If not for my hat and gunslinger’s reflexes, we might not have known the attack was coming before it was too late.
While the dragon undulating through the air like a nightmarish snake swimming through water might want an aerial duel, I wanted nothing of the sort.
Smoky was fast, maneuverable, and deadly, but I did not want to put him at risk through his desire to protect me.
We could fight the dragon.
But I would prefer to do it on better terms.
Smoky executed a beautiful dive, swooping immediately below the dragon, taking us toward the fractured canyonlands riddling the landscape like so many intertwined wrinkles on Ilaeria’s worn, pitted face.
As we darted beneath it, the dragon unleashed a furious gout of roiling hellfire. Raising my arm protectively, I called forth a translucent dome of force just before the world disappeared in a churning wall of red, yellow, orange, purple, and blue flames.
Leaving the hellish flames behind, I countered with a series of rapid shots from my gun to the beast’s exposed underbelly, lashing out with kinetic balls of force through the twin barrels of my pistols.
The azure bullets of magical force bounced off the dragon’s scales harmlessly in screeching, chaotic, yellow-white sparks.
The wyrm’s magic resistance was too great for simple spells to penetrate, even traveling at the speed of a gunshot.
Our dive took us in the direction opposite to the dragon’s approach, so it had to wheel sinuously in the air, adjusting its trajectory, and expend vital time trying to regain speed to catch us.
Keeping my head turned, eyes focused on our pursuer, I watched the dragon struggle to keep up with us.
For its enormous size, the beast was surprisingly graceful, a thing of awesome beauty and power, but the dragon was no match for Smoky’s speed plummeting toward the earth.
Despite the growing distance between us, I could feel the dragon’s tremendous presence and sense its terrible power.
Even with his guns blazing furiously with his most potent incantations, without time to adequately prepare, Talen would have stood little chance meeting a monstrosity like the crimson fire drake in combat.
His window for success was just too short, the odds too long.
The dragon looked like a living mountain as it fell away behind us—as impervious to assault as the raw rock, if not more so. Wings larger than the sails of the mightiest ships beat like thunder, a volcanic haze issuing from the jagged lines of its pitted maw fanned with each powerful stroke. Baleful eyes full of the fires of hell glared at me, daring existence itself to impede its progress. Long, sinewy arms and legs capable of smashing fortified walls were tucked beneath its sinuous body, ready to snatch prey from the heavens and rend its quarry bodily. The lashing, finned tail roping out into the far distance behind its massive body helped steer the dragon’s movements, a rudder for a tempest ready to touch down and destroy.
I expected a roar, a call to challenge, or another threatening gout of arcane fire, but there was nothing.
After a few heart-pounding minutes mirroring our curves northward through the Wastes, the dragon banked westward with a crackling whip of its tail, leaving us to wonder if we might be better served gathering a legion to try to bring the beast to justice.
The ride back to Sky’s End took far longer than I would have liked.
I had news to share and did not want to hold it close.
Retreat
The world floated by beneath me in a fractured mosaic of barren earth and rock. Raw, worn outcroppings; dusty, pitted earth; and erratic gullies and sheer valleys all formed a desolate tessellation of bleakness.
The land was harsh, empty, and cruel, just like its denizens.
It felt like home.
* * *
Pulling me away from my observations now that we were sure the dragon was not tracking us, Smoky snorted at me derisively.
He was clear.
We should have stayed and fought.
He was probably right.
He thought retreating was not only cowardly but a poor tactical decision.
I didn’t disagree.
But I had also given my word to help Leila with her plan.
I usually did not play nicely with others.
I was trying something different.
Probably to everyone’s detriment.
Doing something different was always an uncertainty.
Smoky also thought we worked best when we acted decisively.
On our own.
I had not said we would take care of this by ourselves, like we normally did.
“This isn’t about just us. We gave Leila our word that we would help her.”
Smoky scoffed again.
Getting rid of the dragon was helping her.
And us.
Anything else put more people at jeopardy.
He was right again.
I was about to argue that fighting the dragon alone was too big a gamble.
But that wasn’t true.
We had faced longer odds.
We should have stayed and fought.
With Smoky’s superior speed, we could have stayed out of the dragon’s breath range and strafed until it fell. The main risks were that none of my shots could get through its defenses or that its own magic would bring us down.
Only the latter was a real danger. If my firepower was ineffectual, then we could have retreated, a bit wiser than before, and come back as we’d originally intended.
So much for trying to work with others.
I worked best with others when I worked by myself.
* * *
With Smoky still expressing his disapproval, I landed on the outskirts of Sky’s End ready to let him burn off some of his frustrations.
Patting Smoky on the back, I suggested, “Why don’t you go get some supper?
