Dawn of the Drakes

"They're here. You picked a bad time to come."

Kopie's words haunted Affe's thoughts. He had disappeared almost as soon as he spoke, going to find his brother no doubt, but she shivered as each second passed, her heart beating furiously in her chest.

I should leave. I should run as far as I can, south, away from this town. This town will only spell death for those in it. Mucker's Folly. She stopped herself from laughing out loud.

Gabel appeared in the doorway, took two steps into the room, turned, and fixed her with a stare she thought she could see.

"Well?" he said. "Can you help us? Or will you cower?"

She stared at him. Run! The voice that had saved her so many times in the past screamed at her. Run away! This isn't your fight. It's more important to get this information back to the Mardux. But it wasn't. The Mardux already had the information. And with it, he had chosen ... to send Affe Kurzeit. Not to send the army he knew should be going. She took a deep breath.

"Where do you want me?"

"Can you use magic?"

"No." She was surprised he asked.

"No time to teach you," he murmured. Louder, "Follow me."

He strode outside even before she stood up, purposeful yet calm. Affe stepped outside, into the starlit darkness. The sky was deep blue, full of pinpricks of light. The treetops formed the edge of a circle rimming the sky. Beyond that, the buildings swallowed all light. She kept her poise well, she felt, when someone grabbed her arm.

"Be quiet," Gabel said, though she had said nothing.

They crossed the main square of the town. Every move they made seemed to make a loud noise. Affe could feel her heart and hear her breathing, and Gabel's dark cloak swished against his legs. The leaves of the trees rustled, and branches and buildings alike creaked, settling against the earth. But no animals called. No night birds sang. Affe shivered.

Gabel pulled her down near the base of one of the buildings. He pressed something into her hand. She felt the cold metal and the chipped rock. Flint and steel, to start a fire. Something else pressed into her hand. A bottle, with a short wick to light.

"Oil," he said, his beard brushing her cheek as he spoke quietly into her ear. "Four bottles. Light them, and throw them from a safe distance."

Her lips found his ear. "At what?" she asked just as quietly.

"The buildings. Shield your eyes."

"When?"

"I'll tell you." His beard brushed her cheek in farewell, and he was gone. She crouched at the corner of the building, confused about how he would tell her if he wasn't with her.

Then she heard a loud crack. Someone was coming through the trees. She froze, staring into the darkness. Something moved, something the size of Ries but not Ries. She could barely make it out. And, she thought, it cannot yet see me. She tried to hold even more still, taking slow breaths, but fear tinged her calm.

It took a step forward into a patch of starlight. Its head rotated, back and forth, back and forth. The dim light made it little more than a shadow, but she thought the head was oddly shaped, as though it was entirely a nose. It stepped again, and by its motion, she guessed the legs and hips were very different from a Mar's. It seemed to carry no weapon, but its arms, which hung past its knees, ended in claws.

It turned away, and Affe finally moved. Fumbling in the darkness, she found the other three bottles. Juggling them, she dodged around the building the opposite direction of the drake. In the pitch blackness, she ran straight into something large and warm.

She screamed then, dropping the bottles. She didn't know if they broke, because the creature she had run into roared back at her. Deep inside, her mind registered that this drake screamed in fear as well, but that thought was superceded by her rising anger. Of course if one was on that side of the building, one might be on this side.

Rage overtaking fear, she dodged to one side. Silence was no longer necessary, as their screams had caused others to start, and more drakes appeared in the dim pools of light. Then, she heard Gabel's voice, calm and cool. She thought she felt his beard against her cheek.

"Go, Affe. Light the buildings."

She laughed out loud. Of course! Magic! And, of course, she held nothing in her hands. A building on the other side of the village exploded in flames, then a second. She remembered at the last second to shield her eyes, even as she fell to her knees to try to find the flint and steel. Roars of pain and rage surrounded her, plus barked sounds that could have been commands. Her mind reeled. They knew the drakes were organized, why wouldn't they have language?

Has anyone tried to talk to them? Of course not. Everyone knew drakes killed anyone they met. After all, no one who had seen a drake ever had returned. Unless they killed the drake first.

After a few futile seconds, she risked opening her eyes. Half the village was in flames. Two drakes stood, legs like tree trunks, watching her. More ran about purposefully. She crouched carefully, but when they saw her moving, one casually grabbed her and held her fast with both arms. The other wiped her mouth with a rag, and the sweet taste of morutsen stung her tongue.

This act raised even more questions in her mind, but now the two trussed her and tossed her in a corner. She barely had time to see Shilling launch himself at a drake in the center of town before she faced darkness again, the heat from the fires warming her back.

********

Fire consumed all of Mucker's Folly. The six who had stayed behind had coated all of the buildings with flammables and filled most of them with dry tinder. The initial explosion and blaze had stunned and blinded almost half of the drake force. Their attempt to hold on may have lasted longer if Affe had had any success.

Had they intended to hold off a drake force? Or destroy one? They used their only advantage when they destroyed their town.

This was Affe's dream, turning into a nightmare, as she rose back into consciousness.

What was Gabel really doing here?

She was swaying. Her head bobbed gently against her chest. Her mind slowly registered each part of her body, and slowly she realized she was hanging by her hands and feet from a pole suspended across the shoulders of two drakes.

