Novice Dragoneer

16

Charge Ottavia,

I write you in the hope that what little news I have will be relayed to the rest of the troupe. I also write to exercise myself—I am so used to speaking the Galantine tongue I wonder if I need to use my native language so as not to forget it entirely. Fespanarax has taught me enough Drakine now so I can follow simple commands in his feeding, grooming, and care, so I hardly use it with him, either.

First, I must relay some news for you to pass to Hael Dun Huss and his wingmen who were friends with our Galia (when she was ours) and whoever else might ask of us. I received one letter from the Baroness Galia Dandas (as she is now and I won’t trouble you with the other titles) with news that she is happy and in good health. She had hopes of starting a family quickly but has not yet been blessed. Her life has other interests, but unfortunately she couldn’t be explicit as they are military in nature, I understand, having to do with her husband’s command.

As for me, I am glad the winter has passed. The trips on Fespanarax will resume soon, as the plateau with the silver mine I mentioned is hospitable again with winter over and the miners shall return. As for this pleasant valley, the only complaint is tedium. One grows tired of the same walks, the same society, the same conversations. The view has altered slightly, however. The volcano to the north opened up a new fissure on our side of the mountain range, and on clear nights you can sometimes see the fire, which looks to me like a ship burning signal-candles, but bigger.

I am entertained in the late afternoon as the dinner is being set out whenever I wish to be by the many children of my host’s family, but perhaps you have to actually be related to them to truly delight in their exhibitions. I long to dance again with the troupe. It’s too bad the costumes and style are still a little too foreign to the Galantines than to audiences in places like Zland, as some of the social dancers are skilled and I have never heard better musicians. It would be wonderful to have a few here to break the monotony and let me truly dance.

Long live the Republic! The censors may ink that out, but they can’t remove it from my heart.

I leave you now, having filled up the piece of paper my host considers sufficient,

Ileth of the Serpentine

The glow of the visit from “her” (as she liked to think of them) Dragoneers warmed her until the balmy spring sun returned, earlier than she’d ever experienced. She welcomed it. In the north, sixteen was an important year in a girl’s life. Some took jobs and started earning for their families, some courted with a serious eye toward marriage, a few took religious orders, but most everyone thought it the year to do the first trial swim in the deeper waters of adulthood.

She did leave one detail from Galia’s letter out of her own. Galia had asked her about drinking dragon blood and fertility, not for her, but for her husband. Galia was contemplating a visit to Chapalaine and Fespanarax for that express purpose. Ileth, speaking in general terms in a return letter, professed ignorance of the exact effects on men (true!) and warned her against its use save in infrequent circumstances (also true, unless Fespanarax was lying).

She suspected the Baron had either received a similar letter from Galia or been told by his wife. Ileth believed Galia corresponded regularly with the Baroness because she sometimes relayed some small bit of news like the fact that Galia had found friends among some of the wives around camp, saying they were quite agreeable but not the least bit stimulating. The Baron relayed in a conversation, seemingly out of nowhere, an anecdote of a former game warden on his lands who had been caught trying to bleed Fespanarax, and had escaped a conviction of witchcraft only by being publicly lashed before volunteering for service in the Fencibles. Ileth, who still knew little about the Galantines on the battlefield, did understand thanks to the unfortunate scene with the soup on that fast day with Dandas that the Fencibles had the most desperate and dangerous work of all the Galantine companies, as they were charged with taking down dragons.

“Could just as well be called a death sentence. Chances are you get burned either way,” the Baron had sighed, scratching his dog’s ears.

The first visit to the plateau to deliver kegs of beer went much as the others. The Tentkeeper spoke of a supply of wood he now had enough money to have conveyed to the plateau, so he could have the beginnings of an actual tavern. He had begun to lay out big stones for the foundation. He was hopeful that if he could get it built, Ileth would perform again as a ceremonial opening to get the place open with an appropriate spectacle, even some real musicians instead of men shaking pebbles in pans and clacking spoons.

