Protector

by J. A. Armitage

  The Slayers and Wolvren held back as the dragons were welcomed home. I ran to Lucy, giving her a huge hug. Behind her stood Edeline with Fiere, Ash’s recently-reunited parents.

  Edeline waited until her daughter had finished with me and then hugged me too.

  “Edeline, Fiere, I’d like you to meet someone.”

  I beckoned my father forward. He looked uncomfortable but did as I asked. By the time he’d walked around the fire pit, he’d gotten over his awkwardness and pulled himself up to his full height. Even at a disadvantage by being in his perceived enemy’s village, surrounded by dragons, he was not going to show any sign of weakness.

  “This is my father, Rocco.”

  “How do you do,” said my father stiffly, holding out his hand. Edeline ignored it, instead deciding to hug him, too. I had to stifle a giggle at the look of surprise on his face. I don’t think I’d ever seen my father blush in his life and yet here he was, his face turning the color of a tomato.

  Thankfully, Fiere was much more composed. He shook my father’s hand warmly. They were doing a much better job at hiding their dislike for Slayers than my father had at hiding his dislike of dragons. He seemed pretty taken aback by the welcome he’d received and it was with a sigh of relief that I saw him sit by the fire alongside Edeline and eat the food offered to him.

  “They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” whispered Morganna when she caught what I was looking at. “I think he might have a small crush on Ash’s mom.”

  I laughed. “My father is many things, but he does love my mom. He’d never leave her. I think in this case, he is just really, really hungry.

  The dragons served meal after meal until everyone was fed. It was amazing to feel the tension drop after a good meal. I found a place between Ash and Lucy and took an offered plate with freshly baked bread and some of the roasted deer.

  Night drew in quickly and with it a cool wind. The fire was kept burning for those of us still outside.

  “We should be getting home,” my father said, noticing how dark it had gotten. “Can someone tell me the way?”

  “It’s too far and too dangerous to get to your village at night,” said Spear, sidling up to him. At first, I thought he was being nice, until he added, “Not unless you want us to fly you home?”

  “No,” replied my father hurriedly. “I’m sure we can walk.”

  “Nonsense.” Edeline put her hand on my father’s back. “We have room for you in our house. Any family of Julianna’s is our family too. I’m afraid you’ll have to sleep on the sofa, but I can find you some pillows and a blanket.”

  I thought my father would say no, but he nodded. “That would be wonderful. Thank you, Edeline.”

  I opened my mouth in shock. Maybe he did have a teeny, tiny crush on Edeline after all.

  “Thank you, Edeline,” shouted Spear. “We have a lot of visitors here. Can anyone else offer up a bed for the night? We are going to find the swords, but we cannot do it without the Slayers’ help. Please be considerate and let them stay one night.”

  It was one thing sharing a meal with the Slayers and Wolvren, but I could see a look pass between the dragons at the thought of opening their homes to us.

  “I have space,” said one woman, putting her hand up. Morganna and Alpha were the closest to her, so they got to go back with her. Once the first few people had spoken up, it didn’t take long for the others to volunteer, too, until there were only a few Slayers and Wolvren left. Spear graciously invited them to his own house.

  Ash took my hand and led me back to the house he shared with Lucy and their parents. As we crossed the threshold, I could hear my father and Edeline conversing upstairs.

  “In all your life, did you ever expect to have the leader of the Slayers staying on your sofa?” I asked in a whisper.

  “No,” grinned Ash, shutting the door behind him. “No, I did not.

  Chapter Eight

  I had never slept so soundly in my life. Exhaustion had sent me into a dreamless sleep that lasted way longer than eight hours. In fact, it was mid-morning before the smell of something cooking woke me up. Something that smelled like bacon.

  Firecracker, the family dog, greeted me in her usual exuberant manner as I opened the door to the bedroom. Padding from door to door, I saw and heard no one. The house was empty.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked Firecracker, giving her a friendly tickle behind the ears. She responded with a woof.

  The delicious smell became stronger as I made my way down to the ground floor. Opening the front door, I saw a whole group of people sitting around the fire pit. I picked out my father straight away. He was sitting, chatting amiably with Edeline and Fiere with a plate loaded with food on his lap. It was a nice surprise to see him acting so laid back. The fire pit was always busy, but today, there weren’t enough seats for everyone. People were standing around, waiting their turn to take some of the bacon and eggs that were being fried over the fire. Up in the air, the sky was a riot of color, filled as it was with dragons. It reminded me of a kite festival I’d been to once where we’d flown kites of every color.

  “So, you’re finally awake,” Ash said, coming over to me and kissing my cheek. Firecracker wagged her tail at him and then bounded off in the general direction of the food.

  “You should have woken me,” I replied with a smile. “I’ve never seen so many dragons up in the air.” I looked up and Ash followed suit.

  “That’s because of you,” Ash replied, leading me to the line for breakfast.

  I grabbed a plate and joined the line. My stomach rumbled in anticipation. “What do you mean, because of me?”

