Dragon Champion

by E. E. Knight

  “I see. A feud.” The dwarf started a fire.

  “Please.” Auron said the world with difficulty.

  “No. I know the Dragonblade spent some time here . . . oh, last summer, I think, hunting for one of your kind. A bronze, this pelt-trapper told me.”

  Auron stared at the burning twigs as they licked at a larger piece of driftwood. So the Dragonblade’s story was not just brag meant to cow a young dragon.

  Djer got out a frying pan. Auron was grateful for his silence. As darkness fell, the fire grew brighter against the now-shadowed riverbank. Djer threw a spoonful of delicious-smelling lard and strips of meat into the pan, and soon they were sputtering, all the while the dwarf grumbled in Dwarvish as though in an argument with the hot iron and its contents.

  When the meat was ready to be turned, he spoke again to Auron. “Let me tell you something about dwarves, young dragon. Who you’re related to determines your future, unless you’re a granitehardworking dwarf. I was born not even to miners, but to diggers. Plain tunneling folk, my father and his before. My father gave all he had to get me apprenticed to a miner, and I spent weary years working double-time saving to buy into the Chartered Company at my age. Gave up tobacco and beer, ate day-old bread so I could save to buy in.” The dwarf sighed. “Even so, I’ll never go anywhere with the Company unless I work out my life behind these horses in unprofitable lands—and I’m getting tired of the view—or do something special for the Company.”

  Auron saw eyes glittering from behind the mask.

  “You say you want to go east?” the dwarf asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Every year a trade Caravan goes east, from the gap in the south of these mountains across the steppes, crossing the realm of the Ironriders. The great east is a land of spices, timbers, fabrics, and metals that can’t be found around the Inland Sea. It’s the backbone of the Chartered Company, that Caravan. How would you like to travel it with me?”

  He pulled the sausages off the pan with a fork and tossed one to Auron. It burned his unsheathed tongue but was admirably tasty, better even than a fire-roasted horse Father brought home.

  “You go every year on this trip?” Auron asked.

  “Ach, no—I’m not important enough. But if I could bring a dragon along, well, they’d take me, sure and certain.”

  “How would a dragon help?”

  Auron thought he saw a glow from behind the mask as the dwarf pulled his beard. “Remember what I said about money? We pay our way east, rather than fight through the Ironriders. Bribes. Hiring guards. There’s a money wagon that we pay expenses out of. Usually we guard it with strong warriors, men hired at great cost. Funny how trustworthiness costs more than muscle. A dragon would be better. Ideal for you. You’d have nothing to do but ride with the treasure and look fearsome whenever we open it to pay the Steppe Kings. You’d eat rich and travel in style. What say you, Auron?” Djer finished a sausage and tossed Auron another.

  “Answer me a question first,” Auron said.

  “No trade secrets.”

  “I don’t think so. Why do dwarves hide their faces?”

  The dwarf chuckled. “Part custom among strangers. But there is sense to it aboveground.” Djer turned away from the fire, took off his cap, and reached behind his head. He peeled away the mask and turned to Auron. Great limpid eyes like that of an owl regarded him half-hidden by a heavy brow thick with hair. A scraggly beard . . . Auron widened his eyes and looked again. The dwarf’s beard shone, faintly, rather like the moss in his parents’ cavern. Tiny flecks of copper dust sparked in his beard.

  “Your beard . . . it glows.”

  “It’s sort of a moss. Most dwarves cultivate it in their whiskers with a morning sprinkling of sweetwater. Weathier men than I add silver, gold, or even jewels to enhance the glow. Useful when you’re in a dark hole. Sunlight kills it. And hurts the peepers, in the by. So what do you say, dragon? Help me earn a dusting of gold for my young whiskers?” Djer tossed him another sausage hot from the pan.

  “Tell me,” Auron finally said. “On this trip, will there be a lot of sausages?”

  Auron rode in the back of Djer’s cart curled up on the floor, stomach full of food, out of the wind and rain. If this was all he had to do to make his way east, he’d be happy to sit atop the dwarves’ bags of gold.

