by E. E. Knight
Water and Fire! The fishermen chased him even underwater. The men went headfirst into the water, broad shoulders making clumsy splashes, each holding a harpoon and quenching the fighting heat in his body with their courage. Auron plunged as far down as he could and clung flush to the rocky bottom. The men swam toward him for a moment, but perhaps had trouble seeing underwater, giving his camouflage an edge. The men could not hold their breaths long; they waved to each other and floated slowly toward the surface, back to back and harpoons ready to stab at whatever came from the murk. Swimmers from the other ships clung to the sides of the launch.
Auron accepted the draw and watched their little flat-bottomed boat row toward the larger ones. He came up to breathe and took in the havoc he had loosed. Two fishing boats burned. Horribly blackened bodies floated in the gentle waves of the bay under seagulls already dropping for a meal. A dissipating fire slick kept the birds from another body, probably that of the determined harpooner. Dolphins still circled in the water, nudging at the dead member of their family floating there. And something else. One bore the boy Auron had knocked overboard. The men had missed him in the confusion and smoke of burning ships.
Auron swam over, his nose, eyes, and crest cutting the water ahead of the swirl of his snakelike body. The boy floated facedown in the water, pale and unresponsive as the dolphins poked him again and again to the surface.
Hunger gnawed at Auron, despite the fading heat of battle. He took the dead or unconscious boy by the neck—breaking vertebrae as his jaws closed—and swam for the cliffs. A dolphin came close alongside for a moment of pale regard. Its eye held no merriment this time.
BOOK TWO
Drake
IF LEGENDS KNEW WHAT AWAITED,
THEY’D SPEND THEIR YOUTHS DIFFERENTLY.
—Naf Touraq
Chapter 10
The seaside days of plentiful fish, oyster, and lobster made Auron’s reacquaintance with hunger that much harder to bear.
He crossed rainswept, stone-studded, uninhabited country for two days after climbing the bay cliff. He sought the white tips of the faint mountains. All he found to eat were snails and slugs among and under the rocks. They were hardly worth the effort of time and tongue to find, given how many it took to make a mouthful.
“I’ll leave you for the birds,” he finally said to one snail creeping amid the flaky lichens of the rocks. Its antennae waved in the odor of his breath.
Auron had passed into drakehood in blood and flame. The realization didn’t come to him until the second night after the fight with the fishermen that, had Mother and Father been present, they would have recognized his first fire as a black-smoke symbol of his, and their, achievement—even as they drove him from their cave and territory. His wings were still years away, but according to his parents, these would be his wandering years. Drakes were supposed to range about on foot, finding new hunting ground, learning how to outfight—or outwit—their enemies.
Auron didn’t want any of it. He was proud of his first flame, but if some wizard could work spellcraft, he’d give it up, go back in time. He wanted to smell his mother again, or even Wistala, or hear the claws and scales of his father as he returned from a hunting trip.
But even wizardry couldn’t grant a drake’s wish. Mother and Father had gone the way of so many other great dragons. The weakness?
Auron wandered south and east. He found a few human trails, recognizing hoof- and footprints running north and south along the coast. Once he saw the smoke of a campfire and smelled the musty odor of burning peat, but hesitated to investigate further. He guessed it to be men, and after the bloody encounter with the fishing boats, the cautious voice of his mother’s wit told him to keep an eagle’s distance. By the third day, he saw forests staining the slopes ahead black across a stretch of land a little lower than the coastal hills. Trees meant game, though whether he was up to dashing down a deer remained to be seen. His appetite would settle for a sick hedgehog.
Water helped the hunger pangs. He drank from rain pools, the collar tinking as it scraped stones. There were thunderstorms, none so frightening as the first he experienced—yet more miserable from loneliness for Wistala than the noise and wet of the storm.
