by E. E. Knight
He raised himself as high as he could, and spread his wings slightly so that all could see him.
“Will you follow me back to the surface?”
The Lavadome roared their assent.
“In the memory of our martyred hatchlings, let us strike.”
They liked the sound of that.
“In the memory of our fallen fighters, let us strike.”
They liked that even better. HeBellereth roared. Even little Takea hopped up and down, dodging waving necks and tails, growling.
“In the memory of our ancestors’ glory and in the hope of our hatchlings’ future—let us return! United we resolve. United we overcome. United we strike!”
They roared so as to shake the Lavadome. Even NoSohoth and the thralls joined the chorus.
BOOK THREE
Overcome
OH, BATTLE’S THE EASIEST THING IN THE WORLD. SMASH ’EM UP. THEN
SMASH ’EM SOME MORE, THEN STOMP WHAT’S LEFT. IT’S THE BEFORES
AND AFTERS WHAT CAUSE ALL THE TROUBLE.
—AuRye, grandsire to AuRon
Chapter 17
“In some months it blows out. In other months it blows in,” Ayafeeia said. “The Anklenes told me why once, but I’ve forgotten. All that matters is that you’ll have an easier time of it with the wind passing out.”
AuRon noticed that she looked at a high rock as she spoke. He searched, saw nothing, then glanced over at her.
“My sister was mated here,” she said. “To your brother.”
“I’d rather think him your Tyr than my brother. Nilrasha is lovely, though this seems an odd place. Is it because of the privacy?”
“Oh, no, it’s not a tradition. Mated dragons usually fly to the surface in the south, to the tips at World’s End.”
“Then why here?”
She told him, briefly. A crippled dragon and a sickly mate, jokes the whole way there and back.
“I was closer to Halaflora than—we don’t speak of my other sister. She saw a quality in RuGaard. Have you ever heard the expression ‘deephearted’?”
“No.”
“It’s one of the virtues we try to instill in the Firemaids. It means a dragon who thinks about others more than himself. I see it in our Tyr. I see the same in you.”
“I’d be curious to know how you came to that conclusion.”
“For whom?”
“Me. I’m curious.”
“I saw how you looked to your sister at the assembly.”
He should be saying good-bye, but he should probably rest a few more moments before attempting an ascent. “Is concern for a sibling so strange here?”
“One sometimes wonders. But not just her—that young dragonelle next to her, and the others. No fear, no anger, just interest. I never thought you were deciding which part of the hide was the most vulnerable.”
“It may have been that smoke in the air. It leaves one relaxed and fog-headed.”
“That’s oliban. Very valuable. Don’t be surprised that NoSohoth uses so much of it. It’s a rare commodity. His family controls the trade.”
“Fascinating. But I must be off.”
“Are you with us, then?”
“I delivered the Red Queen’s message. She owes me a reward. I’m off to collect it.”
“Don’t eat any gold of hers. She’d poison it.”
AuRon took a breath. “I’m after blood now, not coin.”
With that he launched himself into howling confusion.
He felt like a leaf caught in an updraft. The wind slid him this way and that, threatening to send him crashing into the side of the tunnel.
Perhaps if he’d been a scaled dragon it would have been an easier flight, since the wind roaring up the shaft would not have pushed him so easily. But then again, his weight allowed him to ride the current, follow it as it swirled through gours and sword-edged scars.
He took painful bashes to each wingtip as the current sent him careening toward the blue patch of night sky above.
Out of desperation, he misaligned his wings, sending him into a spin. Though dizzying, it kept him to the center of the shaft.
And if he crashed into a rock, he’d be spared the moment of horror before the impact.
As the patch of lonely sky breaking the dark grew, the shaft widened, and he found himself having to flap his wings hard to keep rising.
An ascent at this angle is almost impossible for a scaled dragon for longer than a brief moment or two of furious wingwork, even with such a tailwind. AuRon found his body swelling with each deep breath, his throat one long wound forcing the rush of air in and out.
Out, with night sky all around, with the loom of a shorn-topped volcano above, dusted with snow and pocked with ice. AuRon, curious, circled up and over the crater.
Despite the smokes rising from tears in the side of the mountain, he had a good view down into the mouth of the crater. A lake lay there, with a thin bulge at the center that seemed to be a mound of ice, but he suspected it was in fact the crest of the strange crystal dome.
Off to the west a second volcano steamed, connected to the mountain by way of a rocky saddle.
It took him a moment to obtain his bearings and evaluate the air currents, for the stars were strange this far south. Once he knew north from south, he turned his neck for Ghioz.
An hour of flight passed and he idled in an updraft as the dry ground north of the Lavadome’s mountain bled heat into the night sky. He spotted a watering hole shining below and started a slow circle down to see if it was safe to drink.
Motion caught his eye to the north. Two roc-riders, flying hard and a goodly distance apart, straight for the mountain of the Lavadome.
Something about the distance between the two bothered him. All the roc-riders he’d seen flying until now had kept close. These flew to observe as much sky and desert as possible, and still stay in visual communication with each other.
He alighted, trusting to shadow and coloration to conceal him from the fliers’ eyes—hominid and avian.
