Damsel Knight (14 page)

And that's when the world explodes with fire.

She sways, the heat taking more out of her than anything in the fight so far. It hits her like a physical blow, a harsh contrast to the constant cold. Noise follows, overwhelming after the silent battle.

Above her trees burn, the brightest turning to skeleton before her eyes. The lost ones flee, like rats on a sinking ship. The soldiers are gone. In their place are vague forms of white mist that occasionally shift into men, women, children, each with agony on their faces.

The light pains her eyes, but she keeps them open, watching. There's a cracking sound as a dozen trees break at once. Wind buffets her face, and a dark form drops from the sky, wings spread wide.

Chapter 14

She sleeps, though she doesn't know how. Every time she opens her eyes she can see the forest below. Sometimes they get so close she thinks that if she leans out of Gelert's clenched fingers far enough, she'll be able to touch the top of the trees.

She doesn't try.

Gelert isn't a good flier. She could tell that right from the start of their bumpy progress. Each time he rose a little higher than usual, he'd make this queer whining noise in the back of his throat and drop so quick her stomach would lurch. Now though he seems to have found his stride, staying as close to the trees as he can.

Now and again the dragon glances down at her head poking from his fist, and his body starts to vibrate like he's trying to purr. It's a stupid thought, but it's almost as if he's trying to reassure her, or maybe himself.

Neven shouts, but the words are lost over the wind. She opens her eyes anyway to see if she can spot what he's excited about. Blinking against the wind, she sees it. The trees are gone, and from the looks of things they've been gone a while. There are houses down there, and planted fields. No one lives close to the forest, so she must have slept longer than she thought. Sunlight is slowly creeping into the world.

Neven's voice comes again, and this time she picks out words. "There, there!"

She doesn't want to look. She wants to curl up in Gelert's warm fist and go back to sleep. The places where the cold had spread no longer hurt, but they feel odd and stiff. When she presses hard on her right side, chest, neck, and cheek, she can feel it. But when she skates her fingernails lightly over their surfaces there are numb patches.

Her right arm is dead. She tried rubbing it, hitting it, but she feels nothing. It's like she has no right arm at all. She could hack it off and not even notice. It would be about the same to hack it off. If it stays like this then how will she fight? Whoever heard of a one handed knight?

Her stomach jumps, and suddenly they're going down. The landing is as rough as the minutes after they first took off. If she's right and Neven is in Gelert's other fist then that's no wonder.

They skid haphazardly, soil and chunks of grass flying past before she manages to lower herself into Gelert's fist, clutching one of his fingers tight. It's as thick as her waist, and the rough scales make it feel like she's hugging some abnormally warm tree.

The dark almost makes it worse. Her limbs flail, and her sword disappears out of the opening into dim daylight. She crashes heavily on her right side, but doesn’t feel it. Her left arm loosens around Gelert’s finger. She presses her body as tightly as she can to the rough scales, trying to make up for her lack of another hand.

Then she’s falling, rolling over loose dirt with a speed that makes her stomach lurch. She tries to get her forearms under her to protect her head, but with only one hand the effect is minimal. She digs in hard with the arm that she has, slowing her progress with a few jarring thumps.

On hands and knees she shakes herself off like a dog. Dirt chokes the air around her as it’s thrown from her clothes and skin. Sunlight and dust causes her to squint. Dropped into the world like a newborn babe, she hates everything. The dirt is too dry and itchy, the sun too bright, the air stings of smoke, and her arm lies on the ground below her like a limp piece of meat.

The air stings of smoke.

Pushing herself roughly to her feet, she spins around, heart thudding hard against her chest. They’re in the middle of a village. A small one with the roundhouses just within glimpsing distance of each other. Every house is a burned husk of straw, smoke pouring thick and black from their shells.

The dragon is sprawled inches from the biggest house. He gets to his massive feet, shaking himself off. Dirt from his wings hits the softly burning flames and smothers them.

The building is more intact than the others, and she can tell from its size that it must have been a storehouse. She swallows, her throat dry. Everything slots together with a finality that’s painful. Neven’s shouts, and why they came here of all places. 

This isn’t just a village. This is her village. And it’s all gone.

