Dragon Strike

They had the usual questions about dying of hunger on the way—he told them that they would just have to sneak a sup from sleeping Firemaids, there should still be some left in the Star Tunnel—and of course, there were the demen themselves.



“Now, you can help yourself to a little of my blood. Just a little. I’m weak enough from feeding demen. You can clean out this cut, while you’re at it.”



Nothing like bat saliva for speeding healing, he’d found. Even Nilrasha thought it was disgusting, but she couldn’t argue the result—the wounds healed thrice as fast with only the faintest of scars.



Thinking he’d done a good day’s work, he told the thralls he would have an extra haunch of roast pork for supper. And perhaps a second or even third helping of that wine his adoptive grandmother used to be so fond of. He had blood to make up.



All the while he met that afternoon with NoSohoth, the smells coming up from the kitchens made it very hard to keep his mind on affairs in the hills. NoSohoth’s droning lulled him, and he had to resort to his old training cave-watch trick of digging sii into saa to stay awake.



Unfortunately, dinner was spoiled by one of his thralls, the female in charge of the cleaning staff. She was a massive creature, as wide as she was tall, almost white hair bound up in a Tyr’s household kerchief.



“Oh, sir. One of my scrubs, she found some strange odds and ends in your wizard’s sleeping chamber. We’re used to his strange devices, but we wondered about this.”



A similarly wide young man, probably one of her family, moved forward with a bundle wrapped in a blanket. He unrolled it before his Tyr.



There was rope, a mallet on a lanyard, spikes, food, waterskins, hooks, spiked shoes with soft fronts for gripping.



“I know a runaway being planned when I sees it,” the old woman said.



“This was in . . . Rayg’s quarters?”



“Aye, sir. All between two boards in his bed under the matting. Clever, but she heard it sliding around when she moved the bed. No one can say my girls don’t do a thorough job cleaning.”



The Copper thanked her and told her to help herself to whatever she might find hanging in the Tyr’s larder.



He didn’t finish the meal with the same appetite as he’d started it.



Later, the Copper invited Rayg out into the gardens, so they might have a private talk under the red light of the flow. Other dragons and drakes and drakka enjoying the gardens and the fading light at the crystal circle in the top made room for him.



The Copper brought Rayg to the banquet pit and showed him the assortment of gear.



“Rayg, these were found in your quarters. Tell me what they mean.”



“It’s not obvious?” Rayg said in his good Drakine.



“False claws, lines—this is climbing gear.”



“You’ve noted how old some of it is,” Rayg said.



“Well.”



Rayg lifted one of the spike-studded shoes. “See the rust. Years old.”



“You were planning an escape.”



“I had my reasons.”



“Numerate them for me. Have I been ungenerous?”



Rayg wasn’t behaving like a thief caught by his owner dragon. They might have been discussing the bulbs in the gardens. “Oh, I’ll take you over the barbarians, of course. You are fair. You’ve been very generous to my family. They’re prosperous and happy. The time I spend with them is wonderful. If another dragon became Tyr, however . . . Must I say it?”



“I intend to be Tyr for a good many years yet.” It didn’t do to mention the relative life spans of humans and dragons.



“It seems a Tyr doesn’t always have a choice. You’re the third Tyr since I’ve been here, I believe.”



“Rayg, you’re a great help to me. Indeed, invaluable. If you were to run away and be killed in the Wind Tunnel, as I’ll hazard this gear is meant to ascend—”



“Oh, no. I won’t run away on you, RuGaard.”



For a thrall to use a dragon’s name, let alone the Tyr—The Copper glanced around, but if anyone was trying to listen to the conversation they were as stealthy as his bats. The banquet area was empty.



“Hmmm. I’ll give orders that you’re allowed to have whatever sort of equipment you need for climbing. I’ll say it’s for your experiments. No sense having your life depend on this rusting old junk.”



“Thank you, my Tyr.”



“Will you tell me something, though? Why do you stay?”



