A dwarf stood on his neck. The dwarf called another over, and they bound him in the leather strapping they used to bear their war machines.
The dwarves took up a chant. The Copper heard thwacks and chunks as they employed their axes, and then he heard a strange, high-pitched sound as some blew air through tubes.
Then the singing dwarves marched back out of the cavern, bearing their wounded and trophies wrapped in salty-smelling fabric on litters made of their spears. He smelled dragonblood everywhere.
One of the men pointed and there was some talk, but Gobold broke away from the others and grabbed the Copper by the crest and lifted his head. The Copper shut his eyes at what was coming….
But instead Gobold spoke, and again, strangely, he understood: “No. This feud started over bargains not being kept. Let none say Gobold—”
The dwarves called out at that; others clapped and stamped their feet or rattled their knives in their sheaths. The Copper struggled against his bonds, wanting to sink his claws into the dwarf’s fleshy gut.
“Well, Fangbreaker, then. Let none say Fangbreaker is not true to his word. Or his threats.”
Gobold the Fangbreaker let go of his crest. “Besides, he’s worthless in trade. That foreleg’s useless, and his tail’s shattered. The cavern and its treasures are yours, O prince of dragons!” He laughed and slapped his belly. “The honor and glory of this day is yours.” He bowed. “Enjoy.”
The dwarf hurried off to join the others in their march.
Next the men left, leading their dogs—dried dragonblood made the curs’ hair pointy—with the big man in his black armor carrying his spear across his shoulder, a bloody dragon ear dangling from each end.
The big man paused the march by the bound hatchling. He stared down at him, the gruesome flat face working obscenely as he thought.
The Copper felt his fire bladder pulse. He managed to spew a little yellow stream of sulfurous saliva across the dragonscale-covered boot.
The man chuckled. “That’s more like it,” he said in his rough, uninflected Drakine. “I’m your enemy. You may as well know my name. I’m called the Dragonblade. Know that I did all this—with your help.”
Why didn’t the man end the misery? Strike off his head, obliterate each bloody memory, the horror of what he had done…
“If you’re my enemy, why don’t you kill me as well?”
Perhaps the man sensed his torment, decided to leave him with the pain, alone in a cavern with the stripped bodies of his family. He just adjusted the burden across his broad back and called something out to his companions.
“Will you not kill me?” Some little flicker within him still wanted to live, then, for he waited for an answer.
The man expelled a long breath. “You should be wiped out. Bestial. Craven. Look at you. You sold your birthright for a mouthful of silver. The sooner the last remnants of the tyrant-wings are gone, the better for the world.
“Besides, I slay only dragons.” He set down his spear and drew his long sword. The Copper shut his eyes again, and he felt a sharp tap along his back. Then a throbbing agony flared, worse with each beat of his synchronized hearts.
“Farewell, worm.”
The Copper opened his eyes and saw a jagged rent next to his spine. Exposed meat and bone gleamed among torn scale. It hurt worse than the battering his tail had taken. He took a cautious breath—his lungs were still intact, though it hurt to breathe. The man had crippled his dormant left wing!
Chapter 6
He panted in his binding, pain plaguing both body and spirit. He lay there for a long time, thinking slow, dark, wounded thoughts as his blood thickened across his back.
Mother had told him once to overcome difficulties. How did one overcome oneself? Self-destruction?
Hunger saved him, hunger and the sound of squeaking rats. He heard them moving toward the egg shelf.
He wiggled his head around and began to chew at his bindings. He bent as he reached for the straps on his saa and incautiously brushed his back wound against the cave floor, white-hot agony leaving him quivering for a moment, and when he came out of the hurt his brain took a moment to remember where he was. He forced his head between his sii and tore through the back bindings.
That done, he lay for a moment, too weak to do anything but breathe.
He crawled toward the egg shelf and saw a ghastly heap atop it, the end of a severed neck dangling off the egg shelf, cave moss in a tiny splash of light where the blood had pooled. Rats, fat on dragonflesh, crept along the cave wall, stupid and weakened by gorging.
