Bazil Broketail (4 page)

Now with blunted swords and padded maces they were matched in bouts of one-on-one, twos and threes. From their performances in these bouts they would be selected for combat with the veteran legion champions at the end of the week. Much depended on this selection, and upon the performance given in that later combat when the recruits would go up against their seniors in exhibition contests before great crowds of city folk.

Dust flew, heavy feet stamped the flags of the floor of the amphitheater. Twenty-foot-long dragons clashed chest to chest, nine-foot-long swords swept and rang together. Heavy shields yielded splinters of metal with steely clamor.

Yet these were not contests to the death, although once in a while a great champion would forget himself and strike a little too hard and some young twenty-foot hog-lin‘ would hurtle to the ground inert, only to be dragged away by a team of three cart horses. For the most part the injuries sustained were survivable. Nicks and bruises, broken talons, sword cuts and broken ribs. The dragon infirmary would be full all week, and dragonboys would be busy with liniment and bandages, antiseptic and poultices; but despite the violence, deaths were very rare.

Among the hopeful dragons was Bazil of Quosh, now in his fourteenth year and a lean veteran of many small campaigns in the Bluestone country. Bazil was a medium-weight dragon of twenty-two-foot length from nose to tail, of the brown-green leatherback breed.

To compensate for his lack of heft, Bazil had been endowed with a natural skill with weapons. His movements were always deft and economical, and he had an uncanny knack for anticipating an opponent’s blows. Fighting with a foil he was as quick as a man, something most unusual for dragonkind.

However, before he could enter the ring in Marneri he required a dragon stamp. This scrap of parchment, the size of a man’s hand, was vital. The Dragon Laws were strict—dragons being such large and potentially rapacious creatures, each one employed in human service had to carry a stamp and to produce it on demand.

On the whole the Dragon Laws had preserved the peace since the two races had joined in common desperation to fight the dread enemy of Padmasa with its hordes of trolls, imps and weres, all bred in unholy ways from living animals.

To get into Marneri in the first place had required that Relkin talk his way through the watch at the Watergate. They’d come at the peak period in early morning and got passed on without having to show any stamp. It was a time when there were lots of dragons in the city.

But to enter the combat ring they had to produce the stamp, and Bazil’s first bout was set for noon.

Relkin had been in the city only a few days and yet he had made a number of friends, including his contact in the Office of Administration who was also from the village of Quosh, although somewhat older than Relkin.

However, everyone in Quosh was immensely proud of Bazil and they had all been much distressed by the ill treatment accorded the Quoshite leatherback by the Baron of Borgan. The man in the Stamp Office was eager to help, but he could not bring the stamp out of the building himself. The scrutineers would inevitably discover him in the act.

And so Lagdalen of Tarcho awoke, breakfasted, and brushed her teeth in dread. Then she went out to meet Relkin at the appointed hour feeling most unhappy. She had never feared the scrutineers before, it was an increasingly uncomfortable experience.

They met outside the administration block and walked up to the North Gate together while Relkin apprised her of the situation and what she was to do.

Relkin was wearing a rustic, brown cloak against the wind, but at the North Gate this was not unusual since here was the live animal market and hundreds of drovers and riders from the countryside were at work.

Everything was ready, she was informed. The scrutineers of course were being especially cautious that day, but the same things that made it safest for Lagdalen to bring the stamp out in the first place applied even more strongly now. The scrutineers were looking for the guilty alien or a corrupted citizen. They would not look long at a novice from the Temple.

She was to enter the building, go up to the second floor and walk down a hallway where petitioners brought civil suits for registration and informal arbitration. The place was always active and people were constantly exchanging small scrolls, large scrolls, and even stacks of scroll.

A man in the grey tunic and blue trousers of the administrative clerical corps would approach her, they would meet briefly, and he would give her the stamp. She would then go on down the hall and out on the exit stairs.

The scrutineers were posted on the landings on the stairs and she would not be stopped.

That at least was the plan.

