Dragon Fate

by J. D. Hallowell

  “If I get my longevity from you, does that mean that the increased strength I have attained comes from you also?” He was concerned that their relationship might actually harm her.

  “Calm yourself, Dear One,” she soothed. “Remember what I said, magic cannot create life, so your extended life has to come from somewhere? Strength, stamina, and other physical characteristics are different. The energy flow between us enhances them as a byproduct of the link. You are taking nothing from me. In fact, I believe that I am gaining some benefits in those aspects just like you are. Think of it like running water through a stream; the bigger the stream bed, the more water can flow.”

  “Delno,” she suddenly sounded alarmed, and he instantly became alert for danger, “There are three men about three hundred yards ahead of you.”

  He stood in the stirrups and strained his vision. “I only see one,” he replied.

  “The other two are trying to hide on either side of the road. I can see them because I can see heat as well as light. To me, they glow like beacons.”

  “Perhaps I can go around and avoid them all together?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I believe that the one standing in the road has seen you.”

  Delno considered his options. He could return to town, but he would lose much of the night doing so. He could simply wait here and let them make the first move, but that would also take time he would rather not lose. He said aloud as well as mentally, “Oh well, nothing for it but to push on and get this over with.”

  Making a quick check on his bow and quiver, he started forward. To Geneva he said, “Stay out of this Geneva. I am armed and have had a great deal of training with weapons; I’ll do better knowing you are safely airborne than if you try to help me.”

  “There are three of them,” she responded, sounding a bit hurt.

  “Yes, but they believe they have surprise on their side. It’ll put them off when they realize I am prepared for all of them. Besides, if I need you, you will be much more impressive swooping down from out of nowhere than if you walked up by my side.”

  His last statement soothed her hurt pride, so she reluctantly agreed to be reserve air support.

  Delno briefly considered breaking the horse into a run, but then thought better of it. While a charging horse is an impressive sight, it was full dark, and they might have laid a rope across the road. The last thing he wanted to do was lose his horse to a broken leg and be left on foot to deal with three highwaymen. He continued forward at the same pace he had been maintaining since leaving camp.

  As he came within ten yards of the man standing in the middle of the road, he stopped. The man waved as if this were just a natural meeting of two travelers. When he didn’t move any further forward, the man said, “You can advance, rider, the road ain’t blocked.”

  “Oh, I think I like it so well right here that I may set up camp,” he quipped.

  The would-be robber, as tall as Delno though not as filled out, looked perplexed. “There’s nothin’ to be scared of; I don’t bite.”

  “Ah, but I do,” Delno replied. Then he added, “Why don’t your friends come out where I can get a better look at them? Are they shy?”

  The man didn’t look as though he was pleased by the question. He said, “I’ve got no friends here. I’m all alone.”

  “Really?” Delno replied, “Then you had better get away from there because there are two men, one lying in the brush on either side of the road, and I don’t believe that their intentions are exactly honorable.”

  The man looked as though he would either swear violently or perhaps cry. Delno went on talking casually, “I know your friends are there. I know that you are lying in wait for unsuspecting travelers. Now you know that I am not unsuspecting, so I would advise that you and your friends move along and find easier prey.”

  The man didn’t seem to know when to quit. He said, “I tell you, I’m alone.”

  Delno pulled his bow from behind him and nocked an arrow, then said, “Then you won’t mind if I shoot a few arrows into the clump of brush off to your right, and couple more in the brush on your left, will you?”

  The man stared at him for a moment and then said, “Iffin you want to waste your arrows, I guess you can.”

  Geneva said, “The man on the right is moving slowly toward you, the one on the left is moving further out into the field.”

  In a loud voice, Delno said to the man in the road, “I am tired of this game. If either of your companions moves another inch, I will put this arrow right through your chest.” After saying this, he drew the bow and aimed carefully.

  There was no movement. They all stayed perfectly still until the slender man’s will broke. “All right,” he said, “You boys git up and come out of those bushes before I end up a pin cushion.” When neither of them showed himself, Delno stood in the stirrups and fine-tuned his aim. The man swore and then screamed almost hysterically, “I said you two git up here, now.”

  The other two, neither of whom had seen his twentieth birthday, stood and walked over to stand next to the first man. Delno was a bit disgusted with the lot of them. He moved closer, but stayed out of reach, and he kept the bow ready. He could now see that his suspicions had been correct; there was a rope stretched across the road. If he had tried to charge past, the two hidden boys would have pulled the rope tight and tripped his horse.

  “In this kingdom, it is my right to leave your decapitated corpses beside the road, and I could collect a bounty for your heads,” he said. “Smart highwaymen are a bane to trading; stupid highwaymen like you are just idiots and should be killed before they have a chance to breed.” Then, noticing the resemblance between the man and the boys, he added, “I can see I’m too late to stop you from breeding.”

  After letting them sweat for a few minutes, when all three were shaking with fear, he continued, “I should take you back to the city and turn you over to the guards.”

