The Erth Dragons Book 1: The Wearle (6 page)

9

Other than when he’d been hunting with the men, Ren had only ever seen one animal die. A mutt so old it had buzzers laying eggs in its matted fur and legs so bent they wobbled when it walked. He was a boy of just six winters then, and life and death were still a mystery to him. Where did the ‘life’ go when something died, he wondered? He’d asked the mutt’s keeper that very question:
Was that what the dead eyes were staring at, the life drifting to its next dwelling place?
The keeper, none other than the gruff Varl Rednose, had bellowed with laughter and flashed his knife in a gouging motion. He had asked Ren if he’d like an eye to stew? Ren had said no. He didn’t understand why Varl had found the question funny. The tribe prayed for help from the Fathers all the time and some of them had been dead
for ever
. Surely their ‘lives’ must be floating over the settlement somewhere?

That day in the cave, Ren learned something about the death of skalers. For one thing, their eyes didn’t stare like a mutt’s. As the mother’s tear struck the floor of the cavern, every rock around it shone like gold, including those where Ren was standing. Her life filled his like rising water. His body grew light and his mind touched the stars. He felt the presence of something extraordinary. It moved around him and through him and somehow
between
him, blowing like a wind from another world. Perhaps the strangest thing of all was what happened to the darkeye horn he still carried. It was lying in a pocket close to Ren’s heart. Later, when he would think to look at his robe, he would find a scorch mark on the cloth around the pocket and remember a burning sensation there. But that was later and this was now.

The mother’s eye closed and Ren heard the erth breathe as if to welcome her home again. He shook himself alert. He was still in great danger. Rocks were falling. The erth was dancing. The sleeping mountain was no less angry. The skaler in his arms gave a pining cry. Ren stroked it and said a short prayer for the one still minded by the mother’s tail, then started for the tunnel.

In his bid to rescue the skaler he had jumped a fair way down into the cavern. Going back up would be a far stiffer challenge. The mountain had been kind to him, though. A number of boulders were heaped in a stack just under the tunnel entrance. Ren bounded over three, then had to stop. A wall of rock now stood in his way. He could rest his hands on the ledge without stretching, and would normally have scrabbled straight up it and away – but not with a skaler clinging to his chest. At best it might fall. More likely be squashed.

‘We climb!’ he said, aware that his words were stiffer than usual. But how did one talk to a baby skaler? He pulled it off his robe. It took several attempts; as one foot cleared, the other reattached.

Grracck
, it skriked, looking frightened and lost.

No time to worry about that. Ren lifted it onto the ledge, forgetting that from there it could see its mother. He watched it turning circles with its wings outstretched, all the while calling mournfully to her. For a moment, Ren thought it would be kinder to leave it. But even as the idea entered his mind the mother’s voice was in his head again.
Galan aug scieth
. He pressed his hands to his eyes. What had she
done
to him?

Another shuddering movement underfoot reminded him survival was of primary concern. In one push, he scrabbled onto the ledge. The youngster called again, with a little less hope in its gravelly voice. Ren scooped it up and ran, relieved to see the tunnel wasn’t blocked by rubble. He pushed the beast in as far as he could, then dropped to his belly and started to crawl. The skaler, not surprisingly, was frightened by the dark and unsure of what to do.

‘Go!’ Ren snapped.

The youngster wailed and flapped. But after a couple of head butts and a squirt of dung that landed in Ren’s hair, it got the idea and skittered on ahead. Ren spoke to it all the way, but was in the cave before he saw it again. He had a moment of panic when he thought he’d lost it and another when he trod on something soft in the gloom. Horrified, he knelt down and patted the rock. Feathers. Old feathers that crumpled to dust. A beak. A wrinkled leg and claws. He’d stood on a caarker, dried and long dead. Sighing with relief, he pushed the carcase aside but stuffed the foot into his robe. A Kaal hunter wasted nothing. And to string a caarker’s claws around the neck was lucky.

By now his eyes were seeing shapes in the rock, but the youngster was absent still. ‘Pupp?’ he called, using a name he liked, one his father had given to a mutt they’d once owned. With a rustle of wings the skaler found him. Ren bent down and picked it off his ankle. As he tilted his head, a trail of the wet dung fell from his hair and Ren instinctively wiped a hand through it. Strangely, it didn’t burn too badly, though the smell was just as raw. He supposed that was because the skaler was young, and probably still to eat meat. ‘
Galan aug scieth
,’ he whispered to it. ‘What does this mean?’

