by E. E. Knight
The vanguard of the Ghioz column appeared, riders moving widely spaced with bows notched.
The men behind the barricade launched arrows at them. They fired madly, trying to send up a volume of arrows rather than well-aimed strikes. The Ghioz scouts turned their horses and rode back.
AuRon watched the main body approach, a black block of archers to the front, tightly packed like some enormous multi-legged insect. Behind them, AuRon counted riders interspersed with dismounted men with swords and axes or hefting javelins.
The dismounted warriors must mean their mounts were somewhere farther back. It should be easy to smell that many horses.
Under swarms of arrows, the Ghioz column approached the barricade. Many heads turned to watch the cliffs nervously, but perhaps the trackers and whoever might be in communication with the Red Queen assured them that the retreating rebels had followed the riverbank in hurried retreat.
Ghioz skirmishers ran forward, javelins and light axes at the ready, giving high war-yips like slim hunting dogs after rabbits. They flung the javelins and buried the axes in trunk or helm, vaulting up to the peak of the short, irregular wall. Others shouldered one of the trunks, opening a gap big enough for a horse. Seeing but a few men falling back before them, they yelled to their fellows, and horsemen came forward to complete the destruction of what they must have thought was a rearguard designed to delay their advance.
As the first rider passed through the gap in the trail-block, Naf acted.
A horn blew and a rain of arrows fell from the cliff. The Ghioz column reacted like a flock of sheep to approaching wolves; they whirled and tightened ranks.
An avalanche of rock and beam fell from the cliff. Some bounced off the cliff to land harmlessly in the river, but enough rolled into the Ghioz, carrying more with it, that the column dissolved into chaos.
Some desperate souls escaped into the river by jumping in and swimming.
Naf’s men descended through the steep notch with the aid of ropes, under the cover of concealed archers. Still more continued to throw stones down on their enemies, leaving bloody men and horses scattered on the riverbank path.
A pair of roc-riders came shrieking down into the river canyon, perhaps seeing battle joined from far away but losing track of the action in their dive. One suddenly folded and fell, dashing its rider to pieces as it bounced off the cliffside, shafts from the cliff-top bowmen projecting from its head and neck like a lopsided mating display.
The remaining rider wheeled, and AuRon’s hearts pounded when he saw the rider guide his mount up the river, flying low and gathering speed for a climb to the cliff-top level.
He’d never make it.
AuRon exploded out of the rushing stream, brought down rider and bird in a crash of avian forehead against dragon chest and sii. Feathers flew, the rider went head over heels into the river, and AuRon and his prey rolled into the flow. He stomped and tore and left the ruin of the bird tainting the white water red.
AuRon turned on the Ghioz, most of whom had their backs to the river, thinking that quarter safe.
Poor conventional-minded fools. But then, they would fight a lord with an old dragon friend.
Still more of Naf’s men were now running for the barricade, having either come down another notch as the Ghioz approached or sent there earlier. They joined the men descending the ropes to harry the Ghioz, now recoiling up the riverbank like a snake backing away from a burning brand.
AuRon, with one eye cocked to the sky in case more roc-riders arrived, chose a likely spot and set fire to a mix of riverside brush, dry driftwood, and timber.
Retreat through that, he thought with satisfaction.
Then he launched himself up the river to seek out those horses.
He found them hardly a score of wing-flaps back, gathered in another notch with the baggage train and carts and wagons filled with feed and bundles.
He scattered the horse-guard with a lightning descent, gout of flame, and swipe of his tail. They didn’t even have time to notch arrow to string. Then he circled back and landed hard in the water. Much of his splash fell on the backs of men fleeing or riding off at a gallop, leaving their baggage train.
It burned gloriously. The bags of grain caught fire with loud whoofs, and alarmed mules gladly tore themselves loose from picket-lines and trotted off, yelling their heads off in the beast-tongue: Dragon draagon draaagon!
