by Dante King
“So apart from the obvious signs like the lion’s head etcetera, what should I be looking for?” I whispered, moving Noctis so that he stood close beside Orka.
The Queen turned on the back of her bear to look at me.
“The wood is strange like that,” she observed, “you automatically talk in whispers and muted tones, like you might at a funeral or a wedding—only, in the forests of Vetrusca, it’s nature that is being celebrated or putting on the exhibition.”
“Very insightful,” I said, my throat strangely dry. “Any tips on what might announce our quarry’s imminent arrival?”
“You’ll know it when you see it,” the Queen replied simply.
“Oh, yeah, how’s that?” I asked.
“Because it’ll try to kill you.”
The two of us and our mounts were moving in a tight pairing now, deeper into the forest, the Queen’s entourage hanging back behind us about fifty feet. I guessed that this was because when the Queen came hunting, she liked to pretend that she was alone.
There was no sign of a path that I could see. I wondered briefly whether Queen Frami knew where she was going? Was she looking for some sort of spore, or did she have an idea of what sort of environment within the Beinwood the chimera liked to inhabit?
After that initial feeling of general unease that had come over us, we heard and felt nothing more. We’d been walking for fifteen minutes or so, when Queen Frami stopped, slipped down off Orka, and bent over to examine something in the leaf litter. As I was following her lead, I slid down from my own mount and peered down at what she was studying. To my surprise, she knelt down amongst the dead branches and fallen pinecones and stuck a finger into the lumpy, yellow-green nugget of crap.
“Still warm,” she said, as if she had been hunting magical beasts ever since she was knee-high to a grasshopper—which, I reminded myself, in Vetrusca the kids probably did.
“I have to say that I was not expecting you to do that, Your Majesty,” I said, wrinkling my nose as the Queen stirred her finger through the stink pickle. “Back on Earth, where I come from, it’d be quite the circumstance that led to a monarch sticking their finger in a butt dumpling.”
The Queen chuckled, then said, her head moving slowly in an arc, “Come on, our quarry isn’t far away.”
I felt a tickling thrill of excitement as we continued on our way, moving with a touch more stealth than we had previously.
Mentally, I ran through the magical abilities now open to me with four dragons at my disposal. I wondered what one would be most suited to bringing this chimera down when we caught sight of it. If we were hunting it for food, then I figured any spells that would vanish our target into nothing were out.
After another cautious ten minutes, there came the unmistakable groan of something fairly large moving through the undergrowth ahead of us.
The Queen stopped me and the guard company in our tracks and listened as whatever it was snapped through a grove of young pines.
“Tell me,” the Queen muttered, “how do you like my ward, Hana?”
“Ward?” I replied, my eyes glued on the grove in front of us.
“Yes, her father was a bondsman of mine. We were siblings of the sword and bear-riders for many years before I was appointed Queen of Vetrusca. When he was slain in a border dispute, he asked me, as a dying favor, to look after Hana.”
I nodded. I decided that, as friendly as the Queen and I were being, it was probably best not to tell her that her ward was one of the most smoking pieces of ass that I had ever clapped eyes on.
“She’s a skilled warrior, Your Majesty, and despite me taking her prisoner,” and here I cleared my throat apologetically, “she does not seem to bear me much ill will.”
“No,” the Queen said, her tone rife with innuendo, “I would say that she does not bear you much ill will.”
“I’d, uh, be glad to have her fight by my side,” I said, a little awkwardly.
“Just fight?” the Queen grunted, her lips twitching.
There was a deafening roar that cut off our conversation. It was the furious screeching bellow of an animal that had caught sight or scent of another animal in its territory.
“Ready yourself!” the Queen said in her booming commander’s voice, all traces of humor gone from her face.
The chimera launched itself out of the undergrowth in an explosion of broken tree branches and clods of soil. It sailed twenty feet into the air and up into a fir tree. It stuck to the trunk of the fir like a gecko, only instead of suction pads at the end of its toes, it sported formidably sharp hooves. They bit into the trunk of the tree, anchoring it with a surety that boggled the mind.
