Dragon Fate

Page 47

“You’re the one they call the philosopher-king?”
“Thunderwing philosopher-king. They make it rhyme, like a hatchling taunt.”
“You’re saying pull them down, like rats clinging to a rope after a shipwreck? Humans don’t last long in cool water, let alone cold, and the coastal water here is quite cool.”
“No, I mean we load them like bales of wool into coasters and barges and such. Haul them down on rafts on our backs if we have to.”
DharSii froze for a moment. “You’re—you may have something. But their craft are mostly wrecked.”
“All the gear and stuff for those wrecked ships, the rudders and masts and lines—they’re to make the boat sail, correct.”
“Those that aren’t rowed or pulled, yes.”
DharSii’s warnings fell on deaf ears, until refugees appeared from the south.
The demen were taking slaves and carrying off anything that could be pried up and dragged out. They made a clean sweep of Quarryness, leaving behind only bodies of those who fought.
“We will go south, but not as conquerors and pillagers. We will come as friends, so that north and south face this new threat together.”
“I suspect they’re moving on Hypatia, too.”
“They have to. The demen breed like rodents if there’s adequate food. It’s an elegant system: When food is plentiful, demen halls teem with life. When it runs out, they eat each other until their numbers match the current food supply. Most other creatures have their population adjusted by predators or disease. Demen self-regulate.”
The boatwrights and shipfitters went to work with a will. The challenge and uniqueness of the task appealed. Even Seeg’s dwarfs joined in. At first the locals were suspicious and hostile, refusing to share a tool or tell them where they could find more cordage. But once they saw how neatly their clinker hulls overlapped and the tight staving, they were gradually won over to the dwarfs’ two-prow design.
“It’s so in the underground rivers we can go either direction if there’s no room to turn,” Seeg explained. The men of Juutfod followed the Hypatian tradition of putting a woman on the prow—their unsleeping eyes maintained a steady vigil ahead for ice and shoal, protecting the men with maternal instinct—but the dwarfs carved dragon heads, or wings, or a griff-and-tail design that looked like an elaborate battle-axe, and soon there were so many requests for the art that the dwarfs were working days on the clinker hulls and nights on the figureheads.
The grounded dragons were more used to swimming than the others, so they made the best “drak-kaar” pullers, as the barbarians called the queer hybrid craft.
DharSii learned another advantage to the craft when he observed some sea trials with strong-swimming volunteers filling the hulls. With no mast and sail, the ships vanished into the Inland Ocean mists where warm southern water met cool northern air, and disappeared over the horizon more quickly than a regular sailing vessel would. They could still hug the coast for safety and travel unnoticed; without the aid of powerful—and rare—optics the whole fleet could be mistaken as whales at a distance. To aid in this they rigged weathered and gray canvas covers on the hulls, which would both keep out the rain and disguise the outline.
Among the tower’s stores were old helmets from the Wyrmaster’s days. His warriors had fixed dragonhorns on their heads, or high ridges in imitation of a male dragon’s crest or a female dragon’s fringe. The barbarians who could speak Parl well enough to take orders were given those helms to wear, so dragons could instantly recognize a man who could understand instruction. The others made fun of the outlandish headgear at first, but were soon scrounging for dragonhorn of their own.
“Learn some Parl, then, and you’ll get helmets, too,” DharSii advised his translators to tell them. “Even if I have to saw it off my own crest.”
“There’s one last thing you can do, Gettel,” DharSii said. “Send out your weather-dragons. Because of the seaworthiness of our craft—or rather the lack of it—we’ll have to do the last horizon or two in darkness, coming from the north. I’d rather do it in daylight so we might circle around the city and come with rain from the south. That way we could strike up the Falnges.”
“Will do, DharSii.”
“Don’t let the aerial dragons get carried away and come in ahead of is. Just before or once we’re engaged would do nicely.”
“Most of them have experience in properly joining in on an attack going back to the Wyrmaster’s days,” Gettle said, eyes bright and young with the prospect of action. “Don’t you worry, Stripes, we’ll see to it. You know, Stripes, I’m an old woman, been around dragons all my life. I’ve never ridden one into battle. Too late now, I suppose.”
