Jonah and the Last Great Dragon (14 page)

The Great Dragon beat the air wearily as Jonah scrambled to his feet.

‘Right, I dealt with the bear. Jonah, can you move away from Lumi? I’ll take the poor little dragonet back to the glacier, and then I’ll come straight back for you.’ Ffyrnig was gasping for breath, puffing out little clouds of smoky air. He wheezed as he coughed out his words. ‘Can you get your gear together, please? I wouldn’t be able to land, even if I weren’t wounded, so I’ll get Valkea to loosen the end of one of the harness straps. You can attach it to your own straps and hang from it, while I take you across the sea. Then I shall land and you can climb on my back’

‘Okay.’ Jonah stared up anxiously as the blood dripped down, spattering red pools on the gleaming ice. ‘You’re losing such a lot of blood. I don’t think you ought to come back for me. You stay on the glacier. I’m sure one of the others will come to fetch me.’

‘Perhaps that would be best.’ Ffyrnig’s voice was weakening. ‘Stand back, then, so I don’t knock you over.’

Jonah scrambled out of the firedrake’s way, as Ffyrnig lumbered down to sea level. Twice he tried to pick Lumi up in his claws but missed and had to fly clumsily upwards again. Jonah could hardly breathe because he was so scared that Ffyrnig would collapse and fall under the sea-ice. On the third attempt, Ffyrnig managed to grab hold of the baby icedrake and, gasping for breath, flapped away to the glacier, with Lumi’s wings fluttering uselessly in the wind. Jonah stood watching, stamping his feet and clapping his
hands against his sides to try to keep warm. And all the while he was wondering if he would ever see Ffyrnig again.

After what seemed like an age but was actually only about two hours, Valkea came for him. Jonah had put all his food packs and gear into the tent, closed it up and finally strapped it to his body. Then Valkea, who was also too big to land on the ice floe, swooped down, grabbed him with his large claws and flew swiftly across the sea, with Jonah dangling, until they reached land. The icedrake gently dropped Jonah down on the snow, so that he could climb on to his soft, furred back, and they then flew on to Prince George Land. As the frost dragon lost height and circled before landing, Jonah saw Ffyrnig’s immense red body lying motionless on the glacier. He felt as if his heart had leaped into his throat. The icedrakes were standing around shaking their spiky heads and grunting miserably. As Valkea landed, Jonah slipped off. Scrambling to his knees, he unbuckled the harness with shaking fingers, dropped his tent-pack and then pushed himself upright and ran clumsily across the glacier, slipping about on the uneven surface.

He dashed up to the Great Dragon, and looked round anxiously at the icedrakes. ‘Is he—? Is he going to be okay?’ Ffyrnig’s mouth was half open and there was something swollen and black inside.

‘He is strong, Master,’ said Kaunis. ‘We have packed ice around the wound to help to stop the bleeding and three of us went hunting to get fresh meat, so when he wakes, he will have some energy.’

‘But he can’t stay here,’ broke in Valkea. ‘The cold will kill him, if he can’t move about. As soon as he can, you should fly south with him. If he can rest in a forest, you can bring branches for him to light with his fiery breath. Then
you will both be able to keep warm until help comes.’

‘But how will anyone know where we are?’

Valkea swung his head. ‘I will come with you to find a resting place and then I shall return here to wait for my brothers.’

Jonah nodded. ‘Thanks. But what about the Black Lord of Komi? Won’t he still be looking for you all?’

The icedrakes rumbled with amusement. ‘He may have wounded Ffyrnig but we think Zhestokii may have come off worst,’ said Kaunis.

‘Look here,’ said another drake and, ambling forward, put his snout into Ffyrnig’s mouth. With his teeth he seized the thing inside and pulled at it. Something long, black and scaly, raw and bleeding at one end, was drawn from the firedrake’s jaws and thrown down on the glacier.

Jonah screwed up his face. ‘Yuk! What on earth is that?’

‘That, Master,’ said the icedrake, ‘is the Black Lord’s tail.’

Jonah looked through the first aid kit from the British Red Cross and found some large dressings. There was special tape, too, and scissors. He taped three dressings over Ffyrnig’s wound and then cut up the emergency foil blanket and taped that over the dressings to keep them dry.

After some hours the firedrake woke up. ‘I need to eat, Jonah,’ he grunted. ‘After that, I think we should go. The icedrakes must go into their caverns again, in case the Black Horde returns.’

‘Led by a tailless black firedrake, I suppose.’

Ffyrnig gave a weak spiked-tooth grin. ‘I did enjoy doing that!’ he said. ‘I hung on by my teeth and Zhestokii pulled me across the sky for ages, until I managed to bite half of his tail right off. I’m surprised you didn’t hear him roaring. He won’t be causing much havoc for a while.’