  Auron had decided to take the road east after long thought. For all he knew, the Dragonblade was hunting the lands between mountains and coast for him, and if he lingered, he’d be found again.

  He wanted to travel to NooMoahk, and learn the great weakness of dragons. Perhaps by exploiting it, the hominids were killing them off; his father had spoken darkly of the dragons vanishing from the earth. How many times had the scene with his family been repeated up and down the mountains, he wondered? How many dragons had been slaughtered in their caves? If Hazeleye had uncovered some weakness that allowed assassins an edge, he wanted to know it, so other dragon families wouldn’t suffer the fate of his. NooMoakh lived somewhere where dragons reached maturity and old age, perhaps in a land far from assassins in the empty plains. At the very least, he might find safety, other dragons living and hunting in peace.

  “We’re coming to a village,” Djer said. “Stay quiet back there. I won’t open the cart unless no one is around. I might have to do a little tinkering; having you along means the meat’ll run short soon.”

  “A village of men?”

  “What else? They breed like rabbits, and roam like wolves.”

  Auron pushed under some tenting and curled his shortened tail beneath him. The little house-on-wheels bounced on its springs as it neared the village and crossed more ruts in the road.

  “What ho!” a man’s slow voice called from the road. “If it isn’t the wandering dwarf.”

  “Still trying to get new money for old hides, Djer Highboots?” another said in a more friendly tone.

  Auron heard Djer lift himself in the seat, and he could picture the dwarf taking off his hat. “Afternoon, my men, afternoon. I see the manner of the men of Irr-on-Slackwater is as welcoming as always. Why the spear, Gule the Younger?”

  “A dragon’s been tracked on this road, north of three-arch bridge. Drakossozh himself seeks the beast. Oddly enough, he seeks you, too. Seems his armor took fire in battle with a dragon.”

  “Ahh, a beautiful bit of workmanship. I remember it. Well, well, well, if it were any other time, I’d wait a month for him, but I have a Caravan to meet.”

  “The thane has bade us give you food, fuel, and fodder while you wait for him. You’re the only dwarf hereabouts.”

  “And whose fault is that? The thane himself and his ‘men’s money for men’s goods’ decrees; your priests railing against dwarves bringing in liquor and wine, and that dryhole wizard’s emblem on the lintel of every shop meaning I’ll get my head knocked in if I darken the doorstep. The great Chartered Company’d have a crafts-dwarf in your village, if only you’d patronize them. You’re getting as bad as the barbarians. I’ve been up north since the snow melted, and what do I have to show for it? Six ponies’ load.”

  “Dwarves never tire of blaming others for their troubles,” the slow voice said, as though it were speaking words of a foreign tongue.

  “Ach,” Djer said. “You go about your business, and let me do mine.”

  “You’ll wait here for the Dragonblade, if you want the thane’s goodwill.”

  “The thane will let me pass, if he wants the goodwill of the Diadems. I’m driving on.”

  Auron felt the cart lurch into motion. Djer set his horses to a trot, and the bouncing stopped only after an hour’s hard travel. A panel behind the driver’s seat slid open, and for the first time, Auron saw a weapon, a stout mace, taken from a box beneath the little window.

  “Trouble?” Auron said. “Did they ride after you?”

  “Not from behind. Ahead. Take a peek.”

  Auron looked over Djer’s shoulder. He saw a line of dirty-clothed men, interspersed with gangly boys,
trudging in a tight line up the road. A man walking his horse led them. The leader carried a shield and sword, but the men had only clubs, staves, and hoes. Auron had seen a column like it before, farther north along the road.

  “Beeyah, dwarf! Off the road,” the leader shouted in Parl. He halted his file with a sweep of his shield. “There’s good men afoot, and some riding dwarf bastard isn’t going to push us off.”

  Djer said nothing, but clucked his tongue and shifted his horse to give them room to pass. He snapped the panel shut, cutting off Auron’s view.

  “There’s room to share the road,” Djer said. “Space for both of us.”

  “Go to the other side. That side’s upwind of us.”

  Auron felt the cart lurch to a halt, setting the hung tools inside swinging on their hooks.

  “This is as far as I go,” Djer said. “If you wish to pass upwind, you go to the other side and do so. I’ll not move.”

