Dragon Champion

And getting rarer, Auron thought. But he said, “It would be a desperate dragon to go against all this for a wagonful of gold.”



“Once the Caravan gets moving, I’d like to come out of the towers and join you for a meal, young drake. It’s a long, slow trip. You’re a new experience. I’ve made near two hundred round trips since starting on the push-pull level, and you’re the first live drake I’ve seen.”



Auron wondered how many dead drakes he had crossed, but thought better of asking.



Long, slow trip. Auron had time to consider in full the meaning of those words as his cave-on-wheels ground along, day after ever-so-the-same day.



He thought of it as a cave because it was dark and enclosed. There were solid doors at the rear, but they stayed locked from both inside and out—the dwarves showed him how to work the simple sliding bolt that secured it from the inside. Auron had a source of air in the roof: there was a vent window shaped like a mushroom. A dwarf might be able to see out the slit, if he had something to stand on, but Auron could not work his crested head into it so that he could see. He settled for looking up at the sky at an angle, or sticking his nose up into the vent and experiencing the steppes through his nostrils. He smelled wraxapods, draft oxen, and sun-dried grasses, overlaid with dwarf.



They locked him inside the wagon soon after the towers, pulled by straining wraxapods, moved away from the walls of Wallander. To the drake’s ears they made a sound like a constant mild earthquake as they ground across the steppe. Auron’s own wagon had a team of no fewer than sixteen oxen pulling it along, and those numbers were often doubled at fords on the rare watercourses running across their paths. The double team was necessary for the wagon, burdened as it was with iron-banded chests of gold and silver.



Auron ate well and slept better, warm out of the cold winter wind that brought chilling rain and flecks of snow like blown sand. He got to know the sound of the traveling towers crunching snow beneath the rotating roads they carried with them. He took entertainment in his dreams, either vaguely pleasant visions of clouds and landscapes, or vivid experiences from his ancestors somehow passed down through his parents, sights and sounds and smells and tastes that wafted through his consciousness without explaination.



He found time to compose a few couplets to his own song, should he ever meet the right mate once his wings had grown. All the while, his lung healed, and the wounds from his battles became faint white scars on his gray skin. Best of all, his tail slowly lengthened.



A dwarf woman—who also cared for the beasts outside the wagon—fed him twice a day as the teams were hitched and unhitched. At those times, Djer and an accounting dwarf counted the money again and again, paying out small amounts to the nomads and merchant-nobles of the steppe for grain, eggs, and meat. Djer told him of teams of men and horses dragging tree branches and rolling bales of hay to feed the wraxapods. All had to be bartered in workmanship or paid for in coin.



At night, the dwarves allowed visitors into the camp, always ready to make a bargain with king or serf. Auron’s one and only alarm on the long trip came when he heard a stealthy set of hands trying the vent at the top. Spoiling for action, Auron gave a growl that corkscrewed into a full-throated dragon cry, and whoever explored the roof jumped off with the speed of a cat that had unexpectedly landed on an iron stove.



Auron got his promised dinner with the commodore. While Sekyw stood watch in the cart, the commodore took Auron to his room just under the command-cupola, and showered drake and Djer with food and tales. Auron heard stories of young men Stal met as warriors, who later became kings and dotards over the course of long years of Caravan. He showed them a tapestry to commemorate the Battle of Hurth crossing, where Stormrider K’ada va K’on brought his hordes against the towers until the Hurth turned red with their blood. They heard of ageless wizards living in icy wastes, writing in lost tongues on the skins of man and blighter, and the great king of the Unmapped Continent, who sent emissaries north on flying carpets. How much was truth and how much was legend, Auron had no way of knowing.



“What do you know of NooMoahk, the black dragon?” Auron asked.



