by Robin Hobb
The sun had passed its zenith. No carcass had bobbed to the surface yet. No one had slept. All hands had kept watch on the water, fearing at first that the dragon was not dead and might venture another attack. Then, as the night wore on and she did not rise, they watched, fearing that their long-sought prize, the foundation of all their dreams, was on the bottom of the river, forever out of their reach.
They had probed the area between the moored ships with their longest poles and felt only water or river bottom. One hapless oar slave, secured by a rope about his ankle, had been thrown overboard and commanded to dive as deep as he could and see what he might see. He had not wished to go; he had cried out in protest as his fellows had obediently lifted him and then flung him over the side. No swimmer he; he had sunk, risen to the surface to splash and beg for help. The shouted commands for him to dive and look for the dragon carcass had not, in Hest’s opinion, moved him.
Rather, his own ineptitude had sunk him again. The second time, they had dragged him from the water by the line about his ankle. He had lain on the deck like a dead thing, his skin kissed red by the river, puffing air into his lungs, his eyes filmed with gray from the acid water. They shouted at him, demanding to know what he had seen. “Nothing! I saw nothing, I see nothing!” The man’s terror at being blind had robbed him of his fear of his master.
The Chalcedean had kicked him disdainfully, proclaimed him useless, and would have discarded him over the side if one of the others had not insisted that a blind man on an oar was better than an empty bench. Hest had noted that none of the Chalcedeans had volunteered to dive overboard.
Now as the rising sun granted them enough light that they could see under the trees, they scanned the nearby banks to see if the dragon’s carcass had washed ashore. There was nothing. Then the Chalcedean had announced that perhaps the current had carried their prize downstream. His haggard men stared at him with sick doubt in their eyes. The dragon was gone and they knew it.
Their leader did not share their gloom. “Oh, come!” Lord Dargen cajoled them. “Will you rest now and let our fortune slip away from us? The current has carried our prize downstream. We will seek her there, and know that every stroke of the oar carries us closer to home as well as closer to a golden future!”
It sounded like chicanery to Hest, a mother’s lie to make a child open his mouth for the bitter medicine. But the crews accepted it and began to make ready for a day’s travel. What choice did they have? Odd, how living as a slave was showing him how little choice most men had in their lives. His existence had always been shaped by his father’s authority. Last night when his stolen rags and chill hold had begun to seem like a cozy refuge from standing on the deck holding a lantern aloft for the searchers, he had reconsidered Sedric’s fantasy of the two of them running off to a distant country. Sedric had voiced it only once, toward the end of their time together in Bingtown. Hest had scoffed at it back then and forbidden him to speak again of his idiotic dream.
Hest had recalled the quarrel in detail as he had stood on the darkened deck, spending hours of his life functioning as a lamp stand as he held the lantern high. It was Sedric’s fault he had come to this, he had decided. His lover had dreamed of gaining a fortune and moving far from Bingtown, to dwell together in luxury where they did not have to hide their relationship from Hest’s wife or Bingtown society. Hest had told him not be ridiculous, that they were fine as they were. Hest had had no wish to gamble his comfortable life. But, whether he willed it or not, Sedric had cast the dice for them. And instead of a fortune and a life of freedom in some exotic location, he had won slavery for Hest and whatever peculiar exile Sedric now endured.
He had heard the dreams of the Chalcedean dragon hunters. Sedric had not imagined the vast value of dragon parts. For the first time, he wondered if Sedric had gained his ambition, had harvested blood or scales, sold them, and gone off to live alone the dream that Hest had mocked. No. He had not. For if Sedric had taken such plunder to the Duke of Chalced or to any of the trade contacts they knew, these others would have known of it. Perhaps they would even have been able to go home, knowing that someone else had finished their terrible quest for them. And if Sedric had acquired a fortune, he would have come back to Hest and pleaded with him to go with him. Of that Hest was certain. Sedric would always come back to him.
So. What had become of Sedric and Alise? He did not much care why his frumpy little wife had not returned to him, but what had kept Sedric from his side? Being so deeply infatuated with Hest in his juvenile and romantic way, surely if Sedric could have come home, he would have, with or without dragon’s blood to trade. And Captain Leftrin had claimed that both Alise and Sedric were alive. So much he had gleaned during his time in Trehaug and Cassarick.
