A Dragon at Worlds' End (20 page)

Bazil was ready to move on. Though the food was good and plentiful, the wyvern was growing bored with the soft life he had been living on the plains. In addition he missed the company of his own kind. There was no company to be had among the flat-headed pujish with their tiny brains and vicious ways. He missed his friends in the old 109th fighting Marneri dragons. He missed the Purple Green and Alsebra. He even missed Vlok, though he would never have admitted it.

In a desperate bid to break the spell of the death bone, Relkin ostentatiously burned it in a special fire of his own. With elaborate ceremony he built the fire high, using only the driest wood so that it burned splendidly. He made sure that nothing was left. He strode around the camp telling various men what he had done, even though, of course, they had known all along. He sat openly with Ium and Wol at the evening fire and ate roasted three-horns meat.

That night, as he slept, a new death bone, almost identical to the old one, was placed by his head. When he awoke, his eye fell at once on the top half of a human thigh bone. A chill spread through his heart.

His incineration of the other bone did not produce any converts, either. He was still a nonperson to more than half the tribe.

Relkin knew the source of the venom, and so did poor Pumo, who came to Relkin's fire that night and confessed that he felt he had to give in and go back to the tutelage of the Yellow Canyon grandmothers. Until he did so, they would not cease their campaign to drive Relkin away.

Relkin persuaded Pumo not to surrender. Pumo belonged to the tribe now. He loved Wulla as if she were his real mother. He liked all the Red Rocks children. It was not as if he were without family and friends. To go back to the Yellow Canyon grandmothers would hurt the tribe. Relkin confessed that he and the dragon would be leaving soon anyway. It was time for them to head north. They had a long journey ahead of them and they needed to start soon. They had to return to their own world.

Pumo wept the open, unselfconscious tears of the Ardu at this news, for he loved Relkin as a brother. Wol and Ium were also saddened, but they had expected this for some time. They could sense the dragon's restlessness and Relkin's feelings of futility as the death bone took its grip on the folk.

Still, Relkin struggled to complete the training course he had begun. There were a few men, including mighty Norwul, who would still listen. They came and sat a short distance away from him so that they would not be seen befriending the no-tail, but still close enough so they could see and hear clearly while Relkin demonstrated, with the help of Ium and Wol, how the Argonath Legions trained men to fight in small groups. Combinations were the key to success. Every man had to be looking out for the welfare of every other man. Every fighter had to be flexible in approach and prepared to give his life for those around him. When these fundamentals were accepted, then came training to proficiency with sword, spear, and shield.

The Ardu were only just now learning the value of a good shield. Relkin and Wol had made a few, using flexible green wood and sections of three-horns hide. Relkin and the young Ardu sparred with clubs and shields and sometimes with blunt spears, and Relkin passed on all he knew of feints and blocks, kicks and rolls, and all the other maneuvers of close-order combat that he had assimilated in his life as a dragonboy in the Legions of Argonath. He'd been gratified to see shields passing around among the men, who were already experimenting with design and decoration.

He felt that he'd done his best and that if they stayed together and continued to train as he'd taught them, the Ardu men would be able to give a good account of themselves in any fight with the slavers. The Ardu people would have a fighting chance at survival.

One day Relkin, Ium, and Wol went out to hunt for small hopping beasts the Ardu called yoosh. These were smaller than a man, but very speedy, running on two legs and capable of leaping into the branches of trees at a moment's notice. To hunt them successfully took good coordination among a group, and good spear throwing.

They headed east, toward the big river. There was good yoosh country there, with open grasslands dotted with small forests. The yoosh fed in the grasslands and retreated swiftly to the treetops when pujish appeared.

The men hunted, always with an eye out for pujish themselves, through the heat of the day, but discovered only a wugga, a squat, four-legged brute covered in armored plate and with a pair of horns on the end of its tail. The wugga ignored them and though they briefly considered it, they moved on. Wugga were very hard to kill, and surprisingly dangerous for such sluggish-looking beasts. They could whip those horned tails around with lethal speed. Besides, the request from Wulla was for yoosh. She intended to roast yoosh and have it with a sauce made from apples. Fresh jungle apples were appearing now on trees scattered through the forest. Everyone in the Red Rock group maintained that eating Wulla's roast yoosh with apple sauce was one of the great gustatory experiences in the world and not to be missed.

