Dragon Fate: Book Six of The Age of Fire

by E. E. Knight

  “I’ve seen you somewhere or other before, Copper,” she said, in intelligible but flat dragonspeech. “You fly in a very distinctive manner. What’s your name?”

  “RuGaard,” the Copper said, fiddling with his wing and pulling it shut with a pained wince.

  “The old Tyr? I have seen you before, years since. Passing eastward, you were.”

  “Thank you for the compliment of your memory.”

  “The day I start forgetting dragons is the day I’ll be fit for my last trip beyond the surf aboard a flaming raft. But I’m not ready for my last ride yet, if you think you’ll be taking over in the name of the Empire—”

  “Nothing like that. I’ve given up all claim to any title or position. It’s been years since I’ve had any part of the Empire. I’m a wandering exile, lonely for the smell of my kind.”

  “Smell we have, all you want, free as air. You take anything else, I expect you to work for it. Everyone earns their keep in the tower, man or dragon.”

  “What is the price of a decent meal?”

  “A ride to the top of the tower. Don’t worry about a saddle, I know how to hook on to scale for short trips. I need to check the fire-wardens up there. I found some drips of whale oil at the bottom of the tower, which means they’re getting sloppy again, and I don’t want my tower burned to the ground. Ain’t like whale oil is cheap, neither.”

  She introduced herself as Gettel and clung to him using her knees and ankles. The Copper sighed and extended the wing again. He double-checked the condition of the locking-peg. It would be just his luck for it to give way at the top and have him kill the mistress of the tower by accident.

  The Copper wasn’t used to bearing a person. He’d last done it in his youth and he didn’t like the sensation. His neck was a vulnerable spot for a blade.

  “So, sick of old Scabia at the Sadda-Vale, m’dragon?”

  “I’m lonely,” the Copper said, honestly enough. “I’ve spent too much of my life in decisive thought and action. A life of contemplation of the day’s fish haul and techniques of de-boning and filet preparation isn’t for me.”

  “If it’s activity ye seek, I can use you. There’s coin in it for you to eat—I know there’s precious little of that where you come from. Not just messenger-flying, either, but real fighting. Feel up to taking on some dwarfs? I’ve a rich commission from the Hypatians.”

  “I’ve no enemies among dwarfs. All mine are farther south.”

  “Your Empire. They tried to get me to join, but I don’t care to call another my master. Between them to the south and the barbarian chiefs to the north, Juutfod is in a bad way. Both would like to claim this tower and my dragons.”

  “I don’t care to call anyone my master, either,” the Copper said.

  “RuGaard, you won’t. Partnership is what I’m thinking. I know your reputation. I’ve heard you praised by tongues that don’t find words of praise easily. To be honest, I could use a dragon with some leadership experience in the tower. I can put it on paper if that’s your preference. Got a copy of the old Chartered Company articles around here somewhere that I copy from, if your tastes run to laying everything out on a bit of thin rag.”

  “I’m as rusty as this wing joint. To tell you the truth, being Tyr was mostly a figurehead position. People listened to me because I was up on a golden perch with bodyguards all around.”

  “We could give it a try for a while. You might find you like it here. I know there’s dissatisfaction down south. We might get another recruit or two, and I could sure use ’em, if this tower’s to keep free to do our business the way we like.”

  This was close enough to perfect that the Copper wondered if it was some kind of trap. Was old Gettel holding some kind of bounty offer from the Empire for his death or capture? Would she take him below, just to have an axe-wielding blighter strike his neck from the shadows?

  “I’d like to know more about this tower and what it does,” the Copper said.

  She escorted him to a wooden platform large and heavy-timbered enough to support a curled dragon. It could be raised or lowered from a quadruple brace by means of chains and heavy woven cables.

  “Counterweight at the other end,” she explained. “This is the fifth version of the lifter. Just six men working a capstan can lift our heaviest dragon to the top. Try to keep to the center—less wear and tear if it’s balanced.”

