Dark Lord of Derkholm (46 page)

Another man came up with a list. “You're down as expendable. You don't get a weapon,” he told Blade. “But you're allowed to use the chain. And remember. You fight, or you get a squirt of the fire hose. Ready?”

Blade shrugged. The list man took that as an answer and opened the iron door. When Blade did not move, two people took him by the shoulders and pushed him through.

There was quite a big oval space beyond, floored with sand. Benches went up all around, full of happy, chatting people. When they saw Blade stagger through the iron door, unreeling chain behind him, they cheered and clapped and gave catcalls. There were much louder howls for Blade's opponent, who was being pushed through the door opposite on the end of six pitchforks. Blade's stomach sank as he saw what he was supposed to fight with just a chain. It was a huge black griffin. One of its wings trailed, and it limped from a fire hose burn on one flank, but it was utterly formidable all the same.

I shall just walk to the middle and let it kill me, Blade thought. Then he recognized the griffin. It was Kit. But Kit so ragged, red-eyed, and shamed that Blade still hardly knew him.

Blade raced across the sand, dragging chain as he ran. The crowd got very excited, thinking Blade was going for a head-on attack. “Kit! Kit, what are you doing here?”

“Oh, gods!” said Kit. “How do we work this?”

“But—” Blade could see Kit was not chained the way he was himself. “But why don't you just fly away?”

“One broken wing, both clipped,” Kit snapped, more thoroughly shamed than Blade had ever seen him. “Shut up, Blade. They burn you for not fighting. I'm supposed to kill you. What do we
do?
”

“False fight?” Blade suggested. “The way we used to frighten Mum?”

Kit brightened. “That might work. All right. One, two, and
three!
”

They jumped toward one another. False fighting, as they had perfected it when Kit was eleven and Blade ten, involved a lot of yelling, even more quick movement that meant nothing, and a great deal of rolling around. The crowd loved it. But it took Blade only half a minute to see it was not really working. He kept getting tripped by his own chain. Kit was even more hampered by his broken wing. When they tried the rapid roll over and over, Kit screamed and actually slashed at Blade in his pain. The crowd thumped feet on the wooden benches and roared. Blade rolled hurriedly away, as far as he could for the chain, which had somehow got wrapped around Kit's right hind leg, and found that his crimson vest was split diagonally down the front to show a long, bleeding gash. He and Kit lay panting on the sand, staring at one another.

“Sorry,” Kit gasped. “I was going to let the next person kill me. Get the chain around my neck next time.”

“No,” said Blade. “Get this handcuff off me somehow. Then I can translocate us.”

“I'm too big.”

“I'll do it somehow. I did Elda easily.”

“But I'd have to bite your hand off.”

The slash down Blade's chest began to hurt fierily. He clenched his teeth. “If that's what it takes, then bite it off.”

The crowd began a slow handclap. At the sides of the sandy arena, men in loincloths took the clips off the ends of hoses fastened to barrels and others stood up ready with tapers to light the gas that came out. Kit rolled an eye at them.

“We have to keep moving or they'll burn us.”

“Let's do the savage chase then,” Blade said. “Ready, steady, go!”

He got up and ran, sprinkling blood on the sand to the crowd's great pleasure. Kit kicked his back leg free of chain and came after Blade with his neck stretched out, one wing spread and the other raised as far as it would go, moving his legs very fast almost on the spot. It looked spectacular. Shona always used to scream when they did it. This crowd screamed, too, and clapped, while Blade ran in an arc at the full stretch of his chain and the men with the fire hoses relaxed.

“Going to spring,” Kit warned Blade. “Now!”

He leaped, high and mightily. Blade plowed to a stop, fell on his back underneath Kit as Kit jumped, and ended up clinging to the underside of Kit's body with his legs and arms. Kit yelled. Blade hastily moved so as not to hurt the broken wing any more than he had to. Kit began running back and forth in short charges, pretending to worry at Blade, with his head down between his own forelegs.

