Battledragon (40 page)

Those who looked at the maps were left with a feeling that they were on the edge of a tremendous victory, a heady feeling indeed.

To those without maps there were just the legends and the rumors. They accepted these with equal aplomb. They were soldiers first and foremost. Somewhere ahead lay a large body of water. They would land on the shore there and march. Then they would fight. The one certainty was that there would be battle. They had little reason to fear the Kraheen overmuch.

And so the fears in dragonboy hearts were not for the certain battle ahead, but for the rumors of sickness that swept through the rafts. There were unusual fruits brought in from the forest. The witches tested them and pronounced them safe. However, some men became sick on one raft, and a rumor flashed through the whole fleet that the fruits were poisonous. No one would eat the strange fruits after that. Not until General Baxander set an example and ate several and survived. Then came the one about a ghost that had taken to haunting some Czardhans. Several Czardhans were said to have lost their minds as a result. Soldiers were sensitive to such things as ghosts, and it was felt to be an unlucky omen.

They saw strange beasts now every day. Often they were of the huge, placid type with long necks supported by immense, bulky bodies that seemed to come in dozens of sizes, though all with the same general body shape. In color these beasts varied from a dusky green to a sober brown, rather like wyvern dragons. This spectrum of colorations was much commented on by everyone, including the dragons themselves. The Purple Green noted the lack of any purple beasts like himself. Alsebra wondered whether they were seeing many different types of similar-shaped creatures or seeing juveniles and young adults of a single type.

There was a feeling of something akin to awe among the dragons when they spotted any of these vast, mysterious animals. They were either the ancestors of dragons or creatures very much like them, except for one very noticeable thing. These great monsters were plant eaters with tiny heads. In those heads were tiny brains, and the great ones were indisputably stupid. Most of them simply ran to the shore when confronted with the rafts and disappeared into the trees with no more than a few mournful hoots.

There were other beasts, however, that were less pleasant to meet. A water beast with a head six feet in length suddenly appeared one day beside a cavalry raft, seized a horse, and dragged it screaming into the river. Only by tremendous efforts did the men stop the remaining horses from stampeding clear off the raft.

After that guards had to be posted, and several times they were engaged in fierce battles with similar beasts that would erupt from the depths and reach in to snap up a horse or a man standing near the edge of the raft. Horses grew decidedly nervous.

So did everyone else after Legionary Gidips disappeared in the night. He was on guard in the late watch, and no one saw him taken. His body was never found. Watches were doubled after that.

The river had widened and slowed. On some days they never saw either bank, just the wide open water, as if they sailed on an ocean of calms. Then, quite suddenly, things changed when they entered a plain of reeds. Progress slowed. Conditions quickly became nightmarish. The river broke into a thousand channels that crawled through a plain of mud covered in reeds. At times men and dragons had to get out and haul the rafts through the shallowest places.

It was exhausting labor, and biting insects were a constant problem. Even though the witches used fly spells over and over all day, the numbers were just so enormous that they seeped in past any amount of magical influence. The mud was thick, goopy stuff that clung to legionary, horse, and dragon alike and made the going very hard.

Leeches in vast numbers were also attendant on them at the time, and the witches became acutely anxious about diseases. The quinine ration was doubled for every man and a noxious drink called "blue draft" was prepared for everyone, man, horse, ox, and dragon. It had a disgusting taste, but it was consumed nonetheless, with little complaint, even from the Purple Green. The Purple Green had a horror of leeches, and there were some in these sloughs of mud that could even penetrate dragonhide. The draft was supposed to discourage leeches, and it did, to an extent.

At last they worked their way through the reeds and entered cleaner, more open waters. They noticed that the water was now brackish. They had entered the estuarial length of the river. The islands lay behind them quite shortly, and the water opened out again until they could barely see the northern shore.

They floated on for another day and then, after many careful sightings of the sun and much consultation of the maps, Baxander decided they should land. They were close enough to the sea now that it was time to march north. The rafts would not be seaworthy, and once they left the great river they would be on a truly immense body of water.