  She reached up and rang a brass bell three times by its pull. There was a pause and then the Copper felt the wood shift beneath his feet. The platform ascended as though by magic. Guide-cables kept it stable.

  In the light-filled upper chambers, dragons reclined with viewing slits to the world outside and wide balconies to the central shaft. The Copper guessed she had eight full-grown dragons. There were two drakes and six drakka, a typical ratio. One female, probably ready to lay eggs, had a splendid retreat near the ground floor, with a heavy timbered egg shelf with huge iron-bound beams forming a lattice that protected her yet gave her light, air, and a good look at the activity of the tower.

  The wealth and knowledge that went into the construction of the tower astonished him. When he’d seen it years ago, he’d assumed it was some relic still standing from a lost high civilization, but on closer inspection of the walls and timbers it looked as though it had been built in his lifetime. The Copper had had no idea any humans outside Hypatia could achieve something like this, save under the whips of slave-gang organizers such as the Ghioz.

  So there was inspiration and mind in the north, as well. Perhaps the barbarians would one day rise to greatness. “How would you like to be known here? You’re welcome to leave your name behind, if you like.”

  “I’ve plenty of identifying marks. Still, we might as well confuse the issue.”

  “Some of the dragons take names in the local tongue. ‘Broadwing’ and all that. It’s more friendly to human mouths.”

  “I don’t know the local language.”

  “You’ll pick it up, if you speak some Parl. How about ‘Brighteye’?”

  “I like it,” the Copper said. “What does it mean?”

  She explained that she was referring to the good one, not the milky and half-shut bad eye, and he accepted the name. So he became ‘Brighteye’ in Juutfod tower. He met Loic Varlson, the chief dragon-handler, and a few stout bodies who knew how to ride or care for dragons. Many of them were descendants of “wizard men” from the Isle of Ice. One of them didn’t like the look of Scabia’s dragonhelm; he said it “looked elvish.” There were a few blighters around to aid in the cleaning and working the capstans, but no dwarfs or elves in the tower.

  She set him up with a perch—sort of a section of floor, open to the central shaft of the tower, where the lift ran. It was cavelike, though perhaps a little noisier than he would have liked, for the dragons of the tower—it seemed about six were living there at any one time—enjoyed calling across and between levels to each other.

  The dragons of the tower were happy with their lot and their mistress. The tower’s most stable source of income was from the merchant shippers, who pooled together every quarter-year to buy flights out into the Inland Ocean to bring back word of approaching storms. Dragons have keen eyes for weather, and at the sight of towering thundercaps they could soon estimate how severe the storm and how quickly it was coming. They’d hurry for the eastern shore of the Inland Ocean and warn the coastal traffic to seek shelter.

  Just saving a ship or two this way more than paid for their bounty. Gettel saw it as good exercise for her dragons.

  He tried to find out exactly how old Gettel was; she was ancient-looking yet seemed spry and sharp. The dragons said she collected loose dragon teeth, ground them up, baked the powder into her daily bread, and mixed it in her oat porridge. One of her older dragons quoted her as saying keeps me feisty.

  The Copper believed it. She was quick to reprimand dragons who claimed illness, ate too much, or didn’t keep their sleeping-shelves tidy. Any one of them could break her like a twi
g without a thought, but still she wasn’t afraid to rap a dragon across the nose with her cane for not picking up a dropped scale and putting it in the ration bucket. She also quieted the men—twoscore or so lived in the tower, with twice that making the climb every morning from the town below—when they started in on elves or dwarfs as weavers of a conspiracy against men.

  “Only conspiracy against men I ever found to be true was their indolence and stupidity working together to keep ’em from getting any work done,” Gettel said, putting them to work changing the lift’s guide-cables.

  Of course there were brushes with the dragons from the south, but at the moment the forces of the Dragon Empire were concerned with other horizons. He heard news of the fliers meeting pleasant fishing expeditions out from Hypatia, or young couples heading out to the wilder western “colonial coast” for their long mating flights.

