Dragonheart (16 page)

“We dragons love to sing when we’re happy,” Draco purred, fluttering his eyelids coyly.

Kara laughed at his awkward shyness and continued to pet him. “You’re not like a dragon at all.”

Draco chuckled. “How many do you know?”

“You’re the first,” Kara confessed with a smile. “But what a fraud! You’re supposed to eat maidens, not serenade them. I’ll bet you do none of the horrible things they say you do.”

“Minstrels’ fancies,” Draco agreed. “I never hurt a soul unless they try to hurt me first.”

“Then why were you in my village?” Kara asked curiously.

“Oh . . . ?” The dragon paused, stuck for an answer, when suddenly something rattled his distracted memory. “Oh! . . . The village!”

“Yes! You remember the
village
.”

Both Kara and Draco turned to the new voice. Kara frowned when she realized it belonged to that rude knight she had met earlier. He charged his steed across the stream, heading straight for Draco. But as he reached the rock Kara emitted a warlike screech and leapt onto his horse. She plopped into the saddle behind him and pummeled his back with wild, flailing blows.

“Leave him alone, you bully!” she cried, then to Draco: “Run, Draco, fly! I’ll hold him.” The knight tried to dislodge her from his back, but she clung to him tenaciously, snarling at him all the while. “Pick on someone your own size!”

Bowen’s excited horse spun and stomped in the water and both Kara and the knight went tumbling from the saddle into the stream. The knight got to his feet before Kara, and when she saw the dragon still on the rock, she desperately floundered in the water, trying to get to Bowen before he could draw his sword. But he didn’t draw his sword and Draco didn’t seem at all afraid of him.

“Smite him, Draco! Torch him!” she shouted. But the dragon was too busy suppressing his laughter to torch anybody.

“You all right?” Draco asked the knight, choking back a chuckle.

“Where have you been?” the knight snapped at him, far too casually.

“I’ve . . . been distracted.” Draco smothered another chuckle. “Bowen, meet Kara.”

Bowen turned to the girl and, with an exasperated sigh, grabbed her arm to help her up. Kara slapped him away. He let go and she flopped back down into the stream.

“You should have eaten her!” the knight growled.

By this point Kara was utterly confused.

“Now, Bowen . . .” the dragon tried to placate him.

What was going on here? Draco called the knight by name. Their conversation was far too informal. Kara rose and shook the water from her. The knight continued to rant at the dragon.

“Bad enough you forgot me, but what about yourself?” the knight railed. “You were so smitten by this baggage—”

“I beg your pardon!” Kara interjected indignantly. The knight withered her with a glance and she was once more overtaken with the feeling of familiarity she had had when she first saw him in the village.

“Shut up!” the knight ordered her, and turned back to the dragon. “. . . So smitten that your alarm senses didn’t even hear me ride up. If I was the hunting party whose tracks I saw back on the trail, you’d probably be extinct right now.”

“Now, Bowen, don’t be angry,” Draco tried to mollify him.

“Why not? I was worried to death—”

“Worried? Over me?”

“Here I am, waiting around . . . I don’t know what’s happened . . . where you are . . .” Bowen sloshed through the stream, complaining and waving his arms to the uncomprehending air. “When you’re coming back . . .
If
you’re coming back? You just disappear . . .” He wheeled back on Draco, only to discover he had disappeared.

Bowen glared suspiciously at Kara, as though she had hidden him. She hadn’t, of course, but she’d seen Draco tense, go all aquiver as his ears perked and he listened to a sound her ears weren’t capable of hearing. He had suddenly whirled and swooped behind the falls.

All this she was about to explain to the insolent knight when Draco popped his head out of the falls.

“Horses. Someone’s coming.” His acute senses on the alert again, he ducked back behind the falls as Bowen suddenly swerved to the sound of the horses. Kara heard them too, pounding along the ground, echoing through the trees.

“I’ll handle this,” Bowen instructed her. “Just act nonchalant.”

Instead, Kara ran. For, as the riders emerged from the trees onto the bank, she recognized them. And they recognized her. It was Einon and his search party.

As she ran for the opposite shore Einon motioned two riders into the creek to pursue her. They were quickly upon her. Dismounting, one grabbed her and tried to hoist her to his mounted companion. As she struggled in the warrior’s strong grasp she suddenly felt it slacken and he went tumbling backward. Unable to regain her balance, she went with him—he to the ground, she into Bowen’s waiting arms.

