Dragon Outcast (Age of Fire #3)

Dragon Outcast (Age of Fire #3) Page 29

“I’ve seen these lines in tunnels before,” the Copper said to Nivom.

“They’re rut-carts. Have you ever seen a road?”

“No.”

Nivom never minded showing off his knowledge. “In the Upper World hominids use these chariots and wheeled carts and such, and they eventually dig furrows in the ground. This is the same principle, only instead of furrows the wheels sit in the iron furrows. They’re a little noisy, but you can pull a heavy load quite easily. The dwarves use them for mining, or for transport when there’s no underground canal about.”

The Copper blinked for a moment as he tried to absorb what Nivom had said. Nivom was a clever drake, but didn’t make allowance for those not as bright as he.

“So the cart…floats on the rails. Like the dwarf boats on a river.”

“Yes, you’ll see.”

The thralls went to ropes attached to one end of the carts. SiDrakkon barked out an order, and Nivom distributed his drakes to the heads of the lines, putting their necks through harnesses made for draft animals.

Some of the drakes grumbled at doing beast work.

The Copper put Rhea on one of the flat carts with some of the other female thralls, who cooked or toasted a grainy paste on metal bracking rods for the males.

“Exercise won’t do any of you harm,” SiDrakkon said. “Toughen you up before you get to the Upper World.”

The Copper, though frightened enough of SiDrakkon to keep well out of his way lest he be barked at again, had to grant him this: He kept the column working and moving. The thralls didn’t have time to worry about being eaten, and the drakes were so busy they couldn’t get into squabbles.

“I’ll take a line,” the Copper said.

“You’re a courier. You needn’t—”

The Copper stiffened, extending his neck as though getting ready to issue a challenge.

“If you want the fatigue, have it. I’m riding in a cart, as befits a commander.”

The men went to knotted lines and threw loops across their shoulders, padding them with bunched clothing. The Copper let the sweat-stained leather ring—it smelled deliciously of equine—fall about his shoulders. It fit better than the Tyr’s emblem.

“Set…step…off!” SiDrakkon shouted.

“Take the strain. The start’s the worst,” Nivom shouted.

The carts set up a chorus of metallic screeching, and the chickens clucked in alarm and the sheep hurried out of the way, but the procession lurched into motion.

“Sorry, lads, it’s mostly uphill to Bant,” SiDrakkon said as he lowered his head to watch the wheels on their iron ruts.

The Copper liked the challenge of the pull; you could lose yourself in the effort. He did most of the work with his saa, just hopping forward on his bad leg during a strain.

When a thrall slipped and fell so that he lay dangerously facedown across the rail, the Copper quickly hooked him under the arm with his tail and helped lift him to his feet again before the grinding wheels could take off a leg. The thrall looked at him wide-eyed from behind his shaggy hair.

Fourfang clapped the thrall upon the back and grunted out a few hominid words, pointing at the Copper. The Copper had earned little enough honor among Drakwatch and Firemaidens, but even the respect of his thralls counted for something.

They took their first rest at a cave spring. The thralls instantly fouled the tunnel with their waste; the grains and roots they ate resulted in enormous quantities of excrement that rivaled bat guano in its unwholesomeness.

Nivom came to check on him.

“Ride for the next quarter.”

“I’m well enough.”

“I don’t want the Tyr’s courier dropping of heart seizure. Water or blood?”

“Blood.” He thirsted for the salty taste. Fourfang made a nuisance of himself, pulling up his saa and applying some kind of ointment that smelled like sheep fat.

“There’s a pan. SiDrakkon’s already shared a pair of sheep with his duelists. Better hurry, or your fellow line drakes will have had it all.”

He walked while the pullers were changed, but as soon as they took another break, went back to the traces.

“No. Drake ride. Fourfang pull,” Fourfang protested.

“I like it,” the Copper said, settling into the collar.

“Only unimportant drake pull,” Fourfang said. “Unimportant drake have unimportant thrall.”

“Is that so?” the Copper said. It hadn’t occurred to him that the thralls had some kind of clan system of their own.

“Pride of place.”

“Oh, all right. I’ll walk beside. If you get tired, let me know.”

