by Rance » Wed May 15, 2013 8:37 am
It had been some time since dragons, but you never forget dragons. You never sleep without seeing beasts spitting fire from under their tongues or hearing the screams of frightened children. An eye opened. He saw the hot glow beyond his curtains. Old muscles worked their way to waking so quickly that he'd scarcely had time to cram brogans on his feet before he was outside, buckets in his great, rockbreaking fists.
A boy was outside -- the rogue, worst rogue he had ever imagined, too-talkative and too-loud, arrogant little prick with a curl to his lip. Elliot had started the train of alerts. From another house, the rockbreaker watched as an able-bodied man emerged, shouted to his boys for buckets, water-pans, the piss in their chamber pots. It didn't matter.
And one of the boys knew his job well, too. He followed in the footsteps set by the rogue, going from house to house, hammering on the doors, tossing stones at windows. All learned, all practiced.
This is what you do in case of dragons.
Arrestes Gold, the rockbreaker, the man who broke rocks for a living so that that one big rock became a thousand little rocks, and then those little rocks became gravel or pebbles for throwing -- he just broke rocks -- was the first to stride toward the fire. It was already flaring, burning out of control, leaping high, belching black smoke in to the air.
Arrestes's two buckets would not do enough. The fire would still blaze. Behind him, he heard shouts.
"Buckets -- as many as you can," shouted someone.
Arrestes set down his buckets. He did not remember whether or not there was anyone living in there. All he saw was a house coiled in flame, being swallowed, and his first thought: What if there were children in there. Pretty girls and pretty ribboned dresses. The people he broke rocks for even when they didn't pay him. What if they were in there? It made his day when he broke rocks just because they thought it was fun.
This is what you do in case of dragons.
That damn rogue. Snot-nosed shit. Likely set a fire, probably playing with sparks, sticks, something. It didn't matter. Water enough would be there in a few moments. Just a few moments. But the rockbreaker kept striding toward the entrance to the burning home even when the smoke was too great and the heat scorched his cheeks to red. Doors were like rocks, but weaker, so he barreled his way through the front entrance, held high his hand against his eyes to look for anything. Children. Sleeping men. Women. Walls did not matter anymore; they were reduced to their minimal beams, their fluttering strangers of ash, their billowing columns of hungry, roaring fire.
They'd be there with water in a few minutes. They would. That's how this town worked.
But it was easy to get lost in the fire. Especially when there was no one inside, nobody to be burned, just furniture and floorboards and emptiness. The rockbreaker didn't really know how to get back out. Fires confused, burned out the logic in his mind, kept him knowing up from down, left from right, front door from back. Heat. So much heat, such a little home.
The townspeople got there with their buckets moments later, emptying all the troughs, dousing it with muddy liquid. By the time they were done, the home was a smoking corpse, scarcely anything more than its black-burned supports and an ash-gray tattoo of heat like a starburst burned into the ground around it. It clogged the sky with plumes of choking smoke, turned the moon from silver to brown.
Arrestes Gold the rockbreaker was not a smart man. That's why he was meant to get the women and children out at first sign of a fire. That was what this part of town, which knew dragons all too well, had told him. When they tried to drag his corpse out of the husk of the home, his burnt skin slipped away from the bone and left red rings of human meat around whatever bits of him remained.
Sometimes humans died when dragons attacked. Men died in fires. That's what they did. They went from big rocks to little rocks to tiny rocks to powder and then nothing at all.
This is what you do in case of dragons.