Dragon Outcast

by E. E. Knight

  The only one of the three who really spoke to him was the sickly one, Halaflora, conversing between tiny mouthfuls of food. Perhaps that was why she was sickly. She was interested in details of life in the Drakwatch. Ayafeeia and her sister Imfamnia spent most of their time discussing how they would have organized the banquet.

  “No, no. Make the dishes stationary. That way the society has to circulate,” Ayafeeia said.

  “Look at Tighlia up there, queen of all she surveys. How I envy her,” Imfamnia said.

  “Envy’s nothing to brag of, daughter,” Ibidio said, raised scale in her voice.

  Tighlia’s relations of the Skotl line, on the other hand, didn’t mix much with those from the Tyr’s Wyrr side. They didn’t have quite the decor of scale and elegance of manner the Tyr’s side possessed. He spoke with only one, a grim, battle-scarred dragon with still-healing wounds on his uncased wings—SiDrakkon’s son, SiBayereth. He glistened, a deep red oily color, like blood spilled in shadow, but was polite enough to tip his head as he congratulated the Copper.

  “Heartstrong of you to jump forward, cousin. Don’t let them frighten you about the Upper World,” he said in the growling accent of his Skotl clan. “Our family’s just so used to being guarded down here, they swoon at the thought of risk.”

  The Copper swelled with pride, willing to hurl himself against a wave of spears at such praise. A guard! And of these splendid, noble, glamorous, glittering dragons—his…his family.

  Chapter 14

  The Copper walked around the caverns of the Drakwatch trainees one last time. The rather brackish pool, the loose skull that one of the thralls had jammed back into place upside down, the boiled kern and fatty joints, the smoky smell of the fat-lamps and drakes—each bore a memory.

  He limped around saying good-bye to his trainee companions. He knew they told jokes behind his back, because of his age. But they didn’t dare snicker when his eye was on them. He towered over them, thanks to years of Imperial hams and chucks.

  “You’ll need a good travel thrall,” NeStirrath said. He looked into the Copper’s cave, where Harf scrubbed the decorated archway in his usual halfhearted manner. “Strong and road-wise. That fool can feed your bats until you come back.” Harf scratched his paunch and edged out of the way. “I’ll give you one of mine, Fourfang. He’s mostly blighter, strong as a dragon, for his size.”

  “I’ve come to wish the drake honor and glory as well,” a dragonelle’s voice called. Rethothanna didn’t bother to announce herself as a stranger to the Drakwatch caves or wait for an invitation, but the drakes would hesitate to attack a full-grown female.

  She closed her nostrils. “Fee-fie-foe-foul, when was the last time these holes were washed out?”

  “There’s a sluice from the upper levels that backs up,” NeStirrath said. “But do not tell the Imperial Family that their waste stinks; they’d never believe it. What are you doing bringing your refined nostrils to these caves, female?”

  “As I said, to wish young Rugaard safe horizons. I give him a gift, as well.”

  The girl thrall who’d worked his face stood just behind, a heavy quilted coat around her and a woven basket tied to her back.

  NeStirrath dug around behind his griff and extracted some loose scale. “For an egg-dripping drake you make the journey, but you couldn’t be bothered to come wait on me for your blasted song?”

  “Even the oldest of trees needs to bend now and then. I wanted the advantage of home ground to hear your song, lest my hearts melt and I lose all my concentration in your glory.”

  “Don’t jest with me.”

  “You old, stump-winged fool. I’ve wanted you beside me for years. You’re the best dragon in the dome, and yes, I include the Tyr himself in that assessment. But we can talk later. It’s youth that needs the benefit of our years now.” She swung her oxeyed head around to the Copper. “To glory bid, eh, drake? I’ve brought you a gift. Come forward, Rhea.”

  The girl stepped up to the base of the dragonelle’s neck, her flat face hidden behind her straw-colored hair. Harf put down his brush and made an ooking noise.

  “You remember Rhea; she arranged you for the banquet. You need a proper body thrall, and she needs some time in the sun, or she’ll grow up all bent and spindly, no matter how many fish she eats. Bant’s sunny enough.”