“What is that?” A man’s cry, full of wonder and perhaps fear, sent everyone scrambling to the rails to peer over the side. Had the dragon returned? But a glance at the lookout showed him pointing, not at the river but at the sky.
“Parrots,” someone exclaimed in disgust. “Just a flock of blue and green parrots.”
“And gold and silver and scarlet and blue,” another man cried.
“They’re a bit big for parrots . . .”
It was not a flock of birds startled from their canopy home. These creatures came on swift, wide wings, more batlike in motion than birdlike. They flew in formation like geese, and even the powerful downstrokes of their wings were orchestrated, as if someone called cadence for them. Hest stared with the others and felt blood drain from his face. His hands and feet tingled, and he could not voice what someone finally shouted, his voice still tinged with disbelief.
“Dragons! A flock of dragons!”
“Fortune favors us! Ready your bows!” Lord Dargen shouted joyously. “Attack as they fly over us. Let us bring down one or two of them, and return home with our holds full of dragon parts!”
For the first time, Hest realized that the man was mad. Insane with fear for his family, believing that somehow he could get the magical items that would bring them safely to him when he returned home. Hest suddenly knew with terrible certainty that they were no longer alive, that they had died terribly, probably months ago, possibly screaming the Chalcedean’s name as they perished.
This quest was all the man had left. It was only a fantasy. Even if he filled the ship with chunks of bloody meat and kegs of blood, there was no grand life for him to reclaim. To fulfill his mad goal would be as disastrous for him as to fail. But this was his life now, and he was trapped in it as surely as he had imprisoned Hest in his madman’s mission. Whatever doom he had brought upon himself, Hest would share. Weaponless he stood and watched them come. Creatures of legend, glittering like gemstones against the endless gray sky, in the distance they looked more like adornments to a lady’s elegant music box than vengeful flying predators. All around him on the decks of both ships, men were running and shouting, stringing bows, demanding arrows of their fellows, limbering their arms with their throwing spears. They have no idea, Hest thought to himself. He had seen the blue dragon of Bingtown, Tintaglia, once. It had been in the distance, as he returned to Bingtown after she had driven off the Chalcedean warriors. He had thought her pretty then.
But on his return to the city, he had seen what a dragon’s wrath could do. She had not intended to pock paving stone with acid holes, nor fill the harbor basin with sunken ships. That damage had been incidental. He had seen the harm that one dragon, fighting on behalf of a city, could do.
He stood on the deck and tried to count the oncoming dragons. He stopped at ten. Ten times dead was very dead indeed. The slaves chained to their oars were praying. He was tempted to join them.
The dragons had flown through the night, ignoring cold and fitful rainfall. Sintara had expected to be exhausted by dawn, but they were not. They had flown on, as the sun rose, and on as it climbed into the sky. They had flown as if they had but one mind, reverting to the animals that perhaps dragons once had been. Mercor led their formation, and
Sintara had been proud to fly to his right. Blue-black Kalo had taken his left, and then Sestican and Baliper. Those three, she knew somehow, had been a long time with the golden dragon, perhaps swimming with him as serpents once. Quarrel they might among themselves, but now there was a common enemy to fight and vanquish. All differences among them were gone. Even their thirst for Silver had been suppressed. Fifteen strong, they had risen to Tintaglia’s cry for vengeance.
Silver Spit lumbered along at the tail of the line. Copper Relpda flew strongly, her early awkwardness scarcely a memory for her now. And ridiculous red Heeby flew wherever she would, now part of the formation, now trailing it, now flying to one side. Her slender scarlet rider sang as they flew, a song of anger and vengeance, but also one that praised the beauty of angry dragons in flight and painted a glorious victory for them. Ridiculous, and ridiculous that she and the others enjoyed it so. Thymara had complained more than once about how freely the dragons used their glamour to compel their keepers to tend them. Yet not once had she ever admitted the power that human flattery and praise in song could exert over dragons. She was not the only dragon who flew with her mind full of Rapskal’s glorious images of exotically beautiful dragons triumphing over every obstacle.
