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Kerkio surged forward towards the incoming shriekers.
"Vodeni," Dion spoke the word of the old language into the water. The acorn that was in his hand cracked and sky-blue bright light burst out of it when Dion let it float out of his hand. He pulled himself out of the water and the first thing he saw was a shrieker pulling at Kerkio's cloak, trying to unbalance him, but Kerkio turned quickly and cut across its ribs with the full length of his sword and threw the shrieker away.
Then the stream stopped flowing for a moment and it spilled over onto the clearing behind Kerkio and started forming the body of a water elemental.
"Bebe, zmai, Kerkio," said Dion in the old language and pointed at everyone that needed protection - "Babies, dragon, Kerkio."
The man-shaped body of water bent and grabbed the stream like someone would pull at a blanket and then charged at the shriekers, pulling the water of the stream behind him. It was at once in front of Kerkio and in the midst of the shriekers who were moving to surround the legionary. They were utterly helpless against the elemental. He entered their nostrils, he entered their throats. He strangled them on the ground. He whipped them with the stream's water into the air and drowned them mid-air. Their panicked and frightened screams forced Roga's hand and she ran for her carriage, screaming commands at the saggy-eyed riders to snatch at least a few babies and get the dragon back into its carriage.
But the dragon saw an opportunity and ran straight into the middle of the closest fire, dragging two of the shrieker-riders with him. They took to flame as if they were made of Aquia's paper. He laid down, placed his head onto the embers and waited as still as a stone until the fire ate away the leather bag that was over his mouth and the leather straps that were around his legs and wings.
Dion knew he could no longer afford to watch what the dragon was doing so he turned to Kerkio only to see one of the shrieker-riders throw something at Kerkio's head. It looked like a small stone but Kerkio did not even flinch when it hit him. It bounced off his head and fell to the ground without making a sound. Not a moment passed when Kerkio suddenly started backing away from the small rogichi demons as they swarmed toward him as if he was made out of honey.
"Dion!" he heard Kerkio's confused cry, but Dion's attention was once more drawn to the dragon who stepped out of the fire and charged the shrieker-riders about to grab some of the children still lying on the ground near the fires.
"Babies are attacking me!" shouted Kerkio, struggling to understand what was happening to him.
Dion looked for babies amongst the rogichi coming at Kerkio but he saw none.
"I see babies!" Kerkio shouted as he ran away from the rogichi, frustrated and confused, as they tried to climb up his legs and gnawed at his boots and trousers.
"It must be the same kind of magic they used on Avia!" shouted Dion. "Those are not babies. Shake them off!" Kerkio heard him but nothing could force him to strike at the rogichi until the water elemental came to his aid and washed away the magic and the rogichi off of him. The elemental then turned his attention towards Roga but she had already climbed into her carriage and commanded the giant bird to run towards the main bridge.
"Dion!" a new voice shouted his name behind his back and the sound of many footsteps closing in followed that voice. He turned towards the voice and saw Galinos, armed with a large two-headed axe and behind him stood a whole group of woodsmen from Mara who looked in horror at the sight before them.
"Help us!" Dion shouted at the Marans and waved for them to join, and then he noticed the two Marans who came equipped with bows and arrows.
"Bows! To me! Hurry," he said and then ran away towards the nearest fire. He pulled his last remaining shirt out of the bag as well as the last piece of travel food left - dried meat stored in a jar full of fat. He cut into the shirt with his knife and then started ripping it into strips. Roga's carriage was nearing the end of the clearing.
"Come on," he shouted to the men who were running towards him so fast that one of them stumbled and nearly fell but managed to recover and continue running.
"Tie this under the arrow heads and place them down here," ordered Dion nervously, glancing at the bridge and handing them strips of his shirt greased with fat from the jar.
He wrapped the rest of his shirt around his left hand and rubbed it against the wet grass to get it moist. He grabbed a burning branch sticking out of the fire with his left and picked up the four arrows the Marans prepared with his other hand.
