by David Noel
"So, Marcia has escaped you!" Crowed Brendan. "Well, I certainly can't tell you where she is but with a little luck she’s far from here and getting farther by the minute."
"No, you fool!" Growled the dragon, "Where is Portia? I set this whole trap to draw her out of the castle, is she hiding in the forest? I hear no one else outside the cave.”
“No,” was Brendan’s only response. He prayed that Portia would remain silent and thankfully she did, she was a lot smarter than she gave herself credit for.
“Interesting,” the low, silky voice continued, “I wish that I could call you a liar, but I sense that you are telling the truth. Still, something remains hidden behind what you say. I knew that she was a fool, but I was sure that she had the courage to at least try and rescue her sister. I am disappointed both for her and her parents that she is such a coward that she wouldn’t even ride out here with the two of you. Instead, she sends two boys to do the job of two dozen men. You are barely able to shave and that one over there has yet to touch a razor to his face. A pair of brothers, from the smell of you, fresh from the fields. Sadly, the two of you are probably the best of what is left in the castle after Sir Gerard took all of the able-bodied fighting men with him." Tauschung paused for a moment to consider what to do and Brendan spoke up.
"Why do you care about Portia? If it’s revenge you’re after then why isn't Marcia good enough?"
This was clearly not going according to the dragon’s plan and its irritation showed in its voice. "If revenge was the only thing that I was after, she would be, but revenge is only part of what I seek." The Black looked at the two of them thoughtfully and Brendan and Portia waited. Clearly after twenty years alone tending dragon eggs Tauschung felt like telling its story to someone, even if it was only someone that it was going to eat in a few minutes. "When my mate and I moved into this area to build our nest and lay our eggs, we naturally fed on the local prey, including the humans. A man who claimed to be a prophet of God came to our cave and told us that if we did not leave immediately then God's judgment would fall upon us. He foretold that my mate would die at the hand of a Centurion knight and that I would die at the hand of his eldest daughter. We thought he was a fool and ate him and thanked Tiamat for sending us a delicious meal. I thought he was a fool until a Centurion knight killed my mate a month later.” She seemed to brood on this for several long moments. “I knew then that…"
"Let me jump ahead and save some time," Brendan interrupted, "you fled in fear back to your nest, like a chicken fleeing to its chicken coop, sealed up the cave and tended to your eggs for all these years while plotting your revenge against some little girl you didn’t even know. Now you’ve decided the time is right to trap the Centurion’s daughter and kill her before she can kill you, right? The only real question is why you thought that this stupid little scheme of yours would actually work."
Portia gave him an incredulous look, as if to say, Are you trying to make it angry? Then a look of understanding came over her face, of course he was trying to make it angry. They were here to kill the dragon and it was planning to kill them so making it angrier couldn’t make things any worse. In fact, they might even make things better; an angry dragon was more easily distracted and more likely to make mistakes.
The dragon snarled and then caught itself and laughed; it was a deep menacing laugh that sent chills up Brendan’s spine, "You are not as stupid as I thought! It is too bad that she’s not here with you; if she were, I would have killed you instantly the moment your backs were turned. Your deaths would have been quick and painless. As it is, since she is not here, I am quite safe from two half trained squires whose knees are knocking so badly from fear that they can barely stand. I have waited for twenty years to take my revenge upon Sir Gerard and his little child of doom and her absence here means that I will just have to take my frustrations out on the two of you. Your deaths will be slow and painful for you and very amusing for me."
"So, all of this was just a lucky coincidence? Your eggs hatching, the Hungarians jumping the border, Marcia riding out of the castle, all conveniently happened at the same time?” Brendan was trying to stall, looking for a chance to strike.
