Dragons were quickly bored. No patience. That was the way of it as far as Skjorl knew. A dragon sniffed you out in some cave somewhere; you curled up deep and waited and waited and eventually it found something better to do than sit outside wanting to eat you. Skjorl couldn’t say for sure because most of the dragons he’d ever seen had got in plenty of eating, thank you very much, but that was the way he’d heard it.
Apparently the dragon from Bloodsalt had heard different.
He’d seen it enough times to recognise it before they even left, while he and Jasaan were still hiding, nursing their aches and pains and their stomach cramps and eating dried and salted bits of Relk and washing him down with brackish river water. He’d seen it lots of times, flying out of the salt desert every day, gliding off, away along the Sapphire, coming back again in the twilight. Hadn’t occurred to Skjorl that the dragon was looking for him though, not then. Time passed. The dragon flew away for longer. Didn’t come back for days sometimes, but it still came back. Never got to see what colour it was beyond a black shape up in the sky, but there was the size of it, the sound of it, the shape and the beat of its wings. Always the same dragon.
When they moved, they moved at night. Jasaan wasn’t going to be winning any prizes for his running or his climbing, that was for sure, but at least he could walk and keep walking for hours. There was still pain there, Skjorl could see that, but still some bits of Jasaan were made of adamantine and he kept his hurt to himself. Skjorl’s hand wasn’t much use for anything any more except gripping a shield or his axe — Dragon-blooded, he’d settled on calling her — but that was all he had ever asked of it anyway. Besides, the first days were easy enough. They’d come this way before, when there had been more of them. Knew places they could shelter in the day, deep out of sight of the sky. No shortage of potions to keep their thoughts hidden. Wasn’t much food to be had out in this part of the world, but there was enough. They’d already found out the hard way which roots and berries they could eat and which they couldn’t, back when they’d had Vish and Jex and Kasern and Marran, and the others who hadn’t even made it as far as Bloodsalt.
As the days and the nights wore on, they started to pass the places where the last few of their company had fallen. Vellas, stung by a scorpion that had taken a shine to the shade inside his boot for the day. Goyan, who’d eaten something he shouldn’t have and become too weak to march. Him they’d put out of his misery. Couldn’t leave him to die on his own. Couldn’t take the risk some dragon might fly past and see him either, that he might not be careful enough, that he might give them away; but he was an Adamantine Man, so he took his fate like he should have when they bled him out into the river. They’d weighted him down with stones like they had with all the others and given him to the water. Dragons wouldn’t see them under the glint and glimmer of the Sapphire. Or so they thought.
The fourth day was when Skjorl saw the vultures. Shouldn’t have been out of cover, but he was bored with listening to Jasaan snore and in desperate need of a piss. Came out all careful, but there wasn’t a sign of anything in the sky until he looked to the south and saw specks. First thought was dragons because that’s what the first thought always was, but he could see right away he was wrong about that. Half a dozen specks, maybe more, and they were circling, which dragons never did. Dragon saw something it wanted, it went right down and helped itself. Either that or it flew on about its business. Maybe swooped down for a closer look, but never circled.
Vultures then.
Took another two nights of walking to find what the vultures had been eyeing from up in the sky. Hard to be sure, on account of there not being too much left, but there couldn’t be much doubt in the end. Erak, who’d had his arm bitten off by a snapper. Snappers had died, been eaten, been buried under rocks to keep them out of sight, but something had found them and something had found Erak too. Hauled his fish-pecked corpse up out of the water and scattered its shreds all about.
‘Dragon.’
Jasaan shrugged. Skjorl didn’t think much about it either. Dragon had dug him up out of the water, or else maybe a snapper — so what? They walked on past the bones, and it was only later, when they were settling in to rest up for the day, that Skjorl had got to wondering; and that was when he remembered the vultures.
‘Dragon dug him out of the water two days ago,’ he said.
