The Last Dragon 2

by LeRoy Clary

  “There!” Spike almost shouted.

  Flier screamed.

  Their shouting exclamations startled me. Spike’s arm drew back, his fingers clutched an arrowhead as wide as my thumb. Flier sat, eyes wide, centered on the bloody object.

  “Want it?” Spike asked him proudly.

  Flier held out his palm. Spike dropped it in his hand.

  We all looked as if it was the first we’d ever seen. It was covered in blood and who knows what else, but it was definitely an iron arrow tip, looking rusted, the tip slightly bent, probably from striking his knee bone.

  Spike lurched to one side, reaching for rags as he pointed to blood flowing freely out of the knee and running down Flier’s leg. I took the rags and stemmed the flow as I cleaned up the floor and wooden side of the bed, while Spike dribbled a powder from a vial into the wound. Then he pulled a curved sewing needle used for carpets and a spool of thread heavy enough to repair sails.

  “Better put some more of that tree-stuff on before you sew the wound,” I suggested and was rewarded with a nod from a white-faced Flier.

  Spike was already reaching for it. “I know what I’m doing. Look away,” he told Flier again.

  Flier winced and gritted his teeth with every stitch, but in the end, Spike did a respectable job of closing the cut. I folded the cleanest strips of cloth for a pad, and dirty ones to wrap around his knee to hold it in place. As soon as Spike left us, Flier used my shoulder for a crutch, and we limped two doors down to our cabin.

  Spike had given me a powder to mix with water for Flier. His advice was to ignore his moans and make him drink the concoction no matter what. “Might take away some pain or not, but it’ll put him out for the night and half of tomorrow.”

  I gave it to Flier and left him in the lower bed, his eyes already foggy. I had a mug or two of wine to drink. At the door of the salon, I’d intended to head to the gaming table and relax. It didn’t happen that way. Kendra stood and drew my attention. Yes, I’d forgotten we’d used her cabin instead of mine for the operation, and she had no idea of the outcome. In retrospect, we could have performed the operation in our cabin and used the powder to put him out before Spike made his cut.

  “How is he?” she asked.

  “Sleeping. But we pulled an arrowhead from the side of his knee. Every time the knee bent, there must have been excruciating pain. He bled all over your cabin. I tried to clean it up.”

  “Don’t worry, we can finish up. Is he going to walk again? I mean, without a crutch?”

  “I have no idea. But his knee was hot before we started. It was swelled and leaked pus. You were right. I could tell it was hot around his knee before we saw it.”

  “So, your magic was helpful?” She grinned as if to say, I told you so.

  Pouring a full mug of red wine, my least favorite but all they had tonight, I said, “Spike was going to make the cut much bigger so his pliers could get a grip on the arrowhead. It was stuck in bone. I convinced him to try with his fingers again. When he did, I assisted with my mind.”

  “A smaller incision should mean less healing time.”

  “You can take the girls to your cabin if you’d like,” I said while pouring more wine. I intended to drink several mugs.

  “So you can get to the table and play your silly gambling game with those crude men. You’re not cheating them, are you?”

  A direct answer was hard. There were times I could confess to manipulating the game, but never to win for myself. The stakes were generally very small, and the game was more for companionship and to pass the slack time on the ship. However, I’d caught three players cheating so far. As each was identified by me, they encountered a losing streak. One expressed, “Never had such bad luck.” The others just accepted their sudden losses.

  Kendra waited for an answer. “I have no need for their copper coins.”

  “Tomorrow, I wish to have some time for myself. Will you be free to escort the girls around the ship?”

  It was impossible to refuse. She left me to the empty seat at the table and the raucous greetings of the players. To their delight, I lost the first three rounds. That was acceptable. They were all small. Then the fourth round came, and the pot grew and grew. I held three five-spots. Not the best hand by far, but one that seldom lost. I raised.

