Dragonheart (10 page)

“Look, Bowen, late Roman! I don’t believe it!”

Bowen couldn’t believe it either. “I’m a little preoccupied, Gilbert, for one of your history lessons.”

“It’s
my
history lesson, Knight,” growled the voice behind the falls. “And you’d best learn from it. Or history will repeat itself. I’ve quite a collection in here.”

“I won’t be added to it!” Bowen eyed the shadow, then suddenly cast his lance with a mighty heave. It shot halfway through the falls before jarring to a stop with a loud thunk! The shaft vibrated in midair.

“A hit, Sir Knight, a hit!”

Bowen grinned in cocky victory as the priest waded toward him, jubilantly waving the plumed helmet. The withered skull plopped out of it and disappeared into the water . . . just like Bowen’s brief triumph. There was a loud crunch of wood. Bowen and Gilbert turned to see Bowen’s lance shaft slowly being sucked behind the falls. There was more crunching and, with each crunch, the lance got shorter until it had vanished completely behind the shield of water. Then no more crunching. Only the rush of the falls, which suddenly spewed out a jumble of broken, splintered pieces of lance. Bowen’s horse whinnied and reared. Gilbert flopped back into the creek. With a snarl, Bowen raised his shield and spurred his horse through the falls.

He should have known better. Never go out in the day. But the water had been so cool and the sky so bright. A little swim and some warm sun. So rare these days. He had thought it worth the risk. He had been wrong.

He should have known better. Especially since the Old One’s slaying just the other day. The knowledge of the killing had come rippling along the channels of his mystic senses that linked all the ancient brethren to one another. And with that somber sensation came the terrifying prospect of aloneness. Alone. The last.

He should have known better. Should have been cautious. Taken the warning. Instead, it had made him yearn for the so-long-unseen sun. He should have stayed with the night. Clung to the blackness. Sought the shelter of the stars. But the stars were out of reach for him. There would be none to sense his fate when it came. None to mourn his death . . . his dreaded, dreadful death.

Yes, he should have known better. About so many things. But death would not come today. He spewed a bolt of flame as the knight rode through the falls into the cave. But the fellow was quick and deflected it against his shield; sparks hissed and smoked against the moist cavern floor.

“Little damp for fire.” The knight grinned up at the shelf of rock where the dragon perched.

“Leave me in peace!” the dragon snapped. “Go rescue a damsel or win a joust! Why must you knight-errants out to make a reputation for yourself always pick on us dragons?”

“I don’t need a reputation,” the knight retorted. “And I have a collection of my own.”

The warrior held his shield into a rainbow of sunlight that prismed through the waterfall. The talons mounted on it glinted in the light.

“Ah!” the dragon breathed a disdainful sigh. “One who kills for
money,
are you?”

The dragonslayer flinched at the assessment and shot back testily, “It’s honest enough work! Ridding the country of you lot. One must earn a living.”

Strange, how begrudging the fellow sounded. Almost apologetic. As though he were trying to convince himself. Unusual sensitivity for a slaughterer. Still he was right about one thing.

“Yes . . . one must live,” the dragon agreed solemnly, almost regretfully. “No way ’round then but to have at it, since you seek profit in this.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” The knight drew his sword. “No profit this time, purely pleasure.”

“Perhaps less pleasurable and more costly than you think.”

“It will cost you your middle right talon.”

The dragon cackled hoarsely, “I think not, Knight.” He extended his right front limb out of the shadows, exposing it to the stunned gaze of the dragonslayer. His hand was a maimed stump, with only the clawlike thumb and fore talon. The other two digits had been sheared off, the little one completely, and the middle one had lost its tip, including its talon.

“Afraid someone beat you to it,” the dragon mocked him, and scooped up a skeleton in his wounded claw from the litter of armor and bones heaped upon his perch. “Him here. Much good it did him.” The dragon flung the skeleton from the ledge. It clattered down the rocks into the water in front of the knight with a splash. The horse wheeled, and as the knight reined him under control his sword flashed in the refracted sunlight.

The dragon blinked at the sun-sprayed blade and a startled hiss rattled out of his throat when he saw it
—the talon-scraped groove in the blade!
Oh, gleaming stars of heaven, he thought, how our mistakes come back to haunt us! And he lunged off the ledge!

