The company spent four more wet and miserable days in the Fyrken swamp before they came to the foot of the Gráfell Mountains. Jagged peaks rose high above them. Dense pine and fir forests covered the high mountainsides. The woods cut off in a strangely level boundary, almost as if Maht-Hildis had used his divine sword to scrape clean the lower slopes.
The dwarf pointed at the sharp forest edge. “Dragons hunt the lands below the treeline. All of us must watch the skies. Do not hesitate to cry out if you see something.”
Bodelic unslung the waterproofed leather case from his back and pulled out a short dark bow, replacing it in the case with his staff. The five caravan guards followed Bodelic’s lead and armed themselves with elenium bows from Gellan Ware’s cargo.
“If a dragon attacks, wait for my signal. Our goal is not to kill, but to chase it away. The dragon can burn us with fire before we’re close enough for a kill shot.”
Philburn asked, “What part o’ those beasts do we shoot?”
“The wing roots. Tear the delicate wing membrane and the dragon will flee. Do not aim for the head or the breast, because dragons have bony plates along the front profile and will dive towards us behind that armor.”
Gellan Ware asked, “How long before we reach Nidafall?”
“Three days. We also cannot light campfires. Large dragons assume the flames mean a small dragon has made a kill, and they will come to steal the meat...”
“Royalty of the sky,” muttered Garin in disgust.
Bodelic ignored the interruption, “Large bonfires scare them off, but we should not squander the fuel to use such a trick. Thus we must rely on sharp eyes and secrecy.”
With those words, the dwarf led Gellan Ware’s party into the Gráfell Mountains. The dwarf carefully chose their path to utilize the available cover: mostly large boulders strewn across the rough terrain. He scowled as the larger men crunched the broken rock beneath their feet. The dwarf tried to teach them to minimize their footfalls by taking cautious steps, but the men seemed reluctant to heed his warnings. When questioned about the need for such care, the dwarf explained, “If our steps spook a flock of birds or a mountain goat, a dragon could be drawn to the activity.”
Despite fear-driven efforts, the city-bred guardsmen and traders barely reduced their clumsy racket. Bodelic resigned himself to the danger. For two days, fortune favored them and they walked safely through the jagged mountain passes. On the morning of the third day, however, their luck ran out.
Every morning, mist hung over Gráfell’s cool passes in a thick white blanket. Bodelic ordered the company to remain in their camp until the morning mists passed. Dragons liked to hover just above the soup in the hope of sniffing prey through the low-lying fog and pouncing upon unaware victims. On this particular day, Aubert dropped a cooking pan out of his pack after neglecting to close it completely before hefting it onto his back.
Just as Bodelic hissed his objection, a noxious breeze assaulted them from above. A panicked Garin cried out, “DRAGON!!!”
Bodelic did not even bother to turn his head. Instead, he bellowed, “Cover!” and dove behind the nearest boulder to put solid granite between him and the monster.
Cal frantically spotted a likely rock and, remembering that the dwarf had said dragons hunt from upwind, he instinctively sheltered behind the correct side of the huge stone to protect himself from the dragon’s swooping attack. Crouching behind the boulder, he raised his bow and groped at the quiver over his back for an arrow.
Aubert screamed as the dragon’s claws gashed his side before he could find safety. Peering around the rock, Cal caught a glimpse of the stricken guard. Aubert took two drunken steps toward cover, and then fell backwards. The doomed man flopped on the ground in a quivering mass, his muscles firing in random spurts up and down his spine, jerking his limbs with crazed impulses. He shrieked in agony.
Bodelic screamed, “LOOSE!!!”
Calidon sprang from cover, his eyes rapidly locking onto a vast bulky shape with forest green scales and a red crest looming over Aubert, the creature’s massive head low to the ground, apparently preparing to feed.
Heedless of flying arrows shot by his companions, Garin dropped his bow and rushed from cover, his long gray-blond braids flying behind him like streamers. Screaming in anguish, Garin windmilled his war hammer in an awkward two-handed blow with all his enraged strength. The solid strike to the dragon’s shoulder seemed to have little effect on the great beast. As the dragon brought his mouth to bear, the hysterical guardsman punched the creature with his chain-mail covered left fist.
