4. Splinters
Shatter glass, shatter ice, shatter all in sight,
Dragon Shatter, shining cruel, cold her claws and teeth.
The Princess Bone alone is bound to dragon of her might,
Shatter mountain, shatter empire, weapon without sheath.
—
"A hundred earth dragons labouring for half a century could not see my way into the mountain once more," Cat said. Her dragon Viviane howled once melodramatically into the snowed skies. "Draveed. Sanguin Pur. Selah. They go with the Dragon. The caverns are lost."
Inge and Mauja had made it out and run around to find Cel. I couldn't care so much for a man I'd never known. Life can be too short.
"He died saving Sedna and Pak," Inge said. "For that we owe his memory. Move out before we all freeze to death." Mauja's flanks were badly bruised; Viviane trailed quick-freezing blood from her feet when she walked. Pak stayed still and hoped his bandages would hold.
Cel hadn't been able to save much from the camp we'd made. He'd had to run from the tremors. Blankets, tent, warm clothing, field gear, supplies. We'd need much to make that stuff back.
Cat's cargo had made it out too. More than my life; I didn't taunt her that it'd been the dragon's and Draveed's life. If she'd been ordinary, that's what she'd have been telling herself, but you could see none of that in her cold formal face. The glass coffin had splintered over a grey rock rising out of the snow, the shrivelled mummy inside falling out of it. A grey wrinkled corpse long-preserved. It wasn't the normal way folk laid human or dragon dead to rest. Cel, curious, bent over it.
"Your herb messes're a bit late for her," Inge said.
"I know. He's a he, by the way," Cel said, studying the naked withered thing. "He doesn't have any marks of violence. Buried in a glass coffin. I think there's something in his throat..."
I've reached into just-dead throats many a time, but not like this. Cat trod heavily over the snow. "You interfere with what is not your right," she said. Cel glanced up at her.
"Do you want to know or not?" he said mildly, which silenced her; opened the mouth by pressing the neck; and gently slid his fingers into the corpse's mouth without damaging it. He felt deep down there. "I suppose he could have been diseased or poisoned, but this would have asphyxiated him." What he drew out was old tattered parchment crumbled into a thick ball. It seemed too fragile to last in the snow. Cat saw it too.
"Give me that—no, give Sedna that for one of her preservation pouches," she snapped. "This is quite enough. I will haul him back myself."
"Walk into Ikiaq with a dead northlander body you stole? What's wrong with you?" I said. "We lay our dead in ice and stone and mound to keep them safe—a glass coffin's a bit different, but a lowlander's not going to steal our dead because she's curious—"
I felt stronger about it than I'd have expected. Die young, die on a hunt, and the most you could hope was they'd bury you in stone and ice where your body wouldn't be eaten up. The way Draveed and his dragon were inside that mountain.
"Take the paper and bury the man deep," I said, trying not to steam. Bits of magsculpt weren't the same.
"Agreed on the condition that you scan him with all the instruments you have: whether there is something else within him and to preserve the images," Cat said, and I didn't punch her small haughty nose but set to digging.
Have to respect the dead, because there's not much of that to go round in life.
—
It wasn't good when we got back to Ikiaq, tattered and bruised and hungry and cold. The tuktural hide was down on our place, two large dragons were tethered outside, and Aardal's voice was raised inside. It looked like Boss Turuk's tax collectors had come early.
"I'll take care of this." I slid off Pak, gave him the last nutribar we'd saved, and walked in. They'd made our home a skrimming mess. Cel's cookpot overturned, shelves swept and books flung down, Inge's gear ripped down and spilled over her den, their own commjaks plugged in to take our drakkals. They'd even trodden on the alinak egg case and spilled out the light fluid on the ground without noticing what that could have made in market.
"Nuunam, I know you," I said, hands on my spear. It didn't do to look weak. "I remember you as a weak little boy crying for his mother." I'd been younger and weaker at the time; I didn't mention that. Ikiaq's the kind of place where if you don't know someone on sight you're sure to know their mother or mother's sister. I didn't know the family name of the female thug with him, tall and dark. "Isn't it supposed to be next month?"
