The Redundant Dragons Read online

  “Are they?”

  “Oh, yes. As long as they provided food, it didn’t bother me as much, but now we’re away from there and I remember they’re always trying to ‘improve’ their surroundings, the earth, the sea, the sky. They want to own the world and are ever looking for ways to enlarge their hoards and test their firepower. See, not being able to make their own fire the natural way, they’re afraid they’ll forget how. In the old days, our ancestors had nothing to do with them except to eat one once in awhile. But then some of them made friends with some of us and that was the beginning of the end. Treacherous critters, men, and even if you find a good one, he’s an exception and the others will overrule him in time and hunt you.”

  Along the track from the mine, a dozen or so black streaks seared the earth. At the long rail, the streaks turned sharply to the south, leaving little lines of flame still flickering between the scorched strips.

  “Looks like the others headed for the capital,” Smelt said with another grunt and an expulsion of gas. “Nothing for us there though, lad. What we need us is a nice deep cave high up in the mountains.” The thought made him yawn.

  3336 did not share his friend’s desire for a cave. After spending most of his life in a mineshaft, he was dazzled by the sky and the vast spread of open land, both the flat bits and the pointy bits. He wondered aloud if the points were sharp.

  Old Smelt snorted. “Only compared to you, lad! They have caves in them, them mountains. How sharp do you think they are really? The distance fools the eye.”

  “Let’s find out!” said 3336, a giddy feeling sweeping through him knowing that nobody was going to send him down the shaft again. But then he began to worry about that. “What about the mine? Won’t the men want us back when they return from the city?”

  Smelt snorted again. “Fact is, we’ve been fired.” He huffed a number of times, exhaling clouds of pungent smoke, and his young friend realized he was laughing at his little joke.

  He sobered quickly as they crossed the tracks and headed in a northerly direction—or up the tracks. “You want to talk about fire? We’re very close now to what was pretty much our last stand. Fire versus firepower, it was, and many a great dragon perished there that day. Without being able to go aloft, I’m not certain but I know it’s around here somewhere. I feel it. It’s burned into me bones, actually.”

  3336 hopped forward to explore, then back to the older dragon, needing to hop off some of his excitement at being free, breathing fresh air, hearing the wind whisper through the grass instead of the clunk of a shovel hitting rock. And now they were visiting one of the places the old one dreamed of often. Also, the same things were not happening today at the same time they always had every day for as long as he could remember. It was all new.

  Auld Smelt’s steps grew hesitant until finally he stopped and gazed reverently upon a field of wildflowers that lay not far from the railroad track.

  “There it is, laddie, the site of our greatest glory, almost the end of our race, but the deciding battle of the Great War. Many a brave dragon warrior went down in flames that day.”

  “Why was that?” 3336 asked.

  “To try to win, of course,” Auld Smelt said with another snort, indicating he thought it a stupid question.

  “Yes, but win what?”

  “The battle, and ultimately the war!”

  “Oh,” he said, then, “Why were we in the war? What were dragons fighting about?”

  “Oh, that. Well, to protect our hoards and to gorge on the flesh of the humans and horses who opposed our side’s humans and their horses. It was all arranged ahead of time between our leaders.”

  “Did the dragons on the other side have humans, too?”

  “There were no dragons on the other side.”

  “Then why did so many of us die?”

  “Steel, laddie. Steel. And guns. We had no guns back then and the others did. Not very accurate, as such things go, but we dragons, back then when we were all wild, were big and easy to hit. That’s one reason why when we went to work for the humans I decided to work in the mines where the steel could be made. The other good thing about an iron mine, you know what you’re getting around so much iron. No tricky magic stuff there, no wizards shooting death rays at you, none of that stuff. Just the ore and the men and your own honest flame.”

  “Oh,” 3336 said, less impressed with Smelt’s approval of what they both already knew than with the story he had seemed about to launch into, the one concerning the war. “Were all of the other mine dragons in the battle too?”

  Another snort from Smelt.

  “They weren’t even invented then.”

  “Invented? But how could they invent us? We’re all dragons, same as you—” He had started off a little heated at the implication that he was other than what he’d always considered himself to be, but at Smelt’s dubious expression, 3336’s voice damped down to a whimper, “Aren’t we?”

  “For want of a better term, I suppose so, but most of the new ones were never wild dragons, proper dragons. A great many were messed about with by men before you ever were hatched.”

  “I don’t recall anything about that,” 3336 said. “What’s the difference? We’re not like their devices, unless Mother and I were both very much mistaken.”

  “No, but in my case, first there was me and who I was and then there was a job and I agreed to do it, using a skill I was already quite good at. In your case, in the case of most of the other mine-drakes, there was a job and they wanted a dragon to fill it, so they figured it out and how to make a dragon into what they wanted before putting him on the job. You never had any hopes, dreams or wishes before that, did you?”

  3336 thought it over and said, “Well, maybe not at first, because there was never a choice, but I have a wish now.”

  “And that is?”

  “To have a proper name, rather than a number.”

  “What sort of a name?” Smelt asked.

  “Yes,” the youngster said. “How did you guess?”

  “Guess what?”

  “Yes, how did you guess I want it to be that?”