Dark gold ichor flowed from the beast’s damaged nose, causing the startled dragon to pull back its head, open his jagged tooth-lined jaw and let fly a great blast at Garin from his mouth. Garin, expecting burning flame, froze in a momentary catatonic trance. Belatedly, he realized he had merely been drenched from a high-pressure blast of a foul-smelling gas mixed with water droplets.
Cal let fly an arrow at the yellow-green wings and hastily ducked behind the boulder once more. When the dragon gave a horrible high-pitched warble, he belatedly realized he had heard three of the powerful elenium bows twang. The beast took to the air with a mighty flap of its enormous wings.
“‘Ware the Dragon! He’ll come around for another pass,” warned Bodelic. “Fire at will!”
The men sprang from behind the rocks and showered the dragon’s back with wild flights of arrows. Only a few found their mark. The dwarf continued to spout instructions in a rapid-fire delivery, “He cannot flame unless he aligns his body straight along his central axis. Shoot! Shoot!”
While the men continued to launch shafts at the dragon, Bodelic burrowed in his pack once more. The dwarf desperately yanked out a cloth bundle and rolled it out like a long, thin carpet that graced a human Lord’s throne room. The dragon rose through the fog and the men lost sight of him. Meanwhile, the dwarf counted silently to himself. Once his tally reached one hundred, he hurriedly lit the cloth with his tinderbox. A great gush of flame ran down the carpet’s length.
“Scream!” cried the dwarf, letting out a blood-curdling cry of pain. The men answered his call. Their chorus of cries filled the sky and echoed throughout the mountain pass. Bodelic made cutting motions at this throat, his eyes bulging with animated desperation. The men fell silent. The dwarf stood emphatically still, hoping his companions would follow his lead.
As the group fell quiet, Cal clearly heard the grisly sounds of Aubert thrashing on the ground like a marionette attached by invisible stings to a demon-possessed puppeteer. Garin jerked his head in Aubert’s direction and rushed to his aid. The dwarf ran after him.
Aubert moaned in agony while Garin fumbled with his friend's torn leather jerkin. The cries abruptly stopped when the dwarf clamped his thick, stubby hand over the screaming man’s mouth. Garin turned to the dwarf, his face twisted with undisguised rage. Bodelic ignored the guardsman's futile anger while his eyes searched the sky, his ears tuned to the slightest sound from the above. After an anxious few moments, the dwarf relaxed; apparently, he thought the dragon would not return. The other men rushed to Aubert’s side.
They were too late. Already, a crimson river of blood gushed over the rocks under Aubert’s back and pooled in a small hallow about a foot and-a-half from his thrashing body. When the men gently turned him onto his stomach, they saw the spiked white bones of his spine. His friends’ strained voices murmured a confused babel of assurances.
“Lie still!”
“’Tis not so bad...”
“We’ll have you fixed in no time.”
Aubert did not believe them. His pale, drawn face showed no hope. He knew he was dying.
The harsh rasp of metal against metal rang in the air as the dwarf pulled a wicked curved dagger from his waist sheath. Bodelic made a swift motion toward the ill-fated man as if to slit Aubert’s throat.
In a foaming rage, Othon grabbed the dwarf's thin right arm. “How dare you murder him, you bloodthirsty dwarf! Now we see the true character of your kind.”
Bodelic’s actions had blasted away twenty years of carefully nurtured trust in a single moment. The remaining four guards crowded the dwarf, attempting to intimidate him with their height. Even Gellan Ware looked at the Miner with skepticism, apparently wondering if he had befriended a viper.
“Maht-Hildis’s mercy,” muttered Cal, stepping forward to defend Bodelic. As Aubert’s nominal commander, and friend, it was his duty to offer the dying man warrior’s grace: not the dwarf. Just as the tension mounted toward what seemed to be an inevitable confrontation, the stricken guardsman gargled a large splat of blood and died.
Aubert’s lifelong friends slowly gathered around his corpse like a herd protecting a wounded calf, as if their mere presence could hold his soul to his body. They said nothing. Another friend was dead. They had seen it many times before. Cal looked at their faces and saw the unspoken question of aged warriors flitting from eye to eye: which of us is next?
Garin’s grief so overcame him that he did not even stop to question why he was merely wet instead of burned to a crisp.
