“All the barbarian tribes right up against Juutfod are the weaklings, little clans that lost out in some war or other. They know the Northerns—as the men of Juutfod like to call themselves, not Hypatians but not barbarians, either—will take alarm at the approach of a war-bent tribe and fight. The best of them serve in the tower, thinking it’s glamorous. They usually quit within a year when they see that most of the coin goes down dragon gullets and the workers spend most of their time moving food in and dragoncast out. South of here it’s actually less densely populated, even though it’s Hypatian territory, because of barbarian raids. Good country for herding, if you can keep the wolves down and the Red Mountain dwarfs from bagging your lambs. There’s a scattering of Ironriders who have settled in the woods and are doing well; a few of them even found their way to Juutfod and married. Good to get some fresh blood in the man-strains, don’t you think? Juutfod used to be a good trade port, but the local thane—yes, they adopted the Hypatian title—he started leveling dockage or demurrage or some man-word so the merchant houses pulled up stakes. Fishing and lobstering’s good here, Gettel says it’s all the dragoncast dumped in the bay. The fishermen do their smoking and potting out on the barrier islands to keep the thane’s hands out of their pockets. Fishermen think it’s good luck to toss a fish to a dragon and they pull up some big blue-tops with red meat, very tasty. If you like mutton you’re better off getting it straight from the herdsmen . . .”
On and on it went. The Copper simply enjoyed the salty smell of the Inland Ocean and the strong, steady wind that made flying easier with a fixed-open joint. He re-promised himself that he’d settle with Natasatch within smelling distance of the ocean, if he ever saw their reunion come to fruition.
After his first week, the rats finally brought him an interesting tidbit.
“Down-belows extra-extra fooding,” this rat said. The Copper found him harder to understand than Red Ears, mostly because he spoke through a mouthful of boiled potato.
“Who are the down-belows?”
“Cave dragons. No wallspace. Eat rat-folk.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Are you saying there are dragons in a cave beneath the tower?”
“Maybe so not like you. Swim dragons, crawl dragons.”
The Copper gave up and decided to investigate.
It took him a while to find the correct cave down. He ended up following a set of rails for a wheeled cart, such as the dwarfs used in their mines, adopted by the dragons and other underground races. A food cart made the trip down every other day.
He spoke to the men who drove the cart. It turned out there was no great secret about the other dragons. They just weren’t housed in the tower because they didn’t fly. The men called the underground dragons the “pensioners”—most of them were dragons who, because of wounds and injury, could no longer fly.
It was gloomy in the underground. There were a few attempts to grow cave-moss, but it hardly glowed enough to reveal itself. Maybe salt air wasn’t good for it. He followed the food cart into a larger chamber, bow-shaped so that dripping water pooled at the center. Dragon perches, some natural and some cut, punctuated each side of the chamber like the holes of a human flute.
The cart-men halted their load and rang a bell. Gettel was fond of bells.
As the ringing faded, he heard a familiar sound in the darkness. Grinding teeth, followed by a yawn from the first alcove on the right.
“Shadowcatch, can that be you?” he asked.
Two eyes popped open wide. “My Tyr!” the black dragon said.
He’d met the enormous Shadowcatch in battle on the other side of the Inland Ocean. Eventually the black had become his bodyguard. He was the only dragon to remain overtly loyal to him after he had resigned the title of Tyr.
“That’s all done with, don’t you remember?” the Copper asked, regretting the choke that found its way into his voice.
Shadowcatch emerged. He was as huge as ever, but one wing hung crooked. “For me, sir, it’s the rest that’s done. Truth be told, you’re my Tyr, the Tyr, until my last breath escapes.”
“What brought you here? Surely not the comforts of a home-cave.”
He looked at the dank walls. “Not the best of accommodations, are they? Truth be told, there’s not a dragon down here that doesn’t deserve better, but we’re charity cases these days. We’re the tower guard, and that’s about all we’re good for. Or tunnel-fighting. Our flying days are over, and it’s this or starve in the forest and have the wolves scatter our bones.”
