Makho now shouted for the rest of them to charge, and without further thought, Jarnulf bounded down the slope with the Talons. The dragon heard its attackers before it saw them, but it was befuddled to discover enemies on all sides, and in that moment of confusion Makho reached it and threw his loop of rope over the creature’s head. Kemme was only a few steps behind, but the thrashing tail struck him and flung him to one side like a chip of wood leaping from an ax-blow. Kemme somehow staggered to his feet again a few moments later and managed to throw his own noose behind one of the creature’s back feet, then waited until the dragon stepped into it before he pulled the cord tight.
Nezeru had snagged a front leg as it clawed at her, then managed to pull her rope around a huge spike of stone before the worm realized it; from that moment on the dragon was anchored. Jarnulf, aiming for the other hind leg, got the tail instead, but pulled the rope as tight as he could and scrambled backward until he could belay it around a boulder. He threw his weight back against the pull of the creature, which even under restraint was astoundingly strong, and dug in his heels. The dragon bellowed in fury, a strange mixture like a lion’s deep roar mingled with a donkey’s bray, that made Jarnulf’s ears ache. He could not imagine how they would subdue the creature, even as Goh Gam Gar came clambering down from his high hiding place and leaped up onto the creature’s broad back as if to ride it. Even under the giant’s weight, the dragon still thrashed and snapped, but as Makho and Kemme secured their own ropes, one to a rock, one to a wide stump mostly buried in frozen earth, the flailing white beast had increasingly little room to move. Goh Gam Gar lifted his great ax as if to dash out the dragon’s brains, but Makho shouted at him not to harm it. The giant glared back at the chieftain with an expression of disgust that would have amused Jarnulf if not for the rope that vibrated in his hands like a stretched bowstring—a rope with a thrashing, jaw-snapping monster at the other end of it.
Then suddenly, as if by magic, the dragon’s movements slowed and became clumsy rather than desperate. Its pale, blind-looking eyes fell shut as it strained upward against Makho’s noose one more time, trying to get its teeth into the mountainous creature on its back, then it shuddered, stumbled, and collapsed.
“Fool of a giant!” Makho snarled. “What were you thinking? I told you—a living dragon! We need a living dragon! That is why Kemme shot it with an arrow dipped in precious kei-vishaa, to steal its wits and put it to sleep.”
“I would not have hit it so hard as to kill it outright, little Norn,” Goh Gam Gar said, rising carefully from the now motionless body, the heavy legs and long claws splayed out across the snow on either side of its trunk. “There would have been time to take blood while it still lived.”
Makho shook his head. “You understand nothing . . .” But he was breathing so hard that he said no more, only bent and did his best to find his breath.
Saomeji, who had never managed to employ his own noose despite several attempts, now came forward, his rope dragging along the icy slope beside him. The sun had mounted above the eastern rim of the mountains. Jarnulf saw a puzzled look twisting the Singer’s face. “Giant, can you lift the tail?”
Goh Gam Gar barked a laugh at the strange request, but reached down and heaved the huge, wide tail up so that Saomeji could climb underneath. “Don’t let go,” the Singer begged.
“It is a trifle slippery,” said the giant, showing his yellow tusks in amusement.
Saomeji spent a few moments beneath the creature’s tail, staring at the base of its belly. “This is no he-dragon,” he said as he clambered out. “Not as shown in any treatise I’ve seen. This is a female.”
“So?” Makho helped Kemme to his feet. He had collapsed after the dragon had stopped fighting, and clearly, from the way he clutched his ribs, had been injured by the flailing tail. “The Mother of the People did not specify male or female, only the blood of a living dragon,” Makho said, then turned to Goh Gam Gar. “Take your great rope, giant, and wrap it fast around the creature from head to tail. Hurry, or you will feel the sting of the queen’s collar and think the dragon the lucky one.”
Saomeji shook his head. “You do not understand, Hand Chieftain. If this creature is female, it is very young. Scarcely a year old, perhaps less.”
Jarnulf could not get over the size of the thing, three or more times the length of a man and so broad through the body it must weigh somewhere between twenty and forty hundredweights—as much as two long tons. He watched the great rib cage expand and contract with each slow breath, examined claws like curved swords, and thought how lucky they were that the kei-vishaa had done its job quickly.