"The mills! Aim at their windows! Let's go!" he commanded the Marans and bolted towards the bridge, carrying the lit branch and the arrows.
"Now!" he told them when Roga's carriage approached the bridge. He lit the first two arrows and handed each of them one arrow. The carriage pulled by the giant bird was between the two mills when the Marans fired their flaming arrows. One struck the wooden edge of the window, but the other found the window of the mill closer to them and took its fire into the mill.
The mill only existed for the shortest of moments after the arrow entered it. The explosion cast the roof away from the rest of the structure, and blasted the flimsy doors of the mill into the carriage's wheels, breaking one of them. Dozens of pieces of broken shingles fell onto the carriage and showered Roga's giant bird. It sounded like hail coming down on a house caught in a storm.
Angry like bad weather, but also visibly frightened, Roga ran out of her carriage and then noticed her attacker as he was giving the Marans his remaining two arrows.
"Get her," he commanded and they loosened their arrows, but neither arrow found its target. She evaded the arrows and left her last enduring gaze in Dion's eyes before she untied the bird from the carriage and disappeared across the bridge.
Accepting that she had managed to run away he threw away the branch and the already hot shirt.
"What did you destroy the mills with?" asked one of the Marans. "What kind of magic was that?"
"No magic. The flour exploded," replied Dion but Kerkio called him away from the conversation.
He found Kerkio next to the dragon who still shielded the babies with his wings. Next to the two of them stood Galinos who no longer held an axe in his hands but something much smaller.
"Is it him? Is he all right?" Dion asked Galinos and bent over the baby. He felt Galinos's arm grab him by one shoulder and drag him closer. He lifted his eyes and then immediately closed them as he felt Galinos kissing his forehead. It was a long kiss and felt even stronger than the grip on his shoulder.
"Thank you," said Galinos when he let him out of his hold. "I will remember this day."
"It went well," said Dion relieved to see little Leut was all right, but at that moment the dragon moaned and collapsed to one side.
"Vodae," spoke the dragon silently and with great effort.
"Vodae," the dragon spoke once again.
The groans of the hurt animal formed a picture of clear liquid in Dion's mind and Dion realized that he understood him. The dragon was speaking in the old language. He was asking for water.
Chapter 9 - Zmai
His lips were covered in a thick layer of spit dried up by the fire and the ash. The skin on his bruised and scarred wings was dry, the muscles on them thin and underused. Every detail on his body told Dion that the dragon had been held in captivity for a long time.
"Vodeni," Dion called the water elemental and it immediately glided across the grass to Dion and then stood in silence in front of him, awaiting new orders.
The woodsmen of Mara glanced uneasily at the creatures next to them, ignoring the cries of the babies still on the ground next to their feet. They found it hard to stop looking at the dragon and the water elemental.
"Lahko," Dion said in the old language, telling the elemental to be gentle before even giving him an order.
"Dai vodae an zmai," he stuttered as he spoke the command, unsure of his pronunciation of the old language. All the important words were there and he hoped the water elemental would understand their meaning. "Give the drago
n some water," was the command.
The elemental's response left him first speechless and then attentive. He felt as if he was pushed centuries backwards into a time when the skins of the first history books were still on the backs of live sheep. The water elemental answered his command with a gesture he only read about in books Odea found in Echa's library on shelves even the elders had long forgotten.
The elemental raised one of its watery hands to its head and then touched its half-transparent forehead with the tips of its fingers. It then lowered the hand to its chest, and squeezed the hand into a fist. Finally, it opened its hand again and then extended it towards Dion, keeping the palm open and turned upwards, as if it was giving something to Dion.
"My mind and heart," was the meaning of that archaic gesture.
The gesture was used when one wanted to display the deepest affection to someone but Dion never saw anyone use it until now. Anyway, the books said it was a gesture that men had stopped using because it carried with it a promise of lasting respect and connection, and that was something that men were less willing to commit to as the years passed. Dion wasn't sure why the elemental did that, but he was happy he understood the depth of the elemental's gesture and smiled widely in gratitude, even though he felt fatigue set in from calling him out of the acorn.
