by Rob May
‘Where did you get your knife?’ Rafe asked her. Kal was cutting bread with it; the blade glimmered in the firelight.
She had noticed him eyeing her weapon several times since they had met. She handed it over. ‘It was a gift. Have a look: it’s not magic or anything.’
Rafe weighed it in his hand. He looked almost disappointed. ‘It’s bloody sharp, though,’ he noted.
‘It needs to be,’ Kal said. ‘This bread’s bloody tough—’
She froze. Something was flying by, its massive silhouette visible in flashes through the branches of the trees. Kal and Rafe drew back under the cover of their bush as the shape passed almost directly overhead. When it did, they could see exactly what it was: the snub-nosed snout, the thick neck and bulky tubular body, the black wingspan that was fifty feet across, the sinuous tail that followed in its wake. It glided past without a sound.
Kal stood up and watched it slowly circle around the mountain. It caught an updraft and, with a lazy shake of its wings, shifted its course and made for the face of the mountain about half way up. It disappeared into shadow where there must have been a cave entrance.
She felt a shiver of fear run down her body. So there was a dragon on the island after all. Kal had a horrible feeling of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Darklaw she could have dealt with, and she had already survived one encounter with the strange hobgoblin creatures. But a dragon? Did she really want to go through all this again?
She looked at Rafe. He was standing behind her, staring up at the mountain, an awed expression on his face. Kal realised that it must have been the first time that he had seen one of the winged beasts. ‘It’s actually here, Kal!’ he said. ‘A dragon! They must have really done it: the Dragonites, they finally found a way to summon one. You know what this means—this is just the beginning of the great war between monsters and men, a war that will be the stuff of legends.’ Rafe could hardly contain himself. ‘And we’re going to be part of it. They’ll be writing songs about us, Kal. In a hundred years’ time, we will be the heroes, and people will talk about us the way that we talk of the gods.’
Rafe was breaking Kal’s heart. ‘The Dragonites can’t summon dragons, Rafe,’ she insisted. ‘They’re just a noisy cult. I’ve read their stupid book, Calling the Dragon; it’s all nonsense. Arcane rituals and human sacrifice—what self-respecting dragon would take any notice of that?’
Rafe looked affronted. ‘So why is the dragon here?’
‘I don’t know!’ she said, throwing herself back down on the blanket. ‘Maybe it just wants a nice warm place to nest and raise a family. When it gets light, we’ll go and take a look in that cave. Maybe you can ask it. But don’t expect it to leave without a fight; I’ve seen how stubborn dragons can be.’
Rafe rejoined her on the blanket. ‘Lula told me you’ve tangled with dragons before.’
‘It was a long time ago.’
I still dream about it every night!
Rafe leaned closer. ‘Can you kill them?’
‘They’re clever,’ Kal warned him. ‘Cunning even. But their brains aren’t any bigger than ours; it’s their thick skulls that take up most of the room in their head. If you’re smart you can trick them.’
‘Then we can take it down, Kal, between us! Two brains against one. Benedict will have to knight us both: Sir Rafe and Dame Kalina!’
Dame Kalina! Kal had to laugh. She returned her companion’s gaze. Rafe had changed somewhat in the three weeks that she had known him: his pale skin had tanned, and his blond hair—once straight and silky—had now turned wavy and tangled by saltwater, and was tied back from his face with a leather thong. But he hadn’t yet lost his optimism and enthusiasm. ‘Why do you want to be a knight so bad, Rafe?’ she asked him.
‘There hasn’t been anyone knighted in Amaranthium for over five hundred years,’ Rafe said. ‘Feron Firehand killed the West Wind Dragon in the Palace Plaza, right in the middle of the city. He severed its head in one blow with the Blade of Banos.’
Kal nodded. ‘King Aldenute knighted him. That must have been just before the revolution.’
‘Yes. When the king died, Firehand kept the peace. He rose above the violence and settled conflict and dispute on both sides. He was Lord Protector for three years and was a powerful voice in the formation of the Republic. He was tough, principled and fair … and he was my ancestor, Kal.’
