"Dragonhunt" by Garon E. Whited

“Was it my idea to promise we’d kill a dragon?  No!”

The ranting wizard waved his hands theatrically and his horse snorted in surprise.  With a curse, the wizard snatched at the reins wrapped around the saddlehorn.

“That’s not entirely Aramon’s fault,” replied the priest.  “It was Gorgar that decided to brag about us.”

“He didn’t decide anything,” the wizard snapped, squirming in the saddle.  “He drank enough mead to drown a horse—and I wish we could drown this blasted beast!”

The priest’s eyes twinkled blue.  “If you would remember that the objective is to keep your backside in contact with the saddle—you sit on it, you know—instead of standing in the stirrups, you might find it more comfortable.”

“I should have brought another blanket, Tindal,” moaned the wizard, miserably.

“What’s this about a blanket?” asked Gorgar as he rode up from the rear of the group.  Dust from the horses’ hooves stained his armor and steed a roadway grey; the blending of color made him look like a strange hybrid creature of man and horse.

“Y’vin is a trifle uncomfortable on horseback, still,” Tindal replied, unperturbed.  “He could use another blanket for his own backside, rather than under the saddle for the horse.”

“Gee, I’m sorry,” Gorgar said, and sounded sincere.  “I forgot how you and horses get along.”

“You also forget that I hate dust, and heat, and eating that dried dung you call trail bread!” Y’vin snapped.

Gorgar sighed.  Y’vin was in one of his moods again.  Nothing would be right until he was in a small, enclosed room, freshly bathed, and pleasantly filled with a hot meal.  It was always the same.

“I’m sorry,” Gorgar repeated.  “I hadn’t intended to go off on some wilderness trek like this, but…”

“You weren’t to know,” Tindal soothed.  “We should have thought twice before coming along to your sister’s wedding.  We knew it would be a long trip and not entirely pleasant,” he added, and pointedly looked at the wizard.  “We all agreed to come along.”

Y’vin muttered something too low to hear and subsided into a sulk.

“I’m glad you were all here,” Gorgar agreed.  “It really made Sis happy to see actual heroes.”

“And got us volunteered to go hero-ing,” Y’vin muttered, this time more loudly.  “We could have been in Tourmaline, minding the town’s woes, getting paid to just be handy in case of trouble, but noooooo—we had to go looking.”

Gorgar flushed a darker shade than his usual heavy tan.  Tindal spoke before anything more could be said.

“That will be enough from both of you.  Gorgar, please go relieve Sir Aramon on point.  And you, Y’vin—if you can’t do anything but complain, shut up.”

Y’vin shut up.

*   *   *

“My brother, Gorgar.   Gorgar, this is my betrothed, Llewellyn Harpsinger.”

Gorgar looked the man over with an experienced eye.  The fellow wasn’t a fighter, not by a long shot.  Still, he was hale enough and handsome enough.  Combined with a fine instrument and clear voice, he looked like he might be a decent provider… for a worthless songsmith.  If Sis was happy with him…

“I am most pleased to make your acquaintence,” Gorgar recited, and offered his hand.  Llewellyn clasped forearms with the warrior and showed himself to have a good, strong grip.  Gorgar liked him, even against his natural suspicion of minstrels, but held hard to that suspicion.  Anyone too charming spent a long time practicing it.

“The honor is mine,” Llewellyn replied.

“I got word in Tourmaline of the wedding,” he replied.  “I wasn’t aware that Sis had been seeing anyone.”

“Maedel and I were rather taken with each other,” Llewellyn admitted.  Maedel blushed madly and lowered her eyes.  Gorgar’s own eyes narrowed as he looked hard a Llewellyn.

“Oh?”  He swigged from his latest tankard and set it roughly aside.  “How taken?”

“My brother, please,” Maedel said, and laid a hand on his forearm.  “Father has approved of the joining, and most heartily!”

Gorgar’s eyes narrowed further.  “Father’s got no great love for minstrels, either,” he said, almost to himself.  Louder, he asked, “Why’s he so pleased?”

“Because he’s soon to have a grandson, I’d wager,” Llewellyn said.  Maedel gasped in shock and one hand flew to her abdomen.

