Battledragon (6 page)

"Exactly," said Tommaso, slapping the table.

Iapetor spread his hands. "But the revenues, remember the revenues. Marneri keeps two legions and a dozen frigates for the defense of shipping. The cost is enormous. We need revenue from wherever we can get it."

"The damn Aubinans are manipulating the grain markets again," said one of the men to the left.

"The exchequer is in a lamentable state," said another.

"We need to sell more commissions, not stop the practice. A good way to raise revenues."

This all seemed suddenly too ignoble a conversation, and Tommaso changed the subject and asked Relkin to describe his visit to the hidden stair of the kings of Veronath. Relkin was glad to do so, pushing his chair back, feeling his belly stretched taut. The trifle was finished, at last.

Lagdalen came and forced Rozerto to let her share his seat, for she had had no time alone with Relkin, who was her friend first and foremost, before any of the company.

Relkin had described the lesser stair and then the mustering of Clan Wattel and the opening of the cliff to the secret main stair when there was an interruption.

The major domo came close and whispered in Tommaso's ear. Lacustra signaled him to tell her, too. Tommaso's face had gone grey. The major domo moved toward the other end of the table.

"What is it, brother?" said Iapetor.

"We have a visitor, an unbidden one."

Lacustra suddenly gave up a wail. "No, not again, my heart won't bear it."

Relkin looked up to the door and saw a small figure in a simple robe of grey come in. He stared, amazed. It was the Lady Lessis.

"Greetings to you all," she said with a simple bow. Artfully she cast a spell of attraction over them with a fluid gesture of her arm. They responded very well; frowns and gawps were replaced by smiles for the most part.

"I see some faces here that I know well, and I see other faces that think they know me too well." She laughed sadly. "Thus are we divided in our struggle with the Great Enemy. Good Master Tommaso and Mistress Lacustra, I offer you a thousand apologies for this interruption. It is absolutely unkind, I know, but it is vital business of the empire. I am afraid I must speak with Lagdalen alone. The need is very urgent."

Tommaso had risen to his feet, his face a war of emotions. For a moment he could not speak, then he mastered himself.

"Lady, we did not know you were even in our city."

"No, I came only very recently."

And Lagdalen knew at once from Lessis's tone that she had, indeed, only just stepped through the Black Mirror, after a flight through unimaginable danger in the ether of chaos.

Lagdalen rose and went with the Grey Lady, and when she was out of the room, Lacustra wept aloud and could not be comforted. It was too much to be borne. These witches came as they pleased and stole one's children out from under one. There was nothing a mother could do. The poor child had already served enough, more than enough, enough for several lifetimes. Why couldn't they leave her alone? Why couldn't they leave the family alone?

Relkin's eyes met those of Hollein Kesepton and read there a hidden knowledge. Something was happening, but even though Lagdalen was his wife, Hollein would not break his silence, especially not at a dinner like this.

A foreboding began to build in Relkin's heart. He resolved to immediately investigate the matter of a tropical kit.

Lacustra was lead away by some of her ladies, and the dinner ended on a quiet note with the conversation much reduced. The last course was a marvelous pudding of rose water, flour, suet, and currants. It was extremely filling. Relkin struggled to finish it and left the Tower of Guard feeling as stuffed as one of the suits of armor that stood on the landings of the higher floors. Going downstairs was uncomfortable at first, and he had to pause for a moment at the second landing.

Outside in the cold air and winter light of evening, he took several deep breaths and felt somewhat better. The tropical kit surfaced on the uneasy brew of his mind. Lessis the Grey was in Marneri. Something unusual was in the works.

He made his way back to the Dragon House and found the rest of the 109th lined up in the midst of a full kit inspection, with everything spread out before them and Dragon Leader Wiliger standing there glaring at him with icy rage.

"You are derelict, Dragoneer. Where have you been?"

Relkin explained that he had been away to dinner with friends, special friends who had invited him to their home. He mentioned that while he had been away, he had deputized Manuel to stand in for him.

He made the mistake of saying further that he had heard nothing from the dragon leader since they had first met at Dashwood and that he had no idea that he would be joining them that day.

