the same way as you treat us. They do not know, these keepers you make. Send more so I can show them. Poisons and potions and lies, that is all your kind know.
It felt the old man, amidst his fear and confusion. How far, he was thinking, how far can the dragon reach?
I have tasted you. I have something you desire to know.
‘I have nothing to say to you, abomination.’
The dragon you call Snow is coming, little one.
‘No.’ The dragon felt the old man close his mind and hurry away.
The dragon returned to waiting.
The old man wasn’t long in coming. The dragon felt him long before the door to its prison opened. Others came with him. They brought a weapon they called a scorpion, broken into pieces. The dragon spat fire at them. The chains around its neck were strong, though, while its flames were starved and weak. The little ones moved with care and carried shields of dragon-scale to turn what was left of them aside. They carried their weapon in pieces to the end of the cave, where the dragon couldn’t reach. Where sunlight and the open air and freedom called. Methodically, they put the weapon together. The dragon watched. Their thoughts showed it what the weapon was and what it was for long before they finished. The dragon waited though and said nothing until the last piece went into place, until the first bolt was being loaded and the weapon was armed. Then the dragon turned.
You are pointing that the wrong way, old man.
‘No. I should have done this weeks ago.’
Yes.
‘Shoot it.’
The dragon paid them all its attention now. Its eyes drooped almost closed but its mind climbed into theirs, watching, seeing, waiting. One of the little ones called Adamantine Men aimed the weapon called scorpion at the dragon and fired. The dragon sprang straight up into the air, exactly in time. The scorpion bolt missed.
The old man became angry. ‘It knows what you’re trying to do. Load another and fire again. Sooner or later it won’t be able to get out of the way. We have as long as it takes, and I have all the scorpion bolts you could want. Don’t try to be clever. Aim at its body. If we have to put fifty bolts into it before it dies then that’s what we’ll do.’
You are wrong, old one. You have no time left at all.
‘And why is that, monster?’
Because the one you call Snow is coming, old one. Coming here. Coming now.
‘They happen to be coming, right here, right now?’ The old man shook his head and picked up another bolt. ‘You’ll not fool me as easily as that, monster. I’ll do it myself.’
Coming because I have called them as I called you. Look. They come. It is no longer necessary for me to distract you. The dragon let his thoughts fill with venom and glee. The old man couldn’t help himself. Looked over his shoulder, out into the expanse of open air beyond the cave mouth, past lake and fields and farms into the distant desert sky.
A dozen dragons were coming. They were close. Not close enough yet for the old man to make out what colour they were or whether they had riders. Human eyes. So dim.
No riders, old one. The one you call Snow comes.
The old man didn’t know what to do. Incomprehension fogged his mind. Disbelief. Confusion. Fear. Realisation. Alarm. Comprehension. Dread. Despair. The dragon revelled in them all. The last most of all. We are all dead.
Yes. You are.
The onrushing dragons split. Most climbed. One kept straight. By then even human eyes could have no doubt. All the little ones could see now. White riderless death.
The dragon called Silence soaked up their despair like a lizard basking in the sun.
‘Go!’ the old man shouted to the other men. ‘Go and get your hammers and do what you came to do. All of them! Smash them all!’ The old man took the weapon called scorpion himself and aimed. ‘You’ll not live to see this, abomination.’ Fired. Missed. The dragon laughed. Swords and arrows were wasted weapons, however big they were.
Outside the cave, the mouth of the white dragon called Snow opened. Claws reached for the edge of the cave. The rest of the little ones had fled. The old man tried to make his weapon work once more. Too late.
The cave filled with fire as another dragon voice crashed into the old man’s head.
I am home.
28
Valleyford
In the ruins of Plag’s Bay they sat together with the other dazed survivors, keeping close to the caves in the canyon walls. As if that would help, should the dragons return. High above on the edge of the canyon, fires lit up the evening sky. Kemir had watched the dragons pass over, spreading their wings, dipping their heads, flames bursting from their mouths. Hadn’t been able to do much else sandwiched between the Fury and a thousand-foot cliff. Three of them, that was all, dropping down from the dark cloud of a thousand beating wings. The rest had stayed high. Flying on to Watersgate, to the Hungry Mountain Plains, to the City of Dragons, to wherever their war called them. Three dragons. A town burned. They hadn’t even come back for a second pass; simply flew on up the gorge to Watersgate.
Smoke rose from what had once been houses and jetties. Half the town was burning. Still, it wasn’t all that big a place. Maybe that was the way to look at it. A few hundred people and most of them itinerant sailors. So in the big scheme of things Plag’s Bay hardly mattered, right? Made you wonder why they’d even bothered at all.
Whoever they were.
Boats drifted on the water, crippled and burning. Kataros clung to Kemir’s arm. She’d never seen this before, he supposed, never seen a town burn. That was the pampered sheltered life of an alchemist, right there. Alchemists didn’t get burned. Apart from the once.
No one moved, not unless it was to find a deeper cellar or a darker cave where they could hide. More dragons flew north, stragglers in ones and twos, and then the first horde came back, returning from whatever destruction they’d wrought. At least this time they stayed high. None of them came down to the river. For the rest of the day, dragons criss-crossed the sky in ones and twos, here and there. Kemir thought he saw another swarm far off to the west, but they were high and far away, little more than a distant blur in the sky.
Darkness fell. Reflected fire glittered in the black water of the Fury. They crept, dozens of them, the survivors, to the shores of the river. At the water’s edge, half-ruined boats lay among the wreckage. There had been more but they were gone now, floated off downstream. Kemir and the rest sifted in silence, working through the wrecks, looking for any that might still float. There wasn’t much else to do. Plag’s Bay was gone, dead, wrapped in a still-fierce heat. No one said but they all thought the same. Dragons only flew in the day; night-time was safe, and so they wanted to be gone before the sun rose once more, in case the dragons came back.
Daft, really, since the dragons could be anywhere, but a boat was a boat. A boat meant travelling further towards the sea. Towards Furymouth and far away. Where Kemir wanted to be.
They found a barge. Scorched but good enough to float. They climbed aboard, twenty, forty, fifty of them. Mostly men. Too many really, but they climbed in anyway and let the current take them away. Pushed themselves out into the water with makeshift poles and let the river take them. Kemir watched as they drifted past the husks and skeletons of boats that had fared less well. When the moon rose, he took Kataros down to the half-deck below, where passengers might have slept if any of them still could, and hid away with what little he’d managed to save. One of his knives. The bow that might have been his or might have been his cousin’s. A few pieces of armour. The last of the gold they’d taken from the river pirates. Not much else. The roof was low, too low to stand straight. The darkness was complete, so thick and solid that they crawled, finding their way by feel. Everyone else was up above,
