Dragon Thief (22 page)

It hadn't been a bad plan as such things went. I had been out of it for most of the day. In the meantime, the Dermonica troops had spent a large amount of time and effort securing the castle and the surrounding town, enough time and effort to give Grace and company the time to slip into the keep and find the armory. They had known of
Dracheslayer
because they had overheard Lucille lamenting the fact that she hadn't retrieved it and inserted it into a select part of the dragon's anatomy back when she had the chance.

After slipping away from the castle, Grace's plan had been something along the lines of, get information, slay dragon, be hero, and escape to retrieve gold and riches at leisure.

I almost felt guilty for screwing that up.

But we all had something else to worry about. In my unconscious flight, I had flown in the wrong direction. I had landed somewhere between the castle and the Fell River, putting the mass of the Dermonica army between us, Snake, and Grünwald.

And the mass of that army, once the castle was secure, would be moving in the direction of the nominal reason for their invasion . . .

Me.

Dragon or not, I was in no shape to face an army.

“You need to fly out of here,” Krys said. “They can't be more than an hour or two behind us.”

I stretched, causing the girls to backpedal from a wall of black-scaled muscle. The movement fired off dozens of flares of pain across the whole of my body. When I tried to spread my wings, a spasm ran fifty feet down the length of my spine and back, slamming the back of my skull with white-hot pain that elicited a groan that set off a small bonfire in front of me.

The girls, remarkably tiny, had managed to put a hundred feet between me and them. They all stared at me and the fire.

“Sorry.”
I shook my head.
“I don't know if I'm in condition to fly.”

“So what?” Grace said. “You give up? We leave you for them?”

Mary leaned against
Dracheslayer
. “I don't think they'll give you time to explain who you are.”

“We could go back,” Laya said.

“We'll explain what happened,” Thea said, excitedly. “We could fix everything!”

“No one's going to listen to us,” Grace said. “A bunch of girls playing dress-up? They're going to take us seriously?”

“Grace?” Thea said.

“Grow up!” Grace snapped.

“This isn't her fault,” Mary said.

“You don't need to tell me whose fault it is,” Grace said. “I know!”

“She wasn't saying—” Krys began to say.

“Shut up! I know what she was saying!”

“P-Please,” Thea said. “Don't be angry.”

“Why not?” Grace shouted at her. “Why shouldn't I be angry! Do you have any idea how bad things are? How they're getting worse?”

Thea cowered from Grace's outburst, shaking her head. “P-Please stop.”

“What? You think a whole army's going to stop when they catch up with us? You think some tears are going to make anything bett—”

Grace's tirade was cut short by a sharp slap. She turned to face Rabbit, who stood next to her now, glaring bloody murder. Grace rubbed the side of her face and said, “Rabbit?”

Rabbit hauled back and hit her with an open hand slap on the other side of her face. The sound echoed through woods that were suddenly silent. Grace took a shaky step back, staring at the mute girl in open-mouthed shock. “But . . .”

Rabbit turned away from her and started walking away.

Grace seemed to deflate, to look her age. “I'm sorry.”

Rabbit stopped walking away.

“I keep trying. But it just . . .” She shook her head.

“Don't let that stop you.”

She looked up at me, startled, as if she had forgotten I was there.

“What?”

“Failure. It happens. It keeps happening. But if you let it stop you, it's all you're left with.”

“So do you have a suggestion on what to do now? You can't move.”

“No. What I said was I couldn't
fly
.”

 • • • 

Our best option was to continue to draw the Dermonica forces away from the castle. That meant a straight line toward the Dermonica border. And while I was too injured to fly, I could still move at a respectable pace overland.

However, there was only one way to do that without leaving the girls behind.

I think I was the one most hesitant about the girls climbing on my back. Given the size differential now, they all seemed too fragile to me. Feeling them climb up and perch themselves between my wings made me almost afraid to move, as if the lightest breeze might carry them away.

“What you waiting for?” I heard Mary's voice and turned my neck in what felt like impossible ways to look down at my own back. All six of them had taken hold of part of a wing.

“Hang on,”
I said.

They hung on.

I don't know how fast I moved, but I think I may have outpaced a good horse for a few stretches. I was frightened when I heard someone screaming, but when I turned my head to check on them, Rabbit, of all people, had risen to her knees, hooking one hand under the base of my wing and waving the other above her head, making a guttural sound, looking like a war goddess riding into battle.

“Really?”
I said.

She gave me a sheepish smile and crouched back down with the others. We came up to the Fell River as the last of daylight faded. I could hear the rushing water as we closed on it. Before we came in sight of it, I felt tugging at the base of my wing. I slowed to a stop and turned my head to see Rabbit on her knees again. This time, however, she wasn't playing. She faced the evening sky, wrinkling her nose with an expression I'd seen too many times before.

