by Guy Estes
"We must go separate ways," she told them.
"But why?" the other blonde asked.
"It will be more difficult for them to capture us if we scatter like sand before the wind. Doubtless they are already in pursuit. I will let them see me and lead them away from you."
"No," the blonde protested. "You have already done so much for us. It is not right that you should now be the one to take the greatest risk of capture. We cannot ask you of more."
"You are not asking. I am giving. Now go. We have no time to dally."
"How can we ever repay you?" one of the other brides asked.
"By making the most of your freedom. Do not dishonor me or yourselves by wasting it."
"I'll certainly not," the blonde said with a gusty sigh. "I'll -"
She still had the smile on her face when she fell from her horse, a feathered notch sprouting from the socket where her right eye had been, the razor tip of the arrow pinning her once-pretty head to the sand.
"Go," Aleena told them, trying to get them past the girl's death. "Even now Akhbeer's soldiers close in on us."
With that, Aleena wheeled her horse about and galloped for the mountains. She could do nothing more for them except divert the pursuing hounds. Aleena didn't bother to watch the direction in which her companions departed. That way if she were recaptured there was no way she could tell her torturers where they'd gone.
She topped a large dune and stopped to look back at the city. Her sharp eyes detected a dark thread that grew with each moment, nearly hidden by the dust enshrouding it. Aleena drew her scimitar and held it aloft so that it caught the sun's rays and revealed her location. She was sure that once they had her scent they would forego capturing the others. After all, in their eyes she was the one responsible for all of this. Aleena didn't know if she should feel relief or terror when she saw the dark line turn towards her, but as soon as she knew they had a fix on her she turned her mount and rode down the opposite side of the dune and resumed her race for the mountains. They poured over the summit she'd occupied a few moments ago, much sooner than she expected.
The mountains loomed before her, the brown, craggy rocks springing right from the sand. For a sickening moment Aleena could find no canyon or ravine to grant her access to the rocks, but then she spotted a narrow opening. She goaded her horse more and they bolted into the small canyon. Her pursuers came within one hundred feet of her when they saw her enter the canyon and came to such a sudden halt that Aleena expected them to fly from their saddles. They would not set one hoof closer. Aleena sat on her horse and regarded them, her eyes narrowed and suspicious. They hurled no spears and loosed no arrows, nor did they even make threats. Some made signs for protection. Other than that, the swarthy little men did nothing but wait for her to come out.
Then let the sun bake them to their saddles. Better to face whatever perils await in this canyon than fall into their hands again.
With that, Aleena turned her horse and trotted down the winding way. After an hour’s progress she’d found no water. The canyon walls were too steep for her horse to negotiate, and she had no intention of leaving him there. Although she desperately wanted to go home, she did not fancy the idea of walking. Besides, the beast had served her well, and Aleena had always loved horses. She could not leave him at the mercy of predators and the angry sun. After another hour, she was dismounted and leading her horse, allowing it some rest. Then she spotted the cave. It opened up on the left wall of the ravine, which was about eighty feet deep here, and it was probably the place most likely to retain some water.
At that moment the ugly brown head of a dragon lunged out of the dark hole in the strata and seized her horse, hauling it back into the cave, the reigns ripped out of her hands with a burning jerk. Aleena heard the pitiful squeals of her loyal mount, the rending of flesh, and the crunch of heavy bones. The entire thing happened so quickly that Aleena briefly wondered if the whole episode had been the product of a dehydrated brain. Then she heard a rumble that sounded horribly like a sigh of satisfaction and realized just how much trouble she was in. She was a fugitive in a foreign land, stranded in the desert with no food, water, or transportation, and trapped in a canyon with an inhospitable dragon, and if she dared to leave that canyon she would be snatched up by the slave traders. Her only weapons were a whip (which was not even capable of dulling the finish of a dragon's scales) and a sword which, while it was of high quality, could not be counted upon to pierce the dragon's adamantine hide. The dragon was in possession of the only water she would find.
CHAPTER 8
“...self-reliance is the best defense against the pressures of the moment.” – Carl von Clausewitz
A direct assault against the dragon would be suicide. Having just eaten, though, Aleena thought it likely the beast would go to sleep. She sat and waited. Before long, she heard the long, slow steady breathing that signified she was right. She slowly made her way down the tunnel, her eyes adjusting from the glare of the desert sun to the shadows of the cave. An avid reader, Aleena’s knowledge of dragons was much. Despite having no outer ear, dragons possessed uncanny hearing. One little rustle or whisper would suffice to draw the worm’s attention. The tunnel ran for perhaps one hunded feet before opening up into the main chamber.
The first thing she saw was the sleeping dragon, curled up on its belly, head resting on its front feet. Its head, not counting the horns, was as long as she was tall. Right next to it was a large pool of water. The basin that held the water had sharp edges, and the water was about two feet below them. The only place where the water was even with the basin’s edge, and the only place she could get to it without risking falling in, was on the other side. Going there would place the dragon between herself and the exit.
