Everything was as ready as Arlian knew to make it, and as yet there was no sign of the dragon.
That meant that Arlian had time to think, and to see just how feeble his preparations really were. Yes, he had his spear-thrower—but the thing was too big and heavy to be moved by a single man, and even a team of four could not turn it quickly enough to have any hope of hitting a moving target. The only way Arlian could hope to hit a dragon with it would be if the monster walked or flew directly into its path.
Of course, he might be lucky. The dragon might do exactly that. Arlian remembered that Rime had come from the northwest, and had guessed that the dragon's lair lay beneath the western mountains; he had therefore, before Venlin and the other footmen left, had the spear-thrower turned to point west, almost directly toward the front gate.
If the dragon came from the east or south or north, the spear-thrower would be useless—but Arlian could not see anything he could do to remedy that.
The general commotion in the Old Palace had not gone unnoticed by the rest of Manfort; curious crowds were beginning to gather at the fence, staring at the spear-thrower and at Arlian standing beside it with his strange stone-headed spear. People of all ranks, in homespun or velvet, wandered by and watched for a while, perhaps shouting an insult or two before growing bored and moving on.
Horn appeared, watched Arlian for a moment, then departed again.
Arlian ignored them all and watched the sky, which was growing dark. The sun was still high, but thick clouds were gathering, blocking the light. The day, warm to begin with, seemed to be growing unnaturally hot.
It was not true dragon weather yet, but that was clearly coming.
Arlian had thought since the previous summer that the dragons somehow created dragon weather, rather than waiting for it to occur naturally—that long period of time when they had roamed freely had been too convenient to be mere coincidence—but he had never imagined a single dragon could bring it about so swiftly.
The dragons were powerfully magic, no question about it—like the things beyond the border, the wizards and demons and monsters, they could manipulate their environment in unnatural ways.
But they did have limitations. Perhaps they did not merely prefer hot, dark weather, but required it. He scanned the sky, west to south to east to north.
Then his thoughts were interrupted as a voice called from the gate, "Obsidian! What is this all about?"
Arlian turned, dropping his gaze from the clouds, and recognized the bald, eyepatched figure standing just outside the fence. He smiled. "Belly!" he called.
"Come in, come in, the gate's open."
It was odd, perhaps, that he should be so pleased to see a man he had once sworn to kill, a man he had twice dueled, but nonetheless he was very glad to see Toribor. This was at least one man who shared his hatred of dragons.
Toribor entered the forecourt, looking up at the spear-thrower in bemusement. "I knew you were working on machines, but I had not gotten a good look at one before. Is that thing supposed to kill a dragon?"
he asked.
"I hope it will," Arlian said. "If I can get one in position."
"You can't aim it?"
"No."
"You could probably rig up something with ropes and pulleys that would let you aim it however you please."
"If I had more time, perhaps," Arlian said—though in fact, he had not thought in terms of turning it with ropes and pulleys, and he now realized he should have.
"Alas, a dragon is on its way even as we speak."
"So your message said. You neglected to explain how you know this."
"The dragon told me," Arlian said. "In a bowl of bloody water."
Toribor turned his one good eye on Arlian. "I thought they no longer spoke to you."
"This one was provoked," Arlian said. "I believe we may have found a way to remove the heart of the dragon without killing a person." That description was uncomfortably literal, though Toribor would not yet know it.
"I take it you tested this method?"
Arlian nodded. "On Lady Rime. The dragon that spoke to us is the one that killed her family four or five centuries ago; it did not take the death of its unborn child well."
"Ah," Toribor said. "But you weren't deliberately luring it here?"
"No, of course not. If I were going to lure a dragon deliberately, I wouldn't do it in the middle of Manfort."
Toribor shrugged. "There are probably worse places."
He looked up at the spear-thrower again. "So you don't have a way to guide the dragon into that thing's path?"
"Suggestions would be welcome."
