The sound was astonishingly loud, the metal ringing like a bell, and then the princex swayed on their feet and began to crumple to the ground. Omar, clearly expecting that reaction, caught them easily and laid them gently on the packed snow.
“Omar!” Gerald said, caught between shock and admiration.
Omar grinned. “They’re fine. I just knocked them out, is all.”
“They’re fine!” he added, louder, to the figure Gerald had only now noticed was hanging out the tower window with a horrified expression on his face. “It’s okay!”
“I refuse this rescue attempt!” Prince Thierry yelled back.
“This isn’t a rescue attempt!” Gerald shouted. “Not of you, anyway,” he muttered under his breath, and then he threw his hands up in disgust as Thierry kept yelling down at them. “I’m not having this conversation again,” he told Omar. “Talk to him if you want. I’m getting that collar off.”
He approached the amarok confidently, diagram, wax stick, and chisel all in hand, but he stopped a sensible distance away to make his case. Just in case. As soon as he opened his mouth, however, the amarok rolled its amber eyes expressively and flopped on the ground, wagging its tail like a puppy.
“I guess you don’t need any convincing!” Gerald said, smothering a laugh. “Excellent.” He knelt next to the wolf and laid his knapsack down, spreading the diagram out on top of it in order to keep it out of the snow. It was well packed down around the tower, enough that they weren’t floundering through drifts, but he didn’t want to risk getting the parchment wet and having the ink run. He quickly got to work making the preliminary marks in wax, while keeping half an ear on Omar and Thierry’s conversation. Not that it can really get out of hand, with Thierry stuck in the tower.
By the time Gerald had made and checked all the preliminary marks, Thierry had gone quiet, apparently convinced Gerald and Omar weren’t attempting to keep him from Taylor. Gerald shot a guilty look at the princex and saw they were beginning to stir.
“Dragon?” Gerald said.
“Yes?” it asked cheerfully. It had been sitting back and watching Gerald and Omar with evident amusement ever since Omar had knocked out the princex.
“Keep them from stabbing me when they wake up, okay?” Gerald said, nodding toward Taylor. “I’m ready to start carving and I don’t want to be distracted.”
“No problem,” the dragon said. It moved closer, reached out, and delicately draped a forearm across Taylor’s armored chest, holding them down with no effort on the dragon’s part. “They won’t be getting up anytime soon,” it promised with a toothy grin.
“As long as they can breathe, that’s fine,” Gerald murmured and then he turned back to the amarok. “It won’t be long now,” he promised, and then he raised his chisel and got to work.
Taylor woke up about halfway through and the mountain started ringing with shouts and echoes as Taylor, Thierry, and Omar all started yelling questions, threats, and reassurances at each other and at Gerald. Gerald forced himself to tune out the noise and focus on the task at hand. He had had to take his gloves off for the delicate work of altering the symbols, and his fingers were starting to turn white and numb. They can yell as much as they want. They’re not going to interrupt me. And I’m going to finish this before I get frostbite!
Finally, finally, the noise levels dropped—or he got better at ignoring them—and the symbols changed one by one until he made the last change and the collar abruptly began to rust.
“There we go!” Gerald said triumphantly and with a sharp rap that reminded him of how Omar had dispatched Taylor, he shattered the now-fragile collar.
The amarok lunged at Gerald and the prince had barely enough time to register the movement and tense with sudden fear before the wolf bowled him over. Gerald waited to feel teeth or claws rip through his clothes and into his flesh, but all he felt was the rough sandpaper of the amarok’s tongue as it frantically washed his face.
“All right, all right!” Gerald said, laughing. “Good wolf. You’re all right now. Okay! Okay, that’s enough, you’re going to wash my skin right off.”
The amarok eased off but kept its giant front paws on Gerald’s shoulders, holding him down against the snow.
“Not so fun now, is it?” Taylor groused. “Call off your dragon, would you?”
