Dragon Strike

by E. E. Knight

  Poison? His cooks, dragon and thrall, had tasted of it right in front of him, and assisted him all through the meals to prevent them from running off and bringing it back up in some waste-chute.

  The messenger was running on about another victory over the demen. Paskinix, the Deman-King, had requested an “accommodation in recognition of the change in circumstance.”

  The Copper clacked his teeth good-humoredly. NoSohoth had probably coached the courier on his wordplay. Irascible old Paskinix, tough as a dug-in scale-tick, would have used blunter phrases. A canny warrior and formidable opponent, even in defeat he made a plea for peace sound like a demand.

  “The old northeast passage lies open,” the courier continued. “The Star Tunnel echoed with the sound of your Aerial Host as they flew and broke the enemy. Now the Firemaids explore regions long-lost to dragonkind.”

  At a mutter and a nod from NoSohoth, the messenger repeated his words, roaring out the news. The fierce noise elicited growls and stamps of approval that seemed to require a nod of acknowledgment from their Tyr.

  Just so, the Copper thought. When he heard word of the size of the Star Tunnel, he asked HeBellereth if he thought the Aerial Host could be brought into action. Dragons could ferry elite human thralls about easily, or men could fight from dragonback.

  “Captives?” the Copper asked.

  “Ten claw-score or more and two of their generals. One general is wounded and seems likely to die.”

  “Have them brought to the Lavadome. Paskinix will have to come to Imperial Rock if he wants them back.”

  “HeBellereth sent them along behind me in those cockleshell boats of theirs, under beak and claw of the griffaran. They should be arriving at the river ring even now.”

  “Thank you for such a complete account,” the Copper said, and the courier swelled.

  “So large and dangerous a group of captives should be supervised,” NoFhyriticus, a scaleless gray Anklene who served as the court physician, said. “Demen have surrendered before, just to get spies or assassins inside the Lavadome.” The Copper liked having him around because he rarely spoke, but when he did it was something sensible.

  “Perhaps my nephew SuLam—” CoTathanagar began.

  “I’ll go meet them myself,” the Copper said, stretching. Maybe exercise would settle his stomach. It had been a hearty feast last night, three bullocks to commemorate Tyr FeHazathant’s ending of the civil wars and peace in the Lavadome. Perhaps the kern was an irresistible force meeting an immovable mass of roast hides. His mate, Nilrasha, Queen of Imperial Rock, called his selection of fried hides crass when he should be claiming the tyrloin.

  “Offal fit for kitchen thralls and cave-mouth beggars,” she’d said, even after he told her that the taste brought back memories of his days in the Drakwatch caves. In some ways Nilrasha struck him as a regrettable queen, but she always spoke her mind. Few other dragons on the Imperial Rock could make that claim. The Copper thought Tyr FeHazathant’s Queen Tighlia, dead but no more forgotten than her besung mate, a model, at least in her public behavior. Nilrasha relished the glitter of her position more than its duties.

  Though the thralls loved her. They called her Queen Ora, after an old nickname the blighters had given her during the fighting in Bant. It meant “lucky.” She liked to award thirty days’ rest from duties or relocation to the sunny Upholds to thralls who showed good judgment or skill or even a pleasing song, and she left punishment of lawbreakers to her mate.

  He was skeptical at first, but her system did get more work out of the thralls, if they had a chance at reward, though there were others who maintained you’d get twice the sweat with a simple threat of being turned into a feast. Problem was, she also bestowed her blessings on thralls belonging to others, which caused grumbling in court.

  But at the end of the wing, he admired her. She was the one dragon in all the Lavadome who never brought him a complaint.

  Being Tyr reminded him of the snake-cave where he’d met his bats, three claw-score years ago and three. Every time you broke the back of one, another slithered silently up behind you and struck.

  He knew he was a young Tyr, a compromise from different factions because he’d arrived at the Lavadome a hero of the griffaran and a stranger to each line and faction. His role in the rising against the dragon-riders four years ago settled him into Lavadome legend. The dragon-lords of the Lavadome’s cave-stitched hills thought he’d be pliable with bits of egg practically still sticking to his scale. His bad eye and withered forelimb brought pity, contempt—some even called him cripple or used his old Drakwatch nickname “Batty”—in private.