"You have already shown me that you are not a fool, though I must admit that I have reservations about how intelligent you actually are if you came to fight a dragon on behalf of someone else. You know that I am behind it all. It was I who entered the dreams of Akros and induced him to attack so that Sir Gerard and Lady Evelyn would be pinned in place by their duty to their subjects. They would gladly sacrifice themselves to save their daughter, but they cannot sacrifice their people for her." The dragon began to chuckle to itself again with an evil glee. "I entered into the dreams of Marcia and induced that brat into leaving the castle with visions of bat guano. She has such strange dreams of using brimstone, charcoal, and bat guano to create some sort of weapon to destroy the Hungarians and save Carinthia. Such a curious child, very intelligent and very foolish at the same time.”
“Hello! I’m right here!” An angry voice echoed out of the pit. “I can hear what you’re saying about me!”
The dragon growled, “That child is insufferable! Her parents should be thanking me for taking her off their hands!”
“I can still hear you!” She yelled. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you any manners?”
The Black chuckled darkly, “Perhaps the best way to punish her parents would be to give her back.”
“Oh yeah?” Responded Marcia defiantly, “Well I…”
“Enough!” Bellowed the dragon so loudly that the walls of the cave shook. “You will be silent, or I will kill you by drowning you in the blood of these two idiot squires!” Several moments of silence passed before the dragon was satisfied.
“Now to continue my story,” it said. “I entered the dreams of Portia and convinced her that this was all a trap to destroy her parents and that her only hope of success was to sneak off by herself and try to catch me by surprise. It would seem however that she is not made of the same mettle as her parents. It is sad, really, that two such worthy enemies as Sir Gerard and Lady Evelyn are only able to produce a coward and a fool for offspring.”
“I am NOT a fool!” Came the angry voice from the pit, “And Portia is NOT a coward! You can just shut your lying mouth right now!”
The dragon roared and whipped around to deal with the pest in the pit and Brendan attacked.
“Get to that ledge!” The squire barked as he waved his sword toward the near side of the cavern. Instantly, Portia snapped out of her daze and sprinted for the ledge.
Chapter 39
“There is a time in battle to think through every action to ensure that it is the right one, there is also a time to not think at all and let your body do what you have trained it to do.”
The Centurion Handbook of Combat – Heart and Mind: Chapter 3
Adrenalin coursed through her veins and broke the dragon’s spell. It was a good 30 feet up the side of the cavern but there were numerous large hand and footholds for her. She dropped her shield and slung the bow over her shoulder and launched herself up the wall as the stout, sinewy muscle that gave her body such unladylike lines proved its value now. Her strength and agility shot her up to the ledge in less than two heartbeats. She flipped herself onto it and immediately leapt to her feet with her bow in hand. She uttered the briefest of prayers for God's strength as she knocked an arrow to her bowstring. She looked down and saw Brendan charging, trying to get around the left flank of Tauschung. There was blood on its leg; somehow, he had already managed to draw blood while she was climbing to the ledge, but the creature seemed far more angry than injured. In slow motion she watched the dragon's head whip around and she knew that Brendan would die if she did nothing.
Portia suddenly found herself in the grip of a terrifying calm. He is MY man; you will NOT harm him. It was like when she was fighting the winter wolves. She remembered Heron of Alexandria and his amazing machines. Portia became one of his machines. T
here was no fear, no nervousness, not even anger or excitement, there was only lever and fulcrum, pulley and counterweight, action and reaction.
Effortlessly, she drew the arrow all the way back, 120 pounds of war bow bent as if she had done it all her life instead of doing it now for the first time. The touch of her left hand and bowstring against her left cheek felt perfect. Her vision down the arrow shaft was sharper than ever. She sighted in on the faint orange and green gleams that marked the most sensitive parts of the dragon. She shouldn’t even be able to draw the bow, let alone shoot it accurately, but she wasn’t Portia anymore, she was one of Heron’s machines. Firing down on a target from above with an unfamiliar bow would have been an almost impossible challenge but now she was back at the castle with her mother, practicing her shooting from the balcony down into the courtyard. The height and distance she had practiced at then was almost identical to the height and distance she was shooting at now. She heard her own voice inside of her head, speaking as if she was giving targeting instructions to someone else. She could hit this target, God be praised.
