Dragon Princess (3 page)

“It’s quite serviceable scale mail. Barely used. Only two squires have died in it.”

“Don’t people generally ride to the rescue of a princess in full plate?”

“Oh, you don’t want that kind of hassle. All the fittings involved, you need two assistants just to get it on you—this is much more convenient—”

“And cheaper.”

“—and you won’t need to ride anywhere, the dragon’s lair is less than a day’s walk.”

“You know where the dragon and the princess are?”

“Of course I do.”

“And these dozen knights?”

“Oh, I’m sure one or two must have run into the dragon at some point.” He set down the armor. “But they didn’t have
Dracheslayer
.”

I hefted the sword in my hands, every instinct screaming “bad idea.” I think even the hangover-troll joined in the chorus, bellowing his objection. I hadn’t seen such an obvious setup since the Thieves’ Guild of Grünwald told me, “No problem, abandoned temple.”

How do you gracefully tell a powerful wizard to shove off? To all appearances, Elhared could give the priests of Nâtlac a run for their money in the ancient mystical darkness department. Also, turning down a request to aid the king’s daughter? Let’s just say it seemed less than wise to have another house of royals after my head.

Not good.

Elhared cleared his throat.

“Yes?” I asked.

“I should mention, in addition to the princess you will also get first pick of the dragon’s hoard before it’s repatriated to replenish the Lendowyn treasury.”

I had to wonder, did I
look
like a rube who would get drawn into any questionable enterprise just on the promise of some treasure?

To hell with it.

“Fine,” I told him. “I’m in.”

I was still recovering from my hangover when Elhared the Unwise threw a bearskin cloak over my shoulders and dragged me in front of King Alfred. I tried to protest. I wasn’t in any state to meet royalty. I still had a month’s worth of back roads to wash off me, I hadn’t shaved in days, and for some reason I expected that I looked like a drunk someone had peeled off the floor of a dockside tavern.

Elhared told me I looked the part of a barbarian prince.

The wizard dragged me into the throne room where the king was receiving envoys from some kingdom of even less note than Lendowyn. When the envoys were done, and the herald waved us on, Elhared shoved me forward and presented me as Sir Francis Blackthorne of the Northern Wastes, here to serve the kingdom and rescue the princess.

The king eyed me with a sigh and muttered something about scraping barrels. He was a very large man, intimidating in a way that made me suspect he had been absolutely terrifying in his prime. He looked at me with steely gray eyes in a way that made me suspect that he wanted to go out and deal with his daughter’s kidnapper himself. “The Northern Wastes, eh?” he asked.

At this point, I really couldn’t contradict Elhared without causing myself even more problems. “Yes, Sir.”

“Then why do you have a Delharwyn accent?”

“I travel a lot.”

“That is quite a distance.”

“Well, you see, uh, my parents were traveling merchants from Delharwyn.” I paused, and steeled myself. “Mordain, actually, before the Duke’s war. They had a shop, but they heard rumors of the coming annexation and fled with their goods. Of course, having their shop nationalized in a proxy war left them with no love for the southern nations—”

I kept going in that vein. While I normally prefer stealth, there have been enough times I’ve had to ply my trade face-to-face that I’ve gotten reasonably good at crafting tales extemporaneously. It’s a useful skill to be able to plausibly explain your presence in places where you otherwise shouldn’t be.

It helped my case that my story was mostly true—not that it had anything to do with me. The life story I told the king belonged to an angry redheaded barbarian with whom I’d had the misfortune of sharing a cell in the city of Delmark about two years ago. I suspected he had embellished some of his tale—I left out the bear wrestling—but it provided a convenient superstructure on which to hang the story of Blackthorne of the Northern Wastes.

I measured my success by the king’s eyes glazing over and the envoys and herald staring off into the middle distance, all apparently wishing they were somewhere else.

That was my cue to wrap up.

“—and that’s how I ended up in your fine country, Your Highness.”

“Yes, yes.” I heard what sounded like relief in the king’s voice. “Well, good fortune and gods’ speed, Sir Blackthorne.”

 • • • 

All in all, that had gone about as well as could be expected.

