Bazil Broketail (21 page)

“I, my lady, yes, I would,” Lagdalen stammered.

“Good. Then we’ll go and see your parents together. You have your news for them from Lady Flavia, and I need to obtain their consent for your new posting to my office.”

Lagdalen had to shake her head. One moment it was as if her life was over and lost in total failure, and now she was redeemed and offered the best opportunity she could ever have wished for. It was almost too exciting to believe.

The winter was over, a hard one filled with snow and rumor of war away to the south in the land of the Teetol. Now fresh green clad the slopes, and though the streams still thundered with the snow melt, they were diminishing daily while the greater rivers rose downstream.

The little white flower called the snowprince by the colonists had already blossomed and gone, and now bluebells and scarlet amydine cloaked the glades and clearings.

In the woods the deer fed eagerly, replenishing themselves after the lean months of winter; the rabbits had their young, as did the foxes, and the migrating birds were back from their southern sojourns. The thrush’s song was loud in the hemlock-clad valleys, and the too-whit was active in every hedgerow and farmer’s field.

And with the spring came war. Raiders from the cold lands beyond the Oon, small armies of imps and trolls, under the command of fell men clad in the black uniform of Tummuz Orgmeen, came coursing through the forests intent on slaughter and the capture of women.

And to protect the villages of the colony lands came the legions of the Argonath.

In the lands closest to the Oon and the flat wastes of the Gan, the legions went in strength brigades, even full legions on the march—each with five hundred horse and fifty dragons in support.

In the lands further east, where the colonies had been set firmly for fifty years or more, the patrols were made by smaller units, and often these units were under strength and the patrols themselves seen as quiet duty, handed out to units that had seen active service in the winter.

And thus the weary dragons of the 109th Dragon Squadron found themselves in the magnificent country of the Upper Argo, marching past lush pastures and wide forests.

After the long campaign in the winter snows against the Teetol the 109th was reduced to six dragons, six boys and two dragoneers. While replacements were sought they had been assigned to a patrol along the relatively tranquil zone of the Argo Valley between Mts. Ulmo and Red Oak.

Leaving Fort Dalhousie as the snow melted, they had marched east and south along the Razac road as it wound into the hills. As they climbed higher, the bends of the Argo became magnificent meanders carved into the mountains with vineyards perched on their steep slopes.

Now they were resting high above a serpentine bend of the river, not far from the town of Argo Landing. It was a warm sunny day, and from their position on the flank of Mt. Red Oak they looked out across a wide view of the lands across the river. The vast forest of Tunina was flushed with fresh green, and on the east great Mt. Snowgirt bulked up against the sky with rocky Mt. Raptor thrust out in front like a bent claw. On the west Mt. Ulmo raised a great snow-covered dome high above the land.

Around the dragons were the jumbled ruins of an ancient place, a temple from bygone Veronath, now lost in the red oak woods.

Unfortunately this timeless peace was illusionary. Everyone knew that the ugly rumors they’d heard in Wide-field and the lower valley were turning out to be true.

Raiders had been seen in Tunina. Now a party of imps and trolls had crossed the Argo and caused massive panic around Argo Landing. It looked as if the weary 109th was going to be in the thick of fighting before long.

As they had marched into the country of the Upper Argo so the stories had grown and magnified. Now they had been confirmed. Sergeant Duxe had come round only an hour earlier and warned everyone to see to swords and helmets, shields and plate. The dragons sat back and groused, while the dragonboys worked feverishly on equipment.

Two men came around with the water jug and filled their canteens. A single canteen was not enough for hot, thirsty dragons and they went down to a nearby creek, still running with snow melt and drank their fill before plunging in and submerging themselves as far as was possible in three feet of water.

They emerged refreshed but hungry, and it was hours before the cook pots would come out and noodles were boiled.

They returned to the laboring boys in better spirits but complaining about their hunger. However, they complained in a cheerful ritualized way that told the boys the great beasts were basically in a good mood. It was a funny thing, but the prospect of combat always seemed to arouse them, no matter how tired or worn.