I took a deep breath and I smelled it too. Wood fire.

“Get down.”
I didn't quite manage a whisper.

“What?” Grace said.

“Something's ahead of us.”

They all scrambled off my back and I gestured for them to get back. I may have done it more aggressively than I intended, because they fell over each other backing away from me.

Once they were a safe distance away, I grabbed the trunk of the tallest, straightest tree in reach and pulled myself up on my hind legs. It ignited pains over the length of my body, but I managed to stand, breaking branches aside, shedding an avalanche of snow. I grabbed the tree with my other hand and pulled myself up. The tree groaned with my weight as my feet left the ground to dig their talons into the base of the trunk.

I only had to climb up a short distance—relative to my own size—before I could extend my head above the tree canopy to see the surrounding terrain. I craned my neck as the tree creaked and swayed with my weight. I tried to spread my wings to stabilize things, but they only caught the wind and made things worse. I heard something snap inside the trunk and immediately folded them back as tightly as I could manage.

The good news was there wasn't another burned–out town awaiting us.

The bad news was I had made an error in assuming we had left the bulk of the Dermonica army
behind
us.

From my vantage above the trees, I saw across the Fell River to an encampment of troops maybe five times the force that had taken Lendowyn Castle. I saw tents, horses, and a large pavilion flying a recognizable royal banner.

Then the tree shuddered with another snap and I suddenly tilted away from the river as my head fell below the trees.

“Watch out!”
I called down as the tree and I crashed back through the forest canopy. I fell on my back with a thud that shook the snow from every tree around me. I groaned as the remains of the splintered tree rolled off of me to crunch against another tree that echoed my groan.

The girls ran up to me, Krys yelling, “Are you all right?”

“Yes.”
I stared up at the sky through the large hole my descent had torn in the canopy.
“That was not stealthy.”

“What?” someone said. Probably Grace.

I groaned again as I struggled to right myself.
“This dragon thing,”
I said.
“It doesn't play to my strengths.”

“What did you see?”

“We have a problem. And we better move downstream before we have more of one.
”

 • • • 

Amazingly, my draconic pratfall did not draw a battalion of Dermonica soldiers to finish us off. I suppose that being a mile upstream and having the river between us made it less obvious. That, and anyone looking for a dragon would probably be looking up.

“You sure that it's the duke?” Grace asked once we'd stopped again.

“I know the banners. They wouldn't be flying over another commander.”

“Don't that make that pavilion a target?” Mary asked.

I snorted.
“It is a wonderful thing to be able to suspend the rules of logic and strategy by decree and divine right. Staying on the Dermonica side is probably the only concession the duke's made to his generals.”

“You should counterattack,” Grace said. “They're obviously not expecting it.”

“What?”

“You have their ruler, they have yours,” Grace said. “You could work out some sort of deal with that, couldn't you?”

“If I
had
that. But we're on the wrong side of the river and an army.”

“We have to cross the river anyway,” Mary said, “or we'll have to deal with the soldiers already on this side of the river.”

“Don't remind me.”

“Can you fly yet?” Thea asked.

I shook my head and looked up at the sky.
“Even if I could, there's no cloud cover and a nearly full moon. The archers would shred me before I got anywhere near the pavilion. They'll be expecting an attack from the air.”

“We can't stay here,” Grace said. “We'll be pinned between them.”

“Think of something,” Krys said. “I heard your stories, I know you can come up with something.”

I sighed and lowered my head.
“I'm not a miracle worker. You can't defeat a whole army with six girls, a half-dead dragon, and a magic sword
 . . .” I raised my head and faced the sky again. No cloud cover at all.
“A magic
dragon-slaying
sword.”

“You thought of something!” Krys said.

“We'll probably regret it, but yes.”

Stealth and misdirection were some of my primary strengths, and, as I'd told the girls, being a dragon really didn't play to them. However, that also meant that those tactics would be the least expected by those who anticipated the possibility of going toe-to-toe with a dragon.

Searching back upstream toward the main encampment Rabbit was able to scout out the small navy's worth of barges that Dermonica had used to ferry the ground troops across the frigid waters of the Fell River. There was a light contingent of a dozen guards or so, all of whom came to the quick conclusion that protecting a fleet of glorified rafts was not that important once I came crashing through the tree line belching fire. In less than a minute, the guards had run off and half the rafts were burning.

As I turned to add the tops of the winter-naked trees to the conflagration, a bubble of clear, unheated air moved from the woods, through the fire, toward the rafts. At the center of the bubble moved Mary, holding
Dracheslayer
aloft. The enchanted sword kept the flames and heat at bay enough so that the tightly grouped girls could move freely through the firestorm to cut the ropes on the burning rafts, setting them free to float into the river. While they worked to free the rafts, I made sure to stand upright and spread my wings while dramatically backlit by the burning woods. I bellowed a roar that would have terrified me if I wasn't the creature making it.