Her head jumps to the left, eyes searching for the glimpse of the roof of her’s and Neven’s house. It’s not there, but where it should be rises a trail of dark smoke. Neven’s already trudging toward it, his head down low.

Bonnie takes a step to go after him, then stops herself. No. This isn’t her village. She was wrong about that. This is Neven’s village. This is his time to mourn. If he needs her he knows to ask.

Alice stands a little way off from the dragon, staring after Neven with a distraught look. She makes no move to follow him. They’re both strangers here.

It takes five minutes to find her sword in the expanse of rolling hills, now turned dirt and uprooted grass. The dragon had skidded at least two large fields worth before stopping. Somewhere under there were crops, but most had been used to graze the few sheep the village had bought together. Next to her sword lies a sheep carcass, dead long enough for the flies to claim it. A rank smell rises from the corpse as the flies return to their business, not easily deterred by dragons falling from the sky.

Wrinkling her nose, she picks up the sword, trying unsuccessfully to slot it into its scabbard. The angle is wrong. Her right hand is too used to drawing and returning it to the opening over her left shoulder. Sighing, she gives up, letting the sword hang from her left hand. If she tries too much she might open her throat. The dark dragon steel is nothing if not sharp.

Gelert gives a questioning whine, the sound strangely gentle in his large throat.

She looks up to see Neven jogging back toward them, head up, shoulders set with determination. She runs to meet him, even though her legs still ache from last night. She uses her left forearm to hold her right against her body. The last thing she wants is him to see her arm wobbling all over the place like a broken puppet.

“There’s only one grave,” he says before he reaches her. “If they let her, my mother would’ve buried my father near the house, to keep him close. So maybe - what happened to your face?” Expression slack with horror, he puts out a hand to touch her cheek.

She flinches back. Her stomach churns. She’d known her arm had kept its deathly white appearance, pale even compared to her skin, but it hadn’t crossed her mind that her face could be marked too. Her father had been one to bear his scars proudly, not like other knights who hid or cured theirs with magic. In her mind she’d known this path would have wounds and some would stay, but knowing is different to experiencing it.

“We’ll search the other houses,” she says briskly. She doesn’t mention that his mother could be in the burned remains of their home, her bones too damaged by the fire to find. He knows that. He’s not stupid. “If we find no one, then we’ll go to Porthdon. That’s where she would have gone.”

Alice screams, causing the dragon to snap his head around and growl. The sound is nothing like his purr. It’s a rock-slide on a giant mountain. A thousand of the King’s large cats at their meanest. Thunder when the storm is right over your head.

“We got this Gelert,” Bonnie calls out, already running. The last thing they need is an overprotective dragon frying someone who could tell them what happened here.

Running with a sword almost as big as herself isn’t easy, and by the time they reach Ness’s house Neven is ahead of her. He stops dead in his tracks beside Alice. He pauses long enough to swallow, adam’s apple bobbing, then he starts forward, tucking his knife into his belt as he does so.

“Ma,” he says as he envelopes the ragged woman in a hug.

Mrs Moore is a shadow of herself. Once the short woman had seemed the feistiest in the village. True, she’d never talk back to a man, and would always keep her eyes firmly on the ground when answering her husband, but alone with women she’d argue with the best of them. Now she’s a frail lifeless thing with only her features to mark her as the same woman.

In her hand she holds a spade. At her feet five bodies lie neatly side by side. One is big, the other four small. Ness’s widowed mother, his twin sisters, his six year old sister, and his one year old brother. There are cuts and their faces are smeared with soot, but other than that they look like they’re sleeping.

Alice stares at them with eyes so wide they look like they might fall out of her face. It’s as if she’s never seen a dead body before. Maybe she hasn’t. Maybe she thought the dead would all be like Timon, helpful, eager to please, and so alive.

It’s then she realises Timon isn’t with them. Gelert must’ve not picked him up with the rest of them. She’s not even sure he could pick him up. Alice couldn’t touch him without going cold. Maybe Gelert couldn’t either.

“What happened?” She asks. The words seem insignificant. Dead children lie in front of her, ones she’s watched growing up, played with. It feels like there should be something more to say, but she can’t think of anything.

