by E. E. Knight
The Copper looked at the widening of the passage. Harf stood there beside a two-wheeled cart. Fragrant sides of meat swung from hooks on a wooden frame.
“Finally, something other than guts, hides, and hooves,” one of the black drakes said.
Harf was doing his bobbing thing again, holding up the dragonscale on the chain around his neck.
“An Imperial Family thrall,” NeStirrath said, as Harf waved his icon at the drakes, bobbing and bringing the cart forward a wheel spoke at a time. NeStirrath made a wretching noise: Grf grf.
“Well, we’ve landed in it, lads. What are you doing down in the Drakwatch caves, sir?”
“I was told I should learn from you. I’ve just arrived.”
“That’s a good way to get your guts spilled, showing up un-announced. We might have had a tragedy here.”
“NoSohoth couldn’t wait,” the Copper said.
“Accept our apologies, sir,” the white drake said.
The Copper bristled. His toe was starting to really hurt, and the drakes were lowering their heads and exchanging wary glances. But he was going to live here, and if he got too highhanded, what was stopping them from gutting him and going to NoSohoth with a tragic tale?
Besides, he didn’t really know what being in the Imperial Family meant.
“No one’s fault but NoSohoth’s, I’d say. I came down the river from the north, and the griffaran found me. The Tyr gave me the name Rugaard and put me under your eye. Your honor, if I’m to join the Drakwatch, maybe we could all have a fast feast and begin afresh.”
NeStirrath licked drool from his lips, and his wing stumps relaxed against his sides. “That’s a kindness, sir, that is. Better put a mesh of cobwebbing on that toe, sir. I’ll show you where you can find—”
“Rugaard will do, your honor. I can take care of it myself.”
He rather enjoyed the generosity of the gesture. The dragons each tenderly lifted a joint off of the cart’s hooks and tore into the meat. NeStirrath took the smallest of the joints and sucked at it for a long time, as though relishing the taste, before swallowing it. “Smoke and flame, lads, we’ll be eating well with an Imperial scion among us. Tails up and heads down for Rugaard, newest member of the Drakwatch!”
The Copper learned his duties, and learned them well.
From the first, he learned that every drake of the Drakwatch wanted honor in his lifetime, and a glorious memory after death—a name proudly sung to a line of future hatchlings and would-be mates.
Word came down from the Tyr himself that the Copper was to be treated the same as any other member of the Drakwatch. With permission to unsheath his sii, so to speak, their leader saw to it that the Copper was treated as roughly as any of the others, in fact more roughly, for he was the junior, and so the others considered it their duty to pummel him for the slightest error. NeStirrath liked aggressive young drakes, and almost any question, from order of line at mealtimes to order of march out in the Lavadome, was settled by pairing off into duels or all-out brawls. Claws sheathed and teeth only for gripping, of course.
The Copper took his first blows learning that there were separate pools for drinking and bathing, and that his fellow drakes would knock him about the ears and griff if he forgot to use the right one.
Then he learned about the honorable, glorious history of the Drakwatch and how it was organized. There were perhaps six or seven claw-score of drakes in dragon watch—provided you were counting with a full set of twelve true-claws, that is. The Drakwatch was charged with patrolling the area of the Lavadome itself in search of hominid thieves and assassins. They could also be called on by the leaders of the various hills to present a show of force to troublesome thralls.
What the drakes of the Drakwatch liked best of all was the chance to compete against the Firemaidens. The young females performed similar duties to the males, if not quite so wide-ranging, placed at important posts to guard and inspect and supervise.
Some of the more aggressive of the Drakwatch, and a few wild-griffed and claw-loose Firemaidens, would explore far beyond the underground river that circled the Lavadome, looking for signs of dwarf, blighter, or demen activity. There was great honor to be found in that sort of territorial assertiveness. Only a victorious battle with the hominids themselves could bring more glory, and with it the chance of a fine cave, thralls, and flocks to supervise upon reaching dragonhood.
When they needed physical rest they got lectures. NeStirrath made them recite proverbs and learn about battles won and lost—but mostly won.
