Lewin pressed the erase on the memo block, and it gave out a satisfied sort of gobble. Neither of the other two said anything, but I could feel Alectis thinking how much he had always hated Palino. Terens was looking down at Wormstow through a fieldglass and trying not to remember a boy in Cadets with him who had turned heg and given himself up. I felt I wanted to say thank you. But I was too shy to do anything but sit up and look at Wormstow, too, between the jags of the rock. Even without a fieldglass, I could see the place throbbing like a broken anthill with all the Slaver troops.
“Getting ready to move out and mop up the countryside,” Terens said.
“Yes, and that’s where most people live,” Lewin said. “Farms and holdings in the hills. What’s the quickest way to the Dragon Reserve?”
“There’s a track on the right around the next bend,” said Neal. “Why?”
“Because it’s the safest place I can think of,” Lewin said.
Neal and I looked at one another. You didn’t need to be heg to tell that Neal was thinking, just as I was, that this was a bit much. They were supposed to help all those people in the holdings. Instead, they thought of the safest place and ran there! So neither of us said that the trade was only a bridle path, and we didn’t try to warn them not to take the van into the Reserve. We just sat there while Lewin drove it uphill and then lumping and bumping and rattling up the path. The path gave out in the marshy patch below the Saddle, but Lewin kept grinding and roaring on, throwing up peat in squirts, until we tipped downhill again and bounced down a yellow fellside. We were in the Reserve by then. The ling was growing in lurid green patches, black at the roots where dragons had burned it in the mating season. They fight a lot then.
We got some way into the Reserve. The van gave out clanging sounds and smelled bad, but Lewin kept it going by driving on the most level parts. We were in a wide stony scoop, with yellow hills all around, when the smell got worse and the van just stopped. Alectis let go of the door. “Worms—dragons,” he said, “don’t like machines, I’ve heard.”
“Now he tells us!” said Terens, and we all got out. We all looked as if we had been in an accident. I mean, I know we had in a way, but we looked worse than I’d expected: sort of ragged and pale and shivery. Lewin turned his foot on a stone, which made him clutch his chest and swear. Neither of the other two even asked if he was all right. That is the Dragonate way. They just set out walking. Neal and I went with them, thinking of the best place to dodge off up a kyle, so that we could run home and try and warn Mother about the Slavers.
“Where that bog turns into a stream—I’ll say when,” Neal was whispering, when a dragon came over the hill into the valley and made straight for us.
“Stand still!” said Alectis. Lewin and Terens each had a gun in his hand without seeming to have moved. Alectis didn’t, and he was white.
“They only eat moving prey,” Neal said, because he was sorry for him. “Make sure not to panic and run, and you’re fine.”
I was sorry for Alectis, too, so I added, “It’s probably only after the van. They love metal.”
Lewin crumpled his face at me and said “Ah!” for some reason.
The dragon came quite slowly, helping itself with its spread wings and hanging its head rather. It was a bad color, sort of creamy through the brown-green. I thought it might be one of the sick ones that turn man-eater, and I tried to brace myself and stop feeling so tired and shaky so that I could lam it. But Neal said, “That’s Orm’s dragon! You didn’t kill it after all!”
It was Orm’s dragon. By this time it was near enough for me to see the heat off it quivering in the air, and I recognized the gamesome, shrewd look in its eye. But since it had every reason to hate me, that didn’t make me feel much better. It came straight for me, too. We all stood like statues. And it came right up to me and bent its neck and laid its huge brown head on the ling in front of my feet, where it puffed out a sigh that made Lewin cough and gasp another swearword.
It had felt me coming, the dragon said, and it was here to say sorry. It hadn’t meant to upset me. It had thought it was a game.
That made me feel terrible. “I’m sorry, too,” I said. “I lost my head. I didn’t mean to hurt you. That was Orm’s fault.”
Orm was only playing, too, the dragon said. Orm called him Huffle, and I could, too, if I liked. Was he forgiven? He was ashamed.
“Of course I forgive you, Huffle,” I said. “Do you forgive me?”
Yes. Huffle lifted his head up and went a proper color at once. Dragons are like people that way.
“Ask him to fetch Orm here,” Lewin said urgently.
I didn’t want to see Orm, and Lewin was a coward. “Ask him yourself,” I said. “He understands.”
“Yes, but I don’t think he’d do it for me,” Lewin said.
“Then, will you fetch Orm for Lewin?” I asked Huffle.
He gave me a cheeky look. Maybe. Presently. He sauntered away past Terens, who moved his head back from Huffle’s rattling right wing, looking as if he thought his last hour had come, and went to have a look at the van. He put out a great clawed foot, in a thoughtful sort of way, and tore the loose door off it. Then he tucked the door under his right front foreleg and departed, deliberately slowly, on three legs, helping himself with his wings, so that rocks rattled and flapped all along the valley.
Alectis sat down rather suddenly. But Lewin made him leap up again and help Terens get the broadcaster out of the van before any more dragons found it. They never did get it out. They were still working and waggling at it to get it loose, and Lewin was standing over Neal and me, so that we couldn’t sneak off, when we heard that humming kind of whistle that you get from a dragon in flight. We whirled around. This dragon was a big black one, coasting low over the hill opposite and gliding down the valley. They don’t often fly high. It came to ground with that grinding of stones and leathery slap of wings closing that always tells you a dragon is landing. It arched its black neck and looked at us disdainfully.
Orm was sitting on its back looking equally disdainful. It was one of those times when Orm looks grave and grand. He sat very upright, with his hair and beard combed straight by the wind of flying, and his big pale eyes hardly looked mad at all. Neal was the only one of us he deigned to notice. “Good afternoon, Neal Sigridsson,” he said. “You keep bad company. Dragonate are not human.”
Neal was very angry with Orm. He put my heart in my mouth by saying, quite calmly, “Then in that case, I’m the only human here.” With that dragon standing glaring! I’ve been brought up to despise boys, but I think that is a mistake.
To my relief, Orm just grinned. “That’s the way, boy,” he said. “Not a booby after all, are you?”
Then Lewin took my breath away by going right up to the dragon. He had his gun, of course, but that wouldn’t have been much use against a dragon. He went so near that the dragon had to turn its head out of his way. “We’ve dropped the charges,” he said. “And you should never have brought them.”
Orm looked down at him. “You,” he said, “know a thing or two.”
“I know dragons don’t willingly attack humans,” Lewin said. “I always read up on a case before I hear it.” At this, Orm put on his crazy look and made his mad cackle. “Stop that!” said Lewin. “The Slavers have invaded. Wormstow’s full of Slaver troops, and we need your help. I want to get everyone from the outlying farms into the Reserve and persuade the dragons to protect them. Can you help us do that?”
That took my breath away again, and Neal’s, too. We did a quick goggle at one another. Perhaps the Dragonate was the way it was supposed to be after all!