  Rhea shivered despite her quilted coat.

  “She’s worried about Black Rock. Thralls get eaten in here,” Rethothanna said.

  “Not in my caves,” NeStirrath said. He pointed his tail toward Harf. “That idle-fingers is still intact, as you can see.”

  “Can she make a journey?” the Copper asked. The slight girl didn’t seem up to a climb to the gardens.

  “She’s young. She’ll harden to the road,” Rethothanna said.

  NeStirrath brought Fourfang over. The blighter had shoulders fully as broad as the girl was high, and legs like a dragon. He offered a long list of instructions, both to Fourfang and the Copper, as Rethothanna inspected the skulls decorating the passages. “Above all, remember your lessons and keep a dragon’s virtues. You can’t go far wrong.”

  The Copper thought it funny that the same advice went to a blighter as well as a dragon. What would a blighter do with learning? It would pass through him like water, clear going in and smelly and tainted coming out.

  “And keep off that poor girl,” he finished.

  That must have been directed at the blighter. Fourfang grinned, showing his sharpened teeth.

  “What can you tell me about Bant?” the Copper asked Rethothanna.

  She fluttered a griff at NeStirrath. “You mean what kind of food is to be had?”

  “No. Our allies in the Uphold. What are they like? How do we keep the peace with them? What’s the nature of this problem SiDrakkon needs to solve? But if there’s some delicacy to be had…well, I’d hate to miss a new feast.”

  “He is a promising young thing,” she said to NeStirrath. “Interested in the essentials. Very well. I’ll give you the essential for Bant: water. Bant’s either dry or rainy, depending on the time of year; the rainy season starts right around the summer solstice, usually a little before. It’s made up of rocky, rather dry plains that go lush during the rains and tinder-dry the rest of the year. There are three rivers, all flowing west to the Ocean of the Summer Sun, and it’s control of the rivers that’s everything, for there are rich forests full of trade goods and spices along the rivers. Very good land for herding on the plains, as long as the herds can get to water holes or the rivers in the dry season.

  “The elves lived there first, along the rivers, but tribes of blighters came and dispersed them, though they didn’t quite get rid of them. A few still live on in the deeper woods or around the better-watered rock piles. A dwarf or two pass through, usually engaged in trade or craft with the ivory and hardwoods. Some tribes of men as well, distant relations to the Ironriders of the north, I believe, as fierce as the blighters when fighting on horseback.”

  “So it’s hard to keep the peace between the groups?” the Copper asked.

  “Well, yes, they’ll go to the dragon to settle disputes, when neither side thinks it can gain an advantage. But this case is difficult. The Ghi-men, the stone shapers, are pushing south and taking over the rivers, from what I understand of the messages the Tyr has shared with me. They’re well organized—their armies will put up a fight against even dragons in the field—but their real skill is in digging and roofing and wall building. When they’re behind their battlements they’re as tough as a scale digger.”

  NeStirrath’s wing stubs dipped. “If SiDrakkon thinks he’ll throw his main strength against one of their fortress towns, we’ll be singing laments from Imperial Resort again.”

  “You do travel light,” SiDrakkon said three days later, as they assembled at the northeast riverbank. “Only two thralls?”

  “You said it was a six-day journey.”

  “Barring delays.”

  “I’ve gone hungry before.�
�

  “That’s why I bring extra thralls. Once you’ve consumed the baggage, there’s no need for baggage carriers.”

  Nivom had two sissa of Drakwatch and a sissa of Firemaidens. He wore a golden ring in his ear, a mark of a Drakwatch full commander, a rare honor for a wingless drake. Beside the Tyr’s brother-by-mate and and Nivom, the Copper also noted three battle-scarred dragons, two blacks and a red, with purplish tones shading their coloring.

  “The worst of the Skotl clan,” Nivom said quietly. “Duelists.”

  The Copper hadn’t seen a duel yet, though his bats had witnessed one while hunting. The Tyr discouraged the custom for the dragons in the Imperial Resort, and absolutely forbade it among the Imperial line. But on some of the other hills, dragons settled their differences in combat. For the wealthier dragons who didn’t want to risk losing an eye or something even more vital, challenges could be settled by means of a duel-by-proxy.

