by E. E. Knight
Ayafeeia crossed necks with her, and they stood so, feeling each other’s blood pulse.
“Take your time,” Ayafeeia said quietly.
Once past that break in the tunnel the Firemaids relaxed considerably. The party met with a magnificent blue with red stripes on his wings whom Ayafeeia called one of the “Aerial Host.”
He bore a rider, but it was easy to see who was in charge. While Ayafeeia spoke to the dragon, the man fetched water and food for the dragon. The rider had no reins, but he did have a thick strap tethering him to the saddle. Ayafeeia later told her it was so he could turn around in the saddle to shoot his crossbow behind in flight. The riders did communicate with their dragons, through either words or leg taps, to let them know what they were doing, so a sudden turn or dive didn’t “spill” their burden.
Wistala noted that the rider wore a sort of armor under his fur-trimmed cloak of blue dragonscale, the same shade as his dragon.
He flew off down the passage, evidently with a message. Imagine, flying underground! This Star Tunnel was a wonder of the world.
“What sort of men ride with the Aerial Host?” Wistala asked.
“Free thralls,” Ayafeeia said. “There’s talk of establishing an Uphold just for the Aerial Host so the men can raise their families among proper gardens in the sun. Though if I were the Tyr I might fear such a move.”
“Why is that?” Wistala asked.
“I suspect the Uphold would prosper, and a rival might rise.”
It seemed all the dragons in this empire lived in fear of another civil war. The previous one had lasted for generations, off and on, and ended only with the establishment of the First Tyr, FeHazathant. There were two short-lived ones after him, a brief domination by dragon-riders, and now Tyr RuGaard, who had inaugurated what he called the “Age of Fire.”
“Our Tyr would not have us hiding in the dark. He promises a return to the surface,” one of the drakka said. “When we are strong enough.”
Wistala wondered. The world was an awfully big place, and it sounded as though even this empire had few dragons.
They marched on through the Star Tunnel, drakka out scouting ahead and behind. They came to another break, but this time the floor had fallen away, spanned by a single bridge.
“It’s heavy enough to bear a dragon,” Ayafeeia said, trotting across with wings out for balance.
The others followed in line.
“Maidmother, demen!” shouted one of the drakka who stood on watch, sniffing down into the chasm.
“Quick, across, on wing,” Ayafeeia called. “Drakka who haven’t crossed yet, ride! Wistala, hurry.”
Hearts pounding, there was nothing to do but cross. She fixed her eyes on Ayafeeia and dragon-dashed across. She felt a thump on her left saa and slipped for one awful second. An iron hook rose, dragged across her fringe, but luckily didn’t catch and fell off into darkness.
Wistala wondered what she would have fallen into if that hook had pulled her down.
But she finished crossing.
She hurried to the others, grouping so as to fill the Star Tunnel wall-to-wall.
“You’re hurt,” Ayafeeia said.
Wistala saw a gash in her saa, and wondered what had made it. It looked like an ax blade that left a ragged end to the wound. She was bleeding, badly. Blood coated her saa and was already pooling, though she’d just planted her foot.
“Tuck it tight, tight as you can. That will slow the flow,” Ayafeeia advised.
The last of the drakka dashed back from the edge of the chasm. “Many hundreds, Maidmother! Coming up each side.”
“We should run,” a dragonelle said. “This is not good ground, too wide.”
“Wistala can’t run.”
“Too bad for her,” Takea said.
“How do we live, Firemaids?” Ayafeeia asked loudly.
“Together!” they responded.
“How do we fight?”
“Together!”
“Then how should we die?”
“Together!”
Now they could hear breathing from the darkness around the break in the tunnel. A shadowy mass of movement, like some mass of seaweed thrown up by a nighttime surf, resolved into individual shapes.
They came, limping, pairs of demen supporting each other, a larger deman dragging a smaller evidently unable to walk.
They all shared one attribute: bright, dry eyes. Wistala would never forget them, bobbing in their reflected light, hundreds of pairs of fireflies, each in its own dance.
“Drakka! Skirmish line, single length!” Ayafeeia called.
