Dragon Fate: Book Six of The Age of Fire

by E. E. Knight

  A second order was waiting for them at the landing, and this one caused dismay in AuSurath. It simply read: Wait for further orders.

  Idiots! If they were going to wait, why couldn’t they have ordered them to a city with garrison facilities? The City of the Golden Dome, the capital of Dairuss and Mother’s Protectorate, was less than half a day’s flight away. There were old halls to serve as sleeping shelter, markets full of food, an Imperial paymaster to draw funds, diversions for the men, and hunting in the mountains for the dragons. Everything his wing needed to wait for NiVom to decide where to send them.

  Instead, they sat on the riverbank, supplying the mosquitoes with generous helpings of hominid blood (the dragons urinated in bits of rag and stuffed them in their ears to keep the mosquitoes away and out of the one area of their hide that was vulnerable to the tiny insect lances), but all the men could do was soothe the bites with river-mud.

  AuSurath called his officers together. Nothing to do but organize some kind of games or entertainments. Perhaps the men could cook for the dragons, or the dragons could cook for the men.

  They’d commandeered some of the fishermen’s catch. It would be enough to feed the riders properly, anyway. An enterprising rider had found beds of wild onions beside the river, so skewered fish and onions looked to be the menu, unless one of the promised supply barges arrived. As for entertainments, there was a good deal of driftwood along the riverbank that hadn’t yet been gathered for cooking fires. Perhaps they could have some kind of carving contest, with the winning dragon and rider pair being given a trip back to the palace at Ghioz to figure out just what in the glowering mood was the reason for this hungry delay.

  Their meager dinner was interrupted by the arrival of the Commander of the Aerial Host.

  AuSurath hated to see his dragons lined up for review showing muddy snouts, but they had been reduced to plunging their jaws in among the reeds and sucking in mouthfuls of mud and slackwater to catch frogs, fish, snakes, crayfish, worms, and water beetles. Hardly a diet that made for champion warriors, but until the barges arrived or he received orders to disperse some of his wing to hunt Ironrider lands, he had to do something to keep his dragons with the energy to fly and breathe fire.

  They’d set up a command tent by stretching casualty netting between two large willow trees and weaving in reeds and willow-streamers. At night, the Dragonriders slept in it. It kept out the sun and burning fragrant wood kept some of the biting bugs down.

  BaMelphistran, Grand Commander of the Aerial Host, grunted as he reviewed the Heavies. He had a newly fledged messenger with him, still wet about the wings.

  “You’re down how many fighting pairs?” BaMelphistran asked, nodding in recognition at AuSurath’s rider, Gundar.

  “Three. Two casualties, one on messenger duty.”

  “Ah. Well done, considering you’ve been on campaign since spring.”

  “Thank you, sir,” AuSurath said.

  “Still, you could polish your scale while waiting for orders.”

  “Red attracts enough attention in battle without adding polish, sir.”

  Still, he passed word for a couple of men to attend to his scale. The Grand Commander liked to see limbs in motion as soon as he gave an order.

  “I’ve bad news for you, son,” BaMelphistran went on. “Your sister’s joined a mutiny.”

  He didn’t feel any particular emotion at the news. He hadn’t seen Istach in years, and never much liked her anyway. Too quiet and thoughtful. He liked lively, talkative dragonelles who enjoyed tricks and jokes and quick, flirtatious passes overhead. “Istach always was an ingrown scale. To be honest, sir, I’m not surprised.”

  “Not your sister in Old Uldam. It’s Varatheela, in the Light Wing.”

  “Varatheela? She’s not imaginative enough to be a mutineer. Your sources have the story wrong, I suppose.”

  “CuSarrath himself,” BaMelphistran said. “The former Tyr RuGaard has gone mad and is committing suicide in a spectacular fashion. He’s walking—walking, mind you—all the way across Hypatia to his mate’s refuge to reclaim her. Several dragons of the Lights are fool enough to follow him. I’m sure when it’s all over they’ll claim they pretended to join him, just to see if there was a larger conspiracy at work, but it will be good fun stopping them, especially if he decides to remain on the Old North Road and on foot.”

