“But I knew none of that at the time. I just knew that I had to find Boreas. So, unarmed and all but naked, I waded into the lake once more and made my way along the shallows, into the cave.” His mouth twisted in a sour smile. “Even in my fear, I found the stench within appalling. In the stories, you always hear of great wyrms lying atop heaps of treasure. In those stories the dragon’s lair is a cave transformed into a palace. Let me inform you that this is not true of a young dragon intent only on feeding and growing. I passed bits of carcasses, mostly those of sheep and horses, but some may have been human. All smelled equally bad. Near the back of the cave, I found the dragon.”
He took a deep breath. The others seemed not to breathe at all.
“It was dead, and the signs of a terrible fight were everywhere. I saw bits of my own armor and, no doubt, bits of me, scattered about the cave. The creature lay on the sandy floor, pierced by a number of ghastly wounds. My broken spear was nearby, as was my grandfather’s sword, now twisted like a piece of wire. Human and dragon blood mingled all over the floor.
“The dragon was about the size of a large draft horse, although its neck and tail gave it far greater length. When I saw it, and what it had done, I understood for the first time my folly in ever dreaming that I could slay a great wyrm single-handed. It was a most humbling experience.
“I had to decide what to do. There was no sign of Boreas, nor of our horses. I might freeze on the slopes, and I had to regain my strength before making my way out of the mountains. In fact, I was not at all certain that I would survive my wounds. But I had come to that place to be a dragon-slayer, and I wanted proof of the deed. I still had my knife, so I began to skin the dragon.”
He looked at the two of them somberly. “It is a long, hard task, skinning a dragon. It took me several days to accomplish it.”
“But what did you live on?” Shellring asked. “Did you hunt?”
“He did not need to,” said Nistur. “He had dragon meat.”
“Aye, and I can affirm that it is very sustaining. In fact, between the dragon’s flesh and the waters of the lake, I healed with amazing speed. Later, I learned that this was the dragon’s true vengeance on me, for I began to hope again. I did not know yet that my wounds were indeed mortal. That was to come later.
“The dragon bore many small wounds from the fight, and two that might have been mortal. One was a great rent in its chest. Another pierced the roof of its mouth. I do not know which was the deathblow, nor who dealt it. Indeed, I do not know if I killed the thing at all. It may have been Boreas. Perhaps I have lied about myself for all these years.
“My search of the dragon’s lair turned up no treasure. Apparently this one had not yet developed its acquisitive skills.” He held up the hand upon which gleamed the knotted ring. “I found only this, which had probably been on the hand of one of its victims. Even I knew its significance, so I took it, feeling that it might come in handy someday, as indeed it did.
“Finally, I had the dragon’s hide rolled into a bundle. I wanted to take its head as well, but I knew I would never be able to bear the weight. The hide would tax my strength to the fullest as it was. One thing I could not bring myself to do; I could not open the dragon’s stomach. I feared that I would find the remains of Boreas there.”
“I can understand how that might be a daunting prospect,” Nistur said. Shellring’s glare silenced him.
“Long had I dreamed of returning to my home as a hero, to be adored for the rest of my life. Now I had my dragon skin, but I knew I could never go back. I was certain that I had caused the death of Boreas, who had been far more popular in the district than I, whose father was a powerful man, and for whom I nursed a crippling guilt. So I set out for the far side of the pass.
“For months I made my way on foot through the wilderness. When my store of dried dragon meat was exhausted, I lived on what I could trap, catch with my hands, or bring down with rocks or with my knife lashed to my staff. A hundred times I was tempted to abandon that hide, for it was the weight of the thing that kept me to such a slow pace, and sometimes I had to drag, rather than carry it. But then I would reflect on all it had cost me. And so I would shoulder it again and carry on.
“In time I found that I was out of the mountains and in a district of rich, cultivated fields. In the villages I traded a few dragon scales for food and clothing. People looked at me strangely, and I must have presented a wild appearance. Surely they thought me mad, but a madman who carries a dragon hide on his back is worthy of respect everywhere. At a river wharf I traded some dragon claws for barge passage to the nearest city, and there I found an armorer.”
