A Sword for a Dragon (29 page)

He had been there a few minutes, long enough to get seriously depressed about his chances when he heard a familiar voice demanding food, any food at all, for a starving dragon. He stood up, his heart beating wildly, and knocked his head on the crossbeam. With stars in his eyes, he headed toward the source of that voice.

Ahead he glimpsed more lanterns, and he ducked aside as a pair of guards emerged from a large darkened doorway. The Princess Zettila emerged behind them, and they closed the door and barred it.

The dragon continued to demand food, listing all of its favorite things starting with whole roast chickens and going on to venison pie and noodles lathered in akh.

The princess disappeared, accompanied by one of the guards. With a grunt, the other man pulled out a bale of hay and sat down and leaned back. He set his spear against the wall beside him and placed a hand on the hilt of the sword he wore. Relkin’s eyes glittered in the dark.

The guard, Yoka, leaned back against the rough wood of the stable door and sighed with boredom. The great monster tied up on the other side of the door continued to snort and mutter to itself. Yoka wondered idly what it was saying. It was amazing to think that an animal like that could actually talk. But that’s what the priestesses had said, quite distinctly, the damn monster was trying to talk to them in the barbarian tongue of the north.

For the umpteenth time, Yoka spat and prayed that those ropes were strong enough. If that dragon got loose, the goddess alone knew what it would take to recapture it. Yoka hoped they were going to hurry up and kill the damn thing. Weren’t they planning to sacrifice it at the end of the ceremony and spill its blood down the stairs? Something like that. It couldn’t come too soon for Yoka.

By the breath of the goddess, he hated this duty. He wished he was back with Tofor and the others on his regular detail on the third tier. You got a good view of things from there.

He yawned. At least there were compensations on this job. You could sit down, and you could even take naps when both guards were present. From this vantage point, you could see right through the stables to the front entrance. You could see someone coming long before they could see you, so there was plenty of time to get back on your feet and look watchful.

Still, he knew he was missing the fun on the third tier. There was sure to have been a round of beer sent up by the priestess of Tork, who always stood on the third tier during sacrifice ceremonies, surrounded by her assistants. She was the wife of a wealthy landowner in Bogra, and she was always generous with the beer and the food. All the guards would be in a good mood, looking forward to the sacrifice and the singing afterward. The goddess would be called on to protect her servants from the demon in Dzu. Afterward there would be a carnival on the main avenue, all the way to the port. But unless they sacrificed the dragon, too, Yoka would miss everything.

He kept his eyes on the front entrance. The other guard, Rozaw, would be awhile yet. Once he’d seen their visitor into her carriage, Roz would try and get some beer for the two of them. The beer stall was just fifty yards away, but Yoka was sure that old Roz would put one or two down his gullet before he headed back with a job. So he didn’t expect him anytime too soon. He cursed and then he chuckled. He’d have done the same thing, of course.

Yoka was so absorbed in these thoughts, that he failed to see the slim, determined-looking youth creeping up on him along the wall. Nor did he see the leg of a wooden stool that the youth had in hand. In fact, Yoka failed to react until the very last moment, when something made him look up, and he saw a blur flash down and felt it club him along the side of the head.

The next he knew, he was kneeling on the floor and his helmet was rolling away in front of him. Something struck him hard on the back of the head, and he went out like a light.

Dragoneer First Class Relkin of Quosh bent over the man and checked for a pulse. Relkin prayed he hadn’t killed the fellow. It had not been his intention. After a moment of panic, he detected a steady throb.

Relieved, he took Yoka’s sword, then levered up the bar across the door, and slipped inside.

A vast bulk lay there groaning to itself. In the light that flooded in behind him, Relkin could see his dragon encircled a dozen times in cables as thick as a man’s wrist.

“It’s alright, it’s me,” he said in a whisper, aware that the dragon was watching him approach with drawn sword and that the dragon was in a wild mood.

There was a long silence.

“Boy Relkin?”

“In the flesh.”

“Boy Relkin?” roared the dragon astonished. “That is good, I not believe it possible.”

“Thanks for having faith in me.”

