Handbook for Dragon Slayers

by Merrie Haskell

  “Ready?” Judith asked, coming out of the stable, also holding a belt. For a moment, I thought she was going to ask me to gird her, too, but I had already done so in the stable, just with less formality and ritual.

  But then I noticed this wasn’t a belt, but rather a gem-studded girdle, one of the treasures from Joyeuse’s baggage; threaded onto it were a silver dagger and a leather pouch. Judith grinned, girding the belt around my waist before I had a chance to react. She kissed my cheek and said, “The pouch holds two pens, a knife, and a horn of ink. We know better than to go into battle and leave our scribe unarmed!”

  “Where did you get these?” I asked, peeking into the pouch.

  “Parz and I sold the necklace he made out of the horsetail hairs to the innkeeper here.”

  “Ready?” Parz asked. I didn’t say anything at all, being too overcome by their thoughtfulness to speak. I just accepted his help into Joyeuse’s saddle.

  And then we were on our way to fight a dragon.

  WE TURNED OFF THE road after a short league, onto a narrow path through a large stand of young, slender pines.

  “This is it,” Parz said, catching sight of a half-burned, half-eaten carcass of a cow lying in a field.

  “I’m going to dismount here, then,” I said. Parz helped me down from the horse and then climbed onto Joyeuse’s back. She tossed her head a little, but settled in. I tried not to be jealous that she didn’t buck him immediately off.

  I busied myself with pulling out the Handbook and my new pen pouch, even as I wondered if this was a safe distance from which to view the fight.

  The only hint we had of what was coming was the shadow that crossed the sun. The stink of sulfur stung my nose, and an undulating green-and-red-scaled wall passed overhead, almost close enough to touch. The wall slid from view, and I realized the wall was the passing belly of a great flying beast. A gigantic tail slid away over the trees, leaving behind only blue sky.

  Dragon.

  chapter 15

  BY THE TIME I CAUGHT MY BREATH, THE DRAGON WAS gone—and so was everyone else. Both horses and their riders had plunged into the trees after the dragon.

  “Swine!” I swore, shoving my pens back into the pouch. “Swine, swine, swine!” I jammed my crutch into my armpit and hobbled off as fast as I could go after them.

  I wasn’t sure how long I walked. Time never seems to flow the same when you are late for something, and I was very late for something. Roars and screams rose from not so very far away, and the air filled with the acrid scent of smoke.

  I entered a burned-out clearing from the west. On the south side of the clearing a cave mouth gaped. Joyeuse stood guard near a copse of trees at the far edge of the clearing, tensely scanning the sky.

  It took me a moment to realize that the pile of silver at Joyeuse’s feet was Parz’s supine body.

  Joyeuse gave a high-pitched whinny when she saw me.

  My heart was in my throat, but I decided that Joyeuse was not the sort of horse who would guard a dead body. Or so I told myself in the long moments before I reached them, when each footstep seemed like the death toll of a church bell. Where was Judith? Where was Durendal?

  “Parz?” I called, hurrying to him as fast as I could.

  He was breathing, but unconscious.

  “Good Lord!” I cried, chafing his hands and wrists as I inspected him for signs of damage.

  Parz coughed, blood bubbling between his lips.

  I nearly screamed in terror. My life in Alder Brook, far from any battlefront or disaster, had in no way prepared me for this kind of injury. I couldn’t think of how to stop him from coughing, but I could imagine the blood running back into his lungs and choking him. I slid my hands up underneath him and pushed, getting him over onto his side so the blood could drain from his mouth.

  “Please don’t die, Parz,” I heard myself saying, and my voice was so strange. I realized I was crying. “Please, Parz. Please. You can’t die. Oh, I’m—” I paused for a sob, which I tried to stifle against my shoulder. “I’m being so silly, I’m speaking such nonsense. See how bad it is, for you to be trying to die on me like this? See what it’s doing to me? So. Just don’t die!”

  Parz stopped coughing, and for a moment, I was horribly afraid he’d also stopped breathing. And I guess he had, for he was summoning together a great gob of blood. I yelped when he raised his head, turned it, and spit the blood gob out into the grass.