“What now?” he asked, looking upside down into Blade's face. “I really don't want to bite your hand off. The man I did that to—he bled to death.”

“But the cuff hasn't got a lock,” Blade panted. “I think Barnabas put it on by magic. Can you get it off by magic?”

“No,” said Kit. “All the cuffs are fastened by a spell I don't understand. That's why I bit—”

Blade saw him look sideways and then upward. He rolled his head against the sticky, sandy fur of Kit's chest and saw the fire hoses being lighted.

“Drop,” said Kit. “We may be lucky. I think it's going to rain. Drop and run.”

Blade thumped to his back on the sand. It had certainly gone very dark, he saw, as Kit jumped aside. The crowd was bawling and screaming, and the men with the hoses were, for some reason, pointing their streams of fire up into the air. Perhaps the gas did not go out quite at once. Blade jumped to his feet, into a tremendous roll of fire. Both sides of the arena vanished in it for a moment. There was a sound that seemed to be thunder. As Blade staggered a few steps, fairly sure that the arena had been struck by lightning, the blaze cleared to show the exploded remains of barrels, shriveled hoses, and charred benches with little flames flickering on their edges. At the narrow ends of the arena, people were fighting one another to get out. And the thunder was louder than ever.

An enormous voice boomed out of the thunder. “Can't you fly, cat-bird?”

“No, sir,” Kit shrieked. “Broken wing.”

“And I can't land. Place too small. What's wrong with the boy?”

“Iron!”
bellowed Kit. “Stops his magic.”

“Stupid little beasts. Get beside him and keep still then.”

Blade collected his wits enough to look upward. Scales was hovering over the arena, filling the whole sky with the booming of his webby green wings. As Blade looked, Scales extended both gigantic forelegs and scooped Blade and Kit up in his talons. They might have been dolls. The great wings cracked like whips as Scales fought for height to get out of the burning arena, clutching the two of them to his hot, scaly chest. There came a painful jerk as they got to the end of Blade's chain. Blade felt the cuff leave his wrist and craned out to watch it fall, chain and all, back into the sand, and wondered for a moment if his hand was down there with it. He held it up, in front of a whirling, diminishing view of a town with a huge pile of smoke rising from somewhere in the middle, and found he still had a hand after all. Then they were going up again, to level out. Kit, dangling like a kitten being carried, shot Blade a look, a mixture of shame and delight. Blade knew how Kit felt. You felt stupid, being carried by something this large, and very uncomfortable. Scales's horny claws bit in around you, and Scales's great voice came rumbling through the enormous, hard, bellowslike chest the claws had you clamped against.

“Stupid. One of them can't heal himself; the other one can't do iron spells. Any hatchling dragon would be better off than that.”

Though it was plain that Scales was simply grumbling to himself, Blade and Kit both squirmed. “Nobody
taught
me iron spells!” Blade called out.

“Even if I did know how to heal myself, it wouldn't have helped!” Kit bellowed. “They clipped my wings!”

“Quiet,” Scales grunted. “Got to find the place—Oh, there she is.”

They were now well out over grasslands, faded creamy with the autumn. Blade saw the pale stretch of the earth tilt and rotate beneath them as Scales wheeled in against the wind. The great wings above and behind him cupped with a sound like a storm. The ground came rushing in toward them. It was much rougher than Blade had thought, and full of rocks. Scales's voice rumbled, “Letting go now.”

Blade and Kit found themselves dumped on the grass, sliding. While they staggered and bumped into one another, Scales glided in to land beside a tall boulder which had a small golden shape dancing on top of it. “There you are, girl. No problems. Got you the black cat-bird, too, while I was at it. I thought you'd want him. No accounting for tastes.”

“Lydda!” Kit and Blade screamed.

Lydda rose up rampant to wrap both forearms around Scales's huge neck and rub her beak delightedly against his great muzzle. “Thank you, Scales. I love you.” She looked tiny beside him.