“Llewellyn!” she cried.  “That’s not—”

Llewellyn shushed her with a sharp gesture.  “Hush!  That will be enough from you.  You’re safe now, and I’m marrying you.  Count your blessings!”

Gorgar extended his hand again, saying, “And congratulations on that!”  Llewellyn reflexively reached out to clasp forearms again, but Gorgar, drunk or sober, was as fast as a striking snake.  Instead of forearms, they clasped hands.  Gorgar, massively built and hardened by a profession of arms, squeezed.

Llewellyn’s eyes widened, then bugged out.  He gasped, a startled eep! sound, and tried desperately to jerk his hand away.

Gorgar squeezed slightly harder.  Bits inside the minstrel’s hand ground together in ways the gods had not intended.  Llewellyn instantly ceased to struggle and Gorgar slacked off slightly.

“You want to explain,” Gorgar informed him, and gave out a slightly-flammable belch.  “I’ve been drinking, you see, and I need to have it explained to me.  Before I break every bone in your skirt-lifting, button-working, harp-strumming hand.”

“Gorgar!” his sister cried, laying her own hands on the paired wrists and pulling vainly at them.  “Let him go.”

“I will in a moment,” he replied.  “Just as soon as I have what I want.  He might even get to keep his hand.”

Llewellyn spoke quickly.  “There’s a dragon terrorizing Pelamir and they need virgins to give to it so I saved your sister from being kidnapped and was persuaded to marry her.”

“’Persuaded’?” Gorgar repeated.  His hand flexed slightly, encouraging the minstrel to speak even more quickly.

“Your father described you and I’ve heard of you and you’re proving their point right now with my hand and I’ll need it to earn a living for the both of us and your nieces and nephews please?”

Gorgar thought about it.  It took doing, considering the number of mugs of mead he had already downed.

“Come with me.”  Gorgar, without releasing the hostage hand, walked off.  Llewellyn, perforce, followed.  Maedel fluttered along with them, like a butterfly caught in the wake of a storm.  Gorgar led them straight to Sir Aramon, Tindal, Y’vin, and Fliss.

“Hey.  Guys.”

“Here’s the lucky brother-in-law now,” Fliss said, feet comfortably on a table while the rest of him leaned gracefully back in a chair.  “Hail and well-met, all.”  He lifted a mug, drained the dregs, and flipped it underhand into the air to twirl several times before rattling to a stop on the tabletop.  It remained upright upon landing.

“Hi.  Got a problem.”

“It would seem you have your brother-in-law’s hand,” Sir Aramon observed.  Of the entire pre-wedding party, he was the only one in full armor.  Then again, he was also the only man with the right to the coat of arms he wore over it.

“No, that’s his sister,” Fliss replied, grinning.  “Well, it’s maybe not his hand that she’s got—”

“Hush, you,” Tindal said, watching the storm signals in Gorgar’s eyes.  “Listen up.”

Gorgar explained.  Sir Aramon’s eyes lit up instantly with the word “dragon,” but he held his peace to better hear the rest.  He and Tindal frowned at the circumstances that required a wedding.  Y’vin and Fliss looked less concerned with the propriety of the thing, but still interested.

“So, since I haven’t got the safest occupation,” Gorgar said, “I was sort of hoping that—”

“Got it,” Y’vin said.  “A little insurance, coming right up.  Hold him still.”  Gorgar moved.  His hands and arms did brisk, efficient things with Llewellyn’s limbs.  A moment later, Llewellyn was on his knees with a complicated interlocking of bones and joints that encouraged him to hold very, very still, on pain of pain.

Y’vin rolled up the sleeves of his robes and drew both wand and dagger.  He chanted and waved the wand; sparks and drifting bubbles of polychromatic light issued from it and began to circle both Gorgar and Llewellyn.

“Wh-what’s he—” Llewellyn began.

“Shut up,” Gorgar replied, and tightened his holds.  Llewellyn repeated his eep! noise and fell silent.  The rest of the people at the pre-wedding celebration gave back from the scene of the action.  Wizards were best given large amounts of room—generally a good-sized courtyard, preferably a township.

