“I’d be very willing to help,” Koradan said, relieved that they seemed to be making a little progress. “But I will put a few conditions on my cooperation. The first being that you immediately release Paul.”
The man holding Paul glared at him for a long moment, then let go of the boy. Paul stumbled forward, putting a hand to his throat as he took a few deep breaths. “Thanks,” he said to Koradan.
“Secondly,” Koradan said, “if you make even a hint of any threat towards my dragon, we will both be leaving immediately.”
The men hesitated at that. “Oi, is he trying to brainwash us?” one of them asked.
“Don’t sound like it,” another answered. “He just said if we hurt his dragon, he’ll leave. That don’t sound like no brainwashing to me.”
“All right,” the first one replied. “We won’t hurt your dragon.”
“And if we can move some of the rocks and get the miners to safety, will you then consider that me and the other so-called demons are not here to harm you?” Koradan asked.
That caused a longer pause, as the men considered the situation. “Fair enough. If the women folk have made a deal with you to that effect, then we’ll honour it.”
“Good. Then I’ll go and get my dragon, and we can start clearing the mine. Do you have some thick rope?”
“Piles of it,” one of the men said. “We use it to haul the carts out of the mine. Why?”
“We’ll need to wrap it around the boulders to give my dragon something to hold onto while he drags them out of the way. Fetch what you have and meet me at the mine entrance.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Koradan headed for the entrance to the gorge. He could have called Ashd from where he stood, but firstly, he didn’t think the nervous men would take kindly to learning that he could communicate telepathically with his dragon, and secondly, he wanted to see if they would actually give him the opportunity to walk away. It was one thing to promise not to hurt his dragon, but it was quite another to stand back and allow their supposed enemy to simply leave unharmed. He glanced back as he headed for the road, and he was a little surprised to see that the men had, in fact, headed back toward the mine to prepare the needed rope.
Paul, on the other hand, was hurrying after Koradan. “Thank you,” he said, as he came level with him. “I didn’t expect them to do that. I think they thought I’d gone mad for a moment.” He cringed, rubbing his neck again, and Koradan shook his head. Being set upon by your own friends and neighbours must be a rude shock.
But there was something else about the way they’d held Paul hostage that had bothered him. “Has no one ever taught you to fight?” he asked Paul.
“Fight? No. Why do you ask?”
“The headlock he had you in was clumsy. With a little training, you could have easily freed yourself from his grasp. The fact that you didn’t suggests that no one has ever taught you how.”
Paul’s eager expression faded to a more guarded one. “My mother’s not a fan of fighting. She’d throw a fit if I ever tried to learn.”
“I’m not saying you should go and start hiring yourself out as a mercenary. But everyone should have the basic skills to defend themselves.”
Paul shrugged. “It makes no difference to her. We live in a quiet village. Her argument would be why would I ever need to know?”
“She never remarried after your father died?” It was probably none of his business. But Lynette’s antipathy for risk and danger was neither healthy nor practical, and he suspected that her husband’s death had had something to do with it.
“No. I never really asked her why. But she’s never shown any interest in dating someone else.”
“Hmm.” Koradan fell silent. Ashd was waiting for them as they rounded the corner, full of nervous energy at the way the men had threatened Koradan. “Sometimes you have to call your enemies’ bluff,” Koradan explained to the vreki. “But there’s good news. They’ve asked you to come and help move some of the rocks away from the mine entrance. What do you think? Are you up for some heavy lifting?”
An image appeared in Koradan’s mind of the men wielding axes and spears, a clear threat even to a battle-hardened vreki.
“They’ve promised not to hurt you,” he told Ashd. “But if they make even one wrong move, then you and I will be leaving immediately. I’m not going to let them harm you.”
Not harm you either, Ashd said, and Koradan smiled fondly at him.
“Not me, either,” he agreed. “So what do you say? Shall we go and impress them?”
Caution before pride, Ashd said – the same thing Koradan had said to him just before they’d crossed the gate.Rude human.
“You’re right,” Koradan said. “We should be careful. But if we don’t try to help them, they’re never going to accept us.”
“What’s he saying?” Paul asked, his eyes darting back and forth between Koradan and Ashd. Koradan realised he would have been getting a very one-sided version of the conversation.
