by Devin Hanson
"But now you're a Runemaster. Or will be, given time and practice. Fit consort for any noble heiress." She chuckled at his hesitation. "Don't worry, I'm not dallying with you. Despite our present... arrangement."
"It's not that--"
"Sh. You're ahead. Don't say something stupid and mess it up."
Andrew took her advice and shut his mouth. He rested his head on his arm, staring down at the top of Jules' head. She had put her hair in a tight braid sometime during the climb and he admired the precise back and forth of the braid. Jules was warm against him and he started to relax, enjoying the heat of their combined body warmth, letting his tortured shoulders and arms finally loosen up.
Jules propped her head up and looked out over the valley.
"See something?" he asked.
"The airship. It was hiding in the setting sun, but it's visible now, just barely."
"Are they doing anything?"
Jules shook her head. "No. Probably just trying to locate us. On their scrying compass, it must have looked like I had stopped moving. They're checking on us to see what's happening. In all likelihood, they've either spotted us, or assumed we're on the cliff somewhere."
Andrew closed his eyes, too tired to care. "Tomorrow will be interesting."
"The game's afoot," she said, her voice low. "The morrow will decide all."
Andrew slipped into exhausted sleep, his last waking sensation Jules burrowing into his chest, her breath hot against his abused muscles.
Chapter 18
The Brooding Den
Andrew woke with a start and the gut-wrenching sensation of falling. The feeling of the ropes biting into his back yanked him back to the present and after a frantic assessment to make sure he wasn't in fact falling off the cliff, he relaxed.
The rising sun warmed his back and cast a rosy glow over the cliff. In the valley far below birds twittered. It looked to be a beautiful day.
Jules was still asleep, her face peaceful, one hand curled up next to her cheek. Andrew had wrapped an arm around her shoulders in his sleep and he left it there. She had made it perfectly clear she was not interested in him last night. All the same, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to have her sleeping curled up against his chest.
He had started to doze again when Jules woke slowly, blinked up at him, a comfortable smile on her lips.
"Morning," Andrew smiled down at her.
"Good morning." Jules stretched and yawned. "Oh, look at the sun! We should have been moving hours ago!" She tried sitting up, remembered she was tied in, and set about undoing knots.
Andrew felt his secure position starting to sag and hurriedly grabbed a handful of rope next to a piton. "You could have warned me." His shoulder protested at the sudden strain put on it. Now that he was moving again, it felt like every muscle in his upper body was sore and stiff.
"You could have woken me earlier."
Andrew didn't bother arguing it, instead set about packing his bags and preparing a quick breakfast one-handed; his other hand wrapped tight in a loop of rope securely anchored with a piton. They took turns relieving themselves over the cliff, the other turning their back.
Jules reviewed their map again before setting out. "We're not far now," she guessed. "Fifty, sixty yards, tops."
Andrew felt a chill go down his spine. If he had known they were so close to the dragon's lair he wouldn't have slept so soundly. "Before we go," Andrew had to ask, "are you sure this is a good idea?" Up until now, it was an intellectual exercise. 'Go raid the dragon's lair.' Now it was suddenly starting to be very real. They might not live another twenty minutes.
"Of course I'm sure," Jules replied shortly. "I've come too far now to turn back."
"Desperation doesn't make it a good idea," Andrew argued.
"Who said I was desperate? I need the scales. You need the learning."
"All the learning in the world won't do me any good if I'm dead in the next half hour."
Jules snorted. "You're not going to die. Stop being melodramatic."
"Can we at least have a plan? We can't just walk into the cave."
This made Jules pause. "You're right. About needing a plan. I still think it's a perfectly feasible concept."
"Plan first," Andrew said firmly, "then we argue."
"Okay. Here's my plan. We get up next to the cave and hide. When the dragon flies out to get food, we get in, get the scales and get out. We hide again until it comes back, hang low for an hour or so, then climb down the cliff."
"Do you think she'll notice scales are missing?"
