Dragon's Heart (14 page)

"I was a boy!
A boy!
" he protested.

Likkarn raised his hand again. "Take the masks." It was the end of the laughter.

Having already had a run-in with the stench of a dead drakk outdoors, Jakkin was not eager to be in a closed room with one, so he took the proffered mask eagerly.

Then Balakk handed them each a long knife with a straight blade and bone handle. "We don't dare use extinguishers—that's sting-guns for you new boys—within the barn for fear of setting the straw bedding on fire.

"Or hitting a hatchling—or a dragon," Balakk added.

"Or each other," Kkitakk remarked.

Frankkalin laughed. "There speaks the worst shot in the nursery."

"Not any worse than you!"

"How many times did you hit the tree instead of the drakk?"

They were referring to drakk hunts long past, so Jakkin snuggled down on the floor, his back against the sofa.

"More importantly," Balakk added, "we have to save the power packs as much as we can. With this fewmetty embargo, it may be years before we get any new ones." He paused. "If ever." His face was no longer blushing and almost seemed to light up with the thought. Like Slakk, he reveled in bad news.

Nodding, Likkarn told them, "We're working on finding new ways to recharge the packs, as is every nursery crew on the planet. There is a building in The Rokk dedicated to the work. What scientists we still have get shipped there."

Akki
... Jakkin felt cold.
So
he's
sent Akki there. Without asking me. Without telling me. Without...
But if true, it meant she hadn't gone on her own. It was all Likkarn's fault. He should have guessed.

"But for now, we use the knives," Likkarn finished.

Balakk added, "In small spaces they're best, anyway."

Everyone agreed.

But Jakkin was thinking,
Extinguishers. Stingers.
It would be a hardship indeed when they could no longer use them against the drakks.
Maybe Likkarn was right to send Akki to The Rokk.
Knives meant close work. With a stinger, a man would be outside the reach of a drakk's sharp talons.
And if Akki is with other scientists, maybe it will be easier to...
He wiped the thought from his head.
Without Akki, nothing is easier.

Slakk raised a hand. "Do we work in pairs?"

"We do." Likkarn took a roster from his vest and showed it around. Though few of them could actually read, Jakkin could. He found his own name even before Likkarn said, "Slakk—you and Jakkin are in the back stalls, with the new dragon, Auricle, and her hatchling. Be especially watchful there. Things aren't as tight in the rear of the building. There might be some holes. Jakkin did well on our last drakk hunt. Slakk, follow his lead."

Jakkin could hardly believe his ears. A compliment from Likkarn! And then he realized that Likkarn thought the hatchling was still in Auricle's stall.
But if he sent Akki to The Rokk, he would know about the little dragon.
Confused, he put it down to forgetfulness on Likkarn's part. After all, the old man was surely in his fifties already.

He glanced over at Slakk who was steadily gazing at the floor. He wondered if Slakk considered being on guard with him a good thing, or a bad one. Slakk always managed to get out of the hard jobs, and his partners always had to do twice the work. Not like Akki, who always did more than her share.

Not like Akki...

He turned back. Likkarn was still speaking.

"...do some work several months ago," Likkarn was saying, "where a dragon—it was that scamp, Bloody Mess—who had scraped away a hole, going after some wort growing outside. There may be areas we've missed." He handed out small leather bags to everyone. Jakkin recognized them—they were old bond bags. His hand went automatically to his chest.

"Use the nails in these bags if you find any loose boards," Likkarn said. "Hammer them in with the handle of your knife.

"Balakk," Likkarn continued, his voice tightly controlled, "you take Arakk and Frankkalin and Kkitakk, here, and the four of you patrol the new hatchling area, sleeping two on and two off."

They nodded.

"Atkkin, Tolekk, Trikko, you stay here with me. The rest of you will be with the broodless hens. In pairs." He read them off by twos.

Likkarn probably ordered Akki into the truck with that same sharp tone.
Jakkin gritted his teeth.
Even though she wanted to find me to say good-bye.
He stopped, ran his hand through his hair, thought again.
But then he would have seen the hatchling in her arms.
No, that didn't make any sense. Maybe he was wrong. Or partially wrong.

