Dragon Strike (Age of Fire #4)

“He knows that we meet as equals, he King of the Demen, myself Tyr of the Dragon Empire. No humiliation, no victor and vanquished.”

“The Tyr is generous. I, as general, admit that we beaten, beaten very. He cannot object.”

“He may choose the location of the meeting. All I ask is the companionship of my guard and his word that we meet in fair parley, no tricks or ambushes. Is that an immoderate demand?”

“No. The Tyr shows courage. That last parley with fighting—it was quaking trick. I take no part in that.”

“Of course. You are a warrior, with a warrior’s honor. Your followers surrendered, and I’ll die before I see them ill-treated or have the terms of the surrender broken. That is my promise to you, Gigrix.”

“Your word is prove by better treatment than I ever expect, Tyr.”

“I just hope it is soon. So you see no fault in my offer?”

“No—none!”

“Hmmm. Well, perhaps something is being lost in the messaging. This has dragged on far too long. I’ve nothing but admiration for the discipline and spirits of your warriors, but I hate to see them confined to a few dragonlengths of shabby holes.”

“Shabby! Tyr, the Lavadome is a wonder. Holes are clean with sound water than accustomary, purify in from steam. See the living hot rock flow against the . . . the—

“Crystal,” the Copper supplied.

“Ah, crystal! Great magic. Very dangers. Yes, it is like a magma pilgrimage that never ends behind crystal.”

“Ah, yes. Well, as I was saying, such fine warriors, kept waiting, though I commend you for keeping their minds occupied with exercise and training. How did we ever beat you? We could have used such skill in the skirmish with the dwarves at the hotflow.”

“A sharp fight, eh?” Gigrix asked, his spines rising and falling.

“Yes, the dwarves had taken refuge on a rising slope up from the steaming river. They’d banked stone against flame, so our own fire ran down on the Firemaids, and they had a stout shield wall behind.”

“Ha! The Tyr is wise, but I know how to fight dwarves in such a situations. You had water near. A good triple pump.”

“Triple pump?”

“Easy to build, just copper tubing of different sizes, and some stout backs to work the handles. It throw stream of water farther than any dragonflame. I see a triple pump knock down a wall, dwarves behind shields? Spill ’em and send ’em rolling like toadstools. Oh, a sight, that to see.” Gigrix seemed lost in his imagination.

“Well, if the occasion calls for it, when a peace of friendship instead of enmity is made, perhaps I’ll ask for your assistance in a future fight. Reward the victory with herds of cattle and drink a toast of dragonblood over a pile of dwarf-heads.”

“Dragonblood, my Tyr?”

“You’ve never had it?”

“Well, yes, in war . . . well, bodies and such.”

“And how do you like it?”

“Made me a new-shucked deman. Could that I took six matings instead of the usual three.”

“Ah. Well, the dragon-riders in the Aerial Host swear by it. Both they and their mates enjoy it regularly. A well-fed dragon’s all the better for a little bleeding now and then, I always say. Their children raised with a sip on the seven-day grow up uncommonly handsome and strong.”

“Amazing.”

“How so? I’ve heard that in Anklamere’s time dragonblood was used as a tonic.”

“No, that ye share. My apologies.”

“Well, there was some resistance to it at first, but they’re used to the idea now. It’s something of an honor, to play ‘host’ at a party for the riders and their mates. No dragon is ever forced, and there are enough volunteers willing to bleed a little.”

Gigrix smacked his mandibles. That divided jaw of the demen—most unsettling. It looked too much like an injury.

“Would you care for some?”

“I . . . I would never ask.”

“Oh, come, you’ve been most helpful to me today. You allowed me to watch your exercises, advised me on the offer to Paskinix—perhaps he’s died and your warriors can name you the new king. That would simplify things. Look, your eating knife looks clean enough, and one of those water buckets would do.”

“Not from you, Tyr!” But he did retrieve the bucket.

“Oh, come, a little blood spilled makes lasting friendship, I’ve found, and I’m heartily sick of counting demen as enemies instead of praising them as allies. Give me that.”

He pinched the short, sharp knife between his sii and cut himself just inside the turn of his forelimb.

