Free Battledragon by Christopher Rowley

mouth of the rubbish yard, a small court in which the garbage from the Tower of Guard and the Dragon House was mixed with other refuse from other official buildings before being mulched and transported.
    They looked at each other and shrugged.
    Suddenly there came another crash.
    They looked at each other again.
    "Come on, Gerse, we better take a look."
    "You go. I should stay here."
    "Both go, just in case. Might be a lunatic."
    They peered through the snow.
    "Come on."
    Cautiously they made their way across the passage to the entrance to the rubbish yard. Gerse had brought a torch, which he thrust in ahead of himself. The other, Irodle, came behind him with his spear leveled.
    The torchlight revealed mounds of debris, all carefully graded and tidied away. Two enormous cats glared at them from the dark, then sidled swiftly away behind the bone bins.
    "Just them cats," said Gerse.
    "I dunno," said Irodle, "it was pretty loud for cats."
    But the piles of discarded clothing, dirty hay, vegetable compost, and builders' scrap stood there mutely in rebuttal.
    "No lunatic," said Gerse with relief.
    "Damn cats."
    But it was not the cats who were solely intent on the rats drawn to the place. Nor was it a lunatic.
    Neither Gerse nor Irodle glimpsed the tall, massive form that had slipped out of the Dragon House while they were in the rubbish yard.
    It moved through the snow with a light, anxious tread, and turned out onto the wide space of Tower Parade, which led down the hill on the south side of the height on which stood the Tower of Guard.
    Here Bazil Broketail paused for a moment. He was out of sight of the guards. Their job was primarily to keep people out of the Dragon House rather than dragons in, since wyverns only rarely entered the city, apart from the fortress set about the Tower of Guard. Still, he didn't want anyone to know about this mission, because he was about to break a most fundamental rule for the Dragon Corps.
    From here on questions would certainly be raised about his conduct. But his determination remained. The damned old Purple Green was going to eat a fish and enjoy it. He'd been listening to the wild dragon go on about how distasteful fish was for months, and he was tired of it. So were all the others. It was up to Bazil to do something about it.
    He set off southward, down Water Street, a steep lane that wound down through the Lamontan Graveyards to Sawmill Lane and then to Old East Street, where it changed pace. Now it dogged southeast and went straight down a smooth, gentle slope toward the East Bay. Here stood the homes of prosperous merchants, sea captains, and the like, in a fine row of white-fronted houses, each with a square portico held up by plastered pillars.
    In the day a thousand eyes scrutinized this street, but at this hour there was no one to observe the progress of a two-ton wyvern dragon, partly concealed beneath his great cloak, as he hurried down the center of the street.
    At the dockside he paused. On this side of Chandler's Point lay the East Bay. Here the water was shallow and just offshore the current was swift. There were shoals in the bay so it was not favored for shipping, which congregated on the west side of the point, inside True Bay.
    Bazil crossed the promenade of the Southside and passed through the ornamental gardens to the ramps that led down to the sandy flats that fringed the water. Among the wealthier families, a ride on the exposed sands was one of the pleasures of the day.
    The tide was low, and so he would have to cross a hundred yards or more of tidal flats. This wouldn't have been a problem except that across the bay he saw a fire on the beach, near the East Gate, where someone, perhaps drovers waiting for the morning's market, were staying warm and passing around a bottle of whiskey.
    He removed his cloak, folded it roughly, and stuffed it beneath a bench. Then he dropped to all fours and slithered down across the cold wet sand to the water of the Long Sound.
    He