The Dragon's Prize (2 page)

“No.”  Mira finished reloading the crossbow and raised it to take another shot at Daro.

He was gone.

The only evidence that he’d been on the mountain was the copious splashes of blood all around.  Could a human lose that much blood and still be alive?

Well.

He wasn’t human, after all.

A reptilian screech cut through the howling of the wind.  Sandra managed to get to her feet and looked in the direction of the screeching.  In the dwindling light, she saw something that looked like a massive red bird winging towards her.

Dragon!

Daro.

The creature swooped in fast, but it was not heading for Sandra.  It was aimed directly at Mira!  Sandra moved without thinking, running to intercept the dragon’s dive before he reached Mira.  She ran as hard as she could, putting every ounce of energy she had left into that single charge.  Her legs pumped quickly and the metal of her armour jounced and jingled, making a massive racket.  He had to know she was coming.  Could he dodge?

If she missed, she would go right off the edge of the mountain.

At the last moment, she leapt forward, pushing off a convenient outcropping to give herself some air.

For a moment, she thought she failed.  She hung in the air, almost motionless, with nothing but wind between herself and the ground thousands of feet below.

She caught Daro heavily, slamming into the slick, scaled side of his shoulder with all of the force she’d managed to muster.  He was close to thirty feet long and composed mostly of pure muscle, but she was wearing a hundred pounds of metal on her.  She didn’t knock him out of the air, but she did force him off his intended course.  He twisted into a spin as she hit him, and as they passed by Mira, Sandra was hanging upside down trying to get a hold on the dragon’s neck.

She briefly saw Mira’s shock at the sight of Sandra’s foolhardy maneuver, and then the two of them were wheeling off into the sky.  Sandra wrapped her arms tightly around Daro's neck and straddled his shoulder, using muscles well-toned from all the riding she’d done lately to keep her position.  Daro did not leave well-enough alone.  He couldn’t reach her with his claws or tail, but he shrieked and twisted and bucked, trying to throw her off.

Sandra realized that the flimsy hold she had on his neck would not be enough.

Fortunately, she still had a longknife left.  She drew it out of the sheathe at the small of her back and drove it into the skin at the top of his neck.

The metal skidded dangerously off the hard scales, and she nearly lost her last useful weapon.

Gritting her teeth, she leaned forward and pulled the knife up into the underside of his throat.

Success!

Daro screamed as she drove the knife deep into his neck, and she felt burning dragon blood pump out onto her gloved hand.  It might not be caustic, but now that he was back in his natural form it was much hotter than before.  It was all she could do not to lose her grip, but they were twirling through the open sky.  Losing her grip was not an option.

So she held on as well as she could while they soared through the sky.  She didn’t really have time to revel in the sensation, though she should have.  She would probably never again get to experience flight.  And it was glorious!  They soared at a blistering speed through the chill evening wind, banking around the top of the mountain.  In the distance she could see the kingdom spread out below them, lights slowly lighting in all of the little villages and hamlets below.  Were the people of Velmar thinking of her?  It would be nice to be remembered when Daro finally shook her off.

“So what’s you move?”  Daro choked the words out around a mouth not meant to speak Common, and a knife in his throat.

“What?”  The wind stole her words from her.  She yelled louder.  “What!?”

“You kill me, then you fall to your death?”

“If I have to!”

“You’ll need more than a little knife, then!”

Daro twisted in the air, but instead of flattening out again he just hung there.  Sandra hung upside down, flexing her thigh muscles to keep from falling.  She gripped the knife tight, jamming it into the dragon’s neck and working it back and forth to drive it deeper.

They were falling!

Daro didn’t do anything to stop their descent, he just let them fall backward toward the ground.  And it was happening fast.

Fast!

The ground rushed up like an angry hammer.  Distant features were resolving into clear terrain far too quickly.  Below them was a forest.  Would they be impaled on a tree when they landed?   Would they just be crushed against the ground?

Sandra briefly considered letting go of the dragon, but that was stupid.  If he did pull out of the stall, then she would be saved, and if he didn’t she would be just as dead holding him as not.

At the last second, Daro twisted and snapped his wings.  He caught the air and changed their frightening plummet into an arrow-straight flight.  The tops of pine trees nearly scraped his soft underbelly, and Sandra thought she saw a bird go whizzing by as they twisted around and then back up toward the mountaintop.

“You’re stubborn.”

“You’re a bastard!”

Their ascent was much slower.  He swept great wingfuls of air beneath him and gained altitude as fast as he could, but it was almost calm compared to their fall.

Sandra took the time to launch her next attack.  She reached forward and pulled most of her body up his neck.  Then she pulled the knife out and jammed it in higher up.  He shrieked but didn’t twist or turn in the air, just kept climbing.  What was he doing?

She inched up his neck, using her knife to get handholds as she could, for what seemed like hours.  They were close to the top of the mountain when she reached his head.  What was he doing?   She was ready to stab him in the eye, and he was still climbing… then it hit her.

Mira!

She panicked and tried to stab the knife into his head.  The first strike skidded off hard bone and scales and she barely kept her grip on it.  Daro threw them into a punishing barrel roll, and she nearly fell off.

“One more chance.”  Daro actually laughed.

She raised the knife again, ready to stab him, when he bucked in the air and lost altitude dramatically.  Sandra whipped around with the force of his convulsion, and briefly saw a crossbow bolt tear through the skin of his left wing.

What a shot!

Off-balance, she wasn’t able to get the right angle and her next strike missed his eye and went into the scales above his mouth.  He growled as the knife worked in between two scales and jabbed through to the inside of his mouth.  It wasn’t what Sandra had been trying to do, but it looked very painful.

