by E. E. Knight
A grizzled one-handed blighter began to give orders. Most obeyed, but one or two of the females ran into the ruins, whether in search of their mates or because they thought they could escape through rubble and rooftop, Wistala didn’t know.
She settled herself at that last, half-built wall, tried not to listen to the screams and clatters echoing from farther out in the vast cavern. And always, always was that waterfall echo of hooves.
A dragonback moved among the ruins, wing-spurs high and proud. DharSii surmounted a fallen building and rested between two vast chimneys. His snout and neck and shoulder bled, but not profusely, and one sail of wing hung, cut into ugly tatters. He’d taken worse from those terrible contraptions than she had.
He came within a dragon cry.
“Wistala, I remember,” he said.
“DharSii of the Sadda-Vale. How is your aunt and the rest?”
His nostrils pulsed. Perhaps he found the exchange of pleasantries amusing. “The same. As always.” He stalked a few more paces forward.
He’d added another ear-ring, well, not quite a ring, more of a smooth squiggle, of what looked (and smelled!) like the rarest of white gold.
He marked her gaze and lowered his griff enough to hide the decoration. Or was it just decoration? Did it hold some significance to those slaughtering men?
“You’d better move along,” he said. “The battle is lost. The Ghioz have some business in these caves and then they will depart. You could return in a day or two.”
“Behind is my cave. If any of them wish to contest my claim, I look forward to the contest.”
DharSii took a reluctant breath. In a flash he shot forward and fell upon her, not biting but trying to pin her to the mound of rubble half blocking the passage. Or perhaps trying to pull her out.
He was frightfully strong, but she had plenty of grips for limbs and tail, and though her thick body would never be called elegant, anyone who tried to overcome it would admit it was powerful. She rolled him off hard enough to feel the impact through the rock and retreated a little farther behind the mound.
The smell of blood and dragon—male! Male! MALE!—both frightened and excited her.
“Did you think I spoke idly?” she asked.
“Of course not,” he said.
“Perhaps you could convince your host to leave.”
“They’re blighters. Hardly hominids, even. What could you possibly care about them?”
She panted, but even more than the air in her lungs, his hateful tone invigorated her spirit. He was the sort of dragon she could hate as fiercely as admire.
“Even blighters have their charms if you get to know them.”
“I rather doubt that. How did they buy such loyalty? All I’ve seen in these mountains is bits of copper and brass.”
“I’m not loyal to them. I’m loyal to my sense of right and wrong.”
“If there’s a wrong here, it’s that dragons are fighting among themselves in some hominid squabble. You’ve injured my companions, and taken very little harm in return. You could fly out of this cave knowing you’d given better than you received in defense of this rubble.”
“I could say the same to you. You three tried, and lost two dragons. Only a fool would press the contest after that. You could retreat with honor intact.”
“I told the Red Queen I would clear these caves when they met my price,” DharSii said. “Clear them I will.”
“You just said they’re nothing but a rubble. What do you suppose your Red Queen wants with rubble?”
“For all I care she just likes holding parades and parties when they’ve won a victory. You know humans. They like to cheer and celebrate deeds others have done, whether it’s their armies beyond the domes or some slathering hound in a fighting pit right beneath them.”
“Interesting choice of imagery. You’re no better than a trained dog, to my mind.”
“I’ll leave that to opinion. I’m certainly richer, and I have my independence.”
“For now. Until the Red Queen decides she needs to chain you up at her door.”
DharSii snorted. “Let her try. I’m more careful than that, and she needs me and my dragons too much to chance it.”
“Then you may die when she meets an opponent greater than herself.”
“I’d simply switch allegiances. The strongest faction is always willing to buy more strength. They pay a little less than the desperate, but it’s more enjoyable to win.” He looked at his tattered wing. “Less hazardous too, but that doesn’t seem to enter your reckoning. I shall have a long job with hemp and dart here tonight.”
“Some victory. Leaving those awful horsemen to skewer screaming children.”
