Her biggest fear, however, was catching the attention of a passing dragon. Clinging to the rock face, she had nowhere to go. It had taken her a good while to scale to the ledge—it would take even longer to descend again.
Jaxon and an older man strode several paces ahead of the rest of the hunt. Jaxon carried a quarterstaff in one hand and a bow slung over his opposite shoulder. His companion carried a long, barbed pike.
Bile rose in her throat upon seeing the hulking form of Joram waddling beside Jonas at the head of the trailing pack. Both men had battle-axes strapped to their backs, the large, double-bladed heads protruding above their shoulders.
Reecah counted nine more men comprising the hunt. She recalled Poppa’s words to Grammy one night at the dinner table. “Jonas likes carrying thirteen men in the hunt. A witch’s quorum, he calls it.”
She had no idea why that conversation had stuck in her mind. Perhaps the witch reference or the odd word, ‘quorum’—one she’d never heard until that day.
The hunt passed below her position. Three of the men carried nothing but bows and long swords, one of them sporting blonde hair and a long nose—Jonas Junior. They were obviously the dragon slayers, along with Jonas and Joram.
The six stout men bringing up the rear had great tower shields strapped to their backs. Poppa called them the firebreakers.
Reecah remembered the firebreakers three years ago. The large, friendly man she fondly recalled from the village, towered above the rest. She had wondered how overweight men like him trekked all this way burdened by thick shields and the heavy, leather armour they wore to protect them from the worst of the dragon fire. Despite their size, they must be in incredible shape.
Watching the last of the firebreakers pass beyond her field of vision, Reecah searched the sky before getting to her feet and edging her way around the backside of the massive rock formation. It took her a while to position herself to peer into Dragonfang Pass and the trail winding far below.
Jaxon came into view first, pointing to a cliff on the first hill lining the pass—the embankment separated from the backside of the Fang by a wide gap. The other tracker stepped beside him and started climbing.
Reaching a small ledge, the second tracker pulled a coil of rope from his shoulders and tied it to the base of a pine tree growing out from the ledge.
Jaxon tested its strength and stepped aside to allow the three firebreakers access.
Reecah held her breath as the heavily burdened men took to the rope. She thought for sure they would tire and fall, but before long, they joined the tracker on the ledge and waited for Junior and the two slayers Reecah didn’t recognize.
When all seven men were on the small ledge, the older tracker, with the help of the firebreakers lifting him on top of one of their shields, reached up to grasp the bottom edge of a fissure in the rock. Pulling himself up, he studied the fissure for a while before the firebreakers lowered him back to the ledge.
The tracker gave a thumbs up to the men on the ground and pulled the barbed pike strapped to his back over a shoulder. With the firebreaker’s assistance, he climbed until his chest was at the height of the hole. Taking a moment to search the skies, he inserted the pike into the hole.
A muted squeal pierced the quiet. The tracker jabbed and pulled on the pole, his actions threatening to topple him from the upturned shield to a certain death.
The rest of the hunt urged him on with unbridled excitement.
The strain on the tracker’s arms was evident even from Reecah’s position as he struggled to hang onto his pike.
He bore down and the squealing grew in volume—a blue, dragonling’s wing appeared at the edge of the hole, snagged on the barbed weapon.
The firebreakers lowered the tracker to the ledge as he gave the dragon one last yank, pulling it free of the warren. It fell past the men on the ledge, crying out in panic and trying to flap its wings but the embedded pike prevented it from going anywhere.
Reecah cringed at the squishing thud of the poor beast impacting the trail below. It emitted pained squeaks and backed away from Jonas and Joram, but it was obvious even from where she watched that the dragonling was in no shape to elude them.
Two battle-axes churned in unison, each massive blade striking the defenseless baby with killing force. A quick yelp followed by a decisive silence settled over the entrance to Dragonfang Pass.
A great cry rose up from the members of the hunt, everybody patting each other on the back.
