Valley of Smoke

There weren't always dragons in the Valley.

In my grandfather's boyhood -- or so he likes to tell it when my brother and I can catch him sitting by the hearth in between supper and bedtime, the fire making shadows dance on the wall and visions dance in his eyes -- our valley, the longest between the Grayfish Mountains in the south and the northern seaside city of Hamplun, was a main thoroughfare from the mines. The farms along the way made their living shipping what they could up to the coast alongside the dallic from the mountains, on wagons that seems to never end; an endless line going north with the ore and our crops, south with provisions for the miners, plus dried fish and other trinkets that sold in the villages along the way.

Grandfather came from a village in the Scales, the foothills of the Grayfish range.

"How far away is that, granda?" asked Sethel, though we both knew the answer. Grandfather just needed a little prodding and then the story would sustain itself until the end.

'Oh, leagues off, perhaps a week if you walked it. Our growing season ended sooner so when I was old enough I would get a ride down the valley and get work at other farms. You could work your way almost to Hamplun by the time autumn had begun in earnest, with enough money to see you through the year. By the time I was fourteen I knew every farmer in the valley by sight, and they all knew me as a fast worker.

It was in my fifteenth year that there was a bad harvest all across the Scales. My ol' dad said it was the worst he'd seen: grapes dried and bitter on the vine, corn sprouting but less than five ears to an acre, potatoes turning to slime in the dirt. He and my sisters and I both made our way north to find work or we'd have to sell off some property, though if the land was turning rotten I didn't know who'd buy it.

There were a lot of us on the road, all farmers, shipping ourselves instead of our crop down the valley in hopes that we could salvage the growing season. But as we made our way we found more of the same--dying crops and desperate people. We heard hopeful news from the wagoneers who'd passed through the lower valley, but by the time we arrived their harvest was gone, too.

Rumors had started that there might be something unnatural about this blight. Farmers would gather around fires at night to compare stories of blights from their past, and none could remember a time like this, nor could they remember stories they'd heard that came close. Except one, an old housewife, a hundred years if she was a week, who was blind and half deaf. Her skin and hair were pale as spider silk. She'd been sitting and staring into our fire with sightless eyes, listening to the cross-talk as different people swapped ideas about the crisis.

'It's some sort of rot.'

'You don't get rot on every plant at once. Maybe if it was just the corn, or the taters, but everything?'

'Maybe runoff from the mine got into the soil.'

'The mines have been there for decades.'

'Doesn't mean it's not what's done it.'

'My money's on magic.'

'What money? And don't tell me you put stock those crooks, fooling one village with their tricks then skedaddling to the next before they get found out.'

'That ain't magic, that's just quick hands making fancy show, like when Deen over there deals cards off the bottom.'

'I ain't!'

'I know what I saw, and if I see it again I'll bend your thumbs backwards for you.'

'I seen real magic. In Hamplun, when I was a lad.'

'What else did you believe when you was a lad?'

'This was real! I saw a mage. He made a tree grow right outta the ground, and five minutes later there was a sapling looked like it had been growing ten years.'

'I saw a witch once. She came with a wagon of women headed for the mines. Pretty ladies, y'see? So was the witch, but she weren't one of them. They'd camp some way off, but she came into town asking after any sick or hurt people. Me mam was bedridden with a fever, and pappa was desperate enough. He let her in and she made some tea that smelled like death. But mam drank it down and was right as rain in a week.'

'Your pappa got taken. She probably woulda been fine in a week regardless.'

The talk died down for a while, and I was watching the fire, thinking about magic things, when the old lady beside me started to speak. She whispered at first, but each word seemed to give her strength and before long she spoke clear and loud enough for everyone to hear.

'My dolly was under the bed. Never went anywhere without her. Don't know why I forgot today. Ma and Pa were fighting, and I was hungry. We had no food, and that's why they were mad. I heard Pa say it was the same everywhere, we'd have to leave, like the others had. Ma didn't want to, she didn't want to leave her home. I ran to my hiding place in the garden. I cried in the bushes because I was hungry, and didn't want my parent to see me crying and be mad with me. I saw it get dark, looked up through the dry branches. I saw a cloud, but it wasn't a cloud. Then I heard wind, then another sound, loud, from the sky. Never heard it before, but it froze me to the ground, stopped my breath until I was choking. Then fire. Fire from the sky.'

She stopped talking, and I saw a tear zigzag its way down her wrinkled face.

'My parents burned, and my dolly.'

Nobody felt like talking after that and we went to our separate camps. I had nightmares, about fire and giant wings.

