by Sam Hall
“No,” Miazydar snarled. The rider’s lips curled back to snap a retort, but he never got the chance. The dog turned into a dragon, forcing us to stumble back or be caught under his huge claws. The riders fell into formation, spears at the ready but he just reared up, sending out a massive plume of fire over their heads by way of a warning. Any of the Damoricans still hanging around the square saw this and went running.
“Holy shitballs! He goes from Vomit the Wonderdog to that?” Jez said.
“We can’t strike the dragon!” one of the riders said.
The leader nodded. “Bring in your beasts, defensive positioning only.” His eyes then fell to us, the weakest link in this scenario. He ignored my dragon, marching towards us, spinning his spear into what I remembered as attack formation: two hands on the first quarter of the spear to provide the momentum behind any blow and to keep the enemy as far away from you as possible, blade pointed at the target.
“Don’t think so, mate,” Flea said, pulling out a handgun. The rider frowned but stopped where he was. That was odd, I thought there were no guns in the whole of this world, he shouldn’t stop because he shouldn’t know what it was. I didn’t get to ponder this for long as four dragons dropped into the square. Make that four pissed off dragons. They approached Miazydar, heads angled low, necks thrashing like snakes. One’s mouth opened, a bright green gas beginning to form in it, droplets sizzling when they hit the stone, burning little holes. This was all going to shit, turning into some god awful Mexican stand-off.
“What the hell is going on!”
We both turned to see a unit of the Damorican Royal Guard had arrived led by General Best, a furry dressed heavily in an elaborate uniform. Wolfish looking bipedal creatures all drew their swords, though the looks they were giving the five dragons clustered in the square suggested they weren’t exactly feeling confident about any upcoming fight.
“Wing Leader Raith, General Best. We are escorting the accused and the unregistered dragon back to Aravisia for trial by the Grand Council,” the leader of the riders said, “as per the treaty signed on the —”
“Yes, yes, I’m well aware of the preferential terms you bastards manage to wring from the previous government on the basis of your bonds with these blasted creatures, but that does not give you the right to bring five of the damned things into one of our major settlements! And without prior permission!”
Wing Leader Raith unrolled his scroll, “Notification was lodged in triplicate this morning at —”
“Notification is not permission. Damorica remains a sovereign country!” The dragon closest to him hissed, drawing the attention of the General and all of his soldiers. Everyone within the dragon’s range began to cough wildly, tears streaming down their face as they fought what appeared to be a noxious fume from their lungs. “You bring… weapons of…mass destruction…” the General struggled to squeeze out between coughs.
“Weapons that will be removed as soon as we are able to take our prisoner before the Council.”
“Look,” I said, “we’ve come through the portal at your behest and agreed to attend this ridiculous trial. You’re making this difficult by insisting on dictating our travel arrangements. We will come to Aravisia, just on Miazydar’s back. Do you doubt the ability of four trained dragon riders to keep an unregistered one in line?”
Raith and his comrades stiffened and finally, he shook his head. “An excellent point,” Best said. “Take your beasts away from here. Be sure to let Lord Graves know I am very displeased with this,” he gestured to the square. “This is a direct contravention of section 33—”
“Your position is noted and will be reported back to my superiors,” Raith said with a snap, Best bristling at the implied threat. He turned to me. “Give me any opportunity to doubt you and your dragon’s compliance and I’ll have the two of you forcibly grounded so fast your heads will spin.” He walked over to the other riders, slapping his gloves against his thigh. “Be ready to leave. The prisoner follows on her dragon. Any diversion from the flight path and you are cleared to attack. The dragon’s life must be spared, but the others are expendable. Flight is in flanking formation.”
The riders waited with animals coiled and ready to jump when Miazydar did. We took some time, working out seating arrangements and how to strap on the luggage, much to everyone’s disgust. “I’ve had sex like this before,” Jez said as we settled on the dragon’s back. “A bunch of guys standing around, scowling, waiting for me to hurry up and climb on.”
