by LeRoy Clary
Cinder’s soft breathing was the only sound he listened to. She rolled closer and her knee was over his leg. She wiggled and scooted closer until he was forced to move away as much as possible, then she pulled him closer again. Rake finally tossed an arm over her shoulder to keep himself from being pushed off the sleeping platform.
“That’s better,” she muttered as if half-awake.
“W-what?”
She was already asleep again. He left his arm where it was, both because it felt good, and because he was more than a little scared of what would happen if she woke while he removed it. She might think he was advancing his wishes. As he enjoyed being in the bed next to her, he relaxed and felt his mind drift in the direction of sleep. Her body suddenly stiffened, and her elbow shot out, striking him on his lower ribcage. He moaned and sat up, holding his side.
Cinder sat up and asked, “Did I hurt you?”
“A little. I wasn’t doing anything.”
She sniffed and spoke in a little-girl voice. “It was me. A bad dream. Will you hold me?”
Rake had conflicting thoughts about doing that. As pleasurable as it sounded, he’d probably have a sore place where her elbow already struck in her sleep. Another might cripple him and how would he explain that to the others? Then he gave in and placed both arms around her, effectively pinning her arms to her sides for self-protection. He went to sleep that way. A smile on his face.
When he awoke, the positions were reversed, with her arms around him and her lower leg over his ankle. How that had happened when he’d been the one doing the holding remained a mystery. He didn’t get up right away, telling himself it was to allow her additional sleep. He felt her body stir and as he watched her face, she opened her eyes and looked at his. She made no attempt to untangle herself.
The shafts of light streaming in through the cracks around the door to the balcony told of another cloudless morning. Rake was about to attempt escaping her clutches when a shout from outside sounded. Others erupted, along with a few screams. He leaped to the balcony door and yanked it open to hear more screams and see people running in the early morning brightness.
All were watching the sky. Looking up, he saw dragons in the distance, several of them, flying as a pride. Like lions, dragons in groups are called prides, or families. That thought came from nowhere. He shouted loud enough for the entire inn to hear, “Dragons.”
He pulled his boots on and his desert robe, finishing just as Cinder did the same. “Your hat and scarf, he reminded her as he pulled his on. He grabbed his bow and a fistful of arrows, the ones with stone tips and lifted his tan robe to reach them with the hand fumbling through the slit pockets. Once he had the bow and arrows in hand next to his body, he allowed the robe to fall into the natural position over them.
Cinder watched and duplicated his actions. They descended the stairs slightly ahead of the others. Rake shouted as he ran for the door, “Stay here and guard the inn.”
Nobody objected.
Cinder followed him outside. The dragons were closer, fanning out to attack. Rake pointed up the street to the higher part of the hillside where the last of the buildings stood. Beyond was a forest where he’d feel more at home and safe as he hid behind trees while shooting his arrows. He pointed again, at a small path under the trees. “There!”
He didn’t have time to explain. They ran, passing others also running, some the other way, and a few the same as them. At the last of the buildings, Rake saw a wider path leading into the trees and took it. The path was a different one from where they’d been during the last attack.
It was wide enough to be a small road, so it was obvious a lot of people used it. The path rose up a small incline within the forest, then at the top, it opened into a grass field, a pasture where locals kept a few grazing animals in a common area. There were a dozen sheep, a few lambs, goats, and two dogs guarding them. A young boy walked alongside a calf held on a leader.
“Get under cover,” Rake yelled. The boy looked up and dropped the rope as he sprinted for the trees, leaving the cow to fend for itself.
Rake, however, ran to the center of the commons where the ground was open with lush, fresh grass. Cinder had remained at his heels, although clearly puzzled at his actions. They paused, strung their bows and set more arrows in front of them, points in the soft dirt.
“Why?” Cinder asked, fitting one hunting arrow to her string.
“A test. I sensed the small-dragons identified me yesterday. That one came for me. That might be a wrong description, but up here, we’ll find out if one of those Blacks attacks me instead of the hundreds of other people it sees.”