"Is it coming specifically to kill youl"
"And Rime, and the Aritheian magicians, yes."
"You'll have to tell me about this method of yours sometime."
"Of course; I certainly wasn't planning to keep it secret. At the moment, though, I have other concerns."
"Do you know when the dragon will arrive?"
"No."
"If you stand right where you are, the most direct path to you takes it in front of this infernal device of yours."
"If it comes from the west, yes. If it comes from north or south, no. And I need to strike it in the heart, not the face, which complicates matters "
"Indeed." Toribor studied the situation thoughtfully.
"Can those magicians of yours do anything? Steer the spears, perhaps? Use illusions to guide the dragon into range?"
"I don't know," Arlian admitted. "Two of them are upstairs with Rime; the third . . H i s voice trailed off.
Qulu might be useful here after all; using illusions to lure the dragon to the right position might work.
Then he heard the first screams. Startled, he looked past Toribor at the little crowd in the street beyond the fence.
Several of them were staring at the sky, pointing upward—to the north. Arlian turned and stared.
A thin black shape was visible against the overhang-ing gray clouds, a shape like a winged serpent, long and narrow, tail waving, crossed by broad, flapping wings. It was growing larger at an alarming rate.
It was unquestionably a dragon.
"By my blood," Arlian said. "It's fast!"
"Give me a spear," Toribor said, turning to face the approaching beast.
"I don't.;." Arlian hesitated, then handed his spear to Toribor. "Here."
Toribor accepted the weapon.
The crowd beyond the fence was screaming, milling about wildly; some of the people had fled in terror, but others seemed too fascinated to move, and yet others were actually running up to get a better view of the monster. Horn had reappeared, this time in company with Opal and Post; the three of them were standing on the far side of the street, staring at the northern sky.
"The Duke!" someone shouted, loudly enough to be heard above the hubbub. Several faces turned to the south, toward the Citadel.
If the Duke really was coming, Arlian did not see that it mattered. What could the Duke or his guards hope to do against the creature? They had only steel blades, no obsidian.
And, Arlian realized, all he had was his spear-thrower and a pair of knives—he had just given Toribor his spear.
Toribor apparently had every intention of using it; he had clambered up on the frame of the spear-thrower, to be closer to the dragon's own level, and was now standing on the loading platform, eight feet off the ground.
"Belly!" Arlian called. "It's not after you!"
Toribor glanced down at him. "It doesn't need to be," he replied. "A dragon took my eye, and it's past time I repaid that. I swore to fight die dragons, and by all the dead gods, I intend to!"
Arlian knew better than to argue. He wished Black were here to help, but his steward—his friend—had not yet returned from the Grey House.
And then, as suddenly as a summer cloudburst, the dragon was upon them.
As the great black shadow fell over him Arlian drew one of his daggers, but looking up at the dragon's belly he knew the gesture
was absurd. The creature was immense; the dagger was no more use against such a thing than a pin would be.
The audacity of trying to kill such a creature at all suddenly overwhelmed him. Who was he, to attempt it? He was just twenty-two, while the beast had lived for millennia; he was but a single man, armed with a stone knife, against a creature as large as a wing of the palace, a beast that spat flaming venom, a beast whose every talon, even the tiniest dew claw, was longer and sharper than the obsidian blade Arlian clutched.
He was about to die. He knew it. As soon as the creature noticed him he would perish in a burst of flaming venom, or perhaps be snatched up by those dreadful jaws and devoured.
But the dragon did not strike at him immediately; instead it dove at the roof of the Old Palace itself, talons outstretched. A cloud of venom sprayed from the dragon's jaws and burst into flame.
Fire washed over the roof of the Palace; even over the fading screams of the fleeing bystanders Arlian could hear tiles popping and shattering from the heat and pressure.