“Maybe you could even see fit to bring me a bite…”
As Smoky took off, glaring at me out of the corner of his eye, the fire of his anger shifted to an intensity of purpose and a beleaguered tolerance for my irksome ways.
While he disappeared in the sky, I followed the puffs of dust from my boots blown forward by the wind back to the ranch.
An Unwelcome Return
The mood of the ranch had changed.
The buildings were just as liquidly ethereal as they had been during my last visit. The animals remained contentedly aloof, their worlds undisturbed and unchanged as they gathered and chewed arrayed in the yards and pens around the ranch. The ranch hands bustled industriously, making the many challenges of the day seem to resolve themselves naturally although they involved more hard work than many were willing to freely give.
Although the Sky’s End Ranch remained outwardly at peace, it was the stillness before a coming storm.
Strangers were afoot.
Although I could not yet see them, I could feel their presence.
The very people all the ranch’s defenses were designed to keep out were inside.
The ranch’s sanctity, long-cherished and cultivated, was no more.
I was here to make sure it came back.
* * *
A swarm of sentry drones came to greet me as I reached the ranch proper, almost liquidly invisible, their burnished surfaces reflecting the ground and sky more clearly than any mirror. All their gadgetry was retracted, giving them a polished sleekness made all the more striking compared to the roughness of the grit and sand over which they flew.
No longer so menacing, they looked something like a welcoming pack of extraterrestrial puppies.
I must have somehow gotten into their good graces.
I was a man only an automaton could love.
“Will Leila see me?”
Her voice answered from the nearest drone.
“I already do.”
Hearing her smooth voice issue forth from the equally smooth hull of the nearest drone was oddly natural.
I was spending too much time alone in the dese
rt.
“I have some news if you’ll hear it.”
“As do I, and I will.”
From her tone, the news was not exactly good.
But what news in the Wastes ever was?
* * *
As on our previous visit, Leila was kind enough to show me into a verdant sheltered alcove amidst the unexpected greenery within the ranch’s central building.
“Please sit.”
She gestured to a chair made of driftwood, the wood’s exterior polished and worn smooth by exposure to wind and sun, artfully arranged to accommodate something as unfavorable as my backside.
I stood by the chair.
I had had enough sitting on my flight back.
My recalcitrance did not so much as disturb her for a moment.
She was as accustomed to the desert’s vagaries as its unrelenting harshness.
People were little different.
Her eyes asked me to speak, so I did. “I have met the dragon that slew my brother and that has terrorized your ranch.”
Even saying these words aloud caused me some shame.
I should not have returned without righting the wrong I knew was my charge.
My word be damned.
But a man’s word is often stronger than the stoutest bonds.
And it is just as often the only thing he has to hold on to in times of travail.
Even if it makes little sense.
In her face there was no recrimination or judgment, which, peculiarly, made me feel all the worse, as though I had to punish myself all the more for my failings as a ja’lel.
I shared what I felt, at least in part. “I should have killed it then, or at least tried, but I gave my word that I would take your help as much as it is against my nature.
“I fear this decision may lead to more strife than my trying to slay the monster on my own.”
Her eyes told me everything I needed to know—how wrong I was, how short-sighted my view was, in truth. Strangely, being seen and understood to be wrong made me feel somewhat better.
So much for grown men and their independence.
One look from a woman and I could not only see the error of my ways but feel them made aright, even if they were still wrong.
If ever there was magic, it was this.
“Koren, do you think that if you returned having slain the dragon that the men and women here would rejoice?
“Many would, true, but many more would be angered that they had not had a chance to take part in the retaliation, that they had lost the chance to enact revenge.
“These are my people, good and true.
“What of those I now harbor?
“The men I have summoned to kill the dragon on promises of gold and gems, art and artifact?
“How would they respond?
“Would they thank you and march off willingly, eagerly, to claim their riches?
“Or would they lash out at a missed chance for fame and glory?
“Perhaps they might not wish to leave at all, to stay at their leisure now that the threat is gone and a safe bed and a warm meal are to be had? Perhaps they would think they could take what we hold dear for themselves?
“They might create more strife than the dragon ever has.
“No. These men, many of whom are the very men who ravage the desert and bring ruin upon its people, need this dragon.
“They need this dragon to give them cause…cause to leave and cause to die.”
I could not argue with her, nor did I wish to, for she was in the right. By asking for the help of mercenaries, even if under the guidance of the ranch’s able hands, she had brought a loaded gun into her midst, one that itched to be discharged.
“I will introduce you to them at dinner tonight.
“They will know little of you, merely that you are Talen’s grieving brother, for if they did, they might fear you as much as the dragon and seek to hunt you down as well.”
Her counsel was wise and I added no counter, only a short nod.
“The dragon hunts from the mesas, eyeing its quarry from the heights in preparation for attack.