Y’vin pinked both Llewellyn and Gorgar with the dagger.  He used the tip of his wand to get a smear of blood from each.  The chanting increased in pace and volume while the lights and colors darkened to somber, purple-and-black shades.  The blood at the tip of the wand burst into a small cloud of smoke and sank immediately to the floor.  Once there, it seemed to sprout misty legs and scuttle away.  The whirling lights and sparks dissipated.

Llewellyn simply held still and stared in horror.

Gorgar let go of him and caught Maedel as she fainted.  He laid her gently on the floor and fanned her face with a kerchief.

“What…” Llewellyn began, and his voice broke.  He swallowed once, twice, and started again.  “What did you…?”

“Just a little necromancy,” Y’vin assured him.  Llewellyn paled further.  “See, if anything happens to Gorgar, his ghost is now bound to watch you.  If you don’t live up to your end of the bargain in this marriage, it will be able to summon the ketch.  It’ll crawl into your mouth and nose while you sleep and fill your lungs until you die.”  Y’vin grinned horribly.  “I’d be a faithful husband,” he added.  “There’s no way to lift the curse, and not many wizards can kill a ketch.”

Gorgar was kneeling next to his sister and could have broken Llewellyn’s fall.  But he didn’t.

*   *   *

The pavilion tent was up and the horses hobbled.  It was easy to see that the region was less prosperous; even the grass seemed stunted.  Farms to either side of the road grew wild, abandoned—where anything would grow at all. 

The clouds of the afternoon had turned into the rain of the evening.  Everyone gathered inside around the fire to dry out.

“Who has first watch?” Tindal asked.

“I’ll take it,” Sir Aramon replied.

Gorgar nodded.  “Wake me for the next one.  Fliss?”

“Since the intellectually gifted require their beauty sleep, I shall once again bear witness to the dawn,” he agreed.  “We have to hire someone for this, someday.  Or get a dog.”

“I vote for the dog,” Y’vin said.  “It won’t complain as much.”

“Oh, look who’s talking!”

Tindal raised his hands.  “That will be quite enough!  It has been a long day and we are all unused to the trail after the soft living in Tourmaline.  Let us sleep and recover our strength.”

There was some grumbling, but four out of five prepared their pallets for the night.  Sir Aramon put his helm on again and stepped outside, into the rain.

Inside, Gorgar placed his armor in a carefully-arranged pile.  If a fight started, there wouldn’t be time to don it, but if there was enough warning to put on some of it, the breastplate would be the first choice…

“Y’vin?” he asked.  The wizard propped himself up on his elbows.

“What?” he asked, testily.

“That spell you did on Llewellyn…”

“That?  That was nothing.”  Y’vin settled back down in his blankets.

“Really?  It sounded like a powerful spell.”

Y’vin chuckled for a moment, then laughed aloud.  “Oh, you dupe!  You’re no better than the minstrel!”

Gorgar restrained his natural response to such a slight.  Y’vin might be an irritable fop, but he was a powerful wizard and a good friend.  His insults were never meant to bite, unless they were aimed at enemies.  It was just Y’vin’s manner.

“Oh?”

“Yes, indeed.  You were just as easily taken in.”

“How so?”

“I got the idea from Fliss,” Y’vin said.  Fliss sat up.

“Wait, you got a spell from me?”

“No, just the idea.  Remember the time you poured that concoction down the prisoner’s throat and told him that if he didn’t get to a priest in jig time he was a dead man?”

“Yes.  He went straight back to the bandit camp and their healer.  Made it easy to find them.”

“Exactly.  Well, I told that minstrel-boy the same sort of story.  A little chanting, a little handwaving, a spooky cloud of blood-smoke.”  Y’vin snorted.  “A ketch!  Ha!  There aren’t ten wizards in the world that can counter a ketch if it comes for you, and none that can summon one!  The things are dangerous spirits.”

“So you didn’t really sic a ketch on him?” Gorgar asked.

“Of course not.  But he thinks I did.  Now let me get some sleep, would you?  It’s bad enough that I get dragged into the gods-forsaken hinterland to go hunting for a powerful and dangerous beast, but I won’t stand for this incessant chatter.”

“Look who’s been doing the talking,” Fliss muttered.

Y’vin ignored this and almost immediately began to snore.