NoSohoth gave them a lecture that seemed to stretch on through the day and into the night about the importance of honor. One dragon being able to rely on another to keep his word was the solid ground into which the lasting cave of civilization was dug. He went on and on about this point, until the Copper wondered if he was simply rearranging the same words into every variation possible.
The Copper’s favorite days and darks in the Drakwatch were spent wandering from horizon to horizon in the enormous Lavadome, looking in on the thrall hovels, or counting cattle and swineherds, or running sorties to check the alertness of the Firemaidens on watch at the various tunnel entrances. The Firemaidens had their own set of teachers and taskmasters in the form of the Firemaids, the unmated and oathed-never-to-mate dragonelle guardians of the Lavadome.
NeStirrath drove his drakes hard, delivered bites and bashes as they climbed or jumped or dashed or swam, lobbed bruising stones into mock battles at any dragon who lagged or paused too long in evolutions. They learned to ignore pain and blood until the objective was achieved, be it a bit of tattered banner on a sharp pile of lava rock or a pumpkin-headed scarecrow with a tin crown. If they could keep the drakes off the scarecrow-king for a set time, heavily padded blighters armed with hatchling tooth–studded clubs could win a cask of the malty beverage they adored, with a leg of beef thrown in for any who managed to draw drakeblood.
They learned to take turns volleying flame in groups as they advanced or retreated, though the Copper’s stream came out thinner and more liquid than the others’ and seemed to take forever to light properly. They hunted boars goaded to savagery by cruel wires twisted into them by blighter herders. To keep things fair NeStirrath applied similar painful wires to the hunting drake’s sii or saa.
It was a toughter, tested bunch that passed out of the first-year caves.
There were losses. Sometimes adventuring drakes would simply disappear. Others were crippled permanently in duels or skirmishes. Fallen drakes would be replaced by younger drakes from NeStirrath’s little enclave of “yearling” trainees in the Black Rock.
The Copper didn’t quite feel the equal of the three other trainees. Though they bashed him and joked about it afterward, they seemed to think his joining their ranks was sort of a stunt, a bit of preening from a member of the Imperial line destined for a high cave in the resort. Though NeStirrath ordered him around and cajoled him much like the others, he never got water spit at him the way the others did around the pool, or received a playful nip as they hurried toward the hamcart at mealtimes, and while halfhearted duels were fought every other day between the other three over who should have the honor of leading the next patrol or running a message from one sissa of the Drakwatch to another, no one ever challenged him when he asked for a chance at the honor of leading an ore raid on the caves of the Firmaidens.
So once again, it seemed he wasn’t to fit in, a stranger in his own cave.
It took a full season before the Copper could walk the inside of the Lavadome without standing and gaping upward.
When the sun was down and the shining oval at the peak was dark, it was at its most spectacular. Glowing rivers of fire rose or fell along its sides, sometimes brighter, sometimes darker.
“What holds the world up?” he asked NeStirrath as they rested on one of their “saa-hardeners”: a pile of volcanic rock, the slag heap of an old tunnel leading down to the water ring.
“The Air Spirit must have made it,” K
rthonius said. “Some battle with the Earth Spirit.”
“The Anklenes say it was a mighty scale that fell from the sun,” NeStirrath said. “It plunged deep into the Lower World and expelled a ball of gas.”
“The way you do when in the washing pool, Aubalagrave,” Nivom, the white drake with the slashed-off lip, said.
“Give me a whole pig for dinner and I’ll produce one as big as what made the Lavadome,” Aubalagrave said.
“May you choke on your next mouthful of pig, boaster,” Krthonius said, and he and Aubalagrave wrestled for a moment, scattering sharp lava rocks and ending it bleeding from a wound or two.
“Who are these Anklenes?”
They all looked at him.
“Half-a-drake strikes again,” Nivom muttered to the others.
