And lying in the middle of the chamber was it.
The dragon sniffed. *I have a name, you know.*
Of course you do, my darling Geraden.
It was a huge beast, easily five times the size of a dray horse, its scales dark brown, edged in green. Wings curled and uncurled in impatience as it eyed the goat.
But it didn't make a move to rise from where it lay, its legs tucked underneath its body, as though it was trying to conceal the way the left foreleg ended in a stump.
Elanee had let her attention lag, and the goat panicked, its hooves skittering comically on the smooth stone as it tried to gain purchase for a quick break to daylight, freedom, and survival.
But Geraden was too quick for it. Its saurian head snaked out and caught the goat around the shoulders, bones crunching between strong jaws as it lifted the twitching animal high in the air, then swallowed it quickly, in two bites. A yellow snake of entrails hung from the side of Geraden's jaw; the dragon tried to chew at it, but couldn't quite get it
Elanee walked up and pulled the bloody scrap of intestine from its teeth, ignoring the stench of its breath. She didn't mind getting her hands dirty - cleaning off dirt was, after all, a secondary function of the bath - but she hated bad smells.
*Like the smell of that bad man who shot me with that burning arrow?*
Yes, she thought. Like the smell of that one. She patted at its stump. Yes, he was a very bad man. They all were. Men, that is. Look into their souls and you'll see that, Geraden.
The dragon looked at her with wet, loving eyes the size of dinner plates. *But you won't let them hurt me again.*
Of course not. That's why I've hidden you here so long, letting you rest and gain your strength.
Verinel had been a terrific archer, and his dragonbaned arrow had brought Geraden tumbling out of the sky. No matter that Geraden, blown out from Faerie like a soap bubble taking form and substance, had been in full stoop, ready to snatch a rider and horse, even if one of the riders was a baroness on her afternoon ride -
*I'm sorry. I didn't know you then.*
I know, my darling.
She stroked at the stump. On the ground, Geraden would limp, but the few times she had dared let him fly - only at night, and only on stormy nights at that, where a burst of flame might be mistaken for lightning - he had been fine in the air, swift and sure, not lumbering through the sky like that horrible Ellegon, that beast that kept the Cullinanes and Furnaels and their stinking minions in power.
*I won't let him hurt you, Elanee. I promise.*
He's coming for me, you know, she thought, letting some of the real fear she felt show through. He hates me because of you. He wants to be the only dragon in the Eren regions, and let the bad men ride high above the clouds, swooping down when they want to hurt me.
Geraden's mental voice was sure. *I can stop him,* the dragon said. *And then I'll be the only one.*
Perhaps or perhaps not. Many strange things had leaked out before the breach between Faerie and reality had been sealed. The orcs, for one. And there were tales of serpents in the Cirric, and of creatures living high on mountain peaks, away from man. Men and magical creatures didn't get along. Men didn't get along with anybody, be it other men or women.
But for now, he would be the only one.
And the emperor would have to meet her terms, unless he wanted his empire to fall apart in bloody chunks. Maybe the irreplaceable loss of Ellegon alone wouldn't start the avalanche that would tear the empire apart - but would Thomen want to risk it?
He would meet her terms. They all would. The Cullinanes and Furnaels had seized power with bloody hands, and they could hardly protest sharing it with Elanee's cleaner ones, now, could they?
She was not a young woman anymore, but she could still bear children, even if she might need a little help from the Spider or an Eareven witch to conceive and bring to term. It would be a bit... much to ask Thomen Furnael to adopt Miron as his heir, but she could bear him another son.
And Miron could still marry Leria, and consolidate their lands.
It would be nice to give him something to play with.
*I can hear horses,* Geraden said.
Shh. Hide your thoughts, she thought sternly. Be still as a rock. No, better, be the rock. Don't let any of them hear you until it's too late.