‘Quite the role model,’ Kal said. ‘It’s a pity that if you do slay the dragon, he won’t be around to appreciate it.’
Kal mentally kicked herself. Stop saying things like that!
‘You’re here, though,’ Rafe said quietly.
They sat together in silence for a moment. ‘Although,’ Rafe said with a grin, ‘right now I’m not in that much of a hurry for dawn to come so that we can go and meet this dragon. I wish we could stay here for a while longer. No, forever … forever under the stars.’
On impulse, Kal leaned forward and kissed Rafe on the mouth. He responded instantly with surprising force. Kal gasped as he took her in his arms and put her down on her back on the blanket under the saltwine bush. Her mind emptied—all thoughts of dragons, knights, hobgoblins and villains falling away as she surrendered herself to purely physical instincts.
She arched her back as Rafe’s hand found her thigh.
END OF PART THREE
PART FOUR
THE DUEL
IV.i
Refuge
Kalina stepped out into the clearing. It was raining, and the water set rivulets of mud and dirt streaming down her body. She stood staring at the spot where three days before she had lain with Deros. He had promised her that morning that her life was about to change forever, and it had. Except that now it didn’t look as though she was going to spend the rest of it as a woodcutter’s wife.
She blinked back bitter tears. The grass where Deros had fallen had been sluiced clean by the spring rain. There was no body, no blood—just some crushed wild flowers: poppies and dandelions, and the snapdragons that Deros had fretted over. She had laughed at him then. Kalina crushed the flowers beneath her bare feet in anger. She should be miles away from here by now, yet she couldn’t bring herself to leave without learning why the man she loved had been killed, and his body taken away.
Kalina wasn’t a stranger to monster attacks—her own parents had been killed in an unfortunate incident with a troll when she was ten—but for a dragon and a tribe of goblins to destroy a village … that was unheard of. Was it possible, she wondered, that someone in the village had somehow provoked the attack? The eighty villagers she thought of as her extended family were a diverse crowd, with no shortage of secrets and history between them. They were orphans and widows, runaways and outcasts, retired adventurers and exiled politicians. For many years, people had tended to converge on the village, find a job that needed doing, and then maybe—if they fitted in—think about putting down some roots. Kalina couldn’t remember a time before the village was named Refuge.
Smoke was still rising from down in the valley where the village nestled. Kalina steeled herself. Was the dragon still there? Was anyone but her still alive? She had to know. She had to take one last look.
* * *
Kalina moved silently through the trees; not even the deer and birds reacted to her presence. She had stitched together some animal furs and skins she had found in the willow grove at the river fork, and she had smeared mud and dust over her naturally pale skin. Her camouflage was essential: there were goblins in the forest, still.
Lying on her belly beneath the wide fronds of a fern, Kalina Kalina spied on a pair of the creatures. These goblins weren’t armed and armoured like the group that had chased her down to the village three days ago; in fact, they appeared to be female. They wore skins around their waists, but their breasts were bare. They were collecting sticks of dry wood from the forest floor, communicating in grunts and whistles as they did so. If the goblins were here, then the dragon must be around too; she knew that much from
the old stories. Every dragon commanded its own army of goblins, trolls and other monsters. Would the rest of the dragon’s horde be coming down from the mountains any time soon? Kalina shuddered at the thought; she really, really shouldn’t linger here long.
When the forest was still and empty once more, she slipped away, keeping to the dark shadows between the trees, heading down the slope towards the village. Dusk was making it difficult to see. But what I can’t see, can’t see me, she reasoned. But what use was reason now? Only last week she had been telling her young pupils in the schoolhouse about how goblins all lived in underground chambers that their dragon masters had gouged out of the rock for them; they could probably see quite well in the dark. Kalina had gotten all her facts from the schoolmaster who she worked with; he had filled her head with countless old stories and legends. She wondered if his specialist knowledge had been enough to save him from the dragon attack.
She avoided the well-trodden paths and took secret shortcuts through tangled groves and past secluded pools. Eventually she could see the ridgeline through the trees, and she followed it until she came to the Overlook, a pointed finger of limestone that jutted out over the valley. She went down on her hands and knees and crawled to the edge.