*   *   *

The morning dawned grey and cloudy.  The rising Sun was only a bright place in the thick overcast.  Fliss woke everyone when the light grew bright enough to see more than a dozen paces.  Sir Aramon and Gorgar helped each other into their armored shells while Y’vin placed a pot on the coals of the fire.  Tindal stepped outside and faced the direction of the hidden Sun; he knelt and began to pray.

It was less than an hour later that they hit the road again.  The tent was packed, the gear stowed, the campfire obliterated, and most of the signs that a camp had even been there were gone.  It wasn’t perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it was unlikely to draw anything’s attention, not even from the air.

Besides, old habits died hard—so their possessors didn’t have to.

As they rode, Y’vin asked, “Someone want to tell me again why we’re going to go bother a scaly beast that isn’t stomping on our sand-castles?  I’m still a little unclear on that.”

“Because,” Sir Aramon answered, quoting, “’there shall rise into the air dark things, kin to the Serpent of Night, and thou shalt smite them, and hew them, lest the fumes of their breath bring ruin to all the birds and beasts of the earthly sphere.’”

“Book of Namae, chapter six, verses six and seven?” Tindal guessed.

“Very good, priest.  I did not think you knew my god’s holy works?”

“I’m more familiar with the the Solar Scrolls,” Tindal answered, and made a gesture—a closed fist in front of his heart, opened suddenly, like a starburst—“but I decided to at least be familiar with your faith so as not to inadvertantly blaspheme your god.”

“It sounds like you’re much more than familiar,” Sir Aramon noted.

Tindal shrugged.  “I cannot help my memory.  It is one of my gifts.”

“Would that I had such,” Sir Aramon replied.  “It was test of my teachers’ faith to commit the Book of Namae to my memory.”

“The test of ours is coming.”

*   *   *

The dragon was first seen in the high air that evening.  A line of light streaked the heavens above the setting sun.  Sir Aramon nudged Gorgar and pointed.  Everyone’s gaze swung to the west.

“Looks like a dragon,” Y’vin stated.  “How big do you think it is?”

“Sixty, seventy feet,” Tindal guessed.

“More like eighty, at least,” Fliss replied, hand held low to shade his eyes.  “It’s further away than you think.”

“Any idea where it’s going?” Sir Aramon asked.

“I think… I think it’s got something in its claws,” Fliss said.  “I’m not sure what it is, not from here.”

“Then it’s probably headed back to its den,” Sir Aramon said.  “Blast!  I wish we could have been a bit quicker.  That may be some village girl.”

“It’s more likely to be a sheep or a cow,” Y’vin replied.  “You know how hard it is to find a virgin, these days.”  He snickered.  “Or maybe you don’t.”

“Y’vin, just because my vows preclude—”

“That’s enough!” Tindal declared.  “I swear, we never used to bicker, jabber, and argue like this in the old days!  Look at us!  We’re getting on each others’ nerves like a bunch of boys while their tutor is out of the room!  What is this?  Some fair-day outing?  Pull yourselves together and act like men!”

Sir Aramon flushed inside his helm.  Y’vin simply frowned in thought.  Gorgar and Fliss both pretended not to hear, but knew that the injunction had been directed at them just as much.

“Have I been acting like a child?” Y’vin asked.

“You have,” Tindal replied.

“I had not noticed.  Thank you for drawing my attention to it.  And I apologize to you all for my unwitting manner.  I will attempt to correct it.”

Fliss looked amused.  “Oh?  Then who are you, and what have you done with the real Y’vin?”

“I outgrew him,” Y’vin replied.  “Why haven’t you outgrown the Fliss we used to go out questing with?”

“Because I was already perfect,” Fliss replied, unabashed.  “Do we camp, or do we go dragon-hunting in the dark?”

*   *   *

It was late afternoon when the group hobbled the horses among the trees.

“What do you think, Tindal?”

“I’m thinking that we’ll have a much better idea where the den is tonight.  If the dragon follows his pattern and comes back this way again around sunset, we should be able to see where it goes.  Somewhere up on that mountainside is a cave, I bet.”

Gorgar, seated beneath a tree and sharpening a sword, nodded.  “If we can spot that, I say we sneak in during the day, while it’s out, and ambush it.”

Fliss grinned.  “I like that plan.”

Sir Aramon shook his head.  “I do not think it has much honor in it.”