An old oaken chest lay under the crack in the outer wall, and next to it an even stack of long wooden poles. She opened the chest, and removed the stone crock that lay within it, setting it down very carefully on the floor before she pried open the waxed lid with her fingernails, too eager to reach for the knife that lay on the floor next to the spears.
Eagerly, hungrily, she took up a spear and coated the head of it with the tarry sludge. Boiling down the dragonbane had been easy, although Geraden had had a moment of panic when the wind outside the cave had changed, bringing the scent to his nostrils, poor dear. But she had reassured him.
The dragonbane wasn't for him, after all.
The trick had been to get the extract thick and gooey enough, and she had finally resorted to pouring most of a jugful of honey into the vat, cooking it down until what was left was a thick, sweet, deadly tar.
It wouldn't do to have the wind whip droplets of it back into Geraden's face. She coated the spear thickly, a full arm length back from the point, and then wrapped the head of the spear in a sheet of leather, binding it tightly with three thongs, like a cook preparing a roast. The force of the point being driven into Ellegon's hide would tear the wrapping loose and smear the poison along a channel as deep as Ger-aden could gouge.
And Geraden would gouge deeply indeed.
It's time, she thought.
Obediently, Geraden rose, limping over on his three good legs to gingerly take the spear in his mouth.
*Don't worry, Elanee. I won't let them hurt you,* the dragon said as it limped its way down the passage toward daylight.
Of course you won't. I am relying on you, my dearest darling.
Chapter 26
Death of a Dragon
He should have made it one of Slovotsky's Laws years before: "It always takes a lot of time to make things go right, but they can go all to hell in a heartbeat."
Walter Slovotsky kicked his heels against the beefy side of his borrowed horse, following Thirien up the steep trail to where the forest broke on daylight.
Below, a dark-mouthed tunnel opened at the base of the far hill, near where a half-dozen men sat around a rough corral filled with horses. Either it had been too long since Walter had spent time around dwarves - he liked the Moderate People, as long as they didn't insist that he share their moderation - or that was awfully large for a dwarven tunnel.
Still, it was possible. And if not an entry to dwarven warrens, then what was it? Kethol had relayed Durine's description, and Walter's first guess was a mine, although not a modern one. One just didn't make mine shafts larger than necessary. A larger tunnel called for more bracing, and was more likely to collapse than a smaller one. You did want to make it large enough so that you could pull a large cart out through it - no matter what you were mining, you'd find it necessary to haul away a large quantity of rocks - but enlarging it beyond necessity quickly ran into the law of diminishing returns, and -
A dragon limped its way out into the sunlight, a spear clenched in its mouth.
Holy mother of shit.
Thirien grabbed his dagger from his belt and lunged for Kethol, while Erenor just sat openmouthed at the sight of the dragon.
Slovotsky already had a throwing knife in his hand, and while his throw went wide and caught Thirien's horse in the withers instead of Thirien himself, that sent the horse bucking, tossing Thirien into Kethol, knocking both of them to the ground.
Ellegon?
The dragon didn't answer; he was either too high or distracted.
As who wouldn't be?
There was still talk of the occasional dragon still surviving in elven lands and the Waste, and there was, of course, Th
e Dragon, once again sleeping at the Gate Between Worlds, but dragons were mostly gone from the Eren regions, the Middle Lands in particular. That was one of the reasons that Ellegon was so valuable an ally: it wasn't just that he was powerful, but that he was unique.
But another dragon, here, its dinner-plate-sized eyes blinking in the sunlight?
Things seemed to move slowly, the way they often did when it all hit the fan.
You could spend as much time as you wanted figuring things out, the whole fucking universe could be laid out in front of you, clear as a bell, ripe for the plucking, but you were just as trapped in the slow time as everybody else was, and you could no more escape from it than they could.
They had been had.
The whole thing wasn't some minor play for additional lands for the baroness's son to inherit, and it wasn't some typical backstreet noble politics, even though that could end up with a knife through somebody's throat as easily as not. Walter was barely egotistical enough to think that he was part of the prey that the baroness wanted, but no, he wasn't the target of all this.