Another day passed in slinking across the hilly marshes brought him off the heights and into trees. Pines, communal trees that just touched each other with their branches as though looking for reassurance from others of their kind, gave the forest a pleasantly scented stillness in the gentle summer air. Between the rolling moraines flowed endless streams into lakes girded by poplar and birch; Auron made better time swimming across water than he did negotiating tree trunks. Hunting did not bring him much in the way of game. He found a rank-smelling pile of sticks at the edge of a lake and tore into it, only to find its builder fled. He was reduced to pulling up mice and voles from their shallow homes when the lakes yielded little but bony catfish and craws. He slept curled around a stone one morning, and was rewarded with an ambush of a summer-fed hare when his ear woke him to the sound of it chewing dandelion.
The moon waxed, bringing with it the sound of wolves as it rose each night. They were talkative creatures, singing back and forth to each other from hilltop to rockpile in sad, sonorous voices. Auron didn’t know much about wolves, except they looked something like the dogs of men: more dangerous in some ways, less so in others. Dogs brought men; wolves only called other wolves to their aid. Father had said something about groups of wolves being dangerous, so Auron took to sleeping in trees.
He still cut across man trails each day, old and rarely used, and they became older still as he traveled deep into the forest, always heading for the mountains until hunger forced him to forage. Now and then he came across cabins in glades. Bear pelts and wolf hides stretched across windows warned him of the fate of livestock raiders, so he stayed clear of the barns and coops. He trekked warily, avoiding any hint of man smell.
While doubling back from a strong man odor, he ran into wolves.
He was retracing his steps across a dry watercourse and up a rise no higher than a sapling when he came nose-to-nose with three of them. They were a lighter gray than he, with more closely set eyes and mouths that hung open in the summer warmth. A younger one, all paws and ears, joined his three elders. Auron caught flashes of movement at the corner of his eye; wolves slunk down the sides of the hill, heads and tails low to the ground. Auron crouched, putting the softer skin of his belly close to the ground.
Auron looked into the eyes of the nearest wolf, a crystal blue of such brilliant purity they reminded him of the gemstones his father gave his sisters. The eyes held a wary cunning; dangerous jaws dripped with hunger. Each waited for the other to make a move.
The nearest trees that would bear his weight stood at the top of the little knoll the four wolves occupied.
Auron made the first move, a leap up the hill with four claws splayed, hoping to scatter the predators with a sudden rush. The leader jumped sideways, whipping his body around in a snapping blur to sink his teeth into Auron’s throat. He caught hold of the thickest part of Auron’s neck, and the others joined in.
The teeth locked so fast, Auron felt no pain. Auron took advantage of his limber spine and turned around, rolling over on a wolf and injuring it enough for it to cry through clamped teeth. The young one caught Auron by the foreleg. Auron counter bit, crushing its skull in his jaws. The leader hung on with a determination that served the pack when bringing down a deer or an elk, but against a dragon, the death grip became just that. Auron rolled over and opened the wolf with his rear claws, tearing the leader from throat to hock. One of the flankers got a grip on his rear left leg, and Auron’s bloody front claws found its ear-and eyeholes. Red flesh came away as the grip of the wolf’s teeth relaxed in death.
Another bit at his face, not closing for a grip. Auron brought his neck up to get out of reach and bite back, but something tugged at him. Somehow, despite the disemboweling, the leader still held on. Auron pulled it off with his fro
nt claws, opening long wounds on the base of his neck. A wolf was atop his back, biting at the thicker hide along his spine, and Auron knocked him off with a crack of his tail. It flew against a tree, tumbled to the ground, and lay still.
Auron crushed the head of one of the injured ones trapped beneath him with both front paws. He felt blood flowing out of his neck. He and the last wolf exchanged a brief flurry of bites; Auron tore its ear, and the wolf bit off a length of his upper lip. The combatants stared at each other, Auron among a carpet of dead wolves and the other with paws spread, ready to leap in any direction.
The drake felt strangely light and exultant. “Will you come?” Auron asked in beast speech, spitting blood from his lip wound.
“My pack dead, as need I,” it returned, lowering for a spring. It spoke well, though its constructions rang oddly in Auron’s ear.
“Wait!” he said, putting his heart into it. “Pack not dead if you live. Why we two fight?”
“You not bear, so you prey. Shorter than deer, bigger than sheep.”
“But I fight better. I not prey.”
