Dragon Champion Page 2

  “Your great horned head, my lord,” Mother said as her skin turned the richest green. “Ten thousand scales that reflected the yellow sun, your bellows that shivered the very clouds. Your presence captivated me. I lost my head . . . and my hearts. The first came back to me . . . afterwards. But you shall always hold the second.”

  Auron’s nose itched abominably. He felt the urge to rub his egg horn against the cave wall, but fought the instinct. After seeing his sisters lose theirs by scraping them off against Mother’s scales, he decided he did not want to part with his. His egg horn still smelled faintly of his brother’s blood, reminding him of the service it had done. There was still the copper to think of, and he worried that he might need its point again in another fight.

  Climbing Mother took his mind off the discomfort. He swarmed up her neck and stood atop her head, bleating out his satisfaction with his feat to his sisters below.

  Her tail was even more of a challenge, for she swung it up and down, back and forth, until he felt giddy with the motion as he hugged its whirling end. On a low sweep of her tail, he gathered himself and leaped. He sailed over his sisters in a splay-legged fall, and upon landing instinctively absorbed the impact with his tail.

  “’Gain, Mama!” he squeaked, scaling her haunch. His hooked claws made climbing her armored skin easy.

  “Not just now,” she countered. “Eat a little.”

  He remembered his appetite and returned to the half-eaten horse, placed on the shelf this morning by Father. It was much better than the egg-size slugs Father had gathered the two previous days. Mother seemed content to eat slugs, though, even with horse-flesh available.

  “Wish we could ’ave ’orse every day, Mama,” he said. His sisters had not left him much for seconds. They were useless baggage. All they did was eat and sleep and chatter at each other. If he tried to get them to do something interesting, like wrestle, they would skedaddle for Mother’s belly, squealing. He almost wished the copper would try to take some horse.

  “Father has to hunt the Upper World if we are to have horse, Auron. He can’t afford to be gone too long.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a risk, dear. You and your sisters are precious beyond my words’ ability to tell. He doesn’t dare leave us.”

  “Why?”

  “Someone might try to come and take you.”

  “Who would come?”

  “Your father will tell you, when the time is right.”

  Auron—with a belly full of horse entering his bloodstream—bristled. “I’ll fight ’em, Mama!” He shot to the edge of the shelf and looked down, in search of foemen come to harm Mother and his hapless sisters. His griff descended along either side of his head and rattled against his crest at the thought.

  Somewhere below, he heard his brother, worrying rats from among the offal at the base of the cave wall. He reversed himself like a whip cracking, and dashed back to the carcass.

  “Wind and sand, how quick you are! But rest now, Auron. When you’re grown, you’ll have a clutch of your own to fight for.”

  “Not sleepy!” he insisted, glaring at his sisters and spoiling for action. They retreated to the shelter of Mother’s left hind, meeping.

  Auron belched, and the fetid smell pacified him. But the horse still needed guarding. Mother’s warm belly beckoned, yet he curled himself around what was left of the head and forequarters. If Mother was right, the next horse might be some days off, and he could not bear the thought of the copper making off with such a prize.

  Days passed. Once the remains of the horse joined the pile at the shelf base, and not a bite of slug was left to be had, Auron felt bold enough to explore the cave. Should his brother gain the egg shelf, he felt confident enough to teach him a real lesson, though his desire to kill him had ebbed.

  While the cave looked like a vast expanse from the egg shelf, it was anything but. There were great pillars of stone that met others hanging above like the teeth in his mouth, only less precisely arranged. There were cracks and fissures too small for his parents but a satisfactory size for an inquisitive hatchling, and places where the ceiling came low enough for him to torment the bats who clung here and there.

  Away from the smells of the egg shelf, he snuffled amongst the pools and refuse of the cave floor. Music in the form of trickling water sounded all around; each fall had its own syncopation, from deep plops of heavy drops to the more rapid cadence of little streams splashing from ceiling to cave floor.

