A Dragon at Worlds' End (31 page)

"Ommi and Pilduk threw Relkin off the cliff. We saw him fall to the river."

Lumbee was stunned by this news.

"Boy dead?" growled the dragon, who drew Ecator in a swift, fluid move. In Bazil's eyes Wol and Ium saw the imminence of death.

"No!" said Wol. "He swam across the river. We saw him step out on the far bank."

"You lie," rumbled the wyvern.

"No, he tells the truth," said Ium. "They beat us and told us to go to the Yellow Canyon. That's where we've been. Ommi said he would kill us if we told anyone what we had seen. He said they would kill Relkin if he came back."

The dragon head swung around to Lumbee.

"Lumbee, dragonfriend, do you think they tell truth?"

Lumbee was acutely conscious of the fact that she held the lives of the two young men in her hands. Fortunately she was also sure they were telling the truth.

"I do."

Bazil looked up and over to the green on the far bank.

"We were afraid," said Wol, his lower lip trembling.

It took a moment for Bazil to accept this and internalize it. That was a long moment for Wol and Ium, as they looked at the dragon and expected death. Finally Bazil gave a soft snort. These were just boys, not even dragonboys. Dragonboys were different—they were hardened in war, the hardest school of all. The drop from that bluff was a long one; only the toughest could have survived it.

"Then possibly boy lives, but somewhere on the other side of the river."

Bazil was in motion the next moment. The Ardu had to trot to keep up with him as he headed south, where the bluffs fell away and the river wound through meadowlands.

As soon as he was able to, Bazil climbed down to the water's edge and slid into the river. He called Lumbee and the others to join him.

"Hold on," he told them, and when they were attached to joboquin or scabbard, he pushed off into deeper water, propelling himself with smooth strokes of his long tail.

It was wonderful to be in the water again. He had avoided it since he'd first heard of Relkin's disappearance; now he surged forward into the glorious coolness of the river like some enormous crocodile. His flesh rippled in the water and his heart sang with renewed hope.

Boy might be alive! He had lived long enough to cross this river, anyway. Boy might have been afraid to come back, since it had been Ardu that had thrown him off the bluff.

Bazil ignored the unlikeliness of this thought in his newfound joy in living. He drove himself furiously through the water, terrifying fish and other creatures all around him, and rose up on the far side and strode ashore. He paused and took careful stock of the situation. Important to come up with a plan. Alas, boy was usually responsible for planning. Bazil had to admit to himself that over the years he had become accustomed to letting Relkin organize life. It was the usual way in the Legions. Battle-dragons were intelligent, but they were unsuited to the minutiae of daily life among human folk, things like schedules. It was easier to let dragonboys take care of those things. But now it was up to him to come up with a plan, and for a moment he couldn't think of a thing to do. It was overwhelming. The vastness of the land here was frightening. The eastern side of the river was a flatter landscape, more heavily forested in the north, more open in the south. Boy might be anywhere.

For a few moments his jaws moved angrily as he tried to grapple with it. There had to be a way. How would boy do it? For that matter, how would the dragon himself do it if he were hunting?

These thoughts set his jaws together and he thought harder. There was a lot of space to cover, and time and energy were at a premium. It was best to look first by tracking up and down the riverbank. For a few miles in each direction at first. Try to find some sign of where boy came ashore.

Up and down the shoreline they went, searching for some sign of Relkin. It had been some time since boy might have passed here, but there had been little rain, and it was possible some track might have survived, some scrap of information concerning a dragonboy's fate.

Nothing presented itself. No tracks had survived. Regretfully, Bazil turned north again and retraced their steps, carefully examining every inlet and beach. They found tracks, including several trails left by big pujish, but nothing that looked like a human footprint.

They reached the northerly point where they'd given up earlier and turned back south. He pushed on this time, and this time he was rewarded. They emerged onto a sandy area, where the beach was very wide, and there they found the remains of a reasonably recent campfire. Coals, ash, and pieces of burned wood littered the center of a ring of blackened cook stones. Excited by this discovery, Bazil checked the shoreline, and sure enough he soon detected the long straight mark left by the keel of a heavy boat.

It had been hauled out of the river, right up onto the sand, and there was still the imprint of the boat's keel.

