by Alan Carr
“I don’t believe it,” Boe said. “A dragon passes through and these people react by raiding the valuables?”
“Well,” I asked, “is it really stealing now that everyone and everything else is gone?”
I got four very angry looks in response.
“I’m not defending them,” I said, “I’m just trying to imagine what it would be like, knowing they were powerless. They aren’t Stone Souls, they would have no business confronting a dragon. What choices do they have?”
Boe wasn’t buying it. “I wouldn’t care even if I wasn’t a Stone Soul, I’d die trying to defend the Realm.”
“That’s nonsense.” This from Bayrd. “You don’t have any idea what it would be like. We were born into this. This is our destiny, not theirs.”
“Well, they could at least try to give the dragon a headache or something,” Boe said. “And anyway, they don’t have to do this. This looting.”
Warley agreed, and then Gable chimed in with the idea to destroy the valuables, saying they should have been destroyed with the rest of Harper’s Fork anyway. I didn’t see the point, and we all began to argue before Bayrd stepped in again and said that we didn’t have time. He was right, of course. Whatever we did or didn’t want to do about these looters, they did not matter. Not now. Not with the dragon loose.
This time there was no indication of where the path of destruction had led. I voiced that I most worried that it went west toward Chialaa Valley and Boe confirmed that seemed to be the most likely next major target, so we rode toward the setting sun until the last rays of sunlight disappeared. We set up camp by the light of Stone, heavy in the eastern sky. I continued to worry about Daija, and caught only short fits of sleep.
***
We raced along this way for another full day, finding the points that marked the path of destruction. We began to run into survivors now, and many of these were eager to tell their stories and direct us to the next stop along the path of destruction. From descriptions we learned that the dragon had an eight yard wingspan, or was as large as a dozen cattle wagons, or was as black as death. It was clear that many of these people hadn’t seen the dragon, at least not clearly. That made sense. Those who did see the dragon weren’t likely to have lived to tell us about him. There were a few people with fanciful stories about residents screaming and throwing rocks to scare the dragon away from their villages. I was skeptical, but they offered up their still-standing dwellings as proof of their deeds. I hadn’t expected to see any buildings left un-razed, but then I was realizing that the dragon quest was such a different thing to experience than it was to hear about or read about.
All the various stories made me feel a little crazy, but Boe dutifully recorded all of them, at least those we had time for before Bayrd or I would insist that we continue toward the dragon. For the most part, the survivors did agree with each other about where the dragon had fled to, and so we were able to follow the path of destruction with minimal problem. The dragon had curved north toward the ocean, away from Chialaa Valley, but I found less comfort in this than I’d have expected. We had no idea where Boe’s family might have fled to, if they’d fled at all, and they could have as easily gotten themselves right into the path of destruction as out of it.
Traveling through the swamplands was unpleasant. The horses couldn’t rely on steady footing, which slowed us down. That part was just as well since our pace had been extreme and it was clear that we were pushing our steeds to their limits. But it meant taking more frequent walking breaks, trudging through the mud and reeds. The smell was unpleasant, too, but my least favorite thing was definitely the bugs. The stinging, the creeping and crawling, the swarming. Even when none was crawling on me, I could hear the swarming. I began to fantasize about drawing my blade and trying to hack at the bugs. That would be just great. I could picture Bayrd and Gable making fun of me: oh great Caedan, Bug Master.
One thing was becoming increasingly clear as we traversed the swamplands: there was no way that Tahlor would have chosen this direction to flee from a dragon. Boe and Daija’s mother would surely have insisted on escaping somewhere more refined and civilized. It was a comforting thought, but it only served to lessen my nerves a little. The dragon had changed paths once, there was nothing stopping him from changing again. Nothing except us, and, hopefully, some reinforcements on their way from Rægena. That all depended on whether Walker would choose to believe the reports, and whether Magnilda would step forward with the information about the Dragonborn. Or maybe Master Walker would decide that having us on a dragon quest in the area was enough. That was the point, wasn’t it? The reason he let us go in the first place?
