Dragon Champion

“Some thane in these parts. Letting bands of robbers roam the roads.”



“Those were the thane’s men.”



“In the village, what did the wizard’s emblem you spoke of look like? The one that meant you’d get your head knocked in?”



“Silly piece of figuring, like something scratched in a barbarian cave wall. A circle—”



“With a man in it, arms and legs outstretched?”



Djer rebalanced one of his ponies’ packs and retightened the girth. “Yes. You’ve seen it?”



“Closer than I care to again.”



“Some rabble-rouser stirring up the men. Their kind come along every couple of generations.”



“Will these men pursue us, once they talk to those you left behind?”



“I have friends in that village—all that talk about the thane back there was just a hurk getting too big for his boots. I don’t want to spend time around Drakossozh and his men. Did you burn someone important, young dragon?”



“Only those that were hunting me. Perhaps the Dragonblade’s pride, as well.”



“Ach, I see. Then you did kill something important, in the by. A dwarf will fight for honor, but a man will kill for pride.”



Auron thought for a moment. “What’s the difference?”



“Honor is how others see you. Pride is how you see yourself.”



Auron spent weary hours in the back of the cart as the woods gave way to open lands. He could no longer take breaks to walk alongside Djer at the plodding pace of his draft horses; they traveled through farms and fields of men. Farm wains, wagons, and dispatch riders all used the road, no longer rutted and uncared for, but paved wide enough for two wagons to travel abreast. Djer called it the Old North Highway.



Auron diverted his mind from his cramped body by learning Dwarvish. Djer started by naming parts of the body, sights along the road, and items in the cart, and before long, Auron could understand simple bedtime rhymes such as Djer’s mother used to lull her son to sleep. Other times they had to fall back on Parl, as when Djer told him about Hypat and the Old North Highway.



“It’s a mighty root of an even mightier tree. Ancient Hypat, at the mouth of the Falnges River, Queen of the Inland Ocean. In better times, Hypatian culture surrounded the ocean like a crown on a head, but even the mighty age and fall. It is still a great city.”



“Will I see it?”



“No, we make for the Delvings at Diadem. The Waterfall Mountain on the Falnges, the birthplace of the Chartered Company. We had our beginnings moving cargo past the six falls. Endless trips up and down the Iron Road.”



“Iron road?”



“Rails and carts, young dragon, rails and carts—as we have in the mines, though bigger there. Pulled by wraxapods, the mightiest creatures to walk the earth. Stronger than dragons. So big that they didn’t need their brains, I suppose, for while they’re the largest beasts afoot, they’re also the dumbest. We hoist entire barges out of the water, and they pull them uphill many hundreds of quivers.”



“What’s a quiver?”



“You’re empty of knowledge but full of questions, Auron. A quiver is a unit of measurement, though it varies between man, elf, and dwarf. It’s the distance an archer can fire twelve arrows, if he paces out to the end of each one’s flight. Nearly four thousand rods.”



Auron wanted to ask what a rod was, but suspected the dwarf would tell him “sixteen fingers” or some other senseless term. A distance remained the same no matter how you measured it.



“Is that where we will join up with the Caravan?” Auron asked. Djer always put extra emphasis on the word, so Auron did, too.



“Oh, no—it’s being formed up in the plains at Wallander. But we shall go, the two of us, into the Delvings and request an audience with one of the Partners. When he hears a dragon has been brought in, perhaps Byndon himself will see us. Then you’ll see some bargaining. How I wish I had gold in my beard! They never take a poor-faced dwarf seriously.”



“I hope they serve sausages,” Auron said, his empty stomach growling.



They passed into familiar lands, returning to back roads and wild hill country surrounding the mountains of Auron’s birth. Djer urged his horses along, seeking the river. If they could get to the Falnges, they’d be able to travel over water to the falls, saving time and effort. The Caravan would be leaving shortly and not return until the spring. Djer did not want to be left behind.



