by Marc Secchia
Dragon snorted, “Pathetic. Try again – no, pretend you’re gargling splinters of glass in your throat. Let it rasp. Imagine you’ve snuck into Prince Floric’s bedchamber late at night, and you want to put the fear of Dragons into him. You’re going to scare him so badly, he will hide in his castle for the rest of his life and never look at another Princess again.”
“Dragon!” she giggled. “Oh, alright. Mwaa-harr-hargh!”
“Not bad.”
“Gnarr-harr-hargh-arrrgh!”
“Made me shiver, that one. Come on, you pint-sized pirate. Louder!”
Raising her fists to the sky, she roared, Mwaa-harr-harr!
MWAA-HAA-HA-HARGH!!
“Listen to this one – gnrrr-hrrr-HARGH!”
“I do believe you are now able to impersonate an evil Princess. Congratulations.”
“Thank you for the lesson, Dragon. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
* * * *
Ruling a kingdom was wildly overrated. Boring! After a frightfully dull day marked by frightfully dull chatter with people who were, in the main, frightfully dull, Dragon whisked his Princess into the blue yonder for a much-needed breath of fresh air. She practised her wicked laugh.
Developing nicely.
Dragon gave his best window-rattling thunder upon departing, and had the distinction of many people running into the streets to wave their fists impotently at the sky as he winged off.
Ah, she might struggle with wickedness, but he had it built right into his five Dragon hearts.
Flying up to the mansion, they kidnapped Yarimda and coasted down to the nearest beach. She was desperately weak and sick, but being herself, she had a few definitive requirements. One was to walk barefoot in the sand. A little sleight of paw allowed her to at least pretend, even if she was taking almost none of her own weight. The next request was to swim. Much, much easier. He simply floated her upon his paw, and the natural buoyancy of water did the rest.
Azania stripped down and had a swim too. The luminous waters were as warm as ever, but Dragon spied the non-wavelike curves of a couple of large azure Sea Serpents lurking not far offshore. Busy waters. Greedy maws.
Dipping his muzzle into the water, Dragon experimented with spurting his fire. Despite that he knew it worked from exactly one prior experience, fighting off carnivorous fish in the Skaggar River, he was surprised how well it performed. White fire bloomed beneath the water in a long bubbling jet, all of fifty feet – less distance than in the air, but still a respectable effort in his ever so humble opinion.
Oh, fine. Strut that pride, Dragon!
His Princess agreed. “Excellent effort. Did I see you drinking some seawater as well? Was that for the salt?”
“Aye. I feel I needed it,” he said. “Don’t know why.”
“Freshly salted Dragon?” she smiled.
“I’m so insalted.”
“Don’t get your tang in a knot, now.” He waggled his tongue. She chortled, “Exactly. My puns keep getting worse, don’t they?”
“Aye, conversation should not be too liberally salted –”
“With de-salt-ory comment?”
Sharp.
After returning Yarimda to the beach, Dragon collected driftwood and built her a roaring fire so that she did not get cold. While she and Azania sat watching the suns dip beyond the ocean, chatting non-stop, he tried to learn how to take off from the water without kicking off the bottom with his paws.
Failure.
≈Wavewhisperer? Wavewhisperer, come.≈
This was the limit of his vocabulary this day, even though he tried numerous times. Was he trying too hard? Why if some words came naturally, did others not follow?
He had no answers.
One could only hope that Yarimda was right. Perhaps the ocean alone knew. He begged the very waves to rise to his calling, and fetch an old friend to bear her to her final rest.
* * * *
After tarrying in Hamirythe as long as they could, Dragon and Princess took their leave of their friends. The aching in his hearts was every ounce as weighty and poignant as he had imagined.
For Chalice and Yardi, the promise was to see them again. For Yarimda … the outpouring of his grief became so strong, he misplaced the ability to speak.
It was she who spoke to him in a whisper, as he leaned close, “I have played my part, Dragon, and lived a good life. Wavewhisperer will come, you’ll see. Thank you for this gift you chose to give an old woman. May it be returned to you tenfold. Take care of that girl for me, alright? She needs you more than she will admit.”