"Always Sedna Smartmouth," Nuunam said. "You pay or you pay the price."
"You owe a hundred and twenty," the other one said. "Boss moved the schedule up a little." She checked the account on one of Inge's comms. "Got any furs?"
"Have the walga tusks," I said. "They're worth twenty at least."
She spat on them. "Small as withered manroot. Ten at most. Do we have to beat some sense into you and the kid, or are we going to do this nice and easy?"
Aardal had come to my side. I put my right hand on his shoulder to keep him still. No matter what happened he'd be protected.
"We can do this easy. But you'll have to listen to a bit of sense. Take too much and we stop swelling Boss Turuk's ivory collection," I said. "Not because we want to, because we can't. Winter's coming."
"You're sixty short. We got at your logs. Where do you keep the good stuff?" Nuunam had a go at leaning threateningly.
"Come out. I'll show you two." I could see Mul Mugak's cave near us had gone through the same tax raiding, from their ripped-down doorway. "This here's our cache." I dug down into it and took out a bag of twenty-eight Ikiaq minetokens and scrip we'd got for the alinak hunt, two felinous skins we'd been thinking of turning a coat for Aardal, a set of tuktural horns from a young buck I'd shot down. "Hunting hasn't been good lately. This ought to cover it."
"Ya think we're eyeblind newborns?" The woman's dragon reared behind her. "Where's the real cache in place of this trash? Nuunam, you know this smartarse. What d' you reckon we should do to set an example?"
He sharply smacked the side of his dragon's neck, then the white spiked tail hit the side of our cave. The rock trembled.
Still, winter was coming. I figured they'd see reason. "Sure, you're smart ones," I said, raising my hands. I pried a set of six lowland-minted draakals in a roll from the deepest pocket I have. "Worth more 'n scrip. And this." I passed on a necklace of ivory selky teeth, carved oldfashioned in the long nights. Not worth much to Boss Turuk, but there were those who liked the old ways.
"And if we say it ain't good enough?" the woman said, leaning over me. Nuunam backed her up. I stared them both straight in the eye, not taking my arm from Aardal's shoulders.
"Then you stop oppressing the people, and leave the Mountain Bow Crew to stay free!"
I hadn't expected the shout from behind us. Nor had I expected it to be Cat. She walked up with her dragon beside her. "You're bullies and extortionists, and where I'm from we give no quarter to the likes of you!"
Nuunam and his fellow collector burst into laughter. "Go away, Cat," I said. "We'd just settled this."
"It does not look that way to me!" she fumed. I'd never seen her lose her temper before. "You two! Leave now and rob no more. You have done enough."
"What's this—" Nuunam wiped a tear from his eye. "—lowlander drowned rat poking her nose in? Now you pay us—ten extra for the annoyance tax—"
"Sedna is owed my life debt! So I order you to go," Cat said. And then they raised their clubs to go after her. It was only a second's space of time. I wasn't sure to defend her or let her learn a lesson the hard way—but then she kicked once and lashed out with her blocking staff at near the same moment, moves for fighting against humans like nothing I'd seen before. Then the collectors were flat on her backs and Cat panted a little, but she was upright and unmoved. They got up.
"You'll pay for that." The woman whistled for her dragon, spiked and heavy and slow as Nuunam's, much bigger than Viviane. Aardal looked up at me, and I knew what he was thinking—
"Pak!" I called, and he ran out to try colliding with them. But there wasn't time for that either.
"You're cowardly lowlifes," Cat said autocratically, a human stuck on her feet between two large dragons, and then she reached out a hand and touched Viviane's neck. And then her other hand glowed like a star, like Draveed's mag-moves back in the mountain but somehow less disciplined, and she threw the collectors and their dragons straight off the cliff with a blast that took me off my feet too. I sat up with two pieces of a broken spear in my hands.
