Snoring harshly, the dragon twitched in its sleep now and then, as if striving through bad dreams for a less miserable position on the gold coins, jewelry, gems, and bones layering the cavern floor.
Two dozen paces off, at the turning of the passageway, the damoselle froze, suppressing nausea at the appalling stench of the place. She clutched tight In her arms the royal tax collection to prevent it clinking on her armor lest it wake the beast.
Heavy training had preceded this, her first trip as tax-bearer.
Her task was to quietly empty the sack into any low spot the light of the cave’s natural oculus showed her, so the king’s treasurer could simply measure from true floor-level upward to the evened height of the hoard in order to render a reasonable current accounting of the royal wealth. It would be for some brawny knight, armed with smoke bombs and a gas mask, to drug the dragon, and use his mace to even out the hoard more precisely in advance of the treasurer.
But training had not prepared the damoselle to find, outlined against the soot-stained cave wall, a living shape so like her grandmother curled on a hard pallet near the waning warmth of the hovel’s clay oven, gasping for air and aching for decent sleep.
The dragon shifted, and the damoselle smothered a gasp herself at sight of a shackle sliced through scaled membrane to encircle bone halfway from tip to shoulder of one wing. The shackle’s chain rattled on precious metals its links descended down into; there would be a massive iron bolt wedded to bedrock below.
“Another new one,” a hoarse voice rasped, jerking the damoselle’s gaze back to the prisoner’s face. And open eyes. “Another fool. You girls never think to organize your ranks and villages, bring a wagon-train, clear this cave out for yourselves, and beggar the king.”
“Cl… clear it out?”
“Yes, idiot. Didn’t the taxes come from your threadbare pockets in the first place? And could an impoverished tyrant pay soldiers and knights to enforce his rule over you?” The dragon stretched a gaunt neck and eyed her closely. “You look very familiar. Had you a sister or mother serving in this job cadre before you?”
“Aunt and grandmother,” the damoselle stuttered.
“And where are they now?” The dragon’s forked, cat-rough tongue flicked out on the query’s fourth word.
“Grandmother is crippled, hardly able to manage the smallest home-chore — you attacked her, her first trip here. My aunt you ate.” She could not suppress a shudder, glancing involuntarily at scattered, calcified remains.
“Don’t be more stupid than you can help. A mere six meals a year wouldn’t keep any creature’s body and soul in one piece. And human bones are not that large. Look there—“ the free wing rustled up to point across the cave— “you’ll find the source of the reek that’s bringing up your bile. Oh, for the gods’ sake, put the sack down and get a sleeve of your surcoat across your nose and mouth before you lose your lunch. What more proof would anyone need that the deputy treasurer selects lackwits for his depositor-cadre.”
“We are not— !”
“Shut up, and go look. Closer, little fool! But don’t lose your footing across all this precious mess. If you break an ankle, I can’t help, and the next visitor will be one with orders to kill you. Likely what happened to your aunt, unless she somehow ran off and escaped this putrid land. Well? What kind of carcass do you see? It’s intact; I’ll never again touch a bite of the king’s drug-laden fare. Better starvation with a clear mind as end to this torture. Well, a village wench cannot mistake the shape. Speak up, you!”
“It’s a small ox.” She backed, stumbling, from the bloated thing the dragon had positioned itself as far away from as its chain allowed.
“Go back down the passage for air — I don’t need any reek from you worsening matters — then come back if you care to speak further. But take care! Don’t set a foot outside the cave entrance for your guards to see you — they’ll know you’ve failed your task, and suspect something more traitorous.”
“I came alone,” the damoselle said stiffly.
“You imagine you did. Do you really think a king who picks the bones of his people clean and hoards treasure a dragon is claimed to protect would set no jailor-executioner on you burden-beast girls? Any one of you might conspire with criminals once you’d learned the nature of your servitude. How young are you all these days, that you believe everything your betters say?”
“Fourteen.”
“Ah, so very much younger now? At what ages did your aunt and grandmother serve?” The dragon spoke less contemptuously now, as if to acknowledge the damoselle’s strength in not leaving the cavern for clean air, and there was almost a kind of pity in its eyes.
“Aunt started at eighteen, when she’d reached full growth and could easily carry the load,” the damoselle slowly said. “Or so I was told. By twenty-two, she had disappeared. Grandmother was twenty-one her one trip here.”