The elemental turned his back to Dion and then knelt next to the dragon who opened his eyes for a moment when he felt the elemental's cold but feather-soft hands on his head. It lifted the dragon's head with one of his hands and tilted it upward. The elemental then raised its other hand above the dragon's head and every time the elemental clenched its fist a new drop of water formed at its bottom. Soon, a steady stream of large water drops, glowing blue and white with magic, started dropping into the dragon's mouth. The drops found their way between the dragon's sharp teeth and every so often the dragon's neck would bulge when the dragon swallowed, and except for his throat, no other part of the dragon moved. He had exhausted the last remnants of his strength helping Kerkio and Dion save both himself and the children.
Dion watched the water elemental nurture the dragon, hoping the creature was all right.
"He looks young," Dion tried guessing the dragon's age even though he had never seen a live dragon before. No one ever had.
"He'll recover. I'll make sure of that."
"What do we do with all these?" he heard an older voice asking about the children. Dion looked away from the dragon and his eyes stopped at the men standing close by. He soon realized they were all watching him and that he was the one that needed to answer that question.
"I am not sure," he replied truthfully and at once felt a noticeable discomfort. He didn't have a ready answer to their question and he hated not having answers.
"We can put them all into this carriage," spoke a bald woodsman, but Dion stopped him as soon as he mentioned the carriage.
"Aquia is destroyed," he started carefully, trying not to sound as if he was about to order them. He looked around the village to check for survivors once more, but he knew there were none.
"Take all the children to Mara with you. There are families there that can take care of them. I... No, the dragon still needs this carriage." He looked at the bald woodsman when he finished speaking and the woodsman waved quickly with one hand, gesturing that he was no longer interested in the carriage, but Dion felt he needed to explain himself to them.
"The dragon is in no state to follow us to Tialoch. That is why I need the carriage for him. I wish to take him to the king and to Ellodoris, the legion's horse apothecary. He might be able to help a dragon since he knows how to deal with horses and other animals."
"Quiet!" Listen!" A young woodsman with long and curly brown hair interrupted Dion.
"Here!" he shouted again when he peeked through the small entrance located in the front-left corner of Roga's carriage. He climbed its two steps and entered the carriage. The other woodsmen rushed towards the bridge.
"Selna dieca," the dragon explained. Dion closed his eyes and pressed his lips tightly when he understood the dragon's words. The children of Aquia were inside Roga's broken carriage.
"You could have hurt them when you decided to destroy the mill! And maybe you did!"
Dion ran to the carriage carrying dark thoughts with him.
The young woodsman stepped out of the carriage with a baby in his arms. There was no worry on the woodsman's face, but Dion's fears would not abandon him, even when he saw both the woodsman smiling and the baby yawning.
"It looks good," the young woodsman said and turned so the others could better see the baby.
"How many are in there?" Dion asked.
"Around twenty. They are all asleep in their beds, except for this one. It was closest to the entrance, maybe that is why it woke up first."
"Let me see," Dion spoke harshly, struggling with guilt that seemed to grow with every breath, and moved the woodsman away from the door so he could go in.
"If the explosion happened a moment later the carriage could have been pushed off the bridge into the river," tortured him while he climbed into the carriage.
"I have to see they were not harmed."
The inside of the carriage was lit by the dark yellow light of a few candles of varying heights and widths that spread their light from a shelf built into the back side of the carriage. The entire carriage was filled with cribs and small beds. Dion counted eight, and all were occupied, except the one closest to the door.
A narrow corridor led through the middle towards the candle shelf and when his eyes followed it Dion saw more legs and arms, but this time belonging to larger children who were stacked on the floor between the cribs and the beds. He got to the first pair of legs that were sticking out between two cribs. He carefully pulled the child into the corridor, turned it over and saw a ten year old boy. He was breathing.