“You’ve not seen much of the world if you’re surprised by such behavior. You can’t expect better from blighters or men.” He lowered himself, set his wings at an angle to deflect blows, wing-spurs up and ready to close on neck or tail, and advanced, bent a little to his right side so his tail could be brought into action as well. “I give you one more chance to show the sense I credited you with those years ago when you quit the Sadda-Vale.”
Wistala felt her fringe rise. “Don’t speak of last chances to a dragonelle with jaw and limbs intact.”
He dragon-dashed forward.
She washed the wall in flame as she retreated. He broke through the wall of fire as though it were nothing but a winter mist.
“You think pain will deter me?” he asked. “I am a dragon. Pain only makes me more resolved.”
“I never doubted your dragonhood. But it’s well-singed.”
She edged back. She could make one last stand at the mouth of the tunnel to the library-cave. She would have good tunnel to defend and he would be contending with verticals. He’d be fighting her and his own weight.
Wistala wondered why he didn’t roar. Male dragons, in her limited experience, made a good deal of noise when they fought, especially when in pain. DharSii conserved his breath, struck, struck again. She’d never felt such power in a blow before. It reminded her of a mountain-troll, toughened by climbing. He struck, not biting, but stabbing forward with nose-tip and tail-point, and with each strike she heard her own scale breaking.
He battered her. He never closed, never came to grips in a manner that might allow her to claw or bite. She managed to latch on to his crest, but came away with a bloody sii and a torn-out claw when he recoiled.
“Yield!” he said, his voice oddly calm. “Cry settled! Cry, curse it all, cry!”
“Never!” she managed, wondering what in the six skies “cry settled” was supposed to mean.
His nose guard was cracked and sat askew, giving his snout the appearance of being bent a little. If she weren’t so battered and bruised, she might have laughed.
Her tail felt emptiness behind. She’d been driven right to the brink of the pit—
She batted one of the cauldrons filled with hot oil with her tail. It broke loose from its chains and sent a shower of oil toward him. The oil hissed as it struck on his flank and he scrambled to get out of the way.
Seeing a chance, she rushed forward, slipping as she passed over the spilled oil, hardly hot anymore after expending its burn in the first instant of striking the cool stone.
They reared up, grappling, biting and snapping. Wistala had always counted herself strong, and for a moment she bent him back—
But then her saa slid.
The oil might have cooled, but the footing was treacherous. DharSii lunged. She heard his hot panting in her ear, felt his breath beating at her neck as they strained, his griff locked in hers. Her tail sought purchase but found only empty air—
Then she was over.
She fell with a shriek. Just as she heard DharSii gasp something—it may have been “no”—her own frightened wail overwhelmed his word.
She tried to open her wings, a natural instinct, but while the chasm was wide it was not wide enough for that. She heard something snap, felt a shock, heard a flapping and realized one wing
was broken, whipping wildly as she spun down—but the other was open, turning her fall into a crazy spin, like those spinning one-winged seeds those tall trees dropped in Hypatia’s northern forests.
She bounced off the wall, or a projection, and continued her fall, some instinct keeping that one wing open.
It was the most terrifying moment of her life.
Later she wondered how long she fell. It felt like an eternity, a day, but it couldn’t have been more than a few moments, for when she finally struck she could still see a circle of light above, not quite a star but far smaller than the moon.
Her eyes perceived a bump in the circle. Natural irregularity, one of the oil-pots, or DharSii?
She’d landed on something spongy. The soggy slap shocked her; she felt wet, clinging wet, all around.
Stunned for a moment, she could only lie there, looking up at that far-off circle of light, a wet, rotting smell like a barrel-full of last year’s swampwater, alternately revolting and comforting—the latter because a dying dragon would have more important things on her mind, one would think, than mouldering water.
Of all the dragons in the world to appear here—she couldn’t have been more distressed if she’d just fought AuRon. Of course, there weren’t many dragons left; she’d looked hard enough when she first uncased her wings. Would the hot oil scar him?
Then it struck her that her first thought upon landing, before judging her injuries to determine if they might be her last thoughts, was of the dragon she’d just fought.