A pebble-backed desert lizard with two rows of horns running along his back hissed a warning that he was poison to eat. AuRon glared at him—he’d not come hunting lizards.
Then he had a thought.
“See those birds above?” he asked.
“Too big for prey,” the lizard said. “I hunt jumpmice.”
“Do you see such birds often?”
“Wrong color for griffaran,” the lizard said, rolling one eye skyward while the other kept watch on the dragon. “No, not see such birds before. Hawk and carrion-wing dayhunters.”
AuRon wondered what two such hunters of the Red Queen, flying hard for the Lavadome, could be seeking in the night.
Had the Red Queen somehow learned of the hour and place of his departure?
Hardly moving, even to breathe, he let them pass overhead.
When they were thin black lines against the sky again he caught the lizard’s attention.
“Thank you for the information. Is the water nearby wholesome?”
“Best drink in the world,” the lizard said.
“I thank you again. Good luck with the jumpmice.” AuRon raised a saa high and stomped, hard. Tiny rodents bounded away in panic. The lizard scrambled after them with an excited hiss.
AuRon resolved to fly low and slow for the rest of the night, and hide out of the sun.
He had an easier time finding his way back to Naf’s encampment.
He overflew the woods, searching, searching, while wolves howled beneath. The wolves were complaining of men to the northwest devouring all the deer.
Naf’s men must have moved—or perhaps they’d learned not to light campfires where the roc-riders could see.
Or he was too late, and his friends had been destroyed.
As he passed over thickly wooded hills on a blustery afternoon he heard a hunting horn—or so it seemed. He turned, following the sound. A flaming spark streaked up from the trees.
He altered course,
saw another streak of flame rise.
He searched the sky, looking for the Queen’s riders.
It was all very well for them to indicate where they were hiding in the forests. He was considerably larger than a flaming signal arrow. For a dragon to land there risked breaking a wing.
He had to settle for a messy, painful landing on top of the green canopy, quickly folding his wings as the limbs gave way . . .
Six kraaaks, a cascade of snick-snaps, and a very loud swoosh-thunk later, he stood on the forest floor, smelling the spring growth and the hearty rotting smell of last year’s leaves breaking into detritus.
He righted himself and shook the twigs out of his griff, hoping he hadn’t landed on anyone.
Coming up the slope, he heard running water and followed the sound to a camp at a creek curled up next to a tumble of water that was neither rapids nor waterfalls but something in between. But there were rocks aplenty and tree trunks placed upon them so men might cross without wetting their boots.
“Pfew!” a sentry on a high, twiggy platform whistled. “His lordship’s dragon’s back.”
Men and their adaptive abilities. They could sound like birds when they chose. Run like horses by riding, fly like dragons by taming savage beasts, even dragons. They even had a desire to be turtles, judging from some of the armor he’d seen.
AuRon saw Naf’s tall form standing in the center of a warren of crude huts, part tent, part shack, part burrow. The smell of cooking meat and boiling laundry rose from the camp.
He glided across the river and landed in a central strip of green that smelled of horses.
“It’s fortunate for us that tail of your body is as distinctive as the tale of your travels,” Naf said, smiling in his usual cheery manner. Naf could fall into a dungheap and have his house collapse and still find something to laugh about. “At first we were afraid you were one of the Queen’s dragons. I’ve asked my cook to heap a shield with sausages and deer-vitals as a welcome. I’m afraid I lack the more civilized seasonings, but there’s salt and some rosegift and butterbloom—”
“I see you’ve shifted camp again,” AuRon said, trying to keep his mouth dry at the thought of sausages after so much flying.
“We were found again by the roc-riders, the fabled gods know how.”
“I have an idea about that,” AuRon said, wondering if he could manage a takeoff through a break in the foliage above the stream. “Naf, cling to my back. You must fly!”
“What have you seen?”
“Nothing. It’s what I have done.”
Naf raised an eyebrow to match the corner of his mouth. “I wouldn’t leave my men! You must know that.”
“Then run away with them. Just leave this place. The Queen is coming!”
Naf whistled, and gave a few orders. The men began to wake up and go to work gathering their possessions and harnessing their pack animals.
“How do you know?”
AuRon thought it the best compliment of all that Naf had issued his orders first and asked questions later. If there were more such men, he wouldn’t be keeping them at a cold, stormy sea’s distance on the Isle of Ice. “The last time we met, I had a necklace. The Queen saw whatever I saw, heard whatever I heard, through it. Some magic of hers.”
“It didn’t do her much good. My scouts report riders to the south and north, but they’re back searching the column rocks and sweeping through the mountains, where we’d last been camping.”
“Their columns would not be closing on these hills as they search the mountains?”
Naf’s eyebrows narrowed. AuRon had been too long away to determine if that meant he was interested or suspicious or vexed. “Yes, they’re passing close. But the search is proceeding in the other direction.”
“Last time I was here you told me you had volunteers joining you, a steady stream.”
“Yes. Some stay, others I send on to seek refuge in Hypatia. What’s left of the elves at Krakenoor are happy to have men to help rebuild their city.”