A dragonelle on the other side of the column tossed demen this way and that, stomping and swinging her tail. She saw one knocked off into darkness by a tail swipe. A wet splat sounded out of the shadow.
The drakka dashed ahead and fell into line with admirable speed, as though the only thing that mattered in their young lives was getting noses into line, the space of a fully extended tail between them.
She could hear the steps of the demen horde now, a sound walking through spur-deep leaves to faint claw-taps.
“Drakka! Loose flame!” Ayafeeia bellowed.
Orange gouts of flame struck the foremost.
“Drakka! Protect the rear. Firemaids, scale wall, three across!”
As the drakka dragon-dashed to the rear, the remaining six dragonelles dropped into a strange back-to-front set of interlocking pairs. The three biggest dragonelles plopped their backsides down, hugging ground, tails pointed toward the enemy. They swung their tails back and forth, not in unison, but at random. The backward-facing dragons watched flanks and rear, the forward-facing dragonelles held their breath as the demen surged through their burning, fallen comrades. The flames showed the approaching forms admirably.
The other three dragonelles filled the spaces, sii just behind the backwards-facing saa.
Wistala stuck close to Ayafeeia, who kept one eye on the approaching demen and the other on the dragonelle who’d reduced the flanking attack into smears of blood and twitching bodies. She breathed fire into a hole.
The demen charge broke against those swinging tails. Demen were crushed between two meeting tailswipes, or batted against the Star Tunnel’s walls, or knocked head over heels before being crushed like an insect under a branch. Those few who dodged through the maze of movement, brandishing frightful-looking barbed swords and spears, met lashing saa-strikes that separated torso from legs or sent entire bodies flying, leaving only the spinning head to bounce off the tunnel floor like a dropped melon.
The mass piled up, just out of reach of the waving tails.
“Firemaids, loose flame!” Ayafeeia bellowed.
The tails flattened against the mass of haunches as the three dragonelles emptied their firebladders. Wistala smelled the hot, oily smell of dragonflame and the flames burst among the demen as though howling, dancing, blue-orange-yellow beasts rampaged in their ranks.
Keee, keeee came the screams from the demen, hissing like Widow Lessup’s old kettle before making the morning infusion.
“What’s left is running,” one of the Firemaids called, spitting to cool her mouth.
“Drakka, finish them,” Ayafeeia said. “Run and pounce, before they get back to their holes.”
It wasn’t a battle anymore, if it ever was. It was an extermination.
Wistala couldn’t watch the rest.
They had to relocate, to remove themselves from the reek of blood and waste.
“It doesn’t usually go that well,” Ayafeeia said, as the Firemaids settled down to a meal of the vanquished. “If they’d been quicker and quieter, as demen usually are, it might have gone ill. I’ve been engulfed before. It seems they suddenly flood up from the floor and walls and you’re in a sea of them. You’re lucky to form fighting pairs.”
She and a pair of drakka, returning from the fight with gore-smeared mouths and saa, attended to Wistala’s wound. They dusted it with some kind of ground lichen and wetted the root that Wis
tala knew as dwarfsbeard to revive the sticky strands before laying it on and binding it with sponges.
“It’s a shallow cut. They always look worse than they really are,” one of the drakka said, checking the bindings. “You’ll be limping for a while.”
“Well, Wistala. I’d say you arrived just in time to see the last of the Demen War,” Ayafeeia said. “I envy you. You can tell your hatchlings a fine story someday.”
“I should think you’d have a better one,” Wistala said. “You led the fight.”
“She—” a Firemaid began.
“Wistala,” Ayafeeia said, “the Firemaids take a most solemn oath of celibacy, so that we may be more devoted in defense to the Empire. Hatchling survivals are two to one favoring the female, so we must do much of the work of defense of those who do take mates.”
One of the dragonelles licked at her torn and riven scale. “Oath or no, some recant at the first opportunity, like—”
“Enough of that,” Ayafeeia said.
Wistala couldn’t help but be moved at such an attitude. This green bodyguard had saved her life twice now. She’d often despaired of finding a mate—she’d once promised her father that she would avenge their family’s destruction by having many hatchlings—but if she couldn’t have her own, she could certainly protect those of others.
