Dragon Champion

by E. E. Knight

  They moved up to the tower-captain’s post, where a nest of speaking trumpets projected from the floor like a bouquet of oversize pitcher-blossoms under a peaked wooden canopy. A single watchdwarf nodded to them as they explored the level, but kept an ear cocked to the trumpets. They looked down at the chains being laid out for the wraxapod team. A walkway projected out from the tower-captain’s post in all four directions of the compass. Above them, a pole with rungs going up it like legs of an insect led to an observation post at the tip, with the huge—now that they were near it—flag of the Diadem fluttering above.

  Auron marked a veritable nest of speaking tubes.

  “The towers talk to each other, the teams, and the convoy with flags by signalmen at the end of these walkways. At night we use fireworks of different colors.”

  “May the Law and Order pity the apprentice who misses a signal,” a gruff voice said from the tower-captain’s post. “For I won’t.”

  They turned to see another squat dwarf emerging through a hatch in the floor. He wore a sash of red with gold braiding, but was barefoot. Auron couldn’t help staring at his feet; he’d seen horses’ hooves that looked more fragile.

  “Commodore-of-the-Caravan Stal, pleased to meet you. You must be Djer and his dragon,” the barefooted one said, bowing with a gesture only a little more pronounced than a nod.

  Djer and Sekyw bowed low, so Auron lowered his head, as well.

  “Heard about the fight from some of my men—sorry I missed it,” he said. “What does our guest think of the Traveling Towers?”

  “I didn’t know such things existed, or could exist, sir,” Auron said in Dwarvish.

  The commodore gave a more pronounced bow. “So you know a civil tongue, as well. I worry at times how we’d fare against a full-grown dragon. This wood is coated to stop flame, but that’s just from fire-arrows and what-have-you. Thankfully, your kind are rare.”

  And getting rarer, Auron thought. But he said, “It would be a desperate dragon to go against all this for a wagonful of gold.”

  “Once the Caravan gets moving, I’d like to come out of the towers and join you for a meal, young drake. It’s a long, slow trip. You’re a new experience. I’ve made near two hundred round trips since starting on the push-pull level, and you’re the first live drake I’ve seen.”

  Auron wondered how many dead drakes he had crossed, but thought better of asking.

  Long, slow trip. Auron had time to consider in full the meaning of those words as his cave-on-wheels ground along, day after ever-so-the-same day.

  He thought of it as a cave because it was dark and enclosed. There were solid doors at the rear, but they stayed locked from both inside and out—the dwarves showed him how to work the simple sliding bolt that secured it from the inside. Auron had a source of air in the roof: there was a vent window shaped like a mushroom. A dwarf might be able to see out the slit, if he had something to stand on, but Auron could not work his crested head into it so that he could see. He settled for looking up at the sky at an angle, or sticking his nose up into the vent and experiencing the steppes through his nostrils. He smelled wraxapods, draft oxen, and sun-dried grasses, overlaid with dwarf.

  They locked him inside the wagon soon after the towers, pulled by straining wraxapods, moved away from the walls of Wallander. To the drake’s ears they made a sound like a constant mild earthquake as they ground across the steppe. Auron’s own wagon had a team of no fewer than sixteen oxen pulling it along, and those numbers were often doubled at fords on the rare watercourses running across their paths. The double team was necessary for the wagon, burdened as it was with iron-banded chests of gold and silver.

  Auron ate well and slept better, warm out of the cold winter wind that brought chilling rain and flecks of snow like blown sand. He got to know the sound of the traveling towers crunching snow beneath the rotating roads they carried with them. He took entertainment in his dreams, either vaguely pleasant visions of clouds and landscapes, or vivid experiences from his ancestors somehow passed down through his parents, sights and sounds and smells and tastes that wafted through his consciousness without explaination.

  He found time to compose a few couplets to his own song, should he ever meet the right mate once his wings had grown. All the while, his lung healed, and the wounds from his battles became faint white scars on his gray skin. Best of all, his tail slowly lengthened.