Jules threw up her free hand in exasperation. "How am I supposed to know? It's not like I've ever robbed a live dragon before."
"What if she does? What if she searches the mountain side for us?"
"We hide behind the cloaks?"
"It's a cloak, Jules, it's only meant to provide cover when the dragon isn't specifically searching. If she notices scales are missing and searches for us, there's no way our cloaks will be enough."
"Then I guess we'll have to hope the dragon doesn't notice scales are missing immediately. How about we take only scales that aren't in obvious plain sight?"
Andrew rolled his eyes. "There're a million things wrong with this plan."
"You got a better one?"
Andrew didn't have an answer for that.
"We need to make it up as we go. We be smart, try to think of things, but above all, we move fast. We won't have more than ten or fifteen minutes before we have to leave."
Andrew sighed.
"And we have to go now. If she leaves and we're not in position, we might as well be at the bottom of the cliff for all the good it'll do us."
This, at least, made sense to Andrew. "Okay. Let's get going then."
The climb was brutal for Andrew, at least until his muscles warmed up. The night had been cold despite his blankets and cloak and his arms and shoulders had grown stiff. The first few legs of the climb were the hardest, but then started to get easier as blood started flowing through his abused limbs again.
The cliff face started to change, transitioning gradually from a sheer face where the only holds were cracks and minute ledges then roughening out with boulders and an easier slope. Andrew started smelling the sharp cinnamon tang of dragon dung, and a lot of it.
They started passing clumps of it spattered on the rocks, most of it old and crumbling, but the rare patch rank and fresh enough to make their eyes water as they climbed past.
Andrew spotted the cave before Jules did; he had the luxury of being able to look around while he waited for Jules to work out how to scale the next section of cliff. The cave entrance was to their right about a dozen yards, a foreboding chasm that drank the light.
"Jules!" he hissed, and tugged on the rope to get her attention.
"Tiny gods, Andrew! What?" A few pebbles skipped by his head, dislodged as Jules fought for balance against his rope tugs.
"Shh! The cave! Look to your right."
Silence, and Andrew wondered if Jules could see it from her position, then, "It's bigger than I thought it'd be." A few more pebbles bounced past then Jules slid back into view. "Good thing you saw it. I would have climbed right by it." She spoke in a whisper now, and had her cloak tucked tight around her.
"Shouldn't be too hard getting over to it from here," Andrew guessed.
"Yes, a few minutes. But that's a few minutes that we could use to find more scales. We have to get closer."
The climb to get to the mouth of the cave was simple, almost too quick for Andrew's tastes. The cave mouth was a slash of shadow that only got deeper as they worked closer and were able to see further in. They started seeing great gouges in the stone, claw marks where the dragon had torn into the solid granite to widen the mouth. These provided almost ideal handholds and they closed the distance to the mouth of the cave quickly and easily.
Andrew half-expected to be overwhelmed with the scent of dragon dung, and he wasn't disappointed. His senses were swamp
ed by a miasma of burnt cinnamon. After a few tense seconds where he was sure he was going to sneeze his nose clogged up and muted the stench.
Jules pointed to an alcove, a hole in the cliff face where the dragon had clawed out a boulder next to the cave mouth and left a cavity behind big enough for both of them to sit comfortably. From there, they could reached the cave mouth in a single leap.
As Andrew arranged the folds of his cloak to his satisfaction, he couldn't help but reflect on the sheer stupidity that had led them to this point. Now that he had stopped moving, he could hear a low rumble coming from the cave and a barely perceptible draught of air. He looked a question at Jules and got a shrug in return.
They settled in to wait. Andrew alternated between fear sweats and agonizing boredom. He wished the dragon would come out, see them and get it all over with. He wished the dragon would never come out. He wished he hadn't found the scale. He wished the dragon would come out and fly off without seeing them. He wished he had the balls to find Jules' hand with his own.