But she was also a Hypatian librarian. The title meant much to her. Would she have to renounce her Hypatian rank if she joined these sisters from the Lavadome?
“Tell me more about how one becomes a Firemaid,” Wistala said.
Chapter 12
The chief dragons of the Lavadome met in the map room.
The map room was a minor wonder. It was the design and labor of one of the Copper’s predecessors as Tyr, the thrall-sniffing sybarite SiDrakkon, begun in the days when he assisted Tyr FeHazathant.
SiDrakkon took the idea from a map the Anklenes made of the Lavadome, formed in three dimensions out of the poured stone the dwarves made. He turned one of the Tyr’s old hoard-rooms into a map room and had the Anklenes re-create the Upholds as though viewed from high above, mountains and rivers and forests in miniature.
The only shortcoming was that one had to be careful where one stepped, for some of the peaks proved fragile.
The Copper thought the map rather shortsighted. It encompassed only the Upholds of the Dragon Empire of long standing, from Anaea to Bant. The rest of the world did not exist unless it bordered their Empire. But then, SiDrakkon always had lacked imagination to match his ambition.
Already, thralls with artistic talent had started painting the walls with the representations of the rest of the Upper World. It didn’t look quite right, but SiDrakkon’s artisans had done such a lovely job with the mountains and rivers that he couldn’t bear the thought of tearing them down and starting afresh.
The Copper listened to HeBellereth’s chief of thralls report of matters in the southern and northwestern Upholds. The human captain could more easily step through the sculptures without obstructing the others’ view.
NoSohoth had to be present to keep track of decisions and opinions and supervise decorum. HeBellereth had to be there to give his opinion; he’d just returned from a tour of the Upholds with a few snout-picked fast-winged scouts of the Aerial Host. HeBellereth wasn’t the quickest of the dragons in the Lavadome but he had a good eye for weaknesses and fault and his snout-picked thralls showed the quality of refined gold. Then there was LaDibar, of course, so that Anklene opinion might be consulted. NoFhyriticus stood apart, close to the wall, his gray skin darkening so that he seemed hardly present at all. The Copper asked him to attend because of his practical mind. He would have liked Nilrasha to be present as well, but she had business with the victorious Firemaids just returned from the Star Tunnel.
Just outside the entrance a few dragons of the principal hills waited so they might have their share in the discussion.
CoTathanagar was among the outer audience, of course. He’d found his way into the map room despite the lack of an invitation, probably to cadge for an Upholder apprenticeship for one of his relations. At a griff-twitch to NoSohoth he’d been ejected.
Thralls worked hard at the entrance, circulating air with fans. Despite its size, the map room tended to grow stuffy very quickly if more than two dragons stood in it. SiDrakkon had always been an aloof, solitary dragon, and couldn’t imagine bringing other dragons into the map room, so he’d never improved the airflow in the chamber. He liked to brood in peace.
“Ever since the Ghioz claimed all those islands to the east in the Sunstruck Sea I’ve feared for Komod and Tuvalea. Men and blighters of the most primitive sort live there, unchanged in their worship of dragonkind since Silverhigh, and they cry and wail of Ghioz slaveships raiding their coasts. On the Windbreak Isles the Ghioz established relations with the headhunters there—they paddle their canoes into Tuvalea and whole villages disappear. They kill the old and take the young.”
“One might ask the difference between a Ghioz slave-raid and our own thrall trade,” LaDibar said with a sniff.
“The tribes willingly offer up strong sons and daughters as sacrifice to the Upholders for their favor,” NoSohoth said. To the Copper’s mind NoSohoth had his own ways of wasting time and breath, but even patient, courtly NoSohoth tired of LaDibar making the same observations over and over again.
“Ah, yes, that old swindle,” LaDibar said. “After a poor harvest the Upholder explains that he was unhappy with the quality of the last offering and sent a warning. To think of dragons resorting to such tricks in this advanced age.”