The horses scattered in terror, fleeing flame and the alarming odor of a dragon—which AuRon was doing his best to enhance by voiding whatever he could onto the highest branches he could reach by cocking his leg like a flop-eared dog. He did his best to herd them into the river, where the current would put an end to many of them or carry them down to Naf and his men in the calmer waters.
He swam back downstream to find the Ghioz in full retreat, harried by archers popping in and out of the trees. They did not stop to aid their wounded, but AuRon saw many an ugly scene of those pierced by arrows thrown off their horses and dumped into the stream as a new warrior took saddle and rein.
Ghioz and its Red Queen, it seemed, could be beaten after all.
AuRon didn’t understand even a fraction of what the Dairussians said. It seemed they were calling Naf “Lord Dragonheart.”
“Dragons have more than one heart,” AuRon corrected.
Naf and his men were enjoying a dinner of stick-toasted horseflesh. For AuRon, the grateful Dairuss bagged livers and hearts and kidneys into horse intestines, wrapped them in skins, and blackened them all over the fire.
AuRon thought it one of the most delicious meals he’d ever eaten, despite the smell of burning horsehair (which probably somewhat covered the odor of a well-fed dragon’s sulfurous burps and emissions as his firebladder refilled).
He thought it best if he at least saw Naf safely to his new camp. This one was in some ancient ruin, nothing more than rings of stones set on a hillside in the forest and a few cairns running the ridgeline above like the bones on a blighter’s back, but there were clay-lined grain pits that could be cleaned out and wells that would produce water once cleared of the deadfalls and wildlife.
Naf said he suspected it was an old elf settlement. There were yew trees aplenty, which elves always planted for the construction of their bows. A few limbs would be cut to replace worn wood or supply new weapons for recruits coming over the mountains.
Only these would stripped, bathed, and checked for crystals . . .
Already Naf was hearing back from his scouts and spies on the Ghioz borders.
“We’ve angered our good foes, AuRon. As the Ghioz see things, scattering horses and burning pack-trains is a violation of an honorable warrior’s code.”
“What does their code say about throwing wounded into a mountain river?”
“Oh, it’s that whole victors and failures ‘ethics of the strong’ that their priests spout. To the victors the spoils, to the failures a new station serving the victors, so they might learn and do better next time.”
AuRon was about to comment on men being born mad—was not the first sound every human made a wailing scream?—and dying even more madly, but was that terribly different from the fights hatchlings engaged in, with bits of wet egg still clinging about their snouts?
“My spies report that our obstinacy at the riverbank has incensed the Red Queen. She’s claiming that the Hypatians have assisted us in battle—for how else could a scarecrow band like mine triumph over Ghioz arms?—and a state of war now exists between Hypatia and Ghioz.”
“No wonder old NooMoahk was always glum when I spoke of the wider world,” AuRon said. “I wonder how many wars he saw in his long years.”
“It’s not a man’s thought but a man’s deeds that count, AuRon. Same rule for dragons, I expect.”
AuRon belched and felt his firebladder settle.
“A terrible reckoning is at hand,” Naf said. “I wonder if I shall be blamed by both sides. Could be, no matter which empire wins, myself and the Dairussians will end up vassal
s. Again.”
Hominids. If there were but six left in all the Red Mountains, they’d soon shave it down to three by fighting, and two would make the third their slave.
“Come with me,” AuRon said. “Come to my island. You could live out your life in peace.”
“The peace of an exile? I can’t. It’s hard to explain, but if my people believe me still alive, still fighting, it’s as though some part of them hasn’t been beaten. More so, I have to keep near, be a threat, or I fear it will be the end of Hieba, or my daughter.”
AuRon felt a pang at Hieba’s name. The little girl he’d hunted for and watched grow up, snared in all this, thanks to no crime but her love of this man. “How can you be so sure they still live? Have you had word?”
Naf picked a sizable hunk of meat from the gap in his teeth, worked it thoughtfully with his toadlike tongue. AuRon could never make up his mind which hominid line had the ugliest arrangement of features. “No. It’s just—a feeling. And the Queen—she’s too keen a calculator of chances. If matters were to go ill with her, she’d like to have them as goods to be negotiated in a final bargain.”