The trip took about an hour and a half all up. Aravisia was a bit of a blur, looking at it through the goggles. It seemed a lot like Damorica, very lightly populated. We passed small settlements, each of which had a distinctive stone tower before reaching the city proper. It spread out, a sea of grey stone against the greenery surrounding it, the buildings becoming clearer as we drew nearer.
This is where we descend, Miazydar said. And we did, long, lazy spirals from which I saw houses and shops, big office blocks, factories and warehouses, clearer and clearer. The towers were here as well and it became apparent why quite quickly. Dragons perched on some of them, beside buildings of importance, it seemed. The building we approached on the tails of the lead dragons was massive. It was made up of a series of sweeping shapes that reminded me of a dragon’s neck, but as much as I stared at it, I couldn’t work out where the windows or doors were. We landed finally, I felt the shake in my legs as I slipped off and it wasn’t from riding on M. I’d been able to keep the nerves at bay, kept in a box for ‘later’. Well, later was now and my heart had begun to pound. I laid my hand against my dragon’s front flank, just feeling the shift of his glittering red scales for the moment, trying to not let the big wave of anxiety rush up and pull me under. I jumped when a hand covered mine. Flea had grabbed it. Jez tried to smile reassuringly, but we were all looking up at the building with apprehension.
“Miss McKinnon? I’m Klara.” A tall woman wearing the close fitting garb of a rider, but without the helmet or spear approached us. “You can have your dragon rest on one of the eyries provided while the hearing is underway.”
“Why would I do that?” M said, his teeth baring in his version of a smile when she jumped back. “If you wish to discuss the matter of my existence, surely I should be present?”
“Oh, well, yes, of course, Great One. There is a precedence for this but we usually use the open-air meeting spaces to do so. I’ll just check to see if it’s available.”
“No need,” he said with a shiver and his form condensed down into that of a dog.
“Oh, oh…” The woman looked like she was in full brainfart mode, her mind not able to take in what she just saw. Our escort walked over, flicking their spears to life.
“I’m handing them over to your custody, Chief Official,” Raith said, passing her the scroll. “Alert Lord Graves to the fact we need to speak to him about the Damorican insolence.”
Klara took the document and nodded, still looking a little shell-shocked, but she pulled herself together with some effort. She led us inside, through a massive complex filled with the office spaces of the various government departments. The Council met towards the back of the building, apparently. We were brought to the waiting area and told that someone would bring us into the hearing once they were ready.
My knee began to bounce the moment I sat down, M sitting next to my feet. “It’ll be OK,” Jez said, sitting next to me and patting my leg. People seemed to be doing that a lot lately. Why the knee? What was so reassuring about knee patting?
“We’re in a foreign country, about to go through god knows what legal proceedings, surrounded by soldiers who have weapons that could slice and dice us with little to no effort. I’d say there're grounds for worry,” Flea said, grabbing a cigarette out and lighting it.
“I’ll have some say over that,” Miazydar said.
“Yeah? Do plasma spears cut up dragons as well as humans?”
My dragon fell silent at this, considering the idea. �
��Stop worrying,” Jez said. “Nan McKinnon is watching over us. All will be well.”
We were about to find out if what she said was true. The massive twin doors in front of us opened and a man walked out onto the polished stone floor. He looked down at his scroll and said, “Therese McKinnon and…Miazydar?” I stood up in response and he waved us over.
“Joon Nelasca,” he said by way of introduction, “I’m the Council secretary. The members are ready to see you now.”
We walked down a dark hallway, pictures of what I assumed were prior councilmen and women hanging on the wall. Another set of doors were placed at the end and when we went through them, the space expanded out into a long oval room. A brilliant skylight made of stained glass stretched above us, depicting several dragons and men fighting some battle of note. A table that echoed the shape of the room filled most of it, men and women arranged on the far side of it with empty chairs on ours. “Please, take a seat,” Joon said.