The wolf’s tail drooped as it looked on the corpses. It said nothing.
“I hungry, too, a traveler to the mountains. You know woods. We hunt together. Share.”
“Cannot.”
“Why? Two can hunt better than one.”
Confusion filled the crystal eyes. “But you not me-people,” the wolf said.
Auron thought for a moment. Wolves hunted together as second nature, but didn’t dogs, which were practically wolves, hunt with men? Did the dogs think of men as part of their tribe?
“Then make me one,” Auron said.
“Not understand.”
Auron lowered his head to the level of the wolf’s. Then below it, fighting a throbbing hurt in his neck. The wolf brought up its head and stood taller.
“We make pack. Pack has two. You leader,” Auron said. “I Auron. I do as you say. I promise this.”
The wolf looked at him and sniffed at the scent of dragon blood. Its remaining ear flicked up and tail gave the tiniest of wags. Auron gave a hint of a prrum in response, though in his pain, the noise didn’t come naturally.
“This story to sing from highest hill. Good Aer . . . Aur-ron. Auron. But you kill leader. With me-people, mean you leader.”
“I bad leader. Not know this land. No, me not wolf . . . you-people, I mean. You leader.”
The wolf’s tail wagged once, and it brushed Auron’s face with the side of its own. “Settled. I Hard-Legs Black-Bristle of Dawn Roarers. Must leave this stink-of-blood behind. Come.”
Auron followed.
Auron picked up wolf speech easily. It was enough like beast speech for him to understand most of what Blackhard—as the pack-familiar was rendered—said to him; each day he spoke it better. The hardest part was the phrasing required when the pack member asked something of its leader. Reading and imitating the body language that often passed for simple words took him no time at all to pick up.
“Goodwolf if stop by lake, try for fish?”
“Good if wolf stop by the lake and try to fish,” Blackhard corrected, with a nip in the air just in front of Auron’s nose. That habit took some getting used to.
“Good if wolf stop by the lake and try to fish,” Auron said again, and Blackhard smiled in assent. Wolves were smilers, but Auron didn’t have the muscles to imitate it properly. Auron took in the banks of the lake in a slow examination. A cluster of man houses stood on the other side, hardly visible through the morning lake mists. Men fished here, too. Satisfied, Auron slipped into the water and floated upside down, nostrils above water and eyes beneath. He caught a bottom-feeder for himself and brought one back for Blackhard.
“Fish is a good stink. I like to roll in the leavings. Confuses the prey,” Blackhard said. “Don’t know what it would take to cover your stink-of-dragon. Skunk, maybe. You are only creature whose front end smell worse than back.”
Auron knew what a skunk was, and didn’t care to try rolling in one. He couldn’t help it that eruptions of gas from his fire bladder startled Blackhard.
The howling at night fascinated him. The wolves told each other stories, claimed territory, negotiated hunting rights, and prayed to the Moon for game and healthy offspring all at the same time.
“White-Tooth Winter-Nose heeeere! Forests thick with deer, the Fell Runners thank you, O My Mooooooon!”
“Thank thee, Moooooooon!” others in White-Tooth Winter-Nose chorused.
“My pup Deep-Eyes Feather-Tail made his first kill todayyyyyyyyyy, O My Cousiiiiiins!” a faraway voice called.
“Honor and Praaaaaise!” a distant pack answered.
Blackhard could stand it no more. He stood, crossing his front legs on a stone to elevate his head. “Hard-Legs Black-Bristle, last of Dawn Roarers heeeere! I hunt with an Outsider, one who spared my life and the life of my pack, and asked to hunt with meeeeee. This Outsider is a drake named Aurrrrooooon!”
“Whaaaaaaaat?” came many cries from afar, as the forest wolves took in the news. Consternation broke out as others spread the word.
“You call your name, Auron, there’s a good wolf,” Blackhard said.
“You mean howl?”
“Yes. You speak the tongue well enough. Just make it good and loud.”
Auron put his stumpy front legs on a fallen tree trunk and extended his long neck to the moon. He inflated his lungs until his body swelled like a puffing fish.
