Dragon Outcast

by E. E. Knight

  Mother told me to overcome. She left out any details of how to do it.

  After he told her how to find the home cave, she gave him a purse full of silver pieces to seal the bargain.

  Chapter 5

  Their plan had the virtue of simplicity. The dwarves would storm the egg shelf, restrain Mother with holding poles, and bind up his siblings.

  They showed him the straps and poles and snout cage that would be used on Mother, yet worms of regret were wiggling at the back of his mind. But they gave him no chance to escape, keeping chains on him from the point where he swam through the underwater tunnel with a guideline for the dwarves to the moment tunnelers arrived to widen the cracks.

  The dwarves lit their way with hissing firework torches that burned bright blue even underwater and created a minichamber from a polished shell as big as a dragon’s head. They cleverly fed the air bubble within the shell with a pair of leather hoses worked by bellows back at the scullery, constantly substituting good air for bad.

  The trick, as the Copper saw it, was to have the dwarves make off with Auron and Wistala the chatterbox. If a few of the rod-carrying poghti got burned in the process, so much the better.

  He thought he knew how.

  All three of the other hatchlings explored and hunted within the egg cavern. Auron always scurried around over a wide range, Wistala had a few predictable perches where slugs were likely to pass, and Jizara kept closer to Mother and the garbage pile.

  He could take care of Auron. Thanks to the dwarves’ meals and generous amounts of metal, his new scales were coming in thick and fast. He could tell the dwarves where to find Wistala, then immobilize Auron somewhere far from the egg shelf—but not too far to be heard—and scare him into trumpeting a warning. The dwarves would not be so foolish as to attack an alerted dragon, and at the first sign of alarm Wistala would certainly hide by Mother.

  So pleased was he with the plan, he found himself giving off a slight prrum.

  The day finally came. They timed it with Father leaving on a hunt.

  He met the dwarves and the missing-eyed elf in the now dry chamber behind the waterfall. The dwarves had cleverly diverted the water into a metal tube that carried it off down the cavern of the scullery, save for a little leaking that dropped into a bubbling pool.

  Tunnel dwarves were marking the wall behind the waterfall with chalk, muttering quietly to others who carried spikes and hammers.

  Behind them warrior dwarves gathered with their holding poles and lines and straps, the potbellied dwarf at the front. Eye Patch, looking tired and smelling of wood smoke from the Upper World, stood off to one side, armed only with a small knife at her belt.

  The Copper was rather relieved that the big, cruel man who liked to step on his broken tail was absent. There’d been some talk, he was told, about having a guard outside the cavern in the event Father returned unexpectedly. Perhaps he was in the Upper World. The farther off, the better. Once the bargain was struck, the dwarves had become elaborately polite to him, always bowing and tossing him greasy half-eaten joints of lamb or broken old bits of metal. But that man…Every time he stared down into the Copper’s eyes with those cold, unfeeling round eyes, his griff fluttered nervously.

  The man meant to kill him. What was holding him back? He doubted even Eye Patch or the dwarves could stop him—even if they wanted to.

  And he smelled like dogs. Dog smell awoke an ancient fear in the Copper. In any case, it was time for a few last words. He’d have the egg shelf and his sister at last, or be dead.

  “I keep my bargain. Two hatchlings,” he said, using a rehearsed speech in the Dwarvish that Eye Patch—for he never learned her name—had taught him.

  The potbellied dwarf started at that. Eye Patch chuckled to herself and said some lilting words to the dwarf, who grumbled into his beard.

  “He says no good’s ever come from teaching others Dwarvish,” Eye Patch said in her bad Drakine.

  “Tell him I’m going into the cavern now. I’ll come back in a moment.”

  Eye Patch translated: “He says you’d better, or he’ll skin you personally.”

  He squeezed out through the cracks—just—and swam across the pool. The egg cavern seemed vast now, a great expanse filled with comforting smells but doubtful shadows and the echoes of the waterfall. He returned to the dwarves and gave them that strange up-and-down waggle of the head that hominids used.

