Empire of Ivory (32 page)

tally, "and most of them fat, handsome things; enough to

dose half the Corps, if only they will last the journey."

"We will give them their damned herd of cows," Laurence

said to Ferris, meaning Demane and Sipho, who were now

taking their ease stretched out upon the ground before the

cavern mouth, making grass whistle and refusing to pay much

attention to Reverend Erasmus's attempts to read them an

instructive tract for children, his first attempt at

translation into their tongue; his wife was helping with

the harvest.

Ferris blotted his forehead against his sleeve and said, in

stifled, choked tones, "Yes, sir."

"We will need larger quantities than required of the

fresh," Dorset said, joining them. "Should some potency be

lost in the journey, a concentrated dose will compensate

for the preservation. Pray stop the harvesting for now: at

this rate no one will be left to carry." The frantic pace

had already slackened, with the wearing away of the first

flush of excitement and the urgency of getting the dragons

loaded, and many of the men looked sick and wan; several

were being noisily sick into the grass.

The tents had all gone to make sacks of mushrooms, and

there would certainly be no sleeping in the cavern, so they

cleared instead the ground before it, chopping through the

thornbushes with swords and axes. The remnants they used to

build a low encircling break about the edge of the

clearing, thorny and obdurate enough to give pause to

smaller beasts, and a few parties were set to collecting

dry wood for a fire. "Mr. Ferris, let us establish a

watch," Laurence said, "and now that we have all been

rested, we will go to work in shifts: I should like to see

a more efficient job of it."

A quarter-of-an-hour seemed long enough, inside that damp,

dark space beneath, with only the narrow crack of white

light at one end. Besides the mushrooms themselves, there

was a grassy stink very like damp manure throughout, and

the sour smell of fresh vomit which they had themselves

added to the atmosphere. Where they had already cleared the

mushrooms, the earth was strangely springy underfoot,

almost matted, not like dirt at all.

Laurence staggered out again into the fresh air,

gratefully, with his arms full. "Captain," Dorset said,

following him out: he was not carrying a mushroom, and when

Laurence had deposited his armload before the newly

organized sorters, Dorset showed him a torn-edged square of

matted grass and muck, the flooring of the cave. Laurence

gazed at it uncomprehendingly. "It is elephant dung,"

Dorset said, breaking apart the chunk, "and dragon also."

"Wing, two points west of north." Emily Roland's treble

voice rang out high and sharp, before Laurence had fully

understood; at once all was a confused hurrying into the

shelter of the cave. He looked for Reverend Erasmus, and

the children; but before he could be herded inside the

cave, Demane with one quick look at the oncoming dragon

snatched his brother up bodily from the ground, and ran

instead away into the underbrush, the dog dashing off after

them; its barking came back twice, at increasing distances,

and then cut off into a muzzled whine.

"Leave the mushrooms, take the guns," Laurence cupped his

hands over his mouth to roar over the commotion; he

snatched up his own sword and pistols, put aside to help

with the carrying, and gave Mrs. Erasmus his hand to

descend into the cavern, past the riflemen already crouched

down by the door; shortly the rest of them were crammed in

also, all of them jostling involuntarily to keep as near

the entrance and its fresh air as they could, until the

dragon landed with an earth-trembling heavy thud, and

thrust his muzzle directly up against the opening.

It was the self-same feral: dark red-brown, with the queer

ivory tusks in his muzzle. The hot queasy kerosene smell of

dragon-breath came in upon them as he roared furiously, and

the faint undertaste of rot from old meals. "Hold fast,

men," Riggs was yelling, by the entrance, "hold fast, wait

for it-" until the dragon shifted his position, his open

jaws before them, and the volley went off into the soft

flesh of its mouth.

The dragon squalled in fury and jerked back. His talons

came scrabbling in at the edges of the hole, too large to

come all the way inside, and began to pull and claw at the

rock. Small pebbles and stones worked loose; dirt rained

down upon them from the ceiling. Laurence looked around for

Mrs. Erasmus: she was silent, and only bracing herself

against the wall of the cavern for steadiness, her

shoulders rigid. The riflemen were coughing as they

reloaded urgently; but the dragon had already learnt, and

did not present them another target. Its claws came curling

in on both sides of the fissure, and then it began to throw

its weight back, until all the chamber trembled and

groaned.

Laurence drew his sword and leaped forward to hack at the

talons, then to stab, the hard scaly flesh resisting the

edge but not the point; Warren was beside him, and Ferris,

in the dark. The dragon roared again outside and flexed its

talons, blindly knocking them down as easily as gnats might

be swatted. The hard polished bony curve of one claw slid

across Laurence's coat in a line over the belly, thrusting

him hard against the matted cavern floor, and the tip

caught and pulled a long green thread from the seam as the

talons withdrew again from the fissure.

Warren caught Laurence by the arm and together they

staggered back from the entry. The gunpowder smoke was

bitter and acrid, overlaid on the rotting-sweet stink of

the mushrooms; already Laurence could scarcely breathe for

the slaughterhouse thickness of the place, and he heard to

all sides men heaving, like the lower decks of a ship in a

roaring gale.

The feral did not immediately renew the attack. They

cautiously crept forward again to peer out: he had settled

himself in the clearing outside; by bad luck, far back

enough to be out of firing-range of their rifles, and his

pale yellow-green eyes were fixed malevolently upon the

fissure. He was licking at his hacked-about talons, and

making grimaces with his mouth, pulling his lips back from

his serrated teeth and forward again, spitting occasionally

a little bit of blood upon the ground, but plainly he had

taken no great harm. As they watched, he raised his head up

and roared again thunderously in anger.