They found a landing, a human town but with dwarves working on the docks, and it was just a matter of time before Djer found some representatives of his Chartered Company to bargain for passage on an eastbound barge. Auron watched the river traffic from the driver’s slot in the cart: a mixture of everything from canoes to two-masted sailing ships. The river was so wide, details on the other side were indistinct. The barges were especially interesting: teams of horses pulled long, narrow, squared-off boats with cargo and a few people on board from a well-tended path on the riverbank. Auron did not know how much power a horse had, but he thought it would take a dragon at least to pull one of the barges, were it on a good road with wheels under it. Yet the teams of mighty draft horses, with waving manes of fur at neck, hoof, and tail, managed to pull the loads along the river with nothing but a dwarf riding them urging them along with gentle taps from a quirt.



Auron wondered why moving things to and fro was the object of so much effort, but put it down to the eccentricities of hominids. Djer had done his best to explain trade, and while Auron could repeat back to the dwarf the substance of what he had been taught, he didn’t really understand all the talk of supply and demand and rarity. But if it would get him away from this land of men, dwarves, and elves, he would go along with it.



“There’s a piggy-back due in tonight,” Djer said, clapping his hands and rubbing them together as he settled himself into the driver’s seat. “Now you’ll see something, young dragon.”



“A piggy-back?”



“A barge, almost a floating village. We just drive our teams and wagons onto it, and the barge does the rest. I bought us a meal. I hope you like fish. It’s the cheapest thing at the market here.”



This news meant a few hours’ inactivity, so after eating the salty dried fish, Auron curled up among the camping goods and slept.



When Djer woke him, there was a strange odor in the air. The cart now stood in a line of wagons, with Djer at the reins, waiting to be loaded onto a wooden construct that looked like another dock, complete with little houses, attached to the longest quay at the riverbank town. Auron saw what was making the smell: four-legged beasts, legs as broad as tree trunks, with thick necks and fleshy, beaked mouths. They stood, stomach deep in the river, two abreast in front of the barge. A little boat manned by dwarves floated at their heads; at the moment the dwarves were opening bales of greenstuffs and leafy tree branches to feed the animals, which engulfed the food in their flexible beaks.



Djer drove his cart and joined the other wagons on the deck of the barge. Auron saw hatches leading to what he guessed to be holds—bringing back memories of his long stay in one, though the ship he had traveled in was smaller than this barge—and travelers with bundles lounging at the rails.



“Those must be wraxapods,” Auron said.



“That they are,” Djer said. “Did you see the little boat in front? The handlers pole that along—they make sure the beasts have decent footing. Sometimes they’ll stop and let the creatures graze from the trees along the bank, but usually they make a trip just being fed at the stops. Another dwarf works the other end; our gardens at the Delvings are bedded with their droppings. Every time I become discouraged with my position in the Chartered Company, I just think of the wraxapod tenders.”



Auron looked at the massive slabbed hindquarters at the front of the barge, absurdly tiny tails, more like flaps, swishing back and forth at flies gathered at their tailvents. “I didn’t know anything was bigger than dragons,” Auron said.



“I don’t know that they’re longer, but they are heavier. Of course, they aren’t meant to fly. Just eat a lot, chunt a lot, and have little ones like them. What a way to come into the world. Like getting dropped out of a tree.”



The barge eventually got under way, and the wraxapods stepped into the current. They moved ponderously, slowly it seemed to Auron until he looked at the riverbank. He marked the progress of a tree with astonishment. The barge was actually traveling at a speed Djer could get with his cart only if he cantered his horses.



They traveled by night, as well, changing only the dwarves in the boat at the front. Auron saw a team return, covered with saliva from the wraxapods, river mud from the sounding poles coating their arms. As Djer lay wrapped in a blanket on his driving bench, and Auron lay curled in the rear of the wagon, they spoke through Djer’s window.



“Dwarves are not what I expected,” Auron said.



“What did you expect?” Djer’s voice said from outside.



“Fierce warriors in armor, hunting dragons and searching for gold.”



“That describes a few. I suppose all the ones that dragons encounter. If it makes you feel any better, you’re not what I expected from a dragon. So curious and not at all fierce.”