“What do you mean, Singer?” asked Nezeru, who also seemed stunned by the sheer size of the thing they had captured. She crouched at a respectful distance, looking at the finger-sized teeth protruding from the creature’s pale jaws.
“If this is such a young she-dragon, it means it could not be the child of the monster we saw buried in the rock slide, which has plainly been dead for many years.”
Makho did not even look up, too intent on watching Goh Gam Gar bind the apparently slumbering dragon. “What matter is that? Knot it there, giant. Tightly. If it has no room to struggle, it cannot break someone’s leg with a twitch.”
“What matter is that, you say?” Saomeji took a step back, suddenly looking all around. “Does no one understand? If this huge creature is not the child of the dead dragon, then it is the child of another.”
Makho looked up at Saomeji as it finally came to him. “Another—?”
A great booming roar rolled down upon them, as if the clouds around the mountain had turned to stone and fallen from the sky. Even the echoes were earsplitting. Jarnulf and the rest looked up the mountainside in time to see the thing appear headfirst over a great outcropping, looking like some unbelievably vast serpent, though that was only its head and long, long neck. The rest of the body came into view as the dragon crawled over the rock, its claws digging deep furrows in the raw stone. This beast was white, too, wingless like its child, but much, much bigger than the creature lying trussed at their feet. It saw them, and opened its toothy maw in a hiss of fury.
Saomeji’s voice seemed to come from very far away. “The mother is not very happy with us.”
And then, with a roar that shook the mountainside and echoed from the surrounding peaks, the huge white thing clambered off the rocky outcrop and came scrabbling and slithering down the slope toward them in a landslide of tumbling stones, fountaining earth, and billowing snow.
50
Several Matters of State
During a brief pause between audiences with visitors and supplicants, Simon turned to his wife and said, “That was a clever gamble with the escritor—and a lucky one.”
“What was?” She gave Pasevalles a sign across the heads of the milling courtiers. He nodded and said something to his clerk.
“That Auxis would be able to agree to all that by himself, without waiting to hear from the lector. Or were you hoping he wouldn’t so you could avoid the wedding? It will probably be an unpleasant affair, with both sides snarling at each other.”
She shook her head. “You are right—I am not looking forward to it. My teeth will be clenched the whole time I’m there.”
“Poor wife. Remember, though, you were the one who decided to face it by yourself and leave me at home.”
“Don’t mock me, husband,” she told him sternly.
“I don’t mean to. In any case, you handled the negotiation well.”
She recognized a peace offering. “It seemed obvious that Vidian had to have put a few concessions in the escritor’s pocket, or what’s the use of sending a high-ranking churchman instead of a letter? The Sancellan Aedonitis has known for a long time that we wanted another northern escritor, so it made sense that the lector would have given permission ahead of time for Auxis to accept any reasonable candidate. As for the other promise—fairer treatment of all sides by Mother Church—I felt certain Auxis had been told to accept any deal that the lector might be able to slip out of later on.”
“Sweet Elysia, Mother of our Redeemer,” Simon said, keeping his voice down to avoid being heard by the various courtiers and visitors Pasevalles was now herding toward the throne room’s great doors. “You are more cynical about the church than I am!”
“I love God, but I know the church is composed of mere men.”
The king laughed, though not entirely happily. “Well, I give you all the credit, my dear. You told me Auxis could say yes on the lector’s behalf without waiting for an answer from his master, and you were right.”
“It only made sense. Lector Vidian wants the dukedom of Nabban to be held by one of his allies, like Count Dallo, but not by violent rebellion, which will bring in the High Throne. Now he sees that matters have gone too far and is desperate to calm things down, and a large part of that is because his own position is shaky. It’s his own fault for having so obviously favored the Ingadarines that none of the other families trust him.”
Simon looked uncertain. “But even if Dallo and Drusis reach for power and fail, Lector Vidian cannot be . . . what would it be called? ‘Un-elected’? See, there isn’t even a word for it. Lectors serve for life!”
“You’re right, my husband. So he knows that if it came to a civil war in Nabban, someone would likely kill him.”