drew my blood. The memories are very dim, after so long a time, but me seems they are truly there, that I do recall such a thing. The drawings stopped, of course, when first I went to fight, and had need of my full strength. So they carry that on, and bleed the dragons at the farm?”
Dumery nodded. Then he stopped. She didn’t understand, he realized. And she should understand-these were her kin they were discussing. He swallowed, and said, “They kill them, and drain the blood. They cut the dragons’ throats.”
Aldagon reared back, her head flying upward. “Kill them? Kill them? Do they so? Is that why they breed so many, and kill them so young?”
Dumery squeezed back against the hard logs of the nest wall. “Yes,” he said.
“Why, those foul, treacherous fools!” Aldagon roared, so loud that Dumery thought his ears would burst inward into his skull. “What need, to kill the poor things? Those barbaric idiots! Any pinprick will draw blood; what need to open their throats? What need to slay them?” She stamped about, her tail thrashing, and the smaller dragons scattered in terror, while Dumery readied himself to climb back through the gap between the logs.
“Idiots!” Aldagon roared, spewing forth a huge gout of flame, the single word so loud that the ground shook, and wind rustled the leaves in the surrounding trees for several seconds.
Finally, though, the great dragon calmed herself, and sought out Dumery once again.
He stood with his back pressed against the rough, peeling bark, trying not to cower too obviously, and faced her as she lowered her head toward him.
“Tell me, boy,” she said, so loudly that Dumery’s ears rang, “did you intend to slaughter them so, had you your own farm?”
Dumery had sense enough to lie. “No,” he said, shaking his head, “of course not!”
She glared at him suspiciously. Then she turned away. “Oh, foul creatures,”
she muttered, more loudly than Dumery could shout, “to slaughter them so needlessly! Would that I had smashed that den of evil long since! Would that I... but shall I now, then?” She turned, head raised, and looked north, her tail lashing, sending up showers of broken wood and bone. “Nay, they would summon their clients, all those wizards who purchased hatchlings’ lifeblood, to turn their spells against me...”
Dumery watched this display of draconic fury, marveling, and very glad indeed that Aldagon had managed to keep her word and hadn’t killed him in her first burst of anger.
He sympathized with her, really. The farm’s methods did seem unnecessarily cruel. The memory of all those hatchlings dragging their poor broken wings around the cage was still fresh. But what could anyone do?
Inspiration struck.
“Hai!” he shouted. “Aldagon!”
She ignored him.
“I have an idea,” he called. “Aldagon!”
She turned. “Manling,” she growled, “you’d be well advised not to draw my attention just now.”
“But I have an idea,” he insisted. “A way to put the farm out of business!”
She blinked, paused her thrashing, and lowered her head to look at him more closely.
“Manling,” she said, “your idea had better be good.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Aldagon sat and considered, the tip of her tail twitching slightly.
“I don’t know,” she said doubtfully.
“It’ll work,” Dumery insisted. “It’ll work fine. We’ll just undercut their prices. My father’s a merchant, I know how it’s done!”
“I don’t know,” Aldagon repeated.
“Look, Aldagon,” Dumery said, “how big are you? What do you weigh?”
“How am I to know?” She looked back along her gleaming, green-scaled body, past the dark green wings and the four great hunched legs and out along her tail. “Forty yards, perhaps, from head to tail? Seventy, eighty, ninety tons?”
Dumery nodded. “Say it’s eighty tons,” he said. “I think that’s the important part. Well, the farm has, what, a dozen dragons a year to... um... I was going to say harvest, but that’s not the right word.”
“To slaughter,” Aldagon said. “And betimes it’s a score.”
“All right, twenty. Well, they aren’t any bigger than twenty feet long, ever-Kensher told me that was a rule his family had always lived by, ever since the war ended. And a twenty-foot dragon weighs maybe a ton, he said.”
Aldagon nodded. “About that. Betimes a plump one could be a ton and a half.”
She considered, then added, “Avery plump one.”
“Well, then,” Dumery said, “say twenty dragons at a ton and a half apiece-and that’s more than it really is, you know.”
Aldagon acknowledged that, with a dip of her head.
“Well, that’s thirty tons of dragon a year that they drain of blood. You weigh eighty tons...”
“And you drain thirty tons of me, I’ll perish,” Aldagon replied angrily.
“If we drained it all at once, it might kill you, yes, but suppose we bled you once a month, drawing blood equivalent to three one-ton dragons-three-eightieths of your blood.”
“And how much would that be, in fact?”
Dumery shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never done this before.”
“And is there no variation with age and size? Does a ton of my flesh hold the same blood as the whole of a lesser dragon?”
“I don’t know,” Dumery repeated.
“You would have me, alone, compete with the entire farm?”
“Why not?” Dumery asked. “You’re bigger than every dragon on the farm put together!”
She shook her head. “I am not convinced of that,” she said.
“Well, then, you can steal some more dragons there! And we can bleed some of the ones you’ve rescued, the bigger ones, anyway-you can hold them while I do it, so they won’t hurt me. And they can breed-or you can...” He stopped, unsure of himself, and a little embarrassed at bringing up something so personal.
“Mayhap it’s still possible,” Aldagon said, untroubled by the topic. “I’ve no idea. There’s been none of a size to interest me these past two centuries. But yes, Prittin should be good for many a fine clutch of eggs, and there are more females to be had at the farm.” She glanced at the blue dragon as she considered. “But what’s to stop the farmers from breeding more of their own? What if they turn to slaughtering two score, or three, each year? Then I’ll have suffered this bleeding for naught but your enrichment, Dumery of Shiphaven, and while I have no dislike for you, yet I see no reason to gift you so generously with the very blood of my body.”
“Well, first off,” Dumery said, “they don’t have much room to expand on that mountaintop of theirs. And second, once there’s another source of blood-yours-then the wizards won’t need Kensher so much, and who’s going to retaliate if you destroy the farm someday? You’ll be the one with wizards for customers! And third, I could split the gold with you, of course, I don’t have to keep it all. I wouldn’t expect to keep it all.”
Aldagon snorted, and grey smoke curled up from her nostrils. “Oh, surely, and what good to me is a fat purse? What is money to me? Am I to stroll into an inn and order a barrel of ale? Am I to buy gewgaws and playpretties, as if I were a female of your own species? Where would I wear such things, that they might be seen? And if we have customers among the wizards, and Kensher has customers, and I burn that stinking farm to the ground, will not his wizards be pitted against ours? Might we not provoke a split within the Wizard’s Guild, or perhaps an outright war?”
“Well, what if we do?” Dumery said.
Aldagon blinked, and thought, and replied, “Aye, what if we do, indeed? You’ve no love for wizards, have you? And in truth, neither do I.”
“And as for the gold, it can buy more than jewelry or wine. What if I spent half the money on cattle? I could bring them up here to feed you and the little ones.” Dumery blithely waved an arm at the “little” dragons on the
