Dragons of War (6 page)

Taking advantage of the watch's apparent self-absorption, Relkin crept to the edge of the aft hold. The hatch was off. He glimpsed a lantern down below, a circle of men arguing around it. To the other side, he caught a glimpse of the side of a cage and a shadow within.

His blood boiled at that. These blackguards were going to pay. He slipped back to the bow, leaned out, and signaled to the dragon in the water. Bazil started the difficult process of climbing the side of the ship. For a beast weighing two tons, this was not a simple task. Yet he did it quietly enough with the stealth of a top predator at work. His movements, however, sent slight tremors through the ship.

Relkin hugged himself against a sudden night breeze, he was wet through and chilled. His ribs ached, and so did a dozen other sore spots. In a way, he was almost sorry that there would be no opportunity to even the score with Golber. But Golber had paid for his villainy nonetheless. He checked on Bazil again. Not much progress had been made. He relaxed. The traders had noticed nothing, although the
Calice
shifted a little with each mighty heave by the dragon.

He turned back to check on the watch and just caught a glint of something in the air above him. He ducked instinctively and narrowly avoided having his brains dashed out by Nert's heavy belaying pin.

"Why, it's the little dragonrat. You didn't get enough the other night, eh?"

Old Nert wasn't too swift, but he wasn't too slow either. He had been on Dook's ships for ten years now and knew a thing or two. Nobody could crawl around the
Calice
when Nert was on watch and hope to evade detection for long. At least not if they weighed two tons.

Relkin dodged aside and drew his dirk.

"Oh ho, you draw steel do yer?" Nert lunged and suddenly tried a kick, aiming to tumble the youth. He misjudged the speed of the lad. Relkin had shifted sideways, and the kick sailed through the air, pulling Nert off balance.

Relkin struck in, and Nert was forced to defend himself as that dirk swung from side to side in cutting loops that threatened to lodge into his shoulders or his sides if not deflected with the belaying pin.

Nert took a step back and then another. A cry of anger and then a shriek of fear came from him as Relkin got through and cut his right arm. The belaying pin clattered to the deck.

The scream brought an immediate end to the argument down below. Nert tried to jump backward over a hatchway, but his heel caught on the edge, and he went down with another shriek and a heavy thud.

Feet were thundering on the steps up from the hold. Relkin drifted back to the bow. Where was that dragon?

"In the bows, get him," snarled Nert scrabbling up his belaying pin.

"What is it, Nert?"

Someone held up a lantern. Relkin ducked behind the foremast and stayed in the shadow.

"It's the damned dragonrat!" said Nert pointing with the belaying pin.

"That little rat?"

"He's got a sword, Trader," said Nert.

"I can see that! What did he do to you to make you squeal like a stuck pig?" Dook replied.

"Nert's bleeding, Trader," said Nert in a woe-filled voice.

"Must've got something into old Nert, eh?" chuckled another loutish crew member.

"Shaddup, Fulk," growled Nert.

"Take him," said Dook, gesturing with his cutlass.

The men surged forward, and Relkin fought a desperate struggle in the confines of the bow. He cut one man's hand and knocked aside several slashes aimed at his head. But at last he stumbled over a pile of rope, and somebody caught him with a kick He fell and the end seemed close.

"Tie him up. We'll cook him and feed him to the dragons," said Dook.

Just then the
Calice
gave a heavy lurch under their feet and a huge greenish brown arm and shoulder came over the side, followed by a leg and a tail.

The tail wrapped itself around some rigging up above, and there was a stentorian exhalation of breath. In a moment a full grown battledragon had heaved himself onto the ship's deck, pulling free the dragonsword "Ecator," yard upon yard of gleaming white steel. At the sight of that terrible weapon, the crew drew back with a collective jerk.

Relkin scrambled to his feet.

"Where have you been?" he said.

"It's not easy to climb the side of ship. You should come up with a better plan."

The crew was filtering to the stern, and now Trader Dook alone barred their way.

"You'll not rob me of the dragons," he snarled, and made play with his cutlass.

Bazil hissed and stepped forward quickly while Ecator whistled through the air, sliced through rigging and fretwood, and then sank into the foremast and stuck there.