“If we are to be its equal and slay it on the field or in its lair, we must remain hidden from its fell gaze or set a trap and lie in wait.
“In either case, we will need sure magics, sound men, and more guns than one man can carry.”
Her smile was as bright as the rising sun and just as dangerous. “I think we have more than enough.”
I hoped she was right.
Enough good men had died at the dragon’s claws. I did not wish to be responsible for more, oath or no.
A dragon gone bad was like an army of evil men, its capacity for destruction out of all proportion with its size and scope.
We were to face an ancient wyrm that was born evil, the blazing heart of the terrible Wastes, one made even worse by long centuries of terror and woe, greed and villainy.
Sadly, the dragon was probably no worse than my prospective traveling companions.
Either way, I wasn’t much better.
One in the Crowd
“Do you know the dragon’s name?”
Leila smiled grimly, her lips tight. “This creature is legend, Koren. It has dwelt in the Wastes for centuries, its rampages like a storm.
“When it comes, people—the few who are here—mostly hunker down and hide, waiting for the worst to pass. It comes and goes at will, for none oppose it.
“But, generally, it has kept to the heart of the Wastes, or beyond the Hellfire Range, and has never ventured so close to their outskirts as here at Sky’s End.
“Even so, yes, we have heard tell of its name. Kiersaegian is its name. ‘Fiery Lord’ is what it is called, what that name means.
“We do not name the dragon, for we do not wish to give it any more power.”
I nodded, pursing my lips. “Dragon it is.”
And dragon it would be until I killed it.
I would honor the dragon’s death by using its name.
In vain.
* * *
Leila led me out of the central building and over to the dining hall where the willing had gathered in preparation for the hunt. The large, billowing room felt like a tent—a tent that was inverted, bringing the outside in rather than holding it out. Inside, like the central building, the structure held far more greenery and vegetation than the surrounding desert, as though the tent protected a small, verdant gem within.
Even stranger, the men and women inside looked more out of place than the enclosed mass of vegetative profusion sheltered in the desert.
Which probably made my appearance even stranger.
All eyes turned to us as we entered.
Leila gave a warm, commanding smile and gestured toward me. “Everyone, this is Koren, brother to Talen. He will be joining you on your adventure.”
A few folks nodded or shouted welcome. Some grunted or glared. Others regarded me in stony silence.
That was a warmer welcome than I had expected and probably deserved.
Strategically, as much for my own protection and probably to hide who and what I was, knowing Talen would have revealed little, she added, “He has lost as much as anyone and has much less to gain.”
She made it clear I was not interested in the dragon’s hoard.
Let them think I was beneath their notice.
I would not, however, fall into a similar trap.
What I noticed upon first inspection was not altogether pleasant but was expected.
* * *
There were, insofar as I could tell, three distinct groups that had gathered at Sky’s End to hunt the dragon. All were clearly distinguishable from one another.
The largest group were the ranch hands themselves. The ranch employees were still wearing the dusty, worn clothing from their day out on the range and working about the ranch. Composed of largely of humans, woden, therans, cuythia, and dwarves, this group was relaxed, attentive, and largely unarmed.
The second grou
p, the one I had most expected to see, were the various mercenaries who had crawled belligerently out from every hole, crevice, and snake pit the Wastes harbored in its vast reaches. These bristled with more weapons than porcupines had quills and made the ranch hands who had been sweating in the dirt and dust on the range look as immaculately unsullied as freshly washed babes. They were by far the most distinctive bunch, with almost as many species present as weapons. Among their sullen number could also be found fearsome gornak, demonic lustran, and loathsome furers.
The last group was perhaps the most surprising to see in this largely lawless land. The sheriff of Ghost’s Gulch had come with a handful of lawmen. This spoke to the importance of Sky’s End to the local economy, if not the sheriff’s care for the citizens of Ghost’s Gulch, who might or might not miss his absence. The lawmen were a blend of races like the other groups but, on the whole, they were more uniformly dressed, ordered, and armed than the others.
The mercenaries and officers of the law kept wary, appraising eyes locked on one another. If not for the presence of the ranch hands, autonomous heavy weaponry, and rich potential rewards encouraging cooperation, they would already have had their weapons drawn.
There would still be time for that after the dragon.
Or even before.
Which was exactly why I was here.
There were some things more fearsome than dragons.
* * *
I gazed upon the lawmen appraisingly.
Why had the sheriff come here?
Why would he join this motley crew when, in another time and place, he would be hunting most of them?
Why would he risk the poor people of Ghost’s Gulch to come hunt a dragon?
Did he hope for the village’s betterment or that of his own purse?
Why would he risk his home by leaving it largely unprotected?
How corrupt was he?
I would have to ask Leila.
Spellslinger--Legends of the Wild, Weird West Page 4
