Battledragon (28 page)

The woodcutters worked with a will, eager to be done and back in camp in time for the midday meal.

The scrubby little woods were fast thinning out, and Relkin could see more fields of grain just ahead, when there came two notes on the cornet to recall them.

Bazil put down the huge ax with a groan of pleasure.

"That thing is getting heavy."

Relkin had been impressed with the dragon's axwork that day. Bazil was sometimes unenthusiastic for this kind of drudgery, but today he had really put his heart into it. A lot of trees he'd struck had fallen on the first blow.

"You cut more than your share today," Relkin said.

"Thank you. Boy always remind dragon of things like that."

They skirted clumps of thorn on their way back to the meeting point.

"How are the feet?"

"Feet are good. Not need dragonboy at all."

"Ho-ho, and then you'd have to go and get your own dinner."

"Not impossible to do. Even dragonboy can do that."

Relkin chuckled to himself; his dragon was ready for dinner, that was certain.

They were interrupted by a sudden thunder of hooves.

Approaching were three Czardhan knights, in full armor, with lances and pennons flying, riding right through the sorghum, flattening the crops. When they saw the dragon at the edge of the trees, they pulled up short with a chorus of raucous cries.

They'd been drinking, there was a clear edge of berserk madness in their voices. Relkin felt a sense of foreboding.

Suddenly, one of them spurred his mount closer.

"Ho, you there, the boy," said this fellow in heavily accented Verio. "I am Hervaze of Gensch. All men know that I am a true and faithful knight of my lord and liege Gaspard of Mayoux. I have never shirked a fight. Tell your beast to ready himself. I challenge him to fight me in the traditional way."

Relkin's unease deepened.

"Good knight, the dragon is due to have his dinner. The bell is ringing over there. He is tired from woodcutting. Let us joust another day. And besides, the dragon has only an ax. The ax is good for cutting wood. It is not dragonsword."

Hervaze snorted disdainfully.

"I do not care for your concerns or excuses. I will take the monster's head for my trophy whether he fights to defend himself or not. Prepare yourself for the charge."

Relkin heard Bazil hiss beside him. The dragon could understand even this barbaric Verio.

"This man wants to fight a dragon?"

The knight had avoided looking directly at the dragon; now he glanced up, but he did not freeze. Relkin marveled at the strength of fury in the man. He stared back at those huge eyes for a few seconds, and then he tore his gaze away with an effort of will and rode back to the others, uttering shrill screams as he forced his horse into a gallop.

Relkin swore. "This fellow's drunk and crazy. You can't kill him, Baz. If we kill him, there's sure to be hell to pay."

Bazil nodded gloomily. "I remember too well the matter of Trader Dook. I understand perfectly. The fool in the metal suit will charge us, and try and kill this dragon, but we must not harm the fool."

"It ain't right, it ain't logical, but you know that's the way it is."

Privately Relkin was wondering if the knight's horse would press an attack on a dragon. Czardhan warhorses were said to be uncommonly ferocious, and certainly they were huge. They had to be to carry these big men and all that armor and steel weaponry. But even so the horse was not half Bazil's size and was not likely to mistake the sight of the horse race's worst enemy, the hungry dragon.

The Czardhan knights were toasting one another from little silver flasks. Each toast ended with a series of whoops and cries as they whipped up the frenzy for combat. Then the challenger spurred his mount around, dropped his vizor, and lowered his lance. His horse moved into a canter and then to a purposeful gallop and drove straight toward them.

Relkin moved aside, looking around for something to throw. He didn't have his bow with him, and suddenly he felt terribly useless.

Bazil froze. He had only the troll ax, a clumsy, stupid weapon. The perfect thing for a troll to wield. Something shifted uneasily inside him, and Bazil felt more tired all of a sudden than he'd been in years.

All the drills he'd learned for fighting cavalry involved the use of sword and shield against any determined horseman armed with a long, pointed weapon. The defender should take the point on the shield and deflect it inward toward the horseman's line of motion. This moved the point completely clear of the defender and would also turn the rider's shoulder and open him to the counterblow. All he had was this stupid ax.

