Dragon Champion

by E. E. Knight

  Faces appeared at the windows, and an iron-banded door opened.

  “By the hair of a she-elf, she did it,” a man called to his fellows within.

  AuRon felt Hieba sag upon his back. She climbed off his back and fell to her knees. She kissed the gray-green stones of the mountain and looked up at the Sun.

  “Thank you, blessed life-giver,” she said.

  Men streamed from the fort until fourteen stood in the courtyard. Two more remained at their stations on the battlements, looking out at the mountain pass to the north and plains to the east.

  “Beyond our hopes! Hieba, little darkling, you’ve come back,” a man said. He was as craggy and pocked as the mountain, and topped by the same white crown.

  Hieba flew to him. “Evfan, you old condor, you haven’t drawn your allotment yet? Worried that the valley air will kill you?”

  Evfan planted a kiss on her forehead. “It’s quieter up here nowadays. We’ve missed you, and so has the commander. My heart stopped for a moment when I saw the wings come up out of the east. I thought it was our turn.”

  “Has the war come that close?”

  “They burned out Enderad and Ilslis on the other side of the Paired Passes. What’s left of the Apatian elves are scattered in the valleys or outside these walls.”

  A youth wearing his first beard against the cool of the heights spoke up. “The queen is stalling, but she cannot assuage the emissary forever. There are those in the city who are sick of elvish refugees and their pious airs, and tales of woe from dwarvish beggars.”

  Evfan’s eyes narrowed. “Scabbard your tongue, boy. What I allow to be said among men of the guard at table and what is permitted in front of guests are shields of different greathouses.”

  “Yes, guideon,” the boy said.

  “Hieba, if I’m to be part of these affairs, I want all made clear to me,” AuRon said.

  “Evfan, perhaps your new stag could run down the mountain with a message that I’ve returned? Does my lord want me to keep AuRon here, or have circumstances changed so that we need to find a refuge for him elsewhere?”

  “The Silver Guard stands loyal, first to the queen and then to Commander Naf, little raven. Much else has changed, but that remains true. We’ve a good stock of salted meat here, and if what I know of dragon’s eating, and excreting, is true—we’ll be able to plant a new garden before the snow comes.”

  The scouts of the Silver Guard emerged from their castle, curiosity finally getting the better of their fear. They wore soft leather boots and gray uniforms of thick wool. Bright, silvery sashes crossed under their weapons belts, save on the officers, who wore theirs over their shoulder. They carried little ax-hammers in soft sheaths across their backs. Manlike, they crossed over from fear to overfamiliarity in a twinkling. The men patted AuRon’s flank and examined his claws as if he were a horse at auction.

  “You wouldn’t think those wings could fold into nothing, but they do,” a veteran said, running his hand along the tight mass of skin and bone covering AuRon’s back and flanks. “Seems like if you get in under the arms, you’d kill it easy enough.”

  AuRon turned his long neck to face the man, and extended his griff from his crest, doubling the size of his head as his snout poked the man in the shoulder.

  “Yiy!” he shouted, jumping back against the little wall at the edge of the cliff.

  “Careful, or you’ll learn about dragon fire the hot way,” AuRon said.

  “No offense, skyking,” one of the soldiers said, stepping in front of his startled officer.

  “As long as you keep your hands to yourselves, there will be none.”

  “Dragons are much on our mind,” the older one said. “There’s war on the other sides of these mountains. There are dragons in it, dozens of them, or so I’ve heard.”

  “I’ve food on my mind, not rumor.”

  Evfan intervened. “Getting acquainted can wait. Open a cask of pork and a cask of beef for our guest. Flying’s hard work, judging from the birds and their appetites.”

  “And dragons get irascible when they’re hungry,” Hieba said, stepping under AuRon’s chin and rubbing the soft spot under his long jaw.

  Food and snowmelt put AuRon into a better mood, though the heavily salted meat made his head throb. He slept in a tight ball in the corner between the mountainside and the cliff-clinging castle, out of most of the wind. His rest was disturbed by two runners that came up the long trail down to the city, but they only had messages to be passed farther into the mountain passes. The wiry men rather reminded AuRon of Blackhard’s wolves; they had the same cautious eyes and fleshless frames.