He stroked her cheek with the tip of his sheathed talon.
His Princess muffled a sob.
“Don’t weep for me, my precious Azania. I will depart the shores of Solixambria a happy woman.”
Yarimda spoke with him a little longer as she had strength, her mind wandering to her love of the ocean, and riding upon Wavewhisperer’s back. See? She was the first Dragon Rider. What he listened to most of all, was her heart. No Dragon hoard in the world could compare to this treasure.
At last, he managed to choke out, Yarimda-mah Ociane, may you soar evermore.
I have already with you, my wonderful Dragon.
When they turned their faces to the rising sun and flew out of Hamirythe, he began to grieve so helplessly, Azania rightly asked him to put down on a quiet hillside before he crash-landed somewhere. They held one another.
“I only hope Wavewhisperer will hear her call. I could not bear it if she did not,” he managed at last. “Fate should never be so cruel.”
“She has faith.”
“Aye.” He shook his muzzle slowly, and shivered with feelings he could no longer understand. “A lesson for this Dragon, for certain.”
“And for this girl. Come on, Dragon. We’ve a ways to fly.”
“North until Mornine,” he said lightly.
He flew hard and steady for the green coastal mountains of Hamirythe, reaching them mid-afternoon against a wind rising toward gale force. It thrashed the towering heads of the tall bamboo forests mercilessly. After resting a couple of hours, they beat across a short but windswept stretch of ocean and put down on a tiny, sandy islet on the edge of the Tariboli River Estuary, where the ocean ran brown from silt and grey riverine sharks jagged hungrily through the brackish waters. Azania eyed up the busy feeding grounds and suggested she would rather play with the nice Dragon than those evil beasts.
“They aren’t evil, they’re just animals obeying their instincts,” he protested. Phew. This coastal wind was something special. Spray blasted off the ocean, stinging his still-soft scales.
“I prefer your instincts.”
Grrr.
“You’re such a sweet, kind Dragon,” she said, patting his neck. “Besides, you’re my Dragon.”
GNARR!!
“What, I get to be your possession but you don’t get to be mine? That is not how this relationship works.”
Ooh, cross, was she? Stamp of the little foot there?
He purred, “How does it work, Highness? Would you prefer to tell the story?”
“Why, so I would. Once upon a time, a sweet Dragon was innocently painting flowers in his lair, when who should happen along but the wickedest Princess in the land. She took one look at him and cried, ‘Ah, this talented Dragon shall be mine!’ Mwaa-haa-ha harrr!”
He fell over laughing.
“Nice. Stay there,” she grinned. “You make a wonderful windbreak.”
“I abase myself before your dainty slippers, o mighty Dragon-kidnapping Princess.”
“Ah, my day just improved.”
The wind dropped during the night, but the following day dawned blustery and dull. They scooted across the estuary, labouring against freshening winds, and decided to make directly for Fara’ane on the far side of a wide bay. Bad idea. Five hours of non-stop gale-thumping later, he put down on the beach at the far side. His wings threatened to fall off. Lungs burning. Body on fire.
“I v
ote for walking. It’s easier.”
Azania agreed, “Well done, Dragon. I’d flap my arms if I thought it would help.”
“You are very streamlined.”
She gave him a beady-eyed glare. “Is that a sizeist joke?”
“Would I tease a shrimp?”
“Oh my, the colossal granite boulder has gained the power of rudimentary speech. The science of evolution is real.”
“I just evolved into a ruthless Princess-snapper,” he chortled, clacking his fangs near her knees.
She dodged smartly. “Hey, go ooze back into your primordial swamp, will you?”
One Princess in fine fettle! They strolled up off the beach, searching for fresh water. Azania wanted to refill her gourd and to relieve herself. Scenting wood smoke drifting on the breeze, he circled her position a short ways away – protection balanced against privacy. Humans even had private rooms in their dwellings where they produced their waste, whereas for Dragons, the matter was always purely functional. Pit, river or airdrop, who cared where it landed? What little survived the digestive process emerged as pellets with almost no smell whatsoever.
