A Sending of Dragons

  Around the bend he saw that the way flattened and then widened into an unexpected barren arena, as large as a minor dragon pit, the carved-out bowl of a mountaintop.

  “Akki, come see this!” he called.

  She rounded the bend and was as surprised as he.

  “I’ve never made it this far before or seen anything like this,” she said.

  Jakkin scouted the base of the eastern slope and Akki the western. Since they’d come up over the southern rim, they had to find some alternate descent or else just go back the way they had come. But the best they found was a small handscrabble and rock-strewn trail running up the northwestern side.

  “Maybe it widens later on,” Jakkin said cautiously.

  Akki shrugged, her mind a careful blank.

  The path did widen after about a hundred steps up the slope but only slightly. What was worse was that at every turning there seemed to have been a rock slide. Great plugs of granite blocked the narrow, twisting trail and at each one they had to scramble hand over hand over the rocks. Jakkin went first, after giving his pack to Akki. Once on top, he leaned down and took both packs from her, hauling them to the top, then sliding them down the far side. Then he extended a hand down to Akki and helped her up. It was slow, exhausting, sweaty work, and they didn’t make good time.

  Sitting atop the third pile of rocks, Akki took a deep breath. “How many more of these do you think?”

  Jakkin shook his head, too winded to talk.

  A moment later Akki managed another sentence. “Couldn’t we call the hatchlings in? After all, Sssargon says he’s our eyes. Let them tell us what’s ahead.”

  “Good idea,” Jakkin said. “Why didn’t we think of that earlier?” He shaped a careful sending of red and gold flags flapping in the wind, wound about with his signature color of green. He kept it quiet at first so as not to hurt Akki’s head and after a while felt her blue braid winding around the green. They broadcast the sending as loudly as they dared until Akki’s part of it began to waver and she put her hand to her head. Still there was no answer.

  “They must be miles away,” Akki whispered, rubbing her temples.

  “Or just not answering,” Jakkin added.

  “Like babies.”

  He nodded. “Big babies.”

  They both laughed and the ache in their heads bled away.

  “Wouldn’t it make life simpler if we could ride a dragon?” Jakkin said at last.

  “That’s impossible.”

  “I knew you’d say that. But wouldn’t it be nice if we could.”

  “You know that any extra weight on a dragon’s back presses against the flight muscles and—”

  “Anatomy lessons?” he asked innocently, referring to her medical studies in the Rokk.

  “Oh, you worm pile, you’re just egging me on.” She tried to look grim but started to giggle and, as if to tease him back, formed very graphic sendings of the kinds of wounds dragon scales inflict on the inner thighs of any humans foolish enough to sit on them. When she saw Jakkin flinch Akki grinned broadly. “Now there’s a real anatomy lesson,” she said. “All the muscles laid bare. I had to stitch up a number of drunken bonders who tried to sit astride walking dragons.”

  Quite deliberately, Jakkin stuck his tongue out at her and was surprised—and embarrassed—at how much better it made him feel.

  “So, we’re even now,” Akki said. “And I could use something to drink.” She slid down the rocks to the sling packs below and took out a jar of boil. Taking a deep draft, she passed the jar up to Jakkin. He made a face, more for her amusement than for real, and drank his share. Even boil tasted good after hours of climbing.

  “What would happen, do you suppose,” Akki mused, “if we tried to clear a path instead of climbing over each and every rock?”

  “It’d take forever,” Jakkin said, wiping his hand across his mouth. “And time is important. It’ll be day soon, and the copter will probably be back.”

  Akki nodded. “We’d probably start an avalanche anyway.”

  “And alert every wild dragon around,” Jakkin added.

  “Bury villages, too,” Akki said, smiling, her ironic tone clear in the words. At the same time her sending was of an idyllic picture of a peaceful village.

  Without meaning to, Jakkin sent back a scene of the same village with a series of small blue-gray people, shadows of shadows in an endless line, standing in front of the houses.

  Akki touched his arm. “Are you lonely?” she asked.

  Immediately a fall of rocks buried the shadow people and their village. “I have you, Akki,” Jakkin said. “And the hatchlings when they bother to answer. How can I be lonely?”