“You are welcome. Please now, use blade and free this dragon. I have terrible itch.”

“Well, I suppose I should.”

“Hurry.”

Relkin started hacking at the rope that bound the dragon’s forearms together at the wrist. Yoka’s sword was not the sharpest, and it took several blows to even cut into the heavy rope. While he sawed away, the dragon interrogated him.

“Where is this? And why are we here? Who are these people? And why have they been starving me?”

“Some island in the river, there’s a big pyramid, temple to their goddess. They were going to sacrifice me.”

“Sacrifice dragonboy?”

“Yeah.”

“Then they want to sacrifice dragon, too, eh?”

Relkin paused for a moment. He hadn’t thought about it, but now that Bazil had mentioned it, that did seem the most likely reason they would have brought a two-ton dragon to the island. “Well, I guess so, I can’t think why else they’d have gone to the trouble to bring you here.”

“They make big mistake.”

“They still have Lagdalen.”

“What?”

“For this sacrifice of theirs.”

“I see. Dragonboy and girl for appetizer, and dragon for main course.”

“I don’t think they eat their sacrifices, Baz. It’s not like when we sacrifice some grain to the goddess or slaughter a steer for her. They were going to slit our throats and pour our blood down the big staircase. That’s the way they measure these things here.”

“Damn wasteful, if you ask this dragon.”

Relkin heard the tone in the dragon’s voice and whistled to himself. Somebody was going to catch it, and soon. This dragon was angry.

“And they have Lagdalen, dragon friend?”

“She’s up on the top of the pyramid. We have to try and rescue her.”

“Of course.” Bazil’s eyes glowed. He was ready to take on his captors no matter how many of them there were. Then he caught a movement down by the front of the stables.

“You better hurry up, someone is coming.” Relkin looked over his shoulder. It was true, the other guard, jug in hand, was coming through the stables.

Relkin renewed his assault on the ropes, sawing back and forth with the blade. The ropes were resistant. He was still only half through the first.

Rozaw saw the prone body of Yoka. He set down the jug with an oath and stumbled forward while drawing his sword.

“Hurry, boy, or all for waste, and we both end up as sacrifice,” growled the dragon.

Relkin made another effort, but the rope continued to resist. The guard burst into the room with sword in hand, and shouting for help he ran to attack.

Relkin dodged aside and parried the first sweep.

Then he counterattacked with his speed against the bigger man’s strength.

He beat the man inside, lunged, and old Roz felt the sword cut through his jerkin to his belly as he flinched from the blow. He put a hand down there and found that he had barely been cut, but it had been close.

Relkin circled. Old Roz realized how out of condition he really was. This boy had almost gutted him. Old Roz was starting to wish he hadn’t jumped in here quite so fast. Not only was this boy a good swordsman, but the damned dragon was writhing madly and looked as if it might break its bounds.

It was time to reach into the old bag of tricks. Roz had learned a few in his days as a beer house brawler.

He regained the initiative with a short swing, and mixed in a sucker punch that caught the boy on the shoulder and spun him around. Roz chuckled, the old tricks they always worked best on the young, but Relkin came back with his foot up and planted it solidly in Roz’s paunch. Old Roz doubled up and went down gasping. Relkin went back to a furious assault on the rope. It was giving, but oh so slowly. He sawed on it again, cursing the while.

Old Roz recovered his breath and, flushing with fury, lurched to his feet and took another wild swing at the youth. He missed and traveled around off balance. As he spun by, the flailing sword just nicked the tip of Bazil’s nose. Hot blood spurted while the dragon convulsed with a tremendous hiss. The huge muscles in his body stood out in stark relief. The cable that was partway cut broke with a loud snap.

Roz stood there irresolute for a fatal second. The monster’s ropes had broken! How could this have happened to him? It had ruined a perfectly wonderful day.

Then he realized that the dragon was still hampered, bound at the legs and roped to the wall. Disaster could still be averted. Roz plunged in with a scream of desperation, and Relkin met him blade to blade. Roz took a hack, and Relkin slid away behind a stable post. Wood chips whined through the air.

