They crossed a line of mountains that had a winding road going up to a red-roofed barn and yellow inn, their next landmark. From there they passed through the mountains, a thin chain hardly worth the name range, and came to a greener, warmer land.
Ileth felt the welcome change to the air immediately. They were just in cold air now, rather than frigid with ice from their breath building up on their scarves.
They overflew many herds and planted fields and roads winding this way and that. The Vale folk liked reliable roads, and the Republic had been merciless in their land reforms in the early days so that their roads might run in that manner. The Galantine Baronies let old cow paths become roads and didn’t do much in the way of drainage ditches that Ileth could see, but perhaps their lands did not have to deal with the runoff of the mountainous Vales where clouds piled up against the peaks. Or maybe the Galantines liked staying put and traveled seldom.
The next landmark was a blue-roofed baronial estate with a long rectangular decorative pond surrounded by a white path that conveniently marked where they would turn. They were to follow the direction of the pond toward a thick forest that showed first black in the distance and then bluer as they approached. From the forest you went to a little pile-up of three low mountains, one of which had a lonely observatory atop it that could be seen far off as it was capped with brassy, shining shingles that almost always reflected the sun.
After they made yet another minor turn, towering white clouds ahead indicated trouble.
“Thunderstorm,” Galia said over her shoulder.
Preece put out an arm and rotated it like a wheel. His dragon increased speed.
They’d talked it through when planning their flight. Though they were expected at Ves Verdus, they were still members of the Republic’s military arm, a vital and powerful one at that. They couldn’t just set their dragons down at the nearest inn and order dinner and beds, at least not without a great deal of trouble from the locals. According to Preece, it would be a good way to get a mob up, howling for dragon blood to avenge old injuries. An aristocrat’s house might be a possibility, but the famous Galantine hospitality applied only to invited guests, not members of an enemy camp in wartime, whatever the armistice might say. The safest, but least comfortable, would be to find something remote and make camp under the dragons.
Ileth had asked about religious orders, but they were an even riskier chance than an aristocrat’s house. The official position of the Galantine High Church was that dragons were incarnations of wicked spirits sent to test and torment the faithful. There was an order of monks dating back to Old Hypatian times that took a different view (Preece said they cared for the Galantine King’s few dragons), but there was no way to recognize them unless you met one on a road and studied his vestments.
There were still five more landmarks to go and the clouds piled skyward. At the rate they were passing, they’d be under the storm before two more had been passed. Clouds boiled up all along the storm line as though it were reaching out arms.
They passed over a river, a wide, sandy sort of mess of a stretch of isle-dotted water. There were many islands with trees at the bends of the river and here and there in the straights. Preece gave up and angled toward them. Even if a contingent of peasants took to pike and bow and came after them in a storm, they’d have to swim to be much of a threat, but judging from the rooftops, the nearest village was some distance away and there were no roads along this part of the river.
The air was warmer. Spring was already well on its way in the Baronies.
They set down. Thunder sounded in the distance and the sun disappeared behind the thunderheads.
They chose one of the smaller islands, well away from the banks with only some small farms scattered about, well away from the river. A larger island stood just a little distance upstream, its banks more crowded with trees overhanging the water, sometimes the trunks leaning over it as though to take a look. Ileth thought she saw some raggedy shapes with unkempt hair looking at them from the thick growth, but whoever they were they didn’t care to venture into the open.
The river had a different smell than the mountain flows and coastal washes Ileth was used to, different from the vast lake around the Serpentine. It smelled rich and green and full of life but vaguely rotten, like lichen on a wet old stump.
Lightning can be a bad business for dragons with their metal scale, but Preece was prepared for that. He tied a flexible wire to a special crossbow bolt and carefully shot it into a tall tree, then pegged the wire into the ground with a metal peg. It, and the top of the poor tree, would draw the lightning away from the dragons.
“We’re being watched from that island there, I think,” Galia said, when Preece returned from setting up his lightning trap. Another blast of thunder, louder.
“Really?” Preece said. “I don’t think some curious fishermen or whoever they are will be a threat. Not to dragons, anyway. We might as well eat.”
While she and Galia readied the food and Preece told the dragons to sleep, if they could, and the humans would keep watch, a blast of wind and thunder hit and it began to rain. The dragons settled down, back to front like two horses standing in a field so they could swish flies from each other’s faces, and stretched out their wings facing each other, forming sort of a tent. The dragons put their heads down under their other wings and soon were breathing deeply and regularly. Ileth couldn’t see their griff to know if they were truly asleep or simply resting.
Three figures, all teenage boys, Ileth guessed, emerged from the other island and swam, paddling like dogs, to their sandy stretch of ground. They didn’t have to swim far; they waded unsteadily through the flow and up onto the sandy, tree-lined island. Their clothes were crude, in tatters below the knee, and their shirts weren’t much better, utterly frayed at the collar and sleeves. Their hair was thick with dirt and she could see rib bones through rends in their shirts. Hungry, wary eyes looked from dragon to dragon.
One of them spoke. All three held out their hands, palms up in supplication, bowing and bobbing.
It was Galantine, Ileth thought, but a dialect she couldn’t begin to understand, except for the word we.
“I think they’re hiding from the conscription agents,” Preece said. “One of them said army. Don’t know if he meant theirs or ours.”
“They’re begging food,” Ileth said, picking up the word meal in the requests. “Meal?” she asked in Galantine, holding up her wrapping paper full of bread and nuts and smoked fish.
“Meal, meal,” they all said, nodding. She could see saliva bubbling up on one’s lips, even in the rain.
Ileth wondered how awful service in the Galantine army must be if it was better to be dirty, cold, wet, and half-starved in the middle of a river.
Galia looked them up and down. “That one’s not over twelve. He can’t be hiding from the conscription agents.”