Dragon Champion

The drake felt strangely light and exultant. “Will you come?” Auron asked in beast speech, spitting blood from his lip wound.



“My pack dead, as need I,” it returned, lowering for a spring. It spoke well, though its constructions rang oddly in Auron’s ear.



“Wait!” he said, putting his heart into it. “Pack not dead if you live. Why we two fight?”



“You not bear, so you prey. Shorter than deer, bigger than sheep.”



“But I fight better. I not prey.”



The wolf’s tail drooped as it looked on the corpses. It said nothing.



“I hungry, too, a traveler to the mountains. You know woods. We hunt together. Share.”



“Cannot.”



“Why? Two can hunt better than one.”



Confusion filled the crystal eyes. “But you not me-people,” the wolf said.



Auron thought for a moment. Wolves hunted together as second nature, but didn’t dogs, which were practically wolves, hunt with men? Did the dogs think of men as part of their tribe?



“Then make me one,” Auron said.



“Not understand.”



Auron lowered his head to the level of the wolf’s. Then below it, fighting a throbbing hurt in his neck. The wolf brought up its head and stood taller.



“We make pack. Pack has two. You leader,” Auron said. “I Auron. I do as you say. I promise this.”



The wolf looked at him and sniffed at the scent of dragon blood. Its remaining ear flicked up and tail gave the tiniest of wags. Auron gave a hint of a prrum in response, though in his pain, the noise didn’t come naturally.



“This story to sing from highest hill. Good Aer . . . Aur-ron. Auron. But you kill leader. With me-people, mean you leader.”



“I bad leader. Not know this land. No, me not wolf . . . you-people, I mean. You leader.”



The wolf’s tail wagged once, and it brushed Auron’s face with the side of its own. “Settled. I Hard-Legs Black-Bristle of Dawn Roarers. Must leave this stink-of-blood behind. Come.”



Auron followed.



Auron picked up wolf speech easily. It was enough like beast speech for him to understand most of what Blackhard—as the pack-familiar was rendered—said to him; each day he spoke it better. The hardest part was the phrasing required when the pack member asked something of its leader. Reading and imitating the body language that often passed for simple words took him no time at all to pick up.



“Goodwolf if stop by lake, try for fish?”



“Good if wolf stop by the lake and try to fish,” Blackhard corrected, with a nip in the air just in front of Auron’s nose. That habit took some getting used to.



“Good if wolf stop by the lake and try to fish,” Auron said again, and Blackhard smiled in assent. Wolves were smilers, but Auron didn’t have the muscles to imitate it properly. Auron took in the banks of the lake in a slow examination. A cluster of man houses stood on the other side, hardly visible through the morning lake mists. Men fished here, too. Satisfied, Auron slipped into the water and floated upside down, nostrils above water and eyes beneath. He caught a bottom-feeder for himself and brought one back for Blackhard.



“Fish is a good stink. I like to roll in the leavings. Confuses the prey,” Blackhard said. “Don’t know what it would take to cover your stink-of-dragon. Skunk, maybe. You are only creature whose front end smell worse than back.”



Auron knew what a skunk was, and didn’t care to try rolling in one. He couldn’t help it that eruptions of gas from his fire bladder startled Blackhard.



The howling at night fascinated him. The wolves told each other stories, claimed territory, negotiated hunting rights, and prayed to the Moon for game and healthy offspring all at the same time.



“White-Tooth Winter-Nose heeeere! Forests thick with deer, the Fell Runners thank you, O My Mooooooon!”



“Thank thee, Moooooooon!” others in White-Tooth Winter-Nose chorused.



“My pup Deep-Eyes Feather-Tail made his first kill todayyyyyyyyyy, O My Cousiiiiiins!” a faraway voice called.



“Honor and Praaaaaise!” a distant pack answered.



Blackhard could stand it no more. He stood, crossing his front legs on a stone to elevate his head. “Hard-Legs Black-Bristle, last of Dawn Roarers heeeere! I hunt with an Outsider, one who spared my life and the life of my pack, and asked to hunt with meeeeee. This Outsider is a drake named Aurrrrooooon!”



“Whaaaaaaaat?” came many cries from afar, as the forest wolves took in the news. Consternation broke out as others spread the word.



