A Sword for a Dragon (5 page)

Bazil agreed, in principle. “Yes. That is how it should be, but in these times it is not. The enemy of the humans is the same enemy that destroyed your wings. The same that took you captive in the evil city.”

The Purple Green bristled again.

“We have to live with the humans now. If we do not, they will kill us, do not doubt that they have the power. You know that. You have seen how they are.”

“So many, they swarm over the world.”

Bazil shrugged. “It is said by some that this is the end of the age of dragons, that eventually there will only be humans. That is why there are so many of them.”

“There are none in Dragon Home. If any go there, they are soon devoured.”

Bazil hissed again, pleased to hear that there was one part of the world still where dragonkind served itself and not the human race.

“But here, they rule. So it comes to this, my great friend, either you must leave this land and go north, or you must change your way of life completely.”

“I will go north, and I will starve to death.”

Baz nodded and then fell silent while he thought for several minutes. Then he walked off a ways with Relkin.

“The wild one will die on his own. He cannot hunt properly, just as we feared.”

Relkin sighed in sorrow. They owed much to the great Purple Green. Then Bazil stunned him.

“What would the legion say if wild one join us in the 109th?”

Relkin sucked in a breath. Life, which had seemed so simple so recently, now seemed a lot more complicated.

“Well,” he gulped. A wild dragon in the line of battle! “Of course, that’s brilliant. Except that he’s completely wild and he doesn’t know how to fight with weapons.”

“I know, but we train him. I already teach him how to hold a sword and a shield, back in evil city.”

“Train him? Who will be so bold, not I. One argument and he’ll eat me. I know him, he’s eaten human before this.”

Baz chuckled and hissed.

“Not bad idea, I think sometimes.”

“Yeah, well remember the goose that laid the golden eggs. You eat one dragonboy and you never eat good food again. You have to eat nothing but wild meat.”

“Dragonboy not taste as good as roast goose either.”

Relkin hesitated. Bazil was right, it was the only fit solution. Bazil would have to train the wild one, and everyone else would have to learn to be very careful when they were around him.

And there was a plus side. The Purple Green was as big as the largest of their brasshide wyverns, but he was appreciably quicker than any brasshide. When trained, he would make a formidable tenth-dragon for the squadron.

Relkin agreed. Baz went back and put it to the Purple Green.

“When they destroy your wings they change your life. Even if you could live long enough to return to Dragon Home, you would starve to death there. But there is an alternative. Come back to fort, join legion, and fight with us. That way you will have the chance for revenge on our enemies. And remember, they always feed dragons well.”

“Yes, but on noodles? I am not like you, I cannot get by on anything but meat.”

“They will give you some meat, but you will have to get used to noodles. You must try akh again. Akh make anything good to eat.”

“Disgusting stuff, I do not understand how you can eat it.”

Bazil hissed again, slightly perplexed. Dragons were not the best at gentle persuasion, and akh was wonderful.

“Look, my friend, I can see your condition. There will be a lot more meat in the legions than there will be for you outside in the wild. If you eat their cattle, they will come to kill you.”

“Let them try.” The spines bristled.

“They will poison you. They will harry you in their hundreds, and they will fill your hide with arrows, and eventually you will succumb.”

The Purple Green grew still. The wingless one was right, and such a death would be useless and degrading. He had spent weeks in hunger, and there was no doubt about what would happen to him if he went north.

He gave a huge sigh and gave in.

“I will try. You will teach me how to fight with the weapons of the humans.”

“We will teach you, and you will be able to kill a great many of the enemy.”

“I would like that.”

And so they left the cave and returned to the fort.

Relkin’s request produced complete consternation at first, but as Relkin pressed the point, people came around to the idea. They were always short of dragons, and once trained the Purple Green would be a tremendous military asset.

“It’s most irregular,” said General Paxion. “But Dragoneer Hatlin is for it, and we have a long campaign season ahead of us. We need every dragon we can get. But he’ll have to eat like the rest of the dragon corps, he cannot dine on cattle anymore.”

