Into The Vale

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. To the humans, it was a safe haven. To me, it looked like an opportunity.

Growing up, Mama always warned me and my sisters that the Valley was not safe for dragons. Yes, those humans might look delicious, but some of them had arms sharp enough to cut through dragon hide, and others had tamed terrible beasts capable of spitting trees into the sky. And then there was the air down there, all thick and flammable. Better to stay up on the peaks and plateaus, snatching mouflon and geese and trolls, than to risk the Valley, where you were more likely to accidentally set yourself on fire than to wrap your jaws around a tender blacksmith.

I first met a human on the plateau that made up most of my part of Mama’s territory. A stranger had flown into my territory and I’d had to fight her off. Her talon sliced through one of the tendons in my left wing, but I grasped out at her and brought her down with me. We hit the ground with a mighty crash, sending red dust up into the air around us, but her body cushioned my fall. I got up, she didn’t.

My wing burned with pain for the next few weeks, and I couldn’t get off the ground. Frankly, it was no great shame. Flying is exhausting. Dragons wouldn’t hibernate for so long if flying was easy. Walking around meant that I didn’t get as hungry, but I did still need to eat, and I hadn’t stalked a mouflon since I was a hatchling. Turned out that hiding behind boulders wasn’t going to cut it any more.

I did, eventually, find a spot near a stream where the vegetation was thick and tall enough to obscure me in shadow, and I could lie in wait to ambush a mouflon. On the first day I barely moved. A lamb walked right up to peer down my nostrils. Free food. Unfortunately it took several days for any more mouflon to come down to the stream, and when my stomach emptied I entered a state of semi-hibernation. My metabolic rate plummeted, and so did my ability to think. I was just watching and waiting, ready for my instincts to kick in if I got a sight of prey. I wouldn’t be able to produce any fire in this state, but I could pounce as well as any predator.

“Yoo-hoo!”

I thought nothing of it, mostly because I wasn’t thinking at all. My instincts filed it as the call of a songbird, not worth stirring for.

“Excuse me, Madam Dragon? I was wondering if you could spare a few minutes of your time…”

This took a moment to process. No songbirds sounded anything like that. Somebody was talking to me. That meant they could see me. That meant… crumbs, I’d been wasting my time. I stumbled to my feet, knocking into a tree and scattering the pigeons roosting in it. Pigeons, apparently, were the only thing as stupid as lambs. Still mentally asleep, I turned and tried to find the speaker. I spotted her, further down the stream. She was a human, mostly covered in fur that was brown and green like the valley. Her face lacked fur, except for two comical strips above her eyes. I thought her small, but I was no judge of human standards. I’d never been this close to one before. She had the most bizarre set of spikes and pouches about her person, the largest of which covered her entire back.

“I’m terribly sorry,” I said. “I was semi-hibernating. I didn’t realise you could see me. I’m not quite… excuse me, who am I speaking to?”

“I’m Faz! I come from the university.” She seemed excited. That was good. Scared creatures have more bitter notes. Happy creatures are sweeter. “Is now a good time?”

“Honestly, I am wounded and starving.”

“Oh dear. Will this help?”

Faz slung the large pouch down from her back, turned it upside down, and shook out a carcass that looked bigger than the pouch itself. It smelled a lot like happy mouflon. She dropped it on the ground before her.

“Why, is this for me?” I asked.

“This gift is not an inducement, and does not bind you to further discussions with me. Participation in the study is not mandatory and you can stop at any time. This study has been approved by the department’s ethics committee and is made possible by a grant from the State of the Vale. I have registered this study with the Society for Dragon Research and will submit it for publication in a peer-reviewed journal once my fieldwork is complete.”

“I’m afraid you’ve lost me.” I bent down and snapped up the carcass. She stood and watched me as I ate, which made me self-conscious, so I swallowed slightly quicker than I should have.

“I am conducting research into dragon social relations.”

“Oh, are you a natural historian? I have heard about you, you’re supposed to be delicious.”

“Ah, no, I’m an anthropologist. I study dragon society, rather than dragon biology.”

I wasn’t immediately sure what the difference was. “Does that mean you aren’t delicious?”

“Probably. Yes. Most definitely. Plus I’m gristly. Erm, my apologies if this is a sensitive subject, but did a dragon die near here recently?”

“A few days ago, yes. Now she was delicious. I managed to get the heart and the liver before my sisters arrived, and then we split the rest evenly.”

The two strips of fur above Faz’s eyes moved slightly closer together at this. “So… excuse me, but I want to make sure my understanding is complete. When a dragon dies, you eat them?”

“Of course. No sense in leaving good meat for the crows.”

The colour of her face desaturated. Bah. So she was gristly and anaemic? “Fascinating,” she mumbled. Then she took a deep gulp of air and continued her questioning. She asked about my sisters, our Mama, the territories of other dragons. I was still slightly dazed from semi-hibernation, and I was afraid that the simplicity of my answers would give the impression that I was a particularly stupid dragon. Faz pressed me on how dragons came to collective decisions, whether we interacted with trolls or dwarves or minotaurs, and how we exchanged goods with each other, and I couldn’t provide intelligent answers. It was terribly embarrassing.

“Well, thank you, dear, that has been most helpful,” said Faz. “Now, do you have any questions for me?”

I thought. Yes, I did. I wanted to know if she had any more mouflon. I wanted to know if she’d spoken to my sisters, and what they’d said about me. But most of all…

“What is ‘University’?” I asked.

“Oh, erm, sorry, I assumed… the University is a place of higher education and research in Strathvale. Humans pool their resources so that some of us can dedicate our lives to finding out about the world.”

That sparked a number of other questions, most of which I couldn’t put into words. I went with a simple one. “Where’s Strathvale?”

