I did think that he would do it. I’d never met a man like Fankin. Even Dagan Mar and Toadie and One-Eye I could kind of understand. They did what they did for money, or because they believed in Inyene. But this man was like one of those crazed wolves that had lost their packs. They grow strange and cruel.
But there are still two of us, I told myself. Even Fankin has to sleep some time, I was thinking as I started to turn to Pipe-Smoker – just as there was yet another shout and the sound of approaching feet over the side of the mountain.
Pheeet! There were three lights appearing over the dark slopes, accompanied by the sound of the screeching, high-pitched whistles. But then more appeared. And then some more.
At least seven mine guards, I thought. And they were making such a noise that there were bound to be more following behind them. “Run,” I said to Tamin, seizing the old man’s hand as I picked the direction in the dark.
“Move it! They’re coming!” Fankin shouted from behind us, already gaining. There was no way I was going to let him escape with us.
“This way,” I said, recognizing the way that the dark shape of the mountain cut across the night sky. I knew what that place was. I had been there before.
“Ach.” Tamin grunted in pain as he scrambled, but I wouldn’t let up. I hauled and pulled as behind us Fankin cursed and abruptly changed course to follow me. But I had chosen one of the hardest routes. It was a boulder field, and it stretched around this entire saddle of the mountain.
Bang. “Ah!” But even after my four previous attempts to escape across the Masaka, and all of my scale-collecting shifts, it seemed that I was not immune to scraped shins either. It was less of a run than it was a fast crawl, as I pushed Tamin between two larger boulders, and then jumped atop another to pull him up behind me, only to repeat the process all over again. And again.
“Scale-collecting missions?” a small voice in the back of my head said.
Pheet! Pheet! The sounds of the whistles echoed over the mountains behind us, but they were fading. I heard at least two startled shouts of pain as various mine guards must have fallen and sprained ankles or even broken bones.
Fankin however, was still coming. I couldn’t see him clearly in the dark, but I could hear his grunts and gasps of pain as he pushed and pulled himself over the rocks below. He’d given up talking or threatening us, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t still there.
“Nari? How much farther?” Tamin panted as our ascent had slowed considerably. I raised my head briefly (a little afraid that Fankin would knock it off with one of his thrown rocks). The boulder field continued above us, but we had rounded the slope and were looking back down on the high crags.
And not too far from us was a midnight-black void like a pit. If I had done my reckoning right, then that would be the gorge and the cliff, which meant—
Yes! There. I could see the ledge and the cave. The same cave where I had met a dragon.
The sounds of the guards had become just a distant murmur behind us now, and far less agitated or angry. They must have lost us in the dark and were now wondering whether or not to abandon the search and come back the next day.
But Fankin was still there, grunting and growling, his breath ragged. He wasn’t far behind us.
Well, let’s just see how his charm works on a dragon, shall we? I thought as I helped Tamin down onto the ledge and put one hand under his shoulder. He was now limping from our wild escape. The cave was only a little way ahead, and I sidled him towards it.
“What’s that smell?” Tamin whispered. It was that fragrant scent like frankincense again, mixed with charcoal.
“Don’t panic, god-Uncle,” I breathed, listening for Fankin’s loud gasps as he rounded the edge of the boulder field. With any luck he’ll slip and fall down the cliff, I thought – before quickly deciding that would be a terrible outcome. Not out of mercy, but I really didn’t want to have to clean up his body after the fact.
“That smell is dragon,”
“Dragon!” Tamin said in alarm, but I pushed him ahead of me, into the dark.
“A dragon!” Tamin repeated. “I used to see them as a child, but that was a long time ago now.”
“Shhh!” I pointed back at the entrance to the cave, knowing that Fankin would be on this ledge at any moment.
And then I realized that Tamin probably couldn’t see me, so I tugged on the hand I was still holding, and hissed “Fankin,” instead.
“Oh,” Tamin said in the gloom.
But of the dragon, there was no sign. The problem with the cave was, that it was black and the dragon, well… But I could still smell the aroma of charcoal and incense. Just how far back did this cave go? With a sudden sense of loss, I wondered if it had healed and flown away already. Maybe my plan had been to no avail.
But surely not even Fankin would creep into a dark cave on a dragon mountain in the middle of the night, right? I thought.
I was wrong.
“Here, princess.” The man’s footsteps crunched on the loose chips of stone outside. Right outside. Suddenly, there he was, silhouetted against the night sky, holding up his metal club. “You think you can hide from me, huh? Well, better men than you have tried,” he said and smacked the side of the mine with a dull thump.
He took a step inside, another thump on the walls. “Sooner or later, I gotta hit something soft, right?” I could smell his sweat wafting in the air.
“Do yourselves a favor and come out now, all peaceful.” Thump. He hit the other side of the cave.
“Maybe I won’t even bash you about too much.” Thump.
There was a rattle of stone as something moved in the darkness, near the floor. “Aha!” Fankin leaped forward, bringing his metal club down on it.
Clang! Only this time it didn’t make a dull thudding noise as the metal hit rock. Instead, the bar rang like a bell as if it had hit metal. Or something just as hard as metal.
“Sssss…” The sound behind us grew like the coming hurricane winds in early autumn, the ones that brought with them towering thunderheads and threw lightning across the Plains. The hissing grew louder, turning into a fierce storm of noise.
And two familiar, baleful gold-red eyes opened further back in the cave.
“Duck!” I pulled on Tamin’s hand as the dragon surged forward. It was like the mine collapse all over again –a blast of hot air and dust pulled at me, in the same moment as something very large and very angry passed overhead. I heard a startled gulp, and a scream.
The black dragon roared, and it was a sound worse than the collapse of Western Tunnel Two. I think I shrieked, but if I did then I couldn’t hear my own voice in my ears. The echo of the dragon’s anger rolled back into the cave as it must have rolled down the mountain outside, too. I held onto Tamin as he had one arm around me, too, waiting for the noise to fade. As it did, I heard something scrabbling and running on the rocks outside – it had to be Fankin, fleeing.
The dragon stood awkwardly in the mouth of his cave, and there was a dim orange glow illuminating gigantic fangs as he swept his mighty head back to regard us.
“It’s me!” I said desperately. “Narissea of the Souda. I brought you bread. It was terrible bread I know, but I brought it. We weren’t the ones to hit you, I promise. That was Fankin, he was the one we were running away from.” I was panicked and speaking fast, praying that the black would remember me. I had only decided to come here at the last minute. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, to hide near a dragon when a murderer was chasing us.