What she saw below took her breath away. The village had been completely wiped off the map. No trace remained of any of the fifty or so buildings that were once there—not even one burned-out shell. Instead, in the centre of a mile-wide field of ash, was an enormous smoldering bonfire. Goblins were busy to-ing and fro-ing between the edge of the nearby trees and the smoking heap, which was piled up to the height of a three-storey building. Kalina could see they were bringing more wood to throw onto the bonfire.
No, not a bonfire …
In a shallow crater-like depression on top of the mound of timber, Kalina could see movement. A black man-sized shape was scrabbling atop a pile of still corpses. It moved awkwardly, stretching out its limbs, its neck, tail and wings.
Not a bonfire … a nest.
Kalina hissed between clenched teeth. The dragon was using the village and the villagers as a source of fuel and food for its young. Where was the parent now? Probably out hunting in the surrounding countryside; there was enough wood and wildlife nearby to raise a whole litter of juveniles to adulthood.
She was aware suddenly of how exposed she was out on this promontory. I shouldn’t have come back. There’s no helping Deros, or any of them now. I need to run far, far—
A dark shadow fell over her. Kalina felt the rock she was crouching on shudder, and heard the crack of heavy wings battering the air. She was buffeted forward several yards; her feet stumbling out into nothingness. She tried to grab at the sky with her fingers as she began to plummet.
Then she was caught in mid-air. The dragon’s clawed toes wrapped painfully around her body like a gibbet. Kalina was still speeding through the air, but this time on a new trajectory: directly towards the nest. At the last moment, the dragon beat its wings and rose up, releasing its hold on her. Then she was falling again, this time head-first, arms flailing.
Fifty yards below her, the hungry juvenile opened its jaws.
IV.ii
Ashes
Kal’s eyes flicked open. She could taste fear and bile in her mouth; was that from the dream, or because of the day ahead? The mangroves were black against a pink sky: dawn had arrived—time to get on with it! Removing Rafe's arm from around her waist and getting to her feet, she gulped down water from one of the skins that they had brought with them. Then she went and refilled it from the swamp, and poured the greeny-brown sludge over the ashes in the fire pit. Next, she set about stirring it all up with a stick.
When Rafe awoke he was greeted by the site of Kal rubbing mud and ashes into her body. It covered her face, arms and chest; she looked like a grey ghoul.
‘You look beautiful in the mornings,’ Rafe said with a grin.
Kal flicked mud at him. ‘Rub some of this in,’ she ordered. ‘Dragons can’t smell you if you’re smeared with ash. It overpowers their senses.’
Rafe did as he was told. ‘Yes, my lady.’
Kal smiled despite herself. She couldn’t deny that she was his lady now. She moved behind him and started helping him apply the mixture to his back. ‘When we get to the cave, don’t run in swinging your sword,’ she said. ‘Let me call the shots.’
‘I’m yours to command,’ Rafe said, holding up an arm to let Kal work mud and ash into his armpit. ‘But I think it’s about time that you shared with me all that you know about dragons.’
Kal bit her lip. ‘There are reasons I don’t talk about it, Rafe. For a start, I’m not proud of what I did to that poor creature. And if the Dragonites ever found out what I know …’
‘Come on, Kal, you can trust me,’ Rafe said. ‘I’ll swear by Banos and all the other gods that I’ll not tell anyone.’
Kal sighed. She could trust Rafe, more than she had ever trusted anyone for a long, long time. She wasn’t entirely comfortable with that feeling.
‘Alright,’ she said, pulling her dress on over her grey skin and throwing the coil of rope over her shoulder. ‘I’ll tell you everything as we walk. Let’s go!’
* * *
‘I grew up in a small village in the Wild, a thousand miles north of Amaranthium, at the foot of the Starfinger Mountains,’ Kal revealed as they splashed inland through the swamp. ‘It was a nice quiet life; I lived in a room above the schoolhouse, and taught the younger children. Told them stories mainly; the schoolmaster who took the older class taught me pretty much everything you could possibly want to know about dragons.’