Relkin promised to handle the dragonboy chores associated with the wild one to begin with while a new dragonboy was summoned up.

General Paxion signed a special order and away went Relkin to celebrate. The general returned to his study of the map of the Empire of Ourdh, an ancient realm built on irrigation of the lower courses of the great river Oon. The “well-watered land,” as they called it, had been a center for civilization since the Dawn Ages. Now it was an empire in the balance where a bloody civil war was raging. A civil war that was too important for the Argonath to ignore.

While work intensified on the fleet of rafts that was to take them down the great river, the legion sorted out its equipment and drilled, regiment by regiment.

The 109th Marneri Dragons now got their first look at the Eighth Regiment and its new commander at a full regimental parade.

It was a brisk day, with a chill wind from the north coursing over the parade ground as the regiment formed up in squads and then centuries with the dragon force bringing up the rear.

The drums thundered and the pipes blew fiercely as the regiment went through its paces, rather clumsily, it must be said. The men were hesitant, unused to drilling as a regiment. The Third and Fourth Centuries actually got mixed up and made a devilish mess of things.

The new commander was mortified. He had a loud voice and no hesitation in deploying it to curse the sloppiness of the men. The sight of the worn uniforms on a few veterans, drafted in to give the Eighth a stiffening element, drove him to a most powerful passion.

The lieutenants and corporals were all nervous as cats, giving their men venomous looks as the commander rode up and down the ranks and criticized the lines, the squares, the dressing, indeed, everything that he saw.

The ways of frontier soldiers, he informed them were not good enough for Porteous Glaves. He had come to the frontier to instill into his men the virtues of the coastal cities, diligence, obedience, loyalty, and an appetite for hard work.

Of course, the men of the Second Legion, to a man, were from the coastal provinces, mostly from Aubinas and Seant. Which was where the surplus population was in the lands of the Argonath. The free folk of Kenor were farmers, mostly men who had served in the legions and were now reservists. And so the commander’s references to them as frontier slops and “woodsmen” who were going to be taught how things should be done properly, fell upon incredulous ears. They weren’t woodsmen, they’d all been to the big city now and again. Their faces went white with rage.

It got worse. It was announced that until their drill improved to the point where Commander Glaves could feel proud of them, they would drill every day and they would drill while wearing the hated neck “cuff,” a four-inch-wide collar of stiff leather that went around a man’s neck and forced his head back and his chin up and out. It had once been a punishment in the Kadein legions, but had more recently become a thing for display by a few crack regiments of Kadeiners. They received bonuses from wealthy men who identified with the regiments and were given honorary captaincies in return for their gold. Men wearing the neck cuffs and drilled to perfection made a fine sight with their heads tilted back and their spears and shields gleaming. Just the sort of backdrop aspiring young politicians required to show well in front of the ladies of Kadein.

The Marneri legions regarded the cuff as humiliating and barbaric, something from the ancient days of Veronath, when soldiers were often slaves.

Nor were the 109th spared the lash of the commander’s tongue. He found the dragonboys a complete, disgusting mess. Their uniforms were dirty, patched, or incomplete, or all three at once. They wore nonregulation items of dress and weaponry. Their dragons seemed uninterested in the drills, and dull and listless during the right dress.

The commander warned them that their discipline would have to improve many times over.

Eventually, in complete gloom, the Eighth Regiment broke up at the end of the parade and wandered back into the lines of listless groups.

For Relkin and Bazil, the gloom was compounded by dread. The new commander was none other than the pompous idiot they had heard on board the
Tench
just a week or so before.

Relkin spent a sleepless night running schemes through his head for escaping from the 109th and the Eighth Regiment. Nothing occurred to him that seemed promising.

The next day dawned cloudless and sunny. The chill north winds were replaced abruptly by a balmy breeze from the east. That was the pattern of spring in Kenor, where winters were cold and summers hot. Spring was violent in its moods.