  Stalagmites were almost as easy to climb as Mother. He tried one in the higher part of the cave, wrapping himself around it in imitation of his father. Finding a comfortable rest, he froze. Rolling only an eyeball, he looked down at his body, almost indistinguishable from the cool stone he clung to. Faint darker bands could just be distinguished amid the gray. Was he developing a different color? Mother said dragons came in many colors, though dragonelles were usually green. His sisters asked endless questions about colors and played with sparkling stones and bits of metal Father gave them. They arranged them in intricate patterns, rhyming as they counted the colors:

  Red, Gold, Bronze, and Blue,

  To my lord I shall be true.

  Copper, Silver, Black, and White,

  Who will win my mating flight?

  Auron wondered why grays weren’t part of the song. Was something wrong with him? The question worried at him. But only until he caught the scent of a fresh slug trail on his tongue.

  Chapter 3

  A season had passed. The bats became torpid, their endless output of guano slowed, and the fungus that lived off their droppings shrank back from a carpet of light to spotty patches, little green points like stars on the cavern floor.

  Auron, his belly holding nothing but hunger, hunted.

  The slug trail was old, but not old enough to fade into the cavern murk with the growing hatchling’s sensitive nose held to the rock floor. The slugs had also slowed with the change in the bats, until they hardly moved from hiding place to hiding place.

  Even his sisters, who shared none of his interests or sports, joined him in hunting. Useless in all other respects, he grudgingly gave them credit for slug trapping. Though they were not so active in searching out food as he, they did show some skill at guessing where the mindless soft-skinned prey would be in its wanderings, and more often than not, chose the right perch to while away the day waiting for the faint slurping sound of a moving slug.

  Auron’s legs were longer now, the claws thicker at the end of his four digits, divided three long and one short. The hind limbs, more muscular than the front pair, allowed him to leap clean to the egg shelf from the floor of the cavern. The black stripes descending from his backbone were more pronounced now, and his gray had deepened everywhere except his underside, still pale as slugmeat. His leathery skin gave him the ability to wriggle into cracks even his undersize brother could not reach. He and his brother crossed each other’s trails in their endless explorations, and sometimes he caught a flash of copper as the cripple dived into the lake at the base of the waterfall.

  The slug trail disappeared into a crack in the floor. The aperture was festooned with dried fungus, full of dormant spores awaiting the trickle’s return. Auron circled the exit and saw that if he shifted a boulder, he could pursue the slug.

  He wiggled under one end of the boulder and pressed his backbone hard against the rock. He strained to no effect. He gathered himself for a real shove—and heaved until his vision went red. The rock did not move. His tail whipsawed in his petulance as he came out from under the shelf.

  “Pogt!” he swore, using a Dwarvish curse his mother taught him by accident in one of her mind-stories. He brought up his neck in an intimidating arc. He felt something gurgle behind his breastbone, his neck muscles stiffened, and he vomited a thin stream of yellowish liquid at the rock.

  Amazing.

  He tasted the air around the expectorate. The odor singed his smell buds on his tongue and nasal membrane. He snorted in disgust and turn
ed to find Mother. She would be able to move the rock. He scrambled to the egg shelf.

  “Mother, the rock, Mother. A slug went down a hole and a rock is in the way!”

  Mother opened an eye. She had grown perceptibly thinner, eating only the leavings from her hungry brood. She closed it again.

  “Mother! I need a rock moved. I can get a slug if you move it!” he insisted.

  “Quiet, Auron. You’ll drop the bats from the ceiling, you’re making so much noise.” His sisters, waking from their nap, glared at him in agreement.

  “It will only take you moments, Mother! Please, I’m so hungry!”

  “A rock over a dry trickle, Auron?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your father put that there for a purpose. He will move it for you, maybe. Please let me sleep.”

  “The slug will get away!”

  “Slugs and bugs, let it. Your father will be back soon.”

  “But—”

  Mother’s tail lashed out, the thin end catching him across the snout.

  He smarted to his eye sockets. “Owww! You didn’t have to crack me!”