“You’re presenting yourself as a target.”
Cinder’s words stung but were accurate. The first of the pride of dragons had circled the city a few times and dropped from the sky spitting and screaming. Instantly a building flared brightly as the spit must have found an open flame. When would the people learn to extinguish all flames during a dragon attack? Rake thought about warning them to douse all fires, but for people who had never seen a dragon, and that most believed were myths, the information probably wouldn’t go over well, and it might shed suspicion of his Dragon Clan connections.
“None are coming this way. That’s good,” Cinder said.
Not all had fallen from the sky and attacked Mercippio yet. Of the six, only half had descended. Three more circled. One suddenly turned its head sharply as if it spotted something. It was looking directly at Rake.
“Well, that’s not good,” Cinder amended her earlier statement.
“I see it.” Rake had an arrow ready and more near his hand. He tried to remember all he’d heard about fighting dragons. “They draw their heads back before they spit. Watch its neck. As soon as it is ready to let go, leap several steps away from me, to your right. I’ll do the same to the left.”
“Even a little of that dragon spit will eat your skin and continue right through you,” she said. “Aim for the chest?”
A calmness descended over Rake, a hunter’s mode, his father called it. Time seemed to slow down. He was not scared, and his mind reviewed what he needed to do and all he’d done. He answered her evenly, “A shot through the eye is a kill-shot, but don’t even attempt it. Their heads are quick like snakes. Through the roof of the mouth is another, the old stories say, but they also say ten arrows in the chest is equal to either of the others.”
“Six for me and four for you,” she snickered as their eyes watched the black leave the others and fly in their direction.
“These are smaller. It may take fewer.” Rake ached to draw his bow but holding it in firing position would tire his arm. Time seemed to move even slower. He waited. Tried to relax.
Cinder started the pull on her bow as the Black began its descent, aiming right at them. She said tightly, “Three shots for me, one for you?”
The dragon was still too high to land in the pasture. Rake realized it was going to pass over them in a glide and spit at them. He wanted to shout a warning but had no time. The dragon was already drawing its neck back in preparation to spit at them.
Rake drew quickly and let the arrow fly, long before he intended, then leaped to one side. From the corner of his eye, he saw Cinder do the same. Both must have missed. She had the forethought to grab another arrow and take with her—he hadn’t. As the beast went past, she let another arrow go. It struck behind the left rear leg.
The dragon screamed in anger or pain, he couldn’t tell which. It rose higher and turned, always watching them. Rake raced back to his stash of arrows and grabbed two. He held one alongside the bow, opposite the arrow-guide. The dragon began another glide.
As it drew closer, Rake saw blood streaming from a single arrow in its chest. He knew it had another near its rear leg, but he couldn’t see another. Either Cinder or he had missed with their first shot—but the other had hit. The dragon had two arrows in it, each with heavy stone tips that allowed profuse bleeding past the shaft.
Because of t
hat, he decided to take his first shot sooner than planned, and perhaps have the time to get off a second as it drew closer. The slow glide was as before, the neck started to pull back and Rake released, aiming higher so the arrow could drop in its arc and hopefully strike the dragon. He instantly fitted the next arrow to his string and drew back, ready to dodge the spit he expected.
An arrow was now lodged at the base of the dragon’s neck, which was thrown back over its body in pain. The wings fluttered. It slipped in the air to the left. Rake let the second arrow go as he heard the twang of Cinder’s second shot. The dragon twisted in return, spilling air from under the extended wings, two more arrows in the chest, almost beside each other. It turned sideways in the air and fell.
“Run!” Cinder screamed.
The dragon was falling, fast. It had been flying directly at them, and now appeared like a tall tree in a forest falling on them. Momentum carried the dying beast directly at them. Cinder ran left. Rake right.
