The Hero and the Crown (12 page)

pulled on her long gloves. Shining rather in the sunlight then and reeking of

pungent herbs, Aerin rode into the village.

“I am alone,” said Aerin; she would have liked to explain, not that she was here

without her father’s knowledge but that she was alone because she was dragon-

proof (she hoped) and didn’t need any help. But her courage rather failed her,

and she didn’t. In fact what the villagers saw as royal pride worked very well, and

they fell over themselves to stop appearing to believe that a first sol (even a half-

foreign one) couldn’t handle a dragon by herself (and if her mother really was a

witch, maybe there was some good in her being half a foreigner after all), and

several spoke at once, offering to show the way to where the dragon had made its

lair, all of them careful not to look again down the road behind her.

She was wondering how she could tell them delicately that she didn’t want

them hanging around to watch, since she wasn’t at all sure how graceful (or

effective) her first encounter with a real dragon was likely to be. But the villagers

who accompanied her to show her the way had no intention of getting anywhere

near the scene of the battle; a cornered dragon was not going to care what non-

combatant bystanders it happened to catch with an ill-aimed lash of fire. They

pointed the way, and then returned to their village to wait on events.

Aerin hung her sword round her waist, settled the spear into the crook of her

arm. Talat walked with his ears sharply forward, and when he snorted she smelled

it too: fire, and something else. It was a new smell, and it was the smell of a

creature that did not care if the meat it ate was fresh or not, and was not tidy

with the bones afterward. It was the smell of dragon.

Talat, after his warning snort, paced onward carefully. They came soon to a

little clearing with a hummock of rock at its edge. The hummock had a hole in it,

the upper edge of which was rimed with greasy smoke. The litter of past dragon

meals was scattered across the once green meadow, and it occurred to Aerin that

the footing would be worse for a horse’s hard hoofs than a dragon’s sinewy claws.

Talat halted, and they stood, Aerin gazing into the black hole in the hill. A

minute or two went by and she wondered, suddenly, how one got the dragon to

pay attention to one in the first place. Did she have to wake it up? Yell? Throw

water into the cave at it?

Just as her spear point sagged with doubt, the dragon hurtled out of its den and

straight at them: and it opened its mouth and blasted them with its fire—except

that Talat had never doubted, and was ready to step nimbly out of its way as

Aerin scrabbled with her spear and grabbed at Talat’s mane to keep from falling

off onto the dragon’s back. It spun round-it was about the height of Talat’s knees,

big for a dragon, and dreadfully quick on its yellow-clawed feet—and sprayed fire

at them again. This time, although Talat got them out of the worst of it, it licked

over her arm. She saw the fire wash over the spear handle and glance off her

elbow, but she did not feel it; and the knowledge that her ointment did

accomplish what it was meant to do gave her strength and cleared her mind. She

steadied the spear-butt and nudged Talat with one ankle; as he sidestepped and

as the dragon whirled round at them again, she threw her spear.

It wouldn’t have been a very good cast for a member of the thotor, or for a

seasoned dragon-hunter, but it served her purpose. It stuck in the dragon’s neck,

in the soft place between neck and shoulder where the scales were thin, and it

slowed the dragon down. It twitched and lashed its tail and roared at her, but she

knew she hadn’t given it a mortal wound; if she let it skulk off to its lair, it would

eventually heal and re-emerge, nastier than ever.

It bent itself around the wounded shoulder and tried to grip the spear in its

teeth, which were long and thin and sharp and not well suited for catching hold of

anything so smooth and hard and narrow as a spear shaft. Aerin dismounted and

pulled out her sword, and approached it warily. It ignored her, or appeared to, till

she was quite close; and then it snapped its long narrow head around at her again

and spat fire. It caught her squarely; and dragon fire had none of the friendliness

of a wood fire burning by the side of a river. The dragonfire pulled at her, seeking

her life; it clawed at her pale shining skin, and at the supple leather she wore; and

while the heat of it did not distress her, the heat of its malice did; and as the fire

passed over her and disappeared she stood still in shock, and stared straight

ahead of her, and did not move.

Aerin took half a dozen stiff steps forward, grasped the end of the spear and

forced the dragon to the ground, swung her sword up and down, and cut off the

dragon’s head.

Then there was an angry scream from Talat, and she whirled, the heat of the

dead dragon’s fresh-spilled blood rising as steam and clouding her vision: but she

saw dragonfire, and she saw Talat rear and strike with his forefeet.

She ran toward them and thought, Gods, help me, it had a mate; I forgot, often

there are two of them; and she chopped at the second dragon’s tail, and missed.

It swung around, breathing fire, and she felt the heat of it across her throat, and

then Talat struck at it again. It lashed her with its tail when it whirled to face the

horse again, and Aerin tripped and fell, and the dragon was on top of her at once,

the claws scrabbling at her leather tunic and the long teeth fumbling for her

throat. The smoke from its nostrils hurt her eyes. She yelled, frantically, and

squirmed under the dragon’s weight; and she heard something tear, and she

knew if she was caught in dragonfire again she would be burned.

Then Talat thumped into the dragon’s side with both hind feet, and the force of

the blow lifted them both—for the dragon’s claws were tangled in leather laces—

and dropped them heavily. The dragon coughed, but there was no fire; and Aerin

had fallen half on top of the thing. It raked her with its spiked tail, and something

else tore; and its teeth snapped together inches from her face. Her sword was too

long; she could not get it close enough for stabbing, and her shoulder was tiring.

She dropped the sword and struggled to reach her right boot top, where she had

a short dagger, but the dragon rolled, and she could not reach it.

