by GARY DARBY
And yes, I do mean to flee from this hellhole and take Scamper and myself someplace where there are no dragons and no Wilders to bring horror and anguish that rips at soul and mind.
My only fear is, does such a place actually exist?
Chapter 3
I jerk upright and throw my coarse, thin blanket to one side. My heart thuds in my chest, my eyes fly open, and I thrust my hands out as if to ward off some rampaging monster. My heart pounds so loud it’s as if I can hear dragon wings beating in the air above me. Just as they did on that awful night of hellfire.
The nightmare doesn’t come as often as it once did but when it comes, the memory is like dragon fire, burning, searing, and filling me with an anguish that sometimes takes hours before it finally cools down to the point that I can think about anything else again.
I take a deep breath and bury my head in my hands. The early morning is cool, on the brink of actually being cold, but still, I wipe clammy dampness off my face.
A tiny silver sphere of sweat forms on the end of my nose and hangs there for an instant before it drops to the straw. My mouth works, but no words come out, only a guttural groan of pain and loss.
The rustling of dragon scales in a nearby birthing stall causes me to raise my head and the pain in my eyes is replaced by pure hatred. I stare at the dragon, Glittering Wind, a sapphire who stirs restlessly in her giant enclosure before she settles back down on all fours and goes to sleep.
Hate fills my eyes, my mind, my soul as I stare at the foul beast.
I can’t ever forget. I won’t ever forget. I only have one nightmare, but it will stay with me forever.
I hear a faint fluttering high above me. The whiteback morning doves that live in the barn’s rafters are waking, which means that dawn is not far off. However, my day begins well before daybreak. Malo will be making his rounds soon, and I’ll be the first he wakes.
I retrieve my threadbare blanket that I tossed onto the barn’s loose chaff and lie back onto my musty straw bed. I know I have little time left before Malo appears, but sleep is a precious commodity, and I’ll take whatever moments I can get. My bristly blanket used to cover all of me when I was younger, but I’ve grown some, and now it only reaches down to my knees.
But if I curl up just so, I can huddle most of my body under the thin covering. And now that we dragon workers are back to Draconstead’s high meadows, with its early spring cool, sometimes cold nights, I also keep my goat’s hair tunic on at night, with the hood up to cover my head. And I leave my pants and socks, holes and all, on at night, too. Together, they’re just enough to ward off the cold. Most nights.
I close my eyes, but my effort to drop off to sleep is wasted. I hear Malo’s footsteps shuffling through the loose stubble just in time to roll out of bed before he plants his boot in my backside. He holds his lantern high, and I can see not only the leer on his thin, craggy face but the short, finely pointed Proga lance he always carries.
“That’s good,” Malo cackles, the lantern’s light casting his yellow and broken teeth in garish relief. “You’re getting faster.” He shoves the lance menacingly close and smirks. “Better a boot and another bruise than this again, eh?”
My hand goes instinctively to my side, to the fresh wound that still bleeds just a bit and at times feels like someone has put a hot coal to my flesh. The bleeding will eventually stop, but the pain stays for several days.
Malo may be getting old, but he can still move pretty fast, especially with his Proga lance. I’ll take his boot over the searing lance any day. I overheard one of the other dragon workers say that getting bit by the lance was akin to lying naked “on a fire ant nest for a day.” I wouldn’t know. I’ve never sat or lain on top of fire ants, but I’ve had the lance put to me more than once, and if given the choice, I might try the ants next time.
As for my bruises, yes, I have a goodly collection of black and blue marks. If there were a contest among the other workers who had the most, I’d win easily. Course when you’re a puny runt, and you look like me, scarred arm, leg, and face, what else is there to expect? Still, though my bruises are plentiful, I’ll take them over the Proga.
“Get the cook’s wood and water,” Malo orders, “then start with the yearlings’ paddocks, Wind Fury’s first. The trainers will be working with him first thing this morning.”
He turns and points to the closest empty stall. “Have that cleaned out by noon. The master may be bringing another sapphire birther to the barn this afternoon.”
