“I’m a stranger here,” AuRon admitted. “My business is my own. I’ve flown from a land where even the stars are strange. My name is NooShoahk, of the line of NooMoahk.”
“You’re a civilized dragon. You speak well.”
“I read and speak the four hominid tongues, and dialects besides. I’ve heard you need dragons who can fight, and flew far to join.”
“Join? Join? We’ve had men join, but never dragons.”
“A wise man knows that just because something hasn’t happened, doesn’t mean it can’t happen.”
“I leave wisdom to the Wyrmmaster. I’m but a servant of his Supremacy.”
“Wyrmmaster? I’ll obey a just lord as liege, but I’ll call no man my master.”
“He has a way with your kind. Wait here.” The man turned, muttered something to one of the men at the ropes, and moved off into the cavern until he disappeared into the shadows left by tallow dips set into the walls. The other men continued with their duties, watching AuRon out of their eye-corners and drooping lids. AuRon smelled bloody meat somewhere within the cave.
The older dragon, wearing a harness that reminded AuRon of the baskets he had seen men and blighters put on mules, approached. It had scales of muted red, like laterite. There were no challenging bellows, no display of armored fans. Its crest bore six goodly-size horns.
“You I not know,” it said, golden eyes blinking at him in confusion. “You fly with men other side mountains?” Its speech was harder to interpret than the hairy man’s Parl.
“The mountains to the east?”
“That way,” the dragon said, pointing with its snout toward the Red Mountains.
AuRon marked new men entering the landing-cavern. Men in dragon-scale armor. “Yes, I come from the other side of them.”
“Is good hunting there?”
“Very good.”
“Fighting stock or breeding stock?”
“Neither. I’ve only just arrived.”
The dragon looked him up and down for a minute. “You not fighting stock, no scales. Not breeding stock, no scales—old man not want soft hatchlings. I think you laughingstock.”
“Your wit is as quick as your tongue.”
“Is like joke?”
AuRon didn’t know what to make of that, so he just snorted. “Is like joke.” It couldn’t hurt to agree. An odd sort of exchange with another male, neither a challenge nor a gesture of accommodation.
The men with the younger dragon began to swear. Their charge was flapping its wings furiously, forcing the men on the wing-lines to lie flat.
“Good trials, then, laughingstock. We see each other a’morrow.”
“Thank you.”
AuRon waited and watched the men get their dragon under control, and then begin the “lean right, lean left, tip forward, tip back” routine again. It struck him as odd that men, creatures without wings, should be giving lessons to dragons, creatures who took to the sky like seals to water.
“So you’ve come to join us?” a flat voice said. The sound reminded AuRon of the slow rumble of the wheels on the dwarves’ traveling towers.
AuRon shifted his neck at the words, instinctively covering his vitals.
The newcomer was a man, one of those diamond-shaped men whose power seemed to come from their bellies. He had gray hair still flecked with black, close cropped, but no beard. His face was strangely immobile, as if he wore a mask, though he showed a full set of white teeth with his smile. He wore a shimmering short- sleeved tunic, cut deep and revealing black-flecked hair on his chest and powerful arms in thick leather wrist-guards. Pants, stitched at the outer seam like elvish riding breeches with leather pads sewn in, disappeared into soft leather knee-boots. AuRon recognized dragon scale at the tips of his boots, and on the leather at his wrists.
Beside the older man was a youth, hardly out of his teens. AuRon did not know his face, but startled when he took in the man’s array of armor and weapons: the silver helm, with the swan’s wings sweeping up to meet above, the sword with the hilt fashioned like a gaping dragon’s mouth, the polished black armor of dragon-scales. The spear was gone. The Dragonblade’s armor had been modified to fit his slighter body. The spiked face-plate was up. It revealed a cruel, scarred face, as if something had taken a handful of flesh from the cheek and cut it away with a knife. Fissured pink tissue covered his cheek, but not thickly enough so that AuRon couldn’t make out the bone beneath. One eye—the center of a scar—was gone; in its place a red ruby glittered.
“It’s just a gray,” the young man in the Dragonblade’s armor sneered. “No use to us.”
The older man held up a hand. “Tell me, dragon, you’ve heard of us and come to join?”
