Dragonback 04 Dragon and Herdsman (6 page)

But apparently they could. The Erassvas seemed quite comfortable
as they moved back and forth among the trees, picking berries and
either eating them right there or else putting them into one of the
massive pockets in the heavy greenish-brown robes they wore wrapped
kimono-style around their bulk.

Their arms were as strong as their legs, too. Jack watched as an
adult weighing at least three hundred pounds hauled himself up on one
of the branches, chin-up style, to check out a vine running along the
top.

One of the few aliens who had bothered to watch the
Essenay
's
landing looked over again as the visitors approached. He looked them up
and down, then detached himself from the group and waddled over to meet
them. "A noon sun and satisfied belly to you," he greeted them in
heavily accented English. His smile was wide, seeming to split his face
in half, and his eyes were half-closed and rather dreamy looking. "I am
Hren."

"A noon sun and satisfied belly to you, as well," Alison said,
bowing her head toward him. "I'm Alison. This is Jack."

"Fine names for ones so young/' Hren said approvingly. "Have you
come to join in our midday song?"

Jack glanced at the sun, which wasn't even close to being
overhead. The Erassvas apparently scheduled their rest breaks early.
"I'm afraid not," Alison said. "I've come to meet up with two others of
our people."

"None such has been seen here for many songs," Hren said, some of
the dreaminess going out of his eyes as he frowned thoughtfully at her.
"Are you sure you do have the right place?"

"I'm sure," Alison said. "But they may have been delayed. Would
you mind if I waited here for them?"

"Your company would be as sweet as a
bishti
berry," Hren
said. "And since you are here, will you not please join us in our
midday song?"

He looked at Jack. "You, especially, would be most heartily
welcome."

Jack frowned, throwing a sideways look at Alison. "Me?"

"Yes," Hren said, smiling knowingly. "Because of—" He broke off,
waving a hand at Jack's chest. "But come," he went on, looking at
Alison. "You all are welcome."

"We
all
?" Alison asked. "Don't you mean we
both
?"

A slight frown creased Hren's face. "Perhaps I use the wrong
word," he said. Puckering his lips, gazing out into space as if in deep
thought, he reached a wide hand to the front of his robe. For a moment
he flapped it in and out as he fanned air onto his torso. Then he let
go, leaving it partway open at the neck.

And Jack froze. Starting from the big Erassva's right collarbone
and curving around over his shoulder to his back was a wide
green-and-brown tattoo. An image of a large, serpentine creature.

Only it wasn't just any serpentine creature. And it wasn't a
tattoo.

It was a K'da.

'Thank you for the offer—" Alison was saying.

"Yes," Jack cut her off. "We would be honored to attend your song."

Hren led the way toward the forest, Jack following behind him with
Alison bringing up the rear. She hadn't said a word about Jack's abrupt
decision, and he didn't have a clue as to what she thought of it. But
at the moment, he didn't really care.

There couldn't be K'da here. There
couldn't
. Draycos had
told him the refugee fleet was coming from an entirely different arm of
the galaxy. It had taken the advance team nearly two years of
hyperspace flight to get here.

But if that wasn't a K'da wrapped around Hren's body, it was a
terrific imitation.

Had Draycos spotted the tattoo? Jack didn't dare ask, not with
Alison right behind him. But he could feel the dragon shifting
restlessly, and a couple of times he twitched as sharp claws brushed
against his skin. Either Draycos had indeed seen the K'da or else he
was a lot more agitated by Jack's decision to join the Erassvas' midday
song than even Alison was.

Or maybe he had smelled the other K'da. Did K'da give off an aroma
when they were in their two-dimensional form? Somehow, the subject had
never come up.

"The Phookas will be gathering in the forest for the morning
celebration," Hren said as they reached the other Erassvas.

"Phookas?" Jack asked.

"Our friends," Hren said. He gave Jack another knowing smile, like
a child with a secret. "They usually hide when there are strangers
near. But you are different. You they won't mind."

He gestured toward a wide path that had been worn in the grass
between the trees. "Please. Join them."

