The Erth Dragons Book 1: The Wearle (5 page)

7

He used the dung robe as he had before. The smell had turned even worse for the keeping, but this was the price Ren knew he must pay if he wanted to get among the beasts.

The night was dry and idly dark. Even the sluggish, half-chewed moon failed to notice him crossing the scorch line. Only twice did he need to conceal himself, once from a startled hooter that glided away from the smell of his disguise, and once from a distant skaler. This time, the beast made no attempt to land.

By dawn, he was deep into skaler territory, already climbing the sleeping mountain, so called because it rumbled with fire and smoke like an old man blowing wind from either end of his body. The beasts were often seen circling here. Skalers, because of their size and weight, needed good ledges on which to settle. And nowhere were the mountainsides more ragged than on the peaks that surrounded the great ice lake. Ren was certain he would find a whole clutch of skalers here. And why warn one when he might warn many?

Travelling in the light was slow and dangerous. For a while, he was safe in the Whispering Forest, among the swathe of tall green spikers that thrived on the lowest sections of the climb. But when the trees thinned out and he was faced with a bumpy expanse of grass, his choices became severely limited. If a skaler flew over and he was forced to lie low, he would have to hope it mistook him for a solitary stone. A perilous risk to take. So he changed his mind and took the longer way round, keeping to those areas of bare grey rock where only the skinniest plants took hold and the shadows offered plenty of cover.

Despite the unevenness of the slope, he was able to travel freely for a while. But it wasn’t long before the mountain grew serious and the rise began to bow his back. The rocks made ever more awkward angles and their edges began to cut into his hands. And soon he was faced with another problem: snow. The higher he climbed, the more pockets he encountered. At first he ignored it and went scrambling up the incline like a young bleater; the Kaal were mountain people, used to living with cold conditions. But there came a point where every fingerhold burned. Worse, water had leaked into his boots. His toes no longer moved when he stretched them and his back was a growing arc of pain. If he didn’t complete his journey soon he would either have to go back to the settlement or make himself known to the next beast that flew over.

Luck was on his side, however. Not far ahead was a fresh crop of trees. They were set out in clusters of twos and threes. Their branches were sparse and offered poor cover, but no skaler, unless it came down to feed, was going to see him amongst them.

He checked the skies then ran for the nearest tree. It wasn’t easy. The slope was truly against him now and his knees had forgotten how to bend. Twice he stumbled, the second time kicking enough scree down the mountain to wake every beast from the ice lake to the sea. The rubble slid away and would not stop clattering. Ren plunged toward the treeline, getting there in time to see a purple skaler with a long white neck come soaring up the spur of the hill. It jerked its head at the trickle of stones, but didn’t stop to investigate. Ren sighed with relief and pressed back against a tree. A chance to rest and warm his hands.

Burying his fingers in the pits of his arms, he turned to see where the skaler had gone. It was well above the ridge, near the peak of the mountain, resting on an overhang beside another skaler. They snapped at each other as they shuffled for room. Then both of them turned toward the valley, their long tails flapping in the wind.

At the same time, a lengthy cry split the air. Ren jumped and covered his ears. The wail was so strong it shook the trees, sending down a shower of the dark green spikes that grew from their branches. A skaler had clearly made the sound, but it seemed to have come from
within
the mountain. The pair high above roared back in response. Ren’s heart began to thump in unison. He didn’t need to speak the skalers’ language to realise they were seized with excitement.

Blowing on his hands he moved into the open, scrabbling from one clump of trees to the next. A half-blind caarker might see him now, but the skalers seemed more concerned with what was happening on the far side of the ridge than in guarding this tiny part of their territory. At the last of the trees, Ren paused for breath, and looking up, he saw an amazing sight.

Two skalers, one white, one blue, appeared to be clashing in mid-air. They rolled as they approached one another at speed, disappearing from sight as a cloud exploded and the sky around them filled with rain.

Ren had never seen a spectacle like it.