  The Copper explored the foundation of the tower, curious as to where the dragon-waste and other garbage went. There were tunnels beneath the tower leading down the cliff, and natural chutes for dumping waste into the surf. There were always fishing boats in the water around the tower, taking their share of the fish and crustaceans thriving on dragon-waste and scraps.

  There were rats in the tower as well. It had a double wall facing the exterior for better insulation, and the rats had passages up and down running the whole height of it. They grew brave at night and came out in search of dropped food.

  The Copper had learned that if you really want to know about a place, you should talk to the vermin. Their survival depended on always looking and listening.

  “Here’s a boon, mates!” a rat said. Their speech wasn’t all that different from that of the bats he’d known.

  “Maybe he’s trying to sucker us out for an extermination,” one high-pitched voice squeaked.

  The Copper shrank away from the remains of his dinner. “Don’t worry—some of my best friends have been vermin.”

  Some came out and ate; others, suspecting a trap, picked up pieces and scurried away. They disappeared into crevices the Copper wouldn’t have believed would fit a big cockroach.

  He let them finish his dinner. Like most lower animals, the pecking order was enforced brutally.

  “How would you like a share of my food every night?” the Copper asked.

  “This much?” a rat with reddish ears asked.

  “Sometimes more. Less, if I’m famished.”

  “Rolling in it,” another said. “Yes, yes!”

  “I count thirty-one of you,” the Copper said.

  “If you say. We just call it the mob,” the rat with red ears said.

  “Well, if any more than this number come, I’ll eat the stragglers. Now, in return for your food you have to do a little work. Seems like you all know every nook and cranny in this tower. I’d like to know more about the dragons here, and the humans who work with them. Who fights with whom, who mated with which dragonelle.”

  “Just dodge dragons, don’t listen to their gossip,” Red Ears said.

  “Start. That is, if you want a choice selection of my dinner.”

  The rats, in their greedy way, brought back memories of the bats he’d traveled with through the Lower World with Fer-nadad and his family. But he’d learned his lesson and didn’t become close to any of the individuals.

  Each day he counted the number rushing to his food, and brought his tail down hard to scare away the extras bringing up the rear. The rats were ninnies who couldn’t count—their numbering ascended “one, pair, mob.” Therefore anyone who wasn’t first or second to the food feared being eaten himself, so they all rushed out of the walls like a living carpet when he called them to dinner.

  After they stripped the meat, they gnawed bones and told him of the doings in the tower. Much of it was garbled—“wide wings fighting lopside, luck in for fooding”—and he had to repeat questions to put together a sensible answer. But it diverted his mind from nerving himself for the future.

  Most of the gossip they brought was useless. The rats paid very close attention to the biological cycles of the dragons of the tower, for solid dragon-waste was almost as good as a filched meal. According to the disgusting stories of the rodents, dragon-droppings made for a fine meal, being a perfect mé-lange of the odds and ends the dragons ate, with hides and cartilage conveniently digested.

  Though it was useful knowing which dragon was constipated, and therefore irritable and to be avoided if you didn’t like an angry bash of a territorial tail as you climbed up to take in some sun and air.

  He took a short flight with a dragon named Skystreak, a thin-framed male whose usual employment was sending messages from Hypatia to its reclaimed colonies across the Inland Ocean. The Copper thought it strange that there were no dragons of the Empire willing to take that duty. Perhaps NoSohoth didn’t like the idea of another dragon of the Empire handling his mail. NoSohoth always had at least three coinmaking schemes behind his back at any one moment of his life.

  Or it was a convenient way for this Skystreak to serve as an agent, reporting on the activities of the Dragon Tower of Juutfod.

  Skystreak didn’t seem like the sort of dragon NoSohoth would choose as a spy. He was fidgety and inattentive when not flying and kept up a steady stream of chatter that would do the most gossipy old dragon-dame credit.

