Lynette bit her lip. Her heart rate sped up, Paul’s idea being the first step in a real solution to the problem. But there were plenty more steps needed before they would have a workable plan. “It’s not a damn bad idea, though,” she said. “Maybe not to have a vreki go all the way into the city, but what if it landed out in the forest, and then we take Markon the rest of the way in a horse cart?”
“Where exactly are you going to get a horse and cart at a moment’s notice if you go and land in the middle of a forest?” Best asked. “I’m not trying to shit on the idea. But there are a huge number of practical limitations here.”
“How long would it even take a vreki to get there?” Peter asked. “We’re just assuming it’s going to be quicker than a horse, but we don’t actually know. And might I add that if we’re going to start inventing fanciful ways to fly Markon to Minia, we should probably ask the salases – not to mention the vreki – for their opinion on this plan.”
That was the next roadblock, and it was one they should deal with sooner, rather than later. If either the salases or the vreki said no, they were back to square one. “Paul, would you mind running over to Hazel’s house?” Lynette said. “She invited all the salases over there for the evening.”
“Yeah, no problem,” Paul said, leaping up and rushing off. The change in his behaviour was remarkable, so eager to help now, even volunteering for things to do, and Lynette reflected that if she’d known it would be that simple to get Paul to cooperate, she would have started giving him more independence months ago.
A few minutes later, the door opened again, and Koradan and Rodgard came in, Paul close behind. They took in the two men sitting there with studious frowns, and Lynette’s apprehensive expression, and came to stand at the end of the table, looking entirely serious. Immediately, Lynette jumped up. “Please, sit down,” she said, offering her chair. There were only four in the room, and she supposed that she and Paul could stand.
But Koradan waved the offer away. “It’s fine,” he said. “We’re used to standing.” Hesitantly, Lynette sat down again, and Paul sank back into his own chair.
“How about you explain this idea of yours,” Koradan suggested, which told Lynette that Paul had already given them a brief rundown of what they’d been discussing. Koradan’s tone of voice was significantly calmer than the expression on his face, and she wasn’t sure whether that was a good sign or not.
“I’m not entirely sure what Paul has said,” she began, “but I’d like to make the point that we haven’t just started making plans without you. We had an idea, and as soon as it seemed like it might be a viable one, we decided to call you in and ask for your opinion.” If it had just been Koradan, and not Rodgard, she might have skipped the apology. But Rodgard was glaring at her with a deep scowl on his face, and the fact that Koradan had asked him to come strongly implied that his opinion was going to carry significant weight here. So she explained the idea – strap Markon to a vreki and transport him to the outskirts of Minia, from where he would be moved to the hospital, and gods willing, the doctors would save his leg. “What do you think?” she asked, when she was done. “Would it be possible? And if so, would you be willing to try? And furthermore, how long would it take to get there? There are so many details to work out, and I have so many questions, but…”
“Okay, let’s just slow down and take a step back,” Koradan said, as calm as ever. “Have you mentioned this idea to Markon?”
“Not yet, no,” Lynette said. “We need to know if it’s a realistic option first, but there’s a good chance he’d refuse to go anyway. Not everyone is willing to consider the idea offlying.”
“Fair enough,” Koradan said. “Let’s look at each detail in turn, then. Based on the time it took us to get here after crossing the gate, we should be able to fly back in about two and a half hours. That depends to a certain extent on the weather and the wind direction, but the answer to one question is that yes, it would be a lot quicker than a horse. But that’s really the end of the good news.
“Markon wouldn’t be able to sit in a saddle. So we’d need to rig up a way to strap a stretcher to a vreki, then strap Markon to the stretcher in a secure enough way that he couldn’t possibly fall off. That’s difficult, but not impossible, and it’s probably one of the smaller problems we’d face.
“Next up is a bigger one. It’s not just a case of strap him to a vreki and send them off alone. The vreki won’t fly without a salas rider. Theycan, but they’re not going to go far without at least one of us going along. So what you’re asking us to do is to travel into a city that is literally teeming with warriors all hell bent on killing us. And you want us to put the vreki in direct line of that danger as well.” He glanced at Rodgard, who was still scowling fiercely. “Have you thought about how we’re going to deal with that one?”
Everyone was silent. “I hadn’t really thought about the fact that you’d have to go along,” Best admitted, after a few moments. “But you’re right. A salas in Minia is not a great idea.”