“I like dragons.”



The Copper thought that over. Strange thing for a slave, even a pampered and privileged slave, to say.



“You don’t mind the smell, being underground?”



“Oh, the years have accustomed me to that. You’re not cruel. I lived among barbarians when I was very young. Dragons aren’t cruel to those in their power. They don’t go out of their way to make captives miserable to amuse themselves.”



“You’re never afraid I’ll lose my temper and eat you? I thought that all thralls, free or no, lived with that fear.”



“Not particularly. It would be an easy death.”



“What do you mean?”



“Have you ever seen a really old dwarf?”



“What does that have to do with anything?” the Copper asked, puzzled.



“I am getting to that. They get so they just sit. Can hardly lift a finger anymore, but too stubborn to die. Some get wheeled about in tiny pushcarts, for a time, while they still talk and give instructions. Eventually, when truly ancient, they lapse into silence. They get fed and washed off once a day, from the same contraption, a sort of portable pump you wear on your back. They might as well be a potato plant. Rows of statues in the hall of ancients.” Rayg shuddered. “Just eyes, glaring out of this bird’s nest of hair. I think death’s better.”



“You’re not a dwarf,” the Copper said.



“No one can accuse you of being of philosophical mind,” Rayg said. “I only mean I’m troubled by the frailties of inevitable age.”



“I’ll see to it that a few of your children are around to help as you get older.”



The Copper looked at Rayg. He knew him to be at least a score of years into adulthood, yet he still looked hale and hearty. He wondered if he didn’t have a secret source of dragonblood or something to keep himself so youthful looking.



A pair of young drakes, glaring at each other, approached, but the Copper waved them off.



“More grievances to be settled,” the Copper said, trying to put a briskness in his voice that he didn’t feel. Rayg’s talk of decline depressed him. “It is enough to make one wish for a return of dueling.”



“But you hate duels.”



“Oh, I’m just tired and I didn’t enjoy my wine. Just last night I had my meal interrupted by two dragons—never mind their names; they were sort of a charcoal and a dull bronze. Charcoal sold a herd of cattle, an even score, to Bronze in exchange for three young thralls. By the time Bronze delivered the thralls and picked up the cattle, two of the beasts had sickened and died. Charcoal insisted that Bronze take the carcasses, as they could still be eaten.



“Neither could resolve anything between themselves, so they brought it to me. Bronze wanted to keep the ten kine but give only two slaves, but Charcoal demanded that the original deal for the herd be kept.”



“What did you do?”



“I told Charcoal that if dead cattle were so valuable he should keep them and replace them with live beasts. Bronze claimed that he would be given two more sickly beasts and insisted on the return of one thrall and that anything else would be a cheat. Now both are more angry with me than with each other. United in their disgust at my decision, they had a fine session of tail-bowling after, it seemed.”



“Dwarves had disputation hearings,” Rayg said when he’d finished chuckling. “I saw one once. Part of one—I’m told it went on for much of the day. Each side brought several others to give their version of events.”



The Copper couldn’t dig teeth into it, but something about speaking to Rayg always settled his mind. Or the purge settled his mind and he was simply used to venting his firebladder—figuratively—in Rayg’s presence. It often gave him ideas. Maybe Rayg’s manner of settling disputes could be put into practice here.



“Speaking of disputes, may I ask you for a favor?”



“Of course.”



“Those twins, SiHazathant and Regalia. They’ve been giving dragonblood to the expectant mothers among their thralls, trying to breed extra-strong humans or something. A little dragonblood is a fine thing, but a diet of it exclusively—the babies are born dead, or don’t live long. Which is probably just as well. The mothers are deeply grieved by the . . . the mutations. One killed herself. Would you tell them to stop experimenting?”



Idle fools. Of course, it wasn’t all that different from what he’d done with his bats, but the bats weren’t dangerous to begin with and had been much improved by doses of dragonblood. Humans, on the other hand, were and always would be a threat.