The tiniest relaxation of her fingers and the arrow was away, her eyes stayed locked on its course even while her hand went about its business of grabbing the next arrow and putting it to the bowstring. The flight of the arrow was true but the continued movement of the dragon's head as it reached for Brendan amongst its own feet caused the arrow to miss its eye and glance off the side of its head with an audible thud. The massive, shadowy head snapped up looking for this new threat. Her next arrow was already knocked and drawn, the bowstring against her cheek. She saw two glowing, green orbs and two burning, orange slits as the dragon zeroed in on her location. For just a moment, the head was still, and she fired. She was already drawing her third arrow before she saw the second missile embed itself, deep into the monster's left nostril. It reared back and screeched in pain. The noise was so thunderous that Portia found herself idly wondering if the roof of the cavern was going to collapse and finish them all off.
Down below, Brendan threw all his weight behind the point of his sword and drove it deeply into Tauschung's left rear knee. His angle of attack seemed odd until she realized that he was stabbing from behind and upward to get in between its overlapping scales. The dragon tried to back up and put some distance between itself and its attackers, but the injured leg gave way and it overbalanced causing it to fall awkwardly on its right side. The squire started to charge forward but then pulled up short at the last moment. The beast slashed at Brendan with its front claws and would have disemboweled him if he hadn't stopped his attack.
The dragon quickly rolled back onto its feet and it was instantly clear that its injury was only a minor one. A passing thought went through Portia's mind; had Brendan seen something that tipped him off to the dragon’s deception? Or had he just guessed that it might be up to something sneaky? She would have to ask him later, if they got out of this alive.
Tauschung suddenly lunged forward several feet and slashed again, its black talons almost impossible to see in the dim light. Its injured left leg couldn’t push the creature quite as far forward as its right which caused it to swerve slightly away from the squire. This probably saved Brendan’s life, but the dragon still slashed out at him with its right claw. He ducked, but the tip of one of the talons impaled his shield and ripped it off his arm, knocking him to the ground at the same time.
Portia fired again; she didn’t have a clear shot at any of the creature’s soft targets, but she needed to distract it. The arrow bounced off the side of the dragon’s head near where she estimated its ear hole probably was. The beast turned and snarled at her, rage pouring out of it. She fired at it again as it tried to charge her perch. The dragon slid sideways when its front claw came down on Brendan’s shield which was still impaled on its talon. Portia fired again, this time at its eye. The dragon recoiled and the arrow hit it in the corner of the eye instead of in the center. Blood began pouring into the eye partially blinding the dragon.
It shook its head trying to clear the blood from its vision while backing away from Portia’s ledge. It breathed its dragon breath at her and a cloud of total blackness enveloped her. Numbing cold and paralyzing fear washed over her like an ocean wave but she was a mighty rock that broke the wave, she was one of Heron’s machines and immune to fear. There was no emotion, no thought, only action, take the initiative and keep it, that is how a weaker opponent defeats a stronger one. She drew another arrow and prepared to fire as soon as the darkness cleared. She wondered why the dragon had not breathed on them before, then realized in a moment of crystal clarity that it had. It had breathed on her when she first stepped into the darkness, that was why she had been so overcome by fear. But now she was pulleys and levers, steel and wire, there was no more fear, she had to protect her man, he needed cover fire.
The darkness cleared and Portia saw the dragon trying to scrape the maddening shield off its claw. She began to rain down arrows on it, praying a verse over each one as she fired. In frustration at her unrelenting barrage, it gave up on trying to remove the shield and charged her position on the ledge with its jaws opened wide. She would die if she didn’t move. The ledge she was on was only about six feet long but there was another one about 15 feet away. She ran and jumped like she was jumping for the balcony. She hit and rolled and somehow managed to avoid landing on her bow or losing her quiver.