  But the old Tyr FeHazathant believed in him enough to issue his blessing before he died. Or so he’d been told.

  That was the worst part of being Tyr. Not being able to trust the words others spoke.

  Which is why he set off to see the demen prisoners himself.

  He set out with a few of the court and his griffaran guard. They made an impressive procession, with their Tyr at the head of the file. One of the advantages of copper scales was their versatility. They looked blood-colored in the low light of tallow dips, and in the brighter light of the vast underground of the Lavadome, lit by rivers of liquid rock flowing down the mysterious walls of its horizon-wide crystalline bubble, they positively burned like embers. When polished to a fine smoothness by soft wire brush and scouring-rag by his body-thralls, of course.

  “Are you leaving Imperial Rock, my love?” Nilrasha, his mate, asked, alighting. If anything, she was sleeker and more beautiful than when she’d first sprouted wings, every scale trimmed and polished, scale around her eyes subtly painted and etched. She’d been drawn down from the gardens atop the Rock by the circling griffaran.

  “Just to the river ring. I haven’t been out enough lately. I need exercise. My digestion . . .”

  “I’m feeling it too,” she said. “We are in sympathy. I was just thinking a swim would clear it. But must half the court follow us?”

  “There are prisoners to see. A curiosity.”

  If he’d been feeling well that rising the trip would have been a pleasant walk, especially with his beautiful mate drawing attention away from his limp with her playful chatter and shifts of wing and tail.

  The Lavadome burned gloriously today as the northern lines of glowing liquid earth ran down the transparent crystal, a vast bubble that had created the Lavadome in old years beyond count. At the top it peeked from the volcano’s caldera so that frosted sunlight was admitted. More marvelous still was the way it dispersed and conducted the heat of the lines of lava so the entire dome simply became pleasantly warm. Normally the south had the better view, but the flow sometimes rerouted itself.

  But instead of enjoying mate and view, he dragged a sour stomach as he had to pass the jagged barbs of Skotl hill, so naturally dragons great and small crept out of their holes, drawn by the bright wing-feathers of the griffaran bodyguard advertising his trip as they traced endless double-loops above him.

  He limped along, three-legged. His left front leg wasn’t quite as useless as it once was. Nilrasha, falling back on lore she’d learned as a hatchling attending to old, battle-scarred Firemaids so that as succor flowed one way wisdom might trickle another, worked it and massaged it and worried it with tooth and tongue until he felt—well, not so much a tactile sensation as a sort of warmth. Now he could extend it and lock it in such a way that he could rest on it, rather like a tired thrall’s leaning on a rake or bearing-pole.

  It was nice to halt here and there and take the view, giving his good sii a chance to rest as he leaned on his not-quite-useless forelimb.

  “Mighty Tyr RuGaard,” a rather plump blue bellowed at one halt, bowling over a couple of drakka who’d climbed a rocky perch to watch him pass. “My thralls are stealing from me. None will confess the crime. I’d like an Imperative to eat a few as an example to the rest.”

  RuGaard didn’t give a waggly tail-tip scale for the gizzards of unknown thralls, but
the Lavadome had few enough. Most dwarves starved themselves rather than work for dragons, blighters fought among themselves so you had to limit the number in a household or appoint a strongman to keep the others in line—who would then cripple or kill a third of your servants every year through beatings—and as for elves, you might as well try to capture and keep a cloud for a pet. Demen hardly bred in captivity. That left men. With men you had to be careful in feeding and watering and housing or they died like flies.

  “What are they stealing?”

  “Food, of course.”

  “Men will steal. Be thankful yours are such poor thieves.”

  “Tyr, my brover sits on my neck,” said one little green hatchling, rather undersized for a Skotl. A bigger, bristling silver hatchling rolled an eye to watch the griffaran above, as though thinking about timing a jump. “Tell him to stop.”

  “Bite or claw whatever you can reach and don’t stop until he gets off,” the Copper said. “Leave enough marks and you’ll get invited to join the Firemaids as soon as you light your first flame.”

