Dragon Strike

by E. E. Knight

  “We are short of wholesome kern now, my Tyr,” NoFhyriticus said. “You can’t eat cold, dark, and damp.”

  “Still, we have losses to make up,” NoSohoth said. “It doesn’t help that we’ve lost promising hatchlings to the kern-sickness.”

  “If it was the Ghioz, the Red Queen picked the perfect time to strike,” HeBellereth said. “Let the Aerial Host go to the islands, Tyr. I’ll burn their slaveships and smash their pens. The winds will be blowing hard in the Sunstruck Sea, they’ll affect those featherweights more than dragons.”

  “Perhaps they wish us to do just that,” LaDibar said. “I agree, the Red Queen might know we’re weak now. If we attack her she could rally all Ghioz to the fight.”

  “We attack her?” HeBellereth said, stomping his feet so Yellowsand Desert seemed in danger of gaining a few new canyons. “The Ghioz mass in the Horsedowns, stir up trouble in Bant, take slaves from our Upholds, and you speak of us attacking them?”

  “Don’t forget the kern poisoning,” the Copper said. “As though we’re rats in some grotty waste-shaft.”

  LaDibar stiffened. “That conclusion is utterly unfounded.”

  “I have reports of winged birds above Anaea this summer,” the Copper said.

  “My Tyr’s information is always very carefully chosen,” LaDibar said. “It always seems to support what my Tyr wants to do. We caught one deman raiding griffaran eggs and suddenly every lost egg is the fault of demen. If the Drakwatch had had trials in logical leaps during your famously long stay in the training caves, your scores would have astounded the Lavadome.”

  “I have a scar from an egg-raid and still feel the pain in my firebladder when I grow angry,” the Copper said. “It’s started throbbing again just now, LaDibar.”

  “My apologies, Tyr. But nature may have put the blight on the kern. Perhaps some new parasite has found its way to Anaea. Diseased crops are nothing new. Send an Anklene mission to investigate, and we’ll have an answer after observing healthy crops against sick ones for a cycle or two.”

  “Years, you mean. We can’t do without kern for years.”

  “Who else grows kern?” NoFhyriticus asked. “Perhaps we can trade, somehow, through intermediaries.”

  “It is a staple in both Ghioz and Hypatia,” LaDibar said. “Ghioz is closer.”

  “Brilliant,” HeBellereth said, banging his forecrest against the star-painted ceiling with a thunk. “We’ll trade dragonscale for kern with the Queen who probably poisoned it in the first place. A few score more dead hatchlings, and then shields and arrowheads made out of dragonscale in the hands of our enemies. Well done, LaDibar!”

  “I gave facts. I offered no opinions as to how those facts should be acted on, you Skotl egg-sack.”

  “Cry settled!” the Copper snapped. “NoSohoth, remember to ask the plasterers to repair the damages. Let’s have another ladle of oliban on the fire, there! All of you, just be quiet a moment, breathe, and let me think.”

  The Copper circled the Upholds. For some reason, he though more clearly when he walked. After two circuits he had an answer, an unusually elegant one, if HeBellereth’s assessment of the Ghioz was correct.

  After all, there would be no need of kern if the dragons could return to the surface. Kern, in and of itself, wasn’t necessary, except for dragons who lived long without sunlight.

  But he would be laughed out of Imperial Rock if he put such an idea forward. While still in egg, every dragon of the Lavadome was taught that they had to hide from hominid assassins, concealing their strength and egg-caves deep underground.

  “What would you all say to an alliance with Hypatia?” the Copper asked.

  “An alliance? With a hominid power?” HeBellereth said.

  “They’d never keep their word,” NoFhyriticus said. “We’re talking about hominid kings, not dragons. If a hominid ruler keeps a promise from one solstice to another they etch the title faithful on their obelisks.”

  “My Tyr,” CoTathanagar said, poking his head in through a hedge of crest and horn. He’d polished his scale to a blue as bright as the sky for the meeting. “I have just the dragon for you for this commission. My cousin CuNiss. His Parl, perfect! And such a diplomat! He knows just when to use sweet words and just when to bite a head off.”