“Holy shit, you don’t see every day, do you?” I said, my voice thick with the kind of awe that is reserved for when you see a living thing that, if it weren’t for the magic or weapons that you’re packing, could quite easily unstring every sinew in your body in less time than it took to say, ‘Oh shit’.
The chimera did, as the Queen had already told me it would, have the foreparts of a lion, the body of a goat, and the rear end of a drake, but that had been the layman’s description.
The creature itself was as big as a cart horse, with the head of a lion that had gone through the prison system and not come out as a better, more docile lion. It was scarred and had more than a little of its once lustrous mane missing. Its eyes burned with a manic fire.
Fervent. Angry. Ravenous.
Sure enough, its tail was definitely the drake part of it, though I had assumed that it would be the drake’s tail. In actual fact, the tail consisted of a neck and the drake’s head. It looked pissed, the drake’s head, and I couldn’t really blame it. Must be a tough gig, spending your life stuck next to an asshole.
Even its goat’s torso was somehow disquieting. It was far more heavily muscled than your regular goat, veiny and ripped like that of a roided-up bodybuilder. It had wings too, but they were small and looked quite useless.
“Remember, Mike, we need the body whole and unscathed,” Queen Frami said, her good eye riveted on the beast. “Now, go to work!”
I was the first off the mark and fired a flurry of Garth-powered crossbow bolts at the creature while it sat, crooning to itself on the tree. With the reflexes of a cricket, the chimera bounded off the tree trunk. My occult bolts, peppering a single spot of the tree, sheared the bole in half, sending the tree crashing to the forest floor.
“Allow me to have a go!” yelled Queen Frami, holding up a hand to stop her guards from rushing forward and, in her eyes, ruining all the fun.
She swept her arm around, flicked open her fur cape, and revealed a leather bandolier stuffed with a selection of throwing axes. With incredible dexterity, the Queen launched a succession of axes in the chimera’s direction. Her arm was a blur as the axes left her massive and weathered hand. Streaks of metal flew through the dim forest air. The chimera, though, was too agile and bounded from tree to tree like a cat might leap from chimney to chimney. It roared again, as the Queen’s throwing axes thunked into the tree trunks and boughs overhead. A rain of sweet smelling needles spiraled down.
Within a few seconds, the magical beast would be among u. With those razor-sharp hooves, drake tail, and gaping lion’s mouth, I wouldn’t have bet upon everyone making it out alive.
The chimera made it to the last tree in the grove and then launched itself at the staunch figure of the Vetruscan Queen who, while lobbing her axes from the back of her bear, had strayed a little distance from me.
I heard one of her guard’s give a cry of dismay from behind us.
Queen Frami cleared her sword from its scabbard and Orka gave a roar of defiance.
“I can flame this thing,” Noctis told me, his words beaming with laser speed into my mind.
“Wait,” I said, replying before I knew what I was really saying. “Wait.”
I tracked the chimera with my hand, as it made its final, terminal, death-bringing spring at the Queen. Summoning my mana, I let loos
e with a concentrated Forcewave spell, directing the magic ever so slightly ahead of my moving target.
The air in front of my arm rippled and contracted as the Forcewave shot across the intervening space, growing in potency in under a second. The spell punched into the side of the chimera’s neck with a dull thud of air on flesh. The flesh along the beast’s side rippled outward. Its fur was a miniature version of an explosive concussion ring expanding. The chimera spun in the air like it had just been hit by a truck, by a fucking train. The creature smashed into a sapling, spun again, and crashed into another pine with bone-breaking, joint-popping, tendon-tearing force. Then it disappeared out of sight. From the way that its screeches carried up to us, it sounded like it had fallen downward somehow. Wounded cries echoed up to us.
