The river broke into pieces here, lined with sandbars, some with trees up past their roots in floodwaters. On the far bank stood a fortress of the Ghi men: a rounded hill, crowded with stone housing and surrounded by a wide, stout wall and marshy ground. The fortress stood next to taller hills cut open and butchered for the stone they contained.
A dead dragon lay on the riverbank, below a raised path that led up to the fortress gate. The path itself was littered with what looked like colorful bundles, and it was only after a moment’s reflection that he realized they were bodies.
Another of the duelists lay, apparently unconscious, panting, bleeding, while a couple of blighters pulled gingerly at spear shafts sticking out of his underside. The Copper left Fourfang and Rhea with some gibbets of drying game and dead Ghi men and approached the wounded dragon. It was HeBellereth, the red.
The Copper looked downriver and saw confused motion at the bank of some eddies in the river. Bant men and blighters were riding or wading across the thigh-deep water, retreating from the far bank.
“One more flight, NoTannadon. Just one more flight,” SiDrakkon was saying. “You must keep them off the Drakwatch and what’s left of the blighters. Otherwise they’ll never get back across the river. They’re out of range of the war machines now.”
The duelist dug in his throat with his saa and extracted a piece of an arrow. “And end up like HeBellereth, or the corpse across the river? Go yourself.”
Several deep thwack noises rose even to the hilltop, and the Copper saw the arms of war machines whipping up from thick hedges of concealing brush. They threw masses of stones high in the air, dark clouds that dispersed as they fell on the river crossing. Warriors threw cowhide shields up over their heads for protection, but they had no more effect than a mist. Blighters fell by the score.
“Curse them!” SiDrakkon roared, and flapped into the air. He swooped down over the river crossing and loosed his flame upon the bushes and war machines.
He turned a tight circle over the river valley and plunged among the burning machines, throwing men and their constructs this way and that in his fury.
The Copper saw a group of Drakwatch clustered around Nivom—he was easy to see at a distance, a white vesper with head rising again and again to call to the drakes. Nivom loosed his flame into a mass of rock and washed-up timber on the riverbank, and was rewarded by the sight of tin-helmeted Ghi men running, throwing aside their weapons. Nivom dashed through the inferno and came back with something in his mouth. He dropped it long enough to call to the last few Drakwatch on the north bank of the river, and as they plunged into the current he retrieved his prize and followed.
The blighters staggered back up the hill, some throwing themselves into the first piece of cover to pant or tend one another’s wounds. The proud Drakwatch had an easier climb, being four-legged, save for the wounded. Nivom stalked right past his injured drakes and started up the hill.
The Copper looked from blighter to drake and back again. Dragons were a superior species in every physical respect. Their scale kept out arrows that felled the blighters, their crests could deflect a fall of stones such as rained down on the blighters at the ford, and their fire terrified even if it did not kill.
But the blighters would not abandon an injured fellow warrior to his fate.
Nivom threw down his captured weapon, a contraption of wood and metal, in some respects similar to a bow. “Curse them. They’re using dwarvish crossbows.”
A bleeding drake just made it to the top of the hill and collapsed. The Copper approached to see to his wounds, but the drake just snarled a warning: “Keep off!”
The wounded drake curled into a ball.
SiDrakkon flapped across the river and landed on the hilltop, somewhat bloodied about the griff and gums. A blighter ran up and tugged at an arrow projecting from his saa, and the dragon growled and struck him down.
On the other side of the river, the Ghi men sallied out of their fortress, teams of spearmen hunting about the riverbank. They flushed a wounded drake and put an end to him. Wounded blighters they beheaded, digging into the ground the warriors’ short stabbing spears and setting the taken heads atop, grisly flowers lining the road leading to the Ghi men’s fortress.
“Come, NoTannadon,” SiDrakkon said. If he noticed that the Copper had returned he gave no sign of it. “We’ll return to the Lavadome and there ask for more dragons to redeem this. Nivom, go back to the Mud City as best as you can. I’ll return with two-score dragons ready for war!”