Naturally, she thought, restraining the impulse to sigh.
Aleena made her way to the other side of the pool, shooting glances at the sleeping dragon the entire time. It didn’t move, nor did the rhythm of its breathing change. Finally, Aleena was at her destination, feeling as if she’d run ten miles. She took a very slow, long breath, trying to be perfectly silent. Looking at the water, she wondered how she would silently gather some. There would be some dripping or sloshing. For that matter, what was she going to put the water in? She had no flagon or canteen.
Gods damn it!
She was puzzling over this when some part of her mind tapped on her consciousness, trying to tell her something had changed. What was it?
It was the silence. She could no longer hear the dragon breathing.
Oh dear.
Aleena looked at the dragon. It was staring straight down at her, and it did not look amused. She could think of nothing except to perhaps try and reason with it. Dragons were intelligent creatures, after all.
“You dined upon my horse, leaving me on foot in the desert, so I thought it only fair that I should have some of your water. Surely you wouldn’t –“
A stream of roiling fire jetted from the beast’s livid mouth. Aleena scuttled into the tunnel to her left even as the flames enveloped the space she’d occupied a moment before. She found it difficult to breathe, as the dragonfire consumed even the air and caused her skin to flush. She wormed her way through the tiny passage, searching for some way to vanquish this awesome foe.
Aleena ceased her crawling. The dragon’s fire had stopped. Only silence permeated the immense subterranean chamber. Aleena studied her foe through a fissure in the rock. The beast was about sixty feet in length, its steely scales the same rusty brown as the surrounding strata. Its muzzle somewhat resembled a beak in shape, but it was covered with scaly skin. Twin horns jutted from the back of its head. Its glittering yellow eyes were reptilian yet chillingly intelligent. As a general rule, dragons were at least the equal of humans in intellect, and very often their superiors. Aleena could see the wheels of its mind turning behind those eyes. Plotting. Calculating. Inevitably deducing her hidden position, briefly making Aleena wish she’d stayed in Ak
hbeer and taken her chances with the slave traders.
She shook off the thoughts and focused on the task at hand. She would kill the thing and she would return to her home. Nothing in this world was going to stop her. She would not allow it.
The dragon moved. So did Aleena, using the sounds its movement produced to mask her own. She heard a sound like a giant bellows and saw the dragon’s nostrils flare, and she silently cursed to herself. It was sniffing her out. The fact that she wore no perfumes or artificial scents made no difference, not to something whose olfactory organs could detect a butterfly’s breath and know what kind of flower it had sipped from three days ago.
He wishes to toy with me. That is why he contains his fire. He wants to see me trembling in terror before his might. Perhaps that can be his undoing.
Aleena set off through the slim crawlways that honeycombed the rock formations within this mountain, taking all manner of twists and turns. The dragon dutifully followed the trail of her scent, like some gargantuan hound, as she gradually worked her way towards the exit that led from this hollow in the mountains and out into the desert valley. Though dragons were usually more intelligent than humans, they could also be as subject to emotional blunders as humans. They were powerful creatures and they knew it. Aleena was gambling her life that that this particular dragon had vanity to match its power. She based this on the fact that it could easily flame the entire place and be virtually guaranteed of her death, but instead it was pursuing her, dragging things out.
Aleena set off down her crawlspace, following it as it led out of the main chamber and towards the valley outside, parallel to the main tunnel through which the dragon moved as it followed her scent. Her passageway was really nothing more than a horizontal crack in the main tunnel’s north wall. Even as it occurred to Aleena that her intentions could become obvious to the crafty beast it reared up on its hind legs and began to dig into the wall a few feet behind her, sticking its snout into the mangled strata and licking with an eager tongue, like an anteater would with a termite mound. She took advantage of the noise to forego stealth and crawl faster. She felt something hot and wet curl about her calf, like an amorous python, with near bone-snapping force. She was powerless to suppress a cry of nauseated revulsion. The beast’s tongue withdrew, nearly ripping her pants leg off. Then the jaws crashed against the stone and sheared out a mouthful of rock less than afoot aft of her toes.
Aleena’s fingers pulled and her toes pushed with the desperation of one buried alive as the first waves of claustrophobia broke upon the shores of her spirit. The top of the fissure closed with the bottom, pressing her in between. She was painfully aware that she had nowhere to hide while only being able to crawl in one direction and that the dragon knew exactly where she was. She squirmed through the jaw-like spaces, the hot smell of earth pressing against her face as she expected to be roasted alive at any moment.
And yet, this is still better than what the slave traders had in mind for me.