The blighter planted his short, bandy legs. The column squealed into motion again.

“These carts need tinkering,” Nivom said, looking at the wheels of a particularly noisy contraption in front of the Copper. “If only dwarves didn’t starve themselves so quickly when enthralled. Get some fat drippings over here. That helps.”

At a widening of the tunnel SiDrakkon had found a rock pile to rest upon and watch the column as it passed. “That’s it, Rugaard. Work ’em hard and they’re too tired to make trouble. True for scales as well as hair.”

They had to leave the carts on the fourth “day”—as measured by sleep periods—and go on foot.

They lost only two thralls on the trip to Bant, one to sickness and one to a badly broken leg when he fell under a cart and seemed unlikely to recover. In both cases they had their heads quickly bitten off by the big duelist dragons as they slept. The others accepted the deaths fatalistically, though they turned their backs when the bodies were shared out and eaten, except for some of the younger thralls, who watched the process with a sort of dread fascination.

At last they saw golden light at the tunnel mouth again. A female dragon, with dust caked thickly in her scales turning her almost white, guarded the entrance from a pallet of wood and straw.

SiDrakkon had them rest in the cave until the sun had lowered so they wouldn’t emerge into full daylight.

The Copper took his first step into the Upper World at sunset, blinded and blinking for a full hundred heartbeats. When he finally looked about, squinting, he saw a dizzyingly vast landscape, bronze-colored and dotted here and there by taller green lacework that Nivom identified as trees. An orange sun, so perfectly round it seemed an eerie visitor as strange to the landscape as dragons, rested on the horizon, illuminating a distant rise.

“That’s the Sunshard Plateau,” Nivom said, pointing with his nose to the distant break in the horizon. “The Lavadome lies beneath. We’ve come all this way. It fills the sky when you’re nearer.”

The mouth of the cave had bones scattered all around the looser gravel below the cave gap. “My warning to trespassers.” The Firemaid chuckled.

SiDrakkon flew into a rage when he saw the tiny, tired collection of animals gathered at the watering hole at the base of the mouth-mount, watched by a few sandled herders in thin white robes who threw themselves on their bellies when they saw the dragons.

“Courier! Come here!”

The Copper approached, trembling.

SiDrakkon had turned quite purple. Or maybe it was the color-shifting light of the setting sun. “Your first duty is to hurry back with a message for the glorious Tyr. Tell him I’m relieving that fool NiThonius, friend of his or no. We’ll come to the Mud City half-starved, thanks to him. Eat one of these pathetic, scrawny sheep and go!”

It appeared his visit to the Upper World would be as brief as it was dazzling.

Chapter 15

As it turned out, the Copper didn’t return to the Lavadome that day. Nivom hurried up to SiDrakkon and convinced him that ill news would be better received by the Tyr if it were mixed with good.

SiDrakkon sputtered some more, but when Nivom pointed out that the Tyr might just appoint SiDrakkon as replacement governor of the Uphold, and SiDrakkon would spend a goodly stretch of years in Bant, the dragon finally retracted his griff and f claws and cried settled.

The next morning the Copper looked more closely at the Bant hominids as they washed. Their skin was a similar tone to his own scale, though a good deal less shiny, and he decided it made them look healthier and more intelligent than the paler thralls from the Lavadome.

Two tiresome marches later, guided by another dusty dragonelle who could easily converse with the locals, they came to the Mud City.

The Copper got a chance to study a depiction of the lands on an animal skin, with inked squiggles representing rivers, ranges of hills, stone outcroppings, and water holes. Once one got used to maps they made sense. The Mud City was a collection of dwellings and workshops and markets on the southernmost of Bant’s three great rivers. Downstream the riverbanks teemed with life, according to SiDrakkon, with the assorted kinds of trees growing so tall above they blocked the sun, rendering the Upper World much like the Lower, though better lit, at least in daytime.

The Copper discovered that while dirty, the Upper World had its compensations. For one thing, all the light sharpened his eyesight. He picked up detail at a distance. In the muted light of the Lower World colors faded and shadows muddied edges. Up here the Spirits’ wonders and labors in shaping all between blue sky and black earth stood under brilliant light as though it were a statue on display in the Anklene hill.