With that he flapped into the air, the remaining duelist trailing behind.
“Rest a moment,” Nivom said to some of the Drakwatch who rose to begin the long journey south. “The Ghi men aren’t crossing the river just yet. Might as well eat the hanging meat; Spirits know when we’ll have full bellies again.”
He looked at the receding dots of the dragons flying south. The wounded duelist gave a groan.
“Two-score dragons,” Nivom said. “Three will come over footsore and give up before they’re out of the Lower World. Two will get into a duel, killing one and leaving the other too wounded to go on. Six will see all the game on the savanna here and decide to spend the season hunting instead of in warfare. One will see a village in the distance, immediately attack, and it will turn out that he just burned out some headman of the king’s and will have to be sent back in disgrace. Four will argue with SiDrakkon about the orders he gives, and return to the Lavadome rather than serve under one they consider inferior to themselves. Two more will quit the first time an arrow goes home; for having shed blood honorably, they will consider their bit in the war over. Of the half-score remaining one will always be too ill to fight, another too cowardly, and a third will fly into a rage and die atop the first tower he sees. Leaving SiDrakkon with three reliable dragons again.”
“You should have a mouthful yourself,” the Copper said. He’d never heard Nivom so discouraged. “Just as many lengths for you as the rest.”
“What I’d like is some wine. Have you ever had wine, Rugaard?”
“What about HeBellereth? And the wounded on the hillside?” the Copper asked.
“You think this is a training march? I won’t bleed victorious dragons looking after losers.”
“The blighters don’t feel that way.”
“Blighters!”
The Copper stared off across the river. Trails of smoke rose from the town.
“It’s that cursed wall that did it,” Nivom said. “See how the causeway runs along it? They could fire down on us, throw rocks. Rothor and NiHerrstrath tried climbing it, but they were picked off from the towers.”
Some of the Ghi men had ventured out beyond the broken gate and were crowded around the corpse of the dragon, cutting trophies of their victory.
The Copper suddenly noticed something about the wounded and the survivors. “What happened to the Firemaidens?”
“SiDrakkon grew desperate. After the first rush against the gate was thrown back, he sent the Firemaidens to lead the blighters. Some fell under the towers. I think that’s Agania there, being lifted by those rats.”
The Copper approached HeBellereth. The blighters had managed to get the horrible, hooked spear out, and the dragon lay on his side, panting. He rolled an anguished eye at the Copper.
Nivom shut his nostrils and walked over to the hanging meat.
“Can you walk, sir?” the Copper asked.
The dragon managed to right himself. He got his hindquarters up, but managed only a short, shaky rise on his sii before collapsing again. “No. I’m vanquished.”
“I’ve been vanquished too,” the Copper said.
“Yet…” the dragon said, “you wear laudi.”
The Copper inflated his lungs, looked down at the wounded drakes struggling up the slope. He couldn’t say who was talking or where the words were coming from, only that he was angry about the sacrifice of the Firemaidens, and the wretched humans across the river, pulling teeth and claws from the corpse of the dead dragon. “Not yet! Drakwatch of the Lavadome, you’re hurt but you’re not dead. Not yet!”
A drake pulled himself out from the rocks at the bank of the river.
“Up. Up, drakes,” the Copper said, rearing onto his hind legs, a strange clarity in his mind. “Climb. On three legs if you have to.” He waved his shriveled limb to emphasize his point.
One drake made it only a few paces before collapsing.
The Copper scrambled down the hill. The drake, a coppery color not much different from his own, was bled out, his gums and eye sockets almost white.
“Vanquished,” the drake said. “Cry vanquished for me. To what little glory I’ve earned I depart this—”
“Not yet! Climb on my back. I’ll get you up the hill. You’ll heal and get another chance at them.”
Six or seven blighter warriors were gathered nearby, resting and chewing on some kind of leaf. Some no longer had their spears or shields.
“Up the hill,” the Copper said.
They looked at him blankly as the drake climbed on his back. Luckily he was slender-framed. The Copper gestured with his snout. “To the top. Top.”