Dragon's Heart (31 page)

Jakkin sighted along the stinger, pushed the setting back to stun, then pulled the trigger. The first shot missed but not by much, hitting the left-hand shutter and exploding it into pieces of wood. The shot startled the trog and for a couple of seconds he looked around, not sure what was happening.

He's probably never even heard of anything like a stinger.
Jakkin kept firing in the circular motion that Likkarn suggested until he eventually hit the trog—once, twice, three times. It hardly slowed him up at all. He jumped down from the window and headed directly toward Jakkin.

Jakkin slammed the lever from stun to kill and again sprayed the room with the stinger, round and round, until finally the trog fell, his legs scissoring a half dozen times before he died. Shaking, Jakkin kept firing at the downed body until the stinger ran out of energy.

"Well, that didn't go the way I meant it to," Jakkin whispered. Yes, he'd stopped the smallest trog—much to the dismay of his stomach, which was threatening to heave up into his throat. But the stinger was now useless. And Big Boss and the wounded trog were still out there.

Somewhere.

JAKKIN RAN to the stall door. "One down, but the stinger's empty," he shouted. He didn't mention that the trog was dead.

"Worm waste!" barked Likkarn. "Maybe it's just jammed. They do that sometimes." He pulled the door open. "Let me see it."

"No! No! No—he didn't say Heart's Blood!" Errikkin screamed, slamming the door shut.

Evidently the door shut on Likkarn's fingers, because he began to curse on and on, even after the door was opened slightly and then closed again as quickly.

"Heart's Blood!" Jakkin cried. "For God's sake, Errikkin, don't be a big fewmet. I'm all alone here."

The door was opened again. Errikkin was flapping his hands. "What's the good of a password if you don't use—"

"Give it here," Likkarn said, reaching out with his left hand. The right one he cradled against his body.

Jakkin was about to hand over the stinger when a noise behind him made him freeze. Glancing over his shoulder, he glimpsed a shadow dashing toward him. He turned, swung the stinger like a club. It connected with the arm of the already injured trog, who dropped to the floor screaming, a strange high-pitched cry of pain. This action threw Jakkin onto one leg.

Taking a deep breath, he tried to right himself, but before he was ready, something large leaped out of the darkness and hit him a body blow. He went down on all fours, struck by a sending so black and nasty, he nearly passed out from it.

Big Boss!

"Help!" Jakkin cried, his voice suddenly as weak as his body. "Heart's Blood!"

Behind the half-open door, Errikkin pushed aside Likkarn, who seemed momentarily stunned. Then he dashed out and launched himself at the trog's back. With his knife, he punched down, again and again and again, till the knife grew so slippery with blood, it slid out of his grip.

Big Boss reared and shook him off and Errikkin was slammed to the floor. He lay there, hardly breathing, something broken in his back.

"Worm drizzle!" Likkarn cursed, then raced toward the bloody trog before Big Boss could turn his attention back to Jakkin. Using his left hand—the right still pretty useless—Likkarn slung the hammer at the trog's head. It nearly missed, but hit him above the eye with a loud crack, then bounced off. Immediately the eye closed and blood sprayed from a deep cut above it.

Big Boss's sending ended with that blow and Jakkin was able to grab the messy hammer. Heaving up to his knees in a single motion, he slammed the hammer into the trog's other eye.

Effectively blinded, Big Boss howled and reached out for Jakkin, but Jakkin had already slipped behind him. Picking up Errikkin's body, he scrambled over to Likkarn.

"Get him back inside, into one of the stalls, any hen without chicks will do. He needs the warmth."

"I know what he needs, but that big troll—"

"Leave him to me," Jakkin said. "I have things to settle with that one." He handed over Errikkin's body and wiped the fair hair away from his friend's face. "Hang on, bonder," he whispered. "Hang on."

Then Jakkin went back to the trogs, one sitting with his hands up to his ruined eyes, one lying down. He looked around, found both hammer and knife, and took another deep breath. Then, standing behind them—Big Boss first and the smaller trog after—he slit their throats. He felt no more than did the stewmen who killed dragons for their meat. Maybe even less, for unlike the dying dragons, the trogs made no sound or sending to trouble him.

Jakkin dropped both hammer and knife. They clattered noisily onto the floor. Then he began to wipe his hands compulsively on his leather pants over and over and over again as if he could wipe away what he'd just done.