  “Say nothing of the dragon, if you value your allotments,” Evfan said, seeing them out the door to the path down the farther side of the mountain. “It’s a matter for the Silver Guard, by the queen’s order.”

  AuRon settled back down and dozed until dawn. The sight of the sun coming up over the flat lands to the east, dyeing the morning mists of the Falnges orange. AuRon forgot his concerns and took in the sunrise. Existence was a long march from despair to despair, but there were spots of beauty along the way.

  He wished for a mate and hatchlings to whom he could pass the picture.

  Hieba and Evfan appeared, she at the castle door and he on the parapet above.

  “There are people on the trail,” Evfan said. “Three. Could be the commander. He’d get that far if he was outside the high wall before dawn, as is his way.”

  AuRon uncurled himself, stretched from nose to tail-tip, and followed Hieba to the cliff wall. He looked at the long path snaking down the mountainside, and saw three hominids on the ascent. After his search of the valley and the plain, Evfan joined them at the wall.

  “The big one could be Naf,” AuRon said.

  “I hope so. I haven’t seen him in nearly a year. It took that long to find you.”

  The three inched up the path, at this distance looking like ants ascending a difficult twig. Two helped a third along.

  “It is Naf, no question,” AuRon said. “Another man in a hunter’s cape, and a third, cloaked. The cloaked one is shorter than the other two, perhaps a woman. Whoever she is, she’s not used to mountain climbing.”

  “By the seven prophets, I hope it’s not the queen,” Evfan said. “We’ve got nothing fit to serve her. Salted meat, biscuit, and dried fish for the queen? Soldier’s wine?”

  “The queen doesn’t dare step outside her gardens without escort,” Hieba said. “It’s not the queen, or any other Ghioz. They’d have us come down to them. They are Ghioz, after all.”

  “Scabbard your tongue, Hieba,” Evfan said, veering from his worries about the contents of his larder. “That sort of talk might get you a bad name, and you’re to be the wife of the Commander of the Silver Guard.”

  “Since when is there an edict against truth?”

  “There’s private truth and public truth, girl.”

  The humans lapsed into welcome silence, allowing AuRon to watch the climbers. When they grew close enough to wave, Hieba jumped down the path like a running deer.

  “To be that young again,” Evfan mused to himself.

  AuRon saw Hieba run into Naf’s arms. He felt a spasm in his fire bladder; gladness at Hieba’s joy folded under a crest of jealousy. Naf would take Hieba away again, leaving him lonelier than before.

  Naf still wore the silver circled about his long hair. He had filled out since AuRon had last seen him as a desert-lean bandit: his neck was thick with muscle and the lines around his mouth and eyes deep with age and cares. AuRon could no more judge human beauty than he could talk to the stars, but Naf’s face still looked as though it was put together from two different halves. The cloaked figure squatted and rested while the lovers embraced, and the third, the man in the hunting cloak, scratched a red beard and looked out on the vista of city, river and plain.

  The four continued up the mountain, Naf and Hieba holding hands as they picked along the trail. They covered the short distance left ea
sily, except for the cloaked figure, who paused at the edge of the outlook. AuRon could hear wheezy breathing from beneath the cowl.

  AuRon sniffed, but smelled only thick man-scent and traces of charcoal on the cloak.

  “You know . . . me gray . . . we once . . . did trust . . . one another,” she said, lowering her hood to reveal a scarred face and hair like hoarfrost in the sunshine. It was Hazeleye, her hair bristling with pine needles. “It is him,” she continued, gaining her breath back. “It’s tiny now, but he still has his egg horn. I’ve never known a dragon to keep it, save this beast.”

  Naf approached, and grabbed him by the loose skin at his jaw joint. The man stared down AuRon’s snout. He saw brushstrokes of gray at his temples. “Old beast. Somehow I knew we weren’t through yet.”

  “Old? Not a phrase I’d choose for myself. I am yet young, not even three score years of age; I’ve still a hundred winters before I’m counted in my prime.”