Stal flicked crumbs of his meal from his beard. “Hmmmm, that’s an old name. My last news of him goes back years, must have been around the time of the Blizzard that Killed Spring, it seems. A good forty years ago. We had a band of men traveling with us. They had camels as well as horses, and planned to cross the desert to kill him, for they said he still lived, but had grown feeble. He must not have grown feeble enough, for they said they’d meet us for the return trip at the rustless iron temple at the edge of the desert. It’s a fascinating place. There’s a well there that’s never empty, and thick groves of fruit trees. They say a mighty king is buried there, but no one remembers anything more than that. But I’ve lost my grip on the tail of my tale—the men were not there waiting for us.”



A day later, when the accountant dwarf and Djer did a full counting of the coin, an argument broke out.



“We both signed the tally two nights ago,” the accountant insisted. “After we bought that herd of mutton.”



“It must not be right. How can there be so much missing?” Djer said. “None have been here but Auron and Sekyw.”



“Perhaps the drake eats coin after all, though I beg your pardon for saying it.”



“Nonsense. Who searched Sekyw?”



“Myself, and then two others. We felt his clothes, he removed his boots—”



“Yes, I know the procedure. Perhaps he ate it. The fat would mask the sound of its clinking.”



The accountant bristled. “Never. There’s a magic on it. It’s death to swallow it—I’ve dusted the gold with powdered poison myself. He had no water to wash it with.”



“So you told me,” Djer said, looking at Auron in the back of the open wagon with a wounded expression.



Auron lifted his head. “My friend, I did not touch so much as a coin. And if I ate it, wouldn’t it have killed me, as well?”



“I never tested the formula on a dragon,” the accountant said.



“Send for Sekyw,” Djer ordered.



“I don’t mean to add to the mystery, but there’s sand on the floor,” Auron said, sniffing at a crevice between thick planks of the wagon bed.



“What’s that?”



“There’s sand on the floor of the wagon. Not much. A pinch or two. But it smells like the riverbank. It wasn’t there before. I know the smell of every crack in this cage by now.”



Dwarves began to gather, sensing something wrong. Sekyw came up, looking as bulky as ever.



“I wish we had weighed him before and after he rode with the money,” Djer muttered to Auron.



“Sir,” Sekyw said, rolling his eyes at the other dwarves, “I’m a dwarf of years of experience. I hold a position of trust with the Company. Am I to understand you think I took a few handfuls of coin? To what gain, at such risk? My pension is worth more. The dragon must have eaten it.”



“Only two have been alone with the money, you and the young skyking. I just wanted to have both of you present while I thought this through,” Djer said.



“Are you sure there is no error in the count?”



“None,” the accountant said.



Sekyw walked over to Auron, pointing with his stick. “Then it must be the dragon, as I was searched when I left the cart—”



Auron snorted.



“Quiet, please. I can’t think when you’re talking,” Djer said. “Shut up or I’ll cram that stick in your mouth. . . . Umta, did you check the stick?”



“Solid orewood,” the accountant dwarf said. “I felt it myself—it was no heavier when he left as when he went in.”



“There’s gold in it,” Auron said. “I can smell it.”



“Umta!” Djer said. “The stick!”



The dwarf called Umta swore and snatched the stick from Sekyw’s hand. He worked first the handle, then the tip, trying to open it.



“This is outrageous. That stick was a present from my master when I was just an apprentice. To my knowledge, it’s nothing but solid orewood.”



Djer went over to Umta and took up the stick. He cracked it across his leg, breaking it in two. Dirt flew in all directions.



“So it was hollow, and weighted with dirt. That proves nothing,” Sekyw said, but his face had grown pale.



Auron sniffed at the stick. “Empty the ground-end, Djer. On something clean.”



Djer poured the end of the stick out on the accountant’s tally sheet. A trickle of sand, golden against the other dirt, poured out.



“Who would weight it with dirt, and a little sand? Where’s the gold, Sekyw?”



Sekyw looked down at the evidence and wheezed. Dwarves watching murmured to each other as they worked it out, or had others explain it to them.



“As you value your life, where’s the gold?”



Sekew tore at his beard. “The stick was magic, it opened only at the right word. I buried the gold. I buried it so the dragon would take the blame. It’s unfair. I’ve sweated for this Company for as long as you’re old, and just because you happen upon a friendly dragon—”