Forged By Fire by Janine Cross

Author:Janine Cross [Cross, Janine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Published: 2011-08-06T01:21:32+00:00

THIRTEEN 123

Abscesses. That’s what the nodules on my dragons’ snouts were. Great, hard abscesses of prurience. When lanced and squeezed, a curdled material slowly came out, like boiled albumen that had been coarsely minced.

My escoas were drugged at daybreak by means of sev eral blow darts shot into the soft folds of their dewlaps, each blow dart as small as a young porcupine’s quill. The darts had been tipped with peshawar, or what Xxelteker sailors call h’xar, redivivus moth oil. Or at least, that’s what I supposed the darts had been dipped in; that was what we’d always used in the Clutch Re stables to subdue loose and fighting destriers.

The women tending the escoas debrided the necrotic tissue around the dragons’ snouts with swift confidence, nimbly picking soft splinters of deadwood and shards of bone and cartilage from the exposed tissue. I watched them closely as they worked, in case I had to repeat the procedure.

It was as I was bent over their heads that I realized why the women’s hair was the exact pale green of creeping moss. They’d woven the stuff amongst their locks in such profusion that moss and hair were one. I felt foolish that I’d not noticed it before.

Throughout my youth I’d heard greatmothers and aun ties tell lazy children in danku Re that if they didn’t get working, they’d turn into moss, just like the idle tree sloth. As with all effective threats, some truth resides behind their words: Sloths of a certain age are green from the creeping moss that has entwined itself amongst their hair during their protracted bouts of motionlessness. I’ve heard tell that sloths encourage moss growth on their young by coarsely weaving strands of it over their offspring. For cam ouflage, perhaps. Now that I could see the women’s green hair for what it was, I found it hard to believe I’d hitherto not recognized it as largely moss.

Just as the escoas started to come out of their druginduced stupor, the women flushed out the knuckle-sized holes they’d created, using a solution the color of Longstride’s eyes. They filled their cheeks to bulging with the solution and sprayed it out in a strong blast through their teeth. By way of fingers held up and brusque gestures, I was ordered to flush the gaping holes clean four times daily. Four gourds were filled with the solution and tied to the escoas’ saddles.

By late morn, the peshawar wore completely off and my escoas were mobile. The matriarch ordered three of the hunters who had found me to take me away.

I repeated the word myazedo many times, but received only disdainful looks: What I desired was insignificant.

I remembered what Fwipi had said, back in the arbi yesku: It’s not the Djimbi way, to fight, to be aggressive. Nothing could be so far from the truth when describing my captors. They were every inch warriors, predators, fighters. If more Djimbi tribes had been like them, Emperor Wai Soomi Kun would never have established an Archipelagic empire four hundred years ago, in the land known now as Malacar.

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