The Order of the Scales Deas - The Order of the Scales

The armour. He was still wearing bits of the armour. The stupid dragon-scale armour…

‘Fetch a good price, a dragon-rider,’ snarled a new voice, and then another boot met his face and all the light went out of the world.

*

Kemir was staring up at the sky. The air was warm. He was in a boat, rocking from side to side. People were laughing. He could hear the river, water, oars. He couldn’t move, though. Couldn’t even move his eyes. Just had to stare at the sky, so bright and blue…

He was moving. Couldn’t see, but he was moving. Snow. Snow was carrying him. He was on her back. Just couldn’t see…

Screaming…

Cold…

He opened his eyes again. Lucid this time. He was somewhere in the dark. Very dark. Night, perhaps, except too dark even for that. Underground? He blinked. He could do that now. Couldn’t move much else but he could move his eyes. He was lying down and he was in a cave. He could see the outline of an exit straight in front of him, a lighter dark against the blackness.

He’d been stripped. The air in the cave was warm but cooling. They hadn’t cut him, at least. His face and his back throbbed from the kicks he’d taken. His arm pulsed like the heartbeat of the world, a steady rhythm of agony. He tried not to think about that. Moved his head and scanned the cave instead. He was alone, for now. Outside he could hear voices. Laughter.

There was a smell too. A sweet smell. Dust.

He heard a whimper, then a rising shrill pleading. Kataros. He tried to move, but the river men knew their business. He was tied to a pole, hands, knees, ankles and neck. He couldn’t even stand up.

The whimpers turned to screams, and then after a while back to whimpers, the laughter rising and falling with them. Eventually they stopped. The smell of dust grew stronger.

He must have fallen asleep. When he woke again, there were men coming into the cave reeking of drink and dust. They had Kataros with them. She was naked, half bound. Their hands were all over her but she barely seemed to notice. She had the languid slithering walk of someone lost deep in the dust and most of the pirates were little better. A couple of them came over to Kemir.

‘Had your whore and had your dust, dragon-man,’ slurred one of them. They kicked him for a bit but quickly lost interest. Before long, they were all snoring.

Snoring was good. He started working on the ropes around his wrists.

He was still working on them when the light outside the cave began to change. The river men knew their business indeed. Hours of effort and he’d achieved nothing. Nothing at all.

The river pirates rose late in the afternoon, as the dust torpor slowly wore off them. Mostly they ignored Kemir. There wasn’t much point in trying to talk to them. They thought he was a dragon-rider and that was that. So he stayed quiet, played dead and watched. Kataros was his only hope now, before the pirates decided to kill him.

They seemed to forget about her too. As the evening came and the pirates went back outside, they were left alone. She hadn’t moved all day. Dust could do that. Although there was always the chance she was dead. From where he lay, Kemir couldn’t tell.

‘Alchemist,’ he hissed. ‘Alchemist.’

She didn’t move.

‘Alchemist! Wake up! Kataros!’

Now she stirred. They’d tied her ankles and her wrists, Kemir saw, but she was moving. She rolled clumsily across the floor of the cave. She was dirty and bruised. Her face was puffy. Streaks of dried blood ran down her legs. Her eyes were glazed and wouldn’t focus. The aftermath of too much dust.

‘Please… help.’ She looked at him, eyes drifting back and forth.

‘Yes!’ He tried to roll over but couldn’t. ‘Can you untie me?’

She shook her head. ‘Hands.’ She showed him her hands, tied together behind her back. Kemir gritted his teeth. If they’d been so lax with him, he’d have chewed his way through the ropes in the night and slit all their throats. It would have been easy.

‘Fine. Curl up in a ball.’

‘What?’

‘Curl up in a ball. Get your hands round in front of you. Use your teeth to free your hands. Then untie me!’

‘I don’t…’

The light changed. Someone was standing in the cave mouth.

‘Well well. It lives. Lads!’ Two of the river men came in. They weren’t drunk or dust-addled this time, so the kicking they gave Kemir was more methodical than the one he’d had in the night. ‘You know, I think we should just kill you. You and your woman.’ When they were done with Kemir, one of them grabbed Kataros by the hair and started to pull her to the cave entrance. She screamed and bit and fought, but there wasn’t much she could do to stop them.

‘Dust,’ Kemir shouted at her. ‘Take dust. It numbs the pain.’

The river men laughed. ‘Oh we’ll give her your dust, dragon-man. We did that already. Couldn’t get enough of us, could you?’

‘Dust!’ he shouted as they pulled her out. Dust. Lots and lots of it. Made you forget everything. She’d be all right as long as they had dust. With enough of it, the pirates would probably start buggering each other.

And then he lay there and pulled at his bonds and got nowhere as he listened to Kataros sob and the river men laugh.

Snow.

His throat hurt with thirst. The air that blew in from the Maze was dry and parched. There was a river right outside the mouth of the cave, though. He could hear it.

It might as well have been across the Endless Sea.

They didn’t bother dragging Kataros back in that night. Then again, half of the river men didn’t come in either.

He didn’t want to die. He was fairly sure of that. Otherwise why was he on the river in the first place, running away from a monster he ought to be trying to stop, planning to sell the only person left in the world who seemed to give a damn about him into slavery to save his own skin? Someone who didn’t much care about being dead wouldn’t do something like that, would they?

Monster, Kemir?

It took him seconds, whole seconds, to realise the last thoughts hadn’t been his own. The dragon was back in his head. Come to gloat at his dying, he supposed.

No.

He opened his eyes. It was light outside. Daylight again. Middle of the day? Bright sun in the canyon, reaching its very roots. There were men stirring around him, dazed and half asleep.

From outside, the loudest scream Kemir had ever heard split the air. It echoed around the cave. It was the sort of scream that should have tumbled rocks from the stone walls outside. It was Kataros, and it pierced his heart like a knife. It could only be the scream of someone who was about to die. River men stumbled to their feet, still dazed with last night’s dust, grabbed whatever weapons they could find and staggered outside. Kemir’s heart pounded. Five beats, then twenty. He strained his ears, trying to hear.

Shouting – questioning at first, then angry. He thought he heard Kataros laugh, but that must have been his ears playing tricks. As more of the men lurched their way out into the daylight, a whooshing rush of air shook the cave. Two more screams, just two, men this time. A figure in the mouth of the cave was silhouetted against the brightness outside. For a moment he seemed frozen, then some huge shadow came down behind him and he was hurled away. The last few men in the cave stood paralysed. One of them swore; one whimpered; one fell to his knees and clutched his head. The rest said nothing at all.

The cave went dark. For a moment Kemir thought he’d gone blind, but no, this was the dark of something enormous poking its head into the cave mouth and blocking out the light.

Dragon. Kemir sighed and closed his eyes and waited for the fire. Riders came to the Maze to clear out the pirates from time to time. Not often, and not for many years, but it happened. It suited the sort of luck he’d been having that they’d choose to come now.