Joram and Jonas grabbed an ivory horn and lifted the dragon’s corpse into the air between them—the animal easily as large as Jonas. The brothers grinned, soaking up the adulations of their peers.
Jonas nodded to Joram and they let the carcass drop to the trail. Pulling daggers from their belts, they set to work cutting the ivory horns from the baby’s head, then stood with their gory trophies held high.
The men cheered again.
Reecah slid down to her backside, afraid she might be sick.
The body of the dragon lay in an expanding pool of blood, its lifeless blue eyes catching the last of the dying sunlight.
The Love it Never Knew
Dragonfang Pass was deathly quiet as darkness crept across the mountains. The dragon hunt had disappeared up the trail into the pass, out of sight of the Fang.
It took everything Reecah had to summon the strength required to scale down from her perch. She had witnessed the hunt three years ago but, for some reason, the dragonling’s violent demise affected her more this time.
She sat at the base of the Fang, oblivious to the cold air wafting from the heights. Shadows lengthened into night before a distant caw echoed off the surrounding cliffs. Raver crash-landed on the ground beside her, rolling into her hip. Normally she would have laughed. Not tonight.
She helped right the mangled bird and placed him in her lap. He blinked up at her as she gently stroked his back—the silence of the mountains deafening. Everything she had done to stall the hunt had been for nothing. A dragonling had been killed and butchered no sooner than the hunt had entered the pass and all she had done was watch it happen.
“What are we doing here?” she asked Raver, and immediately felt even guiltier. Dragon Pass was nowhere to bring her little friend.
A tear dropped on the bird’s head. He shook it off and clawed his way between her cloak and tunic, ostensibly to get out of the cold. The bird was smarter than her.
She sighed and unslung her rucksack, digging out the thin blanket and draping it over them.
Gazing at the clear sky and the infinite stars, she caught sight of something big flying toward the pass, its great wings flapping slowly as it soared overhead.
Reecah grabbed onto Raver who painfully nipped at her hand. She pulled him from her cloak and set him on the ground, her attention on the dragon.
The moonlight reflected off the dragon’s blue scales. She gasped. The mother!
Jumping to her feet, she clambered up the steep slope abutting the backside of the Fang.
The dragon stretched its wings out wide and back-flapped until its talons grasped the ledge below its warren. Extending its head into the hole, it quickly pulled out again—a mighty roar echoing off the heights.
It searched the area. Looking down, another roar, fiercer than the first, made the hair on Reecah’s neck stand on end.
Unfurling its wings, the dragon dropped to the path below, its head dipping to inspect its baby’s lifeless body.
Reecah dropped to her hands and knees in fright.
A great gout of flames escaped the enraged dragon’s mouth, its head twisting one way and then another. She feared what might happen if it spotted her.
The mother dragon extinguished its flames and dropped prone to the ground, her head lying across her dead baby. Emitting the saddest mewl Reecah had ever heard, the dragon’s sorrow broke her heart.
Raver’s call as he winged away in the early light of the new day woke Reecah from a disturbed sleep. Her friend rose high overhead
and disappeared up the pass.
Reecah shivered beneath her thin blanket, her mind weary from the emotion of the previous night. She half expected to see the mother dragon still draped over her baby, but the dragon had departed sometime during the night—the blood stain on the path and a scorched cliff face, the only sign either dragon had been there at all.
Her efforts to stop the hunt had been for nothing. Disheartened, she had decided last night to head home come morning. She had fooled herself into thinking she could make a difference. She was relieved Poppa wasn’t here to see what a failure she had turned out to be.
Those sentiments had filled her before the mother dragon arrived to discover its slain baby. Before she witnessed the mother dragon’s heartrending grief.
Fueled by a new conviction, she was done with hampering the dragon hunt. It was time to put a stop to it altogether. But first, she had a promise to keep.