The appearance of the jungle apples was another sign of the turn of the seasons. Soon the tribe would head into the northern hills for the second quarter of the year, the lush time of the light rains. The berries were ripening there and young, fat shmunga and untishmunga would be on the trails. The Ardu would stake the pits once more and feast on the young shmunga.

Relkin had made up his mind to leave the tribe at that point. He and Baz would make a boat and go downstream on the same river that he and Lumbee had ascended. They would return to the Inland Sea and then head east. With luck they would find the kingdom of the Kraheen and rejoin the Legions. They had been out of all contact with the Legions for almost a year. Relkin knew that they'd been given up for dead by now. What a shock everyone was going to get! He looked forward to seeing friends' expressions when he and the dragon showed up alive. The Purple Green, in particular, would be a treat to see when Bazil came back!

By late afternoon they'd reached a bluff with a view across the river. To the east the hills glowed purple. Some huge shmunga had plowed through the forests here not long before leaving a trail of broken trees and mowed reed beds. Long-necked shmunga, the enormous critters that had almost done in Relkin and Bazil once, were too huge to hunt, or even to stake a pit for. The Ardu regarded adult shmunga as sacred beasts and would never kill them. The fact that big shmunga killed pujish, usually by smashing their skulls with the tail whip, made them seem godlike to the tailed folk. Young shmunga, however, were fair game, but hard to hunt, since they were usually protected by their elders.

Suddenly Relkin stiffened. Out on the river, which was swollen with runoff from the rains, bobbed a small boat, single-masted with a big white bellying sail. Relkin's blood chilled. The Ardu did not use sails in their canoes and dugouts.

"Slavers," said Ium beside him in a whisper.

"Early in season for slavers," muttered Wol.

"They are searching for the tribe," said Relkin with complete certainty. "The damage we did them must have set off a reaction. I bet there are parties like this all over the plains, hunting for the Ardu."

"They want to find the tribe and take all Ardu back as slaves."

"They have to stop the growth of the tribe. It's a direct threat to them."

Ium and Wol saw the point of this instantly.

"We have to tell everyone. Tribe must move north early. Stay away from slavers."

Relkin nodded slowly. Another idea had occurred to him. "We could take them as prisoners. Find out why they're so far up country so early in the year."

As the boat tacked in close, just below the bluff, they could clearly see the three men, brown-skinned, massively built. They turned perhaps a hundred feet from the shore and then tacked back toward the opposite side of the river. After a while the boat disappeared around the next bend.

That night they camped on the bluff. The dark came quickly, as it always did in the Ardu land, and soon after they observed a light burning off in the canyonland, some miles distant. The slavers had put in to shore for the night. Relkin watched the distant glitter for a long time. He wondered just how strong a response the slaver cities would make.

These were scouts, most likely, searching for the tribe. Maybe they had already mounted a punitive expedition. Tales of the forest god must have been a shock. The Ardu could not be allowed to progress to nationhood.

The question was, what should the tribe do in response? Fade into the hills? Or take the initiative and capture these slavers and interrogate them? Find out just what they might be receiving in the next summer season. Then with better intelligence on their enemy's plan they might fade into the hills if need be, or else try to come up with a more aggressive strategy. Aggression might cost lives, however, and it was inherently risky. Relkin wondered if a resumption of ambushes on slaver groups would reduce the slaver presence in the Ardu territories or spur yet further expeditions. The Ardu needed to raise a small army, several hundred strong. And that army had to be trained, at least in Relkin's view, if it was to have any chance of success. The slavers would bring mercenary troops, well armed, seasoned with years of warfare. The Ardu, still virtually Stone Age in culture and technical skill, would have no chance unless they had learned how to fight together in a large group. They were used to one-on-one combats and very occasional melees between two kin groups, but not to battles between forces with several hundred on either side.