Jasaan shook his head, but only until Skjorl told him about what he’d seen. Neither of them had much to say, but thinking on it set Skjorl on edge. Dragon had been here just a couple of days ago, down on the ground, rooting and nosing about. Had to ask yourself why a dragon would be doing that.
They saw it again that evening, flying back towards Bloodsalt. Low over the valley, head sweeping from side to side. Searching.
‘It’s still looking for us,’ said Jasaan. Skjorl frowned. Couldn’t be right, because that wasn’t what dragons did, but if he took a moment to forget about all that and just looked, he’d have to say the same.
It took another week and, seeing the dragon come prowling right past where they were hiding before, there couldn’t be any doubt. Dragon on the ground, sniffing its way up the Sapphire valley, lifting boulders and peering into caves? Skjorl had never heard of anything like that, but maybe that was because no one had found a pair of dragons with so many eggs and then done what he’d done. He gave himself a day to see if he could think of some way how two Adamantine Men might make a trap for it and kill it. Wasn’t surprised when he got nowhere with that, and so on the next night they changed their course and struck away from the valley, up towards the moors, still close enough to Bloodsalt that the slopes were gentle and not yet the boulder-strewn cliffs they’d start to be fifty miles further up the valley.
If you had to look back, Skjorl thought later, that was where their real falling-out had begun. Not that either said a word — too busy with pushing themselves onward — but once they got up on the moors even Skjorl could see it had been a mistake, and there was the look in Jasaan’s eye like he knew that too. Or maybe it had nothing to do with the moors. Maybe that was just when they’d both given up pretending any more. Jasaan, who’d never quite got over what happened in Scarsdale, and Skjorl, who simply couldn’t stop thinking that it should have been Jasaan who’d died in the cisterns under Bloodsalt and Vish who should have been alive and walking back to the Purple Spur.
Three dragons in three days up on the moors and they both knew they should have stuck to taking their chances in the Sapphire valley. Didn’t use to be dragons up on the Oordish Moors. No eyries. Hadn’t ever been that many snappers either, so Skjorl had reckoned on it being a safe enough place. Now he knew better. No food in the desert, but plenty of it up around Yinazhin’s Way. Plenty of dragons too now, all busy eating it.
‘Every dragon that eyried in Bloodsalt must have come up here,’ said Jasaan. ‘Back in Hyram’s time that used to be more than two hundred.’ They were hiding in a hollow, surrounded by rocks and long grass. They weren’t the only things hiding there. Jasaan had already been spat at by a snake.
‘Except the one in the Sapphire valley hunting for us.’
‘The one.’
‘ Hunting for us.’
‘We should go back.’ And Skjorl knew he was right and they should, but there was some little demon in him that couldn’t quite ever let Jasaan be right and him be wrong. Maybe because if it happened once then maybe Jasaan was right about some other things too.
‘You do that then.’
‘We’re stronger together.’
‘Your foot’s good enough. We can both stand alone if we have to.’
Made sense to go back into the valley. There was water. Walk at night, hide in the day and they’d be fine, dragon or no dragon. They’d be back in Samir’s Crossing in a month. Trouble was, Skjorl was sick of it. Sick of everything. Sick of running and hiding. Sick of never seeing the sun, of sleeping every day in a cave, sick of dragons, sick of being too hot or too cold or too wet, and sick of not being able to do the slightest thing about any of it. But most of all he was sick of Jasaan. Spineless, moaning Jasaan. And that, at last, was something he could change.
‘Adamantine Men fight together. We stand together. That’s what we do.’
Skjorl nodded. ‘Right up until we’re a little bit hurt and instead of standing together we cry like babies and plead for help and let our comrades get killed when we should have been fighting, eh?’
‘What?’
‘You.’
‘What are you talking about.’
‘Vish. Vish died because of you. Because you were too scared to do what you should have done.’ He saw Jasaan’s eyes burn then, but there was no going back. ‘I should have left you in the cistern. I should have left you
