The Dragon Book (30 page)

“First of all, you weren’t burned at the stake, were you?” He cleared his throat.
“You’re welcome.”
He held up a pair of fingers. “And second, did you or did you
not
do what they say you did to that child?”

“She was either going to end up dead or as a Scarred Sister, locked away in a nunnery.” She tilted her nose up snootily. “Forgive me for being considerate of a child’s future, Lenny.”

“Okay, I forgive you.”

“No,” she rubbed her eyes, “that was sarcasm, not a command.”

“You ought to work on that.”

“Amongst other things, apparently”—her stalk was heralded by a sigh—“such as my choice in thralls. You weren’t my first choice, you know.”

“It is difficult to forget, what with you only reminding me every half hour.” He slid a hand into his pocket, producing a piece of dried parchment and a small, leather pouch. “Fortunately, I have
ways
of forgetting.”

“Again, huh?” She glanced as he emptied a green herb in a neat little line upon the paper. “You can’t even stop for just a few moments?”

“Apparently not.” He licked the paper’s edge, rolling it into a small, twisted cigarillo. “Though, of course, if you were halfway competent at what you did to me, we probably wouldn’t have this problem.” He placed it between his lips and leaned over her shoulder. “Help me out here.”

“Help you with your addiction?”

“You’re the one that chose it.”

It was difficult to argue with that point, she admitted—but not to him. With a sigh, she held a hand up and snapped her finger. There was a brief spark, a puff of smoke, and, when both cleared, the tip of her longest digit was alight with a flickering flame. He leaned closer and took a few puffs, followed by a long draw of breath.

“There we are.” His sigh was an acrid cloud of smoke. “I don’t really disagree with your choice of anchors, mind you, but you could at least give me permission to carry around some matches.”

The thought was tempting, and she had considered it many times before. Matches, of course, would be far less conspicuous than conjuring fire out of flesh, not to mention it would cut down significantly on all manner of whining and complaining.

The problem, of course, was that all that reminded him of his previous life
also
gave him free will. Free will was admirable … in people who could use it responsibly, of course.

The man that had once been Sir Leonard was not a man of such capabilities.

That thought gave her the will to deny him his request for matches, as did the comfort that such denials prevented a recreation of what his previous lords had called previous glories in a previous life.

For all that, however, he was growing more difficult to control. The fact that he had drawn his sword without being commanded to had proven that. The idea of the townspeople being slaughtered, she admitted without remorse, was not such an appalling thought. After all, if they couldn’t be grateful for the life of a child, she saw little reason to be grateful for their lives.

It wasn’t as if their god was the right one, anyway.

And yet, if he fought the townspeople, someone would eventually fight him back. Someone would rush to their kitchen or their barn, someone would seize a pitchfork, a butcher knife, or a sword of their own. Someone would stick it in his neck, thigh, shoulder, or arm.

Then everyone would notice when he didn’t bleed.

“So, anyway,” Leonard continued, completely unappreciative of any internal struggle, “I think there’s another town a few miles out yonder.” He waved a hand in no particular direction. “You know … I mean … whatever yonder is. We can probably make it by sundown, find a place to bed down, then be off before anyone can think to burn you alive.”

“We’re not going to any town.”

“Oh, really?” He grimaced. “I hate sleeping outside … you know, I
did
hate it. I still would if I slept.”

“Good for you. We’re not going to be sleeping outside, either.”

“Then …” His grimace became a wrinkled, stubble-laden crag. “Oh, dear.”

“If I have my way, we won’t be sleeping at all.”

“You can’t be—”

“I’ve already come up with something. It’s a good plan.” She paused, tapped her cheek thoughtfully. “Well, it’s the
only
plan, so it’s as good as any. You just throw yourself at the stupid thing until you manage to stab it … wherever it’s supposed to be weak.” She glanced over her shoulder. “We should find that out. At any rate, you’ll kill it eventually. It can’t hurt you … I assume.”

“Armecia …”

“If you’ve got a better way to kill a dragon, I’d love to hear it.”

“All this over a
book …
”

No sooner had the words passed his lips than she froze, in spirit and body. Standing stock-still, so rigid as to render her breath barely detectable, her shadow seemed to grow long and cold, reaching out to engulf the knight behind her.

Leonard noted, not without a grimace and not for the first time, that when a breeze whistled across the road, kicking up dust and dead leaves, her hair hung black and unmoved.

“It’s not just ‘a book’…” her voice echoed off of nothing, reverberating through the branches and birds and killing their songs in flight.

Leonard knew that. Things that were
just
books usually didn’t warrant laws being made about them. Of course, he thought, this could have been avoided if he had just killed all the townsfolk to begin with. A pile of corpses was easier to deal with than a dragon; corpses, at least, didn’t move … or breathe fire.

Truly, she had only herself to blame for stopping him. However, given the rigidity of her spine and the particularly fierce clench of her rear cheeks, it struck him as a less than sound idea to say so.

“Besides”—she sighed, going slack on her bones—“dragons have hoards.”

“Amongst other things.”

“Right, they have fiery breath and hoards.”

“Actually, I heard that the breathing-fire thing was just a myth.”

“Well, they’re supposed to be creatures of myth, so we should be fine.
Regardless
”—she held up a finger to silence further discourse—“hoards mean gold.”

