Dragon Champion

by E. E. Knight

  “Whoever he was, his men fought well,” Djer said, stroking the gray-white horse’s mane in thought.

  “They lost. History won’t remember them. If he wasn’t killed here, his head is probably already on the steppe. The steppe men don’t care for leaders who take them into defeat.”

  Auron thought of the rider’s skilled attack: the exploding swine, the horsemen pulling apart the wall, the archers who felled the long row of dwarves lying in a hallowed wait for the pyre. The terrible, bloody determination of man, he thought. Will it outlast dragons and dwarves?

  The dwarves of the Chartered Company were some of the few to leave Wa’ah with most of their purchases intact. The barbarians, who melted away as quickly as they appeared, had pillaged both ends of the Golden Road, leaving many the poorer and unhappy with the suerzain.

  The towers rarely stopped on the way back, with spring fodder more readily available for the wraxapods, but they did rest at the Iron Temple.

  Auron rode as a passenger on the return trip, looking out of the forward tower’s slow-moving cupola at a countryside of unrelieved horizon. According to the dwarves, they traveled through the steppe at its most beautiful, when a riot of yellow and blue broke out across the sward.

  “It seems good earth,” Auron said to the commodore. The treads of the traveling towers churned up rich black soil. “Why are the lands so empty?”

  “The Ironriders are nomads. Wherever their horses can run, they claim, and they don’t take to settlers. Some of the patches of trees you see were once planted settlements, but those elms might as well be gravestones. We have some success with them because we travel, as they do.

  “The Iron Temple where we will stop marks the grave of the last king to subdue them. Tindairuss was his name, of the land of . . . Oh, the name escapes me. Back then the Ironriders rode under Ju Ain K’on, which means ‘bloody hooves.’ He slaughtered and stole and expanded the lands of the Ironriders to the very falls of the Falnges. Tindariuss and the riverside elves suffered their depredations, and he formed an alliance of those victims of Bloodyhooves. That dragon you mentioned, NooMoahk, figures into the tale somehow, but since I heard it from the lips of an Ironrider, I don’t know that I trust the details. Tindairuss won many victories, and for a while his men settled the steppe, but he grew old and fell ill. Even before he died, his sons fought with his brothers over the kingdom. The queen sided with one son, but he was assassinated. The kingdom was divided into a confederation for a time, but now their lands are a few overgrown walls of stone. The usual story with men. Many joined with the Ironrider clans. I can only imagine what Tindairuss would think of his blood riding with his mortal enemy. The Iron Temple must quake with his anger.”

  “They build a temple to him in the middle of the steppe?”

  “The work of the son who ended up being assassinated. It was at the site of his father’s greatest triumph. Can’t imagine why anyone ever felt the need to fight a battle there. It looks just like any other part of the steppe. It was a well before. The only one for a distance, so perhaps there was a reason for the battle after all. That’s why we shall stop there. Our casks grow empty.”

  The caravan stopped for two days of rest at the well, forming itself into the triangular fortress Auron knew so well, though tighter, and with a ditch dug all around. He walked up the hill with Djer as a line of dwarves with wheelbarrows hauled casks to the top of the hill, corded muscles glistening in the sunshine.

  The temple was made of metal. It showed only dirt, no sign of rust or tarnish. Djer ran a hand along the smooth side, leaving the black face underneath as shiny as if it were wet. The four sides of the square inclined slightly to a flat roof thirty hands above. A column of metal pointed from it like a lance aimed at the sky.

  “What ore is that?” Auron asked. His Dwarvish was accomplished without effort, though it didn’t ring quite right in the ear because of the way his head was constructed.

  “If I knew, I’d own the Chartered Company,” Djer said. “Wizardly artisans must have made it, and the skill is lost, like so many other gifts, in these bitter days.”

  Auron placed his claws on it; a metallic ping sounded as he touched the surface. “It’s a bare surface. I thought men wrote on everything.”

  “Just above the door,” Djer said, pointing.

  Auron looked at the apocryphal letters. “I must learn to read one of these days.”

  “Many who can wouldn’t know what to make of that. The characters are unknown to me.”

  “You know it’s time for me go.”