"Thank you "Jack said, bowing the way Alison had earlier.

Hren smiled again and headed back to the outer edge of the forest
to rejoin his fellow berry pickers. Squaring his shoulders, Jack
started toward the path.

And stopped short as Alison grabbed his sleeve. "Wait a second,"
she said in a low voice. "Are you forgetting what I said about there
being big, nasty predators in there?"

"You said the legends put them in the deep parts of the forest,"
Jack reminded her.

"Legends are sometimes a little off in their geography," she
countered. "You want to rely on that tangler of yours to deal with
them?"

Jack thought about the K'da spread across his back. "We'll be
okay," he said. "Trust me."

She snorted. "I'd love to." Bending down, she popped open one of
her travel bags. "Fortunately, that won't be necessary."

And as Jack gaped in astonishment, she pulled a small Corvine 4mm
pistol from the bag. "What the—?"

"What the what?" she asked as she pulled out a holster and spare
ammo clip and fastened them to her belt. "I like to bunker my bets a
little." She checked the Corvine's clip and safety then settled the
weapon into her right hand and picked up the bag with her left. "You
can take the other bag."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Oh,
may
I?"

"Don't be snide," she said, starting toward the path. "And stay
close."

The path snaked its way through several rows of trees and bushes.
The bushes in particular showed how the trail had been formed, their
branches bent and broken on both sides by the stream of wide-bodied
aliens who had pushed their way through during the past few days or
weeks. Passing between two final bushes, Jack and Alison stepped into a
large clearing.

And Alison came to a sharp halt. "Mother-of-pearl," she breathed.

Jack nodded in silent agreement. All across the clearing, digging
methodically into fallen trees or poking among the bushes or just
wandering around in the sun, were K'da.

K'da of all sorts, too. Draycos had mentioned that his people came
in many different color combinations. But Jack, with only the one
example, had naturally come to think of them as gold-scaled dragons.

This group covered pretty much the whole rainbow. There were K'da
with dark red scales, dark green ones, blue ones, and another of the
brown-and-green ones like Hren was carrying. One of them, particularly
striking to Jack's way of thinking, was all gray with shining silver
eyes.

"Jack, they're
dragons
," Alison whispered. "They're real,
live
dragons
."

Jack nodded. "Sure looks that way."

"But this can't be," she protested. "How could they—I mean, how
come no one's ever seen them before?"

Maybe because they're usually wrapped around Erassvas bodies
?
"Why would they?" he said instead. "You said the only people who come
here are miners and traders."

"None of whom would bother with the forests," she conceded
reluctantly.

"
And
Hren said they usually hide from strangers," Jack
reminded her.

"Right," she agreed, her voice going suddenly thoughtful. "So how
come we're different?"

Because Hren's figured out I've got one wrapped around my body,
too
? "No idea," he lied.

He felt her eyes on him. "If you say so."

"I say so." Jack took a deep breath. This might be risky, but he
needed to make sure this wasn't some kind of weird look-alike species.
"Stay here. I'm going to get a closer look."

"Oh no, you don't," Alison insisted, bringing her gun up. "They've
got teeth and they've got claws, and I'm betting they're every bit as
fast as they look."

"They also seem very well fed," Jack pointed out. "Most predators
don't kill when they're not hungry."

"Jack—"

"Just stay here and keep an eye on them, okay?" Jack cut her off.
Without waiting for more argument, he strode off toward the dragons.

He was halfway there when it belatedly occurred to him that even
if they
were
K'da, they might not be civilized. "Draycos?" he
muttered, slowing down his pace a little. "What do you think? Are they
all right?"

There was no answer. "Draycos?" he repeated. "Come on, buddy, wake
up."

"Look at them Jack," Draycos murmured darkly.

Jack glanced down into his shirt. "What?"

"I said look at them," Draycos said, his voice going even darker.
"Lying around, not watching for danger or threat, digging grubs—
grubs
—out
of dead wood."

A chill ran up Jacks back. He studied the multicolored dragons as
they wandered around, trying to see in them the powerful, clever,
deadly poet-warrior that was Draycos. "But they
are
K'da,
aren't they?"