"And let that be a lesson to you!" she howled out, as they saw sense and ran away with their dragons' tails between their hind legs. Then she slumped against her dragon as if it had taken a lot out of her; her dragon's head dipped too. "There, Viviane," she said more gently. "I know I have yet to master the magblast technique, but there—"
Then I slapped her across the face.
Cat took a quick step back and looked dark-eyed at me, bruised across one dark brown cheek and a fiery glint in her eyes. The dragon behind her only looked shocked.
"Sedna, she helped!" Aardal cried behind us. "Stop!"
"She did this," I said, showing the spear. "She did worse. They won't let it end here. Boss Turuk'll send more and then more, and then there'll be a hunting accident, or something'll slip on Cel in the tannery, and Inge'll get the wrong sort of mechwork—" Inge and Cel knew well enough how things were. There wasn't time to waste.
"Cel, dig up the other cache," I ordered. "All of it. Inge, salvage what you can in the cave. I'll tend to the dragons. Aardal, go dress neat and look respectful. Go away, Cat. No—give us what you owe. We're going to pay Boss Turuk the tribute ourselves and fix matters, and my beating you again won't help—"
"I could incinerate you!" she snapped, face alight with sweat like a sheen of living flame and a crimson light glinting in her brown eyes. "Boss Turuk. That is what you call your Mayor Turuk, then, is it not? It is not right for tax collectors to behave in such a manner. You must stand up for yourself or they will extort until you are bled dry. It is the way such things always work. I was not aware of this corruption in Ikiaq, but now I know of it we must fight the injustice. So I go with you to stand up to Turuk, because that is the debt I owe and because it is right!" She reached in her robes and flung down a package of drakkals that seemed more than the sum she owed. "Take that if you will, and take me too, for I am the one who blasted those disgusting criminals!"
I looked around and I saw Aardal's pleading face below his black fringe. Protect Cat, I figured I read in him. He could be too soft-hearted for his own good.
"Stay. You're only an outsider," I said.
"You cannot make me," Cat said. And because I'm harsher than Aardal, I let her come along to admit to what she'd done.
—
Boss Turuk—Mayor Turuk to outsiders—owns Ikiaq Squattown. Her and that dragon Muruak. Once you get in debt to her you never make it out. She owns what's left of the ferrdeny mines and the still, near all the gambling, and the fighting pits worst of all. We sold our hunting and stayed on the outskirts of town and paid our protection money in season; Cel's shifts at the tannery were the closest we got to Ikiaq proper.
First up, the town stinks. It's not only the tannery: it's all the ferrdeny slag and all the old smoke from the big factory. That black thing hangs over all the town like a lump of coal compared to a few tiny scrapings of dust. Then around it are the squatflats that give Ikiaq its name, tents and the odd stone hut. The wood walls of the synthplant base—nothing grows natural in Ikiaq, not after all the mining. We walked quietly through the black irregular streets, shooting away the glances of the few curious.
Second, the company's not so good. Lice-infested kids and drunks lolled about in the streets. One little kid Aardal seemed to know, a dirt-faced little beast with black eyes like holes in the snow waving and calling to him. He waved back but didn't encourage him to follow. A patchy black-and-white dragon clawed his way through a midden heap like an oversized rat, small and scrawny for a dragon. Was only a year or so since Aardal'd come out of that.
Third, there's the reason for the errand. We walked up to the great black factory doors and the pair of humans and dragons lounging outside it, smoking cigars and curling tails. Asked politely for the way in, and started to hand over the standard bribe money. Cat scowled and put a hand on her dragon again. I glared at her.
"You're the ones who—Nuunam and Huld?" The doorholder straightened up. "Fine. In you go. Let Boss Turuk take it out of your hides, dragon witch."
The black doors opened, and the innards stunk worse than the outside. It was sweating warm in here, dragon feet driving the old fires somewhere deep below. Smoke, alcohol, walga-fat perfume, worse stenches. Clawmarks and scraped messages marked the metal walls. Our footsteps clanged loud against the grilled floors. Hemlock blew a long breath out of his wide mouth. Aardal gazed around at the gaslamps flickering on the walls. It was mostly the noises that led us down to Boss Turuk's central pit.
