“My name is Taryllan, and I am just a traveler on the road. I went to visit my son and his wife in Tisa’ron, but I got a later start leaving than I wanted, so I was still on the road much later than I wanted to be. I had hoped to rest in Hamittown, where my cousin lives, but I grew tired. I spotted this clearing and thought to stop for the night. I heard your horses and decided to see if you would let me take shelter with you. Then your wards went off, and you woke up much more suddenly than I had expected.” Nothing about him looked dangerous, which, of course, made me think he was probably even more dangerous than I expected. Spending so much time in Fairyland was making me downright untrusting.
“How much farther is it to Hamittown?” I asked.
“About three hours,” the old man said. “That’s assuming nothing tries to eat me on the road. There’s a dragon near these parts, you know.”
“Nothing’s tried to eat you so far, and it’s got to be close to midnight,” I replied. I didn’t have a real good sense of time, what with my cell phone not getting signal in another dimension.
“That means anything still out there hunting is going to be desperate enough to eat stringy old man meat!” he protested. I had to give him that point. He was the hunting equivalent of picking up a girl in the bar when the ugly lights come on. You just take from what’s available, no matter if it ain’t exactly prime pickings. “Please,” he begged. “Just let me camp inside your circle. I won’t even stay near you or your people. Then I’ll be gone at first light.”
I looked at Skeeter, who shrugged. “I ain’t too worried about the old dude. I mean, I think even I could whoop his ass, and I ain’t exactly the heavyweight around here.”
“We can’t just turn him out onto the road to be eaten, Bubba,” Joe said.
“You can’t,” Amy said. “You’re a priest. I work for a shadowy government agency that technically doesn’t exist. I can totally send him out into the darkness to be eaten.”
“Here,” Mama said, stepping forward. She pulled the little man’s sleeves down until they covered most of his hands, then turned to Amy. “Now put the handcuffs back on him. He should be fine as long as they don’t touch his skin.”
Amy did as Mama asked, cuffing the little dude’s hands in front of his body. Then Mama helped him up and escorted him over to her wagon. She pointed to the ground by the wheel. “You sleep here. If you move from this spot, my son will shoot you in the leg. It won’t kill you, but it won’t feel very good. If you try to hurt anyone, then he’ll kill you.”
The little dude looked like he didn’t know whether to thank her or run off into the woods, but he sat down and leaned his back against the wheel. “Thank you very much, ma’am. I appreciate the kindness.”
“It’s not kindness,” Mama said. “I don’t want you anywhere near us unless I can keep an eye on you. This seems like the best way to do that. In the morning, you will travel with us to Hamittown. There we part ways.” She knelt by him and carved a half-circle around him in the grass with her knife. Then she wiggled her fingers, and sparkling dust fell from her hands onto the grass. “Now if you cross this circle, it will trigger the wards as surely as if something breached them from the outside. So don’t.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
The rest of us separated and went back to our sleeping spots, but sleep was a long time coming.
I have to admit, it was kinda nice waking up with the breeze on my face, birds chirping in the distance, Amy nestled up under one arm, Skeeter snoring like a buzzsaw from the other wagon. Okay, not so much with the last part, but the rest of it was nice. I slid my arm out from under Amy’s head, trying not to wake her, and smiled as she opened her eyes.
“You’re sweet, but I’ve been awake for a little while,” she said.
“Good, because I’ve gotta pee like a racehorse.” I rolled out of the wagon and stumbled off behind a tree to deal with morning necessities. On my way back, I noticed something odd on the ground beside Mama’s wagon. Or, more to the point, I noticed that there was nothing on the ground by Mama’s wagon. I drew Bertha and spun around, looking for a skinny old man who should have been stuck in an alarmed circle in the dirt.
“Hey, Mama?” I called out.
“Yes, Robbie?” Mama sat up straight in her wagon, looking like she’d been awake for an hour already. Was I going to be the only one who woke up with a string mop on my head and a Brillo pad on my chin? The more heads poked up, the more certain I was that everyone I traveled with looked better when they got out of bed than I did. Not that it was particularly high bar to get over.