With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, Lagdalen catered
the
building through the
great, grey gates
.

Inside she proceeded, as if in a dream, along the hallway, among a traffic of folk from all sectors of society, and thence up the marble stairs.

A portrait of King Sanker loomed above, made in his prime some thirty years before. He wore armor and the helm of a Legion Commander and the red robe that went with it. The king’s eyes, by a twist of skill from Rupachter, the great painter of the age, possessed a
trompe l’oeil
effect and seemed to follow the viewer below, as if his majesty was examining one and forming a stern judgment. Sanker watched all!

Lagdalen felt terribly unworthy at that moment. She was about to do something that violated the spirit, if not the substance itself, of her vows.

Worse still, she felt certain she would be caught.

And then what?

She would try to explain to her father that following the debacle with Werri there had come an entanglement with a dragonboy, a wild, feral youth from far away. And that for this boy’s sake she had risked her future in the Sisterhood.

Her father’s face would crumple with repressed grief. Solemnly he would send her away from his presence. Her mother would break down into hysterical weeping.

Lagdalen would almost welcome being sent away, to do military penance on the frontier in the army. There was a woman’s brigade in the Legion; it had been used as a threat to discipline the young women of Marneri for many years now. She could imagine herself serving there, growing coarse and hardened over the years. Eventually perhaps she would settle on that frontier and become a peasant. Her illustrious family would of course have long since disowned her.

Her feet carried her on, and once she was past the portrait of King Sanker XXII, the stairs brought her to the second floor. Dignitaries in robes of office and of foreign lands were gliding past on a separated gallery built a few feet above the main passage, but not connected to it except through a guarded and hidden entrance. This was the magnates’ walk, from which they could communicate, barter, trade with the public but still maintain a distance.

Both the walk and the much larger passageway around it passed into the long, rectangular Hall of Plaints.

Here Lagdalen proceeded more slowly. The large oval room was occupied by several dozen people in conversation. Clerks towed small trolleys laden with scrolls. Large scroll readers were set up along the walls and most were in use.

Suddenly a plump man in a grey tunic appeared in front of her.

“Ah,” he said. “You must be a friend of Bazil of Quosh.”

“Yes,” she whispered. Were they listening? Were there scrutineers scattered through this hall?

“He is a very special dragon. Everyone in my village is following his career very closely.” The plump man rubbed his hands together and beamed. “Your village raised him, I take it.”

“From the egg, and he was always a hungry spratling. He could eat ten chickens at a sitting by the age of five.”

“Goodness,” she said.

“Yes, it is very expensive for a village to grow a dragon, but since it obviates legion taxes for the entire village it makes sense when there are good harvests.”

If there were scrutineers they were all doomed, she concluded, and this Quoshite from the Stamp Office was an idiot. They would send her to the legion or even into exile.

Noticing her anxiety, however, the plump fellow leaned close and said in a quiet voice, “It’s perfectly all right. Nobody tries to monitor this place—it’s a madhouse. The only danger is on the stairs, but you’re in novice blue, so they won’t even look at you.”

“I wish I were so confident,” she muttered. “All will be well, you will see. Here is the stamp.” Here it was, the moment of culpability. She took it from him, a little thing, rolled up and stuffed in a tube made from a dried symony leaf. She tucked it into her sleeve pocket.

“Remember, the village of Quosh has its hopes pinned on you!” said the man.

He turned and left her and headed away, through a group in loud discussion of water rights on some city-owned land.

Lagdalen licked her lips and headed the other way, toward the exit and the scrutineers.

The dread returned. Damn the village of Quosh—her own future was on the line here. This they would never forgive if they found out.

The stairs going down were crowded, however, and the first scrutineers seemed disarmingly unconcerned, observing the passing crowd quite impassively.

On a ledge overlooking the stairway two heavyset women and an older man with white hair sat in easy chairs watching the people going by. They were in continual conversation and seemed quite detached from the proceedings.

