He still needed to get closer. She turned away from David and glared at Brian, warily. "Anything that dares attack a dragon deserves caution," her look said.
He circled left, drawing her away from the boy, clearing David's way back to the bow. She slithered after Brian, circling him with her body, her head weaving like a hunting cobra. He caught a flicker of motion in the corner of his eye and jumped. The whip of her tail caught his toes, and he flipped, but the force missed him. He rolled to his feet again, ignoring dagger-sharp pains in his injured shoulder and ribs.
His old wounds might be bad, but they were nothing compared to what those teeth and claws would do. His leg wobbled, on fire, but it held. The dragon slithered closer.
David was moving, clambering to his feet, running.
"Get your bow, dammit! Go for her eyes!"
All Brian saw of him was ass and elbows flickering down the forest trail. Goddamn bug-out.
The dragon feinted, jabbing with her head and then snapping her tail. She acted like she was testing for traps, for poison in her prey. Brian limped closer to her head and she flicked her tongue, smelling for illusions. She didn't believe it could be so easy.
Close enough. Brian triggered the spell. He felt the power flowing through his wrists, his palms, the blackness of the stun-spell leaping from his fingers. It splashed across the dragon's nose.
Nothing happened.
The transparent membrane flicked lazily across her eye, protecting it from any dirt or scratches when she struck. Brian swore she was smiling at him, the malicious smile of little Sean. So that was why she'd looked behind her.
{So kind of you to walk into my mouth. The other one will not get far.}
Brian dove for his kukri and fell, headlong, lucky, as claws brushed past his leg. He scrambled to his knees, and the snout thumped his shoulder with a missed strike and bowled him further across the trail. He shook stars out of his eyes and focused on a single golden eye.
The eye of death.
She blinked again, lazily, a cat with a mouse pinned between her paws. Her sour sharp breath flowed over Brian like a fog.
Mulvaney whispered in his ear, again. You're going to die, Brian Arthur Albion Pendragon. Goddamned guitar player bugged out. Left you to save his ass. Never count on civilians.
Brian's head still rang, and he played dead to gather his wits. The dragon tapped him with one paw, as if he was a warm chocolate candy she was patting back into shape before taking a dainty nibble. The tongue flicked out again, tasting, testing, slithering over him as coarse and rough as wet sandpaper. She still couldn't believe he was real, edible, no trick.
He stared at teeth as long as his hand, pitted and caked and slimy. They carried jagged edges, like the serrated blades of steak knives or the dental arsenal of a shark.
He pulled in his last reserves and tottered to his feet, the kukri back in his hand somehow. "You goddamned worm, go ahead and bite! I'll dive down your throat and carve your heart out from inside your gullet!"
The teeth jerked away, and something like warm jelly splashed across Brian's face. An orange-fletched shaft poked out of a deflating yellow beach-ball overhead. The dragon spun away from him with a screech that shook the ground.
A second arrow skipped off her head. Brian staggered forward, focused on stabbing that other eye. Blind her and they just might have a chance . . . .
The dragon screamed again, and something huge slammed Brian sideways into the air, tumbling, flailing, barely tucking into a roll that carried him to thump against a tree. Another shaft hissed by his head and buried itself in the ground up to its feathers.
He identified it, automatically. Soft orange vinyl fletching. Olive green aluminum shaft.
Real-world archery, not Summer Country.
His own arrows.
The dragon roared and howled, head lifted high, pounding the ground with its tail, shattering trees and throwing dirt. A man darted out of the bushes right underneath her snout, drew bow, and loosed in a single perfect flow of movement. Point-blank range, ten feet or less, he couldn't miss. The shaft drove straight up, through the soft skin under her jaw, and vanished.
Brian thought his head would split with the shriek of the injured dragon. She thrashed and rolled in a fog of blood and dust and splinters, claws gouging furrows in the ground as though she was plowing for some deadly crop. He saw the shadow-man flipping through the air like a discarded doll.
