Damsel Knight

by Sam Austin

  Bonnie frowns at the crate. "So how do you get that to the castle?"

  "This does it for me," Jack pats the gnarled trunk with a certain fondness. "Magic my lad Boone. Watch."

  Bonnie and Neven watch as Jack pries off the lid. Unease washes over her. She can't help but think of the crate her father brought back from one of his quests for the King. That one little crate that changed everything, and led her here today with her father's sword over her shoulder and neither of her parents by her side.

  With a practised movement Jack eases off the lid, letting them see the contents. Neven screws up his nose, face turning as green as it had in the boat. "Are those teeth?"

  "What did you think I'd be delivering to the castle?" Jack asks with a raised eyebrow. "Cream cakes and pasties?"

  "Well, yeah," Neven says, sitting up straighter on the grass. He frowns at the gleaming contents of the crate. Disgust falls away to interest on his face. "Is it a trade? I thought you needed gold for that?"

  Jack scoops up a handful of teeth, dropping them into a deep hollow in the centre of the gnarled trunk. There's no sound of them hitting wood, like they're falling forever. The crate is filled up to the very top, and there's a pang in her chest as she notices most are small; children's teeth. How did he get so many?

  "Gold, teeth, bone, blood, honey, children," Jack shrugs a massive shoulder, depositing another handful. "Magic isn't too picky as long as it thinks it's got a fair trade. It's when it you don't give enough when you get problems. Then it'll just take and take."

  Bonnie swallows, nervous. Neven shifts. There're stories about what magic does to people when they play with it too much. Men who ask for wealth and wake up in a bed of gold with all their limbs missing. Women who ask for youth and have their children taken as payment. Magic is for the wealthy, and no one in the villages has wealth enough to get the training to devote their lives to magic. So all they had were stories passed on by traders and fishermen to be whispered and used to scare small children.

  Until now, seeing all those teeth, the stories gain a solidity that turns her speechless.

  "You've traded your tucked away village for an ugly world Bonnie," Jack says, looking between her and the teeth, using her real name for the first time since they left the dock. His expression softens slightly. "You children best go and play whilst you still have the chance. Don't go far, and don't go near the castle. If that beast so much as smells you he won't stop chasing until you're dead. Killing is all a dragon thinks about, that one more than most."

  Neven gets to his feet, starting up the hill. It's now or never.

  "You should stay here Neven," Bonnie says with forced casualness. "I know you like to see how things work."

  Neven pauses, turning back to her. "Are you sure?" He asks, his brow screwed up in puzzlement. "What about you?"

  "I'll be fine. I'm just going to practice some footwork." She gives a smile that she hopes looks believable. "You stay and help Jack. It's not like you'll be able to see magic this close again."

  "You're right," Neven says, near running down the hill. He stops himself on the magic tree, then gasps and looks down at his fingers. "I feel it working. It tingles."

  "Just don't go sticking your hand down inside the tree," Jack says, chucking another handful into the hole. "Else you'll get mistaken for teeth."

  Bonnie turns to go up the hill, her sword feeling heavier than before. Then she stops, something nagging at her.

  "Jack? Have you ever known a dragon that wasn't a killer?" She asks, choosing her words carefully. Some desperate feeling uncoils itself in her chest. It screams at her, screams and screams and screams like she did the day her parents died. "A dragon that was nice?"

  "A nice dragon?" He tilts back his head and laughs, the sounds booming. Finally he gets himself under control, wiping away a tear. "I'd forgotten what fancies children have. My dear Boone, take it from me I lived most of my life on the borders of the north, just outside the circle, where dragons still fly down from the mountains when winter makes their food scarce. Dragons are the cruellest, most vile creatures alive. They know nothing of mercy. They burn whole villages to the ground for the joy of it. No, mark my words, the only thing a dragon can be is a killer."

  Bonnie nods, all the excitement she'd felt earlier draining away. She holds her father's sword tight and makes her way up the hill.