He stretched his long arms, displaying his scaly harness. “The armorer made this harness for me. It required only half the hide, and he took the other half as pay for his art. He was so pleased with the trade that he threw in a helmet, a decent sword, and a passable horse.
“From that day to this, I have earned my bread as a mercenary, a common sell-sword who fights in other people’s wars for pay. It is far from being a knight, but I no longer aspire to such foolishness.”
“It is a story worthy of a great poem,” Nistur said.
“When did you learn about your … uh, your condition?” Shellring asked tentatively.
“It was about two years later,” Ironwood answered. “I began to feel a tingling in my fingers sometimes. I thought I was just training too hard with the sword and shield, and thought nothing of it. Then it began in my toes. Then my hands and feet began to go completely numb. When my hands trembled I tried to hide it from my comrades, but in time some of them began to notice.
“An army is a tight little world, my friends. Everyone knows all about everyone else, or fancies that he does. Rumors are treated as revelations from the gods. I was already a strange figure in the brotherhood of mercenaries, a man who might have killed a dragon but was no sort of hero. Then my infirmity became known because it struck while we were in battle. More than once I was wounded because of it, although it was nowhere near as crippling as it is now. The rumors began to center on me. I was a man under a curse; some god or baleful spirit hovered over me, waiting to do me harm. I was an unlucky man to have around.
“Once a soldier bears such a reputation, brave deeds, loyalty, and skill at arms are to no avail. Men avoid him. Captains will not have him in their bands. A man who is unlucky brings ill luck to everyone near him. And there was something else.” The mercenary’s eyes were more haunted than ever.
“As if you had not problems enough!” Nistur said.
Shellring nudged him to silence. “What is it?”
“I began to see a dragon, sometimes in my dreams, sometimes in my waking hours. At first I thought these visions to be the phantoms of a disordered mind, for I spied it only at night or in the dusk, at a great distance. I thought it might be the spirit of the one slain on the mountainside, but this was no infant. It was a great wyrm; that much was apparent even from afar. But then others spotted the thing. It was real.
“In time, I chanced to pass again through the town where my armor had been made. I was appalled to find it utterly destroyed, so recently that the ruins still smoked. It was not the wreck of war. The place had been attacked by a dragon, and no one had been spared. Men, women, and children were slain by the hundreds, and the survivors were half mad with terror. I knew that this was no coincidence. No dragon had been seen in those parts for many generations. Those who could speak at all agreed on one thing: the dragon had been black.
“I sought out a wizard of the Red Robes, one learned in dragon lore, and told him my tale. He found it a most interesting case. He said that the presence of a black dragon in cold lands was most rare, for that breed love the hot lands and dwell in deep jungles and dismal swamps. He determined that the young one must have left the nest too soon and strayed into the cold mountains while searching out a lair of its own. The hot spring and the dark cavern drew it to the place where we found it. It would soon have left in search of wa
rmer climes.” He paused, as if the next part were especially painful.
“Because it left the nest too young, its mother was searching for it. She must have found the cave not long after I staggered away from it.” He thumped the scales over his chest. “Somehow, she has tracked me by this armor. She destroyed that town because the armorer still had the balance of the baby dragon’s hide in his possession. She would have found me long ago, but I kept moving, and she hunts only at night, and then only for a few days at a time, for she cannot abide the cold for long.”
“Why not rid yourself of that hide?” Shellring asked. “It can’t be that valuable.”
“I’ve tried,” he said. “Something prevents me from removing it, or even leaving the seams open for more than a few minutes at a time. I once tried to have a companion take it off me while I lay drugged. The moment he tugged at it, I snapped awake and half killed him before I came to my senses.”
“A most daunting prospect, my friend,” Nistur said. “It seems you have a choice of fates, and your principle amusement lies in seeing which kills you first, the effects of the young dragon’s poison or its mother’s vengeance.”
