Dragon Champion

“Bear. Alone,” Auron thought to her.



“Dragons can’t eat bears.”



“Not dragons our size. You should see this thing. If we climbed a tree to get away, it would just push it down.”



“It doesn’t know we’re little, though. Do we smell like little dragons or big dragons?”



“How should I know?”



“We’re going to find out, brother.” Auron heard a faint sound from the other side of the tree, like a spill of rain.



The bear’s head turned at the sound, wizened eyes looking directly at their tree.



“That’s done it—he knows where we are,” Auron thought. “What a time to panic.”



“I didn’t panic.”



Auron’s sharp eyes saw the bear’s nostrils twitch. It stood up on its hind legs and sniffed. It came to the ground, turned, and ran. Auron watched it head for thick timber in its odd, lolloping run.



Wistala craned her long neck around the tree and watched it go. “We smell like big dragons,” she said.



Auron rubbed his snout against his sister’s. “Do you think I’ll have my own song to sing?”



Wistala still searched the tree line for signs of the bear. “How’s that?”



“Will I ever be as great a dragon as Father?”



She blinked as she thought. “You’re smart and careful.”



“But will a dragonelle want me? My skin doesn’t shine, I’m thin—”



“Remember what Mother said. It’s a gift in a way—”



“Don’t remind me of Mother. And Mother’s not a dragonelle. Who would mate with me? You’re lucky.”



“Lucky?” she cocked her head, startling a red-winged bird into flight from the branch above.



“You’re normal.”



“Drakka don’t have it any easier. Harder, in some ways. Mother told us there are only a few males left. They die in wars, in the nest, or in challenges over territory. Stupid fights.”



Auron didn’t remember Mother saying any such thing, but she had spent more time with his sisters. “So even a gray—?”



His sister leaned against him, and he felt the pleasant prickle of her scales. “Many dragonelles go mateless their whole lives. Don’t be foolish about your fights, you know—”



“Your wrath shouldn’t win,” Auron supplied.



“Exactly. And you’re quick. You swing your neck and your tail so fast sometimes. It’s quite impressive. Even to a sister who knows all your faults. You’ll have a mate and a clutch to be proud of one day, I’m sure, and raise a sii of clutch champions like yourself.”



Auron felt his skin go warm at the praise.



“Oh, quit prruming,” Wistala said. “First we’ve got to live until our wings emerge. That’s years off, and we still have to find Father.”



A mountain is the least pleasant place to be in a thunderstorm. They had just reached the ridge as twilight began. From its heights, they saw storm clouds sweeping up from the horizon in a rolling line, like ranks of an advancing army from one of Father’s mind-pictures.



Auron didn’t know much about weather, but the air had an ominous tang to it, and there was a rumbling in the distance, as if mountains were falling apart far away. Something about the air and the sound made him want to get underground. But he had his look at the landscape. Details to the west were hazy, but far to the south, Auron could see a white-watered river, and more mountains, blue lumps on the far side of the river.



“I think we should get off this ridge,” he said. Another wooded valley stood below them.



Wistala agreed, but they did not make it back into the trees before a battle between Air and Water broke out above their heads. Air pushed up from the west, moaning and shrieking out her anger, and Water tried to stop her by hurling sheets of rain. They pitted Lighting and Thunder against each other, lighting the valley with flashes.



The two hatchlings couldn’t get under anything, but they did wedge themselves between a pair of boulders to keep out of the worst of the wind. They pulled down their water-lids over their eyes, which blurred their vision.



“It sounds like the end of the world,” Wistala said, shivering against him.



“The Upper World needs the rain. It keeps everything refreshed,” he said, tucking her head against his flank.



“I hate the Upper World! It’s all noise and danger. Everything can see me from far away, and there’s nowhere dark to hide.”



Auron stuck out his tongue. He curved it so the forks made a channel for the rainfall to run down. “But taste this water, Wistala.”



She glared at him, her eyes clouded by the water-lids. “I’m not thirsty.”



“Taste it anyway.”



The tip of her tongue flicked out. “There. Happy now? What’s—?” She paused, and stuck out her tongue a second time, then a third. “Threat and wet, this is rather good.”



“Better than cave water.”



They startled at every flash of lightning, and their necks bobbed down at each chorus of thunder, but they stood firm with tongues out, defying the storm, enjoying the trickle of rainwater.



The worst of Air and Water’s fight passed on over their heads, though the storm still blew as if all the wind in the world were trying to rush through the river gap. Real night fell, but less cold than those they had passed the previous two. Rather than making them wet and uncomfortable, the rain improved Wistala’s mood, for it flushed the accumulated dirt away from under her scales. She rolled and arched in the softer, after-storm rain, prruming. Auron, with no twigs or pebbles rubbing under his scales to trouble him, merely felt clean and refreshed.



They awoke the next morning with just enough of an appetite to make a hunt feel like a pleasant necessity. After finding another group of goats in the heights, they reversed their method with the deer. This time Wistala drove the goats toward Auron, who hugged the side of a rock with an eye cocked to the game and his body tinted a perfect match for the slate-colored stone. A goat caught his scent too late; Auron’s dragon dash brought it down, though Auron took a kick in his voicebox for the trouble. It turned out to be a stringy old billy, but the satisfaction that their hunting system worked so well flavored the tough meat with the zest of accomplishment.



It would have been an easier dinner yet, had they pounced on the horses corralled under the trees.



Thirty-seven horses sharing a small space—Auron counted them using his fingers singly and toes to keep score of groups of eight fingers—made an easy scent trail to follow. What had Father told and shown him about horses? Men armored them and rode them into battle. Elves used them to move from one place to another quickly, but fought on their feet. Dwarves harnessed them to pull wagons or carry packs, blighters ate them, and dragons frightened them. It took an exceptionally good rider to stay saddled when facing a dragon.



After counting the horses, he backed away as slow as a winter cave slug. He turned to find Wistala.



“What is it?” she asked, sensing danger in his caution.



“Horses. Not wild—someone has caught them between downed trees.”



“And just left them? We’ll have an easy meal, then.”



“I don’t care for the look of it. All those horses and no one around.”



She sniffed the air. “Are you sure of that, Auron? I smell a cold fire.”



“I did, too, but I saw no hominids.”



“That doesn’t mean they weren’t there. Sneak and peek, elves hide so well, they look like tree limbs, until they put an arrow in your eye.”



“Want to take a look yourself?” Auron asked.



“No, I’ll keep my eyes, thank you. Let’s circle round.”



“Wistala, this morning when the sun rose, we were in the shadow of the mountain we came out of. The west tunnel must be here somewhere.”



“High, do you think? So that only a dragon could fly in or out?”



“I wonder. Remember the bats? It would have to be near where they could go out and hunt at night. The bats used the west tunnel, I’m sure of that.”



“Mother said the blighters used to live in the cave. Maybe they had a lower entrance the bats used.”



“It won’t hurt to go up the mountain a little. To some of the higher meadows. I don’t want to be in these trees if there are elves hunting.”



His sister nodded, and they raised their noses in the air until they were sure of the direction of the wind. It was blowing out of the northwest. They couldn’t travel right into it to let the air carry a warning; the best they could do was cut across it. They crept along low, keeping their bellies to the ground, slithering through underbrush when they could.



They gained a high meadow. The warm western sun and spring air had reduced the snow to clumps of ice beneath the beds of pine needles or in the shade of rocks. Wistala’s green scales and his chameleon-like coloring made Auron confident of crossing the meadows safely. He hoped to get to a prominence, a splinter of the mountain that had fallen away and pointed like a claw at the setting sun