The Summer Dragon

by Todd Lockwood

  Situated along an easy path, this place would shield a small fire from the wind and screen the light from casual gaze. It really was the perfect redoubt. I’d spent the night in a poacher’s hideaway. I could only imagine what Darian would make of that.

  When times were hard, Father would overlook poachers who acted out of hunger and took only deer and other game. Charity keeps a community healthy, he would say. But there were others who took only dragons, knowing that dragon leather and bone and blood were valuable in the underground market.

  Dragon poachers were opportunistic killers, only in it for the money. He showed them less mercy. They could upset the entire balance of our livelihood. All the emperor’s aeries reserved land for wild dragon stock, to rejuvenate the bloodlines from time to time. Aeries traded eggs from their wild reserves when they could. Rannu and Athys had ancestors in these very mountains. Audax and his mate Coluver were the offspring of wild dragons. Father had taken their eggs from two separate nests in this valley as a wedding gift for Tauman and Jhem. It was in our interests to maintain this natural equilibrium.

  I realized that I hadn’t seen a wild dragon in weeks, apart from the Summer Dragon, Getig, and the dragon I’d hidden from yesterday.

  How long had the poachers been here? How much damage had they done? Had they already killed my baby? My stomach clenched into a hard knot. They wouldn’t hesitate to kill me. But I’d known they were here somewhere, that sooner or later I would find sign of them. It didn’t change anything; there was no going back.

  I studied the floor of the redoubt, looking for indication that someone had passed recently. Though I could see the hoof prints of a deer or antelope, I wasn’t very good at trail-craft. I could barely make out my own footprints. Taking a deep, calming breath, I gathered up my knapsack and slung my crossbow, making sure my quiver of bolts was easily to hand. Then I looked cautiously out the exit to the west.

  I was closer to the cliffs than I’d expected to be. They stood out in crisp detail, cracked and furrowed. There were almost no trees on those spires, fewer still on the short plateau where they met the mountain proper. The defiant remnants of a granite shelf overlay softer stone, much like our compound’s pinnacle but barren and pitted—the perfect place for a wild dragon pair to hide a nest.

  Hawks wheeled in the heat rising off a crag to my right, high above. Their cries of keirr! keirr! echoed in the upper canyons. There was nothing else in the sky, not even a wisp of cloud. Not a single dragon.

  I took a deep, nervous breath and started out. My head was on a constant pivot, checking every direction below and above for movement. Whenever cover was good, I stopped to survey, but I made good time. The cliffs drew nearer and nearer and I gained altitude by degrees, until I found myself almost on a level with the plateau less than a mile away.

  I heard the hawks again, ahead, beyond the point where the trail followed the curve of the mountain to the right and out of view. Something interested them; they had been there all morning.

  I pulled my pack off and tied my jacket around it, to help keep the meat cool. As the juncture of clifftop to my left and mountain to my right drew near, I slowed to a more cautious pace, pausing at every tree or rock to scan the skies.

  Then the deer track took a hard turn to the right, around a bend and down toward a dark chasm that loomed suddenly—a stark, vertical crack in the mountainside that hadn’t been visible before. This is where the wheeling hawks were concentrated. I felt a damp rush of air at the same time that I heard the splash of water. A stream flowed out of the cave, and water fell somewhere within. My pace hurried momentarily, in anticipation of a cool drink of water, but I stopped short as the vista opened before me.

  The trail forked suddenly—sharply down to the left, slightly upward to the right. Ahead of me the crack gaped open and revealed itself as a deep cavern in the side of the mountain, going back and back into darkness. The floor of the trail changed abruptly. Now even I could see that beyond the fork in either direction it received plenty of human foot traffic. I crouched, suddenly alert to every sound and smell. With cool air issuing out of the cave mouth, there shouldn’t be an updraft of air here. The hawks had to be gathering for some other reason. With that to alert me, I recognized the thick, sour smell of carrion.

  Slowly I pulled the crossbow off my shoulder, spanned it, and loaded a quarrel. Then I crept forward cautiously.