  “Yes,” Djer said, his stubbly face turning serious. “I keep hoping you’ll change your mind.”

  “I want to find my own kind. NooMoahk, first of all.”

  “Steel yourself. It is a hard journey across the desert.”

  “I know. I’ll ask you for a set of saddlebags, with plenty of water skins.”

  “Done,” Djer said, rapping Auron’s crest with his knuckles. “But I cannot let a friend such as you go without something.”

  “You’ve given me my tail-point. That is enough.”

  “Not hardly,” he said, searching his pockets with eyes rolling skyward. He fished out a ring. “I’ve put the seal of the Diadem on this,” he said, showing it to Auron. “It’s my Partner-seal, and more besides. Have you seen what I’ve chosen as my insignia under the diadem?”

  Auron looked at the etching on the golden surface. “Is that supposed to be me?”

  “A dragon. Well, I thought it looked like you, anyway. I’m no artist.”

  “Dragons have wings. I don’t . . . not yet.”

  “Winged or no, you’re the reason I’m a vested dwarf.”

  “I’m honored,” Auron said, his skin flushing reddish with pleasure.

  “You can honor me by keeping it. Should you be in great need someday, showing it to one of the Chartered Company will get you whatever assistance we can offer. Traditionally a Partner gives his emissary ring only to a chief-of-staff on an important journey. You’re welcome to this for the rest of your life—may it be blessed with many healthy years.”

  “I would wear it with pride, but it won’t fit my finger.”

  “Then wear it on a horn, once you grow a proper one. Or a chain around your neck, for that matter,” he said, pulling a long, thin strand of steel from his other pocket. “I hope I’ve made it big enough for a fully grown dragon. I could wear this for a belt.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The chain is special, Auron. A piece of my people’s magic. It’s a dwarsaw. Pull any part of it tight, and it will cut even an iron collar if scraped back and forth across it, should anyone succeed in putting you in chains again. Keep it as a memento of the first favor I did you.”

  Auron tried pulling the links tight, and tiny serrated crystal blades like teeth appeared from their shell-like housings.

  “You honor me with it.”

  “By my shining beard, Auron, this’ll be a tale no one will believe in a century. A dwarf and a dragon, brought together by chance and bonded by friendship.”

  Auron reared up, took the dwarf’s hand in his sii and shook it, dwarf-fashion. He flicked out his tongue, smelling Djer and his pipe tobacco into his memory. “That’s the best thing about friendship. It is a gift that cannot be lost. Only thrown away.”

  Chapter 15

  Hungry, thirsty, and cold, Auron asked himself for the eighteenth time, in as many days, what drove him from friendship and comfort into a waste. When he had first thought of finding NooMoahk, it had been a vague wish, an effort to find a new foundation for his life, and to discover the truth behind Hazeleye’s story about discovering a weakness in dragons.

  But he hadn’t counted on the power of the wasteland. It was vaster than the dwarf maps indicated.

  The dwarves prepared him for the desert as best as they could. Dry meat, especially sausages, and bladders of water filled the two saddlebags adapted for drakeback. Auron found when he emptied the water he could eat the skin, th
e tough leather gave his stomach something to work on through the cold nights. For this was no desert out of legend, a hot expanse of rock and sand—at least at this time of year—but a cold, dry waste of rattling pebbles and windblown rolling weeds bouncing off larger rocks.

  Auron saw his tail and midsection thin perceptibly over the journey, as even one set of leather saddlebags disappeared into his hungry gullet, and he feared his fire bladder was reabsorbing the liquid fat contained within. He did his best to trot along as the wolves did, hardening his heart and muscles to the unnatural gait. He went steadily south, every night the object of the Bowing Dragon’s homage sunk a bit further toward the horizon. Sometimes, if he was lucky, at twilight or dawn he could catch hopping little rodents who sought bugs beneath the stones. Their hairy little bodies made him even more thirsty. He caught several, and in stands of brush found termite nests that he opened by using the dwarsaw to open their fortresslike towers, so he could shift them and dig out the nests underneath.