He tore into them, biting and flinging them hard against the cave wall, and they dove for their cracks. One was too fat to fit back into his shelter, and the Copper solved his problem for him by biting him in half.
He didn’t dare climb the egg shelf. If he got up there and saw what remained of his mother and sister, he’d go mad.
He found a riven helm and nibbled off some chain links. The metal tasted better even than rat. With that he remembered Father’s hoard cave.
Father! What would happen when he returned to this?
Time passed, sliding by unmarked as he staggered around the cave. He couldn’t drink from the pool, evil memories of the dwarves keeping him far from the familiar waterfall. He couldn’t drink from the trickle; he’d spotted more gore and slaughter atop the moss-thick heap of dragon waste; the shadows of the cave held lurking recriminations; the stalactites and stalagmites were spears….
What sort of world was it where dragons were slaughtered in their own homes? He knew almost nothing of the history of his kind, but had a vague sense of the majesty and grandeur that once was theirs, passed down from egg to egg. He’d committed a crime against every drop of blood in his body, every glittering scale passed down from some ancestor.
A hard world, that was certain. Cast out by his own family. Betrayed by dwarves. Of course, he forgot his own intent to betray in his wretchedness, explaining to himself that the dwarves didn’t know his plan. Any betrayal on their part carried the full weight of its own sin, not tainted by his own intent.
Then he went a little mad.
He may have even frothed at the mouth. He vaguely remembered thirst-thick saliva crusting on his snout when he came out of it, a good deal thinner and with claws worn down to dull nubs.
When he woke as though from a sleep-terror he found himself bleeding from a cracked scale at the base of his crest and between his eyes—he’d been bashing his head against a sharp projection shaped like a dragonhorn.
What had brought him out of it?
A familiar sound, a dragon roar.
“Irelia! Auron! Wistala! Jizara!” Father called. “Spirits, it cannot be! Not all! Curse the Wheel of Fire to flame and ash!”
Why did Father not list him with the others? Was he not part of all?
He tried to answer, but his dry throat was capable of only emitting a small squeak: “Fazer!”
Father didn’t call for him because he had no name. He needed a name if he were to be called for.
He hurried toward the bellows but found himself stumbling on his crippled forelimb. He caught one quick glimpse of bronze tail-scale disappearing through the shaft that led up and out. Only Father’s harsh, angry smell remained.
He found some deer that Father had dropped and nibbled a little, but had no appetite. He should save them for Father when he got back. Father would also need metals; he would return from his great battle with the dwarves needing them. He’d show Father that he hadn’t eaten a single coin of the hoard, and in gratitude Father would share some with him again.
Thinking of the hoard…
He went to the shaft covered by the great rock. It had been moved aside and smelled of dwarf. He shut his nostrils so as not to be overwhelmed by the smell and descended into the cavern….
The cavern lay almost empty. A few pieces of copper had been left, and a bit of silver glinted toward the back where it had rolled under a projection, but all that remained was the lingering smell of dwarf. There wasn’t a full mouthful left for him, never mind Father’s vast jaws.
Father would give him some fine names. Thief.
Traitor.
Outcast.
He flung himself down and keened.
Later, he climbed out of the hoard cave and went to the much-reduced pool. The dwarves had rerouted the water so it emptied into some deeper cavern to facilitate their works and crossing into the cavern. It bubbled and belched up from a whirlpool. As he drank he could feel the current.
He heard a wailing Drakine scream from the direction of the egg shelf.
Did one of his family still live? Perhaps Zara had played dead so the dwarves would leave her alone. The smaller body he’d glimpsed was a cruel trick of the Dragonblade’s. He hobbled as quickly as he could to the egg shelf.
It was Zara, green and alive and rubbing her fringe against a sharp spur of rock next to a great growth of thriving moss at the base of the trickle where the dragon-waste lay. He could just see the fringe on her back and the side of her head, but it was certainly her, gloriously alive and moving….
“Sizter!” he said, happy beyond words. She must need comforting, with Wistala lying dead next to her; the pair had been closer than stalactite and stalagmite run together.