  “You’re alive!” I shrieked.

  “Think so,” he rasped. He looked around, his gaze barely focusing. “Where’s Judith?”

  “I don’t know! Are you all right? What’s . . . Something’s broken, what’s broken?”

  He looked thoughtful. “Everything,” he croaked, dropping his head back to the ground.

  “Can you get onto Joyeuse’s back?”

  “Not even,” he said, and groaned.

  I ran my hands over his arms and legs, trying to figure out if anything was actually broken. I couldn’t tell. I just didn’t have the training. “I’m afraid I don’t even know how to move you.”

  He shivered. “That’s all right. Don’t really want to move.”

  I unclasped my cloak and threw it over Parz’s body. I couldn’t think of what else to do—he was shivering so hard, it seemed the right thing.

  I bit my lip when I heard a distant roar and the screams of an angry horse. “Parz, where did Judith and Durendal go?”

  “Judith—never—came out of—the cave,” he said, teeth chattering between each phrase.

  I looked at the dark cave mouth. “Did you go in there with her?”

  “Yeah. Came out—before the—dragon.”

  “And then, what, you all fought the dragon?”

  “Wasn’t much of—a fight. Dragon was—so big.”

  I had seen that for myself. The dragon heads mounted in Sir Kunibert’s hall had ranged in size from a large dog’s to a regular horse’s. None of those dragons could have been close to the size of the great beast that had flown overhead earlier.

  That flew overhead now.

  The hum in the air from the noise of the dragon’s wings shook me to the soles of my feet. Joyeuse stood beside me, and we watched as the dragon sidestepped into the cave, hissing and roaring the whole way.

  I moaned. “Judith.”

  I bent down and gave Parz the kiss on the cheek I’d failed to give him during the girding. “Quickly—anything I should know about using a sword?”

  “The sharp part goes in the dragon,” he said. “Wait—” He grabbed my hand. “You can’t go in the cave. Too dangerous.”

  “I have to go.”

  He struggled to rise. “You’re going to undo my greatest act of chivalry if you get yourself killed.”

  “What, rescuing me from Snail Castle?” I didn’t have to push his shoulder very hard to get him to lie back down. “Surely you’ve done something more chivalrous than that.”

  “Not . . . yet.”

  “Stay down,” I told him. I ordered Joyeuse, “Guard Parz.”

  The silver sword lay nearby. I snatched it up. Sword in one hand, crutch under my arm, I faced the dark mouth of the cave alone.

  chapter 16

  THE DRAGON BURST FORTH FROM THE CAVE’S mouth, roaring the whole way. I fell backward as the creature winged up, over my head.

  I had one glimpse of a small, dog-sized dragon on its back before it disappeared beyond the trees.

  Was it carrying a . . . baby?

  I stood up slowly, testing to make sure I hadn’t injured something when I was bowled over. I noted with distant clarity that my hands were shaking. I resettled my crutch.

  A human scream came echoing out of the cave. Judith’s scream.

  She was still alive!

  “Judith?” I called.

  No answer.

  No answer, and no choice. I was no warrior, and yet . . . here I was, facing darkness with nothing but a sword.

  I swallowed down my fear, and gripping my borrowed sword, I e
ntered the cave.

  I froze for a moment, blinded by the darkness after the bright autumn day, and afraid that I’d suddenly fall down a large hole in the floor if I tried to move forward in the dark.

  But gradually my eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, and I could make out a faint, flickering light ahead. A lantern? Parz had a lantern; had he taken it into the cavern and left it behind?

  For perhaps the only time in my life, I wished I were left-handed. Even though that would make scribe work nearly impossible, I would not now be in the position of trying to hold a sword in my distaff hand. My right arm was occupied with my crutch.

  I shouldn’t be here. I’m not a fighter. I’m certainly no dragon slayer.

  No. I wasn’t a dragon slayer, but I was a princess, and one of my people was ahead of me, in the dark and alone.

  I inched along the rough cave floor toward the flickering light, listening for anything, any sound from Judith, any dragonish noise. I stopped myself from calling her name no less than three times, but when I rounded a narrow curve and came out into a wide cave and saw her lying in a heap next to a lantern, I couldn’t stop myself.