Ironwood leaned back, looking exhausted. “In time, like every mercenary for a hundred leagues around, I ended up in Tarsis. The local wars had petered out, and it was one of the few major cities I had not yet tried. I hoped to find a mercenary band that had not heard about me. Failing that, I was contemplating turning to banditry.”
He looked at them gloomily. “So much for my youthful yearnings to be a great hero, eh?”
“Perhaps fate has a different destiny in store for you,” Nistur said.
“It had better take shape soon,” Ironwood replied. “I have a feeling there’s not much time left.”
“That shaman hinted that he knew of a cure,” Shellring said hopefully. “Do you think he does?”
“I would not trust Shadespeaker,” said Nistur, “to cure a wart.” He caught the look of doubt on Ironwood’s craggy features. “None of that, my friend! I can see what you are thinking: perhaps the shaman knows something. That is just your hope speaking. For understandable reasons you desperately want to believe that the smelly savage has a cure for your ailment, and this lends his claims undeserved credibility in your mind. It is thus that crafty horse traders take advantage of us, causing us to perceive virtues in their nags that we find to be absent when we have ridden them a few leagues. We are easily gulled, for who among us does not desire to find a very fine, yet cheaply priced steed?”
“And you shouldn’t give up just yet,” Shellring said. “We’re going to get Stunbog out of prison. Give him enough time, and Stunbog can find a cure for anything!”
“Our nimble-fingered friend exaggerates a trifle,” Nistur said, “but she has truth on her side. Who knows what we may yet encounter? It is a large and magical world.”
Ironwood snorted. “Never fear, if I were the sort to give up, I’d have done so long ago.” He frowned. “What have the dwarves accomplished?”
They rose and went to the door, then stood aside as an older dwarf trundled a wheelbarrow of rubble from the excavation. The three peered in wonderingly. The industrious dwarves seemed to have melted into the rock, and now a straight-sided tunnel stretched before the companions. Clumps of luminous fungi had been stuck to the ceiling, but they could see nothing beyond the first few paces. The air was full of rock dust, and from far away they could hear the sound of tools against stone, working with machinelike rapidity.
Nistur gave a low whistle. “They told no lie about their affinity for digging. They go through stone like a mole through soft soil.” Even as he spoke he had to step aside for another laden wheelbarrow coming out, then for three more going back in empty.
“How did you come to know about these people?” Ironwood asked Shellring.
“I’ve spent most of my life in Old City cellars. When I was a child I explored all the tunnels I could find. Sometimes I’d meet a dwarf. They aren’t very sociable toward people who live above ground, but they could see I didn’t represent any threat. When Stunbog came to live out in the harbor, I told them about him.”
They went back to the table. “Had you no family?” Nistur asked.
“If I did, I don’t remember them. I’ve picked up my living on the streets and in the cellars as long as I can recall.” She laughed ruefully. “At least the two of you have been something and have traveled. I’ve never been anyplace but here, and I’ve never been anything but a thief.”
“But you are a very good thief,” Nistur pointed out. “A true paragon among thieves.”
“And you’ve been a loyal friend,” Ironwood commended.
“These last few days with the two of you have been the most interesting of my life,” she admitted. She raised the seal that dangled from her neck and gazed at it fondly. “And it’s been great fun having this and lording it over the citizens.” She let it drop and sighed. “I suppose all that will be over soon.”
“Of all the statements we may make,” Nistur said, “predictions of the future must be among the most ill-advised. Let us meet the coming hours as best we can. I doubt that any of our previous experience will be of great use to us, but that is what makes this life so exciting.”
With full stomachs, they rested for a while, then nodded off at the table with their heads pillowed on their arms, oblivious of the distantly clinking tools and the rumbling of the wheelbarrows. They awakened when dwarven hands shook their shoulders.
“We’re beneath the cell now,” Hotforge told them. “Do you want to be there when we bring them out?”