  His sisters touched snouts in triumph and thrummed out their satisfaction to each other. Auron ignored the prrum.

  “I wasn’t biting anyone,” he said in a much quieter tone.

  “Don’t whine. You are flapping me to distraction. Check the floor for dead bats if you’re that hungry. I’ve been hearing them fall all day. Will this winter never end?”

  She turned her head back and forth, a sign Auron knew meant she was listening for Father.

  “We must have patience, Auron.”

  Patience comes hard to a four-month-old hatchling, so Auron passed his time trying to shift the rock. He tried pushing it, he tried pulling it, he tried rotating it. He tried different angles, but the rock remained immovable. Finally, he fell asleep on top of it.

  Father made a noisy entrance, waking him. At other times, Father moved stealthily enough for Auron to pick up his smell before his sound—as stealthily as something of his bulk could move, that is. But Auron heard him enter the great passage at the top of the cave this time; something was wrong with his walk. Was Father hurt?

  Auron climbed a stalagmite for a better view and saw Father moving to the egg shelf. He held something in his jaws, as well as a forearm. Food!

  Father was arguing with Mother when he joined the family at the ledge. “You’ll eat a whole horse, and that’s the end of it,” Father rasped. “I went to a lot of trouble for these.”

  The bronze dragon’s mandibles moved, and Auron watched him work the inside of his mouth with his tongue. An ivory tooth fell out, broken and bloody.

  Auron noticed shafts like quills in Father’s neck, and a longer length of carved wood in his flank. “Father, there’s a spear in your side!” Auron said.

  “What’s that?” He craned his neck and sniffed at his flank. “Too big to be a spear, Gray. That’s a lance. It’s a weapon men riding horses use; they can drive it right through you. If they can get their horse to charge a dragon, that is.”

  “Two sii to the right, and it would have gone right up your tail-vent,” Mother chuckled.

  Auron clamped his jaws shut to keep from laughing.

  “So that’s what kept you,” Mother continued, sniffing at one of the dead horses. “You flew with two horses in your claws?”

  “Two horizons at least. My jaw is going to be sore for a week. What really slowed me down was this.” Father opened his hand, and a mass of fabric, rope, and broken pieces of wood fell to the floor.

  “What is that? More to eat?” his sister Jizara asked.

  The mass moved, and Auron saw a foreleg emerge. It was thinner than his, proportioned strangely, and with four-and-one as its claw arrangement—though perhaps claw was the wrong word, as the creature had no talons.

  “That’s what’s left of a tent. I came on them in the night, and their horses bolted. Few managed to mount. Brave men—they fought instead of running.”

  Something shot from beneath the fabric, running on its hind legs. It stumbled in the dark; its fearful panting echoed from cold stone.

  “That’s a man, Auron. After it, let’s see you hunt,” Father said.

  Auron jumped in pursuit, driven as much by its flight as by Father’s words. It smelled of blood and horses, but there was another dirtier scent to it, a little like a dead wolf Father had once brought to the cave.

  The biped heard Auron coming. It tried to crawl into a crevice. Auron grabbed it by the leg and pulled. He scrabbled with all four claws. The man was larger, but he was stronger. He pulled it out into the open.

  It lashed out with a foot and caught him in the eye. It kicked him again across the snout, hurting far worse than one of Mother’s smacks. He let go, tasting and smelling his own blood on his tongue now. But he was close enough to hunt by eye and ear.

  The man crawled away, seeking refuge in the crevice. It had curious coloration. Auron noticed the varied hues, even as he gathered himself and jumped, of the second loose skin over its first.

  He landed on the man. He aimed a bite at the neck, but got only a forearm in his jaws. The man shifted his weight, pivoting very differently from the way his sisters did in their halfhearted wrestling bouts. The man had much more strength in his forearms than Auron was used to.

  He felt a sharp pain in the pit of his foreleg.

  Father’s head loomed above. In a flash, Father had the man’s skull in his jaws and off its neck. Blood geysered into the air.

