“It’s a trap,” Leth said. “Don’t do it, Tharius.”
“Who said he had a choice?” Saruk asked, firing another arrow. “Here’s the question. How the heck do we find a Dragon’s lair?”
Tharius’s mouth opened, and then closed again. Around him, hopeful smiles turned into sour frowns.
“Well, we…” Tharius mumbled, shifting his weight. “There’s the… the rotation and… huh…” His eyes darted around and sweat broke out on his forehead. You could almost see his mind desperately at work. “Well, there are regular patrols, and the patrols they….”
“Yes?” Saruk asked, letting loose a fourth arrow.
“Well…” Tharius followed the missile with a miserable stare. “I don’t know…”
Saruk chuckled.
Poor Tharius deflated like an empty wine bag as the rest of the Company showered him with curses.
“Alright, alright,” Saruk said. “Get those murderous looks off your face, I won’t make you find the arrows.”
There was a collective sigh of relief.
“No sir. I have a much better idea. I’ll make you find some Dragons.”
The whistling wind brought grains of sand hurtling towards the recruit’s mouths and eyes. Squinting, Aric pulled his scarf up to cover his mouth.
“What you are holding in your hands is a Tracker-Seeker,” Saruk said over the wind. “They are the Guild’s most precious pieces of property. The only Glowstone devices we own whose charms still work.” His desert robes flapped as he held out an opened leather case just like the ones each recruit was holding “Let me rephrase this just to make sure you understand. The Grand-Master would rather lose any one of you, than any one of those cases. Understood?”
“Yes, instructor!” came the unison reply.
“Inside,” Saruk continued, “you will find two objects – a Glowstone pendant and a Glowstone tipped arrow. Your job is simple. Fire one arrow at a Dragon, and return its corresponding pendant to Lamash. A Company of senior Hunters will then follow the pendant back to said Dragon. Any questions?”
“Yeah,” Ashur said, raising an arm. “What does the arrow do? Poison the Dragon?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Saruk replied. “Dragons can’t be poisoned.”
“How exactly will the senior Hunters follow the pendant to the Dragon?” Jullion asked with a confused look on his face.
“It’s a spell, you idiot,” Trissa told him. “Didn’t you hear the instructor?”
“Easy, Trissa,” Saruk said. He pulled the Seeker pendant from his own case and moved it around. “As you can see, the Glowstone shard on the Seeker always points to its corresponding Tracker arrow. So, if you fire the tracker into a dragon, the Seeker will lead us back to it.”
“That sounds a bit dangerous…” Irenya said, her hands shifting around as if she didn’t know what to do with them. “I mean… how close do we have to get?”
“Dangerous?!” Saruk asked. “Of course, it’s dangerous. This is the Dragon Hunters Guild. What did you expect you would be doing, gardening?”
“Yes but,” Orisius came to her defense, “we have no experience with Dragons, instructor.”
“If, or rather, when you find a Dragon, you won’t need any experience,” Saruk told him. “You’ll need to hide. In a cave, under a rock, wherever. Dig yourselves under the sand if you have to. Put your head out long enough to tag the Dragon with your Seeker arrow, then hide yourselves once again. Now, if there are no further questions I would like to address another issue.”
He locked the gilded leather case and placed it on his belt.
“I told you recruits to think about who you wanted to be leading you. Your time to think is over.” He paused, scanning his recruits as they exchanged nervous glances. “From here on out, you will train in teams, and teams will compete with each other. How will we choose the teams? Easy. Anyone who thinks he or she can make a good Captain for this Company can step forward and will immediately become a team leader. Everyone else is free to choose the team they want to be a part of.”
There was a small moment of silence until Ashur gave a step forward. “I can do it, instructor.”
Somewhere along the line of recruits, Trissa snorted. Everyone else remained quiet.
“Is that it?” Saruk asked. “No one else up for the job? If we have only one candidate, then the decision is made. Ashur will become Company Captain effective immediate.”
Aric saw a smirk twisting Ashur’s mouth. There was no way he would let Ashur be their Captain.