It was Ellegon.
Ellegon would land to greet the other dragon - no, he wouldn't. Ellegon had been caught once, and he wouldn't simply fly into a trap. He would wait for the other dragon to rise in flight -
- which meant that that spear in its mouth was coated with dragonbane, and for whatever reason, it was going to kill Ellegon.
It was clear, it was obvious, and if he could have moved quickly enough, he could have done - what?
Ellegon, get out of here, he thought, as hard as he could, trying to shout with his mind. That, at least, made sense - no matter what the game was, it had to be right to get the most valuable piece off the board.
Now.
But there was no answer from the dragon, wheeling itself high across the sky.
His mind was racing, fast, out of control, but he was stuck in this slow time like everybody else was, where Erenor sat stupid on his horse and Kethol and Thirien rolled around the ground, each with his hand on the other's knife arm, as though they were trying to mirror each other.
That was when the rockslide started.
It had taken Pirojil and Durine most of the afternoon to work their way around to the crest of the hill over the cave mouth. It would have been nice to have Kethol around - he had a way of finding a path through woods where there really wasn't one.
But they didn't have Kethol, and they didn't have any paths to follow, and by noon they were well scratched up, as well as tired and sore.
It could have been worse. A couple of days of rest and food had made the two of them half-human again. Not well, not rested, not comfortable nor relaxed, but functional, and that would have to do.
They wouldn't have to watch their back trail closely, although they would; Vester and his family would hardly be carrying tales, not after having put them up for all that time.
Not that it would make a difference soon. The baroness had tried to have not just them killed - that was bad enough - but Leria, as well.
And that was simply not acceptable.
Pirojil shook his head. This had started out as just an annoyance, just an uncomplicated conveying of a silly little chit from one city to another, just another job. When had it become personal? And why? He knew what Durine would have said: It became personal when she tried to have us killed, the big man would say.
But maybe not. People had tried to have them killed before. That was the way it worked for soldiers.
You tried to do it to them first, to do it better, to do it right, but...
But there was no need to get angry about it.
Pirojil shrugged. It didn't matter why he was angry, or even that he was angry. What mattered was that the place to take on the baroness was out here, at her mine or whatever it was. The deadfall would take out her guards, or at least some of them, leaving Pirojil and Durine to then slide down the side of the hill to go after the baroness herself, to settle with her.
This was the place; this was the time. Not that it would take much time. Pirojil didn't need much time. He wouldn't explain to her that you didn't send people chasing after somebody that he and Kethol and Durine and Erenor were guarding. He wouldn't explain to her that when you played a game of bones with humans as the pinbones, you had to worry about one of your pieces resenting it. He wouldn't tell her that his life wasn't worth much, but it wasn't hers to take, not while he was serving the Old Emperor's memory, or the Old Emperor's legacy.
No.
If the stones didn't get her, and Pirojil did get to her, it would be just a quick slash to slow her down, and then one thrust to finish her off.
If he lived through that, he could give speeches over the dead body later. The Old Emperor had been fond of that, although Pirojil had never quite found it to his taste. Usually, by the time Pirojil was done killing, he was more in need of a hot bath than a few hot words.
Maybe he would make an exception this time.
Her guard was outside, sitting around the inevitable cook-fire, and there was one extra saddled horse in addition to the knacker-ready old beasts in the corral, and the saddle on that horse was all pretty and filigreed.
She was there.
Their flintlock pistols had long since been removed from their oiled skins, and Pirojil was busy repriming the last of them.
No, a pistol wasn't as good as a sword, not for killing, but just the sound of the gunshots would likely panic the horses and send them running. And if you could even disable an enemy with a pistol shot to the sword arm or either leg, that would make him easy meat for the sword, when you got around to him.
