The Dragonbards

Chapter 10

On Ekthuma, five speaking wolves were discovered talking with some children. They were killed and their bodies bound by chain to the children’s necks, and the children were made to drag them about the city. That is the way of the un-men. They hunger to destroy warmth and love.

*

“Dragons in the sea! Hah, dragons!”

Teb stared up the cliff. Two sleek brown faces looked down at him with broad, whiskered grins and dark eyes shining.

“Charkky! Mikk!”

“Tebriel! You have dragons!”

The two otters slid down the cliff to embrace him. They smelled richly of the sea and of fish. Teb knelt and gathered them in, hugging them, laughing with pleasure into their whiskered faces. Charkky pounded his back. “It’s a dream!” Charkky shouted. “You really do have dragons! You found dragons!” Mikk winked at him with admiration and looked up at Windcaller banking away over their heads. Kiri sat on a rock, watching them with interest.

“Maybe a dream,” Mikk said, “but their wings make real wind. And Teb is real, I can smell him! And who is that sitting on the rock?”

“Kiri,” Teb said, putting out a hand to her. She came to stand beside him. Mikk shook her hand.

Charkky smiled shyly when she shook his paw; he turned away and pulled at Teb’s arm. “Now that you have dragons, Tebriel, you can drive Sivich from the land. Kill Sivich—”

“I thought Ebis killed him. I thought—”

“Oh, Ebis didn’t kill Sivich,” Charkky said with disgust. “Sivich escaped. He was mounted—he wouldn’t go into battle on foot. He keeps a few horses locked in the stable; we couldn’t get at them. We had to leave them behind.”

Kiri looked from one otter to the other, first puzzled, then with surprised admiration. “So that was what happened to the horses. You stole them? I saw the battlefield.”

The two otters smiled.

Teb said, “If Sivich escaped, we’ll find him.” He put a stranglehold on Charkky so the young otter thrashed helplessly. With his face close to Charkky’s, looking into the otter’s dark eyes, Teb said in a low, growling voice, “We will destroy him—together, we will.”

“Hah, Tebriel! We’ll do that!” Charkky cried.

Teb held Charkky away, laughing. “I want to hear all about last night. How were you sure they were going to attack? How did you get the horses away?”

“We have spies in the palace,” Mikk said. “Sivich decided to attack Nightpool when he found out we had been stealing his food and weapons.”

Charkky laughed. “He was pretty mad, raving about wiping out Nightpool and killing all of us. Vermin, he called us!”

“So the night of his planned attack,” Mikk said, “we loosed the horses and drove them off toward the mountains, to be picked up by rebel troops from the coast.”

Teb looked impressed.

“Horses do not like growling otters biting at their heels,” Charkky said.

“You’re pretty well organized,” Teb said.

Mikk’s whiskers stiffened with pride.

“What happened when Sivich discovered his horses were gone?” Kiri asked.

“Hah,” Charkky said. “He was madder than sin, too mad to scrap the attack. He set out for Nightpool with half his soldiers—a hundred soldiers on foot and only himself and three officers mounted.”

Mikk twirled his worry stones. “His foot troops came at double march, and we followed them all the way, running in the darkness. Sivich kept grumbling and muttering about how he would slaughter us all.”

“He thought he’d just march down the cliff,” Charkky said, “and swim his soldiers across to kill us like sheep in a pen.”

“Ebis was waiting for Sivich in the valley between Auric Palace and Nightpool,” Mikk said. “His mounted men picked off Sivich’s foot soldiers like minnows in a tide pool. But,” he said more quietly, “Sivich will get fresh horses from the countries friendly to him, and more soldiers. He’ll come at us again, you can bet your flippers.” In spite of his steadiness, Mikk’s dark eyes showed a chill of fear.

“Hah,” Charkky said. “Now Tebriel is here! And Kiri! And two white dragons to cut Sivich down from the sky, burn him.”

“How long will it take Sivich to get new mounts?” Teb asked.

“A week or more,” said Mikk. “By now, the rebel troops will have swum the horses we stole, across the channel to Lair Island for safekeeping. Sivich would never find them there, in that tangle of caves and cliffs. He’ll send north for reinforcements.”

“We could join with Ebis now,” Teb said. “Attack Sivich while he has few soldiers and no horses.”

“But even without horses,” Mikk said, “he’s at an advantage when he’s fighting from within the palace. He will not come out into the open until he has reinforcements.”

Teb nodded. “I don’t want to burn Auric Palace. If we wait until new troops arrive, we can wipe them all out.”

“Yes,” Mikk said. “That would be Ebis’s choice, too.”

“There will be more dragons in a few days,” Teb said. “Seven more, and three more bards as well.”

“Hah!” Charkky and Mikk shouted together.

“Nine dragons!” Charkky yelled. “The sky will be filled with dragons!”

“And there will be a surprise for Thakkur, too,” Teb said. He wouldn’t tell them what, though they teased him to find out. He soon left the two otters and Kiri talking about the night’s battle. He went along the rim of the island to the caves that looked down on the inner valley, to Mitta’s cave.

The little pudgy otter was waiting for him. Teb knelt and put his arms around her.

“You are safe, Tebriel.” Her whiskers tickled his neck. “Oh, you are safe.” She squeezed him with eager paws, then held him away to look deep into his face, her whiskers twitching with happiness. Teb tried not to see the gray hairs that rimed her muzzle. “Dragonbard,” she said softly, her dark eyes and her eager otter face filled with bright wonder.