After a minute of this, he shook himself mentally.
Stop thinking so much. Just do what needs doing. And then do the next.

Swiping a forearm across his eyes, he forced himself to breathe slowly. In and out, in and out. He thought of Akki, Heart's Blood, her brood. He must have let loose with a sending, because Auricle sent him back a tremulous landscape of grays and blues with something hunched and dark in the back.

"
Danger?
" she asked.

He smiled tentatively. "
Not anymore, not for me, nor thee
." He pictured the oasis, with dragons romping in the water.

By then he was finally calm, so he went over to the sofa still guarding the front door. Pushing it and the table out of the way, he flung open the door. A sliver of light was pushing up along the horizon. He walked outside. The tendrils of Dark-After's cold were already drifting away.

Soon it would be dawn and warm enough to bring Errikkin back into the bondhouse. There he'd be cleaned up, warmed up, and cared for in the hospice. There they could all eat and drink takk and rejoice at their close escape. Because it
had
been close. Now that it was over, he could admit that. He started to run his hands through his hair before realizing how sticky they were. Once again, he tried to rub away the blood on his leather pants. The pants were sticky, too, even clammy. He let his hands drop to his sides.

Jakkin had one more awful duty to perform. Dragging out the three trogs one at a time, he laid them out by the side of the barn. That way, they wouldn't disturb the hen dragons, and it would be easier to bury them.

In the rising light, the dead trogs no longer looked big or strong or threatening. They were somehow shrunken. Even rather sad. All of a sudden, Jakkin began to sob—for the dead trogs, for Errikkin. He took a big gulping breath, hearing Big Boss in his head:
Do not kriah.

But I'm not a trog and I'm not ashamed to cry.
He kept on sobbing, though now he did it silently. When he was done crying, he went back into the barn to check on his two wounded mates.

***

ERRIKKIN LAY in Likkarn's arms, each breath long and labored. Likkarn had taken off his own shirt and wrapped the boy in it. They were both snugged up against Heart's Ease, who looked strangely uncomfortable with them at her side, as if they were misshapen hatchlings. However, she was—as her name suggested—an easy dragon, with a mind as soft as her manner. She trusted old Likkarn, so she let them stay.

Jakkin sent her a cozy pink sand scene, with pink water from an oasis lapping at her pink feet, by way of thanks. She responded by stretching her neck around the two men, radiating even more heat.

"How is he?" Jakkin whispered.

Likkarn shook his head. "I think something's broken."

"Arm? Leg?"

"Back."

"That's bad." Slipping next to Likkarn, Jakkin put his arms around Errikkin's shoulders. He was ice-cold, even with the extra shirt and the dragon's warmth.

Jakkin pushed Errikkin's hair back from his broad forehead. "That was the bravest thing I ever saw anyone do," he whispered. "Errikkin, you're a hero."

For a moment, Errikkin roused. He tried to smile. His bland face suddenly took on real beauty. "I did it for you," he whispered back, his voice slow and cracking. "For ... my ... master." He pushed out each word as if they were boulders being rolled uphill.

"The best bonder ever," Jakkin said, trying to keep his tone light. "
My
best bonder ever."

Errikkin closed his eyes and sighed. "Your
only
bonder." Then he started shaking, tremors running up and down his body. It caused Heart's Ease to begin hackling.

To calm them both, Jakkin began humming two verses of the dragon lullaby, all the while stroking Errikkin's hair. It worked like a charm and soon both boy and worm quieted. But when Jakkin finished the second chorus, Errikkin suddenly gave three long shuddering breaths and was still, his mouth slightly open.

Sunlight touched the incubarn, splashing in through the broken window and shutters of the visitors' room. The stalls seemed eerily silent until Heart's Ease heaved herself to her feet and started rocking back and forth. She sent a picture of the boy covered in black.

Likkarn scooted away from her, still holding on to Errikkin, who never once stirred.

Jakkin looked down at his old friend. He noticed how quiet he was, how white.

The dragon continued her odd rocking, and now all the dragons in the incubarn were keening, a strange wailing pounding in Jakkin's head.

"Is he ... is he gone?"

"Gone to the highest master of all," Likkarn said. It could have been meant as a joke, but his face was fiercely serious.

"He'll like that." Jakkin's voice cracked on the last word.

