Dragon Champion

by E. E. Knight

  “There.” It took Auron a moment to know what she was talking about. A wide-antlered deer stood atop the gully, staring straight at them. Auron twitched, but Wistala put her tail across his neck.

  “They can run longer and faster than us. One leap—that’s all you get with deer,” Wistala echoed Mother’s words to him. Her mind felt so like Mother’s; it made his hearts hurt.

  She continued. “If I come any closer, he walks away, always watching me. I don’t dare walk directly at him, but even at an angle he moves all of them downhill. We can’t see the herd now, because they’re around the bend he’s standing on.”

  “Wistala, can you find your way lower down the gully? Back out and go around. In a big loop?”

  “I suppose.”

  “You’re good at finding a perch. Get to one over the gully, and I’ll bring them to you.”

  “You mean like . . . like,” she thought, forming a mental picture of a shepherd moving his flock when the word escaped her.

  “Like I’m herding them. Exactly.”

  She looked around. “Give me until when the sun rests on that dead tree branch. Drive them then. Can you hold down your hunger until then?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  She brushed him with her nose. “It’ll have to do. Remember, don’t go right to him or he’ll run. Angles, angles.”

  “Get going—I’m trembling already.”

  He stayed in her mind until she was out of range, getting the feeling for how she moved among the trees, taking advantage of every deadfall and stump. Why hadn’t Mother taught him to move like that?

  He waited, watching the sun. The stag had plans of his own, and vanished below the ridgeline. Auron tried to get the sun’s angle right and crept down the gully, turning color at every pause. He crept under a boulder’s shadow, turning half-white to match the snow beneath, and caught sight of the stag. It had crossed over to the other rim of the gully, in the direction Wistala had gone. He glimpsed the herd now and again. The deer seemed to vanish against the trees when not moving.

  He hoped they wouldn’t wander down the gully of their own accord before Wistala was ready. But the herd left the shelter and came to a meadow where rich new grass already stood thick on the ground. Auron peeped an eye up over the edge of the gully and watched. The canny stag, after a long look at the meadow, moved to put himself downwind of his females and offspring again.

  Auron got a flash of a mental picture. Faint, it faded in an instant, but he had the impression of Wistala being above the gully.

  He ventured out into the meadow, not moving toward the herd but creeping along the tree line, feet plunging into the frigid water of a mountain marsh. Deer heads came up, ears twitching, and as one the herd returned to the gully. Auron angled back for the place he had last seen the stag. He heard the deer moving down the gully. If he could just keep—

  The stag exploded from almost beneath his feet, bounding down the slope as if he were made of lighting. The other deer leaped away, fawns already able to keep up with their mothers even in flight, white tails flashing in a confusing mix of directions. Auron had no choice but to run in pursuit.

  He scuttled forward in a dragon dash. In open ground, he might have had the stag, but the trees made his sprint a clumsy one. He ran along as best he could after the first burst, but the sounds of the deer faded into the woods. Wistala would be heartbroken, they would go hungry for another day—and it was his fault.

  “Auuuuu-ron!” he heard a high, trilling call of his young sister. “Blood and mud, I’ve killed!”

  New vigor in his limbs at the thought of blood-warm food, Auron located on the sound. Wistala was already dragging the carcass up a grandfather of pines, the still-twitching body of a yearling buck fully her own size in her jaws. Auron looked at the kicked-up ground where she had pounced from the hundred-limbed tree.

  “What are you carrying it up there for?”

  “You want to fight wolves for your dinner?”

  Auron’s stood up tall on his legs, his lips pulling back to reveal the full length of his hatchling teeth. “I’d like to see them try, hungry as I am.”

  “Then get up here and join me.”

  He coiled and sprang up to her place on the bloody trunk in a single leap. She hung the kill in the crotch of a tree. Together, they ate.

  Chapter 6

  I feel like we’re going back up the mountain,” Wistala said the next day.