  "Remember," Jack calls after them. "This place is magic. When the sun is high the island will push my boat back out to sea. If you aren't in it there won't be another boat coming until the next full moon."

  "I'll be there," she says, hoping that it's the truth.

  ***

  It takes hardly any time at all to see the tower of the castle. It takes an hour of brisk walking after that before said tower becomes something more than a tiny thing on the horizon, no bigger than her thumb.

  The way is steep hill followed by small valley followed by even steeper hill. With every step she contemplates lightening her burden by leaving something behind. The sword is the most awkward thing to carry, but she can't very well slay the dragon without it. The wooden shield raps against her back and arm, but she'll need whatever flimsy defence it can offer. And what if she leaves her pack, and some creature makes off with the rest of her food? If the boat leaves without her, then that food will have to tide her over until she finds something else to eat on this island.

  Unless a boat is sent when the dragon is killed? That would make sense. The champion has to get to the palace with the princess somehow.

  'Whoever slays the dragon shall win my daughter's hand, be knighted by my sword, and inherit my throne, kingdom and fortunes when I step down.'

  What other way could a girl hope to become a knight?

  Jack said over two hundred champions had come here over the past three years to try and win the princess's hand. None of them came back, and they were men. All of them strong, brave, and MEN! She's just a little girl playing at being a boy. How can she hope to compete?

  The morning is too quiet. Just her, the grass beneath her rough shoes, and the sun pounding down relentlessly from above. For a moment she wishes she'd brought Neven, then she mentally shakes her head. This is her task. Her dream. To drag him along would be unfair to him.

  She'll share her reward with him of course. He can live with her on her lands, or she can give him enough gold to decide what he wants to be. Farmer, blacksmith, scholar, nothing will be out of reach for him. And maybe she'll hire Ness, as a jester of course. Nothing else would suit him more.

  The thoughts are a welcome diversion from what's about to happen, but as the tower gets closer they get harder to hold onto. If Neven were here, and somehow not cowering in fear, he'd know the right words to put her at ease.

  "They say he breathes flames as hot as the sun," she'd say.

  Neven would wave off the comment. "They also say that no one who meets him comes back alive. So who exactly do they think is coming up with all these stories?"

  "Claws as sharp as knives," she'd say.

  Neven would grin. "And the size of toothpicks I'll bet. You've got a sword. Yours is bigger."

  "But I'm just a girl."

  Here's where her imaginary Neven breaks off from the real one, because there's no way he'd ever dispute the shortcomings of that. In fact real Neven would quake, and pull at her hand, and say anything to get her to stop this foolish idea.

  Imaginary Neven somehow knows exactly why she must do this. "You're not just a girl," he says. "Because you know this isn't just any dragon."

  She hefts the sword up higher, trying to ignore the aches in her arm. Two hundred champions, two thousand. It doesn't matter, because she has an edge they never had. She's met this dragon before.

  It was small then. The size of a large hound. Maybe the tales were false, and the knights had simply taken one look at it and turned away in pity. No. She knows that's not right. No matter its size it's something to fear, but the thoughts have given her hope. Maybe the dragon isn't as dange
rous as the tales make him sound.

  She doesn't see the white rock until it's too late. She trips, sword flying from her grasp. Arms flailing she tries to keep her balance but the next step takes her over the top of the hill. Her foot lands wrong on the uneven ground and she topples down the slope, rolling down head over heels.

  She catches short snatches of sky and grass before the hill throws her violently onto the flat ground below. But it isn't ground.

  She scrambles backwards, scattering the bones beneath her hands. Her foot lands on a charred skull and it collapses with a crunch. She half crawls over the field of bones, back to the grass of the hill. Her breath comes in pants.

  The bones extend far into the distance. There must be hundreds of them. Some are full skeletons, but most are scattered pieces. Most have been charred, and all have been picked clean. She shudders, hoping that it was by time and birds, not the dragon. She can't bear to think of him eating people like that - like a monster.