I give a quick nod in acknowledgment and reach for my boots. I have to work at getting my feet into them as the thigh boots are too small for me, but I can’t have new ones till next spring. I’m hoping that one of the other workers will throw away his old pair. Since they’re all older than I, naturally their boots are larger. Still, I’d rather have oversized boots that I can stuff straw into and fill the space to prevent blisters than to have to bend my toes in an awkward, painful fashion all day long.
I’ve thought about cutting the toe ends out of my boots or going barefoot, but neither is something you do when you work around dragons with their sharp talons and their never-ending supply of dung.
Seeing that I have my boots on, Malo moves away, taking his light with him. I don’t rate a lantern, nor even a candle, but in the little hole I call home, I know every part by heart, even in complete darkness. Besides, there’s nothing I need to find, everything I own is on my body, except for my blanket, which I quickly tuck in my little secret hiding spot.
I reach into the straw just above where I lay my head and touch a warm, furry body. For an instant, Scamper rouses, and I say, “In early today, huh?” Lots of times, he spends the whole night hunting and usually doesn’t return until past dawn.
I slide my hand down to his tummy. Nice and full. That explains why he’s back so soon. He probably tried, but can’t put another worm, stickle bug, or maybe a nest of termites in that cavern he calls a stomach. “I’ve got to go to work, Scamp, but I’ll try to sneak something out of the meal house for you. You go back to sleep.”
I can feel him wiggle in delight under my hand before he quickly quiets down and falls asleep. I scuttle out the barn’s side door, my tunic hood still up, and hurry up the path that runs past the meal house to the woodpile. The early morning dew on the grass wets my pants below my knees, and I can see my breath in the air. Even by early-morn starlight, it’s not hard to find the wood as the woodcutter’s been busy and the smell of newly cut timber wafts heavily on the light breeze.
I stop at the woodpile that rises to my chest and stare at the darkness that shrouds Dielong Forest. I can make out the closest stand of birchen trees, their white trunks standing in stark contrast to the gloom of the spruce-filled forest behind them.
Somewhere deep in this same forest was my family’s cottage and I stand staring for just a moment thinking how apt the name is for Dielong Forest, especially when it’s dragons that do the killing. My breath is a short plume in the cool air, and my eyes turn hard as I rub my good hand over my scarred arm. I wonder to myself, what would have been better — to suffer a long death or to live like this?
I don’t have an answer, so I load myself up with split wood to the point that my knees almost buckle. But if I don’t completely fill the wood bin for Marly and Larl, there’ll be no dawn meal for me, or maybe even a middle meal, either. I labor back down the path, staggering under the wood’s weight. I quietly fill the box that sits next to the kitchen’s back door, careful not to wake the two cooks.
They’ll be up soon enough, but if I wake them before Malo does, well, I can forget about any meals for the day, and maybe even tomorrow. I hurry over to the stone-rimmed well. Four full, heavy buckets of water later, I’m done with my meal house chores just as a faint glow spreads across the horizon.
Later, with the early morning sun peeking just over the horizon, I’m in the paddocks. I’ve had my first meal, more bread, cheese, and a piece of turnip. Before I went to the stalls, I da
shed into the barn, split the cheese with Scamper and then picked up my dung rake, shovel, and wooden wheelbarrow before heading outside.
To my chagrin, Malo has me take the four two-week-old sprogs with me again. Most likely, for the next month or so, I’ll have these smelly beasts with me most everywhere I go during the day. They’re too young to go to the trainers just yet, so I get to shepherd them around while going about my chores.
Their mothers understand what I’m doing; still, when I approach their birthing stalls, I have to endure several moments of their sniffing, to make sure it’s just me, Hooper. Once I have all four sprogs rounded up, I put them in the barrow and head for the paddocks. They think it’s great fun to ride, but I only do it because otherwise, it’s too hard trying to get them out of the barn.