It would have been perfect if I hadn't broken into a coughing fit at the end.

Coughing aside, for those across the river, it was an unmistakable announcement. The dragon was coming. And as the barges and the woods burned, black smoke roiled up and crossed the river, hiding the stars and moon.

I now had my cloud cover, and the defenders would have a nerve-wracking time staring at a featureless sky, trying to discern a winged shadow in a cauldron of smoke, ash, and floating embers.

“Good luck with that.”

Behind the ranks of burning barges, we had left one intact. Mary led the girls climbing up on it. They flattened themselves in the center of the raft as I slid into the water under the cover of the floating conflagration.

The frigid water was a shock, shoving icicles into every bruise and wound all over my oversize body. The river rushed over my back and tail as I pushed the barge against the current, straight across the river, toward the shore just a half mile downstream from the Dermonica encampment.

As my back end sank as the river deepened, I realized a flaw in my plan. I didn't know if dragons could swim. The way my legs and tail sank argued against it. Fortunately, my legs found the muddy bottom before the rest of me followed suit.

Above us, the sky had turned into an orange maelstrom, and I could hear the chaos of shouts as the troops by the encampment scrambled into a defensive formation facing the river. With the forest fire and the burning barges, no one seemed to notice the lone barge floating back across the river.

I stayed as submerged as possible, even though parts of me were going numb. As the dozens of aches and pains that had been beaten into this lizard body faded from my awareness, I worried about this body's sensitivity to the temperature. Dragons weren't cold-blooded, but this was really pushing it.

We approached the opposite shore and my feet dug into the mud of the rising riverbank. Only a few dozen yards away from shore, I was still submerged, belly in the mud and river rushing over my back. The woods rustled and suddenly a dozen men broke through aiming bows at the single barge.

Damn.

They didn't notice me yet. The bulk of the barge, which was meant for two or three times the company that faced us, blocked their view of the part of me that was still above water. The lead man drew his sword and pointed at the raft. “You there! Drop your weapons and surrender now to the Dermonica crown!”

The girls stood up, one by one, and in the glow from the fires behind us, I could see his expression change from grim determination to confusion.

“A bunch of . . . girls?” The tip of his sword faltered.

Grace stepped out in front of the girls, who all stood within ten feet of Mary, with
Dracheslayer
hidden behind her back.

What are you doing? If you're not by the sword I can't blast them safely.

“Sir, I have to suggest that you are the ones who should surrender.”

“What?”

“Drop your weapons, and call forward all your men still in the woods.”

Oh.

Grace was thinking a few steps ahead of me now. The point of the whole conflagration on the opposite shore was to get me in close without alerting the enemy, which would be pointless if a bunch of troops burst into flame the moment we hit shore.

There was an extended silence broken by a few laughs here and there. The leader raised his sword back to point at the girls. “What gives a brat like you the nerve to issue ultimatums?”

“If you don't,” Grace said, “you're going to die.” She took a step back to join Mary and the others within the safe radius of
Dracheslayer
.

“That's it,” their leader said. “If they don't come forward in five seconds—” He stopped as a wave of frigid water washed across his boots. He looked slowly up as I pushed myself out of the water.

“Do as she says,”
I said as quietly as I could manage.

The sword splashed into the water as he let it go.

 • • • 

We managed landfall without having to set one guy on fire. I oversaw things as the girls liberated the men of their weapons, marched them into the barge, and tied them hand and foot with their own bowstrings. I leaned over them as I pushed the barge back into the river.
“Relax. By the time you get out of this, things should be over.”
I watched them as the barge followed the current down the Fell River.

Once we were clear of the patrol, we headed inland, making a wide circle around the Dermonica encampment. Once away from shore, we appeared to be away from any other patrols.

We came up to the encampment from behind, and while the rear faced a wide clearing, recently trampled, only a few guards faced the muddy field. Most of them seemed to pay more attention to the smoke-shrouded sky than the rear approach to their camp, so they didn't notice immediately as Laya dropped them one by one with a crossbow.

It wasn't until number five that the others noticed what was happening. Before they could react, I broke out our last distraction.

I erupted from the cover to the rear of the encampment, roared, and launched myself unsteadily into the sky. A couple of wild arrows flew my way, but went wide. I did a circuit of the field, strafing a line of fire along the rear of the encampment. That did two things. It kept everyone's attention on me, and it gave the girls cover as they ran across the field.

