The Last Dragon: Book Two

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

A t the sound of Kendra’s scream, I realized my mistake. In defending against those attacking on the left side of the dragon, I’d left the way open for those on the right to work their way past me to reach the girls. Kendra’s scream was more of a warning than fearful. With my sword in her hand, any attackers were about to face a sword wielded by one of the best.

All that flashed through my mind in the smallest part of an instant. While turning to ensure my deductions were accurate, I made a second mistake. Not only had I heard my sister’s scream, but the dragon always appeared next to her when she was in danger. The dragon had been threatening any enemies who ventured too close to us, but it must have realized with that scream that Kendra was in trouble.

The dragon spun at the sound, her long tail whipping to provide balance. While I also looked behind, I didn’t see the massive tail coming at me. It struck me shoulder-high. The impact knocked the breath out of me and sent me tumbling off the path and into a tangle of thorns and vines.

Flier leaped after me. The tail had missed him, and he managed to dart out of the way as the dragon charged towards Kendra. Flier used his sword to slash away some of the clinging vines and helped me get untangled and to my feet.

When I drew a deep breath and found nothing broken inside, my eyes turned to the four men surrounding us. The bow had been had been knocked out of my hand, and I didn’t know where it was. The sword Flier held in his inexperienced hand would only get him killed.

I raised my empty hands in surrender. “Flier, don’t be a fool. Drop it.”

He hesitated.

“Now,” I ordered.

The four didn’t attack. Flier said, “I won’t be taken prisoner again.”

He defiantly stood in a crouch, his sword held ineptly low, his face intent on the single man in front of him, as he ignored the other three. He was surely going to die.

Without giving it any thought, my fist balled, and I swung, striking him high on the side of his head. Flier stumbled, and the sword fell to the ground. Two of the attackers rushed forward, and in a few heartbeats, his hands were bound by a scarf one attacker had worn around his neck.

I turned to the dragon in time to see it snatch a man in its mouth and bite down so hard the man popped like a pomegranate seed between a thumb and forefinger. The dragon tossed the lifeless body to one side and scanned the area for another. When it didn’t find one, it reared back in anger and roared a warning so loud that people across the sea in Dire must have wondered.

That might be a slight exaggeration, but it was how I perceived it. My hands went to cover my ears, and my eyes shifted back to my situation. Two sword-tips were pressed against my middle, and an imposing man, a third, gazed calmly at me with intense eyes. He stood taller than most and wore a long, tan robe with a red scarf around his neck. He said, “Bind him.”

My first thought was that if I got a hand on that scarf, I could choke him with it. My second was that choking him while two swords penetrated me didn’t seem the best way to do things. A third thought quickly followed, and a glance at the dragon confirmed that Kendra and the girls were safe. The dragon again blocked the entire path, and behind it, I caught a glimpse of a woman with a raised sword who looked back at me before turning and fleeing.

I raised one arm to indicate—well, to indicate something positive to her, but I’m not sure what.

The man with the red scarf had turned and walked back in the direction they had come from, to the top of the summit. Another man removed a brown scarf and used it to tie my wrists in front of me. A little use of magic would slip the knot free, and the same with Flier’s bindings, but then what? We had no weapons, and two more guards joined us, so there were six of them and two of us. Our weapons had been removed. They would kill us if we fought back.

Flier scowled. “You hit me.”

“I saved your life.”

That didn’t seem to calm him at all as he pulled away from his guard and charged me, intending to butt me with his head since his hands were bound. The man with the red scarf paused long enough to watch Flier knocked to the ground by a guard. Then his lips twitched into what could have been the beginnings of a smile before he turned away and continued walking into the night.

“Kendra and the girls are fine,” I told Flier without attempting to whisper. The guards had seen the same things we had, and they looked relieved to be ordered to move away from the dragon, as had those who were attacking the dragon.

We walked most of the night, finally stopping when we reached a small lake surrounded by dense underbrush and small trees. A trail broke off the main one and took us deep into the vegetation, single-file. Near the far end of the lake, a clearing had been carved out of the green growth, a place concealed from the trail.

Flier and I were fed a stew of fish, turnips, and carrots. The broth was thick and surprisingly tasteful. Only our feet remained bound while we ate, but there were two guards for each of us. We sat beside each other and emptied our bowls without talking. Flier avoided my eyes, and he remained angry with me for punching him. After a while, our wrists were bound again, and only one guard remained near us. When he briefly turned his head, I loosened the knots on the scarf with magic and slipped one hand free to scratch my head in plain sight of Flier.

Flier glanced my way, then his head almost twisted free of his neck as he spun to look again. By then my hand was slipping back into the scarf, and the knots were magically pulling tighter. My intent was to let him know the situation was not as ominous as he believed. I said, “Getting away is no problem. But what do we do after that?”

He slowly shook his head.

“Getting caught a second time will be much worse,” I told him. “We need a plan.”

He asked, “Are the girls nearby?”

“I think so.”

“The dragon?”

“With them.” He pursed his lips and glanced around. I sat quietly and studied the situation. We were being fed, and our captors were not treating us badly, so escape wasn’t at the top of my list of concerns. The guard was now watching me, sensing something had happened, and he hadn’t seen it. I said to him, “You all speak my language?”

“Yes.”

“I’d think you would speak the same as Kondor.”

He spat. “Kondor. It is the language of dogs.”

“Hey, I’m not from Kondor, friend. My home is Dire.” I flashed a winning smile that he ignored.