Wiliger's fury intensified, but he visibly checked himself.

"I hardly consider that good enough. However, you have an alibi. I will investigate. Should it prove false, then you will be up on a charge. Now, fall in with your own personal kit for inspection."

The obstacle course for dragons was built on heathland well beyond the walls of Marneri. Here, in a group of sandy drumlins, the legion had constructed a series of climbs, slides, crawls, and wallows, connected by a path roughed with dozens of rocks and felled trees.

Over this course went the 109th, each dragon carrying on his back four hundred pounds weight of sword, shield, and equipment. This in addition to helmet, chain mail, and the joboquin with breastplate and arm protectors.

Through the muddy wallows they splashed, throwing up a bow wave as they went. At their head were the younger dragons, such as Roquil, a leatherback from Blue Hills. They pushed themselves hard, even the big brasshides like Oxard and Finwey. Behind them came the older dragons: Alsebra, the green freemartin, generally in front; then the leatherbacks, Vlok and Bazil Broketail; and then the heavyweights, big Chektor, an oversize brasshide, and the huge Purple Green of Hook Mountain, the only wild, winged dragon that had ever joined the legions. He'd been forced into it when the minions of the Blunt Doom of Tummuz Orgmeen clipped his wings and robbed him of the power of flight.

As they went on around the course, a pattern began to repeat itself. The youngsters started well, but by the halfway mark they began to lose stamina. They tired quickly on the twenty-foot climbs. The older leatherbacks and Alsebra caught up and passed them in a while. Now these three plodded on, increasing the lead, down on all fours for most of the time, with sweat pouring from the glands down their backs and along their tails, despite the chill wind from the north and the snow under their feet.

By the end they were a minute or more ahead of the younger dragons and a full three minutes ahead of Chektor and the Purple Green.

As always, the Purple Green disparaged the course and the thinking behind it. The others drank the water brought by dragonboys and ignored him. He always complained about everything. They knew that the course was a physical challenge and that they had met it and well. Even the Purple Green had completed it within the twenty-six minutes alotted. They knew they were lean and fit for anything. The month at Dashwood had hardened and tightened their massive muscles.

After the water they sipped kalut and endured inspection by dragonboys anxious about every talon and every fragment of equipment. Then they formed up and marched for Marneri, keeping up a brisk four-miles-an-hour stride that brought them within the walls by the evening hour and well in time for dinner.

In the Dragon House they stood still while dragonboys undid armor straps and stays. Joboquins came off and were immediately inspected for the slightest rip or tear. Dragons cooled down from the march in the plunge pool. Then they headed into the refectory and sat in a circle around the central fire.

Dragonboys wheeled in cauldrons of cornmeal stir about. Pots of akh were handed out. Dragonboys returned with kegs of beer, which were eagerly seized up by the dragons as they were broached.

The cornmeal vanished in minutes. Already the boys were back, however, wheeling in an enormous "gift" course, this one from a subscription among the fishermen of the city taken up to honor the "fighting 109th" of Marneri. It was a pie of "three fishes," easily twelve feet long, eight feet wide, and two feet deep. The pan it rested in had been especially cast for the occasion. Within were cods by the half ton, pequerel by the half ton, and runido in the same measure. This had been simmered with onions and garlic and then covered with a pastry shell and baked to a turn.

Two hogsheads of the finest ale from the Barbican brewery were brought in on a donkey cart and drawn into tall steel pails. The dragons sang happily after the first toast.

The pie was cut and shoveled into great platters that the dragons ate off with the same oversize spoons they used for everything else.

The wyverns much appreciated the pie. Their breed had originally been coastal predators, wild sea-dragons of the north, and they always enjoyed the flavors of the ocean. The Purple Green from Hook Mountain, however, disparaged the flesh of fishes.

"Pallid, insipid stuff," he proclaimed after cleaning two platters clean.

"Hardly worth the effort of devouring," he said as he accepted a third.

There were cries of disagreement. "Not so," said several of the wyvern dragons. "This is excellent pie. The cod is bland enough, but it supports the flavors of the runido and the pequerel."