“It’s not my dragon,” Gerald said. “But—I think you can let them up now, Dragon. And I’d like to get up, too,” he added to the wolf. “The snow’s a bit cold for me.” The amarok let him up and he brushed the snow off his back, but it had already soaked through his cloak and the damp chill made him shiver.
The dragon sighed theatrically and muttered something about humans and manners, but it let the princex up in the end. They immediately ran to the tower and Gerald watched, bemused, as they produced a grappling hook. Thierry prudently disappeared from the window and Taylor sent the hook flying toward the sill. After three attempts, it caught, and the princex scrambled up the wall with all the agility one would expect from a squirrel.
“Impressive,” Omar said with admiration. “Well, they seem to be all right up there. How’s the wolf?”
Gerald had begun examining its wounds after it let him up. “It’s all right. You’ll be all right,” he said directly to it. “I bet it hurts, though. I have some medical supplies. One or two of those wounds could probably do with stitches, if you’d like?”
But the amarok shook its head and began to yip.
“Getting the collar off is enough,” the dragon interpreted. “It—she—says amaroks are hard to kill. She’s going to go back to her pack, and they will tend to her there.”
The wolf darted in to lick Gerald’s face once more, and then she took off at a deceptively fast lope, disappearing into the snow within minutes.
Gerald watched her go with an odd feeling of disappointment. The serpent guardian had disappeared even more quickly and with even less thanks, but that hadn’t bothered him at all. I guess that was the sort of behavior I expected from a reptile. Mammals, though, you expect a little more from…and she reminded me of the castle dogs, I think that’s the real problem. Gerald wondered how all his four-legged friends were getting along back home without him.
Omar snapped him out of his reverie. “I guess we’re all done here,” he said, half a question in his voice.
“I guess so,” Gerald agreed.
“Then can we go somewhere warmer now?” he asked plaintively.
“We better,” Gerald said. He was shivering in his wet clothes and even after he put his gloves back on, his fingers remained stiff and numb.
Omar helped him gather up his supplies—he saw with relief that the spell diagram had remained safely out of the snow despite the amarok’s enthusiastic response to getting her collar off—and then gave him a boost to get back up on the dragon.
“Oh—” Gerald said as the dragon prepared to take off. “Wait—we better warn them not to say anything about us.”
Omar smirked. “Trust me, they’re not thinking about anything other than each other right now. And Taylor isn’t going to want to let any hint slip that they didn’t defeat the guardian and rescue Thierry in typical heroic fashion. I think we’re safe to go.”
Gerald hesitated, but the dragon agreed with Omar. “Neither of them is going to talk,” it said. “And if we linger in this cold, you are going to catch your death.”
Gerald sighed and let himself be overruled. “Let’s go, then,” he said, closing his eyes and bracing for takeoff. It wasn’t nearly as violent this time, though, as the dragon chose to simply take a running leap off the side of the mountain, snap its wings open, and glide away on an updraft, a procedure that kept them much more horizontal than usual.
But the modified takeoff didn’t affect the wind whipped up by the dragon’s flight. The cold air felt even colder as it rushed over Gerald’s wet clothes and he was soon shivering violently.
“Take your cloak off,” Omar said. “It’s soaked, it’s only making you
colder—here, take mine, it’s dry.”
“Then you’ll be cold,” Gerald protested through chattering teeth. “Better only one of us is.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Omar said. “Better for both of us to be slightly chilly than for me to be warm and you to freeze and make yourself sick.” He hesitated, then added, “After you lectured me about deliberately making myself ill, I wouldn’t think you would be keen to do the same thing.”
“It’s not the same,” Gerald said, but he started making an effort to get the wet cloak off. He still made a token noise of protest when Omar shed his own cloak and bundled it around Gerald, but he couldn’t put any force into it; he was shivering too much and the dry cloak was more than welcome.
“Dragon?” Omar called. “How far are we flying?”
“Far enough to get out of the mountains,” the dragon called back. “I hope. There’s a storm coming.”
“Of course there is,” Omar muttered, but they could both see the dark clouds boiling up from the south.