Lagdalen skipped down the stairs and avoided even glancing in their direction as she passed, although she wanted to look up desperately hard. It was almost as if they were willing her to look up, to bring herself to their notice.

Lagdalen passed the first landing. The scrutineers receded behind her.

Still she was sweating freely as she went on and no command to stop came from above.

The second set were younger and all male. They did scan every face with great intensity and Lagdalen felt sure she was blushing as she went past them and down the stairs.

And yet no call came, no constable appeared to take her away and a few moments later she was back on the street, with the illicit dragon stamp safely in her sleeve and her heart beating furiously in her chest.

She walked almost blindly across Tower Square and down the Strand.

Relkin caught up with her at the corner with Bank Street, and as they walked along she gave him the stamp.

He swore undying devotion and gratitude to her and then vanished. He would just have time to register Bazil in time for the noon bout.

In the first combat Bazil was drawn one on one against Smilgax, a taller dragon, a “hard green” from the county of Troat.

Smilgax had a reputation for sullenness and a dislike of learning. He was resting in the bottom tenth of the cohort in tactical skills and lore. Consequently he needed a great performance in the combats if he was to remain in the running for a place in the legions. Only the top two-thirds of the cohort would be inducted, the bottom third would go home to their villages to aid the agricultural effort, a worthy if unexciting prospect.

“Good luck, Baz,” said Relkin with a final pat on the leatherback’s shoulder before he slipped down from his perch on Bazil’s back and took his place in the front stalls, behind the protective barrier of rough-hewn logs that surrounded the wide amphitheater floor.

“He’s big,” said Bazil, quietly fingering the straps on his shield. When standing on his hind legs, for combat, Baz was just under ten feet tall. His opponent was six inches taller and somewhat wider as well. The unofficial rating on the bout had Smilgax as favorite with odds of two to one. Bazil’s odds for victory were an unflattering nine to one.

“Oh well, big doesn’t necessarily mean clever. Otherwise trolls would own the world,” Baz said to himself. He handled his sword Piocar in its well-worn sheath.

They entered the ring and moved towards each other,

Smilgax giving his sword great play in the open space while uttering ferocious snorts and roars. Baz remained quiet, unmoved by this display, and merely stared hard across the space between them.

Smilgax circled, with drawn dragon blade before him, nine feet of gleaming steel. Bazil drew Piocar, handed down for many generations by the dragons of Quosh. The gong sounded and the bout began.

With a surge they moved together, both swinging, and their sixty-pound blades rang off each other with fat sparks aflame.

They circled. Smilgax wore a helm of black steel with paired horns that jutted forth in front. Bazil wore a steel pot of more conservative appearance, with no horns and just a single spike.

Smilgax began an assault, sword whirling, crashing, lunging.

Bazil defended, gave ground, used his shield with good effect and then swung his tail mace into play with a roundhouse sweep that cracked hard on Smilgax’s helm and left his defensive countermove far behind.

Smilgax fell back, his head ringing. He snapped his own tail and flourished his mace.

“All right, Quoshite, I’ll see to you now,” he snarled.

Smilgax renewed his attack, his great sword swirling in heavy cuts and thrusts. Bazil used sword and shield to blunt them and turn them aside.

Once again Bazil made play with his tail, but this time Smilgax was quicker with his own and their tail maces rang together in a minor key as they thrust and grappled and shoved shields against each other.

Smilgax was unable to gain an advantage. With an oath he pushed Bazil away, and once more their swords rang together. This time, however, instead of backing off, Bazil ducked and dipped inside and brought his sword up from below and caught Smilgax’s forelimb and knocked it aside. Bazil swung the blade back and caught the hard green a cut below the breastplate, low down on the left side.

The gong rang to announce the point and Smilgax gave ground with a vicious curse concerning Bazil’s parentage and the entire village of Quosh.

Bazil merely smiled in reply and his eyes flashed.

An old champion, Margone, called from the stalls. “Now, now, Smilgax, temper tantrums won’t get you into the legions!”