“The whole world is hearing of you. You should be more surprised if I hadn’t. Do I speak to the Wizard of the Isle of Ice?”
“If by Wizard do you mean sorcerer, no, I don’t possess that gift. If you mean am I part of a movement that will change the world, well, I do my part. Of late, the Varvar, the Quiol, and the Endiko have been calling me the Wyrmmaster.”
“Or his Supremacy?” AuRon said.
“Win a few battles for your people, and you’ll find yourself called all sorts of ridiculous titles, O Good Dragon NooShoahk. They tell me that you name NooMoahk in your song. If so, I bow in recognition of your great line.”
Which he did.
AuRon bowed in return.
“Why do you wish to join us, NooShoahk?” the Wyrmmaster asked.
“Vengeance.”
“Go on,” the Wyrmmaster said.
AuRon kept his words to a minimum until he had a better feel for the man. “You kill elves. You kill dwarves.”
The Wyrmmaster and the younger version of the Dragonblade exchanged a look. “This has happened before, Eliam. Coloklurt came out of the East to join us . . . what was it, eight years ago. Poor, half-starved wretch when he arrived, and now he’s one of our sleekest fighters on the elven coast.”
The man wearing the Dragonblade’s armor gave a strange twitch of his shoulders. “He’s got a wary look in his eye. Like he’s bracing for a fight.”
“You’ve been around our dragons too long—you’ve forgotten what a wild one looks like. I just see a proud young dragon. With a few scars,” the Wyrmmaster said. “Are they souvenirs of battles with the lesser lines?”
“Lesser lines?”
“The line of hominidae, young dragon. There were the blighters, the crude first attempt by the Guiding Hand, and then the failed branches of sylvanline and dwarrowline, before the flowering of man.”
“The blighters I knew kept their place. But I’ve been hunted by elves and dwarves, and all my family is dead at their hands. Men, too, have brought me to bay.” AuRon looked at the scarred youth in defiance, but the single green eye just stared back at him.
“A tragic story, one shared by many others of your kind who were not lucky enough to survive. Someday I’ll tell you the truth behind your suffering, if you wish.”
“Truth is a worthy goal, but I look for revenge, Wyrmmaster.”
“That’s Supremacy to you, gray,” the youth said, stepping forward with hand on sword-hilt.
“We’ll work out the titles later, Eliam,” the Wyrmmaster said, gripping the weapon so that it could not be unsheathed. “NooShoahk looks a little hollow about the eyes. We’re poor hosts to one who has come so far to offer wing, claw, tooth, and fire to our cause. Tell me, is Shadowcatch still the ranking dragon?”
“No, Wyrmmaster,” the hairy-faced man spoke up, “As of the last trial, Starlight outclimbed Shadowcatch. The new order is Starlight, Shadowcatch, and Ramshard.”
“You’re not thinking of giving him a chance at being a breeder,” the young Dragonblade whom the Wyrmmaster had called Eliam said.
“Odd names for dragons,” AuRon opined.
“These dragons were born here. Different land, different traditions,” the Wyrmmaster said easily. “Feed our bright new dragon, and give him a day’s rest. We’ll hold trials on the morning after. We’ll match Ramshard and NooShoahk. We can use a dragon of this gray’s intelligence in the cause. What do you say, NooShoahk? Care to test yourself against one of our best dragons?”
AuRon wondered if he was speaking to the wizard he had come to slay, or some herald. He was in no shape to kill and then fly; he needed rest and a meal. Then there was Wistala. If there were a chance that Tala lived on this island . . .
“A fight?” AuRon asked.
“That’s part of it, but there are strict rules. Flying figures into it as well, laden and unladen. You should do quite well. I’ve read that grays are the fastest dragons in the sky. We could use more of your kind. Pleasant duty.”
“As you say.”
“An ideal way of thinking, NooShoahk. I predict you’ll go far.”
AuRon could never have imagined a barrack for dragons, but that was where the bushy-faced man with the elaborate belt, who AuRon learned was named Varl, led him. It was only a brief walk down through the crudely dug tunnels. They passed a man staircase, and AuRon smelled fresh air coming down from above. Another shaft had lines and guide-rails built into it.