“Alas,” Florien said mournfully, “these are the lands of the Satyrs. Virgins are exceedingly difficult to find.”
Gina choked.
But even Gina conceded that the Unicorns were very welcome once the sun went down and the tem-perature plummeted. They arranged themselves on either side of the two bedrolls, providing not only something to lean against, which apparently put them in sheer bliss, but a source of gentle warmth.
With the Unicorns playing guard, Gina elected to wear only the body-pieces of her armor, keeping the helmet and gloves off. And for the first time since the beginning of this journey, Andie was able to look at a face across the fire. Gina was a girl Andie would have called “handsome,” rather than pretty. Her features were strong and striking, though hardly unfeminine. Her short hair was cut in the “bowl”
fashion favored by many Warriors who had to wear helmets; it was curly and rather unruly and a chest-nut-red in color, a hue that Andie had only ever seen 224
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on one or two foreigners before. She had greenish eyes and a boyish figure, but was clearly quite strong.
Very clearly. After all, Andie had seen her fight.
Still, Andie had never heard of a female Champion before….
“Bet you never heard of a female Champion before,” Gina said, giving her a shrewd glance from across the fire.
Andie started. “Can you read thoughts, too?”
she gasped.
Gina smirked. “No, but the look on your face was fairly clear. There aren’t many of us. Some Chapters simply won’t accept them, and to be honest, there aren’t a lot of female Warriors willing to put up with the hardships of a Champion’s life. The ones that are fighters out of necessity know that they can get very good pay working for men who want their wives or daughters guarded by people who won’t seduce them. The ones that are fighters out for some other reason are generally following a lover or acting out of loyalty to a liege. That leaves very, very few interested in becoming Champions.” She stretched, and popped her neck in a way that made Andie wince.
“We are something of a secret weapon. This is not the first time that someone has created an exclusion-ary spell that specifies ‘no man will do such and such.’ In fact, at this point, it just might be a Traditional path.” She chuckled. “Though, another way to get around it is to have someone give up his real name and be dubbed ‘Noman.’ That works, too.”
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“But in this case they sent you?” Andie asked.
Gina nodded. “It’s because young women were involved, Princess. Godmother Elena has strong feelings about young women being forced down the Traditional path of falling in love with their rescuers.
Though I must admit, you were clever with that oath of blood-siblings. That was one I hadn’t thought of, nor had she. When I get back to the Chapter-House, I will have to make sure that goes into the record books for future reference.”
“Please don’t call me ‘Princess,’” Andie said, as Gina speared a roasting mushroom with her knife, looked at it and took a bite. That was another area where the Unicorns were proving handy. It didn’t matter if the mushrooms so abundant in this part of the forest were poisonous or not. A Unicorn’s horn could purify every sort of poison. So Andie had gathered up as many as she could stuff into a sack and one of the four had dutifully touched each one with the tip of his horn before they were arranged around the fire for roasting.
“I’m Andie. At least until this is over.”
Gina nodded, mouth full. “These are really good,”
she said, after swallowing. “Never thought of this aspect of having a Unicorn along. I take back all the nasty things I said about you four.”
“We don’t mind, Warrior Maiden,” said Florien, his eyes misting over with stupefied devotion. “You can say anything about us that you like.”
Gina rolled her eyes but did not comment.
“How did you end up a knight?” Andie asked. “I 226
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mean, you are a knight, right? I thought all Champions were knights.”
“I am and we are,” Gina replied. “And it’s not very complicated, really. My father was a Champion, out of the Chapter-House of Earendell. When he started feeling himself going stiff in the knees he knew it was time to think about settling down. He really didn’t want to retire to the Chapter-House—he wanted to raise a family. So he started looking for the right opportunity, trusting, oddly enough, that The Tradition would put something in his path. And sure enough, he got one of those ‘save the Kingdom from the rapacious beast’ jobs. It was a tiny little Kingdom and the reward was small enough that it didn’t tempt any of the mercenary types. So they asked for a Champion, and he answered. It was an easy task as such things went and he was offered the reward of a title and a little bit of land and the hand of the Princess. It was exactly the situation he had been hoping for, exactly the right size Kingdom and reward. And—” she added with a smile “—exactly the right person to settle down with.”
Something about that smile prompted her to respond, “But not the Princess.”
Gina shook her head. “The Princess he’d been offered was only six. Her personal guard, however…that was another story. He’s quite famous in our part of the world, though I doubt you’d have heard of him here. Sir Septimus of Galenstein.”
Andie shook her head.
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“Didn’t think so,” Gina said cheerfully.
“Godmother Elena hadn’t heard of him, either, so I doubt his fame would have spread this far. Anyway, the lady he settled down with, my mother, was the Princess Iselda’s bodyguard, and Poppa found her a lot more to his liking than a six-year-old. The King was a bit put out about having to find a new Guard but—well that was just his bad luck. She wanted lots of children, he wanted lots of children and—” she laughed “—wouldn’t you know that was just what they got. With Mama being something of a sword-bearer herself, he never saw much reason to keep his girls at their embroidery frames if that wasn’t where they wanted to be. So we all got good educations in whatever we thought would be our life work.”