  “What?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  3336 knew it was disrespectful, but he was getting hot under the collar he still wore, the one with his number on it. “Yes. Wat. What is so wrong with Wat?” and the moment he asked, he understood how Smelt had misunderstood. “I suppose Bill might be easier.”

  Smelt grunted. “The Dragon Bill. Bilious Bill they might call you.”

  “They don’t call him that,” 3336/Wat?/Bill? said.

  “Who?”

  “Bill, of course. Milton says old Bill is an artist with a pick. Milton is a good name too, don’t you think?”

  “Milton the Dragon, the Dragon Milton. Doesn’t have much of a ring to it. You need a name that means something.”

  “Like Auld Smelt?”

  “That’s my nom de flambeau, so to speak. My work name. My real name is—uh—what was it? Been a long time since I used it. Wait. It’ll come to me. It was a grand one, anyway, worthy of a dragon because it was bestowed by me dragon mum, who had a broader acquaintance of names than those found in a mining crew.”

  “People she ate? Like knights and such? The crew talk sometimes about how dragons used to eat people. They whisper and don’t think I hear, because as they tell each other, they don’t want me getting ideas beneath my station.”

  “Aye, that’s true enough, but it was a long time ago, before the war. There’s them as have said we ought never to have stopped.”

  “But it seems so rude! I would never have dreamed of so much as nibbling at Wat, Bill, Milton or even Harry, and I don’t like him much.”

  “You’ll understand when you’re older,” Smelt said.

  “Speaking of eating…?”

  “Yes, I know. I’m getting hungry again too, so we’d be better off not speaking of eating. Ah, did you catch that?”

  “What?”

&nb
sp; “Don’t start that again. The way the wind is blowing, I catch the smell of fresh blood and raw flesh. Nothing like it. Give it a bit of char and it’s tasty.”

  “But you said it was only before the war that we ate people.”

  “We never ate any people during the war. Only enemies. It’s not like they were really people.”

  3336 frankly didn’t understand the difference, but he kept quiet so as not to sound ignorant.

  Smelt kept swiveling his head and sniffing every few steps.

  “What is it?” 3336 asked.

  “My nose isn’t what it used to be but, by all the stones in my hoard, that is blood I smell.”

  Chapter 5: Up the Creek

  To her relief, Verity found she made a much better sailor than a queen. She was good at hauling on the lines, even climbing the mast. The physical work was terrifying at times, but great fun once she got used to it. Her Frost Giant heritage not only gave her height and strength, but also granted her a tolerance for cold temperatures. She did not get sick and she didn’t mind the cold nighttime watches, or the rough seas lifting the ship’s bow and smacking it down again in the water, ‘shivering’ the timbers of the ship. The hardest thing was trying to learn what they called everything, but usually pointing sorted that out.

  She no longer had trouble sleeping and was too tired when she wasn’t working to worry over cares she knew she hadn’t actually left on shore, though it felt like it.

  During the first part of the voyage, when the seas were calm, Captain Lewis displayed the flair for the dramatic that caused Madame Louisa to be such a theatrical sensation at the cabaret. She told excellent stories, all of which she claimed were absolutely true and most of which featured herself in a heroic role.

  “Now then, lads, you’ve most of you been with me as long as the Belle has been under steam on the trade route between Queenston and Frostingdung. You may have noticed that on these runs we traverse the Gulf of Gremlins from Queenston to Port Bintnar in West Frostingdung. In the old days, before the Belle was fitted for steam, I dived for salvage. Since we’ll be sailing round the Horn this time, and through the Strait, we’ll be salvaging again. The waters should be rich, as the Strait is known to be a graveyard for sailors. Mighty warships have been lost without a trace in those waters. Some say wrecked by the storms and rough water where the North Sea meets the Gulf, some say they were taken by monsters, some say lured onto the rocks and pulled down below by merfolk. All anyone knows for sure is they sailed in but didn’t sail out again.”

  “I never heard of no sailor’s graveyard, Captain. I don’t much like the sound of that,” said the sailor who used to tend the steam engine while the ship was still dragon-driven, but now was a common sailor, and had almost as much to learn about it as Verity.

  “Hasn’t been much trouble of the sort since we’ve been under steam, has there, Mr. Gray?”

  “No word that’s come to me, Captain,” the first mate responded. “Some say the curse that haunts the Strait doesn’t like messing with the dragons in the engine room, but perhaps it’s just run its course, as things sometimes do. The stories mostly date from those grim days just after the Great War. The spirits have probably quieted since then.”

  “We can hope that they will have realized they’re no longer able to use whatever treasure might remain aboard the ships then,” Captain Lewis said. “After all, we’ve got to eat, and they no longer have that problem.”

  The captain was accustomed to serving as tour guide for the paying passengers, of which there had been many during the recent years of flourishing trade between Frostingdung and Frostingdung-influenced Argonia. Oddly, Verity’s lie detecting headaches did not trouble her, although the stories were far too outrageous to be true, weren’t they?

  “Off the port bow, you can just make out the coast of Outer Frostingdung, marking the entrance to the Frostingdung Strait, known to Frosty mariners as the Strait of Argonia. Have you been to Frostingdung before, Majesty?”