She chuckled like Rainfall amused by one of old Stog’s mulish tantrums, a very undragonlike noise, but the laughter of elves infected all who heard it into imitation.
She cleared her mind with a determined effort and shifted her weight, testing limb and tail. Pain in her injured right wing stabbed, a fast, deep, twisting spear that bored right up through her shoulder muscle and shut her eyes. Her wing was more than half closed and hung at a strange angle. It also hurt when she breathed on her left side, though whether that was related to her wing or not she couldn’t say. Rainfall had done some sketches of her muscles once, just for his own satisfaction, and commented that a dragon’s entire body pivoted on the wing nubs.
Strangely, the most painful wound was that arrow in her tail. Of course the punctured flesh had a chance to grow tender. Luckily both sides of the arrow were still visible. She broke off the feathered end, then extracted the head by pulling it forward.
Fierce new pain made her eyes water. She spat out the arrowhead. Good workmanship, and the metal was well shaped and wholesome-smelling. She swallowed it.
Tangles and angles, she had more important matters at snout. She blinked and tried to clear her head.
The blighters had said something or other about this being an old well. She wondered. Down here there were ancient stairs, not masonry but steps cut into the rock itself, wide steps, even so that a full-grown dragon might use them, spiraling up. They must end somewhere above, for she was sure they did not go all the way up to the blighter defenses at the top.
Rainfall’s laboriously taught logic told her that the stairs must have been built, then, by someone who didn’t particularly desire access to the surface.
The cave she’d fallen down widened at the bottom like a bell, and it was filled with mushroom-like growths. Water soaked the muck here. She sensed that it moved, so it must be coming from somewhere and going to somewhere. She stood up, rather shakily, and surveyed her surroundings. It seemed there was some sort of lip or ledge above.
She could reach it by rearing up on her hindquarters. She shifted her saa and heard an alarming snap, but on inspection she discovered she’d just broken a moldy rib cage with muck and growth clinging to it. She dredged up a skull with tail-point and perched it upon tail-tip and brought it up to her eye.
Blighter, it seemed, and judging from the heavy brow, jutting jaw, and oversized incisors it had probably been a big male. Fallen from above or killed somewhere else, dumped here where the odors would only bother dark and feed the mushrooms.
She sniffed the big mushrooms, especially the smashed caps that had cushioned her fall. A second leafy undergrowth covered the well-floor, oblong pads, big and spongy enough for a blighter to sleep upon. Both smelled wholesome enough to eat, if she was in the mood for vegetation. She also smelled slug-trails, and for a moment stood again in the egg-cave with Auron and Jizara, with Mother watching from the shelf. The memory relaxed her. She could do with a nap.
Mustn’t!
The moldiness of the mushroom patch overwhelmed her nose, but another faint scent drifted down from above, one she couldn’t quite identify further than determining it was animal. First she raised her neck, testing limbs and tail, then reared up and explored the lip above.
The stairs broke at the ledge, and she sensed a tunnel of some kind—there was airflow. After their brief interruption, the stairs continued up again.
If she was to regain the surface she would need her strength.
She found the origins of the water, a mostly blocked-up crack in the wall. She lapped and lapped again, her head clearing with every swallow. The water was pure and clean and cold, thankfully, and even had a faint soda-mineral taste that pleased her exceedingly. Real dragon-water, this. No wonder the mushrooms thrived on it.
She cautiously ascended the stairs to the ledge, poked her head in the tunnel. Still that faint odd animal smell.
“Gaaaa!”
She recognized the bray of a goat. What in the worlds was a goat doing down here? She stuck her head farther into the tunnel. It seemed a natural one, curving up and rising a little, thinning as it did so like a dragon-neck. The goat looked lame, dragging a broken rear leg. Had it tumbled down the shaft and survived a miraculous landing on one of the spongy pads?
Poor thing. She could make a quick end to its suffering, and get a meal besides. Just what she would need to get herself back up that shaft.
The goat fled as best it could, and she took two quick steps after it, opening—
Kzzzzzt!