“Nice-nice work, Dragonmancer,” the Queen stammered, her voice hoarse with sudden adrenaline. She did not look scared, not by a long way. In fact, she looked like she was having the time of her life.
I put my mental heels to Noctis, and the dragon sprinted into the thick grove of young trees. The Queen followed on her bear, and together we crashed through the smaller trees.
Abruptly, the Onyx Dragon halted. He had come to the edge of a long slope, but the vegetation was so thick and the light so dim that I couldn’t see any sign of the chimera. Then, from what sounded like a fair distance, there came a thin, mournful wail. It sounded again, and then faded.
“Sounds like you gave it a deadly wound, Mike,” the Queen said, coming to stand next to me. She actually leaned across from where she sat atop Orka and slapped me heartily on the back. “Those reflexes—and that shot! You wait until my men spread word of that through the inns back in Hrímdale!”
“With all due respect, Your Majesty,” I said, “it doesn’t sound half as dead as I should like it to be. We’ve still got to go down there and make sure the thing is no longer of this world, right?”
Queen Frami grinned at me. Gods, but she really did look like this was her idea of a relaxing day by the pool. The grin was infectious though, and I smiled back. It looked like me and the Queen were two peas from the same pod.
“We are not a culture that will leave a creature to suffer,” she told me. “Or waste good meat. Let us go down, the two of us, and finish this.”
The guards looked far from pleased when Queen Frami told them to wait at the top of the slope.
We pushed our way down the slope alone, crashing through the branches of encroaching trees on the backs of our mounts. Noctis and Orka made light work of the undergrowth, hopping over fallen logs and walking through thorn bushes like they weren’t even there.
I had never been much of a hunter—life in central Los Angeles not really being famous for its wildlife, except maybe on certain nights in West Hollywood—but I got a taste, then, of the appeal. Knowing that we were going to be taking home our kill to eat added a layer of satisfaction.
My heart rate had settled now. I figured that was thanks to my dragonmancer training and to my newfound ability to deal with weird and wacky shit; an ability that was expanding by the day.
We found the chimera at the bottom of the long slope. It looked, to put it bluntly, like an absolute fucking mess. The Forcewave spell had helped me blast apart a wild dragon’s head from the inside out, so it didn’t really surprise me that the concentrated form of the same spell had taken such a toll on the chimera.
“Still looks mad, doesn’t it?” Queen Frami said as we dismounted and approached the dying creature cautiously.
I had to agree with her. The chimera’s eyes were rolling in its head, the one leg that didn’t look to be broken thrashed at the air, trying vainly to get at and rend the two hunters who had brought it down. The drake’s head was lying limp and lifeless on the ground. Judging from the crick in the tail, its neck had been broken—if it was a neck, of course. I wasn’t really in the frame of mind to try and understand the biology displayed in front of us.
“Well, Mike,” Queen Frami said, sheathing her sword, “this is your kill. Do right by the creature and finish it quickly. It was a worthy adversary. In truth, it’s the biggest damn chimera I have ever seen in the Beinwood. When it came out of the trees, I admit that I was taken aback.” She smiled happily. “But what the devil is life, if not one great daring adventure, eh?”
She slapped me on the back again, and I turned my attention to the stricken chimera.
“It’s nothing personal,” I said quietly as I approached, being careful not to get caught by the flailing hoof. The windmilling foreleg was making it impossible to get close to the creature’s head so that I could put it out of its misery. “But people have to eat. It’s the law of the jungle.”
Not wanting the thing to suffer unduly, I used my Lightning Speed spell, courtesy of Pan, to dart in close to the chimera. The spell sapped a lot of mana, but it was a fair trade for a creature’s life. Noctis disappeared from behind me, and his magic formed in my hand in the shape of the Chaos Spear.
Before the chimera had a chance to so much as raise its lip at me, I plunged the spear through the top of its massive skull and skewered its brain.