He wrapped himself and lay down to sleep for a while as Ium took the watch. Who could he call on for help? They might need ten men to be sure of success. They had to be sure of capturing all three and getting their boat. Apart from Ium and Wol there was Norwul and probably Uper of Black Lake and Mogs of Sunny Bank. That gave them six, a minimum number.

At dawn they moved out, heading upriver in pursuit of the slavers. The bottomlands were covered in a forest of gloomy conifers that shaded out the ground. They made good time, therefore, unimpeded by brush. Relkin had some hope that they might catch up to the slavers. What they would do then would depend on events. If they could take them unawares, then he and his two young friends might capture them. If not, then at least they would learn more. A larger party would have to be called up back at camp.

Their pursuit was fruitless, however. They cut across the ridgeline, passed a trail where shmunga had cut a swath through the forest, and came down to the river again. The slavers had already broken camp and moved on. Relkin glimpsed the sail, far down the next reach of the river.

"We must head back. No point in trying to catch a boat on foot."

Wol and Ium accepted this. The Ardu were swift of foot, but had less endurance than Relkin, who had long ago been hardened to long marching.

They climbed the nearby bluff to fix their bearings before heading back to the main camp. Relkin was preoccupied with thoughts of who he would try to recruit for the ambush party. They reached an outlook where white limestone broke through the green and gained a view out over the land to the west as well as the east.

Far away loomed the mass of the northern hills known as Gunja Luba, the "Safe Land," where the slavers had never been and where the pujish had long ago been hunted out. There the Ardu would spend the next season until the land began to dry out and it was time to trek back to the southern forest for its fruits and fibers.

They ate some dried sausage made with three-horn meat and drank from a small stream spattering down the bluff.

Relkin surveyed the distant river reach once more. He wondered if they should cut across the next bend. This reach was perhaps five miles in length—they might save themselves almost that many by going across the ridge. Of course, once they were up on the ridge the undergrowth would get thicker and their progress would be slowed. Once over it, though, they would be on the edge of the plain and could hope for better speed for the rest of the way back.

Relkin turned back to ask Wol his opinion, when he heard a cry followed almost instantly by a thud. There followed a confused melange of images. Ardu men were beating Wol and Ium with their clubs. Big Ommi was there. Big Ommi swung a massive fist into Relkin's face and Relkin found himself on his back the next moment, dazed and bloody. He shook his head to try and clear it, to little avail. His jaw felt like it might be broken.

Ommi and another Ardu hauled him up to his feet and dragged him to the edge of the bluff. Below was an almost sheer cliff falling straight to the river.

"Good-bye, no-tail, we don't need you here," said Big Ommi.

The next moment Relkin was in midair, arms pin-wheeling to keep himself upright. Was the water deep enough?

He barely had time to pose the question before he went in feet first and drove deep into the river and sank up to his knees in mud. The shock jarred every bone in his body, but his legs didn't break. He rolled out of the mud, kicked frantically to free his legs, and rose in a huge cloud of mud to the surface, rising just in time to fill his collapsing lungs with air.

He lay at the surface, coughing a little, gasping, treading water. Looking up, he saw nothing but the tawny walls of the bluff, which already seemed to be dwindling as he drifted slowly downstream.

The shock, the pain in his jaw, and the luck of surviving that fall combined to leave him stunned. He drifted. He prayed that they did not kill Wol and Ium. That could start a blood feud between the kin groups. By the gods, his face hurt. Ommi could really land a punch. Relkin didn't think anyone had ever hit him so hard before.

He let himself drift, with an occasional kick. He felt for his sword and found it was gone. He had only the knife.

Nor did he have his little hunter's bow; he'd set it aside when they stopped to eat.

Old Caymo had rolled the dice pretty damn badly there. Relkin prayed that they would spare Ium and Wol. Ommi, damn him! Of course it would be Ommi. Relkin had expected some kind of blow from Ommi for a long time. Ommi had seethed for weeks.