The dragon had ceased its diet of stone but it was continuing to follow along, licking the wall directly over her, teasing itself with the faint flavor of her meat. Aleena heard the thick tongue rasping upon the exterior of her crawlspace. She wondered if this was how a cockroach felt as it scuttled through a house’s wall, the owner pursuing it with boot in hand. Her thoughts were cut off as she detected warmth, one that differed from the dry radiance of the dragon and was in stark contrast to the coolness of the cave. A glow then made itself known to her, the glow of sunlight probing a finger into the fissure, escorted by a breeze. Aleena’s grey eyes were suddenly branded by the glare of daylight. A hole in the rock a bit larger than her head admitted the direct gaze of the sun. Looking through the hole, she was aware that her current position was just to the north of the main tunnel’s entrance, which was to her right. All she needed to do now was find a bigger hole and she would be ready to put her plan into effect.
A few yards farther on she found what she needed. The cavity in the rock was just large enough to allow her to be on her feet, but only in a crouch. She waited, her sword poised and her legs as relaxed as she could make them. She would have preferred a straight blade for what she had in mind, but the gentle curve of her scimitar would not be too much of a hindrance. A warrior must be able to work with the resources at hand. Aleena heard the dragon coming, making her heart fling itself against her breastbone even harder than it had been. The air in her hole was disturbed by its sniffing. It stirred her honeyed tresses and tugged at her billowy, formerly white shirt. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath in an effort to relax. Her plan required that her anticipation of the dragon’s actions be perfectly accurate. If she guessed wrong, if the dragon did anything even slightly unexpected, she would die. She had no contingency plan. There had only been time to devise this desperate ploy.
The scene of the desert valley outside her hole was abruptly replaced with one of rust brown scales as the dragon’s snout came into view. The creature’s head, not counting the horns, was about as long as Aleena was tall. She continued her efforts at calming herself. The snout tempted her warrior’s aggression, but there were no vital organs or blood vessels in it. Even if she pierced the tough scales, she would only anger the beast.
Wait a bit longer. Then a far better target will present itself. I hope.
She heard the brute rumble with what could only be described as satisfaction as the lips, snaggled teeth and all, curled into a hideously human smile. Then a great glaring yellow thing was but two feet from her hole. The yellow thing had a black center. Aleena contemplated her reflection in the dragon’s triumphant glare. Then she hurled herself forward, her coiled legs launching her as if from a spring, sword point first. Holding the weapon with her right hand and pushing the pommel with her left, she manipulated the blade so that it pierced the dragon’s eye. Once it plunged through the springy ocular tissue it had an unobstructed path to the brain. In a twinkling, Aleena had sunk her scimitar into the monster’s left eye up to the cross guard. She was able to wrench it around once before it was jerked from her sweaty hands. The dragon reared backwards, vomited fire to the sky, and crashed onto its back. Then it slowly rolled onto its side, its back legs kicking, it neck and tail lashing.
By the time Aleena climbed from her hole down to the ground, the dragon’s death throes had been reduced to its back legs weakly kicking and its tail lazily twitching as it lay on its right side. Aleena’s legs had trouble supporting her. She who had formed the plan had difficulty believing it had worked. She had difficulty believing such a great beast had been slain by the first and only wound she, a seventeen-year-old girl, had inflicted upon it. She flopped down onto the sand and rested her back upon the rocks as she wondered, How in the seven hells do I get myself into these situations?
The memory of that portentous night in Jac’s tavern four months ago sprang to mind.
Oh. That’s how.
PART II
TEMPERING
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
― E.E. Cummings
“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt
“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
― Flannery O'Connor
CHAPTER 9
Picking herself up, Aleena walked over to the dragon’s huge carcass and steeled herself for the task ahead. The work would be hot and quite messy. She pulled her sword out of the beast’s ruined eye and briefly reflected upon what she’d accomplished. She’d acted out of desperate thirst. The result was that not only had she acquired the most precious commodity in this part of the world – water – but she also won the prize of the dragon itself.
Legend had it that whoever ate of a
dragon’s heart would gain the dragon’s strength. Some insisted it was fact rather than legend. Aleena would find the definitive answer. Walking down the monster’s body, she stopped where she estimated the heart to be. Aleena settled the tip of her blade on the border between two breast scales and pushed, once more wishing for one of her native straight blades as she did so. Piercing the seam between two scales would be easier than piercing the scale itself. The fine blade flexed and wobbled, but it grudgingly forced a gap between the scales and slid in. She pulled the blade down the dragon’s chest, working it in a sawing motion. Dragon hide is superb natural armor, being pliable yet very tough. She felt the muscles of her arms and shoulders pulling and straining. Blood squirted out around the blade, making Aleena cry out and jump back; any creature that can produce fire within its body would naturally have hot blood. Slowly, she forced herself back to continue the job.
Two hours later, her muscles quivering with exhaustion and her arms and front matted with steaming blood, Aleena had made an incision three feet long. After taking some rest, she used a large rock as a hammer to break several ribs and laid the heart bare. She then shoved her blade further into the dragon’s chest. She worked her blade this way and that to disconnect the heart from its moorings and coax it out of the body. Feverish blood continued to run down her arms and torso in searing torrents. With much snarling and cursing, Aleena finally beheld the heart roll from the thoracic wreckage and onto the sand, now syrupy with blood.