  “What do you have against duelists?” the Copper asked.

  “A rich dragon can hire professionals, and then start a squabble with a poor one to take what little he has.” His griff rattled, though he kept them sheathed.

  The three-score drakes and drakka under Nivom snorted and whispered: “They’ve finally let Batty out; Spirits help us.”

  SiDrakkon walked back up the line of dragons, flocks, baggage, and thralls at the northeast tunnel mouth. They’d go down for a short distance, to the water ring, then start the underground journey to Bant. He paused again by the Copper and took a long sniff at Rhea.

  “She’s just maturing. Ahh, but that’s a smell,” SiDrakkon said.

  The Copper found her aroma pleasing, rather soft and mammalian, but not nearly as interesting as forge-fresh steel or a fat joint sputtering in an iron pan. But there was no point in being disagreeable.

  “Yes,” he said. “The blighter could use a daily wash, as she does.”

  SiDrakkon glanced back at the distant wart of Black Rock. “I’d have a garden of such women, rather than the Tyr’s wretched ferns and darkblooms, if I had my way. But duty calls. Which reminds me—Nivom, where’s that old courier ring of yours?”

  Nivom nosed around in his baggage, and approached with a bronzed token on a chain.

  SiDrakkon took it in his sii and held it up. “Your first laudi.” It was a pair of equal-sized bronzed bones, joined and wired at the center so crossed as a dragon might cross his sii before settling down to sleep.

  “The crossed man-bones of the Tyr. This shows you to be a courier of the Imperial Resort.” He opened the length of chain, and the Copper bowed so he might slip it down his neck.

  The links rattled down his scale and finally stopped.

  “Of course. It doesn’t fit. You’re wide across the neck base, drake. We’ll have to find some smithy and get it adjusted.” SiDrakkon smelled hot and angry, like Father.

  “My…my line was thwick-bodied,” the Copper said.

  “Watch that lisp. What’s wrong with you? You sound like a hatchling. Nivom there speaks better, and half his lip is torn off.”

  The Copper averted his eyes and swallowed.

  “Well?” SiDrakkon growled.

  Some of the Firemaidens were whispering among themselves.

  “Sow—sorry.”

  “Be careful with that necklace in battle,” Nivom said. “It gives foemen a good aiming point.”

  The lounging drakes chuckled, and even SiDrakkon deflated a little. “Confound it, we were supposed to have more baskets of chickens. Where are they now?” He swung around and stalked back up the line.

  Nivom edged closer. “What do you mean, your line was thick-bodied? You still live, so your line does.”

  “Bad wing. I’ll never be able to mate.” At least the words came out with a dragonly inflection. He felt comfortable around Nivom.

  “Nobody cares about those back-mountain rituals anymore. Well, almost nobody.”

  SiDrakkon, satisfied at last with the preparations, set the column in motion. They left the Lavadome, with the tunnel guardians of the Drakwatch and the Firemaids raising their necks and trumpeting.

  The families of the thralls in the baggage train who’d made the trip to the assembly camp added their own wails. Bits of wood and bone on string were passed from fathers to sons, or between mates. The Copper had been told a dragon could spend a lifetime describing the different good-luck charms and fetishes of the hominid races.

  SiDrakkon placed him behind the thralls of the column, with the rear duelist dragon and the sissa of the Drakwatch. They came to the encircling river and he again took in the wonder of the high-walled cavern, with sunlight falling through the cracks and landing in golden slivers upon the fetid water. A group of hatchlings sunbathed under the watchful eyes of their mother, and two young dragons swam. Probably newly mated, the Copper thought with a pang.

  There were boats drawn up for the thralls and provisions. The dragons all swam.

  “You’ll need to ride in a boat, I expect,” SiDrakkon said as he watched the thralls load the last boat.

  “No, sir. I’m a strong swimmer,” the Copper said, plunging into the water.

  “Don’t come crying halfway across. Maybe one of the bodyguards will let you ride on their back, but I won’t carry you.”

  “Of cowse not sir.”