  “I hardly think biting the head off some Hypatian noble would help negotiations along,” LaDibar said.

  “Oh, not a king or anything, just some ventwipe or whatever wretches important hominids employ to keep their orifices clean. It has a most salubrious effect on the waste-elves of Yellowsand.”

  “I shall give it my deepest consideration,” the Copper said, tempted to add, The next time I’m in difficulty at the Tyr’s personal waste-chute and need something ridiculous to ponder.

  But it wouldn’t be to advantage to insult CoTathanagar. He had relatives in most of the Upholds and Firemaid posts in the Empire.

  “Perhaps we should continue this discourse another time,” the Copper said. The idea of an alliance with a great hominid power like Hypatia needed time to sink in. If he left them talking, they’d resolve on it being impractical, even dangerous.

  At a wink from his Tyr, NoSohoth called the meeting closed. Little factions formed between those inside the room and outside as dragons of like mind discussed the matter.

  He thought about it all through his meal, eaten alone since Nilrasha still hadn’t returned from her meeting with those Firemaids. His former mate-sister was probably telling war stories.

  He went to his gallery, alerted the griffaran, and took wing for a few circuits of the Imperial Rock.

  The flight was an easy one. He never dared be too vigorous, since he still didn’t quite trust Rayg’s artificial joint, though it had not failed him since it had been properly installed. Rayg had just put some new rigging in it—some animal’s tendon that blighters used in their bowstrings—and it would be a shame if he—

  Later he wondered if it was his bad wing that saved him. He had it slightly closed as he flew, making his other side work harder to give himself the momentum to stay aloft. His instinctive protection of the injured wing caused him, at the first sense of a presence falling from the Imperial Rock, to close the wing, forcing a quick turn-dive.

  He heard the sound of teeth snapping shut just behind his head and felt a blow across the back.

  A flash of red scale passed. He felt the air of the scaly missile’s passage more than the wing-strike. By the time he turned his head to see what was happening, the two griffaran converged on a smallish dragon.

  The dragon made one more attempt to fly at him, lashing hard with sii and flapping through the griffaran, but his eagerness to come to grips with the Copper left him open to the griffaran talons. They tore at his wings and the red tumbled broken-winged to the earth below.

  He landed hard, righted himself, and searched the sky.

  Long necks projected from the Imperial Rock.

  The griffaran dove, claws out, like hawks after a running rabbit. But this prey didn’t run.

  “Death to the Tyr, killer of hatchlings!” he shouted.

  Then he turned his snout to his shoulder and bit himself just under the sii.

  The griffaran struck but he made no effort to resist; he didn’t even cry out as their talons tore flesh from neck and spine.

  The Copper drifted over the body. Two more griffaran, attracted by the war-screams of his escort, swooped down from atop Imperial Rock.

  The body arched away from the ground, the tail and one saa stuck in the air. He’d seen stiff dead dragons before—too many—but never a dragon who’d just died like this. The dragon was very young; his skin was striped with clear extrude where his wings had emerged. Not more than a few months since he’d begun flying.

  And he’d expended his life in trying to kill the Tyr.

  The Copper was so shocked he could hardly stay aloft. It was one thing to have a defeated deman charge you, quite another to have a young member of your own society, without apparen
t quarrel, try to kill you. He found that his sii and his tail were shaking.

  “Return to your nest, sir,” Aiy-Yip, the chief of his personal guard, called. “You two, keep close! Yes! Close! No tailfeather-slacking!”

  Some young drakes, probably on a Drakwatch hike, were already trotting toward the scene. He was Tyr—he shouldn’t just scuttle off to his hole.

  “There’s been an attempt on my life,” he said, passing over the drakes. “The griffaran guard killed the dragon responsible. I don’t know who he is, but two of you watch the body and two more send for help to the neighboring hills.”

  Later he learned that the dragon’s name was RuPaleth. He made a brief appearance to concerned members of the Imperial Line out in the gardens—yes, he was fine, just shocked, no, nothing was known of the motive or grievance of the villain.

