He would be eaten by dragons. He would be nothing but dragon fodder.
He should have just gone with Teneria.
The ponderous jaws began to open, and sudden inspiration struck Dumery.
This creature was surely the one that had built this nest, and that had put at least some of the other dragons in it, giving them a place of safety, a home, a nest. It had brought them food. It cared for them. It might be the mother or father of some of them.
He rolled over and dove for the black hatchling, catching it off-guard. He came up with his left arm clamped around its throat, his right hand holding his knife under its jaw.
“I’ll cut the little bugger’s throat if you come any closer!” he shouted.
The black dragon squirmed, one fore claw gouging Dumery’s leg, but it stopped when it felt the prick of the blade.
The great green dragon’s gleaming golden eyes blinked, thick horny lids sliding down across them and then flicking back up.
“Very well,” the beast said, in a voice like an avalanche, “then I shan’t come any closer.”
Dumery’s mouth fell open.
He had known that dragons could talk, at least in theory-but theory wasn’t reality. All the dragons he had seen so far had been treated as mere beasts, and had behaved as mere beasts, either caged and subdued or wild and dangerous. Even given the far greater size and obvious relative maturity of this monster, he hadn’t expected speech; where could it have learned Ethsharitic, out here in the forests of Aldagmor?
Still, it had clearly spoken, and spoken clearly.
For a moment Dumery stood, the black dragon’s head clutched to his chest, the knife at its throat, while those huge golden eyes watched him, the gigantic dragon’s expression completely unreadable.
His own throat was dry; he swallowed.
“If you would be so kind as to release the hatchling?” the tremendous rumbling voice said.
The hatchling reacted to this by scrabbling viciously, shredding the right leg of Dumery’s breeches and drawing three deep scratches down his thigh. He squeezed its neck more tightly, and it stopped.
“You’ll eat me if I let it go,” he said.
“Nay, I shall not,” the great dragon replied. “I feasted well ere I fetched the kine for these younglings, and I’ve no appetite left in me. I’ll swear not to harm you, if you’ll in turn swear not to harm these infants here gathered.”
Dumery glanced down from those eyes, and saw the other five dragons watching with interest.
“You’ve got to promise to keep the others away from me, too,” he said.
“Surely,” the dragon agreed. It turned its immense head and hissed, a sound like storm-driven waves breaking across the docks of Ethshar; the yearlings and the blue dragon backed away to the far side of the nest, thoroughly cowed.
Then the head swung back to face Dumery.
“Release the youngling, then,” the dragon said.
Still reluctant, Dumery looked down at the black hatchling. It glared up at him with its yellow-gold eyes, and squirmed again, but this time its foreclaws missed his leg.
He dropped his knife and took the little beast’s neck in both hands, then flung it aside, stepping back away from it as he did so.
The dragon tumbled, then scrambled to its feet and started back toward Dumery, hissing, its neck weaving like a snake preparing to strike.
The adult dragon hissed in reply, loud as an ocean; startled, the hatchling stopped in its tracks, turned its head, and stared up at its guardian.
The big dragon bent down and picked the infant up, grasping it gently in its gigantic maw and depositing it, unhurt, with the others.
Then it turned back to Dumery.
“You swore,” Dumery said, nervously.
“Aye, I swore I’d not harm you, and I shan’t. Speak, then, manling, and tell me what has brought you hither. Why have you come to my nesting and keeping?”
The beast spoke Ethsharitic very clearly, but also very oddly. Its words were accented strangely, consonants enunciated far more clearly than Dumery was accustomed to, and some of the words it used struck him as curiously old-fashioned. Dumery tried to make sense of the dragon’s question. Did it mean why was here in the area, or what was he doing in the nest?
He decided it must mean the latter.
“It was an accident,” he said, defensively. “I was just curious about what was in here, so I was looking through the logs, and the wind from your wings knocked me down inside.”
“Ah, and what was a lad from Ethshar, for I note your use of the Old Tongue as spoken in that land, what was a lad from Ethshar doing in the wildernesses here, where few men dare venture, save the warlocks bound to their fate?”
This sentence was too much for the boy, with its warlocks and tongues and ventures.
“What?” he asked.
The dragon made a noise in its throat that reminded Dumery of a heavy bucket dropped into a very deep well. “Are my words hard on your ears, then? I confess, I must strain to apprehend some of your own pronunciations.”
Hopelessly, Dumery repeated, “What?”
The dragon eyed him warily, then asked, “Do you have trouble understanding my words, lad?”
Dumery nodded. “Yes,” he said, nervously.
“And I yours,” the beast said. “I fear our common language has changed since last I had occasion to speak it.”
“And you use big words,” Dumery said.
The beast snorted in amusement, and the gust of hot, fetid air nearly knocked Dumery off his feet. “Aye,” it said. “Surely I do, by the standards of a lad as young as yourself. I forget myself. Well, then, I shall attempt to limit myself to simpler words, and my apologies to you, boy, for my inconsideration.”
Dumery just stared.
“Now then, boy, why is an Ethsharite in this vicinity?”
“I... I was on my way home.”
“Ah? Whence, that your route led through these wilds?”
“What?”
“Where had you been, lad?”
“Oh. In Aldagmor.”
The dragon made the bucket-in-a-well noise again-could it be a chuckle? Dumery hoped it was that, and not something more ominous. The dragon said, “Verily, lad, still are you in Aldagmor, as they call this land, and indeed at its very heart and namesake. Mean you that you were at the keep of he who falsely claims to rule here, him styled Baron of Aldagmor?”
“No,” Dumery said. He hesitated, then asked plaintively, “Um... smaller words, please?”
“Forgive me, child,” the dragon said, with what Dumery took for a sort of smile. “’Tis such a pleasure to speak to a human again, after all these years with none but foolish young dragons to hear me, that I find myself wrapping my tongue around the richest and finest words that strike me, the better to savor the experience. I’ve had none with whom to hold converse for twenty years or more save younglings of my own kind, taught to speak by myself, so that I’ve but heard my own words prattled back to me, and poorly, at that. This drought has been hard and long on my ears, so that I would now drink deeply indeed from the font before me. Is’t truly hardship for you, then, to follow my thoughts?” It looked at Dumery’s bewildered expression. “Ah, I see it is, and again I would beg pardon.” The beast paused, clearly thinking, its head cocked slightly to one side. Then it spoke again.
“I shall try to use smaller words. Were you visiting the Baron of Aldagmor?”
“No,” said Dumery. He debated whether to volunteer more information, and if so, whether to tell the truth.
“You are surely a reluctant font, that needs must be pumped,” the dragon remarked. “Where, then, were you, if not at the castle?”
“I applied for an apprenticeship,” Dumery said. “I was turned down, and I lost my way, and I knew that if I headed south, I’d eventually come to the river or the sea.”