  “And stop that flapping lisping!”

  “Y-yes.”

  The Copper clasped limbs to body and swam off after the sissa.

  At the other side of river—two bonfires marked the wade-out—the Copper was able to lose his shame again in the fascinating activity of loading and manning the rut-carts.

  Here by the river ample cave moss lit the scene. A wide tunnel, with two shining bands of metal running off into its darkening length, left sun-shafted beachfront and disappeared back into the depths of the Lower World. The Copper was so used to the pool of yellow light coming down from the top of the Lavadome or the orange flicker of fat-lamps that the faint green glow of the moss seemed strange again.

  Wheeled contraptions rested on the bands of metal. Some had sides; some were just flat platforms, but all ran on four or, rarely, six wheels. The wheels were small things, with lips along the inside that kept them in place on the iron bars. Specialized thralls, barefoot with thick leather belts and wrist braces, minded the oily-smelling joints and laid out and checked pulling lines.

  They were dwarvish contraptions, of course.

  “I’ve seen these lines in tunnels before,” the Copper said to Nivom.

  “They’re rut-carts. Have you ever seen a road?”

  “No.”

  Nivom never minded showing off his knowledge. “In the Upper World hominids use these chariots and wheeled carts and such, and they eventually dig furrows in the ground. This is the same principle, only instead of furrows the wheels sit in the iron furrows. They’re a little noisy, but you can pull a heavy load quite easily. The dwarves use them for mining, or for transport when there’s no underground canal about.”

  The Copper blinked for a moment as he tried to absorb what Nivom had said. Nivom was a clever drake, but didn’t make allowance for those not as bright as he.

  “So the cart…floats on the rails. Like the dwarf boats on a river.”

  “Yes, you’ll see.”

  The thralls went to ropes attached to one end of the carts. SiDrakkon barked out an order, and Nivom distributed his drakes to the heads of the lines, putting their necks through harnesses made for draft animals.

  Some of the drakes grumbled at doing beast work.

  The Copper put Rhea on one of the flat carts with some of the other female thralls, who cooked or toasted a grainy paste on metal bracking rods for the males.

  “Exercise won’t do any of you harm,” SiDrakkon said. “Toughen you up before you get to the Upper World.”

  The Copper, though frightened enough of SiDrakkon to keep well out of his way lest he be barked at again, had to grant him this: He kept the column working and moving. The thralls didn�
�t have time to worry about being eaten, and the drakes were so busy they couldn’t get into squabbles.

  “I’ll take a line,” the Copper said.

  “You’re a courier. You needn’t—”

  The Copper stiffened, extending his neck as though getting ready to issue a challenge.

  “If you want the fatigue, have it. I’m riding in a cart, as befits a commander.”

  The men went to knotted lines and threw loops across their shoulders, padding them with bunched clothing. The Copper let the sweat-stained leather ring—it smelled deliciously of equine—fall about his shoulders. It fit better than the Tyr’s emblem.

  “Set…step…off!” SiDrakkon shouted.

  “Take the strain. The start’s the worst,” Nivom shouted.

  The carts set up a chorus of metallic screeching, and the chickens clucked in alarm and the sheep hurried out of the way, but the procession lurched into motion.

  “Sorry, lads, it’s mostly uphill to Bant,” SiDrakkon said as he lowered his head to watch the wheels on their iron ruts.

  The Copper liked the challenge of the pull; you could lose yourself in the effort. He did most of the work with his saa, just hopping forward on his bad leg during a strain.

  When a thrall slipped and fell so that he lay dangerously facedown across the rail, the Copper quickly hooked him under the arm with his tail and helped lift him to his feet again before the grinding wheels could take off a leg. The thrall looked at him wide-eyed from behind his shaggy hair.

  Fourfang clapped the thrall upon the back and grunted out a few hominid words, pointing at the Copper. The Copper had earned little enough honor among Drakwatch and Firemaidens, but even the respect of his thralls counted for something.

  They took their first rest at a cave spring. The thralls instantly fouled the tunnel with their waste; the grains and roots they ate resulted in enormous quantities of excrement that rivaled bat guano in its unwholesomeness.