Bazil Broketail (2 page)

She felt a flash of intense dislike and reached into the pocket of her drab novice’s overalls, pulled out a slingshot, and let fly with one of the round stones she always carried.

The boy vanished instantly, and the stone pinged off the wall and fell back into the yard. Lagdalen ran over and retrieved it for another try.

When she looked up, though, it was to find the grim figure of Helena of Roth looking on. Helena pointed a long white forefinger at her with undisguised glee.

“Possession of a weapon! Expressly forbidden! Use of a weapon against another human! You’ll be whipped! Not to mention that pile of excrement you’ve dropped on Keeper Sappino’s clean cobblestones. Wait till I tell him what you’ve done. I should think that when Flavia’s through with you, you’ll have accumulated another year’s worth of drudge!”

With a scarcely contained cry of triumph, Helena wheeled about and marched off to find the yardkeeper, who habitually slept through Fundament Day and all other festivals, relieved of all concern for his polished cobbles on the parade ground.

Lagdalen looked back to the site of her disaster. Long before she could shovel it back up and then sluice down the stones with water, Yardkeeper Sappino would return, and when he saw what she’d done he’d log an immediate complaint with Flavia.

Tears renewed themselves in the corners of her eyes. She seemed to be doomed to stablework for the rest of her life.

She felt a nudge on her elbow. She turned, eyes blurry, and discovered the dragonboy who had mocked her so recently, standing just a few feet away.

He was no more than fourteen by the look of him, with a raffish air and a cocksure grin. His dragonboy suit of brown broadcloth was old and worn, his boots were scuffed, and he wore his cap backwards. He was also carrying a couple of shovels.

She resisted her first urge, which was to knock his hat off and pull his nose. He gestured to her with a shovel.

“Use this shovel, we’ll use ours. Baz here will fetch some water. My name’s Relkin, Relkin Orphanboy, at your service.”

Lagdalen gasped. Looming behind the boy was a battledragon, standing ten feet tall, with olive green hide and big black eyes that fixed themselves on her most intently. It hefted a shovel with a blade more than a meter wide.

She felt dragon-freeze begin to sweep over her, the instinctive human response to full-grown dragons.

“I’m, I, I don’t know what to say.”

At this the dragon’s huge head split into a wide grin and the eyes seemed to gleam. The boy looked up and snapped his fingers, breaking her out of incipient dragon trance.

“Yes, I know, you’re overwhelmed, girls often are when we’re around, but you’d better stop gawking and get shoveling before that nasty girl wakes the yardkeeper.”

“Why are you doing this?” she said at last.

“We talked it over. We decided we liked you and we don’t like that other one—that mean-spirited Helena of Roth. We think it’s rotten that anyone should be stuck here in the yard, working all day on Fundament Day.”

Lagdalen stared at him. He gave her a brief little grin and went to work with his shovel. However, both his and Lagdalen’s efforts were virtually beside the point. The dragon wielded his own shovel and scooped up the mess in two huge strokes.

Lagdalen stared at the load, replaced in the barrow so quickly. Relkin took hold of the barrow and wheeled it across the yard to the alley and down to the compost pit.

Meanwhile the dragon sauntered over to a tall rain barrel under the eaves of the stables and picked it up as if it weighed practically nothing. With its contents he sluiced down the cobblestones in a trice. The water gurgled down the drain, leaving the yard damp but spotless.

Lagdalen used a cloth from the stables to mop it dry and shine it up once more.

“Thank you Master Dragon,” she said when it was done.

The monster’s face split into a terrifying smile, with two-inch fangs bared over a long green, forked tongue. It spoke with the characteristic sibilant hiss of dragon speech.

“Well, miss, you best call me by my name—Bazil of Quosh, at your service.”

At which the dragon reared erect and stood to attention with enough energy to make the ground shake, while he snapped her a crisp legionnaire salute.

Slightly stunned she returned the salute, hoping she was doing it properly. The boy, Relkin, had returned with the now empty barrow which he parked inside the stables gate.

“Always glad to help a damsel in distress,” he said with a little bow, swinging his hat wide in an extravagant flourish.

Lagdalen smiled. In spite of her misgivings, there was something clownishly sweet about this young ruffian.