"Let's bring him home," Likkarn said. He got to his feet carefully, with an assist by Jakkin, Errikkin still in his arms.

Heart's Ease stopped rocking, but the keening by the other dragons continued until Jakkin opened the front door of the bondhouse, ushering in Likkarn, who was carrying Errikkin's body as easily as if he were a child.

"WHAT DO I say to them?" Likkarn asked.

"As little as possible."

Likkarn nodded.

"We can't hide the trogs, of course, but no one needs to know the rest."

"I agree."

The kitchen door opened and Kkarina stood there, hands on her ample hips. When she saw Errikkin's body, she started to wail.

Four nursery folk raced out of the dining hall to find out why Kkarina was carrying on—young Terakkina in the front, then redheaded Vonikka, Slakk looking white and drained, and at the last, old Balakk.

Jakkin couldn't hear anyone else nearby, especially with Kkarina moaning so loudly. "Where is everybody?" It was unusual for only four people to have been in the dining room for breakfast.

At that, oddly, Kkarina flung her apron over her head and began wailing even louder.

"Be quiet, woman!" warned Likkarn, before looking down at the boy he was carrying. "We'll talk of that other later. Right now we have something more important to do."

But Slakk, as always, had to be first with bad news. "Jakkin, they're all off to The Rokk to help find Akki."

"What do you mean,
find
her? Is she gone?" Jakkin thought his voice no longer sounded like his own.

"
Taken
," groaned Kkarina. "Someone's gone and taken her!"

Jakkin had never felt so cold before. He could hardly think.
Have the trogs gotten Akki? Not in the city, surely? Dragged her from the truck? It doesn't make sense. Still...

"We've got to go."

Likkarn glared at him. After a thoughtful moment, he said, "We've got three things to do first, and then I'll drive you there myself."

Distracted, Jakkin asked, "
What
three things?"

Peeling the apron from her face, Kkarina answered, "Why, we have to clean thee up, boy, and then feed thee up." She spoke to him as if he were a dragon. "And we have to bury this poor child." She put her palm against Errikkin's cold cheek.

"But—"

"There's many a nurseryman already gone to the city to look for Akki at Golden's call," Kkarina said, her voice suddenly calm, nothing remaining of the wail. "All of ours but the ones you see here. We needed some to keep the nursery going. What can you add that's not already being done?"

"I can hear her in here..." murmured Jakkin, touching his head. Then he stopped.

Likkarn nodded. "So can we all."

Heeding the implicit warning in what Likkarn said, Jakkin allowed himself to be led to the showers by Balakk, where the water first ran blood-red and then clear. But his mind remained bloody. Now he realized how bruised he was. He could see the purple and yellow of the older bruises on his wrists, and newer, blacker ones on his legs and arms. He supposed there were more along his back. Possibly some on his face. None of that mattered, of course. Finding Akki was the most important thing.

***

LATER, IN THE dining hall, Jakkin managed to gulp down a boiled lizard egg and two quick cups of tea, including one made of yellow dickory. Kkarina insisted it helped with bruises.

"It better," Jakkin muttered, "because it tastes too awful for just drinking."

They all finished eating in record time, serving themselves. Kkarina had been occupied with washing Errikkin's body on a long table in the bondhouse kitchen. Alone, she'd put the oil at the back of his hands and on his feet. Then she dressed him in clean clothes.

They assembled in the small cemetery, Jakkin, Balakk, and the two young women carrying the spikka-wood casket. It was heavier than Jakkin had expected and had no name etched into the top. There hadn't been time.

"Twice in a week," Kkarina said, wiping her eyes with her apron. "Bad things come in threes, I shouldn't wonder."

She means Akki.
Jakkin shuddered before grabbing hold of one of the two shovels. Balakk used the other, and they quickly dug a grave in the soft sandy soil under the weeping wilkkins.

As they lowered the casket, Vonikka started up the old hymn they'd sung for Arakk's burial:

Oh, God, who sends the double moons,
Who spreads the singing sand...

The others joined in a thin, ragged chorus, but not Jakkin.
Too fast, too fast.
He meant the burial had been pushed ahead too fast, knowing Errikkin would have hated the rush, would have wanted the entire nursery there. But Likkarn said they had no idea when the others would be back from the search for Akki, and—as Jakkin well knew—in a hot desert world, all bodies had to be buried as soon as possible.