by E. E. Knight
The trek down the tunnel was long—fortunately there were few places one could get lost, and when in doubt the Copper simply smelled for the leavings of the flocks driven downtunnel. Once they met up with the dwarvish iron ruts it was simply a matter of following the lines down. Their trek had little to remember, save that Fourfang slept soundly each night with his head pillowed upon the Copper’s rump, and Rhea, lacking the warm sty provided by her fellow thralls, huddled against his leathery stomach. So they came again to the Lavadome with little doubt or danger. The deman boatman who carried them across was a gruesome specimen, and fondled Rhea’s sun-colored hair as they climbed in.
“Enough, you,” the Copper growled. The demen were useful enough in keeping order among the thralls, but he still found them loathsome. “Keep to your end of the boat.”
The deman and Fourfang exchanged looks. Fourfang licked his lips and showed his teeth.
The deman’s spines rose. “No brawling,” the Copper said, placing his tail between them.
The pens and dragon-holes of the Lavadome’s hills felt shrunken in scale now, after the horizon-stretching space and light of the Upper World. They had to rest only once, crossing easily on common paths, and instead of blue infinity overhead, they enjoyed the intricate beauty of the fire-streaked dome. He left Fourfang and Rhea on the lower entrance to the Imperial Resort. He would have liked to see how things were getting on in the training caves—though he’d been gone only two-score and five days it felt like years—but Tyr would need to hear about events in Bant.
He hurried up one of the steep, narrow back step-passages used by the thralls. He was still small enough to fit, and he could avoid some of the transverses leading to the garden level.
Thralls worked the Tyr’s Gardens, diverting trickles from the central pool and splashing water on the ferns and vines. One had a dirty joint shoved in his waistband, probably cast aside during a banquet and found in the underbrush, and guiltily dropped it.
Well, let him enjoy his find. “I’d boil it well if I were you. A joint can go a long way, made into soups,” he said. The thrall just blinked. “Go on; pick it up. You found it; you enjoy it.”
He met NoSohoth in the plaza before the Tyr’s outer entrance, eating a dish made of meat shredded into thin, stringlike strips and swimming in gravy, as a thrall poked around behind his crest, cleaning dirt and dead skin with a rag-wrapped stick. Saliva flooded the Copper’s mouth at the smell of the dragon’s breakfast.
“I’ll say this for you, Rugaard: You’re easy to identify at a distance. Your hop-walk is distinctive.”
“I bring news for the Tyr.”
NoSohoth took another tongueful of gravy. “I’d be surprised if you didn’t. SiDrakkon calls for three more dragons, I suppose.”
“My mate is sleeping,” Tighlia said, emerging from the Tyr’s cave. She moved rather stiffly.
Thralls exploded out of the corners of the plaza like a flight of startled birds, converging on the Tyr’s mate.
“Yes, some breakfast, just a little kern,” she said, looking from thrall to thrall. “No, no bath. Just some ointment for my joints. My shoulders again. Leafdrip’s formula and none other, now. Oh, leave off; the scale’s still lined from sleeping. It’ll smooth on its own.”
She shrugged off her attendants and took a long drink from Tyr’s trickle basin.
“Restless night again, glorious Queen?”
“Not a good turn to be had, NoSohoth.” She looked at the Copper. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“Our newest courier has returned with news from Bant,” NoSohoth said.
“My mate’s lame little indulgence. Well, out with it.”
“I bring news for the Tyr himself,” the Copper said.
“Be off with all of you,” she said to the thralls. “You too, NoSohoth. See what’s keeping my kern.” She sidestepped toward the trickle spilling into the basin.
The Copper regretted to see the shredded meat in gravy go, but the hard eye of Tighlia made him forget his appetite.
“We can talk here, you. No one will overhear. Come closer; I’ve never bitten a drake in my life and I won’t start this morning. What news?”
“I’m the Tyr’s courier,” the Copper protested. He wondered if he should relay her brother’s exact words.
