Dragon Champion

by E. E. Knight

  Something wetted his eyes, something that even closing and opening his water-lids didn’t remove. AuRon flicked his tongue out, curious for the taste. Salt.

  BOOK THREE

  Dragon

  STRENGTH WITHOUT VISION IS TYRANNY.

  VISION WITHOUT STRENGTH, DREAMFUL IMPOTENCE.

  BREED THEM, AND THE WORLD IS YOURS.

  —Wrimere the Wyrmmaster, Wizard of the Isle of Ice

  Chapter 18

  The young dragon AuRon flew south after seeing to the burial of his mentor. It was no small job. He wished to do his duty to the ancient dragon, so after some thought, he started work. AuRon’s foua made a pyre of the dead dragon, and with the weight burned off, he placed the bones into a circular burial trench dug into the grassy ground of the hill. NooMoakh’s bones lay in a ring around the tomb of Tindairuss, the last buried tailbone dropped just a claw’s length from the nose. AuRon’s sii claws were dull and tender from days of moving earth, digging until his own blood mixed with the loam around the well.

  At last he was resolved. The physical labor cleared his mind; he knew his path. NooMoahk’s hold would be his and his alone. He would live a solitary existence among the aging manuscripts, losing himself in dead tongues of even deader sages. AuRon knew now the dull ache of loneliness was trivial compared with the pain of saying good-bye to friends through death and distance. His family, Blackhard, Djer, Hieba, and NooMoahk had passed into and out of his life, each one leaving a bigger hole than the one they filled. It was better never to have others in one’s life than to lose them.

  There would be the blighters to deal with, of course. He would live apart, above them in the manner of earlier days: a remote liege lord they could turn to in trouble, as long as they did not hunt in his forests or fish in his streams. Their interactions would prevent attachments that might hurt when the hominids ended their brief, furious lives.

  It was a bitter lesson. He realized now there were more ways to be left vulnerable than being born without scales.

  Dragons were meant to fly, to hunt, to live alone and free. Flying was the purest freedom he had ever known. Riding the sky went to his head like wine, but left him exhilarated rather than a throbbing head. It reduced distances and obstacles to nothing more than vistas beneath him, made hunting a trifle, and gave him a new world to explore—a world of cloud-heads rolling beneath him like ocean waves and wisps above as light as a goose’s feather borne by currents and tides invisible. With each beat of his wings on his trip back across the desert, he felt more a lord of the lands under his eyes beneath: a Power above ground dwellers and beyond their comprehension. He was a dragon, a terrible prince of cave, water, and sky who would rule through wit backed by tooth and flame.

  He made the journey back to the mountains in two flights, resting in the desert a day, letting the summer sun bake his skin clean. With the growth spurt that preceded uncasing his wings over, his appetite was reduced; the trip brought only a pleasant hunger and thirst rather than an all-consuming appetite that drove every other thought from his mind. Instead of searching out game, he watched the heights slide up from the south until he was among the peaks, fighting the headwinds coursing through the peaks.

  Now to find the blighters.

  The huts clustered on the hillside like a ring of warts. Just inside a wooden palisade stood a line of stone-bottomed, rounded thatch-topped huts, most with wisps of smoke coming from a soot-rimmed central orifice. A more imposing hut, roofed with tusks of something that might have been elephants, stood at one end of the empty space in the village center: a common ground of charcoal pits and clay-colored grain dumps. A V of head-poles—AuRon dredged from memory the word for the blighter’s spikes, stood before the village. The lines extended out from the gate down the slope, groups of three empty bleached skulls mounted to stare out at visitors to the village.

  AuRon wheeled and swooped over the huts, getting a better look.

  Blighters took up their pointing children as AuRon circled their settlement. Livestock, mostly goats and cattle, bleated or bellowed alarm. A few blighters took up spear and bow, or held up shields against the threat from the sky.

  AuRon spread his wings wide and drifted over the village in silence, riding the wind. With a dip of his wings and a swoop of his neck and tail, he turned. “I come to parley. You’re in no danger,” he called. “Bring forth your elders!”