  The coins in the center of the table shifted without a hand to move them, and for the first time, I noticed the ship was rolling side to side, and lurching ahead now and then. The moon had risen, and the silver streak of light usually upon the water was broken by waves. The wind tore the tops of each wave and churned the water white.

  Before long, a partially filled mug slid across the table in my direction. I gathered it and handed an embarrassed player his drink. A sailor entered the salon and shouted for attention. “Pardon the interruption, but the captain says we’ve encountered a spot of foul weather. The outside decks will be closed until notice. Prepare your cabins for shifting cargo. If it ain’t nailed down, you better put it away before it flies and hits you in your face.”

  He must have realized he’d insulted many of us. His face reddened, and he turned and ran from the salon as if chased by angry passengers. Behind him, the door was caught in a gust of wind and slammed shut with a bang loud enough to emphasize his words. Three of us were willing to stay and play, but the other three in the lounge stood and left. The few other people in the salon soon went to their cabins, leaving only us at the table.

  I was about to deal when the ship rolled more than usual, and I had a mental image of Flier rolling from his bed while drugged and hurting himself in the fall. “Tomorrow,” I said to them as I stood, which turned out to be a lie, although not an intentional one.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  W hen I managed to reach our cabin after bouncing off both sides of the passageway, because of the motion of the ship, Flier was half out of bed. One leg hung over the side, his foot on the floor, but his eyes were closed, his body limp, and he snored like a pig grunting at rutting time. The water jug had been tossed off the table despite the depression intended to keep it in place. The floor was wet, the chamber pot slid and sloshed with every tilt or twist of the ship.

  After securing everything, I knocked on Kendra’s door and found the girls asleep, and everything in there in far better shape. They had braced for the storm. I timed my movements to that of the ship and staggered back to my cabin and climbed into the top bed. No sooner had I done that, when I felt the first warnings my dinner and wine were about to pass my throat—the other way.

  I climbed down and groped for the chamber pot and settled for the metal water jug when my hand touched it just in time. The ship rolled to the other side and took me along with it. The jug also. The bow struck a wave, and the entire ship shuddered.

  My dinner spewed into the jug. The movement of the ship told me it was not the last time I’d puke. Our cabin door flew open.

  Kendra stood there, bracing herself in the doorway. She shouted over the howl of the wind, “There are four mages and two sorceresses out there.”

  Questioning her powers of locating them was unthinkable—and so was most everything else in my misery. “Where?”

  “Ahead of us. Clustered together in two separate places, which are probably ships.”

  “We can’t do anything about it, now.” My head lolled to one side, and my eyes closed. I wanted our ship to sink to the bottom of the ocean where it couldn’t roll or tilt.

  Kendra slammed the door in anger. I moaned and tried to settle my stomach. Moaning didn’t help. I cried, and that seemed to help some. I’d have screamed if it might have done anything productive. My eyes were closed, but sleep was impossible.

  I tied my blanket around a corner of the bed so I couldn’t roll off in the middle of the cabin, but it did nothing to prevent me from banging into the wall—which was also the hull. The twin candles burned themselves out. I lay in darkness on the floor, wishing I had used some of the sleeping powder that Flier had taken. He managed to bo
th sleep and stay in his bed. No doubt he was unaware of the storm.

  I dozed several times, more of a dreamless sleep from exhaustion than real sleep and woke when the ship either struck a large wave head-on or rolled to either side so much it seemed in danger of turning upside down. The porthole remained dark except for the flashes of lightning. The night seemed endless. My body was tired of fighting the ship, my stomach wanted to eject more contents, but there was nothing left, and my head hurt from lack of sleep and nausea.

  The porthole finally turned a few shades lighter, but the heavy storm clouds kept it dark. Adjusting to the motion, I slept in fitful snatches until the door burst open and Kendra stumbled in again as the bow raised high and crashed down again.

  She took a look at Flier to see he was still sleeping from the medication, then shouted at me, “They’re still there. The mages and sorceresses.”