He hurried on again, hugging the final bend in the hill that would take him swiftly to the top of the ridge. But at its steepest the hill puckered gently inward, and he was irritated to find that he needed to climb a short, almost vertical wall of rock. Desperate not to miss too much of the fight, he reached up and found the holds he needed. At no point did it occur to him that this might be a reckless venture. Indeed, it wasn’t until he was halfway to the top that his folly was realised and the first note of panic set in.
Whup! Whup! Whup!
A skaler was approaching. Ren’s heart immediately beat a new rhythm. Breathless with fright, he looked over his shoulder. The thing was out of sight, somewhere behind a bulge in the hill. But the onrushing clatter of wings suggested it would fill the sky at any moment. Ren was in a hopeless position, his arms and legs both fully exposed. If he was seen – and the skaler would have to be blind to miss him – the beast could melt him with an arc of flame. Frantically, he looked for somewhere to hide. Again, his luck was in. Down to his right the rock face darkened and he could see a crescent-shaped split in the stone. Using all his strength he swung himself sideways and dropped onto a sill just in front of the split, gouging his left knee as he fell. It was all he could do not to cry out in pain. Somehow, he managed to grip his knee before the blood could bubble freely to the surface and send its warm scent into the air. He rolled into the opening, out of sight. The skaler flew past, blowing up a cloud of dust and grit. Ren stalled for as long as he could before opening his lungs and coughing out the dirt. The skaler was gone by then, but something had heard Ren’s burst of noise. A growl, not unlike a row of deep clicks, came creeping out of the belly of the mountain. Ren turned his head and stared into the darkness. There was something in here.

Something huge.

8

That was the moment Ren should have escaped, while the skalers were diverted by the fight above the valley. He should have dressed his wound, counted his blessings and fled. Blood was leaking fast through his fingers. His lungs were lined with grime and dust. Climbing was going to be painful at best. And he didn’t need Targen the Old to tell him that whatever had made that clicking sound would not stop to think about taking off his head if he poked it close within biting range.

He stared into the darkness again. By now his eyes were making use of the light and he could see he was in a narrow cleft, no wider than his outstretched arms could span. The crack ran some way into the mountain, tightening at its end where the light grew dim. With the skalers occupied, Ren slid down and attended to his wound. The gash was the length of his smallest finger and dark with grit at its puffiest end. He picked out as many chips as he could, then spat on his hand and rubbed the spittle into the cut. It stung like the tips of a hundred spikers, so sharp he couldn’t stop himself yelping. Again the darkness answered, with a growl even more threatening than the last. But on top of the warning was a grating squeal that could only have come from the throat of something small. Ren’s heart pounded again. For now he had guessed what was in the mountain: a female skaler, maybe with young.

It was madness, he knew, to even think of going closer. He had once seen his mother give birth to a child (a brother that had not survived) and she had screamed foul murder at any man who tried to approach, especially Ren’s father. But Ren had also known the joy of seeing and holding a new-born mutt, and the lure of the skalers proved too much. Quickly, he tore off a piece of his under-robe (the cleanest patch he could find) and tied it tightly around his knee. Then he hopped to his feet and started to feel his way along the cleft. The light from outside was quick to grow faint, but he was soon drawn forward by a deeper, yellower glow. It occurred to him that it must be fire, because the air all around was thick and warm and seemed to be competing for his every breath. On he went, aware that the passage was leading him down, until sixty paces forward, his progress was stopped. A wedge of stone was blocking the upper half of the cave, creating what amounted to a tunnel beneath it. The only way through was on his belly or his back.

He got down and squeezed himself into the hole. The first push was the hardest, but once his shoulders were beyond the wedge the tunnel became a comfortable crawl. It took two painful scrapes off his arms, but the threat of small flesh wounds was soon to be the least of his worries. At its end, the tunnel opened out again. And there, almost filling the entire floor space of a huge cavern, was a beautiful skaler.