“Don’t question me; it’s not your place. FeHazathant needs twice the sleep that he gets. I’m eager to hear every detail of my brother, and you have my promise that the Tyr will hear your report.”
“I’m under instructions—”
She interrupted in a quiet voice. “You would be wise to obey me. I’ve given my word: Tyr will hear your message. Will you offer insult to me by disbelief? There is no shortage of champions who will duel to defend my honor.”
“Yes, great Queen. Our journey—”
“Stomp the journey. How go things in Bant?”
“They are hard-pressed by the Ghi men. Two of their river valleys are lost. Their forces have been defeated, scattered, and discouraged.”
“What has my brother done to retrieve the situation, or is the Uphold lost?”
“SiDrakkon won a victory against the Ghi men. He destroyed a fortification before it could be completed, with small loss.”
“Ninny! You should have been shouting that from the moment you passed into the dome. A victory! FeHazathant must hear of this.” She rounded on a kitchen thrall hurrying up with a steaming bowl of milky, yellow kern. “You there! Let’s have a skewer of steaks for the Tyr’s breakfast, and if they’re not still sputtering from the fire you’ll be turning on the next spit.”
Within a dwarf-hour the court was roused and the Tyr came into the plaza to hear the story. When the Copper repeated his news and told of the battle, all the Imperial line began to twitter.
“Well, that is good news,” NoSohoth said when Tighlia nudged him. “A roar for SiDrakkon.”
The dragons roared, but to the Copper it sounded half-lunged.
The Tyr nodded. “Well, if it’s begun, at least it’s begun well. But open war…the Ghi men are strong and numerous and craft-wise. What’s the spirit of the warriors in Bant?”
The Copper chose his words carefully. “NiThonius says they’re in poor spirits. They’ve been broken by defeats. SiDrakkon believes this victory will bring them round.”
“What do you think?”
“I, Tyr?”
“Yes, you’ve been up there recently and I haven’t. What do you think? Can Bant win a war?”
The Copper remained silent for a moment. “I…I can’t form an opinion. I haven’t even seen them fight.”
The dragons chuckled at that. “Don’t overtax my poor cousin’s abilities, Grandfather,” Simevolant called.
“SiDrakkon seems confident they can win,” the Copper said.
“And why not?” Tighlia said. “Hominids are always braver behind a dragon than in front.”
The Tyr stared off to the northeast, as though trying to pierce crystal, lava, and rock with his eyes. “Rest for three days, Rugaard: You look worn. Then return to SiDrakkon and give him my congratulations. Tell him that if there is to be a war, let it be a short one, and seek concessions from the Ghi men rather than battles. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Tyr.”
As it turned out, he didn’t return to his familiar shelf in the training caves. NoSohoth arranged a cave midrock in the better-lit south quarter, among some of the wealthier dragons who stored their hoards in the Imperial Resort and wanted caves near their coin. He even had a nice crack in the wall where he could look out and take the air—though he suspected his head would be too large to fit out the hole anymore as his horns began to come in—and was near a cascade of only occasionally tainted water.
Tyr sent him a gift of a small bag of coins. He ate just a few and stuck the rest on a little shelf by a corner the bats were exploring for grips. He was a growing dragon and should think about establishing a hoard.
Harf, Rhea, and Fourfang even had their own roo
m just off his, with a thick curtain so it was warm and cozy. Naturally they set to squabbling when Harf started pawing at Rhea and trying to mate with her. The Copper sent Rhea to see about some fresh clothing for herself and Fourfang, for the journey had tattered their simple tunics, and put Harf to work scrubbing a noisome corner the previous tenant had left. Why couldn’t dragons be bothered to use the waste pits?
“Fourfang, you know about these things. If she’s not ready to mate, she shouldn’t, right?”
Fourfang probed his ears, perhaps prodding his brains into activity. “Not know humans of many. Not want babies for sell?”
“I’m not sure she’s even mature enough for that. Don’t they get those suckle points when they’re ready for children? Bigger is better, no?”
Fourfang thought that funny.