“You call your name, Auron, there’s a good wolf,” Blackhard said.



“You mean howl?”



“Yes. You speak the tongue well enough. Just make it good and loud.”



Auron put his stumpy front legs on a fallen tree trunk and extended his long neck to the moon. He inflated his lungs until his body swelled like a puffing fish.



“Auron son of AuRel here!” he bellowed. “I travel to the Eastern Mountains to seek my kind, but for now I hunt with the Dawn Roarers.” It was more of a roar than a howl, but it was no sound a wolf could make.



“We seek free passage though your lands to the Eastern Feeeeeeells, as good wolves in your laaaaands. Pass this neeeeeeews,” Blackhard added.



Their words were spread over the howling network. Auron listened to the wailing cries as tingles danced up and down his spine. He felt very un-wolfish.



“Hanging-Tongue Snow-Crossed of Silent Fangs heeeeeere!” a wolf called from the north. “Three packs now ask for Thing to know this news at midsummer night. We meet at the rock-tree at the three-river falls. If you wish to pass, we must hear this story and smell-hear-see this Outsider in full. Pass this neeeeeews!”



“I wiiiiiiiill as I am a good wolf!” Blackhard answered. “Hard-Legs Black-Bristle of Dawn Roarers heeeeeere! There will be Thing at midsummer night by the rock-tree at three-river falls. Pass this neeeeeews!”



“Pass this neeeeeews! Pass this neeeeeews!” echoed wolves from hilltop to hilltop.



“There has not been Thing in my lifetime. I’ve seen only two summers,” Blackhard said as they crossed the smallest of the three-rivers well above the roaring falls. On the other side of the river, a pack climbed out of the wet and shook their coats, flushing sparrows from gorse bushes and devil’s club with their spray.



“Will we see the falls?” Auron asked. He wondered what could make such a noise; it sounded like all the dragons in the world arguing farther down the river.



“Why? There’s nothing to eat there,” Blackhard puffed as he swam. “Oh, I imagine it can’t do any harm. It might be just as well to keep you out of sight until Thing. A gathering of two packs-of-packs-of-packs of wolves can be trouble.”



Auron worked the numbers in his head, wolves using pack to mean eight to twelve. Usually. Over a thousand wolves! They climbed up onto the far bank. Auron slithered to the top of a rock to let the sun dry him, keeping one eye cocked to the fast-running river for fish.



“Hungry wolves, who can only catch, and cache, so much game. There may be many more packs—this news has been howled from the mountains to the seacoast. There will be fights. There won’t be so much as a mouse to eat until we can disperse. To the falls it is.”



The unlikely pair stayed along the riverbank; Blackhard had to stop and scratch while waiting for Auron to catch up.



“No wonder your kind grew wings,” the long-legged wolf said as Auron climbed over yet another fallen tree. “You’re slow on the ground. When will you be able to fly?”



“That’s years off. Perhaps a pack and a half-pack of summers.”



“I wish I could live to see it,” Blackhard said, loudly for the sound of falling water now grew with each step. “It must be something. To be able to terrify men, even. I’ve heard stories of flying dragons. One of our pack saw one against the moon, before I was born. Here we are. Be careful—the rocks are slippery.”



A mist rose from the roar. They stood at the brink of a great cauldron steaming in the summer sun. Auron looked across from their cliff. Another river poured into the turmoil from the high plateau. Trees clung precariously to the edges of the cliffs, some even on little shelves jutting out from the rock face. A third river joined the others below, to tumble over a much smaller fall farther downstream. Auron saw a long house of men below the lesser falls. Birds whirled above, floating on the updraft.



“Eagles hunt here, not wolves,” Blackhard said. “The man-place is new. Is there nowhere they don’t go?”



“What will happen at Thing?” Auron could feel the impact of the water, transmitted through the stones up to his cliff. He imagined the wolves deciding he had committed a crime against their kind—and tearing him to pieces.



“We need a Thing now and then. Young females leave packs, sometimes new packs are formed by thwarted males who could not rise in their own. It is good for wolves to mix now and then; a pack that stays only within its territory weakens its blood. Your coming was taken as a signal to gather. There’s also curiosity to it. I suppose only a handful of wolves even know what a dragon smells like nowadays.”