Dragons of War (16 page)

The dragoness was waiting with her wings still unfolded, her body crouched, ready to spring at once into the air again if the approaching men should threaten her with arrow or spear.

A crowd of men, with dragons shouldering through from the north avenue, was pouring out onto the parade ground. The cornets were still screaming the alarm from the tower tops and officers were barking orders, but the great mass of the men merely came forward with awed expressions and complete silence. These were men used to dragons. They trained, they marched, and they fought alongside dragons, but the monstrous beasts they fought with did not fly! And to see something this huge, with wings that seemed to fill the sky above the fort, was in some way a fulfillment of the myth, the very promise of dragons. The winged dragons were the ultimate dragons, the greatest wild predators of the world. Few men had ever been lucky enough to see one and survive to tell the tale.

And here was one, unloading a dragonboy right on the parade ground. Now she stood there before them, her great wings flapping slowly, her lean, muscular body covered in green scales, her mouth glittering with terrible teeth, and they were mesmerized by the sight. No man raised a weapon, and even the cornets on the towers had stopped their calls.

Dragonboys elbowed forward and cautiously approached. A familiar loud voice rang out.

"Well, I'll be damned for a fisherman, it's our friend from Quosh." Swane of Revenant was the first to reach him. Then came the rest of the boys from the 109th in a leaping, hugging crowd.

"Ol' Turrent'll be feeling sick after this!"

"He was gloating until the captain came."

"The whole army is talking about it."

"You'll never live this one down Quoshite!"

Relkin was hoisted onto their shoulders and carried away up the avenue.

To questions from officers, they called that they were taking him to General Wegan and thus no one ordered them to stop. Right to the entrance to the tower gate they brought him and set him down.

Soldiers at the gate drew back. The general himself appeared among them. His face was flushed, his mouth set in a grim line. His voice shook with suppressed anger.

"I do not care to see this man brought to me as if he was some conquering hero. He is charged with desertion as well as murder. By rights he should be in chains. It is not fit for him to be treated thus."

General Wegan glared at the dragonboys of the 109th. They hung their heads but said nothing, disagreeing completely with every word.

"As for you Dragoneer Relkin, I will see you inside. At once."

"What about the dragoness?" said someone.

Wegan turned, almost said something, then checked himself and changed his mind. In a quiet voice he said, "Feed her. I'm sure she'll be hungry."

Dragonboys raced off to fulfill this command, not daring to speak until they were well out of earshot of the tower gate, whereupon they declared that Relkin was no deserter and certainly no murderer. They all knew that now that dragon's evidence was to be heard, the case against Relkin could not succeed. Their shouts and bursts of song carried away to the parade ground.

Meanwhile Relkin faced General Wegan across his desk. Wegan was furious.

"If it was up to me, boy, you'd face desertion charges this evening and the end of the rope tomorrow. What you think you're playing at coming in like this, I don't know. But it won't get you any soft treatment from me! You've started a panic in the town and upset the rhythms of my fort. This kind of grandstanding would be bad enough from an officer, but from a dragonboy, it's more than I intend to put up with."

Relkin tried to swallow but found it hard.

"Well," snapped the general, "what have you to say for yourself?"

Relkin tried to speak, failed, and tried again.

"Come along, speak, man!" General Wegan scowled.

At last he found his voice. "Begging your pardon, General, but I was not in control of the dragoness. She flew where she wanted to fly. I'm sorry for any damage caused in the town, but it was not my decision to fly that way. I think she wanted to terrify everyone. These kind of dragons, they like to terrify everything else that lives."

"But what were you doing flying here at all? Who gave permission?"

"Uhh, no one, sir. When we got the message from the captain, we had to persuade the dragoness to give a deposition. She agreed, but she refused to wait for us to make our way back to the fort by land. She wants to leave these parts for the north. The game migrations are about to begin. So we agreed that this would be the quickest way to get her deposition to Captain Kesepton. We thought that would be the best thing to do, sir."

