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Auron wished he knew more of men. He looked at the branch stuck in the dirt, the hat, and the sign beneath, but could make nothing of the arrangement. Was this a man version of a mind-picture? It wasn’t a picture of a dragon. Nor was it an image of a face, as he had seen on Father’s coins, or even that wizard’s cursed circle. He somehow felt it was a threat, so he knocked over the stick and rubbed out the mark.
Hoofbeats.
He cocked his ear in the air and decided they were coming from the ridge he had descended. Of course, his flame had left smoke—burning dogs, perhaps—for the horsemen to use as a mark when answering the horn calls. What the mountain men could read, others could. They would also follow the blood trail or, worse, use more dogs.
Auron trotted away from the slaughter at the fallen log. He had eaten too much after all, and he felt bloated. The fight—and the need to refill his fire bladder—had given him an irresistible appetite. He cut through the woods in the direction of the flat-topped mountain at the best pace he could manage. A stream wound its way through the bottom of a deep, stone-studded ravine. The rill was more waterfall than waterflow as it jumped from stone to stone. Auron drank and washed out his wounds again. He rubbed his crest against a rock, testing the armored ridge. He felt sure it was cracked, though his sii detected nothing when he probed.
He found the remains of some bird’s meal: a fish, crawling with flies and ants. He wiped his feet and rolled about in the area as best he could, imitating Blackhard, and then ascended along the edge of the stream. When his feet no longer smelled like fish, he trotted through the water. Foggy and sleepy, he resisted the impulse to crawl beneath a log and nap. He missed his friend Blackhard’s tongue-hanging smile of infectious energy. Auron felt sure that if the Dawn Roarers were along, joking and laughing, he’d be up the hill in a song.
Tired of climbing, tired of running, tired of being hunted, Auron wondered if he dared take to a tree for a nap. Probably not. Some combination of hominid woodcraft and dog nose would find him out; fifty horsemen instead of three men would then surround him. He drove himself on as the shadows lengthened, his wounds making every step a stab.
The poplars and birches growing in this soggy part of the woods, sheltered by a spur of the mountain, thinned and gave way to spruce and hemlock as he went up another slope. Through them he caught sight of the cliff side of the flat-topped mountain: scored as if some titanic dragon had flown up and down the granite face dragging its claws into the rock like a man’s plow making furrows in a field.
“Can you climb that?” he asked himself in a quiet mutter.
Must you climb it is the question, and the answer is yes—part of him that spoke with his father’s voice answered. The cliff looked too formidable for even the mountain men to manage, and from the top he could pick a route through the mountains east. The sun was falling, which was good. If he could ascend it in the dark, he would vanish from the pursuit as if lifted up by his still-dormant wings.
It couldn’t hurt to take a good look at it while the light lasted. He licked his scab-stiff, bitten flanks again as he examined the mountain. The fluting looked deeper on the side nearest him, though that would give him a farther distance to climb. But the channels would offer him more places for his sii and saa. Nevertheless, it would be like climbing the side of his parents’ cave a hundred times over. He closed one eye and kept watch with the other.
Blackhard was a long way off, howling. Considerate of him to go off so as not to disturb a good sleep.
Auron awoke with a start.
It wasn’t Blackhard’s voice; it was some strange wolf’s, and at great distance. It was too faint for him even to make out much of the call, which sounded like news of the Thing being relayed to wolves who couldn’t attend. He looked at the moon and startled: he had fallen asleep, and night had come upon the land.
Too big a meal with too much left to do. Auron’s conscience roused him faster than the sense of danger did. Hoofbeats thudded faintly, far off but all around. The woods had been turned into a cage with innumerable bars.
Auron surveyed the gaps in the trees and started a slow walk through the forest. His imagination turned the trees into watchful elves with ready spears, waiting for him to step under their moon-shadow to strike. As the trees thinned, he saw flickering pinpricks of watch fires on the hills ahead.