Still, Akki could have sent him a farewell, with roses and blue skies and balloons and ... She could have sent something and she hadn't.
Why?

His heart was thudding again.
Why?

Everyone stood, and Arakk was already at the door into the corridor when Likkarn growled, "Wait!"

Everyone waited.

"Remember to come at drakks from behind." He paused. "
Never
assume a drakk is dead." He put a finger to the side of his nose, his face grim.

Balakk interrupted. "Knew a man once, who..."

Laughing, Arakk finished for him, in a fair imitation of his drawl, "...had his leg nearly took off by a drakk he thought a goner." His hand smacked his leg above the knee. His moon face seemed to split in two as he grinned at everyone.

They all laughed then, even Balakk, whose normally dour face was almost handsome when he smiled.

Angry as he was at Likkarn, at Akki, at himself, Jakkin laughed, too. The laughter went a long way toward breaking the tension in the room. Then each man and boy trotted off to his appointed place.

***

AURICLE WAS SNORING, a deep frothy sound, when Jakkin and Slakk reached her.

"Maybe we should check the empty stalls first," Jakkin said.

"There are five," Slakk pointed out.

"Two for you, three for me." Jakkin spoke before Slakk could complain. "And I'll do Auricle's as well." Anything to keep his mind off Akki's desertion with the hatchling. And Likkarn's complicity in sending her off. And Errikkin's dismissal of their friendship. And the difficulty of working with Slakk. And most of all, the possibility of finding a drakk. "Then I'll take first watch. Of course, if Errikkin were here..."

Without a change of expression, Slakk said, "We'd have had to babysit him. Best he stays away." Then he nodded at Jakkin and set off toward the two left-hand stalls.

"Of course," Jakkin muttered to himself, "Slakk
would
take the smallest ones." He turned into the stall closest to Auricle's and started his search.

Crawling along the base of the stall and looking especially at the outside wall, he tapped the boards with the handle of his big knife. The boards seemed solid and snugged right down into the ground. There was not even a whisper of air coming through them, nor the cold of Dark-After sneaking in.

"Tight." He nodded with satisfaction.

The second stall seemed just as solid.

In the third stall, he found a single loose board and hammered it shut with three well-placed nails. Then he packed extra dirt around the bottom of the board, stomping it down with his sandal. He promised himself to check it often.

Finally, he went into Auricle's stall. She'd slept through the hammering and the whispered conversations with Slakk and all the to-ing and fro-ing. He guessed she could probably sleep through the end of the world. When he slid into her mind, it was all muzzy, a kind of purposeful gray landscape.

Checking around her stall, Jakkin found the boards tight, though her tail lay against part of the back wall and he couldn't get her to wake in order to check behind. Any drakk willing to chance a full-grown dragon was a dead drakk, anyway. However, there was always the possibility that a dragon's fiery breath could set the whole incubarn aflame.

Always something else to worry about,
he thought. But he let Auricle sleep.

And soon after, he let Slakk sleep as well. As promised, Jakkin took the first watch himself.

THE FIRST COUPLE of hours were quiet with only a few hammering sounds coming from down the corridor and the occasional pipping of hatchlings. Jakkin walked through the stalls, checking and rechecking the walls and floors. When he found himself beginning to yawn, he woke Slakk.

"Your watch."

"Already?" Slakk said without much conviction and a whine in his voice. With Slakk, every conversation started with a complaint, and Jakkin knew better than to argue.
But why is Slakk still around?

"You used to say," Jakkin began, his voice pitched low, "that when you bought yourself out of bond, you'd never work with dragons again. Yet here you are, a free man and still at the dragon nursery."

Slakk shrugged but didn't answer. It seemed as if he was not yet awake enough to talk.

However, that shrug told Jakkin everything. Slakk's complaints were simply part of his personality. And after all, what else did Slakk know but dragons? At the nursery he had three meals a day and a warm place to sleep. If he got sick, there was the hospice. If he got old, he could help in the kitchen. If he pair-bonded—though Jakkin could hardly believe anyone would put up with his constant complaining—there was special housing for couples. Jakkin shrugged back, keeping his own silence.