A soft harrumph of breath made his paws freeze. Soldiers? Knights? What he had heard was one of their mounts blowing air from its nostrils.
Azania’s voice carried to his ear canals, “Were you spying on me in the bushes, sir?”
“Never, milady. Merely waiting for you to finish so that we can have a little … chat. You and me.” A voice with enormous slug factor. High, arrogant and far from as charming as the man imagined he was. “You’re a long way from home, girl.”
“Am I?”
“I wouldn’t try to run, if I were you. My men have you surrounded. Wouldn’t want to hurt you now.”
Dragon drifted through the bushes, low and silent. Every sense on the alert. Drawing his magic around him to blend in with the sounds of the forest, the whisper of leaves, the soft birdcalls. Not a twig must be disturbed. Softly, he hooted the call of a Tamarine night owl, twice – their agreed signal so that she would know he was near and alert to her need.
“Do you know who I am?”
“Obviously, you are the surpassingly beautiful Black Rose of the Desert,” said he, sounding puzzled. “Where are your companions? How came you to be trespassing on Fara’ane land?”
“Oh, I flew here.”
“You will fetch us a very fine ransom. We were hunting tigers, but you are a much greater prize by far, Princess.”
Politely, she said, “I should warn you that ransoms are only useful to men who remain alive to spend them.”
Several men sniggered; the nearest must be standing just beyond a screen of broadleaf trees ahead of him. There. He spied a glint of armour. Dragon bared his fangs. Hello, little victim. Shall we measure your entrails, together?
“So, in the code of chivalry, good knight,” the Princess continued to string him along, “where does the kidnapping of foreign Princesses fit in? Again I must warn you, I am no damsel in distress, and I do know exactly where I am and what I am doing here. You clearly do not. I’d desist and go after the tigers, if I were you. They are much easier prey than me.”
“You’re threatening me?”
Not the sharpest talon in the paw, this one. Dragon spied him between the trees now. A big man clad in plenty of plate armour, he had removed his helm and was scratching his blonde head, clearly nonplussed at the idea of any girl talking back to him. Sassing him, even. The brain clearly balked at handling such conundrums.
He said, “We are ten men –”
“Then I have you outnumbered, one to ten. I like these odds.”
“What? Are you quite mad?”
“Now you’re being downright insulting,” she observed mildly. Need? This royal was holding court! “Gentlemen, I’ll give you one last chance. Turn and flee right now, or I cannot be held responsible for the consequences.”
“I’ll squash you like a bug, little girl!”
“Oh, no! My Dragon’s right behind you!”
The knight shouted, “What kind of an idiot do you take me for – get back here!”
Dragon snuck his paw around the tree. Squish. One down.
Arrows whirred through the trees and bushes, but Azania had dived and rolled, wriggling beneath a spray of brambles. Two men tangled themselves up and fell back, cursing, as she used her tiny size to best advantage and sprinted with great agility between the trees. The knight and his men blundered after, shouting and brandishing their swords. She ran right up to his paws.
She grinned. He grinned back.
The knight charged around a tree, and ran straight into Dragon’s fist. Blam.
On his backside, the man looked up and saw his doom smiling down at him. His stomach made a horrid gurgling noise. One second later, the full whiff hit Dragon’s nostrils. Blergh!
“That kind of idiot,” Azania said.
Two of his men tripped over him. The knight shook, and lay still. Dragon herded another four wailing men-at-arms aside with his tail, and smashed them to the ground. “Shut up, you yapping fools!”
He turned. One of his own men had accidentally run his sword through the knight’s neck. Oh well. One less fool to use up Solixambria’s good oxygen.
The Princess clashed swords with another man, then knelt and cut his leg smoothly out from beneath him. The blade smacked audibly against his thigh bone, a terrible cut. Tigers were definitely easier prey. They did not stalk that last man with a Dragoness-inspired wriggle of their hips; paralysed by indecision, the last of the knight’s men stood stock-still as Azania smashed the fist holding the hilt of her sword up beneath his chin. Inch-perfect uppercut.
