Dragonback 03 Dragon and Slave (10 page)

Jack stared straight into that ugly face. There was a punch Uncle
Virgil had taught him, he remembered, a punch he'd guaranteed would
drop any bully flat on his rear. Out of sight at his waist, he curled
his right hand into a fist and braced himself.

And then, he felt the warning touch of K'da claws against his arm.
He hesitated—

"Stop," a flat Brummgan voice ordered.

Jack turned his head, letting his hand drop back to his side. One
of the Brummgas standing guard over the berry collection process was
striding toward them, a slapstick clutched in his hand. "You," he said,
jabbing the slapstick toward Fleck. "Release him."

Fleck did so. Jack reached up and rubbed the back of his neck
where the strap had dug into his skin. "It's all right," he said. "We
were just—"

Without a word the Brummga slashed the slapstick across the side
of his face.

Jack spun around and tumbled to the ground, a flash of pain arcing
through him. His bowl bounced against his chest as he hit, spilling the
berries all around. "Wait!" he managed as the Brummga lowered the
slapstick toward him. "I didn't—"

The end of his protest bubbled into a groan as the tip slashed
across his chest, this second tingle rattling his teeth. The weapon was
on its lowest setting, without enough juice to knock him unconscious.
But it had more than enough to hurt.

"You not argue with Red Stripe," the Brummga growled, pointing at
Fleck's red sash. He raised the slapstick for emphasis; in spite of
himself, Jack winced back in reaction. "You understand? You not argue
with Red Stripe."

"I understand," Jack said, his teeth chattering together with pain
and shock and fury.

The Brummga waved the slapstick again, apparently just to see
Jack's reaction. "Good. Don't forget."

He looked at Fleck and pointed the slapstick at Jack. "Hotbox," he
ordered.

"Yes, Your Commandary," Fleck said, bowing his head. Reaching
down, he grabbed Jack's arm and hauled him to his feet. With his free
hand, he unlooped the now nearly empty bowl from around his neck and
handed it to the Brummga. "How long?"

The other eyed Jack as if measuring him. "One night," he decided.
"He will work tomorrow."

Fleck glanced at Jack. "Tomorrow is Tenthday, Your Commandary," he
said.

"He will work regardless," the Brummga said. "He will bring a full
bowl, or he will not eat."

Fleck bowed again. "Yes, Your Commandary. It shall be done."

For a moment the Brummga continued to watch Jack, as if expecting
an argument. Maybe even hoping for an argument.

But Jack had learned his lesson, and remained silent. With a
rumble from his chest, the Brummga turned away and plodded back toward
the collection table.

As he did so, something else caught Jack's eye. Another car was
approaching the slave colony, carrying two Brummgas and a wildly
painted Dolom. Lisssa had been right: Crampatch's daughter got bored
quickly with her private slaves.

"Come on," Fleck growled, turning Jack around and giving him a
shove toward the hotboxes.

"What about my berries?" Jack asked, looking back at the berries
lying on the ground, many of them smashed. A hard, tiring day's work,
all gone.

Fleck gave him another shove. "You didn't want dinner tonight
anyway, did you?" he asked sarcastically. "Think of it as a lesson
learned cheap."

"The guy with the big stick is always right," Jack murmured. "I
already know that one."

Five minutes later, he was back in the hotbox. "Here we go again,"
he muttered. "Our home away from home. Looks just the way we left it,
too."

"I am sorry, Jack," Draycos murmured from his right shoulder.

Jack shrugged. "It's not like there was a lot you could have done
to help," he pointed out reasonably. "Besides, you already did. If you
hadn't stopped me from decking that big jerkface, I'd probably have
drawn a week in here."

"Still, I am sorry I could not prevent it," Draycos persisted.

"Forget it," Jack said, trying not to let his anger at Fleck and
the Brummgas spill over onto Draycos. "Tell you what. As soon as your
people get settled in on Iota Klestis, we'll bring a few of your
buddies in and make Fleck pick up every berry he spilled. And eat them.
How's that sound?"