She and Fespanarax were descending to Chapalaine after the first run when she noticed much of the Baron’s family outdoors, looking at her. No, not at her; she looked behind her and saw great clouds of dark smoke boiling up from the mountain, dark and different from the usual steam. Arcs of lava splashed up from the Cracked Cauldron like a heavy surf hitting a boat.

She decided it would be best to land nearer the Baron’s family and asked Fespanarax if he would set down by the grounds there.

Once off Fespanarax, she felt the ground tremble. It was unsettling.

“The Cauldron’s erupting. We’re quite safe,” the Baron said. “Still, it’s lucky for us the wind is from the southwest today. If it were a winter wind, some of the ash might even reach Chapalaine. Too bad about those miners. I suppose we won’t be selling beer to them anymore.”

“What?”

“Oh, they’re doomed,” the Baron said. “They’re right downwind.”

She begged the Baron for some good rope. She had to produce tears, but once he finally agreed, his livestock people were summoned and instructed. She hurried back to Fespanarax. “We have to help the miners.”

“We?” Fespanarax said. “I don’t know that I have to do anything but obey the terms of my confinement.”

“They’re trapped up there. The path faces the volcano, if it even exists.” The Baron’s men were bringing lines, twine, old bridle leather, everything they could find. Ileth started sorting through it.

“Hundreds of people? You must be mad!”

“Children, then. As many as we can,” Ileth said.

“A pointless risk of my wings. Volcanoes are nothing to mess about with when they erupt.”

“I’m quite rich, you know.” She was a terrible liar. Well, no, actually she was good at lying. That is what was terrible.

“They don’t make rich girls dancers.”

“My family gave me this when I left for the Serpentine,” she said, holding up her whistle. “Would a poor family have a whistle like this made?”

Fespanarax sniffed it and his mouth started to run with thick saliva. “I suppose not. Consider it a down payment.”

“What?”

“Let me eat it and I will fly for you.”

“It’s, it’s not even a mouthful for you. Wh-What good could it possibly do you?”

“It could show me you’re in earnest about paying your debts.”

There was nothing to do. She gave it to him. As she’d predicted, it was practically nothing to swallow.

“Ample silver. If I don’t get it, I’ll take it out of your hide, Ileth.”

“Bargain,” she said.

“Tie some sacking about my snout. You’ll want scarves.”

They took to the air.

As they glided into the plateau, she could feel the heat, even at a distance, on the wind off the volcano. “Be funny if they’re all dead by the time we get there,” Fespanarax said through the sack. “Let me know if it starts to get too hot for you. I can take more than you.”

Ileth didn’t reply. She was trying to see and keep ash out of her eyes at the same time.

The earthquakes were stronger close to the volcano. A smell like a hot stove hung in the air, even at Fespanarax’s altitude. Rock was falling off the plateau, either flaking off or breaking in sheets to crash into the more ancient rock pile below. Escape by the path was impossible.

The plateau was a waking nightmare or a preview of some hellish afterlife. Ash was everywhere, so deep you had to wade through it. The miners tied anything they could over their faces to filter out some of the ash—still, everyone was coughing. Some were sheltering in their little pits, but the sides kept collapsing and they had to climb out again. The plateau was hot enough to be unpleasant—the radiant heat of the lava was being carried by the winds westward over the plateau.

She couldn’t even begin this task. Fespanarax had to sweep his tail about to keep them away.

“Just the children,” Ileth shouted. “Children only!”

Fespanarax only let people holding children near him. The others he beat back with his wings and tail. Ileth couldn’t let herself be overcome by the horror; she had to be careful with the knots, far more careful than when the Captain was watching her work. All she risked there was a whipping.

Frantic parents thrust their screaming children into her arms. The tears on the frightened children and babies made clean streaks running down their faces.

