It was time for the cave to be Auron’s. He would drive his brother out, or kill him. The scent of another young male so close to his sisters was intolerable. Auron rubbed his egg horn in anticipation. This vestige of his hatching was firmly fixed to the end of his nose now: a sharpened spur he could drive through even his brother’s scales if it came to killing.
Stillness never suited Auron. His sisters were better at sitting and waiting; he wanted to be up and following a trail. With nothing to occupy his mind but looking and listening, he dozed.
Splash(tap) . . . Splash(tap) . . . Splash-splash(tap-tap).
Auron woke, nerves racing with danger, though he did not know the source of his alarm. He opened an eye and rolled it to and fro across the pool. The splash-tap rhythm repeated itself over and over. Auron’s ears located the source: the wall of the pool and the trickling fissure.
Whatever was making the noise was behind the wall, in some hidden cavern curtained off by a sheet of rock and flowing melt.
Auron slipped down from his stalagmite and crept to the pool. The stranger behind the wall was timing its work with the sound of water falling from above. He could not be certain, but the fissure seemed wider than when he had smelled his brother’s footprints at the crack. He wanted a better look, but there was no cover close to the crack—
—save the pool! Auron slipped into the icy water; his hearts jumped. There was a shelf under the waterfall, and he laid his head atop it, keeping his body submerged. The water showered off his skull before entering the pool below. Through the veil of droplets, he could see the crack, and his eyes picked up flecks of stone flying out with each tap.
He wished he could find Father and tell him, but Father was away hunting. He had just left the day before, and would be gone for days on his search.
A section of cavern wall fell away into the hidden chamber. Auron could tell it was pulled and supported by some unknown strength: it did not fall naturally.
A pointed, shining dome appeared at the new hole, and it turned left and right. Auron saw eyes behind thin slits in the shell. A figure stepped out into the cavern, pressed its back against the wall, and froze.
It was thick-limbed, standing on two legs, not as tall as the man Father had brought, but far more broad. A great helm sat on its head, and Auron heard breath moving through the faceplate. It probably weighed three times what Auron did with all its metal trappings added. Something sharp on a long pole emerged next, passed from the shadows to the intruder. Ornately wrought barbs decorated the pointed head.
A spear!
He heard voices exchanging words in low tones, very different from Drakine. “Az-klatta. Mu-bieblun,” the one on the outside growled to another.
Auron shivered at the foreign sounds, which made the danger all the more real. They must be dwarves, and dwarves hunted dragons. He flinched, but stopped himself from leaping away outright. Instead he sank back into the pool, shielded by the waterfall, and swam away underwater. He poked just his eyes and crest above the water against the cave wall at the far end, careful to keep the cascade between himself and the dwarves.
He scrambled out of the water and into cover as quick as four legs could carry him. He wove between stalagmites, making for the egg shelf. He had to warn Mother before more dwarves—
Something crashed atop his back.
“Got you! Death has come for you, softling.” The copper hissed.
Auron clawed at his brother with his free leg; he felt his saa rake against layers of scale.
“By the eggs that sheltered us, there’s something you don’t know,” Auron said. “There are others in this cave. Dw-auuggg!” Blinding pain as the copper’s teeth tore the soft tissue of his earhole behind his crest, near his beating pulse point. Auron thrust up with his rear legs, but his brother’s entire weight bore down on the weaker front legs.
Copper’s tail immobilized a leg, and the good forearm pinned his mouth shut to stop Auron’s squawking. “Others? I know about them. Good friends, strong friends, who’ll give me more of a chance in this world than my own kind. I saved your life, but would you share the egg shelf with me? Allow me a full belly? Even one sniff of Mother? I’ve lived in hunger and hiding since the day I came out of the shell, thanks to you.”
Auron could not respond. He could hardly breathe through his nose, let alone speak of the instincts that had driven him.
“So you’ll die now, as you should have died out of the egg. Two brothers, both stronger, and you ended up with the nest. It’s time to right a great wrong. Nearly time, that is. First you get to watch Mother and the chatterers skinned. Stop writhing, you lizard—you’re worse than a snake! Too bad you shan’t see me gorge myself on Father’s gold.”