  The dwarves began to tap at their chalk marks, timing their strikes to the splashes outside. The work went fast, as it always did when the dwarves had a plan to follow. They spent a good deal of time before and after each job arguing amongst themselves in their glottal tongue, but when in action together they were swift and efficient.

  He slipped back out through the crack and felt his hearts hammering. He found a patch of dark well away from the now thriving cave moss and waited, every nerve alert.

  Auron passed soon enough, sniffing as he hunted. The Copper fell in behind his rival, stopping when he stopped, moving when he moved. Auron paused for a taste of water at the waterfall pool and cocked his head in that odd way of his, listening. He slipped into the water. He’d heard the dwarves tapping!

  Clever, my brother.

  But not as clever as I.

  Auron would head for the egg shelf; he was sure of it. He positioned himself on a low ridge of stalagmites at an alley the Gray Rat would use….

  The cave wall fell away, almost silently, toppling inward into netting the dwarves had ready to receive it. Auron hurried from the pool, swimming like an arrow toward Mother.

  He mustn’t reach the egg shelf or things would go ill. The Copper would terrify Auron into screaming his unprotected lungs out!

  The Copper jumped, landing full-weight on his brother’s scaleless back. Mother’s green gleam could just be seen in the distance.

  “Got you! Death has come for you, softling,” he hissed in Auron’s ear.

  The Gray Rat protested, clawed uselessly at the Copper’s scales as he whined about intruders. The Copper bit him in the soft tissue behind the griff to shut him up. He gave the rehearsed speech, but couldn’t help pouring a little extra resentment into it:

  “I’ve lived in hunger and hiding since the day I came out of the shell, thanks to you. So you’ll die now, as you should have died out of the egg. Two brothers, both stronger, and you ended up with the nest. It’s time to right a great wrong. Nearly time, that is. First you get to watch Mother and the chatterer skinned. Stop writhing, you lizard—you’re worse than a snake! Too bad you won’t see me gorge myself on Father’s gold.”

  He let the Gray Rat have a good look at Mother. He’d call out a warning and—

  Blinding pain flashed up from his snout, and his vision burned white. He lurched away from the pain and Auron wriggled free. He bit at where he sensed his brother stood and got only air, and when he could see again, he and Auron were snapping at each other.

  Why wasn’t the fool screaming out a warning to Mother? The dwarves would be on him any moment! What did he have to say to get the Gray Rat to shriek out a warning? He heard a splashing and a clatter behind—the dwarves were gathering.

  Auron wasted more time in speech making: “You live this day if you trouble me no further. Though when I tell Father of this, he may feel differently. He’ll pull the mountains down to find such as you, who’d lead assassins to the egg shelf.”

  The words hurt almost as much as the tail-crack. Auron spun and hurried off toward the egg shelf at a dash, finally sounding a warning. A thrown net just missing as his brother ran.

  Well, the dwarves would have to deal with that. He’d smelled his sister around somewhere; if he could find her he could hold her down until the dwarves could get a loop around her snout.

  He turned and saw the dwarves advancing, widely spaced across the egg cavern.

  Behind them he saw a gleaming helmet, two upraised wings, and polished black scale—dragonscale!—about the shoulders. The huge man was down here after all,
carrying a spear that glowed and sparked like a log in the concentrated heat of a dwarf hearth.

  What was this? The dwarves weren’t carrying restraining poles and ropes. Instead they bore great bowed machines balanced across their broad backs, two carrying the bulk with another lifting the fletched end. Others had climbing ladders and spears, spears, and more spears, each with a thick crossbar to keep a pinioned dragon from pulling itself down the shaft toward the wielder.

  He marked Wistala climbing toward a hole in the cavern roof above the egg shelf. Mother flung Auron up after her, then nosed at Jizara.

  But Jizara stared out across the cavern, met his eyes.

  Brother! Look out for the dwarves! We must escape!

  The dwarves ignored him as they charged—later he thought it would have been kinder if one had split his skull with one of the broadaxes they carried across their backs—and he searched for Eye Patch. Where was she? He saw the potbellied dwarf, hanging on to the top of a stalagmite, giving orders and pointing with a gnarled bit of polished wood.

