Berd noticed for the first time that the magician’s eyes were purple. The deep color of the Southern Mountains in the afterglow of sunset. Unusual.
The butt end of the magician’s staff in the small of his back ceased his musing. He reached high to grab the cheek strap of the lead steed and bring the long head down to his own eye level. He whispered a few words into the stallion’s ear. Abruptly the beast lurched, straining against its padded collar and harness. Head down he plodded his massive feet forward beginning the long journey.
“You have a magic of your own,” Lyman said, walking beside Berd. “The steed responds to your wishes. Most of the caravan animals I have encountered are stubborn about their laziness, putting more energy into resisting their masters than it would take to just comply.”
Berd threw back his head in laughter. Something moved in the deep blue sky still shedding the last traces of night to the West. Must be dust swarming on the slight morning breeze. Too early and chill for a heat haze. “Ah, I know those headstrong steeds well. I do not employ them on my caravan.”
“This one looks like a herd leader. I’m surprised he agrees to follow your lead.”
“Champion and me, we have an agreement.” Berd said nothing more, keeping to himself the knowledge that this lead stallion was the only intact male in this particular herd. And the majority were mares. No other steed challenged his authority or breeding rights, and for that favor he didn’t challenge Berd.
Until now. Twenty steps into the journey the steed shifted his feet without moving forward. He jerked his head away from Berd’s grip and bellowed in challenge.
“What?” Berd demanded.
Champion sidled, snorting, nostrils flared and eyes rolling. The other steeds picked up their leader’s distress and began stamping and trumpeting. The previously straight line lost cohesion.
Now alarm spread upward from Berd’s gut to his head and down to his feet. An instinct in the back of his mind told him to run. Run far. Run fast. Anywhere but here.
Berd forced himself to anchor his feet and search for the source of the steed’s alarm.
Something screeched louder and deeper than a steed’s bellow. The booming sound rippled up and down half a dozen scales totally absent of harmony and sent flusterbumps up and down his spine.
The stamping of frightened steeds could not drown out the noise.
Lyman appeared on the other side of the lead steed. Together they held his harness. Berd threw a blanket over the beast’s eyes to calm him.
Then a new odor swarmed up from the dry grassland half a mile a way.
Smoke.
Strong, semi-sweet, gray-brown and headed this way.
Without a word he and Lyman steered the stallion across the small creek they’d camped next to. Not much of a barrier. Was the fire strong enough and hot enough jump it?
Berd hastened the steed across with a firm slap on his rump. “Smell the water,” he commanded, holding a cupped handful of liquid beneath the beast’s nose. “Keep the water in your mind and smell its sweetness. Water good. Water safe,” he reminded his beast. Over and over he chanted the litany of safety.
Champion kept moving, thank the Stargods. He didn’t like the idea of stepping out of the creek onto dry land again, but he could still smell the water, and without sight, he trusted Berd. He had to trust Berd.
With a flip of his finger, Lyman lifted the end poles of the sledge so that it cleared the creek and all the rocks water rippled around. He did the same for the next sledge and the next as drovers urged each animal away from the fire in an orderly manner—as orderly as frightened steeds could manage. If the men relaxed their vigilance, the horses would stampede, dragging their cargo with them until they broke free. As long as the smoke stayed behind Champion his instinct to flee was satisfied.
And then Berd saw it. His bowels turned to water and his mouth went dry; drier than the dusty road and the rain-starved grasslands.
A dragon! A great yellow-tip. Its massive body reflected sunlight, forcing Berd’s eye to look anywhere but at it, and yet drawing it irrevocably, directly to it. Only the yellow wing veins and spinal horns outlined the monster and gave it definition. And in the morning light the yellow rapidly faded in the sky’s background. It flapped its mighty wings and belched flame. A new patch of grass erupted into a conflagration.
The thing was huge. Monstrously huge. As wide as two sledge steeds and as tall as two more. Any one of Berd’s precious beasts would make a nice meal for the dragon. He couldn’t afford to lose any of his herd. Six spare beasts marched at the rear of the group. Still…
A wall of heat hit him, driving him back and back again.
He still had two sledges and the six spare steeds to get across the creek to safety. Safe from the fire, not from the ravening appetite of the dragon.
“I thought you said we had the blessing of the dragons!” Berd yelled toward the magician.
Lyman continued to levitate the guide poles of the sledges as they crossed the creek. But stood a little apart from the group, closer to the fire, closer to the dragon. He anchored his staff against the ground and stared at the oncoming fire that rose as high as the tucked in paws of the dragon. Smoke swirled and raged, giving the dragon more definition than clean air.
Berd gulped. Then his fear drove his sense of responsibility. “Keep those steeds moving. One at a time. Cover their eyes, make sure they smell the water and not the smoke,” he commanded, not letting his men sense his knocking knees and trembling hands. The steeds could smell his sweat and know what drove them. He had to make sure they smelled more water than fear. He began splashing their faces with handfuls of water.
“Lyman, we could use a little help here!”
The magician remained firm, facing the dragon with a stern scowl on his face.
“Useless, trumped up piece of…”
And then a miracle happened. The dragon ceased its agonized roaring, gulped back his sheets of flame and turned a wide circle. He flew the perimeter of his fire again and again, creating a wind that contained the flames and forced them to eat themselves rather than seek out new fuel in the grassland.
The last embers winked out just as the final steed cleared the safe boundary of the creek.
Only when the dragon disappeared toward the South did Lyman turn and accompany the last of the herd through the water. He wore a rather smug smile.
“What was that about?” Berd demanded, shoving a skittish mare into line with his burly shoulder.
“An old and cranky dragon, displeased with himself and the world,” Lyman dismissed the beast with a wave of his hand as he moved into line checking straps and knots again as Champion led the caravan East toward the cities. “Of course compared to me, Chrysum’s still a youngster. Sulfur would be a better name for him considering the stench of his breath.”
Berd shook his head, trying to clear his ears. He wasn’t sure he’d heard the last bit or imagined it.
They traveled without further incident all day. The watering hole they passed at noon was clean. The well they found by an abandoned farmstead was not. Berd’s firm control of Champion and therefore the herd was all that kept the thirsty animals from stampeding to the water. “Keep moving!” Berd yelled at all the drovers. He slapped the steed’s rump sharply.
Champion snorted and rolled his eyes, but he kept moving forward, even though he looked back to where Lyman stood beside the circle of stones around a natural spring.
“Keep them away until I finish,” the magician said calmly. Then he thrust the butt of his staff sharply into the water, all the while chanting nonsense syllables under his breath. One short stanza of his almost rhyming words was followed by a wide circling of the staff still in the water. Ripples of slimy liquid worked outward and slopped against the stones. He repeated the process four times more. With each repetition the staff came a little further out of the water revealing more and more green muck clinging to it.