Then the dragon's forelimbs struck the roof with a tremendous rending crash. Arlian could not see what was happening, but he could hear heavy beams creaking and snapping, plaster falling, glass breaking. A cloud of dust and debris rose, mingling with the smoke of dragonfire, drifting over the eaves. He could catch an occasional glimpse of wing, but most of the creature was out of sight.
"What's it doing?" Toribor called.
"It must be after Lady Rime, and the Aritheians,"
Arlian called back—though in fact, the dragon had apparently struck at the center of the Palace, and the three women were in the south wing.
"Your machine is pointing the wrong way."
"I noticed that," Arlian agreed. The spear-thrower was pointed directly away from the palace, which had seemed reasonable at the time—it was intended to stop the thing before the dragon reached its target.
Except he had never had a chance to try it. The dragon had come from an unexpected direction, and faster than he had anticipated.
It was ascending again, and Arlian could hear the crackle of flames—the palace was ablaze, and the fire was spreading fast. The crackling quickly became a roar.
That made sense; why should the dragon hunt and dig out its prey, one by one, when it could simply burn them all to death? Arlian remembered the village of Obsidian, on the Smoking Mountain—every house had been burned, and the people who escaped the fires had been killed as they fled. The dragons had not bothered to dig anyone out.
Arlian remembered how a dragon had killed his grandfather. It had not used claws or teeth; when it noticed the old man standing in the burning house it had simply sprayed more burning venom in at him, then moved on.
This dragon would smash and burn the palace and kill anyone who fled from it. It might not take the trouble to dig anyone out.
If the Aritheians could get Rime or themselves to somewhere relatively safe—the wine cellar, perhaps—
they might yet survive.
If the dragon could be lured away from the palace ...
But the only thing that might lure it would be one of its intended targets, and the only one available, the only one outside the palace, was Arlian himself.
Arlian hurried to the edge of the loading platform.
"Belly," he called, shouting to be heard over the roaring fire and the screams from the street, "I'm going to try to lead it away from the palace, away from the women.
If it follows me into position, you can shoot it..."
Toribor glanced down at him, then at the release mechanism.
"I've never seen this thing shoot," he said. "I don't know how it works, what its range is, any of that."
"But it's simple," Arlian shouted frantically. The dragon had circled once, high overhead, and was starting to slip sideways into a steep dive, back toward the Palace for another attack. "You just..."
"I'll lead it away," Toribor shouted, interrupting him.
"You shoot it. You know how." He jumped down from the platform, spear in hand, landing beside Arlian.
"But it won't..." Arlian began.
This time Toribor did not interrupt him with words, but with a hard shove in the chest, pushing Arlian back beneath the loading platform.
"You get down there out of sight until it's chasing me," Toribor said. Then, before Arlian could regain his balance or begin to reply, he ran out in front of the spear-thrower, bellowing at the top of his lungs.
"Yah! Dragon! You stinking worm, you monster!
Come and get me!"
The dragon was plummeting toward the palace, but it spotted the running figure and swerved toward him.
It was taking the bait. Arlian didn't understand why at first—Toribor was not on the list of enemies its image in the bowl had recited, and he was a dragonheart, carrying an unborn dragon in his own blood.
But then he realized, even as he lunged for the release lever, that the dragon was probably not thinking that clearly. It saw someone running, trying to escape, and it pursued without stopping to consider. It was not a human being; it was a predator, a destroyer, and its instincts told it to attack anything that fled.
The beast was dropping, wings spread; it flapped, and dust and smoke swirled around Arlian and the machine, half-blinding him. The wind from a second flap almost knocked Arlian off his feet.
Toribor had reached the gate, and had slowed; he threw a glance back at Arlian, and Arlian realized that he wanted to be sure he was still well within the machine's range.
The device could easily put a spear a hundred yards past where Toribor stood, and the dragon was dropping fast. Its shadow blotted out the sky, the wind from its wings staggered Arlian and tore his hat away.
"Go!" Arlian shrieked. "Run!"
Toribor ran—but not far enough, not fast enough.