It was wide: you could have fit a small town in here, all the walls on this floor knocked down. A slag pit bubbled orange in the centre, wide enough to drown a hundred dragons. Tracks that had to be Turuk's gladiator pits ran on the far side of it and then down deeper where the factory went far below the ground. Metal staircases rung with dragons and humans passing to and fro. It felt like half Ikiaq lived here, and smelt like it.
I glared and Cat glared and Pak and Mauja tail-flicked enough folk out of the way to move forward. The fires were heaviest here, and we walked by a card game dealt by a tall fair-haired axefolk-looking man bare-chested and sweating in the warmth. He was run to seed and wide-bellied—though his eyes were flat and unblinking as an agliuk waiting for undersea prey as he watched us past. A wide-seer, one who took in most things. Dragons howled below, turning up the heat.
Boss Turuk wasn't waiting for us; she was surrounded by a gaggle of flunkeys and pleaders and bodyguards, her giant dragon Muruak poised by her. On her walls in trophies pinned up there I swore I recognised giant walga tusks I'd paid from a hunt the year before. A fancyman away to the side called out an offer to me, then giggled to his friends while I ignored him. A wheel spun and dice rolled in some endless betting game. A tall girl in rough furs with knives strapped to her waist and a javelin slung on her back posed, showing off her muscles to her nearby dragon; two others dressed the same looked on.
We went up to wait in line. Nuunam had already settled in with a grimy sling around his arm, and glared. I stood straight like a northlander should.
"She's the Boss?" Aardal whispered, tilting his head instead of being so stupid as to point a finger at her.
"Yep."
Boss Turuk was smoking one of her famous thick cigars. She could outsmoke and outdrink and outwrestle anyone in Ikiaq and beyond, they said. She chewed on the end of the cherry-red cigar and spat out tobacco juice on the ground, then took a long drag of the flask on the low table next to her. Her arms and torso were bulky; she was a big woman but they said it was all muscle. Her big dragon Muruak ate the meat of an entire tuktural—and you could hear him crunching bones. The red tendons stretched apart and separated fragile as jelly in his mouth. He was impossibly big, the largest dragon in Ikiaq by a long chalk, five times Hemlock's size, five times Pak's length. He wielded a fast white spiked tail. One of his white eyes was red-marked by a scar cutting it through, but the pupil in it still bobbed around as if he saw well. Blood spattered his thick nostrils and one of the Boss's men threw him another carcass. That one looked like a draghound, and below I could hear growls as if a dogfight ran there.
Turuk heard them. "Give eighty scrip, Helmord. Jiala, go seascuttle yourself and don't bring such to me. Kainak wins the pit. You two, take Akna and his dragon and dump them down shaft eight. If they live the debt is done. Tyrssen, you're Blarn's for two turalstar passings." We saw the man cry out as two of the fur-clad guards grabbed him and the dragon. Then they took him out while Boss Turuk heard the next in line. She stopped after a while and cheered and yelled down into her pit below the slag. We were closer and we could see parts of the dogfight. A man rode to escape a pack of draghounds. Folk watched from the other side and from a floor set down there above the ramps running deeper and deeper into blackness. One of the hounds nipped the dragon's flank and I saw the spray of red. The dragon screamed like a dying burswin.
This was no true hunt. I stuck a hand over Aardal's eyes. The dragon's squeals went on and the man jumped to the ramp above, trying to swing up by a bleeding hand. Then the dragon tumbled over and down into the floors below, the draghounds chasing their prey down where none of them could be seen. Boss Turuk flung her empty flask on the ground and called for another. After a while she continued again, and we moved up toward the pits.
"Forty scrip in eight days, Maral." The man in front of us walked off looking frightened. I stepped forward. Boss Turuk's face was weathered and brown and plump, swallowing her black eyes in its weight and jowls, but the eyes were sharp if they were small and did not blink. We waited still.
"Dragon witch." She seemed to figure it was Cat.