  The body twitched as it exsanguinated, and Auron kept attacking the headless corpse, ripping at it with his teeth.

  “Auron, stop,” Father growled.

  Auron froze, teeth clamped on the man’s shoulder.

  “Look in its hand, Auron. It had a knife.”

  Auron drew himself off the blade and sniffed at the wound in his armpit. A steady flow of blood joined the man’s on the floor.

  “Will I die, Father?”

  “No, you were lucky. Lick the wound clean.”

  Auron nursed himself, and Father continued.

  “When you leap like that, let your back legs do the killing. You’re still fighting too much with your mouth. It’s all right for taking the neck of something that’s half-dead. But when you’ve got a hold of the prey, remember, he’s got a hold of you, too. Pin and dig with your saa. They put up less of a fight when they’re gutted.”

  “Yes, Father. ’E hurt by nose, too.”

  “Many a drake has gotten worse from his first kill of a hominid. You did well, my champion; I was months above ground before I took one, and it was just a half-starved blighter I ran to death. Sheep are easier.”

  “Bay I eat ’im?”

  “He’s your kill,” Father said, swallowing the head. “Well, mostly.”

  Auron soothed his aching hunger, messily, appetite winning out over manners. Mother had taught him not to bolt his food lest it come back up, but Father seemed to understand hunger better.

  “It was your mother’s idea. Her father taught his drakes to kill this way. I may have saved you from a nasty surprise later. Remember, with hominids, what they lack in strength they make up for in tools, and plans, and magic. Cowardly way to do it, letting a piece of metal do your killing, but there you are.”

  They shared the corpse, Father crunching down the bones after Auron took most of the meat. The bleeding stopped in his nose and side. Father’s battle wounds already showed brownish scabs among his riven scales.

  “Father?”

  “Yes?”

  “What is under the big rock? I followed a slug, but couldn’t move it. Mother said you put it there.”

  “I’m not surprised you couldn’t. Someone your size shouldn’t be able to.”

  “Will you show me?”

  Father’s lips rippled across his teeth in thought. “You’ve made your first kill, Champion of our Clutch, so as far as I’m concerned, you’re no longer a hatchling. Come along, then.”

 
Father led the way to the rock. He brought his long neck down and sniffed at Auron’s bilious spit.

  “You are growing. That’s your foua. Perhaps four more seasons, and your fire bladder will be able to turn that into real dragon flame—as long as you eat properly. Fatty flesh brims the bladder, the old red used to tell me.”

  Auron knew about the fire; his mother said breathing his first would mark his passage into drakehood. His body would put a special kind of liquid fat in his fire bladder, ignited when he spat by the substance he was already producing. Mother knew everything.

  Father pushed the boulder aside.

  “How do you climb down that, Father? It’s too small.”

  “My neck fits. That’s all that has to go there, really. It is only a short distance. Climb down and look.”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “Yes, but not in the way you think.”

  Auron sniffed the air wafting up the sink, but smelled only the congealed blood in his nostrils. He shifted back and forth at the rim of the shaft in uncertainty.

  “Would a little light help?” Father asked. He coughed, and a gob of flame struck the dead moss hanging there.

  The blazing light revealed a narrowing shaft, so even if Auron fell, he would not fall far.

  “I don’t see anything, Father.”

  “Get under the overhang. It’s not far—my neck isn’t that long.”

  Auron tested his wounded leg and decided it would not hold his body weight. He went down the shaft tailfirst.

  Something gleamed under the overhang, reflecting the light from the burning moss. Auron entered the alcove and stopped breathing, amazed.

  A cascade of silver covered the floor, flowing out of rotting containers like the tent he had seen earlier. Shining golden-colored disks filled little fashioned chambers. Here and there, colored stones like the ones his sisters played with lay amid the metal.

  Father peeked in. “Overwhelming, isn’t it? It isn’t much, as hoards go. I’d rather eat the gold than keep it to look at. You may have a mouthful or two, if you wish. If you haven’t sneaked some already, that is.” Father chuckled at unvoiced memories.