by Don Perrin
“Speaking of seeing things, you didn’t happen to get a look at what was in the box, did you? Our presents?”
“No,” Shanra said, shaking her head sadly. “But we better get back to the barracks fast or we’ll miss out on our share. The others will hog it, whatever it is. You know they will.”
Now thoroughly alarmed, the two sivak sisters pushed and shoved their way through the crowded streets.
* * * * *
The sun made no appearance all that day, lurking behind a mantle of gray clouds that threatened rain, but never committed to more than an annoying drizzle. The engineers’ barracks were filled with the sounds of hammering and the noxious smell of the brown goo pulp concoction. After what passed for lunch, Kang made the rounds, inspecting the construction. He was pleased with the progress.
Though the pulp was taking longer to dry than they’d anticipated, the brown goo had proven to be far more effective than they had hoped. But time was running out. Receiving the scout’s reports that the first elements of the army had been sighted, Kang climbed up to the reinforced battlements to see for himself. Line after long line of goblin soldiers marched over the ridge, the very same ridge where Kang had first stood and looked down into the fort. He could smell their foul stench and he could even hear the occasional shout from their officers.
The goblins poured down the ridge and into the canyon like a flood of turgid water, roiling and boiling as various units detached themselves and took up positions on the field. The flood crept slowly toward the fort, the tide rising. Soon they would be surrounded, an island in an ocean of death.
The draconians could do nothing to halt the flow. The archers of the Twelfth kept watch on the walls, occasionally picked off the odd goblin here and there, to much cheering and shouting. But they might as well have been flicking grains of sand into that ocean of death for all the good it would do.
Kang descended from the wall with a heavy heart, to find a few of his men clustered around the walls, trying to see through the cracks.
“Yes, there’re goblins out there,” Kang told his troops, ordering them back to work. “No surprise to us. We knew they were coming. We’re the ones with the surprise.”
The men laughed and returned to their work with renewed vigor.
“Pass the word for the second-in-command,” Kang told Granak.
Granak passed the word. Kang waited in his quarters for Slith to arrive, but the sivak did not show up.
Figuring that perhaps something had gone wrong with the cactus mash, Kang tromped over to the distillery. Slith was known to take great care with his brew, tasting it repeatedly to make certain of the quality. He sometimes tasted it so copiously that he could be found sleeping off this quality control. Slith was not around, however. Gloth was in charge. Under his direction, the draconians were filling the barrels with the pungent mass of cactus pulp. The fumes alone nearly rocked Kang back on his heels. He felt giddy just breathing them.
“Slith went to the quartermasters to requisition supplies, sir,” Gloth said.
“When was that?”
“This morning, sir.”
“Shouldn’t he be back by now?” Kang demanded angrily. “It’s mid-afternoon!”
“I couldn’t say, sir,” Gloth replied meekly.
Of course he can’t say, Kang thought. It isn’t his responsibility to keep track of Slith.
Angry at Slith for not being there when he was needed and further angry with himself for allowing his anger to show, Kang stalked off. He hung around the work crews, watching them construct the dragon until he realized that he was only getting in the way and making the men nervous. He made a brief inspection of the females, found them hard at work spreading the brown goo mixture over the wings. He successfully avoided speaking to Fonrar and, pleased with that at least, he retired to his quarters, leaving orders that Slith was to be sent to him the moment he returned.
* * * * *
“Men are all the same, Fon,” Huzzad said in comforting tones. “Whether they have skin or scales, they’re all the same.”
Having been first viewed by the female draconians with jealousy and suspicion, Huzzad was now not only accepted by the females but looked upon as a kind of elder sister, one who has “seen the world” and could impart her knowledge to her younger naive sisters. Huzzad had taken care not to try to usurp Fonrar’s place of commander, but was acting in the capacity of adviser. She had shown them where they were deficient in their training, undertaken to correct their mistakes and had done so in a respectful manner.