Then Talat was there again, and he bit the dragon above its small red eye,

where the ear hole was; and the dragon twisted its neck to spout fire at him, but

it was still dazed by its fall, and only a little fire came out of its mouth. Talat

plunged his own face into the trickle of smoke and seized the dragon by the

nostrils and dragged its head back; and still farther back. Its forefeet and breast

came clear of the ground, and as the dragon thrashed, Aerin’s leg came free, and

she pulled the dagger from her boot and thrust it into the dragon’s scaleless

breast. The dragon shrieked, the noise muffled by Talat’s grip on its nose, and

Aerin stumbled away to pick up her sword.

Talat swung the dying dragon back and forth, and slashed at its body with one

forefoot, and the muscles of his heavy stallion’s neck ran with sweat and smudges

of ash. Aerin lifted up the sword and sliced the dragon’s belly open, and it

convulsed once, shuddered, and died. Talat dropped the body and stood with his

head down, shivering, and Aerin realized what she had done, and how little she

had known about what it would involve, and how near she had come to failure;

and her stomach rebelled, and she lost what remained of her breakfast over the

smoking mutilated corpse of the second dragon.

She walked a few steps away till she came to a tree and with her hands on its

bole she felt her way to the ground, and sat with her knees drawn up and her

head between them for a few minutes. Her head began to clear, and her

breathing slowed, and as she looked up and blinked vaguely at the leaves

overhead, she heard Talat’s hoofbeats behind her. She put out a hand, and he put

his bloody nose into it, and so they remained for several heartbeats more, and

then Aerin sighed and stood up. “Even dragons need water. Let’s look for a

stream.”

Again they were lucky, for there was one close at hand. Aerin carefully washed

Talat’s face, and discovered that most of the blood was dragon’s, although his

forelock was singed half away. “And to think I almost didn’t bother to put any

kenet on your head,” she murmured. “I thought it was going to be so easy.” She

pulled Talat’s saddle off to give him a proper bath, after which he climbed the

bank and found a nice scratchy bit of dirt and rolled vigorously, and stood up

again mud-colored. “Oh dear,” said Aerin. She splashed water on her face and

hands and then abruptly pulled off all her dragon-tainted clothing and

submerged. She came up again when she needed to breathe, chased Talat back

into the water to wash the mud off, and then brushed and rubbed him hard till

she was warm and dry with the work and he was at least no more than damp.

With much greater reluctance she tied together some dry brush and set fire to

it from her tinder box, and approached the dark foul-smelling hole in the rock.

She had to stoop to get inside the cave at all, and her torch guttered and tried to

go out. She had an impression of a shallow cave with irregular walls of rock and

dirt, and a pebbly floor; but she could not bear the smell, or the knowledge that

the grisly creatures she had just killed had lived here, and she jerked back outside

into the sunlight again, and dropped her torch, and stamped out the fire. She

didn’t think there were any eggs, or dragon kits. She’d have to hope there

weren’t.

She thought: I have to take the heads with me. The hunters always bring the

heads—and it does prove it without a lot of talking about it. I don’t think I can talk

about it. So she picked up her sword again and whacked off the second dragon’s

head, and then washed her sword and dagger in the stream, re-sheathed them,

and tied her spear behind the saddle. The dragons looked small now, motionless

and headless, little bigger and no more dangerous than rabbits; and the ugly

heads, with the long noses and sharp teeth, looked false, like masks in a monster-

play for the children during one of the City holidays, where part of the fun is to be

frightened—but not very much. Who could be frightened of a dragon?

I could, she thought.

She tied the heads in the heavy cloth she’d carried her leather suit in, and

mounted Talat, and they went slowly back to the village.

The villagers were all waiting, over a hundred of them, gathered at the edge of

town; the fields beyond the village were empty, and men and women in their

working clothes, looking odd in their idleness, all stood watching the path Aerin

and Talat had disappeared down only an hour ago. A murmur arose as the front

rank caught sight of them, and Talat raised his head and arched his neck, for he

remembered how it should be, coming home from battle and bearing news of

victory. The people pressed forward, and as Talat came out of the trees they

surrounded him, looking up at Aerin: Just the one girl and her fine horse, surely

they have not faced the dragon, for they are uninjured; and they were

embarrassed to hope for a sol’s burns, but they wished so sorely for the end of

the dragon.

“Lady?” one man said hesitantly. “Did you meet the dragon?”

Aerin realized that their silence was uncertainty; she had suddenly feared that

they would not accept even the gift of dragon-slaying from the daughter of a

witch woman, and she smiled in relief, and the villagers smiled back at her,

wonderingly. “Yes, I met your dragon; and its mate.” She reached behind her and

pulled at the cloth that held the heads, and the heads fell to the ground; one

rolled, and the villagers scattered before it as if it still had some power to do them

harm. Then they laughed a little sheepishly at themselves; and then everyone

turned as the boy who had announced Aerin’s arrival said, “Look!”

Seven horsemen were riding into the village as Aerin had ridden in. “You

weren’t supposed to get here till tomorrow,” she murmured, for she recognized

Gebeth and Mik and Orin, who were cousins of hers a few times removed and

members of her father’s court, and four of their men. Gebeth and Orin had been

on many dragon hunts before; they were loyal and reliable, and did not consider

dragon-hunting beneath them, for it was a thing that needed to be done, and a

service they could do for their king.

“Aerin-sol,” said Gebeth; his voice was surprised, respectful—for her father’s

sake, not hers—and disapproving. He would not scold her in front of the villagers,

but he would certainly give Arlbeth a highly colored tale later on.

“Gebeth,” she said. She watched with a certain ironic pleasure as he tried to

think of a way to ask her what she was doing here; and then Orin, behind him,

said something, and pointed to the ground where the small dragons’ heads lay in

the dust. Gebeth dropped his gaze from the unwelcome sight of his sovereign’s