  “All the barbarian tribes right up against Juutfod are the weaklings, little clans that lost out in some war or other. They know the Northerns—as the men of Juutfod like to call themselves, not Hypatians but not barbarians, either—will take alarm at the approach of a war-bent tribe and fight. The best of them serve in the tower, thinking it’s glamorous. They usually quit within a year when they see that most of the coin goes down dragon gullets and the workers spend most of their time moving food in and dragoncast out. South of here it’s actually less densely populated, even though it’s Hypatian territory, because of barbarian raids. Good country for herding, if you can keep the wolves down and the Red Mountain dwarfs from bagging your lambs. There’s a scattering of Ironriders who have settled in the woods and are doing well; a few of them even found their way to Juutfod and married. Good to get some fresh blood in the man-strains, don’t you think? Juutfod used to be a good trade port, but the local thane—yes, they adopted the Hypatian title—he started leveling dockage or demurrage or some man-word so the merchant houses pulled up stakes. Fishing and lobstering’s good here, Gettel says it’s all the dragoncast dumped in the bay. The fishermen do their smoking and potting out on the barrier islands to keep the thane’s hands out of their pockets. Fishermen think it’s good luck to toss a fish to a dragon and they pull up some big blue-tops with red meat, very tasty. If you like mutton you’re better off getting it straight from the herdsmen . . .”

  On and on it went. The Copper simply enjoyed the salty smell of the Inland Ocean and the strong, steady wind that made flying easier with a fixed-open joint. He re-promised himself that he’d settle with Natasatch within smelling distance of the ocean, if he ever saw their reunion come to fruition.

  After his first week, the rats finally brought him an interesting tidbit.

  “Down-belows extra-extra fooding,” this rat said. The Copper found him harder to understand than Red Ears, mostly because he spoke through a mouthful of boiled potato.

  “Who are the down-belows?”

  “Cave dragons. No wallspace. Eat rat-folk.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Are you saying there are dragons in a cave beneath the tower?”

  “Maybe so not like you. Swim dragons, crawl dragons.”

  The Copper gave up and decided to investigate.

  It took him a while to find the correct cave down. He ended up following a set of rails for a wheeled cart, such as the dwarfs used in their mines, adopted by the dragons and other underground races. A food cart made the trip down every other day.

  He spoke to the men who drove the cart. It turned out there was no great secret about the other dragons. They just weren’t housed in
the tower because they didn’t fly. The men called the underground dragons the “pensioners”—most of them were dragons who, because of wounds and injury, could no longer fly.

  It was gloomy in the underground. There were a few attempts to grow cave-moss, but it hardly glowed enough to reveal itself. Maybe salt air wasn’t good for it. He followed the food cart into a larger chamber, bow-shaped so that dripping water pooled at the center. Dragon perches, some natural and some cut, punctuated each side of the chamber like the holes of a human flute.

  The cart-men halted their load and rang a bell. Gettel was fond of bells.

  As the ringing faded, he heard a familiar sound in the darkness. Grinding teeth, followed by a yawn from the first alcove on the right.

  “Shadowcatch, can that be you?” he asked.

  Two eyes popped open wide. “My Tyr!” the black dragon said.

  He’d met the enormous Shadowcatch in battle on the other side of the Inland Ocean. Eventually the black had become his bodyguard. He was the only dragon to remain overtly loyal to him after he had resigned the title of Tyr.

  “That’s all done with, don’t you remember?” the Copper asked, regretting the choke that found its way into his voice.

  Shadowcatch emerged. He was as huge as ever, but one wing hung crooked. “For me, sir, it’s the rest that’s done. Truth be told, you’re my Tyr, the Tyr, until my last breath escapes.”

  “What brought you here? Surely not the comforts of a home-cave.”

  He looked at the dank walls. “Not the best of accommodations, are they? Truth be told, there’s not a dragon down here that doesn’t deserve better, but we’re charity cases these days. We’re the tower guard, and that’s about all we’re good for. Or tunnel-fighting. Our flying days are over, and it’s this or starve in the forest and have the wolves scatter our bones.”

  “Who are these dragons?”

  “All veterans of the Wizard at the Isle of Ice, sir. We did a bit of mercenary work with the barbarian chieftains since, but that’s the only action I’ve seen since washing up here.”