Wegan stared hard at the youth. This one was special, they said, a real survivor. Yet there had been murder charges. Of course the charges stung the worse because Wegan felt responsible. He had made a hasty decision to allow the youth and the dragon to go in pursuit of the Trader Dook. He had never expected them to kill him. The political damage to the general in the Argo towns was serious. And then this deserter had pulled strings to have his case moved to Marneri. Had brought down the great hero Captain Kesepton to plead for him in person. In person! Wegan wished he had friends like that. And now this bit of grandstanding! It wouldn't go down well in the town. It meant even more political damage. He took a deep breath. He reflected. Still, all in all, his anger was perhaps a shade unjustified, he stuck out his lower lip for a moment. His first duty was to the men and the dragons and to the dragonboys. All this could hardly be bad for morale now could it?

Wegan's attitude softened. "So this wasn't just a show-off for the crowd?"

"Not at all, sir. I was petrified the whole way. If you knew the dragoness, you'd be petrified, too."

"What do you mean? Is she dangerous? Should she be excluded from the fort? Will she attack the horses?"

"Only if there's nothing else to eat. She says she dislikes the flavor of horse and much prefers aurochs and elk." Relkin lied quickly. Dragons loved horseflesh, raw or roasted, anyway you chose.

"Elk? Auroch?" Wegan raised his eyebrows. "Well, considering how wyverns like to eat, we must recognize that the appetites of such a beast must be tremendous."

Relkin nodded with complete, honest agreement.

"Yes, sir, they are."

Wegan stood up and paced around the room, reconsidering. Then he spoke to an orderly.

"Send for Captain Kesepton. I want to see him here, at once."

A few minutes later Hollein Kesepton came in and saluted crisply. He did not even glance at Relkin, and Relkin kept his own eyes averted.

"Well, Captain, my fort is in an uproar, and we have a very hungry extra dragon to feed. That said, it does seem that your plan is working, more swiftly than we had ever imagined."

Kesepton said nothing.

"Now, Captain, I want you to accompany this young rascal and take the necessary deposition from the dragoness that's sitting out there on the parade ground."

"Yes, sir," said Kesepton. "The translator will be Dragoneer Feregold from the 66th Dragons."

"Old Feregold, eh? Well, he's the best they say."

"Yes, sir."

"When it's done, I want that monster removed. She's to have no more than one feast upon our stores."

"Yes, sir."

"And this dragonboy is to be turned over to his dragon leader, who no doubt has a long list of punishment rosters to discuss with him."

A few moments later Relkin was hurrying across the camp beside the captain. "Captain, I want to thank you for what you've done."

Kesepton flashed him a warning glance.

"You're still going to stand trial. You killed a man, Relkin."

"I had no choice. He would have killed one of the dragons."

"You will be asking a jury of men and women to weigh a human life in the balance with that of a wild dragon."

"But they will hear the evidence of the dragons! That will mean it will not be simply my word for it. Dragons would not lie."

"We will hope that the jury of good folk in Marneri will see it that way. Many would not."

"Perhaps that is because they know little of dragons, even though they depend on them for their very lives. You and I both know what would happen to all our cities if we had no dragons with which to face the enemy."

Kesepton nodded and hardened his face. It was true, and the folk of the Argonath cities had almost forgotten their peril and the need for the heroic cooperation provided by the wyverns.

The translator, Feregold, was waiting for them, having been called even before Kesepton went to see Wegan. Now he fell in behind them, and they all turned in at the administrative tent, where a scribe was summoned along with scrolls and pen. Then a column, Relkin and Kesepton at the head, then the scribe and Feregold, and then the two men bringing chair and desk, made its way across to where the dragoness was feasting on a side of beef, raw, pulled from the butcher's cool room.

She looked up and licked the blood from her chops.

"Who is this?" she said in suspicion with breath that was redolent of blood.

"This is my friend," said Relkin, "our friend, Captain Kesepton. Bazil told you about him."

"Yes, so he did."

"Welcome to Fort Dalhousie," said Hollein Kesepton, and Relkin translated for him.

Then Feregold stood forward and introduced himself. His dragon speech was the best in the legion, and the dragoness was both surprised and pleased at this development.