So much effort for one small drake! Hundreds of men hunted him, a drake of no reputation. He counted nine watch fires between forest and cliff; behind him, he saw others on the ridge where he had first encountered the prowling dog. He heard dogs in the forest barking at shadows, and the cracking sounds of men blundering into branches.
He felt it was still early in the night. With enough hours, he could creep between the watch fires and get up the cliff before they knew he had slipped the encirclement. He began a slow and stealthy journey toward a fire. Drums broke out, alarming him for a moment, but no men appeared, and he relaxed—the fearsome tattoo perhaps was designed to drive him west and deeper into the wooded valley. He could pick out the silhouettes of men now and then, crossing the fire with their dogs. Curse the human-canine alliance! Men’s brains and dogs’ senses made a formidable team.
To his right, he saw a hunter in one of the tall fur hats leaning against an outcrop of rock. A stillwatch. The wind blew out of the west, and would carry his scent parallel to the watch fires rather than toward it, thankfully, but this hunter was directly downwind. The man showed no sign of smelling him, and Auron thanked the Sun for Her absence and the peculiar weaknesses of humans.
The watch fires cut his night-wide eyes with a painful glare. Auron heard some stirring beyond the crackling logs, but the sounds could have been anything from picketed horses to a herd of sheep. He had two options: slip through the shadows between the fires, the most likely areas to be guarded; or dash right across, traveling in and out of the light in a matter of a few seconds. Auron preferred the latter, and he nerved himself for the run.
A boy toting a load of firewood on his back appeared in the light. He dumped the burden with a sigh and started to build up the fire. The boy’s motion might be confused with his, and Auron took his chance.
When the boy turned his back, Auron raced up the slope toward the hilltop fire. Under other circumstances, the boy would have been an easy kill, but Auron whipped past him. A dog at the next bonfire to his left sprang to its feet and barked, but Auron was already out of the light.
“Niy! Niy!” a man’s voice called, and Auron saw a squatting figure get to its feet. A horse . . . no, a pony, got wind of him and reared before it turned to run.
Auron strung out his dash as long as he could, overfilled belly scraping the ground in between stretches. Curse his appetite! One of the mournful horns of the mountain men blew as he jumped over a stone wall running down the other side of the hill. He turned and ran along the top of the wall, hopeful that the pursuit would continue in the direction he had been moving. The cliff beckoned, but he trotted parallel to it until he heard the baying of dogs on a scent and thudding hooves behind.
He looked up at the cliff. It loomed above like the world were standing on its side. The sky around it glowed a faint pink. Dawn already? But then it was high summer, and he was north, where the nights would be short.
There was nothing to do but try. He turned for the cliff.
The baying of dogs behind and the mens’ shouts froze him in alarm.
He stood atop a shelf of rock. The shelf jutted from one of the boulders scattered at the base of the sheer wall, like fallen pinecones around a tree, and he watched them close in. Shadows loomed in the morning mist: men on horses, men afoot, dogs both free and leashed, boys with slings and mouths full of stones. Worst of all, archers with great recurved bows stood atop the rocks to either side with arrows nocked, ready to shoot when they saw a target.
A pack of dogs had caught up to him; he had killed two before the rest backed off and set to baying. Now the horsemen gathered. He could hear but could not see the mounts in the mist.
The archers would probably kill him, and the odds were worsening by the minute. Soon there would be men with spears and swords among the rocks. While the dogs were still keeping their distance, he crept to the cliff face, letting his nose lead the way and slowly curling and uncurling his body as he flowed from hiding spot to hiding spot like a tar seep. Soon he had to grip cracks in the stone with short-clawed sii. He had made the transition to vertical travel, and long climb was begun.
One of the archers shouted, “niy!” and an arrow tapped off a rock next to him. The channel he climbed closed to something like a notch a dozen body-lengths above. If he could reach that, the archers would have trouble getting an angle on him, and their bows might not throw the missiles that high.