“Not a bit,” Y’vin answered, “but it has a much higher chance of us walking out of the fight with whole skins.”

Sir Aramon opened his mouth to argue, but the expressions on the others’ faces told him the story.  It was the plan.  It was how things would work.  It was the only way to go.

“I won’t strike with you,” he said.

“I know, Ari,” Tindal replied.  “We’ll ambush it, and you can join the fight.  I know it’s not what you’d like…”

“…but it’s the best you can do.”  Sir Aramon sighed.  “It rankles, Tindal.  It is without honor.”

“I guess the question,” Y’vin answered, “is whether you value your honor more than the lives of a bunch of virgin girls.”

The silence following that statement was all the more profound for the look of shock on Sir Aramon’s face.

“I… I’ve never thought of…” he began, and trailed off into silence.  He rose from his seat at the base of a tree and walked a little way off from the group.

Gorgar, Fliss, and Tindal turned with seething glares to face Y’vin.

“Oh, come on,” Y’vin said.  “You’ve thought that before.”

“Yes,” Fliss hissed, “but had the good sense to avoid giving a good friend a serious crisis of conscience!”

“Indeed,” Tindal agreed.  “You know what he’s doing now.  He’s praying that his pride hasn’t been the death of some unknown number of innocents.”

“Nice going,” Gorgar added.

Y’vin muttered something and sighed.  Then he looked up.  “Oh, look!  A dragon!”

*   *   *

The entrance was under a heavy outcrop of stone.  The passage itself was little more than a crack in the mountain, worn to smoothness by the belly-plates of the beast.  With the dragon out hunting for its next meal, the group entered quickly and hurried down the slanting face of stone.  In Gorgar’s case, this was a trifle too quickly; he slipped, failed to catch himself, and began a long, spark-showered slide down the smooth incline.  He vanished from sight around a turn of the passage, but his wild yell echoed back to his companions.  There was a resounding clangor, and silence.

“Gorgar!” Sir Aramon shouted.  The echoes of his voice reverberated eerily.

“You have to try that!” Gorgar shouted back.

Sir Aramon and the rest looked at each other.

“I’ll pass,” Sir Aramon said.  Tindal nodded.  Y’vin and Fliss just shrugged.

The remaining four continued down more cautiously to rejoin their distant friend.  Down, down, and down it wound, twisting crazily until it opened into a cavern.  The torches of the invaders illuminated perhaps a third of the whole cavern.

A depression, worn into the floor of the cavern, formed an enormous bowl.  Within this lay the rich glitter of gold in the torchlight.

While the others looked the place over, Gorgar gave his assessment.

“The place is big, but not big enough to stay out of the thing’s reach,” he noted.  “Good spot for it.  There are two other openings, but I don’t know where they go.  They may lead to other, more difficult entrances; we have to consider that it might not come in by the front door.  The other openings look tight—it may not use them.”

“Have you looked at the hoard?” Fliss asked.

“Yes.  Don’t touch it.  If it notices even a single coin out of place—and it would—it will have more warning than we want.”

“Afterward, though…” Fliss said, eyes never leaving the pile.

“Afterward, you’ll have your work cut out for you; there’s a lot of stuff you’ll have to evaluate.”

“Right.  What’s our plan?”

Gorgar gestured for the others to follow him.  He walked around the perimeter of the chamber and pointed out details.

“See the other openings; they may be useful escapes for us if things go badly.  And the ledges.  We can start there, and one of these may be a good spot for Y’vin to stand and throw spells.  Sir Aramon and I will be to either side of the main entry.  Tindal will be with me.  Namae looks after Sir Aramon; I’ll need Tindal on my side.  Besides, Tindal and I will strike first and attract its attention.  Fliss, you’ll be above the opening, on that ledge, there.  Once we have it suitably distracted, you can drop down on its neck and get busy with those double blades of yours.”

“What about the fire?” Sir Aramon asked.  “Fliss will be safe enough from it, if he gets into position, but you two are likely to roast.”

“I’ll ask for protection,” Tindal replied.  “The Sunlord will not permit mere fire to harm us.”

Sir Aramon nodded.  “All right.”

Y’vin was listening, but also looking over the roof.  “I like that ledge, there,” he said, and pointed.  “It’s got a good view and it looks like I can step back far enough to be out of sight if I have to.”