Catacomb shook her lowlander head. "The forgotten arts are not witchery. Draconis..." She added a sentence in a tongue I didn't know.
Boss Turuk scowled, and said a few words in the old tongue. "Lowlander mummers and fools."
I spoke up. "My household want to pay you our taxes in person," I said, and unloaded furs and scrip and Cat's drakkals from Pak. "Away from the misunderstandings of your guards. Direct to who it's owed."
"Be quiet, girl, and don't play the coward. This is Sedna Sannakin, the mighty hunter?" Boss Turuk pointed to fur and ivory on her factory walls. "Sedna, none's daughter, longears kit." Obedient laughter followed her. I took that she knew my mothername.
"Sedna's not a coward, she's the bravest hunter in Ikiaq and everyone k—" Aardal burst out. I took his shoulder fiercely to silence him.
But Cat got in on the act. "I owe Sedna life debt, do not call her coward," she said with the same arrogance. And Boss Turuk took it like a vast krawhal toying with a shred of kelp.
"You owe bloodprice for the injury to mine," she said. They both stood around watching us with burning eyes, Nunnal with his arm in a sling and Huld badly bruised about the face, dragons cut up too.
"We paid fair taxes. Nunnal and Huld took what could have gone to your pocket in future," I said. "We will pay again...when next the time comes."
"What brings you here, dragon witch? What slop-middens of the past does your sort finger through?" Turuk said. This time her followers didn't seem to grasp the humour. "You are alone." It was no question. Cat looked aside, and I suspected her superiors wouldn't take the death well.
"I am here. I am the one who punished the bullies acting in your name, Mayor Turuk. If you let Sedna pay a fair price you and I have no further business. Until I am once more convinced of your injustice."
It had all gone so well until the last sentence. Boss Turuk stood with ripples of thick muscle. Her dragon twitched and opened his eyes. I waited for her to throw a punch, but she did not.
"Arrogant young pup," Boss Turuk said, and breathed out a short bark that had to be meant to pass as a laugh. "You remind me of myself at your age. Sedna has tried to pay her debt to me. But you..." She looked down at Cat, who was much shorter and smaller than her bulk. "You show what the dragon witches can do. You win, you owe no price for going against my laws." Muted laughter followed that reference. "You lose, and I fling you to my draghounds."
"Don't do it. Offer her a price!" Inge whispered. Cat ignored her.
"I accept. Let's stake the sum of this—" she pointed to our tribute—"doubled. For your thugs despoiled Sedna's property already and she must be compensated. If I lose she pays nothing; if I win she receives twice it in return." Turuk gave a near-imperceptible nod. "Who shall I face in your arena?"
Boss Turuk looked over her shoulder. It only took that for the three young women in coarse furs to stand to attention, like begging, pathetic kits fighting and whining over a single withered herring. "We volunteer, Boss Turuk! A dragon witch is a breakfast meal." The muscled girl flung back her dark head and stood tall. She was thin built despite her biceps, not an ounce of fat on her. Her brown-haired second wore an eyepatch over a long scar in her left eye, and the third girl looked younger than the other two, scruffy and windblown. Their dragons were three battle-ready spiked fourlegs. One was ice-pale and moved carefully, as if he'd been carved out of some clear translucent stone or as a snow sculpture; one was a cold white striped with knotted scars of past times in the gladiator pits; and the third lay prone with a long wide red tongue hanging out of his mouth. He reminded me a touch of Pak, but I didn't like that.
"Go ahead. Take her on in the third pit. Let the betting begin."
Activity sprung up. The tall fair gambler sat among those marking the odds and pulling in scrip and mine-tokens. Looked like most folk went against Cat. The terrible trio stretched themselves and saddled up their dragons, making the beasts push and pull and warm up. Cat stood like a pole in a whirlpool watching it all, quiet and contained in herself. I gripped her arm.
"This pays your debt to me. We'll survive the winter because of it," I told her; it was the least I could do. "Luck..." I began.
There are three of 'em—pit fighters all, not collecting thugs. You'll need it. Aardal's dark eyes looked accusingly up at me.