They changed places, Slakk standing, stretching, scratching behind his shoulder, making soft grunting noises, occasionally wandering into the various stalls assigned to them.

Jakkin took the blanket and went into Auricle's stall, where he lay down close to her for warmth, though the barn was certainly warm enough already. But the familiarity of lying close to a dragon was comforting. Shutting his eyes, he was fast asleep within moments, snoring lightly.

He dreamed of Akki, not as she'd been in the caves or in the great city of The Rokk, nor as she'd looked out in the oasis back when he'd first trained Heart's Blood. The dream took place where he first met her, in the hospice, her black hair hanging straight down her back, her generous mouth laughing at him, as she nursed him back to health.

Why did you leave?
he asked her in the dream.

To save the dragons,
she answered, holding up the hatchling by its tail.

Why did you leave?
he asked a second time.

To save the dragons,
she answered, holding up a full bond bag. She shook it and it rang with the sound of coins.

Why did you leave?
he asked a third time.

She began to scream.

Jakkin woke, startled, his heart beating wildly. Oddly, the screaming continued even though he was wide awake, staring into the dark. The screaming wasn't just out loud, but in his head, too, accompanied by a series of horrible images: blood-red rivers, bones piercing through skin.

Suddenly he realized that Akki wasn't doing the screaming. Slakk was. And there was an awful smell in the barn.

Drakk!
Jakkin reached for the mask that was still attached to his vest. The smell was everywhere and the mask did little to filter it out. The stench was overpowering. He wanted to vomit.
But not in the mask!
he warned himself.
Not in the mask.

Leaping to his feet, Jakkin grabbed his knife and stumbled toward the stall door, but his feet tangled in the blanket and he nearly fell forward, cursing loudly. "Fewmets! Worm waste!"

Now Auricle was standing behind him and screaming as well, rocking back and forth, her voice high-pitched, her sendings frantic, huge, streaking lightning bolts plowing through a muddy sea.

Righting himself, Jakkin stepped out of the tangle of blanket, and turned. "
Lie down, thou beauty.
" He meant it to be calming, encouraging, but it came out as an order.

Auricle was used to orders. She lay down.

Turning back, Jakkin rushed through the door, looking around till he found Slakk in one of the two smaller stalls he'd claimed as his own sleeping room. He was on his knees, shaking, covered with blood.

"Slakk!" Jakkin cried, his voice filtered oddly through the mask.

Slakk looked up, screaming silently, his eyes wide open, haunted. His mouth gaped. He kept sending gouts of blood and flame into Jakkin's brain.

A sending?
Jakkin was sure of it.
But how?

In front of Slakk was a female drakk, rather small, but deadly nonetheless. Even a tiny drakk could open a man up, spilling out blood, bone, intestines.

This drakk, however, was dying. Jakkin could hear her pain, her anger, her astonishment. She had a gaping hole in her belly and a slash ringing her neck, so wide that her oily green snake head lay half off. But still she kept moving, gashing the air with her vicious talons. Each time she lifted those talons, her wings lifted as well, disclosing scabrous sensor organs that pulsed like a beating heart. In her opened belly lay a clutch of white eggs.

A female. A young breeding female.
Jakkin shuddered. Likkarn wouldn't like that.

Slakk's hand clutching the knife slashed down again, this time smashing the eggs. He screamed as his fingers touched the hot blood that pooled in the drakk's wounds. Then, as if waking from a nightmare, he looked down at the horror in front of him and tried to scrabble back from it. Whimpering, he held his knife hand against his chest. The drakk's hot blood must have scorched his hand. Suddenly he began crawling backward, all the while continuing to howl.

"Slakk!" Jakkin called, but Slakk didn't seem to understand him. So Jakkin walked carefully around the dying drakk and bent down, trying to take the knife away from Slakk before he hurt himself with it. Slakk wouldn't loosen his hold on the bone handle. He was weeping loudly now and babbling, though Jakkin could make no sense of what he was saying.

There was a sudden movement in the stall behind them. Turning swiftly, Jakkin brought up his own knife and looked around frantically, his entire arm trembling.

"There, lads." It was Balakk, with Likkarn next to him, their masks securely fastened over their noses. They'd come to check on the noise.