  He alighted in the center of the village, reared up, and rested on his hind legs so he towered over the blighters. AuRon was nothing like the size of NooMoahk, but in length he had already exceeded the greatest snakes of the jungles south. He got light-headed and saw spots if he sat like this for too long, but he held the pose until two blighters of commanding girth emerged from the royal hut.

  “What hospitality can we offer, who speaks our tongue of old and knows our ways, young dragon?” one called, resting on a curved cane of some gnarled wood that tapered like a tooth.

  “I ask nothing yet. Where is your third elder?”

  “Dokla is not as old as I or as Keerh. He leads a game drive south of here.”

  AuRon’s knowledge of blighter ways gave out at this impasse, so he simply asked, “Will you speak for him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then bring your people out. I wish them to hear us, and to see while we talk.” AuRon’s mouth was growing sore from forming blighter words.

  The blighter who had not yet spoken put a steer-horn to his mouth and made a rattling, whistling call through it. Other blighters led their wives and children from the huts, holding weapons but walking with the points trailing in the dirt to show that no threat was intended.

  The elder’s wives unrolled wooden mats on the ground, and the blighter chieftains sat cross-legged, facing AuRon.

  “I am called Bund-kleh’Tran. Visitor, speak your name and your wants.”

  “I am Gray Dragon AuRon, out of the west,” AuRon said, straining to translate his thoughts into the blighter’s speech. “I’ve seen fourteen summers since coming out of the egg. I’ve climbed mountains and swum oceans. I’ve sailed in ships and traveled in carts. I’ve hunted with wolves and been hunted by men, learned from elves and bargained with dwarves, stood my ground in battle and driven my enemies from their lairs. I’ve defeated a fully grown dragon by wit and wing. I bear four great wounds as testament to this. I come to claim the ruins of Kraglad, a city of old Uldam, and take the black dragon NooMoahk’s place.”

  The blighter elders whispered in each other’s ears. Bundkleh’Tran pushed the tip of his staff into the ground. “Two generations ago, NooMoahk-vhe was our lord. None with him now speak.”

  “NooMoahk is gone. I will take his place, as his heir, and I want peace with the Umazheh,” AuRon said, using the blighters’ word for themselves.

  “What price is the peace?” Bund-kleh’Tran said, after shooting a glance at his fellow elder.

  “Just as I said. The ruins of Kraglad will be mine. The river east and west of the old city I claim, as well, and the lands in between the two. I will not touch Umazheh or Umazheh’s herds, as long as they stay off that land. Beyond the rivers, I hunt where I choose. In return for this fealty, you will have my aid against any enemy of the Umazheh within one day’s dragonflight of Kraglad. This is many mountains east and west of here, and much of the southern forest to the borders of old Uldam. If famine or disease strikes your herds, I will succor the Umazheh as I can by hunting. These are my terms.”

  The chieftains retired and whispered, still facing AuRon. AuRon could hear them, but most of the words were unfamiliar. After a conference, they approached him again.

  The blighter named Keerh crossed his arms across his chest. “We stand at an impasse. Kraglad is revered of our people. NooMoahk-veh claimed our shrines. This wrong must be righted.”

  “A dragon needs safe refuge. Pilgrims who come in peace unarmed, preceded by a harbinger, will be allowed within the city.”

  “We must bargain for what is rightfully ours?” Keerh asked of B
und-kleh’Tran.

  “A dragon is better as an ally than as an enemy,” Tran said, gripping his staff with his hand reversed. AuRon wondered if the awkward gesture meant indecision.

  Something flashed at the corner of his vision, and AuRon crouched. Two arrows that would have found his heart struck his shoulder instead.

  Bund-kleh’Tran lifted his arm, and a wide blade shone in the sunlight as it emerged from the cane-scabbard. His aged companion Keerh, moving quickly for a blighter of such age and weight, reached to a hidden scabbard at his back and drew a fighting ax.