“Go on,” Leth whispered in Aric’s ear. “We can’t be stuck with Ashur.”
“He’s right,” Clea agreed, tugging at Aric’s tunic.
“Why don’t you step forward?” Aric asked Leth.
“Are you kidding?” Leth replied. “I don’t like anyone in this Company. I’d make a horrible Captain.”
Aric turned to Clea. “You do it, then,” he whispered.
She shook her head very quickly, glaring back at him. “No way!”
“Come on,” Leth insisted. “You’re an Auron.”
“So what?” Aric asked.
“Isn’t everyone in your family supposed to be a hero or something?” Leth said. “Think of your… your legacy or whatever. I don’t care, just step forward.”
Aric exhaled loudly. He pulled his scarf down and stepped forward. “I’ll do it.”
“Good,” Saruk said. “We have ourselves a competition after all.” He rubbed his hands together. “So, one of you two is going to be the Captain of this‒”
“No!” Tharius stepped forward. He looked angry. “They’re not even volunteers.”
“So what?” Saruk asked. “There’s no rule against a conscript making Captain. Are you stepping up to the plate as well, recruit?”
Tharius looked left and right, first at Aric, then at Ashur, as if he was measuring them. “I am,” he said after a while. “I’ve been preparing for this my whole life.”
“And so have I,” the powerful voice of Nahir thundered as he stepped forward.
“Well, fire take me,” Saruk said, “this is going to be more interesting than I thought.”
“It will if you like boys-only taverns,” Trissa said. A couple of the other girls giggled. “We need a girl to lead this Company. There’s a reason the Grand-Master is a woman, you know?”
Ashur snorted.
“You got a problem?” Trissa asked him.
“Nothing I can’t handle,” Ashur said without even looking at her.
“Trissa,” Saruk said. “I could not agree with you more. Why don’t you step forward?”
Irenya and Dothea agreed, spurring her forward.
“Alright,” Trissa said, hands on her hips. “I’m in.” She stepped forward.
“Excellent! Anyone else?” Saruk asked. He waited a moment, and when no one else said anything he continued. “Alright, now the rest of you have to choose. Get behind the candidate you wish to follow.”
Aric felt his stomach twist a little bit. He still wasn’t sure if he wanted to be the Captain, but he certainly didn’t want to have no one choosing him. That would be humiliating. Especially considering Ashur could count on Jullion and Prion. Those two would never choose anyone else.
Behind Aric, people shifted and moved. Some went straight to their candidates of choice, like Jullion and Prion, while others remained on their spot, scratching their heads.
A sigh of relief left Aric’s chest when Clea walked behind him.
“What are you doing?” Clea asked Leth.
The Akhami boy hadn’t moved yet and was looking from Tharius to Nahir. “What? I have a right to choose, don’t I?”
“You’re the one who told Aric to step forward!” Clea said through her gritted teeth.
“Because I didn’t know there were other choices.”
“Leth!” Clea warned, fists clenched.
“Alright, alright,” Leth surrendered.
“I don’t want you to support me against you
r will,” Aric said.
“Nah,” Leth dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “You’re fine, I suppose.”
Aric looked at the others. To his great satisfaction, no one had chosen Ashur beside Jullion and Prion. Trissa hadn’t done too badly either. Both Irenya and Dothea were standing behind her. Everyone else had chosen Nahir, which meant poor Tharius was left alone.
Ouch, Aric thought.
“Tharius,” Ashur sneered, “the one-man-Company.”
Jullion and Prion chuckled.
Calmly, Saruk neared Tharius and spoke in a low voice. “You may forfeit your candidacy if you like, recruit.”
“I would rather not, instructor.”
“Are you sure? This is no easy mission. Certainly not for a single person.”
“I’ll be alright, instructor.”
Saruk nodded. “Good for you, recruit.” With a twist of his heel, Saruk turned to rest of the Company and raised his voice. “The rules are simple. First team back to the fortress wins. Last team loses.”
Aric raised his hand. “What exactly do we lose, instructor?”