  “A lot of those dragons are the ones you saved. If you hadn’t used your blood to save them, they’d still be stuck in the swords.”

  I looked up again. I’d not noticed before, but now that Ash had mentioned it, they did look like they were happy to be free. One of them did a loop-the-loop before gliding to the ground. It gave me a deep sense of satisfaction, seeing the dragons flying up there, and made me ache to be up there again myself. Having a dragon boyfriend had its perks.

  Someone filled my plate with food. I thanked them then found a newly vacated place to sit. I noted that Slayers and Wolvren were also enjoying breakfast among the dragons. Overnight, things had changed. The air of hostility that had been with us throughout the mission had seemingly disappeared. Just like my father, the other Slayers also appeared more relaxed. I saw Xander enjoying breakfast with one of the Wolvren, and even Jasper was chatting with a young dragon girl.

  It was amazing what a good night’s sleep and a delicious breakfast could do.

  I’d almost finished eating when Spear spoke up.

  “Good morning all,” he began loudly, getting everyone’s attention. “I’d like to begin by offering a welcome to our guests and thank you to those of you that gave them a bed for the night. For those of you that weren’t here when we got back last night, having Slayers and Wolvren here may seem unusual, but I can see that everyone is making an attempt to get on. For that, I thank you.”

  I tried not to laugh at him. He’d hardly made much of an attempt to be friendly. I remembered all the arguments I’d been forced to listen to over the past few days. Still, he was being friendly now.

  “I’m afraid our mission to find more swords was a failure,” he continued. “To say the Goblins were unhelpful is an understatement. The king of the Goblins essentially sent us on a wild goose chase and we didn’t retrieve a single sword. Unfortunately, we are no closer than when we set off.”

  There was a collective round of whispers and mutterings around the fire pit. The disappointment of the dragons that remained was obvious, and I could understand why. It had taken a great deal of faith to take us in, and now to hear that nothing had come of it must have felt like a kick in the face. No one shouted or complained, however. Instead, everyone remained silent to let Spear continue his speech.

  “We need to decide the next course
of action if we want to free our people. The Slayers of Dronias have agreed to give us their swords, but it isn’t enough. There are more out there. All this time, we assumed it was just the one village that was taking us, but we have found out that there was another village on the other side of the mountain. Another village with swords, another group of people slaying dragons.”

  “Why can’t we go to this other village and talk to them, too?” someone shouted from the back.

  Spear looked over the crowd. “We did. That’s where we came from last night. Unfortunately, the Slayers who lived there have gone. The village is abandoned and the Slayers have taken their swords with them.”

  The collective mutterings became louder now as everyone processed this new information. For some of them, it meant that seeing their loved ones again was now further away in the future. I could already sense their disappointment.

  “The question is, where do we go from here? Does anyone have any suggestions? I welcome ideas from everyone.”

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it?” asked Fiere. “We need to find the swords.”

  “That’s not going to be easy,” replied Spear. “The Slayer village had been abandoned some time ago. We have no idea where they went, or even why they decided to leave.”

  “I don’t know why they left,” I piped up, “but I have an idea where they are headed.”

  All eyes turned to me.

  “How could you know that?” asked Spear. “They left no clues that I could see.”

  “I’m only guessing, but it seems to me that there was only one possible direction they could go. Behind the village, the mountains were too high to climb. Maybe some people could have scaled them, but I find it hard to believe that an entire village could manage it, especially with all their furniture. The same for the way we took to get back here. The hill was hard enough to climb without bringing all our worldly belongings with us. That leaves either upriver or downriver. If it was you, which direction would you choose to go in? Downriver seems to me to be the only logical direction they’d go. They probably loaded up some boats with their furniture and set off together.”

  Spear looked thoughtful then nodded. “I agree. However, that doesn’t tell us how far they traveled. They could have stopped at the next town or village, or carried on until they reached the ocean. We have no way of knowing.”

  “I say we go back and pay another visit to that lying toerag, Krikor,” chimed in my father. “It doesn’t matter about the swords if we can’t find a way to get the dragons out of them.”

  “We do have a way to get the dragons out. Julianna.”

  I closed my eyes. I could already see that this line of talk was going to descend into another argument.

  I was surprised to hear my father keep his voice level. “The Goblin king told us that the swords were in that abandoned village, right?”

  Spear nodded his head in acknowledgment.

  “But they weren’t,” he continued. “So, who’s to say that he was telling us the truth about them being Slayers too? For all we know, they were living peacefully and the Goblins made them leave.”

  Spear’s eyes narrowed. “What possible reason would the Goblins have for making them leave? According to Krikor, the other Slayer village bought swords from the Goblins. They would be pretty stupid to chase their customers away.”

  “Chasing people is not the Goblins’ way,” a man by the fire said. I recognized him as Coal, one of the dragons who had come with us to the Goblins’ home the first time we went up. I remembered that he didn’t trust the Goblins then, and it seemed that nothing had changed. “They don’t chase people, they don’t fight people, they manipulate people. They lie and they cheat. No matter what anyone tells you about how Goblins always stick to their word, it is just a myth. The wretched creatures wouldn’t know honesty if it hit them in the face.”