Having taught them how to be better soldiers in possible battles with the goblins, Huzzad was now teaching the females how to be better soldiers in that grand eternal struggle—the battle of the sexes.
“You’d think he would have at least looked at me,” Fonrar said, slopping on brown goo with wet, irritated slaps of the brush. “He didn’t. Not the whole time. He hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you,” Huzzad said. “In fact, if he was human, I’d say he likes you so much that he doesn’t know if he’s on his head or heels when you’re around.”
“Really?” Fonrar stopped work, looked up, pleased. “But then why does he act as if he can’t stand the sight of me?”
“Men don’t like change. Men like things to stay the same. Why? Because then they don’t have to make any changes themselves. In Kang’s mind, you are still the little hatchlings he rescued from the cave. All he had to do was feed you and protect you. He understood what was required of him. But now you’re grown up and he doesn’t have a clue what he’s supposed to do or say or how to react around you. He’s afraid, Fon. Afraid he’s going to lose you.”
“But why?” Fonrar was bewildered. “Why would he think that?”
“When you were little, you looked up to him. He was perfect in your eyes. He could do nothing wrong. But now you know different, Fonrar. You know he’s not perfect. You know that he can make mistakes. That’s why you feel so angry at him sometimes. That’s why you rebel against him. So in a way he has lost you. He sees that every time he looks into your eyes.”
“I like him better for not being perfect,” said Fonrar loyally. “I feel closer to him. I wouldn’t want him to be any different from the way he is.”
“I know,” said Huzzad, smiling. “And he’ll figure it out. Someday. You just have to be patient. Give him time.”
The two were interrupted in their conversation by the arrival of the sivak sisters. They came clambering over the wall of the latrine, bounding through the door, panting with excitement and overturning a bucket of goo.
“Did we miss it?” Shanra cried.
“What’d he bring us?” Hanra asked. “Did you open the box yet?”
“Calm down!” Fonrar ordered. “Did who bring what?”
“Then he hasn’t given out the presents yet?” Hanra said in relief.
“We haven’t missed out on our share?” Shanra said, adding suspiciously. “You’re not just saying that, hiding it from us?”
“What are you two talking about?” Fonrar demanded, exasperated. “Hiding what?”
“We saw Slith on the street,” Hanra explained. “He was coming from the Quartermasters and we heard him say he had bought presents. For us.”
“He was carrying two big boxes,” Shanra added. “We tried to see inside, but we couldn’t. He was on his way back with the boxes. We thought he’d be here by now. We would have been here sooner only we took a wrong turn.”
“Well, he hasn’t been here,” said Fonrar shortly. “And this is no time to be talking about presents. We have work to do. Grab brushes, both of you.”
* * * * *
The dismal afternoon darkened imperceptibly, so that it was difficult to tell where day left off and night began. Outside the walls, goblin campfires began blossoming to life like some sort of noxious weed. Goblin archers returned fire at the draconians on the wall, doing little damage, for goblin archers were notoriously poor shots. The draconians hooted and shouted and danced o
n the walls, urging the goblins to fire. When they did, they invariably missed and the draconians collected the spent goblin arrows for use when their own ran short.
An enemy officer finally figured this out and the goblin tactics changed. They began to fire flaming arrows into the fort. These had the potential for doing far more damage, not to people, but to the wooden fort. Kang had ordered barrels filled with water placed at strategic locations around the fort and he had the draconians to soak the thatched roofs with water. Thus far, the flaming arrows were few and the archers had not yet found their range. Most fell harmlessly into the streets. Those few that did hit a wet rooftop sizzled and went out. Kang pulled a group of draconians from dragon building and put them on fire detail, ready to handle any major conflagration. He had intended to put Slith in charge of this detail, but Slith had not reported back.
Kang put off going to supper. The draconians were now ready to fit the various parts of the dragon’s body together and Kang was kept busy with questions, questions he would have liked to discussed with his second-in-command.