It was too much to take. She fixed them at every point she could, to the saddle, to the stirrups; she tied them on her own body.

“More. I can take more,” Fespanarax kept saying. Something seemed to have come alive in him. For the first time Ileth saw a flash of Fespanarax the Reckless.

She had fifteen. But there were more. She should have thought to fix the beer barrels on; she could have crammed a dozen more in them.

“We’ll be back,” she shouted to the desperate, tear-streaked faces. She met the eyes of the Tentkeeper. “Fast, girl, just go!” he shouted.

Fespanarax came off the plateau in something more like a controlled glide than a flight.

“High ground, we must set them on high ground well away, just in case there are slides off the mountain, or lava rivers,” Fespanarax said. The heat was not so much of a problem with the bulk of the plateau between them and the volcano. Then they were in clean air; some fluke of wind current kept the ash back. Flapping madly, Fespanarax found a pine-covered hill out of the ash-fall, and they landed and put down the children. Ileth told the oldest boy to keep the younger ones together.

“Dare we go again?” she asked Fespanarax.

His eyes were alight with excitement.

“If you are game. We’ve begun this, let’s see it through.” Ileth saw some hint of the great dragon within that Charge Deklamp had praised.

“Then let’s go.”

“It will be even hotter up there. I might survive—scale has its purposes. Will you?”

“We’ll . . . find out.”

They took off. The heat was getting worse. It bordered on unbearable.

Maybe she’d die in the Galantine lands, along with Annis and Heem Zwollen and who knew how many others. But better this than sitting around Chapalaine, eternally at the service and indulgence of the Baron or whichever of his brothers or sons took over when he died. She wondered what poor soul they’d send out to doom themselves on Fespanarax the Unlucky.

They landed, right at the far edge where the crowd had mostly huddled to escape the heat. There were already ash-covered bodies on the plateau. Ileth saw an upthrust hand sticking out of a collapsed mine-hole.

This time they got twenty-six. The miners sensed their doom and had organized themselves while they were away. The children had notes and family icons tied to them. She heard rites and prayers being called. Ileth had the stronger boys, scarves tied over their faces, hang on to each other like saddlebags across the dragon’s back. She tied and fixed and fiddled while Fespanarax did his best to shelter them with his wings. She could hear shrieks of pain.

“Hurry, Ileth,” Fespanarax urged from somewhere in the hot blowing ash.

The Tentkeeper managed to make it through the press. His skin was peeling. He thrust a scrawled, sealed letter into Ileth’s hand. “My wife. Village of Isswith.”

“I shall,” Ileth said, thrusting it into her shirt.

He helped her tie on the last of the children.

“Don’t forget, Isswith. Now go!”

Fespanarax jumped. He wasn’t the only one, but he was the only one with wings. Ileth wept and screamed from the pain and frustration.

They lost one of the boys gripping hands. Ileth had a brief, terrible glimpse of the fear in his eyes as he slipped and disappeared down into the fog of ash. She reached back and held on to the other one until Fespanarax glided to the other waiting children. He skidded in hard.

It was a mercy that the ash hid the denouement. The end of those left on the plateau came swiftly.

There was a great deal to do on the little pine-covered hill. Shelter, water, making a count of the children and putting the older ones with little groups of younger ones, pairing those who seemed most capable with babies.

The wind held and kept the ash off them, and the plume of the clouds filled the skies of Baron Blue Heron’s lands.

She spent an exhausting night getting the children to a cattle ranch Fespanarax spotted. Ileth would have preferred to wait until daylight, but she wanted to put more distance between the children and the volcano. Who knew what further cataclysm might come? Fespanarax had them keep to a ridge the whole way. The dragon told her tales of cloudy rivers of superheated ash rolling off volcanoes, and Ileth wanted nothing to do with anything like he described. On the way they met an outrider for one of the herds, and Ileth begged him to get a message to the Baron. They got their thirsty, hungry, and ash-covered children to the ranch house, just a long shepherd’s cabin, but it fit everyone. Ileth promised the cattlemen and their wives the Baron’s money if they would feed the children for a few days until arrangements could be made.