Impassive faces greeted us across the table and I noted that several plasma spears had been left standing in a purpose-built rack behind them. A large man sat in the centre, his brown hair pushed back from his forehead. He skimmed over a scroll before him, then put it to one side.
“So, we have an unregistered dragon and a non-Aravisian rider. How the hell did this happen?”
I opened my mouth to answer but one of the men held up a hand. “Milord, it appears that the dragon has been a pawn in some kind of Damorican internal power structure. I‘m not sure how, but the revolutionaries have obviously found a feral clutch and decided to augment their forces. I’ve been in frequent communication with my counterpart in the new regime and got little else other than that they were used to remove the former Prince.”
The leader, Lord Graves I assumed, rolled his eyes. “Little communication is unsurprising. What they’ve done contravenes about half of the treaties that keep us from their borders. All dragonlets or eggs found are to be brought to Aravisia or face the combined might of our forces.” He sat back in his chair, hands behind his head. “What’s our situation currently, General Grall? There was that border dispute with Sariah, correct?”
“Resolved a fortnight ago, milord.”
“Good, good. Well, we’ll hold off on military action for now, but will consider it if diplomatic avenues fail. They need to pay for this and well. Aravisia does not lend its dragons like mercenaries to overthrow monarchs placed in power by the gods themselves. Now, to this matter.” The man looked up at me. “Our usual punishment for the illegal raising and bonding of dragons is death.”
“I’m sorry, what the freaking hell?” I said.
“The fuck you will.” Flea got to his feet. He started rummaging around in his bag of ‘toiletries’ but I stopped him with my hand.
What the fuck, what the actual fuck?
“But in return for some information about your Damorican handlers, we could commute the sentence to life imprisonment. Your bond with your dragon will, of course, be sundered and he will be placed with a more suitable candidate. Who do we have on the waiting list currently?”
A woman with long dark hair peered at a scroll. “If we’re going with a merit-based selection, and we’re due to, there’s a Luce Windar. Excellent scores, intellectual capacity score was off the charts. Well liked within his workplace in the Department of Primary Resources.”
“I’d prefer a soldier if we’re going with merit,” General Grall said. “Too many of these merit riders have no idea of what it takes to succeed in battle. I have several candidates I’d like to put forward.”
“If you’re quite finished deciding my fate,” Miazydar said, “I think I might have something to say about this.”
Well, you could have heard a pin drop. Every eye swivelled around to look at my dog, who had placed his paws on the shining timber surface of the table.
“What is this?” Milord, because that’s all I knew him as, said. “Some kind of parlour trick. Remove this animal instantly.” The secretary was waved over but M stopped him in his tracks.
I’m going to shift, M said.
Like hell, it’s not big enough in here to fit you.
I don’t need to be full-sized, he replied and I saw a familiar shiver run down his spine. The people around the table pushed back their chairs as he began to change, turning into a dragon the size of a large horse.
“What the…?” The question hung in the air as every single one of them looked Miazydar over, unable to believe what they saw. None were prepared to come any closer, people peered at him with craned necks.
“Now, as I was saying, I have something to say about your ‘ruling’. We are not Aravisian citizens, so we are not subject to your law. We came to your country in good faith, to deter those goons you sent through with plasma spears from revealing alien life to the Eartherns. It is only through good sense and personal restraint that I don’t burn the lot of you as you sit.” To emphasise his point he allowed out a thin trickle of flame to play across his muzzle. “Sever the bond? Kill my rider? What idiocy!”
Well, that put the cat amongst the pigeons. The Council erupted, every single one of them yelling and gesticulating wildly.
“How in all the seven hells did a dragon get inside this building!”
“Contact the troops! Get them in here, now!”
“That’s not a dragon, it’s just a clever shifter! Those bloody Damoricans have found a way to ape our beasts!”
“Enough!” Miazydar said, his nails digging into the surface of the table for emphasis, the groan of the timber sufficient to shut them up for a moment. “I am a dragon of the Rozenrrath family, Tess is my rider and we are going.”