The impact of the dragon striking jarred the ground, and the dragon tumbled ahead, rolling over at least twice before coming to a stop. At the last moment Rake had dived aside again, or he would have been crushed by the weight of the beast. He couldn’t see Cinder.
“Are you all right?” he called.
“I’m fine. Look out and don’t get close, it’s still alive.”
A clawed leg shot out and scraped grooves in the ground as deep as any furrow cut by a farmer’s plow in any field. The dragon’s head was on Cinder’s side. He shouted, “Watch out for spit.”
Cinder let out a yip of satisfaction, then called, “One arrow in its eye. The dragon is dead.”
“Her eye,” Rake answered softly.
Cinder came around the body of the dragon, wearing a wide smile and walking as if she’d slain a dragon—which she had. She took one look at Rake’s expression and reached for another arrow as she crouched, searching for the problem. “What is it?”
He pointed at the rear of the dragon. “There.”
Her eyes found what he’d just noticed. “We need the grace from all seven gods for this, Rake.”
“What do we do?” He remained seated, his attention engulfed in the dying spasms of the female small-Black, and the oozing emergence of the fifth egg to join the other four that lay in the grass. A sixth egg followed, only slightly making itself known. It remained partially inside.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Eggs,” Cinder hissed. “Dragon eggs. What do we do with them?”
Rake couldn’t look away from them.
Cinder said sounding protective, “We have to do something.”
“They are not our dragons,” Rake said, his mind felt like his legs when trying to walk through a swamp and each one sinking to his knee. He could barely move. His mind refused to function, and he still sat on the ground.
The dragon made a few more twitches in its death throes, then lay still. Rake couldn’t take his eyes off the sixth egg, the one that hadn’t made it all the way out. His instinct was to smash them, kill them and their like. He’d killed the mother, now it was time for the offspring to die at his hand.
“But we’re Dragon Clan,” Cinder said in a choked voice as if reading his mind again. “We care for dragons, we don’t kill them. At least not eggs.”
“Not these. They are not Dragon Clan eggs.”
“Babies are babies. Chicks are chicks. Does it matter what the mother was trained to do?”
Rake barely heard her words. Other instincts were slowly taking control of him. Cinder was right. They were Dragon Clan, and that didn’t separate species of dragons. He managed to stand on wobbly legs.
His eyes went to the city rooftops and the sky above. The remaining dragons were flying away. More spires of smoke rose. The shouts, yells, and screams of the people barely reached the clearing. He turned to Cinder.
She said, “We have to help them. The eggs, I mean.”
“How?”
She pulled the robe over her head and tossed it aside as she reached for the butt of her knife and said, “First, we get that last egg before it’s crushed, or predators arrive to begin feasting on more meat than they’ve ever had.”
Rake gawked blankly at her. Get the last egg? What the hell did that mean?
Cinder pulled the knife at her waist and strode confidently to the underside of the dead animal, and the five eggs on the grass of the pasture. She strode directly to the tip of the one egg that remained inside. Before Rake could offer help or get his thoughts together, she knelt and sliced the flesh around the egg, and it oozed out to lay beside the others in a pool of blood and mucus.
Rake joined her and examined the eggs in wonder while disregarding the stench. Each was larger than his foot, longer and not as rounded as chicken eggs, and when he poked an exploratory finger at one, the shell felt like old leather instead of hard like a duck egg. It resisted at first, then moved. A layer of clear slime coated it.
Cinder said, “They look ready to hatch. Not really, because I know nothing about dragon eggs, but they are fully developed on the outside, and she would have laid them in the next few days. I’m guessing at everything I say and hope you realize that.”
“Meaning?”
Cinder turned to him with an expression of wonder. “Again, a guess. If properly cared for, you and I are about to become mothers.”
“Properly cared for? How do we care for dragon eggs, even if we want to?”
“Take off your robe.”
“Why?”
“They must be kept warm and besides, we need something to carry them in. Your robe is perfect.”
Rake didn’t move. “Are you sure this is the right thing to do?”
