He saw only one group using the road to move north: cloaked, sandaled humans stepping into the forests, behind another cloaked man on a horse singing a marching song. Auron would have thought nothing of them, except the rider’s horse bore an emblem stretched on a fly-blanket across its face: the little man in the golden circle. He hurried away as fast as he safely could—that emblem had brought him nothing but unhappiness in the past, and the farther away he fled from it, the better.
A rider or two went south; Auron took care to stay downwind from the road so the horses would not become alarmed and warn the riders. He kept himself fed at the innumerable little rivers, all moving westward down from the mountains to the far-off coast. Plentiful fat and tasty fish were fighting upstream and dying along the riverbanks, and their red flesh was welcome. After watching a bear do it, he learned to raid honeycombs; his skin might not keep out arrows, but it was impervious to bee stings. A little honey went a long way: after a few tonguefuls—and some crunchy insects—he left the bees to buzz out their outrage.
It was raining again when he saw the tradesdwarf.
Auron was sleeping out the rain with one water-lidded eye open, his belly pressed to pleasantly warm mud in a runoff-filled ditch, when he saw the red-and-gold cart and string of ponies going south along the road. The cart had two horses drawing it. It was an odd two-wheeled construct, too big to be a chariot but too small to be called a wagon. A beardless dwarf sat at the reins, dry under a canopy that extended from the covered cart behind. The unhappy-looking string of ponies walked behind, packs tied to their backs. The dwarf grumbled to himself as he drove, a studded leather face-shield muffling his words.
The dwarf was not dressed for war. There was not so much as an ax or a spear in sight. He wore simply cut brown clothes with polished metal buttons holding the double-breasted front closed, and leather pants that had boots built in, or perhaps boots that extended high on leather pants. A sagging, brimless leather cap, not a helm, sat on his head.
Auron could never say for sure what inspired him to do what he did next. The horses looked tempting, but he was far from starving, so it wasn’t hunger. And had he desired murder, he would never have trotted out into the road and reared up on his hind legs.
The dwarf pulled up his horses with a cry of “Pogt!” He did not reach for a weapon, but a purse, and flung a handful of coins past Auron and into the woods.
Something about the motion caught Auron’s eye. He glanced to see where the money landed before he turned back to the tradesdwarf, who now had his whip ready to put his horses into a gallop. If only Auron would get out of the middle of the path.
“Money, dragon . . . there! Silver!” the dwarf shouted in Parl. “A mouthful at least!”
Auron flicked out his tongue and smelled the horses.
The dwarf whipped his horses, and they took a few steps forward, but when they smelled Auron, they reared up, protesting with high whinnies.
“Klatta buggak!” the dwarf shouted. Auron caught a flash of white eyes from the slits in his mask.
Auron dropped back onto all fours and cleaned an ear. Couldn’t the dwarf see that the fans weren’t extended down from his crest?
“Well, creature, what is this? Robbery? I carry trade goods, not gold.”
Auron extracted a tick from his earhole.
The dwarf rose in his seat. “Murder? You’ll find me a poor meal, and I have many kinsmen to avenge me. I’m a journeyman of the great Chartered Company of the Diadem.” The dwarf pulled a chain from his shirt—a diamond-shaped pendant in silver hung from it. “If your sire and dam taught you any wisdom, I’m sure they told you not to cross us.”
“Neither,” Auron said. “I came to beg a favor.”
The dwarf made a noncommittal noise, then settled for pushing the cap back on his head. “A favor? A favor? What favor can I grant a young dragon? I, a poor dwarf in my company’s service.”
Auron hooked the collar in the ear-exploring claw. “This souvenir. I wish to be rid of it. Before I get any bigger and . . . air-starve—and choke.” Auron hoped his slow, awkwardly phrased Parl got the point across.
“Hmmmpfh,” the dwarf said. He hopped down from the driver’s seat and clumped over to Auron. “Now you’ve got me curious. A collared dragon. But then I’m young, and haven’t seen much of the world. I was apprenticed to a miner, you see. It wasn’t a life of new experiences.”
Auron lifted his head, watching the dwarf’s hands.
The dwarf took up the collar. “Man-work. Shows all the craftsmanship of a warm pile of horsechunt. Follow me. There’s an old bridge ahead—I was going to camp beneath it for a dry fire.”
“I can offer you little in return, save a hunt or two. What forest meats have you a taste for?”
“This will be our bargain. Gather all the coins I threw, don’t eat any of them, and follow behind and return them to me. I’ll take care of your ‘souvenir.’ ”
Auron rooted for the coins—he smelled precious metals easily enough, though he had no appetitie for them—and carried them in his mouth well behind the dwarf and his animals.
The road sloped down and turned, coming to the broken bridge spanning a river-carved gully. Once the bridge had stretched above the riverside willows; now only broken columns remained past the first arch. The dwarf pulled his cart under it and unburdened his animals.
When Auron joined him, the tradesdwarf touched his nervous horses and muttered soothing words to them. He blocked the wheels with stones, put down an extra set of legs for the cart, and unharnessed the draft animals. The dwarf took the string of ponies from the back of his cart and tied them beside the newer road at the drift that had replaced the bridge, using the stone pillar to shield them from wind and weather. When the animals were munching in their nose bags, he returned to Auron, wringing water from his cap. Auron saw straps holding the face-shield in place, fixed across thick, woolly hair.
His companion resettled his cap. “What a land. When it’s not raining, it’s snowing,” the dwarf said, opening the back of his cart. Chests with rows of tiny drawers, glass jars with crystal stoppers, and tools hung inside with cooking and camping equipment.
Auron spat out the coins. “I’m a stranger to this land, until a moon or two ago, that is,” Auron said.
“That so? I’m not surprised; dragons don’t stay long hereabouts. The men got them all, or so I’m told.”