***
“When we get out of here,” Boe said as we were walking the horses through an especially narrow stretch of relatively dry land, “I’m going to make that dragon smell my boots before I kill him.”
“I’m going to drag my sword through this gunk,” Warley joined in, gesturing at the burbling gray liquid to either side of us, “and make him drink up before I kill him.”
“I’m going to stab him through the heart and get the heck out of here!” Gable said, not really getting into the spirit of things.
Bayrd remained quiet and kept trudging forward steadily.
I was sick of listening to nothing but the swarming bugs and unseen creatures of the swamplands. “I’m just going to cut him open and see if any mosquitos can deliver the killing blow and prove themselves Dragon Master.”
“Maybe we won’t kill him at all,” Boe said, “we’ll just leave him there, cut open all tied up, an eternal immortal feast for all the creatures of the swamp.”
“Then they’ll keep multiplying.”
“Or they’ll drink in the dragon’s toxin and die,” Boe responded. Thinking about dragon’s toxin made me worry again about the prophecy and all the other dragons that could be out there, breeding. It finally occurred to me that I still had no idea who had taken the prophecy from the study, or how, or why. But that seemed forever away, in both time and distance. It was hard to care very much about it.
We continued to walk the horses without saying more.
***
We spent another day and a half in the swamplands before we caught a break. The path of destruction took us into the heart of the swamplands, looping back around toward Harper’s Fork. We hadn’t seen any signs of the dragon’s passage all day and I was convinced that we’d missed something, or that the dragon had gotten sick of these surroundings and just took to the skies and flew off to greener pastures. Greener pastures like Chialaa Valley. But through the murk and dark and hanging vines of the swamplands, we started to sense smoke. We could smell it before we could see where it was coming from. It was smoke from an acrid, unnatural fire. Warley began to say something about it, but Bayrd cut him off with a gesture. He dismounted and tied his horse to a fallen tree stump, and we followed suit. We all drew our weapons. I could see undulating, faintly glowing shapes in the distance. It had to be Dragonsfire. We approached as quickly and silently as we could manage.
After cutting through a curtain of hanging vines and dangling, weepy branches, we could see several large crudely-built grass huts. They were on fire. Thick, dark smoke was rolling heavily out of them, getting caught up in the underbrush and overgrowth.
I heard the cry of a child, and at that moment Bayrd sprinted out of cover with a battle cry. The rest of us stayed still, whether frozen from fear or shock or the smoke or some other ailment. I told myself I was waiting for the dragon to show itself, I needed to see what I was up against. Then the child cried out again and I knew that I was just hiding. Scared.
Forget that.
I charged forward and heard a set of footsteps right behind me. Bayrd was standing in the center of a small circle of huts, sword above his head, spinning jerkily around, looking for his opponent. I raced toward the nearest hut, where I’d thought the cry had come from, and saw that there was n
o door, only a thin mesh net covering the entrance. The net was on fire, but the surrounding doorway did not seem to be. I sliced at the net and then ran through the flame.
Light came from above, like the sky during the Stoneflame, except the light was coming from tendrils of flame from the burning roof above. It was unbearably hot. Three people, two adults and a child of maybe eight years old, were tied to the far wall of their dwelling. The man and woman were hunched over, passed out or worse, but the child looked up at me like I was a Stonespirit appearing miraculously from nowhere. My lungs were full of smoke, and I dropped to my knees to try to get some fresh air to breathe lower to the ground. The air didn’t seem much better there. I quickly crawled over to the child and used my sword to cut her bindings. I gestured for her to leave, and she ran out through the opening of the structure while I returned my sword to its scabbard. I needed to figure out a way to get the remaining two people out of the building. As I was starting to try just dragging them along the floor, Gable appeared beside me and he helped me to pull them, slowly at first, and then quickly out into the clearing where Bayrd was still looking frantic.
