A Dragon at Worlds' End (16 page)

The Ardu, of course, knew nothing of this interior dialogue. They simply gave him awestruck worship, and hot food. A wyvern dragon had never been known to turn down the latter.

Relkin, on the other hand, was not so well received. He seemed to come under the general cloud of suspicion that fell over all no-tails. After receiving looks of frank dislike from many of the older Ardu who had just been rescued from bondage, Relkin withdrew to a small fire of his own, which he built behind Bazil's log. He took over one of the smaller slaver tents, set close by. Its former occupant had abandoned all his gear. Relkin had liberated a couple of good leather belts, a long knife and a hatchet, plus a stoutly made pack. The Ardu had taken everything else.

Lying down out of the rain, he, too, mused upon the oddities of human behavior. This ingratitude from the Ardu should have shocked him, but after his years in the Legions, he found that it didn't. People always had their own agendas and they saw events through a prism distorted by those agendas. He wondered if he'd been coarsened by his long military service. Was he a cynic now? Despite his relatively tender youth, Relkin of Quosh had seen war in all its shapes and forms. Many were the horrors his eyes had recorded. Many the death screams his ears had absorbed. In between he'd witnessed all the chicanery that people were capable of. He expected the worst. Maybe he
was
just a cynic.

Then he chided himself. He'd seen some of the best as well. The people of Clan Wattel, for instance—they had been magnificent in the war of the great invasion. Ordinary shepherds, they'd come to the call from their leader and marched off to fight to the death to preserve the Argonath. The common soldiers of the Legions were an inspiration as well. People had their faults, you had to expect it, and there was often a good reason behind poor behavior. These Ardu, for instance, had been subjected to horrifying captivity in those hellish sheds. All their woes had come from no-tail people. It was no surprise that they were still smarting from it and looking to lash out at someone.

He mopped up some gruel with a chunk of the slavers' unleavened bread. It had been a long day. He put all thoughts of the Ardu and the slavers from his mind and slept soundly with the soldier's ability to sleep no matter where or when.

His dreams were unremarkable.

In the morning he awoke to find the rain reduced to a mere drizzle. Crawling out of the tent, he decided to examine more closely the boats they'd captured. His plan called for them to use those boats to move rapidly downstream and intercept the slavers who had been hunting on other parts of the river system in the forest. Where the other branches of the main river joined, there, if they were quick, they might ambush the slavers and rescue more Ardu.

The camp had been severely used. The stockade was largely flattened, much of it already burned. The hated sheds were completely destroyed. The stench of the open latrines had been obliterated beneath a mound of fresh dirt. The people were sorting themselves out, aligning with familiar kin groups where possible. There was an endless jabber among the females, who directed much of this activity.

The males were standing around the central fire in angry groups. Many of them were decidedly red-eyed, the aftereffects of the brandy. They were mean and looking for someone to take it out on.

The sight of a no-tail, even if it was Relkin, brought growls from some throats. Relkin whistled softly to himself as he made his way past them. He could feel their eyes burning into his back. There was nothing to do but to go about his business. They had to get over this. They were all going to have to work together.

Suddenly a strapping young male named Jusp stood up in front of him. Jusp's eyes were filled with hatred. His nostrils were flaring. Relkin could smell the drink on him. A torrent of abuse poured out of the youth. Relkin understood little of it, except for the cardinal fact that the young man was angered by Relkin's relationship with Lumbee.

"You don't understand," Relkin said several times in his most careful Ardu. Relkin reflected that it was a good thing the youth didn't understand. Relkin didn't understand, either, except that he'd been lonely, as had Lumbee, and they had felt a strong mutual attraction. Then he tried to ease his way past. The last thing he needed was a fight with this youth, who was wide as a door and covered in sculpted muscle. They had to learn to get along. He didn't want to begin that process with a bruising battle with someone twice his own weight.

The young Ardu put out an arm to stop him. Relkin sighed inwardly. On the other hand, he knew he could not refuse a fight if it was forced on him.

