Dragon Champion

“I understand. Stars above, more than that, I approve, my new-horn young gray. I’ve some messages that need to go to Gettel at Juutfod’s dragon tower. Then I wish you to go on to Thunderarm’s hold at Maganar. There are some men there who may welcome a change in leadership. After you’ve delivered that message and taken replies, you may return here for a time. With luck, I’ll have to send you south with more messages, and you’ll be spared some of the winter.”



“I’ll need to look at a map to find these places. I’ve never been to either.”



“Come to the map room. Or rather, have your head come to the map room—the stairs are too small for you—and I’ll show you.”



He returned to his lodge, and AuRon waited until he opened the shutters on one of the upper rooms. By rearing up on his hind legs, he could just get his head inside so he could turn it and look at the walls. There was a map of the Isle of Ice filling one wall, attached to it a smaller map showing the archipelago around it. A huge table of sketch-maps and notes stood in the center of the room, and on the other long wall a case. The Wyrmmaster unlocked the case and opened it to show a map of the lands around the Inland Ocean. Rib-boned pins stuck out of it in various places, like a hedgehog trailing bracken.



“What do the pins say?” AuRon asked.



“You’re quicker than some of my captains, NooShoahk,” Wyrmmaster Wrimere said. “The pins let me know who and where my friends and enemies are. With your help, this map will be kept more up to date. Much of the information on it is months old, if not a year. I’d have more courier dragons, but we’ve had losses to replace. I sent out too many untrained dragons at first, and they reacted unpredictably in battle. Now only a few dragons are trusted to fight without men to bridle their natural fury. White silk means members of the Circle of Men. Red silk shows where my dragons are based. Blue silk are blighters who have allied themselves to the cause—they’ll be the rude labor that builds our new world—green is for the elves, and gold the dwarves. This summer I’ve pulled out a gold pin and two green ones. A good year.”



AuRon looked at the headwaters of the Falnges. Naf’s land was marked with a black pin. There were only a few scattered on the map, most of the others were clustered in the old Hypatian Empire.



“What does black mean, your Supremacy?” AuRon asked.



“Those are the saddest of all. Those lands are ruled by men, but they’ve succumbed to the influences of elvish plots or dwarvish gold, and as such must be treated as the failed lines. Human hygiene demands their extermination.”



“Starlight returns! Starlight returns!”



There was excitement in the saddling cave. AuRon looked up from the bandolier Varl was fixing about his neck to see a silver dragon gliding into the cave. It was a rather stunted dragon, even AuRon with his unusually thin body probably outweighed him, but it flew gracefully.



“He’s our ranking dragon, NooShoahk,” Varl said. “He was the fastest until your trials. The Wyrmmaster calls him a dragon for the others to imitate, and Starlight loves the Wyrmmaster more than life. He’s one of the older dragons of the new generation.”



“Older! Why it’s smaller than me.”



“They say he was ill when he was young. But don’t be fooled—he’s killed dragons larger than you in the trials.”



“How?”



“He’s a venomer.”



“A what?”



“You’ve never heard of a venomous dragon?”



“No.”



“He secretes poison in his bite. A few drops will send a horse into a seizure that’ll snap its neck,” Varl said, and then lowered his voice. “The Dragonguard carry special daggers. They’ve got a hollow core; you stab someone good and hard and then wrench the blade. It breaks a vial and gets the poison in. He’s milked for it now and again. I’m told a lot of the riders carry it, as well, in case their beast bolts.”



“Why tell me?” AuRon asked, watching the silver cast an imperious eye on the dragons bobbing their heads in welcome.



“The first dragon I ever trained was a fine blue. I even named him; Icelake he was called. Strong, fast, smart. We’d follow the terms out to the lesser isles and fish, no wood to be found but he’d use his fire and we’d have dragon-fried cod. He outflew Starlight there in his trials, got put into the breeding stock. A few days later, we found him dead. Starlight doesn’t like being bested. Someone’s bound to tell him you could fly circles around him. I don’t want to find you all stiff and broken like I did Icelake.”