Cal interrupted their vigil by intoning the Warrior’s Eulogy from the Temple of Maht-Hildis:
’Tis by the Sword we Live.
’Tis by the Sword we Die
’Tis by the Sword we Preserve:
—the lands
—the lodgings
—and the lives
of those we Love.
’Tis by the Sword we Matter
to the Gods Above.
As Cal began the ritual words, the four guardsmen and Gellan Ware turned to him, betrayal etched on their middle-aged faces. Then they realized Calidon had broken Temple strictures to offer a freebooter the warrior’s eulogy as a token of respect. A tear ran down a wrinkle alongside Philburn’s nose, which was soon lost in the thatch of his heavy brown beard.
Styrian stood a respectful distance apart as the warriors paid their final respects to their friend, but the dwarf ignored the impromptu ceremony and instead poked at a whitish-silver lump that lay about five paces from Aubert’s broken body. After Cal fell silent, a curious Styrian came to Bodelic’s side and looked over the dwarf’s shoulder.
“You see! Here is why Garin is not burned!” exclaimed Bodelic to Gellan Ware’s stunned apprentice.
“What is it?”
“A soft metal,” answered the dwarf, squishing the lump with his staff.
The Miner explained, “Nandium is what Artisans call it. The rest of us use another word that translates to dwarrow-bane in your tongue. Dragons extrude it, covered in a light coat of oil, from an orifice right under their nose. The blasting mist exposes dwarrow-bane to air and ignites the gas. Garin had the good fortune to smash it free with his fist even though I am certain he had no idea what he was doing.”
Bodelic looked up from his lecture and saw all the men staring in his direction. “Come. We dare not linger or another drake will return.”
“No!” shouted Othon. “We won't leave ’Bert as carrion for those vile beasts!”
The four elder guardsmen firmly planted their legs in the earth, looking to Gellan Ware for support. The Trader slowly nodded his head.
“Your empty death rituals will make carrion of us all!” retorted the exasperated dwarf. “Dead is dead. If the Gods are kind, he will be reborn as Myötuòr—One Who Matters.”
Fardinanth appeared outraged by Bodelic’s harsh judgment of Aubert’s life, but Phil pulled at Fardinanth’s sleeve and drew him into a discussion about the most efficient way to bury their companion. The men quickly concurred that it was too difficult to dig a grave in the rocky mountainside and decided to build a simple cairn of stones over his body.
Before beginning the work, Phil’s wiry frame knelt at Aubert’s side and removed a thin silver earring from his friend’s ear. As he held it in his palm, he looked his companions in the eye and removed a matching bauble from his own left ear. Slowly, the three other men nodded and removed their own earrings while the Trader approached with his hand reaching for his left earlobe. By some unspoken agreement they handed their jewelry to Phil. Cal presumed the rings were mementos from some shared adventure during their youth.
Philburn placed the earrings beneath Aubert’s body and said, “I know you yearned for a bed of gold, my friend. But it’s the best we can do. Sleep well.”
Bodelic muttered ‘futile’ under his breath and Cal wondered whether dragons, with their keen noses and sharp claws, would simply dig the body up and feast on human flesh despite the guardsmen’s best efforts. In their grief, however, he knew such a suggestion would torment his friends even further. Instead, Calidon helped them pile rocks on Aubert’s grave.
After Othon placed the last stone, the men ranged themselves in a rough crescent about the mound. Their ability to cover over Aubert’s body in a mere flicker of time, with little effort, disturbed Cal.
Obscuring an entire life should not be so easy.
Garin broke the discomfited trance when he stepped forward with Aubert’s sword and, using both hands, thrust it between the stones at the head of the grave. Following Garin after a ceremonial pause, Philburn hung Aubert’s leather helm on the hilt, turning the rim to make certain the engraved nameplate faced the front of the grave.
Aubert was the first man to welcome me into the squad. How much grief did he spare me?
Bodelic interrupted their sorrow with an even more impatient tone than before, “Come. We can be safe under the trees before nightfall. We must hurry!”
Reluctantly, the men left Aubert behind. Their friend was now just another anonymous warrior lost among thousands of unmarked graves.
Cal could not stop himself from looking back at the grave before expelling a melancholy sigh. Someday, like everyone else, Aubert will be forgotten.