“Where’s your little old dude?” I asked Mama.
“He’s right…sonofabitch! Where did the little bastard go?”
I’ll own it: I’m not at a point in my life yet where hearing my mama cuss doesn’t amuse the shit out of me. “I don’t know, Mama, that’s why I’m asking,” I hollered back.
I walked over to Mama’s wagon, and Amy met me there. Joe crawled out from under our wagon, also looking pretty close to perfectly put together. At least his hair was mussed a little. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“The little dude vanished,” I said.
“Taryllan?”
“Did we have any other little dudes traveling with us?”
“Good point. When did he vanish?”
“Sometime in the night,” Mama said, kneeling beside the wheel. “My wards are still intact. I don’t have any idea how he could have escaped.”
“Teleport spell?” Amy asked.
“We can’t really do that,” Mama replied.
“Maybe he turned himself into a frog and just hopped away,” Skeeter said, walking up and rubbing sleep out of his eyes. He, at least, looked a little rumpled and had a little bit of drool dried on his chin.
“We can’t really do that, either,” Mama said, reaching out with a napkin to clean his chin. Some people will just always be mothers, no matter how old folks get.
“Well, what do we do?” Amy asked. “He didn’t hurt anyone, although he certainly could have.”
“I reckon we just move on,” I said. Everybody turned to look at me like I was crazy, and I held up my hands. “Look, he didn’t hurt nobody. It don’t look like he stole nothing. So we might as well keep on trucking down to Hobbitton and get on about our business.”
“Hamittown,” Skeeter corrected. “Hobbitton was from Lord of the Rings.”
“Whatever. Load up the wagons while I feed the horses. Mama and Joe can get some grub going, and we can be on our way pretty quick.”
“Why do I have to cook?” Joe asked.
“Because I’ve eaten Skeeter’s cooking and don’t want to die today. Now get us something to eat, so we can go kick some ass.”
Chapter 11
I saw the smoke a good half hour before we got within sight of Hamittown. Amy saw it, too, and spurred her horse on ahead of us. A couple minutes later, she was back, her eyes wide. “You are not going to believe this shit!”
“I wrestled a naked sasquatch and recreated the big finish from Dirty Dancing in a no-shit fairy palace. Do you really think there’s something left I don’t believe in? Besides an honest politician, that is,” I said.
“It’s a dragon.” She was a little pale, and a little out of breath with excitement, or fear, I couldn’t really tell which. “Or, it was a dragon, at least.”
“You’re saying somebody already killed the dragon?” I asked.
“No.” Her face fell. “I’m saying the dragon destroyed almost the entire town and flew away. It was still there when I rode up to the gates, but as soon as I got there, it took off. I didn’t even get a shot at it.”
“Holy shit,” Skeeter said. “A real dragon? Like, flying, burning, teeth, the whole deal?”
“Well, I wasn’t close enough to see teeth, but yeah, it was flying, and the whole damn town was on fire, so it was pretty much a dragon. Long tail, wings the size of a jumbo jet, a body that looked like a barn—a dragon.”
�
�Was anyone hurt?” Joe asked.
“I couldn’t tell, but I’m guessing there’s probably a lot of people injured there.”
“Then we need to get there quickly. My magic may be of use,” Mama said.
“Alright,” I said. “Let’s haul ass. Mama, you get on the back of Amy’s horse. Amy, take Joe’s rifle with you in case the dragon comes back. Y’all ride on ahead and start making with the healing, and we’ll get there as fast as we can with these things.”
They did as I asked and rode off toward Hamittown. “Well, this is gonna make going after the dragon even more a pain in the ass,” I said.
“Why?” Skeeter asked, pulling his wagon alongside mine.
“We’re going to have to split up. There’s no way Mama is going to leave a bunch of hurt people if she can help.”
“Neither will I,” Joe said. “Sorry, it’s part of the vows.”