  Akki corked the jar and banged her fist on the cork. “That’s what I asked,” she said. “And you answered me with another question.”

  ***

  THEY WALKED ON until the path made a particularly bad turning, with only a foot’s width between the cliffside and a steep drop. Their slings overbalanced them precariously.

  Akki, who was in front, clung to the cliff and moved one foot at a time, then disappeared around the bend. Jakkin heard her cry out, “Look! Oh, Jakkin, look!”

  He couldn’t move quickly, and his heart was pounding madly by the time he’d come around the same precarious bend. Then he saw what had so astonished her. After the turn the path was nothing but jumbled rockfall for a few feet and then, below that, an unexpected meadow covered with deep purple gorse and dotted with bright green trees.

  Akki slid down the rockfall, but Jakkin, conscious of the jars of boil in his pack, picked his way carefully.

  “One, two . . . three. Look, Jakkin, there are seven spikkas.”

  The trees, with their crowns of spiked leaves, were unmistakable, though they were shorter and spindlier than valley spikkas. They all leaned toward the eastern slope at a comical angle.

  Jakkin counted quickly. “You’re right—seven—and over there a few smaller ones sprouting.” He pointed to the far edge of the meadow where the gorse ended suddenly in a sharp, spectacular drop. “How could spikkas grow so high up? And look how they lean.”

  “They lean because of the prevailing winds,” Akki said. “And they’re up here because dragons fly.”

  Jakkin snorted. “Of course dragons fly.”

  “When they fly the seeds of the trees often stick to their underbellies or go through them undigested and out in the fewmets, and if they land here and—”

  “No lessons,” Jakkin said. He smiled. “It wasn’t that kind of question.”

  Smiling back, she nodded. “No lessons.”

  “It’s morning and getting warm. We should rest here, under the trees. They may lean, but their crowns are full enough to hide us from copters overhead. We can look for food later on.” He wasn’t afraid to admit his exhaustion, and besides—he reminded himself—Akki had probably already read it in his thoughts.

  Running over to the closest spikka, Akki dropped her sling pack and began to dance around the tree. Then she stopped, looked up at the leaves as if counting them, and shook her head. “Not this one. We, my friend, are going to sleep under the prettiest one in the copse.”

  “Some copse,” Jakkin said. “Seven spindly trees widely spaced is not a copse.”

  “Who says?”

  “I say.”

  “Where is it written?”

  “Here!” He pointed to his head and sent her a very vivid picture of a book with words illuminated in fiery colors: 7 TREES NOT A COPSE.

  Laughing, Akki picked up her pack and walked over to what was, without a doubt, the tallest and handsomest tree of the seven. She dropped her pack and flopped down under it, signaling Jakkin with her hand.

  He walked toward her humming an old nursery melody.

  Akki took up the melody and added words.

  Night is coming,

  See the moons;

  Softly thrumming

  Dragon tunes.

  Sky above is

  Filled with laughter
,

  Dragons care not

  For Dark-After.

  Dawn . . .

  “We come, we come, we come.” The sending was clear.

  And then, from farther away, almost an echo, came the sendings of the two largest hatchlings.

  “Sssargon feeds now. Sssargon comes soon.

  And then Sssasha’s languid message. “I ride the winds. I come after.”

  Turning on her side, Akki mumbled something.

  “What?” His voice was a whisper.

  Out loud, in imitation of Sssargon’s sendings, Akki announced in a deep voice, “Akki sleeps.”

  Jakkin laughed and curled up by her side. “We’ll both sleep now and eat at dusk. Then we’ll find a way down from here when the moons begin to rise. It will be much safer that way.

  Akki’s only answer was a light, bubbly snore. Jakkin was still trying to figure out whether it was fake or real when he slipped into sleep himself.

  6

  IN THE MIDDLE OF a dream in which he and a great red dragon were lazing by the side of a stream, Jakkin stirred uneasily. A dark cloud entered the dream, raining drops of fire onto the sand. He woke to an overpowering stench, a landscape in his head as barbed and as angry as any he had ever felt, and a steady babble of dragon voices churning across the picture.