So great was his spiraling introversion that he almost missed Jules' sudden intake of breath. He barely restrained the muscle reflex to turn his head, instead made himself freeze, locking down every muscle. Then he felt the tremor in the rock. An earthquake? No. Footsteps! He recognized what was happening just as the brooding dragon burst from her cave.
He could have reached out and touched a wing as she went by, a mass that seemed too big to move so fast. Then the dragon was past and a scorching wind roared past them. Andrew saw the hair hanging in front of his face curl in the heat. Then silence.
Andrew stayed frozen for he didn't know how long. Fear paralysis locked his muscles down and his head thundered. All he could see was the great beast destroying the airship about him three years ago.
Jules was moving. It snapped Andrew out of his memories and brought him to the present, not necessarily a change for the better. She leapt across the gap and waved frantically for Andrew to follow.
Every fiber of his being screamed that going into that cave was a horrible, horrible idea. He should turn around and climb down the cliff right now. Better, jump off. That way he'd be at the bottom faster, and no less dead than if he stayed here. Then he found himself at Jules' side and it was too late for intelligent decisions.
"Quickly now," Jules hissed at him and drew a stick from her pack. With a deft stroke, she finished the Igan and the head of the stick burst into flame. She handed it to him then repeated the motion with her own torch.
Feeling slightly foolish for not having thought of needing a torch, he followed Jules into the cave. Andrew didn't know much about how caves formed, but even guessed that the mountain had a vein of softer rock in it, probably sandstone of some sort. Wind and rain and eaten away at the vein over the years, forming a winding cavern that bored deep into the mountain side. Then the dragon had come along and ripped it wider, filling the crevices with rubble and pounding it flat over the years.
The walls shown in their flickering light were shredded in rough crisscross. The sandstone was glazed in places, and it was a while before Andrew realized the dragon must have melted the stone into glass with a stray gout of fire.
They rounded the first bend in the passage and the cave opened up into a high-ceilinged cavern that their torchlight barely reached. Blasted and fused rocks formed a wide bowl in the center of the floor that emanated a palpable heat. The lip was too high to see over, so they skirted around it, waving their torches across the floor looking for scales.
Jules ducked down and came up with a faintly glowing scale, a wide smile on her face. "And one!"
Andrew forced himself to stop staring up at the claw-marked ceiling. The nest in the center drew his attention and he approached it cautiously, holding a hand in front of his face to shield it from the heat. The ground started to slope upwards as he got closer, piles of congealed slag half-fused together, thrown from whatever hellish process formed the nest. His head cleared the rim and he looked down into the nest.
Cold, raw terror rushed through him. "Jules!" he cried, "The dragon isn't hunting!"
"What? What do you mean? We saw her go out!"
"She isn't hunting. She's already lain her eggs."
Jules dashed up beside Andrew and skidded to a stop, her hand clamped around his arm. "Oh gods," she whispered. "That isn't good."
Five eggs lay at the bottom of the nest. The stone around them glowed red and blistered as they watched, still molten from the dragon's breath. Each egg was roughly the size of Andrew's head, obsidian-black and smooth as glass.
Thunder rolled outside the cave and Andrew shared a confused look with Jules. The sky had been clear when they had entered the cave.
Jules voiced it first. "Guns! The dragon is attacking the airship!"
"Oh man," Andrew groaned, "we do not want to be here right now."
"Andrew! Listen to me. Right now, the only thing we can do is collect all the scales we can and get out. We'll know when the dragon is finished with the airship, you can count on that."
"But what happens if the airship finishes with the dragon?"
Jules face hardened with determination. "Then we negotiate. I'm quite good at negotiating." She rested a hand on the butt of her pistol.
Andrew nodded and started scrambling about, searching for scales. A glint caught his eye and he stooped down and scooped up a scale almost as big as his own. He dropped the scale immediately, muffling a yelp, then fished the scrap of leather out of his belt pouch and picked the scale up with that instead. With the scale safely stowed and clacking against the original as he moved, Andrew thrust his torch out in front of him, moving as quickly as the flickering light would let him.