Gilbert came up out of the creek, spritzing water, sitting up in time to see Bowen gallop into the waterfall. His sack went floating by just then, and snatching it up, he began to compose aloud as he rummaged for another quill and parchment.

“Into the mouth of death he strode,
Into the gringy gloom,
Into the pit of fear unknown,
To bring the beast to doom.”

There was a roaring whoosh, a nervous whinny, and a flash of flame that lit the water screen a shuddering red. A blast of steam rolled out from the falls, slamming Gilbert back into the creekbed. The priest shook the water off him once more and, with ominous speculation, reconsidered his opening.

“Into the pit of fear unknown,
Perhaps to court his doom!”

Gilbert stood up and slung his sopping sack over his shoulder. He managed to find a dry piece of vellum and, juggling his inkwell and quill, scrolled it down his arm and began to scribble furiously.

In this encumbered position, he waddled toward the rushing falls, mystified—and not a little worried—by the sudden quiet beyond it.

Gilbert called out softly, “Sir Bowen?” But he was answered only by the swirling swish of water. He returned to his epic.

“In darkness stygian befell,
The fate of warrior bold.”

Again, he called out, “Sir Knight?” Again, only the cataract called back. He fretted to his muse.

“Had dragon flame engulfed his flesh
And left it lifeless cold—
Bowen!”

Gilbert shouted for his hero once more. This time the answer came in a gush of wind and water that knocked Gilbert back into the creek. The dragon swooped from the falls, water spraying off his magnificent wings as he spread them to their full extension. Patches of his hide glistened. As Gilbert struggled to rise he craned his neck back, watching the glorious awesome creature in slack-jawed amazement.

“Look out!”

Gilbert wheeled to find himself directly in Bowen’s path as the knight galloped through the stream after the dragon, twirling a chain-mesh net above his head. The priest plummeted into the drink once more, narrowly avoiding the horse and rider as they sprayed past him in a wing of water and charged down the creek in pursuit of the dragon overhead.

Gilbert bobbed back up to see Bowen cast his net skyward and ensnare one of the dragon’s hind feet. Though not impeding the dragon’s ascent, the net was attached to a fine chain that uncoiled from a side pouch on Bowen’s saddle. The knight quickly wrapped it around the saddle pommel and reined his horse to a skidding halt. The dragon jerked to a halt also . . . in midair.

“Hallelujah! Saints be praised!” Gilbert whooped his elation and inspiration struck, in spite of his waterlogged parchment and his quill floating downstream.

“Oh, gallant knight! Oh, valor true!
A hero’s end you’ll know.”

Then the saddle cinches snapped. Horse and rider parted company as Bowen, still mounted in the saddle and still grasping the chain, slid off the horse. The dragon shot through the sky with a spurting lunge and Bowen shot out of the creek, plowed through the muddy bank, and was dragged into the woods, where he disappeared. Gilbert gasped in dismay.

“Oh, dreaded dragon, dark and foul.
Is yours the victor’s blow?”

Ten

IN THE DRAGON’S MOUTH

“If your teeth come down, my sword goes up.”

Feet in the stirrups, rump in the saddle, Bowen hung on to the chain for dear life, careening through the forest underbrush, bouncing off tree trunks, clobbered by uprooted stones, spitting out leaves and dirt. Once he was flipped upside down with the saddle riding him and the talons of the shield strapped on his back plowing furrows in the dark forest loam. Birds frantically fluttered skyward, small forest animals scurried from thickets out of the path of the human juggernaut.

He came to a sudden groin-bruising halt as the saddle snagged a tree trunk and the chain went taut. Above, the dragon also lurched to a jarring midair stop. He whirled and snorted a blast of flame on the chain, but to no avail. Recovering his wind, Bowen watched the beast hover over him, angrily thrashing and tugging to free himself. The knight quickly wrapped the excess chain around the stump to secure his prey. He heard hoofbeats and turned to see Gilbert galloping up on Merlin.

“Are you all right?” Gilbert asked, fresh quill and parchment at the ready.

Before Bowen could answer, the stump was suddenly uprooted and all three—stump, saddle, and Bowen—were off again. Bowen rolled out of the saddle and found himself dangling from the chain by his hands only, dodging both the stump and the saddle as they collided along with him. They twirled and whirled and sometimes one or all of them left the ground entirely, spiraling in the air as the dragon zigzagged above them, trying to shake loose his restraints.

