Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [194]
“I’ve never agreed with a man more. What about a back door, like? The base of those cliffs look as full of holes as a wormy cheese.”
“In the morning it’ll be worth a look. If we work our way from tree to tree, we’ll be safe enough. Maybe.”
It was late that night before either of them could sleep. Even though it was quite likely that the dragon had just fed, since it had flown home to lair, this was not a probability either wanted to put to the test. For some time they sat under the trees and talked in low voices about the problem of getting near enough to the beast for Rhodry to enchant it.
“You’ll need a few ticks of a heart at least,” Enj said. “To call its name in the right way and all.”
“Just so, and a place to sit or stand where I can get a good lungful of air, too.”
Enj considered for a moment.
“Since they hunt by sight, we should make a run for the base of the cliff now.”
“Good thinking,” Rhodry said. “Here, we’re going about this the wrong way. We keep thinking we’re hunting a dragon, when we should be saying we’re hunting a dragon. I’m not the woodsman you are, but I’ve brought down my share of game in my day.”
In the starlit dark he could just see Enj grin.
“So have I,” Enj said. “A beast like that will be leaving tracks and signs of its passing you’d have to be blind to miss.”
Carrying their packs they dashed across the caldera floor to the rise of cliff, which turned out to offer a wealth of hiding places for two men. They found a shallow cave whose entrance was just big enough for them to squeeze through one at a time. While a dragon might have managed to pry one paw in, they were safe enough from the rest of it. Still, they spent a less than settled night, dozing in turns rather than sleeping straight through. As he sat up with his back to the cavern wall, Rhodry thought he might feel, just every now and then, a trembling as if the rock behind him breathed. When he did doze off, he dreamt of fire that oozed like water through the dark places of the world.
Before the sun truly rose the sky turned light enough for the pair of them to see. Hugging the cliff, staying as much as possible under the overhanging lip, they searched for other caves and fissures, found many, but none that seemed to lead in deep. They went back to their night’s refuge and sat discussing plans while they ate the last of the flatbread they’d brought from Haen Marn. They had plenty of smoked meat left from a deer killed early on, but smoked meat alone grows wearisome after a while.
“Well,” Enj said. “If this beast doesn’t eat us, and if you don’t tame it, then it’s a slow and hungry walk we’re going to have back to Haen Marn.”
“Truly. Ye gods, I hope your mother fares well. I know you’ve both told me about Haen Marn’s dweomer and such-like, but this Alshandra creature can pop out of nowhere like one of the Wildfolk. What if Angmar doesn’t have time to work whatever spell this is?”
“Not a spell. Haen Marn goes where the danger be not, that’s all.”
Enj spoke so calmly, so sincerely, that Rhodry felt his worry ease. Soon, perhaps, he would see Haen Marn safe for himself, anyway, if he could tame this dragon.
“Let’s be out and searching, shall we?” Rhodry said. “The more we linger, the better chance it has to realize we’re here.”
But though they went back and forth along the cliff for hours, they never found a crack or cave more than twenty feet or so deep. They risked walking back a ways, into the open caldera, to study the rock face. Quite clearly in the bright sun they could see the dragon’s entrance, a squat half round of cave running back from a tiny slant of ledge. Leading up to it, in fact, ran a number of fissures and breaks.
“Practically a ladder,” Enj said. “I wonder if the beast did scrape all that out, with its claws, like, searching for a way in?”
“That would explain our luck, right enough.”
“Luck? Our luck? Rori, what are you suggesting?”
“Look, we could scrabble round here like moles for days, then find some tunnel and crawl for days more only to fetch up at some dead end. We don’t have one of