  NoSohoth told him what he’d learned under the eyes of six griffaran in the throne room.

  “NoSohoth, what was all that killer of hatchlings insult the fool shouted?”

  His chief counselor shifted his stance and looked around, as he always did when choosing words. “Why should my Tyr pay attention to the ravings of a mad dragon?”

  “What hatchlings have I ever killed?”

  “None, my Tyr,” NoSohoth said. “Forget his words.”

  But the Copper couldn’t forget them. He had a double helping of Tighlia’s brand of wine to calm the distress. Nilrasha returned, exhausted, clearly having had a dash of a flight.

  “An assassination attempt. My love! My love! Oh, what wickedness,” she said, wide-eyed. She ran her head this way and that, neck against his, as though checking for a hidden, festering bite.

  “Never mind. It’s over.”

  She sniffed his breath. “Who was it?”

  “A young drake from milkdrinker’s hill. RuPaleth.”

  “RuPaleth! I knew him almost out of the egg. He was half strangled in his fight for the eggs, but he was bit and the venom took hold. Grew up stupid because of it. That old tradition of squashing venomers was a good one, I think. They should never have abandoned it.”

  “So he wouldn’t have thought of this himself?” the Copper asked.

  “As I told you, my Tyr, his brain’s deformed. Don’t credit his words. Shall I have the thralls bring more wine? It may help you sleep.”

  “Did he rave?” the Copper asked, waving away the thralls.

  “He’d never raved, or his parents would have squashed him for sure,” Nilrasha said.

  “I ask because he said ‘Death to the Tyr, killer of hatchlings,’ ” the Copper said.

  “Idiots,” Nilrasha said. “Those Anklenes—their brains are too big. All they can do is dream up trouble.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, Essea told me she’d been to Anklene Hill to see about a sculpture and she overheard a couple of young Anklenes gossiping, or maybe theorizing is the word. They were going on about how you probably poisoned the grain yourself to get the dragons stirred up and start another war now that the one with the demen is finished.”

  The Copper could only blink for a moment.

  “Sometimes, my love, I wish I’d never been named Tyr.”

  “Oh, don’t say that, my love. Just today I was with the Firemaids and they all—all—praised you to me. Since the victory in the Star Tunnel there’s been only one attack by the demen, and that was a rout. I had it direct from a messenger who was there. Ayafeeia rescued a dragonelle captive with some sad loss, but apart from that it’s been two full seasons now without so much as a drakka taken in the Lower World.”

  “I hope my mate-sister is well?”

  The Copper knew he was setting saa upon drift-ice in mentioning his former mate, a delicate dragonelle who had choked to death despite Nilrasha’s attempts to save her.

  At least that was the story he chose to believe.

  “She sent her respects.”

  “Wait—you said the demen had one of our Firemaids held captive? I don’t remember being told about that.”

  “That’s because she wasn’t a Firemaid. She’s some dragon out of the wild. She’d been injured in a fall and the demen took her captive.”

  “A strange dragon? The Anklenes will probably want to talk to her. They always ask questions of anyone who travels in the Upper World. I’ll send them a message.”

  “What shall we do with her?”

  “Do with her?” the Copper asked. “Is she some criminal or exile?”

  “No, or you would have heard of it from someone other than your mate chatting about her business.”

  “Offer her hospitality and show her the best exit to return to her mate or wherever.”

  “Unmated. She has friends in Hypatia, it seems. Ayafeeia has some idea of convincing her to become a Firemaid.”

  The Copper forgot the unfortunate business of the attack. This dragon had friends in Hypatia?

  His adoptive grandfather had always said that he’d been born lucky.

  “Hypatia?” the Copper asked.

  “Yes, you know, the old—”

  “I know where Hypatia is. Strange, we were just speaking of it this morning. My love, I’ve changed my mind. Please ask Ayafeeia to do whatever she can to get this stranger to take up residence here, even if she might not become a Firemaid.”

  “She may just wish to return to her home.”

