Red howled as fire washed burnt umber scales, then darted aside and hovered nose-to-nose with the great green dragon, crying, “You would, would you? Have at thee, worm!” Fire blasted.
So did Stegoman's, and fire fountained high where the two flames met, then winked out as the dragons realized they were wasting their breath. They circled one another, glaring into each other's eyes, fifty feet apart, slipping and sliding on currents of air.
Matt noticed that it had been exclusively a firefight, no claws tearing skin or teeth rending hide. There were those pounces, but even he had seen them coming a mile away. He wondered if this was more a ritual than a fight.
Either way, he didn't like it. Time for a breathing spell.
Then Matt remembered that taking a breath wasn't necessarily a sign of peace between dragons and hurried on to the next verse.
Red frowned. “What is that prattling your grub makes?” “He is no grub, but a mortal man,” Stegoman retorted, “and if I know him, he speaks of truce.”
“Perhaps he has some reason.” Red eyed Stegoman warily.
“Shall we perch and talk?”
“There is more profit in that than in wasting flame on hides that will not burn,” Stegoman allowed. He half folded his wings, then opened them with a boom as he landed on a split peak off to Mart's right. “My name is Stegoman.”
Red dropped down to land on the other half of the mountain-top. “I hight Dimetrolas.”
“Let there be peace between us, Dimetrolas. There need be naught else, for I shall be in your mountains only one night.”
“Oh, that is ever your way, is it not?” Dimetrolas spat. “To come and go, to pass but a single night, then waft away on the wind and never return?”
Stegoman's eyes flashed as nictating membranes slid over the eyeball, reflecting the setting sun, then withdrew—the dragon equivalent of a blink. “I am a wanderer, aye, and shall be so until I find a reason to stay and ward a mountain.”
“How is it you have never found such a reason? Have you too much love for the feel of the wind under your wings?”
Stegoman's jaw lolled open in a dragon grin. “Well I might, for I have had little enough of it.”
“Little enough?” Dimetrolas eyed him narrowly. “Yet you must be a hundred years old at least, come into your maturity.”
“I am no longer a hatchling,” Stegoman admitted—but since it hadn't been an insult, why was he so tense, crouching like a coiled spring?
“You must have wandered for half your life.” Dimetrolas too crouched taut, and Matt readied another spell in case the two leaped at one another again.
“I have spent many years among the human kind,” Stegoman said by way of explanation. “Their follies amuse me.”
“Amuse! Are you not yet old enough to put amusements behind you? Have you a hatchling's mind in a dragon's body, that the work of life holds no appeal for you? Are you not grown, that you have no wish to make a home?”
“Perhaps not,” Stegoman said quietly. “I am what I am, and pleased with it.”
But Matt caught an undertone of sadness to his friend's speech, an echo of bitterness, and knew the dragon well enough to doubt the truth of his words.
Dimetrolas, though, seemed to sense no such undercurrent.
“Aye, I doubt not you are pleased with yourself, scion of the wild wind! Well, go your way! Be blown where you will, but when your fifth century comes upon you, be mindful of what you have missed.” With that, the red dragon dove off the peak.
Matt almost called out in alarm, then caught himself, remembering that dragons were safer in the air than jets. Sure enough, Dimetrolas rose into sight again half a minute later, wings wide-spread, spiraling up to become only a slender curve gilded by sunset, coasting away to the south.
Stegoman watched with a fixed gaze, and the tension in his body seemed to increase, if anything.
Matt decided it was time for a distraction. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called, “Handled like a true diplomat!”
The dragon's head turned slowly, and his eyes appeared to burn. Matt almost backed up a step in fright, but summoned nerve and held himself steady. Then Stegoman relaxed a little, and the burning dimmed to a glow. “A diplomat? An intransigent transient, rather!”
“Okay, so you're a stubborn hobo! How about coming over here so I don't have to yell?”
Stegoman gazed at him a moment, then dove from the peak, his wings booming open. He circled twice and landed beside Matt, who said, “Thanks for sticking up for me.”
“Friends are priceless,” Stegoman replied. “I have few enough, after all.”
“And need all the friends you can get? Too bad Dimetrolas doesn't think that way.”
“That may not be the case.” Stegoman gazed south where the other dragon was a glowing dot in the sky.
Matt frowned at the cryptic comment, but asked, “What was that business about travel being 'ever your way'? Odd thing to say to someone you don't know.”
“It would be,” said Stegoman, “if that ‘your’ meant me myself.”
Matt frowned. “What other ‘your’ could it be?”
“Males,” Stegoman said, with a volume of meaning packed into the single word. His gaze was still fixed on the south, his body still tense with leashed energy.
Matt stared as a lot of things became clear, including the tenor of Dimetrolas' remarks, why she had pushed the issue to a fight, why that fight had seemed more a ritual than a battle, and most especially Stegoman's tension—he was highly stimulated, virtually bursting with adrenaline and hormones. “Oh,” Matt said. “Dimetrolas is female.”
“A fact of which I was instantly aware,” Stegoman said dryly.
“And, I take it, a rather pretty one?”
“Absolutely beautiful,” Stegoman hissed, eyes burning again.
In spite of himself, Matt backed away a step or two. “Well, then, why didn't you do something about it?” His eyes widened as he remembered the thrust of Dimetrolas' comments. “No. She was basically saying that you should forget it and suffer if you weren't willing to stay for life, wasn't she?”
“Indeed,” Stegoman rejoined, “and in all good conscience, I could not pretend that I might.”
Matt studied his friend closely. “You could come back, though. When we've found Balkis and retrieved her, you could come back and stay awhile.”
Stegoman shook out his wings in irritation. “Could I? What have I to offer a female? I, who have no home and no friends of my own kind, who have been outcast by my own clan and was so long in exile that I cannot stay long in the mountains where I was born for the feeling of strangeness there! What tribe, what house, what people could I give? I have nothing to offer but wandering and loneliness, and estrangement from my own kind!”
Matt gazed at his friend, feeling his heart twist with remembered pain of his own. At last he said, “You could offer a strong male dragon in his prime whose loyalty is proven to border on the fanatical.”