Dragon Champion

by E. E. Knight

  “What do the pins say?” AuRon asked.

  “You’re quicker than some of my captains, NooShoahk,” Wyrmmaster Wrimere said. “The pins let me know who and where my friends and enemies are. With your help, this map will be kept more up to date. Much of the information on it is months old, if not a year. I’d have more courier dragons, but we’ve had losses to replace. I sent out too many untrained dragons at first, and they reacted unpredictably in battle. Now only a few dragons are trusted to fight without men to bridle their natural fury. White silk means members of the Circle of Men. Red silk shows where my dragons are based. Blue silk are blighters who have allied themselves to the cause—they’ll be the rude labor that builds our new world—green is for the elves, and gold the dwarves. This summer I’ve pulled out a gold pin and two green ones. A good year.”

  AuRon looked at the headwaters of the Falnges. Naf’s land was marked with a black pin. There were only a few scattered on the map, most of the others were clustered in the old Hypatian Empire.

  “What does black mean, your Supremacy?” AuRon asked.

  “Those are the saddest of all. Those lands are ruled by men, but they’ve succumbed to the influences of elvish plots or dwarvish gold, and as such must be treated as the failed lines. Human hygiene demands their extermination.”

  “Starlight returns! Starlight returns!”

  There was excitement in the saddling cave. AuRon looked up from the bandolier Varl was fixing about his neck to see a silver dragon gliding into the cave. It was a rather stunted dragon, even AuRon with his unusually thin body probably outweighed him, but it flew gracefully.

  “He’s our ranking dragon, NooShoahk,” Varl said. “He was the fastest until your trials. The Wyrmmaster calls him a dragon for the others to imitate, and Starlight loves the Wyrmmaster more than life. He’s one of the older dragons of the new generation.”

  “Older! Why it’s smaller than me.”

  “They say he was ill when he was young. But don’t be fooled—he’s killed dragons larger than you in the trials.”

  “How?”

  “He’s a venomer.”

  “A what?”

  “You’ve never heard of a venomous dragon?”

  “No.”

  “He secretes poison in his bite. A few drops will send a horse into a seizure that’ll snap its neck,” Varl said, and then lowered his voice. “The Dragonguard carry special daggers. They’ve got a hollow core; you stab someone good and hard and then wrench the blade. It breaks a vial and gets the poison in. He’s milked for it now and again. I’m told a lot of the riders carry it, as well, in case their beast bolts.”

  “Why tell me?” AuRon asked, watching the silver cast an imperious eye on the dragons bobbing their heads in welcome.

  “The first dragon I ever trained was a fine blue. I even named him; Icelake he was called. Strong, fast, smart. We’d follow the terms out to the lesser isles and fish, no wood to be found but he’d use his fire and we’d have dragon-fried cod. He outflew Starlight there in his trials, got put into the breeding stock. A few days later, we found him dead. Starlight doesn’t like being bested. Someone’s bound to tell him you could fly circles around him. I don’t want to find you all stiff and broken like I did Icelake.”

  AuRon stalked past the other dragons to the cave mouth. Starlight raised his head high, and instead of lowering his, AuRon brought his up to the cavern roof, extending his fans. Starlight hissed and thrashed its tail; dragon handlers came running, alarmed.

  “Who do you think you are, gray?” Starlight barked.

  “I know who, and what, I am. Do you?” AuRon asked.

  Without waiting for a reply AuRon left the cave and flew southeast, four brass cylinders around his neck. Three were to go to the Wyrmmaster’s servant at Juutfod for further dispersal, and the last he was to take into the mountains and Maganar.

  As soon as the island had disappeared into the misty horizon behind him, he’d been tempted to turn away and just make his way to Dairuss. Being free of the Wyrmmaster’s ill-ordered world, the baleful gaze of Eliam and his Dragonguard, the regimented existence where even mating was a function of time and not choice, made him value the open sky and free air. He had no wish to give it up again and go back to a place where he might be killed for disobedience, or castrated because another dragon was stronger than he. The prospect of life with one’s ears threaded for reins or chin and wings pierced for guidelines was not something he wished to chance.