Andie listened to this with envy, thinking how much easier her life would have been if her own parents had been like that….
“I’m the middle of fourteen children,” Gina continued. “The only Champion, though. There are too many of us to inherit what’s really a pretty small estate, and Poppa had some ideas about that, too. Whichever of us shows the most aptitude for running the duchy, the most love of the land and the most care for our liege-men and farmers, is going to get the lands and titles. So all of us chose things that would support us. I’ve got a couple of siblings in the clergy, a couple in the King’s service, one that’s a Wizard, two that are Sorceresses—let me tell you, that kind of startled my parents, they had no idea that there was magic in their blood, but the 228
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sibs in question are the seventh born, the ninth born and the thirteenth born, so that probably explains it.”
Andie nodded.
“As it happens, I’m a good fighter.” Gina shrugged. “And I like it. So did Christine, Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. So father trained and knighted all of us. On top of that, I really believe in the ideals of the Champions, so I went looking for a Chapter-House that fancied me once I was knighted.”
“What an enlightened fellow your father is!” said an interested voice from above. “I’d like to meet him!”
Andie didn’t even get a chance to blink before Gina was instantly on her feet, sword at the ready, with one hand throwing something on the fire that made it flare high, revealing the cliff-face at their back.
A dragon perched above them on a ledge well out of reach. It was big—Andie had forgotten just how big dragons were. The ledge where it perched was easily of a size to support a large farmhouse and gardens and the dragon overflowed all of the edges.
&nb
sp; The four Unicorns bleated, scrambled to their feet and bolted, leaving Gina facing the beast alone. Not that Andie blamed them. Against a creature that size, their horns would scarcely be of much use, and they would merely serve as appetizers.
It was hard to tell what color the dragon was in the shadows and firelight. Something dark, and there couldn’t be that many dragons about, so it was probably “their” dragon. It craned its neck down along the rock, peering at them, eyes gleaming redly in the fire.
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“My dear Sir Gina,” it was saying. “Please put that away, I have no intention of—”
But Gina was already moving, jumping up the slope with the agility of a cricket, and halfway to him by the time he got the word intention out. It looked absurd, but there was no doubt that she was going to reach him in a moment.
He uttered a yelp and leapt up, flapping heavily off into the night sky. Which was equally absurd—he had the highest position and he would have no difficulty in picking her off the cliff, and yet he acted as if he was afraid of her.
“Come back here, fell beast!” Gina screamed after him, shaking her fist and waving her sword.
“Coward! Scum! Wretched thing of evil! Come back here and taste my steel!”
The dragon evidently had gotten more than enough of a “taste” of her steel the last time, and wanted no part of her. His shadow crossed the moon, wings flapping hard to gain him height and distance, and it was obvious from the speed he was going that he had no intention of coming back.
Gina stood on the ledge he had vacated, waving her fist furiously in the air.
It took her a long time to calm down enough to descend again, and it was quite clear that their Unicorns had abandoned them altogether. Not that Andie blamed them.
She strapped on the rest of her armor, made sure it was secure, and remained sitting on a rock staring 230
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into the fire, her expression furious, long after Andie crawled into her bedroll.
For her part, Andie was confused.
The dragon, this horrible creature, this rapacious beast that had devoured maiden after maiden, had sat above them on a ledge and listened to their conversation. And it wasn’t as if what they were talking about was the strategy of how they were going to deal with the dragon, either. It could have plucked them right off the cliff wall. They had no defenses against it. The dragon had the advantage of height and stealth. If it hadn’t spoken they would never have known it was there.
Gina’s stony expression and rigid posture told Andie that she was furious. Andie, however, was thinking hard, and coming up with a great many things that made no sense—because the dragon had not attacked, had not attempted to defend itself, had, in fact, flown away with a yelp that would have been more appropriate coming from a dog than a dragon.
Gina didn’t have any sort of mystical dragon-slaying sword, Andie was relatively certain of that. It had looked absolutely ordinary, and Andie was sure that Gina would have mentioned something if she had possessed something like that. After all, that would have been one more way to invoke The Tradition on their side. Fear not, for I have in my hands, the mighty blade Wyrm-slayer, known throughout the Five Hundred Kingdoms! That sort of thing turned up in tales all the time, and as versed in The Tradition as One Good Knight
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Gina was, she would have made sure to get something like that said aloud.
So why would the dragon flee like that?
And why, back when she herself had been rescued, had the dragon been defeated so easily? At the time, she had just been terrified out of her wits, sure they were both going to die, and ready to faint with relief when they didn’t. Now, in retrospect—
Looking at those claws, Andie knew there was no way that Gina should have escaped without a punc-ture or gash. She had barely even had scratches. It hadn’t bitten her once, not once—and teeth were one of its chief weapons. It hadn’t flamed her, either, using the other chief weapon.