  “Madness,” AuSurath said.

  “Yes, sounds it, doesn’t it?”

  “Some of the dragons won’t much care for killing him. He led us in battle and promoted some of us. Including myself.”

  “If it comes to bloodshed, will you help Gundar take her head?”

  “I’m a dragon of the Empire and Commander of the Heavy Wing. Duty to Empire and Wing and family comes first. In that order.”

  “As it should be. Aaagh, I was considering flying back to the palace tonight and see if I might get NiVom out of his funk—the Queen says he’s been locked up in his sleeping chamber with maps laid on every square inch for three days now—but I can’t face a night-flight. Not that facing a night in the rough is all that attractive, either. Why weren’t you garrisoned in the Golden Dome, for Spirits’ sake?”

  “Orders, sir. The Iwensi riverbank, for easy supply.”

  “The supplies would probably have to come from the city anyway. Who gave those orders?”

  “It wasn’t you, sir? Then I assume it was Tyr NiVom.”

  “Some courtier probably wrote his words down badly.”

  “Well, we’ll see what we can do about making you more comfortable, my lord.”

  “However,” BaMelphistran said. “Young wings need exercise.” He turned to his freshly fledged assistant. “Fly first to the City of the Golden Dome and ask for supplies to be sent here. Then go to the Sun King’s palace and ask if the Heavies might be moved to the old delvings at the falls. That’s all.”

  The messenger repeated the orders verbally to show he understood, then launched himself eagerly into the night air.

  “Should have sent you to the delvings in the first place. It’s not far, and there’s plenty of room and facility for the care and health of your fighting dragons. I’ve just come from there. Perhaps Tyr NiVom was worried that the rot had spread all the way there. I’ve half a mind to countermand the Tyr, but just in case there was an important reason for you to sit here, I’ll leave things as they are for now.”

  AuSurath couldn’t have agreed more with the sentiment that they should occupy the old dwarf delving, but at the moment he was racking his brain, wondering what food there was around camp fit for the Grand Commander of the Aerial Host. You couldn’t tell a dragon in line of succession to the throne to just shove his snout in riverbank mud and swallow whatever he could suck up.

  For the rest of his life, AuSurath never quite forgave himself for being deep asleep when the troll attack struck.

  They came, as startling as a thunderclap on a clear night.

  Trilling pipe-whistles the Dragonriders used to pass signals sounded first, followed by roars and cries from dragons. The hisss-whoof of dragon-flame bursting into life met him as he leaped from under the sheltering willow tree.

  AuSurath thought he’d woken into another dream, this one a nightmare of fire and fear.

  Creatures the likes of which he’d never seen danced in battle with the dragons of his precious, alarmed command. They were taller than dragons, with two massive forelimbs holding up a wedge-shaped body. A sort of gash or mouth could be seen at the base of the wedge, near two smaller limbs that seemed to be used only for stability. An orb on a kind of short tentacle stood out from somewhere between the chest and the stomach—at least that’s what he would call the upper and lower half of the body. At the back, flaps of skin lifted and lowered, revealing pink tissue beneath.

  They were thick-skinned and scaly. Some had huge, full sets of wings that resembled webbed spider-legs coming out of their backs; others had more rudimentary versions of a real wingspan. A few had horns and hide
, crests and frills, or something that looked very much like them, running across their headless shoulders or down the back between the flapping sheets of muscular tissue.

  They were silent in battle, save for a disgusting wet gulping sound and flaps of wing and back-flesh.

  A headless dragon lay sprawled in front of the command tent, his dazed rider looking down at the body. He noted dully that it was his best rock-bouncer from the tower assaults.

  These must be trolls. He’d heard them described in some lecture or other on exotic fauna, but he remembered being more interested in the talk about Rocs of the southern jungles.

  “Rally to the tent! Defend our Commander!” he shouted.