In one fluid motion, the knight slung her behind him and yanked his sword from the dead warrior to meet the onslaught of the other horseman. The rider’s skill was no match for Bowen’s swift blade, which slashed across his throat. He pitched off his horse into the stream, and as his scream faded to a gurgling rattle, laughter boomed across the water.

“It can’t be!” Einon laughed, and Brok, at his side, laughed with him. “But it is! The king’s old mentor.”

And it was in that moment that Kara remembered where it was that she had seen Bowen before. He was her knight. The one who had let her escape on the battlefield. The one who had defied this king once before to save her and her father. She watched his face harden as he sized Einon up, not liking what he saw. Piglet rode his horse a little ways into the creek, taking the measure of Bowen in return.

“Still giving carving lessons, I see, Bowen,” Einon said amiably.

“Get off your horse and I’ll give you one,” the knight replied.

“I’m bigger now. Perhaps I’ll give you one.”

“Stick to slaughtering peasants. It’s safer.”

Einon laughed blackly. “Oh, we don’t slaughter them anymore They can’t pay their taxes if they’re dead.”

“This wench must owe a lot if you’ll come to fetch her personally.”

“Show your future queen more respect.”

Kara knew her face must have mirrored the knight’s startled surprise as he turned to her. Speechless, she could only shake her head in vigorous denial. It was enough for the knight. He turned back to Einon.

“The lady seems unwilling.”

“I admire her spirit.” Einon shrugged.

Kara found her voice. “I’ll never wed you, Piglet!” she swore vehemently.

Bowen grinned. “Do you admire her honesty as well?”

“Ask me at the wedding.”

“When I go to your wedding,” Bowen said, “it’ll be to make your wife a widow.”

Kara laughed. Einon’s pale face flushed with anger for a moment, then his bland smile returned. “Your manners are as ragged as your attire. Bowen. It seems times have not been kind to you. You should never have broken with me.”

“It was you who broke with me.”

Einon idly stroked his chest in somber, and it seemed to Kara, perhaps even regretful remembrance. But he quickly shook off old memories with a twisted smile and unsheathed his sword. Bowen pushed the girl back and tensed with readiness as Einon started to slowly dismount.

“I’m ready for my lesson now, Knight.” Einon’s foot was still in the stirrup. “But first I’ll teach you one!” He suddenly flung his shield at Bowen. Even as Bowen dodged it Einon was back in the saddle and bearing down on him. The knight deftly rolled from the path of the flailing hooves as Einon charged over him and swooped down on Kara. Before she could flee, he had grabbed her by the hair and jerked her head back.

“Don’t go anywhere, sweet. This won’t take long.” He leaned down and kissed her ruthlessly on the mouth. As she squirmed from his cruel lips she saw Bowen rise from the water, Einon’s shield in his hands. He slammed it against the king’s back, knocking him off his horse.

“Only expose your back to a corpse. That’s one lesson you never learned,” Bowen jeered. Einon’s men started to rush in, but the piglet came up shaking water, eyes flashing.

“Stand back,” he ordered Brok and the others, and wheeled on Bowen. “You
are
a corpse! You just don’t know it yet.”

Kara shrank back toward the falls as the two engaged, trading fast and furious blows. It was breathtaking to watch. Bowen held fast. But Einon was younger. And more agile.

“Lie down, Knight,” Einon pressed him. “Life has passed you by. You’re the sorry scrap of a dead world and dead beliefs.”

“They were
your
beliefs!” The fury of the knight’s voice matched the fury of his attack. But Einon met every thrust.

“Never! Never mine!” It was Einon’s words that struck home more than his blows. Bowen faltered in his attack.

“They were! You spoke the words! You spoke them from your heart!” Bowen shouted in mad vehemence, but he sounded as though he were trying to shout down the truth.

“I vomited them up because I couldn’t stomach them. Because I knew it was what you wanted to hear!” Einon’s voice had the harsh grate of the swords’ screeching steel.

“Lies!” Bowen gasped, and staggered like an old man. His eyes blurred with wetness. “I taught you . . .”