AuRon stalked past the other dragons to the cave mouth. Starlight raised his head high, and instead of lowering his, AuRon brought his up to the cavern roof, extending his fans. Starlight hissed and thrashed its tail; dragon handlers came running, alarmed.



“Who do you think you are, gray?” Starlight barked.



“I know who, and what, I am. Do you?” AuRon asked.



Without waiting for a reply AuRon left the cave and flew southeast, four brass cylinders around his neck. Three were to go to the Wyrmmaster’s servant at Juutfod for further dispersal, and the last he was to take into the mountains and Maganar.



As soon as the island had disappeared into the misty horizon behind him, he’d been tempted to turn away and just make his way to Dairuss. Being free of the Wyrmmaster’s ill-ordered world, the baleful gaze of Eliam and his Dragonguard, the regimented existence where even mating was a function of time and not choice, made him value the open sky and free air. He had no wish to give it up again and go back to a place where he might be killed for disobedience, or castrated because another dragon was stronger than he. The prospect of life with one’s ears threaded for reins or chin and wings pierced for guidelines was not something he wished to chance.



Only one thing called him back, and that was the misery of the female dragons. The males filled him with loathing, leavened only with a little pity, but the plight of the unhappy greens was overtaking even his old desire for vengeance for Djer. He thought of the callused spots on Natasatch’s face where her muzzle had chafed, and the chain that prevented her from ever getting out into the sky and sun.



Juutfod was easy to find; he made landfall by midnight. It rested on a long spur of land, serrated to the south by sandy inlets, projecting out into the ocean and falling into a series of islands. It was the home of the Varvar, the masters of the dragon ships that wandered so much of the eastern coast of the Inland Ocean.



High above the city, among the steep-sided mountains of this part of the coast, stood the dragon tower. It was part of the Wyrmmaster’s vision to have many of these in the realms of man, where dragon-born communication lines would meet, but so far only this first had been built as a model of what was to come. It was imposing, perhaps too much of an engineering feat for other barbarian tribes. It had a wide top, and a hollow center lined with alcoves where dragons could rest in safety, with rooms and storehouses for man and dragon beneath. A flame was kept burning at all hours atop the tower, a flame magnified by a polished bowl of silver turned around and around by a windmill-driven pivot.



AuRon landed and was inspecting the beacon when a Dragonguard came forward from his watch-shelter.



“What, no rider?” the man asked. “Was there an accident?”



AuRon cat-stretched his back. “I carry no rider so that I can fly faster. I bear three messages for this tower. Wake your master so I may put them in his hand.”



“Her hand. Go below, pick a berth. We’ve no dragons staying at the moment. We’ll have food swung up, and the raincatchers are full.”



“I’ll only stay a night. This last message needs to be taken inland.”



AuRon climbed down to an alcove. The hollow center of the massive tower was lined with ledges and bays, and a set of ropes going to the bottom hung from a steel arm at the top. Each bay had a narrow window and a pelt that could be swung to curtain it with the flick of a snout. AuRon curled up in an alcove near the top, and watched reflections from the signal beacon play across the stones on the inner walls of the tower.



The blocks above creaked, and AuRon looked over the edge of his perch to see a platform being raised. One set of lines did the lifting, and another maneuvered the platform so it could be brought to any of the shelves. A human rode it.



“Up. Up,” she called. “A bit to the northside. No! Northside! Better. Up. Up . . .”



The platform arrived at AuRon’s berth, and a human female stepped off. She was tall, like the people of this part of the coast, with reddish hair that reminded him of Hischhein pulled away from her face and into a thick braid. She wore a leather tool-vest and loose peasant-pants tucked into soft boots.



“Welcome, skyking,” she said, looping chains over a pair of iron hooks so the platform joined the bay. “I’m Gettel, his Supremacy’s factotum in Juutfod, and your host. We’ve got pork in cask, and some fresh mutton for you.”



“My name is NooShoahk. I’ll have a little of both, but only a little. I need to be on wing again tomorrow.”



“NooShoahk . . . hmmm . . . That’s a dragon name, gray.”