“Yeah, I kinda figured. That means two or three of us are gonna have to go dragon-hunting without Mama’s magic. But we can’t just let people die, and we can’t leave the dragon alone, especially not after this shit. Let’s get there and see what we can do.” I snapped the reins, and we pushed the horses as much as we could for the next twenty minutes until the Hamittown walls came into view. Well, what was left of the Hamittown walls, anyway.
I’m betting it used to be a cute little town, even with the big wall of tree trunks surrounding it. But now, it just looked like a bunch of matchsticks scattered around what was left of a campfire, with a field hospital set up off to one side. The wall was destroyed, smashed to toothpicks by the dragon’s giant legs, I reckoned. The fires were mostly out by the time we got there, but smoke still wafted up into the air from the burned-out husks of homes, shops, and one big central inn.
We parked the wagons outside what used to be the gate, and I left Skeeter to deal with the horses. Joe and I walked through the wreckage, the smell of smoke and burned flesh making it hard to breathe. Pigs, chickens, and dogs lay smoldering in the grass by the smoking buildings, but we didn’t see any bodies. Yet. A line of weary men and women spread from the well in the center of the village to the last building still burning, a two-story structure that I figured used to be the inn.
“There’s Mama,” I said to Joe, pointing to a flash of golden light. Sure enough, Mama knelt beside a screaming woman, pressing her hands to the woman’s face. That golden light flashed again, and the woman’s screams stopped. As we got closer, I could see that she was asleep.
“She okay?” I asked.
“No,” Mama said, her voice tight and curt. “She just lost everything and received horrible burns trying to pull her husband and daughter from the blaze that engulfed their home. I healed her physical wounds, but the pain she suffers will endure for a long time.”
“Shit,” I said. I reached down and helped Mama to her feet, but as soon as she was upright, she shook free of my grasp and made a beeline for a man writhing in pain on the ground. I looked to Joe, who nodded at me.
“I’ll help her. I can do more good here than fighting a monster, anyway.” He followed Mama and knelt by her side, taking the man’s hand and murmuring encouragement as she healed.
I looked around, trying to find somebody in authority, but everyone around me was either screaming in pain or trying to help somebody who was screaming in pain. I walked back to the well and said, “Who’s the mayor or whatever?”
A woman pulling a bucket from the well pointed to the flaming structure. “He’ll be the one behind the bar in there. I don’t think he feels much like talking, though, on account of being burnt to a cinder.”
“Do you know where the dragon’s lair is? And how long have y’all been living next to a dragon anyway? That kinda seems like something that would be an issue.” I said.
She handed her bucket off to the man next to her and wiped her face. Soot left a black streak across her brow that would have been funny if the whole place didn’t look like a damn war zone. “It’s a cave maybe two hours farther west. He’s been there for years, but never been a problem until recently. He’d take a cow every now and then, or a couple of sheep if he was feeling lazy and didn’t want to hunt, but mostly, he left us alone. He’d never hurt anybody before Jacob, and even that was probably an accident. But Oberon got all bent out of shape and started sending expeditions out to hunt him, and now I guess he’s decided that we have to be punished for Jacob’s stupidity.”
Amy and I shared a look. There was more going on here than we knew. Typical damn faeries, always working an angle. The pointy-eared bastards were worse than TV preachers and politicians rolled into one. I asked the question. I had to ask the question. “Who’s Jacob and what did he do?”
The woman spat on the ground before she answered. “Jacob is…was the mayor’s youngest son. Stupid shiftless, lazy, good-for-nothing little rat-faced prick that he was, he was still the mayor’s son. Couple months ago, he took it upon himself to ‘raid the dragon’s lair’ like he was some kind of hero out of legend. It’s not the first time a local kid has done something stupid like that, of course. Happens a couple times every century. Some brat gets a wild hair and tries to go steal some of Xythigax’s treasure. The really brave ones might make it back with a gem or a goblet. Most of them come back empty-handed, with melted swords and scorched pride. Xythigax is a patient dragon, not that I’ve known any other dragons, but he usually doesn’t get too offended at the antics of the younglings.”