“. . . to fight! That’s all.” Einon barked. Kara watched helplessly as he drove the knight back toward her. Toward the falls. Toward an unbearable truth against which the knight was unable to defend himself. “I took what I needed from you, Knight. You taught me to fight! And you taught me well!”

It was the coup de grâce. Bowen seemed dazed, his attack was desperate. Einon’s blade ripped across his shoulder and sent the shattered knight spinning back onto his knees under the splash of the falls. Kara ran to him as Einon charged in, blade upraised. But before he could deliver the deathblow, he was blinded by a swooshing spray of water.

Kara saw the glittering body of the dragon blot Einon from their view as he landed between them and the king. His wings swooped up and he roared. She heard Einon’s scream and then saw him splashing through the water toward his mount. He stumbled onto his saddle and, wheeling his horse, looked back upon the dragon and shivered, quaking with fear. Draco seemed to shiver too, and dropped his wings with a gasp as Einon galloped away, his minions following.

Draco slumped down in the creek, trying to catch his breath and clutching his chest.

“Draco!” Bowen staggered up out of the water and sloshed over to him. “Did he wound you? Let me see?” Kara was surprised by the knight’s concern as he tried to shove aside the scales where the dragon held his chest. But Draco rolled sharply away from him.

“He didn’t touch me!” Draco snapped wearily, then softly explained. “It’s just the old complaint again. Look to your own wound, Knight.”

“A poke in the shoulder, that’s all.” The knight dismissed his bleeding arm.

Draco turned his head back over his shoulder and gazed gravely down. “That is not the wound I meant.”

A troubled frown fell upon Bowen’s face. Kara was also troubled by something.

“Excuse me,” she said, and both knight and dragon turned to her. “Just how is it that you two know each other?”

Part V

THE CODE

Arthur unto the vale of Avalon was swept to lie among his brother knights in a grove of stone upon a tor.

—Gildas the Scribe

Twenty

SCARS

“That’s the way the Wretched world turns.”

A cluster of gray huts huddled on the edge of a gray marsh, all cloaked in a gray mist. A craggy tor lurked above the haze like a dawdling god in the clouds disinterestedly contemplating the dreary fate of those below. Like the distant tor, Bowen appraised the sullen village from a knolltop perch, sucking his teeth in distaste.

“You’ll wring little gold from those squalid hovels.” Kara voiced his silent thought. But when he had thought it, it hadn’t sounded like the reproach it now seemed.

“And you’ll recruit few warriors from them,” Bowen snarled testily. He clawed at his wounded shoulder and looked to Draco for support. All he got was silence. Draco was staring at the glum grayness down the hill. His filmy inner lids had shuttered over his eyes, turning them dull and lifeless as they gazed beyond the village to the forbidding crag that pierced the fog. A slight trilling sighed from his closed mouth. The dragon had descended into this woebegone, distracted mood ever since the girl first discovered the true nature of the trade he and Bowen plied. Bowen had quickly curbed her scandalized tirade by suggesting that those who saved her deserved gratitude rather than vilification.

While sparing in her thanks, Kara had at least abstained from upbraiding them for the ethics of their profession. But she had hardly abstained from moralizing. Indeed, Bowen was beginning to feel like he had been kneeling in church for the last four days. The girl had tediously harangued them on the plight of the peasantry, the tyranny of Einon, and her feeble plots for rebellion. The indirect ploy to shame them was hardly subtle. But the more the girl nattered about the deplorable state of the kingdom, the more sullen and silent Draco had become. Bowen didn’t need this. He would have liked to send the wench packing, but couldn’t figure out where.

They couldn’t abandon her to Einon’s cold mercy, and her own village had used her as dragon bait. She was a nuisance, true. Still one could feel sympathy for her predicament. And even admire her unrelenting sense of purpose. There was a fine fire in her defiance and her courage . . . and in her red, red hair.

Right now it was ablaze in the sunlight, which seemed to make her angry eyes glow. Under their hot gaze, Bowen sweltered with sudden shame. He turned from her, furiously scratching at his shoulder with a frown.

“Here. Let me see.” Kara came to him and slipped a cool white hand under his unlaced tunic. She tenderly eased off a poultice of matted leaves that she had soaked in herbal oils and examined the wound. “It’s knitted well.”

“Y-yes . . .” Bowen stammered, staring down at her head of flame. “You . . . you have the healing touch, girl . . .”