Legacy of Steel

3

The dragon suddenly jerked in mid-breath, his eyes grew huge and smoke leaked from his nostrils. "I know you!" snarled the blue.

"Cobalt!" gasped Sara in genuine surprise.

"I thought you were dead," they said in unison.

A long silence fell as the two stared at each other. Sara knew Cobalt could still blast her with his dragon's breath. The dragons loyal to Takhisis and the Vision were as strict in their code of justice as their human Counterparts. Although few of the knights stationed outside Storm's Keep knew of her crime, Lord Ariakan had condemned Sara to die for her treason to the knighthood. Any Dark Knight or blue dragon had a duty to kill her on sight.

But so many things had changed since the Summer of Chaos. The Knights of Takhisis no longer existed as a viable organization. Only Cobalt's sense of loyalty to a dead cause could persuade him to kill Sara now. She fervently hoped another loyalty would be stronger. Cobalt had been the nestmate of Flare, the blue Sara had loved and trained and eventually left with Steel. She had trained Cobalt, too, for a while, before turning him over to a new rider, a handsome young knight named Vincit. Old friendships faded slowly in blue dragons. Perhaps this one would remember.

"Blast it," murmured Cobalt, and his horned head sank slowly to the sand. "I'm too weak to kill you now.

"Well, that's fine," Sara said matter-of-factly. "In the meantime, I'm going to make a fire and have something to eat. It was a long hike over here to find you, and I'm quite hungry."

The dragon's breath slipped out in a long, ragged sigh. His eyelids slid shut. "Do what you want, just leave me alone."

Sara knew better than to push her attentions on the blue. Cobalt could be terribly stubborn when confronted It would be far safer to encourage him to accept help willingly.

Trying to look as casual as possible, Sara unloaded hen mule and brought her packs and the dry firewood into the cave. Against one wall, near the entrance, she built a fire ring of stones and laid a fire. As soon as the flames were hot, she set the caldron filled with water over the heat.

Fishing pole in hand, she walked to the opening. "Keep the fire going for me, will you?" she called over her shoulder.

Cobalt did not answer. Sara hadn't expected him to, but besides being stubborn, he was also curious. There was a good chance he would keep her fire burning just to see what she intended to do. Since he had not killed her yet, she suspected the dragon's strong sense of survival had not totally faded. Perhaps his stomach was hoping for something to eat.

Sara fished for several hours in the cold surf by the cliff. She was not very good at it, being a farm girl herself, and she missed a catch more often than not. But the water swarmed with fish rising to feed after the storm, and with only a few curses and tangled lines, Sara was able to catch enough fish to make a meal for a dragon.

She made three trips into the cave with her catch, trying not to pay too much attention to her fire. As she hoped, the flames burned hot and the water gently boiled She cleaned the fish in full sight of Cobalt, where the wind could carry the smell to his nose. She left the heads and entrails in a pile on her cleaning stone and carried the tidbits to him. Without a word, she laid the stone in the sand by his head and went back to her fire to make the soup.

Pieces of fish, a little salt, and some bits of seaweed. Sara knew to be high in nutrients went into the caldron to simmer. The results looked nasty to her, but it would be nourishing and tempting to a starving dragon.

While the soup cooked, Sara sat back against the wall and studied Cobalt. Although it was difficult to see much through his covering of sand, Sara could tell the blue was in bed shape. Just as her dream revealed, he was emaciated from starvation and illness, and he appeared to be favoring his back. His normal vivid blue coloring was faded to a dull gray; his brilliant eyes were lackluster and full of pain. His horns and the spiky frill around his head were flattened tightly against his skull. The torn ruins of a dragon saddle dangled from his chest.

Cobalt stirred. "Why did you come?" he asked Suddenly.

Sara saw his yellow eyes upon her and she returned his gaze, unblinking. "I dreamed of a blue dragon in trouble. I did not know it was you."

"Would you have come if you had known?"

"Yes."

"Even knowing I could kill you?"

Sara smiled slightly, remembering her earlier reluctance. "Yes."

He clicked his teeth together. "Huh. Doesn't matter now. Oaths to a vanished goddess aren't much good. Who is going to listen? Everyone is dead."

"We are not."

"I will be soon."

"You do not need to be. I can help you. The world has lost enough blue dragons."

"Not without Vincit." The eyes closed again, and he slipped into sleep.

Sara removed the caldron from the fire and set it in the sand to cool. She cooked some fish for herself, checked the mule, and retrieved her cloak. Night had come by then, filling the cave with dense darkness. Sara hauled the caldron close to Cobalt and curled up by her fire for some much-needed rest. She slept well and deeply, without dreams or distress.

In the morning, Sara woke to find Cobalt buried in the sand again. However, the fish soup and the pile of fish entrails were gone. She smiled to herself and went fishing again.

The next few days followed much as the first. Cobalt remained stubbornly embedded in his mound of sand, refusing to move or talk or cooperate in any way except eating. Silently, when Sara was out of the cave or asleep, Cobalt ate whatever offering she left for him.

Encouraged by his willingness to eat, Sara used most of the daylight hours finding things to tempt an ailing dragon. She fished, set snares in the hills for rabbits, raided birds' nests, caught crabs, and collected seaweed and clams. Every day her catch was thrown in the soup pot, simmered for a few hours, and left by Cobalt's head at night. Every morning the pot was empty.

In the evenings, Sara sat by her fire, eating her own meal and talking to the dragon in her firm, melodious voice. She told him about her village and the years she had spent there; she told him stories about Steel and Storm's Keep; she talked about anything that came to mind just so he could hear her voice. Although he did not respond, he kept an ear cocked in her direction, and he didn't once ask her to be quiet.