It was Mitta and Thakkur who had nursed him through his long illness when he hadn’t known who he was, had fed him, watched over him, set his broken leg, and changed the dressings on it.

“Dragonbard,” she repeated. “And you killed the black hydrus. Oh, I am proud of you, Tebriel.” She smiled a whiskery smile. “You will take back your land, now, when you destroy Sivich.”

Her assurance, on top of Charkky’s and Mikk’s, made Teb uneasy. Yet why should it?

He sat with Mitta for a long time, reminiscing, before he took her to meet Kiri and the dragons.

It was the next afternoon that the sky was filled with dragons, as Charkky had said. Mikk and Charkky ran to the highest rock, shouting and pointing. Wings hid the sky. Dragon faces looked down. Dragon teeth and claws shone.

When the dragons dropped onto the sea, they sent waves heaving against Nightpool. As they swam, rocking on the waves, two dragonlings brought Iceflower to the landward side of the island, where the sea was calm. She looked very weak. Mitta saw, and went to her.

Only Thakkur was not watching Iceflower or the circling dragons. He stared past them to where Nightraider rocked on the far swells. Camery was standing up on Nightraider’s back, between his spreading black wings. Her arms were raised. She was holding Hanni up, as high as she could. He perched there, looking across the waves at Thakkur. Thakkur looked back, rigid with amazement.

Thakkur dove.

He swam between dragons like a white streak. Before he reached Nightraider, Hanni dove, too. The two otters met in mid sea. They bobbed on the waves, looking. They circled each other, staring. They dove, surfaced, spun in the water, then disappeared beneath the sea. Teb could imagine their flying race deep down in the clear green water.

“No one had to introduce them,” Kiri said. “They were kin as soon as they met.”

He laughed and took her hand. The two white otters were together. He felt good, very complete. He put his arm around Kiri, and they watched Mitta, balancing on the rocks, with the waves crashing around her as she touched Iceflower and talked to her.

“What’s Mitta doing?” Kiri said. “Iceflower looks so sick.”

“She’s asking questions,” Teb said. Mitta had that stern, doctoring look about her.

When Iceflower rose from the sea, she winged in a dropping glide over the island, and came down in the center valley. Mitta stood on the rock cliff with paws raised, giving orders to a dozen young otters.

Soon Mitta had a fire burning in the valley and a kettle boiling, and she was gathering roots beside the lake. As she steeped her herbs and roots, Iceflower curled up on the meadow with her wings tucked around her. Kiri smiled, watching the efficient little otter. When the brew was ready, Iceflower sucked up the warm potion obediently, and soon her eyes drooped with sleepy comfort.

Soon afterward, a second pot of water was put to boil, and the otters began bringing shellfish. The bards crowded close to the fire, warming themselves, their stomachs rumbling as the good smell of steaming clams and lobster filled the wind. It was not long until they were feasting, at first hungrily, in silence, then with more grace. Marshy ate so much lobster, Kiri thought he would be sick. Hanni sat close to Thakkur, wrapped in Teb’s gull-feather blanket. The little white otter, like Thakkur, preferred his shellfish raw. All the otters began asking questions about what had happened in Dacia, though they already knew quite a lot.

News had traveled fast down across the island continents, from owl to fox to great cat to wolf to owl, and at last to Nightpool. The bards listened with excitement to how skilled the animals’ network had grown.

Thakkur said, “The news that there are still dragons has given us all new hope. Even the owls are working as one for the first time. Owls are always such loners.

“They have formed cadres and have begun living in communal groups, in the cave sanctuaries. By carrying messages, they have helped the rebel bands come together into a strong army. When news of the dragons and of your victory in Dacia swept the continents, Tebriel, within a matter of days every creature rose to join us.”

The otters began to talk all at once, telling how the owls had brought news of boats carrying dark soldiers, and how teams of otters had sunk those boats, swimming deep underwater to pierce the hulls with sword and spear. Or if no otters were near, the great cats or the big speaking wolves had swum out in force, clinging to one side of a boat to flip it, killing the soldiers as they tried to swim ashore. The speaking animals were working so well with the resistance that Teb thought this was nearly like the old times when all speaking folk, man and animal, lived in an active, working harmony.

This very harmony would infuriate Quazelzeg. They all agreed that he would invent new ways to fight them, and a chilling fear touched the little group. The wind seemed to come colder, fingering down inside collars and parting fur, and the surrounding sea seemed all at once an open highway to evil invaders instead of a safe barrier. Little Hanni pushed closer to Thakkur, reaching out a paw. Kiri put her arm around Marshy and drew him near, and squeezed Teb’s hand very hard; and she thought, with Teb, that they dare not let fear touch them so powerfully.

In late afternoon the two white otters grew restless. Hanni fidgeted, and Thakkur began a nervous pacing.

The otters and bards had gathered again in the valley, but soon Thakkur was moving back and forth among them; then he and Hanni roved out along the marsh alone, tilting their heads as if they scented something alarming. When they turned to look at the gathered crowd, everyone was watching them.

The two otters left the valley, climbed the black cliff, and stood on its ridge, sharply white against the afternoon sky. The bards and otters rose and followed them, toward the sacred cave.