  At this suggestion, both of the boys actually started crying. The older man, who he assumed he was the father, fell to his knees and starting begging, “Please, sir, don’t turn us over to the guards. We didn’t want to harm no one, we just needed to get some money, and there’s no work we could find. We wouldn’t have hurt you, honest.”

  “Wouldn’t have hurt me? Suppose you had tripped my horse and I had broken my neck in the fall?”

  The man looked completely abashed at this suggestion. Apparently, the thought that they could accidentally cause injury or death hadn’t occurred to them.

  “Fortunately for the lot of you, my business is too pressing to return to town at this point. I’m going to send you on your way, though I should tie you up and leave you here with a note to whoever finds you.” As he kicked the horse and clucked at it, he added to the three men, “Go to the docks in town. If you are willing to do hard work, they are always looking for men to load and unload cargo. What ever you do, get out of the robbery business. You’re really lousy at it.”

  The three men couldn’t believe their good fortune. The older man said, “Thank you, sir. We will git out of this here business, I promise. We’ll go to the docks come first light, I promise.”

  Delno continued on his way, hoping the man wasn’t lying through his teeth. Either way, he didn’t have any more time to spare for those three. As he kept the horse walking at the same brisk pace as before, the three reformed robbers kept jabbering thanks and promises until he was out of earshot. For all he knew, they kept jabbering even then, but he no longer had to listen to them.

  The excitement, though a bit unwarranted, had drained him more than he would have expected. To rise to such a state of readiness only to find out he was dealing with halfwits had left him feeling the hours and miles he had traveled since he had awoken at dawn the previous day. He asked Geneva to look for a suitable place to camp not too far from the road. When she found one, he followed her to it.

  Once at the clearing, he did little more than remove the saddle from the horse and the pack from the p
ony and hobble the two animals to keep them from wandering off. He was too exhausted, both physically and mentally, to actually make camp. It was a warm night, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, so he simply rested his head on Geneva’s front leg, and they went to sleep.

  Chapter 21

  Delno woke the next morning expecting to find himself covered with mosquito bites. He was pleasantly surprised to find that wasn’t the case. When he thought about it, he realized that since he had begun associating with dragons, he hadn’t been bothered by any such pests. He pondered this for a few moments while he quietly went about his morning rituals. He would have to ask Geneva when she woke up if she knew anything about this.

  One of the things he had told Geneva to look for in a campsite was a close supply of fresh water. This was not a problem here in the north near the mountains. Even in the summer, the runoff from the higher peaks kept most of the streams bubbling along nicely. So, after building a small fire, he retrieved his kettle from his pack and went to the nearby stream to get water.

  As he was about to fill the kettle, he noticed several pan-sized fish swimming lazily and feeding off of a plant that was growing so near the bank it was partially in the water. As he got nearer, he realized why the fish had come so close. They weren’t eating the plant; they were eating the beetles that were crawling down the plant stems to drink. He didn’t know what prompted him to do it, but he decided to try and grab one of the fish before he scared them off filling the kettle.

  He knelt down slowly and held his hand over them. As he’d expected, his appearance caused the fish to move off into deeper water. He sat patiently with his hand still in position to grab and waited until their hunger and his lack of movement lulled them into returning to feed. He didn’t have long to wait. Within minutes, several of the fish moved back under his waiting hand. Though he had never before been fast enough to do this, his hand shot forward like the neck of a wading bird and he grabbed one of the creatures and threw it up on the bank. He sat on his haunches for a moment just looking back and forth from his hand to the flopping fish. “This dragon magic definitely has advantages,” he said out loud to no one. He briefly considered trying for a few more fish, just for sport, but decided that it would be wrong to do that to the fish when he already had enough for his breakfast. Instead, he filled his kettle, and, slipping two fingers into the creature’s gill opening, he returned to his fire.

  First, he put some of the grounds he had brought into a cheesecloth sack, which he then submersed into the kettle. Then, placing the kettle on the edge of the fire, he went to his pack and got his frying pan and some bacon. Just a small piece of bacon would go well with the fish, and the fat would lubricate the pan. As the bacon was heating, he set about cleaning his catch with his small belt knife. After removing the head and tail, he gutted it and found treasure. Inside, the fish was laden with delicious roe. He carefully cut that away from the rest of the gut and put it aside while he removed the fins and filleted the meat. All of the scraps; gut, fins, bones, and skin, he saved in case Geneva wanted them. Then he fried the fillets, adding the roe only as the meat was just reaching perfection; he wanted the roe to be cooked but not over done. Not wanting to unpack any more of his camp gear, he improvised a plate by turning the cast iron lid upside down and using the concave underside. As he poured his drink, he lamented that he had no way to lighten the brew. He much preferred cream and sugar. However, since there were no milk cows about, and sugar was nearly worth its weight in gold here in the north, and he didn’t even have any honey, he resigned himself to drinking it black.

  Geneva woke while he was eating. “Good morning,” he said to her.

  “Good morning to you, too,” she returned. Then she sniffed and asked, “What are you eating?”

  “Fish. I saved you the gut and some other parts if you like. It’s not much more than a morsel, I’m afraid.”