They had flown straight, not following the river’s meandering course. Dawn had come earlier for them than it had for the ships on the river’s surface. The tall trees that surrounded this section of the Rain Wild River also blocked the earliest rays of the sun. The dragons had flown over the treetops, feeling the warmth of the sun limber their weary wings, and then, as the trees gave way to the open space of the river, they had seen their enemies in the distance.
“Vengeance, my beautiful ones, jewels of the day! We will visit death on them, a death so glorious they will die praising you!”
“Destroy them all! Sink their ships!” Kalo’s trumpet call of fury rang against the dead gray sky.
Rapskal laughed aloud. “Oh, no, my mighty one! There is no need to destroy such useful vessels. Only the killers must die. Leave enough crew to row our prizes home! Some we may allow to live, as servants, to tend our kine and flocks for us. Others we may ransom! But for now, blaze terror into their hearts!”
The young Elderling glittered scarlet in the morning light, his garments of blue and gold like a battle banner in the wind. He broke into a deep-throated song in an ancient tongue, and Sintara discovered she recalled it of old. When Rapskal paused at the end of a stanza to draw breath, the dragons trumpeted in unison. Her hearts swelled with fury and joy at her own mightiness. They neared the hapless boats and swept low over them.
The ships rocked in the wild wind of their passage. Those few crew members who remembered to release their arrows saw their puny missiles wobble and spin in the dragon tempest. Leaves and twigs from the nearby trees showered down with a shushing sound and even the river surged up in wavelets. The force sent Hest staggering to the wall of the ship’s house.
“We’re going to die here!” he shouted, for he suddenly saw it all clearly. The dragons would circle back and fly over them even lower. But no wind need they fear, for the danger of the acid they would spew down on them would make the wind seem like a friendly pat. Even a falling drop of the stuff would kill a man, eating through clothes and flesh and bone until it emerged from a stumbling corpse and buried itself in the earth. If the dragons breathed it out as a blanketing mist, only sodden wreckage and sizzling bones would remain of them.
Hest screamed wordlessly as the images fully penetrated his mind.
“Get off the ships! Hide in the trees!” Someone shouted the order, and a wave of men scrambled to obey. From beneath the closed hatches, screams of terror rose, but there was no time for Hest to think of anyone except himself. Get off the ship. It was his only possible chance to survive. He rushed to the railing and jumped amid a fountaining wave of other men doing likewise. He was fortunate that his ship was closest to the bank. The water, cold and stinging, closed over his head. He had shut his eyes tightly as he jumped and as he came up he floundered blindly, scarcely daring to open his eyes until he felt the slimy river bottom under his boots. Then he blinked rapidly, feeling the river water sting and haze his eyes for a moment before he scrabbled out onto the muddy, reed-choked bank.
He was one of the first ashore. Behind him, all was chaos on the boat and in the waters between them. Men had jumped haphazardly, some on the river side of the vessels, to be swept away in the stronger current there. Others were trapped between the ships, half blinded and stunned by cold water and terror. They yammered and shrieked as the dragons swept back over them. The wind of their passage rocked the vessels, and the cries of the drowning men were submerged by the earsplitting roars of the dragons as they passed. Hest was stunned by the sound, staggering and covering his ears. A full knowledge of the majesty and power of dragons suddenly filled him, and he fell to his knees, weeping to think that he had dared defy such magnificent creatures. All around him, men were doing the same, begging for forgiveness and promising lifelong servitude if only they were spared. They knelt or prostrated themselves in the mud. Hest himself stood, his arms uplifted to the sky, and suddenly realized he was shouting praise to their beauty. In the distance, the dragons were beginning a wheeling turn. He knew two things with certainty: this time they returned to kill, and then, with an even greater clarity, he knew that the thoughts and feelings of the past few moments were not his own. It’s like a dream, he told himself. A dream in which I do and say things I would never do or say in my waking life. This is not me; this is not of my own will. Then, as the dragons approached, all rational thought fled.