  “Verity, please, “she said. “Just Verity.”

  Her ascension to the throne had been highly irregular and informal and possibly was not widely known throughout the country. Now that she considered it, being more or less incognito (since the captain and most of the crew were quite aware of who she was) was a good idea. Just as well not to advertise the crown that kept wanting to fall off her head.

  Early the next morning, just before dawn, she climbed aloft with a spyglass to stand watch. She did not mind in the least. Her cabin was cramped and everything below decks was both cramped and smelly. She bumped her head on low beams and lanterns, but she didn’t care. From the crow’s nest she could watch the waves breaking across the bow, or stare into the ship’s wake. Even the ghost cats liked life on shipboard. They blinked into visibility sitting in a line atop the yards, the horizontal timbers supporting the square sails. As the sun pinkened the sky, it shone through the hazy white cat bodies, giving them a blush and occasionally revealing the colors and patterns each might have worn in life.

  All the cats were facing starboard, staring toward the coast of Suleskeria in Outer Frostingdung.

  Shading her eyes against the blushing dawn, Verity stared in the same direction, blinked, then called out, “Captain, what is that blackish haze hanging over the coast? Is a huge storm coming? Ought we to batten down the hatches or furl the sails or some such nautical precaution?”

  “No, lass. That’s nothing. You’ve seen no real storm yet, although I reckon that you may before the day is done. But that, me dear, is no weather. ’Tis the famous Frostingdung Reek.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Frostingdung has not had the benefit of using dragons to fire their machinery and has instead relied on coal-fed steam engines. Behold, the veil of progress.”

  As they drew nearer the coast of Outer Frostingdung, the part known as Suleskeria, she beheld rocklike creatures that moved in a rather spasmodic fashion without changing their position in the water. They made a strangled sort of croaking sound.

  She picked up the spyglass and held it up to her eye, focusing on the questionable rock creatures.

  “My word! The rocks are swarming with seals! I’ve never seen so many all in one place.”

  The individual seals grew more distinct as the ship sailed nearer the Suleskeria coast, and their barks increased in number and volume.

  Several of them began swimming toward the ship, perhaps looking for fishy handouts, Verity thought. They were so entertaining that she was unaware of what was going on behind her until she heard something large smack into the water. Staring over the rail, she saw a head surface and slice through the water in the direction of the rocks.

  “Man overboard!” she called as she scrambled down the mast and raced sternward, hopping over coils of rope and other impediments. Then added, “But it might have been intentional!”

  The group of seals that had been heading for the ship suddenly veered in the direction of the swimmer, barking excitedly.

  She reached for the life preserver, but hesitated as the swimmer seemed to be doing quite well and would have needed to swim back to make use of the ring. She poised to toss it over the side, but the captain called back. “No need for that. It’s just Mr. Gray taking a spot of shore leave while we’re in the area. He likes to visit family when we’re this near.”

  Mr. Gray was the first mate, a man of lively, graceful movements but few words. Even before she’d come aboard, she’d seen him playing washtub bass with the band that accompanied Madame Louisa when she sang at the Changelings Cabaret. As first mate, he worked hard and expected those under his command to do the same.

  She returned to the helm and asked, “Does he always jump overboard and swim when he goes to visit relatives?”

  “Aye. We can’t sail too near their rocks and his kin are a bit leery of the rest of the crew.”

  As the seal welcoming party reached the rocks, some of their dozing friends and relations slid off into the water to join them. They fr
olicked and ‘ork-ed’ at each other in what seemed to be seal language for, ‘About time you showed up! It’s been far too long since you were here last…’ It hadn’t occurred to her that Mr. Gray was anything other than a human, but the denizens of the Changelings Cabaret did seem prone to having dual natures. The captain swore that when in the water, she became a mermaid thanks to a magical heritage she shared with Verity’s family on her father’s side. The club’s bartender seemed normal unless the club was very busy and then all eight arms and hands were brought into play.

  For this crew, it really wasn’t at all odd that one of them was a selkie or seal-person. She hadn’t met one before, but she had heard of them. She wondered how many other crewmembers also had dual natures—or perhaps more than two?

  “So, do we drop anchor to wait for him?” she asked.

  “Oh, no. He’ll catch up in a bit. While he’s there, he generally learns about the weather and waters through the Strait, which is apt to be treacherous. His relatives have connections all along the coast.”

  Selkies were a bit more magical than dragons, who were, after all, merely large animals equipped with extraordinary fire power. Mers were a hybrid, a characteristic that ran in families, hence the ability of her own father to turn into one and yes, that had to be magical, even in this day and age. None of this surprised Verity, especially now that she was surrounded by the ghosts of cats who had been watching and waiting for the delivery of the magicians, wizards, witches, sorcerers, and so forth, who had once been their companions. Even before she met them, before her father changed, before she’d lived among dragons, she was aware that, theoretically at least, magic existed. Vestiges of it were not uncommon in Queenston, even then. People who were not actually magicians, but were descended from a magical race (elves, trolls, fairies, that sort of thing) couldn’t change what they were simply because their kind was no longer fashionable.