A blur of ground, forest, sky, stump, saddle, dragon spun past Bowen’s dazed and dizzy gaze. Then a swirl of bark loomed into view. A tree. Two trees. A dead one nestled at an angle in the fork branches of the other. The positions were interesting only in that they made a much larger target for Bowen to hit. And hit it he was going to do.

But as the dragon swerved toward the obstacles, Bowen gained his feet and scampered broad-legged up the dead tree, which was positioned like a ramp against the other, the saddle and the stump thumping up behind him. He swung out on the chain as it threaded through the fork of branches and dangled in the air as the saddle and the stump crunched together in the pronged boughs behind him.

Bowen was jostled from the chain as the dragon’s momentum partially uprooted the forked tree and freed the dead limb against it. Bowen hit the ground a moment before the huge timber came careening down behind him. A tumble and roll spared him a flattening by inches. He peeked over the trunk to see a flash of dragon, at the end of its chain, plummet down behind a clump of trees.

There was a rapid cracking of tree limbs. A crash shuddered the earth, which belched a brown cloud of dirt into the air.

Staggering, Bowen braced himself against the log as he found his feet. He wiped what seemed like half the forest off him, drew his sword, unstrapped his shield off his back, and still wobbling, followed the trail of the chain.

It led to a small clearing where the dragon, none too steady himself, reeled amid the debris of his inelegant landing and clawed at the netting entangling his foot.

“Fleeing an honorable challenge?” Bowen charged into the glade. “What manner of dragon are you?”

“You won’t live long enough to find out, dear boy!” The dragon caught Bowen’s sword blow on his maimed right claw and swiped at him with his good left one. “You want my talon. Here it is!”

Bowen caught the upward slash on his shield. The dragon linked his claw with the center talon—the broken one—and yanked the shield and Bowen, still holding on, off the ground. But as he pulled the shield closer to him, his eyes suddenly went wide, and with a hissed gasp, he let his talon slip off the buckler. Both it and Bowen plopped to the ground. Bowen rolled and regained his feet, sword poised. But the dragon had made no move. He eyed the knight in wary shock.

“Recognize an old friend?” Bowen smiled and tapped his sword against his newest trophy. “This one perhaps. He was my last!”

The dragon’s eyes glinted with bitter recognition. “So you killed the Old One.”

Bowen lunged. The dragon dodged and parried the thrust with a fireball shot from his nostril. Bowen ducked and it struck the ground behind him.

“If you mean that hobbled, gamy-winged, grain-sucking excuse for a dragon, yes, I put him out of his misery.” Bowen feinted and dodged another fireball. “He made an even dozen,” he lied. It was twelve talons, but only eleven kills. “You’ll be thirteen.”

“Unlucky.”

“For you!”

Bowen’s taunt was answered by the dragon’s uplifted tail. The scales at the tip folded back and it flanged out, producing sharp curved edges. Bowen caught the first slash on his blade and nearly lost his balance. The next one came low and he leapt over it.

“You’re good!” Bowen laughed, hoping the dragon couldn’t detect the nervousness in his voice. “Haven’t had this sort of challenge in some time.”

“Nor likely to again.”

Again the tail flailed out. A little too fast. And a little too close. Bowen just barely ducked under it. It sliced a tree behind him in half. It came crashing down with a roaring crack and Bowen dived behind it to evade another blow.

It came in a splintering spray, the tail chopping chunks out of the felled tree as though it were slicing vegetables. Bowen rolled down the length of the log, just inches ahead of the carving tail, until it bit a little too deep and wedged itself in the trunk. The dragon shook his tail, trying to get it loose, bouncing the log up and down.

“Little overconfident, aren’t we?” Bowen sprang up, grinning, realizing the brute’s tail had been, in effect, “disarmed.”

“Hardly, but if you win, you’ll be out of work.” The dragon maneuvered to confront his enemy as Bowen approached cautiously.

“Ha! I’ll keep on till I’ve exterminated every last one of you.”

“I
am
the last one!”

Bowen stopped dead in his tracks . . . and was almost blown dead out of them by the fireball that whooshed from the dragon’s nostril. The knight leapt for cover behind the tree and the fire exploded against it.