The smoke swallowed him whole.  He stood still in it, ears straining
for any clue that the dragon might be about to attack.  Then he heard the
other dragons above and knew he was in very deep trouble.  Nikol worked his
way slowly through the burning brush to where the dead horse lay.  Beneath
it was the other fire lance, dragons tongue.  He took it and held the slow
match close to the lighting port.  The hammer across his back he moved
slowly out of the smoke, back towards where C'aranth should be.  Dragons
screamed above him and then flew off in that direction.

     It gave him pause.  Here he was, a single dragons tongue and a hammer
and he was heading in which direction?  With what at the destination?  He
thought about it and then decided that he liked the answers.  Where C'aranth
was.  There was where he had to go.

     It didn't help to slow his racing heart, as he stepped from the smoke
to find several dragons and men.  After a short question and answer
challenge, though, he was satisfied that he had reinforcements, not enemies.  

>     While M'yer and P'ker saw to getting the other dragons and riders
>reassembled for another trip, Trevor climbed up onto Trissana's saddle and
>motioned that Nikol should follow him.  The blaster seemed a bit hesitant, and
>Trevor realized he'd probably never ridden a dragon.  But he also clearly had
>no desire to be stranded out here in the wilderness, and mounted the dragon
>without complaint.

     He felt like he was five again, being lifted up onto a plow horse for a
ride.  The animal was huge!  No.  It was not an animal.  he had to keep
reminding himself of that.  But as he was doing so they prepared to fly and
then, moments later, teleport.

>     "Not as bad as some folks say," Trevo said.  "Just remember, it only
lasts a
>few seconds!"

     Now if that wasn't a warning to not do something . . . but Nikol had no
choice in the matter . . . everything went Grey.

                                                   very grey.

                                                          it sank into the
bones and smothered the eyes

         he would have screamed if he could just find his voice in the grey

>     They came out of teleport just a short distance above the ground, so
>close that Triss had to come to a running stop despite her furious
>backwinging.  For a moment, the dragon and her two passengers did nothing
but >remain still, taking deep breaths to clear their heads and settle their
stomachs.
>
>      "If *that's* what teleporting is like, I'll leave it to you riders,"
>Nikol said after a moment.  "It felt like...like being turned inside out."
>He dismounted and gave Nikol a hand down.
>
>     Triss closed her eyes and turned her head to gently rest her cheek
>against Trevor's chest. They stayed like this for several
>seconds, until he heard Nikol politely cough to get his attention.  He quickly
>disengaged himself from Triss, knowing how odd this would look to anyone who
>wasn't a rider.
>
>     "Begging your pardon," said Nikol. "I don't mean to bother you,
>but...will we be returning to Cleft now?"
>
>     Trevor's eyes opened wide...CLEFT!"We're going right now!" he told the
>blaster.  He dashed around the dragon, intending to leap up onto her
saddle, but >Triss quickly stood up to prevent him.  He stood staring at her
for a moment.     >Triss hung her head, but made no move to lie down again.
Trevor clenched his >fists in frustration. 

     It was obvious to Nikol that he was witnessing a very serious
discussion but one in which he was not included.  It was like being amongst
people who spoke another language.  They could talk all day and you'd never
know what was going on.

>     Trevor nodded, sitting down dejectedly.   "Looks like we're not going
>anywhere for awhile," he told Nikol.  "We may as well make ourselves
>comfortable."  
>
>     Nikol looked around him.  "Do you know where we are?" he asked.
>
>     Trevor, too, looked around, deciding that he needed something to distract
>him.  He'd pulled the image of this place almost at random from his mind, the
>first one that came into his head.  It took him a few seconds to relate their
>surroundings to what he'd mapped.  "We're in the Nomadlands," he said, "nearly
>100  miles south of the warren."  Well, that ended the other idea he'd been
>considering, asking Triss to simply fly them straight to Cleft without
>teleporting.  They'd get there more quickly just by giving the dragon the
>short rest she needed to teleport.
>
>    "Will someone come looking for us, then?" Nikol asked.
>
>     "Maybe," Trevor answered.  "P'ker and M'yer know by now that we didn't
>come out of teleport with them, and they'll probably try to search for us.
>But the spot they'd have gone to is about a hundred miles west of Cleft and
>just a little south, so they're a long way from us."  
>
>     "In other words, we wait then," Nikol decided.  He began looking around
>for kindling to start a fire, and after a moment Trevor went to help him.
>Soon, with Trissana's help, they had a small fire going.  The dragon asked if
>she could be allowed to fly a short distance away to hunt, and Trevor, knowing
>she needed to eat, reluctantly gave his consent after warning her not to go
>too far.  She spread her wings and took off, and was quickly lost to view.
>Trevor and Nikol sat down on either side of the fire to wait.
>
>     "I saw what you did in the hatching cavern," Trevor said, desperate for
>any diversion to keep him from having to think of Cynthia pacing the floor
>worrying about him.  "You do very good work.  I draw maps myself."

