AuRon had three choices, none attractive. He could live in a remote place, like NooMoahk, and trust to distance and terrain to shield him from assassins. The mountains were far enough from the paths of the hominids for the blighters to exist, after a fashion, so he imagined he could as well. The blighters might even be convinced to follow him, as they once did NooMoahk.
There was an attraction to that choice. After all, why should he care what happened beyond his lifespan? He could mate and live out his existence, perhaps better but certainly no worse than most dragons. But if he could find a mate, could he be sure of that isolation in twenty winters, or forty? The hominids knew the mountains existed, and eventually they would come. And there was the problem of a hoard for mate and brood. NooMoahk’s falling scales were a testament to the lack of precious metals in the area.
The second choice was to join with the hominids, to serve rather than rule. The dwarves spoke of using him as a courier. He and Djer were friends; for a time he knew he could have safety, food, and shelter. But if he took a mate, would the dwarves expect his mate and hatchlings to serve them someday? He imagined so. The dwarves had any number of shining qualities, but they gave nothing away.
The third option was so remote, it hardly seemed a possibility. He could find some like-minded young dragons, convince them of their predicament, and get them to act together on a solution. Dragons were an independent species, jealous of everything from mates to hunting ground, and the very idea was like a gourd with no stem. AuRon couldn’t see how he could get inside without smashing it. Male dragons wouldn’t listen to him without a fight, a chancy business, and females, if Mother and his sisters provided any guide, were too concerned with mating and hatchlings to see beyond their immediate horizon.
AuRon watched the sun settle in the western mists rising from the river’s swamped banks. The dilemma was a hard bone to swallow. Perhaps he would wait for one of NooMoahk’s more lucid moments and talk it over with him.
He glided into the cavern bearing another chunk of water buffalo in his rear claws. Flying with the beast’s dead weight was a challenge, and his claws got caught in the meal, causing him to make an inelegant landing on his front legs and chin. He could almost hear Wistala’s braying laughter as he picked himself up.
He heard something—a dragon’s shriek.
AuRon forgot the buffalo and raced to the sink in a series of hops, half-dash and half-flight. He jumped for the lower entrance; the cave wasn’t wide enough for him to use his wings. A rope ladder caught on his left front elbow, and he bit himself free in a frustrated snap of his jaws.
Something wide-eyed turned and fled from before him, running on all fours like an ape. Blighters!
AuRon folded his wings in tight and dashed through the cave. The sentry, if that was what it was, was faster than it was watchful. It wasn’t until they reached NooMoahk’s lair that AuRon could catch up to it with a leap. It died shrieking under his claws, but AuRon hardly noticed.
An assassination unfolded before his slit-pupiled eyes.
Armored blighters hurling spears had NooMoahk surrounded on the dais, coiled about the crystal statue. Dragonfire lit the room in an infernal glow of orange and black shadow; the flame’s oily smell mixed with the coppery odor of blood. Pairs and trios of blighters sheltered behind columns, with larger ones shouting orders and gesturing with swords. They placed spears into some kind of throwing stick, then jumped out from behind the rock to hurl their missiles into NooMoahk’s sides. So many spears hung from wounds in his sides that he looked like a blood-soaked porcupine.
The blood scent, the screams of battle, and the spade-in-dirt sounds of throwing spears striking NooMoahk’s flesh awakened something in Auron. He braced his legs wide and half-opened his wings and bellowed a challenge that brought pebbles down from cracks in the ceiling. The blighters froze at the sight of AuRon: tall as a warhorse but much longer, opening his wings like a standard unfurling.
“You vermin! You dare trespass in a dragon’s hall?” he bellowed in his father’s voice.
NooMoahk rolled off his refuge, snapping spear shafts to lie, belly up, in the blood pooled on the floor.
A blighter shouted something back, and spears arced toward AuRon. He jumped to the right in a flash, and one spear punched a hole in his wing before clattering to the floor with its fellows. The blighters took up hand axes and stabbing spears, and they followed their hulking leaders in a ragged line to surround AuRon as they had NooMoahk. They were more numerous than AuRon had thought at first, and others popped out from behind pillars and appeared from beyond the flame-light. He couldn’t deal with a sixth of them with his flame, they would close and kill him like a deer surrounded by wolves.
AuRon turned around, whipping his tail low along the ground. A few blighters were quick enough to hop it, but the others went over like the wooden pins in the dwarves’ game of tendown. AuRon ran for the exit and felt a thrown ax dig into his flank.