  AuRon whipped his tail across the ground in anger; the instinctive gesture scattered charging spear-blighters. Tran swung his ax-wide sword as if to cleave the dragon’s skull from crest to snout, but the blade opened AuRon’s chin as he avoided the swipe. He was not so lucky with Keerh, who plunged his battle-ax into AuRon’s throat, swinging under the armored griff. AuRon felt his neck stiffen, the blighter had cut into the muscle-wrapped tube leading up from his fire bladder. A sphincter at the outlet of his fire bladder clamped shut at the touch of air; his flame was useless.

  AuRon hugged the ground, protecting his soft belly. He extended his wings and flapped hard, sending up a cloud of dust and pebbles from the open ground at the center of the ring of huts. Keerh and Tran turned their heads from the stinging spray for a second—

  —which was all AuRon needed. He pounced, getting a forelimb on each elder blighter’s chest. He knocked them to the ground and bore down with all his weight and muscle, and felt a satisfying crunch as his sii tore into collapsing rib cages. Even more satisfying, though brief, was the shriek from Keerh.

  More arrows pierced his flank. AuRon turned to see that the blighter charge had become a rout. All save one blighter had dropped his spear. Some flung themselves on the ground; others ran. The lone attacker, perhaps not knowing his fellows had deserted him, still ran forward with spear point raised. AuRon’s tail flashed over and forward like a bullwhip; he knocked the spear into the ground. The weapon stopped, but the charging blighter didn’t, and the unfortunate tripped over first the haft and then his own foot. The blighter sprawled before AuRon.

  The arrow wounds burned him; the blighters must have dipped the heads in some foul substance. “Don’t move,” AuRon said to the blighter before him. “Or you die, and I consume this village to the last goat-kid.”

  “Mercy! Mercy, great AuRon!” the blighter cried.

  “I’ll do more than show you mercy. Lift your head, and tell me your name.”

  The young blighter lifted his slobbered face. “I am called Unrush! I ask your mercy.”

  “Unrush, are you a father?” AuRon said, a little thickly.

  “Of eleven youth, by two wives. Spare us!”

  “Then you can be called an elder. Unrush, you’re in charge of this village now. Don’t worry, when this Dokla comes back, I’ll make him understand. You may pick the third elder yourself. If the three of you play fair by me, I’ll see you chieftains of all the Umazheh of these mountains. Did you hear the bargain I offered to the dead ones?”

  “Yes, and it was fair! Most fair!”

  “Then keep it and see your Umazheh safe and prosperous.”

  AuRon fought a growing weariness as he flew off to the river where he had first met the fishing NooMoahk. The arrow wounds throbbed. He submerged himself in the cooling water and worried at the arrow points with his clipping front teeth. Only once the arrowheads were out, and the blood ran as freely as the water coursing over him, did he allow himself to lay his head on the riverbank. The sun pained him. He sank into a half-sleep and dreamed of a sky filled with thunderheads.

  He awoke chilled and hungry, with the feeling it was some days later. The moon’s face had turned a full quarter farther toward the earth. At some time he had hauled himself out of the water, but he had no memory of it. He sniffed the air and smelled woodsmoke. And blighters.

  Unrush emerged from the thick riverbank ferns. He carried a sword, thickened almost to ax-width at its far end and notched like a claw. In his other hand he carried a skull by its wiry hair. He tossed it to AuRon.

  “Dokla never saw reason. I took his head in single combat.”

  A few other blighters emerged from the woods, spears pointed straight up.

  “What now?” AuRon croaked. The head stank and was crawling with maggots. The fight must have been some days ago.

  “Some say: let us kill the dragon while he is weak. I say: dragon must grow strong, so the Umazheh of these mountains grow strong with him.”

  “Thank you.”

  “We have bound the families of the defeated chiefs. Blood sacrifice our pact to seal.”

  At another time, AuRon would have welcomed the meal, but he was still half-sick from the venom in the blighter arrows. He was not in the mood to kill and eat screaming hominids.

  “No. Send them away. West, south, east—I don’t care. They shall go into exile.”

  The blighter’s shoulders drooped. “You are too merciful to those who tried to kill you,” Unrush said.

  “Those who tried to kill me are dead. Except you.”

  Unrush digested this, and nodded. “So they live.”

  AuRon licked his aching flank. The skin was discolored where the scar tissue was growing. “If you want to bring me the archers who shot me, I’ll eat them instead.”