  I moaned an unintelligible answer.

  She continued, “Don’t you understand? Two groups of them ahead of us. Storms. Lightning. Rain.”

  I shook my head.

  “We’re not making any progress. The Gallant is at a standstill. I heard a crewman say that, but don’t know how he can tell. What I can tell is that we are no closer to the mages than we were last night.”

  “The ship can’t advance against a storm like this,” I muttered. “Wait until it passes.”

  “Right! Even if it is a storm made by them!”

  Her accusation made me sit up and ignore my pain. No closer to the mages than last night? My tortured mind imagined three ships, two with mages aboard. They hadn’t been in Trager or the Port of Mercia. It made sense they were heading in our direction from Dagger, not from behind us. The storm should have pushed them right past us as we made no progress.

  At the very least, they were waiting for us. All the mages we knew of had fled to Dagger, and possibly beyond. Now four were ahead of us. We’d encountered a similar mage-storm on the day we’d rescued the girls.

  All that was true. My mind grasped at what it meant and quickly came to a single conclusion. They should have sailed right past us, helped by the storm’s winds. That was the important thing. They should have. But hadn’t. I tried to focus on that single item—as Kendra was doing.

  Kendra was holding on to the side of the doorway, keeping her balance while I thought. I said, “Why didn’t they sail by us?”

  “Exactly. They are in the same positions as last night.”

  “Point to them,” I ordered.

  She furrowed her eyebrows, then obeyed despite my rude tone. Her finger pointed to the bow of our ship, to the left about twenty degrees. She shifted her arm and pointed to the right, the same distance away from the center.

  I said, “We’re right in the middle, one to the left and another to the right. Both in front of us.”

  She nodded, a slight smile cracking her face as she knew she’d finally made me understand. She shouted over the shriek of the wind, “If we turn away from the land, parallel to the storm, I’ll bet they remain positioned the same. If we run with the wind, the storm will cease.”

  “They know you are here,” I hissed. “The mages. It is their doing.”

  She said, “How can we convince the captain to do as we wish to test this?”

  “I say we tell a lie so big nobody can deny its truth.”

  Kendra barked a laugh. “Try me.”

  I allowed my mind to wander, then seized on the lie required. “I’m a student working for the Dire King’s Navy, small as it is. My research involves storms.”

  “Do they involve ships rolling over when they take waves from the side, as they certainly will if we were foolish enough to turn to our left or right?”

  “What if we turn away and run with the storm?” I asked.

  She nodded. “After we are clear of it, the captain could then turn east and then south. I could determine where the mages are, and you could convince the captain that you are trying to run around the end of the storm. A few coins in his palm might make him listen to your theory.”

  I waited for the roll of the ship to assist me and slid from the bed without knowing how I’d managed to climb into it during the night. The last I remembered, was being on the floor. One hand remained braced, while I attempted to stand. A dry heave convulsed me. My body fell onto the bed while my feet remained on the floor.

  “I can do it,” Kendra said.

  “I’ve never even seen the captain,” I moaned. She wrapped her arms around my thighs and lifted me back into the bed. I crawled gratefully under the blanket and closed my eyes before she departed.

  I tried to sleep but couldn’t. Finally, I fell into another dull stupor and drifted off. Later, I woke to find the motion of the ship had changed. The bow no longer plowed into the waves but seemed to lift and wallow over them. The ship rolled and twisted as if it was not fighting to advance into the storm. The change in motion allowed my stomach to settle.

  After checking on Flier, I went to Kendra’s room to find Anna and Emma sitting on the edge of the lower bed, laughing and playing. I sat with them. “Where’s Kendra?”

  Emma pointed to the door.

  Anna said, “Hungry. Eat.”

  “You want me to take you to the dining room?”

  They smiled. Amazing how basics like food improved their language skills. Their infectious behavior had me laughing and playing as we walked down the passageway to the dining room. We made a game of trying to walk down the middle, no matter which way the ship rolled—an impossible task. As we entered, we found we were alone. A glance out the window revealed the wind was now at our back, the waves smaller.