  “Judith!”

  Immediately, a hissing and spitting creature that waggled its neck like a goose came charging from the shadows. I lifted my sword before me, and it must have caught the light just right, because the dragonet darted away and back into the gloom. The shadows writhed and scales glimmered—and I realized there was more than one dragonet hiding in the dark.

  Judith said nothing, and I feared the worst. I crept along to the lantern, not taking my eyes off the shadows from where the dragonet had come.

  I didn’t want to speak and risk the dragonets’ attentions, so I nudged Judith with my toe.

  She sat up immediately, and I breathed a sigh of relief. She’d only been playing dead. I pointed back the way I came.

  She shook her head, and pointed at her leg. I assumed she’d broken it, and stooped awkwardly to feel her thigh, trying to assess the damage.

  But instead of a break, I put my hand in something warm, wet, and sticky, and Judith screamed when I touched it.

  The dragonets screamed back—great, honking bleats that filled the cavern till my head rang. I clapped my hands over my ears, shouting, “Can you walk?” while I tried to make sure the dragonets weren’t advancing on us.

  “I don’t know!”

  “Try! On the count of three!” We counted, and I levered her up. She leaned on me too hard, so I stuck the crutch in her right armpit and slid my shoulder under her left. I needed the crutch for stability as much as anything, and even leaning on me, Judith could provide that.

  I still held the sword, which left no way to carry the lantern. We had to abandon it and make our way out of the cave in darkness, with the dragonets milling in the shadows behind us.

  “No choice,” I grunted, taking the first dragging step forward toward the cave mouth.

  “Shhh,” Judith hissed almost silently in my ear, and squeezed my ribs painfully.

  We took another staggering, dragging, hopping step forward, then another. Judith grunted, and now I squeezed her ribs. She stopped grunting.

  It seemed like the longest walk of my life, but I was sure that once we reached daylight, the worst would be over.

  When we reached the cave’s mouth, though, the worst was far from over.

  The big dragon was back, circling overhead, its enormous wings sending gusts of air down that made my ears pop. It opened its mouth and bellowed out a stream of flame at Parz.

  But Joyeuse and Durendal were both there now. Joyeuse made an unnatural sound of anger and Durendal’s nostrils and eyes were wide with fear, but nonetheless, the mares turned sideways against the flame. They caught all of the dragon’s fire with their bodies. When the flames hit, their bodies turned from silver and copper to glowing orange.

  I only realized I was screaming when I ran out of breath. I felt ready to vomit, sick with grief and terror. I buried my face in my upper arm, unwilling to see the horses die so horribly.

  But even as I hid my eyes, I realized that I wasn’t hearing what I had expected to. There were no screams of anguish. I lowered my arm and found Joyeuse turning to track the dragon as it circled again, while Durendal pawed the air.

  The horses and Parz were unburned. The mares’ bodies and tack remained the orange-red of heated metal, but nothing was charred except the waterskins that we’d left tied to their saddles.

  The dragon sent another flare at Parz, and again the horses turned to take it on their sides. A gout of flame licked underneath Joyeuse’s belly, igniting the grass. But Durendal stomped her hoof, kicking up a shower of blue-green sparks that cleanly and quickly burned the grass out—and the fire was gone almost as soon as it started.

  The dragon circled again, looking for a better angle of attack, I thought; the trees protected Parz on one side, and the horses protected him on the other. The treetops, however, would not remain cover if the dragon ignited them.

  I thought for certain that this would be the dragon’s next move; but it must have spotted Judith and me, for it landed in the clearing, facing us, touching down one delicate claw at a time as its great wings backstroked the air.

  The dragon turned its long, snaky neck toward us, making a variety of hissing and popping noises, punctuated by low moans and high-pitched growls. It snapped enormous jaws at us.

  I inched Judith leftward, trying to get us away from the cave’s mouth so that the dragon could pass us and enter the cave.

  The dragon snarled, and with the snarl came orange fire. It licked toward us, and I shrieked as the heat rolled over us. I buried my face in the crook of my arm.