Durine carefully fitted another stone into place behind the rotting log they were using as a deadfall. Kick out the stones they'd jammed in front of the log, and it would all happen quicker than a man could die.
There was an argument to not waiting for the baroness to come out, to drop the deadfall now and then go in after her. But Pirojil wanted at least the chance of doing it quickly and neatly, and Durine seemed to read his mind and nodded, his fingers spread in a "let's wait" motion.
And then things all started to happen quickly.
Too quickly.
A quartet of horsemen emerged from the forest over the far hill just as Ellegon's dark shape appeared over the horizon above them, flame issuing from the dragon's mouth to mark the spot in case Pirojil missed it.
Which he didn't.
And if he wasn't - no, he was right. He could recognize Kethol's red hair and his overly stiff way of riding a horse from here, and with Ellegon overhead, that probably meant that he had Walter Slovotsky - yes, it was him.
Durine grinned.
They weren't going to have to deal with the baroness themselves, and while six on five wasn't the best odds he'd ever heard of, they had Ellegon overhead, and while the dragon would be careful to stay out of range of any dragonbaned arrows, he was still -
A smaller, browner dragon limped out of the cave, a spear in its mouth. Work with somebody long enough, and you end up sharing a mind. Pirojil didn't have to see Durine moving out of the corner of his eye to know that the big man would be going for the left side of the deadfall, trusting that Pirojil would go for the right. He scrabbled across the ground, ignoring the way that rocks chewed at his hands, until his boots reached the rock.
He kicked hard at it with his heel, once, twice, three times, but it didn't move. They had piled too many rocks behind the rotting log, perhaps, or maybe he was more tired than he thought, but the important thing was that the cursed rock wasn't going to move, and that dragon down there was going to move.
Could it be harmless, or friendly? He didn't waste a heartbeat on that notion. Ellegon hadn't been lured here to meet a new friend, and the baroness was not only more dangerous than Pirojil had imagined, she was more dangerous than anyone could have imagined.
He kicked hard, harder, then braced himself, back flat on the rocky slope, fingers grabbing for purchase, and pushed.
&nbs
p; And failed.
But Durine had more luck, or more strength, and his side of the log began to move, at first barely, but then more and more quickly, until the whole rotting mass of wood slipped away downslope, rocks and rubble tumbling after it.
Chunks of wood fell away as the log rolled and bounced down the slope, but the mass was almost intact as it struck the dragon a glancing blow on the shoulder, and a good third of the rocks hit it in a steady rain that knocked it to the ground.
But the dragon rose and shook itself all over, like a dog drying itself, and craned its neck up toward where Pirojil stood, his hands bloody and empty.
That's right, he thought. Come to me. Durine was fumbling with the straps of their rucksack. If he could get to the vial of dragonbane and get it on a knife edge, maybe, maybe, maybe ...
Maybe they could die, roasted in dragonfire, before the dragon went on to kill Ellegon and their friends.
But wait. That spear in its mouth - the only thing that made sense was that that was coated with dragonbane, too, and if it used its flame it would burn the weapon it intended to use on Ellegon.
*I won't let you hurt her. Or me.*
Another man perhaps could have reassured it with his mind, or perhaps would at least have tried. But Pirojil wasn't another man, and Durine had coated his sword with the dark oily fluid from the flask and tossed the flask toward Pirojil before he ran, half-stumbling, down the slope toward where the dragon waited below.
Pirojil, trying to do everything at once, stumbled and fell as he went down the slope after Durine, the flask of dragonbane extract bouncing out of his bloody hands. It came to rest on a clump of grass, and he had just retrieved it and started to coat his own blade when Durine reached the bottom and charged the dragon.
He moved quickly for such a big man; if he could only get his sword -
The dragon moved even faster, snakelike, its wings pinioning the air as it backed away, ready to launch itself into the air after Ellegon.
Not Exactly The Three Musketeers Page 30