Dragon Outcast

by E. E. Knight

  Nivom came to check on him.

  “Ride for the next quarter.”

  “I’m well enough.”

  “I don’t want the Tyr’s courier dropping of heart seizure. Water or blood?”

  “Blood.” He thirsted for the salty taste. Fourfang made a nuisance of himself, pulling up his saa and applying some kind of ointment that smelled like sheep fat.

  “There’s a pan. SiDrakkon’s already shared a pair of sheep with his duelists. Better hurry, or your fellow line drakes will have had it all.”

  He walked while the pullers were changed, but as soon as they took another break, went back to the traces.

  “No. Drake ride. Fourfang pull,” Fourfang protested.

  “I like it,” the Copper said, settling into the collar.

  “Only unimportant drake pull,” Fourfang said. “Unimportant drake have unimportant thrall.”

  “Is that so?” the Copper said. It hadn’t occurred to him that the thralls had some kind of clan system of their own.

  “Pride of place.”

  “Oh, all right. I’ll walk beside. If you get tired, let me know.”

  The blighter planted his short, bandy legs. The column squealed into motion again.

  “These carts need tinkering,” Nivom said, looking at the wheels of a particularly noisy contraption in front of the Copper. “If only dwarves didn’t starve themselves so quickly when enthralled. Get some fat drippings over here. That helps.”

  At a widening of the tunnel SiDrakkon had found a rock pile to rest upon and watch the column as it passed. “That’s it, Rugaard. Work ’em hard and they’re too tired to make trouble. True for scales as well as hair.”

  They had to leave the carts on the fourth “day”—as measured by sleep periods—and go on foot.

  They lost only two thralls on the trip to Bant, one to sickness and one to a badly broken leg when he fell under a cart and seemed unlikely to recover. In both cases they had their heads quickly bitten off by the big duelist dragons as they slept. The others accepted the deaths fatalistically, though they turned their backs when the bodies were shared out and eaten, except for some of the younger thralls, who watched the process with a sort of dread fascination.

  At last they saw golden light at the tunnel mouth again. A female dragon, with dust caked thickly in her scales turning her almost white, guarded the entrance from a pallet of wood and straw.

  SiDrakkon had them rest in the cave until the sun had lowered so they wouldn’t emerge into full daylight.

  The Copper took his first step into the Upper World at sunset, blinded and blinking for a full hundred heartbeats. When he finally looked about, squinting, he saw a dizzyingly vast landscape, bronze-colored and dotted here and there by taller green lacework that Nivom identified as trees. An orange sun, so perfectly round it seemed an eerie visitor as strange to the landscape as dragons, rested on the horizon, illuminating a distant rise.

  “That’s the Sunshard Plateau,” Nivom said, pointing with his nose to the distant break in the horizon. “The Lavadome lies beneath. We’ve come all this way. It fills the sky when you’re nearer.”

  The mouth of the cave had bones scattered all around the looser gravel below the cave gap. “My warning to trespassers.” The Firemaid chuckled.

  SiDrakkon flew into a rage when he saw the tiny, tired collection of animals gathered at the watering hole at the base of the mouth-mount, watched by a few sandled herders in thin white robes who threw themselves on their bellies when they saw the dragons.

  “Courier! Come here!”

  The Copper approached, trembling.

  SiDrakkon had turned quite purple. Or maybe it was the color-shifting light of the setting sun. “Your first duty is to hurry back with a message for the glorious Tyr. Tell him I’m relieving that fool NiThonius, friend of his or no. We’ll come to the Mud City half-starved, thanks to him. Eat one of these pathetic, scrawny sheep and go!”

  It appeared his visit to the Upper World would be as brief as it was dazzling.

  Chapter 15

  As it turned out, the Copper didn’t return to the Lavadome that day. Nivom hurried up to SiDrakkon and convinced him that ill news would be better received by the Tyr if it were mixed with good.

  SiDrakkon sputtered some more, but when Nivom pointed out that the Tyr might just appoint SiDrakkon as replacement governor of the Uphold, and SiDrakkon would spend a goodly stretch of years in Bant, the dragon finally retracted his griff and f claws and cried settled.