On the fourth day, as Sara stirred her soup, she felt the dragon's eyes upon her. She turned and saw Cobalt gingerly stand upright on his three good legs. Sand cascaded off his back and wings and fell from his sides in damp clumps. He stood just long enough to free himself from his blanket of sand, then pulled his wings close to his body and sank back down to his belly.

Sara wordlessly brought him the soup and watched with satisfaction while Cobalt slurped the pot dry.

"Humph," snorted the dragon. "Can't you do better then this? I'd like something with more meat."

Sara grinned. "Let me see your back and I will try to find something tastier."

Oh, if you insist. You won't do any good though," he groaned. "It's an old wound and it's festering."

Sara didn't stand still to argue with the irascible dragon. She hauled her pot to the creek, scrubbed it clean, filled it with water, and lugged it back to her fire. Then she brought out her medicine bag and laid out its contents on a blanket.

Cobalt watched her listlessly.

Sara began her examination at the dragon's wedge-shaped snout and worked her way, scale by scale, back to the tip of Cobalt's blunt tail. The dragon had grown some in the years he had been with Knight Vincit, not only in length but also in breadth and mass. He was about in forty-five feet long, muscular, and well built. Healthy, he would have been a handsome figure of a dragon. Sick as he was, his condition tore at Sara's heart.

One problem was several deep parallel lacerations across his shoulders where the dragon saddle usually sat. From its appearance, Sara guessed the wound was at least several weeks old. Under normal circumstances, a dragon's rider or trainer or even the dragon itself would have treated the wound and kept it clean while it healed, but Cobalt had no human help, and his own head could not pivot around far enough to reach his damaged shoulders. The injury, unattended, had become infected, and how it oozed pus from a black, swollen mass on his back.

The other critical problem was his right foreleg. It had apparently broken, and without splints to keep it straight, it was healing at a bad angle. His right wing, too, had suffered some damage. There were minor tears in the delicate membranes and several large, raw scrapes that looked as if the dragon had fallen heavily on that side.

Sara had seen enough. "I'll be back," she informed her patient, sliding down his side to the ground. She hurried outside to the beach.

After days of clouds and gloom, the wind had finally died, and the sun broke through to bestow its radiance on the sandy white beaches. Sara paused a moment to savor the balmy afternoon, then she hurried down to a cluster of rocks half submerged in the receding tide. Somewhere in one of those tidal pools, she hoped to find a creature particular to Solamnia's western coast, a small, insignificant creature she had seen only a few times.

She searched carefully under the water in the shelter of the rocks until she found two prickly brown things that reminded her of fist-sized cockleburs. Using a stick, she gently pried them loose from their watery perch and pushed them to the edge of the water, where she tipped them upside down and speared their soft underbellies with her dagger. She carried the dead creatures into the cave and laid them out before her fire.

"What are those?" Cobalt snorted.

"Numbtouch sea urchins," Sara replied as she broke off the spines one by one. "They produce a slime on the points of their spines that is a very effective painkiller."

"So?"

"So I am going to use these little points on you while I clean your wounds and…" Sara paused to cast a quick glance at the cave entrance. If Cobalt objected violently to her remedy, she wanted a clear way out.

"And what?" Cobalt prompted suspiciously.

Sara took a deep breath and said hurriedly, "Reset your leg. You see, it's crooked. I shall have to re-break the fracture, set it properly, and splint it, or it will never hold your weight." She stared up at the dragon's head and waited for his reaction.

"That seems like a great deal of trouble for nothing," he said in a mournful tone. "I am so empty. Everything is wasted. I don't want to stay in this world anymore."

Sara crossed her arms and glared at the blue. "Things are different, but by no means is everything gone, Cobalt. Vincit was a good rider; I remember him well. He cared for you very much. Do you think he would want you waste away when there was help and food close by? I can promise you he would never forgive me if I let you die."

Cobalt's head dropped to the sand and his eyes closed. "Do what you want, then," he muttered.

The woman set to work before Cobalt changed his mind She did not like the heavy mood of depression that gripped the dragon, and she hoped that fixing his body would help revive his spirits. Blues could be very touchy when their riders died; some she knew had allowed themselves to die rather face the loneliness and grief. Cobalt, though, had not tried to kill himself, and despite his listlessness and misery, there were flashes of life in his choices.

She dragged her pot of warm water beside his shoulder. With her healer's tools and the sea urchin spines, she started her first task of cleaning the infected wound on the dragon's back. First she cut away the remains of the harness and tossed the saddle aside. Prying apart the dragon's tough scales, she inserted a row of urchin spines into Cobalt's skin and muscles beside the lacerations. The anesthetic took effect immediately.

Alternately washing and trimming the wound, she was able to remove much of the ruined scales, dried blood, pus, and dead tissue. She was relieved to see that the injury was not as deep or as damaging as she feared. When the wound was cleaned to her satisfaction, Sara slathered a liberal coating of an antiseptic ointment over the whole area and laid clean strips of cloth on top to protect it from dirt and sand.

Next she cleaned and treated his wing injuries. His leg she saved for last, partly because of her own nervousness and partly because if he took serious objection to what she had to do, at least his other wounds were already treated.

With one cautious eye on the dragon's fearsome teeth she inserted urchin spines above the break in his foreleg and below it.

Cobalt lay very still, his eyes closed. Only one ear swiveled in her direction.

Sara started talking to him in a low, reassuring voice. "This may feel very odd. Please don't move. I am going to try to pull the break apart again. Fortunately it is simple break, and the set hasn't solidified yet. I hope it will part easily." She continued to talk, describing everything she did and planned to do. As she hoped, the fracture in the bone separated easily under pressure, and Sara was able to manipulate the two ends back into proper alignment. She splinted his leg with driftwood and strips of cloth. Only then did she pull out the urchin spines.

Cobalt let his breath out in a long sigh. A moment later he was asleep.