“Here,” I pointed to a spray of water that fell down the side of one of the ravines to fill a long, thin lake. We didn’t even have to wait before we heard the fat plop of a fish jumping for insects.
If I had wondered about all that Tamin had forgotten, I was proved wrong as we made fishing spears out of the straightest branches of the trees, sharpening their points with the chips of flint that we had to knap against other granite boulders. “My grandfather used to hunt this way,” Tamin said with a smile, and for a while, there in the sun, it seemed as though a weight had fallen from his shoulders.
It was hard to not feel at least a little optimistic as we rolled up our canvas trews and waded out to the edges of the lake. The water was freezing, but it still felt good. We threw handfuls of the Bilberries in wide arcs around us, knowing that the fish would be attracted to their bobbing forms – and that there would be plenty more to harvest on our way back to the cave.
Splash! With sharp smacks into the water, we threw our spears, Tamin getting the first fat silver fish with one, and me missing. After which, we had to wade a bit further, throw our Bilberries again, and wait. The afternoon went like this for a little while, until the shadow of the Masaka behind us started to stretch long.
“The sun drops quickly up here,” I told Tamin, who nodded. I remembered how it was different out on the Plains – where the land seemed to stretch out in every direction forever, and the days lasted longer.
Or so it had seemed, anyway, I thought with a pang of doubt. A finger of cold wind reached the back of my neck and brought with it my doubts as I shivered. I had been a child back then. Only just passing my Testing before I was captured. My memories felt like a fairytale, and I wondered if it really had been the way that I remembered it.
With my change of mood, came my questions. Had Oleer made it? Was he out on the mountain somewhere, like us? Or had he been recaptured? And, just as worryingly; how many of our people had survived the escape attempt? How many had been beaten or punished?
“Out of the water.” Tamin seemed to sense my unease as he helped me up, back to where a rise still held the last of the sun. On the top of a wide, flat rock was our collection of six large silver fish. Even one would probably be more than enough for me and Tamin, I guessed – but who knew how many a dragon could eat?
“You know that Torvald still trains dragons, don’t you?” Tamin asked me as we gutted and skewered our catch. It was messy, smelly work, but anything that wasn’t chipping rock felt like such a relief.
Which is what Oleer and the others are probably doing right now. I faltered. “Really?” I said, not exactly paying attention.
“Yes. Although their number is far smaller than they ever were before.” The wistful note in my friend’s voice made me look up at him. He was looking out to the west, and even though the mountains were in the way and the sky was darkening out there, I wondered if Tamin could still feel the pull of that almost-mythical place.
‘Torvald’. The Citadel-on-the-Mountain. Shining white walls. The place where anything could be bought and sold. Once an empire, and now just another kingdom like all the others. Home to the Dragon Academy. I’d heard stories about wars and great magical battles happening out there on the other side of the mountains all through my childhood – but they had always seemed so distant and far away. Not real. I had never even seen a dragon before the black.
“I would go there, as a part of the Scribes and Magistrates Guild,” Tamin said, explaining a way of life to me that sounded strange and foreign.
“We would be trained every few years, kept up to date with recent rulings and changes in the law,” he explained.
“The law changes?” I frowned. “That seems… messy.”
Tamin chuckled, but it was a sad laugh. “Yes, it is. For the Middle Kingdom it is, anyway.” He nodded back west. “New kings and queens come and go, they make new decrees, and different magistrates and judges decide different things. It’s the reason why Inyene can do what she does.” His voice faltered, and I understood why.
The mines. Her slaves. The mechanical dragon. From our vantage point, standing in the fading afternoon light with fish guts all over our hands, it seemed too nightmarish to be true. But it had been, hadn’t it? Which brought back the urgency of our mission: We had to find a way out to the Plains, and to warn the rest of our people of what was coming.
And then raise them to form warbands, encourage them to attack Inyene’s camp and free the others, I thought.
But then I remembered that mechanical dragon once again, how it had stood tall and breathed an inferno of fire into the sky. It had been smaller than the black – but not by much. I remembered the clang as Fankin’s bar had hit the black’s tail – how useless would the very best weapons that the Daza had be against the scales of Inyene’s metal monsters?
I looked over to Tamin to see that his eyes were shadowed and serious. He must have been thinking the same thing. “What are we going to do?” he said.
I looked at our fish, and at the ridiculously simple wooden spears we had fashioned. Inyene has a dragon, Inyene has a dragon, I kept thinking. My elbow throbbed with a dull ache again, and I remembered the far greater pain that the black dragon was in, right now. “I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “But that dragon is in pain and needs our help too,” I said seriously. I wouldn’t be a Daza if I just abandoned it. “After we have helped the dragon and built up our provisions for the journey ahead, then we’ll be in a better position.” I tried to sound as confident as Mother had been when she dispensed wisdom.
But – be in a better position to do what? I couldn’t help but think as we made our way back to the cave.
“You know, Narissea?” Tamin said as we climbed, once again looking at me with that odd, serious look, “It is a very serious thing to make friends with a dragon. It’s not like you train a pony, a hawk, or a hunting dog, it’s…” He shook his head as he tried to explain it, and settled for just, “There is an old word for that type of friendship: A bond.”
“I know that it’s serious, Uncle,” I threw off his concern with a laugh, all the while as I was thinking, every friendship is important, isn’t it?
The sun was getting low, but it still wasn’t true evening as we rounded the ridge and onto the boulder field, loaded down with our catch. Again, we practiced the tandem creeping and look-out that we had used before. It was on our second such leap-frog scurry through the boulders that I reached Tamin’s crouch by a large boulder and wondered when he remained frozen where he was.
“Uncle?” I whispered.
“Nari – out there, look.” He nodded down the slopes, to where the two near arms of the Masaka held the work camp between them. I could see Inyene’s keep clearly at the end of one of the Masaka’s ‘arms’ just as I could see the work sheds and the terraces, but the entrance to the mines itself was obscured below our height.
Not that it mattered, as it was clear what Uncle wanted me to look at.
They were pulling out a wide cart from the smelting sheds, and on it was another mechanical dragon. I knew that it was a different one because the first dragon was sitting up with long forelegs straight like a cat on one of the higher terraces, looking down at the work camp below it like it was going to pounce.