He had a bump on the right side of his forehead, hidden behind his straight black hair. Dion crouched and pulled the boy up into a sitting position. The boy's head flew forward and landed on Dion's shoulder that was waiting for it. Dion took him by the armpits, inhaled and then stood up holding the boy in his arms. He leaned the boy's body onto his right shoulder and went backwards to the door.
Everyone except Galinos was already near the carriage. Even Kerkio and the dragon were there, and the dragon now looked much healthier than moments before when Dion last saw him.
Dion placed the boy on the ground and tried to wake him by gently slapping the boy's face.
"Get everyone out of the carriage. There are more of them in the cribs and on the floor around the cribs. Then burn the carriage. I feel somehow strange now, even though I was only in there for a short while. Maybe it's those candles, I don't know."
"Lyud," the dragon called Dion using the word for "man".
"Roga vodit diecu kralyu," the dragon explained.
"Roga is taking the children to the king," Dion translated to himself, but that didn't help much.
"Kralyu?" asked Dion aloud, unsure of Roga's connection to the king. His mind was overflowing with questions.
"Which king? Ours?"
"Ada," confirmed the dragon with a short "yes".
"Kralyu vel groda ti..." said the dragon but struggled to speak the last word.
"To the king of the large city ti," translated Dion, and when he said the last two letters he understood what the dragon wanted to say. A wave of panic and disbelief almost swept Dion off his feet.
"Tialoch?" Dion shouted the question, and the dragon nodded and clicked with his teeth when he closed his mouth. He could stop trying to pronounce the city's name.
"What about Tialoch?" asked Kerkio, who until now was busy watching the woodsmen bring the children out from the carriage.
Dion shook his head from side to side to tell Kerkio he did not know yet. At the same time he made circles in the air with one finger pointed at the dragon, gesturing for him to continue speaking.
He regretted his wish as soon as the dragon continued
speaking.
"Grod uv vatrah, al nai polah kam kral siedi. To natchuh dieca poslugit Rogi. Visat ada kral pusti grod."
Nervousness that was already eating him inside grew into absolute horror. He felt sick again. The hairs on his arms stood up as waves of discomfort passed through his skin.
Kerkio noticed the change for the worse. All the color from Dion's face hid somewhere in the deep. His eyes looked empty and lifeless.
"What happened? What did the dragon say? Speak!"
"I'll destroy her!" shouted Dion, loosing himself in anger for a moment.
"She wanted to hang the children to force the king to surrender the capital," he spoke through clenched teeth.
Everyone was quiet now. Only the baby in the young woodsman's arms cried. Dion scared it, but also managed to wake the boy he brought out of the carriage.
"Sai amonom?" Dion asked the dragon. "Idem hvatat Roga."
"I will follow you, lyud. I'll hunt the witch with you," added the dragon instantly in the old language.
"Hodai sah Kerkio uv kola," Dion added in the old language, telling the dragon to follow Kerkio.
The dragon gestured with his head, and it looked like a nod of approval.
"The dragon will follow you to the carriage," Dion said to Kerkio and then shouted Galinos's name so that he could hear him.
Dion's legs were already itching to run across the bridge after Roga but he had to run first in the opposite direction to gather his scattered belongings from the ground.
"Please, take the children with you to Mara," he said as he picked up the bag and the standard. "Kerkio and I must continue to Tialoch," he finished and Galinos nodded immediately.
"Of course we will take them," he replied loudly and raised an arm into a silent goodbye, but Dion did not see it. He had already crossed the flimsy planks of the bridge across the Naumona and was alone on the narrow road leading up into the woody hills surrounding Aquia.
There was no sound of Kerkio or the carriage on the road for quite a while, but Dion did not care to stop and wait for Kerkio and the dragon. The rage in him had subsided somewhat, but determination was still there to try and find the witch, even though his strength waned with every step he took.