Джеффри Лорд: Ice Dragon

Rena's village-she knew it as East Pass Town-had been one of the northernmost villages of the Treduki-the «Coldlanders»-as opposed to the Graduki-the «Warmlanders,» who lived in the warmer, temperate regions of this world, rather than farther north, nearer the glaciers. The glaciers had been advancing south for many generations, grinding out of existence one Treduk community after another, and driving the people farther and farther south. Some had, over the centuries, given up and tried to flee all the way to the cities of the Graduki. But these despised the Treduki as barbarians. Those who fled were usually killed outright or enslaved; at times they might be allowed to live free but confined to menial tasks and poor areas. In the end this discouraged refugees.

But the Treduki in their turn saw how physically feeble the Graduki seemed as a result of their reliance on machines, and in turn came to despise them. Blade could understand why the Treduki might despise a more mechanized people, if Rena's endurance, muscles, and genuine skill in unarmed combat were typical of her people.

But neither the glaciers nor the undeclared war between the two peoples was the greatest danger any more. In the past few years the Ice Dragons had come, monstrous creatures that swarmed out of the night to fall on Treduk villages. The Dragons smashed and slaughtered with their stamping feet and their lashing tails and their terrible jaws. And the men who rode and controlled them, the Dragon Masters, added to the horrors by orgies of looting and raping, and by capturing with the sticky webs scores of younger men and women, to carry them away to the north and an unknown and unthinkable fate. Rena had at first feared Blade was a Dragon Master returned to visit the scene of the raid of the previous night. Rena and perhaps a few others had escaped by simply running into the forest at the first sound of the Dragons crashing into the town's walls. But most of the people had either failed to run, or decided to stay and actively fight with their weapons-spears, axes, swords, pikes, bows, and what Blade recognized from Rena's description as crude but workable black-powder guns.

The Ice Dragons particularly intrigued Blade. It took him many patient questions and much soothing of Rena's trembling and shivering at the memory of seeing them looming out of the night, to get anything like a coherent description of them out of her. They were apparently enormous-Blade realized that his guess about dinosaur-sized creatures had been right-incredibly savage, and apparently invulnerable to any weapons the Treduki possessed. (That was another reason for their hatred of the Graduki-the latter, it appeared, possessed weapons that could have sliced the Ice Dragons and their Masters into little pieces or broiled them like steaks in a matter of seconds. But they would not make these available to the despised Treduki.) The Dragon Masters rode on the backs of their mounts, and controlled them with small rods-ridiculously small, it seemed to Rena, to have any effect on such great beasts. Perhaps the Dragon Masters themselves had advanced knowledge, like the Graduki?

That seemed to Blade a virtual certainty. The Ice Dragons did not sound like the product of any sort of natural evolution that he was prepared to believe in, at least not on this world. Moreover, from Rena's account, he had the impression that the worsening of the climate that brought the glaciers south-and presumably north from the opposite pole-had moved in with unnatural speed. But the earlier days of the glaciation were far back in a now legend-haunted past, so he could not be sure.

Whatever was abroad in this world, it deserved more inquiry. But the first step in that would have to be finding clothes and food, then making his way with Rena to the nearest surviving Treduk village. Rena indicated that the town of Irdna would be-if not stricken by the Ice Dragons also-off to the south and about two hours away. The day was wearing on; Blade knew it was time to equip themselves and move out.

Rena was understandably reluctant to return to the wreckage of the village which hid the mangled bodies of her family. Blade scrounged the necessary gear for their cross-country hike, though he found it a thoroughly unpleasant job. It involved burrowing into the ruins of cottages and shops and finding in nearly every one the bodies of villagers-chests crushed in by falling timbers, limbs bitten off by Ice Dragon jaws, some showing signs of torture and mutilation by the Dragon Masters. As he had expected, most of the young men and women were entirely gone-spirited away on the backs of the Dragons. After a quick meal of salted meat and crackers, they dressed themselves and began the hike to Irdna.

Rena's idea of two hours walking was rather generous. It was well into the evening before they met the Irdnan patrols flung out along the riverbank toward East Pass. The Irdnans were suspicious of Blade until Rena explained who he was, and somewhat reserved even after that. He understood their attitude; living out here on a frontier in constant deadly danger had made the Treduki draw in on themselves and become cautious with strangers. He made no attempt to question the Irdnan patrol, but simply fell in behind them for the last miles of the march to the town.

He was impressed by the discipline and order of the patrol. Although they all wore the tunic-breeches-boot combination that seemed to be standard among the Treduki, it was as close to a uniform as the crude materials and tailoring permitted. Most of them carried long, heavy flintlock muskets as well as swords or axes. Their leader, a youngish man named Nilando with a Viking-style blond beard and braided hair, carried a large pistol with a silvered mounting and wore a chain of heavy brass links around his thick, tanned neck. The patrol kept good march order, and there was much looking from side to side of the path until finally the gate towers of Irdna came in sight beyond the treetops.

Irdna was many times the size of East Pass Town. Not only was its wall of stone and brick, but it was further surrounded by fields laboriously hacked out of the forest, in which anemic crops of grain were beginning to sprout. It lay close to the riverbank, and alongside a pier mounting several small guns on swivel mounts lay a number of stout, slab-sided boats.

Nilando turned to Blade after the gate had slammed shut behind them and said gruffly, «Rena tells me you saw nothing of the Ice Dragons' attack on her village. Is that right?»

«It is. I had traveled far that day, and-«

«No matter. There would have been nothing you could have done in any case. But we bring all survivors of Ice Dragon attacks before our town leaders. They send what the survivors tell them to the Council of Resistance in Tengran.»

«The Council of Resistance?» Blade sensed that there was something here that Nilando might not reveal if he thought Blade was probing directly.

«We of the Treduki are sworn to resist the Ice Dragons and their Masters to the death. Our hearts are not rotted by warmth like those of the Graduki. So from each survivor of an attack we learn what he saw and heard, and the Council adds it to their great books. Someday we will use what is in those books to destroy the Ice Dragons and make the ice go back north, to where the legends say it once was.»

Blade shook his head. He could hardly explain to this tough young soldier that his people were fighting a foredoomed battle, as hopeless as that of a tribe of savages against a modern army. Nor did he really feel like undercutting the man's courage by even trying to do so.

Nilando went on. «Rena has made us believe that you are no Dragon Master, and I trust the word of a Free Woman of the Treduki. Even more do I trust one who would have been my betrothed within the space of another moon's waning. But until we know what you are, we must confine you. It will be only for a few days, and you need have little fear for yourself. We are not the Graduki, to slay or enslave a stranger merely because he is a stranger.» He and Blade shook hands, then two of the patrol stepped forward and led Blade away.