  "So much for him not being dangerous," Bonnie says when her voice comes back.

  "And so much for not breathing fire."

  ***

  Everything about her turns weak as she stares at the hill of charred bones. There's nothing she wants more than to turn back. Her legs are as weak and watery as the patches of quick mud that surround her village. Part of her knows this is folly. A girl against a dragon. But another part wants to bury the point of her father's sword deep in the monster's throat.

  That's her duty as a daughter. And she could never be a knight of honour like her father without that duty carried out.

  So she pushes herself to her feet, and walks unsteadily back into the field of bones to retrieve her sword. The bones are packed so tightly together that she can't avoid stepping on them. They snap under her feet, and she tries to pretend they're just twigs, not people. The sword sticks up out of the field like some peculiar flower, the blade caught in a ribcage. She tugs but it won't come free, so she puts her foot on the skeleton, closes her eyes and pulls until it does.

  By the time she makes it off of the field of bones, she knows her face must be as white as some of the bones themselves. She pushes the fear aside. A knight has to be brave and strong. If she ever wants to be a knight like her father she can't afford to act like a weak woman.

  Then she looks up at what's before her and fear consumes her again.

  This close the castle looks magnificent. The single tower rises far into the sky, taller than any building Bonnie has ever seen other than the palace. But that's not what catches her eye. In front of the rest of the castle - a large stone building with an open front like a giant fancy barn - a dragon lies stretched out in the sun, cat like. It's huge, bigger than the round house she'd called home for so long. Its scales, the deep crimson of blood, glint as its large side moves up and down. Every now and again its tail twitches.

  It has its back to her, but that won't last for long.

  So much for size of a large hound.

  Bonnie reaches her hands into the field of bones, grasping a helmet. She tries a few before she finds one without a skull in it. It wobbles loosely on her head, but she can see enough to swing a sword and it should provide some protection. Then she grabs a shield, much larger and heavier than the wooden one that had fallen from her arm. Added to her sword, the weight of it all makes her stagger. She pushes on and finds her stride, though the shield and sword make her arms ache.

  She ignores the bones as she creeps past them. She doesn't want to think about the bones in that pile that once grasped the shield as she is now, and wore the helmet teetering on her head.

  Her father used to talk of dragons often. Some were as small as kittens, he said, and some as large as whole villages. She'd never believed they could grow so big, but now she's starting to.

  Were it not for the gleaming red scales and the way his side rises and falls she would think him a hill, not a dragon. Even lying down his height is taller than any building she's seen apart from the tower and King's palace. His head is as tall as the peak of the roof of their roundhouse, his middle at least four times as tall and nearly as wide. His length from nose to tip of his tail is as long as every building in her village set wall to wall.

  He's come a long way from the hound sized dragon she'd last seen four years ago.

  She breathes deep, trying to push the terror down. She grips her father's sword tight. Giant or not, fire breather or not, it's sleeping. It's vulnerable. She can kill it. She will be a knight, and she'll have paid for the mistake she made long ago.

  It doesn't stir as she moves closer. Its breathing is deep and even, like the waves of an ocean washing over her. Its claws are each as thick and sharp as her sword. Wings bigger than sails shuffle together in its sleep, making a noise like autumn leaves settling on the ground.

  She walks right up to its head, keeping her body low and ready to run. Her heart increases in volume until she can't hear the dragon's breaths even though she's close enough to feel them.

  You never can tell how tough those scales are, her father had told her once. They're usually softer on the stomach and under the jaw, but if you get them there there's no telling whether it’s going to be a fatal wound or if the dragon is going to snap your neck for giving it a flesh wound. No, he said, if you get the chance then you try for the eye or inside the mouth. Only way to know you're going to do some real damage.

  She's close enough now to see the intricate patterns of the scales around its jaws. Its chin is on the grass, tilted sideways slightly so the only way she can reach the eyes is if she reaches upward when she stabs. She'll have to drive the blade in fast so she kills it instead of half blinding it.