  The next morning the Copper looked more closely at the Bant hominids as they washed. Their skin was a similar tone to his own scale, though a good deal less shiny, and he decided it made them look healthier and more intelligent than the paler thralls from the Lavadome.

  Two tiresome marches later, guided by another dusty dragonelle who could easily converse with the locals, they came to the Mud City.

  The Copper got a chance to study a depiction of the lands on an animal skin, with inked squiggles representing rivers, ranges of hills, stone outcroppings, and water holes. Once one got used to maps they made sense. The Mud City was a collection of dwellings and workshops and markets on the southernmost of Bant’s three great rivers. Downstream the riverbanks teemed with life, according to SiDrakkon, with the assorted kinds of trees growing so tall above they blocked the sun, rendering the Upper World much like the Lower, though better lit, at least in daytime.

  The Copper discovered that while dirty, the Upper World had its compensations. For one thing, all the light sharpened his eyesight. He picked up detail at a distance. In the muted light of the Lower World colors faded and shadows muddied edges. Up here the Spirits’ wonders and labors in shaping all between blue sky and black earth stood under brilliant light as though it were a statue on display in the Anklene hill.

  The Mud City stood on both banks of the river, surrounded by green, well-watered hills and walls of various age. The buildings were all a white or sandy color, sprouting wood supports or a plot of gardening here and there. The dwellings looked cracked and dry, like Fourfang’s sunburned skin.

  He expected to see flocks and herds on the surrounding hills, but there were few animals on the heights grazing, and what there were kept close to town.

  The dragons camped in a vale between two hills overlooking the town, with good cliffs to one side and a steep slope on the other.

  “The Ghi men’s horsemen have not yet raided south of the river,” their Firemaid guide said.

  “I don’t put anything past men. They always show up where you don’t expect ’em,” SiDrakkon said.

  “And don’t let your thralls cut wood from these trees; these belong to the local chieftain. Wood pilfering will create a grudge.”

  “Of course.”

  The Firemaid departed, and SiDrakkon immediately ordered the thralls to gather wood for cooking fires—but only dead branches and deadfalls.

  Rhea spent weary hours cleaning dust out of the Copper’s scale, while Fourfang made some kind of gruel in a pot as he was toasting a spitted lamb. Fourfang and Rhea licked the spit clean of grease when the Copper was through eating.

  The Copper hoped the provisioning would improve soon; already the thralls were pushing and shoving over food allotments.

  The next morning NiThonius arrived, and the whole camp stirred at the news.

  He was an odd-looking dragon, rather bony and the color of a rusty shield, and had strips of cloth running from his crest and twelve horns, all tied to an ivory tusk piercing his nostrils, creating a sort of fabric shield for his eyes and nose.

  Alongside him rode a fine figure of a man with a long, forked beard wrapped in gold cording. More gold cording held a sun cloth to his head, and his robes had glittering strands woven into the lapels.

  SiDrakkon lined up the drakes and Firemaidens to meet him, with his bodyguard just behind him. “Let’s wait downwind; we’ll be able to hear better,” Nivom said.

  “Eminent of the Bant Uphold, I bring you the Tyr’s gree
tings,” SiDrakkon said.

  “Mate-brother to the Tyr, I long regret the Tyr’s absence from my hearth and hoard. Will you cry ally?”

  “I do cry ally.”

  They both made a perfunctory clucking noise at the sky.

  “I welcome your coming,” NiThonius said. “Let me introduce King Onato of the Rains and Winds and the Three River Savanna. You met his father, I believe.”

  “A great warrior and friend to the Lavadome,” SiDrakkon said. He gurgled out a few words in a tongue the Copper did not understand.

  “Did you catch that?” the Copper asked.

  “I can’t make snout nor tail of their yammering. But I expect I’ll learn if we’re here long.”

  Some of the king’s retainers unrolled white material and tied it between the branches of two spreading trees. The king sat beneath atop a folding wooden sort of post-seat, and NiThonius settled down beside. SiDrakkon dismissed the welcoming party and joined the repose, calling Nivom forward. The Copper followed behind.