  “There is still one here you do not know,” Naf said. “This is Hischhein, counselor to the queen, of the ruling house of Ghioz.”

  “Welcome to our land, young dragon,” Hischhein said. For a courtier, he spoke the tongue of the Dairuss with a thick accent. “This is a long-hoped-for day.”

  The elf looked at the whitecapped mountains. “And a cool one, even in summer. I wouldn’t care to pass a winter at this post.”

  “Shall we talk inside?” Hieba asked.

  “No,” Hazeleye said. “What I’ve come to tell is best done under clean sunlight.”

  The Silver Guard brought out chairs of wood and fur, and the visitors sat.

  “We have dark news, too,” Hieba said. “There is war coming from the east, out of the Bissonian Heights and beyond. The blighters are building boats for a descent of the Falnges.”

  “They will come in the tens of thousands,” AuRon said. “Not just from the river, but in chariots as of old.”

  “The queen’s diplomacy has not bought us the time we had hoped, then,” Hischhein said, rubbing his brows together in thought. “They may mean to catch us unawares.”

  “If you’ve brought me here to fight—,” AuRon said.

  “All in good time, AuRon,” Naf said. “We know there is only so much one dragon can do. We have a great favor to ask, more dangerous than battle, but more hopeful, as well.”

  “Let him hear all in its proper order,” Hazeleye said. “He has little reason to love elf, dwarf, or man, if I know much of the lives of dragons these days.”

  “The dwarves were good enough to him, from what I saw,” Naf said.

  “You weren’t at the raid on his nest cave,” Hazeleye said. “I was. AuRon, war has come out of the north; its source is the very island and the very man you were destined for when we were on the ship. It is not a war of territory, of conquest, of loot, of pride, of women, of any of the reasons that take sword from sheath and fill the sky with arrows. It is a war of death. Barbarians come from the misty north only to kill and supplant. There are no slaves taken, no prisoners exchanged, no children spared unless they are human. It is a race war, pitting man against elf and dwarf. Blighters fight as allies of the men, for now at least, but I’ve read tomes of the Wizard of the Isle of Ice. He means to clean the earth of them, as well.”

  “This is the Wyrmmaster?” AuRon asked. “The wizard within the circle of man?”

  “Where did you hear this?” Hazeleye asked.

  “From blighters preparing for war.”

  “He doesn’t seek power for himself, but for his kind. Even men who oppose him are counted his enemy and murdered. He wishes to usher in an age of men, to fulfill what he calls Man’s First Destiny. I’ve heard weary hours of it, and have no wish to belabor you.”

  “Hominids killing each other off, even in race war, is nothing new. I know your history.”

  Hischhein shook his head. “This is not a kingdom or two. This is war on a scale never before seen. From the rolling ocean to the west to the myriad isles of the east, he means to clear the land for the sons and daughters of men. Elves, dwarves, blighters, and yes, I believe even dragons are to be swept away.”

  “I thought he used dragons.”

  “He does,” Hazeleye said. “As slaves. As warhorses. The dragons he has have no more free will than . . . than . . .”

  Than an exploding pig? AuRon thought to himself.

  “. . . than a hawk trained to bring down a duck.” Hazeleye finished, then added in Elvish. “And I’m the cause of it all.”

  AuRon met her gaze, trying to read further in her eye.

  “What’s that?” Hischhein asked.

  “A curse,” Hazeleye said.

  “He’s ordered them to do more than hunt, AuRon,” Naf said. “They wreck cities, devour and scatter herds, pull down bridges, sink boats—”

  “I’ve seen it firsthand, Naf,” Hazeleye said. “AuRon, I gave up hunting dragons after that last trip. The ship docked and offloaded the other two hatchlings. Some of the Iceislers gave me a tough time for losing you. If they had known I’d loosed you, there’s no telling what they would have done. Even the lowliest dockhand muttered about ‘elvish indolence’ loudly enough for me to hear. One of the beastmasters raised his hand to me, if you can believe it. I gave him the toe of my boot where he won’t soon forget it, and I bit another’s earlobe off.” She clicked her teeth together for emphasis.