“Well, if he starts pawing at her again, stop him. Or tell her she can sleep in here, but there’s a draft from that crack, I’m afraid.”
The bats were happy to probe his scales for juicy ticks and fleas that had come along for the journey, and they told him of what they saw and heard while he was gone. Uninteresting bat gossip, mostly involving the movement of herds or sickly, deep-sleeping dragons. Old Thernadad, blinder than ever but still with some hearing, relayed some details of a good fight in the Drakwatch caves. The Copper decided that when he returned to the surface he’d take a few bats along, just to keep the vermin out of his hide.
The bats stirred at some motion in the outer passage. The Copper smelled rich perfumed oils.
“So you do keep bats,” Tighlia said, thrusting her head in.
The bats flapped back up into their holes.
She sniffed at the bat crack and clamped her nostrils. “I thought it was just gossip. Scale and tail, as my granddam used to say, it’s cramped in here, and the bats are making my eyes water. I want to talk to you, Rugaard. I don’t believe I can fit without squashing you. Perhaps you’d better come out into the passage.”
The coins rolling around in his innards had left him in a contented mood, and he followed her fleshless hips out into the tunnel. She looked around, and though there was nothing but a sleeping thrall on a mat in front of a passage, waiting for her dragon to return, Tighlia still followed the sound of falling water to the cascade. She made a pretense of wetting her face.
“Now, my ill-favored little adoptive granddrake, I thought we should have a talk before you returned to Bant.”
“Yes, Granddam. I’m honored by—”
“Of course. That’s the only thing I can stand about you. You’re polite rather than wheedling or sycophantic or challenging. For all your faults, it seems you have a good memory. I want you to send my compliments to my brother. Can you manage that?”
“Yes, Granddam.”
“With one piece of advice. This is imperative. If he’s going to win a war in Bant, he needs to inspire the hominids. They’re not thralls; he can’t just threaten and bluster and drive to get what he wants. He has to handle them. Make them want the war.”
She paused, so the Copper guessed she expected a reply. “Handle them so they want the war.”
“Yes. Aren’t you wondering how?”
“Doesn’t he know?”
“You’ve no intellectual curiosity at all, have you? Don’t answer; you’re tiresome enough when silent. My brother’s much the same. The trick to getting hominids worked up for a war is to fixate them.”
“Fixate them, Granddam?” the Copper said.
“Yes. Find some old wrong the Ghi men have done to them and get them talking of nothing else. Make sure it’s something long enough ago so the memory’s clouded about exactly what happened. Then tell them all their difficulties spring from that source, like a salted well slowly poisoning the land around. Fixate! If their sheep are dying, it’s because of the Ghi men. If the rain causes a mudslide, it’s because the Ghi men cut down their trees. That kind of thing. Their brains can’t hold more than three ideas at once, and my brother must make sure at least one of the ideas is useful to him.”
If the hominids are so dull, why must we hide from them in the Lower World?
“Fixate them so they blame the Ghi men for everything. Yes.”
“He should call an assembly of their king and shamans or witch doctors or whatever they have and put the idea into their heads.”
“Thank you, Granddam.”
“For what?”
“For bending your thoughts to the crisis. The Lavadome is lucky to have such wisdom.”
She let out what in another dragon might have been a prrum, but it was strangled deep in her throat and emerged as just a sort of gargle. “You’re almost a credit to my mate’s wisdom, Rugaard. Now get back to my brother, before he flings his dragons against towers and war machines. The Bant think it’s their country; they should be the ones dying for it.”
As it turned out, he didn’t return to SiDrakkon in time. After reluctantly pressing Harf into service as a food carrier, he, the bats riding in a two-layer basket, and his thralls made the surface two days sooner than it had taken on the trip with the main force, thanks to a quick passage on the rails. The Copper drove the cart day and night, sleeping uncomfortably on the noisy rails when he wasn’t pulling.
The rains had turned the countryside green in the interval, and there were herds everywhere, following the water and growth. Dry washes now ran with water, and armies of frogs had appeared as though by magic.
The bats had good hunting at night, for the waters had awakened all manner of insect life as well.
