by Travis Kerr
“I’ll try not to be gone for so long this time,” he said, trying to reassure her. As strong as Loretta was, it was sometimes hard to forget that, in some instances, she was just like any other woman. She could still feel the pain of rejection like anyone else. He was not trying to reject her, but that didn’t change how she felt. She couldn’t hide her feelings from him. At least not for very long.
“You better not be. If you take too long, I might have to come find you myself. If I have to do that, I don’t think you’ll be too happy when I do.” For a brief second she stared at him, a dark look of warning on her face. Then she broke into a wicked smile, no longer able to hold back her amusement any longer.
He laughed heartily, the tension draining from him like water in an unplugged basin.
“Come on,” she laughed with him. “I’ve waited a decade and a half for you already. Do you really think I’d get all choked up just because you have to leave for a little while again? I’d like to think that I’m no longer the same person as the girl I was all those years ago. I know you’ll be back, when you can.”
He closed the distance between them, kissing her soundly. She returned the kiss with undisguised passion; passion she had learned to temper when needed, he knew.
“So how soon do you think you’ll be leaving?” she asked.
“It would probably be best if I leave around mid-morning,” he replied. “There will be more people out and about then. It should be easier for me to pass unnoticed.”
“Alright then. Just to be on the safe side, you should probably avoid the main gates. We have ways of getting in and out of the city that the guards know nothing about. You can leave through one of those.”
“That’s a good idea,” he agreed. “Also I think I should probably take some supplies with me, and a boat if we can. Do you think you can have someone waiting at the edge of the swamp with one?”
“You’re going through the swamp?” she asked in alarm. It wasn’t as dangerous in the winter, when the larger and more dangerous reptiles were likely to be hibernating, but it was a dangerous route at the best of times. The paths that led through changed from year to year, as the thick vegetation grew or pulled back. A person traveling by boat wouldn’t know the route they would be taking with any certainty until they were there. People found themselves lost there all the time, never to be seen again.
“There’s no guards along that route,” he reminded her. “I can take follow the swamps north for miles and swing in to meet up with the north road further away. The guards there will have heard that I died here, and even if the city guards have figured out that I’m not dead, they wouldn’t have had time to send word yet. I stand a better chance that way.”
He didn’t want to tell her about the Hut, not yet at any rate. The Hut was his private place, his place to go to when everything else had failed. Only Raine, and now Drom, knew of it. One day, perhaps, he would take Loretta there, but not yet. He would tell her all about it then. For now, the best option was to keep his own council.
Besides, he thought, eying the open doorway, who knows who might be listening.
Chapter Nineteen
Raiste pulled hard on the paddles. The ten foot long boat edged several feet further along, heading north. Always north.
Trick led the way from the air, for which Raiste was thankful. His friend could see paths from his elevated position that Raiste couldn’t hope to. If it hadn’t been for Trick, he would surely have been lost a dozen times over.
Raiste sensed something behind him, like eyes boring into his back. Turning quickly, his eyes darted this way and that, peering into the gloomy swamp. After a moment he turned back, breathing a deep sigh of relief. As before, he had seen nothing.
But yet it was there. He knew it as surely as he had ever known anything in his life. Something was following them through the swamp.
Trick could sense it too. He had been edgy and agitated all day, since they had first left the city. Like Raiste, however, he could not find the source of his discomfort.
Perhaps it’s just the creatures that live here, watching us pass by, he hoped, but somehow he knew better. Whatever it was had no intention of just letting them pass by. It was waiting, watching for the moment to strike. Every instinct, every moment of his extensive training, told him this.
But what could hide itself from Trick’s watchful eyes?
He tried his best to purge the thought from his mind. He couldn’t see any point in fearing phantoms. Many men had lost their minds in these swamps to the specters of their imaginations. He had no intention of being one of them.
Up ahead, Trick began flying in slow circles, and Raiste immediately turned the boat to the spot that his sapphire friend indicated. A narrow channel began there, and he guided his boat down it smoothly. On his own he would never have chosen this as his path, but Trick had not guided him wrong yet, and he didn’t expect him to now.
To the west, the sun was just beginning to dip low on the horizon, shining through as the weak rays broke through the thick mangroves. He carefully brushed aside a thick tangle of vines that draped off of a nearby tree, partially blocking his path. On the other side of the mossy vines he beheld a welcoming sight.
The narrow path he was on opened up wide, and there, in the very back of the open expanse of water, was a large, open clearing. A clearing of dry land! He looked back to the sky, and understood Trick’s reasoning. This would be a good place to camp for the night.
He paddled the boat to the edge of the clearing, stepped on, and pulled the boat out of the water after him. Trick flew down to land on the ground beside him. The small dragonling shook slightly, his eyes scanning the swamp around them. He seemed just as frightened as he had been when they stopped at mid-day.
What is making him so nervous?
He suspected that his friend wasn’t certain himself. If he knew than he would surely have given some indication of what was bothering him, but he didn’t. Raiste could usually understand him, and Trick knew it.