Draycos seemed to think that one over. "You are joking, of course."

"Mostly," Jack said. "But it's still kind of nice to think about."

"But not very productive."

"Maybe not," Jack said. "But there's not a whole lot of productive
I can be at the moment."

"Still, it is not good for your mind to dwell on such things,"
Draycos said. "It can have a negative effect on your judgment."

"You didn't seem to have any trouble killing that guy aboard the
Star
of Wonder
," Jack said.

"That was different," Draycos said, a little stiffly. "That was
justice. It is not at all the same as revenge."

"I know," Jack conceded. He really shouldn't toy with Draycos and
his warrior ethic this way, he knew. But it was just too easy sometimes
to hot-start the dragon's buttons and play a little tune on them. "How
much longer will it take you to get through that hedge?"

"Not long," Draycos said. "Perhaps two days. Three at the most."

"And then?"

"Once we are both at the hedge, I will cut through the last few
branches," Draycos said. "We will then be clear to enter the Chookoock
family areas."

"And from then on it's up to me," Jack said, nodding. "Then you'd
better get to work. The sooner we get out of here, the better."

They waited until the camp was dark and quiet. Then, Jack slid his
hand under the door, and Draycos slipped out into the night.

The trip to the thorn hedge had become a familiar one over the
past few days. Draycos moved silently along the uneven ground, habit
and experience keeping him to shadows and cover wherever possible.

His mind, though, was a million restless leaps away. The injustice
of what had just been done to Jack still throbbed in his brain like an
angry percussion master with a full set of concert drums.

For that matter, this whole situation was beginning to get beneath
his scales. This was an important mission, and part of his job was to
keep personal feelings from affecting his judgment.

But in this case, knowing that and doing it were two very
different things. This was a slave colony, and it was simply not
possible for a poet-warrior of the K'da to completely suppress his
anger and contempt.

And as to Jack's idea about coming back to make Fleck regret his
actions, it was sadly short of the mark. What this place needed was not
a few of Draycos's friends, but six assault squads of K'da and Shontine
warriors. Three squads to free the slaves, the other three to burn the
entire place to the ground.

He flicked his tail sternly. That was not a proper thought for a
warrior, and he knew it. Justice was a vital part of the K'da warrior
ethic. Vicious, bitter vengeance was not.

And any chance for justice was still a long way in the future.
Jack could claim that everything beyond the hedge was his job if he
wanted to, but Draycos knew better. There was a large expanse of ground
they would have to deal with before they even reached the mansion.
Worse, much of that ground was open, without any cover to speak of.

No. Before he could allow Jack through the hedge, he would have to
do a thorough check of the area on his own. He would have to examine
the grounds, search for hidden guard posts, and study the outside of
the mansion itself. His task was far from over.

And perhaps it was because he was thinking too much about the task
ahead that he made it to within sight of the thorn hedge before he
noticed the faint taste of Brummga in the air.

He stopped abruptly, dropping flat into the shadow of a bush,
silently cursing his lack of attention. A well-known route, a routine
duty—that was where a warrior faced the greatest threat of trap or
ambush or simple mistake.

It was a good and timely reminder. He could only hope it hadn't
already been a fatal one.

For a long minute he lay in the shadows, his nostrils and tongue
sampling the air. There was definitely a Brummgan presence nearby; the
scent was too strong to be simply left over from the day's activities.
But the light breeze kept switching directions, hindering his efforts
to pin down a location.

And then, as he strained every sense, he heard a soft cough.

Soft, but loud enough. His pointed ears twitched onto the
direction, his eyes probing the darkness.

There he was, sitting beneath the same type of bush Draycos
himself was hiding beside. A Brummgan soldier, complete with
infrared-view detectors and a short but nasty-looking automatic weapon.

Sitting where he had a perfect view of the spot where Draycos had
been digging his tunnel through the hedge.

Slowly, carefully, Draycos gave the rest of the area a complete
check. He spotted two more Brummgas, similarly equipped, one in another
shadow, the other beneath a sheet of camouflage webbing.