Thunder roared outside again, the rippling pattern of a broadside, amplified and echoing in the cave. Andrew heard ringing ricochets hit the rock at the mouth of the cave, too high-pitched to be full cannonballs.
"They're using grapeshot!" He shouted at Jules. "The dragon won't last against that. They're not trying to kill it, just incapacitate it!"
"How would you know if they were using grapeshot?"
"Just trust me in this."
"I've only got 4 scales, I can't leave yet!"
"Jules, if we don't go right now, the airship will land at the mouth of the cave. We won't be able to escape!"
The dragon roared, deafening in the echoing cave, almost drowning out another broadside.
Andrew turned, grabbed Jules by the wrist and started running for the sunlight. The mountain shook and the dragon roared again, this time it was almost a mewl, a cry of pain and rage. Andrew skidded to a halt and waited, tense. The mountain shook a few more times, barely perceptible.
"You think she's dead?" Andrew asked. He was horrified that the airship would wound the dragon so severely. Yes, he was terrified of the beast, but at the same time, he couldn't help but be in awe of the sheer majesty of the dragon. There was not a creature in the land that had even part of a dragon's awesome strength and regal power. It seemed a crime to kill one, even to wound one.
"Not likely, though I'm sure her mood is not much improved. We have to be out of here before she makes it back up the cliff."
The throb of the airship's props became audible then the slap of a rope ladder on the rock. The light coming through the open mouth of the cave dimmed as the airship eclipsed the sun.
"Get down!" Jules shoved Andrew against the wall and rolled away, pistol drawn.
In the dim light, Andrew saw the muzzle flare from her pistol lash out even as he was cringing away, his hands covering his ears. The gunshot was deafening, even louder than the dragon cry. She fired twice more, a rapid double-tap followed by a dwindling scream as someone fell off the ladder and tumbled down the mountain.
Jules finished her roll, a bare second ahead of a series of sand bursts that ripped through where she had just been kneeling as someone fired back. Shouting from the airship, followed by the crack of a single pistol shot.
"They want me alive," Jules
explained to Andrew as she reloaded the spent shells from a pouch on her belt. "At least Trent does."
"What are we going to do?" Andrew lifted his hands away from his ears to hear her reply, but kept them ready to clap down again if more shots were fired.
"Drive them off."
"What can I do to help?"
"Just stay out of the way. If Trent comes down, it could get a little tense. I can't protect both you and myself."
"Okay. I can do that. Why don't you throw me your torch?" Andrew asked. Jules gave him a look but threw the torch without a question. Andrew buried the head in the sand and fumbled his stylus from his pouch. With the flames subdued by the sand, he scratched out the Igan in the head of the torch and started carving his own.
More shouting from the airship, and the light dimmed as more men started to climb down the rope ladder.
"Whatever you have planned," Jules said, her voice tight with urgency, "I'd hurry it up." She leaned out around the spur of rock she had taken cover behind and sighted carefully. Her pistol barked, lashing fire, and a ricochet screamed off metal.
"They're armored," Jules said, cursing.
"It's just armor," Andrew called back, "you have a gun! Shoot them!" At least the Warding chain was already carved. He didn't have to do that too. He focused on the Igan, his hands remembering the exact details on their own.
Jules leaned out and emptied her gun into the approaching figures. Metal screamed and ricochets howled around the cave. "It's not working! Their armor must be reinforced with alchemy." She holstered the gun.
"Is that it? You're just giving up?"
"There's four of them! And Trent! What am I supposed to do?"
"I don't know, you're the alchemist!"
A voice echoed down from the cave mouth. Andrew recognized it immediately as Trent. "Jules Vierra! I told you we weren't done."
"Burn him," Jules grimaced. "There is no way I'm going to meekly surrender to Trent." She rolled her eyes. "Give it up, Trent! You'll have to drag me kicking and screaming."