  A dwarf woman—who also cared for the beasts outside the wagon—fed him twice a day as the teams were hitched and unhitched. At those times, Djer and an accounting dwarf counted the money again and again, paying out small amounts to the nomads and merchant-nobles of the steppe for grain, eggs, and meat. Djer told him of teams of men and horses dragging tree branches and rolling bales of hay to feed the wraxapods. All had to be bartered in workmanship or paid for in coin.

  At night, the dwarves allowed visitors into the camp, always ready to make a bargain with king or serf. Auron’s one and only alarm on the long trip came when he heard a stealthy set of hands trying the vent at the top. Spoiling for action, Auron gave a growl that corkscrewed into a full-throated dragon cry, and whoever explored the roof jumped off with the speed of a cat that had unexpectedly landed on an iron stove.

  Auron got his promised dinner with the commodore. While Sekyw stood watch in the cart, the commodore took Auron to his room just under the command-cupola, and showered drake and Djer with food and tales. Auron heard stories of young men Stal met as warriors, who later became kings and dotards over the course of long years of Caravan. He showed them a tapestry to commemorate the Battle of Hurth crossing, where Stormrider K’ada va K’on brought his hordes against the towers until the Hurth turned red with their blood. They heard of ageless wizards living in icy wastes, writing in lost tongues on the skins of man and blighter, and the great king of the Unmapped Continent, who sent emissaries north on flying carpets. How much was truth and how much was legend, Auron had no way of knowing.

  “What do you know of NooMoahk, the black dragon?” Auron asked.

  Stal flicked crumbs of his meal from his beard. “Hmmmm, that’s an old name. My last news of him goes back years, must have been around the time of the Blizzard that Killed Spring, it seems. A good forty years ago. We had a band of men traveling with us. They had camels as well as horses, and planned to cross the desert to kill him, for they said he still lived, but had grown feeble. He must not have grown feeble enough, for they said they’d meet us for the return trip at the rustless iron temple at the edge of the desert. It’s a fascinating place. There’s a well there that’s never empty, and thick groves of fruit trees. They say a mighty king is buried there, but no one remembers anything more than that. But I’ve lost my grip on the tail of my tale—the men were not there waiting for us.”

  A day later, when the accountant dwarf and Djer did a full counting of the coin, an argument broke out.

  “We both signed the tally two nights ago,” the accountant insisted. “After we bought that herd of mutton.”

  “It must not be right. How can there be so much missing?” Djer said. “None have been here but Auron and Sekyw.”

  “Perhaps the drake eats coin after all, though I beg your pardon for saying it.”

  “Nonsense. Who searched Sekyw?”

  “Myself, and then two others. We felt his clothes, he removed his boots—”

  “Yes, I know the procedure. Perhaps he ate it. The fat would mask the sound of its clinking.”

  The accountant bristled. “Never. There’s a magic on it. It’s death to swallow it—I’ve dusted the gold with powdered poison myself. He had no water to wash it with.”

  “So you told me,” Djer said, looking at Auron in the back of the open wagon with a wounded expression.

  Auron lifted his head. “My friend, I did not touch so much as a coin. And if I ate it, wouldn’t it have killed me, as well?”

  “I never tested the formula on a dragon,” the accountant said.

  “Send for Sekyw,” Djer o
rdered.

  “I don’t mean to add to the mystery, but there’s sand on the floor,” Auron said, sniffing at a crevice between thick planks of the wagon bed.

  “What’s that?”

  “There’s sand on the floor of the wagon. Not much. A pinch or two. But it smells like the riverbank. It wasn’t there before. I know the smell of every crack in this cage by now.”

  Dwarves began to gather, sensing something wrong. Sekyw came up, looking as bulky as ever.

  “I wish we had weighed him before and after he rode with the money,” Djer muttered to Auron.

  “Sir,” Sekyw said, rolling his eyes at the other dwarves, “I’m a dwarf of years of experience. I hold a position of trust with the Company. Am I to understand you think I took a few handfuls of coin? To what gain, at such risk? My pension is worth more. The dragon must have eaten it.”

  “Only two have been alone with the money, you and the young skyking. I just wanted to have both of you present while I thought this through,” Djer said.