“Who are these dragons?”
“All veterans of the Wizard at the Isle of Ice, sir. We did a bit of mercenary work with the barbarian chieftains since, but that’s the only action I’ve seen since washing up here.”
Back in the Lavadome, a flightless dragon could still do tunnel-duty. But of course this peninsula was far removed from the strange underground byways he knew.
The Copper sniffed the gristle and fish guts the barrow-men were laying out for the dragons to eat. “I hope that’s not all you get, Shadowcatch.”
“It’s expensive to feed us, even on fish meal. We’re ravenous for cattle or swine, but that’s saved for the fliers, and none of them feel much like passing a quarter down for charity. Flying dragons get the best of everything here.”
There had to be a better use for healthy but flightless dragons than sitting in a dark hole.
“Will you introduce me?”
Shadowcatch inflated his long lungs. “Hey, you kindling lighters, this is my old Tyr. His name’s RuGaard. Don’t mind the scars—he’s sharp and quick still. He and I came north together, a dozen years or so back.”
The dragons, who’d devoured their meager mouthfuls, raised their heads.
“Here’s Red Lightning, a fast, tough dragon in the sky. He can still do a dragon-dash like a first-fire hatchling. He’s in charge of the groundeds. Over there we have old Thunderwing. He broke the bowline and capsized three ships in the big fight with the elven ocean city, back in the days of the great sacks. Fourfoes—we call him the Blind Ripper these days—lost his eyesight to a dwarf, but there’s no one who knows the smell of them better, and he can hear an arrow coming out of the dark before it hits. Corpsecount, Horseflinger, Wardog . . .”
The list went on, earthy, human-tongue names with deadly deeds. There were sixteen dragons including Shadowcatch.
The Copper wondered at the names. They were all mature dragons; if you added them all up there must have been a thousand or more years of life among them. AuRon had once told a tale of the Wizard of the Isle of Ice and the dragons he’d collected and bred. Most of them had been given such names with meaning in the human tongue.
They looked healthy enough. They must not spend all their days in this chamber, or they’d have thin and chalk-edged scale. “You all look fit enough. What do you do for exercise?”
“Swim. There’s a decent-sized tunnel for sluicing out the waste. Dragons produce a powerful lot of it, sometimes more than the tide can handle. We help push it out into the Inland Ocean and have a swim and some sun on the Outer Rocks. Good crabbing round the sluice, too. The carapaces are good for the digestion.”
If only they could fly! This number was half the size of the old Aerial Host, and Shadowcatch the Black was a proven fighter. If he said they were good, the Copper could trust his old bodyguard’s esteem. They’d have Nilrasha out of her refuge in no time.
“I’m sorry, Shadowcatch. I really should have come looking for you before this.”
“What, and risk death? If you don’t mind me asking, sir, what are you doing out and breaking your exile?”
“I believe NiVom broke it first when he tried to kill me on the Isle of Ice, so I don’t feel bound by it. But to answer your question, I’m trying to puzzle out a way to retrieve my mate. I’m determined to get her back or die trying. Life is too lonely without her.”
“Find another mate,” Horseflinger said. “A piece of green back’s not so hard to come by.”
“We’re not talking to you,” Shadowcatch said. “And when he does, show a little respect, or I’ll tie your ears together to remind you to keep a civil tone. Tyr RuGaard once commanded hundreds of dragons.”
The Copper put himself between the two of them and accidentally knocked over the feeding cart. Smelly fish juice rose from the mess, hopefully dampening the males’ smell to one another and cooling their heads. “Your wing never healed, Shadowcatch? I’m sorry.”
Shadowcatch lifted the crippled member and looked at it curiously as if it were a cat suddenly perched on his shoulder. “Oh, I’m not the first grounded dragon and I won’t be the last.”
“My own mate can no longer fly, as you recall.”
That caused a stir among the flightless dragons. Some pricked up their ears and began to pay attention. The Copper saw a glimmer of hope. This might be the core of the force he needed . . .