The dragon was suddenly there in the forecourt, its flank toward Arlian, its neck outstretched, its head reaching for Toribor. Its jaws opened.
It was perfectly positioned, its right flank fully exposed to die spear-thrower.
Arlian tripped the lever, but the cloud of flaming venom blossomed forth and washed over Toribor.
Sparks spiraled up from the iron gates, dust and smoke rolled across the yard, and the glare of the yellow flame almost blinded Arlian. He flung one arm across his face as the weights dropped and the huge wooden arm swung upward, rapidly gaining speed.
Then it slammed against the framework with a single earthshaking thump, and half a dozen obsidian-tipped spears flew toward the dragon as it rose again.
Four of them struck—at that range, it would have been difficult to miss entirely. A fifth skidded across the dragon's back and vanished spinning end-over-end into the roiling cloud of smoke and flame that had en-gulfed the gates; the sixth disappeared without touch-ing the beast.
One of the four hits pierced the dragon's right wing; the spear passed almost completely through, then dangled there. Another lodged in its shoulder, just above the foreleg.
And two embedded themselves solidly in the creature's side—but apparently neither one reached the heart.
The dragon screamed, a sound like nothing Arlian had ever heard before—the cry of a full-grown dragon was infinitely deeper and louder than the shriek of a newborn. Windows shattered behind him at the sound, and he thought his ears might burst.
Clearly, he had hurt the monster—but he had not killed it, only angered it. As it whirled to face the source of this indignity it seemed fully as terrible and magnificent as ever.
The hideous stench of venom reached Arlian, mingled with the scents of dust and smoke and burned flesh.
You, it said—though it spoke without sound, as had its sorcerous image.
"Me," Arlian shouted back, drawing both his useless stone daggers. He was going to die, he knew that, and he intended to die defiantly.
The spears hadn't reached its heart. One of them had pierced the creature's scaled black hide behind its foreleg, and penetrated a foot or more into the
flesh—
that surely must have been close, Arlian thought.
But then, how big a heart could a dragon have, to be so cold and ruthless?
If that spear had gone deeper, perhaps it might have...
Arlian had no time to finish the thought; the dragon's head was swinging toward him. He ran—and partly because the spear-thrower blocked him, partly because the wall of the palace blocked him, and partly from mad inspiration, he ran toward the dragon, toward its spear-pierced flank.
The dragon wouldn't spit flaming venom on itself, he was sure—after all, dragon venom was the one thing that could scar a dragonheart, so might it not be able to burn a dragon, as well? And the venom was never ignited until after it had left the creature's jaws, so perhaps the flame could burn them even if the venom could not.
The neck curved around, the head followed him, and he ran as he had never run before, and then leapt, both arms outstretched, still holding his two obsidian daggers. He intended to cut the thing, hurt it more, before he died.
He slammed into the monster's side, between two of the protruding spears; his daggers bit into the scales and gave him purchase as the dragon thrashed, trying to reach him, trying to shake him off.
He hung there, feet dangling, belly pressed against the immense smooth scales, and plunged each dagger in turn as deeply into the beast as he could.
He clutched the hilts for dear life as the dragon screamed again and flapped its wings. The right wing smashed down over him, like a great black leather blanket pressing him against the creature's side, and he turned his head at the last instant, so that his nose was not broken against the scales.
The spear that had penetrated that wing twisted upon impact, tearing the leathery flesh of the creature's wing; thick dark blood sprayed across one side of Arlian's face. And Arlian saw that the blow of the wing drove the two spears in the dragon's side deeper into its flash, though it snapped off half the shaft of the farther one.
That must have hurt, because the dragon promptly lifted its wing as high as it could, screaming in pain and fury, and did not flap again.
That meant it couldn't fly, Arlian realized. He had done that much, at least. If others could find more of the obsidian weapons, perhaps they could wear it down, pick away at it...
The Dragon Society (Obsidian Chronicles Book 2) Page 38