“My pleasure,” grunted Scales. “I like you, too.” He had a preening sort of arch to his neck, as if he meant it.

Lydda laughed, leaped down from her boulder, and bounded to meet Kit and Blade. They did the griffin dance none of them had done since they were small, circling and jumping, wings spread, arms waving, all of them laughing their heads off, until Blade ran out of breath and left the other two still at it. Lydda looked small to him, even now. This was a new Lydda, he realized, slender and sleek and bright-eyed, with a deadly look to her talons and an even more deadly look of power to the glistening sweep of her long bent-up golden wings. She was batting Kit joyfully on the beak with them, but they still looked deadly.

“Hey! Doesn't she look tremendous!” Blade said to Scales.

“Good hunter, too,” Scales agreed. “I met her out hunting yesterday. That's how she knew where I was, after she'd trailed you down to that sandpit. How did you get into that mess? Eh?”

“Barnabas. He's being paid by Mr. Chesney to mine for magic,” Blade said. As he said Mr. Chesney's name, Scales once again went lizard still. “But I don't know how Kit got there,” Blade added.

Kit and Lydda were now jumping over one another by turns, wings spread and beating. The contrast between Lydda's spread of golden feathers and Kit's clipped ones was painful.

“Grow some more feathers, cat-bird,” Scales boomed. “It's unsightly.”

Kit stopped prancing. He spread out the wing that had been broken and stared at it. His head swiveled accusingly at Scales.

“That's right,” said Scales. “I could mend that. But I don't grow feathers.”

“But,” said Kit, “I can't. They won't.”

“Stupid,” growled Scales. “Like
this.
”

Blade was not sure what Scales did. Kit stood for a moment with his head bent and then looked up at Scales in a startled way. “Is that
all?
”

“That's all, unless you want to grow scales, spines, and spikes as well,” Scales answered. “Sit down while you're growing them and explain how you got into that sandpit. All this prancing about is making me hungry.”

“He doesn't mean most of the grumping,” Lydda murmured to Blade. “But I think dragons have to keep sort of half angry most of the time. Did you know you'd torn your vest?”

Blade looked down at the slash Kit had made. His vest was hanging open over goose pimples and bloodstains, but there was no sign of the cut. “Thanks,” he said to Scales.

“She wanted you in one piece,” Scales said, with a flick of his tail toward Lydda. “Well, Kit?”

Kit was crouched facing the wind, as griffins did to keep warm, concentrating in some way. “It was the geese,” he said.

“What?”
said the other three.

“After the soldiers shot me and I fell in the lake,” Kit explained, “I lay in the mud at the bottom and thought I was dead. Then a goose dived down beside me and dragged the arrows out with its beak. And I realized then that I was holding my breath and thought I'd better come up for some air. So I shoved up and floundered and gasped at the surface. By that time the whole flock of the geese was around me, pushing and pecking and getting my blood on their feathers. I tried to get away—I mean I can't swim, but they kept pecking until I arrived at the shore. There was a man there telling them what to do, but they couldn't get me out of the water, whatever he told them. The man pulled me out in the end, by my beak. Then he told me that he was very sorry, but he thought I really had to learn that killing people wasn't a game, and he went away with the geese and left me lying there. It was odd. I wasn't bleeding anymore, but my wing was broken, and I felt awful. And after a bit the hunters from Costamaret came with a cart. They'd been hunting lions for the arena, but they didn't mind catching me instead. They tangled me in a net and cut my wing feathers; then they heaved me onto the cart and brought me along to Costamaret.”

“I know how that feels,” Blade said, shivering.

Kit looked at him broodingly. “Only partly,” he said. “You were the fourth person I had to fight. What do you think happened to the others? It's
horribly
easy to kill a human. Lions are much more difficult. I had six lions. But lions and people were just the same. They all wanted to stay alive. So did I, at first. That was the awful part—them or me. And I had no more right than they did to be alive. I just had a beak and talons, and they didn't.”