“Fire came from the sky,” Mrs Moore says. She moves toward Bonnie, cups her numb cheek. Her eyes move over her, from her face, to her shorn hair, to the sword in her hand. Her eyes set into something hard, but then they glance back at the bodies on the ground and soften again. “I wasn’t near any building, so I hid in the grass. That’s what saved me. I was looking for stones for your father’s grave.”

‘Your father’s.’ Bonnie forgives the slip. She’s in shock. “Was it the soldiers? How did they-”

“No,” Mrs Moore says, some of the fierceness back in her brown eyes. “It wasn’t the soldiers. It was a dragon.”

Chapter 15

“You’re crazy!” Mrs Moore shouts. “It’s one thing to dress like THAT, but a DRAGON?”

Gelert tilts his giant head, staring with ink black eyes at the woman cowering behind a length of charred wood. Abruptly he gets to his feet, giant tail swinging back and forth like an excited dog. He snuffles closer, and lowering his house sized head toward the woman, pins the charred wood delicately between sword-like teeth and lifts it away.

Mrs Moore shrieks, and hops the short distance across the rubble to Bonnie, grabbing her by the waist and pulling her back.

“It’s fine Mrs Moore,” she says as calmly as she can while being manhandled. Neven’s mother is surprisingly strong. “He’s under a spell. It makes him friendly for some reason. He’s just playing hide and seek.”

Neven shakes his head, approaching from behind with Alice clutching his hand. “Seems he’s getting friendlier every day. I thought it would decrease as the spell wore off, but maybe it’s just going to increase to a point, then break. And how do you know he’s playing hide and seek anyway? How often have you seen dragons play hide and seek?”

Bonnie flushes, shrugging. “Look - just watch. Gelert, it’s your turn to hide. Go on.”

Gelert lowers the front of his body to the ground, hind in the air and tail swinging. Then he leaps up and runs off. Each time his feet slam against the ground Bonnie and the others struggle to stay upright. It’s strange. A mountain acting like a puppy. The sun glints off his scales, making him look like he’s covered in blood.

Mrs Moore spins around, not looking so frail anymore. “This spell - it’s going to break? Did you give your wits to the ancestors? Why would you travel with a dragon that could turn on you at any time?”

Not even Neven is spared the tongue lashing. He opens his mouth, and closes it dumbly. A mother may get away with scolding a boy child, but only so long as boy can be considered a child. As soon as the child starts to approach grown, discipline is turned over to the father and the mother is expected to treat the child with the respect owed by his gender.

Alice ducks behind Neven, seeming more afraid of Mrs Moore than she does the dragon.

“We,” Neven starts, licking his lips nervously. “We found a princess.”

“And you didn’t slay the dragon,” Mrs Moore says, shaking her head. Her usually neat hair sticks out of its tie in strange directions, giving her a harried look. “What did you think would happen when you came to the palace? The King would say ‘good enough. That’s half the job done at least. Here’s my daughter’s hand and the keys to the kingdom?’”

“I’m planning on slaying him,” Bonnie says, trying not to quake under Mrs Moore’s gaze. “I just want to do it when the spell is broken, when it’s a fair fight.”

“When it’s a-” Mrs Moore casts a glance at Alice before turning back to Bonnie. “You are a child, and don’t think I can’t see there’s something wrong with your arm. It is a dragon. It could accidentally trip on a house and crush it flat. It can burn villages on a whim. It is made for killing and nothing else. There’s never going to be a fair fight with something like that. That’s not what you should be thinking about. You should be thinking about how many people are going to be standing nearby when that thing snaps and starts killing. How do you know it wasn’t the same dragon that did this last night?”

“It wasn’t,” she says quickly. “It can’t have been. He was with us.” It isn’t a lie. He had been with them last night, just not the whole night. But given how long it had taken him to fly here, it’s impossible that he could fly here and back in time. Right?

“You saw the dragon?” Alice asks timidly. “Didn’t you?”

“I did,” Mrs Moore says. “But it was a dark night with no moon. I had - other things to think about than what the dragon looked like. It was big though, like that one, and I doubt many reach that size.”