  “Truly?” the hatchling asked.

  “Of course,” Nilrasha said. “I’ve placed my eye on you . . . er . . . young prospect.”

  “S’ank you, shining Queen,” the hatchling said, swelling and raising her neck.

  Speaking of which, the Copper thought to her as they moved on, did you review this year’s first-oaths yet?

  By tradition the Tyr’s mate led the Firemaidens, young dragonelles learning to guard shaft and mouth and passage of the myriad tunnels around the Lavadome. Those who didn’t mate often continued in their duties and became Firemaids, warriors oathed for life and the most respected band in the Lavadome, feted in every hill. Though she’d never breathed word, some of the senior Firemaids turned tail to Nilrasha, as she’d broken her Firemaid vow to mate, but the Copper didn’t want to stick his snout into female squabbling and get it singed.

  Don’t bring that up now, she thought back at him.

  Some dragons bowed deeply, others just bobbed their nose-tips, and a few put heads together—mind-speech didn’t come easily to Skotls—to discuss their Tyr as he walked by, his withered left forelimb giving him an odd gait.

  A bit of green flashed across the fields, parting a rather sickly flock of sheep grazing on hairy lichens. The procession halted again.

  “Tyr,” a young dragonelle said, throwing herself down before him with neck turned full round to expose the lesser hearts beating behind her chin. “My name is Yefkoa. My parents wish me to mate against my will . . . to . . . to SoRolatan.”

  The Copper knew him. SoRolatan was another Copper, though brighter and with less of a blood-tinge to his scales. A former Upholder at the tip of the Empire’s southern wing, he’d grown rich mining for the ores dragons needed—indeed craved—for a healthy growth of scale. Rumor had it he had a jade or two. Now he wanted multiple mates?

  “SoRolatan has a mate, does he not, dear?” the Copper asked.

  “But barren, poor creature,” Nilrasha said, glaring at the frightened, skinny little thing, her wings hardly dry from emerging. “The old Upholder’s daughter in the Six Ridges, you’ll remember.”

  The Copper had come to the Lavadome practically as a hatchling but had never quite developed the ear for politics, intrigue, and out-and-out gossip that most dragons born there seemed to possess. He tasted the air next to his mate’s cheek in gratitude for her smooth supply of detail.

  “I suppose you have someone else in mind?” the Copper asked. Yefkoa seemed a sleek young dragonelle with an attractive set of wings, even folded and decorously tucked. He understood SoRolatan’s interest. The Copper was mated, not dead.

  “No, Tyr. I . . .”

  She kept looking at Nilrasha as though fearing a bite.

  “Spit it out,” the Copper said.

  “I want to fly. Out in real air under real sun.”

  The Copper wondered if she wasn’t one of those back-to-nature dragons. She’d clearly never tangled with crossbows or war machines.

  She looked healthy enough, and had nice lines for air, as far as he could judge such matters. “Flying, eh? How fast are you?”

  “Fast!” she said. “Just watch.”

  She hopped nimbly onto a rock and opened her wings—every set of male eyes upon her—and launched herself into the open air of the Lavadome. She gained altitude fast, then dropped into a gliding, tail-balanced swoop. Reflected burning earth turned her glittering young scales to meteors as she rounded the Imperial Rock and returned.

  The Copper would have liked to fly like that. His artificial wing joint allowed him to stay aloft and maneuver, but he was no aerialist.

  Fortunately the wind of her landing dried his eyes.

  Skotl. All brawn and no brains, Nilrasha thought to him. Don’t let a nice pair of wings make you do anything rash. SoRolatan is an important and influential dragon.

  Mind-speech is a strange thing. The closer two dragons are, the better their communication link. Sometimes Nilrasha preempted his thoughts, but she was better at guarding hers. Whenever he probed to find out about his first mate, Halaflora, for example—

  Ahh, the past is set. You’re Tyr, you need to be thinking about the future, as yet unformed.

  “Name the Upholds, the dominant hominid race in each, its principal product for the Empire. You can really impress me by naming the Upholder as well,” the Copper said.

