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“What are you doing with her?”
“I found her hiding under a mule’s hind legs when the caravan was taken. I’m not much more than a mule-tender to the waste elves, so I was able to get her into one of the barrels. She’s old enough to know to keep quiet, anyway.”
“Come with me, then. You can mind the girl, and I’ll keep the elves off,” Auron said.
Naf chuckled. “The waste elves might not believe in the Curse of the Revengerog if they see our tracks leaving this place together. I’ve been with them only a few months, but know they hold to grudges like a dwarf with a nugget.”
Naf set the girl atop Auron’s back. She cried, but so quietly, it made Auron feel for her days in hiding, confined in a barrel. Auron turned his neck to look at her, tears cleaning the wine from the sides of her nose.
“Nula,” she said.
Naf stroked her hair. “I got that anyway. It’s ‘pony’ in one of the eastern tongues. She thinks she’s going on a pony ride.”
“Why do you trust me with her? Why wouldn’t I eat her as an afternoon snack?”
“Because you’re agreeing to take her. There are a lot of legends about dragons among my people. They don’t strike the same terror into us as some other nations of the world. They can be dangerous, but they tell the truth.”
“Even if that is true, I cannot remember making any such promise. What people are yours?”
“We once were counted among the mighty. NooMoakh figures into our sagas, as a matter of fact.”
Auron’s detailed memory supplied a name. “Together with a king named Tindairuss?”
“Yes. Touching that someone else knows our fireside stories.”
The girl began to bang her heels into Auron’s sides.
“Walk her around a little. I’m going to load up my camel.”
“Put something for her to eat in some bags. Waterskins, too. It’ll be days before I get over the mountains. She’ll need blankets, as well.”
“And you thought you couldn’t care for a child.” Naf chuckled, watching her explore Auron’s pebbly skin with little hands. Auron’s skin flushed purple at her touch.
“I’ll take her to the other side of the mountains and find some of her kind. NooMoahk can wait a little longer.”
“Thank you, Auron.” Naf rolled dried meat and fruit into a blanket and fixed it so Hieba could sit on it. “This reminds me of some of the stories of Tindairuss and NooMoahk the Black.”
“Then perhaps you are destined to be a king, as well. That silver you wear about your head is a bit like a crown.”
“My people couldn’t have a king of the old blood even if they wanted one. We’re ruled by the Ghioz now, which is better than being raided by the Ironriders. But it’s hard to better oneself. The Ghioz keep a man in the station of his birth.”
“I wish you luck in bettering yourself, then.”
Auron watched Naf gather food for the camel whistling tunelessly all the while. Finally he nosed out a chest from under the collapsed tent, opened it, extracted a leather pouch, and hung it around his neck. Auron swung the girl on his tail, letting her feet splash in the pool as he did so. The delighted giggles from the child brought back memories of Mother. In all likelihood, this girl had no parents, too. He felt suddenly protective of her, as if she were a hatchling rather than just a human. He rasped the child across the back of her neck with his tongue, and she shrieked and wriggled then babbled to him.
Auron heard a cough, and looked to see Naf standing there with the loaded camel on a lead. Naf pointed to a pile of supplies he had scavenged. The man winked at him and led his camel out of the canyon while the girl kicked her feet into the water.
With Naf gone, the circling carrion birds swept into the canyon and alighted near the bodies, transformed from graceful fliers to ungainly, ugly walkers. The girl pointed to them and barked out a word.
“You can’t speak Parl, can you?” Auron asked the girl. At the rumble of his voice in her ear, the girl ceased playing in the water and started to gabble in her own tongue, though whether it was a language of her own invention or not, Auron could not say. He set her down and swung the end of his tail gently before her. She grabbed on to the point Djer had fashioned, and then dropped it again.
“Iss,” she said, definitively. Auron somehow knew she thought it was cold and hard, not like the rest of his skin. How would he know that?
He forgot the sound of Naf whistling as he walked out of the canyon, forgot the vultures now dropping to the corpses piled in the dead-pit, forgot even the little girl who had dropped to her knees to look at his toes. He concentrated hard and tried to send a mind-picture of her sitting on his back. Nothing came back, but she jerked her head up and looked around. He continued to project the picture. Her face screwed up as she shut her eyes. Auron snorted. If Naf were just here, he would think her face worthy of a laugh.
The picture faded from his brain, and the girl looked at him, little eyebrows together. She slowly got to her feet and climbed on his back, at the deliberate pace of one who is trying to do something just right. When she was perched atop the central arc in his long spine, she set her hands on her hips, as if to say, “Now what?”
What was a journey toward the mountains. The little girl found it more comfortable to sit on the saddlebags over his rear legs and lay her head along his spine, the food-filled blanket cushioning her from the knobby ridge of his backbone. Auron looked back at her now and then and decided she was sleeping, perhaps the slight back-and-forth motion of his body as he walked reminded her of the cradles humans kept their children in. He slowed his pace and was careful to choose an easy path. The flat ground was beginning to give way to the first foothills of the reddish mountains. He found a watercourse that looked as if it led to a notch leading to a mountain’s shoulder. He could get a decent look-round from there.
