Nothing.
All he could do was succeed in his hunt.
He’d spent the last few hours searching for any movement, creeping steadily downslope, wanting nothing more than a rabbit, any creature that would provide them with fresh meat, but he hadn’t seen anything.
A growing frustration built within him. If he failed to bring home a successful hunt, what would happen to Kayla? More likely than not, she would continue to fade. It was the same thing he’d seen with his mother, the way she’d gradually retreated, becoming nothing more than a shell of a person.
If that happened to his sister, Jason had no idea how he could help both of them.
Which was why he had to be successful. Only there was no sign of movement.
He had crouched in place for quite some time, staying near a ridgeline on which he’d frequently encountered rabbits before, but this time, there were none.
Move slowly and carefully. Watch for movement around you. Use that as you hunt.
He poked his head up, and when he did, his stomach sank.
Three figures were beyond the line of sight.
Reltash was one of them, but so too was Angus, and another.
Jason got to his feet, still holding on to his bow, but loosened his grip.
There was no way he was going to find anything with these three out here. And why would they be hunting in this direction anyway? There should be no reason for it. Reltash typically went with the others to the back face of the mountain, where the hunting was better, though often more difficult. At least the snow wasn’t nearly as deep, and they would occasionally come across entire herds of deer—until their shots missed and they chased them off. Jason had seen that enough times to know that the hunters were generally successful, but they weren’t always the most skilled.
Reltash seemed to notice him, as he motioned in Jason’s direction. The three started toward him and Jason crouched where he was, not heading toward them.
“What are you doing out here?” Reltash hollered up at him. He was a large man, and his dragonskin coat reflected the sunlight. His dark eyes glared at Jason.
“I was going to ask you the same thing. It seems to me you’re scaring off any game that might be here.”
“There is no game out here,” Reltash said.
“With you out here, there certainly won’t be.”
Angus watched Jason, his gaze alternating between the bow slung over his shoulder and the buttons on his coat. Jason was now making a point of ensuring he kept his coat buttoned, not wanting anyone to pay any more attention to his distinct lack of discomfort with the weather.
“Aren’t you a little far from home?”
“Aren’t you?” Jason asked.
He didn’t think Reltash would try anything foolish, but this far away from the village, it was difficult to know with any certainty. He’d taunt him back home, but out here, as far as they were, it was possible Reltash would decide he was tired of dealing with Jason.
“Maybe you should head back,” Reltash said.
Next to him, Angus watched Jason a bit nervously. Marl, a young man about his age but much larger than him, shared Reltash’s sneer.
“I haven’t finished my hunting for the day,” Jason said.
“I think you have. It’s time for you to get moving.”
Jason frowned. “Why are you out here? Do you intend to abandon your friend again?”
He watched Angus as he said it, curious how much Angus would have admitted to Reltash. Would he share that Jason had been the one to save him?
It opened him up to questions, but he didn’t really care.
“We didn’t abandon him. He fell into the stream on his own. We couldn’t reach him in time.” Reltash looked up at him, smirking. “What were you doing so far downstream?”
“Hunting. And considering that I’ve now run into you, I understand why I haven’t been able to find anything.”
There had to be a reason Reltash and the others were out. They’d gone to the cave, which suggested there was something more to what they were looking for. Had there been rumors of something else? It was the kind of thing he wouldn’t have known much about. He didn’t spend much time in the village these days, preferring to wander and hunt, hoping he might have a chance to speak with the dragon more, but there was the possibility they’d heard something in the village.
He had shifted his feet, gripping his bow, when Reltash lunged toward him.
Jason scrambled back, and his feet slipped.
Swearing under his breath, he tried to roll, but he slid directly toward Reltash. Reltash grabbed for him, and Jason swung the bow around but restrained himself at the last moment. He didn’t want to connect to Reltash’s body, not wanting to break his only means of hunting. Finding a replacement would be incredibly hard, at least here. It would require that he head downslope, locate the right kind of branch, and then shape and restring it. The only other option would be to head along the back face of the mountain, but he didn’t want to do that, either.
“Grab him. He doesn’t need to know what we’re doing,” Reltash said.
Jason rolled off to the side, sliding along the snow. The others raced toward him, their boots thundering, and he leaned back, trying to slide, but someone was there, grabbing him. The bow was jerked free and he scrambled for it, but Reltash had it.
He watched Jason, a dark look on his face.
“You need to get back to the village.”
Jason took a step toward him, and though the others were larger than him, he wasn’t about to ignore the bow. His hand slipped into his pocket, gripping the dragon pearl. If it came down to it, he had some means of protecting his weapon, though it might involve revealing something about himself.
“Hand it over,” he said.
“This?” Reltash turned the bow in his hands, sneering. “It’s not even all that well made. You do realize if you were more willing to hunt with the others, you might have a better weapon.”
“That was my father’s. Hand it over.”
Reltash turned toward him.
“Give it back to him,” Angus said.
“Stay out of this,” Reltash said.
