caught his breath. Sprinting and walking in turn he watched the western horizon open up and grow closer.
He expected every moment the occasion he could not plan for. A dragon would appear on the horizon, a cloud of dark smoke in the clean afternoon air; it would see him and stoop like a hawk. He imagined it a thousand ways as he ran and walked toward his lengthening shadow. He refused to imagine what would happen next. After all, he would have to face it soon enough. But he couldn’t prevent the images of danger from rising unbidden in his mind.
Consequently he felt a strange sort of apprehension as he, at the end of the day, began to approach the ragged edge of the high fields. Something was wrong; he should not have gotten this far. Not only was he still alive, the dragons had not even seen him.
He looked longingly at the High Gates, just across the narrow valley. They gleamed red-gold against the already blue-black western sky. A gradual slope lifted upon his right hand; he knew that the footpath down to the lakes began on the other side. The temptation was to dash up the slope and down the path beyond. His body, which had run this far, was unwilling to keep still. He attempted to placate it with a mouthful of water, only to find his water bottle was dry. Yet he forced himself to stand under the slope and think the matter through.
Since the dragons knew the refugees must pass this way, they would have put a guard in the valley itself. This would enable them to keep an eye on activity in the High Gates at the same time. He crept cautiously up to the edge of the cliff, soil giving way to bare stone beneath his feet. He looked up and down the valley. Nowhere in its cool dimness did he see the sign of a dragon. There was no fire, no smoke, no tang of venom in the air.
Trying to ponder the matter coldly, Morlock felt his heart rising within him. It would be just that easy after all. He would scramble down the steep footpath, cross the narrow valley, and climb up to the High Gates. In an hour he would be home. Perhaps he should try to catch a fish. It was a small enough risk, after all that he had run, and what a joke it would be when he handed it solemnly to the watch-dwarves in the High Gates. Against his will he smiled and looked up the slope he would climb to reach the path downward. There was a sharp crag just beyond, picturesque in the red evening light. Memorable. He didn’t actually remember it, but he had never seen it from this angle, in this fiery light. It looked like . . . It looked as if . . .
Morlock threw himself on the ground, just barely out of sight of the hulking brown dragon perched on the cliff. He found himself trembling. It was perched directly over the footpath leading down the cliff, its color blending in with the native rock. Fortunately Morlock had seen its head move as it glanced back along the valley. He wondered if it had seen him. He wondered what he should do.
He saw a white dragon-lungful of cool steam puff upward in the air. After some long moments, another followed. The shadows had risen in the meantime so that the second appeared dark blue at first. But even when it reached the zone of sunlight it seemed darker, heavier, smokier than the first breath.
What was happening? Was the dragon waking up after a long period of sleep or inactivity? (Did dragons sleep? Heroes in the old songs who depended on this invariably came to a bad end.) Would now be the best time to dart down the footpath? He discarded that thought immediately. The best time for that, if there was one, had now passed. The dragon, no matter how sluggish, would simply reach down and pluck him like a mouse off the cliff.
He could jump. The idea sprang into his awareness fully formed. Coldly, he considered it. The dragon would certainly see him. But it was the quickest way down the cliff face, without question. If he lived, perhaps he would be able to make his way into Helgrind. He had an idea the chasm, at its deepest, was too narrow for a dragon’s wingspan—probably the only reason