Dragons were not that good at improvisation.

The Czardhan was bearing down, his mouth open in a long, exulting scream. His horse seemed perfectly happy to charge a dragon. Relkin threw a heavy stone and missed. His next banged off the knight's shield but failed to dislodge him. His third bounced impotently off the back of the knight's armor plate.

Bazil was just standing there, not knowing what to do. He hefted the ax clumsily in both hands, and Relkin felt his throat go dry with terror. His dragon could be spitted here. He could die from this terrible stupidity.

And then Bazil convulsively swung up his hands, and by a freak of luck, the lance point caromed off the head of the ax and the knight thundered by, his blow turned.

He rode on a hundred paces and turned his mount. His friends were whooping with excitement. Relkin had already gotten Baz in motion, running away through the scrub trees. Relkin was shouting out for help at the top of his lungs. The others were only a short distance away; they should hear him soon.

Then the knight was in pursuit, Relkin could feel the thundering hooves at his back. He leapt over a stump and turned. The knight was twenty yards away. Relkin spun and tripped over a vine and fell in a tangle of branches.

When he looked up again, the dragon had stopped and was fishing something out of a tangle of fallen tree limbs.

The knight's war cry rang loud as he came in, his lance down, arrowing for the dragon's chest.

Bazil tore something free from the pile of brush and came up with a long branch, a mass of leaves.

The knight came on, his wild war scream wailing. Then Bazil swung the long branch, knocked aside his lance point, and the next moment swiped him off his horse.

The knight fell with a loud crash of steel and rolled into the base of one of the ant mounds that they had been seeing all day. By chance this was the nest of the red tropical ant of Eigo, a fierce and rather feared species.

The Czardhan was obviously stunned. He lay there against the anthill for a few moments while they watched, both equally surprised by this turn of events.

Then with a wild shriek the knight's body jerked. More shrieks erupted until his comrades rode down and dragged him away from the anthill.

Relkin was at his dragon's side by then. Relkin gave a scream of his own at the sight of the long cut on Bazil's shoulder and the red blood running down the dragon's arm, dripping into the dust.

That night Dragon Leader Wiliger brought a Kadein surgeon in to take a look at the dragon's wound. Wiliger had been much concerned earlier that "dragonboy stitch work" would not be good enough.

The surgeon was a well-seasoned sort who had been inwardly certain that this was an unnecessary inspection. He'd seen a lot of dragonboy work over the years. Dragons were always getting cut up and having to be sewn back together.

The surgeon had, however, taken the opportunity to meet the famous broketail dragon and his dragonboy. It would be something to tell his family about, if and when he returned from this expedition.

He took one look at Relkin's neat lines of stitches and patted the dragon's hide and gave Wiliger a broad smile.

"There you are, Dragon Leader, as fine a set of stitches as I've ever seen. You know something, you really don't want to worry about your dragonboys when it comes to this kind of minor surgery. They've been sewing up dragons their whole lives."

Wiliger stared stony-faced at Relkin and slowly turned crimson.

The surgeon then proceeded to chat with the dragon and Relkin and to ignore Wiliger. They discussed the Czardhans and the arrest of the knight that had attacked them. Wiliger endured this humiliation in silence and then stalked away, his face thunderous. He did not reappear that night.

The following day Bazil rode in a wagon towed by a special team of eight oxen. Relkin began the day on the wagon, too, but Wiliger spotted him there and ordered him out to march beside the wagon. There was nothing wrong, with him, and therefore there was no reason to burden the oxen any further than necessary.

So it was that they slogged over a hill in the forenoon hour and obtained their first view of Koubha. The word had come down earlier that the enemy had withdrawn, scared off by the approach of the allied army. The men were tired after days of marching, and there was a general sense of relief that there would be no immediate battle.

Koubha was a large city, built of ocher brick, and it filled a wide valley on both sides of a stream. As they drew closer they passed the wreckage of war, burned-out buildings and the bodies of men and women strung up from trees. Broken spears, arrows, and other items, like sandals and shields, were scattered here and there. Finally they marched in through a large, battered gate, hung between towers built of the same brick.