His eyes checked out my complexion, features, and skin before he snorted in laughter and disbelief. “Dog.”

I understood his humor. What I didn’t understand was that all our captors spoke my language so far from home. Dire is not a large kingdom, so there shouldn’t be diversity in language. There were variations in physical appearances. However, Dire also lay across a sea, a journey of several days on the fastest sailing ship. We called our language Common, but as far as I could see, we had little in common with our captors.

As if to respond to Flier’s earlier questions, and to settle my mind, the dragon flew high above, making continuous circles above us. That calmed me more than words can express. The beast flew one circle after, like a single huge buzzard flying over a dead sheep. Her height was too high for arrows, but anyone looking up understood how quickly she could fall from the sky and attack. The instant my mind made the comparison with buzzards circling dead animals, I tried to shut it from my mind. There were hundreds of other things to consider, but I knew that one would remain.

Flier watched it, too. He said, “How long are we going to stay here?”

The guard had walked off several steps and sat on a log, his sword held across his knees in a silent threat as he watched us. The gentle noises of insects, the rustling of leaves in the breeze, and the distance gave us a measure of privacy. We were out of sight of the others, which meant they couldn’t see us, either. We were sitting beside each other and speaking softly hoping it would keep the words from the guard’s ears.

I shifted to both turn and move a little closer to Flier without being obvious. “There is no hurry. The girls are fine, and Kendra will care for them. If necessary, she will go to Vin or even Dagger because we have a friend named Avery who will be in one or the other, and the princess we serve, along with her delegation will make their way to Dagger. Then they will rescue us.”

“The story about the princess is real? I hate to repeat the questions, but this is all so unbelievable. And I’m scared. A little girl faced down a dragon today, one your sister commands. You talk with your minds. It’s so hard to believe it all.”

“All of it is true. Her father, the king, gave me my sword. We have told no lies.”

“She was sent to Kondor to do the king’s bidding?”

After looking at the guard and seeing his eyes almost closed in weariness, I continued, “In some manner. We don’t know the details but listen to this tale for a moment. Our king became ill and the mages, along with a few appointees, ‘helped’ him rule Dire until he returned to health. A new mage arrived, and I think two sorceresses.”

“The same pattern as other kingdoms,” Flier said.

“Dire, Trager, Vin, and Dagger. The mages must be involved, and until we arrived here, we believed the dragon was, too. It’s the last true dragon to exist, and we believe the mages and sorceress derive their power from it—or maybe from Wyverns.”

Flier chewed on his lower lip before speaking. “You are too trusting to tell me all you have. What if I’m not your friend?”

“I have not asked for your pledge of silence. If we die, I’d like to believe you will carry on in some manner, even if it is just to tell our tale so others might succeed where we didn’t.”

“I was just questioning your judgment, not our friendship. But since we and your magic have the means for escaping, why are we staying? Won’t the girls be worried?”

“That crossed my mind several times until the obvious answer dawned on my witless mind. I have sent several messages via Anna. If she heard them, understood, and passed them on to Kendra, I asked her to have Kendra order the dragon to fly over us and fly in circles as a signal.”

“Good. Now, why are we staying? Have the dragon attack.”

“Two reasons. The first is because they will chase us down and kill us if we escape, and maybe catch the girls at the same time. The second is because we need to find out about them. Where they are from and where it is. Why are they here?”

“Why?”

“We may have the same enemies.”

Flier gave me one of his frowns that said he had no idea of what I was talking about. I added, “They speak the Dire Common language, have a king, and don’t like mages or dragons. They sound a lot like us.”

He considered what I’d said and finally responded, “Some of that I either knew or from their conversations could have arrived at the same conclusions. While all the other kingdoms near here are being taken over by mages or a group the mages support, they are the exception. The only one I’ve heard about, and I haven’t even heard of them before. We don’t even know which kingdom they come from.”

I smiled. “You just gave me another worry. The four kingdoms we know of are all being usurped at the same time—the same way. How many others we don’t know of are going through the same thing?”

Flier’s eyes danced around, coming to a rest on the guard in the long robe who didn’t look like either of us or those from Dire. “I thought the same thing happening in the two major cities of Kondor were a coincidence. Now you bring up a possible conspiracy that crosses the ocean.”

“Yes. I think we should remain with these people until we learn more of them. Kendra and her dragon will follow.”

Flier said, “Do you really believe that you can ‘speak’ with Anna at any time and either her or your sister can send the dragon to attack? I’m just asking because things can go wrong if we remain.”

I gave him my most positive nod and a hint of a sly grin of confidence as I heard the clanking of chains. Two guards arrived along with a line of nine or ten men and boys in leg irons connected to each other. Their hands were chained in pairs. They were dressed in rags, and most were filthy and emaciated.

They came to a halt in front of us. A man wearing a heavy tool belt wore more chains carried over his shoulder. He tossed them to the ground in front of us with a loud clatter. The nearest guard drew his sword and placed the tip against my chest as the other placed a pair of cuffs around my left ankle and drove home a copper pin to lock them.

He said, “Nice and loose, but give us any trouble, and I’ll clamp them down tighter.”

The other leg and my wrists came next, then Flier’s. We were the last two in the line of captured slaves, connected by chains, one short one from foot to foot that prevented running, and another connected to the next man in line, one ahead and one behind.

The situation had suddenly worsened. I glanced up and considered asking the dragon to attack, but even if it did, I couldn’t run with ten or eleven men chained to me.

“What now?” Flier asked me as we stood when ordered and shuffled along with the others.