The dragon crashed into the ledge that she had been on just half a second before. Portia came up on one knee and fired again. The arrow shattered against the side of the beast’s head with a loud thud, right in its ear hole, it didn’t pierce the dragon’s scaly armor, but it was a dead-on blow that stunned the beast for the briefest of moments and Brendan saw his chance. He rushed forward and thrust his sword hilt deep into the thick muscles of the monster’s right hip. This was a much more serious wound than the first two and the dragon responded by snapping at Brendan with its jaws.
Brendan dropped to his knees and ducked under the eight-inch teeth that were trying to chomp on him. Portia shattered another arrow against its skull. They might not be penetrating the scales but based upon the dragon’s reaction she was sure that they were hurting it. It was like hitting a knight on the helmet with a war hammer, the hammer might not penetrate the helmet, but it could still knock the knight senseless inside.
Brendan tried to get back to his feet just as the creature recovered from the latest blow to its head. It slashed desperately at him but again the shield came to his rescue. As the dragon swung its claws the shield hit him before the tip of the talon did and knocked him out of the way. Tauschung’s claw missed him by inches instead of ripping deep into his body.
Brendan lurched to his feet and stumbled toward Portia’s ledge and began to climb. For a moment Portia didn't understand what he was up to but then the dragon turned and lifted itself up with its two front legs to snap at him. For the briefest of moments, when it saw the opportunity to kill the one who had crippled it, hanging like a piece of ripe fruit on the cavern wall right in front of it, the dragon forgot about Portia. It turned its face back toward the handmaiden, opened its mouth wide, and gave her a clean shot. Such a moment might not come again and the machine in Portia didn't hesitate at all. As it prepared to chomp on the exposed squire, she fired her last war arrow right down its throat.
With the twang of the bow, Portia knew that the dragon was dead. Three feet of arrow tipped with a durum steel broadhead flew down its throat before it could snap its jaws closed. An expression of complete surprise passed over the monster’s face. It looked her right in the eyes and in that moment the dragon finally recognized who she was; Lady Portia, eldest daughter of Sir Gerard, Count of Carinthia, Warden of the Eastern Marches.
The beast reared up on its hind legs determined to take Portia down with it but only succeeded in falling over on its side when its injured right leg collapsed underneath it. It continued to twitch and thrash around for several minutes but Portia, Brendan, and Tauschung all knew that th
e battle was over. The arrow had pierced the carotid artery and ripped it open. Blood that should have been pumping to its brain was pouring out of its mouth. The death of the great beast was a surprisingly quiet affair compared to the noise it made during the battle. No bellowing escaped its throat in its final moments, not even the sound of heavy breathing. Its shadowy scales that somehow seemed to help it move quietly when alive muffled even the sound of its spasms as it died. Eventually it was still.
Portia climbed down from the ledge and stood next to Brendan surveying the dead dragon before them. He put his arm around her shoulders and she put her arm around his waist. She had felt completely energized while they were fighting the dragon, now she felt completely depleted. It was easy to lean on him and draw from his strength. Considering how the dragon had beaten on him, she was amazed that he was able to stand at all.
"You took a huge risk climbing the wall right in front of it to draw its head back around to me. If I had missed my shot you would be dead," she said without looking at him. He shrugged.
"I knew you would make it," he said simply. He trusted her ability more than she did. She felt both pleased and embarrassed by that and the mixture of emotions filled her heart to bursting. She wanted to kiss him so badly! She thanked the Lord that the light was dim and he was focused on the dragon instead of looking at her.
Chapter 40
“The only thing worse than fighting a battle is cleaning up afterward. Since this is especially true when fighting dragons, earnestly pray that you never have to fight a dragon.”
The Centurion Guide to Practical Advice – Chapter 9: Proverb 4
As Brendan looked at the still form of the dragon, his overwhelming feeling had been one of relief. It was dead. They had killed it. Deep down inside was also a feeling of shame. He had been sure that somehow, someway, there would turn out to be a reasonable, logical explanation for everything in the end. In the Eastern Roman Empire, things were much more settled, dragons were mythological creatures used to scare rural hicks. Even with Portia’s insistence he had only half believed in the dragon. And yet, here it lay, its monstrous corpse mocking him and his arrogance.