Slay and Rescue

by John Moore

  “Shush,” said Charming. Reflexively, he started to give her the smile. Then he caught himself, conjuring up a quick mental image of what the girl was seeing. Three total strangers suddenly appearing, their clothes torn and disheveled, and their faces grimy with soot. No wonder the babe was freaking out. The Prince stood up, dusted off his hands and said briskly, “There’s a fire, ma’am. King’s orders; we have to evacuate. Don’t worry; everything is under control.” He strode forward, took her hand authoritatively and pulled her out of bed.

  “Fire?” She was looking at the smoke seeping under the door.

  “Don’t worry about that smoke, all being taken care of,” said Charming, dragging her over to the window. “Here you go, just step up onto the sill here.”

  “Did it start in the kitchen? We can move the reception out to the garden… YAAAAAaaaaaaahhhhhh…” There was a muffled splash as she hit the water.

  “Great, a screamer. You probably like that kind, too,” said Ann.

  “Don’t get catty. Come on; you’re next. Unless you’d like to try your luck with the stairs.” Ann came forward and he hoisted her on to the window sill.

  “You don’t have to push me. I can jump by myself.” She looked down at the sparkling water of the moat, fifty feet below, and Aurora splashing toward the banks. “On second thought, maybe you’d better push me.” The Prince obliged and she dropped into the water, feet first. Wendell went next, executing a half twist on the way down. He surfaced and waved upward.

  “Show-off,” called Charming. He jumped after them and hit the water hard, the impact and shock of the cold water knocking the wind out of him. “Ooof.” He kicked his way to the surface, shook the water out of his eyes, and swam to shore. Wendell and Ann were pulling Aurora out of the water. Aurora was crying frantically.

  “There’s a fire! The castle’s on fire! My Prince is in there! My Papa’s in there! Oh, why isn’t anyone doing something?”

  “Time to clear out of here,” the Prince told Wendell and Ann. They nodded. He picked up Aurora and began trotting toward the ice bridge. “Sorry, Princess, but you’re going to have to trust us for a while.”

  Aurora twisted in his arms. “Let me go! We’ve got to help them!”

  “We’ll get help from the village,” the Prince said. “For now, you’re coming with us.”

  Aurora drew back her arm, closed one hand into a small fist, and punched Charming in the nose.

  “Ow.” The blow didn’t hurt the Prince so much as surprise him, and Aurora took advantage of this to squirm out of his grip. Evading his reach, she ran back towards the drawbridge, her white dress trailing behind her, shouting, “Help, fire! Help, fire!” Charming ran after her. Then the dragon came out of the castle.

  Aurora suddenly reversed direction and passed Charming like a comet in a lace dress. “Aaiiiyyeee!” She caught up with and passed Ann and Wendell, who were headed toward the ice bridge at speed. Charming took up the rear, followed by the dragon. The hilt of Charming’s sword still protruded from its head and blood was flowing freely down its face. It was staggering a bit, but there was still plenty of fight and meanness left in it.

  Aurora reached the ice bridge and started up like a spawning salmon. The ice was melting rapidly by this time and the steps were wet and slick. They had also become rounded and irregular. She got about fifteen feet before her feet slipped from under her and she slid back down, plowing into Ann, who had arrived at the bottom. They eventually formed a tight little group, with Ann and Aurora frantically scrambling up the slippery stairs in front, while Wendell and Charming, whose hobnailed boots afforded a better purchase, pushed up from the bottom. Thus they had progressed some thirty steps up the bridge when the dragon arrived.

  Charming hadn’t really believed the animal would try to follow them up the ice bridge. He had underestimated his foe. Fortunately the dragon started out by sending a prolonged torrent of flame in their direction. They were quite out of range, but the heat did have the effect of obliterating the lower rungs of stairs. The dragon made several false starts and slid back down. Charming and company put another ten feet of distance between them. Then, slowly and deliberately, the beast dug its claws into the ice. The two-inch hooks penetrated the bridge more surely than a mountaineer’s ax. Slowly, a foot at a time, the animal began to drag itself up the frozen path.