Odd. Stunning sensation. Her senses fled for a moment. She felt suspended, nowhere in time and space, cognizant only of what felt like a strong blow somewhere on her back.
The ground struck her under the chin, hard. She sensed motion all around. She smelled ozone, as though fresh from a thunderstorm, and suddenly she was with Auron, who was comforting her against the terrifying flashes and noise by tempting her with the taste of rain-drops on her tongue.
Cries and shrieking voices like birdspeech broke out all around. The sounds were kind of a pidgin Drakine mixed with clucks and hoots and croaks, a jamboree of mismatched winged creatures.
She recognized the dragon-name NooMoahk.
“Mizz! Anklamere’s grook cracker works bakka still, ptuck! Dragon-dropper, yak?”
“Yak! Cluck-glug! We braaak NooMoahk! Chukku-na.”
“Nip! Nip! Dulg mak NooMoahk, got us dragon-she!”
“Nie-hruss, ventwipe.”
The motion resolved into dancing forms seen through eyes incapable of focus, but she felt rather easy about it. Something fixed about her snout. She smelled a hot melted-metal scent. She recalled stories of killing dragons by pouring hot lead in their nostrils and other horrible hominid tricks, but she felt oddly complacent about the idea of it happening to her.
One eye focused and she saw a heavy leather band, studded and reinforced with hot rivets, stuck about her nose.
A bent-over shape, almost folded over on itself with an assortment of strange plates and spines and bits of creepily soft-looking flesh showing beneath and violet eyes brighter than any wildflower she’d ever seen stepped forward. It supported itself on a curved stick studded with what looked like hatchling teeth.
She heard a clattering above and rolled one eye up. Some cave above, with false cave-wall broken away . . .
A trap. She’d stuck her head right in.
Other hominids, vague in the dark, not quite so curled up but still bent, with legs that
stuck out sideways and up more like spiders than men, rushed here and there with lines and chains.
“Ye speak to Paskinix, dragon,” the creature said. For a moment she couldn’t say which language it spoke.
“I’ve lived four generations, dragon, four!” it continued to her in competent but unaccented Drakine, tearing off a piece of raw and bloody goat-haunch with teeth like broken rocks, “waiting for another crack at NooMoahk. Didn’t expect that greased projection and the undermined crack when ye climbed down the shaft, did ye? Well, thy recklessness cost ye a wing. Thy Tyr thought he’d sneak in the back door after bashing in the front, eh?”
Wistala couldn’t have responded if she’d wanted, since the band was fixed too firmly about her snout. She wondered which one of DharSii’s dragons called themselves Tyr—an old title from the tales of Silverhigh, wasn’t it? His Drakine was odd. Either he didn’t know proper word order and emphasis or he’d picked up some dialect or archaic form.
The thing, which Wistala decided must be a deman—it was definitely a hominid, if a bizarre-looking one, and certainly no dwarf—straightened, supported by its toothy prop.
“Aye, ye’ve driven me out of my gardens and streams to this forgotten corner of the higher darks.” It grew animated and splattered her with goat-blood as it gestured. “Trading bits of glass for a goat-meal when once I dined on tender young griffaran. Ney more sulfur-soaks for Paskinix, thanks on thy cursed sisterhood. And yon Tyr, acting all lofty and demanding I come call him and negotiate,” Paskinix said. “Well, I’ll let him know I’ve my own token in play this game, ye can be sure.”
He looked up and down her uninjured wing as other demen fixed lines to it. Another did something abominable about her hindquarters and hiccupped out a few words.
“Ney eggs coming, eh? Well, bad for us,” Paskinix said.
Wistala found the strength to swallow the drool accumulating in her mouth and began to feel a little better in body—but much, much worse in spirit. Taken by some deman with a grudge against dragons that she knew nothing of—
She heard a grating sound and a sort of sculpture of metal and wheels like a cart—but all backwards, for the wheels were at the top, spinning as uselessly as an overturned turtle’s legs—was dragged up next to her by the demen. A deman clad in greasy-smelling leather and thick gloves thrust a sort of bright two-headed spear at her and . . .