  “Are you sure there is no error in the count?”

  “None,” the accountant said.

  Sekyw walked over to Auron, pointing with his stick. “Then it must be the dragon, as I was searched when I left the cart—”

  Auron snorted.

  “Quiet, please. I can’t think when you’re talking,” Djer said. “Shut up or I’ll cram that stick in your mouth. . . . Umta, did you check the stick?”

  “Solid orewood,” the accountant dwarf said. “I felt it myself—it was no heavier when he left as when he went in.”

  “There’s gold in it,” Auron said. “I can smell it.”

  “Umta!” Djer said. “The stick!”

  The dwarf called Umta swore and snatched the stick from Sekyw’s hand. He worked first the handle, then the tip, trying to open it.

  “This is outrageous. That stick was a present from my master when I was just an apprentice. To my knowledge, it’s nothing but solid orewood.”

  Djer went over to Umta and took up the stick. He cracked it across his leg, breaking it in two. Dirt flew in all directions.

  “So it was hollow, and weighted with dirt. That proves nothing,” Sekyw said, but his face had grown pale.

  Auron sniffed at the stick. “Empty the ground-end, Djer. On something clean.”

  Djer poured the end of the stick out on the accountant’s tally sheet. A trickle of sand, golden against the other dirt, poured out.

  “Who would weight it with dirt, and a little sand? Where’s the gold, Sekyw?”

  Sekyw looked down at the evidence and wheezed. Dwarves watching murmured to each other as they worked it out, or had others explain it to them.

  “As you value your life, where’s the gold?”

  Sekew tore at his beard. “The stick was magic, it opened only at the right word. I buried the gold. I buried it so the dragon would take the blame. It’s unfair. I’ve sweated for this Company for as long as you’re old, and just because you happen upon a friendly dragon—”

  “There will have to be a trial. Though your confession will be to your credit,” Djer said. “Jealousy drove you to something this stupid?”

  “Never Envy other dragons their wealth, power, or home,” Auron translated, as best he could.

  “What’s that?” Djer asked.

  “A song that we might do well to translate into Dwarvish.”

  Chapter 14

  The sight of the markets in the East would have been worth the winter’s trip to Auron, even without his task of guarding the dwarves’ treasure.

  There were colorful tents and dun huts, run-down stalls and gold-flaked wagons, warehouses and barges loaded with goods under a late-winter sky. The steppe country ended at the feet of a sickle-curve of mountains from the north, hummock-shaped, snow-dusted slopes harboring only a few patches of desert fir. They were in a land the commodore identified as Wa’ah.

  Wa’ah sat in the spine hills between the Vhydic River, which ran south to the Jeweled Princedoms, and the Na, the slow-flowing artery to the East’s fertile coast and myriad islands. Here the twenty thousand paces of the Golden Road joined the navigable lengths of the Vhydic and the Na under the Suerzain of Wa’ah. The suerzain was a monarch with the wisdom to leave a good thing alone by not levying tolls, duties, dock fees, or taxes on the river-road trade. He employed a small army of merchants himself, and the suerzain’s storehouses and food markets, corrals and smithies—located in the best spots, naturally—competed for the custom of traders from near and far.

  The towers halted their inchworm journey on the west side of the Vhydic, where the spring’s first wildflowers already bloomed on the banks of the more sheltered backwaters. Rather than hiring boats to shuttle their goods across, the dwarves assembled their own from frames carried by the wraxapods. It was the knocking sound of hammers driving wooden pegs that revealed to Auron that the journey had ended.

  “But not your duties, Auron,” Djer said. “We’ll spend the rest of the coin in a month or so buying new beasts and wagons for the return trip. We’ll return to Wallander with three times the goods and one-tenth the money that we set out with. But our first purchase will be at the suerzain’s market for some fresh fruits and vegetables. You may not get tired of salted meat, but I’ve had enough dried mushrooms and peas and apples to last me the rest of my life.”

  “It is still the plan for me to return with the Caravan, at least partway,” Auron said.