“Of course we should be grateful to know the name of our particular damsel,” said Relkin with a sly smile.

“Why, thank you, Master Relkin Orphanboy. My name is Lagdalen, of House Tarcho.”

“Lagdalen of the Tarcho, eh? Well, well.” He grinned. Here was a useful ally. By the margin of blue on her sleeve, Relkin could see clearly that she was of the senior class in the Novitiate, and the Tarcho were one of the most important families in Marneri.

“That was a good shot, Lagdalen of the Tarcho. If I hadn’t ducked you’d have given me a bump for sure.”

“I’m sorry,” said Lagdalen.

“Sorry for what? I shouldn’t have laughed, I know it, but at first I thought you were someone else, a stableboy perhaps. There’s one of them with brown hair cut like yours. We don’t get on with the stable boys. They’re all older than sixteen and suffer from overgrown heads, if you know what I mean.”

“I think so.”

“And besides, I like a girl who can shoot straight and carries a good pebble.”

“Why, ah, thank you.” Lagdalen didn’t know what to say suddenly, charmed by this wild child of the dragon yards. A child with oddly calculating eyes.

He seemed to hesitate, as if afraid to say something, and then he blurted it out.

“And I wonder if it would be impertinent of me, to ah, ask the Lady Lagdalen of the Tarcho, if she would like some company for the evening feast of Fundament.”

She observed that he was crumpling his cap in his hands as he spoke.

“Well, I don’t know. I was supposed to be spending the whole day working in the stables. I won’t be finished until dark, and I’ll be exhausted, so I don’t think I can…”

Relkin’s eyes were bright.

“We’ll help, won’t we, Baz?”

She looked to the dragon, still leaning on his shovel. The dragon gave her that unfathomable crocodile smile.

“Be glad to help, Lagdalen of the Tarcho. I’ll bring over the dragon barrow; it’ll hold a lot more than that little one you’re using.”

Lagdalen was stunned anew. She gaped at them. They really meant it. No one had been this nice to her in years, if ever.

“Why, thank you, Relkin and Bazil,” she managed at last. “I do believe that if I can get the job done in time, Mistress Flavia could not possibly object to my attending the evening rites.”

“Oh good!” exclaimed the boy. “I know how we can get some hot apple wine and good seats at the puppet show.”

The dragon suddenly hissed.

“ Someone approaches.”

“Quick, we must hide,” said Relkin. Lagdalen found herself being pulled through a postern gate into the huge, gloomy interior of the Dragon House. Inside was an odd, herbal odor and a stream of warm air that flowed from an interior gate that led to an unseen corridor.

Through a slit in the door, she watched as Helena of Roth returned with Sappino the Yardkeeper, who had been awakened with some difficulty from his morning nap. He was in an irritable mood as a result, and the sight of the clean yard sent him into a fury. He always suspected the sly young females of the Novitiate, always imagined they were out to trick and embarrass him. He turned and set off to find Headmistress Flavia.

“Perhaps a few stripes with the cane will cure your impudence!” he snarled over his shoulder.

Helena looked around wildly, eyes glaring. How could that little Tarcho brat have done this? There’d been a huge pile of horse dung right here. She could never have cleaned it up this quickly.

She heard laughter up above, and turned and glimpsed a round-faced boy grinning at her for a second before vanishing into a crevice in the wall of the Dragon House. Helena frowned, mystified and distressed by this sudden turn of events. After a quick look in the stables for Lagdalen, she gave up in disgust and headed for the gate, hoping to be able to stay out of Flavia’s way for the duration of Fundament Day.

Later that afternoon, as she squirmed into a standing place at the puppet show, so far from the stage that the puppets of the Old Witch and the Little Child were hard to distinguish from one another, she noticed with considerable annoyance that Lagdalen was sitting in a much better seat, close to the front, with a boy in the costume of the dragoneers beside her.

Helena ground her teeth. If only Flavia could see this! But Helena was helpless.
To
report this crime meant she herself would have to visit Headmistress Flavia, which she knew very well to be an extremely risky proposition on that day. Flavia bore an intense dislike of old Sappino, and she would take vengeance on any girl who gave Sappino cause to enter Flavia’s presence to voice his loud and eloquent complaints!