Relkin shifted sideways to go around the arm. Other Ardu had gathered around them, hot-eyed, wanting something to happen, something to offer them a catharsis to help excise the terrible sense of humiliation and rage.

The youth snarled something unintelligible and swung at him, a huge roundhouse blow that would have taken his head off if it had landed. Relkin slipped away on the balls of his feet. The youth hurled himself at him. Relkin dodged out of his path, but drew no weapon, even though he was carrying his dirk. The young man stumbled and fell to his knees. There was harsh laughter among the Ardu.

The youth was beside himself with rage. He unlimbered a club and came at Relkin in homicidal fury. Relkin drew his dirk and made ready. The club swung, Relkin pushed forward under the blow, the youngster's arm came down on his shoulder, and Relkin drove his left hand into the other's solar plexus.

The youth took no notice of the blow. Relkin avoided, barely, being clutched by the other's free hand, and moved back in a crouch. The youth charged him once more, cheered on by the Ardu men gathered around them now in a tight, hot-faced knot.

Relkin anticipated the next crude, flailing blow with the club, evaded it easily, and kicked the youth in the crotch with all the strength he could muster.

This did have an effect and the Ardu doubled up with a gasp of agony. Relkin didn't hesitate, moving now on well-learned lines of combat. His next kick laid the boy out, slamming against the side of his head.

Relkin pulled back and sheathed the knife, relieved enormously that he had not had to use it. Spilling blood would have been a disaster.

There was a raging mix of emotions in the faces surrounding him. On the one hand there was respect. The boy had been strong and wild, and Relkin had handled him with a minimum of fuss. On the other hand there was still the rage and the hatred of no-tails.

"I am not one of them," said Relkin slowly while clearly gesturing to the slaver tents. "I come from far, far, beyond the mountains of the east. Beyond the great water."

They stared at him with expressions of sullen rage and incomprehension. To some of them all no-tails were the same, they hated all with equal ferocity. Others were less obdurate. Still, Relkin felt the tension of the moment. The wrong word and they might tear him to pieces on the spot.

He looked down at the fallen youth. Then he bent and felt for a pulse, just to make sure. That final kick hadn't been that hard, but you could never be sure with such things. There was a throb beneath his fingers. The boy lived.

The Ardu were staring at him with furious suspicion.

Suddenly the dragon's voice buzzed through the muttering.

"Where is boy Relkin?"

"Over here." Relkin was impressed with the wyvern's sense of timing.

"What are you doing?"

"Well, I had to lay this lad out when he came for me with his war club. They're upset with me because of, well, Lumbee, you know."

"Because you fertilize the eggs?"

"Yes, basically."

"Be interesting to see what spawn Lumbee produces. My own were both winged. I was surprised by that. I would have thought that at least one of them would have been wyvern kind."

"And then what the hell would you have done? Quit the Legions and gone back to Quosh to be a farm animal?"

"Never."

"Anyway, enough of that. These fellows are madder than hell at me and yet we've got to work with them if we're going to free the other Ardu."

"We free them, no more slaves. This dragon hate those who would take slaves. Ecator hates them, too."

Relkin thought to himself that this knowledge alone would make a lot of slavers give up their trade if they but knew it.

"Yeah, and if we have the chance we'll educate them in that fact. But first we have to keep the Ardu from killing me."

"They want to kill boy?"

"Well, look at them. What do you think?"

Bazil looked around at the circle of hot-eyed Ardu.

"Mmmmm." He stretched himself to his full height, dominating the mass of Ardu. There was that familiar awe in their faces, a sense that almost verged into dragon freeze in some of them. They had seen the forest god in action. They had seen that incredible ribbon of steel cut slavers to pieces.

Then, speaking careful Ardu, very slowly, with dragonish accent and pronunciations, he announced, 'This is my boy. He is not enemy. He has been mine for many years. He never had time to become slaver."

Round-eyed, the Ardu absorbed these words in silent astonishment. The forest god spoke to them in their own tongue, quite clearly.

With some regrets they put aside all thought of slaughtering the no-tail. Relkin decided to take advantage of the dramatic shift in mood.