“Remember, he didn’t hatch here,” NeStirrath said. “The story goes that the Lavadome was found long ago by a wizard named Anklamere. He was a grasping, conniving sort of fellow, like most hominids, and had it in mind to control everyone and everything: dragon, hominid, beast, even the worms in the earth, I expect. NooMoahk, Black Glory of Legend and Eternal Guardian of the Sun-Shard, finally got rid of him, but not before he enthralled some dragons and set them up here. They’re a spiritless sort of cringers, and they fiddle around with scrolls and books and whatnot. Always blending melting metals or heating stones or poking around in the bodies of dragons who should be decomposing honorably under a lava-stone cairn. The dragons of the lines of Wyrr and Skotl put them in their holes when we moved in.”
The Copper knew little more about the lines of Wyrr or Skotl, but after asking about the Anklenes he decided not to press his ignorance. Besides, Krthonius was getting twitchy. He had the honor of leading this patrol and wanted to set a taxing pace.
They returned to the towering black overhang of the Imperial Rock sore of claw and thirsty. The others hung back, arguing and snapping, until the Copper drank, then jostled one another and splashed and slurped up their thirst. The Copper’s good front limb felt as though it were going to fall off, and he dragged his tail on the way back to his shelf.
NeStirrath entered and took a nostrilful of air.
“Whew. Smells of bats in here. What, are you keeping them as pets, Rugaard?”
“Habit from my travels,” the Copper said. “I…I used them to mask my odor. I got to kind of like having them around.”
NeStirrath wrinkled his nostrils. “They call you ‘Batty’ when your crest is turned, you know.”
“I’ve heard them,” the Copper said. He knew NeStirrath thought him soft. “They’re a good ward against starvation too. Food’s hard to find when you’re traveling underground.”
“I’d have to be starving to eat a bat. But I wanted to have a talk with you, lad. You might be in charge of a whole sissa of young drakes someday. You need to scrap it up a bit. More of the rough-and-tumble, or they’ll never accept you or respect you.”
The Copper felt his stomach sink. “I don’t like fighting. They’re all older and bigger than me. I always seem to come out of one worse off. Like my toe.”
The missing digit itched as though solid with scale mites, a sensation made all the more disagreeable by the fact that it wasn’t there anymore and he couldn’t scratch it.
“You’ve got to be willing to be the first to jump into a fight if you’re to win respect from this lot. Even if you lose a tooth or two, stick up for yourself, lad. It’s not the size of the drake that wins the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the drake. Let your father know he hatched a dragon.”
Mention of Father just made him miserable.
“Don’t look glum,” NeStirrath growled. “Doesn’t matter where you came from, or what you know or don’t know. You’re in the Imperial line now. Cor, someday you could be the Tyr himself. Keep your thoughts behind your eyes; don’t wear them on your face—and above all, let them know a set of dragon hearts beat behind your scale.”
“Yes, your honor,” the Copper said.
NeStirrath loved to pit his drakes against one another in contests and challenges and games, when they weren’t having the weak points of ax-dwarves or fighting-shield demen pounded into their heads, that is.
He ran dragon dashes (the Copper came in last), jumping contests (the Copper fell short of the mark Krthonius set, even the time Krthonius stumbled before the vault mark), and tried to whack a barrel full of sand off a dragon’s nose with his tail (the barrel easily avoided the Copper’s stiff tail).
They looked at one another in triumph. He knew what was going through his fellow drakes’ minds: Another rodentlike performance from Batty, lowest of the Imperial line. They probably sent him to the Drakwatch so they wouldn’t have to look at his odd eye and listen to him limp about the upper chambers.
At each failure he shook off the dirt and dust and tried to keep his face from showing his disappointment. Krthonius found all the athletic events so easy, but he held his tongue and didn’t bark out his triumph. Unlike Aubalagrave, who sometimes could outjump his black-scaled comrade and let the whole Lavadome know it when he did. Nivom also rarely won anything, and it put him in a foul mood.
It was after a particularly gruesome humiliation in which the drakes had to climb up a sheer wall with the drake behind gripping at the tail, a deadweight to be hauled (the Copper’s twotoed saa gave way at the last and he and Nivom fell three full lengths to a mud pit) that Nivom pushed past the Copper on the way to the bathing pool.
