Dragons of War (10 page)

Once agreement had been reached, Swane was dispatched to equip himself for the mission and to join them at Bazil and Relkin's stall.

The dragon conspirators waited a moment or two after his departure, followed by that of Vlok.

"The future belongs to the bold, they say," said Bazil.

"Who is they?"

"Some humans."

"Humans are natural chatterboxes. They say many, many things. Sometimes I wish it were possible to stop their throats and cut off all the talk."

"You not the first dragon to wish this."

"Mmm," the Purple Green scratched himself a moment. "However, on this occasion I think they are right. We must be bold and seize the future."

Bazil chuckled quietly and ignored the wild dragon's look of suspicion.

They lumbered back to the 109th's quarters. As quietly as possible, Bazil and the Purple Green slipped back into Bazil's stall. Relkin, sound asleep, did not stir. Swane came forward with a gag in his hands and a sack over his shoulder.

The dragons carefully reached down, grasped the sleeping boy, and held him still. Relkin awoke to find himself absolutely pinioned by enormous dragon hands. He squirmed and wriggled, but could not free any limbs. A smaller, more dexterous pair of hands now went to work. A gag was forced into his mouth and tightened before he could call for help. Next his wrists and ankles were bound. Then he was unceremoniously lifted and shoved headfirst into a heavy sack. For a moment the sack was left on the floor. Relkin heard the unmistakable sound of the big dragonsword being taken down from its hook and strapped across his dragon's shoulders.

The last thing he saw was the eye of the Purple Green. He knew it was his own dragons who had done this. With some human assistance because they could never have managed the gag or the bonds on their own. Dragon hands were too clumsy for such fine work.

Then he felt the bag lifted and flipped over an immense shoulder, and he knew he was being carried off, abducted into the night by a dragon taken leave of its senses.

He did his best to raise the alarm, but could manage no more than a muffled "moo" into the sackcloth. Then a big hand came down on the sack and squeezed him into silence.

Bazil and the Purple Green, with swords in their scabbards but no shields, timed their exit from the fort carefully. A woodcutting party from the 66th Marneri Dragons was heading out the gate. Military dragons did not wander freely in and out of the fort's gates. Dragons, in fact, only left the fort to exercise or to cut wood or assist the engineers in some task requiring strength and skill.

The woodcutting party consisted of twenty men, marching at the front, followed by several horse-drawn carts, followed by six dragons. As the dragons went by, Bazil and the Purple Green sauntered into the column behind their friends Oast and Ksodan, who were bringing up the rear.

It was a busy day, with men and dragons going in and out constantly on their way to and from the various competitions and arenas. The guards at the gate were far too busy to take any notice of the fact that an extra pair of dragons had gone out with the woodcutting detail.

Outside the fort, the woodcutting party turned left and went along the high road to Dallybridge, avoiding the town of Dalhousie altogether. The booths and tents of the summer fair were soon behind them.

Bazil quietly bade Oast and Ksodan not to mention the presence of the two dragons from the 109th, and then he and the Purple Green slowed their pace and let the woodcutting party move ahead. They were a league or so south of the fort now, and there were few houses here. They retired into Dingman's wood and made their way in far enough to be out of sight of the fort road. Then they turned and headed northeast, looping around the lee of the bluff on which stood the fort, and heading for the river Argo upstream of Dalhousie.

There was swampy ground and a forest of willows, alders, and rushes that was torture for the two dragons to work through. They had to do it quietly and without recourse to their swords, which would have let them hack their way through very quickly. But flashing dragonswords would be seen from the fort and reported, and so they had to push and wriggle and creep through the boggy parts keeping under the canopy of leaves.

At length they came out upon the shores of the Argo. The river here was almost a mile wide, a hurrying torrent of dark water, freshened by recent rains on Mt. Red Oak and Mt. Snowgirt.

After scouting the river for boats and seeing none, the dragons scrambled down to the water's edge. Here the wyvern waded into the cool current with happy grunts of pleasure. The Purple Green tested the current and squawked.

"It is cold."

"Yes, that is good. This dragon is damned hot after walking through swamp."