“Well, strictly speaking it’s on the other side of Laxham, but actually… hold on, that’s not helpful, is it? Strathvale is the large city that spans the river where the valley turns into a lowland plain. It’s the capital of the Vale. Does that help?”

“I suppose.” I was surprised she was so willing to tell me where the human settlements were. The dwarves always got very tetchy if you brought that subject up. “And you are finding out about society? What is society?”

“Ah, well, the simple answer is that it’s the community of interdependent individuals, but of course the more you look at it the less adequate that definition becomes. For example…”

“Do you know anything about mouflon society?” Look, I had food on the brain, and unless Faz had another carcass stuffed into that bag then there was no other way she was going to get me food.

“Interesting question. I don’t think mouflons really have what I would consider a society. They have flocks, but they don’t form the sort of complex relationships and social structures that humans and dwarves have, or even the basic social lives of dragons. Although they’re probably closer than mountain goats, who aren’t social creatures at all.”

Mountain goats. I glanced up at the nearest mountain, towering over the head of the valley. I couldn’t fly, but I could climb, and unlike mouflon, goats didn’t have anywhere to run. “Thank you, you’ve been very helpful,” I said to Faz, and trotted past her to the mountain.

The near slope was shallow, and I had little trouble getting up. The goats saw me coming, and bounded ever higher as I approached, but I was faster than them, and soon I was well-fed. Truthfully I’d never liked goat, and when I could fly it didn’t seem worth the risk of crashing into the mountain for when there were so many mouflon around.

My belly full, I decided it was now a good time to go into full hibernation. It wouldn’t be long until winter, and by spring my wing would be healed.

I clambered around the mountain until I found a cave that seemed suitable. I drew back my lips, and blew fire into the dark depths of the cavern. A burning troll ran out, screaming, and I snatched it up in my jaws. A few smouldering bats fell to the cave floor, thoroughly carbonised.

I walked as far back in the cave as I could go, which was just far enough to feel sheltered, and curled up to hibernate. It’s easy enough, just like going to sleep. You’re only disturbed when it gets warm.

Or at least, that’s how it usually goes. It always takes me a moment to realise where I am, but the heat of the sun kicks some instinctive reaction into gear and I just know that I’m waking up from hibernation. This time I was bitterly cold. Nearly every instinct was telling me to go back to sleep, except…

Yes, there it was. Something was biting my back. I groaned and rolled forward, towards the mouth of the cave and the howling winter winds. There was a full-blown blizzard out there. I turned back into the cave. A grinning dwarf was sheathing her bloodied dagger.

“I thought you were never going to wake up. Was preparing to cut my way through you,” she said. She dropped a shiny rock on the floor. “Have that. Compensation for the injury.”

“Has nobody ever told you that you should never disturb a hibernating dragon?”

“Oh, plenty. But frankly I’ve been lost in the caves for so long that I figured things couldn’t get any worse. I figure being eaten is better than starving to death, anyway.” She was irritatingly cheery. Well, this was something. I’d met a few dwarves before – they were always offering strange food in exchange for moving some rocks around or dealing with a troll – but never one this upbeat.

“What good is this rock to me?” I asked. “Does it heal stab wounds?”

“Nah, it’s basically useless,” the dwarf replied. “Quite good at cutting, I suppose. But take that down to the valley and a human will trade that for something good. Right, well, if you’re gonna eat me, you’d best get a move on, because I’m leaving.” She darted out of the cave and was gone, disappeared into the blizzard.

For a moment I stood at the mouth of the cave, staring out. My wing was healed. It would be utter insanity to head out into the blizzard. It would be very difficult to find anything to eat in the middle of the storm, and I would need to eat a lot to keep warm. But on the other hand, I would be the only dragon around. I’d have all the mouflon to myself. I could raid the flocks in neighbouring territories, giving myself an advantage when the others woke up from their winter slumber. Heck, I probably had a few months to find the resting spots of other dragons and kill them while they slept. My sisters and I could permanently expand our territory.

No. That was far too risky. I curled myself back up and slept until the spring. When I awoke, I bashed a claw against the shiny rock that the dwarf had left. Once I had got over the pain, I looked down at it, and remembered what the dwarf had said about the valley.

I picked up the rock. My stomach complained, with total justification. I needed to eat to build my strength back up after hibernation. I couldn’t even breath fire until I had a few good meals inside me. It was now or never.

I ran down the mountainside in a rather ungainly fashion, with a big rock in one of my hands. I took off, my wing fully recovered, and soared back around. I crested the ridge of the mountain and dived down into the Valley. It was easy to glide down, over the human settlements. The humans gave off that terrible high-pitched warning sound as I soared overhead, and ran about like newborn lambs, tripping and falling over invisible obstacles in their panic. No beasts threw trees into the sky at me. No men with great sharp arms tried to cut me down. There was just panic.

I had never been this far before. I wasn’t sure any dragon had. There were no dragons in the Valley. But soon the Valley petered out, and I came to the largest settlement I’d ever seen. It was unfathomably large, surely a good hour’s flight across. The humans had built right across the river, which was all the more impressive considering how much it had widened down the course of the Valley’s channel. I could hear the human warning calls, but I paid them as little mind as possible, and soared onwards until I found a space large enough for me to land.

My landing certainly caused an impression. Almost all the humans were transfixed by my presence. Most of them tried to run away, but they couldn’t take their eyes off me, and ran into walls and plants and human constructions. I was wrong. They weren’t lambs, they were the moufon who stampede in the opposite direction to the rest of the flock.

“Greetings!” I said, trying to channel the energy of the dwarf who had stabbed me. “I have come to exchange this rock for a place in your interconnected community of individuals. Does anybody know who can help me with that?”