“It’s alright Trick,” he said, trying his best to sound calming. “I’m sure it’s nothing more than our imaginations playing tricks on us.”
Trick didn’t seem any more convinced than he was himself. At that moment Raiste decided that he wasn’t going to have a fire that night after all. They were far enough from the road that he didn’t need to worry about guards seeing the light from the flames, but that didn’t mean it was safe either. He didn’t see any point in broadcasting their location to anything that might see it.
Trick seemed to agree. A light in the darkness was not something they wanted. The two friends, man and dragonling, settled down for a cold meal of dried, salted beef before falling asleep, side by side in the chill of the night.
The next two weeks continued much the same way. Each day the two would rise with the morning sun and set off. Each day they would try to find their way closer to their friends who waited for them at the Hut to the north. And each day they would feel that something watched them; something followed them.
In all that time, however, they never saw anything to cause them to believe that the phantoms they feared were real. They saw nothing, heard nothing. At last Raiste began to finally believe that perhaps they were truly safe.
Raiste was traveling down another narrow channel, quite similar to the one Trick had led him down the very first night in the swamps. Without warning, Trick flew down, directly at him! The little dragonling attacked him like a wild animal, clawing at him. The force of his little friend’s assault knocked him backwards into the water....
And saved his life! For just as he fell unceremoniously into the murky swamp water, a massive red form flew at him from somewhere above. Red flames, like the fires of the underworld, shot from the great beast’s gaping maw, bathing the small boat in smoke and heat. Instantly, the small boat was completely engulfed, and only a moment later, consumed by the dragonfire.
Raiste saw it all from underneath the water. Even while the water surrou
nded him, threatening to drown him, he could still feel the heat from the blast. The magical, liquid stream of the dragonfire didn’t dissipate right away, but instead the liquid floated on the surface, leaving it ignited.
Seeing a clear patch of open water from underneath, Raiste struggled to the surface, the need to breath overcoming his fear of the flames. He broke the surface with a splash, taking in a large lungful, gasping. The heat that surrounded him threatened to cook him where he swam. The air he breathed in was hot and smokey, but with effort he managed to keep from coughing. Coughing now could mean death.
He looked around him. All around liquid dragonfire burned across the top of the water. The boat was gone, in all likelihood it had been destroyed completely, he knew. Along with it were all the supplies he had brought with him. Like the boat, Trick was nowhere to be seen. Raiste could only hope that the small dragonling somehow managed to avoid the attack.
He heard a roar from above and dived underneath the water, just as a second blast of dragonfire streaked across the open surface where he had been. He felt a searing pain on his back as he sunk. He had been too late to avoid it completely, he realized, but believed he had managed to escape the worst of it.
If I hadn’t, I’d already be dead.
He had only seconds before he would need another lungful of air, he knew. He had to find some way out of this, some way to get to safety, at least long enough to take care of his wound and breath cleaner air. The smoke in his lungs now could be just as dangerous as the heat of the flames.
He dived down to the bottom, using the murky darkness there to help conceal himself, and the grips and handholds to propel himself along at a faster pace than he could swim on his own. After perhaps a hundred yards his screaming lungs could no longer take the strain. He had to come up for air.
Just as important as the need for air, however, was the need for silence. This was a dragon that was hunting him, and anything that gave him away could prove his downfall. Slowly, carefully, he raised his head above the water, without a sound or a splash to betray his location.
Peering back to where he had been only minutes ago, his eyes widened in fear. A wide area of the swamp itself was on fire, liquid flames floating on the surface. Several of the surrounding trees crackled and snapped, caught up in the blaze. As he watched, one large mangrove, its gnarled, twisted trunk thick with age, toppled into the water with a loud splash, hissing as the water kissed the flames along its length.
There!
Through the smoke and the steam from the falling tree he saw it. Now there was no question in his mind. This was the shadow dragon that they had seen on the road between Port Tam and Miani. It must have been hunting him then, just as he had suspected, and it still was now.
The beast had nestled itself in a clump of trees. It scanned the water, looking for him. At the moment it was still looking in the area of the attack, but it wouldn’t take long before it started expanding its search. If he stayed where he was it would surely find him.
He scanned the sky, searching. After a short time he gave up. He couldn’t find Trick anywhere. He hoped that his sapphire friend had not been harmed in the dragon’s attack. Unfortunately, there was little he could do to save him, or himself for that matter, at the moment.
I can’t stay here.
He thought about the distance that Trick had guided him so far. They couldn’t be far from the Hut now, he knew. If his sense of direction was right, and it was rarely wrong, it should be somewhere between ten and twenty miles to the northwest. Not far.
A sudden thought hit him so hard he almost exclaimed out loud before stifling himself. The Hut! If the dragon continued searching for him in that area, it would almost certainly find it! If it did, Raine and Drom would be doomed! He had to do something.