She wrung her fingers. “Ouch. He won’t be eating for a few weeks. Broke his jaw, I think.”
“I hope so. Juggernaut would be proud.”
“And this other Dragon I know?”
“Oh, he thinks you’re turning out to be as dangerous as a wrathful Dragoness. So cool under pressure.”
A smile touched her lips. “You are kind. I should not have let them sneak up on me in the first instance. I just thought it would be a great deal quieter here. Maybe we should give Fara’ane the skip? Yardi did warn us they were unlikely to be cooperative.”
“We are behind schedule.”
“Aye, I know. Want to finish off any more of these fools?”
“Not so much. Gratuitous slayings are not my style, unless your honour demands it? Nay, even then I would –”
“We’ve done enough.”
With that, they left the scene of the battle behind and walked on.
Chapter 20: Until Mornine
IT TOOK A FEW hours of hiking before the one with paws worked out what had been bothering him.
He said, “We’re flying at the wrong time of the day.”
Azania replied, “I was just enjoying the walk, and now you’re talking about flying again? What does it take to make a Dragon happy?”
“Aye. Not right now. We’re behind schedule, because the coastal wind always rises in the afternoons. We need to fly in the evening, or early morning and rest in the afternoons. No point in killing ourselves; just wait for the wind to die down and carry on.”
She clapped a hand to her forehead. “Oh!”
“Exactly. Except that we need something this size –” he held up his paw “– because that’s how silly we’ve been. Secondly –”
The Princess groaned. “Who woke you up? And, when?”
“Here’s the deal, my feisty four-foot friend.”
“Alright, I’m listening, my fiery four-footed fiend. I mean, friend.”
“Ha!” he snorted. “Good one. Having applied some actual brain matter to the issue of our onward journey, I have concluded that we either need to move our schedule forward twelve hours, or back twelve hours. Reason being, we do not want to be searching for a tiny reef – our second stop – in the middle of a great big ocean in the middle of the night.”
“Oh … rude words.”
�
��In copious quantities, I have to agree.”
“This must be the Kingdom of Infectious Stupidity.”
He nudged her shoulder playfully. “Makes me the King of the realm.”
“Dragon, I regret to inform you that you really do not fit in around here. I vote for a power nap, a nice snack and flying swiftly on when the wind drops.”
“Perfect. I’ll race you. First one to start to snore – zzz.”
“Didn’t hear you. I’m already asleep.”
After a fine afternoon’s investigating the interior of his eyelids – ahem, that might have been for about ten minutes before he nodded off – Dragon woke to the curious sensation that he was being watched by predatory eyes. The scaly one not being accustomed to any creature considering him for his edible properties, he flicked open his eyelids and checked the most important detail first. Azania. Compact fire going, roasting something on a stick that smelled delicious but was so tiny, it would not even touch the sides on the way down his gullet. Left, right, up … aha.
Tiger, meet Princess. Princess, run from tiger.
Only, the unruly non-conformist royal this girl had turned out to be, she was not running from anything.
“He’s been there for a while,” she croaked.
“The terrible predator has been there for a while, the extremely edible Princess said,” he corrected, stretching lazily. “Following which, the wise tiger bolted for the hills, yowling piteously …”
Unfortunately, this was not a wise tiger. He was young and salivating at the prospect of a royal dinner. Dragon showed him a very large mouthful of fangs, backed by white fire. This time, wisdom was duly communicated and the tiger leaped down from his low branch, skedaddling at a pace which would undoubtedly ensure a longer life than the one he had been contemplating a few minutes before.
“You didn’t run?” he purred.
“Show my back to a tiger?” she retorted. “Besides, I only noticed him a minute ago. In case you didn’t notice …” She held out her hand. Shaking like a leaf.
“You are stupidly brave, Princess. Emphasis on the ‘stupidly.’ ”
“Listen, you!” The left hand perched upon her hip, while the right aimed the skewer at his nose as if she planned to do some excavating with its red-hot tip. “Exactly how brave do I need to be with a fifty-foot monster guarding my back?”