“They could,” Bonnie says. “Dragons live outside the circle. So how are we to know what size they grow to?” Her father would know. It had been him who travelled beyond the edges of the circle and slayed dragons that came too close to the stones. He had told her stories of dragons even larger than Gelert, but she had no way of knowing how common they were, or even if they were nothing more than an exaggeration to make her eyes grow wide.

“All I know is that no one will thank you if you lead a beast like that to King City. Bringing death to life never ends well.” Mrs Moore’s eyes find the dragon and she shudders. “The only way you’ll get whatever prize you seek is to kill the dragon before you reach those gates. Before this spell wears off.”

Bonnie watches Gelert. He’s dug a large hole in the freshly turned dirt, and stuck his head in it like that will help hide him. She can just see his eyes, tightly closed. His tail sways slowly from side to side, sweeping up a cloud of dust.

She has to kill him.

Her heart twists, and her sword feels impossibly heavy. She tries to bring up the image of her father, lying dead in a pool of his own blood. But the picture is faint compared to Gelert, here, happy and alive. She tightens her hand around her sword, tries to imagine herself pushing the metal all the way to the back of his throat, waiting while he bleeds out. Maybe he’d fight at the end. Maybe he’d watch her, purring deep in his throat as she killed him.

She can’t do it. She’s not sure she ever could. He killed her parents, but he’s still-

Still what? He killed her family. That’s all that should matter. A son would do it. A son wouldn’t hesitate. A son would be strong, he wouldn’t have these feelings. She should be able to kill things. This is no different to cutting the head off a chicken, or attacking an enemy before they harm your family, like Neven’s father did.

Except it is different. To her it’s different.

“I might need an extra pair of hands,” she hears her voice say. “Ness was willing. We’ll get him to agree to let Neven have the girl and the kingdom. We’ll have some money and land. That should be enough for both of us.”

Enough for her, but she’s not sure about Ness. They’ve just buried his whole family. She doesn’t how he’s going to react. Not everyone reacts to loss in the quiet tough way Neven and his mother seem to be doing. What she does know is that if she can’t kill Gelert someone else will need to. Alice and Mrs Moore would be too scared for different reasons, Neven might be too. She can’t ask that of them, but if Ness is as brave as he’s always saying then he could hold the sword. She could help. She owes Gelert that much. And she owes her father enough to see it done.

“The soldiers took Ness five days ago, after your father…” Mrs Moore’s voice trails away into tears. Neven moves quickly to wrap his arms around her. She clings to him like she’s drowning, her sobs ragged and heavy.

Bonnie shifts from foot to foot. Tears had never been something she’d been good at. Both Ness and Neven had been better at comforting children after scraped knees than her, and this is a lot more painful than a scraped knee. Mr Moore had been her protector for four years. He hadn’t been her father, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t love him in her own way.

Alice stands with her arms half raised, like she wants to help comfort but knows it’s not her place. Gelert raises his head from the dirt with a questioning whine.

“I don’t - I don’t think he’s gone far,” Bonnie says once the tears die down to quiet sniffs. She feels weak limbed and empty. Useless. The enormity of the past few days hits her, and she hates it. She can’t act the woman and find a way to ease Neven’s mother’s pain. She can’t play the man and use her sword to end this farce. "Dragons nest in the north. If one somehow made it through the barrier, that's where it should've come from. The north guardian stones are manned by druids. One of them must've sent a message to the city. That's why they were gathering the army."

Neven pulls away from his mother. "I get it. The city is ten days march away, and if they're recruiting at every town and village it's going to take a lot longer. Why lead your soldiers away when the war is already at their feet?"

Find Ness. Kill the dragon. That's what all this was for, right? Her parents will finally be avenged, and she'll have her knighthood. So why does she feel so bad?

***

"They were dead," Alice says again. "Really dead. Real life dead."

Bonnie winces. The memory of burying the twins with the rest of their family is sore enough, yet Alice keeps poking at it. "You've seen dead before. I saw Gelert's field of bones."

They walk together across grass and through sparse woods. There's no road to Porthdon, but it's not so bad. Though the ground is uneven, full of little holes that can break your ankle if you're not careful, most of the way is free of quick mud.