“There is… um…” Lynette stopped herself before she’d really said anything. She glanced at the obsidian gem that still hung around Koradan’s neck. Koradan could disguise himself as a human.
But Koradan would surely have thought of that already, so what was holding him back? But a moment later, she realised just why she’d stopped before saying anything. Peter and Best didn’t know about the strange magic the gem contained, and so far, she hadn’t heard any of the other villagers say anything about it, which must mean that Morgan hadn’t said anything to anyone either.
But Koradan couldn’t just turn into a human and hop onto Ashd without everyone in the village finding out about his little secret. Even if they didn’t tell anyone before they left, Markon would find out, and he’d tell Hetti, and then the whole village would know – not because Hetti was particularly malicious with her gossip, but because she had a well-earned reputation for blurting things out without realising what she was saying, and then regretting them later.
Lynette turned the problem over in her mind again. They were so close to a solution. Koradan hadn’t said outright that the salases wouldn’t help. He’d just pointed out the realistic problems with the plan, waiting patiently for someone to solve them. Lynette was fairly sure that if a trip to Minia was out of the question, he’d have said so plainly.
A vague hint of an idea occurred to her, and she tried to come up with a way to put it into words. “What if… You said that long term, you wanted to create an alliance with humans,” Lynette began. “But you also said that humans need hard evidence that ‘demons’ are going to help them, and not cause more strife. And according to most humans, vreki are dragons, and dragons are no more intelligent than the average dog or horse. So one angle we could take – it’s not a full solution, but hear me out – would be for humans to ride the vreki to the forest near Minia, then someone can go into the city to get help – a horse and cart, a doctor, maybe – and prepare the people coming that they’re going to find something very odd when they get back to the forest. Then they explain that the dragon is tame and that a long and convoluted series of events led to them being captured and trained, so hey presto, we have dragons as ‘pets’ now, and they flew to Minia to bring Markon for medical help, just like a horse would have done.”
Rodgard sighed. “How does reducing vreki to dumb animals help them in the long term?”
“Because if we can prove that vreki are tameable and trainable, then we have a reason to allow more of them through the gate. Then we get the ‘tame’ ones to help capture and train the ‘wild’ ones – which would basically just be the old vreki telling the new ones to please behave nicely so that the humans don’t want to kill you – and we have a solid plan for saving a lot more vreki.”
“So they can live out their lives as slaves to humans?” Rodgard said.
“Oh, wow, it’s so much bigger than that,” Paul blurted out, his eyes lighting up as he realised the full implications of the plan. “Because as soon as people realise that vreki aren’t dangerous, they might rethink how dangerous unicorns are. Or hellhounds. Sorry, I don’t know what you call those,” Paul said, turning to Koradan. “The black dogs that breathe fire?”
“Fire dogs,” Koradan said succinctly.
“Right, exactly,” Paul said, ploughing right along. “And if you have these fearsome, violent demon dragons that turn out to be really tame and helpful, then it’ll force people to rethink everything they know about people from Chalandros. Because if a dragon isn’t evil, then what about a demon? Maybe they’re not so bad, after all. Maybe it would be worth actually having a conversation with one? If you can get people to think about the gate differently, you’d have this whole world of opportunities to get them to think about new ideas.”
“It would take people quite a long time to slog through the whole of that philosophical journey,” Peter said, far less optimistic than Paul was being. “Years. Maybe decades. But even so, it would be a start. It would make a lot of people start questioning the things they’ve been taught since they were children.”
“There is an obvious downside to this,” Lynette said, needing to be realistic, despite her excitement about the idea. “If it doesn’t work, if we can’t even get that first handful of people to consider it, then whichever vreki go to Minia would be in serious danger.”
“The only real threat to a vreki are the ballistas,” Koradan said. “And if we stay far enough away from the gate itself, that shouldn’t be a problem. If anyone tries to threaten them, they can simply fly away, so long as we land in a place that has a bit of open field where they can get a run up to get themselves in the air. That said, I’m not agreeing with the idea. It’s tempting, at the same time as carrying a whole world of risk, but that decision would ultimately be up to the vreki. I’m not going to order any of them to go. Nor any of my men. It would be up to each of them to make their own decision.”
“Well, that brings us to the next problem,” Best said. “Koradan said that a salas would have to go with them. And there’s a big difference between trying to get people to accept a ‘tame’ dragon versus a demon warrior built like a stone tower.”