Grracck
, it said again, and nibbled his finger.

Ren pulled his hand clear of the mouth. The teeth, though small, were sharper than grit. To have come this far and be a skaler’s first meal would be a cruel outcome indeed.

A draught of cold air rolled through the cave, carrying the cry of an adult skaler. The youngster turned its head and gave a mystified skrike. Ren immediately clamped its jaws shut. It took the full wrap of his hand to do it; the little beast was strong for its size. It responded by pinching his chest with its claws. ‘No!’ Ren hissed, pulling it away. He raised it up until their eyes were in line. The pupp’s were glowing with a pale blue tint, making better use of the light than his. He loosened his fingers to allow it some air. A row of holes along its neck made a wheezing sound. Ren pointed to the far end of the cave. ‘They will hurt Ren if they hear you,’ he whispered. What gesture said ‘hurt’ without pain? He opened his mouth and made a quiet ‘agh’. The youngster mimicked him (as best it could). Ren sighed and looked toward the light. That call had raised a fresh round of dread. The skalers must be out like a hunting pack. If they saw him with the pupp they would ask no questions, they would simply kill. All he could do – or hope to do – was leave it outside, then hide until nightfall, assuming the mountain didn’t take him first, though its rage, for now, had largely blown out.

Folding down the pupp’s wings, he crept quietly forward. Never had a light been less inviting or shadows more difficult to find. But the task itself was simple enough: get as near to the outside as possible, wait until the skies were clear, then put the skaler out on the mountainside. They would see it soon enough (or more likely hear it), and the job was done.

The first part was easy. In the wall at the very brink of the opening was a natural recess, deep enough to take Ren and the pupp. He got there just as a skaler flew past. He pressed himself into the shadows, holding tight to the youngster so it wouldn’t flap. Breathing slowly, he closed his eyes. Ten breaths later there was still no hint of wings outside and the youngster had settled quietly in his hands. All he had to do was step into the open, stand near to the edge and release the pupp. But as he rehearsed the action in his mind, his thoughts lit up with more pictures of the mother and her dazzling eyes. What did she
want
of him? Why did this feel like a terrible betrayal when all he was doing was giving the skaler back to those who could care for it?

He broke cover and ran for the light. It was almost the end of them both. The rocks at the brink of the cleft were smooth and weathered, but unevenly layered, eager to trip a careless foot. Ren stumbled to his knees, opening his hands as much to save himself from falling as to let the skaler go. Its wings paddled the air but made no flight. It hit the slope with an awkward splat, slid down on a gaggle of stones and pitched forward onto its back. The noise it made was unbearable, such an indignant squeal that Ren was tempted to bound down the mountainside and immediately retrieve it, as though it had all been a terrible mistake. But the air was trembling to the pulse of wings and a shadow had just swept over the hill. Ren scrambled back into the cleft and made himself as thin as possible. The pupp – still out in the open – squealed fearfully and not without reason. A huge skaler had just come down to land.

It was so close it ate up most of Ren’s light. Moving nothing but his eyes, Ren tried to see it. It stretched its sinewy neck and a ripple of colour ran down its scales.
Green
, Ren thought, but then most of them were, darkening a little towards the head. He stilled his breathing, expecting that he wouldn’t need to hold the air for long. All the adult had to do was pick up the youngster and fly it to safety. Ren’s heart wrenched at the thought. He’d cradled the thing for less time than it took to scratch his rear and yet…

He let his chest down and filled it again. Outside, the big skaler was doing the same, moving the air like approaching thunder. A clatter of rocks suggested it was struggling to hold its position. Ren risked another look, pulling back quickly as the skaler turned its head. It seemed to be scanning the sky for some reason. Why? What was it waiting for? What help did it need to lift up anything as small as Pupp? And why hadn’t it made a call to the others to say the youngster was alive and found?

The reason soon became chillingly clear. One of the beast’s short limbs came into view. Set among its claws was a large stone.

‘No,’ Ren mouthed.

Too late. The skaler thumped down with so much force that the rocks zinged and sparks flew. Ren could not believe what he was seeing. The adult snorted, apparently in annoyance, opened its jaws and raised the stone again.

This time, Ren screamed openly, ‘NO!’

By rights, it should have been the last word he spoke. But at the very moment he’d opened his mouth another skaler had skriked in the distance, drowning him out. The skaler on the ground gave a worried start. It dropped the stone and replied with a kind of irritated grate. It shook its head as if to say there was nothing to be found.

Then it glanced down quickly, bared its teeth and disappeared into the sky.

