But there was no smoke coming from it, I could see. No movement, no hint nor sign of life.
“How is she building so many, so fast?” Tamin whispered. We could see the lines of slaves pulling on the ropes, and the circle of slaves in the main yard again, just like before.
They’re using us as shields, I remembered the previous night when the first metal dragon had been raised. It seemed that Abioye or Dagan – perhaps even Inyene herself – could barely control them. The first had looked as though it had malfunctioned when it threw out its fire.
I shook my head at the horror of the sight and tried to focus on Tamin’s question. “We’ve been collecting scales for a long time,” I said. “I’ve been here for four years, and in all that time, they’d send us up the mountain to hunt for scales.” Not that we’d ever managed to gather many, but over four years that had to be a lot, right? And how long had Inyene been gathering them before that?
But it wasn’t just the dragons below that was making me feel queasy. It was the number of slaves and prisoners that I could see. They were too far away for me to work out how many there were, but it still looked like a lot.
“Not that many managed to escape last night,” I whispered, realizing what must have happened. And if that was true, then that probably meant that a lot of people had been hit by the guards’ metal clubs. Or worse. My friends and my people were down there, and they were in pain. I clenched my jaw.
“Come on,” I said, moving past Tamin. It was even more important, now more than ever, that we come up with a plan.
We had just rounded on the final part of the boulder field that led to the cave when I felt that surge of cold, sickening nausea that I had felt before. I heard a small noise and turned to see that Tamin was leaning against the nearest boulder, looking aghast. “You feel that too?” I said.
He nodded. “It must be Inyene. Whatever she is doing. Whatever powers she is using…” He didn’t need to finish the thought. It was clear to both of us that whatever it was she was doing, was wrong.
“SKRECH!” And then, ahead of us, there was a loud cough of rage, and the gravel trembled around my feet. I could see the cave ledge, and there was a pillar of thin black smoke rising from it, clearly from the dragon inside. It was as if he had sensed whatever it was that Inyene had done, too – and he liked it about as much as we did. I broke into a scramble to the ledge with my five speared ‘dragon’ fish, hurrying to calm the black down before he drew attention to our position on the mountain.
“Hey now, here now,” I said in low, coaxing tones as I rounded the cave at a slow, sidling walk. Despite what Tamin seemed to think about my actions, I wasn’t so brash as to run at a wounded and distressed animal with a stick!
A hissing sound came from ahead, and there was the dragon’s head, with the evening light glinting along its scales. Its eyes had flushed that angry, crimson red – but they immediately started to lighten to amber gold as they saw me.
“Here now, it’s only me,” I said. “Look, I brought you something.” I edged closer with the fish.
“Skree-ip?” The dragon made a new noise. A chirrup as its eyes widened and moved forward.
“You like fish, huh?” I said, walking backwards slowly to the ledge and levering the fish off of the stick, leaving them in front of the cave’s entrance. Tamin had joined me on the ledge, but was hanging back, watching me.
“I don’t know how you’re supposed to feed a dragon—” I was saying, just as there was a sudden burst of flame from the cave.
“Nari!” Tamin moved towards me, but the flame was yards ahead of me, and it was nothing like the flame that the metal dragon had produced. Instead of that fireball, it was just a direct and thin needle of fire, hitting the five fish and roasting them in an instant.
“Look, it’s fine,” I laughed. As the dragon moved forward and greedily started picking each roasted fish up between the tips of its teeth, I noted just how different it was from Inyene’s macabre creations. Of course, it was different, it was made of flesh and bone, right? But the black could seemingly use its flame like a tool, entirely unlike the metal dragon.
The black dragon seized the second fish and crunched it down, and then a third disappeared the same way. He started to make a deep, rattling noise in his chest as he paused and took his time with the last two. “Look, he’s purring!” I said happily, crouching down. I waited until he had finished, and then gestured for Tamin to bring our final, fat silver lake fish to the hot stones to roast.
“Nari, how do you know the dragon is a he?” Tamin said to me in a low voice as we watched our dinner sizzle.
I could feel the dragon’s eyes on our dinner and could sense his excitement, but he had also pulled back, as if he wasn’t ravenously hungry, just interested.
“How do I know?” I hadn’t considered it. I just did. I shrugged. “It’s his antlers. It’s a he,” I said with certainty, and to my surprise, the dragon made another chirruping sound across from us.
“Hm.” Tamin was looking at me funny, before he stooped to flip the fish over.
“What?” I asked. “Look, I know he’s not a pet. He’s a dragon. A full-grown bull dragon,” I said confidently.
“A bull dragon?” Tamin repeated my words. What was up with him? I was hungry anyway, and used the fishing spear to hook our fat friend from the hot rocks and start to scrape away the skin. Even Tamin’s hunger seemed to overcome his suspicions, as he stopped his weird questioning and concentrated on not burning his fingers as we both ate.
There was more than enough food for the pair of us, and when we finished I flipped the carcass to the dragon, whose head darted forward with a snap! – to catch it expertly, crunch the bones, and swallow in one fluid motion. Another rattling purr came from the dragon as I poured out the water skin that I had filled at the lake for him to sip – luckily the skin was one of the few things we’d had with us when we fled the camp. As the dragon lay back down on the ledge, half his body in the cave and the rest half out, me and Tamin finished our dinner with our picked Bilberries, and soon my fingers were stained a sticky blue.
“Better,” I said with a pleased yawn as the sky started to burn with the sunset – before, in the very next heartbeat, I felt guilty. Why was I allowed to have this feeling when Oleer and the others were still down there, struggling in the dark?
With this heavy thought, I looked out back northwest to where the mining camp would be, and wondered just what it was that we were going to do.
Chapter 12
Children of the Wind
The next day I awoke from a dream of scales and teeth and wings – but feeling strangely calm and unafraid. If anything, I remembered my dream-self feeling excited.
With once again no food, we decided that it would be best to go harvesting again – this time gathering enough to try and set up a small smokery, if the dragon would oblige. Which would also mean that we needed enough wood for the charcoal, and the frames.
“We’ll only smoke at night,” I explained to Tamin. “That way, we won’t be in danger of alerting Inyene’s guards.” Tamin nodded, as we both knew the process was a simple one, if a little laborious. We would enclose a stack of fish on frames inside a small stone oven, before shoveling the charcoal chips at the bottom. The smoke would dry out the succulent fish meat, and, although I was sad at the loss, it would mean that the fish would keep for days, weeks if we managed to turn it into jerky. The biggest drawbacks were only being able to smoke at night, and the fact that someone had to be awake to tend it at all times, removing the stone to add more wood chips whenever the thin streams of escaping steam started to dwindle.