  AuRon’s throat healed. He settled into the vigorous life of a young dragon-lord as his tally of years doubled. The blighters kept their bargain, and Unrush grew into the role of a feudal lord himself. As his people multiplied, his two fellow chieftains claimed lands of their own, and the village where AuRon struck the bargain became the seat of a paramountcy. Whenever Unrush called his arch-chieftains together, he invited AuRon to sit at his side. The blighters gathered in song and beat thrilling tattoos on their war drums on these occasions; spitted bullocks turned over charcoal pits while the leaders spoke or sang.

  When warlike men in white headcloths came up from the south, scimitars tucked in their scarlet sashes, AuRon flew off, leading his gathered warriors to his first true war. At an assembly of blighters, he heard stories of more and more men following ancient roads through the jungles to the south, hunting elephants in the misty forests. Skirmishes between hunting parties in the woods brought soldiers up from the south, an army to drive the blighters from the mountains.

  AuRon heard their petition for war and gave the blighters his aid, fulfilling his feudal promise. He started a great fire in an empty grain pit, and the blighters thrust their oiled blades into the fire until the air was filled with the sharp tang of heated metal. Then the warriors sang songs and took oaths before jumping through the flame. Only a few failed in the feat. AuRon circled above his “fireblades” as Unrush led his soldiers south, bearing before them poles mounted with the sun-whitened skulls of their foes. Red banners sewn from the sashes of the men hung down, with dreadful runes dyed into the blood-colored cloth.

  They sang as they marched (to the beat of drums so long they had to be carried by three blighters):

  In fighting lust

  our blades we trust.

  To herd and hut

  The way is shut.

  While Umazheh stand

  with spear in hand

  and blood that runs

  from Umir’s sons.

  Uh-rah! Uh-rah!

  Battle will try!

  Arrows will fly!

  Foekind will die!

  Uh-rah! Ur-ri!

  The men camped on a hilltop within a circle of cut-down trees, the branches facing the forest trimmed and sharpened into obstacles.

  AuRon watched them from above, hanging silently in a cloudy evening sky, deep in memories of battles and wars handed down from his fathers or pieced together in NooMoahk’s library. He drifted on the jungle updrafts and counted their numbers before flying back to tell Unrush that the men had two spears, at least, to his one, and war machines besides.

  “Then we must have the humans attack us,”
Unrush said, after consulting with his chieftains.

  AuRon knew how the men would array themselves for battle. “The men will attack with bow and missile-machine. When they’ve done their killing from afar, they’ll come in to take the heads of those who are left.”

  “Then we run?” Unrush said over the discontented mutterings of his warriors.

  “No. We’ll use the dark to make one Umazheh take the guise of five.”

  AuRon had the blighters cut torches and issue them to each warrior. The moved quickly and quietly by night and surrounded the invaders out of the south. Each group lit a sheltered fire once they were in position. AuRon flew circles around the camp, guiding the blighters until he judged them in position, then he drifted above the camp. When the deep dark of predawn cast the night even blacker, and tiny flickers of hidden campfires showed the blighters to have completed their encirclement, he adjudged it time.

  A humid dawn shrouded the fireblades’ battle-trial, softening the bird-haunted trees and giving their oiled weapons a deceptively soft glow.

  “Umazheh!” AuRon roared from the sky, his call echoing across the jungle.

  The blighters thrust their torches into the fires and spread out, waving one in each hand as they moved from tree to tree. Trumpets in the men’s camp sounded the alarm, and the humans ran to their breastworks. The sight of the seemingly endless torches moving between the trees would have unsettled AuRon; what it did to the men far from their homes, he could hardly imagine.

  But AuRon did not let them join their comrades standing guard at the edges of the camp. As they streamed from their tents and leantos like a host of scurrying white-headed ants, AuRon dived from the sky with a roar. He plunged down and swooped over the camp, loosing his fire on the war-machines of the men. Rope and wood burst into angry orange flame. The war-machines became horribly animated as the ropework burned away, flinging bits of smoking metal into the sky, or lurching about and collapsing as the great bent timbers came free.