  Warm breath rolls over her, flattening all the grass and flowers for a good distance before they lean back toward the beast as it takes a breath in.

  Its eye, as big as her head flutters from side to side under the red lid as if it's dreaming. Bonnie heaves the sword up on her tired arm to strike, then hesitates inches from the eye. Everything about the dragon has changed, and nothing has. Its red eyelid is bordered with lashes of the deepest black, but she knows their colour is pale compared to the colour of its eyes. All at once she's stuck by the intense need to see those eyes one last time.

  Bonnie takes a deep breath, closing her eyes and picturing the blood, how alone she'd felt sailing away from the city she'd known in Jack's boat. A familiar rage fills her, but then other images intrude. Her, five years old, staring in fascination at the crate her papa had brought home. Her pudgy fingers reach out toward it, and it shudders under her hands.

  No. No. A knight has no place for mercy. Mercy is for women, weak women who let men control their lives. She won't be like that. She can't be like that.

  She draws back the sword, and heaves it forward with all of her strength.

  Somewhere to her left comes a defeating 'moo.' It's so out of place that she's caught off guard, the force going out of her swing.

  The eye opens, and the ground shudders.

  Chapter 5

  Bonnie falls backward, her helmet clattering hard on her head. Somehow she manages to keep her grip on the shield and sword.

  The dragon rises to its feet screaming. The sound seems to burrow into her head and tear it apart. The ground shakes her like a rag doll, and her ears ring.

  A hand tugging the back of her shirt brings her back to her senses in time to see a set of claws cutting through the air toward her. She jumps backward, leaving the heavy shield behind. The air sings behind her as the hand drags her toward the nearest shelter - the castle. Neven. Her eyes sting with tears. Neven came for her. She should've known she could never hide from him when she was up to something. He knew her too well.

  Neven stumbles, overbalanced by a large shield he must have plucked from the field of bones. Bonnie grabs his arm tight and pulls him into the lower castle. They dodge behind the nearest pillar.

  The lower castle is nothing but wide open space with a stone roof and wide set pillars as thick as t
rees. It's so huge that shadows crowd the middle, despite the lack of walls,

  "I think this is a stable," Neven whispers between gasps. He's looking around the room, white knuckled hands gripping the shield. He's donned his invention, and both the metal shooters stand at attention on his arms. He doesn't notice.

  "What do stables have to do with this?" She whispers back. They're about to die and he's thinking about stables. She looks at him, worried the shock may have turned him mad..

  "Look, it's got water and food." He points into the darkness where she can just see a large pool of water and beside it on a wooden platform stands a cow. A cow? She blinks but it's still standing there. Well, at least the moo sound now makes sense.

  "We're in its home," Bonnie says, letting her helmet fall back against the pillar. "And it's supper time."

  "Jack must have given the tree enough teeth," Neven says. Some of the fear leaves his face as he stares at the creature. "I knew you could use magic to get food, clothes, but not whole animals."

  He's leaning forward to get a better look. Bonnie pulls him back against the pillar hard. "Not the time Neven."

  As if to prove her point the dragon roars behind them. There's a scuffling sound, and the disconcerting noise of claws against stone. Bonnie turns to look, but soon wishes she hadn't.

  The dragon pushes his way into the castle. Its head and back score against the stone roof, sending a wave of rubble behind it, the people who built this place must have underestimated how big he'd grow, just like she had.

  She's struck by its eyes. Other than the size, they're just the same as she remembers. Big and completely black from pupil to what should be the whites of its eyes. Neven told her a theory once about magic vacuums, that if the world were to try and magic something that was beyond price then the magic would keep taking and taking until the whole world was gone. He says there's proof out there in space of planets that tried it. Great black vacuums that have eaten their planets and are still hungry, reaching out to pull more planets, suns, and even light to try and sate their never ending hunger,