I'm not dead, was her next thought. Then, she noticed the sunlight. Unconsciousness had claimed her for the entire night.

She turned her head woozily from side to side. Her worries about the drakes noticing her awake were unfounded. They kept marching as she muzzily noted Alter being carried like her, between the shoulders of two even more massive drakes. She saw no one else of their group. Alter lolled, his body twisted to one side because he only had one arm to tie to the pole. The drakes seemed to be less comfortable carrying him.

The drakes bounced and jerked her and Alter, making the grunts and hisses that were their language. They walked for most of the morning. At some point, one came by, smaller but with longer arms, and wiped a morutsen cloth across her lips, followed by water. The arms were thick with muscles. The skin was grayish-brown, hairless and dry, almost scaly. The reason the heads looked like they were mostly nose was because they were shaped more like a lizard's head. They had long, fat necks, and their legs jutted out from their hips like an alligator's.

The drakes were lizards. And they don't want me dead, she thought. The morutsen keeps me from using magic, which I don't use anyway, and the water keeps me alive. The one I ran into screamed as well.

Drakes were supposed to kill first. Why were they still alive?

But the heat and her dehydration and the terrors of the night before soon overcame her pain, and she fell back asleep again.

She woke again feeling woozy and hungover, but no bonds held her. She pushed herself up to a half-crouch and vomited noisily against the dirt wall she lay by.

"Affe, try not to do that again." It was Gabel's voice, calm. She looked around for him, eyes watered with tears from her sickness.

"Try not to get sick," he advised from across the floor of the pit they were in. "We have to live with enough waste as it is."

Ries was in the pit with them. And Alter. Knut, Kopie and Shilling were not to be seen. The walls were twenty feet tall and slick mud. A mud ramp spiraled down the inside, gated about halfway up. A drake guard stood at the gate, watching them and grunting to itself.

She eased herself to a sitting position. Ries was still unconscious. Alter lay like a corpse. Only Gabel seemed aware of anything.

"What happened?" she asked finally.

"Things didn't go as planned," Gabel said, sounding angry. "Maybe you were right, and resistance was doomed from the start."

The fox-faced exiled magocrat told her the goal had been to draw the drakes into the center of town, using Shilling as bait, then fire all the buildings to trap and stun the drakes. Then Ries, Knut and Gabel would push the fire inward and burn the drakes to ashes.

"They aren't immune to fire," Gabel insisted. "It's like you and I wearing stiff leather. It will burn, if the fire's hot enough. And our magic could make it hot enough."

Just as he had gotten into position, Affe had screamed. The drakes had arrived sooner than they had thought. The drakes had then come in a rush, dozens by Gabel's recounting, and Gabel had sent the word out for Affe, Alter and Kopie to fire the buildings. Of course, Affe hadn't, because she had dropped the oils and couldn't find them. This left the drakes a way out.

"Shilling took out two before his sword got stuck and he was left with a wooden spear. He fended off a dozen in the center, buying Ries and me time while we tried to get the fire to leap to the unlit buildings. Then he fell, tripped or something, and the drakes tore into him. Kopie leapt at them, swinging madly with his sword, but he is no warrior like his brother was, and he fell very quickly."

Gabel didn't know what happened to Knut, but his guess was that because Gabel and Ries were busy on their side, they couldn't protect him, and the drakes found him as well and killed him. None of that explained why they had left these four alive.

"Knut must've tried to attack them," Gabel said. "They seemed to kill people who attacked them."

"Didn't you and Ries attack them?"

He laughed softly. "One of the buildings fell on Ries. That's why he's so burned. Alter dragged him out. I'm surprised he's still alive. As for me," he hesitated. "I'm afraid to say I ran."

"What?"

He couldn't meet her eyes. "It was hopeless," he said, staring at Alter's limp body. Ries began to stir. "You were right, Affe. It was stupid of us to think we could delay them."

She stared at him. His courage had evaporated in the face of battle. He had been so adamant, so sure of things. The plan, in hindsight, was only minimally flawed — she wondered what they would have done if she hadn't shown up. And it used up their one major resource. She could think of a dozen things she would have done to keep the drakes busy, but she still wouldn't have done them. They probably wouldn't have been nearly as successful.

Successful? Three people were dead, the rest captured. How was this successful?

But her mind knew, even if it wasn't telling her yet. Something about their situation was promising, and she knew she'd figure it out. In the meantime, Alter was dying, Ries was weak and their former leader, Gabel, was useless.

Regretting ever taking the Mardux's charge, she took a deep breath.

"You did delay the drakes," she said, and Gabel's head slowly turned to her. So did Ries'. She cast about, looking for the rust in the stream. "I mean, no matter how big the patrol was, at least nine came back here. So not all of them are heading after the townsfolk. And you killed a few, so that's less to worry about later."

And then her mind snatched on what had been eluding her. "And we're prisoners in their camp," she said softly, "which means they want us alive for something. This gives us a lot of opportunity."

They looked at her, Ries seemed barely to register her presence, but Gabel's face narrowed in hope.

"Maybe you're right," he said. "But what do we do about it?"

"We wait," she said immediately. "Something will turn up."

Copyright 2005-2007 Eric Zawadzki and Matthew Schick. All Rights Reserved.
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