  “A Drakwatch commander and an Imperial Courier. I’m impressed you’ve come so well arrayed,” NiThonius said.

  “I was not impressed with your welcoming banquet when we emerged from the Lower World.”

  NiThonius pulled back his head a little. “I did not expect so many. I’d asked my old friend the Tyr for a cunning dragon or two to help me cope with the Ghi.”

  “And what could be accomplished against fortresses by a dragon or two?”

  “I would rather attack them where they are vulnerable, rather than behind scale or stone.”

  “Where are they vulnerable?”

  “Where their archers can’t stand behind battlements and their war machines throw javelin, rock, and fire. I’m a little old to be flitting about, laying waste to flocks and herds. The men of Ghi, the Stonemen, would probably be induced to quit most of the lands they’ve grabbed if we make the lands unprofitable. They are keen calculators, not prideful. Also, they have some salt mines and clayworks and lumber camps. Burn them and kill the workers, swim up under their trade boats, scatter their herds, and burn their crops in the night. A war of stealth and surprise will weary them before too many years pass. That’s why I asked for an active young dragon or two. And that is what our allies gathered provision for.”

  SiDrakkon tore up the ground with his claws, and the king and his retainers scooted back on their hindquarters, perhaps fearing their new ally would lash out. “I’ve no patience for that kind of warfare. The Lavadome needs Bant’s herds, not tales of a burned crop or shepherd’s lodge.”

  “A salt mine is no shepherd’s cot. Without salt, men do not last here.”

  “A war of many small cuts doesn’t answer our need.”

  “It is the only kind of warfare left to us, at least in Bant.”

  “How is that?”

  NiThonius said a few words to his human ally. “The king has lost many of his finest warriors in fruitless assaults. Those who remain are discouraged and scattered.”

  “You say that as though the fault lay at another’s sii.”

  “Perhaps I delayed too long. The northern half of the country was under the protection of my clutchwinner. After he and his mate were killed, the collapse came so quickly—now the Stonemen build a new strongpoint at a watering spring just north of the Green Dancer that flows below.”

  “Build?” SiDrakkon said. “It’s unfinished?”

  “They have a stout wooden palisade. The stoneworks rise day by day.”

  “There is where we’ll strike, then. They won’t expect a hard blow after having won so much, and I wish to move before word of our arrival may spread. Nivom, tell your sissa, rouse the Firemaidens—we fly at once! We’ll give them a taste of dragon fury that’ll put hearts back into these spiritless whelps.”

  After the longest, hardest march of his life, the Copper stayed far to the rear of the attack, watching events from the top of a rock pile.

  He didn’t feel the least bit tired, not with the night full of the fire of battle. If it weren’t for SiDrakkon’s forcibly expressed orders…

  The plains beyond the rivers had these rocky, windswept piles of stones like river-smoothed rocks grown to dragon proportion and heaped. The Copper had become almost as acquainted with the wildlife of the rocks as he had with the grasslands. The rock piles were thick with hopping, naked tailed rodents that the Firemaidens flushed with a quick blast of flame. As he watched the battle, he probed his gum line with his tongue for the remains of the rat he’d just eaten.

  He watched carefully as SiDrakkon’s orders were executed, remembering details for a report to the Tyr.

  His orders had the virtue of simplicity. First the Firemaidens, the most skilled huntresses of their number at the fore, would attack whatever sentries stood on the outskirts of the water hole. One had been killed on the rock pile where the Copper now stood, and his blood still scented the air.

  When Nivom gave the signal that the sentries and outwatchers had been cleared, the Drakwatch went forward.

  Then SiDrakkon swooped overhead, low enough to smell the bubbling fire bladders (the dragons chewed an irritating pepper called green fury to fill their bladders), his three duelists in line behind to lessen the chance of their being spotted.

  The aerial dragons struck and struck hard, setting alight the nests of wooden spikes that warded off horsemen, then picking the flaming bundles up in their saa or knocking them around with their tails.