Have you ever tried to herd cats? Same thing with baby dragons, only worse. Cats mill around a bit but definitely will stay out of harm’s way. Not these four. If I don’t keep a sharp eye on them, they’ll head in four opposite directions including into Wind Boomer’s stall where one misstep from the big crimson dragon and we’d have a squashed, dead sprog. Not to mention that if that happened, I might end up with no head.
Lord Lorell takes raising his dragons very seriously, and his dragon workers had better, too — or else.
Once inside Wind Fury’s pen and after closing the gate, I dump the sprogs to one side. To me, a newborn sprog’s head looks like their mama sat on it. Sort of flat and with four little nubbins marking where their horns will grow. Between squashed head and its back end is a fat toadlike body that ends in a snippet of a tail that reminds me of a writhing worm caught on a fishing hook.
From head to tail end, each of these sprogs would match up against a good-sized watermelon in size. They’ll grow to be a hundred times bigger than what they are now, of course. They grow so fast that it won’t be long before I won’t be able to pick any of them up.
And they smell.
Think of a rotten egg the size of a melon. Ugly, stinking, and something only a dragon mother could love.
They don’t smell all that much better when they’re adults, either.
I can’t wait until they’re a little older, and then the dragon trainers get to be their constant companions. I hate being around dragons as it is, but the birthing season is the worst.
I get busy as Wind Fury, a red dragon from last spring’s sprog crop, has been busy, and my barrow is almost full of muck before I pause, lean against my rake and glance toward the rising sun, a deep reddish orange against the dark-blue sky.
I once saw something called a tangerine, down in Draconton’s market. A fruit it was and supposedly, it had come from far south of here but its color was the same as this morning’s sun.
High overhead, the sunlight paints a few remaining wisps of clouds the color of a chestnut horse. The clouds themselves look like a horse’s tail and streak the blue before rushing away toward the east.
I can’t help but think that if I were anywhere else but here, it would be a beautiful morning.
But I am here in this dragon hell-hole and as I take my eyes off the sky, a dirt clod comes sailing past my head and before I can duck, another thick chunk of sod catches my ear. The sting is enough to make me whirl angrily, but it’s the laughing faces that bite even more.
“Hey, sausage boy! Or, should we say ‘quack, quack, mama duck, get your head out of the muck’ and back to your job.”
Hakon and Arnie, the two novice blacksmiths, lean over the dragon paddock’s top railing and grin, or rather, sneer at me.
“Eaten any sausages lately?” Arnie snickers. “Roasted over an open fire maybe?”
Both boys snort and jab each other with their elbows. Dragons may be at the top of my hate list, but I admit, Hakon and Arnie come in a close second. “Why don’t you two go nail a couple of head rivets in those skulls of yours,” I retort.
Hakon and Arnie look at each other in puzzlement. “Did the walking sausage,” Hakon sputters, “just try and make a joke?”
“It was a joke, right?” Arnie says ominously, his eyes hard and cold.
“Of course,” I quickly reply. “Everyone knows your heads are too thick to drive a skull rivet through.”
The two glance at each other, unsure if I was poking fun at them or not. Hakon runs a hand through his stringy red hair and points a finger toward the stockade’s far end. “Hey pooper scooper,” he chortles in his reedy voice, “you missed a big pile over there.”
He leans farther over the rail, his eyes narrow and threatening. “And I better not be stepping in any of it while I’m working either if you know what’s good for you.”
I turn to see what he’s pointing at, a slurry mound large enough to fill one whole wheelbarrow, just left by the crimson who casually plods away, oblivious to the extra work he’s just given me. I screw my mouth to one side and what little bravado I had toward Hakon and Arnie slips away. “I’ll take care of it,” I mutter.
“You better,” Arnie says and then juts his square chin out at my four little companions that huddle at my feet. “And make sure you clean up after your little ducks too, or you’ll get what you got last time.” He pumps his fist in front of his ruddy, pimpled face to drive the point home. Laughing, the two jump down off the railing and tromp off.
Not all of my lumps and bruises come from Malo, you know.
I pull the sleeve of my forest-green tunic farther down over my burned, disfigured arm. I know what the scars on my arm and face look like. As if someone had left a sausage on the fire pit coals too long. Hooper the Sausage Boy, some call me.