  At his shout, the tent rippled. A troll, dripping with river-water and blood, hurled a substantial piece of the Grand Commander of the Aerial Host at him. BaMelphistran’s haunch bounced harmlessly off his back.

  A blade flashed from the darkness. Gundar flew out of the night as though he bore wings, rather than a flashing sword. He was almost naked, having risen from sleep in just a set of riding underbreeches. The great blade chopped down on the troll’s stumpy orb that was fixed on AuSurath.

  Another gout of dragon-flame lit up the fierce, tooth-clamped battle grin on Gundar’s face. He went into a fight wearing a smile as wide as a banner.

  A dragon rolled practically under his feet, in a death grapple with a troll. The troll had those two huge limbs across his back, and judging from the way the dragon’s saa dragged, his back was already broken. But still he fought, teeth biting and tearing at the muscular shoulders, searching for a fatal blood vessel.

  When the troll rolled above the crippled dragon, AuSurath took the opportunity to leap. He came down in a manner that he’d learned long before the Aerial Host. His father had taught him to strike in a tight curl, grab sii- and saa-fuls of flesh and lash out with his powerful rear legs.

  Mighty saa-fuls of flesh and skin ripped away from the troll and blood sprayed everywhere like a wineskin dropped from a tall tower. The troll shuddered and released the pinned dragon and AuSurath bounded toward his next opponent.

  Behind, he heard a shovel-dig sound as Gundar drove his sword deep into the center of the troll.

  The trolls bore dreadful deformities. Some had withered limbs, others were missing their stumpy legs and dragged themselves around upon vestigial tails by their powerful forelimbs. No two were alike, as though each one had manifested from a unique fever-dream.

  A gamboling troll came at him and he loosed his flame. He dodged the bounding, burning mass as it ran past, dripping flame and heading for water.

  With the taste of fire in his mouth the battle rage was really upon him. Gundar would have to keep up without him. He had to find another troll to kill!

  AuSurath picked out another troll astride a dragonelle’s neck, throttling her just at the neck-hearts. Only her tail still spasmed, but it was enough to keep the troll squeezing. AuSurath bounded out of the darkness, and this time struck the troll full on the chest. He pushed one limb down with his tail and lashed out with hind legs like a snared rabbit. The troll came apart in satisfyingly large pieces.

  “We’re lost, we’re lost, fly for the Lighthalls, dragons of the Host,” he heard his lieutenant call.

  A dragon or two flapped into the sky. Bounding trolls jumped out of the darkness, the clenched fingers of those huge forelimbs pounding and denting the very earth they crossed.

  Gundar dug his sword into a troll’s back and used it as a handle to pull himself up onto AuSurath’s back, where he produced a double-edged dagger from a hidden sheath on his thigh.

  “Let’s fly! To stay is death.”

  AuSurath rose into the air but stopped with a jerk. A troll had him by the tail and one rear saa. He clawed with the other in a flapping panic.

  “Too heavy,” AuSurath grunted.

  “I’ve got it, old friend. Avenge me!”

  Gundar ran lightly down his back, drawing his sword, launched himself off his tail, and landed atop the troll. His shining dagger fell, and rose again covered in green-and-black slime. He tore through the troll’s flesh like a rat digging into a corpse, using both hand and blade to tear at the thing’s shoulder.

  With a mighty blow, Gundar plunged his dagger deep into the joint of the limb anchoring him. A second stab and the troll relaxed, falling as its blood pumped out into the night.

  AuSurath rose, flapping hard. Two onrushing trolls jumped for him and collided with a scaly thunk!

  He wheeled and Gundar looked up at him. His rider gave a quick salute—and was dashed into dressed meat and naked bone by the fist-swipe of the dying troll.

  AuSurath watched pieces of Gundar fall, numb and cold and shocked and then his wings took over and, driven by horror, they bore him off into the night.

  It took him the entire flight to the delvings to come to terms with the idea that the Heavy Wing of the Aerial Host as he’d known it was no more. The Grand Commander had fallen in battle, as had almost all of the dragons, yet the Wing Commander escaped. What would the gossips in the Lavadome say?