Every human who could flee the ships had. Sintara was vaguely aware of men wailing in trapped dismay. Some were jumping about, heedless of how they damaged themselves as they fought chains that secured them to rowing benches. Humans evidently confined humans. Why, she could not guess and did not find it intriguing enough to puzzle about. It did not please her when Mercor led them to land in the shallows of the river and then wade ashore, but she sensed his purpose. The humans were now cut off from their ships. A few, she knew, fled mindlessly into the forest. They would die there, tonight or tomorrow. Humans were not able to live without shelter and food.
But others crouched in the grasses or hid behind trees or simply prostrated themselves, sick with terror. Not one had been killed by tooth or claw or dragon’s breath. Those who had perished had wrought their own deaths, their little minds unable to stand before the terrible glamour of a dragon’s wrath and majesty. As the dragons waded out of the river, some of their captives wailed in terror. Then Heeby spoiled their grand procession out of the water by skidding to a halt on the mud bank, sending muck up in a spattering spray over the cowering humans. Sintara snorted in disdain.
She noticed that Rapskal did not leap down from the scarlet dragon’s back until she had moved to a less marshy site. Then he hopped down, his gay Elderling cloak aflutter about his shoulders. Those few invaders who were capable of a response other than terror gasped in awe at the sight of him. Grudgingly, she had to admit that he looked far grander than the squat humans in their murky clothes. Tall and slender, he was a fitting companion to the dragons. He looked about, a grim smile on his face, and then flung his cloak back over one shoulder. She felt almost proud of him as he strode forward and ordered the humans, “Stand up! Come forward! It is time to be judged by those you have wronged.”
They obeyed. Even as the dragons eased the glamour that held them, the humans obeyed. Pulverized by terror, they had already been defeated. Wet and shaking with cold, they came forward to stand in a huddle. They were a motley assortment. Some were in rags, thin and scarred. Others were attired as bowmen, with leather on their wrists and close-fitting shirts, and there were those in the finery of noblemen. Of old, dragons had known all these sorts of men and found that, stripped of their fabrics, they were all soft-skinned shrieking monkeys.
Hest found himself obeying the command to come forward for judgment. He had
found a small corner of his mind to call his own, so even as he stepped forward to join the others in a kneeling row, he recognized that the awe and terror he felt were not entirely rational. He dared a quick glance at the faces of his fellow captives. Some looked as blank as sheep facing slaughter, but in others, he saw the struggle in their eyes. He knew a moment of consternation that some of the Chalcedean’s rowing slaves were more cognizant of their own minds than the nobles who had commanded them. Then there was no time to think of anything, for a tall scarlet warrior was striding toward the line. Hest had never seen such bright garments as he wore. He walked with a fighter’s stride, but wore no armor nor carried any weapon. Perhaps he needed none.
He stopped a short distance from them. A red dragon had followed him to his inspection, but it was the great golden dragon that towered over both of them that held Hest’s gaze. The creature’s eyes were large and liquid, black over blackness. They seemed to swirl as he gazed into them, radiating calm. The largest dragon of all, a blue-black mountain, towered over the others. Light seemed to sink into him and vanish into his shimmering anger. His silver eyes reflected nothing. Someone spoke, the red man or the dragon, Hest did not know. “Have you offered harm to a dragon?”
“No,” he said, for he had not. He had never shot an arrow or jabbed with a spear. He found himself standing and stepping back. Others were doing the same, slaves and crewmen and even one of the Chalcedean bowmen. Some remained kneeling, and Hest had an ominous sensation of doom.
“Judgment is done,” the scarlet man proclaimed. “You who have dared to raise hands against the glory of a dragon will spend the rest of your lives in servitude to them. That is the mercy of Mercor the Wise. A workman’s village awaits you, where you can become useful. If you fail to serve willingly and well, you will be eaten. One way or another, your lives are forfeit for what you have done. You others have been part of a most evil expedition. You are not without guilt. But your families can buy you back, if they are inclined. If not, you can find useful labor among us. That will be discussed later, after we reach Kelsingra. For now, those who are evil will be transported in constraints.” He narrowed his eyes for a moment, and then pointed at two slaves and a crewman. “You three will see to that. Confine them. Then organize a crew. The rest of you will bring the ships to Kelsingra. Those we claim as rightful booty, for you have invaded our territory without our permission and forfeit all that you have brought with you.”