"Yes, I suppose so," said the Purple Green, who slowly slid his big bulk into the water, too. In truth, once the shock of the cold water was past, the experience was pleasant. He wondered why he had feared the water in his earlier life. Of course, being a flying dragon he was not a natural swimmer—unlike Bazil, who was at home in the water with almost crocodilian ease—but he had the natural bouyancy of any large animal and all the strength that was needed. Indeed, he'd swum this river twice in the previous spring when he had first struck out on his own and tried to make a life as a ground-bound wild dragon.

Out into the stream they swam until the strong current picked them up and they drifted downstream while they struggled across. At length, they touched ground once more on the other side when they were within sight of the Dalhousie Light.

Quickly they scuttled up the bank and withdrew beneath the eaves of the forest above. They had achieved the first objective. They had escaped from the legion.

When they had pushed through the thickets more than a mile inland of the river, the two fugitive dragons paused for a breather.

They set down the sack, which showed no signs of life.

"Should we release the boy?" said the Purple Green.

"I was wondering about that myself."

"He will be all right, I hope."

"Seems a bit still."

"Perhaps sleeps. Dragonboys love to sleep."

"Damnably lazy individuals for the most part."

Bazil reached down and ripped open the sack and pulled it away from the prone form of Relkin, who lay utterly still. Bazil reached down and gingerly inserted the tip of his claw under the gag. He pulled up on it sharply, ripped the material, and then carefully tore it away. Still Relkin did not move.

The dragons looked at each other with dismay.

"By the breath of the ancients, he does not move," said the Purple Green.

"By the breath, you are right." Baz nudged Relkin with a foreclaw, a well-tended foreclaw, cut and polished and trimmed and filed. Without a dragonboy, life in the wild would be a lot less comfortable than this particular leather-back was used to.

Relkin remained where he was, seemingly quite lifeless. Bazil used his oddly broken tail tip to prod the boy again. There was still no movement.

"Oh, by the egg, I am afraid," said the Purple Green.

Bazil was, too. Gently, he shook the boy's shoulder with a couple of fingers. Boy seemed slack-jointed, loose, and soft, not at all like the Relkin of old. Baz began to imagine the worst.

"Boy not robust enough for such a trip. Foolish dragons forget that dragonboys are delicate, easily broken."

Bazil felt a sudden wave of sorrow engulf him.

"May the ancient gods forgive me, I have killed him. I did not think it through. The boy is dead."

The Purple Green gave a great groan of woe, and sat down on a log that gave ominously beneath his enormous bulk. Tenderly he poked Relkin in the ribs with a foreclaw. The dragonboy did not spring to life.

"I am very sad. I think I made a stupid mistake. I wanted to help boy. It was wrong to watch him hanged. Boy teach this dragon a great deal. I would not have survived in the legions without him."

Bazil nodded at hearing this confession from the wild dragon. "Quite true," he said.

"Remember how he taught me to use tail sword?"

"Oh, yes," murmured Bazil. That had been a business, how could one ever forget?

"He taught me, and he does not even have a tail. No human has a tail."

"It is one of the great mysteries. How could any race grow so mighty without one?"

They nodded together, this was indeed one of those ineluctable mysteries of life. Here were the humans, with their cities and ships and manufactured things. They were the masters of things in the world, and yet they lacked a tail. For dragons the tail was prehensile, flexible, useful in many ways, almost like having a third hand. It was inconceivable that one would live without one.

For a long time they sat there and stared at the still form stretched out on the ground. Bazil dropped the other sack, which contained the rest of the boy's possessions, his bow, the scabbard for the dirk; the box and pouches that contained his dragon-tending kit.

"Boy will not be needing these things now."

They nodded and fell back into gloomy silence.

"What will we do with his body?" said the Purple Green after a while.

"The humans usually bury their dead in the ground. We will have to dig a hole and plant him."

"By the hot breath of old Glabadza, that is a strange custom."

"I know. They burn dragons, they bury men, even bury dogs and cats."