“You can’t keep it. He needs it to help feed his sister and mother.”
“You mean the same woman who can’t function since her husband was killed by a dragon? How many other people have been lost like that?” Reltash swung the bow from side to side and Jason braced himself, watching the weapon. When he had the opportunity, he intended to launch toward it, grabbing it.
He continued to hold on to the dragon pearl, squeezing the smooth surface. All he needed to do was push out power from it, but how could he do so in a way that wouldn’t draw attention to what he had done?
The snow.
He focused on the snow beneath Reltash’s feet. If he could send a little power through that, maybe unsettle him, trigger a small avalanche, then he could recover his bow. Reltash might end up sliding down the side of the mountain, but if he were careful, he could prevent him from gliding too far.
Only, Jason didn’t know that he had enough control to be able to do so effectively. Which meant that he had to be extra cautious.
Triggering an avalanche wasn’t going to be the right strategy. It was a surefire way of having others realize what he was doing.
Reltash swung the bow and Jason lunged.
When he did, he grabbed the bow, twisted, and yanked. He pushed a hint of the dragon pearl power through his hand as he slammed his fist into Reltash’s chest.
Reltash went flying backward and Jason kept one hand squeezing the bow.
It cracked.
The sound of it snapping echoed, filling his ears, and he went sliding down the side of the mountain, twisting backward.
Reltash sat up on the slope, anger on his face gradually twisting over to something else. The bow hung uselessly in Jason’s hand, one end twisted and cracked.
Marl helped Reltash to his feet, and Reltash stared at Jason, grinnin
g widely.
“I guess now you have to return to the village.”
They turned away, Reltash laughing. Angus’s gaze lingered on Jason for a moment, and he shook his head.
They disappeared beyond the ridgeline but Jason sat where he was, unmoving.
And here he thought his sister was the one who was beginning to feel hopeless.
His own sense of despair built. Without the bow, there would be no way to effectively hunt. He could return to the village, check to see if there was anyone who might have one he could trade for, but anything he might come across would be not nearly as high quality as what he had.
His father had taken great care of the bow. It was lovingly maintained, the wood frequently oiled, and because of it, Jason had incredible accuracy with it.
No longer.
The bow is your greatest weapon against hunger.
He lost track of how long he sat there, staring at the broken bow. After a while, he got to his feet and started up the slope of the mountain. There was no purpose in staying any longer than he had. From here, he needed to return, to see if he couldn’t figure out something else, and perhaps find someone who might pity him.
It was possible his mother had come back around, too. If so, maybe the promise of her healing would inspire others to make trades, though he wasn’t terribly optimistic that would happen. It was more likely that she was still unconscious, or sleeping, or anything else.
As he trudged up the side of the mountain, his sense of hope faded. Wind whistled around him, snow trapped within it tearing at his exposed cheeks. He ignored it. He still had the dragon pearl in one hand, and he squeezed on it, the hopelessness rolling through him, through the dragon pearl, and away from him.
Maybe that was a mistake, but then again, all of this was a mistake. He should’ve ignored Reltash, knowing that their distance from the village would be an invitation for the other man to taunt him. At the same time, he hadn’t really expected Reltash to damage his bow.
The stream’s burbling drew his attention and Jason paused, taking a drink from it. The water was cold, though not nearly as blindingly cold as it had been before. Maybe that was only because he’d been holding on to the dragon pearl while climbing, but it didn’t burn his throat as he drank.
After a while, he looked up the mountainside, debating returning home. There was still quite a bit of the day left, and even if he did return, he would have to face his sister, admit what happened, and then go hunting for a replacement.
He wasn’t in the mood for it.
Instead he wandered along the stream before reaching the entrance to the cave inside. Pausing there for a moment, he listened but didn’t hear any sign of the dragon on the other side. Creeping along the narrow ledge, he pressed his back along the wall of the cave and crawled inside. Once inside, he dropped down to the ground, leaving the bow there.
There was no sign of the dragon, though Jason hadn’t expected him to be here. The dragon was probably out hunting—and likely much more successfully than Jason had been.
He stared down at the bow. The wood had splintered, separating it into two irregular pieces. Would there be any way to use the dragon pearl that might restore it?
That involved knowing more about the power he could draw through the dragon pearl, but hadn’t he attempted to heal his mother the night before? What was this but another attempt at healing?
Slipping the string off one end, he aligned the bow and held the dragon pearl up against the wood.
He focused on the warmth within him. It came slowly, as if the journey up the mountainside, filled with despair, had drained him of all warmth, and he pushed that into the dragon pearl.
The energy he knew should be there didn’t respond.
What if there was another way?
Could he borrow the cold?
That was easier. It filled him, and he pulled on the cold all around him, the chill that washed over him, the sense of it in the air, even the cold that he knew flowed through the stream. As he did, he pushed that into the dragon pearl.
Strangely, that seemed to be much more effective.
As he pushed, he focused on the crack and tried to imagine the bow reformed.