  The Copper ran up to him, flung himself down.

  “Spare the one on the shelf. My sister! My sister!”

  The dwarf stepped on his neck. “Hmpf. You don’t want to see this.”

  Ka-thun! Ka-thun!—the metal-and-wood contraptions of the dwarves launched their missiles, exploding into motion and dying a moment later, purpose served.

  The dwarves yelled as they stormed toward the egg shelf in a rattle of metal—chain shirts rustling, shields banging, helm flanges rattling on shoulder plates, metal-spiked boots striking the cavern floor, and above all the kuu-kuuu-kuuuu! of the dwavrish war cries.

  It sounded like the end of the world.

  The big man went forward in a series of leaps, springing from prominence to prominence and jumping over formations the Copper had to climb. A flood of dogs led him, and more warriors of his kind followed behind, aiming thick arrows notched in curved bows like half-folded dragon wings.

  The Copper smelled the brassy, hot-oil smell of dragonfire, heard the roar of flame devouring air. The shadows of the cave began to dance.

  “In there under it, my lads. That’s the style!” the dwarf-lord grunted. At least, that was what it seemed to the Copper he was saying, though how he caught the meaning without knowing the words he could not say.

  The Copper heard his mother roar, and the sound made him tremble.

  “Spare my sister!” the Copper squeaked.

  The dwarf looked down. “Poor wretch. We’ll not bleed her a drop. She’s worth a lot to us. Now what passes? Dogluk, hold him.”

  The potbellied dwarf hurried toward the egg shelf, and the Copper scrambled up a stalagmite.

  Mother lay on her side, chest heaving, neck and chest pierced by great shafts that showed feathers at one bleeding hole and gory barbed heads at the other. Her head still moved weakly, one golden eye rolling this way and that, bathed in fire leaking from her breastbone.

  “You have won this battle, Gobold,” she said to the dwarf. “But I keep a last trick. The war is not over. My young live. And they are free. Free!”

  The potbellied dwarf walked over to her, laughing. “Your young? One of them led us to you. Don’t look to your young. Greedy and selfish, like all dragons.” The one she’d called Gobold struck her across the mouth with first one fist, then the other.

  Mother spit out a broken tooth.

  “They will avenge this day!”

  The potbellied dwarf laughed and, still laughing, swung his ax and struck her in the neck. By the third blow his boots were awash in blood, his stout helm, beard, and arms splotched red.

  The Copper’s hearts ceased beating for a moment and he swooned.

  A mass of dwarves, men, and dogs crowded on the egg shelf, embracing one another and letting blood from Mother’s wounds run into their helmets, which they then passed around and drank. Dogs, wild with excitement, chased from wound to wound, sniffing, biting her where she still twitched.

  Men stood, holding nets over Jizara with heavy boot heels. His sister lay frozen in terror, eye whites bright in the cave’s gloom. The Copper wanted to fling himself down atop her, protect her, but the smell of dragonblood in the air had him clinging tight-bellied to the cave floor.

  The big man came forward, his dragon-jaw blade out and ready. He stepped up to Jizara, glanced over his shoulder at the dwarves dancing and stamping about Mother’s corpse.

  “Mercy,” Jizara gasped.

  The big man laughed. “Nits make lice,” he said in his rough Drakine.

  He pushed his blade slowly into her throat, twisting it this way and that, and, whimpering, Jizara died.

  Fiends!

  A dwarf dragged him back by his battered tail, but the pain was nothing to the insensate anger flooding his hearts. A howl broke from his throat, every agony he’d suffered since the moment of his hatching gathered into a single scream.

  Fiends!

  A dwarf stood on his neck. The dwarf called another over, and they bound him in the leather strapping they used to bear their war machines.

  The dwarves took up a chant. The Copper heard thwacks and chunks as they employed their axes, and then he heard a strange, high-pitched sound as some blew air through tubes.