She helped wash and feed the children before flying off for aid from Chapalaine. Fespanarax, with the urgency of the rescue over, complained of burned wings and said that they’d better produce a great deal of salve.

One of the Baron’s outdoor staff, a clever man of middle age who was brave enough to work with the dragon and had turned into a decent groom by watching Ileth, fairly danced with anxiety, his sparse hair flying wilder and wilder with each caper.

“The Baron must see you immediately!” the groom said. “Are you both quite all right?”

“Never better,” Ileth said, though she didn’t feel it. She slid down the saddle and touched the ground. Her skin pained her. She’d been a little scorched.

“Lords and lands,” the Baron said, once she made it to his presence. “What happened to you, Ileth?”

“Bad up there.”

“I have here a report,” he said, looking at some handwritten notes in his own hand, “that you saved thirty-eight children.”

“Eleven b-b-babies, a girl perhaps two—”

“You don’t need to list them.”

“It should have been thirty-nine,” Ileth said. “I lost one boy . . . It was horrible.”

“Well, Ileth, I’m sure your intentions were good but I’m not sure you understand what you’ve done. They’re on my side of the mountains, you see, so now they’re my problem. I could perhaps find homes for a third that number, given the number we lost in the plague before you joined us. Babies can often be fobbed off on someone. Take a couple here at Chapalaine. But thirty-eight! From the lowest sort of sweepings to the north. Miners never have relatives that can be found; they move around too much. I shall have to establish an orphanage! I shall have to buy land and build, or worse, take an established building where I can credibly house over twenty children. Beg the church, with whom I’m not on the best terms currently, as I keep a dragon, a girl who dances about mostly naked, and what used to be a thriving brewery. I am dismasted in a storm, girl, and a whirlpool yawns beneath.”

“Send one or two to Dandas and Galia. I believe they want to start a family.”

The Baron brightened. “Now that is helpful. Good thinking. The Baroness was saying something along those lines. You Vale girls are familiar with the duties of a wife to a husband, I hope? Ahh, if only you’d flown the lot farther south to get them there, then they’d be Baron Alcester’s problem. I don’t suppose—”

He read Ileth’s face.

“No, no, it’s too much to ask. Get cleaned up and get some sleep, girl.”

The following weeks were madly busy. The Baron decided that since the new orphans were her doing, she should run about finding rooms and shelter for them in the village. Fespanarax, his wings greased with a cow-doctor’s salve used to soothe udders, asked her several times if she’d written her family about his reward. The Baron went so far as to allow her to roam about his lands unescorted on one of the horses his daughters shared, and she became something like a Galantine significant as she trotted about on it, enjoying the fact that her ride didn’t argue with her about the quality of his grain and water. Both farmers and townspeople greeted her by name with none of the elaborate obeisances they gave the Baron, often pressing a bit of preserved berry spread in a crock or honey cakes on her “for those poor children the dragon saved.” All the while, the Tentkeeper’s letter sat, still sealed, on her little meal table.

Ileth worked harder than ever, even if it was just scrubbing Fespanarax’s scale with a bristle brush. Only profound exhaustion let her escape dreams of the eyes of that boy as he fell from the dragon.

It took no little doing and much more flying, but she’d just returned from tracking down the village of Isswith and delivering the Tentkeeper’s letter (with the usual travel permissions and elegant letters of introduction) when the Baron summoned her again to his library. This time he had Azal standing gravely behind him and Taf seated primly at his secretary-desk. He held a gilded envelope to the window light so Ileth could see it.

“We have here a letter from Court under the King’s seal, and strangely, I am ordered not to open it until you are in my presence, Ileth of the Vales. Azal, please witness that Ileth is present and the letter is still sealed. I am posted to the Court Exalted, so I may unseal as instructed. Taf, note the date and approximate time, please, and list those present.”