"Boat was here," he grunted. Ium and Wol agreed.

"Slaver boat was here," said Wol.

Lumbee found a scrap of leather, a foot-long piece of thong.

"Slavers were here."

"Slavers take boy."

Bazil was certain now. To him all the pieces of the puzzle had fit together. He knew in his heart that if boy were alive, boy would have come back. Dragonboys always came back.

"Have to go south to find him. There are cities there. Boy will be there."

"We will go south, but we have to tell the others. Some will want to come with us."

"We must go with you. Ommi will kill us otherwise. Our kin folk hate us and will not come to our aid."

The dragon snapped his jaws together. "Ommi not kill you."

Lumbee grew frightened for Ommi. She was still not sure she could accept that Ommi had done this, despite Ium and Wol's certainty; despite the fact that she believed them when they said Relkin had lived to swim across the river. But if he had committed this crime, then the great dragon might kill him, and Ommi was kin of Lumbee's and one to whom she might be wed. If the dragon killed any Ardu, it would make him a kind of pujish. He would cease to be the forest god. But she knew that nothing would stop Bazil if he decided to slay Ommi, and if the Ardu got in his way he would kill them, too.

Bazil was silent as they set off, moving alone in a very grim mood. The Ardu followed him at a respectful distance. This was to save their lives.

Senses clouded by strong emotions and fragile hopes, they headed back down the riverbank to a point where they stood on a bank about ten feet above the river level. The top was flat and open, with a dense thicket of small trees about a hundred feet inland. The ground was rock-hard and hot beneath their feet. The river was a blue-gray mass to their right. Bazil was thinking of how much he would like to swim forever in that water.

Suddenly, with explosive swiftness, the thicket of small trees erupted as a huge red-brown pujish lurched out of concealment and charged them with an earthshaking roar. The beast was on them in an instant. There was no time to deploy, no time to even draw Ecator. The Ardu ran for their lives and so did the wyvern dragon. Against this monster, easily three times his own weight, with a head jammed with serrated teeth like knife blades, Bazil knew he had no chance at all unless he had a weapon in his hands, preferably Ecator.

Bazil dug his big feet into the ground as he accelerated. Each stride might be his last, for he could feel the closeness of the red-brown. Some sixth sense made him duck, and he heard the massive jaws snap shut just behind his neck. The fishy stench of the great predator's breath enveloped him for a moment. The river was ten feet straight down and no telling how deep it might be. But it was his only chance. There just wasn't time to reach up and pull Ecator from the shoulder scabbard. To stop for a second was to invite sure death when the monster's jaws slammed shut around his head.

He ducked low, desperately; there was another loud snap just behind his ears. The next would surely have him, and then Bazil was launched in thin air, all two tons of him hanging for a split second in nothing before he hit the water with a tremendous splash, went to the bottom, and sank into a deep bed of mud. For a moment he floundered there, and then surged out into the river in a vast cloud of disturbed sediment.

Another ear-shattering roar-scream came from the top of the bank. The massive red-brown did not fancy a jump of ten feet. With weird delicacy for a brute of its huge mass, it spun about and stalked downslope, where it thrust into the water at the earliest opportunity from lower ground.

Fortunately, the red-browns were so well adapted to hunting on the plains that they were not nearly as good swimmers as wyverns, who were predators of shorelines and inshore seas. Bazil had a huge lead, big enough that he was able to detour to pick up the young Ardu, who had hit the water first and swum out quite a ways. Still, the red-brown did not give up until it saw Bazil step up the beach on the far shore. It realized then it had no hope of catching him and it turned and swam back to the other shore.

In the meantime, of course, Bazil had pulled Ecator from the scabbard, and had the big predator pressed his attack, he would have paid for it with his head. A wyvern dragon with dragonsword in hand was still too much for any pujish, no matter how massive and mighty.

Together, shivering a little, they watched the huge red-brown stride out on the far side. It gave its great scream-roar and marched off into the forest. For a long time afterward their pulses were all still pounding hard.

Bazil, in the meantime, kept Ecator in hand and insisted that they all keep a keen eye for any more such monsters. The red-browns were acknowledged masters of ambush and could hide their mountainous selves in very modest clumps of vegetation.