The copper used his good forearm to twist Auron’s head on his thin neck. Auron could just see the egg shelf and Mother’s ridgeless back, pale green in the mosslight. He wasn’t a snake; he was a drake, even if he lacked Father’s scaly bulk. A snake was all spine—
Auron whipped his tail up like a cave scorpion striking. He aimed for his brother’s eyes, but the copper must have seen the blow coming. Instead Auron caught him on the side of the head. Auron twisted his limber body, and his smaller sibling gave way. The pressure on his neck vanished, and the two rolled across the cavern floor. Their jaws snapped at each other’s heads, and Auron took the worse of the exchange. Neither could catch the other’s neck.
They glared at each other, mouths agape. Auron sidestepped, but his brother turned, keeping the crippled arm behind his body.
Why wouldn’t his brother close?
He realized he had not time for a fight to the finish. The copper was playing him, keeping him away from the egg shelf while the dwarves gathered.
“You live this day if you trouble me no further,” Auron said. “Though when I tell Father of this, he may feel differently. He’ll pull the mountains down to find such as you, who’d lead assassins to the egg shelf.”
Auron did not wait for the snarled reply: he jumped away from his brother and ran. There was no chase; the cripple could not hope to run him down.
“Mother! Mother! Mother!” Auron trumpeted as he approached the egg shelf. “Others! Assassins, dwarves, here in the cave.” Auron leaped for the egg shelf, gaining it in a bound his scaled sisters could never match.
His mother was on her feet, neck and tail curled protectively around her female hatchlings. “We are discovered?” she said, nostrils flaring as she sniffed the air.
“They’re here. With spears, Mother,” Auron said, instinctively turning and putting his small body between the approaching dwarves and his family.
“No! I’m faint with hunger, and the winter’s been so—,” she began. She froze, looking out into the cavern. Auron had already spied them with sharp dragon eyes.
Figures appeared out of the shadows. They clambered over stone ridges, appeared and disappeared behind stalagmites, leaped over fissures in the cavern floor by bowlegged jumps. Many. Many-many. Some ran with spears, some with axes, some with climbing poles. Others came with heavy shields held before them, sheltering dwarves carrying machinery of some sort behind.
Mother reared up on her hind legs. Not to fight; she turned her back to the assassins, and gripped a broken-off stalagmite near the cavern ceiling. As it came loose, Auron smelled fresh air from above.
“I hope you aren’t too big for this, my hatchlings. Auron, take your sisters and go to the surface. At once! Climb, my love, climb.” She nosed Wistala up the wall.
Auron planted his legs wide and opened his mouth at the approaching dwarves. Oh, how he wished! He wished he had wings to spread, to frighten them from their approach. He felt his body begin to seize up, to spray his bile if nothing else—
His mother plucked him by his back and almost threw him into the hole. Something flew out of the dark and glanced off Mother’s neck. Below, he saw Jizara wide-eyed with fear, tail, limbs, and neck wrapped around Mother’s hind leg.
“Jizara! By your egg, Jizara, let go! My hatchling, I can’t fight with you there.”
Nothing frightened Auron so much as the sight of Mother gently trying to pry his sister loose from her leg. His mind cleared. He couldn’t fight, but he could give Mother one less worry.
“Jizara, up here! Don’t you want to see the Upper World?”
Something flashed up at Mother, sticking in her neck. Arrows. Spearpoints appeared above the rim of the egg shelf, followed by helmed heads, armor clanking and chain grating in the movement.
Mother looked up at him, and he read her. Mother’s mind was a fog of fear, two hatchlings to go into the Upper World unguided, one clinging to her as wounds stung her body.
“Climb! Auron, climb!” Mother implored, looking at him one last time before turning to face the spears.
Wistala would not move until Auron head-butted her. Then she fled, throwing loose rocks in a mad scramble up twists and shelves in the narrow chute. The sound of their panting echoed in the confined space, drowning out the battle cries of dwarf and dragon behind. No moss grew here to light their way; Auron grew more frightened rather than less as they climbed.
Then from behind came a cry—such a cry of anguish, a dragon’s shriek to rend the mountain’s heart. Perhaps the sound of a dragon in her death throes, perhaps the wail of a mother who has seen her offspring die under her eyes. Auron would never know.