Taf wrote a note in a little book the Baron kept on his desk.

He passed a silver knife under the waxed seal and carefully removed it, laying the seal on a small tray on his spotless writing desk. He extracted a sheet of thick cotton paper with a golden foil border decorating it and read it quickly. Ileth could only see that it bore several ribbons. The Baron’s eyes bulged. The thick paper made a slight noise in his hands as it began to shake. His lip even trembled a little as he finished it.

A man reading his own death warrant could not look more shocked. His mouth worked, but no words came. It wasn’t some attack; he had the sense to hand it to Taf, who scanned it and began to read:

“Almendaeldess the Third, King of the Galantine Lands, all her Baronies, Possessions, and Colonies on Foreign Coasts; Defender, Champion, and Final Resort and Supreme Enforcer of her Laws and Traditions, does hereby sign and seal this royal release of the girl born to the Freesand of our western neighbor, one Ileth aged sixteen or thereabout, surname and titles unknown or absent, and a dragon named Fespanarax of the same nation currently held by our most favored friend and supporter Hryasmess at Chapalaine in the Green River Country. Our Gracious Sovereign, in considered and public recognition of their bravery in the saving of life, even at the hazard of their own, in the late disaster known as the Eruption of Laterus (‘the Cracked Cauldron’) on this Month of Memory in the Two Thousand Nine Hundred Sixty-Eighth Year of our Hypatian Founding Sacred announces the following: Be it known that she and her dragon are made free in our lands, all paroles and restrictions lifted at once and forevermore, and may pass and return at will. Ileth, as named above, is elevated to the honorary title of Lady of the Order of Hospitals and Refuges, with Distinction by Acts, and proclaimed and posted to the Court Exalted in significance of her bravery. As of the moment of this order being read in her presence, she shall receive any and all respects and courtesies of that title as occasion merits until her death, resignation of honors, or revocation on the decision of the King or his heir.

“It is our hope that this act of clemency and elevation will lead to an increase in friendship and commerce with our western neighbor and banish forever the pestilence of war between the Galantine Baronies and the lands generally called the Vale Republic.

“Signed and sealed with Acclaim of the Court,

Almendaeldess the Third,

King Galantine

(with titles accepted as listed in usual form).”

“Ileth! I am happy for you!” Taf said. “I’m sorry, Lady, I am happy for you.” She made a deep obeisance.

“You may say ‘Lady Ileth’; technically she’s of our household I suppose,” Young Azal said. “But then again she’s foreign and should perhaps be addressed as a visiting dignitary. Lady Freesand? Oh, we can always look it up, I suppose.”

“Ileth, do you have any idea of the significance of this? Any idea at all?” the Baron asked.

“It means Fespanarax and I may leave?”

He showed no sign of having heard her.

“‘Most favored.’ Not only does he name me and list Chapalaine. No! And not ‘faithful friend and supporter,’ as he’d ordinarily write if he were pleased. I would have danced on my roof if he’d just written ‘favored.’ But he wrote ‘most favored’! Most! Oh, Ileth, if I’d know when you and Galia arrived all that would issue of our meeting, I should have purchased a white cloth runner from your dragon to my door and lined it with every villager I could drag into place to cheer you to my threshold with flower petals. ‘Most favored’! The marriage of Galia must have exceeded expectations. Lucky Dandas! Lucky me! I must tell the Baroness. Oh, where is the Baroness? Find your mother, children! This instant!”

His joy was made a little comical by the rat clinging desperately to his wig as he capered and kicked up his heels, but Ileth felt happy for him.

“I am happy for you, sir,” she managed.

Strange, the Baron’s mention of Galia and not her apparently talked-about-at-Court rescue, but she could think about that at her leisure. Another matter eclipsed everything, including her peeling skin. She was free to return to the Serpentine just as soon as she chose. Home.