  “Ha-errr,” she began, settling her wings in a way that made his hearts beat faster. “Bant, mostly blighters, produces fleshstock—sheep, I mean—and grain, the Upholder is . . . NiThonius. Far Anaea, humans, produces kern, the Upholder is . . . is . . . Ru—no, CuPinnatax ...”

  If you’re really planning to sit through this, I’m going to go on to the river and have a bath, Nilrasha thought. But she made no move to abandon him in so public a manner.

  “The Aerial Host could use you,” the Copper said, cutting her off as she mentioned that Yellowsand, to the southwest, offered only rare spices and herbs and a few jewels grudgingly extracted from the waste-elves there in return for horseflesh. “But remember, fly only at night, unless it’s an emergency or over the home mountains controlled by the griffaran. We aren’t ready for the surface yet.”

  “And SoRolatan? His hoard-offering to my family?”

  “I’ll see to it that it is replaced—within reason.”

  You’ve made an enemy today, Nilrasha thought to him.

  And also a friend. She’s young—she’ll be around longer.

  Young dragonelles forget favors like clouds lose water, she thought back. Old dragons like SoRolatan hold grudges like dwarves keeping beard-light.

  There were several castrated dragons in the Aerial Host, survivors from the brief but brutal reign of SiMevolant and his human supporters led by the Dragonblade. Though unable to produce heirs, they would still like having her around. And if she found some laudi-painted young flier with seed intact who sang his lifesong to her and managed to catch up on a courting flight . . . well, a few generations of eggs inheriting their flying skill would do the Empire equal good.

  If SoRolatan made too much of a stink, he’d ask HeBellereth to send the dome-guard Aerial Host for endurance training over SoRolatan’s hilltop. Airborne dragons had to evacuate their bowels sometime.

  He sent a message to HeBellereth, and the dragonelle practically licked his good sii clean with her tongue, bubbling gratitude like the old hot pool that had belonged to one of his predecessors.

  If mutters arose from the spectators they took care that their Tyr did not hear them.

  Nilrasha moved off toward the river ring.

  A second messenger spotted his griffaran guard and corrected their course to the landing where the demen were held prisoner.

  Of all the hominids, demen struck the Copper as the oddest. They looked like bits and pieces of other creatures fixed together with that liquid stone the dwarves used and men imitated. Bits of them about the shoulders and spine reminded him of
scuttling pinchg-prawn with their carapaces enclosing tasty flesh. They had long, strong fingers, and toes for probing and gripping, and big eyes oddly set slowly blinking on either side of their pointed scabby heads. They had long, knobby-kneed legs that reminded him of frogs or toads, folding themselves neat as dragonwings against their sides when they sat. If a squatting demen closed his eyes you’d almost think him a stalagmite.

  Which, he supposed, was the point.

  They could squeeze into crevices one would think a snake couldn’t wriggle through too.

  They were fast on their feet, though when panicked they shot in different directions, which, according to the reports he’d been hearing and sending on to the Anklenes to be recorded, was their one weakness in battle. He’d seen them working in the Lavadome often enough to know they could be cruel, especially to other races put under their supervision.

  This assortment, bereft of their nets and crystal-tipped spears and slingstones that broke into ugly fragments in a wound, looked much the worse for their experiences. A deman was an emaciated-looking thing compared even to an elf, and these were thin as kern-stalks in a drought.

  They squatted, mud-splattered and smelling of the river, chained or roped or weighted fixed to boat-bottom, half in the boats and half out and with that nasty thrall-dealer Sreeksrack—or so everyone called him. He had lost his honorable dragon name long ago—something having to do with a duel, Nilrasha said. He was a Copper as well, but of a bronzeish hue that reminded the Tyr of his father.

  No one minded owning thralls, but the business of gathering and evaluating and culling them was best left to others.

  Sreeksrack bobbed his head, trying to get his Tyr’s attention.

  Captives taken in war belonged to the Tyr—though by tradition they were quickly sold, adding to the hoard of the Imperial Line. Vast sums moved in and out of the hoard overseen by NoSohoth. There were always coins rattling in NoSohoth’s gold-gizzard as they digested and turned to scale, but if a mouthful here and there kept so efficient a servant to the family line loyal, the Copper was willing to part with it.