One of my many titles thanks to the cruelty of dragons.
I hear the paddock gate opening and turn to find Helmar entering the enclosure. I wipe at the grit on my face while he eyes me as he sets his bow and quiver to one side. He adjusts his scabbard that holds a sword’s dark hilt and grunts with a small upturn of his lips. “What happened, did you stumble and plant your face in the dirt? You want to be careful, you might find yourself in something else next time.”
“Yes sir,” I quietly answer. “I’ll try to be more careful.” The smile in his eyes tells me that he saw everything, but I know from experience to keep my mouth shut. When you’re Hooper, the lowest of the low, you have no voice, and you’re barely visible to anyone else, except when they need someone to do the really filthy work.
I glance over to where Hakon and Arnie are striding away. They’re both the same age as I, sixteen summers going on seventeen, but there the similarities end. They’re tall and well-muscled whereas my skinny and halting body would make a scraggly scarecrow look good. They’re in training to become Master Dragon Blacksmiths whereas all I’m in training for is to become the Master of the Dung Heap.
Just then, the crimson comes shuffling over. Helmar reaches up to scratch him between his eyes, something dragons love. “How’s Wind Fury doing?” he practically croons to the young scarlet.
He gestures to the red’s side scales. “Help me check his loop rivets, Hooper, let’s make sure they’re not coming loose.”
He takes one side, and I take the other. When farm dragons are about two months old, and their scales harden enough, the blacksmiths place small body rivets in front of and behind where the wings join the body. Then, they run lightweight chains through the rivets and bind the wings to the body to keep the dragon from flying off.
Sometimes, if the dragon is headstrong and wants to climb up and over its stall’s high fence, the trainers will use heavier chains through the rivets and fasten them to a sturdy wooden post set deep in the paddock’s center. The chains are long and loose enough that the dragon can roam freely in its pen, but not long enough for the animal to climb to the fence’s top rail.
For a red, this youngster is quite docile, so I don’t have to be too wary of his sharp fangs as I get near his head. Even so, a nip from a dragon twice the size of a grown horse and you might find yourself missing fingers or an ear.
As I finish and move aroun
d his snout to speak to Helmar, the red gives me a head-butt. For a dragon, the blow was actually gentle, but still, it almost knocks me over so I slap him hard on his muzzle, right between his soft nostrils. He gets a hurt look to which Helmar says in a reproving tongue, “Hooper, he’s only playing with you, no need to clip him on the nose.”
I turn and give Helmar a respectful bow. “Master Novice, if you would like to frolic with this beastie, then do so, but I don’t play with dragons.”
He runs a soothing hand between the dragon’s eyes. “I wish I could, but I’m too busy today, some other time perhaps.”
Watching him practically croon to the scarlet drake, I can’t help but ask, “Helmar, why do you like dragons so much?”
He practically sneers at my question. “Dragons are wealth and power, Hooper. And for me, a chance to become a Dragon Master of a Great House, like Master Boren. And that means a fine home, good food, even a servant or two.”
He checks the wing chain’s last few links before muttering, “And for me the only way up the ladder.”
I understand his answer. Like me, Helmar is a “cast-off,” someone who wasn’t born under the House of Lorell’s coat of arms. His father, a tanner, took his firstborn son as his apprentice, and sent Helmar, his second son, to Draconstead to be a dragon worker. That was two seasons ago. But in that time, Helmar showed such an affinity for dragons, that Master Boren quickly recognized his talents and gave him more and more responsibility.
When Daron Dracon, Master Boren’s first and only son, refused his father’s offer to become his novice, he turned to Helmar. If no one else understood Master Boren’s selection, I did. Helmar is tall, strong, handsome, a natural leader with a warrior’s spirit who gets the most out of dragons and men.
Daron is everything Helmar is not. He’s moody, cruel, and not the least bit interested in dragons, or Draconstead. If I know that he’s going to be at the stead, I do my very best to stay as far away from him as possible and with good reason.