Dook's eyes lit up with unanticipated triumph, and he thrust forward with the cutlass. His blow was knocked aside by a dirk suddenly interposed. Relkin blocked the way. Dook pulled back his blade, and Relkin hit him in the nose with a left jab. Trader let out a yelp of shocked pain. His stroke went wild. No one had so handled Trader Dook in years.

"Ach!" growled Bazil, putting one leg up on the mast and heaving Ecator free.

Dook had thought better of this. There was blood streaming from his nose. He stepped away and then darted down the steps into the hold.

Bazil and Relkin advanced. The crew retreated and some dove overboard while others climbed high into the rigging. At the steps to the hold, they split up. Relkin pursued Dook while Bazil set to lowering himself over the side of the hold. There was no way a dragon could use the wooden steps leading into the hold.

Relkin jumped the last flight of steps a little incautiously and was almost decapitated as he landed. Fortunately for Relkin, he had tripped as he jumped and landed on his already sore behind while the cutlass zoomed by just overhead and bit deeply into the step.

Relkin squirmed out of the way and felt the breeze from Dook's boot as it traveled past his chin. Frantically he rolled aside and then dove into a pile of straw and wriggled through it until he abruptly collided with the steel bars of a cage.

In front of him looking down was an enormous shape, a dragon's face contorted in rage. A huge green forearm snapped around him.

"No!" he screamed in his best dragon speech. The killing blow did not come. A look of wonder flashed across the dragoness's eyes.

Dook pulled up. The damned boy was right by the cage. He shrugged. He'd leave it to the damned dragoness to finish him. Meanwhile it was time to get on with his emergency plan. The battledragon was still up there, but it sounded like it was climbing down into the hold. There wasn't a moment to lose.

Trader Dook took down the keys from where they hung and opened the cage to the smallest of the young dragons, the green-skinned female. She snarled and crouched and made ready to spring at him until there was a shrieking hiss from the other cage. The dragoness let loose a string of sibilant phrases, and the young dragon crouched back, away from that deadly human steel.

Dook glanced back to the dragoness's cage. The boy was still alive. What was she waiting for? When poor old Golber got close, it was over in less than a second. Damn these reptiles, unnatural beasts, they had no right to be talking in Dook's book.

Dook kept his cutlass in front of him. The little one was the smallest dragon, but she was still as big as he was. He had no doubt that but for the sword, she would have been on him in a flash with those teeth and claws.

"Listen up, dragonrat, you better tell the big fellow to leave me be or else this little one's gonna get it. You understand?"

Relkin stared at Dook with silent rage. The dragoness had released him after a long, terrifying moment. He was not one of the crew, and he was fighting Dook, and so he lived. She pulled back her deadly talons.

"Give it up, Dook. Why don't you just jump for it. We'll let you live, though others wouldn't."

There was a loud scrabbling sound from above and then an enormous shape fell into the hold with a crash that shook the ship from stem to stern.

A big voice erupted in dragonish curses.

The next moment the dragoness gave a scream of delight and called to Bazil in dragon speech.

Bazil sat up, and a moment later he was at the cage, tearing at the bars.

Relkin had to climb up on his shoulder and yell in his ear to break him out of it.

"Stop it, Baz. The cage is made of steel. I'll get the key!"

At last the dragon stood back. The bars were bent but they could not be broken.

"Boy right, much easier to use a key. Damned human things."

The dragoness,
his
dragoness was there before his eyes.

"You came back, then," he said. "I waited in the spring, two years."

"I came back. I brought your offspring for you to see. That human trapped them and then forced me to get in the cage to stop him from killing them."

"We free you now."

But freedom was not quite won, for Dook had the keys.

"You want to release the bitch-worm, eh?" He waved the keys. "Think again. You get the keys when I'm safely over the side, got it?"

Relkin and Bazil exchanged a long look. There was no way around it, it seemed. Relkin turned back to Dook.

"However you want it, Trader, just leave the little one alone."

Dook shook his head with a bitter laugh.