“All right.  Fliss, if you’ll go up and get a line on it, we’ll see about getting Y’vin up there without wasting any of the magic we’re going to need.”

Fliss bowed from the waist.  “As you suggest, O Tactician Masterful.”  He drew out several tools and prepared himself for the climb.  “I don’t recall that you’ve ever fought a dragon before.  Are you sure this plan will work?”

“Nope,” Gorgar replied, and grinned at him.  “But isn’t that what makes it exciting?”

Fliss sighed, but smiled as well.  “I would argue that, but am I not the one who first said it to you?”

“Yep,” Gorgar answered.  Fliss started up the cavern wall.

“Anything in particular you want from me?” Y’vin asked.

“Improvise.  If you have a clear shot, take it,” Gorgar advised.

“It’s long enough,” Y’vin mused.  “If it gets into the chamber proper, some section of it should be far enough away from the rest of you.”

“We’ll try to keep its body in the passage,” Gorgar said.  “That will restrict its movement.  I don’t think it’ll like that, so it’ll come into the chamber or retreat.  If it retreats, we’re well and truly hammered.  That will mean we can only perform frontal attacks, and that’s a bad idea.  But if we can make it angry enough to come into the chamber—especially after we get a couple of good swings on it when it can’t really reply—we can probably beat it down.”

Y’vin grinned.  “I can guarantee that it’ll come into the chamber.”

“Oh?”

“Once you start swinging, I’ll float some of the money out of the hoard and toward an exit.  Can you imagine any dragon letting that kind of thing go on without a fight?”

Gorgar chuckled.  “No.  All right, that’s the plan.  Any questions?”

Fliss called down from the ledge.  “Yes.  Will someone please tie a rope to Y’vin?”

*   *   *

The next hours were spent in near-total silence and absolute blackness.  Torches extinguished, the cavern was blacker than the darkest night.  The five waited, even their breathing quieted, for their quarry.  Each minute dragged like a sack of rocks, slow and torturous, with anticipation looming ever more fearsome on the horizon.

And a scraping sound came from the tunnel.

The five were instantly alert, both with fear and with relief.  The waiting, over at long last, gave way to the imminent feeling of battle.

The scraping grew louder, the sound of scales dragging on stone.  A smell, oily and sulphurous, wafted ahead of the oncoming beast.  The hunters, eyes adapted to utter darkness, detected the faint orange light from the dragon’s eyes as they shone ahead.  The golden hoard gleamed almost a bloody color in the light.

Sir Aramon and Gorgar had swords in hand, backs pressed to the wall, and an almost surreal calm.  Tindal was on one knee, next to Gorgar, silently praying.  Fliss drew one blade at a time, between fingers pressed to the metal as he drew to silence each.  Y’vin seated himself at the edge of his ledge and took three timed, rhythmic breaths to center his consciousness in preparation for calling forth his most destructive energies.

The dragon paused, just before the entry.  A powerful snort echoed through the chamber, a vast sniff as distended nostrils took in the cavern air—and the scent of invaders.

A blaze of orange-white fire rocketed into the room.  A column of blinding fire shot through the entryway, angled upward, and splashed against the far wall and mushroomed into orange and red as it diffused along the stone.  Gorgar raised one hand and turned away to shield his eyes from that spear of brilliance while Sir Aramon lifted his chin slightly to tilt his visor’s eyeslits away.  Fliss crossed his arms below his face to throw shadows across his eyes.  Y’vin and Tindal, eyes closed in concentration, were the only ones that did not flinch.

While the blast of fire-breath yet raged from the draconic throat, the dragon burst into the chamber like a sprinter coming off the blocks.  With a surge of all four legs and a massive writhing, great claws dug into the feeble rock and provided purchase, catapulting the beast forward to land in a pile of it’s own hoarded wealth while the ambushers were yet blind.

It coiled there, amid the scattered wealth, reversing itself to face those who waited at the door in ambush.  Fliss pressed back against the stone, holding perfectly still.  Gorgar and Sir Aramon both charged.  Tindal began to pray aloud, seeking divine aid.  And Y’vin unleashed bolts of magical force, spearing the dragon through the thick scales, wounding it along the flanks.

