“Welcome, Hipparan,” he said.
“I trust so,” the dragon said. He looked up. “Good. No opening remains in the branches.”
“I didn’t know there was one at all.”
“There was not, until I made it. You wish to know how, of course? I contrived to vary my spell of softening, and made the branches so flexible that I could push through them silently. This left no broken branches to mark my trail or my hide. I do not wish scars so young, when I may yet mate.”
“I’m sure that you are the finest of all copper dragons, and keeping your scales unscarred will indeed win you a mate worthy of you. But what have you-?”
The sound of a dragon clearing his throat interrupts both thought and speech. Pirvan was silent, conscious of vast eyes and an equally vast intelligence behind them both regarding him with something less than favor.
“Forgive me,” Hipparan said at last. “I sense that your mate sickens. Healing is not in me, or I would offer it.”
“Haimya is not my mate,” Pirvan said. This was not the time he would have chosen to discuss human customs, but he remembered that clearing of the dragon’s throat. “She is sworn to the one we seek to ransom. If she is released from her oath and he from his, then each will be free to seek other mates. Only then.”
“Well, then, you should certainly offer for her if she becomes free,” Hipparan said, with a tone of having settled the matter.
An unlikely sound interrupted both thief and dragon-Haimya giggling. Or rather, trying unsuccessfully to stifle giggles.
“Under such circumstances,” she said at last, “I might even give him permission. But we can only know my betrothed’s true mind if we speak to him. Or have you found where he is and brought a message from him?”
“The best place to seek him is definitely in the mage’s tower. He is more guest there than prisoner, but the mage does not seem to trust him entirely. But then, he is the sort who trusts no one. Also, he drinks.” A snow-haired priestess of Mishakal could not have spoken with a tone of such complete distaste.
“As far as I can see, the better for us if he falls headfirst into a wine barrel and drowns,” Haimya said. There was a brittle lightness in her voice that told Pirvan she was not done with her pain, and hinted that fever had come to join it.
“Indeed. The fewer spells he casts, the better. But potent mages hurling spells while drunk …” Hipparan trailed off, as if the image frightened even him.
Pirvan would have gladly put an arm around Haimya, or felt hers around him. Instead, they stood carefully apart as Hipparan continued. “Without the mage-his name comes to me as Fustiar-we have less to fear from the black dragon.” He was silent for a moment, and Pirvan thought he was shaking his head in weariness or sorrow.
Sorrow was in his voice. “The black-I have no name for him-he was old when he entered dragonsleep. Fustiar woke him into a world where he thought he would die alone, the last of all dragons.
“He has served Fustiar against humans and other lesser races. He will continue to serve Fustiar. But he does not want to fight another dragon, even to serve Fustiar.”
Haimya’s voice was very steady when she spoke.
“Are you saying you do not wish to fight him either?”
The silence was so long that, save for Hipparan’s breathing, Pirvan would have thought the dragon had flown away. Finally he heard a sigh.
“That would be my wish, but Fustiar will make the final decision. Fustiar and his minions. If dragon or man comes at me-for what I owe you, I must fight.”
“Can you at least carry us closer to Fustiar’s tower without being seen?” Pirvan asked. He doubted Haimya would admit her sickness by making that request herself.
“As close as I can without invading the other’s lair, yes. That will still leave you some distance to walk, but should keep surprise on your side. Oh, and it will be best done at night, from a larger clearing than any I have seen about here.”
“Thank you,” Pirvan said. The two words in Common did not do justice to what he felt; a whole scroll might have fallen short. He swayed on his feet and gripped the riding harness for support.
“You can examine the harness if you wish, but I assure you it is in good order,” Hipparan said. Meanwhile, if I may offer advice, perhaps I can help you both to better sleep.”
Sleeping folded in a dragon’s wing was a new experienee for Pirvan, but its newness did not keep him awake long. Neither did it bother Haimya, judging from the snores he heard.
* * * * *
Even Eskaia could see that the minotaurs’ second attack was driven by desperation. They simply laid their ship alongside Golden Cup, flung grappling hooks everywhere there was a chance of them holding, then started climbing. The one strategy they used was to station slingers and shatang throwers fore and aft, to pick off archers and sailors trying to cut the lines of the grappling hooks.
Enough defenders went down to weaken the archery and leave some of the hooks in place. Some of them stayed down, skulls shattered so that the brains were pulp or shatangs driven completely through them from chest to spine, beyond healing by twelve of the most potent priests known or imagined on Krynn.
There were still plenty of defenders on their feet with weapons in hand when the minotaurs again swarmed into the waist of Golden Cup. This time the bull-men had come to conquer or die, and about all that kept them from swiftly doing the first was that too many had already done the second.
It was not a battle that anyone could understand even if they had leisure and a safe place to watch it. Eskaia had neither. There was no safe place aboard Golden Cup, and even less leisure for anyone tending the wounded.
Not that she spent all her time under cover. Within a few minutes every able-bodied man was needed for the fight. The wounded and dying, human and minotaur alike, ended in the hands of the boys, the wounded who could sit up and use both hands to aid someone less fortunate, and a staggering, gray-faced Tarothin.
Also Eskaia. She poured out drops of healing potion, applied dressings, changed dressings, held limbs straight so their bones would not heal in unnatural positions under Tarothin’s spells, and wished there were three more of her.
The only respite came when the cry arose for bearers to haul some wounded sailor or prisoner from the bloody deck into shelter. Then Eskaia was among the strongest of those who went out, a pleasant change from being among the weakest.
She only wished her dagger had a weighted pommel like Pirvan’s, or that she was expert with the weighted cord as Haimya was. Both were weapons suited to her stature and strength, and would have allowed her a part in the actual fighting-at least until the sailors in a body forced her back to shelter.
Men, she had long since concluded, wanted the hog’s share of the fun.
Except that this was not fun. It was closer to madness, and she felt that madness plucking with bony fingers at her mind when one of the boys went down with a gaping wound in his thigh. She tore the bottom of her gown to shreds making cloths to pack and bind the wound, but too much blood was already gone.
All she could do was hold him and try to hear what he said above the screams and bellows, the shouts and curses, the thud of stones, the whine of arrows, and the mad-blacksmith din of clashing steel.
The boy stared at her for a long while in silence, then he gripped her hand. His lips writhed, and Eskaia thought she heard the word “Mother.” Then lips were still, eyes empty, and the hand gripping hers relaxed and slipped to the deck.
I sometimes think I have missed so much, yet I am five, perhaps six years older than he, she thought.
She stumbled to the side of the ship, her stomach too empty to spew, but her lungs burning for fresh air. If the price was a spear in the back or a smashed skull …