The western side of the river remained peaceful, however, and they made their way back to the camp without any further excitement. The sun had just set, the cooking fires were going strong, and soon there was food. Wol and Ium crept into hiding—Lumbee brought them some food in secret—while Bazil ate a hearty dinner and then settled down to sleep well, for the first time in weeks.

The next day, in the late afternoon, Ommi came in from yet another hunting trip. Since Relkin's disappearance, Ommi hadn't been around the camp much. He had chosen the wrong day to return.

Bazil spotted him as he came through the boma. Ommi always seemed to take evasive action when he saw the dragon, and sure enough, as soon as he saw Bazil looking at him, Ommi slipped away into the tents of the Red Rock kin group.

Bazil gave no sign of further interest, but that night when Ommi was in his own sleep skins, the tent flap was suddenly pulled up hard and the whole tent rocked and almost collapsed as the dragon shoved its head inside.

Ommi yelped in fright, and would have bolted out under the side of the tent but for a big hand that shot forward and pressed him to the skins.

"Why you try and kill my boy?" growled the dragon in the dark, a vast menacing shape that promised death.

Ommi quailed. "I never—"

"Don't lie," snarled the monster. "I know truth. I found Ium and Wol."

Ommi gasped. Then the monster knew everything. Ommi doubted that Ium and Wol could have kept the truth from Bazil.

"He lay with Lumbee!" he said with sudden rage. "How can Ommi wed Lumbee, now that she has slept with a no-tail?"

The jaws snapped. Dragonish pragmatism came to the fore. "You are stupid. Lumbee and boy cannot fertilize the eggs. Too different. She unfertilized. You take her and fertilize her if she accept you. So you lose nothing."

Ommi purpled. "He defiled her!"

Dragons found it difficult to comprehend the jealous passions of mammalian beings. Dragons only mated when females were ready to fertilize eggs. It was a brief time, soon done with, and afterward females wanted little to do with males. Men and women were so much more intense in their possessive passions. Dragons thought they were mad.

"Boy meet Lumbee far away from here. Nurse her back to health. They feel the thing you call 'love.' You cannot blame them. They did not think they would ever see anyone else again. Lumbee not fertilized, though, so no harm done."

Ommi was unmoved. "She is ruined forever."

Bazil gave a dangerous snort. "Lumbee is dragonfriend. You be careful what you say about Lumbee."

"She would never have done this if he had not forced her."

"Stupid lie. She not forced. Ask her!"

Ommi swallowed. This was the uncomfortable part, for he had asked and been told the truth. It was just that he could not accept this truth. It was inconceivable that Lumbee could prefer the no-tail stripling to Ommi. Lumbee was for Ommi—that had been the unspoken agreement in the kin group. For Lumbee to choose Relkin as a potential mate was so horrible it was unthinkable to Ommi. Therefore he had blacked it out of his mind. Now he was forced to confront this awful truth.

"I cannot! I cannot accept this!" He broke into deep sobs.

Bazil relaxed his grip. "I understand. You weak. Problem is strong." In an absurd gesture the dragon patted Ommi down onto his sleep skins.

"Sleep. I not kill you. You too weak, unless"—the big eyes glared again—"you hurt Ium or Wol. Then I kill you, certain."

The dragon departed, the tent partially collapsed around Ommi, who lay there quivering for the better part of an hour.

It was the quiet season in Yazm City. The rains had tapered off, but the dry season had not properly begun. Now came the growing season of the plains. As lush grasses and ferns sprang to life, the huge herd animals scattered far and wide, leaving a denuded region around the lake. In pursuit went the giant predators. At this time the Ardu left the plains completely and went up into the northern hills, where the berries would be ripening.

Since the Ardu were in the hills, there was no easy way to get at them, so the slavers didn't bother. The Ardu would come back to the southern forest when the dry season intensified in a few months.

Yazm's dock cages were virtually empty, and the bars and whorehouses did a desultory business. A few freebooters came through, along with a steady trickle of frontier merchants selling steel tools and good weapons from the weapon shops of Mirchaz. The boat builders were active—they needed to have new boats ready for the return of the slaving parties later in the year—but most other craftsmen had little work to do.