But now, their main challenge was distance. Numbers would not make their journey any faster -and the foraging would be better for a small party. And Comedo's men, easy enough to intimidate and bring to heel on the early stages of the journey, were a different proposition now that they had been hardened by the nightmare underground river journey.
Hearst woke in the night, and heard small mutter-ings, a faint clinking of steel against rock, sounds of searching and finding, a grunt, a hiss… Blackwood coughed heavily in his sleep. Silence. And then again the noise started, the muttering, the scrape of boots on stone, the sound of steel.
In the night, men were gathering up their possessions and slipping away. Now, if ever, was the time for Hearst to challenge Alish's judgment. But he did not. For, quite apart from anything else, with so few travelling companions left, Hearst would have a better chance to renew that friendship which had once flourished so: and which had then failed, suddenly, after the siege of Larbreth.
Come morning, Garash was dismayed to find that the soldiers had deserted: he went so far as to order Alish to bring them back, only to find his orders were dismissed with scornful laughter.
Gorn and Blackwood did not care one way or the other; Alish declared that a small group could travel more safely than a large one, at least in this dragon country, and they trusted his judgment.
Their march north took them past the heights of the volcano known as Barg, and from then on the volcanic nature of the terrain grew more pronounced.
They passed hot springs, with water which was still drinkable, although heavily contaminated with chemicals from the bowels of the earth. They encountered more of the smoking fumaroles which they had seen at the Araconch Waters, and also things which were new to them: pools of boiling mud, land where the ground shook and rumbled incessantly, places where smoke and sulphur made the air almost too foul to breathe, and huge pits plunging down to depths where the earth seethed and muttered.
Alish estimated their progress north at roughly five leagues a day; if they had tried to make better time, they would have risked losing someone. In places, ground which looked solid proved to be just a thin crust roofing a pool of gently-boiling liquid death; they had to advance carefully, scouting out the way and probing dubious spots to see if they were solid.
On the morning of the second day after they passed Barg, they found a scratching rock. A heap of scales lay beneath it, some dull and cracked, others new and shiny. The scales crunched underfoot; one or two of the older ones cracked, but none shattered into fragments.
'Can these scales be worked?' said Hearst.
'No,' said Garash. 'Cut them or drill them, and they fall apart.'
'It might be possible to glue them onto a foundation of leather,' said Hearst.
And he began to talk of craftsmen he had seen in Chi'ash-lan, in the Cold West, and mentioned the various glues they had used.
Later in the day, they found dragon dung. It was hard – almost like rock – and there was not much of it. Why hard? Water conservation, explained Garash. No liquid wasted. i didn't see any in the dragon's lair at Maf,' said Hearst.
'Dragons don't foul their own lairs,' said Garash.
T roamed all over Estar in the years the dragon Zenphos lived there,' said Blackwood, 'and I've never seen anything like this.' it's water-soluble,' said Garash. 'The droppings would always dissolve in the first rain.'
And that prompted Hearst to make a joke about the impressive size and smell of mammoth droppings he had seen in the Cold West.
It seemed to Alish that Hearst was taking every opportunity to launch into reminiscences about the Cold West; worst still, he tried to encourage Alish to tell his own stories about campaigning in that land of ice and snow. That evening, Hearst actually talked about Larbreth itself, and the treasure gained in the sack of that city; he went so far as to sing a lewd song the Rovac had made about the siege of that seaport stronghold, a song which began:
Their legs were closed as tight as their gates But we broke the both of them open.
For Alish, the very mention of Larbreth again awakened appalling memories: Hearst striding down a hallway, smiling, fingers knotted in the hair of a woman's head, which he had held casually, as if it had been a hunting trophy.
Furthermore, Alish was angered at how lighthearted Hearst had become, full of levity and enthusiasm. For Alish, the quest for the death-stone was assuming the nature of a sacred pilgrimage, undertaken as a rite of atonement to make amends for his thoughtless indulgence in battle-lust and war-glory in the Cold West; he welcomed this barren land of shattered rock, foul air and poisoned water, for it allowed him to perfect his mood of suffering and repentance; Hearst's high spirits, at moments infecting the others with an access of positively rollicking good humour, seemed a gross affront to the spiritual aspirations which Alish had made the centre of his being.
Alish did not know how much more of Hearst's joking and boasting he could take.
The next day they passed right beside a dragon's lair. They could not avoid it: in this land of cliffs, pits and quaking earth, they were lucky to find a way forward at all. They crossed the danger zone one by one, ducking from rock to rock, quick as rabbits. Even a man laden with a pack could move fast when fear inspired him. They were all hot, flushed and panting by the time they reached the comparative shelter of a clutch of tall rocks out of sight of the dragon's lair. They shrugged off their packs and sat on them to rest.
'By the tit that mothered me,' said Gorn, 'I've never moved so fast before. Not in all my days.'
'Me neither,' said Hearst.
'Yes,' said Garash. 'It's one thing to enter the lair of a dead dragon, quite another to walk past the lair of a live one, isn't it?'
'Watch your tongue, pox doctor,' said Hearst.
'But he has a point, doesn't he?' said Alish.
Hearst turned to Alish.
'What do you mean by that?' it's true, isn't it?' said Alish.
'What do you mean?'
'The dragon on Maf was dead, wasn't it? When you entered its lair, it was dead, isn't that so?'
And Alish was on his feet, his eyes alive and blazing.
'Do you think it's a secret, Morgan? How many people do you think you've fooled? Who could listen to your drunken boasting and think you told the truth? We've shared the same shadow down many roads: do you think I didn't know you for a liar the first time I heard your story from your lips? Do you think I don't remember the night before you made the climb? You stank of fear.
'Why so silent, dragon-killer? I know what you are. A coward and a liar. A coward not once – but twice. Remember Ep Pass? Heenmor set the trees alight. Did I run? No: I stepped forward to meet him. Where were you, Morgan? Where was your sword? What happened to our plan: one to manage the snake, the other to kill the wizard? You were off and running, Morgan. You cost us the death-stone. We could have had it, then and there. We could have had Heenmor's head. You cost us the death-stone, and you know what happened afterwards.
'Speak up, Morgan. Come on. What's the matter? It's true, isn't it? Do you care to dispute it? You've got a sword at your side. You know how to use it.'
Hearst stood there, shaking, speechless in the face of this tirade.
'Come on, Morgan. Where's your blade? Will you match me, steel for steel?'
Morgan Hearst abruptly turned on his heel and walked back the way they had come.
'Hearst!' cried Blackwood. 'Hearst, come back!'
'Let him go,' said Gorn, not caring whether Alish or Hearst was in the right, but knowing that their dispute had to be settled now.