Kang ordered Granak to do a thorough search of the barracks, the streets around the barracks and the mess hall. No sign of Slith. No one could even say for certain when they had last seen him. No one knew what supplies he had gone to pick up or what he might be planning to do with them.
A sharp tooth of worry started to gnaw at Kang. He quickly yanked it out by reminding himself that Slith was quite capable of taking care of himself. Slith enjoyed intrigue, he loved spying things out, thought nothing of going off on his own to concoct some ingenious plan. Fond of surprises, Slith quite often kept his little expeditions secret, waiting for the proper moment to gleefully spring them on his unsuspecting commander. Slith figured that Kang would understand and usually Kang did. More than once, these forays of Slith’s had proven to be of real value.
“I’m just jumpy,” Kang said to himself. “It’s these blasted goblins.” And, although he wouldn’t admit it, Huzzad’s question—How would you feel if Slith died?—bothered Kang deeply. Until that moment, Kang had never realized how much he would miss Slith, if something happened to him.
“Go talk to the Quartermaster,” Kang told Granak, after the search had failed to turn up any trace of the sivak. “Find out when Slith was there and what he picked up. Don’t let on that anything’s wrong. I’m certain nothing is wrong.”
“Yes, sir,” said Granak, and motioning to the two baaz, who were part of Kang’s bodyguard, he left on his assignment.
“What’s this I hear, Commander?” A voice came out of the darkness. “Another of your men gone missing?”
Kang turned to find General Maranta, accompanied by an escort of the Queen’s Own, approaching the barracks.
“Sir,” said Kang, “we are unable to locate Subcommander Slith. We are afraid that something might have happened to him.”
“Fah! Nothing’s happened to him. He’s gone over the wall! Run for his miserable life,” said General Maranta. “I have never seen a more undisciplined lot than these engineers of yours, Commander!”
Kang’s anger was brimstone, his worry fire. Both combined to seethe in his belly and he knew, in that instant, exactly how one of the fire-breathing red dragons feels the moment before it unleashes its blazing attack.
“Sir,” he said in a voice that was so tightly controlled he sounded half-strangled, “you obviously do not know Subcommander Slith or you would not say—”
“Desertion in the face of the enemy,” General Maranta continued. “But it’s no less than I expected from you cowards. Engineers.” He sneered. “You weren’t good enough for them to make regular soldiers of you and so they made you crap-hole diggers and shit-haulers! Don’t worry, Commander. My men rescued you from the clutches of those nasty old goblins once and we’ll do so again—”
Red-hot flame exploded inside Kang. The fire cooked his brain, boiled his blood. He could never afterward remember clearly what happened, but he knew that someone was bellowing and someone was battling in a rage and that draconians were shouting and his arms were being pinned in a grip like a vice.
The words “court-martial” filtered through the smoke and the flame in his brain.
“You can’t court-martial me, General Maranta!” Kang roared, saliva flying from his mouth. “I’m not under your command and neither are my men!”
He heard cheering; his men were cheering, and the realization of what he had said and done struck him like a bucket of icy water dumped over his head. The water doused the flame in an instant, leaving him chilled and sick, with a suffocating feeling of despair.
“Let go of me,” he mumbled.
“No, sir,” said Gloth, his arms wrapped tightly around Kang.
“You can let go,” Kang repeated. “I’m all right now.”
“Yes, sir,” said Gloth uneasily. Slowly, he loosened his grip.
Kang looked around to see Fulkth standing nearby, along with Yethik and Huzzad. All had their swords drawn. Behind them were fully half the draconian engineers, holding swords, saws, hammers. General Maranta was nowhere in sight.
“By the gods, sir,” said Fulkth, his tongue flicking from between his teeth, visible in a wide grin, “I thought you were going to kill him!”
“You should have sir,” Yethik growled. “After what he said about Slith.”
“And us, sir,” Gloth added grimly. “Calling us cowards!”
The other draconians gave a angry rumble of agreement.
Kang felt weak all over, feared his legs were going to give way. He sat down limply on the Drunken Dragon’s tail section.