She pursed her lips and answered carefully, “I’m sure killing them is the wrong thing.”
“We save them. Then what?”
“We need help deciding that. Help from the Dragon Clan, our leaders. Maybe somebody knows what to do. Or has a good idea or who to ask for guidance. Maybe these six dragons will grow up to hate us and try to kill us all. But think about it this way; what if we raise these dragons to help us fight Breslau and maybe even Knavesmire? What if they can join forces with our dragons? What if . . . oh, hell, I don’t know all the what-ifs. What I do know is this may be our chance, our one chance to do the thing that will save us. All of us.” Cinder shrugged helplessly.
“Quite a speech,” Rake said.
“Shut up and hand me your robe.” She carefully scooped up each egg in both hands and placed them inside the robe after tying her scarf around the neck-hole of the robe to prevent them from falling through. The six nestled inside the chest area of his robe, as the first flies arrived and found the dragon corpse. The feast began.
The Red also found them. It circled above a few times, then landed in the common and spent several long breaths watching the dead Black, standing prepared to attack at the slightest movement. It towered over the other animal, almost looking like mother and child. Then the Red turned to Rake.
Rake glanced at Cinder and found her still at his side instead of fleeing as she had the last time he had faced the dragon. The Red rumbled closer and sniffed the Black, flicked out its tongue several times, then turned to face Rake and Cinder again. It did the same to them, sniffed both. It snorted and snot shot from its nose, but not dragon spit from its throat. The slime that struck them smelled like five-day rotten fish. Both attempted to unsuccessfully wipe it away.
The Red then shifted its attention to Rake’s robe and the eggs it held. It sniffed the robe, shot out its tongue, and sniffed some more, always moving closer, as if confused. Then it returned its attention to Rake and Cinder. Slime snorted at them struck and covered both again, but the red dragon was not finished with its investigation. It sniffed them again, feet to heads, then moved the gigantic snout close enough to nuzzle them, as a horse would do. Cinder reached out and rubbed the snout gently as if they were old friends, any suggestion of fear long gone.
As she stroked the snout and a de
ep rumble from inside the chest of the dragon reminded Rake of a cat purring. Then, almost without warning, it backed off a few steps, spread its wings and flew away. Rake watched it gain altitude, then circle high above them. It remained there as if on watch, going around and around.
Rake glanced at his robe, one end bulging with the eggs, then at Cinder.
“What?” she asked with a sheepish and impertinent grin.
“That’s what I was just thinking,” he smiled back. “We’re in a strange city and have just fought a dragon—and won. Another is circling above like it’s protecting us. And at our feet are six dragon eggs that we intend to hatch. And then you ask, what?”
“I don’t know,” Cinder said, her smile fading. “If they hatch, then at the very least, we’ll learn information about the new dragons, their likes and dislikes, if they can be trained, maybe our kind can communicate with them, and a hundred other things.”
“Maybe our dragons will kill all of them as soon as they hatch.”
She responded, “Or maybe we’ll feel their presence on our backs in the same way as we do ours.”
Rake hesitated to touch his robe. The eggs presented too many options or possibilities for his mind to follow any to logical conclusions, and he had run out of ideas. Thoughts flashed across his mind. Some good. Others not. However, in any of the futures he could devise, additional knowledge was critical to Dragon Clan survival and the eggs might save the lives of his family.
The questions became more practical and thus easier to answer. What was the next step . . . and the one after that? Was there a goal in hatching the eggs other than learning about a new species? If they managed to acquire information, the decentralization of the Dragon Clan made it impossible to share that information with others. That made the information useless, or at least less useful.
Instead of solving problems, the eggs had created a hundred more. His mind blanked at what might happen after they hatched. If they hatched.
And the eggs possibly contained answers to winning a war, defending their homeland, protecting their families, and even changing the future of their race. Rake pulled away from those thoughts and ideas. Maybe he was making too much of a clutch of unhatched eggs. They might not even be fertilized.