Shed 5

The vermodrome is dark and quiet in the early hours of the morning. Dragons curled up in their sheds and handlers sleeping in the long barrack huts with their leaky roofs. Nobody out on any midnight runs, tonight. So nobody to wait up for.

But Redge still can’t get any sleep. He leans against the side of Shed 5, smoking a cheap cigarette. There’s the smallest chance that an enemy flier could see the orange pinprick from a great height and use that to find the vermodrome, but he’s not seriously concerned about that. He can’t hear wingbeats in the air. Or the thrumbling drone of an engine, either.

It’s cold out here, even with the sheepskin jerkin. It’s cold in the huts, too. They were never built to last, these barrack huts. They were meant to be torn down and rebuilt somewhere else as the army moved north. But the army hasn’t moved north, yet. There’s no sign that it will move north any time soon. The Twergs are digging their heels in. So the army has to dig in opposite, shivering in the mud. And 7th Flight has to stay ten miles behind the lines, shivering in their huts.

The sheds are warmer. Double-walled and insulated. Dragons don’t do well in the cold.

He stamps out his cigarette in the mud, then goes in through the side door, rather than rolling the great barn doors open. That would let the cold air in.

There’s a dim orange light inside from the furnace smouldering in the corner. The toasty heat is welcome, on his face. He can vaguely make out the outlines of a great shape in the gloom, curled up in the centre of the shed. But he walks around the outskirts, heading for the furnace itself. Careful not to touch it without his gloves. It’s down to its embers now, so he opens the grille to try and get it going again. Poking and prodding at the ash. The grille always squeals on its hinges when it’s pushed wide open.

Slithering, behind him. Scales against straw.

“Didn’t mean to wake you,” he says.

“Excuse my scepticism,” says Agatha. He hears her voice inside his head. Not with his ears.

“No, I couldn’t sleep,” he says. “Thought I’d check the furnace hadn’t gone out.”

“It never goes out.”

“Even so.”

There’s wood piled next to the furnace. The whole army’s short of coal, so he sent

a work detail out into the forest with axes last week. He’s not sure what the Vracians would think, if they knew he was felling their sacred trees to keep his dragons warm. But then it’s the dragons keeping their forests from being invaded and burnt down, so that seems like a decent trade to him. He throws a few logs onto the fire and hears a tremendous sigh behind him. Feels a gust of hot breath on the back of his neck.

“Is it Lilian, again?” asks Agatha.

“No,” says Redge. “I told you, I’m just checking the furnaces.”

“It seems peculiar.”

He turns and scowls, with an armful of wood. Agatha is cast in shadow, with her scales barely catching the glow from the fire. But Redge can see a pair of eyes watching him, ancient and calculating in the darkness. And he can see two rows of teeth.

“What’s peculiar?” he asks.

“That the furnaces always require your special attention on nights where your marriage is in jeopardy.”

“Bollocks,” says Redge. “That’s not true.”

“I have yet to be proven wrong.”

“I just thought I’d make sure you were warm enough, is all.”

“How considerate.”

When the wood is on the fire and the flames are climbing, he swings the grille shut again. He sets the poker down and rubs his hands together. Then he stands where he is and scratches his left earlobe. “Although now that you mention it…”

Agatha sighs, again.

There’s a kettle in the shed, and a box of teabags. He heats the water over the furnace and makes himself a brew, talking while he does it. The teapot always goes down on the straw near Agatha, with the lid off, so she can inhale the vapour. And he sits down on a rickety old chair. He’s got to the nub of the problem, by then.

“…she just doesn’t seem to realise,” he’s saying. “That I can’t talk to her on the phone every bloody day. Because there’s only one telephone line that runs out here, and it’s for official purposes. I can’t go up to Major Caelborn and say, ‘Beg pardon, sir, I know you’re waiting for word from brigade headquarters, but I was hoping I could call the missus quickly, if it’s all right with you.’ But there’s no telling her that.”

“You spoke to her once, on her birthday, did you not?”

“Well, aye, I did. But that’s different. I told him then, ‘It’s the wife’s birthday’, and he let me have five minutes on the blower. He’s not made of stone. But that were a special occasion. I can’t do it every day, can I?”

“Humans never cease to amaze me,” says Agatha. “This telephone. It does not seem to have brought happiness into the world. It seems to me that letters were sufficient, for many centuries. And now they have been made insufficient. But no good has come from it.”

“Well that’s just the thing,” he says. “Letters aren’t good enough anymore. And she says that if I am going to send letters then she wants more detail. But I can’t put any detail in! Everything gets censored. Comes back from the major’s office with half of it crossed out.”

“Perhaps she simply worries about you,” says Agatha. “Details might be comforting to her. Without them, she is free to imagine your situation as being worse than it actually is.”

“I suppose that must be it,” he says. He takes another slurp of tea. Part of him feels daft, talking to a dragon about problems with the missus. But who else does he have to talk to? He can’t talk to the handlers, because he’s their flight sergeant. They’re supposed to look up to him. The other NCOs on the base aren’t much use for this sort of thing. And he can’t talk to officers, because they’re above his paygrade. They’re not supposed to treat him as an equal.

Besides, he likes talking to Aggie. She always knows how to make him feel better, for all of her sighing and complaining. You’re bound to know something about everything, aren’t you? When you’re three thousand years old.

“It must be distressing for her,” says Agatha. “Knowing that you could come to harm.”

“Pfft,” he says. “What harm? Not like I’m in the front lines. Been here five months now and I’ve not seen head nor tail of the Twergs. I’m starting to think they’re imaginary.”

“I can assure you that they’re not,” says Agatha. She shifts in the gloom and unfurls her right wing. Sheets of gauzy skin stretching over delicate bones. Between the third and fourth flight-fingers there’s a ragged hole punched through the membrane, which Redge could just about fit his thumb through if he wanted to. It’s healing up slowly, but it will leave a nasty white scar. It still makes him seethe. Some bold-faced Twerg taking a pot-shot at her with his rifle. The bloody nerve.

“Well that’s what you get for flying too low,” he says. “Ought to be more careful.”

“It was Falinor’s idea,” she says. “Not mine.”

Redge grumbles to himself. “Well he definitely ought to be more careful.”

Agatha lowers her wing, again. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything?”

“No, nothing,” he says. “Still on leave. Or that’s what they say.”

They share a moment of sad silence before Redge decides to leave her in peace. He knocks back the rest of his tea and stands up, patting his pockets. “Well,” he says. “Can’t stay here jawing all night. Ought to be going.”

“Be patient with your wife, Redge,” says Agatha. “I’m sure she’s just concerned for your wellbeing.”

“Glad somebody is.”

He closes up Shed 5 and toddles back to bed, past the leaky handler’s barrack and the leaky officer’s mess to the leaky NCO’s hut. There’s only two other men who share it with him: Cob Davies, the Quartermaster Sergeant, and Sergeant Major Gurnbad, who snores like a coping saw. Redge rams cotton wool into his ears before he climbs into bed. Shivering under the covers. Thinking about being back home, with Lilian. Part of him would like to go and make his bunk in Shed 5, with Aggie. Curl up in the straw, near the furnace. It would be a lot warmer. He tries to imagine that while he falls asleep.