10

Stunned. That was how Ren felt. Stunned and hollow inside. After some moments of indecision, he started to make up positive reasons for what he’d just seen. He told himself that the skaler might have been striking at a slitherer that had wound by looking for an easy meal. Maybe the beast had used a rock because the pupp was too close to survive a burst of flame? For all Ren knew, it was, in fact, rescued; when the adult had flown, its feet had been hidden from view. But his mind refused to accept those reasons, and when he at last peered over the ledge there was no sign of any splattered slitherer, just a flash of blue between the stones. The pupp was buried on the slope, not moving. Struck down by one of its own.

Sorrow the like of which he’d never known began to squeeze Ren’s youthful heart. Yet even with the evidence bare before him, he was struggling to believe what had just happened. He ran the scene through his mind once more. Skaler, landing. Pause. Stone. Whichever way he sifted it, the facts came back to him swathed in darkness. A green skaler had cruelly attacked the pupp. It had struck with a stone and…

…not completed the kill!

Ren dropped to a crouch and squinted. Yes, there was a definite twitch of a foot, a little knock of pebble against pebble. Dismissing any thought for his own safety, he quickly jumped down and separated the stones. Amazingly, the pupp was alive, nestled in a cavity between two boulders. Ren remembered the adult’s snort of annoyance and wondered if the young one had seen the blow coming and dived into the hole to protect itself. The impact had probably knocked it senseless, giving the attacker cause to believe it had done enough – but also leaving room for doubt.

Carefully, Ren dragged the youngster clear. It was bleeding from a gash where the legs joined the belly. The goo trickled warmly over Ren’s wrist, the same green fluid he’d seen oozing out of the mother’s head. In that moment, the pupp snapped back to life, kicking in terror and biting Ren’s hand. Stifling a cry, he clamped its mouth shut. Grimacing, he looked at the back of his hand. Blood was springing from an arc of fine holes.

A fresh call from the far side of the mountain reminded him of how much danger he was in. The skaler could return at any moment to finish off what it had started.

What to do?

The cave was the obvious answer, but… He wiped his wrist – and that gave him an idea. A slim chance, but it might just work, though it would mean inflicting more hurt on the pupp. ‘Forgive me,’ he whispered. Kneeling down, he clamped its mouth again and squeezed its belly till more green spurted out of the cut, enough to make a pool on the face of a boulder. The youngster wriggled and jerked like fury, but in a moment it was done and Ren was upright again. He launched the pupp in the direction of the cave, praying it wouldn’t crash and hurt itself further. But it was learning fast what its body could do. Instinctively, it beat its fragile wings, this time creating enough momentum to fly a short way and land safely on the ledge.

Ren knelt again. His left hand was burning with pain from the bite, but he ignored it and used the palm of the other to smear the green blood in a trail across the rocks. To this he added some dung from his hair, still wet enough to spread. In a moment of inspiration, he reached into his robe and pulled out the caarker leg he’d found. It was the size of the pupp’s, but with one toe less. He planted it carefully at the head of the trail, leaving just one toe showing. Then, with a wary eye on the sky, he pushed as many stones as he could toward the site to try to create the illusion of a rock fall, even managing to tip up a huge boulder before he scrambled back into the mountain.

He found the pupp there, huddled and miserable. This time when he picked it up it didn’t struggle, but just settled in his arms as if it no longer cared what happened to it. Ren cradled it in a fold of his robe, then slipped back into the shadows and waited.

Before long, the large skaler came back. It went through all the same motions as before: pausing, breathing, checking the sky. It bent its head and Ren heard it sniffing. He prayed it wouldn’t rake the rocks, and it didn’t, an outcome aided by a closing shudder from the sleeping mountain that added a last trickle of stones to the pile.

But the skaler wasn’t done. It raised itself up and thumped down on the erth with colossal power, doing this twice before it flew off. When all was quiet, Ren emerged from the cave and looked at the site. His ‘burial’ mound was flattened. Whichever skaler had committed the strike didn’t just want the youngster dead – it wanted it deader than dead. For the first time, Ren felt truly afraid. His mission had taken on a whole new twist. He could not abandon the youngster now, nor could he risk another try at returning it. He looked across the silent landscape. The Kaal settlement seemed very far away. Perhaps he should have listened to Targen the Old and never let himself become entangled with the skalers. For whichever way his life turned now, he was going to encounter more enemies than friends, the worst of them being a dark green skaler with a speck of red in its hateful eye.

And a broken fang on its upper left side.