“Fine lady and a fine Queen nonetheless,” Shadowcatch said.
“What ever happened on the Isle of Ice?”
“Had a merry game with that beast Ouistrela, my Tyr. She saw the island as hers more than the Empire’s, and when she wasn’t hunting me to pull out my throat, she was shooting fire at our—or rather at the dragons of the Empire. Hypatians thought about establishing a fishing village for cod-drying and whale oil and whatnot, but they lost boats in the fogs—or at least that’s how it seemed to them. What was really happening was Ouistrela was swimming up under them and knocking holes in them or tearing off rudders. Clever old stump.”
“How do you know she’s the one who was sinking them?”
“Bit of a long story, my Tyr.”
“Let’s have it.” The Copper had little else to do and it was so pleasant to see old Shadowcatch, he would be happy to hear fishing stories from the fat old black.
“Well, we came to sort of a stalemate, see. Most of the wolves, they knew I was friends with that brother-gray of yours, so they took my side of things, you might say. They kept me abreast of where she was and what she was doing. She had the blighters on her side and if they spotted me they sent her a report. We usually each knew what part of the island the other was on, and kept away from each other. It’s a big island—wasn’t that hard to do.
“I had information that she was hunting around a glacier-pool way off from the blighters, so I snuck up the glacier and dug into some loose soil the glacier had pushed down the mountainside. When she was snuffling around, following some goat tracks, I jumped out of the loam and had her, or so I thought.
“We took a bit of a tumble down the mountainside and ended up in the glacier pool. Next thing I knew, we were—mated, I guess you call it. I’m not sure when the fighting died down and the mating began, but it seemed well along before I noticed.”
The Copper snorted. He’d heard many bawdy jokes in his days in the Drakwatch, about a young winged member fighting so hard in an exercise against a Firemaid that she ended up fertilized. He always assumed such stories had some basis in truth, but this was the first time he’d heard it proven out.
“You’re not still on the island, I note.”
“Soon as the mating was over, so was the mating, if you understand me, my Tyr. I heard from the wolves she did have a clutch, a small one. One of the blighters sent me a message saying that if I wanted to see my offspring well fed and thriving, I should quit devouring so many sheep and goats and go live on one of the outer islands. Too windy and cold for me, so I swam here. I used to fly mercenary for Red Hair—that’s what I was doing when we met, at that battle.”
“The hardest fight of my life, Shadowcatch.”
“Aye, I’m not often bested. Red Hair’s gray now, but she found me a place with the groundeds. You know, she calls us the ‘tower guard,’ but we don’t earn our keep. I think she just keeps us around because she’s carrying a soft spot in her heart for dragons.”
“Better a soft spot in the heart than in the head, I suppose. I’ve sometimes wondered if that’s my problem.”
He happened upon Gettel as she left a meal with her human staff and mentioned that he’d visited the pensioners.
“Ahh, flying dragons don’t go down there much.”
“Why not?”
“Same reason as they don’t bring new recruits to the lodge for crippled soldiers in the Hypatian legions, I suppose. No one likes being reminded of what might befall them.”
The Copper found himself joining with the “groundeds,” as Shadowcatch styled them, rather than idling in the tower, learning names and assignments as the aerial dragons came and went.
He had to admire Gettel’s setup, but he wondered if it would die with her. All business of the tower flowed through her hands, yet she was childless and only had a rather brittle-looking old elf to assist her. He asked Shadowcatch what he thought would happen when she was sent on a raft out into the Inland Ocean, or whatever the Juutfod custom for disposal of their honored dead was.
“We’re in better shape than most days. There’s going to be a fight with some dwarfs. There’s an old grudge between them and the barbarian chieftains, and the dwarfs are up to their usual cattle-stealing tricks. We’ve got an upriver swim ahead of us, as soon as the melt’s full up. Plenty of salmon to eat on the way. We’ll need the oily fish, too; that cursed river is cold.”