Harf disappeared one rain-filled night, and Fourfang guessed he’d run away. The Copper toyed with the idea of sending the bats to find him, but was in fact relieved to be rid of him, and wished him well. Fourfang prophesied: “Day and day at most before lions eat him.”
They reached the Mud City, and the Copper simply waited in an open square, watching some half-grown humans practice throwing spears, until NiThonius showed up. He’d taken the laundry off his horns with the rains, but he still looked haggard.
“I’m relieved to find you here,” the Copper said. “I really must learn a few words of this tongue. I can’t even ask those children playing there where to find you.”
“Children playing? That’s part of the king’s guard, now. Every family in Bant has had to send a fresh warrior, and rather than give up strong men they’re sending the old and the young.”
SiDrakkon had taken his war, and what of the king’s forces he could scrape together, all the way to the Black River. Nithonius gave him three blighter guides, who took him across the savanna, hunting as they traveled. They also taught him several words for the local flora and fauna, though he made little progress with the language beyond that.
So within two-score days’ time of leaving the Lavadome he found himself on a bluff overlooking a green river valley, and a battle being lost.
It was a strange transition. One moment the Copper was walking up a long, grassy slope still wet with morning dew. A spotty-hided feline watched them from a dead tree limb, the silence so perfect he heard each grass-parting footstep from the guides in front and Fourfang and Rhea behind.
Then they crossed the hillcrest into chaos.
The river broke into pieces here, lined with sandbars, some with trees up past their roots in floodwaters. On the far bank stood a fortress of the Ghi men: a rounded hill, crowded with stone housing and surrounded by a wide, stout wall and marshy ground. The fortress stood next to taller hills cut open and butchered for the stone they contained.
A dead dragon lay on the riverbank, below a raised path that led up to the fortress gate. The path itself was littered with what looked like colorful bundles, and it was only after a moment’s reflection that he realized they were bodies.
Another of the duelists lay, apparently unconscious, panting, bleeding, while a couple of blighters pulled gingerly at spear shafts sticking out of his underside. The Copper left Fourfang and Rhea with some gibbets of drying game and dead Ghi men and approached the
wounded dragon. It was HeBellereth, the red.
The Copper looked downriver and saw confused motion at the bank of some eddies in the river. Bant men and blighters were riding or wading across the thigh-deep water, retreating from the far bank.
“One more flight, NoTannadon. Just one more flight,” SiDrakkon was saying. “You must keep them off the Drakwatch and what’s left of the blighters. Otherwise they’ll never get back across the river. They’re out of range of the war machines now.”
The duelist dug in his throat with his saa and extracted a piece of an arrow. “And end up like HeBellereth, or the corpse across the river? Go yourself.”
Several deep thwack noises rose even to the hilltop, and the Copper saw the arms of war machines whipping up from thick hedges of concealing brush. They threw masses of stones high in the air, dark clouds that dispersed as they fell on the river crossing. Warriors threw cowhide shields up over their heads for protection, but they had no more effect than a mist. Blighters fell by the score.
“Curse them!” SiDrakkon roared, and flapped into the air. He swooped down over the river crossing and loosed his flame upon the bushes and war machines.
He turned a tight circle over the river valley and plunged among the burning machines, throwing men and their constructs this way and that in his fury.
The Copper saw a group of Drakwatch clustered around Nivom—he was easy to see at a distance, a white vesper with head rising again and again to call to the drakes. Nivom loosed his flame into a mass of rock and washed-up timber on the riverbank, and was rewarded by the sight of tin-helmeted Ghi men running, throwing aside their weapons. Nivom dashed through the inferno and came back with something in his mouth. He dropped it long enough to call to the last few Drakwatch on the north bank of the river, and as they plunged into the current he retrieved his prize and followed.
The blighters staggered back up the hill, some throwing themselves into the first piece of cover to pant or tend one another’s wounds. The proud Drakwatch had an easier climb, being four-legged, save for the wounded. Nivom stalked right past his injured drakes and started up the hill.