Feregold explained his role, and the shape and form of the deposition. The dragoness was astonished by the concept of writing down her words, witnessing them, and using them months later in a far-off city as a weapon in a struggle conducted solely with words. This glimpse into the unholy complexities of the affairs of men unsettled her. She resolved anew that never would she return to the places of men.

Then, to Relkin's surprise, she consented at once and became most cooperative. At his look of astonishment, she commented, "Only the ancient gods know what those two fools will get up to with my children while I'm gone. I want to go back tonight."

"Then you shall," said Feregold, "for this matter need not take long at all."

The scribe sat down at the desk and began to write as Kesepton paced up and down and framed the questions, doing his best to keep things simple. The dragoness, to his surprise, responded with a clear impression of the events. The scribe's pen scratched, and Relkin felt a weight lifting away from his shoulders. With the dragoness's evidence, which essentially confirmed his own story, he would at least stand a chance in court.

It took less than an hour to complete the task, to check the writing, and to read it back to the dragoness and make a few corrections. Then the text was witnessed by Captain Kesepton and Feregold, and rolled up by the scribe.

The dragoness immediately went back to her beef, which she devoured with considerable gusto.

When she had finished, Relkin went to say farewell.

"This meat was good, as good as the young aurochs. I would like more of this meat."

"I don't think General Wegan will allow that."

"Then maybe I will eat your General Wegan."

Relkin wisely refrained from commenting on this suggestion.

"Farewell, High Wings of Tundra Lake. I hope the young of the broketail dragon grow strong and true. I thank you for not killing me when you might have."

She looked at him with a sudden fierce glare.

"I take my young and go north. Never will I return to the land of humans. I see now how your power is derived. You wield authority of complexity set upon complexity. No dragon can think in such tiny patterns. It hurts my mind to even contemplate them."

The setting sun had gone down in a ball of fire in the west. Watch fires were lit on the towers.

"Good-bye, boy, live long. Take care of the Bazil dragon. He has a good heart."

With those words she tensed and sprang into the air while her wings beat down and sent a wind whistling through the camp upending tables, tearing out tent pegs, and sending Relkin scurrying for cover.

When he looked up he saw her, an immense dark shape beating away across the town and heading upriver. The sun caught her scales, and she gleamed like a great emerald in the sky.

With a sigh and a shrug, Relkin turned away from the fantastic to the mundane and made his way to the quarters of the 109th Marneri Dragons and his inevitable interview with Dragon Leader Turrent.

Three weeks later, Relkin was summoned once more to General Wegan's office.

The dragons and Manuel had returned a few days previously. Both dragons were on heavy labor details, and Relkin had kitchen, slops, and garbage details. Dragon Leader Turrent had become a constant presence in his life, hectoring, peering over his shoulder, and ordering fresh punishment details.

General Wegan told Relkin that he had decided to send the 109th to Kohon for the fall campaign against the Cralls a bandit clan of the Kohon Hills that had been raiding into the fertile fields around High Lake. Wegan had decided to double the dragon force for the mission. The Cralls had slain twelve men and abducted their women from a hamlet near Wachau. The Cralls must be taught a lesson they would never forget. Cralls would be taken and tried and hanged for all to see.

"There are questions in your mind, Dragoneer. You may ask them."

"Well, sir, I suppose I should ask why you are telling me this?"

"Because, Dragoneer, I have made this decision with you and your dragon in mind. I want you both somewhere where you'll be too busy to get into any more trouble, and I don't want to have to put you behind bars.

"And if you should die in battle over the winter, then I'll be saving the legion from an embarrassing trial. And I will also be helping to defuse the political controversy here. This killing has been used by certain interests to demand cuts in the contribution to the legion budget by the provinces of Kenor."

Relkin's eyes widened.

"I see you hadn't thought of that. Well, boy, wake up to the truth of the world. The people of the Middle Argo have been spared war for many years. Recent events in Tummuz Orgmeen have reduced their concerns even further." Wegan smiled a wintry smile.