Early in the morning we heard someone yell, and jumped up to see the light of dawn just starting to creep into the valley. I looked around and saw nothing, but a man was pointing south to the mountains. I could see the sun had already hit the peaks, and was about to turn and ask why he was making such a fuss when I looked again. The light blinked, then appeared again further down the mountain. I didn't know what I was seeing, but my nightmare came rushing back to my mind. We all watched as the light blinked again, then another appeared, then another. Each peak had its own light that made its way down and out of sight among the foothills. After that we saw nothing, but in the next hour we saw smoke start to rise away south.

You have to realize, none of us had actually seen a dragon before. Of course we'd heard stories, but they were always about far away places, told by travellers with strange accents. None of us knew for certain what we had seen, and we clung to that uncertainty like driftwood in a stormy sea. We packed our things and continued with the wagon line further north, but our necks became sore from all the looking back.

About midday there was a haze in the air. It was hard to see behind further than a mile or two, and the mountains were hidden. I was just munching on some dried fish for lunch when I heard a noise from behind, almost like wind, but the air was still. It got louder and louder, then from the treeline a half-mile back, came a wagon going at full tilt. A few seconds later another one appeared, then two more. In less than a minute, the clearing was thick with wagons, running north like a wave of wood and horseflesh.

As the wave passed each wagon we could see the northbounders pick up speed or the southbounders turn right around and start running. By the time it got to us the air was thick with dust and hoofbeats. Before we could call out we heard the answer to our unspoken fears.

'Dragons!'

Over and over they yelled it, and suddenly so was I, running to jump on the wagon I'd been walking next to. There was no plan, no strategy, just pure animal flight. We all knew, instantly, what was going to happen, and we fled like rabbits, each wagon trying to outrun the others, knowing that to lag behind was death.

I looked across and saw my father and sisters in another wagon careening down a hill and almost tipping on its side. Then I lost sight of them as my wagon flew into a dried creek bed and shattered a wheel on a stone. The driver, I don't remember his name, he hauled on the reins to stop the horses before they shattered the wagon, and us, to bits among the rocks. He and I cut the horses loose, each grabbing one before they bolted. I'd never ridden a horse without a saddle, but terror makes you a quick study. I didn't need to guide the horse anyway; it knew exactly where not to run, and I just had to not fall off.

Now we could hear a noise above the rattle of wagons. It was a rumble that filled the air and echoed in the gut. I looked back and saw shapes hanging in the air; they seemed to be motionless, except they got steadily larger. Then I felt my terror double; what I was seeing was not still, but flying straight at me. I tried to turn the horse but it was having none of that, choosing simply to run until its legs flew off.

I felt heat then. Behind me and to my right. The horse veered away from it and into a wood. That saved me, I'm sure. A dragon takes the easiest prey it can, and only chases it into tight places when it can't get anything else. Once the horse turned it kept going in a straight line, away from what turned it. I could feel that my family was getting further away, but I had no way to stop unless I wanted to break both my legs. So I just hung on, trying to see where we were going but just seeing more trees and hearing the roar of the dragons all around me."

Grandfather had stopped talking and Sethel and I were very still. We both wanted to hear more but if we said anything it might remind him how late it was. Finally, I ventured a question.

"What happened then, granda?"

"Hm? Oh, I don't remember much after that, not until I arrived at a village as it was getting dark. They told me my horse and I were nearly dead and I was raving about being burned, though the fire had never touched me. I wasn't the first desperate soul to turn up that day and the whole village seemed to be moving, piling whatever they could carry onto anything with wheels. They laid me in the back of a cart amongst some furniture, and the next thing I knew it was day. I sprung up like I'd been stung and jumped out of the cart only to fall down again. My legs were a bundle of knots and wouldn't work properly, but I was helped to a seat and given something hot to drink. Looking around I saw tents and wagons and horses. Beyond that I saw glints of metal and saw soldiers for the first time in my life. To the south I saw nothing but smoke.

We had reached Hamplun, or at least had crossed the river Shay a few miles south of the city. We'd been told to camp there as there wasn't enough room to house us all and to only come into the city if an attack seemed imminent.

We found out later that the dragons had stopped moving north somewhere around the village of Glendall, twenty miles from Hamplun. When I woke up they were still waiting on the army scouts to make there way back. They started to trickle in and news spread quick among the refugees: the entire valley south of Glendall was burning."

Grandfather shook his head, as if the memories were flies buzzing in his ears.

"Now you two have kept me up later than I wanted, and your mum will skin us alive if she gets back and you two ain't in bed. Move it, my little hellions."