I have always had a passion for dragons. One of my favourite series is Anne Macaffrey’s “Pern” books, and I must admit that some of the aspects of her dragons have crept into this book. For example my dragons, like hers, have hide, rather than scales and they live in caves heated by volcanic activity and served by hot springs. I have also used some of the terms she invented, such as referring to a number of dragons working together as ‘wings’ and using the ranks of ‘wing leader’ and ‘wing second’. Mainly because I can’t think of a better way to describe a team of dragons trained to fight a common enemy.
The most important aspect of this book is that it contains no humans. My dragons are free entities, living their own lives by their own social rules and dealing with the political and military problems that any highly organised social group face. I refer anyone who believes these things are peculiar to humans, to the social lives of ants. This book is an exploration of an ancient and well established society getting to grips with changes in relationships with neighbouring clans and with their own expanding powers. Hopefully its also a good yarn.
It is impossible to eradicate cultural references and idioms from a book written in a contemporary style and I have made no attempt to do so. I make no apology for this and hope that the reader will overlook any anachronisms.
One other thing I need to explain is that, while a dragon by tradition has four legs, and four paws, I have chosen to refer to their forelegs as arms and their forepaws as hands. This is simply because it seemed clumsy to keep writing forelegs, and phrases such “gathered him into her forelegs” just sounded silly. Of course, how dragons manage to have four legs and still have two wings, when all other flying vertebrate species use their altered forelegs with which to fly, is one evolution’s great mysteries.