Rafe raised an eyebrow, as if to say, That’s your story?
‘Everything he told me was wrong,’ Kal amended wistfully.
They stopped abruptly when Kal held up a hand; she had seen something moving in a clearing ahead of them.
‘It’s okay,’ she said after a pause. ‘It’s just a big bird.’ She moved forward, surprising the bird—a large blue and green Balibu snakeneck—causing it to flee the clearing with much flapping, splashing and rustling of branches.
‘I heard that dragons often use birds as spies—’ Rafe began, then he caught Kal’s look. ‘Oh, okay. Forget everything I’ve heard, right?’
Kal smiled and nodded. They had come to the edge of the trees and were now at the foot of the mountain. The lower slopes were formed of smooth, gently-sloping dark grey rock. There wasn’t much cover. Kal pointed to a valley-like fissure in the rock that snaked up the mountain. It seemed to lead in the general direction of the cave they had seen the dragon fly into.
‘I used to spend a lot of time in the forests around the village,’ Kal went on as they climbed ‘Walking, sketching and painting … escaping for time alone with the boy I was going to marry …’ She looked back to gauge Rafe’s reaction.
His expression was unreadable. ‘What happened to him?’ he asked, as casually as he could manage.
‘Goblins killed him. Six years ago—when we were both eighteen. Goblins came down from over the mountains without warning. They killed almost everyone I knew. I was then chased out of the village by a dragon.’
‘Dragons and goblins!’ Rafe exclaimed. ‘Our dragon here must have sent those half-goblin, half-man monstrosities—the ones that waylaid us at the governor’s villa.’
‘Wrong again, lover,’ Kal chided him. ‘Dragons don’t have any control over goblins. Or trolls. Or any other kind of monster for that matter. They’re solitary beasts really; they certainly aren’t interested in raising some sort of apocalyptic army like most people seem to think.’
‘Then where did—’ Rafe began, but Kal cut him off by pointing out to sea. A small grey-and-red-sailed sloop was hugging the coast.
‘Whatever’s going on here, it looks like Gron Darklaw isn’t afraid of the dragon. He must have found a way to get to the gold in the mine. Either the mine’s abandoned, or maybe he’s made some kind of deal with the goblins who used to work here. Hell, he might
be even treating them better than Senator Godsword’s men ever did.’ Kal was still angry at Benedict for revealing he had goblins labouring in his mine.
They hurried on up the ever-steepening slope. It was tough going, and after a while they stopped to rest, concealing themselves in the shadow of a large basalt slab. Hot wind was blowing down from the mountain: wind that carried the sickly smell of brimstone. ‘So anyway,’ Kal said, ‘I hid out for days in a den in a clump of willows. But I didn’t dare go far from the river or the forest because the dragon was always there, always overhead, circling and watching. I couldn’t think of anything but to creep right back to the village and look for any other survivors. That turned out to be the stupidest thing I ever could have done …’
Rafe looked into Kal’s ash-and-mud-smeared face. ‘Not stupid!’ he argued. ‘Brave. You killed a dragon to avenge someone you loved. That’s so very brave and noble of you, Kal. I’m slightly in awe of you.’
Kal smiled sadly. ‘No, Rafe,’ she said. ‘I didn’t kill the dragon for revenge. I killed it to survive.’
* * *
Kalina tumbled through the air and landed hard in the nest. Her shoulder exploded in pain and she was stabbed and cut in a hundred places by the sharp wooden wreckage and branches. Her breath was forced out of her, and she could only gag in horror as she opened her eyes and saw the young dragon hopping excitedly in front of her. It struck out at her instantly with razor-sharp jaws that clamped around her forearm and bit deep into her flesh. Kalina pulled away instinctively and felt the horrific pain of tearing flesh.
Please let it end quickly, she prayed. The juvenile put a heavy clawed foot on her stomach to hold her down. The tremendous heat from deep within the burning heart of the nest forced Kalina to squeeze her eyes shut. The last thing she saw was the bloody and charred remains of the faceless corpses that surrounded her.