Though she reluctantly commiserated with the villagers and the reasons behind the hunt, she couldn’t justify the brutality of the hunt itself. Everyone knew dragons were predators who didn’t discriminate what they killed for food. That being said, they generally stayed clear of Fishmonger Bay—probably more from fear of being killed themselves. Unfortunately, they were known to feed on travellers wandering the wilds.
Dragons were meat eaters. People were meat eaters. Reecah struggled to see the difference. Wasn’t that the way of the world? She would fight a dragon in self-defence, or to protect anyone with her, without a second thought—just like she would defend against a bear or a troll. What angered her was the hunt purposely slaughtered helpless dragonlings to prevent them from reaching adulthood. In her mind, that would be like the dragons eating the villagers’ babies for no other reason than to keep them from growing up.
Jonas and his men weren’t protecting the village, they were committing brazen acts of mass murder. The organized obliteration of a species.
Reecah wasn’t clear on what her family’s heritage had to do with her, but according to Auntie Grim, her distant relatives were somehow connected with the dragon community. It was high time she put aside her self-doubt and followed her calling. Ever since she was a young girl, she’d been fascinated with the idea of soaring through the skies. Where better to chase that dream than amongst those capable of flight?
It was time to stop dreaming and start acting. She smiled. If she thought too hard on what she was about to do, she’d likely talk herself out of it.
Stowing her gear, she grabbed her quarterstaff, ensured her sword was properly seated in its scabbard, and set forth on a journey she wasn’t sure she would survive. It was time to locate the Dragon Temple and lay claim to her ancestry.
Raver rode the wind currents over the divide separating the southern mountains from their counterparts in the north—his diamond-shaped tail sticking out behind him like a flattened arrowhead.
Dragonfang Pass curved and twisted eastward, the opposing sides never coming together nor spreading too far apart—as if cloven by a gargantuan harrow, its operator staggering left and right as they went.
Reecah made her way to the trail the hunt followed, the terrain easier to navigate. She didn’t want to test her luck finding another path as she had never scouted the pass before. She didn’t know what she would do if she caught up to Jonas’ men but she envisioned a violent outcome.
She cursed herself over and over for leaving her bow at home. She needed to stop the hunt without engaging them one-on-one. A task that seemed impossible without the ranged weapon.
Raver’s sporadic calls from farther down the canyon informed her he’d located Jonas’ men, but the bird was nowhere to be seen. The hunt was still far ahead.
On her left, it was a long way down to the valley floor. The cliffs on the far side appeared impassable. She wished Auntie Grim had been more specific about the location of the Dragon Temple. For all she knew, it could be hidden in any one of the many mountain crags—perhaps only accessible through a warren. Her previous bluster waned. It would be a miracle if she ever found it.
As the morning wore on, she began doubting herself about her role in stopping the hunt. She would be wise to avoid a confrontation she couldn’t win.
Rounding a bend, she came across a sight that made her sad. It was nothing more than a trampled section of brush and blood stains, but looking up she spied the hole the dragonling had been pulled from. The absence of the victim meant another mother had discovered her slain baby.
She crouched low, searching the sky—a cold feeling flushing her body. It would be just her luck for the mother dragon to be hanging around. Her fear got the better of her. She ran up the trail, putting the gory scene behind her.
Rounding a sharp bend to the right, she stopped and stared. Lying across her path lay the body of a deep purple dragon, smaller than the one slaughtered last night—barely half her size.
She approached the dragonling, its mutilated forehead nothing but a blur through her welling tears. Her inner senses screamed at her to run. The mother might return while she stood out in the open.
Raver cawed from a great distance. She studied the valley, searching the skies for danger.
A feeble whimper at her feet made her jump with fright. The baby was alive!
It lay unmoving on the ground, blood seeping from the ragged gashes where its horns had been ripped from its head. More blood pooled on the ground from two deep cuts on either side of its neck. The evident blood loss was staggering, and yet, the baby dragon’s side rose and fell with shallow breaths.