They had passed a few groups of native men and women. They were solidly built people with dark skins who now shared a hollow-eyed look that spoke of hunger and deprivation.

Inside the gate they were welcomed by a much larger crowd, clad in bright reds, yellows, and purples, with many a gaunt face among them. There was an orchestra that featured a large section of drummers and another of horn blowers; and a continual din was set up that went on and on without cease as men, women, and a horde of ragged children danced alongside the marching columns.

The dragons received a tremendous reception. The people had been told to expect them, and there was none of the terrified flight of the country folk. Swarms of children followed along behind the marching wyverns, wrapt in awe at the sight of these multiton monsters, carrying weapons and armor, wearing helmets and the leather rigging of their joboquins.

At the large open space in the center of the town, men were directed to a barracks, and dragons were sent to an empty stable. There, the scent of fresh hay mingled with the smoke of cook fires while dragonboys set about fetching water for the great beasts.

Relkin checked Bazil's wound while they waited for the evening boil. He cleaned around it with Old Sugustus and then applied a fresh poultice of herbs under a clean bandage. It was beginning to heal, an encouraging sight, although Relkin had expected little else since Bazil was in tip-top condition and the cut was only an inch or so deep. Sealed quickly and kept free of infection, it was responding well. Bazil reported a little soreness in the area, but no deep pain.

The dinner bells clanged, and dragonboys ran down to the cookshacks. There they found a large mob of hungry Koubhans drawn irresistibly to the smell of fresh bread baking. The cooks were ladling out cauldrons of noodles and broth while bakers broke up racks of bread and stuffed the loaves into the baskets for each regiment.

Relkin uneasily pushed his barrow back across the dusty ground past the starving throngs. A strong force of guards kept an open space between the hungry people of Koubha and the legions.

The dragon needed the food, and the dragon was a necessary implement of war. And so, in his way, was the dragonboy. They had to eat. The hungry people around them would have to wait until food could be brought in by their own governors.

He wheeled the barrow to the dragon, who had been joined by the Purple Green and Alsebra. They accepted the cauldrons with no comment, being ravenous, and they ate with typical dragonish fury.

Relkin turned away, appalled at the tug of conflicting emotions. Those people were starving, but it was necessary to gorge the dragons to keep them in the peak of condition.

Quietly he ate his own ration, about half of it, until his immediate hunger was somewhat assuaged, then he went back and gave his last loaf away, breaking it into three pieces and giving them to different elderly women in the line of faces mat met him.

Other legionaries were already doing the same, and from the lines of men going to and from the cookshacks there flew a haphazard fusillade of loaves of bread, tossed into the crowds of" Koubhans.

Relkin turned away, there was only so much a hungry army could do for the starving. Perhaps when the supply trains came up the next day, they could provide better for the Koubhans. The Argonathi legions had a job to do and a battle to fight. They were all certain there'd be a fight soon. They needed their strength.

Back in the stables Relkin found the dragons already asleep, while a mountain of empty cauldrons and sundry pots was stacked up in the central space.

"Come on, Relkin," said young Endi. "I've drawn scrub up, too. Wiliger's really got a burr under his saddle today. He put Roos on a report charge for losing a toggle from Oxard's rig."

Relkin sighed. He'd forgotten the two weeks scrub-up detail he'd drawn from Wiliger for being on the wagon that morning. He'd only been off scrub up for ten days, too. Wiliger's malice was as heavy as Digal Turrent's had been back in the invasion days. The difference was that Turrent had been a dragonboy, and knew his business. Wiliger's mad attempt to buy himself a dragon squadron command had already turned sour. Wiliger was in a perpetual rage these days, burning from insults both real and imagined.

He and Endi loaded the cauldrons and plates and all the rest on a cart and trucked it down to the cook fires. There, with boiling water and hot sand, they scrubbed everything clean and stacked it on the cookshack cart.

It was tedious work, but during it they overheard the gossip flying about the cookshack, which was a magnet for the free and idle to loaf around in. Everything came to the cooks during the day, all the news from every corner of the army.