Later, when the moon rose to bring Fundament Day to a close, Relkin and Lagdalen joined the crowds that thronged the space outside the North Gate, where the High Witches were drawn up in two squares, as neat as troopers on parade.

Thousands of torches on ten-foot-high poles lit up the scene. The faces of the people were bright eyed, expectant.

It was the time for the renewal. The Greatspell was almost completed once again, the words whispered in perfect witchly unison, bringing the bond to full power. Many thousands of lines of declension, texts from the Birrak, paradigms of the Dekademon, had already been said, for the making of this spell took many hours of preparation. And the reciting of it required great powers of concentration, ignoring the firecrackers and drums and the cries of the populace at festival.

Now that the context had been laid down, the higher passages were begun, for under the full moon the majesty of the work was expanded and the power of the Greatspell increased.

The crowd was quiet now, with just the low buzz of occasional greetings and hellos as more people came in from the fields.

Relkin and Lagdalen watched from a spot at the rear of the crowd, where a hillock offered a better view over the heads of the people in front. They could both see the serried ranks of the High Witches, all clad in black with the badges of their Orders emblazoned on their right shoulders. The low murmur of the spell’s words surrounded them.

They began to feel the rising power of the spell as the ancient art of Cunfshon witchery wove magical energies around the walls of Marneri once more.

This was the holiest moment of the year, celebrating the assumption of power in the lands of the Argonath by the colonies sent from Cunfshon to reclaim them. In those times the lands were afflicted by the servants of the enemy, the demon lords, Mach Ingbok and Cho Kwud, who ruled by terror where once the fair kingdoms of Argonath had flowered, before their bitter fall in malice and ruin.

The redemption of Argonath had been long and bloody, and was by no means a completed task. Six times Cho Kwud had brought his great host out of the north and surrounded Marneri the fair. Six times he had been defeated by the city’s walls and forced to retreat by the advancing legions of the other cities.

A dozen great battles had been fought before the blue abomination, Mach Ingbok of Dugguth, could be destroyed. The lists of the valiant dead were long, their names were encoded into these walls. Marneri remembered the fallen, recalled the valor of their passing while simultaneously raising the standard of civilization upon the eastern margin of great land.

A single note from a clarion sounded a short break in the spell-casting. Lagdalen and Relkin exchanged happy glances.

“Did you enjoy the day then, Lagdalen of Tarcho?” said the dragonboy.

“Yes, Relkin Orphanboy, I did. Thank you again.”

“Actually, there is a way you could repay us, especially Baz.”

“What’s that? Anything within my power I will happily do.”

Relkin leaned closer to her side and dropped his voice to a whisper.

“Actually we do have a problem. It’s our papers. We don’t have a discharge stamp from our former employer. We, uh, had a dispute with him, you see.”

“I thought you were a newcomer,” she replied, equally quietly.

“Well, we thought we could sign on with the New Legion they’re raising here.”

“And then I’ll never see you again,” she said mock mournfully.

“No, Lady Lagdalen, you will see us again,” said Relkin. “But only if I can get a dragon stamp for Baz. Without that we can’t join up.”

“How could I help?”

“We have a friend in the Administrative Chamber who has the stamp we need. But he doesn’t dare try to bring it out of the office. We wondered if you would do that.”

Lagdalen hesitated a moment. “Well, I suppose I could.”

“Good!” He accepted this with alacrity. “You will go to the administrative block shortly anyway, to get your birthday stamp—am I correct?”

Lagdalen was shocked. How did he know that? She felt her privacy invaded.

“Yes.” Her voice rose out of a whisper. “I go tomorrow. I was seventeen last week.”

“I’m sorry, my friend in the chamber sees that information all the time, so when I knew who you were I asked him to look up your file. I know it was wrong of me, but our situation is getting desperate. We don’t have much money left, so we can’t leave Marneri and we need to find work. You’re our only hope.”

“I am?”

“Look, Bazil is a premier battledragon, one of the best there is. Marneri needs him.”

“He seems enormous!” she exclaimed.

“Actually he’s only medium-weight for a leatherback. But he’s terrific with a sword and he has great endurance. A lot of leatherbacks have tender feet, can’t take the marching, but Baz is a trooper—he can stay up with anyone. He also likes horses, and not just for food, so he’s no trouble with the cavalry.”