The dragons had grown immensely solemn now, having accepted the boy's death. Sorrow rode upon their shoulders, they were bowed down with it.

"We will take him to a high place and bury him. His spirit will have a good view for all eternity."

"That is a good idea, where do you suggest?"

"Mt. Ulmo. We will take him to Mt. Ulmo. I know a good place there." A high meadow above the hemlock forests, where Baz had met the Purple Green two years before. The same place where he had come upon the green dragoness, High Wings.

The Purple Green understood at once. "Good, let us take him there."

Bazil picked up the sack and found that he had ripped it almost completely in half. It was now useless for their purpose and an ominous foretaste of the difficulties that would lie ahead for them without a dragonboy.

"Oh, by the breath," he groaned. "We have such clumsy hands for dealing with the human world. All these things that are small and neat and fragile."

"It is true," agreed the Purple Green.

They stood there nodding somberly, completely downcast, drowning in gloom.

They were still standing there a minute later when a voice cut through the air behind them.

"Not a good start for your life in the wild without a dragonboy, I'd say."

Their heads swiveled with an almost audible snap.

The dragonboy was sitting up.

"He lives!" exclaimed the Purple Green.

"No thanks to you." Relkin was still sitting there, breathing, obviously alive.

"Thanks be to the gods of old Dragon Home," said the Purple Green.

"What for? Bringing you two fools into the world? You know, I wasn't dead in the first place."

"What?" The Purple Green was thunderstruck.

"A trick? You tricked us?"

"You deserved it."

The Purple Green exhaled an enormous hiss. His eyes flared dangerously. But Bazil reached down and lifted the boy up and put him on his shoulders before hopping around in the clearing, crushing small trees and bushes while hooting in relief and delight.

"Ha hah, ho ho, boy trick these old dragons pretty damn well. Ho ho ho."

The Purple Green nodded, it was incontrovertibly true. Eventually he too saw the funny side of it and emitted several loud noises that those who knew him understood to be laughter, but otherwise sounded more like a horse being strangled.

The only one who was unhappy with the situation was the dragonboy, wet through, sore at wrist and ankle.

"You damned idiots! Do you understand what you've done? Now we're all under threat of a court-martial for desertion. I was in trouble before, but now I'm done for. Now they'll hang me for sure."

"So we cannot go back," said the Purple Green. He seemed unfazed by the prospect.

"Right," grumbled Relkin. "We starve, and then we freeze if we last long enough. For sure we'll starve in the wintertime."

"No," said the Purple Green. "I have studied this problem. I have a plan to solve it."

"Oh, that's wonderful. How are you planning to cook this plan? I'm told that plans are not very filling food."

"What?" The Purple Green frowned in puzzlement, an expression so like the human that even a wet, angry, frightened dragonboy was forced to smile.

"Look, somebody cut this rope, will you?" He held up his wrists.

Bazil rummaged through the pile of Relkin's things and brought out a sturdy dirk with a blade a foot long. It was hard for a dragon to draw from the sheath and difficult to hold in a huge dragon paw. The leverage to cut the rope was too much for the tail. But by dint of much sweat and concentration, he cut the bonds and freed the dragonboy.

Relkin flexed his arms and wrists a number of times, then snatched the dirk from the dragon and cut the rope at his ankles.

"Let me guess, you got Vlok to persuade Swane to tie me up, right?"

"Yes, something like that."

"We persuade Swane ourselves," said the Purple Green.

"And nobody had enough sense to see that you were dooming us to starve to death in the snow."

"Why need we starve? We two dragons will drive the game, you will kill it with your bow. We brought everything you will need."

"And where are we going to live? When the snows come, I will want to be inside someplace warm, with a fire going."

"No difficulty," said the Purple Green. "We will find a good cave."

Relkin nodded, the great damned things had thought it all out. He was going to be a cave dweller the rest of his days. He would wear skins, and stink of smoke and sweat.

He swallowed and shook his head angrily. Unfortunately, it now appeared that no matter how daft this scheme was, it was going to be his life. He was going to be a ragged, half-starved wildling, living in the northern forests with a pair of eternally cranky dragons.