"You are a fool and I think you know it," Inge said. "But I shall cheer your name."
"Here," Cel stammered. "Eat something...have Viviane eat something...I took some of our meat stores. It will help. And I can heal you."
"Give Viviane only a strip of dry alinak—it is unwise to fight on a full stomach," Cat said. Slowly and fluidly she stroked along her dragon's neck, as if only then did she remember the draghounds and their meal. Viviane's long delicate neck flowed down to grab the meal from Cel's hand. "If they rip dragons each day—then where they should obtain new dragons?"
"We'll rip you, dragon bitch, nose-in-the-air lowlander," the tall girl snarled. "Say it was the Frost Hunt Crew sent you down to the Blacksea!"
I sighed in Aardal's direction. I signalled Pak to rear by my side. "You call your milkfed lot hunters? I hunt. I don't remember seeing you in the trails. You couldn't follow a drunk incontinent burswein up your own nose. You couldn't track your own buttocks if you started with both hands up your sodhole. You'd need three-on-one odds to lay a finger on a newborn pup, let alone Cat. I don't see any hunters here. Just arrogant drunks who stink of smoke and beer."
The tall girl raised her head, eyes snapping and a dark look on her face. "You wouldn't dare let me throw you the claw. Run home with your tail between your legs and play with your animals, smartmouth."
"You wouldn't throw me the claw because I've speared baby walga who could outrun and outfight you. Someone's a coward and it's not me—"
Red flared along both the girl's cheekbones and she did it, then: ran forward and slapped me in the face, her pitfighting claw-tipped glove over her fingers. I let her. "I'm Cat's second. I go down with her," I said. She leaned in close, fixing me in her glare.
"We'll take all your crew to the pits and our dragons won't break a sweat!" she said, all rage. A series of metal bracelets clinked over her right forearm. She wore sharp black fighter's tattoos on her arms, visible where jagged slashes cut her furs and bared parts of her arms, even showing rings set into her skin like a piercefreak. Inge stiffened.
Then I raised my voice for the whole hall of Turuk's to hear. "I accept for the two of us," I said, and tried to make my smile as much like an agliuk's cold sharp teeth—a seawolf's—as possible. For I'd gained what I wanted by all the challenge lore. "Inge, you check our comms—Cel, you and Aardal wait for us to win. Let's do it."
That's one trait of good hunting you people didn't learn in these pits. You make the prey set up its own trap, I thought, and strung the auxobow off my shoulder and readied a stilodart. These people wouldn't play around and no more would I. Pak bared his teeth and looked uncharacteristically serious, beside me as always.
"You do not need to," Cat said softly. We waited. "You are not trained to fight humans, you said it yourself. I know the ancient martial arts and the true ways of releasing the power of the dragon. You could surrender with some honour."
"It's just I've never got the chance to hunt two-legged warmbloods before. I'm looking forward to it," I said. "What's our strategy?"
"Stay behind me, use your bow, and try not to perish." Cat inclined her tight-braided head. "They give us little time to prepare."
The rust-iron lift creaked and sped down so fast it left my stomach behind up there. The gladiator pits in the depths of the factory smelt of old blood and smoke. We found ourselves over a maze of ramps above a hot slag pit, spectators watching on long viewramps either side. Cat and I one end, the Frost Hunt Bastards the other. Cel and Inge and Aardal watched close from above and our comms flicked on. Boss Turuk gave the order to begin.
Cat touched Viviane's head and aimed the same uncontrolled fire out of her fingers from all the way across the pit. It scattered our three bright opponents—threw off the first two, the third just a bit faster, leaping up to a high ramp. I lost visual track of her. Cat hit gear on Viviane's back and ran off fast as a devouring fire. My comm beeped a guide and Pak and I jumped up together.
Just like rocky mountain chasing a fast-running felinous to earth, huh Pak? Let's get it over.