  Djer gave his crest a friendly tap, like a merchant testing the soundness of a copper pot. “Of course. You’ll ride in more comfort this time, in the by, and they say the summer is a better time to see the southern steppe. Having you along mightily impressed the Steppe Kings’ men. I exaggerated a bit and told them you were an important scion of a family of dragons in our mountains, learning something of the world as a student and ambassador to the Chartered Company. It didn’t hurt to have the Ironriders think that any nonsense would be avenged by some very angry dragons.”

  After a day of preparation, the dwarves opened their own market, showing off jewelry, weapons, armor, and other finished goods brought out of the countries ringing the Inland Sea. Djer had Auron perch atop the money-wagon, and some visitors made the trip across the Vhydic just to see him, for not even the menageries out of the East could boast of a drake’s presence. His display especially excited the merchants of the Na basin and the eastern coast. Djer was happy to relay to Auron their belief that any endeavour that took place under a dragon’s gaze was considered certain to bring luck and success. Some went so far as to stand beneath his wagon, look solemnly at him, bow, and mutter in their own tongues. Others clapped to get his attention and then tossed a coin or two onto the flat roof of the wagon. Auron made a pretense of eating the money and later presented it to Djer, who would spend it on fat joints of beef and mutton. Djer told him that if he were a golden dragon, instead of a gray one, it would impress them even more. When he hinted that he knew of an elf-artisan who could paint his skin until anyone would think he had come out of the egg that color, Auron snarled in mock fury and chased his friend around the wagon nipping at the dwarf’s fleeing buttocks.

  Auron saw that men, elves, dwarves, and blighters came in different colors, just as dragons did, though in muted, Earth-spirit hues. Some wore plain-sewn furs, others rich robes with glittering pieces of stained glass woven into the fabric. Rich or poor, perfumed or smelling of charcoal smoke, they all tried to buy cheap and sell dear to others with the same goal in mind. They spoke a form of pidgin Parl of many words run together to make sure the point was taken. Auron heard traders asked if they would like to see more with the phrase “thou-you want-care look-see else-more-different?”

  Auron found it all amusing. Even better, he could enjoy the feeling of being amused.

  The waning moon told them they had been on the banks of the Vhydic for over a month. Auron and Djer treated themselves to a private dinner just below the doors of the wagon. The nights were now warm enough for them to sta
nd outside without huddling close to the fire and shivering.

  “Your beard is looking well,” Auron told Djer one evening as the dwarf sprinkled his beard with the faintly sweet-smelling water that fed the glowing mold nestled within. Shining flakes picked up the light. “And is that a little gold dust?”

  “Ach, I splurged,” Djer said, winking at Auron with one of his great eyes. “This will be a profitable trip, from push-pull dwarf on up.”

  “When do dwarves mate?”

  “I’ll take a wife once I have my own line open,” Djer said. “There was a maid, once, in the mines. A kind maid, even to a nobody of a coaler. I should like to return to her stove-corner and take her up to a home . . .”

  The dwarf glanced over at Auron. “Funny the chance that makes a dream come true. Almost makes you believe in that elvish rot about fate and such.”

  “Almost,” Auron said.

  “Yes, you’ve got enough of an ear for Dwarvish to know a curse when you hear it. I don’t care for almosts. The word is a cheat.”

  “There’s no almost about this trip. Meeting you is the best thing to happen to me since . . .”

  Djer laughed to end the silence. “And you, my friend, you’ve grown on dwarf hospitality. I see some bumps on your crest, too. Would those be horns coming in?”

  “Are they even?” Auron asked. He remembered his sisters and their discussion over just where on a dragon’s crest horns were considered attractive, and was vain enough to have it worry him.

  “One’s right on top, and the other is just in front of your ear,” Djer said, and laughed as Auron’s sii flew to his crest. The buds were there, midway up each side of his crest, what his sisters might consider ideal. At least he was normal in that respect.

  “We’re both growing,” Djer said, slapping his vest-covered belly, now full with a feast bought by Auron’s collection of coin. “Another year or two, and you wouldn’t even fit in that wagon.”

  “And you are about to burst that vest like a hatchling’s egg.”