If anything, it didn’t go deep enough. He had to continually squeeze his sii to keep the blood flowing into the bucket.

A small crowd of tired, dirty demen gathered to watch the strange ceremony.

Gigrix called to the others, and one brought a ladle with a bowl at the end.

“Fresh firewater!” a deman marveled. At least that’s what the Copper thought he said.

Gigrix filled the ladle, and like a good leader, offered the first sip to his “voice”—the deman who bellowed orders and corrected the warriors in their practice evolutions.

Then Gigrix himself took a swig. He stood still, drinking, breathing deeply, spines rippling up and down on his back.

“Yes, my Tyr,” he said, passing the ladle to the tallest and widest of his soldiers. His greenish tongue dabbed at the sides of his mandibles, and he muttered a few words the Copper did not recognize. “Just to think, some argued for a glory-charge instead of surrender! Here I am, enjoy a drink fit for a king.”

“It is fit for a king,” the Copper said. “What do you say, warriors? Wouldn’t Gigrix make a fine king?”

Eager for their turn at the ladle, the demen whistled through their mandibles and gave off piping hoots.

The Copper worried the wound to increase the flow. He used to believe himself awful at politics. But one could learn—yes, one could learn.

Pleasantly light-headed, the Copper returned to the top of Imperial Rock at a slow climb, with many pauses to talk to both dragons and thralls, hearing small news of kitchen and nursing-room. He congratulated thralls on the birth of babies or the marriage of children and made a quick visit to a distant relative’s cave to listen to the quiet taps inside three promising-looking dragon-eggs. He assured the mother-to-be he’d never seen such perfectly formed eggs. It portended great things for the brood, most certainly.

Then it was up to the gardens and down the shaft to the old cistern with his bats.

In the days of the civil wars, he’d been told, it held a reserve of water. During FeHazathant’s day, the water was mixed with a paste of ash, strange rare salts, and other nutrients and used to feed the Imperial gardens.

He’d ordered the cistern emptied and new masonry pools built to feed the gardens. Now it housed his bats.

It was a slow climb through the narrow well hole with his bad sii, but fortunately a short one. He found himself among his bats.

These were the trusted elite, descendants of the bats that had guided him as a hatchling. Each wore a tiny foot-band of metal, identifying it as a Tyr-bat. It was a crime to kill a Tyr-bat, at least on purpose.

They were of all different sizes, from small and quick, who lived mostly by eating parasites clinging beneath dragonscale—many a dragon would be revolted at the thought of some filthy, greasy mammal doing him a service as he slept—to medium-sized, who ate flies in the livestock and thrall pens to the big, blood-drinking brutes. Then there were the monster-bats, those who for generations had been raised on dragonblood. Some of them didn’t even sleep upside down anymore, but slept in cracks above the noisome floor.

The Copper was relieved to see that the floor had been freshly scraped. The bat offal was greatly prized by the Anklene herbologists for their gardens.

“Ahh! ’Tis himself,” a bat called as he clambered in.

“Ooo, is there a sup? Perishing hungry I am,” one squeaked.

“No. No blood this time,” the Copper said, climbing carefully to the cave floor so he didn’t slip in filth. His body-thralls would be burning their cleaning rags later.

“I need three quiet, very healthy bats, small and smart. The duty will require a good deal of flying and cave-sense. But on completion I’ll give you a permanent place in the Aerial Host caves.”

He had scores of squeaking, clamoring volunteers. Two brawls broke out. It was difficult to pick three, but he found two brothers who claimed to be descended from Enjor and one female who seemed better-spoken than the rest.

“You’re Ging,” he said to the female. He looked at one of the males. “You’re Gang. You’re Ghoul,” he said to the bigger male, for his fur was a ghostly gray. “Come with me, you three.”

He walked and they flew to the edge of the gardens and he looked down at the assembled demen. “Those are demen. Get to know their sounds, their smells, their voices. In another day or two, a pair of demen will leave that group. I want you to follow them. It will probably be a trip of some days. When they find another group of demen and meet with a big, sort of bluish one who walks with the aid of a big stick, you return and let me know where he is.”