AuRon tailvented enough air-volume to make the stars shimmer in their courses, interrupting his friend. “Horsemeat always does that in me,” he said, by way of apology for the interruption.
“Can I suggest that you stay with me? I could use a pair of eyes in the clouds. Better still, bring your family here, and aid me in my cause. I could promise you and yours food and safe landings as long as the Dairussians call themselves men of honor. With the help of some dragons, I might be able to get my lands back. Then Ghioz would have a true enemy hard on her border. I might bring down the Queen herself.”
“I’m not sure she can be killed,” AuRon said. “She brags of immortality.”
“It’s the same hickory-dickory her priests spout. I think she uses doubles. If one is killed, another takes her place, and the Queen shows herself only to her most trusted courtiers in the safest of circumstances. She must keep four or five copies of herself, women of her height and shape who imitate her voice. You met her, saw the masks?”
“Yes.”
“Once I thought only that she was hideous. Men are too easily swayed by appearances of women—one way or the other. I don’t know how it is with dragons.”
“We appreciate beauty in our mates, but the wise dragon chooses for other reasons.”
“Well, now I think it aids her use of doubles.”
“How do you know?” AuRon asked.
Naf looked thoughtful. “Because I killed her. In her own bedroom. I stole in, said I’d been summoned. The Queen has odd appetites. I fashioned a weapon from a bone hairbrush. I felt her heart flutter its last under my palm, but when I took off the mask. . . . Oh, if men only knew.”
AuRon waited for more, but thought it best not to press him for further details.
“Just as well I didn’t collect my ransom from her, I think.”
Naf returned from his memories. “How’s that?”
“I’d hoped to return to my island bearing coin.”
“Then you won’t stay?”
“I will always call you my friend. But I can’t hurl myself into the flames of war. I have a mate and hatchlings to think of.”
“I think of mine even as I draw my sword,” Naf said.
AuRon could not find a reply.
“Well, I’d be a poor friend if I sent you back empty—errr, handed. I have a few coins. A very few. You’re welcome to them.”
He made a birdlike whistle.
An adolescent girl approached, tall and a little awkward in her movements. She had rich red hair braided out of the way of her duties.
“This is my camp helper and tentmate. She’s the daughter of a man who rode with me, a son of Dairuss now dead. Get the dragon-box.”
The girl scuttled off. She had slight swelling at her hips. AuRon’s limited understanding of hominids allowed that the configuration meant she was ready to mate. “Hieba might wonder, keeping someone like that in your camp.”
“Oh, it’s not that kind of arrangement. I’m getting a little old for such antics, my friend.”
Naf sighed, as if regretting either his age or hers. “We spoke of beauty earlier. Beauty for a Dairuss is a reason for lament. The Ghioz take what they like.”
The girl returned with a wooden box. She carried it easily enough, as it wasn’t much bigger than a loaf of risen bread. Dragon forms, rather more snakelike than the real thing, at least to AuRon’s taste, decorated the lid, inlaid in dark wood.
“It’s an artistic style. Dragons are mostly wing, and if artists were to draw them as they lived, there’d be less room for teeth and fire.”
“Perhaps I will take up cave-painting and draw a few humans with tiny, flattened heads.”
Naf laughed, that easygoing boom AuRon found to be his most appealing feature. “Let’s forget the box and remember the contents. Behold! The mighty treasury of a onetime governor. Do not stare in wonder too long, AuRon, for I believe dragons can become bewitched by the sight of such riches.”
He opened the lid on the box. It was almost empty. Perhaps threescore coins lay within, a mixture of gold and sliver.
Naf scooped out half of them.
“Here, my friend. I have a bag. Offer these to your hatchlings. A present from an old family friend.”
“Naf, you must need this coin,” AuRon said.
“It has its uses, but my men serve for vengeance, not for gold.”
“Still—”
“There’s more where it came from. I robbed for these, I can rob for more. AuRon, if you delay much longer I’ll ram the whole thing down your throat, and your noisy digestion can make of it whatever fireworks it will.”