Mary and
Dracheslayer
carved a temporary path through the wall of fire, letting them into the camp proper as more archers were brought to bear on yours truly. When a longbow shaft bounced off my tail, I took it as a clue to shoot up above the smoke. My stomach churned at the altitude, and my wings felt as if they were about to tear free from my back.

I sucked in a frigid breath of clean air and looked down at a carpet of smoke lit by the moon. Small tears in the carpet showed tents and tiny people moving below me. It was frightening how easily now I could rain destruction down on them.

I'm not Snake.

I watched where my shadow fell on the smoke below and saw arrows and bolts ineffectively piercing the smoke. I flew higher, even though it made me feel dizzy and more sick to my stomach. I let the shadow move farther away from my target as I rose, drawing their fire and attention away.

Then I dropped.

I fell fast, and my shadow moved faster, faster than the enemy should be able to track me. I broke through the layer of smoke and saw the pavilion with the royal banners as I felt an arrow or three plunge into my backside.

I twisted and landed on my feet with an earth-shaking thud and swept my talons across the roof of the pavilion, tearing yards of canvas away, tossing it at the archers who had plunged two more arrows into my neck. Below me, in the pavilion, an old man in rich robes stood in the center of a ring of guards who had just started looking up.

One of them pointed a crossbow up toward my face, but a bolt erupted from his neck before he could fire. Below me, Grace's girls broke from the shadows to engage the distracted guards. While they were engaging, I reached down and snatched the old man from their midst.

I felt more arrows hit me and I held up the man in my taloned hand and called out,
“If you value your ruler, cease fire now!”

I tensed, since I've tried similar threats before, and sometimes people just didn't care for their sovereigns all that much. But the arrows ceased flying, and the fight stopped in the pavilion below me.

I opened my hand and looked at the duke in my palm.

“We have to talk,”
I said.

“Do we?”

I stared at the man in my hand. My first thought was that being able to charbroil your opposite number should make negotiations run a bit smoother. At least a little fear would have been nice.

“You realize I'm a dragon?”

“I've noticed.”

“I could set you on fire, bite you in half—”

“Yes, yes, you can kill me. So can every single man I've ever spoken to. Killing someone is easy.”

“Huh?”

“And you aren't going to kill me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You want something from me and I'm the only one who can give it to you.”

“I want you to withdraw from Lendowyn and release the royal court, then I'll let you go unharmed.”

“You are suffering from the illusion of false equivalence.”

“
You understand I have you hostage?
”

“You assume that I have a king, you have a duke, and as such, a trade has equal value to both parties and is inevitable. You've miscalculated. Yes, you have hold of the ruler of Dermonica, I have the ruler of Lendowyn. But I also have the court, the castle, and an occupying army. I have a host of allies all poised to assist me in the deposing of Prince Bartholomew. I have a son ready to take command in my absence. I have recovered your ill-gotten gains. You're asking Dermonica to trade all of that for the life of one old man.”

“You're bluffing.”

“You are bluffing. Taking my life now would be suicide for you and your new kingdom. Acceding to your demand would require a craven cowardice of me that would be more appropriate to your own family.”

“I can still
 . . .
My family?”

“The truth stings, doesn't it, Prince?”

I buried my face in my free hand.
“I'm not Prince Bartholomew.”

“What?”

I sighed and lowered my hand, setting my prisoner on the ground in the midst of the royal pavilion. The girls had taken care of the royal guard and made their own ring around the duke. He stared up at me as I reached up and started pulling arrows out of my neck.

“What do you mean you're not Prince Bartholomew?”

“I'm Frank Blackthorne. The prince you want is back in his own body.”

“You're lying . . .”

“Then tell me why I'm here bargaining for Lendowyn, rather than leading an army into Grünwald.”

“You . . .” It was his turn to put a hand to his head. Slowly he said, “Yes. You're right. We need to talk.”

 • • • 

Things were a bit more complicated than they first appeared.

Then, again, what else is new?

It probably should have been obvious that Dermonica had fielded a much larger force than should have been possible for a place just slightly larger than Lendowyn, and one that had recently lost a major part of its income thanks to Snake. I guess I'd been too busy trying to stay alive to notice. But the ruler of Dermonica had leveraged a seemingly endless list of Snake's enemies into a large alliance of forces under the Dermonica banner. All of whom went to battle on the strength of two promises: the repatriation of Snake's treasure to the participants, and the capture, trial, and public execution of Prince Bartholomew . . . trial optional.

Given that these foreign forces were now occupying Lendowyn
and
Dermonica, failure to make good on either of these points would be a bad thing for both.

“Still an impasse.”

“You're still trying to broker a deal?”

“What happens to Dermonica if you and I die, and Snake still takes the throne of Grünwald?”

“You have a point.”

“What if Lendowyn joins your alliance?”