Jonah worked out that it would take them about eighteen hours to reach the north coast of Norway. Kaunis
and Valkea seemed to understand where he wanted to make for.

‘There’s plenty of tree cover and I should think it will be a bit far west for the Black Lord,’ he said. ‘Well, not until he’s conquered Russia, anyway. I’m worried that it will be too far for Ffyrnig to fly, though.’

But the icedrakes were sure that the Great Dragon would manage, when he had built up his strength with plenty of fresh meat. Jonah wondered if the meal would include the Black Lord’s tail.

It was a long, hard journey for Ffyrnig. As he flapped heavily across the Barents Sea beside Valkea, Jonah slept some of the way. When he woke up, he could hear the firedrake wheezing with the effort it took to keep flying in the icy air. But at last they crossed the coastline. First, they looked down on snow-covered landscapes and grassy moorland. But at last they saw lakes and grassland and thick forests below them.

‘What do you think?’ asked Valkea.

‘This will do,’ gasped Ffyrnig. ‘Ready to land, Jonah?’

As the firedrake lost height, sailing down towards a large meadow ringed by forest, Valkea bellowed in farewell and flew back towards Prince George Land.

As the Great Dragon rumbled in his sleep at the edge of a pine forest, Jonah sat by the fire he had made, cooking a stew from his pack. He kept thinking about Erin and the icedrakes, and wondering whether they had driven all the Night Creatures back underground. Maybe the Prime Minister had asked to meet Kauhu, and Erin had been to Number Ten again. He hoped the icedrakes wouldn’t be too long coming back. He desperately hoped that Ffyrnig would get better. How on earth would the dragon ever reach home again, if he wasn’t fit enough to fly?

With the sun never setting, Jonah lost count of the time.
The hours dragged by and turned into days. Ffyrnig slept most of the time. Jonah kept getting up to collect branches to feed the fire. Sometimes he tried to amuse himself by collecting pinecones and building little pyramids with them, but his heart wasn’t really in it. He was bored and very scared. At least half his ration pack had been eaten now and he was frightened that he would run out of food. He didn’t think Ffyrnig would have the energy to go hunting. And he was terrified that Valkea would not remember exactly where he had left them.

After a day or two, Jonah stopped caring about anything except keeping the fire going. He nestled against Ffyrnig’s warm hide and, from time to time, examined the dressings to see whether blood was seeping through the gauze. He began not to want to eat, and found that, although he was horribly tired, it was really difficult to go to sleep.

He was leaning against Ffyrnig’s side, wondering whether he could be bothered to heat up another can of stew, when he heard a high-pitched crooning noise. His hair lifted on the nape of his neck.

‘Ffyrnig.
Ffyrnig
. Wake up! There’s a wolf in the woods.’

Ffyrnig wearily opened one eye. ‘Don’t worry, Jonah. It won’t want to come near me.’

Jonah wasn’t at all sure about that. Wouldn’t a wolf soon realise that Ffyrnig wasn’t going to get to his feet and drive the creature away? The noise echoed eerily through the trees again and Jonah stiffened with fear as the howl was answered. Mournful calls rang out from several parts of the forest. Jonah scurried to throw more wood on the fire. He placed several long branches on the ground beside the Great Dragon, ready to make into torches to drive the wolves away. He stood close against Ffyrnig, peering into the forest. He thought he could hear faint noises, as if things were quietly pushing past the bushes, and once
there was a sound like pattering feet. His own harsh breath was loud in his ears. And now Ffyrnig, sensing Jonah’s terror, raised his head and tensely looked around.

In the twilight under the trees, Jonah caught a glimpse of an elongated shadow. He peered at the place but the shadow seemed to have gone. A few yards away leaves rustled, as if something had passed by. A branch creaked near Ffyrnig’s tail. Jonah whirled round but couldn’t see anything moving. The hairs on the back of his neck were tingling. He turned wildly this way and that, staring into the gloom under the trees.

And then a voice that seemed to come from a tomb whispered, ‘The dragoneer! And his
terrifying
companion!’ The demonic laughter rose, as if from a dungeon, like the manic noise of a prisoner left to rot until he became insane. As Jonah fixed his eyes on the forest, a figure in a grey-hooded robe, wolves pacing beside it, appeared under the nearest trees. Jonah felt as if his heart might stop. It was the Wolfmaster.

Jonah grabbed a branch and pressed himself against Ffyrnig’s side, staring at the shadowy space under the wraith’s hood, where two yellow wolfish eyes shone out of the darkness. The Wolfmaster laughed again and Jonah caught the whiff of sulphurous breath that he remembered from his encounter with this demon in Hereford Cathedral. Sickened, he turned his head away from the rotting-egg smell and surreptitiously felt in his pockets for the Abracadabra charm he had copied almost two weeks ago from the one on the wall in the church at Cascob.