  Then the singing dwarves marched back out of the cavern, bearing their wounded and trophies wrapped in salty-smelling fabric on litters made of their spears. He smelled dragonblood everywhere.

  One of the men pointed and there was some talk, but Gobold broke away from the others and grabbed the Copper by the crest and lifted his head. The Copper shut his eyes at what was coming….

  But instead Gobold spoke, and again, strangely, he understood: “No. This feud started over bargains not being kept. Let none say Gobold—”

  The dwarves called out at that; others clapped and stamped their feet or rattled their knives in their sheaths. The Copper struggled against his bonds, wanting to sink his claws into the dwarf’s fleshy gut.

  “Well, Fangbreaker, then. Let none say Fangbreaker is not true to his word. Or his threats.”

  Gobold the Fangbreaker let go of his crest. “Besides, he’s worthless in trade. That foreleg’s useless, and his tail’s shattered. The cavern and its treasures are yours, O prince of dragons!” He laughed and slapped his belly. “The honor and glory of this day is yours.” He bowed. “Enjoy.”

  The dwarf hurried off to join the others in their march.

  Next the men left, leading their dogs—dried dragonblood made the curs’ hair pointy—with the big man in his black armor carrying his spear across his shoulder, a bloody dragon ear dangling from each end.

  The big man paused the march by the bound hatchling. He stared down at him, the gruesome flat face working obscenely as he thought.

  The Copper felt his fire bladder pulse. He managed to spew a little yellow stream of sulfurous saliva across the dragonscale-covered boot.

  The man chuckled. “That’s more like it,” he said in his rough, uninflected Drakine. “I’m your enemy. You may as well know my name. I’m called the Dragonblade. Know that I did all this—with your help.”

  Why didn’t the man end the misery? Strike off his head, obliterate each bloody memory, the horror of what he had done…

  “If you’re my enemy, why don’t you kill me as well?”

  Perhaps the man sensed his torment, decided to leave him with the pain, alone in a cavern with the stripped bodies of his family. He just adjusted the burden across his broad back and called something out to his companions.

  “Will you not kill me?” Some little flicker within him still wanted to live, then, for he waited for an answer.

  The man expelled a long breath. “You should be wiped out. Bestial. Craven. Look at you. You sold your birthright for a mouthful of silver. The sooner the last remnants of the tyrant-wings are gone, the better for the world.

  “Besides, I slay only dragons.” He set down his spear and drew his long sword. The Copper shut his eyes again, and he felt a sharp
tap along his back. Then a throbbing agony flared, worse with each beat of his synchronized hearts.

  “Farewell, worm.”

  The Copper opened his eyes and saw a jagged rent next to his spine. Exposed meat and bone gleamed among torn scale. It hurt worse than the battering his tail had taken. He took a cautious breath—his lungs were still intact, though it hurt to breathe. The man had crippled his dormant left wing!

  Chapter 6

  He panted in his binding, pain plaguing both body and spirit. He lay there for a long time, thinking slow, dark, wounded thoughts as his blood thickened across his back.

  Mother had told him once to overcome difficulties. How did one overcome oneself? Self-destruction?

  Hunger saved him, hunger and the sound of squeaking rats. He heard them moving toward the egg shelf.

  He wiggled his head around and began to chew at his bindings. He bent as he reached for the straps on his saa and incautiously brushed his back wound against the cave floor, white-hot agony leaving him quivering for a moment, and when he came out of the hurt his brain took a moment to remember where he was. He forced his head between his sii and tore through the back bindings.

  That done, he lay for a moment, too weak to do anything but breathe.

  He crawled toward the egg shelf and saw a ghastly heap atop it, the end of a severed neck dangling off the egg shelf, cave moss in a tiny splash of light where the blood had pooled. Rats, fat on dragonflesh, crept along the cave wall, stupid and weakened by gorging.

  He tore into them, biting and flinging them hard against the cave wall, and they dove for their cracks. One was too fat to fit back into his shelter, and the Copper solved his problem for him by biting him in half.

  He didn’t dare climb the egg shelf. If he got up there and saw what remained of his mother and sister, he’d go mad.