Harf and a couple other thralls hurried to get hot water and pumice to scrub the dragonscales.
“Filthiest last, or you’ll dirty the water for the rest of us,” Nivom said.
The Copper, still smarting in his tail from Nivom’s hatchling-sharp teeth, let out a squawk that everyone later said sounded more like a startled chicken than a drake’s battle cry. He threw himself on Nivom and thumped him in the snout with the joint of his crippled arm.
Snarling and growling, the Copper thumped him again every time Nivom tried to shrug him off.
“Batty’s tearing Nivom a new tailvent,” Krthonius cried out to Aubalagrave.
“Rugaard!” the Copper snarled, griff rattling all on their own as though they wanted in on the contest. He left Nivom and dashed at Krthonius, head low and down so Krthonius couldn’t get under his guard and flip him.
Some of the hominids shouted in excitement.
Krthonius turned sideways, as he always did in a brawl, so he could strike with head or tail, off-side up against a cave wall with a line of bronzed skulls just where a mature dragon’s wings usually brushed the walls. The Copper split the distance and jumped up between tooth and tail-tip, pushed off the wall, and fell, rather awkwardly, on Krthonius’s back. He wrapped his neck around Krthonius’s and began to pull scales with his teeth.
“Yeow! Yeoow!” Krthonius shouted, bashing the Copper with his tail.
Aubalagrave joined the brawl, defending his friend’s honor—and scales. The Copper found himself sandwiched between two larger drakes, and much beaten about the head and hindquarters. All he could do was try to make Krthonius or Aubalagrave miss, thus striking each other when they were trying to hit the Copper.
“Keep the claws in, you,” he heard NeStirrath shout.
He didn’t have much success. Aubalagrave gave him a saa swipe across the snout, and he saw brilliant fields of flowers.
“I’ll finish it,” Nivom shouted, forcing his way through the others.
The Copper wanted to flee, but instead he flung himself on Nivom again. They went up on their hind legs, boxing each other with sii and exchanging bites about the snout and griff. Nivom stood tall on his hindquarters and rattled his griff.
“Tail swipe,” one of the thralls shouted. Despite the urging, the Copper’s tail refused to reach. Krthonius yanked on it and he fell, belly-up, under Nivom.
“Cry settled!” Nivom urged.
The Copper got both saa under Nivom and launched him into the bathing pool. He could hardly see out of his good eye, than
ks to the blood, but he could make out Krthonius well enough, and charged at him again.
He felt tail strikes and a weight above his saa—Aubalagrave was atop him, hammering him with kicks while he clung with his sii—but he still pushed forward for Krthonius and grappled. Krthonius easily pushed his nose into the bed of rocks lining the floor.
“Cry settled,” Krthonius grunted.
The Copper managed to poke him under the chin with his crippled forelimb. Krthonius backed off, making retching sounds and coughing. Aubalagrave sank his teeth into both sides of his head behind the crest.
“Kah ettehld!” Aubalagrave said.
The Copper rolled, rolled again, at great pain to the tender skin at the back of his head, and managed to plunge both of them into the bathing pool. He got Aubalagrave’s head underwater and pushed for all he was worth. Aubalagrave refused to yield and go limp.
Something hauled both of them out of the water—NeStirrath, trying to keep Aubalagrave from breathing too much water. The Copper gave him a tail strike for his interference and was dropped atop Nivom and Krthonius. Cheering from the thralls—or maybe the pained roaring of a tender-gummed old dragon—sounded in his ears.
They rolled, a three-colored mass of fury letting out battle cries in high-pitched drake voices. The Copper got his teeth into Nivom’s shoulder and forced him down, pushing for all he was worth, keeping Krthonius’s head pinned with his in the crook of his crippled limb.
Aubalagrave and Krthonius boxed him about the head, trying to get him to let go. He grabbed Aubalagrave at what felt like a sii digit, twisted.
“Cry settled! Cry settled! Cry—” the three chorused. But their voices seemed far away and receding. The smooth rocks of the flooring gave way to the soft, mossy pads of the river-lake, only there was no itchy slime or biting water mites this time….