  Only one thing called him back, and that was the misery of the female dragons. The males filled him with loathing, leavened only with a little pity, but the plight of the unhappy greens was overtaking even his old desire for vengeance for Djer. He thought of the callused spots on Natasatch’s face where her muzzle had chafed, and the chain that prevented her from ever getting out into the sky and sun.

  Juutfod was easy to find; he made landfall by midnight. It rested on a long spur of land, serrated to the south by sandy inlets, projecting out into the ocean and falling into a series of islands. It was the home of the Varvar, the masters of the dragon ships that wandered so much of the eastern coast of the Inland Ocean.

  High above the city, among the steep-sided mountains of this part of the coast, stood the dragon tower. It was part of the Wyrmmaster’s vision to have many of these in the realms of man, where dragon-born communication lines would meet, but so far only this first had been built as a model of what was to come. It was imposing, perhaps too much of an engineering feat for other barbarian tribes. It had a wide top, and a hollow center lined with alcoves where dragons could rest in safety, with rooms and storehouses for man and dragon beneath. A flame was kept burning at all hours atop the tower, a flame magnified by a polished bowl of silver turned around and around by a windmill-driven pivot.

  AuRon landed and was inspecting the beacon when a Dragonguard came forward from his watch-shelter.

  “What, no rider?” the man asked. “Was there an accident?”

  AuRon cat-stretched his back. “I carry no rider so that I can fly faster. I bear three messages for this tower. Wake your master so I may put them in his hand.”

  “Her hand. Go below, pick a berth. We’ve no dragons staying at the moment. We’ll have food swung up, and the raincatchers are full.”

  “I’ll only stay a night. This last message needs to be taken inland.”

  AuRon climbed down to an alcove. The hollow center of the massive tower was lined with ledges and bays, and a set of ropes going to the bottom hung from a steel arm at the top. Each bay had a narrow window and a pelt that could be swung to curtain it with the flick of a snout. AuRon curled up in an alcove near the top, and watched reflections from the signal beacon play across the stones on the inner walls of the tower.

  The blocks above creaked, and AuRon looked over the edge of his perch to see a platform being raised. One set of lines did the lifting, and another maneuvered the platform so it could be brought to any of the shelves. A human rode it.

  “Up. Up,” she called. “A bit to the northside. No! Northside! Better. Up. Up . . .”

  The platform arrived at AuRon’s berth, and a human female stepped off. She was tall, like the people of this part of the coast, with reddish hair that reminded him of Hischhein pulled away from her face and into a thick braid. She wore a leather tool-vest and loose peasant-pants tucked into soft boots.

  “Welcome, skyking,” she said, looping chains over a pair of iron hooks so the platform joined the bay. “I’m Gettel, his Supremacy’s factotum in Juutfod, and your host. We’ve got pork in cask, and some fresh mutton for you.”

  “My name is NooShoahk. I’ll have a little of both, but only a little. I need to be on wing again tomorrow.”

  “NooShoahk... hmmm . . . That’s a dragon name, gray.”

  “I wasn’t raised on the island. I’ve only just joined.”

  She pried open a cask of pork with a crowbar. “Pork it is,” she said, lifting the cask with a grunt and setting it on his platform
. She threw a joint of mutton on top of it.

  “Here are the messages,” AuRon said, passing her three of the cylinders.

  She looked at the labeling.

  “They’re correct. I can read Parl.”

  “I see,” she said. “Welcome to my tower.”

  “It’s remarkable,” AuRon said, noticing the emphasis she gave the word my. Sometimes with humans how they said a word was as important as what the word was. “Do you know how long it took to build?”

  “Do I? A dozen years of labor, and that’s after the materials had been collected. I drew the plans myself. It’s not finished yet, even now we’re working on some catacombs beneath. I selected this spot because of the caves nearby.”

  “The Wyrmmaster is wise to have you.”

  “He gives opportunities to those denied them elsewhere. A woman on this coast who wants to make anything but babies isn’t thought much of. In girlhood I’d designed a round barn for my father, with a winch in the center, like this but on a smaller scale. It was a curiosity, people came to see it from all around, and then clap my brothers on the back and congratulate them on the fine work. In Juutfod I went to one of the councils he and Praskall held. They’re building a new world for men, and I joined to make sure they built it for women, too.”