One of them Draycos could have handled, had he decided that such a
move would aid their goal. But with three of them in widely spaced
positions, an attack was out of the question. Slowly, carefully, he
began to crawl back the way he'd come, his belly pressed tightly
against the ground. Not until he was a hundred yards out of the
watchers' sight did he finally stand fully upright again.

The taste of defeat on his tongue.

So all his work, all his cleverness, had been for nothing. The
Brummgas had spotted his tunnel, and had set a trap for him. It was
only the fact that they couldn't possibly have anticipated the arrival
of a K'da warrior that had prevented them from nailing him on the spot.

What they
were
expecting, clearly, was one of their
slaves. And if they were smart enough to watch one end of the darter's
hole, they were probably smart enough to be watching the other end, too.

Earlier, he had left Jack and the hotbox without much more than a
quick and casual check of the area. There hadn't been any alarm, which
meant he must not have been spotted.

He didn't know yet how they'd managed to miss him. But however it
had happened, he knew he couldn't count on being that lucky twice in a
row. This time he approached the slave colony like the warrior he was
supposed to be: slow, alert, and flat on his belly.

He hadn't noticed anything odd when he'd left, and now he
discovered why. For one thing, the enemy observer was off to the side,
where he could watch the doors into the two sleeping huts but didn't
have a clear view of the three hotboxes. For another, the observer
wasn't a Brummga. It was a human.

Not just any human, either. It was Gazen himself.

Draycos looked across the starlit patch of ground, watching Gazen
idly fingering his rifle. Under normal circumstances, he could easily
tell one human scent from another. But having just spent an hour in the
hotbox with Jack, and a particularly strong-smelling Jack at that, he
hadn't noticed the taste of Gazen in the air.

He twitched his tail in annoyance. First he had wasted time with
thoughts of vengeance. Now he was wasting equally precious time making
excuses.

For two months he had been trying to gently push Jack toward the
path of a K'da warrior. He had tried to teach the boy to think and
behave with a sense of justice and honor, instead of reacting like the
selfish thief his Uncle Virgil had raised him to be.

Now, he wondered if perhaps some of the training had ended up
going the other way.

He twitched his tail again. More rationalization. More excuses.

More wasted time.

All right
, he ordered himself firmly. So Gazen himself was
here. That meant he was taking this attack on the thorn hedge very
seriously. And given that Jack was the newest arrival, he might have
expected that Gazen's suspicions would immediately have turned his
direction.

But apparently, that wasn't the case. If it had been, Gazen should
have found a place where he could watch the hotboxes as well as the
sleeping huts.

Unless he didn't know Jack had been kicked out of his bed for the
night.

Draycos let his jaws crack open in a wry smile. So all
unknowingly, Fleck had in fact done him and Jack a huge favor. If he
hadn't gotten Jack in trouble, Draycos might very well have strolled
out of the sleeping hut tonight straight into Gazen's waiting hands.

Carefully, he began backing up again. They'd been saved by the
thinnest of eyelid scales, the kind of luck every warrior hoped for.
But that didn't mean there was any reason to throw a congratulatory
party, either. Their main escape plan had just been discovered and
neutralized. That meant they would have to fall back on Plan B.

Unfortunately, as far as he knew, they didn't have a Plan B.

Jack was asleep when he reached the hotbox, his hand jammed under
the door to give Draycos a way in. The boy didn't wake up as Draycos
slipped up his arm and settled into his usual position across his back.
The two of them had a lot to talk about; but the hotbox still held some
of the day's heat, and he might as well let Jack sleep while he could.
There would be plenty of time to talk later when the growing cold drove
him awake.

That point arrived two hours later, when Jack began shivering in
his sleep. Draycos managed to postpone it another half hour by
returning to three-dimensional form and using his body to help keep the
boy warm. But eventually, even that wasn't enough.

Jack listened in silence as Draycos related the night's
activities. "That was a close one, all right," he commented when the
K'da had finished. "Thanks to Fleck and his low-rent friends. A shame
we can't ever tell him—I'd love to see the expression on that ugly
slap-catcher face of his."