  There was a quiet pause.

  “Take my advice, dwarf. Keep heading south, and don’t come back. Your kind aren’t much liked up here. We don’t care for dwarvish settlers. This is man-ground.”

  “That’ll be news to my cousins in the mountains. They were here before Hypat laid the first paving stone.”

  “Don’t answer back to an officer, dwarf,” an unfamiliar voice yelled in Parl.

  “Let’s tip his cart!” another shouted.

  “Beeyah! Beeyah!” voices chorused.

  Auron heard stamping feet, and Djer shouting. The cart heaved, spilling Auron and the goods inside everywhere. He crashed to the side of the cart under a rain of tools.

  “Away from those ponies!” Djer shouted. “I’ll kneecap you, you filthy dogs!”

  Auron heard laughter and fading footfalls.

  “Barbarians,” Auron heard Djer mutter. “Are you well, drake?”

  “I’m fine. Your cart is a mess.”

  Djer opened the door, and Auron hopped out and stretched neck and tail. The ponies still stood in their traces, nosing the grass. Djer grunted, and heaved the cart back on his wheels. Auron marveled at the strength in his compact body.

  “At least they didn’t rob you.”

  “They tried. The knots on the ponies’ lines were beyond them, ignorant hurks, and the wire core in the rope turned their blades. One of them filched a fine pair of boots, though, may the feet that stole them suffer of toeworm.”

  “Some thane in these parts. Letting bands of robbers roam the roads.”

  “Those were the thane’s men.”

  “In the village, what did the wizard’s emblem you spoke of look like? The one that meant you’d get your head knocked in?”

  “Silly piece of figuring, like something scratched in a barbarian cave wall. A circle—”

  “With a man in it, arms and legs outstretched?”

  Djer rebalanced one of his ponies’ packs and retightened the girth. “Yes. You’ve seen it?”

  “Closer than I care to again.”

  “Some rabble-rouser stirring up the men. Their kind come along every couple of generations.”

  “Will these men pursue us, once they talk to those you left behind?”

  “I have friends in that village—all that talk about the thane back there was just a hurk getting too big for his boots. I don’t want to spend time around Drakossozh and his men. Did you burn someone important, young dragon?”

  “Only those that were hunting me. Perhaps the Dragonblade’s pride, as well.”

  “Ach, I see. Then you did kill something important, in the by. A dwarf will fight for honor, but a man will kill for pride.”

  Auron thought for a moment. “What’s the difference?”

  “Honor is how others see you. Pride is how you see yourself.”

  Auron spent weary hours in the back of the cart as the woods gave way to open lands. He could no longer take breaks to walk alongside Djer at the plodding pace of his draft horses; they traveled through farms and fields of men. Farm wains, wagons, and dispatch riders all used the road, no longer rutted and uncared for, but paved wide enough for two wagons to travel abreast. Djer called it the Old North Highway.

  Auron diverted his mind from his cramped body by learning Dwarvish. Djer started by naming parts of the body, sights along the road, and items in the cart, and before long, Auron could understand simple bedtime rhymes such as Djer’s mother used to lull her son to sleep. Other times they had to fall back on Parl, as when Djer told him about Hypat and the Old North Highway.

  “It’s a mighty root of an even mightier tree. Ancient Hypat, at the mouth of the Falnges River, Queen of the Inland Ocean. In better times, Hypatian culture surrounded the ocean like a crown on a head, but even the mighty age and fall. It is still a great city.”

  “Will I see it?”

  “No, we make for the Delvings at Diadem. The Waterfall Mountain on the Falnges, the birthplace of the Chartered Company. We had our beginnings moving cargo past the six falls. Endless trips up and down the Iron Road.”

  “Iron road?”

  “Rails and carts, young dragon, rails and carts—as we have in the mines, though bigger there. Pulled by wraxapods, the mightiest creatures to walk the earth. Stronger than dragons. So big that they didn’t need their brains, I suppose, for while they’re the largest beasts afoot, they’re also the dumbest. We hoist entire barges out of the water, and they pull them uphill many hundreds of quivers.”

  “What’s a quiver?”