Bazil found Relkin at work on Bazil’s small tail sword; he had the blade laid out on his lap while he honed its edge with an angle stone. Behind the boy loomed the ten-foot-high head of some long-shattered statue. The head was upside down, where it had rolled and caught in a gap in the tumbledown wall of the ancient temple. A skeleton tree had grown over the head and put down snakelike roots all around it, but the eyes were still visible, staring out upside down at Mt. Ulmo and the lands to the north from whence had come the enemy that had destroyed the carvers of those eyes and thrust down their temples and their gods.

The dragon shifted and sat down on his haunches. From the way his tail flicked to and fro, and the happy hissing sound coming from the huge chest, Relkin knew Baz was relatively content although hungry.

Relkin finished with the blade of the small sword. It was sharp enough now to drive through anything once Bazil was wielding it on the end of that strange “broken” tail of his.

“The water was cold enough for you?” he said absently.

“Water damn fine cold, turn boy blue in seconds.”

“Hmmm.”

Relkin was examining his crossbow, an elegant little Cunfshon bow made from steel reed and bracken wire. It was light but strong and easy to wind up with the cunning little Cunfshon gears. A deadly weapon at forty yards and easy and quick to reload.

“I need some fletching. I’ll be back in a few.”

“Boy need many arrows since so few ever hit target. You go, get as many as you can carry.”

“Mmmm.”

But instead of seeking out the armorers, Relkin went down the line to the commissary wagon and called in a favor from Wilbry, the cookboy, and obtained a couple of loaves of unleavened bread. He split them in half and Wilbry smeared them thickly with “akh,” the preferred flavoring on foods that were not meat but were intended for dragon maws.

Akh was prepared from onions, garlic, ginger and fermented so whereas; it was palate-numbing to humans in anything but the tiniest of doses, but the wingless dragons of the Argonath ate it with everything.

He sneaked back to the upside-down head and found Bazil examining his long sword Piocar, head bent over it while he hissed some rhyme in wyvern tongue.

Carefully Relkin slipped one loaf down behind a rock and then walked in with the other.

“I thought you might want this—we’ve had a long march today.”

The dragon eyes fastened on him for a second, then the nostrils detected akh and the eyes switched down to the loaf, split and thickly plastered with the gummy brown sauce. Petulance was abandoned in an instant.

“Boy, you damned good sometimes, you know that?”

The loaf vanished in a matter of seconds, however. Relkin resumed the inspection of his arrows while watching Bazil out of the corner of his eye.

The dragon was fidgety. There was akh in the air, nearby, and it was enough to make a leatherback salivate. All at once the dragon brain reached the logical conclusion. Boy Relkin was playing his games again.

The dragon would have to ask, then beg, then promise something in return, before that second loaf, all thick with akh, would be given up.

Bazil sniffed. Unless, that is, he could find it simply by smelling it out. But of course he would have to do it in a dignified way; it would not do for a dragon to go crawling around looking for a loaf of damn bread and akh.

At least not while the boy was watching.

Relkin however seemed completely preoccupied with his bow. Bazil tensed himself to rise silently and move to his left where he sensed that the loaf covered in akh was hidden.

Relkin looked up, smiled blandly at the dragon and looked out over the river. A movement in the air caught his attention.

“Look, Baz!” He pointed.

A pair of hawks swung in lazy circles over the valley. They moved away and were joined by another pair. The four birds circled above the forest of Tunina, Mt. Snowgirt rising above the treeline.

“Snowgirt still has plenty of white on him, right down to the shoulders,” said Relkin.

“It would be cooler up there in those north woods. But we must stay here and wait to fight imps and trolls. Such is a dragon’s life.”

“Not forever, Baz. Someday we retire. Maybe we could go and live in the forest there, in Tunina.”

“Bah, elf forest! Infested with tree people and who knows what creatures; not right for dragons.”

Relkin gazed out at the forest, a huge expanse of green. What might it be like to live there, as a forester, wild and free?

The woods teemed with deer and squirrel, wildfowl at the lakes and watercourses. The winters were harsh perhaps. One would have to get by on nuts and stored tubers, but it would be a free life without the daily constraints of a career in the legions.

Of course the elves did still rule in Tunina, so one would have to get along with the folk of the trees, but Relkin didn’t think that would be too difficult. He had always found the wood folk to be easy to please and quite generous to those they deemed kind to their trees.