Brian's focus narrowed to a single thought--Away! Just get away. The bloody snake wouldn't die before sunset. One arm and the opposite leg obeyed him and they dragged the rest along behind. Something heavy slammed to the ground close by, and he refused to look. Whatever it was, if it wanted to kill him, he couldn't stop it.
He bumped up against a pile of rocks, slithered into a crevice between two of them, and waited for the factory-whistles of hell to stop their braying. So much for sneaking up on Dougal. If the bastard hadn't been waiting already, they'd just well and truly rung the doorbell.
Dirt showered across him, and he jerked his mind back to survival. The dragon lay sprawled across the trail, twitching and twisted, silent, steaming blood dripping from her jaw. Her undamaged eye hung half-closed and blank. As he watched, one forefoot relaxed, and a clod of dirt dropped back to the ground in bits and dribbles from the clench of her claws.
It was a damn good thing they didn't breathe fire. Teeth and claws and muscles were bad enough.
He gritted his teeth and hauled himself upright against the sheltering rocks, swaying, trying to sort out the scene. It was a bloody mess, in all senses of the word: dragon blood and human blood and British swearing splashed all over the shattered forest trail.
Brian stared at a gash through his pants and into the meat beneath, twice as long as his finger and slowly flowing red. A dragon claw had just touched him lightly. He swung his right arm and winced when it refused to rise above his shoulder, either way. He spat, saw blood mixed with the dirt he cleared from his mouth, and hoped it came from a cut lip instead of from his lungs. At this point, he couldn't tell.
First priority: look for weapons. His kukri glittered in the sun, half-buried by leaves and dirt. He hobbled over to it and knelt down, one leg stiff to the side, rather than trying to bend over. The knife didn't seem damaged. Only thing that wasn't.
The dragon spasmed again, tail thrashing and rolling a boulder as big as a Volkswagen across the trail. He wondered if it had a supplemental brain to work the hindquarters, like some dinosaurs were thought to have. He'd better stay well clear of the carcass, anyway.
Next thing was, find David. The freeze-frame picture of an archer right underneath the dragon's jaw stuck in his mind.
Brian ran the videotape back in his brain, coordinating the trees that still stood among the ruins. The man had stood there, was knocked flying in that direction. Whatever was left of him should be under those fallen branches.
The kukri made a decent machete, lopping off the thinner limbs even with Brian's awkward, half-strength swings. He moved carefully, clearing and stacking in jerky spurts like a damaged robot and then resting whenever his head threatened to spin off and fall into the mess. The fraction of Brian's brain that still worked, kept nagging him against shifting the balance of the wreckage, against cutting flesh instead of wood.
Boot. Blue jeans. A broken bow, fiberglass, recurved, still clenched in a pale hand. Bloody shirt, both bright red human blood and the darker hematite of a dragon's. David.
David Dragon-Slayer.
He still lived. Brian ran practiced fingers over his head, prodding bruises and finding solid undamaged bone. The pulse felt strong, breathing regular. He pried back eyelids, found pupils dilated but matching.
Brian cut away more branches. He added to the list: dislocated elbow, cuts, scrapes, bruises. Not bad for a rookie, to use the Yank phrase. A quick jerk and the elbow slipped back into joint. It was best to do it while the poor sod was already out and save him the pain.
He'd have to ask about o
ther damage when the kid woke up. The Summer Country didn't provide portable x-ray machines. Just hands and eyes and ears, the original diagnostic tools. Brian stood up, joint by aching joint, and spotted the familiar worn cloth of his backpack lying in the trail. It held water and bandages.
Cutting his pants away from the gash in his leg was hard. Wrapping gauze pad and Ace bandage around it was hard. Everything was hard with fingers that fumbled and shook, with joints that refused to work in the proper fashion, with muscles drained of glycogen and ATP and whatever other bloody chemicals the bloody scientists had decreed necessary for coordinated bloody movement.
When he limped back to David, the boy's eyes were open. He stared up at Brian and slowly blinked, then shook his head.
"I ran."
"You came back."
"I'm a coward."
"You're a brave man. Running away makes sense. Turning around and coming back is harder than staying to fight in the first place. Now shut up and see if everything still works. Try things gently, one piece at a time."