With an almost relaxed and contented sigh, the huge beast slumped, and as blood flowed from the wound in its head to mingle with the dark earth and green grass.
The Queen gave a whistle. This was followed by a crashing and smashing of undergrowth as her personal guard came down the slope. After the Queen had given orders for the chimera to be butchered, she motioned to me that we should start to head back to Hrímdale.
“You did well today, Mike,” she said, nodding her shaggy head as if in benediction. “The chimera is a foe that not everyone can defeat. It was the final challenge that I had set you in the privacy of my own head, although I could have wagered my kingdom that you would have passed it.”
“I appreciate the confidence, Your Majesty,” I said. “Does this mean that tomorrow—”
“You will start on your journey north, yes, but not tomorrow,” Queen Frami cut in. “You will go through the Fey Pass and Hana will guide you and your fellow Mystoceans, but we will wait another day so that all is as ready as it can be.”
I must have looked surprised at this news of Hana because the Queen chuckled. Stroking her chin, she said, “I can draw you no map of the area, in case it falls into rebel hands. Therefore, I needed a guide and, after the battle of the Berserker Hall, Hana put her hand up for the task. She is fierce and brave and will serve you well.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I replied.
“Good,” the Queen said and nudged her bear into a trot so that Orka began crashing off through the trees. I followed on Noctis. “She is also my ward, Mike, which is why I must ensure that you leave with as much possibility of returning as possible. You understand that, yes?”
I thought of the beautiful, savage warrior woman, with her shaved head and piercings and big red eyes.
“Yes,” I said. “I certainly do, Your Majesty.”
And we rode off, with one hunt concluded and the next waiting to begin.
Chapter 12
The day after going hunting with Queen Frami, I awoke in the log cabin lodgings surrounded by Tamsin, Renji, Saya, and Elenari.
My eyes snapped open to stare up at the rustic beams that spanned our cabin’s ceiling. I was as alert and aware as if I had been intravenously administered four shots of espresso while I slept. My bed was deliciously warm, the only sounds the deep and peaceful breathing of my women.
My mind was buzzing. I knew from experience that the best way to sort out my thoughts was to get some exercise.
And so, I went running.
It was extremely relaxing heading out on my own. It was just me and the wild country and the dragons that shared my mind. There was no cellphone pressing in my pocket, no one able to clamor for my attention. The sky overhead had only just begun to flush pink with the coming dawn when I jogged up into the impregnable hills. Only the last, strongest stars were still peeking out through the gaps in the billowin
g canopy above.
So beautiful and savage, so untouched and untamed was the landscape around Hrímdale that it was well after midday that I jogged back into the town, sweating and panting but feeling pumped. I don’t know how many miles I covered, but it had reminded me of the old days, which were not really that old, when my fellow dragonmancers had been led by Sergeant Milena and Lieutenant Kaleen on our long training runs up into the mountains outside Drako Academy.
A lot has changed since then, I thought as I jogged past the wharves.
The docks and wharves were quiet. I figured that the fishing vessels had all and would be back around dark.
I nodded at a few of the townsfolk that I passed. To my surprise, more than a few nodded or raised their hands in return. The Vetruscans had not been impolite to me and the rest of the Mystocean delegates when we had arrived, but they clearly hadn’t trusted us. Maybe the battle in the Queen’s feasting hall had thawed them? I figured the role we had played had been met by approval by the local populace.
I grinned to myself and jogged on toward the cabin set in the woods not far from the Berserker Hall and Queen Frami’s own lodgings.
I approached the headland that separated the township proper from Queen Frami’s little fjordside section of land. Where the land narrowed and the road became sandwiched between the waterfront and a looming cliff, four guards were stationed. They had been here yesterday, but today, something else had been added.
It was a head on a spike.
I slowed from a jog to a walk. Partly out of not wanting to spook the guards, partly because I had never actually seen a fresh head on a spike before.
It was just as grisly as I imagined it would be, having seen it in countless movies and read about such things in many books.