  Charming looked down and saw the beast approaching. He gave the girls an extra shove. “We’ve got company. Let’s move it.” Whereupon he promptly lost his footing and slipped down five steps. He scrambled back up. “I’m okay. Let’s go.”

  They began a desperate race. Melted water from the upper steps ran past their feet. When they stumbled, as happened frequently, their clothing soaked through with icy run-off. The humans made slow but steady progress and the dragon did the same. They maintained their lead for a while, sometimes losing ground, sometimes gaining it, but the girls began to tire. The dragon seemed to have inexhaustible supplies of energy. The humans had numb feet. Little by little the beast closed the gap. They reached the top of the arch. Charming stopped the group and looked back. The dragon was perhaps forty feet away. It glared at him with its one good eye and growled low and menacingly. Charming edged to the front of the line. “Okay, we’re on the down side. Once that dragon tops the rise, all he has to do is let go to fall right on top of us. We’ve got to be off this iceberg before he reaches the top.”

  “We’re moving as fast as we can,” said Ann. Aurora said nothing. She just looked at the approaching dragon and shuddered.

  “Right,” said Charming. “So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to sit down like we’re on a toboggan and slide down the ice ramp. It will be bumpy, but I figure our bottoms will be so numb we’ll hardly feel it.”

  “It’s a steep drop,” said Ann. “We’ll be moving pretty fast.”

  “I’ll go in front and try to break our fall. Wendell, you get behind me.” Ann sat down behind Wendell and wrapped her legs around his waist. Aurora took her gaze from the dragon, now perhaps twenty steps down, and silently took up the rear. “Ready. Let’s go.”

  Ann would long remember this ride as one of the more unpleasant experiences of her young life. They started out fast and rapidly picked up speed. Charming and Wendell tried to limit the speed of their descent by pressing their boots against the side of the bridge but this had little effect. Ice is a hard substance with no ability to cushion a fall whatsoever; each step was a bone-jarring thump that Ann could feel all the way up her spine. She clenched her teeth, afraid that she would accidentally bite off her tongue from the impact. The bumps came faster and faster, but no less jarring. Soon the surface of the ice was whizzing by in a white blur. Droplets of cold water flew up and stung her face. She held Wendell’s shoulders in a death grip and felt Aurora’s nails digging into her own skin. Ahead, she saw the edge of the thorn bushes and the patiently waiting figure of Mandelbaum looming rapidly larger. The ground rushed up at them. As the wind rushed past her ears, she thought she heard Wendell say something like, “Wow, this is great!” and then they hit.

  Charming took the brunt of the impact, the other three coming down pretty much on top of him. Fortunate he was, indeed, that the ground, churned up at that point by the activities of men and horses and soaked with ice melt, was mostly mud. It did a lot to cushion his fall. So when the other rolled off he was able to lay there, winded and gasping and heavily bruised, but with no broken bones. Mandelbaum, perplexed and concerned, helped drag him from the mud and felt all over for fractures. “What was that crazy stunt for?”

  Charming tried to speak but couldn’t find his breath. He pointed his arm up the ice bridge. The move sent arrows of pain into his shoulder. Mandelbaum, instead of looking in the direction he was pointing, began to examine his hand for injuries.

  “Dragon,” said Wendell helpfully, starting to recover. Charming nodded vigorously.

  “Ah,” said Mandelbaum.

  He looked to the top of the ice bridge. The
dragon was standing at the peak, four sets of claws dug into the ice, lips pulled back from snarling teeth. It cast its head about, looked straight at them, opened its mouth wide, and let out an earth-shaking roar that reverberated through the woods. Ann and Aurora, who had been sitting on the muddy ground nursing their bruises, staggered to their feet and made a half-hearted run for the shelter of the trees. The dragon lowered its head and started its slide down the ice bridge.

  Calmly, Mandelbaum took the pipe from his mouth and tapped the stem against the bridge.

  Instantly it disintegrated into a fine spray of water droplets.

  The dragon showed not the least surprise as its foothold melted away beneath its feet. Aggressive to the last, it launched itself toward its intended victims. Then, feet flailing wildly, it descended into the thicket with a roar and a crash. All was silent.

  Charming staggered to his feet. Ann came over and put her arm around his waist. “Well, that takes care of him.”