A broken branch stabbed the earth right next to David's shoulder and another poked the space between his thighs. Together, they propped up a limb thicker than a man's waist. Chance ruled again. Chance dropped the limb there and chance spared David from being skewered, and chance probably guided his arrows in the first place, both the shaft in the center of the dragon's eye and the later one that had missed Brian by a hand's span.
David slowly dragged himself out from under the brush-pile. He wiggled fingers and toes and sat up groggily. He groped around his right kneecap and winced. Brian helped him to his feet, and they both found their way to the comforting support of a tree-trunk.
David stared at the dragon, the monster hulk still twitching fitfully as different parts of it learned that they were dead. To Brian's weary eye, it looked as if the damned thing stretched clear over the horizon.
"Jesus Christ," David whispered.
"Himself and all the saints, as well. You killed it."
"Should I eat its heart or something?"
"If you want to spend the rest of the day puking, go ahead and try. This isn't Wagner, or some stupid fairy-tale. Dragon-flesh will make you sick."
They leaned against each other and the tree, with about enough strength left to ruffle a kitten's fur. Brian's vision blurred for an instant, narrowing to a tunnel before clearing, and he wondered vaguely how they were going to rescue Maureen and Jo if they couldn't even walk.
"Such a touching scene."
Brian jerked his head around at the words. Black spots swam across his sight at the sudden move.
It was Sean. Behind him stood the squat ogre shape of Dougal. Brian felt his hand turn numb, and the kukri thumped to the ground. His muscles froze with Sean's holding-spell.
"You killed my dragon," Dougal said. "That will cost you."
Chapter Seventeen
Sean just stood there, lazily, next to a shattered tree, as smooth and sleek and darkly elegant as ever in the gray pullover and gray slacks that were nearly a uniform to him and to Fiona. His smile twisted gently at the corners of his mouth, and malice danced like firelight in his eyes.
Brian's thoughts jumped from Sean to Dougal to David to his kukri lying on the ground. He swore quietly to himself, even inventing a few new phrases when the accumulated vocabulary of fifty years of army life seemed to come up short.
Even if he broke the holding spell, neither he nor David could lift a finger for another fight. And Dougal was wearing chain mail over leather and carried an ugly clawed mace. Whatever else Brian might think about the misshapen troll, he recognized a competent and vicious fighter.
Cooling sweat stung Brian's eyes and trickled down his back and forehead. Flies buzzed his head, attracted by the spattered blood and eye-jelly of the dragon, the sweat, and the dirt. He twitched a finger, trying to swat at them, but couldn't move. Somehow, the filthy little buggers bothered him more than the certainty that he was about to die.
"Darling Fiona's heart will break," Sean drawled. "Poor darling Brian. Killed by a dragon, a blow to the head even as the beast twisted in its death-throes. It must have been a valiant fight between worthy opponents."
He took the mace from Dougal. "What do you plan to do with the other one, my noble ally? Add him to your collection?"
"He's a poor trade for my dragon," Dougal growled. "You wouldn't believe how much time and trouble the beast cost me. I don't know where I'll find another."
"Ah, yes. An endangered species. And I'll bet my dear brother didn't even file an Environmental Impact Statement. He's left you with a lot of damage to repair."
Brian wrestled with the spell holding him. Power drained away as fast as he gathered it, water pumped into a bucket with no bottom. Where in hell had Sean learned that kind of trick?
But Brian was too tired and muddle-headed from the fight to really care. His tongue seemed thick in his mouth when he tried to speak, as if he'd swallowed dragon's blood and his throat was swelling up to choke him.
"Quit gloating and kill me, you scrawny little freak. Or don't you have enough muscle to lift a weapon? Wouldn't you prefer to have Dougal do the sweaty work and keep the nasty gore off your pretty clothes?"
Get the runt mad enough, he might lose concentration. If he just lost his grip on a single thread of the binding . . . Sean was the dangerous one; Dougal couldn't use that kind of spell.