“We fight for them,” HeBellereth said. “Remember the great migration out of the Black Tip. The Komod and Tuvalea would have been driven from their huts and fetish-places by those . . . one hardly wants to call them blighters. Primitives, more like.”
“Thralls. I’m sick of hearing of them,” the Copper said. “What are a few thralls a year compared to the cattle and goats we need?”
“Not to mention the oliban,” NoSohoth said.
“Especially not to mention your profitable skimming from the oliban trade,” LaDibar said in the airy manner that allowed the Anklene to claim he was joking if challenged.
“Worse news,” HeBellereth said. “We saw many of those Ghioz roc-riders over the Sloai Horsedowns. If the Ghioz swallow Hypatia, as seems likely, the Ku-Zuhu could be lost to us. Without Hypatia’s protection they’ll become just another province of the Ghioz.”
HeBellereth’s chief of thralls put models of condor-like birds over a depiction of gently rolling hills.
“Ku-Zuhu is not ours to begin with,” LaDibar said. “It’s not even an Uphold.”
“But they are friendly to us, as well as the Anaeans,” the Copper said. “We and the Anaeans both benefit from their cattle and grains.”
“And the cloths. There are no weavers like the Ku-Zuhu. They remember patterns even the elves have forgotten.”
“Textiles!” LaDibar said. “We cannot eat textiles.”
“But we trade the textiles to the other Upholds, you Anklene cloudhead,” one of the assembly outside the door called.
“Who said that?” LaDibar called. “I’ll have your—”
“Let’s not spoil the sculpture with blood,” the Copper said.
“Za! I’m not about to start a duel, Tyr,” LaDibar said.
“We all know that,” HeBellereth grunted.
“LaDibar, I would appreciate a suggestion,” the Copper said. “Where should we counter the Ghioz?”
“It is difficult to make a decision. There’s not enough information.”
“There’s never enough information with you,” HeBellereth growled. His griff twitched in anger.
“None of that,” NoSohoth said. “More oliban on the fire, there at the entrance.”
The thralls perfumed the air.
“HeBellereth, you believe the Ghioz will move against Hypatia?”
“They’ve massed much of their marching army at the passes on the
east slopes of the Red Mountains. We couldn’t risk much over-flight of Ghioz itself because of the roc-riders, but there is much river traffic heading up to the Iwensi Gap, heavily laden barges full of grain. That and even more rocs in the south over the Sloai Horsedowns may mean thrust into Hypatia.”
“LaDibar, these rocs, are they fast fliers, or are they more for endurance?” the Copper asked.
“They’re said to be the farthest-flying creatures of the sky over a distance. Griffaran are said to be quicker in a fast flutter, but like dragons they tire after the first sprint.”
“Perhaps Ghioz used them to spread sickness to the Anaean crops,” the Copper said.
“The elves once won a victory in the Age of Wheels by sowing locusts in Old Uldam’s fields,” LaDibar said.
“Anaea is remote and little known,” HeBellereth said, tapping the sculpture of the plateau with his tail-tip. “That plateau cuts them off from all but the strongest climbers.”
“Or fliers.”
“Those hag-riders certainly knew it was important to us,” NoFhyriticus put in. “They attacked Anaea first.”
“Perhaps some of those roc-riders are former dragon-riders,” LaDibar said. “The principles of flight are the same. Same knowledge of winds and safe altitudes, same survival skills . . .”
“The Ghioz seem to be waging a subtle sort of war against us,” the Copper said.
“War! That’s quite an ascent from a few slave-raids,” LaDibar said. Growls of agreement came from the entrance. “Just because we can imagine them poisioning our kern doesn’t make it so.”
“We’ve just had a war, a hard one, against the demen,” NoSohoth said.
The room went silent. The Copper’s decade-long pursuit of a final victory over the demen had wearied the Lavadome. Every hill had suffered losses.
He knew there were whispers. That he was only settling an old score against the race who had wounded him.
“It served its purpose,” the Copper said, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “There’ll be no more griffaran eggs stolen now, and we have vast new areas of the Lower World open to traffic. We can use the rivers again without fear, and the Star Tunnel could one day support many dragons.”