“I am relieved to hear that you concluded that. It’s cold, often wet, always dangerous. Illness would probably make you unfit for riding after a day in the air. And that’s before a single blow is struck in battle.”
“I can’t heft anything much more than my soup spoon. Even what’s left of my teeth wouldn’t hurt a demen.”
“Best you stay here. Isn’t there a rumor that Varangia had a clutch? She’ll need someone keeping an eye on her food and metal supplies.”
“Ahh, she can take care of her own, easy enough. You say I’d probably drop dead like a frozen sparrow before we even reached Hypat?”
“That would be where I’d bet my foreclaw,” DharSii said.
“You talked me into it, DharSii. Always hated the idea of having my body rolling around in the surf till the crabs find it. Death in battle and a pyre lit by dragonflame—that’s the way for—”
“I was trying to discourage you, Gettel. You’ll die. Pointlessly. You have years left here.”
“You’ll read the will and all that. See that it’s carried out according to direction. It’s in that legalistic high-church tongue the Hypatians use. I only get one word in six, but the local altar-circlers vouch for the wheretofores and puffery. You’ll find I’ve been generous to my dragons.”
Wistala was on her third night flight between the remainder of the Hypat garrison and the elves.
The elves had not struck yet. They’d engaged with the monstrous demen, at a distance, with bow and spear-thrower.
The Hypatians held but a sliver of their former city, hugging the coastal cliffs and the riverbank. The Directory was filled with starving refugees improvising water-catchers and ground mist condensers. The rest of the city belonged to demen.
What was left of the resistance was concentrated at NoSohoth’s vast new palace, where his private dwarfish guard still held the high walls and javelin-launcher minarets, the old walled city by the docks, and, of course, the Directory. With the fight against the Ironriders still within living memory, the Directory had established a fine outer wall with metal-sheathed gates.
Wistala had seen their whips flicker as they drove captives to the sinks that had opened beneath home and street.
So many! So many! When three were killed, thirty took their place. Against such force of numbers, even dragons were helpless.
The dragon-ships, filled to capacity with the barbarians, crept south.
To DharSii, by all rights half their company should be sunk and dead. They’d seen a burst of heavy weather coming and tried to make landfall, but the storm caught them just ahead of the surf.
Which was a tricky enough barrier. They lost one back-bourn boat, and the barbarians—rather cheerfully, to Wistala’s idea of dutch—switched over to another dragon’s overcrowded back. Someone might have asked first; they weren’t oxen with longer tails, after all. Still, they found room for a few more in the manner of rabbits in a winter den.
At DharSii’s signal, the groundeds heaved themselves up and out of the water along a pleasant stretch of Hypatian riverbank park. Shadowcatch shook seaweed from his limbs. The barbarians clinging to his back returned their round shields to their arms and slipped off the cargo netting tied across his back from tail-vet to neck. Someone had cut himself on sharp dragon-scale sliding off his back. Shadowcatch risked his throat to arrows and raised his head high to bellow orders to his dragons.
The dome of the Directory and NoSohoth’s palace could just be seen over the hill in the distance. Hypat was unimaginably vast—unimaginable, that is, until you tried to cross its twisty streets and muddy lanes without being assassinated.
DharSii led them up to a wide, column-flanked avenue leading to the Directory. Ignoring javelins and arrows fired from rooftop and window, the mass of dragons and barbarians followed. Sensibly, the human warriors sheltered behind the dragon’s scale-wrapped bulk.
DharSii wanted room to maneuver. The demen were born tunnel-fighters, experts at lunging out of an alley or doorway and then retreating. The dragons had their flame, and could lay many enemies low with a long sweep of the tail or a plunge-and-roll. The barbarians liked to see their enemy at a distance, too. They would begin to sing and chant and shove each other as they jostled to be at the forefront of the battle. Then, when every face was red and the eyes wide and fanatic, they charged forward as a mass.