“Rozenrrath? That family died out hundreds of years ago,” a woman said, scrabbling around through her scrolls, finally finding one which she looked through. “364 years ago to be exact.”
“I don’t know what the hell you are playing at with this charade, but whoever is pulling your strings has a pretty poor grip on the facts,” another man said.
“C’mon guys, this is stupid. Let’s get home and have a coffee and try to forget this ever happened,” I said, getting to my feet.
“You better have a lot of weaponry hidden in that luggage of yours,” General Grall said with a dark smile. “I can have a wing of riders, real dragon riders on your tail within minutes of take-off. You might have a fire-breather but we have acid and venom spitters, spine shooters and—.”
“Yeah, yeah, I watched How to Train Your Dragon too, y’know,” I said. “Miazydar, make sure these gimps don’t move, or breathe or do anything we don’t want to. We’re going to have a little meeting.”
“Done,” he said, expanding so that he lay along the whole table. He slammed his claws down on the man who thought to surreptitiously reach for his spear, waiting until the man’s cries came in high and screechy like a trapped rabbit’s, before letting him go.
“Fuck off over there,” I said to Jerk, the secretary. He scrambled to obey. “Right,” I said as we huddled together. “Flea, kudos, you were right, this is going to be a shit fight. When am I going to learn that it’s never simple dealing with inter-dimensional governments?” He shrugged like it was nothing. “So what do we do? Miazydar can fly us back, but obviously with the majority of Aravisian dragons on our tail and none of us can fight on dragonback.”
“Shouldn’t you just tell them what happened? Surely they’ll see sense,” Jez said.
I looked over at Flea. “It’ll give us some time to think of an exit strategy,” he said.
“Fine, I hope I don’t regret this.” We turned around and returned to the table, forced to stand to look over M’s bulk. “You have no idea how we ended up with Miazydar, yet you’re assuming we’re Damorican agents here to spy. We’re from Earth, there are no dragons there—”
“No thanks to St George,” Miazydar said with a roll of his eyes.
“—we’re not employed by the Damorican government either. They’re friendly because we, well, accidentall
y killed the Damorican Crown Prince.”
“Accidentally?” Milord said.
“Well, the act itself wasn’t an accident. Look, I need to go back a bit to explain.” With Flea’s help, I quickly outlined our adventures in Damorica, culminating in the death of the prince and the burning of the manor. “So you can see, none of this was a deliberate ploy to destabilise governments or infringe on what appears to be a global monopoly on dragons you have going here. And what is your name, anyway?” I asked Milord.
“Lord Graves.”
“Right, so, my Lord Graves, can we just go back through the portal to Earth where we won’t have any effect on the political situation in Aravisia, without incurring the wrath of the acidy, spitty, venomy dragons?”
He thought about what to say next, his hands moving restively and then replied, “If I could have a moment with the Council?”
“I’ll keep an eye on them, Tess,” M said.
“In confidence, if you will,” Lord Graves said.
“Fine,” I said. Miazydar slipped from the table, people flinching back as his claws left great scratches.
“See, that wasn’t too bad,” Jez said with a smile. “Go Team Nan!”
“We’ll see,” Flea said, watching them closely.
Finally, we were called back. “The Council has conferred and we agree, you can leave.” Jez let out a little cheer. “But there are conditions. The portal in Damorica will be destroyed. You will not return to this world, nor will your dragon, or you will face the combined forces of the Aravisian dragon army.”
I was stung by this. Never seeing Natty again, not being able to fly across Bordertown, never seeing the Brigintinian ruins… “Or, we have a compromise. For official purposes, you become an Aravisian citizen, your beast will be registered with us and we will issue you with a visa that will allow you to travel freely through all the realms.” Graves held his hand out when he saw me smile. “However, any evidence suggesting you are allowing your dragon to be used by a foreign power will result in immediate loss of citizenship and subsequent rights. You will be executed for treason and your beast will be redeployed to someone on the merit-based waiting list.”