In doing so, Jason didn’t expect to be successful. How could he be? The dragon pearl did possess magic, but from everything he’d seen, the kind of magic it contained wasn’t able to restore broken bows. Then again, Jason didn’t really know what the magic of the dragon pearl would be capable of doing. He didn’t have enough experience with it to know whether or not twisting it in such a way would do what he needed.
He held on to that cold, continuing to push it out from him, into the bow.
It flowed outward, a torrent of energy, in much the same way as the warmth had flowed out of him through the dragon pearl.
Ice began to form along the surface of the bow, and he wondered if perhaps that was all he was doing. If he manifested ice on the bow, it would crack if he tried to draw it, making it useless.
Still, he forced more and more power through the dragon pearl, summoning as much magic as he could and letting it drain into the bow.
A splashing drew his attention and he looked up. The dragon poked his head up out of the stream. Icy blue eyes locked with his.
“You called to me,” the dragon said.
“I did what?”
“You called to me.”
Jason looked down at the dragon pearl. “I didn’t mean to. I was just…” How could he explain what he had done? The dragon might not understand. He didn’t even understand.
“I’m just trying to repair my bow.”
The dragon looked down at the bow, and when he did, there came a surge of energy from him, though it was the kind of surge that Jason could only barely feel. He wasn’t entirely certain how much of it was real and how much of it was his imagination, and when it came to the dragon, he wasn’t sure he would even know. With the kind of power the dragon possessed, the energy that radiated from the creature, it was possible that what he was detecting was the dragon’s natural state and nothing more than that.
“This is valuable to you?”
Jason stared down at it. “I need it to hunt.”
“There are other ways to hunt.”
“Not for me. And yes. It’s valuable to me.” He wondered how the dragon hunted. He’d seen the dragon using his spikes, shooting ice from them, and had to wonder if there was some other way he would hunt rather than just flying and dropping down toward his prey. “My father gave it to me. Taught me to use it. Without it, my family will be hungry.”
Even with it, his family might end up going hungry. If someone was stealing from them, he didn’t know if he would have any way of ensuring they had enough. That was what it came down to, after all. He needed to find some way for his sister and mother to have full bellies. It was more than that, though. He needed to ensure his mother and sister had hope.
Doing so was difficult. Mostly because Jason wasn’t sure how or whether he had hope. Not anymore, not after having lost his bow and having someone steal from them, taking the things he had hunted for.
The dragon pulled itself out of the water and shook itself dry. Jason braced for ice to target him, but it never came. Instead, it seemed almost as if the water disappeared, turning to a faint trace of steam before fading.
“Come.”
Jason frowned, but the dragon nudged him with his head and guided him toward the end of the cave. Faster than Jason could even think, the dragon forced his head underneath him, tossing Jason to his back. And then they glided free of the cave.
The dragon soared above the surface of the snow, keeping low, gliding just above it, and it took a moment for Jason to realize it wasn’t so much that the dragon was gliding above the surface as he was skiing down it. The dragon moved quickly, using wings and claws in order to stay above the surface, wings arched back from his enormous body. Strangely, it wasn’t nearly as frigid as he would’ve expected, and as he clung to the dragon’s
back, he felt no sense of danger.
And he wasn’t cold.
Truthfully, in the time since uncovering the dragon, Jason had not felt cold at all. There was something protective about the dragon, and since he’d reached the massive creature, since he had made that connection, a bond of sorts had formed between them. It allowed Jason not only to better understand the dragon, but to tolerate the temperature.
He held on tightly. He didn’t say anything, but the wind whistled around him, stealing his breath and making it so he wouldn’t even be able to say anything if it were necessary. He remembered sitting atop the dragon with Henry, the way the heat radiated from the creature, almost unpleasantly so. With this dragon, there was none of that sense. There was only the wind and the snow and the cold. None of it was unpleasant.
And then the dragon stretched its wings.
Within a moment, they took to the air, gliding above the ground. Jason braced, wondering where the dragon might take him, but he didn’t have an opportunity to think about that for very long. The dragon arched down, massive jaw open, and he snapped.
As they banked, twisting off to the side, Jason realized the dragon had grabbed a deer. There was a herd of them, dozens of deer, and they scattered.
The movement seemed to entice the dragon, and with a shake of his tail, two more fell. The dragon dropped, spreading his enormous legs, and grabbed each of the fallen deer before banking and heading back up the slope.
Within another moment, they were slowing, and then descended once again back to the snow. As they did, they glided up the slope, reaching the stream. The dragon tucked his wings away and then flowed into the cave, dropping once more.
When the dragon lowered his head, Jason climbed off, knowing that was expected of him. The dragon turned, meeting his eyes with an icy stare.
“What was that about?” Jason asked.
“Another way to hunt.”
Jason looked down at the deer, understanding what the dragon was getting at. Two of them would feed his family for a long time.
Tears formed in his eyes, and he didn’t know what to say.
Iron Dragon: An Epic Fantasy Adventure (The Dragon Misfits Book 2) Page 5