“Tell me what happened.”
“Don’t you remember, sir?” Gloth asked.
Kang shook his head.
“You jumped at him, sir. General Maranta. You never said a word. Just bellowed and jumped at him. You should have seen his face, sir.” Yethik chuckled. “He was so startled that he couldn’t even move. Same with the Queen’s Own. If it hadn’t been for Gloth, here, General Maranta would have been one dead aurak. Gloth grabbed hold of you and hauled you back. By then, the Queen’s Own had the general surrounded.”
“They were going for their swords,” Fulkth added. “But by that time Yethik had his own sword drawn and these boys and Huzzad showed up.” Fulkth jerked his thumb over his shoulder, indicating the troop behind, armed and ready to fight. “I think the general had second thoughts about us being cowards. He spewed out something about court-martialing you, sir, and made a hasty departure.”
“He’s right,” said Kang. “I deserve to be court-martialed. I attacked my commanding officer. Here.” Unbuckling his harness with its command badges, he handed the harness to Fulkth. “I place myself under arrest.”
“No, sir! No!” The draconians sent up a howl of protest.
Fulkth refused to touch the harness. He wouldn’t look at it, pretended he didn’t see it.
“I have something to say.” Huzzad’s voice rang out. She stepped forward. The draconians fell back to give her room.
After years of being denigrated by humans, used little better than slaves, the draconians had lost the respect and awe they had once felt about the race. Huzzad had earned their trust, however, and they shouted for her to speak.
“Kang,” said Huzzad, “you can’t do this. Not in this desperate situation with Slith missing and half the goblin nation out there. Your people are counting on you. You can’t let them down.”
“My people,” Kang murmured.
He looked to see Fonrar and Thesik and the rest of the females, standing with the others. Their expressions were grave, serious. He looked at his troops, that he had brought such a distance at so great a cost. He thought of his dream, lying somewhere far ahead, a city of white stone beneath a bright sun and a clear blue sky. His people. Their destiny.
Kang buckled on the harness to resounding cheers. But in that moment, he made a decision. A decision he would not discuss with anyone. Not yet.
“Go back to work,” he order
ed. “The goblins will attack with the dawn. We have to be ready.”
The draconians returned to their duties. Fonrar lingered, regarding him worriedly. He managed a reassuring smile for her and she nodded and walked off. The other officers hung about until Kang glowered at them, then they hastened away.
Kang watched them go. He was numb. He couldn’t feel his hands or his feet. He couldn’t feel his brain. He couldn’t think or move or do anything. He sat on the tail section, watching his troops work. The Drunken Dragon was now completely assembled. They were adding the finishing touches to the head and loading the kegs of cactus mash into their special cage.
Fulkth had rounded up every bit of rope the regiment could find, then tied the bits together to form one gigantic length of rope. They ran the rope through a pulley and attached the end of the rope to the dragon. When the dragon was filled with heated air, it would start to rise up off the ground. The rope would keep it tethered until it had risen high enough to fly over the walls. A single sword slash on the rope would cut the dragon loose and send it on its first and last glorious flight.
The Drunken Dragon was enormous. Fully sixty feet in length from snout to tail tip, its wing span was nearly a hundred feet. They had mixed in red clay with the brown goo to give the dragon a red coloring. The female baaz had come up with the idea of adding in metal shards gleaned from the blacksmith. When the shards caught the firelight, they glinted with the appearance of shining scales. The sword-blade teeth had been honed razor sharp. The eyes were shining silver meat platters that had been “borrowed” from the Quartermaster’s shed. The platters were part of the loot General Maranta had carried with him from Neraka. Reflecting the light, the meat platter eyes looked truly fearsome.
As Kang gazed at the dragon, a feeling of pride—pride in his people—seeped in to fill the emptiness inside. They had done a magnificent job.
“You know,” he said softly, “this just might work!”
“Sir,” came a tense voice behind him.
Kang looked around, recognized Granak.