The Wolfmaster turned to look at Ffyrnig, who was eyeing him with loathing. ‘So, Red One,’ he laughed, ‘the Black Lord of Komi has had his revenge for your insolence. He wounded you badly, I see.’

‘Just a flesh wound. Nothing serious. Have you not seen Zhestokii since our battle? I think you will find something missing from his usual lordly appearance,’ said Ffyrnig in silky tones. Then he belched loudly and spewed up a lump of flesh still attached to a black scaly hide. ‘Would you care to restore this to him?’

The Wolfmaster gasped in dismay. His voice rose to a scream. ‘Again you destroy me! Again my Lord of Komi will punish me. He will punish
me
for the injuries you inflicted.’ He whirled round, shrieking to his wolves, ‘Get the boy! Bring him here!’ The yellow eyes blazed at Jonah from the blackness beneath his hood. ‘This time I
will
take you to him. With you I shall appease his wrath.’

The wolves crouched, ready to spring. Jonah stabbed his
branch into the fire and swung the flaming torch to and fro. Desperately he began to chant, ‘O Lord, I beseech thee for mercy. Grant that this holy charm ABRACADABRA may cure thy servant Jonah from all evil spirits and from all their diseases. Amen.’

The Wolfmaster threw up his arms to cover his head and backed away. ‘Take the boy,’ he screamed.

The wolves began to close in. One after the other would lunge forward and then retreat, as Jonah, chanting wildly, brandished the flaming branch. Ffyrnig pulled himself menacingly to his feet, swinging his head around to snap at the wolves. Jonah was just beginning to wonder how long he and Ffyrnig could hold the demons off, when he suddenly heard piercing cries in the air above the forest.
Black dragons?
he thought, panicking.

Then he was coughing as a blast of warm smoky air filled his lungs and the air was filled with the noise of several descending dragons: red, green, blue-green. Not black.
Not black!

Mordiford, Newland and Stinchcombe, pouring flames from their open mouths, advanced on the demons, while the Deerhurst Wyrm circled overhead. For a few moments, The Wolfmaster stood his ground, snarling. Then, with a despairing shriek, he whirled upwards and into the forest, his robe appearing to empty and lose its shape. When Jonah looked round, the wolves had gone, too.

‘Mordiford! Newland!’ Jonah raced over to the dragons, throwing his arms around their necks, as they nudged at him and rumbled with pleasure. ‘How did you know where to come?’

‘The frost dragons in London suggested good places to look,’ Deerhurst said. ‘They told us to look in the most northern forests first, in case you needed to hide from the Black Lord.’

Stinchcombe broke in. ‘Kauhu said to start here before we searched the islands in the Arctic Ocean.’

Newland was looking at the Great Dragon with concern. ‘It’s a good thing we arrived when we did.’

‘You were lucky, Red,’ Mordiford gave an open-mouthed dragon grin. ‘If we had not found you so fast, you could have been a wolf’s breakfast.’

‘Me?‘
Ffyrnig bellowed with annoyance and then, as he saw the glint in Mordiford’s eye, he rumbled with laughter. ‘You old green devil! Yes, we’re certainly glad to see you all, aren’t we, Jonah? Tell us what happened.’

Erin had successfully managed to guide the icedrakes up the Thames and lead them to Westminster Abbey. The dragons said “the young maiden” had been dreadfully upset when the icedrakes flew over the burnt streets and she saw the terrible destruction caused by the Night Creatures. The Archangel Michael had flown with the icedrakes as they searched for the demons.

‘Did their frost-breath work?’ Jonah wanted to know. ‘Have the Night Creatures gone back to the Underworld?’

‘The frost dragons have done a splendid job. The statues and carvings and gargoyles, and all the other bodies that the demons used, shattered with the ice,’ said Deerhurst.

‘It was so cold that there was a freezing fog over the whole city,’ said Stinchcombe. ‘And there was a layer of ice over everything. Too dangerous for cars on the roads.’

Each day, apparently, the icedrakes had hunted the demons, going to Hyde Park at night for a good feed. They were still working when the four firedrakes had flown away to look for Jonah and the Great Dragon

‘They had never eaten pig before,’ said Newland. ‘I can’t say I really fancy narwhal.’

‘Don’t talk till you’ve tried it,’ grunted Ffyrnig. ‘I suppose it’s a bit fishy, but you’re glad of anything when
you’re freezing.’

‘Do you need to go hunting now?’ Jonah wanted to know. They didn’t. They had stocked up on food before flying away from London and thought they would be fine for a few days.

‘But you could probably do with a few mouthfuls, Ffyrnig,’ said Stinchcombe. ‘I’ll go now, if you like. Anything special? You’ll feel better with some food inside you.’