  There was a thud in the distance as though someone had dropped something heavy. I tried to see what it was but there were too many people in the way.

  “Be that as it may, Coal, and I see your point, too, Rocco, but he was right when he said there were more dragons than swords. It stands to reason that there are more swords out there.”

  “No, no, no.” My father’s voice grew louder. “It doesn’t stand to reason at all. You know yourself that each sword can contain more than one dragon soul. Souls are not like people’s bodies. They are almost infinitesimal in size. You can’t even see them. We only know they are trapped in there because they return to the dragons when they escape. One sword could hold ten dragons’ souls, twenty, a hundred, even. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if a sword could hold a million souls.”

  Spear considered this.

  “You’ve not speared a million dragons though, have you?” asked Ash in a quiet voice. “You told me that you were the greatest Slayer in the village and you didn’t really capture that many. I saw how many dragon bodies were in your dragon keep. How many of those did you pick up on hunting trips and how many did you just happen to find up the mountain, already laid out as if dead?”

  “What are you implying? That I’m not brave enough to kill a dragon myself and I only picked them up when they fell out of the sky?”

  I closed my eyes and groaned. “Father!” I cautioned.

  He looked around him at the glaring dragons. “Sorry, but I did use my sword on your people. You know I did. Why else would I be here?”

  “But could it be that sometimes you found the body of a dragon and took it back to Dronias pretending that you had slain it? I would imagine that would bring you a lot of admiration in your village, right?”

  My father glared but then nodded slowly. “Ay, there might have been the odd occasion that we brought the fallen body of a dragon down the hill, and I might have said it was me that killed it. It was only to solidify my reputation as the best Slayer. I still killed more than anyone else.”

  I groaned again. If he kept talking, someone was going to throw him in the fire pit and I wouldn’t blame them. “What do you think we should do?” I asked Alpha in an attempt to take the focus away from my father.

  “We do not belong here,” Alpha said. “We appreciate the hospitality of both Slayers and dragons, and we also acknowledge the struggle that you are all faced with, but our time is up. We have been away from our home for too long.”

  I looked at Morganna, hoping she would jump in and change his mind, but she looked resigned. Losing the Wolvren would be a massive blow. They were fearless and I had the feeling we’d need them in the future.

  There was another thud as Spear began to speak again. “I’m sorry to hear that Alpha. On behalf of all of us, I want to thank you for...”

  An ear piercing scream cut him off. Lucy shoved through the crowd. By the time she got to the middle, she was frantic, tears rolling down her face.

  “What is it, Lucy?” Spear asked her.

  “Come with me. You have to come with me now!”

  Chapter Nine

  It was evident from her tone of voice that she was distressed about something. People around the campfire began to get up, ready to follow her. Whatever this was, it wasn’t going to be good. I wondered if whatever had distressed Lucy was something to do with the noises I’d heard. Before I’d even had the chance to ponder the question, a large, green object fell out of the sky, landing with a crash in the center of the fire pit and thankfully missing everyone around it.

  The ground reverberated beneath my feet like an earthquake as my brain processed what I was seeing in front of me. A huge dragon was now laid out in front of me with flames from the pit lapping around it.

  “Someone do something!” Lucy screamed as another thud sounded about a hundred feet away. The dragons were literally falling out of the sky.

  I pulled off my sweater and tried dousing the flames lapping at the green dragon in front of me. A number of the others followed suit until the flames were snuffed out completely. Thanks to his thick scaly skin, he’d not suffered much in the way of fire dam
age, but he looked unwell from whatever it was that made him fall in the first place. His eyes fluttered open and closed, his chest heaving with each labored breath. Now that the fire around him was out, I could see his skin was pale and clammy.

  I looked up to the sky. Most of the dragons still left up there had begun to come into land, more than likely fearful of succumbing to the same fate.

  Edeline ran up to the fallen dragon and stroked its head. “Can you change back?”

  The dragon didn’t open its eyes but managed a small shake of its head. It didn’t have the energy required to shift forms.

  “This is Bolt. He was one of the older dragons,” announced Edeline to the shocked group. “His soul was taken so long ago that no one remembered him when he woke up. He’s been spending the time since his soul came back catching up on everything in Frokontas.”

  A number of the group that had followed Lucy came running back.

  “How are the other dragons?” I asked. “Are they as ill as this one?”

  “Same,” shouted one of them. “There are five dragons down and a few more that are still conscious, but barely. None of them have the energy to turn back in their human forms.”

  I turned back to the green dragon. He was still breathing, but only just.

  “Ede...”

  My attention was taken from the green dragon to Fiere, who had just cried out for his wife. As I looked over, he fell to the floor clutching his head. Edeline ran from the dragon to her husband. Even from the other side of the pit, I watched him lose consciousness.

  Whatever was happening to the dragons was happening to them in both dragon and human form. They were getting sick.

  A chatter of fear went around the group as more and more of the human-formed dragons fell. Spear raised his voice once again to get everyone’s attention.