A little lamely, he jumped over the corpse of the sentry-blighter and dashed down the tunnel, wings folded again and tail waving behind to keep his pursuers off his haunches. The closer space of the tunnel amplified their triumphant shouts and hunting cries.
At the widening of the down-shaft, AuRon reared up and grasped the jagged stone of the tunnel roof first in his fore sii, then his rear ones. He hung upside down, like a clinging lizard hunting insects. The blighters pointed with their stabbing-spears and gabbled. AuRon was just out of their weapons’ reach.
But they were within his.
He stiffened his neck and vomited up his fire bladder’s contents. Gravity and his muscles sent the liquid flame over the heads of the foremost blighters. The ones in the rear tried to spread out, but the tunnel confined them under the deadly shower. AuRon worked the flame forward, squeezing every ounce of his fire bladder. The remaining mass of blighters ran forward, pushing those in front of them, their desperate cries filling the tunnel with animalistic screams. The crowd dropped their weapons as they shoved and shouted—
—right over the edge of the tunnel and into the deep shaft. The packed river of panicked blighters plummeted over the edge en masse, too fearful of the pursuing flames to look forward until it was too late. They were shoved to their doom by those behind. The last few realized their mistake and jumped for the rope ladders, only to be batted off by AuRon’s tail to plunge into darkness with their comrades.
When the echo of the last cry faded, AuRon climbed down from his refuge and waited for the flames to die down. He crossed the pool of fire, fed by burning bodies, by crawling the wall and crept back to NooMoahk’s chamber. The battle blazes there had gone out, and only the familiar crystalline glow lit the chamber. AuRon heard a wheezy breathing and knew NooMoahk still lived.
“NooMoahk?” he called into the darkness.
A red eye opened, joined by a second, and AuRon heard the bulk of the ancient dragon rise. “Never,” NooMoahk grated.
“NooMoahk, it’s AuRon. The blighters are gone.”
“You’ll never have it. This is my hold. Trespasser!” NooMoahk roared, coming forward, sagging griff extended. His wounds still leaked a little blood, but the spears, save for a few snapped-off heads, were out of the unarmored spots on his hide.
AuRon read murder in the red coals burning in NooMoahk’s long face. He stepped back, lowering his head and hugging the ground. The pose failed to mollify the dragon, who came forward in a rush.
AuRon turned and ran, not as a feint this time, but in earnest.
NooMoahk pursued, shouting threats: “My hold, my city, my mountains! I’ll throw your bones to the cave rats, you jackal.”
AuRon climbed up the shaft in a flash, and scrambled for the cave mouth. NooMoahk, more animated that Auron had seen him in years, stayed a few lengths behind, driven on by fury born of instinct.
When he had enough sky above, Auron launched himself into the air. NooMoahk was long past flying, and in a day or so, when he had a chance to get the heat of battle out of his blood . . .
He heard a rustle and a flap behind him. NooMoahk flew! His gaunt, almost scaleless frame gained the air. With his second line of defense shattered, Auron flew between the remains of the upside-down towers at the giant cavern’s mouth and went higher.
NooMoahk made a chase of it, following AuRon north and into the sky. On the other side of the mountains, the dun desert stretched below. Auron fled into what NooMoahk would not consider to be hunting territory. Whatever madness drove the tons of mind and muscle behind him, it would perhaps be content with chasing him into a wasteland.
A few hours’ flight convinced him otherwise.
Perhaps if AuRon were more used to flying, he could have out-flown the old dragon, but AuRon’s new muscles barely kept him ahead of NooMoahk’s old ones, after the first burst of the chase shrank the black into a dot as large as a claw. NooMoahk gained steadily after that. AuRon was forced by fatigue to glide more and more frequently to rest his wing muscles. The addled NooMoahk was too old a hunter to give up the chase without a kill at the end of it.
Even darkness, when it came, was not enough; a bright moon lit the dry sky enough for AuRon to see their pair of shadows two score of dragon-lengths below. NooMoahk was even with him, diving for him with jaws agape. Again and again, through a desperate use of his wings, Auron rose in the sky when NooMoahk plunged for him. His body was a long rope of agony, his wings a rack of flame. He did not dare fight NooMoahk on the ground, where the elder dragon’s weight and remaining scales would make the difference, so flight was his only option. But it didn’t have to be a directionless flight—