  The blue smudge on the horizon that appeared on the twentieth day without water gave him hope. It must be the Bissonian Scarps of the old dwarf maps as rendered from the tongue of the people of Tindariuss, and somewhere within the dragon’s home. Auron could no longer jog along, but he could walk. He stalked the mountains as if they were prey, planting alternate feet front-and-rear with dried-out muscles and joints that creaked as he walked.

  Something floated above, on wide wings with feathers that spread like fingers. Auron walked on, ignoring it, and it came lower in a half-hour’s worth of lazy circles. Its shadow passed over him, and a cold tail-tip of dread ran up his spine.

  “You should have been picked over a week ago, if you came out of the north, dying one,” it called down to him, in bird speech. “Why did you choose my desert to kill yourself, hatchling?”

  As though inaccurate old maps were my fault.

  “I’m no hatchling, I’ve breathed my first fire, feather-wings,” Auron croaked.

  “You should rest more. You’ll pant your life out in cramp and pain otherwise. I’ve seen a dozen kinds of desert death, and can foretell yours easily. You still didn’t answer my question.”

  “Thank you for the advice.” Auron rather hoped the vulture would come within leaping distance. He waited for it to wheel around again before continuing the conversation. “I seek a relative, a black dragon named NooMoahk. If you aid me, you’ll find me grateful.”

  “I’ll find you stretched out beneath the sun, with your last breath long since blown east. I’d like to know what favor you can do me.”

  Auron had to wait again for another circle; he didn’t feel up to shouting. “NooMoahk doesn’t eat sand. There must be hunting to be had in those hills. I’ll keep the four-leggeds off my kills until you get your chance to pick the bones.”

  “Dragons are notorious bone-eaters, so I wonder. Let me turn the question on its back and try poking at the belly. What can I, the genteelest of hunters, do to aid you?”

  “Genteelest?”

  “I don’t do my prey the discourtesy of killing it, but politely wait for it to die. What flesh-eater can say more?”

  Some flesh-eaters are too ill-bred to wait and dine on the lips and tailvents, Auron thought. “Take me to the nearest water.”

  “There are springs in the mountains, though you must first pass up and over the dry hills. It’s high summer and dry.”

  “Nothing in the desert?”

  “There is a waste-elf oasis, but they’ll have you turning on a spit.”

  “What are waste-elves?”

  “Outcasts, mostly. There are more than usual at their oasis. They’ve just struck some caravan that lost many of its guards in a far-off land—we vultures are great observers of all that goes on beneath our eyes—and they’re despoiling the wine and women taken. There would be good eating, if they would ever finish the job and move on.”

  “Do they ride horses?”

  “Ride them? They share their tents with them.”

  “Where away?”

  “The pit country. A bit east of southeast from here. You would reach it by nightfall, and if you have a dragon’s nose, you’ll smell the water by afternoon.”

  “Do you know many more vultures?”

  “We are a far-flying people.”

  “Tell them to gather for a feast, above this oasis at dawn tomorrow.”

  “You speak bravely for something I took to be a meal in a day or two.”

  “What is the worst that can happen? If the waste-elves get me, they may pick at my hide.”

  “Young drake, the desert is a changeless place. To be honest, I find it a little boring a’times. I shall call my aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews, and relations thrice removed to observe events. Look for us when the sun rises. We will enjoy the show from on high, though the ending may ill-suit you.”

  Auron followed his nose to the sinks. The desert became rockier, and he reached a country of tortured landscape. It was as if long ago boulders had plunged from the sky and into the desert, leaving sheer-sided craters when they punched through the surface. He wondered what mad work of Earth or Water Spirit had created them in the forming of the world.

  He had to restrain himself from rushing forward at the smell of water. He heard songs in high elven voices mixed with the shouts of men—and occasional screams—echoing up from the largest of the craters.

  The sun descended behind him, and Auron did his best to cover the last distance across the desert with the sun directly behind him. If they had guards watching the empty space around the pit country, they would not be watchmen for long if they spent their time staring into the horizon-touching sun. When he could distinguish voice from voice, he stopped and hugged the dirt; nightfall would mask the rest of his approach.