“Thank you, my friend.”
“Well?” Naf said, selecting a leather pouch.
“I will take four coins, one for each of my hatchlings, tokens of many wasted horizons, and four more for my mate. No more, or you will have another fight in these woods.”
It turned out he left the camp more weighted down than he could hope for. Word passed through the rebels that their dragon needed coin, and even the youngest wood-carrier and water-scoop searched their boot-pocket for a Queen’s silver. They filled four saddlebags heavy with coin and arranged them front and back of his wings with hitches of running knot.
Naf encircled his neck with his strong arms, and many in the camp passed their hands over his flanks, though their greasy touch made his tail twitch and he kept an eye rolling across them looking for drawn blade.
They sang a song in his honor as he left, the camp dividing it into three parts: the women and immature boys singing high, Naf and some of the deeper voices low, and the rest rather out of tune in the middle.
If he were to be honest, his digestion made far sweeter music.
But he kept circling back to get his bearings and watch the woods as he gained altitude, thinking of Hieba as a little girl, crying out her loneliness against his flank.
He wondered if he hadn’t left something behind. Like a piece of his conscience.
Chapter 18
The day after the assembly, Takea was teaching Wistala a singsong about the different hills in the Lavadome.Gryathus hill of Wyrr and wall
By river ring and deman hall
The next around, as river winds
The grazing fields of NuGrakat’s lines
A member of the Drakwatch, a young drake, ignored the calls and jokes from the drakka as he delivered a message.
“I am here to escort the new dragonelle to Imperial Rock. The Queen requests her presence.”
Wistala was happy to abandon her lesson in topography. It seemed there wasn’t a dragonlength of space in the Lavadome that wasn’t claimed by one line or another.
She followed the drake to the Imperial Rock. Takea trailed along, using the excuse that she could point out landmarks, but she spent much of it trying to provoke a fight with the Drakwatch messenger. Wistala had learned eno
ugh about the Firemaids to know that a victory in a wrestling match with a member of the Drakwatch was a sure way to get praised by the maidmother.
The drake ignored her taunts and tail-tags, chattering the whole way of a new muster of the older members of the Drakwatch to guard tunnel exits. “Firemaid work,” he complained.
He led her to the “Imperial Gardens.” They lost Takea near the exit for the Aerial Host’s dining halls. Wistala marveled at the growth here, high under the diffused light from the dome-tip above. Strange purple and blue-green blossoms and artfully shaped ferns grew in the muted light of the sun circle above.
They found Queen Nilrasha at a series of splashes, half waterfall, half fountain. A statue of a hatchling spat a thin stream of water, artfully arranged so it bounced off a pair of carved mushroom-caps. Statues of lithe human and elvish girls, posed elegantly, filled jugs that Wistala’s sense told her fed back into the fountain.
“Wistala, I would speak to you,” Nilrasha said.
She looked down at the floor of the Lavadome. Wistala followed her gaze. Hills and pens and goats—was it milkdrinker’s hill? Hominid servants—or rather thralls, as they styled slaves in the Lavadome.
“The Tyr and I ask you for the benefit of your experience. The Lavadome shall send a group of Firemaids to offer assistance to the Hypatians and build an alliance. Do you believe they will accept?”
“Hypatia is . . .” Wistala searched for the right words. “Hypatia is not like the Lavadome. It is not a matter of someone making a decision. There’s no all-powerful Tyr to win over and settle matters.”
Nilrasha gave a humorous prrum and resettled her wings. “When you understand the Lavadome better, you will not say such a thing.”
Wistala, having figured out the flow of the water, watched the lava run down the other side of the crystal. Beautiful colors.
“Dragonkind is depending on you, Wistala,” Nilrasha continued. “We can no longer stay underground, at least as dragons rather than some kind of slaves. I fear we’d turn into little more than a lava-lit stockyard for raising young dragons to be brought to the surface. To survive, we have to return to the surface. We’ve been so long underground, in hiding, we know very little of the Upper World. We need friends up there who can guide us to safety. Friends we can trust.”