She was mid-green with white flecks around her head. Her incredible slanted eyes were the colour of the setting sun, but shone in all directions like broken ice. Ren could see her as clearly as day, thanks to a cluster of small fires burning low along the scorch-blackened stone behind her. It took him a moment to realise she was burning her own waste matter. It occurred to him then that she must have scented the dung on his robe. But if she knew he was there, she seemed unconcerned. She was curled up like a sleeping mutt, tenderly nosing a large blue egg that had just cracked open at its narrowest point. A tiny skaler, purple in colour, was struggling to break out. The mother whispered her encouragement and bathed the egg in a pale half-flame. The shell crackled and split in several places. A tail poked out, followed by a wing. The youngster shuddered and the shell exploded off its body. Ren held his breath in wonder. This was better than he ever could have hoped. To see a mother and—

Suddenly a second youngster clambered onto a rock in front of him. It was blue, this one, with wings the colour of black thornberries. Although Ren was still in shadow, the young skaler clearly had his scent. It flipped its head to one side and sniffed. Out of its throat came a weak roar.
Grrrockle
.

Ren took a breath. It was almost his last. Faster than an arrow, the mother’s tail lifted and shot towards the tunnel. Ren saw it coming and scrabbled back in time to avoid being speared. He realised then that she’d been waiting for him, working out precisely where he was before she struck.

The skaler’s tail lashed around the walls, its sharp points drilling into the darkness, stirring up another stifling dust cloud. Ren coughed and pressed back as far as he could, the tail twisting like a fire sprite in front of him. But for a bend in the tunnel, he would have been skewered like a roasting snorter. Maybe the skaler thought so too, for as she pulled her tail clear Ren heard her move and guessed she was turning, ready to fill the tunnel with flame. From that, there would be no escape. The flame would travel like a gush of water and make ash of anything it found in the space.

Ren slid down and covered his eyes. He begged the Fathers to forgive his folly and prayed that his mother would not weep long. A moment passed. But the fire did not come. The skaler moved again. And now she was not the only thing shifting. Ren could feel his entire body shaking, but fear was only part of the cause. He touched the wall behind him. The rock was trembling. Grit fell from a crack in the stone above his head.

The sleeping mountain was waking up.

The skaler knew it too. She let out another screaming call, so loud Ren thought his chest would burst. Silence thickened around him for a moment, as if he’d put his head in a bucket of mud. Again, the wall behind him shook. Dizzy with fear, he struggled to his feet.

He needed to escape, that much was clear. But as he turned he heard a pitiful cry. He knew right away that one of the new-born skalers was in trouble. The voice of survival urged him to go, but that bleat had torn a hole in his heart. In truth, he owed the beasts nothing. They would kill him as soon as look at him. But the code of honour that governed all life had been drilled into Ren from a very young age.
All life is precious
, his father had taught him. For Ren, that included the lives of skalers. He couldn’t desert the youngster now.

He staggered back to the lip of the tunnel. Rocks were falling like hard black rain, pounding the mother as she sought in vain to protect her young. She was curling her tail around the skaler that Ren had seen breaking from the egg and was all the while calling the blue one to her. Ren could see it, trapped in rubble, kicking its tiny skaler feet. One wing and half its body was buried. The mountain yawned. More rocks fell. A huge lump struck the mother on the head. She lurched forward and her skin split open. Dark green fluid poured out of the wound, coating her neck and the stones around her. Ren thought he saw a tear begin to form in her eye. A single tear, glowing with fire.

That was it. He leapt into the cavern. It took a heartbeat, no more, to free the skaler. It squealed like an angry storm of caarkers, but folded its wings as he drew it to his breast.

Through the hail and dust, he looked for the other. It was sheltered by a curl of the mother’s tail. Thinking he could place the rescued one with it, Ren started to pick his way back toward them. But the sleeping mountain was wide awake now. The floor of the cavern whined and split open. Ren was thrown back as a crack the size of a narrow stream divided him from the mother skaler. Pained and spluttering, he got to his feet. The youngster had fixed its claws into his robe as if begging him never to leave it, but the mother was slipping away. One last time she lifted her head – and fixed her gaze on Ren.

Her thoughts poured into his mind with such force that his neck almost snapped as his head jerked back. And these three words she spoke without speaking:
GALAN AUG SCIETH
.

Then her head slackened and thumped against the stone.

With a smokeless breath, her jewelled eye closed.

And her fire tear fell.