I looked for a shot. The girl was nimble and small and disappeared between the metal ramps in a way I hadn't thought possible. Inge got up a comm reading and for a while I followed that trail, but she kept dodging. And on metal Pak couldn't track the way we did in the wild. We raced and I saw Cat trying to fight the other two both at once, the tall girl coming at her with a javelin and the other one whirling lengths of spiked chain from the back of her dragon. Couldn't delay. I got an idea and switched off the comm feed.
Come out, felinous. Let me guess.
I guided Pak on the twists and turns I figured a hunted animal'd take. The fighter and her dragon came into view again at last, and just like I was hunting in the wild with nothing but blood and breath to go on she couldn't shake me off no matter what she tried. I heard the crowd shouting at us and didn't know what they were doing to Cat. The auxobow's sight got my target dead on.
Everybody's got to look after their own. I fired. It went where I'd aimed it and stopped in the dragon's thigh. Cripple-wound, but you could recover if you did the right things. I caught up.
"You're done!" I yelled at her. "Take care of that dragon!" She swore at me but her dragon stopped below her, and then she jumped off to touch the wound. Pak and I galloped to where we'd last seen Cat.
Cat's dragon flung her around with the magblast from her head; it was rough and it was close enough to the two fighters that I couldn't have risked an arrow. The tall girl's dragon let out a crude magblast and Cat only just got her blocking staff up in time. So I took the time to get the auxobow lined up and shot him the same.
Big creatures have a better chance of living an arrow. I hunt to kill, and that means aiming the shot right the first time.
Then the other dragon's blast hit us. We skidded back and only Pak's claws kept us from the slagpit below. I saw huge black scrapes in the metal. There was rage in my blood and I got the bow over my shoulders and a grip on my second-best spear—my only one now. Pak raced up and the girl with the chains and eyepatch fought me dragonback.
She cut me and then the backswing of her spiked chain hit Pak on the back. One moment it'd be a short precise slash close up, then she'd loose the chain into long-ranged whips. She caught my spear in a loop and near tugged it out of my hands, then struck down and there was blood on my arm. I didn't hunt men, and I wasn't as much a fighter as her. Behind us the tall girl kept Cat busy—she used the ramp like it was her home ground, improvising fast where Cat only had her common tricks. Her dragon was wounded but she grabbed things off his saddle and used them to stop her.
I leaped up and Pak and I ran. Our opponent came after us. One ramp then another, a loop, ducking behind—she followed like a fool hunter. So I led her on to a high spot with half a wall behind us and we stood and fought again. Pak jumped and her dragon tried to follow. She lunged with her chains and I braced the spear against the wall and cut her side. Then I slashed and shoulder to hip she was bloody with a shallow cut. She wounded me in turn but I kept on. I could hear the crowd's cheers close for we were high, and for moments I saw Cel's and Inge's scared-pleading faces watching.
Pak, we've hunted long after we were bone-tired for days. Pak's headspikes scored a cut over the dragon's cheek.
My opponent glanced down to Cat and her friend. "She doesn't stand a chance when Kivi stabs her in the back. But you're annoying me. Give in."
I let a spearslash against her dragon stand for the answer. She howled. Then I saw the girl smile. Her chain flicked out to its full length of half a league, far away from me. I'd recoiled the wrong way. It wrapped itself round Cel's shoulders where he stood watching. Then it flung him down and let him go. Straight down to the boiling slag pit.
Then Pak's mag helped and I dived. I folded arms and legs in for speed and hit Cel in the air. I knocked him aside as much as I could. The slagsteam rose in the air and I felt it heat us from below. Pak's magstream gave another faint shove. We bounced off a ramp in the air. Solid black ground came rising to meet us.
We landed with an obscene crunch and Cel screamed. I'd fallen on him, softish. I got off the packroomer—my hunt-companion, clan, brother. His leg was shattered below and bent at three wrong angles. His face was twisted like burning parchment. I grabbed his shoulders and told him everything I could to keep him with us. I waited for the predators to dare come back down after us.
But it was Cat who came. Cel had fainted dead off and she reached down for me instead of him. She raised my arm high. "Victory is ours!" she cried out, and I stared at her as if she were an uraluk bear who needed killing.
—