  She was interrupted by a roar from inside the thorn hedge. Charming sighed and disentangled her arm. “That has got to be the toughest dragon I’ve ever faced.” He limped over to one of the duffel bags and took out some thick wooden poles. These turned out to be pieces of an oak lance, whose wooden sections fitted into hammered metal ferrules.

  Wendell nodded. “I’ll get your horse.”

  Ann said, “Do you really think he can get out of the thorns?”

  “He got in, didn’t he? I guess it depends on how smashed up he is.”

  They could hear the dragon thrashing about inside the hedge, and occasionally puffs of smoke would drift over from where he set the thorns on fire. The thrashing and the roars grew quickly fainter, however, and by the time Wendell returned with a horse, the forest was silent.

  Charming picked a dry grassy spot and sat back down. “Maybe that’s the end of him. I hope so. I really hate dragons. That’s the worst part of this job.”

  “I’m hungry,” said Wendell. “I’m really starved.”

  “Ah, excuse me,” said Mandelbaum. “I think someone should be paying attention to the newest member of our little group. That, I take it, is the long-lost Princess Aurora?”

  Charming, Ann, and Wendell turned and looked. Aurora was standing some little distance away, leaning against a tree, looking very lost and forlorn. She was holding her stomach.

  “Is she okay?” asked Wendell.

  As they watched, she leaned over and threw up violently.

  “I guess not,” said Charming. “Maybe it’s just nerves. Poor kid. She’s been through one hell of a shock.”

  “She’s pregnant,” said Ann.

  THE PRINCESS AURORA WAS HAVING a really bad week.

  She was descending the stairs when she was overcome by a spell of intense dizziness. “Not to worry,” she told herself. “You’re just overly excited. It is, after all, your wedding day.” She told her maid to go on downstairs (didn’t the girl look a little unwell, too, come to think of it?) and Aurora staggered back up to her alcove to lay down on the bed. “I’ll just close my eyes for a minute and the feeling will pass.” And it did pass. She had a pleasant daydream about her wedding night (in which she let her new husband do very naughty things to her) and was just finishing him off with a really heart-and-soul kiss, when she awoke to find herself straddling a strange boy who looked like a chimney sweep. (A cute chimney sweep, she later decided.) What happened after that, the fire and the dragon, she didn’t even want to think about anymore. She was doing her best to block out the memory right now. Several times in the last few days she had nearly convinced herself that she was still having a bad dream. There were certain things she couldn’t block out, though, certain unpleasant truths that she had been stubbornly pushing to the back recesses of her brain until she felt better equipped to deal with them.

  And the time to deal with them was now. She had been riding for four days and she supposed she had better straighten things out in her mind before they got to wherever they were going. She looked at her companions. The old wizard and the young boy rode in front, the young boy asking constantly about spells and magicks, about warlocks and werewolves. The old wizard would sometimes answer at length and with amusement, but often he would simply suck on his pipe and stare reflectively into space, letting the horse follow the trail while he tuned out the world and thought. Prince Charming rode behind him, but periodically would drop back to see that Aurora was getting along okay. The Prince was dressed in all new clothes now, silks and such, and with his face washed and his hair brushed, he looked very handsome indeed.

  He was quite friendly and personable and undoubtedly very brave. Under better circumstances, Aurora would have fallen for him in an instant. The circumstances were not better, however, and then there was the question of the girl. At first Aurora had thought she was a maid, then had learned that she wasn’t. Aurora still wasn’t quite sure who she was, except that she was the most beautiful girl Aurora had ever seen, with lustrous black hair, deep dark eyes, and flawless skin. Ann was very kind to Aurora, too, helping her with her horse and inquiring solicitously after her welfare. But she stuck to the Prince like glue, Aurora noticed, and whenever he dropped back to chat with her, Ann would move in and casually include herself in the conversation. Smooth, very smooth, although with looks like that she surely didn’t have to worry much about competition. “Some other time,” thought Aurora, “I would have given her some competition.”

  All right, enough of that. Time to face facts. Time to admit the brutal truth. Time to forget the past, accept the present, and plan for the future.