  They didn’t understand the circumstances. They hadn’t seen dragons torn apart like cooked chickens on the riverbank. They would still judge him, though.

  He followed the shining river to the delvings, saw the welcoming orange and yellow lights of lanterns at the sandy landing at midriver.

  No. He couldn’t face the enormity of it just yet. Something was nagging at him.

  AuSurath was not a dragon of exemplary reason. When experience and training couldn’t guide him, he had a hard time laying out arguments for and against. He was the first to admit it. But he had a way of feeling his way through to a solution in strange circumstances. At the moment, instinct told him that he needed to speak to Varatheela, perhaps more than he’d ever needed to speak to anyone.

  Something was dreadfully wrong with what had happened at the riverbank. He couldn’t cite the exact reason just yet, but he was sure of it, just as he would know a mammal by the general shape and fur, without going through a catechism of questions about live birth and using milk to feed its young.

  Well, if they were marching up the Old North Road, they shouldn’t be very hard to find.

  It took him two days of steady flight without food, rest, or much more than a mouthful of water to reach them.

  The way he saw it, there was little point in sleeping, anyway. His dreams, as sure as sunrise, would put him back among the trolls on the riverbank, and nothing on earth could make him return there ever again if he could help it.

  They were resting in a town plaza in front of an inn, near the longest bridge on the road. The inn had, appropriately enough, a dragon on it.

  The objects were wavy and unreal-looking. The world seemed to sway as he landed.

  “Betrayed. NiVom wants us dead,” he managed, just.

  When he had his wind back he continued. “We were stationed on the riverbank so we could be attacked. We were just waiting for it. Gundar dead. BaMelphistran dead. All dead. Murder.”

  He tasted wine in his mouth. They were attempting to revive him. It worked just long enough for him to say:

  “They don’t need dragons anymore, Father. Something dreadful is driving the Tyr.”

  Before he finally dropped into an exhausted unconsciousness.

  BOOK THREE

  Outcome

  “ALL TALES END IN TRAGEDY. FOLLOW THE HERO LONG ENOUGH,

  YOU’LL STEP ACROSS HIS CORPSE.”

  —Ballad of the Dragon Kings (Elvish origin)

  Chapter 16

  The news from AuSurath left the celebration in front of the Green Dragon Inn stunned.

  Wistala had been enjoying the homecoming to Mossbell and the hills and fields where she’d spent her hatchling years. The old rooflines were as familiar and comforting to her as her mother’s fringe. She’d grown up at the local estate under an elf named Rainfall. He was now dead and growing in a patch of forest overlooking his beloved river valley and the four
-span bridge he’d so long kept in repair.

  Elves didn’t die so much as transform after death. She’d read some philosophy that even dragons returned to the earth eventually, where their bodies provided nutrients for plants. The elves just removed a few steps from that chain of life and transformed directly.

  She was beginning to see why RuGaard insisted on walking all the way to Nilrasha’s refuge. The whole way, entire populations were turning out to see the dragons pass. To these northerners, dragons were something they saw only overhead, at a distance, or a reason for painful levies of cattle and grain. Few had seen dragons in their grandeur up close. Every little village they passed through turned into a parade, continued for a long while until the hardiest boy and girl following turned back for home.

  Yes, strange and remarkable as a fox running the top rail of a fence. Strange and remarkable until you knew about the stolen chickens and the pursuing hounds. There could be no quiet little murders with a whole thane’s population leaning on their shovels and berry-baskets, watching a dozen dragons file down the road.

  The Green Dragon put out food for them and quickly slaughtered some pigs to be eaten in Wistala’s memory of the day they’d all fought off a barbarian raid together.

  “It appears the Empire had a parasite growing inside it,” DharSii said. “I’m afraid that unlike a tapeworm, this one can grow large enough to kill the host and then continue on its own.”

  “But who or what is it?” AuRon asked.

  “NiVom and Imfamnia are behind it all,” RuGaard said. “I’m certain of that.”