  The next morning AuRon continued on his journey east, following the river. This part of the coast was a network of lakes and rivers, the constant rain and melt from mountain glaciers fed innumerable rivers and streams, and marshlands in between. It looked a poor land for anything but fishing or falconing waterfoul. He wondered if somewhere below wolves still howled the tale of Blackhard and Firelong.

  The river was his route into the mountains. He followed the northern fork—the southern led toward the former delvings of the Wheel of Fire dwarves—and came upon a riverbank town. Maganar was a strange sort of town: it was more of collection of settlements in the valley on both sides of the river, with smallholdings on every hillside. With winter on the way, the fields were clear of crops, though he saw boys out with slings. They hunted for migrating birds that had stopped for a meal in the fields. The smallholders were shifting timber closer to their homes and making repairs to roof and window for the coming winter.

  AuRon had been told to look near the riverbank for a clearing with six huge poles, where a tent was put up for festivals and gatherings. He saw the open area, and the tree-trunk-size poles, and alighted within.

  Children ran to get their parents, out of excitement rather than fear. AuRon waited and pulled out the last bronze message-bottle from his bandolier. A boat crossed from the other side of the river and a group of men got out. They were dressed in soft deerskin, and many wore black, furry hats with flaps of pelt that hung down the sides. More men emerged from the buildings on the clearing side of the river. Only a few bore weapons.

  They reminded AuRon of birds, gathering and gathering until they all decided to do something. When the men adjudged enough of their numbers present, one stepped forward from the chattering throng. He had a braided blond beard.

  “Well, dragon, if it’s Thunderarm you seek, he’s away with your master, and his living son’s not old enough to speak for his house.”

  “My name is NooShoahk. If he hadn’t returned yet,” AuRon said, “I was to give this message to someone named Urlan Ironmonger.”

  “That would be me, gray dragon,” a man said, stepping forward. He had a twisted left arm; it had been broken and set badly. He took the cylinder in his good hand and opened it. “Where’s Wickman? I need this read to me.”

  A thin man came to the front of the crowd, walking slowly with the aid of a cane. Something about his scarecrow frame seemed out of place among these burly barbarians. Then AuRon realized what it was. He was looking into the face of the man he had once known as Hross. And Hross was looking at his shortened tail.

  The people of Maganar were hospitable. They slaughtered a stringy old milk cow for him, and chickens besides. Hross showed no sign of recognizing him after the first appraising glance, and took the cylinder off to his riverbank home to read it to the man with the crippled arm.

  AuRon watched the town shut down for the night. He was used to seeing young people out on the Isle of Ice after the elders had gone to sleep, talking and singing and courting. There were young women, bringing cattle into barns and working the wells, but not many young men.

  “Do men ride you into battle?” a boy asked. His Parl was thickly accented, and slowly enunciated, but intelligible enough.

  “Not yet,” AuRon said.

  “I practice on a thudmog, except it’s got a hard shell, not like yours. Neck’s shorter, too.”

  “A pony would be more realistic, I think. You want to be a dragonrider someday?”

  “Yes. They’re the best. They’re the only ones who came back from the reckoning with the dwarves. I had two brothers, but they were just axmen. The dwarves killed them, my father says. He lost a hand. When I’m grown, I’ll take our wergild from the dwarves. I’ll see to it.”

  “You’ll take their place? How can one boy fill two sets of shoes?”

  “I’ll fight twice as hard.”

  “Listen to a dragon, boy. Stay home and take a wife, and raise two sons to do the same. Could be some dwarf will come to this village looking for wergild for his brother some day, and if that happens, they’ll need all of you here.”

  The next morning Urlan Ironmonger and the other men came, again bearing the message-tube.

  “Give this to no one but the Wyrmmaster,” Ironmonger said. “Tell him we’ve all put our mark to Wickman’s words. We’ll be true to them.”

  “You’ve put your mark to Wickman’s words, and will be true to them. I’ll tell him myself.”

  AuRon spread his wings, and the men backed up. He launched himself into the air, and climbed away, already wondering about the contents of the tube. If his memory wasn’t playing him tricks, he’d come close to a man who had known he had traveled with dwarves. He was younger then, but Hross had definitely looked at his tail. What was in the message tube about his neck?