  He saw a hominid—it was too far away to determine if it was man or elf—climb atop a claw-shaped rock and stand, staring out into the desert to the east. Water trickled, its sweet sound tantalizingly near within the pit. Auron crept to the edge of the sink and looked down.

  A sea of creepers hung from the rocks. The bottom of the sink was sand and bush, flowing from a notch that gave the oval a teardrop shape. At the widest part of the circular canyon, there was a pool, fed by trickles of water coming out of the vertical rock face. The narrow end had either been shaped or dug into a long fissure inclining up to the surface of the desert, a good six drake-lengths above the canyon floor. It was here, at the only entrance that didn’t involve climbing, that the watchelf stood on his promontory.

  Caves and shelves filled the sides of the canyon, and the waste-elves had turned these into little homes, each inhabiting one like owls sharing an ancient hollow tree. Ropes and ladders hung from some; others could be reached by stepping rocks in piles or handholds cut into the stone. A corral of stacked stone stood by the pool with a few camels; the horses, as the vulture said, must be in the tents covering the pit floor. A capacious tent: a patchwork of rugs and what looked like sail material from a ship ran from the opening of the incline to the surface halfway across the floor of the canyon. Lamps burned within, and disturbing sounds rushed into the darkness, shouts and screams of women. Auron smelled blood, and he looked over to a blackened pit where a limp form lay pale in the darkness.

  Charcoal in little pots and troughs had meat roasting above on skewers. An elf or two, in sandals and loose robes with thorns growing in their hair, wandered from tent to tent, wine bottles dangling in their fingers. Auron saw scimitars and recurved bows scattered in the little caves and shelves. These were warrior elves, and judging from the sounds in the tent, cruel.

  Auron made a mind-picture of the pit, and moved away from the edge and crept among the stones, slithering with his belly scraping the cold rocks toward the watchelf. He tasted the air. There was more than one there, though where the others might be the airs did not say. At least he knew where one stood.

  He thanked his star that the waste elves kept no dogs. He needed water, food, and rest . . . bu
t to do that he needed to drive the waste elves away.

  But how?

  After a few moments’ thought, he slithered forward at a stalk, his body the color of the night sand. He withdrew his claws to climb the watch-rock silently, sticky sii finding grips in the wind-cut limestone. He had to be careful with his iron-sheathed tail, however. He could not climb with it as he was used to, for fear of the metal scraping the rock.

  The waste elf nodded above, seated cross-legged on the rock with his head lolling against his chest. Auron climbed sideways as he neared the top. The elf’s ears must have picked up something, but in the second it took his brain to answer the call, Auron’s tail lashed up, catching him full in the face with the tiny shield. His tail knocked the elf backwards into his waiting jaws, and the skull gave way with a crunch.

  The splattering rain of blood landing on the stones below woke the others. Auron heard one call a jest about the sentry relieving himself too noisily. The elves spoke Parl. Auron saw two figures below stir in their sand-covered blankets, and he jumped down among them.

  The murders were done in an instant. The elves waited there prepared to blow a warning on brass horns, not to fight a lion’s weight of claws, teeth, and tail plunging onto them from a height.

  Auron ate a selection of organ meat and lapped at the salty blood, feeling strength from the meal flow into his limbs as fast as the liquid flowed into his stomach. When he finished, he went to work on the bodies, rending flesh and tearing joints until the remains could not be identified as coming from man, horse, or swine by anyone save a scholar of bone fragments. Then he searched the ground for his footprints and obscured them with brushes of his tail.

  He returned to the pit.

  The revels had grown louder with the night progress.

  Auron scaled the sink-side, above the water. When he sank into the pool, it was like a pleasant dream brought to life—the water seemed to caress his skin with living tongues. He drank, but not too deeply.

  Two men staggered out of the great tent at the canyon mouth, carrying a body by the wrists and ankles. Long hair wet with blood trailed on the sand as they hauled the burden to the mass grave. They tossed the corpse onto the other without word or ceremony, sending an empty bottle crashing against the rock wall after it. They turned back toward the tent, but one found the effort of corpse-removal too fatiguing, and slid to the floor of the pit in a stupor. The other chuckled something Auron could not make out and moved for the glow shining out from a crack in the tent flaps.