  The men rallied to the circle of stone, firing their bows and setting their spears against a descent when the Drakwatch struck, all loosing their flame at a roar from Nivom. The Drakwatch swarmed over the unfinished ramparts, scale glittering in the firelight, and the Copper wished more than anything to be with them.

  The Stonemen broke and fled for their lives, and the Firemaidens had much sport hunting down stragglers in the grass.

  At last a Firemaiden called to the Copper and told him that SiDrakkon bade that he join in the feast and survey the night’s work.

  One of the Drakwatch had been killed in the fighting. Apart from bloodless arrow wounds to the wing tissue, SiDrakkon and the duelists had not been scratched.

  They devoured some of the beasts of burden killed in the action and made presents of the rest to King Onato of the Rains and Wind and other titles. Such heads as didn’t disappear down dragon or drake gullets were lined up on the unfinished ramparts as a warning to the Ghi.

  “That’s how you do it, Rugaard. A fast, heavy blow. Smash ’em up, and they’ll break and scatter,” SiDrakkon said. “When these human and blighter tribesmen see this work, they’ll rally to the king’s banner again. Especially if the banner’s carried by a victorious dragon.”

  “Four victorious dragons,” one of the bodyguards said with a belch, as he nosed up a silver-hilted knife from the dirt, broke off the blade, and swallowed it.

  “Forget not the drakes!” a pair from Nivom’s first sissa chorused, where they rooted among the burned bodies for coin to eat.

  “The Firemaidens took their share of honors,” a dazzling, golden-eyed drakka said as another licked the wounds about her sii and griff.

  SiDrakkon stood and roared a victorious bellow that no doubt sent the rock-racks digging even deeper into the sand. “Now, Rugaard, now you may return to the Lavadome. Tell the mighty Tyr what has been accomplished in his name this night. But hurry back, for the feasting will be even greater when we strike their fortress from the depths of the very river they so arrogantly claim!”

  No one but the departing Copper noticed NiThonius, who’d stayed back from the attack as well. He remained at the edge of the celebration, using his nose to help the Bant tribesmen gather spent arrows and dropped swords. He simply sighed quietly.

  SiDrakkon roared after him: “Give your report to the Tyr, and tell my sister to keep her advice. Her snout’s in too many caves as it is.”

  Chapter 16

  The road back to the Lavadome was wearisome in several respects.

&n
bsp; For a start, the king awarded them, through SiDrakkon, a rather broken-down and dismal donkey, who complained, in the simple words of the beast tongue, that he would be eaten as soon as the Copper grew hungry. For a while Rhea rode him, but he staggered and bellowed, so they left him with just carrying grain and dragon-smoked meat.

  Rhea performed her scale-cleaning duties until her fingers bled from beneath her nails. She slept rather close to him. Fourfang, however, continually disappeared while they passed back south through Bant, especially when the Copper smelled tribal blighters around. He’d slip off quietly in the night, and come back smelling of scented oil.

  “Where do you go nights, Fourfang?” the Copper asked one morning.

  In response, the blighter made a motion of such obvious obscenity that the Copper almost scorched him from the waist down. The Copper wondered how many prominently toothed blighter litters would be born next season.

  On their last day of travel the rains began. Blue-bottomed clouds boiled up out of the east and gathered, and water fell from the sky, first in a drizzle and then in such torrents it was pointless to seek shelter, so they simply squelched on through the mud to the next soggy camp.

  The donkey complained that not only was he to be eaten, but he was going to be eaten wet and uncomfortable.

  “The rains, at last,” the Firemaid guarding the underground entrance said. “You leave us so soon?” The rain had washed and brightened her scale.

  “I’ll return with messages, I expect. I’ll offer you a gift of this donkey to remember me. I suggest you eat him; it’s the only way you’ll ever have any peace and quiet.”

  The Firemaids kept a goodly supply of meat, gained hunting on the plains, and there was even a little fish pulled out of a stream that morning, for with the rain the fish were hurrying to mate and lay their eggs. The Copper ate the fish as soon as it was offered. If his time in the Lavadome lacked anything, it was a good piece of fish now and again.