“Th-there’s a storm, you sh-should k-keep your cloak,” Gerald said slowly, reluctantly, slurring the words through numb lips and chattering teeth.
“We’ll share, all right? You’re going to freeze.” Omar didn’t wait for a response but simply shifted closer to Gerald as he spoke and wrapped both of them up in his cloak. “Ras, but you’re cold!” he cursed.
Gerald flinched a little at the contact, but Omar wrapped an arm around Gerald when he started to pull away. “You’re going to freeze,” he said again.
The clouds were getting blacker and closer and then they opened up and began to dump thick, wet flakes of snow on the trio. The flakes melted in little puffs of steam where they fell on the dragon’s hide, but the ones that landed on the princes stuck.
Omar’s cloak was beginning to give off the distinctive odor of wet wool, and he was beginning to shiver. Gerald hadn’t ever stopped.
“This is no good,” Omar said, rubbing his hands together to warm them. “Dragon, we might need to stop sooner rather than later! We need better shelter.”
“I have to find some first,” the dragon said. Between the snow and the darkness caused by the heavy clouds, there was no visibility to speak of. The dragon began breathing fire periodically, although Gerald wasn’t sure if it was to provide light or to melt a path through the swirling snow.
“C-c-canvas,” Gerald stuttered through his chattering teeth. “W-w-waterproof.”
“I’ll get it,” Omar said. “Hold the cloak—hold it tight, don’t let the wind take it! Dragon, I have to stand up, warn me if you’re going to make any sudden moves.” He loosened the harness and carefully rose into a crouch so he could start to detach the canvas sunshade from its wooden frame.
It felt like hours before Omar crouched back down next to him with the canvas rolled up and tucked under his arm. The cloak, which Gerald was still clinging to fiercely, was completely soaked through, the wool heavy and several shades darker.
It was a fight against the wind and their own numb fingers, but they somehow managed to get the canvas sheet wrapped over and around themselves until they were huddled together in a cocoon, completely surrounded and sheltered by the fabric.
The waterproofing not only kept the snow off but also stopped the wind. It was dark and damp in the cocoon, but the temperature in their canvas cave was already beginning to climb. The simple absence of the wind was such a blessing that Gerald sighed with relief, even though he was still shivering and numb.
“The desert’s looking really good right around now,” Omar muttered when he had thawed enough to talk, and Gerald laughed weakly.
“The Burning Swamp is looking really good right around now!” he replied.
They huddled together under the canvas, sharing body heat and slowly defrosting and even beginning to relax until the dragon abruptly said, “Uh-oh.”
“What do you mean, ‘uh-oh’?” Omar yelled.
“I’m landing!” the dragon called back, and Gerald’s stomach lurched up into his throat as they went plummeting to the ground. It was more of a controlled fall than the usual graceful descent, and the dragon landed hard enough that only the harnesses kept Gerald and Omar from bouncing right off.
“Ooph,” Omar grunted as the landing jolted all the air out of his lungs.
“What happened?” Gerald called, blinking and squinting into the snow. The rough landing had yanked the canvas out of his grip, and they were once again exposed to the storm.
“The wind… I had to slow down too much because of the visibility and that meant I couldn’t fight the wind. I nearly flew right into the cliff face. We’re staying here until the storm passes.”
“Where is here?” Omar asked, rubbing his sternum and wincing.
“Well, I don’t know exactly,” the dragon admitted. “But look, I found a cave,” it added, sounding pleased with itself. “Get inside, out of the wind.”
“Is there anything in there that’s going to eat us?” Omar asked doubtfully, but even as he asked he was untying himself and Gerald and starting to climb down.
“Of course not,” the dragon said indignantly, but it snaked its head into the gaping cavern to check nonetheless. Omar shook his head and helped Gerald slide down the dragon’s side. The snow was piled up past their knees and still falling heavily.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” Omar said. “It’s too cold out here. We have to go inside regardless.”
The dragon pulled its head back and said, “It’s empty, anyway. Go on in. I can’t fit, but I can block up the entrance. I’ll keep the heat in and the snow out. Go on, hurry up,” it said, nudging them forward. “You humans were not designed for these conditions.”