Reecah dropped to her knees, stroking its nose. “You poor thing. Look what they’ve done to you.”
The baby’s lavender eyes flicked open, exquisite pain reflected in them, beseeching her for help.
“I don’t know what to do,” she cried, her hands trembling. It would be humane to put it out of its misery, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. All she could do was be there to comfort it as it died and hope for her own sake that its mother didn’t happen by.
The dragonling’s leathery skin and soft scales were cold to her touch. She shrugged out of her rucksack and draped her blanket over the dragon to give it a bit of warmth. Lying down beside the dying creature, she draped her arm over it, careful not to touch its grievous wounds.
Dragon blood soaked into her blanket, but she didn’t care. She refused to let the baby die cold and alone.
Time stood still. The dragon wheezed, its breath interrupted by raspy gurgling as it slowly drowned in its own blood.
It shuddered and moaned, trying to lift its head to see her. When their eyes met, she was positive its great mouth curled up in a tiny smile. She hugged it closer.
“You poor, little thing. You never got a chance to experience life.” She couldn’t say anymore, her words choked by emotion.
“Well look who it is.”
The male voice made her heart leap.
Jonas Junior stepped out from behind a rockfall with Jaxon at his side. “You were right for a change, Jaxon. Someone is following us.”
“Reeky Reecah!” Jaxon said with a smirk. “I never thought I’d see you out here.” His gaze took in the dragon beneath the blanket. “What are you doing?”
Reecah grabbed her quarterstaff from the ground behind her and rose to her feet, contemplating whether to draw her sword. She wasn’t afraid of Jaxon, but Junior’s size gave her pause. He had grown bigger than his father.
Junior scanned her from head to foot, a strange look in his eyes. He scowled at Jaxon. “That’s no way to speak to a woman.”
Jaxon laughed, slapping his quarterstaff against a tree trunk. “Reeky ain’t no woman. She’s nothing but a slimy brat who’s about to get a what for.”
Junior grabbed Jaxon by the bicep, yanking him off stride. “Back off!”
Jaxon shrugged out of Junior’s grip with a contemptuous glare. “Father said to deal with our follower. We can’t let her be just because you’re sweet on her. That’s Reeky for goodness sake. You’re di
sgusting, brother.”
Junior glowered at Jaxon but directed his words at Reecah, his voice strangely higher pitched. “What are you doing way out here, Miss Draakvriend? Dragonfang Pass ain’t no place for a lady.”
Reecah bristled. “I’m no lady.”
“You can say that again,” Jaxon snorted but his brother’s dark look kept him from saying more.
“My apologies, Miss Draakvriend,” Junior said with a mollifying tone. “Please excuse my brother. He can be a real boor. We’re just surprised to see you this far away from your home. You need to be careful out here. We believe someone is following us. Have you seen anyone?”
Jaxon cast Junior an odd look.
The baby dragon at her feet coughed up a wad of blood.
Reecah crouched to stroke its nose. “Shh, shh, shh.” She glared at the brothers. “Look at this poor thing. Look what you’ve done. You should be ashamed.”
Junior’s face creased with confusion, but it was Jaxon who spoke.
“Ashamed? Of what? Killing a monster? You really are a crazy witch. We’re risking our lives to save the village.”
Reecah straightened and strode toward the brothers, her hand pointing at the baby dragon. “Saving the village from what? A baby that can’t defend itself? Is that how you justify butchering an innocent life? Look how it suffers.”
Jaxon’s brows lifted. “It’s still alive?”
He unsheathed his sword but Reecah stepped in front of him.
“Get out of my way or I’ll slap you down,” Jaxon snarled.
Reecah threw her quarterstaff to the ground and pulled her own sword free. “Over my dead body.”
A wicked grin twisted Jaxon’s complexion. “Even better.”
“Enough!” Junior unsheathed his sword, swatting Jaxon’s sword tip to the ground.
Reecah's Flight Page 11
