“Ample silver. If I don’t get it, I’ll take it out of your hide, Ileth.”
“Bargain,” she said.
“Tie some sacking about my snout. You’ll want scarves.”
They took to the air.
As they glided into the plateau, she could feel the heat, even at a distance, on the wind off the volcano. “Be funny if they’re all dead by the time we get there,” Fespanarax said through the sack. “Let me know if it starts to get too hot for you. I can take more than you.”
Ileth didn’t reply. She was trying to see and keep ash out of her eyes at the same time.
The earthquakes were stronger close to the volcano. A smell like a hot stove hung in the air, even at Fespanarax’s altitude. Rock was falling off the plateau, either flaking off or breaking in sheets to crash into the more ancient rock pile below. Escape by the path was impossible.
The plateau was a waking nightmare or a preview of some hellish afterlife. Ash was everywhere, so deep you had to wade through it. The miners tied anything they could over their faces to filter out some of the ash—still, everyone was coughing. Some were sheltering in their little pits, but the sides kept collapsing and they had to climb out again. The plateau was hot enough to be unpleasant—the radiant heat of the lava was being carried by the winds westward over the plateau.
She couldn’t even begin this task. Fespanarax had to sweep his tail about to keep them away.
“Just the children,” Ileth shouted. “Children only!”
Fespanarax only let people holding children near him. The others he beat back with his wings and tail. Ileth couldn’t let herself be overcome by the horror; she had to be careful with the knots, far more careful than when the Captain was watching her work. All she risked there was a whipping.
Frantic parents thrust their screaming children into her arms. The tears on the frightened children and babies made clean streaks running down their faces.
It was too much to take. She fixed them at every point she could, to the saddle, to the stirrups; she tied them on her own body.
“More. I can take more,” Fespanarax kept saying. Something seemed to have come alive in him. For the first time Ileth saw a flash of Fespanarax the Reckless.
She had fifteen. But there were more. She should have thought to fix the beer barrels on; she could have crammed a dozen more in them.
“We’ll be back,” she shouted to the desperate, tear-streaked faces. She met the eyes of the Tentkeeper. “Fast, girl, just go!” he shouted.
Fespanarax came off the plateau in something more like a controlled glide than a flight.
“High ground, we must set them on high ground well away, just in case there are slides off the mountain, or lava rivers,” Fespanarax said. The heat was not so much of a problem with the bulk of the plateau between them and the volcano. Then they were in clean air; some fluke of wind current kept the ash back. Flapping madly, Fespanarax found a pine-covered hill out of the ash-fall, and they landed and put down the children. Ileth told the oldest boy to keep the younger ones together.
“Dare we go again?” she asked Fespanarax.
His eyes were alight with excitement.
“If you are game. We’ve begun this, let’s see it through.” Ileth saw some hint of the great dragon within that Charge Deklamp had praised.
“Then let’s go.”
“It will be even hotter up there. I might survive—scale has its purposes. Will you?”
“We’ll . . . find out.”
They took off. The heat was getting worse. It bordered on unbearable.
Maybe she’d die in the Galantine lands, along with Annis and Heem Zwollen and who knew how many others. But better this than sitting around Chapalaine, eternally at the service and indulgence of the Baron or whichever of his brothers or sons took over when he died. She wondered what poor soul they’d send out to doom themselves on Fespanarax the Unlucky.
They landed, right at the far edge where the crowd had mostly huddled to escape the heat. There were already ash-covered bodies on the plateau. Ileth saw an upthrust hand sticking out of a collapsed mine-hole.
This time they got twenty-six. The miners sensed their doom and had organized themselves while they were away. The children had notes and family icons tied to them. She heard rites and prayers being called. Ileth had the stronger boys, scarves tied over their faces, hang on to each other like saddlebags across the dragon’s back. She tied and fixed and fiddled while Fespanarax did his best to shelter them with his wings. She could hear shrieks of pain.
“Hurry, Ileth,” Fespanarax urged from somewhere in the hot blowing ash.
The Tentkeeper managed to make it through the press. His skin was peeling. He thrust a scrawled, sealed letter into Ileth’s hand. “My wife. Village of Isswith.”
“I shall,” Ileth said, thrusting it into her shirt.
He helped her tie on the last of the children.
“Don’t forget, Isswith. Now go!”
Fespanarax jumped. He wasn’t the only one, but he was the only one with wings. Ileth wept and screamed from the pain and frustration.
They lost one of the boys gripping hands. Ileth had a brief, terrible glimpse of the fear in his eyes as he slipped and disappeared down into the fog of ash. She reached back and held on to the other one until Fespanarax glided to the other waiting children. He skidded in hard.
It was a mercy that the ash hid the denouement. The end of those left on the plateau came swiftly.
There was a great deal to do on the little pine-covered hill. Shelter, water, making a count of the children and putting the older ones with little groups of younger ones, pairing those who seemed most capable with babies.
The wind held and kept the ash off them, and the plume of the clouds filled the skies of Baron Blue Heron’s lands.
She spent an exhausting night getting the children to a cattle ranch Fespanarax spotted. Ileth would have preferred to wait until daylight, but she wanted to put more distance between the children and the volcano. Who knew what further cataclysm might come? Fespanarax had them keep to a ridge the whole way. The dragon told her tales of cloudy rivers of superheated ash rolling off volcanoes, and Ileth wanted nothing to do with anything like he described. On the way they met an outrider for one of the herds, and Ileth begged him to get a message to the Baron. They got their thirsty, hungry, and ash-covered children to the ranch house, just a long shepherd’s cabin, but it fit everyone. Ileth promised the cattlemen and their wives the Baron’s money if they would feed the children for a few days until arrangements could be made.
She helped wash and feed the children before flying off for aid from Chapalaine. Fespanarax, with the urgency of the rescue over, complained of burned wings and said that they’d better produce a great deal of salve.
One of the Baron’s outdoor staff, a clever man of middle age who was brave enough to work with the dragon and had turned into a decent groom by watching Ileth, fairly danced with anxiety, his sparse hair flying wilder and wilder with each caper.
“The Baron must see you immediately!” the groom said. “Are you both quite all right?”
“Never better,” Ileth said, though she didn’t feel it. She slid down the saddle and touched the ground. Her skin pained her. She’d been a little scorched.
“Lords and lands,” the Baron said, once she made it to his presence. “What happened to you, Ileth?”
“Bad up there.”
“I have here a report,” he said, looking at some handwritten notes in his own hand, “that you saved thirty-eight children.”
“Eleven b-b-babies, a girl perhaps two—”