  Time to have a good long cry.

  No, thought Aurora, she’d done that already.

  Maybe she was still dreaming.

  She got a grip on herself. Okay, so what were the facts? Her father was dead. Her fiance was dead. Everybody she knew was dead. Her home was destroyed. Her kingdom was annexed. Her clothes were burned up. Her shoes were out of fashion. She was twenty years behind the times.

  And she was pregnant. Can’t forget that.

  Try to look on the bright side.

  She tried not to think of Garrison. He was dead after all. Had been dead for twenty years. Devoured by the dragon, his bones baked in the fire, while little Garrison slept inside her.

  It wasn’t his fault, really. Wait a minute, of course it was. It had to be somebody’s fault and it certainly wasn’t hers. True, she had contrived to meet him in the garden, but that was simply out of curiosity to see what he looked like. Both their parents had seen no reason why the bride and groom should meet before the wedding day. Bad for discipline. All she had known was that he was the prince of something (of course) and that he had a lot of land (of course) and they said he was good looking, too. She had declined to take her father’s word for that.

  And then behind the rose bushes, he had taken her in his arms and borne her gently to the ground. She had struggled — hadn’t she struggled? — yes, of course she had, she must have — she had struggled but to no avail. She wanted to cry out but he just kept kissing her and kissing her, and really, she wished he would stop; she hadn’t actually said no but everyone knew that nice girls like her didn’t do that sort of thing. It was all his fault for being so gentle. He deserved to die. Served him right for what he did to her.

  She would name the baby after him.

  “Try and look on the bright side,” said Ann, bringing her horse up beside her. Aurora was a little surprised. It was the first time Ann had spoken to her without the Prince being there.

  “Oh, yes. Just which bright side is that? There’s been so much wonderful news flying at me from all directions that I hardly know what piece of good fortune to congratulate myself on next.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound platitudinous. But you’re alive, aren’t you? You had quite a bit of luck being sealed up in that tower when the spell took hold, but it couldn’t have lasted forever. Sooner or later you’d have been gnawed on by rats or something.”

  �
�How cheerful you are. I can tell you’re just the life of the party everywhere you go.”

  “Listen, before we reach the castle we’ll stop in the city and buy some new clothes. That will make you feel better. It always makes me feel better.”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  “Actually, neither do I. Well, we can window shop. Oh dear, I’m going to have to show up at the castle Illyria dressed like this. I was hoping to make a better first impression.”

  “What? You’ve never been there?”

  “Oh, no. The Prince and I traveled straight from my castle to yours. We were on a quest for a fertility grail. My stepmother had traced an ancient one to the site of your castle.”

  “Fertility grail!” Aurora laughed bitterly. “That would explain a lot, all right. We’re a fertile bunch. The girls in my kingdom can hardly pop their cherries without getting knocked up.”

  “Um,” said Ann uncomfortably. She was not used to this kind of frank talk. “Well…”

  “You were wasting your time, though. I never heard any mention of a grail. Daddy wasn’t really into cults and things, or even collecting antiques.”

  “Well, my stepmother has been wrong before. When it comes to the black arts, her reach very often exceeds her grasp.”

  “Your stepmother, huh? Your real mother is dead?”

  “She died in childbirth. My father died a few years ago.”

  “My mother died in childbirth also.”

  “So did Prince Charming’s. He’s kind of touchy about it.”

  “Everybody’s mother is dead. Is childbirth as debilitating as all that?”

  “Mandelbaum says it’s because royal families can afford personal physicians and the very best medical care. Consequently, they die like flies.”

  “Ah. A cynical man.”

  “I don’t think so. I think he was just speaking his mind.”

  For a while they rode on in silence. It was an uncomfortable situation for Ann. Her life had included few girls her own age and none of her own social status. Aurora was the first girl she’d ever met that she could speak with as an equal. Although her mind was surely burdened with troublesome thoughts and she had a sardonic manner of speaking, there was no doubt she was intelligent and well bred. And yet, Aurora was very wicked, the kind of girl Ann had been told she should never associate with. Sometime in the past, she had actually let a boy do things to her. To her body! The very idea was repellent to Ann. Also fascinating.