“Auron son of AuRel here!” he bellowed. “I travel to the Eastern Mountains to seek my kind, but for now I hunt with the Dawn Roarers.” It was more of a roar than a howl, but it was no sound a wolf could make.
“We seek free passage though your lands to the Eastern Feeeeeeells, as good wolves in your laaaaands. Pass this neeeeeeews,” Blackhard added.
Their words were spread over the howling network. Auron listened to the wailing cries as tingles danced up and down his spine. He felt very un-wolfish.
“Hanging-Tongue Snow-Crossed of Silent Fangs heeeeeere!” a wolf called from the north. “Three packs now ask for Thing to know this news at midsummer night. We meet at the rock-tree at the three-river falls. If you wish to pass, we must hear this story and smell-hear-see this Outsider in full. Pass this neeeeeews!”
“I wiiiiiiiill as I am a good wolf!” Blackhard answered. “Hard-Legs Black-Bristle of Dawn Roarers heeeeeere! There will be Thing at midsummer night by the rock-tree at three-river falls. Pass this neeeeeews!”
“Pass this neeeeeews! Pass this neeeeeews!” echoed wolves from hilltop to hilltop.
“There has not been Thing in my lifetime. I’ve seen only two summers,” Blackhard said as they crossed the smallest of the three-rivers well above the roaring falls. On the other side of the river, a pack climbed out of the wet and shook their coats, flushing sparrows from gorse bushes and devil’s club with their spray.
“Will we see the falls?” Auron asked. He wondered what could make such a noise; it sounded like all the dragons in the world arguing farther down the river.
“Why? There’s nothing to eat there,” Blackhard puffed as he swam. “Oh, I imagine it can’t do any harm. It might be just as well to keep you out of sight until Thing. A gathering of two packs-of-packs-of-packs of wolves can be trouble.”
Auron worked the numbers in his head, wolves using pack to mean eight to twelve. Usually. Over a thousand wolves! They climbed up onto the far bank. Auron slithered to the top of a rock to let the sun dry him, keeping one eye cocked to the fast-running river for fish.
“Hungry wolves, who can only catch, and cache, so much game. There may be many more packs—this news has been howled from the mountains to the seacoast. There will be fights. There won’t be so much as a mouse to eat until we can disperse. To the falls it is.”
The unlikely pair stayed along the riverbank; Blackhard had to stop and scratch while waiting for Auron to catch up.
“No wonder your kind grew wings,” the long-legged wolf said as Auron
climbed over yet another fallen tree. “You’re slow on the ground. When will you be able to fly?”
“That’s years off. Perhaps a pack and a half-pack of summers.”
“I wish I could live to see it,” Blackhard said, loudly for the sound of falling water now grew with each step. “It must be something. To be able to terrify men, even. I’ve heard stories of flying dragons. One of our pack saw one against the moon, before I was born. Here we are. Be careful—the rocks are slippery.”
A mist rose from the roar. They stood at the brink of a great cauldron steaming in the summer sun. Auron looked across from their cliff. Another river poured into the turmoil from the high plateau. Trees clung precariously to the edges of the cliffs, some even on little shelves jutting out from the rock face. A third river joined the others below, to tumble over a much smaller fall farther downstream. Auron saw a long house of men below the lesser falls. Birds whirled above, floating on the updraft.
“Eagles hunt here, not wolves,” Blackhard said. “The man-place is new. Is there nowhere they don’t go?”
“What will happen at Thing?” Auron could feel the impact of the water, transmitted through the stones up to his cliff. He imagined the wolves deciding he had committed a crime against their kind—and tearing him to pieces.
“We need a Thing now and then. Young females leave packs, sometimes new packs are formed by thwarted males who could not rise in their own. It is good for wolves to mix now and then; a pack that stays only within its territory weakens its blood. Your coming was taken as a signal to gather. There’s also curiosity to it. I suppose only a handful of wolves even know what a dragon smells like nowadays.”
“Why is that?”
“The same reason we no longer roam to the coast. Men. The other hominids make war on you, as well, I’m sure; men go on great journeys to kill your kind. They hunt for dragon eggs. Their dogs like to brag to us.”