“End uv da line!”  His words were slurred by the presence of her knife.

Then a clawed hand slapped her.  It was nearly as big as she was, and had the force of an angry dragon behind it.  She couldn’t hold on against that.  The knife was ripped out of her grip, and then she was falling!

She twisted through the air to see the top of the mountain rushing up to meet her, and then pain slashed across the side of her body.  The dragon’s tail whipped against her side, turning her over and twisting her so she was aimed… at the hole in the mountain?

His aim was impeccable, despite all of the pain he must have been in.  She completely missed the mountaintop and went falling into the hole.

The entrance to his lair.

Stone rushed by on all sides and the wind of her fall whistled in her ears.  For the first time since she’d started fighting Daro, cold fear gripped her stomach.  She couldn’t fight this opponent.  She couldn’t outwit it.  She couldn’t grit her teeth through the pain and do what needed doing.

The darkness and the ground it hid was rushing up toward her, and when it found her she’d be dead.

*

Three weeks earlier, Sandra was sparring with a practice dummy and not doing very well against it.  Her attention was elsewhere, and the dummy kept nearly braining her as it spun.  It was designed to teach you to keep your guard up when you hit someone.  You might succeed on one side, only to have them strike at you from the other.  Normally it was  a lesson she appreciated, but today it was getting dangerous.

Of course, she would do better if she spent more time focusing and less time watching the prince.

He flowed like water across the practice yard, dodging around his guards’ strikes and easily infiltrating their defenses to jab them with the wooden practice sword.  When he scored a hit, they dutifully exclaimed in pain and fell to the ground 'dead'.

The prince was training under a swordmaster from a mysterious Eastern kingdom which his father was in the midst of forging trade bonds with, so his movements were unfamiliar to the guards.  He retreated when he should press the advantage, he stood still when he should be circling and he struck when he should block. 

And it worked!

He was a blur on the field, weaving in and around and under and over.

The training dummy struck Sandra across the back of the head.  She swore and stumbled forward, nearly getting thwacked by another spinning arm in the process.  Growling, she dodged out of the dummy’s reach and planted the tip of her wooden sword in the hard sand of the practice field.  The dummy spun forlornly by itself, wishing someone would come play with it again, but Sandra finally admitted to herself that she was too distracted to do this.

She wandered over to the side of the dummy yard and rested against a training weapon rack to watch the prince.  As he 'killed' guards, they went to the side of their field to wait while others rushed in to 'fight' the prince.  He made short work of all of them, spinning in and striking them cleanly with his weapon.

While he moved, the Eastern master sat at the edge of the square yelling instructions and chewing on a tobacco pipe.  He shouted phrases like “dancing water”, “sitting phoenix” and “rushing mountain”.  Sandra didn’t quite know what they meant, but most seemed to be techniques.  Sometimes they were stances or combinations, but mostly they were single moves or countermoves.  Whenever the prince did something wrong, the master would take out a long whip that sat beside him and crack it at his pupil.  He never struck flesh, but the loud crack was enough to draw everyone’s attention.

“Beautiful, isn’t he?”  A woman’s voice, soft and inquisitive, came from behind Sandra.  Sandra turned to see a young woman in a maid’s outfit dusting a vase.  Sandra wasn’t an expert on the subject, but the vase looked like it had no dust left on it.

“Mira!”  Sandra smiled and went over to her.  She clapped Mira on the back, forgetting for a moment that the woman was a maid and not another guard.  Mira stumbled under the impact, but kept a good natured smile.

“Hi Sandra.  Looks like you were having some trouble just now.”

“It’s hard to pay attention with him around.”  Sandra smiled.  Mira’s smile was infectious.

“I know, right?”  Mira fanned herself with the duster.  “So dreamy.”

“Those moves.”

“Those muscles.”  Mira’s grin was distant, her eyes were on the prince.  It was common knowledge that he was good looking.  Most royals were.  Nice cheekbones.  Straight teeth.  Crystal blue eyes.  Impeccable hair, even when he was dripping with sweat.

When he went out among the town, women literally swooned around him in the streets.  And in the taverns…

What most of his admirers never got to see, though, were the muscles.  Chiseled like a dancer’s, they rippled with his movement around the field.  Unlike many of the guards who were huge and bulky, he was wiry and lean.  No fat on him, no wasted space, just muscle and bone.  Right now the sun was shining directly down on him, glistening on the beads of sweat which ran down his smooth skin and flew off in a brilliant mist as he moved.

Mira and Sandra realized they hadn’t said anything in the last few minutes, and they both giggled.

“We sound like those useless girls in town.”  Sandra shook her head.  Most days she worked harder than she had to to prove to the other guards that a commoner could cut it among their ranks.  Sometimes she deserved a little break?

“I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t get to see him every day.”

“You’d probably get more done.”  Sandra winked.

“And you’d be a better swordsman.”  Mira stuck out her tongue.

“And you’d have a husband.”  Sandra poked her in the side.

“And you’d be sergeant.”  Mira poked back.

They both dissolved into laughter and literal ribbing, wrestling in the corridor while giggling like girls.  They lost their attention on the prince for a while, just having fun instead.

Eventually, the prince’s cursing distracted them from their fun.  He stood alone in the practice ring and threw his sword into the ground in disgust.  It vibrated as it stuck in the sand.  It was different construction than the other practice swords.  Thinner.  Flatter.  Something the Eastern master brought with him.  Sandra could appreciate the design, though it seemed too flimsy.

“Don’t we have any guards worth fighting!?”  The prince’s lip was set in a royal pout, and the guards who’d been 'killed' by him were wandering away from his tantrum with their heads down and eyes averted.