Bazil roared with frustration as he unwound the ropes from his arms and shoulders. He took hold of the steel ring in the wall and gave a mighty heave. Nothing happened for a moment and then with a sudden loud crack the metal in the pin broke, and the dragon fell backward with a crash and rolled between the two combatants.

Stable boys were coming, drawn to the uproar. Relkin dodged Rozaw again and tried a sweep of his own. Rozaw beat that aside and lunged. Relkin sidestepped the blade, but ran into that sucker punch again. He staggered and ducked just as Roz punched again. This time old Roz’s fist caught Relkin on the forehead with a solid crack that spoke of broken knuckles. Relkin went down on hands and knees, momentarily stunned. He heard the guard howling with pain, but it seemed as if he were a long way away.

With an effort, Relkin staggered to his feet, stumbled forward, and shoved at the guard. Rozaw was off balance, and he stepped back a pace or two while his face contorted with rage.

“Why, you little whelp,” he began.

And then huge dragon paws closed around him and lifted him off the ground. Rozaw gave a scream of raw terror and fainted. The dragon dropped him in a heap on the floor and took his sword.

The stable boys bounded into the room. Relkin was still dazed, and his sword arm felt about as useful as a piece of wet wood.

With a cry that sounded a little wild and weak, he challenged them. They came on with looks of determination. A brown-skinned boy about his own age swiped at him with a broom, and he barely warded it off with the sword. He and the boy tried to kick each other and missed. The other boys closed in with knife and cudgel. Relkin couldn’t face all three of them. He felt as if he could barely lift the sword.

The broom cracked off his shoulders. He ducked away and swung weakly at the one with the knife. The broom hit him on the back of the legs. He was getting real tired of the one with the broom, who was both active and most aggressive.

The one with the knife darted at him, the one with the cudgel was waiting for him to break to the right, and the broom waited on the left. Relkin had a bad feeling.

Then the stable boys suddenly turned on their heels and fled.

“What?” said Relkin stupidly. “Hey come on back here, you cowards!” he shouted.

A big hand landed on his shoulder and he was facing a freed dragon, who roared with joy and gave him a hug that drove the breath out of his body and rattled his bones.

Boy and dragon faced each other.

“Boy, you do hell of a job there. You almost free me.”

“Well, I wanted to keep it interesting,” said Relkin when he got a breath back into his lungs. “I thought you were having such a good time here, as a sacrificial guest.”

“You succeed. Now we have to get out of here.”

“Well, we don’t want to go out that way,” said Relkin, pointing after the stable boys. They could hear their shouts from the front.

“Is there another way out of here?”

“This way,” said Relkin, and he lead the dragon away down a passage lined with empty stalls. Eventually they came up against a wooden door.

Bazil sank his daws into the rim of this door and broke it in half. It had not been designed with such usage in mind.

On the other side, they found themselves in a hayloft with an opening directly above through which the hay was delivered.

Relkin swarmed up the side of a stack of baled hay and swung open the door. He found himself looking down a short access passage used primarily by hay wagons.

“Climb the straw.”

“Oh, good idea. You think straw hold up weight of dragon?”

“Try it. C’mon.”

The dragon stepped up on the hay. It held him momentarily, but then it collapsed and he slid back to the floor.

“Dragonboy wrong once again.”

Relkin dropped back to the floor. He pointed to a stoutly built hay wagon standing in the corner.

“Now that looks more like it.”

Bazil put his shoulder to the bales of hay beneath the door and shoved them aside. In less than half a minute, he had positioned the big cart right under the open doors.

“Better hurry, they’re getting excited back there,” said Relkin.

Behind them now, they could the hear the sounds of pursuit. Suddenly there was an intense outcry.

“They found the guards,” said Relkin. “They’ll be here soon.”

But getting a two-ton dragon onto the old hay cart wasn’t the easiest thing in the world. The cart tended to tip over when he put his weight on it. Finally on the fourth try, he got both feet aboard and raised his head through the trap door to the outside. Now came the really hard part. He got his shoulders up and began to slowly heave himself through.

It was slow work. Strong as he was, it was hard to lift his own bulk through the door.