  The left fork meandered down toward the cave floor. I chose to take the right, reasoning that it would be wise to take a look from above. The way opened up onto a broader ledge, with smaller trails rounding boulders or dipping between bushes or trees. I inched forward, listening intently, but now all I could hear was a stream of water around the bend and the calls of the raptors above, echoing. Smells shifted in the breeze, fresh blasts of moist air alternated with the foul, acrid stench of decaying meat. Sweat tickled between my shoulder blades. Finally I peeked over a rounded spike of stone onto the cave floor. My stomach lurched.

  The carcass of a yearling dragon hung upside down from a tripod, the rib cage yawning open, head and legs missing. It had been flayed, gutted, stripped of all but the tendons holding the skeleton together. Two hawks worried tidbits of flesh out of the joints, while the surface of it crawled with ants and flies. A blackened half-keg sat beneath it, dark brown stains surrounding it on the sandy floor. My eyes wept from the stench, but I couldn’t look away. A wagon a little further in bore two massive wooden kegs, streaked with black, surrounded by a collection of buckets and a copper funnel, stacks of claw traps, and wire nooses.

  More hawks on the ground were squabbling over something. Three qits lay in the shadow of the stretched corpse, swarming with flies, hawks fighting for position on their little bodies. Their neck frills were cut off for some reason I could not fathom. An inexperienced fool had tried to cut the ports in their wings for the straps of saddles they might one day wear, but had missed and hit the alar veins. A foolish way to kill a little dragon.

  I squeezed two fistfuls of hair in my hands and fought to stifle sobs. I wanted to lash out, hurt someone. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Was the baby I sought one of these?

  I bit back a moan of anguish. It couldn’t be. Getig had perched on one of the spires south of this cave. Perhaps the baby was out there still. Perhaps it was not too late. I clung to the thought like a cinch strap. The only alternative was too horrible to consider—that the Summer Dragon might be so cruel as to lead me here, merely as a witness for this evil, knowing that the likes of Bellua would pin more foul omens to my name with no hope of redemption. A sign of Getig’s trust, rewarded with pain and humiliation? I couldn’t accept that.

  Then I saw the human corpses, three of them, wrapped up in blankets beyond the charnel wagon. What had killed them? Dragons? I hoped so. I hoped that the parents of all these mutilated babies had exacted at least that much revenge before they were murdered, too.

  Wheel tracks led back into the shadows, suggesting that more carnage waited deeper in the cave. I knew only one thing: I needed to find the baby before it was too late. I had little more than two hours of light left. I would head out to the plateau and search for the nest that the poachers hadn’t found yet. If it wasn’t there, I would gather my courage, figure out how to brave this ugly chasm, and . . .

  Something struck me hard in the back, knocking me forward. My chin hit the boulder, and I rolled sideways to see what it was.

  A figure swathed in dark cloth stood only a few paces away from me, lowering a crossbow. Fabric surrounding his head obscured all but his eyes, pale and strange. He muttered something unintelligible and drew a quarrel from his quiver.

  I jumped to my feet, shaking badly, immediately aware that I had but a single shot in Kaisi’s little crossbow. I dared not miss. He fumbled with the spanning mechanism on his crossbow. I raised my own and advanced. His eyes widened as he took a step back, dropped his crossbow, and snatched a thick, curv
ed sword from a sheath on his hip. I let loose, and my quarrel thudded into his chest.

  He lurched toward me. I stumbled backward and fell to the ground, raising my arm in feeble defense. But he crumpled to his knees in front of me, and his sword landed in the dirt. He wavered for a moment, staring, then toppled to his side. He stretched out weakly, clawing my left foot. I scrabbled backward out of his reach. After gasping for a few seconds, he moaned softly and deflated like an untended bellows. He was still, staring at his empty hand with shock in his colorless eyes.