"You can't goad me into hurrying." Sean smiled, running words over his tongue as if savoring a fine wine. "I've waited half a century to bash your brains out. A few minutes of triumph are small enough payment for all your insults and interference. Even Fiona doesn't really like you, you know. She just has this genetic experiment she wants to try."
"So shut up and kill me before I get enough strength back to break your hold and then your bloody little neck."
"Temper, temper. Wait your turn. I was asking Dougal about your human friend."
One of the flies landed on Brian's nose, and he hated it more than he hated Sean or Dougal. He couldn't even purse his lips to try to blow it loose. The only reason he could talk at all was Sean's hunger for a chance to taunt him. How could Brian twist that weakness into a weapon?
He had to keep a hope for Maureen and Jo. David had been blooded now, he ran and then came back again. He wouldn't run a second time. He knew how to fight, and he truly cared. They couldn't both die here.
"David is a bard. His life is sacred. Let him go or bring the curse down upon you both."
Dougal clenched his jaw, and then bit off words like chunks of jerked beef dried a touch too long. "I think you're lying. But bard or no, he owes me blood. He owes blood to the land. I can think of ways to get that without killing him. He'll pay."
Sean's smile broadened. "You interest me. I hope you'll let me watch, even if you don't want help. Things would have been so much tidier if he hadn't killed your dragon. Now I have to get all sweaty, as my brother with the perfect genes so crudely pointed out. He might even splash blood on me, and these pants are wool. My cleaners get so upset if I make them take bloodstains out of wool."
He lifted the mace.
"I don't think you want to do that," said a clear soprano voice. Fiona glided out from behind a tree. "Sean, love, I am not pleased with you. Protecting the dragon against your brother's magic--I could overlook that. It made the fight much more interesting." She shook her head. "Killing him yourself? No, I don't think I can allow that, love. He's worth much more to me than you are. Especially once I've prepared him properly."
Fiona. That explained the drain. It wasn't Sean, or some new skill Dougal had found late in life. Fiona.
The mace slipped from Sean's hand and thudded to the ground, barely missing his foot. Sweat beaded his forehead, but Fiona smiled and shook her head again.
"You're no match for me, love. You never were. Genetics, as you said. Those flaws express themselves in more than just your fertility. Among other things, they make you so predictable."
She glid
ed across to Brian and ran a finger along his cheek and jaw. "Your brother, now, he's a different matter. Much more entertaining. If he weren't hurt twice over, I don't think you'd have held him. What do you think, Dougal? Wouldn't that be an interesting contest?"
Dougal grunted.
"Oh, come now, neighbor mine. You often pit your beasts against each other. What do you think the odds would be? Which way would you bet?"
The troll grunted again. "Weapons? Sean wouldn't have a chance. Barehanded? Even worse." He paused and narrowed his eyes. "Magic, I don't know. You'd be the best judge of that. I'd guess Brian has more raw power and Sean more subtlety and precision. Brian seems to rely on brute force."
She giggled. "True. Who else would try to stun a dragon? We'll have to try it later, when Brian's healed and well broken to the leash."
Now her fingers caressed Sean's face, brushing a smear of dust from his cheek and then straightening the collar of his sweater. "You didn't think I'd trust you unwatched, sweet twin? The way you so admire your brother? No, love, I am not pleased with you. While Dougal plots ways to punish a bard with impunity, I have to think of what to do with you. I think a touch of poetic justice is in order."
She started to hum, gently, a tune Brian recognized. "My object all sublime, I shall achieve in time, to let the punishment fit the crime . . . ."
She broke off. "Dougal, love, you do have other guards? It's not like you, to trust everything to a single dragon."
"I have other guards," he growled. "With such trustworthy neighbors, I'd be a fool not to."
"Oh, I'm not asking you what they are, or where." She chuckled. "That sort of information is dangerous to both the giver and the gifted. I was just thinking I might leave my beloved Sean in your woods to play a while. Just like Brian."
She picked up the heavy kukri from the ground and jerked its sheath from Brian's waist. "Exactly like Brian. With nothing but a knife and with his Power blocked. A week, or perhaps a moon or even two. What do you think?"
The Summer Country Page 18