A landing was made on a sandy strip within a side channel of the main river. The rafts were pulled up and lashed down. The engineers removed many of the best timbers for their siege train. Since there was no way of knowing if the rafts would be needed again, they were treated as if they would be. They could not easily be replicated.

The legions pitched camp. Around it a ditch was embedded with sharpened stakes and a wall thrown up with a palisade of wooden timbers on top. Torches were lit beyond the ditch to cast light into the surrounding area, and a strong watch was posted and relieved every hour.

After the fall of night, the surrounding forest was torn apart by a rising cacophony. The relative silence of the forest above the reeds had been replaced with uproar.

Several times that night, huge shapes showed themselves briefly in the glare of the guttering torches. Eyes set two feet apart glowed momentarily and then disappeared, their owners drawn to the fort and then dissuaded by the alien smells, the bright lights, the smoke of the fires. The watches changed on the hour, and everyone breathed a little more easily each time.

The next morning Relkin awoke to find his dragon feeling poorly. A quick inspection of the wing nubs on the dragon's back showed that he was running a fever.

By breakfast the fever had grown worse. The dragon drank water but vomited it up immediately. Solid food was out of the question. Relkin could do nothing but press cold wet towels to Bazil's forehead and pray to the old gods, and even to the Great Mother, for divine intervention.

The other boys came in to offer moral support and help, but there was very little that could be done in such a situation. Wiliger appeared after breakfast, face creased with concern, and for once Relkin withheld his customary contempt. The dragon leader seemed genuinely worried about the famous broketail dragon. After a careful examination, Wiliger left and returned with a heavy book under his arm. This was Chesler Renkandimo's
Care of the Wyvern Dragon
. Wiliger looked up "fevers" and announced that a dose of murranor was required. Murranor was frequently given to men afflicted with kneeknock and cramps. Relkin didn't think it would do much for a dragon, despite Chesler Renkandimo's claims for it. Wiliger left at once for the chief surgeon's tent.

The witch Endysia came soon after that and questioned Relkin extensively. What had the dragon eaten in the previous day? What had he drunk? Had he drunk any water that had not been boiled? Had he eaten anything uncooked? To Relkin's certain knowledge, Bazil had neither eaten nor drunk anything unsafe.

The fever raged, the dragon lay there in delirium, mouth open and tongue lolling out. He seemed so piteously helpless that Relkin felt his vision blur and he was forced to look away. How such a wondrous hulk of muscle and sinew could be reduced to this desperate state was incredible to him. Relkin was consumed by a tormenting fear that he was about to lose his dragon.

Memories kept coming up to haunt him from happier times, insistent memories that he could not shut away, such as the great day when Bazil was given the sword Piocar, his first true dragon blade. It had been paid for by a collection in the village and forged at the famous Blue Stone Angleiron works. Bazil had taken up the sword then and swung it about him with a positively gleeful abandon. The crowd had cheered lustily as the young leatherback showed off the moves he had practiced for years with a dummy sword made of cast iron. Relkin had almost expired from a surfeit of pride. He'd known then that there was nothing in the world he would rather be than dragonboy to this dragon.

Then more somber memories rose to the surface. He recalled the arena at Tummuz Orgmeen. When they'd cut Bazil down and laid him out, he'd seemed completely dead. Scorched black, stuck with arrows like a pincushion, it looked perfectly hopeless. But Bazil had come back from that, and was walking again within the month. If he could survive that, then he could defeat this fever. There never was a tougher dragon. This thought gave him a slight boost of confidence, but it was small comfort nonetheless.

Wiliger returned with a pitcher filled with a blue extract of murranor. The difficulty now lay in getting it into the dragon. Bazil no longer reacted to any stimulus. Wiliger slopped some of the blue solution into his mouth, but it only made the dragon splutter, choke, and turn his head sideways.

There was no obvious way of getting him to drink Chesler Renkandimo's prize solution. Wiliger squeezed shut his eyes and put a hand to his head.