  Minutes passed before I could do more than stare back at him. The fall had pulled aside the fabric in front of his face. His skin was deathly white, translucent like milk. His eyes were the pale lavender of an oyster shell. A few strands of cobweb hair stuck out of his scarves. I’d never seen the like, but I’d heard tales.

  He was Harodhi, one of the ghostly pale northerners who warred with Gurvaan. The people who used Horrors to fight their battles. Here, in the mountains of Gadia—my home province.

  A sharp pain stung my ribs on the left side, under my arm. I reached down and was surprised to feel warmth and wetness. My fingers were bloody. I pulled off my knapsack painfully and turned it around.

  A crossbow quarrel stuck out of the haunch of venison in my pack. It had emerged from the other side to slash me across the ribs, below the shoulder blade. Had it not been slowed by the meat and deflected by the bone in the middle, it would have been deep in the center of my back.

  I started to tremble. My arms felt weak, my legs boneless. My head spun. I tried to remove the arrow from my knapsack, but the head became stuck in the meat. I left it, too dazed to think it through. My own quarrel was buried to the fletching in the Harodhi’s chest. I looked at him again. Pink drool dribbled from the corner of his mouth. Already, body fluids had started to pool, causing the upper side of his face to collapse strangely. A fly crawled onto his eyeball. I shuddered and drew back, not wanting to go any nearer. But despite my revulsion, I found the wits to take his crossbow, larger than my own, and release the quiver from his belt.

  He seemed young, perhaps two years older than me. Desperate, I backed away from him to the fork in the trail. With fumbling hands I cocked both bows and loaded them, slinging a strap over either shoulder. I felt ridiculous, guilty, elated, and horrified all at once. I descended slowly toward the cavern.

  But for the sound of water falling and the hawks tearing at the carcass, all was still. I was alone again. A small stream cut through the sandy cave floor at my feet. I dropped to my knees, bows clattering beside me, and cupped water to my lips with my hands. It had happened so suddenly, but I was alive. As the rush of fear abated, images of what had just happened overwhelmed me—I’d killed a man. I couldn’t stop seeing a fly crawl on an unblinking eye. I vomited into the stream until there was nothing left to vomit. Wiped my mouth with fresh water. Fought back the dry heaves that followed. Drank some more and vomited again.

  I moved upstream a few feet and washed my face, rinsed my mouth with water and spat it out until the acid was gone. Sat for several long minutes, shivering and sobbing. Drank again and managed to keep it all down. Finally, I thought to fill my waterskin.

  I was covered in a cold sweat, but the shaking had subsided even if the tears had not. There was more than mere poaching going on here. I was in over my head. I needed to go home and tell Father—this couldn’t be allowed to continue. And yet I couldn’t go home. There was nothing there for me. I would be linked to this abomination, too. Bellua would use it to force Father’s hand. I would be taken against my will to Avigal and a fate only the Avar knew. I was trapped.

  There was still only one answer: I had to find the qitling. I gathered my things and started toward the trail, when a sound caught my ear. In the valley, not terribly far away, subdued voices and a clattering, like wheels. Overhead, the screeching of the hawks grew louder. I inched to the lip of the valley and looked out.

  There were wagon tracks leading down the slope, newly carved through the undergrowth. At the base of the cliffs was a contingent of men wrapped in the same loose, dark clothing as my Harodhi attacker. Some bore curved swords, others carried strange halberds with hooked blades. Behind them, two donkeys drew a two-wheeled cart. On it were human bodies, like those in the cave, wrapped in blankets or cloaks. I’d killed the man they left behind as guard.

  I needed to get away as quickly and as quietly as I could. Fleeing into the cave was a poor choice. I had no light and no clue what I might find. The thought of passing all that carnage only made my stomach roil again. And if I was trapped here, if they found me . . .

  A short way below, a game trail crossed the wagon track and wound toward the plateau. There was just enough cover to get there if they didn’t look up at exactly the wrong moment. Crouching low and watching them, I crept forward, but another sound rooted me where I stood. I listened in fear. In another time and place, his shout might have been part of an innocent game, as simple a thing as a call to dinner. But here it was disaster. I ducked behind a rock, my heart sinking.