“What made this time different?” Amy asked.
“Jacob didn’t go in there trying to steal a trinket to impress a girl. No, that stupid bastard wanted to prove his worth as a warrior so his papa would send him to Tisa’ron to join the guard. Like standing by a city gate all day searching wagons was some great thing. But he wanted out of Hamittown so bad he could smell it, so he went in to slay the dragon.”
“Oh, shit,” I said.
“Yeah, exactly. The stupid boy must have snuck up on Xythigax and gotten a lucky shot in or something. Because he managed to piss the dragon off enough that he came back to town wrapped in a sheet. Xythigax flew right over the walls and dropped him on the steps of the inn. It was the first time most of us had ever seen him up close, and it was every bit as scary as you’d expect. I don’t know if you saw him before you rode in here, but he’s a big bastard. Bigger than the inn itself, even. He dropped that crispy boy’s corpse on the steps of the inn and said that our truce was over, and if any of our people ever set foot in his cave again, he’d level the town.”
“And the mayor got all pissed that his kid was barbecued and went in there,” I said, shaking my head.
“If only it was that.” The woman spat again, then stepped forward, lowering her voice. “The mayor’s wife is some kind of distant cousin to Queen Titania. She might have three drops of royal blood, but that’s enough for the queen to get all defensive about her nephew being killed by a dragon.”
“Yeah, she gets kinda touchy when people hurt her relations,” I replied, thinking about my first trip to a Fairyland dungeon thanks to beating the shit out of one of Titania’s cousins. He also happened to be a bandit and an asshole, but neither of those things counted as much as being a royal cousin. I could definitely see the Summer Queen going postal on a dragon for hurting one of her relatives.
“So she ordered Oberon to put a price on the dragon’s head. The kind of price that made people from all over come looking for a piece of fame and fortune. But all they found was fire. Well, the mayor’s wife kept getting more and more furious that nobody was avenging her son, never mind that a dozen warriors had gone into that cave and come back on their shields. Literally, on their shields. Xythigax delivered them. Just the heads, though. He said he enjoyed the snacks, but getting them out of the shell was difficult, and could we please send some with more fat on them, it made the flavor better.”
“Wow, Bubba, he’s gonna love you,” Amy said.
I looked down at my belly, a little aggrieved. Then I noticed that I still coul
dn’t see my feet while standing, a challenge I’ve lived with since I was about twenty, and I had to admit she was right. “I just hope he doesn’t get to find out how well-marbled my ass is,” I said. Looking back at the woman, I asked, “Do you know anything that might help us get the drop on the dragon?”
She looked at me like I was stupid, and I realized that this wasn’t a video game. Talking to the right random villager wasn’t going to give me the clue that helped me avoid all the dragon’s traps and weapons to kill it while it slept.
“You want my advice, human?” she asked.
Amy and I both nodded. “Run east. Or south, or north, or any direction that puts as much distance between you and Xythigax as possible. Because he’s awake, he’s pissed off, and he’s starting to really like the taste of people.”
So, of course, I completely ignored everything she told me and went charging into the dragon’s cave with no more protection than the shirt on my back.
Chapter 12
An hour later, Amy and I pulled our lathered horses to the side of the trail and tethered them loosely to a tree. She looked at me as she draped the reins over a low-hanging branch. “This is a little optimistic, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean?”
“Tying up the horses like we think we’re coming back out of this cave.” For the first time since I’d known her, I saw real fear in her eyes. I mean, we’d been in some deep shit before, and I’d seen her scared. But that was always in the middle of a fight, when the shit was bouncing off the fan blades right into our faces. I’d never seen her scared before a fight.
I put a hand on her shoulder, turned her around, and pulled her in close. “We’re gonna be fine.”
“It’s a dragon, Bubba. We’ve never fought anything like this before. Hell, I’ve never even seen anything like this before. I don’t even know of anybody that’s fought a dragon, much less fought one and lived.”
Hot Blooded - A Bubba the Monster Hunter Novella Page 7