At noon, the entire legion paraded for a medals ceremony, filling the fort’s parade ground with men who were suddenly sweating in their dark blue winter coats.

General Paxion gave out seven Combat Stars to men who had been wounded in sundry small actions over the winter. Then there were three Regimental Orders to be given to men of long service and distinction, sergeants close to retirement. And finally there was the matter of a single Legion Star to be given to a dragonboy in the 109th Marneri Dragons.

The ceremony was not a long one. The Combat Stars were presented, then the Regimental Orders. Here, things bogged down a bit as each sergeant gave a short speech and thanked his friends for their help over the years.

At last it was over, and Relkin was called out of the ranks. He saw Glaves glance at him and then look away with no change of expression. On the stand Relkin saluted and stood still while the star was pinned on him and the general made a short speech. Then with his heart thumping with pride and nervousness, he returned to his place while the drums and pipes began and the legion paraded past the commanders and General Paxion and then out of the parade ground where they broke up and made their way to the lines.

Relkin, however, did not head for the East Dragon House. He had been invited to take luncheon with General Paxion’s wife and the other ladies of the fort, mostly the wives of the senior officers. It was going to be an ordeal he was sure, but the food would make up for it, with any luck at all.

Accordingly he made his way to the tower in the south corner where General Paxion had his quarters. On the uppermost floor there was a large room, white-plastered and floored in oak. On the walls were paintings of the Paxion family and a vast landscape of Kadein by the great painter, Molla. In fact, the only thing that betrayed the fact that this room was in a frontier fort were the windows, which were narrow and easily defended.

There was quite a crowd, most of it gathered at the stand-up buffet at one end of the room. Relkin noted the other medal winners of the day, who stood out as pillars of blue and brown leather among the billows of satin and lace that the ladies wore in imitation of the fashion of Kadein.

Among the matrons of mature years were several of their teenage daughters, who were enjoying the break from the monotony of education and sewing. The standout of this group was General Paxion’s youngest daughter, Kessetra. She wore a yellow satin gown, cut tightly to her figure. She was a red-haired beauty, with lush lips and green eyes in which swirled endless patterns of coquetry and manipulation.

All the young ladies made a great fuss of Relkin once he was identified, surrounding him in a sea of fans, curls, and satin. He was implored to tell them tales of the city of Tummuz Orgmeen. What were the evil women there like? Were there courtesans who really wore the skins of dead men, tanned like leather?

Struggling to retain his natural modesty, Relkin succumbed and told of the deep, dark tunnels and the slave pens for captive women, chained in the imp-bearing chambers.

The girls shuddered and squealed in horror and pressed for more details which he would have provided but for the arrival of Lady Fevill, the adjutant’s extremely ample wife.

“Now, young man,” said Lady Fevill, as she tugged him away from the girls who groaned in disappointment, “you must spend some time with the older women in the room.”

She introduced him to a circle of her friends: Clevilla Hooks, wife of the captain of the First Century: Faja Rinard, whose husband led the Second Century: and Edyth Alexen and Alys Wulnow whose husbands served in the Second Century.

They, too, wished to hear personally of the horrors of Tummuz Orgmeen, so he described the slave market, with men and women in chains, with the marks of the lash and the brand on their skins. They listened in fascinated horror, and whenever he paused- for breath, they fluttered their fans and exchanged exclamations.

At length, however, they tired of him and returned to full-strength gossip, leaving him free to turn his attention to the excellent buffet.

He had barely helped himself to some syllabub and a plate of quibini and samosas when a vision in yellow satin appeared beside him.

“Hello, we didn’t meet before, there was too much of a crowd. My name’s Kessetra Paxion, you can call me Kessi.”

Relkin knew who she was, and he also knew that she was seventeen and no longer the child of her mother’s imagination.

“I expect you’re finding all this pretty excruciating, I know I am,” she said.

“Well, the food is good.”

“Not particularly. The chicken is overdone and the sauces are dreadful. In Kadein, they would hoot at it and demand that the chef be fired.”