  Judith said, “Get behind me.”

  “What? No, you’re injured!”

  “Get behind me,” she roared, shoving me back. The dragon vomited forth another great gout of fire, and, screaming, I buried my face in Judith’s neck, even as I was terrified that she was cooking inside her shell of heated armor.

  “Stop it!” I shouted, popping up behind Judith when the fire blast ceased. “We could have killed your babies and we didn’t!”

  “Tilda!” Judith cried. “What are you doing?”

  “Just—just let us pass!” I said to the dragon. “And we’ll leave you alone to get your babies!” I shouted over Judith’s shoulder when the flame died away. “We don’t want to hurt you! Not anymore!” I dived right, trying to pull Judith after me. She came, and we both hit the ground and rolled farther away.

  We had landed under a bush. Judith slapped out some incidental fires on her body—mostly from a kerchief that had been tied around her arm. I sighed in relief. She was well enough to care about that little tiny fire.

  The dragon sidled toward the cave entrance, still hissing and growling anytime Judith or I twitched. But neither of us was getting up, between her wound, my foot, and the fact that my crutch now lay in the dragon’s path.

  We watched in silence as the dragon turned and sang into the cave. A moment later, the last two dragonets zipped out. They flapped their wings fervently, trying to take flight. The larger dragon—their mother—tucked her nose underneath the chest of one of the dragonets, then flung it behind her and onto her back, between her wings.

  She did the same thing with the other dragonet, and then she launched herself into the air.

  The dragon circled once and flew away.

  chapter 17

  JUDITH HAD BEEN ABLE TO RIDE AFTER THE DRAGON left—but just barely. Parz refused to try to get on a horse, and I couldn’t blame him; but when I suggested lashing two stout branches together to make a stretcher pulled by the horses, he said he thought walking would be the least painful option. But he couldn’t make the distance, and in the end, we ended up devising the stretcher.

  With any other horses, I might have given up long before we reached Wood Ash again; I might be living still in a forest clearing without them.

  There was no bonesetter in Wood Ash, and the midwife w
ho came to see about our injuries insisted on sending an appeal to Saint Disibod’s Cloister for help with Parz and Judith. The cloister sent one of its famous healers, a Sister Hildegard, to assist us. Within the week, we were all in good enough shape to remove to Saint Disibod’s proper.

  All three of us ended up in the infirmary. Parz had broken ribs and a broken arm. Judith’s wound was deep and had to be watched closely for infection.

  I had emerged largely unscathed from the fight with the dragon, except I’d lost my eyebrows and eyelashes. But there was always the matter of my foot.

  The infirmary was a marvel. It had a small, stream-fed fountain, lush plants grown in pots, and every kind of herb and gem and metal. The infirmarians constantly sang songs of Hildegard’s devising that were supposed to aid in the healing of both spirit and mind.

  Sister Hildegard began an intensive regimen with my foot right away. “This is not recent damage. This is an innate injury, developed in the womb,” Sister Hildegard said during the examination of my foot. “You’ll forgive me if I stop calling you Lady Agilwarda, yes?”

  “Um, just Agilwarda is fine,” I said.

  “I was thinking more of calling you Mathilda,” Sister Hildegard said, and carefully placed my foot on the floor.

  “Wh-why?”

  The nun looked at me acutely, as though she saw through my flesh to the shape of my bones. “You’re Mathilda of Alder Brook,” she said. “The lost princess.”

  I gaped. “Yes,” I said cautiously. “I am Mathilda.”

  Sister Hildegard smiled. Her white veil and wimple were almost blinding. “The cloister received word that you had gone missing. We have been praying for you daily, that you did not fall into villainous hands.”

  “That’s nice,” I said feebly, all good manners abandoning me.

  “We’re pleased to have you, and to help you. Now . . . I’ll just go fetch flour, animal fat, and eggs.”

  “To eat?”

  Hildegard laughed. “No. They’re for hardening bandages.” When she returned, she gave me a long, painful session of stretching, then heat treatments, and then followed it by wrapping my leg in bonesetter’s bandages with a splint, and coating them in her mixture of items from the kitchen.