  Somehow he had deduced my plan, followed me, and even passed me by at some point.

  Again I heard him, to the south and west, somewhere on the plateau, loud and insistent.

  “Maaaaiiiiaaaa!”

  It was Darian.

  FIFTEEN

  THE HARODHI LOOKED up the cliff face in the direction of Darian’s voice. I took advantage of the diversion and dashed for the foot trail, not waiting to see if they had spotted me. Once they were out of sight below the sharp edge of the plateau, I broke into an all-out sprint down the path.

  I was terrified that they would hear my thudding footfalls and the clatter of my crossbows. But they had already heard my idiot brother shouting on the clifftop. It was too late for silence. Soon they would find their companion dead in the cave. I had to locate Darian, silence him, then find a place to hide.

  The path quickly vanished as the last of the sparse trees gave way to the hard stone shelf of the plateau. There was no cover here at all.

  I spotted him a couple hundred paces away, standing on the lip of the canyon in plain sight, looking back across the valley and raising his hands to his mouth to call my name again. How could he not see the poachers on the trail below him? I pushed harder, legs aching, lungs burning, sweat stinging the wound on my side.

  “Maaaiiiaaa!”

  Just beyond him was a crack in the floor of the plateau where we might find cover. As I closed, he heard me at last and turned my way, his face pinched in anger.

  “There you are! What is the matter with you, you irresponsible, crazy—”

  “Shut up. We have to hide!” I barely slowed as I reached him, but grabbed two fistfuls of sleeve and dragged him toward the crevice.

  He wrested his arm from my grip. “Maia, what are you doing? Let go of m—”

  I grabbed his shirtfront and pulled him close, looking over his shoulder at the juncture of cliff and mountain. “There are Harodhi at the base of the cliff. They heard you shouting, and now they are coming to find you. We have to hide before they see us. Now.” I pulled him toward the crevice, hoping there was an immediate way down, short of falling into it. “Come on.”

  But Darian slapped my hands away again. “Harodhi? Are you insane?”

  “Dare—please don’t argue.” I took his arm and pulled again. As I turned away he caught sight of the arrow still protruding from my knapsack.

  “Why do you have an arrow sticking out of your pack?”

  A glimmer of comprehension struck, and the color drained from his face. I tugged again, and finally some urgency came to him and he picked up his pace. As I paused at the rim of the crevice he muttered, “By the High Ones, Maia, what have you gotten me into?”

  “Here,” I said, hopping down to a ledge about five feet below. Darian sat on the edge of the crack to consider the drop, and I lost patience. “They’r
e coming, Darian! Let’s go!”

  He kicked out and landed beside me as I considered our situation. The crevice dropped forty or more feet beyond our position, but another shallow ledge led westward to a crack that snaked back into the cliff face like a miniature cave or tunnel. I leapt across the narrow chasm, then again to the floor of the tunnel. Darian followed.

  “What in the name of High Ones have you gotten yourself into?” he said.

  “Did I ask you to come? Why are you here? You have a dragon to tend!” I pounded his chest. “Why did you follow me?”

  “Why did I . . . ? What is wrong with you? Everyone is worried sick. Bellua is ranting like a lunatic. They’re all looking—”

  “Does Father know you’re here?”

  “No! Father and the rest took your bait and followed the acquisition train. They thought you were chasing one of the qits from our brood . . . which is pretty much what you intended, right? After they left, I started to wonder. So I went to the ruins to see if you were there. When I saw that the bones were gone, I put two and two together and came up with crazy.”

  “Shhh. Hold your voice down,” I whispered.

  “You think Getig was showing you something, don’t you? You think he wanted you to march into the wilderness to find a qit.” He whispered now too. “I figured I would catch up to you easily. I sure didn’t think I would be gone this long.” He rubbed the new bond mark on the back of his neck. “I have a qit to tend, but here I am in the middle of dragon country chasing my headstrong, foolish—”