In retrospect, it almost appeared that Gina’s injuries were accidental, the result of her doing something stupid, or of the dragon misjudging its own strength. That made absolutely no sense unless you posited that it hadn’t wanted to fight in the first place, and…
She went to sleep with the puzzle churning over and over in her mind.
She woke up just as puzzled, and Gina was clearly just as furious. Their road took them upward today, far upward, above the green valley into the rocky cliffs and stony tops of the mountains. The road, clear though in poor repair, wound around and through crags like a snake writhing through rocks—a dust-covered snake. It was warm and very dusty up here.
Gina’s back was all that Andie could see. The 232
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Champion had been silent all through breakfast and pack-up, and now her back looked as rigid and angry as her face had. Gina was taking this personally.
Andie felt duty-bound to at least try to posit some of her own theories, however. She coughed. “Uh, Gina?”
No answer.
“I was wondering—I mean, we could easily have been picked off last night—”
“Because I was stupid,” Gina growled. “I let it get right on top of us. And, yes, it could have grabbed us at any point.’’
“But what if it didn’t want to?” she asked. “And I suppose it must have used magic to sneak up on us, but all it did was talk.”
“Use magic? A dragon is magic, in the same way a Unicorn is,” Gina replied, each word sounding as if it had been bitten off. “But it was my—”
She paused, as if only now taking in the rest of Andie’s words. “What do you mean, it didn’t want to?”
Before Andie got a chance to answer, they had rounded the bend, and—
There was the dragon.
Tucked into the side of the mountain was an ancient fortification, now ruins, at least in part, but probably livable with work. There was a wall about it, and a gatehouse, which was thoroughly ruined, all of the same gray-brown stone. The dragon was sitting there, atop the gatehouse, looking down at them.
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looking up at a ferret. But another part of her was taking all of it in—
First, the dragon. He wasn’t a dull charcoal gray, as she had assumed. His scales were actually rather translucent, and reflected in part the colors of things that were near him. Where a half-squashed bush pro-truded from under his flank, for instance, there was a faint tinge of reflected olive-green to the scales. He had twin frills, one at the hinge of each jaw, that looked something like ears and fanned forward and back as he stared at them. His eyes were a brilliant ruby color, and his head was crowned by twin twisting horns.
But it was his posture that was more than a little startling. Because—because it didn’t look to her as if he was poised for an attack. His head was held alertly up on his long neck, his fore-claws folded neatly one over the other, and he reclined, rather than crouched.
Then again, that was probably because he wasn’t alone.
He had a bodyguard.
Between him and Gina, who had reflexively drawn her sword at the sight of him, stood a phalanx of young women, all of them armed in a motley assortment of weapons and armor, most of it looking at least as old as the building behind them, though in slightly better repair. Most of them held their weapons as if they had no idea what to do with them—which was probably the case. At least one of them had a bowl-helm on sideways.
But they all looked angry, and from what Andie 234
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could see, perfectly ready to defend the “monster”
with their lives.
The one closest, who appeared to be in charge, also looked as if she had at least some idea of how a weapon should be held and armor donned. She bran-dished her spear with determination; she was kitted out in gear that mostly matched and mostly was strapped on correctly, she
had a full helmet that even retained part of its old horsehair crest, and had kilted her skirts up above her knees, the better to move.
“Go back where you came from and leave Adamant alone!” she shouted.
Something about that voice… The accent was cul-tured, the voice one she had heard before. But where?
And a moment later, it hit her. She would have recognized it sooner if she hadn’t expected that the owner of the voice was dead months ago—one of the few maidens of wealthy or noble houses to be sent to feed the dragon. Andie didn’t know her well, but she had seen the young woman enough to recognize her voice.
The voice of one who was supposed to have been dragon-food. Then again, wasn’t she herself supposed to be dead?
“Kyria?” she gasped.
“Princess Andromeda?” Kyria gasped back.
“What are you doing here?”
“I ought to be asking you the same question,”
Andie replied, as the other girls looked startled and caught off guard. The points of weapons began to droop, and some of them pulled off helms and hel-
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mets. Andie thought she could recognize, at least vaguely, some of the faces.
She did a rough head count, and came up with about the right number. These were the virgins that the dragon supposedly had carried off and devoured.
All very much alive, looking healthy and well, and clearly ready to defend the monster that had supposedly devoured them.
Now it was Gina’s turn to look stunned. The point of her sword dropped, and she stared at Kyria, dumbfounded.
“Ah,” the dragon said, sounding pleased. “So you do know each other! I had hoped so, it does make things easier.”
They might have continued standing there in the hot sun, dust-covered and bewildered, except that something else interrupted their tableau of shock.
The sound of a minor scuffle behind Gina and Andie—the sound of talons on rock, cursing in a deep and echoing voice, and then a shriek. They turned to see a smaller, darker dragon behind them. This one was greenish in color; its horns and frill were not as ornate as the other’s. Its eyes were red also—and did not look at all fierce or intimidating despite the color.
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