"Listen to me. We have much work to do. There are other slave camps. Now the rains have come. The slavers will be heading downstream. We must use these boats to catch them and free the Ardu."

"How we do this?" said one grizzled veteran with a massively muscled belly.

"Go downriver. Get to where other rivers enter the main river. Wait there until slavers go past. Then follow and attack at night. Kill slavers. Free Ardu."

He sensed broad agreement surge through the Ardu. Then there came that wave of suspicion. As before, with Iuuns and Yuns, there was that elemental distrust.

"You want to go downriver? To go south?" said another elder.

"To rescue the other Ardu. There are more camps like this one. We have to stop the slavers wherever we can."

"South is where the slavers go."

"I know. But I am not a slaver. I want to free the Ardu."

Did they dare trust him? There was a shiver of indecision among them. A couple were helping poor Jusp to his feet.

"Look. I'm going to the boats. Come with me. We have a lot of decisions to make."

Carefully Relkin started off. Bazil fell in just behind him. He didn't look back.

The Ardu looked around for a moment and then followed. They would have to trust the no-tail. After all, he was the property of the forest god.

The war party was set to leave that very afternoon. The rain had resumed, and Relkin had misgivings about the boat-handling skills of the Ardu, but there was absolutely no time to waste and thus no time to train them. The Ardu men were used to their own canoes and small boats; they would have to learn how to work these larger craft as they went along. Like the rain, like many other things, Relkin would just have to live with it.

They had already decided that the dragon would have to swim—he was simply too large for these boats. Relkin was much more nervous about this prospect than his dragon was. Bazil actually liked the idea. The river flow would make it unnecessary to do much swimming. He would hardly have to exert himself and it would be blissful to stay in the water for day after day. Nor was he much worried about pujish in the water. There were creatures with predatory dispositions, he was sure, like crocodiles, but none that would trouble a two-ton wyvern dragon. Relkin, on the other hand, could imagine all sorts of terrible things happening.

Under a cloud of these concerns Relkin sought out Lumbee to say farewell. She was going north with her family and the surviving members of her kin group. She and Relkin had been virtually separated anyway, since the discovery of her parents.

He found her standing in front of a small shelter of leaves and branches, the sort of thing the Ardu could put up in a matter of minutes.

He greeted her with a hug. She seemed stiff in his arms and after a second he stood back. Her eyes were clouded. She avoided looking at him.

"Lumbee…" he began. Then he saw her father emerge from behind some nearby bushes. Uys wore a fierce scowl. A war club dangled from his belt now, along with a hatchet liberated from the slavers' camp.

"What you want here?" said Uys truculently.

Relkin was a little surprised by the tone of Uys's voice. He had assumed that Uys knew and understood that Relkin and Lumbee were attracted to each other and had formed an intimate relationship under the pressure of living completely on their own in the deep forest. They had traveled hundreds of miles together, braving everything from starvation to ferocious man-eating pujish. Alone, they had drawn on each other for the strength to carry on. He had assumed that Uys had managed to accept what had happened and to forgive.

Now he realized that Uys had succumbed to the kind of jealous rage one had to expect from the fathers of beautiful daughters. Relkin supposed that he'd been foolish to think that Uys wouldn't have reached this point. The only wonder was that he hadn't shown this side of himself before.

"I came to say good-bye, for now. We are going south."

Uys's face compressed itself. The Ardu was obviously in the grip of emotional turmoil. ——

"What you do with Lumbee? Out there?" He waved an arm angrily to indicate the wide-spreading forest.

"I know what you want and I'm not going to tell you. It is a private matter between Lumbee and myself."

Uys's face seemed to bulge with anger.

"Father," said Lumbee in a sharp voice.

Uys opened his mouth but said nothing.

Relkin spoke softly as if he might cushion the words somehow. "You have to remember that we were completely alone out there. We did not know that we would find you and free you."

Uys swallowed hard. "True. You come and free Ardu. We all grateful. But… it is not easy. I am Lumbee's father. I."