"Sir, we might put gunpowder in a bottle," his gunner

Calloway said, crawling over to Laurence, "or the flashpowder, maybe, would give him a start; I have the sack

here-"

"We are not going to frighten that beauty away with a

little flash and bang, not for long," Chenery said, craning

his head back and forth to study their enemy. "My God.

Fifteen tons at least, or I miss my guess: fifteen tons in

a feral!"

"I would call it closer to twenty, and damned unfortunate,

too," Warren said.

"We had better save what you have, Mr. Calloway," Laurence

said to the gunner. "It will do us no good only to startle

him away briefly; we must wait until the dragons return,

and reserve our fire to give them support."

"Oh, Christ; if Nitidus or Dulcia are the first back,"

Warren said, and did not need to continue: the little

dragons would certainly be frantic, and wholly overmatched.

"No; they will all be loaded down, remember?" Harcourt

said. "The weight will tell on the light-weights more, and

keep them back; but however are they to fight when they get

here-"

"Lord, let us not be borrowing trouble, if you please,"

Chenery interrupted. "That big fellow is no trained flyer;

a nice thing if four dragons of the Corps couldn't black

his eye in a trice, even if Messoria and Immortalis don't

come along. We have only to keep quiet in here until they

come."

"Captain," Dorset said, stumbling back towards them, "I amI beg to recall your attention-the floor of the cavern-"

"Yes," Laurence said, recalling the earlier sample which

Dorset had shown him, of the dung upon the floor of the

cave, elephant and dragon, where neither animal could have

managed entry. "Do you mean there is another way into this

cavern somewhere, where it could come in upon us?"

"No, no," Dorset said. "The dung has been spread.

Deliberately," he added, seeing their confusion. "These are

cultivated."

"What, do you mean men, farming the things?" Chenery said.

"What the devil would a person want with the nasty stuff?"

"Did you say there was dragon dung?" Laurence said, and a

shadow falling over the mouth of the cave drew their

attention outside: two more dragons landing, smaller

creatures but sleek, wearing harness made of ropes, and a

dozen men armed with assegai, leaping down off their sides.

The new arrivals all stayed well out of rifle-range,

conferring. After a little while, one of them came towards

the entry cautiously and shouted something in at them.

Laurence looked at Erasmus, who shook his head

uncomprehending and turned to his wife; she was staring out

the door. She had her handkerchief pressed over her mouth

and nostrils to hold out the smell, but she lowered it and

edging a little closer called back, haltingly. "They say to

come out, I think."

"Oh, certainly." Chenery was rubbing his face against his

sleeve; some grit had entered his eyes. "I am sure they

would like it of all things; you may tell them to-"

"Gentlemen," Laurence said, breaking in hastily, since

Chenery had evidently forgotten his audience, "these are no

ferals after all, plainly, but under harness; and if we

have trespassed upon the cultivated grounds of these men,

we are in the wrong: we ought make amends if we can."

"What a wretched mischance," Harcourt said, agreeing. "We

should have been perfectly happy to pay for the damned

things, after all. Ma'am, will you come out and speak to

them with us? We should of course understand if you do not

wish it," she added, to Mrs. Erasmus.

"A moment," Warren said, low and cautiously, catching at

Harcourt's sleeve. "Let us remember that we have never

heard of anyone coming through the interior; couriers have

been lost, and expeditions, and how many settlements have

we heard tell of, destroyed, in just this region north of

the Cape? If the dragons are not feral, then these men have

been responsible, viciously responsible; we are not to rely

on their character."

Mrs. Erasmus looked at her husband. He said, "If we do not

conciliate them, there will surely be battle when your

dragons come back, for they will attack in fear for your

safety. It is our Christian duty to make peace, if it can

be done," and she nodded and said softly, "I will go."

"I believe I am senior, gentlemen," Warren said, "as our

dragons are not here," a specious claim, as precedence in

the Corps went by dragon-rank regardless, with no such

qualifier involved, outside flag-rank. Coming from the

Navy, with its rigid adherence to seniority, Laurence had

often found the system confusing if not outright maddening,

but it was a pragmatic concession to reality: dragons had

their own native hierarchies, and in nature the twenty-year-old handler of a Regal Copper had more authority, on

the battlefield, over the instinctive obedience of other

dragons, than did a thirty-year veteran on the back of a

Winchester.

"Pray let us have no nonsense-" Harcourt began impatiently,

when her first lieutenant Hobbes broke in to say, "It is

all a hum; you shan't go at all, none of you, and you ought

know better," a little reproachfully. "Myself and

Lieutenant Ferris shall escort the parson and his lady,

with their permission, and if all goes well, we will try

and bring one of the fellows back here, to speak with you."

Laurence could not like the arrangement in the least, but

for its keeping Catherine out of harm's way, but the other

captains looked guilty and did not argue. They cleared back

from the entrance, the riflemen covering the open ground

from either side. Mrs. Erasmus cupped her hands over her

mouth and called a warning, then Hobbes and Ferris stepped

out, one after another, cautiously, each with a pistol held

muzzle-down and ready, swords loosened on their belts.

The strangers had stood back again, spears held lightly,

the tips pointing towards the ground, but gripped ready to

pull back and let fly. They were tall men, all of them,

with close-cropped heads and very dark coloring, skin so

deep black it had almost a bluish cast in the sunlight.

They were dressed very scantily, in loincloths of a

remarkable deep purple, decorated in a running fringe with

what looked like gold beads, and wore thin laced leather

sandals which left the tops of their feet bare, and rose to