"I didn't look at the bones," Alice says, shuddering. "And I didn't watch when he - killed." She's changed a lot from the spotless girl she's found in that tower. She still wears Bonnie's woollen dress over her own, but both are shredded and caked in dirt. She's lost one of her silk slippers and the other is worn through. Her hair is more frizzy than curled, and mud is smeared all over her face and limbs.

She's easily more ragged than all of them, and that's saying something. For the first time Bonnie wonders if Alice knows how to wash. It's not like she'd have the opportunity with a magic tower cleaning up her messes. She makes a note to watch her the next time they come to a water source.

"Your dragon is being weird again!" Neven shouts from ahead of them.

Gelert is walking behind the boy, his massive stomach parallel with the girls. His head hovers over Neven's head, sniffing at the boy's hair and causing his clothes to flap with every exhale of breath. Being friendly? Tasting his future dinner? Bonnie's not sure. The thought makes her as uneasy as her still numb arm.

"Throw him a stick," she says, trying to shake off the feeling. Fetch would distract him. He's always liked the game.

Mrs Moore walks far ahead, almost out of sight. She'd been the one to insist they wouldn't ride Gelert to the town. "Imagine their faces," she'd said. "Every one of them would brand you as a witch on sight."

Bonnie can't see how that matters when you're riding on the back of a DRAGON. She'd like to see them try to drag her off Gelert's back to burn her. They'd need to build a tower to reach.

Gelert jumps out into the vast expanse of green after the stick.

"It's strange how you know so much about him," Alice says, looking down at her curiously. "What he likes, his real name."

Bonnie turns away, watching as Gelert trots back to Neven with a stick. Not the right stick, but he seems proud of himself all the same. Her teeth clench together tight. "Gelert's not his name. It's something I made up."

"He seems to think it's his name." Alice pushes a limp strand of hair away from her face. Her green eyes are wide and earnest. She thinks she's onto something.

Gelert runs away after the new stick.

Anger spikes inside her. They may be around the same age, but Alice knows nothing of pain. She's a child. She finds something interesting, then she pokes at it, again and again with no mind to what she's really asking.

Alice must see something on her face, because she shrinks back, eyes fixing on the ground. "I'm sorry," she says quickly. "It's not my place."

Bonnie sighs, all the anger draining out of her at once. She remembers when it wasn't her place either. "It's fine. I just don't want to talk about that."

Alice nods, but she doesn't speak or look up.

Neven has stopped moving, looking into the distance where Mrs Moore is walking back toward them. Glad for the distraction Bonnie rushes to meet them. Alice follows behind her.

Gelert comes back, his tail held high. He drops the tree trunk he's holding, then nudges it delicately toward Neven with his nose. A pair of squirrels dart out of the branches, clambering over each other in their hurry to get away.

"No way," Neven says, eyeing the tree. It's bigger than he is. Bonnie doubts even a giant could throw it. "No how."

Gelert's tail droops until it rests on the grass. His black pools of eyes somehow manage to achieve a pleading look that would outdo most puppies. He nudges the tree again, branches scraping harshly across the ground, his chin flat on the grass.

"We can't throw that, Gelert," Bonnie says once she reaches them. "Go find a smaller stick."

Gelert slowly turns away, head down low, and tail dragging behind him.

"Your soldiers are camped out in Porthdon," Mrs Moore says, watching the dragon leave. "I didn't get close enough to pick out faces, but there are enough of them that it's likely Innes is down there. Kingdom or no kingdom. Riches or no riches. I want you both to fix this soon. Standing out in this world will get you burned, and I see no better way to stand out than a giant dragon following on your heels like an over-sized dog."

"So we need to get down there," Bonnie says.

"Without being seen," Neven adds.

"And without getting any heroic notions," Mrs Moore says. "I don't know why, but your father died so you wouldn't become a soldier. So don't have any sudden calling to do your duty."

It's odd to see a mother talk to her son so fiercely. Bonnie decides she might like it if it were anyone else but Neven. Neven is too quick to be cowed and agree, even to a woman. Ness might be good though. She'd like to see a woman get the better of Ness.