  “That will be fine. Thank you for thinking of me.”

  “I always think of you, Dear Heart.”

  She beamed her pleasure while he gave her the pieces of fish he had saved for her. Then she said, “While that was very good, Dear One, I’m afraid that it only made me even hungrier than I already was. I shall have to hunt this morning. I flew a great deal more last night than I’m used to, and I feel completely empty.”

  He chuckled and said, “I had assumed as much. Go and hunt. We are still close enough to town that we would probably meet people on the road if we traveled today anyway. I think that until we are farther into the wilds, we should continue traveling at night. So gorge yourself if you can. Then we can set out again after you have slept off some of the meal.”

  “That makes perfect sense. I shall try not to be long hunting, but I am very hungry.”

  Without another word, she rose up on her back legs, and, gathering herself, lifted her wings for the down stroke and launched. Delno watched all of this and marveled at how graceful she had become in such a short time. He had also watched more carefully this time, noting the way the muscles moved under her hide. He was curious and wanted to figure out how her body worked. He had paid a great deal of attention to other animals, including humans, in this respect. He realized that all the other animals he had seen and studied that were not bugs were four-limbed. Even birds’ wings were nothing more than front legs adapted for flight. Geneva, on the other hand, was a six-limbed creature. She had hind legs, front legs, and those marvelous wings. As far as he could tell, other than insects, dragons were the only six-limbed animals on the planet; therefore, it didn’t make sense that they existed in nature, but here they were.

  When she had gone, he cleaned his utensils and stowed them away. Then he spent some time stretching out his sore muscles. He hadn’t thought that riding for several hours would leave him so stiff when he had been working out so much in the previous two weeks. “Different work, different muscles,” he thought to himself and continued stretching. After stretching, he decided to practice his saber work. This time he used the Dragon Blade instead of the wooden practice blade. Last night had been a farce, but it reminded him that there were real dangers on the road, and, as his old training sergeant used to say, “A false blade gives false confidence.”

  He was amazed and pleased with how well the blade performed, and he was surprised at how well he performed with it, especially since, until now, he had barely handled it. He spent nearly two hours practicing before he finally decided that he had done enough this day to familiarize himself with his new saber. He went to the stream and, finding a place wide enough and deep enough, he took off all of his clothes and washed himself thoroughly, then he washed the clothes, and, upon returning to camp, hung them on bushes to dry in the sun.

  He was just beginning to worry about Geneva being gone so long, even though he could sense her, and she didn’t feel distressed, when she landed awkwardly in the small clearing. He was about to ask if something was wrong when he saw that she was clasping the carcass of a small wild pig in each of her front feet. Then he noticed that she was also somewhat distended from the meat she had already eaten. He watched with something approaching awe as she began eating one of the pigs she was clutching. As she finished that one and immediately moved onto the second, she noticed him staring.

  “I told you I was famished,” she said sheepishly.

  Delno laughed and said, “Eat, Dear Heart, we have a lot more traveling to do tonight.”

  When she had eaten about half of the second pig she said, “I am full. If you would like, you may cut some of this meat for yourself. What you don’t eat, I will eat later after I have slept.”

  “Thank you,” he said, “I suppose a small piece of the haunch would make a nice supper before we have to travel again.” He drew his belt knife and began cutting a small roast from the hindquarter of the carcass. When he finished that task, he set the roast down and built a new fire on the ashes of the old. Then, as Geneva drifted off to sleep, he retrieved his herbs and spices, mixed some, and rubbed them into the meat t
horoughly. Then he put the meat in his covered pot and set it aside to wait until the fire died down to embers and was suitable for cooking the roast.

  He looked over at his sleeping partner and was almost shocked at how large she had become. He knew she grew overnight, but she was now so large that he doubted that any predator on the planet, except another dragon, would have the gall to even consider attacking her. Her talons had gone from the formidable little daggers he had noticed when she had first hatched to something more akin to his main gauche. Her fangs, now visible even when she closed her mouth, were as long as his outstretched hand when measured from his wrist to his fingertips. Her sheer bulk was already bigger than his horse, and that didn’t include her wingspan. If he had to sum up her appearance in one word, that word would be “formidable.”

  Then, retrieving his new carving knives from his gear, he began looking for a suitable piece of seasoned wood. He found a piece that nearly screamed at him. As he looked at it, he could clearly see the animal inside just waiting for him to remove the excess and free it. He took the piece and settled down where he could watch Geneva sleep while he worked. He then lost track of time while he carved on the piece. When he stopped for a break, he realized that the fire had died to embers, so he put the covered pan in the center, and, using a flat piece of wood, he piled the embers up almost to the lid so that the meat would heat evenly from all sides. He lamented that he hadn’t looked harder for a lid that was dished on top so that he could pile some embers on it also. He made a mental note to look for one at the next town they came to on their journey.

  He started to settle back down to his carving, but decided to try and nap since he had awoken early and would be riding long into the night. So he settled down, half reclining against Geneva’s side and closed his eyes. The dragon wriggled slightly in her sleep, snuggling against him.