Instead of following them, Duranix did a bold thing. He slithered with serpentine grace to the foot of the cliff, dodging a third boulder. Fixing his foreclaws in the relatively soft sandstone of the cliff face, he began to climb.
Heedless of the danger from falling rocks, Amero ran to where Duranix was picking his way up.
“Come back!” he shouted. “You can’t dodge them if you’re clinging to the cliff!”
“How many boulders can they have?” replied the dragon coolly. A fourth missile, this time a smaller, harder slab of slate, whistled down. It struck Duranix a glancing blow to the right shoulder. Scales curled up under the impact, and bluish-green blood oozed from the wound.
Furious at the rebels and afraid for his friend, Amero grabbed Duranix’s barbed tail just as it left the ground. The dragon paused and looked down at him.
“Let go, Amero. This is no place for pets.”
“I’m not a pet!” was the young man’s angry reply as he clung to the muscular tail.
“It’s no place for a friend, either.”
“I can watch out for falling rocks! Shut up and climb!”
Without another word or backward glance, Duranix started up the cliff. He didn’t have to hunt for handholds or toeholds; his powerful claws gouged their own as he went. Faster and faster he ascended, until he was racing upward like a lizard on a canyon wall. Yet he was careful to keep his long tail as motionless as possible, to avoid injuring the foolish human clinging to it.
Amero held on for dear life. In spite of his brave words to the dragon, he wasn’t able to keep watch for falling rock — his eyes were tightly shut. He did feel the powerful surge of the dragon’s muscles as Duranix scrambled sideways to avoid being hit. At last Duranix’s vertical tail lifted to horizontal, and Amero knew they’d made it to the top.
By the time he’d let go of the dragon’s tail, Amero saw that Duranix had slain three of Hatu’s men. The dragon sprang forward a full ten paces and caught one man as he was running away. With a sideways flick of his claw, Duranix hurled the luckless nomad over the cliff.
“Stop!” Amero cried. “Don’t kill any more, please!”
“They’re vermin. They’ll make trouble if you let them go.”
“They’re men! They can learn from their mistakes!”
Duranix gave a disgusted snort, but he stopped. The remaining four renegades took the opportunity to race for their horses. They galloped away.
“You’re too forgiving,” said the dragon, resting on his haunches. He growled a bit as he bent his neck to examine his bruised shoulder.
The battle was over. Amero found himself shaking uncontrollably. He slumped heavily to the ground and toppled over on his side. The wounds on his chest and back were shallow, but very painful. As his eyes closed, he felt the dragon’s cool metallic claws close gently around him.
“Lie still,” rumbled Duranix. “I will take you home.”
Chapter 21
A day passed, then another, then five, and the renegades did not return. Nianki posted lookouts on the clifftops and across the lake to watch for trouble, but it seemed that Nacris, Hatu, and their followers had been defeated.
Though his wounds were not deep, Amero contracted a fever, and for many days his survival was in question. To provide the best care for him, a large open shelter was raised near the burned houses, and the people of Yala-tene took turns nursing him. While Amero was ill, his authority fell quite naturally to Nianki. No one disputed her orders now. The villagers, who’d seen her fight for them, obeyed her without question.
For Amero, the days passed like a single bad night’s sleep. At intervals he would open his eyes — it was daylight and someone was feeding him broth; it was night and someone else was smearing larchit on his wounds. After these brief moments of wakefulness, he would lapse back into a deep slumber.
Once, he heard people around him talking, and he recognized Nianki’s voice.
“Where did you try today?”
“South, in the lower valleys,” answered a different voice. “There was no sign.”
“If I know him, he’ll go back to familiar territory, the land of his ancestors.”
“And where would that be?”
“North,” Nianki replied. “The north plain, close to the mountains.”
“Then that’s where I’ll look.”
The voices ceased. After what seemed like only a moment, he heard some scraping noises, and the sound of water being poured. Cool dampness caressed his lips, chin, and forehead. He opened his eyes.
“Nianki.” His voice was a croak.
She dipped a scrap of chamois in the clay basin and squeezed out the excess. “How do you feel?” she asked.
“Dry. Water?”
She lifted a hollowed gourd to his lips, using her other hand to support his head. The small sip of water he managed to swallow tasted wonderful.
“Who was just here?” he asked once he was resting again. “No one.”
“I thought I heard you talking to someone.”
She smiled. “You were dreaming again. You’ve been doing that a lot. You talk when you’re asleep, did you know that?”
“No.”
She gently wiped his neck and shoulders and rinsed the chamois again. He looked past her. His bleary gaze picked out movement — villagers moving to and fro, rebuilding their burned houses.
“How many people did we lose?” he asked.
“Twenty-three of the village, eighteen of my people.”
So many. He closed his burning eyes. “How is Duranix?”
“Arrogant as ever. He and Pakito and that old man Konza took off after the oxen Hatu’s riders chased away. Your dragon still can’t fly, but his senses are keener than a falcon’s, so I guess he’ll be helpful tracking the wayward beasts.”
He smelled the sourness of larchit paste. Nianki had peeled off the dressing of damp jenja leaves to apply a fresh layer of soothing paste to his chest wound. His eyelids felt weighed down by exhaustion. Fighting against the darkness that pulled at him, Amero yawned and said, “And how do you feel, Nianki?”
“I wasn’t injured.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
She continued her ministrations, loading a twig with a gob of larchit paste. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she told him calmly. “Ever. Stop asking questions and get well.”
“Yes, Karada.” He sighed and allowed sleep to claim him once more.
Amero’s fever waxed and waned. On one of his good days, he was visited by Pakito. The giant warrior lifted Amero as though he were a small child and carried him outside.
The villagers and Nianki’s loyal nomads had formed a long human chain from the cliffs to the dragon’s cairn. Stones came down the line, passing from one pair of hands to the next until they reached the ceremonial rock pile. With a final heave, some of the sturdier nomads added the new stones to the pile. They must have been laboring for quite a while, Amero realized, for the cairn had almost doubled in length and width.
Reclining rather stiffly in Pakito’s mighty arms, Amero asked what was going on. Nianki, who had joined them, explained how the villagers needed some place to put the rubble from their ruined houses. At first they hauled the burned and broken rocks to the lake, then someone — no one could recall exactly who — suggested adding the rubble to the dragon’s altar. The idea took hold, and everyone joined in to complete the task.
“The dragon saved us, at peril to his own life,” explained Pakito. “We’re doing this to honor him, and you.”
“Where is Duranix?” asked Amero. It felt as though he hadn’t seen his friend in weeks.
“Sleeping off dinner,” Nianki said.
They watched the work in silence for a while. The cairn grew ever larger.
“The way they feel now,” Nianki said. “They’d pull down the mountain and throw it all on the pile, if it pleased the dragon.”