Relkin looked away. The dragon would cure himself. He was either strong enough to overcome this fever or he was not, and if not then Relkin would have to face the consequences. He blinked away tears. He would save them for grieving, but the dragon still lived, that great heart still beat. As long as it did, there was no time for tears.

Hours dragged by. The fever continued to rage.

Then a dreadful wailing broke out in the quarters. Endi went running by, shouting at the top of his lungs. Wiliger jumped out to see what was happening. The news was like a knife to the heart. Roquil had begun to feel poorly and now had a fever. It seemed exactly the pattern that had felled the broketail.

The dragonboys gathered in Roquil's tent. A gathering sense of doom was spreading among them. They could barely look one another in the eye.

Chektor was next. Relkin came to sit beside Mono. The big orange brasshide's symptoms were pretty much the same as those of the others. Upset stomach, furious fever, eventual lapse into delirium.

"We served together a long time, Relkin," said Mono, looking up after a while.

"That's right, my friend."

"We was at Ossur Galan together. That was a hell of a fight. Old Chektor, he was in the thick of that one."

"I remember," said Relkin.

"It's going to be hard losing the old dragons."

Relkin shook his head. "We haven't lost them yet, Mono. They'll pull through, you'll see." Relkin's words sounded hollow, even to himself. All they raised from Mono was a wan smile. Both of them knew that with dragons fevers were rare, but when they did occur they were usually fatal.

The next alarm came from Calvene. His dragon, Aulay, a hard green from Seant, was sick. Then it was the young brasshide, Finwey. Then Vlok and the young leatherback Stengo. In time the entire unit, including the Purple Green, were laid low. The wild winged dragon was the last to succumb.

By that time the disaster had become general. Dragons in all eight squadrons had come down with the fever.

Orders to quarantine the 109th were abandoned. Baxander met with the surgeons, the witches, and the dragon leaders from his eight squadrons.

Dragoneer Duart of Bea the 34th was something of a herbalist. He felt that the fever was probably a waterborne thing that they had picked up during the struggle through the reed plain. Certain herbs, especially dragonfoil, were very effective with digestive complaints.

A search was made, but no dragonfoil was to be found here in the ancient forest of the Lands of Terror.

The witches had still not produced any answer. Dragons were notoriously difficult to enmesh in magic, and fever such as this was beyond most magic anyway.

Alarm flashed through the ranks of the legions, and then leaked out to infect every man in the camp. A great sense of security had suddenly vanished. Not least for General Baxander. He had counted on the dragons being there. They were the top card for the legion front in battle. Without them the legion could fight, but it couldn't perform miracles and it could not fight against an enemy equipped with trolls.

Darkness fell over a somber scene. Dinner was a muted affair with not a dragon's bowl needing filling. The watch were nervous. With the fall of night came more visits from huge, predaceous animals. In fact, there were more intrusions on this second night than on the first. The newness of the camp was wearing off. Curiosity was overwhelming caution in the hearts of these aggressive animals.

Not long after the crescent moon rose, there came heavy footfalls from the forest, and an immense beast striding on long hind legs came out from the dark and thrust forward to the ditch.

From nose to tail tip, the monster was thirty feet of reddish brown terror. Its head was a foul mockery of a dragon's. It was huge, long, and narrow, with immense jaws. Eyes the size of a man's fist thrust up from the flattened skull and rows of saberlike teeth gleamed in the torchlight. When it snapped at the air, the sound was audible right across the camp.

It prowled along the ditch, casting red-eyed looks of hunger at the men on the parapet. This was an unsettling business, and everyone was acutely aware that they had no dragons to back them up.

The beast stopped suddenly, arched its neck, and emitted a loud, terrifying scream. All at once the Lands of Terror seemed to live up to their name. The horses and even the oxen were disturbed. A chorus of nervous neighs and moans arose from the herds. This seemed to spark the monster's curiosity, and it stepped down into the ditch. The stakes prevented it from crossing.

Arrows by the dozen thunked into its hide. It screamed again in pain mingled with rage, and bent down and seized a stake with its jaws. To their horrified amazement, it then ripped the six-foot stake right out of the ground.