  It was sealed, so he didn’t dare open it. Losing it was out of the question—the harness was well made, and he had been told to bring back the reply. Was he bearing his own death sentence back to the Wyrmmaster?

  He only just remembered to call at the Juutfod tower, so preoccupied was he with what he might do to escape the situation. There was another message to bear back to the Isle of Ice, so he added the tube to his bandolier. As he headed out to sea from Juutfod, he paused, circling. It would be safest to just fly back south, tell Naf all he could, and help his friends prepare for the storm gathering as little flags in the mapcase. But that would leave Natasatch and who knows how many eggs in the hands of a murderous madman. He wavered, tilting his wings first south, then northwest. South, northwest . . . south, northwest . . . Naf, Natasatch.

  He chose Natasatch.

  He decided to deliver the messages immediately upon landing, and wait until the Wyrmmaster had read them to take action. Perhaps Hross assumed that in the intervening years AuRon had fallen in with the Wyrmmaster, and forgotten their old feud.

  AuRon landed at the lodge, exhausted from worry and flight, on a final warm afternoon of autumn. A few of the men lounged about the place, enjoying the sunshine’s glow, and they came in to see what news he bore.

  The Wyrmmaster took the bandolier with his disarming good humor. “A quick trip, my good friend. In a boat that journey would take weeks, with fair weather.”

  “I didn’t want to miss my turn in the breeding cave,” AuRon said, to general guffaws. Even Eliam laughed with the rest.

  The Wyrmmaster examined the tubes, and looked at the seals to see which was which. He read the one from Juutfod first.

  “They’ve burned another fishing fleet at Rerok Isles,” the Wyrmmaster said. “There’ll be hunger in Hypat this winter, with no traffic in smoked fish up the Falnges.” He opened the second, and read it. He pursed his lips, a
nd read it again.

  “Will the men of Maganar stand with us?” Eliam asked. “Or does that ungrateful cur have more friends?”

  The Wyrmmaster handed the message to the Dragonblade.

  “You can go and rest now, AuRon,” he said.

  AuRon shifted his weight and caught himself. “NooShoahk, you mean, Your Supremacy.”

  “You mean your name isn’t AuRon? Never has been?”

  “I’ve heard the name, yes, but never used it. Why should I? I’m proud of NooMoahk; he fought alongside humans just as I would. No, my name’s not AuRon.”

  “There’s a man who says that you are a gray dragon named AuRon, and that you’re a friend of the dwarves.”

  “What man? I talked to a woman at Juutfod, and the guard only at night.”

  “In Maganar. He wrote a note, asking if I knew your history. Come to think of it, I don’t know much about your origins.”

  Members of the Dragonguard gathered, and Eliam stood before the Wyrmmaster, his hand on his sword hilt. AuRon tried to keep his tail still.

  “Someone at Maganar said this? It wouldn’t be that elf calling himself Wickman, would it? Tall, thin, spidery looking?”

  “There’s an elf in Maganar?” the Wyrmmaster said.

  “Perhaps a part elf, but he looked and smelled of it. I thought it strange, but as I was new there—”

  The Wyrmmaster rounded on his men. “Who served at the battle with the Wheel of Fire?”

  “Me, sir!” a Dragonguard said.

  “With Thunderarm, was there a strange man, tall and thin?”

  “Yes, sir. Dark as well, and most of the rest were fair. He seemed an odd duck. Stayed out of the battle, but he was older, and none of the woodmen thought aught of it, so neither did we. Name was Wicker or something.”

  “Wickman?”

  “Yes, sir, I think that’s it.”

  The Wyrmmaster turned red. “By the storms, Thunderarm’s held a viper to his bosom. No wonder his mind was poisoned to me. This elf’s had his ear long before this dragon came. That’s how the elves work, my men, since the first man planted his crop and looked to build a cabin in their woods. They plot and they plan and they infiltrate and deceive with honeyed words that hide the taste of hemlock. He’d have me doubt my own messenger, this dragon who’s lost three kingstones of flesh winging my messages as fast as the wind. Someone will be taken to account for this!”