“Red,” Lynette said. “Pretty much every animal on earth has red blood.”
“Ah,” Koradan said, not sure if that should be a surprise or not. “There’s a fair bit of variety in Chalandros. Blue, black, green, red. Mages and ragions actually have white blood.”
Lynette cleared her throat. “Great. Fine,” she said, in the sort of tone that said she didn’t care either way. “The best thing to do with this right now is mash some of the daisies and Echinacea together and spread it on a compress, then bandage the whole thing together. We can have a look at stitching it tomorrow, but that should take care of any budding infection.”
“Okay. Let’s do that, then.”
He watched as Lynette pulled a mortar and pestle out of her bag and set about mashing some of her herbs, then she added water to make a pulp. Koradan helped where it was needed, holding the compress in place, then supporting the weight of Bnaa’s wing while Lynette threaded the bandage underneath it, but the whole thing took relatively little time, once Lynette had got past her initial fear. As Lynette tucked the last of the bandage into place and tied off the end, a low, rumbling sound filled the air. It was so familiar to Koradan that he barely registered it, but Lynette stopped what she was doing, looking around in surprise.
“It sounds like he’s purring. Like a cat,” she said, a touch of wonder in her voice.
“Like a what?” Koradan asked.
“A cat. You don’t have…? Well, no, I don’t suppose there would be cats in hell,” she muttered, answering her own question.
“Chalandros,” Koradan corrected her.
“What?”
“Where we’re from. It’s called Chalandros. Not hell.”
“Right,” Lynette said, with the same dismissive tone she’d used several times now. Koradan was quickly learning that sometimes humans had to be told things multiple times before they were prepared to listen. “So cats are domestic pets. They’re about so big” – she held out her hands in front of her, about shoulder-width apart – “and they’re covered in fur, and people keep them as companions, or to hunt vermin. And they purr when they’re happy. It’s a rumbling sound, like what Bnaa’s doing.”
“They sound delightful,” Koradan said, with a smile. There were so many fascinating things to learn about the human world.
“Yeah, so I think I’m done here,” Lynette said, hastily packing up her equipment. “I’m going to head back to my house. You can all stay here in the field. It shouldn’t rain tonight, so you should be fine, but if it does, there’s a barn on the far side of the paddock you can shelter in. And, um… I guess we’ll see you in the morning.” She started backing away, as if she expected Koradan to stop her, but he merely nodded.
“See you tomorrow,” he said, as Morgan headed after her friend, lantern in hand. Both women kept glancing back to keep an eye on their visitors until they finally rounded the corner and disappeared from sight.
Once they were alone again, Sigmore sidled up to Koradan, a quizzical look on his face. “So you want to tell me what that was all about?” he asked. “We would have been perfectly capable of treating Bnaa’s wound by ourselves. All she had to do was give us the supplies.”
“Strategy,” Koradan said, still staring at the empty road where Lynette and Morgan had been. “Part of the deal we made with the humans – and a part I agreed to, even though I’d rather not have – was that after we free their men, we leave their village and don’t return. Which kills any opportunity for a longer term relationship with any of these humans. And from the reception we received tonight, I get the feeling we’re going to have extremely limited opportunities to change the humans’ minds about us. But now, Lynette, and to a lesser extent, Morgan, have had the chance to see the vreki up close. She’s got a cute story to tell about feeding him a cabbage and a heartwarming comparison to how he purrs like a cat, and so, without us having to do any kind of sales pitch of our own, Lynette goes and tells everyone what it was like touching a dragon, people’s curiosity begins to overcome their fear, and we’re one step closer to the humans viewing us as people, rather than as foul beasts that were spat out of the mouth of hell.”
“Or she goes and tells people that the fearsome demons forced her to touch their horrible dragon with its blue blood and how brutish we are for making her do something so scary,” Sigmore said.
“Or that,” Koradan said, with a shrug. “But I prefer to look at it as a ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ kind of thing. We’re breaking new ground here. Risks will have to be taken.”
CHAPTER SIX
Koradan stared at the pile of dirt and boulders, fully understanding the humans’ dismay about their current situation. The road that led to the mine had been carved into the side of the mountain, with a steep rock face rising up on one side and a sheer drop on the other. And in the middle of the road, there now sat two massive boulders, each one about two metres across, and each of the boulders was surrounded by what looked like a couple of tonnes of rocks and dirt.
Peering up the mountain, Koradan could see the gouge in the earth where the rocks had come loose. He crossed the road to look down the other side. There was nothing below them but a few knobbly trees and an abundance of moss and ferns, the shadow of the mountain preventing much else in the way of plant life taking hold. According to Lynette’s report, the villagers had already spent the better part of a day clearing some of the dirt and the smaller rocks, simply tossing the debris over the side of the road, but they’d barely made a dent in the greater mass.
“Bel would be up for this,” Koradan said to Sigmore, as they stared at the mess on the road. They’d come out at daybreak, leaving the vreki in the field until they knew more about what they were dealing with. “She likes a good challenge. And we’d need one other. I don’t think more than two of them could work up here without getting in each other’s way.”
“Lign would be the next most obvious choice,” Rodgard said. “He’s bigger than the rest of them, so he’d have the best chance of moving the boulders.”
“We’d need to be careful we don’t destabilise anything else while we’re moving this lot,” Rigolard said. He was Lign’s rider, a quiet man who rarely spoke unless there was something important to say.
“We’ll warn the vreki to keep an eye out,” Koradan said. “Worst case, they can take a dive off the cliff to escape anything coming down on them.” He took another look at the pile. “Do you think they could have this cleared by the end of the day?”
“Well before then,” Sigmore said. “If you give Bel free rein to kick a lot of this shit over the side, she’ll think it’s party time. She’ll have most of it done by lunch.”
“I’m happy to let her have fun, but remember what Rigolard said. We don’t want to destabilise the cliff.”
“There is one other thing we should talk about,” Melowin said, keeping his voice low. The group of villagers who’d come with them to the landslide were lingering a little way down the road, not wanting to get too close to either the ‘demons’ or the risk of a further landslide. “The vreki are going to need something to eat fairly soon. Particularly if they’re going to be putting in a full day’s work. And for that matter, so are we. We didn’t negotiate anything about food in this deal we made with them.”
“I’m aware of the oversight,” Koradan said. “And I was meaning to address it later today. I think we need to put in a good couple of hours’ work first, then we’ll have more sway once they’ve seen we’re serious about helping them. As for the vreki, we can ask Lynette if it’s okay if they eat some of the vegetation in the forest. I think it would be polite to assume that all the plants around the village are for the humans to use, and the farmland is growing vegetables that they wouldn’t likely want to share with ‘dragons’.”