"By the breath, I will not. This one's coming with me. You get the other two, but this one I will take and sell. Worth at least a couple thousand down in Ourdh."

"Trader, you won't live to see Ourdh, not if you try and take the little one."

"Then she won't live either, got it? You better tell those monsters of yours. They want her to live, they better leave me go."

Relkin edged toward the cage.

Dook gestured with the sword to the small green dragon, then he started kicking her.

"Get out of the cage you stupid thing!" he roared.

The small dragon snapped at him in fury but when he raised the cutlass, she scuttled to the door. He followed close behind, his sword point in her back.

"Get up the steps!" he barked, and drove her on with more kicks and curses.

Bazil was on the verge of losing control. Relkin could see it in the big dragon eyes. Desperately he hefted his dirk. He'd practiced throwing the thing a hundred thousand times, but never had he had a life at stake on a throw.

Dook had eyes only for the dragon, and he was preparing to thrust home his blade if Bazil moved an inch toward him.

Relkin bent his arm slowly and then tossed the dirk underhand. It flew twenty feet across the hold and sank to the hilt in Trader Dook's throat. The cutlass fell from Dook's nerveless hand. He coughed once, and a moment later his body clattered to the planking.

Relkin ran to the prone figure and felt for a pulse. Dook was dead, no trace of doubt about it. With a groan Relkin retrieved his dirk, lifted the keys, and went back and released the dragoness and the other small dragon.

The dragons were loose, and suddenly there was no room in the hold for a dragonboy, so he took the steps back to the main deck. The crew had mostly abandoned the ship except for a handful way up in the rigging.

"You'll hang for that," snarled someone up above.

"Damned dragonrat, what right have you to come on board with that dragon and kill the good captain."

Relkin spat. "He would have killed the little dragon. You think the big ones would have let any of you live after that? Be thankful for what I did."

"They'll still court-martial you. I know, I was in the legion once."

Looking down on the cavorting dragons, Relkin sighed. Bazil had both the young ones in his arms and was whirling them around in a paroxysm of paternal love. The bitter thing was that the crewmen were right. There would have to be a trial, and at a trial with a human judge and jury, it might not sound as clear-cut and necessary as it had seemed at the moment the dirk had left his hand on that sweet, incredible trajectory.

"Yeah, I know," he said quietly, and folded his arms around his aching ribs.

It was a dismal day. A cheerless rain had been falling since dawn. The courtroom at Fort Dalhousie, where the military tribunal was holding the hearing, was gloomy and grey, although from behind the bar came the mutter of a considerable crowd. The case had attracted a lot of attention in the town. In front of the bar sat officers of the court, the advocates and prosecutors, the administrative staff and the officers of the peace. It was, however, only a court of inquiry, not a court-martial. The tribunal had to be satisfied that the charges were blameworthy before sending the matter to trial.

Relkin sat in the front row, beside his counselor, Advocate Sweeb, a pink-faced twenty-six-year-old, just arrived from the legal mills in Marneri.

Looming above them all was the high bench where sat the three legion commanders who made up the tribunal. These were men of substance, grey-haired, weathered by experience. Their faces were dour enough, but worse by far was the face of the man on the witness seat, Dragon Leader Digal Turrent. Every time he mentioned Relkin or Quosh, his face radiated sorrowful disappointment.

The chief prosecutor was a bullet of a man, a Captain Jenshaw of Sokadein. He was milking Turrent's dislike of Relkin very skillfully.

"And so you would agree, Dragon Leader Turrent, that prior to the day that Dragoneer Relkin left the fort with the dragon, you had never heard a mention of the dragon's, uh, romantic interest in the female dragon that was aboard the brig
Calice?

"Never heard about it. Came back to my post and found them both gone. A chit from General Wegan gave them leave, I was told, and nothing to be done about it."

"So, no word to you, their unit commander, and no mention of this, uh, relationship, between the battledragon Bazil of Quosh and this, uh, feral winged dragon."

"None at all."

Prosecutor Jenshaw looked up earnestly to the men of the tribunal.

"May it be noted that the people's prosecutor intends to show that the so-called relationship never existed and was an invention, after the fact, by Dragoneer Relkin."