“Search your recruits who have joined since I visited you, or just before. I would not be surprised if one has a crystal similar to the one I wore.”
Naf frowned. “Most of my men are Dairuss. A few Ghioz with reason to hate the Queen, some from the horsedowns who’ve lost their grazing lands . . .”
“A Dairuss or one of those others couldn’t play you false, using a stone such as I wore about my neck?”
“I’ll have some of my men search the most recent arrivals for such a stone. If one has it, they’ll find him hanging when they close in on the camp.”
“Naf, I unwittingly gave the Queen a view of your camp. If there is a spy in your camp, he may be just as unwitting. You’re better off just burying the crystal, or better yet, smashing it.”
AuRon had a thought. “Or better yet . . .”
He offered a suggestion for a way to turn the Red Queen’s insight against her. Naf’s smile widened as he thought the matter over.
Naf put a few of the men who’d been with him longest to searching the recent arrivals as the others broke up the camp.
A detail of six men rigged AuRon with a drag of beams, hoof on sticks, and a sort of rolling log rigged with worn-out footwear. AuRon could do his part in making a false trail, whatever the outcome of the search.
They turned up a Dairussian youth, in his first beard, in possession of a triangular chip of crystal set in a wrist-bracer for his sword arm. They showed it to AuRon, and he guessed it was of the same vintage as the stone he’d worn about his neck. Naf ordered the ornament removed and stuffed deep into a bag filled with clattering herb-bottles—no telling if the Queen could hear as well as see through the thing.
The boy said the bracer had been given to him by his uncle, a veteran of a term with the old Red Guard who’d retired with an allotment on the Queen’s land-grant yet seemed strangely encouraging of his nephew’s desire to join the rebels. The boy thought the leather looked rather new for such an old war trophy, but his uncle told him he’d replaced the sweat-stained old leather, keeping only the buckles and the attractive talisman.
“I wonder what the uncle receives for this service,” Naf said, after assuring the boy that he was not in danger. “A perfect spy,” Naf said. “He’s intelligent and energetic. And he can both read and write. I was considering making him the messenger of my best scouting team, once he gained a little more woodcraftiness scraping his toes and rounding down his bootheels.”
To be sure, they searched the rest of the new arrivals. It would be just like the thorough Red Queen, who always had another plan in place if the first failed, to infiltrate Naf’s camp with multiple spies in case the first was discovered.
As they did this, a breathless scout arrived, panting that the Ghioz columns had turned and were moving hard against the camp from two directions.
Under Naf’s direction and the guidance of a scout with the legs of saplings and the body of a scarecrow, AuRon dragged the contraption downstream, along with a pair of mules distinctly unhappy at being forced to walk in the odiferous wake of a dragon. When they weren’t complaining of the stench, they were hazarding guesses as to which of the pair the dragon would eat first.
“You the plumper, Nok. Dragon eat you raw and juicy. I’m stringy. He smoke me good for later.”
“I’m not eating either of you, as long as you step lively,” AuRon said over his wing.
“Quicker we get there, quicker we’re eaten,” Nok said. “Hope I’m a bird in the next life. I’ll find this gray stinkbomb by the smell and dump on him.”
“I don’t think birds can smell,” AuRon said.
A sii-score of Naf’s men walked ahead of him in a tight bunch, one wearing the bracer under a long piece of waxed canvas meant to keep it out of the rain. Through it, he gave the crystal a view of the backs of the men in front of him and an occasional look at the cliffs the river cut through above.
Another flaming marker arrow sputtered down, hissing as it struck the rushing water. Au
Ron looked up at the cliff above, a deep notch with trees growing on it cleaving the rock face into a shape like a pig’s hoof.
The man with the bracer wrapped his canvas cover around it and stuffed it back into the bag with the clanking medicine bottles. They hurried along, with AuRon dragging his trail-creating contraption and the mules bellowing in protest. And so they came to a trio of fallen trees, cut from a wooded notch in the cliffside and blocking the path.
AuRon chewed his way out of the harness, half tempted to eat the noisier of the two mules to teach the other a lesson about complaining so much—gripers get eaten first. But he heard hoofbeats echoing down the canyon, and besides, it seemed unfair huntsdragonship to eat someone with whom you’ve bandied words.
As he looked at the barricade, with cloaks and old broken helms decorating the branches like warriors lined up behind the fallen timber, it occurred to him that the mules might be smarter than they let on and had engaged him in conversation with his sensibilities in mind.
No time to lose in filling his belly.
He examined the river. Next to the barricade and downstream the river widened and grew calmer, and probably shallower, judging by the shape of the waves. He couldn’t hide there.
But upstream looked more promising.
AuRon plunged into the stream and waded—or swam, in the deeper pools—upstream to a mass of rocks breaking the river into confused froth. The water would carry away his scent as long as he kept under it. He found a pair of boulders that diverted much of the flow, and, muscles twitching and wishing to be active in the cold flow, he settled down between them, eyes and nostrils above water and a bit of driftwood camouflage stuck in the horns of his crest, awaiting events.
At least the river was a little wider here. If matters went ill he could rise from the water and escape the ensnaring branches in a few flaps.