  “I set to training hunting dogs and falcons. I’d had enough roaming, so I settled in Krakenoor, city of the bluewater elves and of my youth, and it’s approaches are thick with elves who’ve rooted for their Last Age to be near it. Krakenoor’s older than any land of men. ’Twas a beautiful old place; there was the Wetside built so it floated out on the Inland Ocean, and the Dryside.”

  “I’ve read of it,” AuRon said.

  “You missed your chance to see it, unless torn pilings and fallen walls are of architectural interest. Krakenoor is no more. Alas! for its old boardwalks and water gardens. Perhaps we’d lived in peace too long, with friends to the north and primitives to the south. The dragons came at dawn, two dozen if there was one, flying in from the sea low enough for their wingtips to raise white splashes where they brushed the sea. They tore through the fishing fleet as it was heading out, capsizing the larger boats and knocking the bottoms out of the cockleshells. I had a view. I was out with my osprey on the cliffs above the Dryside, south of the old watchtower. There were dragons larger than you, AuRon, with pairs of men atop neck and haunch, in sort of basket-saddles to either side. Others were your length or smaller, following the great ones, some with riders and some without.

  “They divided. A pair of big ones and most of the little ones bore in to the sea-fortress on the Wetside harbor mouth. It has withstood tempests, surf, and war, but never such a storm as this. The timbers were thick with paint, and the firebuckets weren’t enough for dragon-foua. Orange fire, reflecting the rising sun, broke out in a dozen places, but especially near the longbridge connecting the Wetside to the Dryside. Elves who didn’t wish to burn to death leaped into the bay, but were met by wingless drakes.”

  Hazeleye shuddered, then went on. “Dryside put up a fight. The elves in the citadel made it to the towers and walls. My own eyes caught Lord Fairwind in the courtyard with his seven-foot bow of yew. I’ve seen him draw it at festivals, the bow cosseted in his right foot as he pulls the string with both hands to his eye while balancing on the other leg. He can drive a lead-cored arrow deep enough into an oak so the feathers are all that can be seen of the shaft. He put one of his steel-tipped arrows into the neck of a great dragon, bringing it and its riders down in the old wood-chapel. As he ran from the fire of others, I saw another dragon fly in and seize him from behind. It dashed him against the Citadel’s walls.

  “I hardly have the heart to tell the rest. I ran and hid among some brush on the far side of the tower, which was pushed over into the sea. Men came in from the sea in longboats with the heads and tails of dragons fore-and-aft. The dragons hunted any elves who tr
ied to flee, and the men came for murder, not for plunder. Even the smallest babes in swaddling clothes were spitted on the broken timbers of the city, before all was set aflame. The dragons attached some sort of iron contraption to the ends of their tails, and began to smash things up. The dragons saw to it that no stone stood upon another. They broke the foundations of the tower with tailswipes and pushed it with elves still screaming inside into the sea.

  “The dragons rested in the ruins of the city feasting on their prey, then roared inland. Those who had hurt themselves in battle went afoot, the rest aloft. Death and destruction passed over me time and again until the merest flutter of a crow’s wings put me on my face in the undergrowth.

  “I lay there, watching, praying for the sun to hurry across the sky before I was discovered. When darkness came I started east.”

  “We know they’ve served the dwarves, and men who will not join them, likewise,” Hischhein said, his face wet with the story of Hazeleye’s grief. “It is always the same. The dragons see to it that there is no rumor of approaching war. They come in sudden fury from the darkness, and the men follow to take advantage of the chaos. Ancient Hypat wears a circlet of burned cities, and it will be the next to fall, I fear. The Wizard of the Isle of Ice has sent an ambassador to my cousin, our queen. He thinks the Dairuss a barbarian people, an opinion perhaps many of the Ghioz shared until this last lesson in true barbarity. The queen plays for time, shows him preparations for war, which are in truth preparations for our defense. Our good cousins in Hypat will find their eastern doors held while we still live.”

  “The queen’s first duty is to her people,” Naf said. “She could spare her land much grief by becoming an ally of this far-off wizard. The people already complain about the refugees from the other side of the mountains. When they hear that war is coming out of the east, they may force her to choose the wizard’s side.”