The way Elhared had been pushing for “Sir Blackthorne’s” quest, I’d expected him to toss me out the gate to face the dragon as soon as we’d left the throne room. But some glimmer of sanity still shone on the wizard, albeit dimly and occasionally. I got board for the night, a decent meal, and a chance to wash up and get some real sleep before going out at dawn.

Morning had me walking a wooded path northwest of the city, dressed in a dead squire’s scale mail and carrying
Dracheslayer
.

Elhared had given distressingly precise directions to find the dragon’s lair, and I probably would have found it rather suspicious if it wasn’t for the fact that
I was being sent to slay a damned dragon!
That tended to preoccupy my thoughts.

Of course, I’d be a rather poor thief if I didn’t consider a Plan B, which involved me slipping away westbound, along the coast and out of Lendowyn, and finding a proper place to sell the priceless magical dragon-slaying artifact. The sword could probably fetch enough in the black market to get me passage on a ship halfway across the world from dragons, crazy wizards, and Nâtlac-worshiping royals, and leave me with enough of a stake to get myself somewhat established on the other side of the ocean.

Of course, as Elhared pointed out to drunken me back in the tavern, the world of wizards is a small gossipy one. There’d be little question that wherever I sold this sword, word would get back to Elhared and I’d have a pissed-off wizard after me. And after the last debacle with the Grünwald court, I had promised myself that I would make a serious effort to
reduce
the number of powerful people who wanted me dead.

Besides, there was a possibly innocent princess involved. Even if I’d half-convinced myself that she’d been either eaten, or saved already by one of the dozen knightly rescuers that preceded me, walking away from this would not help me sleep nights. Much as I might try, I wasn’t that much of a bastard.

So I told myself about the dragon’s hoard and kept on the path as Elhared had instructed me.

The day went quickly, and I came to a clearing in front of a rocky cliff face before I was ready for it. The sun had barely passed midday and shone down across the south-facing cliffs, letting massive overhangs cast deep shadows on crevasses into the hillside beneath them. The face of the hillside shrugged up above the trees in a rocky dome that probably rose five or six hundred feet. Not nearly a mountain, but as lairs go, it was probably as impressive as a dragon could find within the bounds of Lendowyn.

If there was any doubt where the dragon might have been holing up, a couple of skulls glinting whitely on a ledge about halfway up provided a rather significant clue to what resided here. I stared up at the cliff face and froze in place where I stood at the wooded edge of the clearing. I kept my hand on the pommel of
Dracheslayer
, momentarily convinced that the dragon would descend upon me any moment.

I waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

No attack came my way, and as I stood there, every nerve stretched taut, I thought I could hear a sound coming from somewhere above, up the rocky hillside.

Snoring.

 • • • 

The ascent was nerve-racking but uneventful. Climbing up to inaccessible locations was part of my job description, even though I usually did so without a bunch of armor and a massive sword strapped to my ass. The climb was exhausting and I decided that Elhared had been right. Plate mail probably would have been a bad idea.

After what seemed like hours, I had made my way to the opening by the skulls. I eased my weight on to the ledge, the rumbling snore so close now that it resonated in my chest.

Before me, the crevasse into the hillside was much wider than it had appeared on the ground. The sun was now low enough in the sky that I could see about thirty feet in, across a slowly sloping floor, before the depths were cloaked in ink-black shadow. I didn’t see the dragon, but what I did see was enough to make me reconsider my Plan B and deal with the wrath of the Wizard Elhared.

The skulls I had seen from the ground were not the only remains. The entrance to the lair was carpeted with them. Bones had been scattered across the floor, some polished white, some charred black, and some with gnaw marks and bits of flesh attached. I saw remains from cattle and horses for the most part, but I counted six human skulls, some next to piles of armor much nicer than what I wore.

What did the wizard say?

“You know where the dragon and the princess are?”

“Of course I do.”

“And these dozen knights?”

“Oh, I’m sure one or two must have run into the dragon at some point. But they didn’t have Dracheslayer.”

The sword wasn’t reassuring me.

Think of the hoard,
I thought. I’d taken bigger risks for smaller reward before.

No I haven’t,
went my contrary internal monologue.

The cave resonated with the snoring from Elhared’s “small” dragon. I could feel sulfur-tainted breath brush my cheek as it exhaled. I couldn’t see it in the darkness within the cave, but I already knew that “small” would not be the word I’d use to describe this thing.