“Ah, yes.” Leonard sucked thoughtfully upon his cigarillo. “The transcendental lubricant.”

“Right, the—” She turned and stared at him for a moment, aghast. “What?”

“Well, it seems like everyone loves gold, doesn’t it?” He exhaled a ring of smoke, his grimace seeming to suggest that he wished he could have done it earlier. “Illicit dealers being no exception.”

“If even a bit about dragons is true, we’d only need a handful of its treasure to keep you in green for years.” She smiled proudly. “The rest, we use to get back home.”

“Well, isn’t that just brilliant.” He sneered. “Go and fight a dragon, and, if we somehow
do
manage to survive, go
back
to a place rife with Crusaders, murderers, and rapists.”

“That’s hardly a valid criticism coming from
your
lips,” she replied snarkily. “You used to be all three!”

“And I would still be resting nicely on those laurels if you hadn’t come along.”

“Third law,” she replied simply.

“Of course”—he sighed—“Sir Leonard of Savhael shall be returned to whence he came when he is no longer needed.”

“Precisely. And this is one step closer to your no longer being needed.” She rolled her shoulders. “My father had a lot of debts when he died. This dragon business will satisfy the ones that can be paid in gold.”

“And the rest?”

Her face twisted into a frown. Her shadow grew a foot longer.

“Those we shall pay by other means.”

“WELL … that’s a …” Nitz scratched his chin, painfully aware of the fact that it was difficult to look contemplative without a beard, “that’s …”

“A lair,” Maddy finished for him.

He nodded; it was, indeed, a lair.

To call it a cave would seem to label it as something naturally occurring in the earth. To call it a den would imply more coziness than such a thing deserved. To call it a nest was outright ridiculous. Certainly, he hadn’t expected it to be a pretty thing of twigs and feathers, but nor had he quite expected so much …

What’s the word?
he pondered.
“Spectacle”? “Display”?

“Filth,” Maddy grunted, as if in answer to his thoughts.

“That’s it! This cave …” It hadn’t occurred to him that he ought not to be making such a grand and proud gesture, given the locale. “This
lair
… is utterly filthy!”

“Brilliant.”

Its opening rather resembled a mouth, he thought: vast and gaping. In lieu of a tongue, however, a long trail of charnel in various states of decay and burnt beyond immediate recognition extended from the inky depths. In lieu of teeth, various skulls of various creatures that had walked on four legs or on two dangled, caught in the vines hanging over its rocky lip.

To Zeigfreid’s credit, Nitz had to admit, the skulls, at least, were polished to a spotless white sheen.

“So, how do you want to do this?” Maddy grunted, apparently less impressed.

“Yeah,” Nitz hummed thoughtfully, “we do need a strategy, don’t we?”

“We do?” She hefted Vulf over a shoulder. “I was thinking we’d do things the usual way.”

“That being?”

“I go in, hack its head off, and come out in time to search for a rag for you to clean yourself off with after you soil yourself.”

“That might be well and good for heathens and brigands,” he replied, supposing he ought to be more offended, “but this is a dragon in a dark cave. In the time it took you to fumble about and get your face chewed off, I could knit myself a pair of new trousers.” He added a coy smile. “Unless you’re hoping he dies of embarrassment when you accidentally grope him, I’d think of something else.”

“Huh?” She scratched her chin, surveying the long black furrow of flesh upon the ground. “Unless this is his mother’s heap of rotting charnel, he seems to like meat well enough. We can just round up a cow, tie a rope to it, and send it in.”

“Fishing … for dragons.”

“Stranger things have happened.”

He blinked.

“No … really, they haven’t.” He turned back to the cave. “It’s a
beast
, right? It has to make water. We can wait until it comes out to do
that
and then—”

“Who says it has to make water?” she interrupted. “It’s an agent of your supposed Devil, isn’t it? Maybe it pisses oil and sets it alight.” She clapped her hands in a sudden fit of realization. “
That’s
how they spew fire.”

“I somehow doubt it.”

“Either way”—she shrugged—“it’s just not right to axe someone while he’s doing his business.”

Nitz might have suggested that ethics could likely be suspended when battling denizens of hell, if not for the fact that it would undoubtedly lead into a discussion of what fell under the category of “denizen.” That, he knew, would be an argument that would end in his defeat and likely with a boot planted in his groin.

After all, he thought with a sigh, it was only ten years ago that the northerners had been removed from the list of “denizens” by virtue of the fact that they had all been slaughtered or converted.

With that in mind, he resigned himself to merely offering an encouraging smile.

“We’ll keep thinking, then.”

It was only after he turned back to the cave that he noticed that her gaze was directed somewhere else, far into the underbrush surrounding the tiny clearing.

“I suppose
I’ll
think of something, then,” he muttered. “Though, you know, it wouldn’t hurt if you—”

“Shut up,” she hissed, waving him down. “We’re being watched!”

“What?” He instinctively, and, with less shame than he suspected he ought to feel, crept behind her sizable frame. “How can you tell?”

“Something”—her nostrils quivered—“stinks.”

“Well, they might just be passing through,” he said softly. “Don’t kill them.”

“Ha. Right.” She paused for a moment, then looked at him with one eye wide. “Oh … you were serious.”

“I was.”

“I guess you’re going to be disappointed, then.”