“I don’t think it’s a dragon,” I tried yelling to him. The people were tied, it made no sense. And the huts were burning slowly. If Dragonsfire could melt stone, how were these structures made of dried grass not instantly destroyed by it? Unless they were protected by some kind of magic. One of the huts collapsed, and then the one Gable and I had just dragged the two people out of fell over too, its flames shooting up through the canopy of the swamplands. Probably not magically protected, then.
Boe and Warley emerged from a third dwelling and then ran into one more.
The little girl whose bindings I had cut was sitting with her knees tucked up against her, crying softly, watching huts burn. Her face, like the rest of her, was filthy, but I didn’t see any signs that she was actually wounded. I decided that she was at least safe in the clearing for now. I called out to Bayrd again, my voice hoarse and painful, “These people were tied up. Dragons don’t do that.” He ignored me. He was staring up at the sky now.
I followed Bayrd’s gaze and then I, too, saw it. A single giant black wing raised into an opening in the canopy, blacking out the cloudy sky. Bayrd took off running in its direction. I just stood, frozen again. There were people here, I told myself, there could be more people in these huts. I knew that Commander Hawk had told us that we needed to focus on the dragon, that if we did not slay the dragon when we had the chance, if we lost it, then we would be endangering many more lives. The wing dropped from sight and I unfroze. Gable was running after Bayrd now, and I began to follow, but then stopped again when I heard Boe yell out for help. I saw that the building he and Warley had entered was really burning now, almost completely engulfed in flame. Warley came stumbling out of the building carrying two younger children in his arms. The three of them were sputtering and gasping for air. I ran past them and into the building.
The heat was even more unbearable than before, and I could feel my organs begin to cook and shut down. I couldn’t see anything through the black smoke, so I yelled out for Boe. I could hear his answering call, but wasn’t sure where it came from. His voice was barely audible. I tried to picture the layout of the first hut I’d entered, remembered where the three villagers had been tied up, and, hoping this hut shared the same layout, tried to make my way to that same far wall. My gloved hand touched hot metal and I could feel the leather begin to fuse to it. I pulled back, and coughed out a thick wad of blackened saliva.
“Hold on to her,” I heard Boe’s cracked whisper. I still couldn’t see anyone or anything, but I reached out and felt a weight drop on to me. It was wet and hot, and I realized that it was someone’s arm. “Let’s go.”
We were both helping to carry an older woman who was unconscious from the smoke. I started back toward the door, but Boe started in a different direction and I almost dropped the woman. I tried to speak, but my lungs were full of soot and I couldn’t even breathe. Instead, I just held on tightly and pulled firmly toward the door. Boe understood and followed, and we pushed through the dark and the heat.
I could not open my stinging, watery eyes for all the smoke so I just lowered my head and trusted my sense of direction. My body was convulsing in terror and exhaustion as I finally broke through the open doorway into the clearing. I coughed and took short heaving breaths as I tried my best to take a few more steps forward, away from the burning building. Boe pushed us a few steps further still, and then we fell to the ground into a puddle of water. I felt sharp pin pricks on my face and heard sizzling so I turned my head into the mud to try to shelter my face before I realized that it was rain. Wheezing, I got to my knees and then turned the old woman over onto her back so that the rain fell on her face as well. Her clothes were in tatters, completely blackened, and I could see that her skin was badly burnt. I wasn’t sure if she was still alive, but I feared the worst.
The little girl that I’d freed from the first burning building was holding her hands out to catch the falling rain, and then rubbing the water in the faces of the man and woman who I’d also helped rescue from her hut. They were awake now, but dazed, not trying to speak or to move. Boe was removing parts of his armor and I could see his skin was red and tender underneath. I removed my own gloves and saw that while they were damaged beyond repair, they’d offered just enough protection that my hands weren’t badly burnt. I removed my helmet which was still very hot to the touch and relished in the feeling of the rain falling onto my head, working through my hair and cooling my scalp. The rain was coming down harder now and it felt great, even though it wasn’t doing anything to the burning buildings except causing them to emit more smoke. But the wind had calmed and the smoke was rising almost straight up now, so it seemed we were clear of danger.
