I held him closer, following Asdren back to the small, round tunnel I had seen earlier. “I can walk through, bent over, but you’ll have to crawl,” Asdren informed me while eyeing the northwestern shaft. I nodded. “Is it warm enough to follow?” He pointed at the ball of scales, teeth, and claws under my armor and underclothes.
The connection between us was softer now, the hum more of a sleeping mind rhythm. “He sleeps. I will manage.”
“On one arm?” I bobbed my head. “Fuck me. Give the damn thing to me.” I hesitated. “I ain’t going to wring its neck. I got no use for the bastards, but if it’s divine to you, then it’s untouchable.” He held out his rough hands. Hands that I wished would be on my skin tonight. “Come on then, Chirp. Time is—”
“Money, yes, I know.” I reached under my undershirt to lift the dragonling away from my chest. Jaculi growled in protest. “You must tuck him close to your heart so he warms slowly. Your hairy chest will be cozy like a bird’s nest.”
He muttered in Dwarvish as he shoved the ball of blue lizard under his shirt. “You stay close. I got good stone sense. You got no sense.” I smiled at the dig. “Don’t go off on a side shaft. Stay within touching distance of me at all times.”
“Yes, of course. I will.” He cocked a wild brow. “I vow to stay within touching distance of you. Go. Time is money.”
“Wise arse,” he grumbled and ducked down. Bowed nearly in half, he entered the dark, dark underpass. Reaching out with a hand, I found his arse and then laid my hand on it. “You being funny, elf?”
“No, I am within touching distance just as you commanded, dwarf.”
“And here I thought you was this timid little thing with bones as fine as a bird wing, and all along you was metal and spit under pretty scarlet plumage.”
I liked his poetic, literate ways quite a bit. We moved through the tunnel, me on hands and knees, for a long time, leaving the cold behind thankfully. A dim light broke through at the end of an offshoot that he headed down. Creeping along with gravel ground into my hands and knees, we soon emerged on the far side of the cave where the rest of our party was busy trying to move rock from the slide.
Asdren exited, straightened, and dug under his shirt to hand the now writhing dragon over to me when I emerged. I opened my hands. Jaculi leapt from Asdren to me, using his scaly nose to burrow under my breastplate. Or tried to, at least. He gave the leather a bite.
“You three working on moving twenty ton of stone by hand shows me that you got the blood of the miners flowing through your veins,” Asdren shouted.
“Shit on a stick! We thought you two fell into a fucking ice crack,” Smuta replied as she and the twins spun about, shock replaced by happiness to see us before the happiness changed back into shock. “By my granny’s beaded tuft is that a fucking dragon?! Has your cart lost its wheels?!”
I smiled widely, holding a dragon to my chest. The soft breeze from the gap above blew over us, a chilly breeze thatcarried our scent to the ponies nibbling on some hay flakes in the corner. The response was immediate. Nostrils flared, ears back, they jerked to attention as the smell of a predator hit them. How they knew it to be a meat eater, I had no clue. Instinct, I assumed, as they had never smelled a dragon young before.
Danger. Danger. Run! Run!
All five steeds became overwrought in mere seconds. I passed Jaculi to Asdren then ran to the horses, whispering to them, stroking them.
You are safe. It is a young lizard. No threat. Easy, easy, easy. I have apple.
That helped them settle slightly. The apple slices were brown now, dried out, but still palatable enough when one was hungry.
Once the horses were quieted, I moved closer to the huddle of little people gathered by a rounded wall speckled with frost. Asdren still held Jaculi in his arms, his beard covering the small dragonling.
“Have all your carts run off the rails?!” Smuta was shouting at Asdren, and the twins were yelling at each other. I eased closer, unsure if I would be welcomed or hit over the head. With the short-tempered troupe I traveled with, either was a possibility. “Bringing a dragon out into the world after we lost generations of warriors killing off the miserable shits?! Is your pick made of petunias? You’ve been dallying with that elf for too long. You’re getting all tender just like them frond-munchers. I never thought I would see the day that Asdren Grimmane would put the tender feelings of one skinny, pointed-ear, leaf-lover above his own people.”
I cleared my throat. All four sets of eyes whipped over to me. “I will take the dragon and build a fire.” Jaculi leapt into myarms and wrapped around my neck and shoulders like a scarf. A chilly, scaly scarf.
“Look, Chirp, I didn’t mean no serious disrespect,” Smuta rushed to say.
“None taken. I do eat fronds and dandelions and lounge at the base of trees. Some days I embrace the elms and oaks.”
“Well, yeah, that’s real nice,” she replied, her round cheeks bright red. The twins gawked openly at the wyrmling around my shoulders, their hands on their weapons. “And hey, I’m all for eating greens. I do so whenever I need to cleanse my bowels. But this here,” she waved a hand at the cold dragon trying to eat my breastplate, “this beast is a plague. All of his kind wiped out thousands of our people.”
“Hundreds of seasons ago. Perhaps your people wiped out thousands of them. Perhaps your people could have found a peaceful way to coexist with the divine ones instead of slicing them into bits to steal their teeth from their skulls.” I threw a dark look at Narub and Dulgar, who had the good grace to look down at their boots.
“And how were we to do that? No one can speak with dragons!” she shouted up at me.
“I can,” I answered.
Smuta gaped at me. Asdren raised his grimy hands to quiet the female before she fired back. Let her. I was not going to back down. They would have to slay me if they thought to touch this spiritual beast.
“Okay, let’s all just take a few minutes to let our blades cool,” Asdren said aloud. “Now, we can’t do nothing to the dragon as he claims it’s a divine being according to his goddess.” I nodded. The three others looked as if someone had swatted them on the head with a mace. “I know, makes me wonder what kind of dried moss them wood elves is smoking in their pipes, but until we learn different, we can’t kill a divine being. Wedon’t want to stir up shite with the wood elves again. Took us several hundred years of negotiating with their people to end the wars that cost us way more than the dragons ever took. So, until we meet up with a druid with higher learning than Chirp here—”
“I know what the scrolls say! I have listened to the teachings!”