  The mountains marched north to the horizon, but to the south the ground was lower, a gap in the mountains’ teethlike wall. They had been traveling since dawn, watching out for each other by taking turns. While Wistala rested, Auron would move through the pine woods until he was about to lose sight of her. Then he would jump up a tree and keep watch while she caught up and then went ahead until she could hardly make him out.

  “We need to cross over to the west. This is the easiest way.”

  Wistala snorted. “Easiest? I’d hate to try the hardest. I don’t want to leave the trees, Auron. We’ll still need to hunt.”

  Auron aligned her head with his, pointing to a bare ridge with their noses. “When we get to that spot, we’ll be able to see west.”

  “You know this how?”

  “Mind-pictures from Father.”

  “Father hardly gave us any. Oh, I wish we had our wings.”

  “Wishing won’t get us up the hill.”

  “I never said any such thing—Wait, Auron, there’s something ahead.”

  Auron heard it, too. They hugged tree trunks, pressing their bodies flat to the scabby-barked boles. Auron put himself toward the sound of pine needles being crunched underfoot, with Wistala on the other side of the trunk. He turned a deep brown and kept one eye open. His sister touched his tail with the tip of hers.

  A flat-faced mountain of muscle and fur appeared, moving on all fours. It picked up a hint of their scent and stopped, turning its colossal head to and fro with its short snout in the air.

  “Bear. Alone,” Auron thought to her.

  “Dragons can’t eat bears.”

  “Not dragons our size. You should see this thing. If we climbed a tree to get away, it would just push it down.”

  “It doesn’t know we’re little, though. Do we smell like little dragons or big dragons?”

  “How should I know?”

  “We’re going to find out, brother.” Auron heard a faint sound from the other side of the tree, like a spill of rain.

  The bear’s head turned at the sound, wizened eyes looking directly at their tree.

  “That’s done it—he knows where we are,” Auron thought. “What a time to panic.”

  “I didn’t panic.”

  Auron’s sharp eyes saw the bear’s nostrils twitch. It stood up on its hind legs and sniffed. It came to the ground, turned, and ran. Auron watched it head for thick timber in its odd, lolloping run.

  Wistala craned her long neck around the tree and watched it go. “We smell like big dragons,” she said.

  Auron rubbed his snout against his sister’s. “Do you think I’ll have my own song to sing?”

  Wistala still searched the tree line for signs of the bear. “How’s that?”

  “Will I ever be as great a dragon as Father?”

  She blinked as she thought. “You’re smart and careful.”

  “But will a dragonelle want me? My skin doesn’t shine, I’m thin—”

  “Remember what Mother said. It’s a gift in a way—”

  “Don’t remind me of Mother. And Mother’s not a dragonelle. Who would mate with me? You’re lucky.”

  “Lucky?” she cocked her head, startling a red-winged bird into flight from the branch above.

  “You’re normal.”

  “Drakka don’t have it any easier. Harder, in some ways. Mother told us there are only a few males left. They die in wars, in the nest, or in challenges over territory. Stupid fights.”

  Auron didn’t remember Mother saying any such thing, but she had spent more time w
ith his sisters. “So even a gray—?”

  His sister leaned against him, and he felt the pleasant prickle of her scales. “Many dragonelles go mateless their whole lives. Don’t be foolish about your fights, you know—”

  “Your wrath shouldn’t win,” Auron supplied.

  “Exactly. And you’re quick. You swing your neck and your tail so fast sometimes. It’s quite impressive. Even to a sister who knows all your faults. You’ll have a mate and a clutch to be proud of one day, I’m sure, and raise a sii of clutch champions like yourself.”

  Auron felt his skin go warm at the praise.

  “Oh, quit prruming,” Wistala said. “First we’ve got to live until our wings emerge. That’s years off, and we still have to find Father.”

  A mountain is the least pleasant place to be in a thunderstorm. They had just reached the ridge as twilight began. From its heights, they saw storm clouds sweeping up from the horizon in a rolling line, like ranks of an advancing army from one of Father’s mind-pictures.