First, however, he would have to heal himself. He could still feel the burning pain in his back where the dragonfire had scorched him. If left untreated, it could cause him to lose consciousness, and then he would be dead. Taking another deep breath, he slowly sank beneath the water once again. He had to find a place where he could work without the dragon spotting him.
Raiste had always hated his magic. He was an assassin. His entire life had revolved around being able to defeat an opponent without taking injury. The only opponents that could harm him were those that had as much training and experience as he had, and men like that were a rare breed. Magic that could only be used to heal himself was almost completely useless.
Well, unless you are attacked by a dragon anyway, he thought darkly.
He continued swimming, only coming up for air when he had no other choice, afraid of what might see him when he broke the surface. Finally, he decided he might have gone far enough for now, and dared to look back to where he had been attacked. He couldn’t see the place. He couldn’t even see the light from the fire, though it might have gone out. Not even dragonfire could burn forever in swamp.
Now, instead of trying to push away the pain as he had been trained to do, he concentrated on his scorched back. The pain came to him in a rush, threatening to pull him under, but he fought against it. For several moments he stood at the precipice, until he was almost not certain if he would be able to push through it before passing out.
Finally he felt the pain begin to ease. He felt the skin on his back begin to knit back together, underneath the wound. At last the pain was gone altogether. The burned skin on his back tore away, like a snake would slough its skin. The new skin revealed underneath was pink and healthy. Unlike the rest of his skin it was untanned, the sun had never touched it, but otherwise it was flawless. It would itch for two or three days, he knew, as it strengthened itself, but he was healed.
OK, what next?
He could not allow the dragon to find his friends at the Hut, he knew. He would have to find a way to stop it. How he was going to do that, however, he didn’t have the slightest idea. All of his supplies had been in the boat. He reached down at his waist, realizing with dismay that it wasn’t only his gear that he was missing. His sword was gone as well.
At least he still had his belt knife, he discovered. He didn’t think that it would be a very effective weapon against a dragon, but it was better than nothing.
He had studied dragons in his readings, but had never expected to face one. Not even his father had been able to stand against one, and his father had powerful magic as an ally. The only thing Raiste could do was heal his wounds, if he even survived long enough to get the chance. He had gotten lucky on that score once already. He didn’t think it likely that he would do so again.
Without man-made weapons the only options left to him were natural ones, and those were extremely limited. The most obvious weapon, fire, was completely out of the question. He didn’t have any way of making a fast and ready source, for one, and even if he did it would be useless. Dragons carried the powerful flames of dragonfire inside themselves, hotter than any other flame. They were impervious to fire.
They more he thought about it, the more impossible the task seemed. Dragons had unnaturally thick hides, difficult to pierce with even the strongest steel. It would take more strength than he had to wound this beast.
However, it wasn’t impossible, he realized. All he needed to do was put enough force behind it, and even a sharpened stick could kill. As he considered it, a plan began to take root. His plan, however, would take time to prepare. It was a long shot, he knew, but it was the only chance he had left. This thought firmly in mind, he sunk back underneath the water. He would need put some distance between himself and his pursuer, he thought. He needed time.
The dragon slowly threaded its massive bulk through the trees, its nose in the air, testing. Now that the flames of its failed attempt had died down, the smoke no longer ruined its sense of smell. It had the man’s scent now. It could track him.
It silently cursed the swamp it was being forced to travel through. Dragons were the rulers of the skies. They were not meant to have to stomp through thick forests, and th
e damp permeated everything here.
It hated the damp. It hated it almost as much as it hated the man it was sent to attack. It had been created with one purpose, to kill this man. The dragon hated him more than anything else.
It cast the thoughts of the damp from its mind, concentrating on the scent. Yes, it was here. The man had been here, and recently too. In fact, either the man had only just left, or he was still here somewhere! The dragon’s eyes peered into the gloom of the swamp, searching.
With a scream from deep within himself the man burst forth into the open, leaving behind the ferns he had been hiding in. He charged at the dragon, armed with nothing more than a small knife. The man is brave, the dragon thought. Brave and stupid.
It never saw it coming.
From behind it, the opposite direction from the attacking man, something large and heavy crashed into it. As the dragon toppled to its side it saw what had struck it.
It was a log! But not just any log, but a huge log, with thick, sharpened stakes fixed into its side. It swung freely, attached to several vines that held it to the trees around it. Somehow the man had pulled it up into place, a wonderfully set trap. His attack had been nothing more than a trick, to divert the dragon’s attention. Something like that would surely kill any beast.
But then, it was not just any beast, it was a dragon. Its hide was as strong as any shield. The man had done well in tricking it like he had, but it wouldn’t help him.
The dragon leaped to its feet in an instant, ignoring the shallow wounds on its side where the spikes had managed to push through. They were not deep, the dragon knew. It would not be nearly enough to stop it.
The man skidded to a halt in front of it, but it was too late for him as well. Believing that he had severely wounded the dragon, he had allowed himself to get too close. Now the dragon had him instead of the other way around.