  “Maybe we can mate her off to one of the dragons here,” the Copper said. “In any case, visit her when she arrives. If she seems a dragonelle of wit and initiative, and her knowledge of the Upper World profound, hint that the Lavadome may have a high position for her.”

  “Certainly, my love.”

  “I may just adopt her into the Imperial Line, since we’ve had no luck with hatchlings.”

  Nilrasha dipped her nose.

  The Copper shifted and put his tail around hers. “One disappointment just makes the rest of my fortune all the sweeter. No life is perfect.”

  “Can we trust a stranger, my Tyr?” NoSohoth asked. “If you’re thinking that she might serve as an advisor on the surface, I would like to know her better before coming to trust her.”

  “I hope she proves trustworthy. She may lead us back to the surface.”

  Chapter 13

  AuRon cursed the map he’d been given. The farther he traveled from Ghioz the worse it became. It was clearly the work of a cartographer with poor sense of direction and worse sense of scale. He found landmarks that were supposed to be on the east side of a mountain on the west side, rivers flowing the wrong way, and meadows flourishing where snowcaps were supposed to reside.

  He would have blamed it on a careless hominid with a taste for wine with his work, save that some of the landmarks made sense only when viewed from the air, like a lake shaped like a dragon’s sii or a mountain crevice with stunted brush growing in the sheltered crack. Had a dragon advised them, or some roc-rider with altitude-frost fogging his brain?

  The map had a mark in the corner, a little design that resembled a cloverleaf with some scrawls within. AuRon decided that when he claimed his reward, he would ask which titleor was responsible for her surveys and pay him a visit. The dwarves of the Chartered Company would never have allowed such sloppy mapwork.

  On one of his backtracks over the mountain forests to the south—rugged, tree-filled canyons pierced by needles of stone—a waterfall in three steps was simply not to be found. While searching for it he marked a line of those roc-riders, flying in a V-formation like migrating geese. AuRon counted nine.

  Perhaps the fliers knew where the waterfall could be found.

  He turned and flew hard to catch up to them. Low clouds dotted the sky and the riders wove in and out of them.

  AuRon flew closer and saw that the birds held bodies in their claws—they looked like cow carcasses, but something was wrong with the shapes, both stunted and bloated.

  They flew with purpose. The map, erroneous as it was, indicated that he was flying somewhere over the slopes of the Hypatian side
of the Red Mountains.

  He slowed, wondering if he should interfere. They might even attack him.

  They altered course, dipping and rising, changing directions but keeping northward along what was some of the most difficult-looking ground AuRon had ever seen—steep slopes, tight canyons, woods thick as wolf’s fur.

  The lead flier dipped. They turned a slow circle. They must see him now! But they gave no sign of it. One more circle and they dove.

  They folded their wings, falling, in succession, releasing the carcasses exactly where the leader had. The burdens spun as they fell. Again AuRon could think only of small cattle or sheepskins, tied off and filled to bulging with water.

  He saw them burst when they hit, splattering flame in all directions. Flame that burned momentarily with a fierce greenish light before fading to a more usual orange and yellow as it caught or died, depending on the character of the surface it landed upon.

  AuRon could not tell that this pocket of forest was much different than any other patch. The trees were perhaps a little thinner.

  The fliers rose back into the clouds, and smoke pulsed from the forest.

  Auron landed on one of the pillar-like needles, among bracken clawing for a hold in the wind, wanting a look at what might be worth such an effort of wing and oil.

  He slipped across a sheer cliff-face, creeping, creeping, skin a perfect match for the pinkish granite, careful not to dislodge too many pebbles. He looked down into the canyon.

  There were men down there, running with lines of horses, taking them away from the fire. He saw some women dragging or carrying children, and men rolling barrels or dragging sacks four at a time.

  He looked carefully and saw shelters made of pulled-down fir limbs, with more branches laced within, forming crude shelters. Firepits, log bridges making paths through the woods, rope strung here and there with clothing and fabric drying on it—there were men settled in these woods.

  Even at this distance, something looked familiar about one of the men, walking to and fro, gesturing.

  “Naf,” AuRon bellowed, but the wind took his words.

  “NAF!”