‘Thanks, old chap.’ Ffyrnig nodded gratefully at the blue-green firedrake. ‘There are plenty of elk and deer around. But I’ll eat anything you can get.’

Stinchcombe hoisted himself into the air, while the other drakes gathered round Ffyrnig and Jonah.

‘The thing is,’ Mordiford said anxiously, ‘how are we going to get Red home? We never thought you might get hurt badly enough to stop you from flying.’

‘I’ll just have to make the journey in short hops. Bit by bit. I’ll get there.’ Ffyrnig sounded casual but Jonah could hear the tension in his voice.

‘Don’t worry too much,’ said Deerhurst. ‘Saint Michael said he would follow us as soon as the icedrakes have cleared the demons out of London and the counties round it. They were doing really well before we left.’

Jonah and the firedrakes were resting around the bonfire. Occasionally Jonah would get up to gather some more branches but he felt happy to relax, now that the danger was over, nestled on Deerhurst’s warm coils. He was trying not to worry about Ffyrnig’s flight home. After several hours the Wyrm raised his head, turning his horns towards the south.

‘Can you hear that?’

Jonah sat up to listen. ‘No. What?’

‘There’s a droning noise. Like wasps. But the sound is
too low to be insects.’

All the dragons were peering towards the south. It took a while before Jonah could hear the noise but, as soon as he did, he jumped down, shouting with excitement.

‘I think it’s a helicopter. A big one.’

It was massive. The huge Chinook helicopter with its twin rotors circled slowly overhead before descending to land, while Jonah hopped from foot to foot with impatience. At last, the blades stopped turning and the doors opened.

‘Jonah!’ A small figure jumped down and tore across the grass. Erin threw her arms round Jonah, laughing with excitement. ‘Oh, you’re all
right
. Everyone was so worried. But it will be okay now. Sam’s here, and so are Isaac and Max and Ollie.’

The troopers came towards Jonah and the dragons, grinning widely to see them again. The drakes ambled about, butting happily at their own riders and grunting with pleasure. Some other soldiers followed, two of them carrying a large First Aid box. At first they looked at the dragons nervously, but they relaxed when they saw how friendly the drakes were.

‘Jonah!’ Sam gave him a hug. ‘Well, you look fine but how’s Ffyrnig?’

‘It’s a bad wound. He has lost masses of blood. He says he’ll do the journey in stages but, Sam—’ Jonah’s voice wobbled, ‘I don’t think he can.’

‘Don’t worry. This is Nathan,’ Sam said, introducing a soldier who shook Jonah’s hand. ‘He’s a veterinary surgeon and he’ll dress Ffyrnig’s wounds. I’ll get you to introduce him to Ffyrnig in a moment. And we’ve brought a big pallet and netting, so we can load him beneath the helicopter and fly him home.’

‘Isn’t it great?’ Erin was still beaming. ‘I thought Ffyrnig
was so big that nobody would be able to do anything to help him. But the Chinook is ginormous, isn’t it? Ffyrnig will be flown home a lot faster than we came.’

The soldiers and the dragons gathered round the bonfire with the children. Erin and the soldiers heard all about the home of the frost dragons and about Ffyrnig’s battle with the Black Lord.

‘Ffyrnig says his tail was rather tasty,’ Jonah said, and the soldiers roared with laughter.

Erin’s eyes filled with tears when Jonah told her how baby Lumi had died. ‘She saved my life,’ he said. ‘She was so brave. I’ll never forget her.’

Then the troopers told Jonah how Kauhu and his clan had rid London of the Night Creatures and how Saint Michael and his angels were still searching the counties surrounding the city.

‘They just want to make sure that every last demon is underground again,’ said Max.

‘By the time we land, the whole nightmare should be over.’ Sam smiled at Erin and Jonah.

‘And we’ll be back in the Radnor Forest. All quiet and ordinary. Actually, I can’t wait,’ Jonah said.

Isaac threw him a sideways grin. ‘I think, before it’s all
ordinary
,’ he said, ‘there might be a bit of extraordinary.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Photographers. Interviews. That sort of thing.’

‘Chats with the Prime Minister,’ put in Ollie. ‘Appearances on telly.’

‘There might be an award ceremony,’ said Sam. ‘And what’s the bet there’ll be a dragon parade?’

Erin nudged Jonah. ‘You’re going to be so famous!’

Jonah grinned back. ‘Not without you and Ffyrnig, I’m not. We’re all in this together.’

He looked at everyone round the bonfire: at the SAS
troopers, leaning against their dragons, at the other soldiers who were going to take them home, at Erin, who had become his best friend and, lastly, at Ffyrnig, whose appearance in the skies above Cascob had begun the whole adventure.

He stroked Ffyrnig’s red scales, smiling to himself. How lucky I am, he thought.