Now it was Jon-Joras’s surprised incapacity to comprehend. “But the Kar-chee were not dragons—”
“Course they was! What else was they?”
Jon-Joras gestured. “Back down there, near where I slept last night, there’s a frieze—”
“There’s a what?”
“A frieze, a relief… Pictures I Carved into the wall, up above.”
Hue shrugged, as he might shrug off a merely mildly-annoying insect. “Oh, them things. Not Karches, boy. Just big bugs. Karches is another name for dragons, just like ‘drag’ is another name for dragon.” Questions, more questions, tugged at Jon-Joras’s mind; he poured them out. How could the pea-brained dragons have ever conquered the Earth and transformed its land and sea — this was the burden of them. But it was clear that Hue knew nothing and cared nothing of all that. Whatever mass of legendary and ignorance his history consisted of, it was not the past which concerned him. So, in the face of his growing annoyance, the conversation changed from the past to the future.
“What do you intend to do about the dragons, if you get into power,” Jon-Joras had asked. And the answer was immediate.
“When we get into power? Drags? They shall all be killed, every one of them — in the egg, and out.”
“And… the Gentlemen?”
“They shall all be killed, every one of them — in the egg, and out.”
At first Jon-Joras thought that Hue had not fully heard nor understood the second question, was still replying to the first. But then he realized that both of the questions had the same answer.
V
And in the night, the Kar-chee castle was penetrated.
He had slept but ill, his aches and pains contending with what he had heard from Hue, and what he could not forget of the rogue dragon in the wood and the rogue dragon in the pit, at keeping him at least half-awake. He had heard the noises for quite some time before he even paid much attention to them — padding of feet, whispering, scuffling — and then, when he had begun to wonder vaguely what it was about—
He smelled the smoke and guessed the fire before a scream came, signaling chaos. As even a man whose house is rocked by an earthquake may pause to put on his shoes, so, now, Jon-Joras, while the castle exploded into uproar, slowly and painfully drew on his trousers. They were fighting in the corridor by the time he got there, men of the castle against men he did not know, men in fleecy capes.
Jon-Joras did not know them. But they seemed to know him. “There’s the outworlder!” someone shouted. He turned to try and identify the voice, knowing only that the accent was strange.
Someone seized his arm. “Run! Run!” he cried. “Follow our line — follow our torches — when you see the last one, tell him, ‘Pony and pride!’ You got that? Then, run!”
Jon-Joras ran. That is, he proceeded at a painful, agonizing stagger. The torches of the strangers were made of reeds bound in bundles, easy to distinguish from the tarry sticks of the castle-folk; nor were the strangers hard to tell apart, either.
Stumbling and now and then crying out in sudden pain, he made his way through the confusion as best he could. It was only when he stumbled in the darkness that he realized the the fighting was behind him. For a moment he stood still, listening to the echo of it. Ahead, in the distance a single torch flared, and by the uncertain light he saw, or thought he saw, a fleecy cape.
Slowly and fearfully, his hands groping out ahead of him, he made his away along. From the direction of the torch a voice cried, “Who’s that? Speak out, or I’ll arrow you — by my mother, I will!”
In a strangled voice Jon-Joras said, “Pony and pride!” Then he shouted it: “Pony and pride! Pony and pride!”
The man with the torch laughed. His hair and beard was the same light golden brown as his cape. “Come on, then… come on… Ah. The outworlder! How’s the fight going, up there? Well enough, I suppose, if someone had time to give you the word. All right!” He stopped and selected a reed torch from a pile at his feet, lit it, handed it over.
“Now—” He gestured. “Straight along as you go, you come to a hole in the wall. Go through it. Wait! Take another light, slow as you’re humping along, one might burn out on you. On with you!”
Actually, the torch did not burn out on him — quite. The hole led into a tunnel like the one through which he’d entered the castle, though smaller. Again, the faint and alien odor troubled him… he thought it must be the long lingering emanation of the Kar-chee themselves. The floor of the tunnel was thick and soft and dusty. The roof was hung with cobwebs. The small hairs of his flesh began to prickle. He could have cried with relief when he finally saw torchlight ahead, and the air freshened on his face.
Riding, curled up on his side, on the soft floor of the litter was better than riding astride a pony, or even than walking. The litter was not there for him, as the person for whom it was there had made and was making quite clear.
“Time was, me coney-boy, when I could stride a cob with the best of them, yesindeed, ride all day, frolic and dance and make love all night. But those days are gone, yesindeed. Gone before you were hatched, my chick. Or didn’t they hatch on your world? Bear live, do they?”
A gust of laughter took the withered little creature in the corner of the litter. It was day, early day, now. But he could still be no more certain if it were very old man or very old woman there, buried in the mound of furs and fleeces; save that it had been addressed as ma’am.
“You listening, Jonny? Awake, are you? Good. Not that it makes much difference at me age, there I was, babbling to myself for hours, thinking you were listening, all the while you were dreaming away, but I went on babbling, anyway. We’ll stop by and by for a bite to eat and something hot and sweet to drink. Now, then, must mind me manners—
“Ma’am Anna, that’s who I am. Call me Queen of the North People, if you like; call me the Tribe-Hag, if it likes you better. One way you look at it, I pays taxes to their nasty, priggy little Lordships the High-Born Syndics of Peramis, Hathor, Sartis and Drogue, for the pleasure of me folks’ wandering through what the stiff-necks like to think is their territory. Look at it another way, they pays me tribute for not raiding into their borders. What it amounts to, nowadays, want to know: We exchange presents. Eee, the folly of folks!”
She winked, tittered, flung up her ancient paws. Then, with a mutter, drew a horn whistle from somewhere under her coverings, and blew on it. Almost at once a head thrust into the litter, and a hearty voice said, “Well, our ma’am, have you finished seducing this young cock-dragon? And can the rest of us, poor respectable nomads as we are, pause and rest?”
The old woman cackled and gestured. A horn blew, voices cried out, the litter (carried by two fat-bodied, short-legged animals that might have been small horses or large ponies) halted. And over the hot breakfast which presently made its way into the palanquin, to be divided between matriarch and guest, Jon-Joras reflected on what he had heard; for he had not been altogether asleep all during the ride, merely too tired to reply or comment.
The raid had not been planned to free him, although that had been part of it. The raid had not been planned to pick up a dozen or so likely young women, although that had been part of it, too. (The women had shrieked and struck their captors and engaged in some semi-ritual wailing until cuffed into silence, but they seemed to have accepted their change in fortune serenely enough after not very long.)