  “Sssargon kill. Sssargon save.”

  “Help. Help. Help.”

  “Do not move. Do not thrash. Help comes.”

  Jakkin leaped up and looked around, sleep still lapping at the edges of his sight. Akki, sitting on the ground, was as puzzled.

  Then in front of the first of the rising moons they saw their hatchlings flying, four of them, in a tight circle. They were back-winging, tails linked, holding up the fifth, whose wing drooped strangely. Around that circle was another circle of fliers, an attack force of silent winged shadows with long snaky necks and blunted heads.

  “Drakk,” breathed Jakkin.

  “Up this high?” Akki’s voice was strained. “I thought they ranged the lowlands.”

  “They roost in trees. In spikkas . . .” He looked up the trunk of the tree warily but could see only the jagged teeth of the leaves. His hand went quickly to the knife on the braided belt. Then he shook his head. “Useless,” he muttered. “Useless against one drakk, and look—there’s a whole pod of them.”

  “Hush. Listen.”

  Jakkin tuned in on the ring of dragons. Beyond their babbling he could feel the heavy dark thoughts of the drakk. Unlike smaller lizards, whose minds were uniformly pale pink or gray, the drakk’s sendings were sharp: blue-black, barbed, eternally hungry. They fed on the fear of a wounded dragon long before they stripped the meat from its flesh. The pipings of a dragon hatchling roused them to a frenzy. And one of the triplets was piping its fear.

  Akki whispered, “I thought drakk hunted alone.”

  “So did I,” Jakkin said. “But these are mountain drakk.”

  “That awful drakk smell,” Akki added.

  The smell. Jakkin turned. That smell meant that somewhere nearby was a wounded or dead drakk. He looked below the ring of dragons and, by the edge of the meadow, saw a dark shape he had not noticed before, broken upon the stones.

  “There,” he said, pointing. “The dragons have already gotten one.”

  Akki nodded. “How can we help them? As long as they’re up in the air, what can we do?”

  “Lend me your mind. Think as I think. They have a bit of training. Maybe enough. Fewmets, I wish I’d taken more time with them. But Sssasha is pretty big and listens well. And Sssargon is nearly full grown.” He reached out and Akki put her hand in his, for touching seemed to strengthen a sending.

  Concentrating, Jakkin sent a message to the dragons. “At my signal, breathe out fire.” He knew that, large as they were, they were still young, and he’d had no supply of burnwort to help stoke the flames. Of the five only Sssasha and Sssargon could even trickle smoke yet. But he also knew that fear and anger sometimes triggered a fiery display. Perhaps a flame or two would be enough of a surprise to move the ring of drakk back.

  “Wishes fill no bags,” Akki reminded him. Then she squeezed his hand as if in apology.

  The bit of nursery wisdom focused him. He nodded. “At my signal,” he reminded the dragons. “Breathe fire and then at the next, drop down to me. All at once.”

  He repeated the instructions twice. He felt sure that the drakk, with their wordless, dark minds, couldn’t understand the plan.

  Above them, dipping and rising against the first pale moon, the two circles continued their deadly dance. Thrust, retreat, thrust, retreat. Below them, at the ridge, the second moon’s aura was just beginning to show. The drakk ring tightened like a noose. Guided by the dragon smell and the constant piping of the wounded Tri, the nearsighted monsters closed in.

  “When I count to three,” Jakkin said to Akki, “think about the hottest flames you can. It will help them concentrate, and flame is something they know instinctively. The moment the drakk move back, think—drop!” He handed Akki his knife and picked up the femur spear, which he’d left lying against the spikka.

  Akki held the knife before her and bit her lip.

  “One . . .” Jakkin whispered aloud.

  Akki nodded.

  “Two . . .” He could feel her tension.

  “Three. Fire!” Jakkin roared aloud and Akki screamed with him. They sent picture after picture of blazing firebombs and roaring flames, shouting and waving their arms about as an added distraction.

  In response, Sssargon trickled some smoke from his nose, enough to make the sky around them hazy. But it was Sssasha, placid Sssasha, who suddenly flared out with a tongue of flame as long as a mature fighter’s. It licked at the face of the nearest drakk, which banked out of the circle, hissing wildly, and crashed onto the rocks below.