But the dragon did not stop its coiling movement.  Instead, it turned faster, facing away from the oncoming enemies, and bringing its tail around in a whiplash manuver that slammed both armored figures aside like a club meeting fruit.  They left the ground in flat arcs before they impacted against the wall and fell in a heap with a boilerworks clangor of armor.

With the two warriors swept aside, it halted its whirl and faced Tindal.  It lunged forward, mouth agape, and the kneeling priest saw the baleful glow of dragonfire at the back of the dragon’s throat.  Then the teeth closed, driven by mighty jaws, and Tindal saw no more.

Fliss leaped.  Even as Y’vin’s second barrage of magical bolts ripped along the dragon’s side to pierce one wing in many places, to blast aside a dozen scales beneath, Fliss landed astride the dragon’s neck just behind the head.  Faced back along the neck, Fliss leaned forward, heels dug in tightly to hold on, blades dipping down to find the edges of scales and pry upward.  Somewhere, there would be a gap, a place for a blade to pry a scale up and then drive home into the softer meat beneath…

The dragon lunged again, still chewing on Tindal.  It lunged into the passage and whipped its own head upward, slamming Fliss against the roof with all the mass of the dragon’s neck behind him.  Not once, but twice, three times, before shaking briskly to dislodge the stunned and battered attacker.

A claw descended.  Fully half the weight of a dragon settled on Fliss for a second.  Human flesh and bone surrendered to the force and the dragon’s taloned foot settled wetly to the passage floor.

Gorgar and Sir Aramon, once stunned by the impact and tangled in each other and their armor, now regained their feet.  The dragon backed from the passage as they charged.  Swords rose in the pale light of the red-glowing stone where the dragon’s breath had touched, and gleamed in the light from the dragon’s eyes.  The swords descended, driven with all the might of mortal arms.  Sir Aramon’s blade bit, parted the hardened scales of the beast as it might part a man’s breastplate.  Blood flowed.  Gorgar’s blade struck and clanged, deflected.

The dragon inhaled deeply, head turned to face them directly.  Sir Aramon and Gorgar threw themselves aside to avoid the point-blank blast that was sure to follow—but the expected blast of fire did not come.  Instead, the dragon laughed, laughed like rocks grinding in the depths of the world, and the head shot forward like a serpent striking.  It took Sir Aramon from behind, jaws closing about chest and thighs, great teeth penetrating armor like arrows through cheese, driving deep into the tender flesh of a man.  The dragon lifted Sir Aramon, oblivious to the great cry that echoed in the stony chamber, and whipped its head aside.  It released the knight with a contemptuous flick and sent the bloodied, armored form sailing through one of the other openings.  Sir Aramon’s cry echoed back from that passage, dwindling as he plunged downward through darkness.

Gorgar stepped close, along the dragon’s side, and drove his blade upward, under the scales, sending the point deep into the dragon’s shoulder.

The ear-shattering scream from the dragon’s throat deafened both attackers.  Gorgar yanked the blade free and darted back as the dragon snapped at him, great jaws closing only on empty air.  Then the dragon opened its mouth and blasted white-hot fire at the defenseless warrior.

The flames parted scant inches from Gorgar’s face, split apart into a pair of streams.  He gaped as the broad inferno of fiery destruction parted around him and left him untouched.

On his ledge, Y’vin had a hand extended toward Gorgar.  The wizard’s face was sheened in sweat and his lip caught painfully in his teeth… but the dragon’s fiery blast ended before Y’vin’s will broke under the strain.

Gorgar blinked in the aftermath of the blaze, blinded by the sudden near-immersion in such a river of fire.  The dragon ignored him for a moment and looked up, reared up on its hind legs.  It met the eyes of Y’vin.

“Oh, damn,” Y’vin whispered.

A torrent of fire engulfed the ledge, and the wizard with it.  The scream was brief and, truthfully, inaudible in the furnace-roar sound of the dragon’s breath.

Gorgar, still half-blinded, one hand raised against the glare from the latest stream of fire, charged the beast.  His sword was held low in preparation for another upward thrust beneath scales.

The dragon came down, both forelimbs held out.  It landed, full-force, on metal and flesh.

Silence settled on the cavern, broken only by the clicking of cooling stone.