They stumbled through the snow and across the threshold, moving more easily once they got into the cave mouth. Some snow had blown in and formed drifts around the entrance, but after a few yards, it became rough stone.
As soon as they were out of the way, the dragon shifted its bulk into the opening, cramming as much of itself as it could into the cave mouth. That blocked the wind and snow quite nicely but also plunged the cave into complete darkness.
“Oh, sorry,” the dragon said and then a glowing blue orb appeared between its claws.
“I didn’t know you could do that!” Gerald said, watching the mage light bob up and down in the air.
“It’s only light, though,” the dragon said. “No heat, I mean. You two better unpack the supplies you need to get warm.”
“A fire would be nice,” Omar said. “I don’t suppose you’re carrying any firewood in that net of yours?”
“I can get some from outside,” the dragon said. “There’s a stand of evergreens out there. It will be wet, though.”
“As long as it burns,” Omar said with a shrug. “We’ll deal with the smoke. We need the heat too much to be picky.”
The princes untied the supply net and dragged the whole thing further into the cave. The dragon’s mage light followed them and took up a spot over their heads, casting a circle of light around them as they unpacked blankets, dry clothes, and journey bread, jerky, and dried fruit for dinner.
Gerald produced a pair of lanterns as well as a pot to boil water in for tea. But when he opened the water barrel, he saw with shock that it had frozen solid.
“Another reason for a fire,” Omar observed when he saw the barrel of ice. “We need to thaw that. And ourselves,” he added. He was shivering again, and Gerald hadn’t ever stopped, although he was huddled up in a blanket now. Omar tossed a shirt at Gerald. “Here. I’ll turn around or even go outside if you want, but you need to put dry clothes on. Wrapping up in a blanket isn’t going to help when you’re wearing wet clothes underneath.”
Gerald blushed, but he didn’t argue. “Just turn around. I’ll turn around too, you should take your own advice. Let me know when you’re dressed again.”
Gerald faced further into the cave and Omar faced out toward the storm, and they both quickly stripped out of their soaked c
lothes and put on dry. The dragon had gone outside to get firewood and the wind whistling through the cavern gave them ample reason to hurry, on top of Gerald’s embarrassment.
“I’m decent,” Omar said, and they both turned to watch the dragon bring in an entire tree, which it had uprooted while they were unpacking.
“Watch your eyes,” it advised, and then it squeezed the tree into fragmented bits of kindling, stripping off the pine needles as it did so. “Look, it’s dry on the inside,” it said when the sawdust settled, looking quite pleased with itself. “Where do you want it?”
They soon had a cheerful fire going, with their clothes and boots laid out to dry and the water barrel dragged over to thaw. “It would be quicker to melt some snow,” the dragon observed, and Gerald started to get up to get some.
“Sit down!” Omar said. “You’re staying by the fire. And put another pair of socks on, will you? I’ll get the snow.” He grabbed the pot and squeezed by the dragon to fill it. The dragon’s body heat had melted the drifts inside the cavern and Omar had to go out into the storm to fill the pot. He got back inside as quickly as he could, brushing snow out of his hair and off his shoulders.
“Brr, it’s really nasty out there.” He hugged himself and shivered violently. “I think your crash landing was a good idea.”
“Hardly a crash landing,” the dragon sniffed. “It was an unexpected but completely controlled stop.”
“Either way.” Omar shrugged playfully and grinned.
He put the pot on the fire and sat next to Gerald, pulling a blanket around his own shoulders and sighing with contentment as he slowly warmed up.
“I take back what I said earlier about wanting to see the snow,” Omar said. “I think I’ve seen as much as I ever want to.”
Gerald smirked but didn’t disagree. “I can’t believe how fast you fly,” he said to the dragon. It had snaked its head in to join them by the fire. “How many kingdoms have we flown over? Five or six? If we were on the ground, even with horses…this would have taken weeks. Months.”
Royal Rescue Page 13