Run,
I thought,
or do what you came to do.

Standing around waiting for the lizard to wake up wasn’t really an option. I also thought it’d be a waste of my efforts if I ran away without actually seeing what I was running from, so I grabbed the pommel of
Dracheslayer
and slowly drew it from its scabbard as quietly as I could manage and eased forward into the lair of the beast.

I trod carefully, watching so each step came down on stone rather than animal or human remains. And once I stepped out of the light, I stopped so my eyes could readjust to the dimness within the shadows. Now that I was out of the sun, and the light was all behind me, the shapes within the cave began to resolve themselves.

As I began to see, I edged to the wall of the cave so my silhouette did not form such an obvious target against the daylight. Even as I did so, I realized that strategy was rendered moot because of the glowing sword in my hand. I silently sighed at the magical glowing target in my hand, but I wasn’t going into the dragon’s den without having
Dracheslayer
ready for action.

I followed the wall farther in, leaning against it as it curved deeper into the cave, holding the glowing sword down so my body was between the glowing red runes and the rest of the cave. Even so, as the daylight lost itself behind me,
Dracheslayer
’s hellish glow gave enough light to see immediately around me. Fortunately not so much that it woke the slumbering dragon sprawled in front of me.

The dragon snored and I was blasted with the smell of sulfur and devil farts.

Small dragon my ass.

Its head alone was as long as I was, half of that mouth, and three-quarters of
that
, teeth. The muscular jaws looked like they could bite a warhorse in half. It rested its head on its forelimbs, and its serpentine neck curved around to a huge body that merged into the darkness where
Dracheslayer
’s
glow did not reach. I saw hints of vast demonic wings before I realized I had gone from assessing the situation to freezing in panic.

It’s asleep, there’s its neck, here’s a dragon-slaying sword. . . .

It was going about as well as it could possibly go, which meant I shouldn’t have been at all surprised when I took a step forward and heard a sharp intake of breath from above. A glance told me that Princess Lucille was alive, unhurt, and a bit shorter than her portrait would lead you to believe. She gaped at me in shock from a niche in the rock wall above me, bound hand and foot but, unfortunately, not gagged.

I turned back toward the dragon before she said, “Look out!”

I hoped she was talking to me.

In front of me the snore had come to a choked conclusion, and a lid slowly drew up from a golden eye the size of my head. I was already committed. My slow stealthy advance had drawn me in too close for any quick withdrawal.

When you can’t go back, go forward.

I rushed, swinging
Dracheslayer
above my head, and brought the magic runesword down on the beast’s unprotected neck with a visceral scream of premature triumph.

Every second thought I had been having, every suspicion, every sense that all was not right with Elhared’s proposal, all of that was confirmed as
Dracheslayer
,
magic dragon-slaying sword forged by the blind dwarves of Grundar, hit the dragon’s neck with a bone-wrenching impact and crumbled like week-old cheese.

Yeah, I was right, bad idea.

The loss of the magic blade plunged the cavern back into darkness, and for a few moments I stood in shock, cradling in my hands the ornate hilt that was all that remained of the priceless magic sword
Dracheslayer.
The shock lasted until the darkness was obliterated by a gout of flame to my right. It provided enough light to show that I now faced a vertical wall of dragon-scale and muscle.

I did the sane thing and ran off in the opposite direction. My retreat lasted all of three steps before a scaled hand with foot-long talons scooped me up to hold me ten feet off the cavern floor in front of an annoyed lizard. Steam curled from its nostrils as it stared at me with slitted golden eyes, and I braced myself for the inevitable.

For a few moments I wondered what was preferable, being burned alive, or being chomped in half. By the time I realized my vote was for chomping, I also realized that neither was happening.

The light hadn’t faded, and I realized that the dragon hadn’t aimed its breath at me, but at a no-longer dormant campfire in the center of the chamber. The dragon held me up next to the fire, as if using the light to examine me.

Above me, I heard the princess shout down at me, “What kind of rescue is this?”

The kind your father can afford.
I sighed, shook my head, and muttered to myself, “That could have gone better.”

The dragon spoke in a voice that made my chest ache,
“In fact, your attack was rather pathetic.”