“The chance to become Captain,” Saruk replied. “The leader of the losing team has to drop out of the race.”
That wasn’t so bad. Aric wasn’t even sure he really wanted to be the Captain.
“And what do we win, exactly?” Trissa asked.
Saruk smirked. “The support of the losing team, of course.”
No matter how many twisting dune tops they crossed, the mountains stretching across the horizon simply refused to get any bigger.
“That Saruk is a tyrant,” Leth said. “And a sadist. He’s a tyrant-sadist with an insatiable thirst for our misery.”
Ahead of him, Aric looked through his binoculars. “There’s no point in complaining. We just have to finish the mission as quickly as possible.”
“What if Ashur wins?” Leth insisted. “We can’t control how fast a Dragon will smell his stinking armpits.”
“Then all we can do is make sure we don’t finish last,” Clea told him as she scanned the horizon.
“We can’t control that either,” Leth replied. “This is pointless.” He fell to his knees and Aric sat beside him.
The torrid sun had turned their dirt stiff clothes into cooking pans, draining their bodies with every step. With a leathery throat, Aric opened his canteen, only to close it right away. They would have to make their water supply last.
“We should keep going,” Aric said. “I’m sure it was a Dragon.”
“How can you be sure?” Clea asked, dropping her backpack in the sand and sitting down beside the two boys.”
Aric looked through his binoculars again and searched the horizon. “It was a Dragon. Had to be. Besides, those mountains are probably Dragon territory. They’re tall and wide.”
“We don’t need to find a Dragon’s lair,” Clea said. “Just the Dragon, remember?”
“What we need is to get out of the sand,” Leth said. “Sand is death. For all we know there’s a desert lion following our tracks.” He stood back up and circled, searching their surroundings. “We should find a rock formation. Rocks might mean a cave, a cave might mean water.”
“Over there!” Aric said, his eyes glued to the binoculars. “Rocks.”
Leth borrowed the goggles and looked through them. There was a set of outcroppings, brown boulders, each taller than a large house, huddled together amid the dunes.
“Great!” Leth celebrated. “We should head there.”
“Yeah, you should,” Aric said. He took off his backpack and handed it to Leth. “Here, hold this for me. I’ll travel faster without it.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Clea asked.
“I’m going to keep walking south for two more hours, try to get a glimpse of that Dragon,” Aric replied. “The two of you find shelter and rest. That way we’ll conserve water.” Aric fastened his Tracker-Seeker onto his belt and the bow across his back.
“Wait,” Clea said. “Here, switch with me, mine is fuller.” She handed Aric her canteen, then stuck a hand into her backpack. She fiddled inside for a moment and picked up a small pouch. “Take the biscuits too. You don’t want to get too weak to get back.”
“I’m not going to get weak,” Aric said, accepting the biscuits. “Anyway, I should be back shortly after sundown. Try to get some rest.”
“Best idea ever.” Leth adjusted Aric’s backpack over his shoulder, next to his own, with a huge smile. “See. I knew you’d make a great Captain.”
“Shut up,” Clea told him. She turned to Aric. “We’ll have some dinner waiting for you. Be careful.”
The wind had picked up and flying sand was polishing Aric’s cheeks, the only part of his face left exposed. He used his hand to cover his eyes and looked up at the mountain range to the south.
The peaks had finally started to look bigger. Or at least, so it seemed. The Dragon, however, was still nowhere to be found. Aric had first noticed its shape shortly after midday, and despite Leth’s insistence that it was just a hawk, Aric had followed it south for most of the afternoon, until the waving silhouette had become a tiny speck in the immense, blue glass sky, and finally disappeared.
Had it really been a Dragon? What if Leth had been right along?
A stronger gust of wind sent grains of sand into his eyes and he wiped them away with vigorous rubs. As he turned around, eyes watering, the mountains in the south seemed to shift.
“What the…?”
Aric wiped his eyes again, making sure there were no grains of sand or tears left to impair his vision, then focused on the distant brown peaks.
That’s no mountain! Those are clouds. Low hanging clouds.