"You just have a fixation on eating flesh, it comes with the wings," said Bazil Broketail.

The Purple Green scoffed. "You remember that horse we roasted? Now wasn't that incomparably better than this?"

"They're not really comparable at all," said Alsebra, who was taken by all of them to be uncomfortably quick-witted and intelligent. None of them liked to get into an argument with her. She always seemed to get the better of them.

"Fish is disgusting stuff, and these shellfish you talk about have no flavor at all!"

They listened for a while to the Purple Green's raving, but finally Bazil exploded. "I know of a fish that even you will have to admit is a great thing to eat. I will get one."

The Purple Green allowed that it would be something he would love to taste. Bazil swore by the fire of old Glabadza that he would and in a day or so, too.

Only later did he really put himself to imagining how to go about it. The boy had already tried to buy one without success. To go and try and get one on his own would have been an obvious solution, except that it went against the great prohibition.

It was forbidden for wyvern dragons to swim in the ocean. All the dragons in service to the legions were absolutely banned from the waters of the sea. Men feared that the ocean would reawaken the dragons' true identity, and they would cast off their alliance and reassume the wild way of life. "Turning feral" it was called with dread by all dragonboys.

Bazil fell silent as he contemplated the fix he'd gotten himself into.

While the dragons ate, the dragonboys checked and cleaned equipment. An ungodly amount of mud had attached itself to everything.

They worked, mostly quietly, around the hot-water tub in the scullery, but dissension broke out when an orderly brought a message. Dragon Leader Wiliger invited Manuel, Relkin, and Mono to dine with him at the Wolf & Pheasant, an expensive restaurant on Foluran Hill.

"What's all this about, then?" said Swane, who was clearly miffed at not being included.

Relkin was still trying to work it out himself. The last he'd seen of Wiliger had been an unpleasant little interview in which he was castigated for being a troublemaker. Wiliger had told him in no uncertain terms that he would have anyone given ten lashes and field punishment if he thought they were playing the fool or trying to rag their dragon leader.

Now, just hours later, there was an invitation to a dinner more handsome than most.

"He's invited the three oldest of us," said Manuel.

"I don't understand," said Mono. "He was so hellfire runkly this morning. Told me I had to rework old Chek's shield handle by tomorrow."

"I guess we'll find out," said Relkin as he finished cleaning Bazil's breastplate and arm protectors.

An hour later the three of them left the Dragon House. They wore their very best blue coats with red trousers in Marneri twill and knee-high boots that gleamed with the polishing. Their best caps were aligned in perfect horizontal fashion with the brass squad badge aglow on the front. They marched down to Foluran Hill and stood outside the Wolf & Pheasant, admiring its polished-brass fittings and the green awnings that curved above its three windows on the street.

Without hesitation they elected Manuel to go first. Relkin and Mono were orphans, Manuel was not, a real rarity in the Dragon Corps. Manuel had had an education. He belonged in some way to the world that included the Wolf & Pheasant. They did not.

Manuel found the headwaiter, and the name "Wiliger" was enough to secure them instant attention. They were shown to a fine circular table set in the far corner of the main room, near the immense fireplace in which a whole pig was roasting.

A few moments later Dragon Leader Wiliger himself joined them. His self-invented uniform had been toned down somewhat He still wore the long blue coat with tails, but he'd switched from breeches to pantaloons, and they were of the correct red for dress uniform. He had turned to a wide-brimmed hat, like a cavalry trooper, which was all wrong of course, but worse still he wore the oversize cap badge with those sacred numerals, 109, in what looked suspiciously like gold.

They did their best not to fixate on this vulgar, incorrect item. Having spent so much of their lives considering such details under the stern eye of Dragon Leader Turrent, they were intensely aware of how wrong it was.

Wiliger was oblivious to their concerns. He settled in at the table, ordered ale for all of them, and plunged into a determined attempt to be friendly while pumping them for information about the unit. He seemed utterly unconcerned about the incongruity of this. In the morning he was the roaring taskmaster, demanding this and that, poking about their kit and complaining that things weren't polished enough, including items that were never polished at all and never exhibited on parade. Now he was attempting to be their friend and intimate.