  Auron didn’t know much about weather, but the air had an ominous tang to it, and there was a rumbling in the distance, as if mountains were falling apart far away. Something about the air and the sound made him want to get underground. But he had his look at the landscape. Details to the west were hazy, but far to the south, Auron could see a white-watered river, and more mountains, blue lumps on the far side of the river.

  “I think we should get off this ridge,” he said. Another wooded valley stood below them.

  Wistala agreed, but they did not make it back into the trees before a battle between Air and Water broke out above their heads. Air pushed up from the west, moaning and shrieking out her anger, and Water tried to stop her by hurling sheets of rain. They pitted Lighting and Thunder against each other, lighting the valley with flashes.

  The two hatchlings couldn’t get under anything, but they did wedge themselves between a pair of boulders to keep out of the worst of the wind. They pulled down their water-lids over their eyes, which blurred their vision.

  “It sounds like the end of the world,” Wistala said, shivering against him.

  “The Upper World needs the rain. It keeps everything refreshed,” he said, tucking her head against his flank.

  “I hate the Upper World! It’s all noise and danger. Everything can see me from far away, and there’s nowhere dark to hide.”

  Auron stuck out his tongue. He curved it so the forks made a channel for the rainfall to run down. “But taste this water, Wistala.”

  She glared at him, her eyes clouded by the water-lids. “I’m not thirsty.”

  “Taste it anyway.”

  The tip of her tongue flicked out. “There. Happy now? What’s—?” She paused, and stuck out her tongue a second time, then a third. “Threat and wet, this is rather good.”

  “Better than cave water.”

  They startled at every flash of lightning, and their necks bobbed down at each chorus of thunder, but they stood firm with tongues out, defying the storm, enjoying the trickle of rainwater.

  The worst of Air and Water’s fight passed on over their heads, though the storm still blew as if all the wind in the world were trying to rush through the river gap. Real night fell, but less cold than those they had passed the previous two. Rather than making them wet and uncomfortable, the rain improved Wistala’s mood, for it flushed the accumulated dirt away from under her scales. She rolled and arched in the softer, after-storm rain, prruming. Auron, with no twigs or pebbles rubbing under his scales to trouble him, merely felt clean and refreshed.

  They awoke the next morning with just enough of an appetite to make a hunt feel like a pleasant necessity. After finding another group of goats in the heights, they reversed their method with the deer. This time Wistala drove the goats toward Auron, who hugged the side of a rock with an eye cocked to the game and his body tinted a perfect match for the slate-colored stone. A goat caught his scent too late; Auron’s dragon dash brought it down, though Auron took a kick in his voicebox for the trouble. It turned out to be a stringy old billy, but the satisfaction that their hunting system worked so well flavored the tough meat with the zest of accomplishment.

  It would have been an easier dinner yet, had they pounced on the horses corralled under the trees.

  Thirty-seven horses sharing a small space—Auron counted them using his fingers singly and toes to keep score of groups of eight fingers—made an easy scent trail to follow. What had Father told and shown him about horses? Men armored them and rode them into battle. Elves used them to move from one place to another quickly, but fought on their feet. Dwarves harnessed them to pull wagons or carry packs, blighters ate them, and dragons frightened them. It took an exceptionally good rider to stay saddled when facing a dragon.

  After counting the horses, he backed away as slow as a winter cave slug. He turned to find Wistala.

  “What is it?” she asked, sensing danger in his caution.

  “Horses. Not wild—someone has caught them between downed trees.”

  “And just left them? We’ll have an easy meal, then.”

  “I don’t care for the look of it. All those horses and no one around.”

  She sniffed the air. “Are you sure of that, Auron? I smell a cold fire.”

  “I did, too, but I saw no hominids.”

  “That doesn’t mean they weren’t there. Sneak and peek, elves hide so well, they look like tree limbs, until they put an arrow in your eye.”

  “Want to take a look yourself?” Auron asked.

  “No, I’ll keep my eyes, thank you. Let’s circle round.”

  “Wistala, this morning when the sun rose, we were in the shadow of the mountain we came out of. The west tunnel must be here somewhere.”