    "Then our work is related.  Before I blast I make maps as well.  But
mine are a little more detailed."  Nikol said.

     "More detailed?  How?"  Trevor found himself interested by this almost
challenge.

     "Your maps show the topography, maybe the biomes.  Mine must have a
depth to them.  I need to know the surface and what lies beneath it.  While
yours can be drawn and read on a single sheet of paper our takes more work
to represent.  The depth adds anoth dimension."  Nikol waved his hands in
blunt motions trying to convey the depth issue.

     "I'd love to see a sample of one of your maps, for comparison to mine"

     Nikol nodded.  "Not a problem, when we get back to camp I'll show you
the one I'm working on.  There are advantages to making the maps, though.
You get a sense of a place much faster after you have drawn others like it.
This ground, for instance, is rotten with caves.  The water in the flood
season leaches the strength from the rocks and the plain slowly falls as it
becomes hollow from beneath.  Not the best for habitation but good for quick
shelters.  I've read about areas like this but never seen one close up . . . "

     They talked a while further but Trevor could see the blasters eyes kept
being drawn out to the lands around them.  Finally Nikol excused himself
from the fire to 'explore' a bit.

     He was right.  The ground was of the type old Karst had told him of in
his early studies.  He picked his way around a few small holes and found a
larger one that had to be at least twenty feet deep.  He was sticking his
head in, trying to get a better look when the displacement of air told him
something big had just flown above him.  Very big.  Nikol looked up but
there was little to see.  He shrugged and returned to his investigation of
the cave.

     Two dragons do NOT fight quietly.  The thrashing around drew Nikol like
a lodestone draws iron.  He crashed through the brush not worrying about
making noise as the fight drowned out any noise he could have made.  When he
got close enough to see what was going on he almost chuckled.  He had seen
this sort of thing on the breeding ranches since he was a boy.  But then he
remembered, the dragons were sentient, not breeding stock.  This wasn't a
springtime mating . . .

     It had all started to avenge a rape.  Something in the back of his mind
was saying as he, with measured moves, checked the slowmatch and lance and
then moved in at a trot.  Maybe it would end slightly differently, but there
was still a rape involved.  They were both big, very big.  He had the lance
and nothing else, having left the hammer back at the camp.  But there was no
time to return, the male had the female prone, his teeth locked in her
throat.  Her head lolled back, eyes rolling back in semiconsciousness.

     No time at all, but something deep in him chose to apply the old rules,
the old laws, and guided his hands as he lit the lance.  The flame sputtered
at first, burning past horse blood, then shot out a flare that lit the
clearing in a harsh light.  He played the flame across the side of the
dragon and then further back, and lower.  There he held it until the flame
sputtered out.  It probably did little damage, he would have been wiser to
try to flame a wing.  But it DID get the big Blacks attention.  

        Dropping the lance, Nikol turned and ran.  He could hear the scream
of rage in every cell of his body and he tensed as he waited for the
retaliation that was sure to follow.  One does not allow attacks on your
privates to go unpunished.  The Black felt the same way.  Nikol dove
headlong into the hole he had been looking at earlier as flames swept across
the rocks above and around him.  Further back he could hear Triss take wing.
Then the bottom of the hole slammed up to meet him with a splash and a thud
and he lost all cares of what would happen next as the grey once again
claimed him for its own.

<<<nrpg>>>
Christmas time in august.

la la roasting on an open fire 
la la nipping at your nose

I figure the distraction, the loss of prey, and the supposed death of the
person who did the nasty deed should be enough for the Black and he will
return to his nefarious task at hand.  Besides, he'll probbaly want to rest
and check himself before performing anymore 'assaults'

I'll need finding, rescuing, tender loving care, and all that stuff.
Fortunately the puddle I hit was shallow and emptied by the sudden splash of
a foolhardy blaster impacting it in one grand belly flop.

Sheesh, C'aranth uses me for bait.  Trevor sets me up to tackle
'distractions' of the nastiest dragon out there solo.  Why won't anybody
fight next to me?  I promise to be carefull with the hammer.

mike--->would like to be around long enough to be missed when I vanish for a day