  “You’re empty of knowledge but full of questions, Auron. A quiver is a unit of measurement, though it varies between man, elf, and dwarf. It’s the distance an archer can fire twelve arrows, if he paces out to the end of each one’s flight. Nearly four thousand rods.”

  Auron wanted to ask what a rod was, but suspected the dwarf would tell him “sixteen fingers” or some other senseless term. A distance remained the same no matter how you measured it.

  “Is that where we will join up with the Caravan?” Auron asked. Djer always put extra emphasis on the word, so Auron did, too.

  “Oh, no—it’s being formed up in the plains at Wallander. But we shall go, the two of us, into the Delvings and request an audience with one of the Partners. When he hears a dragon has been brought in, perhaps Byndon himself will see us. Then you’ll see some bargaining. How I wish I had gold in my beard! They never take a poor-faced dwarf seriously.”

  “I hope they serve sausages,” Auron said, his empty stomach growling.

  They passed into familiar lands, returning to back roads and wild hill country surrounding the mountains of Auron’s birth. Djer urged his horses along, seeking the river. If they could get to the Falnges, they’d be able to travel over water to the falls, saving time and effort. The Caravan would be leaving shortly and not return until the spring. Djer did not want to be left behind.

  They found a landing, a human town but with dwarves working on the docks, and it was just a matter of time before Djer found some representatives of his Chartered Company to bargain for passage on an eastbound barge. Auron watched the river traffic from the driver’s slot in the cart: a mixture of everything from canoes to two-masted sailing ships. The river was so wide, details on the other side were indistinct. The barges were especially interesting: teams of horses pulled long, narrow, squared-off boats with cargo and a few people on board from a well-tended path on the riverbank. Auron did not know how much power a horse had, but he thought it would take a dragon at least to pull one of the barges, were it on a good road with wheels under it. Yet the teams of mighty draft horses, with waving manes of fur at neck, hoof, and tail, managed to pull the loads along the river with nothing but a dwarf riding them urging them along with gentle taps from a quirt.

  Auron wondered why moving things to and fro was the object of so much effort, but put it down to the eccentricities of hominids. Djer had done his best to explain trade, and while Auron could repeat back to the dwarf the substance of what he had been taught, he didn’t really understand all the talk of supply and d
emand and rarity. But if it would get him away from this land of men, dwarves, and elves, he would go along with it.

  “There’s a piggy-back due in tonight,” Djer said, clapping his hands and rubbing them together as he settled himself into the driver’s seat. “Now you’ll see something, young dragon.”

  “A piggy-back?”

  “A barge, almost a floating village. We just drive our teams and wagons onto it, and the barge does the rest. I bought us a meal. I hope you like fish. It’s the cheapest thing at the market here.”

  This news meant a few hours’ inactivity, so after eating the salty dried fish, Auron curled up among the camping goods and slept.

  When Djer woke him, there was a strange odor in the air. The cart now stood in a line of wagons, with Djer at the reins, waiting to be loaded onto a wooden construct that looked like another dock, complete with little houses, attached to the longest quay at the riverbank town. Auron saw what was making the smell: four-legged beasts, legs as broad as tree trunks, with thick necks and fleshy, beaked mouths. They stood, stomach deep in the river, two abreast in front of the barge. A little boat manned by dwarves floated at their heads; at the moment the dwarves were opening bales of greenstuffs and leafy tree branches to feed the animals, which engulfed the food in their flexible beaks.

  Djer drove his cart and joined the other wagons on the deck of the barge. Auron saw hatches leading to what he guessed to be holds—bringing back memories of his long stay in one, though the ship he had traveled in was smaller than this barge—and travelers with bundles lounging at the rails.

  “Those must be wraxapods,” Auron said.

  “That they are,” Djer said. “Did you see the little boat in front? The handlers pole that along—they make sure the beasts have decent footing. Sometimes they’ll stop and let the creatures graze from the trees along the bank, but usually they make a trip just being fed at the stops. Another dwarf works the other end; our gardens at the Delvings are bedded with their droppings. Every time I become discouraged with my position in the Chartered Company, I just think of the wraxapod tenders.”