No, I corrected myself. The dragon. We were only just getting ready to face the danger.
CHAPTER TEN
Dragonsfire
Everyone we had managed to rescue from the swamplands village were all conscious now, and it was clear that the three in the hut I’d first gone into were a father, mother, and daughter. The three of them spent a long time holding each other and just watching rain fall on the still-burning remains of their home. I gathered that Boe had rescued two siblings and that the old woman was their grandmother whom they lived with. The siblings tended to the old woman. All of them had thanked us profusely, or I was mostly sure that was what they were doing. They didn’t speak Lævenish like most people of the Realm, and were instead speaking in some dialect of Marshtongue. We couldn’t understand each other’s words, but we used gestures to communicate as best we could manage. The children spread their arms out around them, emulating dragon wings, and then they indicated how they tried to scatter into the swamplands but that strange people, apparently, had stopped them and tied them and placed them in the huts. Dragons and humans working together? It seemed we were truly living in a new world, a world where all the old rules no longer applied.
Boe, Warley, and I compared wounds and decided that we were in good enough shape to chase after Bayrd, Gable, and the dragon. We expressed our sorrow to the survivors at their losses, then bid them farewell and recovered our horses, as well as Bayrd and Gable’s horses which they’d left behind in their pursuit of the dragon. When I saw how poorly we’d tied the horses up in our rush, I was somewhat surprised they hadn’t broken free in panic when the dragon had shown itself: horses were notorious for bucking their rider and fleeing in the presence of a dragon, to the point where some Dragon Masters like Walker had grown to completely mistrust them. But perhaps they hadn’t seen the dragon, or perhaps they were too exhausted to act on their panic. When we began to ride them, they did seem rested, and if it wasn’t for the constant attack of the rain against me I felt like I might have used the opportunity to fall asleep and catch up on some rest myself.
“How will we follow them?” Warley asked. Of the three of us, he was most ba
dly burnt from the fires, but he was putting a brave face on it.
“We head northeast,” I said. That was where I’d seen the dragon’s wings and the direction Bayrd and Gable had run. “We’ll look for any signs we can follow.”
“In this rain?” Boe asked. It was a fair point, I couldn’t even make out the trail we’d made through the mud when we’d returned to our horses. “Maybe the map holds some clue about where we should go next.” Boe withdrew the map and unrolled it, leaning his body forward and holding it close to his waist to try to keep the rain from soaking it.
There was a sizable city named Marstyn marked on the map, and Boe determined that it was likely due west of us. He made a mark on the map where he thought this village had been, continuing an arc of similar markings that he’d been making at each point along the path of destruction. The town wasn’t quite on the arc, but if that was where the dragon had gone, it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d changed direction. Something had drawn him away from this village before it had been fully destroyed, and I was fairly sure it wasn’t Bayrd waving his sword around like a mad man. Supposedly dragons could smell human civilization, and the Dragonrage could cause the dragon to rush toward a city if it was as large as the map seemed to indicate.
“So we ride to Marstyn,” I proclaimed, and, lifting the heavy, soaked banner of Rægena, led us westward.
***
We didn’t see any signs of dragons or the path of destruction as we traveled. The going was excruciatingly slow and I thought more than once that it would have been much faster if we’d just abandoned the horses, but I knew we’d need these to have any chance of following the dragon if it cleared the swamplands. The rain lessened until it was a very slight drizzle, and a heavy mist rose and blocked all vision beyond a stone’s toss in any direction. I no longer felt or sensed the bugs, but instead felt an overarching and pervading sense of greenness, of growth and of life. Even the heavy air smelled of the color green. I could also smell salt in the air, and imagined I could judge our distance from the port city of Marstyn from the strength of that smell against the backdrop of green. Evening fell, and we dismounted and lit torches that only seemed to light the fog around us and spook the horses.