  Sssargon tried again. His smoke forced the nearest drakk to blink its near-dead white eyes and back away. Sssasha managed another fire flash. It raked the side of a drakk that had not been pushed back by the smoke. The drakk turned and the circle was broken.

  “Now drop!” Akki and Jakkin screamed, their minds linking as one.

  The ring of dragons plummeted to the ground, frantically back-winging at the last moment so as not to crash and further injure the wounded Tri.

  No sooner had they dropped than Jakkin instructed them, “Form a ring on the ground. Now—hindfoot rise.” He sent the kind of controlled messages he’d used when guiding a fighting dragon in the pit. Only this was not for gold, but for life, so there was an added edge of fright in his sending.

  Sssargon understood at once and Sssasha was not far behind. Even little Tri-ssskkette, the wounded one, tried to stand, front claws raised and waiting.

  For a moment Jakkin closed his eyes, remembering Heart’s Blood. He felt tears beginning in the comers of his eyes. Blinking them back, he forced himself to look, but his grip on the spear tightened.

  The lead drakk and the flame-racked second dived.

  Jakkin flashed out with the sharpened spear, catching the front drakk in the head above the eye. He did not pierce its hide, but he jarred it enough to disrupt its perfect dive and Sssasha ripped its neck open with her claws. Then she grabbed the drakk in her mouth and flung it with such force, it tumbled to the edge of the cliff.

  The second drakk banked sharply and winged away.

  The fallen drakk lay on its side, still except for the pulsing sensor organs on the underside of its wings. Its malevolent, blind snake eyes shuttered and unshuttered rapidly. Viscous blood oozed from its neck.

  Akki ran over to the cliff’s edge and picked up an enormous rock. Holding it over her head, she walked purposefully to the drakk, ready to drop the stone on the dying beast. She bent over it and Jakkin ran up behind her and yanked her back.

  At that moment the drakk’s hind claws razored through the air just where Akki’s legs had been seconds before.

  “It’s not dead!” she cried out in horror.

  ??
?It’s dead,” Jakkin said. “Or near enough. But even dead it’ll make a final fatal pass, a kind of reflex, because of those sensors.” He pointed to the fleshy sensors. They were still pulsing. “Didn’t you study that in your anatomy lessons?” he asked.

  “I never studied drakk,” she said softly.

  “Someone at the nursery told me he knew a man whose leg was nearly severed in two by a very dead drakk.”

  Akki shivered and let the rock fall.

  Hot, foul-smelling drakk blood oozed onto the gorse.

  “Last time,” mused Jakkin, “the smell of that blood made me sick.”

  “Last time you weren’t part dragon,” Akki said, but her voice was strange, and Jakkin suddenly realized it was because she was holding her nose.

  Sssargon walked stiff-legged over to the dead drakk and, using only the tip of his tail, poked and prodded it gingerly, waiting for a response. When there was none he pushed the drakk slowly—from the backside only—through the ground cover and over the edge of the cliff. When it landed, after a long fall, Sssasha sent a chuckling thought into Jakkin’s head.

  “Splat!!!” Then she turned her attention to helping Tri-ssskkette, slowly licking the tom wing. When the wound was clean she swiveled her great head toward Akki. “Fix?”

  Akki smiled weakly and went back to the spikka. Her sling pack lay under the tree. In one of the jars were the remains of her medkit. She whispered to Jakkin, “I hope the needles I have are strong enough for dragon skin.” Threading the needle, she went to work. Her small, careful stitches patchworked the flesh and scale feathers that had been tom. “See,” she said to Jakkin, “luckily the bande dominus, the big wing bone here, is untouched. Otherwise she would have been in real trouble.”

  Jakkin nodded, muttering under his breath, “Bande dominus.”

  After a few minutes, except for the strange nobbiness of the thread, the wing looked as good as new.

  “No more sleeping under trees,” said Jakkin. “There are still a number of drakk there. And since they usually fly in a straight trajectory”—he hesitated—“they probably nest right here in the meadow. In the top of one of these spikkas.”