“Decidedly!” Nistur said, standing and snatching up his hat. “I have been involved in jailbreaks before, but none as unique as this!”
Ironwood yawned and stretched, making his armor creak. “I would not miss this,” he agreed.
Shellring was already up and running to the door when a low vibration rumbled through the huge room. “What’s that?” she demanded. “Earthquake?” She looked up in near panic. The Cataclysm had left Tarsians with a permanent fear of falling masonry.
“Probably nothing,” Hotforge said. “Let us hope so, anyway.”
They followed him into the dimness of the tunnel, where the rock dust was settling to the floor and the sound of the tools had stilled. The tunnel was adequately wide, but Ironwood had to stoop to clear the low ceiling, and Nistur had to remove his hat. Only Shellring could walk upright with ease.
They came to the end of the tunnel, which had been widened into a circular room with a much higher roof. In the center, a few blocks had been retained so that a final workman could stand and work on the last stones overhead. With a chisel he was chipping away at the mortar with almost silent taps of a hammer. As each block began to fall free, he caught it and lowered it to another worker.
To Nistur, this spot looked no different from the rest of the tunnel they had come through. “Are you certain that this is the correct spot?” he asked.
The dwarf leader looked offended. “How could we be wrong?”
“How, indeed?” Nistur mused.
Then they all paused as another vibration rumbled through the tunnel. Fine powder sifted down from the new cutting, and they looked at one another in silence. Moments later, one of the young dwarves rushed in.
“It’s waking!” he cried.
“Quick, now!” Hotforge commanded. “Get those last stones down! We’ve no time to be quiet or tidy. We must be away from here swiftly!”
The dwarf atop the pile of blocks redoubled his efforts, but the dwarven compulsion for perfect stonework was beyond the exigencies of emergency situations, and he continued to cut away the mortar, working around the edges of the blocks.
Ironwood snatched up a sledgehammer. “Get out of my way!” He bounded up to the top of the stone pile, knocking aside the finicky mason. With a powerful surge, he swung the hammer against the stone overhead. Stone chips rained down. Ironwood shook dust from his eyes and swung again, this time shutting h
is eyelids at the last moment. Larger fragments rained down.
“This is outrageous!” groaned the mason. “Scandalous!”
“In times like these we must set custom aside,” Hotforge said in consolation.
With a third swing, great chunks of stone began to fall. Ironwood himself fell back from the stone platform, to be caught by dwarven hands. The dust cleared, and a gaping hole was visible in the ceiling.
“What is happening?” a voice boomed hollowly from above.
“Stunbog?” Shellring cried. “We’re breaking you out!” A head poked down through the new aperture. The broad, handsome face looked astonished, and the long braids hung down toward the floor. “Shellring?” Myrsa said.
“Come on!” Shellring urged, almost dancing with impatience. “We don’t have much time. There’s some sort of monster on the way!”
Even as she spoke there came another rumbling, accompanied by a crashing noise and a prolonged, hissing shriek.
“It’s breaking through the barrier!” Hotforge said. He grabbed one of the young dwarves by the tunic. “Run and tell everyone to get out and drop the iron portcullis that closes off the banquet hall.” He turned to the other workers. “Out with you! We’ve done what we can here. If the thing gets through the portcullis, keep retreating and dropping the barriers. Try to lure it into one of the deadfall traps. Go!” The workers dashed off.
“What about you?” Nistur asked. Ironwood was already back atop the platform of blocks, frantically smashing away at the stone overhead, widening the hole.
“I will stay,” Hotforge asserted. “I am old and might as well die. If we don’t kill the thing, it will eat the lot of us. Then it will sleep, and maybe those of my people who are left can kill it.”
“Never fear,” Nistur assured him, “my dragon-slayer companion will take care of it.”
“Dragon-slayer he may be,” Hotforge rumbled, “but he’s a wretched stonemason.” He eyed the ragged hole in the ceiling with deep disgust.
Ironwood sprang from the blocks. “They’re coming down now!”
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