  “High, do you think? So that only a dragon could fly in or out?”

  “I wonder. Remember the bats? It would have to be near where they could go out and hunt at night. The bats used the west tunnel, I’m sure of that.”

  “Mother said the blighters used to live in the cave. Maybe they had a lower entrance the bats used.”

  “It won’t hurt to go up the mountain a little. To some of the higher meadows. I don’t want to be in these trees if there are elves hunting.”

  His sister nodded, and they raised their noses in the air until they were sure of the direction of the wind. It was blowing out of the northwest. They couldn’t travel right into it to let the air carry a warning; the best they could do was cut across it. They crept along low, keeping their bellies to the ground, slithering through underbrush when they could.

  They gained a high meadow. The warm western sun and spring air had reduced the snow to clumps of ice beneath the beds of pine needles or in the shade of rocks. Wistala’s green scales and his chameleon-like coloring made Auron confident of crossing the meadows safely. He hoped to get to a prominence, a splinter of the mountain that had fallen away and pointed like a claw at the setting sun “Auron! Auron . . . look.”

  He followed her gaze up. A dra—Father! Father was flying in from the southwest. He came down in two great loops, prey carried in each sii.

  Auron dashed across the field for the stone projection. He’d turn himself yellow as the sun if he could, if it would just get Father to look down.

  The dragon’s eyes were elsewhere. He disappeared behind the shoulder of the mountain. Auron got up to the outcropping, just enough to read Father’s mind: he was exhausted from long flight, burdened with food. Auron tried to broadcast danger with every thought in his brain, but by the time he reached the perch, all he could see was Father’s tail disappearing into a cave shaped like the half-moon.

  A cascade of broken rock stood below the cave mouth, as if the mountain had vomited its innards from that aperture. Remnants of what Auron guessed to be battlements stood all around. The ruins stood like teeth around the edges of the mouth, broken teeth shattered by some blow years ago. Leveled walls, fallen towers, and debris-filled ditches were overgrown with grass and lichen; mountain c
reepers hung their tresses to curtain the cave.

  Auron waited at the prominence. He couldn’t feel Father’s mind anymore. Wistala climbed up on the slab with him, so she just poked her head over the edge.

  “Father didn’t see me,” he told her.

  Wistala gulped anxiously.

  A terrible roar came from the cave. Even louder was the thought projection from Father . . .

  Betrayed! The Wheel of Fire! Auron got a flash of mind-pictures, dwarves and some kind of cliff-hugging buildings at the edge of a mountain lake.

  Sounds of battle echoed from the cave. Auron caught the faint flash of light from within. Dragon fire! Auron felt his heart beat with excitement at the thought of dwarves roasting in dragon fire.

  “Ku! Ku! Kuuuuu!” echoed dwarf voices.

  Father reappeared at the cave mouth, his face a black mass of soot, flames still licking from the sides of his mouth. He held his near foreleg tight to his body, where blood poured from his forejoint. Spears stuck from his neck in a gory collar. Father spread his wings. Auron saw a dwarf somehow clinging to his back, knees locked on Father’s armored spinal ridge, hacking at the base of the dragon’s neck with a crimson-painted ax. Father reared up on his hind legs, smashing the dwarf into a smear on the cavern roof.

  Wistala couldn’t watch. She threw herself off the prominence and into the meadow, crying.

  A horn sounded.

  Father’s mind was a iron wall of pain. Before he could flap his wings, bundles of grass flipped up; Auron saw spears and bows in the hands of pale-skinned elves with camouflaged shields. Arrows and spears sang as they tore through the air, some burning as they flew. Others above the cave popped up to empty baskets on Father, round glass globules that glittered in the setting sun as they fell.

  “Above you!” Auron trumpeted, putting every ounce of wind from his long lungs into the shout. His voice cracked in his first dragon roar.

  As Father twisted to look up, many of the weapons from below struck his scales. The globules hit him and shattered, and smoke came from where they struck. Auron felt the pain so clearly that he rolled into a ball.