“Remarkable your grandmother still lives,” the dragon mused. “Let me guess: she was carried home with her right arm and right leg twisted nearly around, and several ribs on that side broken?”
“You did attack her! Or how would you know that?”
The dragon yawned foully, but looked more awake than ever. “I didn’t do it; I watched it. No wonder you look familiar to me. You have nearly repeated your grandmother’s script, word for word and motion for motion. But she stepped out into the cave’s mouth for air before returning, and the soldiers skulking after her saw her do it. They have their orders, after all. They’re paid better than all of you, though.”
“You’re saying the pay makes them more loyal. Why not entrust the gold to them, then?” she asked.
“They know I’m nothing to fear, chained up like this and drugged to boot. But sweet village virgins taught to tremble, blind with tears of terror as they do their duty here — why, that breeds horrific tales that keep peasants in order on the cheap. Like you. So many fewer soldiers and knights needed, so much wealth saved for his majesty and courtiers to keep their armed might.”
“You’ve known and done nothing for centuries!” she accused.
“Centuries? Don’t be ridiculous. Even the longest living creature only reaches two hundred at the very most. I must be about eighty, since I remember your grandmother. I was newly imprisoned here, and not yet drugged, too terrified in anguish from the shackle to consume much of the fodder thrown in with me, though I was not yet fully grown. I begged her for help. The guards crept in, right on her heels when she came back down the passageway. She got not a word out before they did for her. They must not have realized we’d spoken, or they’d have killed her, as I saw happen later a few times. Surely you’d heard of others ‘eaten’ besides your aunt?”
“We all heard. Of many.”
“And yet you bravely did your duty when called by the king.” The dragon’s tone was a sneer again. “Well, it’s to be hoped all the eaten ones escaped somehow. It would only take being a bit smarter than average, perhaps. The king’s treasure-guards are no great shakes; they have to not be, but only know their job and do it, or they’d turn thief themselves, the whole crew, and be over the border before the treasurers knew.”
“My aunt might still live?”
With a bitter laugh for her singular focus, the dragon replied, “Why not? Why not any who disappeared? If they’d been punished as criminals, you’d have seen their bodies hung in chains at the crossroads for all who transgress against the royal will. By the gods, you are terribly young and ignorant.”
“Then tell me more I should know. You must! You owe all who’ve died because of you.”
“Because of me? You understand nothing. Go away. Play the obedient slave. You’re too empty-headed to be of any rescue for me and you only endanger yourself if you tarry.”
“She’s in no danger, except perhaps of withering under your scorn,” came a voice from the passage-way, followed by others laughing in agreement.
“By the gods, another familiar face,” the dragon said as a woman stepped into the shaft of daylight streaming from the oculus. Like her companions, she was clad in mismatched bits of scratched and dented armor, and armed likewise. Besides the helmet on her head was a bloody one in hand. She waved the other women forward, one of them with a small anvil, another with a blacksmith’s hammer, and they got to work digging down to the bolt anchoring the dragon’s chain. Another was setting out a chirogeon’s kit on a clear space of cave floor by the passageway, through which six others were already carrying out the reeking ox, rolled in a canvas the size of a boat-sail, or the covering of a two-wheeled ox-cart by which a girl with a sack of treasure might have travelled here.
“First we get you loose,” one of the blacksmith women was telling the dragon. “Then our witch-woman puts numbweed on you and we get the shackle off and she sews your wing up. All right?”
“Get out of here,” the dragon groaned, stretching out the free wing to nudge at the damoselle in her aunt’s embrace. “Leave before the girl and the guards are missed and more soldiers come.”
“They’re not coming, or no time soon,” another woman said. She was the nearest in a bucket-brigade of them, passing small sacks forward to be filled with treasure, and passing filled sacks back down the passage and out of the cave. Breathless with her work, she added, “Some relatives of yours are keeping things busy at the castle. And some relatives of ours, too.”
All the women hearing it laughed again. One called out, “There’ll be not stone left upon stone of the place by the time our combined families are done with it.”
“And then this hoard will go to all the families to make good use of, and we’ll go on to the next kingdom, and the next, until no royal tyrant’s house stands, and every peasant works safe in her own smithy, weavery, and field, and sleeps safe in her own stone cottage at night,” Aunt said, finally releasing the damoselle from the fierce strength of her arms. “Not such fools as we once were.”
“The air in here is better already,” the dragon told her. The light in the cavern was stronger too. And throughout the land soon after.
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