"No," Draycos said bitterly. "Not K'da. Not anymore.

"They are
animals
."

Over the next half hour the Erassvas gradually filtered into the
clearing, lowering themselves in wide heaps onto the grass around the
edges. Once settled, they began pulling out the berries they'd been
stashing away in their pockets.

And as they ate, the group of K'da did a little dance. A nice,
simple, pathetic little dance.

"Maybe they're not real K'da," Jack suggested hopefully as he sat
against a tree a short distance away from the Erassvas. "You said
yourself they don't smell quite right."

"No, they are K'da," Draycos told him. His earlier anger and
bitterness had passed, leaving an even more disturbing emptiness
behind. "The change in odor is most likely a result of their diet. A
diet of
grubs
."

Jack winced. There was something about that part in particular
that seemed to really bother his partner. Was it because these K'da
were no longer true hunters? "Well, at least we now know where you came
from," Jack said. "The race of slavers who kidnapped your people all
those years ago must have missed a few."

Draycos snorted, a breath of hot air brushing across Jack's chest.
"If this was our original home, then our storytellers are liars," he
said flatly. "These Erassvas are hardly the proud and noble Dhghem
spoken of in so many songs. They are primitives. And they are
primitives by choice."

Jack looked over at the robed mounds of flesh munching placidly
away at their handfuls of berries. Draycos was right, of course. The
Erassvas had clearly had enough contact with the rest of the Orion Arm
to learn English, and yet didn't have a single bit of the galactic
community's technology. "Some people like their lives just the way they
are," he offered.

"And they have no ambition?" Draycos bit out. "No self-pride? No
desire for a better life for themselves and their offspring?" His
tongue flicked out, tickling briefly against Jack's skin. "What happens
here when there is rain or snow? What happens when there is disease or
predator attack?"

Jack suppressed a sigh. There were counterarguments for each of
those, of course. Some people didn't mind getting wet, while others
didn't have much trouble with disease or predators.

But then, this wasn't really about the Erassvas. "Okay, so the
K'da here aren't as sophisticated as you are," he said as soothingly as
he could. "That doesn't mean anything. There are backwoods cultures all
over the Orion Arm that are still composed of intelligent, rational
beings."

Draycos didn't answer. "Draycos?" Jack prompted. "Come on, buddy.
It's not that bad."

Still no answer. With a sigh, Jack gave up.

A motion to his left caught his eye, and he looked up as Alison
came out of the trees into the clearing. "Enjoying the show?" she
asked, sitting down beside him.

"Actually, dance never really did much for me," he said. "How's
your head count going?"

"Finished, I think," she said. "Including children, there seem to
be about two hundred Erassvas in this particular troop. About half of
them are working the vines on the far side of those bushes."

"They don't like the dancing?"

She shrugged. "Maybe the Phookas will do a second show. Speaking
of which, I count fifty of them, including the six who are across with
the other group."

Which wouldn't include any who might be currently riding various
hosts' bodies. But Jack couldn't exactly point that out. "I don't see
any young Phookas," he said instead. "You suppose all of the ones here
are male?"

"You're welcome to try to find out," Alison said dryly. "Me, I'm
staying here. Let me see that tattoo of yours."

The sudden change in subject caught Jack by surprise. "What?"

"Your tattoo," she said patiently. "You didn't have it taken off,
did you?"

There was, unfortunately, no way around it. Suppressing a grimace,
Jack unfastened his shirt and pulled it open, exposing Draycos's head
to view.

"Interesting," she said, studying Jack's shoulder and then looking
over at the performing K'da. She looked back at Draycos, back at the
K'da. "You realize your tattoo is the spitting image of a Phooka?"

"Really?" Jack asked, feigning surprise. He looked cross-eyed down
at his shoulder, as if trying to get a good view of the image there.
"Yeah, there
is
some resemblance, isn't there?"

"Resemblance, nothing," she countered. "It's the same head, same
snout, same scale pattern. You've even got a sort of flattened version
of that spiny crest that goes over their heads and down their backs."