed Wizard on his isle. Threading dragons with rein-rings indeed.” HeBellereth snorted.

  “One more thing, HeBellereth. Make sure he gets a golden storming stripe upon his wing before his body is burned.”

  “I’ll paint it myself, my Tyr,” his rider said in a choking voice, cleaning the merciful spearpoint with his own silken scarf.

  There’d have to be a new promotion from the Drakwatch into the Aerial Host HeBellereth had mentioned, more than once, a likely young dragon, newly fledged. His brother AuRon’s son AuSurath the Red had strength and wit and skill and followed orders well, even if it meant hanging back rather than being foremost in seeking glory in battle. Most reds flamed first and answered questions after. But something in him rebelled at putting one of AuRon’s into the Aerial Host.

  Always too suspicious, he told himself. Well, that’s how you’ve managed to stay alive all these years, he argued back to himself.

  He could think about it later.

  A few of the dragons shifted uncomfortably as the human dragon riders gathered around FeMissanith for the victory toast from the dead hero’s neck. The Copper silenced them with a glare as he personally filled the first tankard and handed it to the human captain of the Aerial Host, a one-armed fellow the Copper always thought of as “Blaze” because of his red-veined nose and ruddy, windburned skin.

  The second came out of his own sii at the elbow joint, one of the favorite spots for his “gargoyles” to sup. He gave that to the young human, Gundar, son of Gunfer.

  The young human drank it in one lusty downing. Red overflow ran out either side of his mouth, and when he put down the cup his almost hairless face suddenly had a new beard and a mustache.

  The Copper watched captured Swayport men gathering wood for the pyre. One of the Aerial Host kept a watchful eye on them, lest they try to dig out a tooth or claw.

  It had been often pointed out to the Copper that odds and ends of dead dragons were worth a great deal in trade in the Upper World. Even his Hypatian allies, canny merchants all, had suggested it.

  It was one thing to collect dropped scales for sale in the Upper World. Harvesting bones and teeth, hearts and livers and sinews for alchemists and craftdwarfs gave him a ghoulish shudder. No, he’d never allow that.

  Once an Ankelene named CuRemom had approached him in the throne room. CuRemom, probably urged on by some dwarftrader, had calculated what a year’s dead dragons would be worth to the Imperial Treasury if properly harvested, bottled, ground, and dried. Hominid witch doctors and physicians counted dragon bits as the most potent of medicines and magics. He’d even tried it on a corpse of a dragon killed in an illegal duel, weighing each part and saying how long it had taken to properly preserve. The Copper did his best to forget the sum mentioned. He’d given the slinker a fuller appreciation for his Tyr’s disapproval of corpse-robbing by hard words and harder pokes with the tip of his tail.

  CuRemom had slunked out, promising to make amends.

  The Copper watched Gundar, invigorated by the blood, dance a jig. He looked to his father, short and stout and squinty, clapping along from the throng. The father was short and fair and the son tall and dark.

  “Fine pup you have there, Gunfer,” the Copper said. Now the youth was whirling, his whipping hair blurring with his face as he spun.

  “M-my T-tyr?” Gunfer said, kneeling at the address. He trembled a little at being recognized.

  Humans! He’d never once simply reached out and eaten a thrall, and he wasn’t about to start now. Wasn’t he famous for decreeing an end to the summary devouring of the Lavadome’s thralls?

  “Your boy. I marked him carrying the Hypatian banner through the gate at the head of the storming column. You should be proud.”

  “Yes, my Tyr. First boy born after you took charge, so to speak.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard. He’s grown up strong, even without the sun and rain of the Upper World.”

  “Aye, little secret of ours, passed down from the Isle, you know. For the long winters. His mother, she worked in the nursing halls during all the fighting with the demen. Lots of blood being sloshed about as broken scales were pulled out and wounds sewn up, especially during the fighting in the star cave.”

  The strangest of all the hominid races, the demen were pointy and thick skinned, almost as though they were carrying their armor with them like a lobster. They were vassals of the Dragon Empire now, contributing the Tyr’s own Demen Legion.

  In the air above them a young dragon and dragonelle flew circles around the city in celebration. A Hypatian banner flew in the highest battlement of the Pirate Lord fortress. His human allies had reclaimed their own. It was soon joined by the woven scale and knotwork pattern of the Grand Alliance. Some Hypatians and an Ankelene had labored hard over the design and presented it to him in great solemnity. The Copper didn’t have the heart to tell them he thought it looked like goat tracks, but then he wasn’t of an artistic bent.

  “She drank dragon blood every day while nursing, and mixed it in with his gruel when he started eating on his own. Turned him into a little hellion, but so healthy he practically burst his skin growing.”

  Gunfer chattered on in the manner of humans suddenly admitted into conversation with their superiors, describing his boy’s doings as a youth in exercises and games with the Drakwatch
. Apparently he’d never once been caught in a game of Fugitive Hunt.

  Gundar dropped and began a wild kicking dance, spinning like a child’s toy. Then he jumped to his feet as though born on his own set of wings, landing lightly, black hair flashing—

  The Dragonblade!

  The youth might have been a statue cast in the likeness of the man who’d briefly ruled the dragons thanks to a foolish wretch of a Tyr named SiMevolant.

  Humans and their infernal constant mating. It made bloodlines almost impossible to develop and decent breeding futile for all but the most diligent owner of human thralls.

  “Yes, a very fine boy you have there, Gunfer,” the Copper said, more to silence the annoying chatter without insulting a worthy warrior than because he wanted to converse. “He bears watching.”

  He dismissed the unhappy thought, saving it for another day. With that he raised his head high and watched the goat-track banner of the Grand Alliance flutter above the captured city.

  Chapter 2

  Wistala’s polished scale gleamed green in the fall sunshine of the Upper World.

  The dragonelle always enjoyed the fall season, and not just because of the plentiful summer-fattened game birds that could be knocked senseless or killed with one quick wingstroke. The pine trees smelled just a little bit more crisp, wood and charcoal smoke a little more welcome, and even as something as prosaic as a pile of horse venting could be called gratifying if you watched the steam’s elegant little curtains waft as it dispersed into the breeze.

  Of course the former circus-elf Ragwrist would joke that she was scaring the manure out of the famous white horses when she alighted in the paddocks surrounding her adopted father’s estate house at Mossbell. Ragwrist’s brother, Rainfall, had dragged her unconscious from the great river bordering his estate and succored her, educated her, and ultimately died next to her defending the land and order he loved. Taking his place, Ragwrist had settled down—at least as much as such a lively elf could settle down. He married a trick-rider from his circus and assumed the position of estate-head and landlord to a thriving little town growing up around a highway-rest inn with a green dragon hanging above its door, but he still walked the roads in a bright, colorful coat as though still advertising the spectacles of his circus.