  Kendra entered as we began to eat a cold meal of crackers and cheese. The cooks didn’t serve other food while in a storm. She wore a smile and gave me a conspiratorial wink. After sitting, she said, “I believe the storm is diminishing quickly since the captain turned the ship around.”

  Without saying, she’d been successful in speaking to him, getting him to do as she wished, and paying him became a secondary issue. Neither Emma nor Anna seemed bothered by it, and they seemed to enjoy the motion while laughing at the few adults that joined us who made faces and groaned whenever a wave struck.

  They ate as if they hadn’t been fed in days. I said, “The motion of the ship told me that the captain had listened to you.”

  “The captain was happy to have an excuse to turn around. He said he’d never seen a storm like that, especially at this time of the year. It came from nowhere and remained in one place. For my research, he agreed to turn to starboard, that’s to our right by the way, when we are clear. He wants to see if he can sail around it.”

  “How much of that does he think is his idea?”

  She bit the end off of a slice of thick cheese. “Most of it. Oh, I offered a few suggestions, but mostly, I agreed with him. I did ask a few leading questions, I’ll confess.”

  I rolled my eyes. “If it had been me, he would have had me thrown off the bridge.”

  “How is Flier?”

  “Sleeping, as far as I know.”

  She used a dull table knife to shave a dozen slivers of yellow cheese, gathered a handful of crackers, and said, “Don’t let him get up or eat too much. Do you have more of the sleeping powder?”

  “If I did, I’d have used it on me during the night.”

  “Let me track down Spike. Us girls will bring it to you, later.” Her head drew back, and her eyes went wide with surprise as she peered out the single window.

  Outside, the waves churned, the wind blew, but not as hard as earlier. What had caught her attention and now caught mine, was the sky. Ahead of the ship, it was blue, almost cloudless, and a faint rainbow had formed.

  “Oohs and ahs came from Anna and little Emma. Their fingers pointed to it. “Pretty,” Anna said.

  “Yes,” I agreed, my attention focused more on the water in the distance than the rainbow. The churned surface of the sea calmed, the massive waves dissipated, and not too far away the sea loo
ked flat and placid. I grabbed the cheese and crackers while standing.

  Kendra said, “Going outside? Of course, you are. We’ll bring the sleeping powder later.”

  Her words were to my back. Instead of remaining on the main deck where passengers were restricted, I climbed a short ladder and stood one deck above, where I made a full revolution to see all. The storm was to the south behind us, almost a solid straight line where the rain began. The clouds hung above, paralleling the line of rain.

  To the north lay blue sky and calm seas as far as I could see. Off to my left, lay a smudge of land at the horizon, part of Trager I assumed. The Gallant sailed due north, away from the storm. As we requested, the Gallant began a wide swing east, away from Trager. The new course kept us the same distance from the hard rain and winds that now waited on our right if we cared to challenge the storm again.

  The crew reacted to shouted orders, but there seemed a lag between the orders and the men’s reactions, as if they too, were confused and unsure with what they saw. Sailors hate unexplained things. The face of an officer, probably the captain, turned in the wheelhouse and watched me through the row of windows that allowed him to observe his entire ship from that one location.

  I expected him to send someone to order me back down to the main deck where passengers belonged, but instead, he turned away and watched to his right as intently as I. Kendra would have told him about me, so he knew who I was—but that didn’t warrant allowing me, a passenger, being above the main deck.

  Other passengers emerged and watched the phenomenon with as much interest as us. Several of those passengers were regulars on the vessel or others. Before a crewman was dispatched in my direction to order me back to where I should be, I climbed down the narrow ladder and entered the passageway to my cabin.

  Flier’s eyes opened as the door slammed shut behind me harder than intended. He reached down to his knee and probed. Then smiled. “The only pain comes from the cut.”