Page 88 of Dragon Outcast (Age of Fire 3)

“Half-a-drake strikes again,” Nivom muttered to the others.

“Remember, he didn’t hatch here,” NeStirrath said. “The story goes that the Lavadome was found long ago by a wizard named Anklamere. He was a grasping, conniving sort of fellow, like most hominids, and had it in mind to control everyone and everything: dragon, hominid, beast, even the worms in the earth, I expect. NooMoahk, Black Glory of Legend and Eternal Guardian of the Sun-Shard, finally got rid of him, but not before he enthralled some dragons and set them up here. They’re a spiritless sort of cringers, and they fiddle around with scrolls and books and whatnot. Always blending melting metals or heating stones or poking around in the bodies of dragons who should be decomposing honorably under a lava-stone cairn. The dragons of the lines of Wyrr and Skotl put them in their holes when we moved in.”

The Copper knew little more about the lines of Wyrr or Skotl, but after asking about the Anklenes he decided not to press his ignorance. Besides, Krthonius was getting twitchy. He had the honor of leading this patrol and wanted to set a taxing pace.

They returned to the towering black overhang of the Imperial Rock sore of claw and thirsty. The others hung back, arguing and snapping, until the Copper drank, then jostled one another and splashed and slurped up their thirst. The Copper’s good front limb felt as though it were going to fall off, and he dragged his tail on the way back to his shelf.

NeStirrath entered and took a nostrilful of air.

“Whew. Smells of bats in here. What, are you keeping them as pets, Rugaard?”

“Habit from my travels,” the Copper said. “I…I used them to mask my odor. I got to kind of like having them around.”

NeStirrath wrinkled his nostrils. “They call you ‘Batty’ when your crest is turned, you know.”

“I’ve heard them,” the Copper said. He knew NeStirrath thought him soft. “They’re a good ward against starvation too. Food’s hard to find when you’re traveling underground.”

“I’d have to be starving to eat a bat. But I wanted to have a talk with you, lad. You might be in charge of a whole sissa of young drakes someday. You need to scrap it up a bit. More of the rough-and-tumble, or they’ll never accept you or respect you.”

The Copper felt his stomach sink. “I don’t like fighting. They’re all older and bigger than me. I always seem to come out of one worse off. Like my toe.”

The missing digit itched as though solid with scale mites, a sensation made all the more disagreeable by the fact that it wasn’t there anymore and he couldn’t scratch it.

“You’ve got to be willing to be the first to jump into a fight if you’re to win respect from this lot. Even if you lose a tooth or two, stick up for yourself, lad. It’s not the size of the drake that wins the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the drake. Let your father know he hatched a dragon.”

Mention of Father just made him miserable.

“Don’t look glum,” NeStirrath growled. “Doesn’t matter where you came from, or what you know or don’t know. You’re in the Imperial line now. Cor, someday you could be the Tyr himself. Keep your thoughts behind your eyes; don’t wear them on your face—and above all, let them know a set of dragon hearts beat behind your scale.”

“Yes, your honor,” the Copper said.

NeStirrath loved to pit his drakes against one another in contests and challenges and games, when they weren’t having the weak points of ax-dwarves or fighting-shield demen pounded into their heads, that is.

He ran dragon dashes (the Copper came in last), jumping contests (the Copper fell short of the mark Krthonius set, even the time Krthonius stumbled before the vault mark), and tried to whack a barrel full of sand off a dragon’s nose with his tail (the barrel easily avoided the Copper’s stiff tail).

They looked at one another in triumph. He knew what was going through his fellow drakes’ minds: Another rodentlike performance from Batty, lowest of the Imperial line. They probably sent him to the Drakwatch so they wouldn’t have to look at his odd eye and listen to him limp about the upper chambers.

At each failure he shook off the dirt and dust and tried to keep his face from showing his disappointment. Krthonius found all the athletic events so easy, but he held his tongue and didn’t bark out his triumph. Unlike Aubalagrave, who sometimes could outjump his black-scaled comrade and let the whole Lavadome know it when he did. Nivom also rarely won anything, and it put him in a foul mood.

It was after a particularly gruesome humiliation in which the drakes had to climb up a sheer wall with the drake behind gripping at the tail, a deadweight to be hauled (the Copper’s twotoed saa gave way at the last and he and Nivom fell three full lengths to a mud pit) that Nivom pushed past the Copper on the way to the bathing pool.

Harf and a couple other thralls hurried to get hot water and pumice to scrub the dragonscales.

“Filthiest last, or you’ll dirty the water for the rest of us,” Nivom said.

The Copper, still smarting in his tail from Nivom’s hatchling-sharp teeth, let out a squawk that everyone later said sounded more like a startled chicken than a drake’s battle cry. He threw himself on Nivom and thumped him in the snout with the joint of his crippled arm.

Snarling and growling, the Copper thumped him again every time Nivom tried to shrug him off.

“Batty’s tearing Nivom a new tailvent,” Krthonius cried out to Aubalagrave.

“Rugaard!” the Copper snarled, griff rattling all on their own as though they wanted in on the contest. He left Nivom and dashed at Krthonius, head low and down so Krthonius couldn’t get under his guard and flip him.

Some of the hominids shouted in excitement.

Krthonius turned sideways, as he always did in a brawl, so he could strike with head or tail, off-side up against a cave wall with a line of bronzed skulls just where a mature dragon’s wings usually brushed the walls. The Copper split the distance and jumped up between tooth and tail-tip, pushed off the wall, and fell, rather awkwardly, on Krthonius’s back. He wrapped his neck around Krthonius’s and began to pull scales with his teeth.

“Yeow! Yeoow!” Krthonius shouted, bashing the Copper with his tail.

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