He took two steps forward as if it could somehow help him see any better.
Yup, those were not mountains. They were dancing and shifting at the top, dissolving into the blue sky.
They’re really dark, too. Could it be rain?
If it was, Aric was about to witness a moment of a lifetime. According to Saruk, it only rained every fifty to sixty years in the Mahar. There were records of entire centuries without a single drop of rain in the desert.
“Well, I guess my water problem is solved…” he muttered to himself.
The problem was, so was every other desert creature’s. According to the Guild’s records, there would be a flash flood. Nothing dangerous, but it would bring out every living creature in the desert. Predators would have a field day, especially Dragons.
I should get back.
Turning his back on the looming darkness, Aric felt the wind push him forward. At least, from this direction, there was no need to cover his eyes from the sand. His robes flapped wildly and he saw huge pockets of sand billowing ahead of him. Were desert rains supposed to be like storms?
Storms!?
“Oh, crap!”
The realization made his heart sink through his stomach. Those weren’t rain clouds. That was a sandstorm.
He quickly remembered Saruk’s survival instructions. “Soak your mouth cover,” he repeated to himself.
Obeying his own instructions, he scrambled for his canteen. The rush made him spill far more water than he would have liked.
“Find cover,” he continued. He needed a hole or a cave to protect himself, or at the very least, a boulder he could hide behind, otherwise he could end up buried beneath the relentless sand. And he had to find it quick, before he was caught by the storm and lost his sight.
Using the binoculars, Aric searched in every direction but found nothing except for dunes and more dunes.
I could try to run back to where I left Clea and Leth…
No, that was a terrible idea. No one could ever outrun a sandstorm. Instead, he ran along the sand crests and climbed the tallest dune around him. He scanned the distance with his binoculars again. The sand hurtling towards him was becoming almost painful. If it wasn’t for the scarf around his mouth and nose he would have swallowed a bucket of sand by now.
&
nbsp; He looked, and looked, and looked until… there! He saw something! A small mesa, crowned by a curving rock that looked like an archway. There seemed to be an opening of some sort on its side.
“Thank the Goddess!”
The only problem was, the mesa was in the same direction as that of the lumbering sand wall, so either Aric would get there first, or the storm would. There was no time to lose.
Aric dashed away, his feet burying in the sand as he raced up and down the dunes. He didn’t even give himself enough time to figure a way atop the crests, but as if running through the sand wasn’t tiring enough, some dunes were so steep that Aric was out of breath by the second one.
Can’t stop. Can’t stop.
Lungs burning, legs shaking, Aric pushed forward. The massive wall of sand kept rolling like a colossal brown wave, swallowing everything in its path. He leapt onto the solid surface of the rock as the deafening sound of rattling sand engulfed him. If he wasn’t inside the storm yet, he sure would be very soon.
The small cave opening stood several feet above the ground. Aric grabbed onto the rock and heaved himself up to an outcropping. It would have been as easy as climbing a flight of stairs if it wasn’t for the gusts of wind tossing him around, not to mention the rock outcroppings stopped about five feet away from the cave opening.
He didn’t even think about it, he just jumped sideways and grabbed onto the ledge, heaving himself up into the cave, and just in time too. The moment he found himself up there a thundering roar flooded the cave, and a thick cloud of brown dust covered the world.
“Sweet mother Ava…” Aric said.
Panting heavily, he removed his scarf. The furious wind played tricks with the cave’s entrance, howling and… barking?
Aric figured he had to be imagining things until he heard it again. It was a strange, high pitched bark. Wind wouldn’t sound like that, no matter how much it twirled inside a cavern.
He stepped closer to the opening, his hands not leaving the ragged, stone wall. A turmoil of flying sand made Aric cover his eyes again as he peeked outside. At first, the sight made him jump backwards. Then, when he peeked again, he saw a large cat trying to jump up to the cave. It was panicking, barking and whining as his paws scratched the wall uselessly. The cave was just too high for him.
The Dragon Hunter and the Mage Page 19