And what wonders might one glimpse, when the moon was full and the elf groves were alight with rituals and dances. Then their strange music would waft across the forest and enchant the ears of all who heard it, and the gross eyes of men might gaze upon the glories of elven life.

Bazil’s long neck was strained to his left—somewhere over there was a loaf. The dragon stomach rumbled. One loaf was not enough.

Bazil looked back and the boy caught his eyes. Trapped!

“Boy, you have hungry dragon on your hands.” An open admission was the only way out now.

“I know, I know, and this dragon is a weary dragon, too weary to lift a sword and hack down a few boughs for a dragonboy to sleep on, oh no, not when there’s good hard ground for that boy.”

“I was tired, very tired. You know how far we march yesterday?”

“Oh yes, I do, and I know which dragonboy kept some extra water and carried it half the day just so his dragon could wet his long, dry throat.”

The dragon was contrite. “Alright, I admit it was wrong. In future I will always cut boughs for dragonboy to lie on, terrible to think of dragonboy resting his precious bones on cold, hard ground.”

“Thank you, Bazil. Uh, there’s a loaf with akh on it just over behind that broken pillar to your left.”

The loaf was seized in moments and chewed enthusiastically. Damn dragonboys—they always knew how to get to one!

A crunch on the gravel behind them turned Relkin’s head. Kepabar appeared out of the brush with his characteristic heavy tread while walking upright. Old Kep was the heaviest dragon in the unit now, a full “brass-hide” with the armor plates of horn and bone that were typical of his breed. On the march, unlike the others, he frequently went down on all fours.

Behind him came Tomas, his dragonboy, a blue-eyed boy from the hardscrabble hills of Seant, across the long sound from Marneri.

Between old Kep and Bazil Broketail had grown up a dragon bond of friendship. They had fought side by side in the winter battles, and were now teamed with the freemartin Nesessitas for the left side of the squadron’s formation.

They greeted each other with heavy slaps of the fore-paws.

“I’m getting hungry enough to draw flame,” grumbled Kepabar.

“Long day, walking and walking and no food for dragons,” responded Bazil.

Well, almost. Bazil avoided looking at Relkin. Fortunately Kep had a dullard’s nose and could not detect the faint odor of akh still in the air.

“Word is we’re to move out again,” said Tomas.

Relkin groaned—his legs ached from the five leagues they’d already covered that day. Tomas was agitated; he was always nervous before a fight.

“Are we going to fight today—that’s what I’d like to know,” said Tomas. “I hate to eat before a fight, it always makes me sick. But I’m really hungry now, and if we ain’t going to fight then I need to eat something or my guts’ll be rumbling all night.”

Relkin had never suffered from this particular problem, but he tried to be sympathetic.

“Sergeant Duxe said to be ready. I think we’ll fight.”

“You do? That’s depressing news, everyone’s so tired.”

Relkin shrugged. It had been a long day and he would have liked a good meal and a ten-hour stretch in his blanket, but if they had to fight then fight they would.

Relkin had seen a lot of fighting through the winter. There was a thread of steel through him now that had not been there before the campaign in the Teetol country.

“Well, Tomas, I guess it’s just whatever-will-be, you know?” Whatever-will-be, the patron saint of the ordinary soldier. Tomas grunted unhappily, then pointed to the huge head.

“Who was that, do you think?”

“I don’t know, but it looks very old.”

“Ancients knew how to build,” commented Bazil gruffly.

Kepabar stretched his limbs, one at a time, working the kinks of each muscle group in turn.

“Your feet hurt, Broketail?”

“Of course they hurt. We walk twenty days now. But at least we don’t walk in snow. Do you think we’re going to fight?”

“I don’t know. I wish we could get some meat for supper, though. It’s been noodles and dumplings for days now.”

“If we fight there’ll be troll to eat,” said Bazil.

“Disgusting stuff, only in the last resort.”

Bazil shrugged. “If you’re going to be that finicky I don’t know what we can do for you. Troll not that bad— you got to make it tender. Beat it with a flat sword, then grill it and have it with akh and wild onions.”