Chicks in Chainmail (29 page)

"To
him
," said the driver.

"I beg your pardon?" Amaryllis' mask of cold pride not only dropped, it shattered, and she almost slid off the seat.

" 'Sdoom perhaps to
him
who pries into it too closely unbidden. Damn and blast, but ye swords-wenches otter know yer grammar better'n that, I'm thinkin', arh."

Amaryllis suppressed a little thrill of delight.
He thinks I'm a real swordmaiden
! Assuming a more kindly tone, she said, "Your pardon, good churl. Perchance it will do no harm to make you privy to the cause that brings me unto yon fair city. I am a poor but honest sellsword, lately out of work since the perishment of my last employer."

"Doesn't say much for yer skill wi' the blade then, if ye let yer last boss die. Looks like carelessness."

"Uh, mmm, er—he did not die through any lack of vigilance on my part," Amaryllis said swiftly. "His wife poisoned him whilst they were, uh—"

"Say no more." The driver nodded knowingly. "Well, no fear: Yell find work aplenty once we reach the town. What'd ye say yer name was?"

"I am Amar—Amar—" Suddenly the princess realized that her given name sounded too soft and mooshy to be associated with a swordmaiden of her supposed redoubtability. "I am Amar the—the
Amazing
," she said, making a fast judgement call that sounded only a little lame.

The bumpkin, however, accepted it without demur and even remarked, "Aye, an' amazing ye are, that's for certain, arrh." Unfortunately he was staring at her chainmail-cupped breasts, not her swordarm, when he said it.

He was making his fifteenth try at steering the conversation back to the subject of now she managed to stand up straight with those things when they passed beneath the city gate—

—and were nearly swept right out again in a flood-tide of thundering, screaming, terrified citizens. The haywain was an island in a human sea, the oxen tossing their heavy heads as panic whitened their eyes, the driver standing up on the footboard, whip in hand, unsuccessfully trying to make the stampeding crowd keep their distance from his beasts.

And then it was over. They were all alone on the inner side of the city gate, staring down a desolate street to the castle mount. Amaryllis gaped. "What was all
that
about?"

Before the driver could answer, the princess heard the sound of approaching hoofbeats. Out of a side-street came a white stallion and mounted on his back was the handsomest man Amaryllis had ever seen. Early training had stressed the importance of self-control in royal maidens, but this was an exceptional case. Amaryllis did not know
how
exceptional until she felt a tiny drop of something warm and wet on the back of her hand and realized that she was drooling. She hastily wiped her mouth and prayed that the glorious young man had seen nothing.

Her prayers went unanswered: He had seen her. He was doing a fair amount of drooling himself.

"If this kingdom survives the horror presently upon us," he said in one of those deep, resonant voices that command respect and carry for miles, "then when it is over I shall order a special thanksgiving service to praise whatever power has brought a creature such as you into my realm." He slid gracefully from the saddle and knelt in the dust beside Amaryllis' side of the haywain.

She scrambled from her place to urge him back to his feet. "Noble sir, do not abase yourself before me. I am but a humble swordmaiden, Amar the Armigerous."

"Thought ye said 'Amazing,' " the driver grumbled. No one paid him any mind.

"A swordmaiden!" The young man's
eyes
lit up. He clasped her hands to his breast in exultation. "This is a deliverance! Know, fair warrioress, that I am Prince Destino. Know too that I have fallen in love with you at first sight. Know likewise that if you will have me, I would make you my bride. Know besides all of the above that whether or not you accept my offer of matrimony—"

"Oh I do! I do!" Amaryllis cried.

"—that I would still offer you a lucrative dragon-slaying contract to—you do? I mean, you
will
marry me?" Amaryllis nodded hard enough to snap the neck of a lesser woman. "Ah, joy! Then I shall ride back to the castle to bring my parents the happy news while you ride forth to slay the wicked monster who—"

"What?" said Amaryllis. And also: "Monster? Slay?" And last but not least: "Huh?"

"Why yes, my beloved." Prince Destino gave her a melting look. "The dragon. I'm sure I mentioned it. It appeared sometime this afternoon in the castle courtyard where I was entertaining my fiancee, the Princess Dimity of Yither."

For a reason known best to herself, Amaryllis heard only one word of the prince's last sentence: "
Fiancée
?"

Destino sighed. "An alliance contracted when we were both in our cradles. We were not supposed to wed for another two years, but what with the recent upheavals affecting eligible princes, her lather insisted we rush ahead with the marriage; 'Before you give me a grandchild that's a damned tadpole,' was the way he put it. Princess Dimity of Yither is a very—"

"Don't tell me about Dimity!" Amaryllis looked hot enough to set the whole haywain ablaze. "Dimity is my stupid cousin, and a more graceless, stubborn, overbearing girl you've never seen!"

"Your… cousin?" The prince chewed this over. "But she's a princess, and you—"

"My father lost his throne to barbarian hordes from the north," Amaryllis said rapidly. "He and all my kin perished in the assault. I alone survived, an infant, rescued by my aged nurse. She's dead now too. There's no one left to tell you any different, so don't bother asking around."

"A swordmaiden, a disinherited princess, and the chosen of my heart!" Prince Destino was in ecstasies. "And once you've rescued her, I am sure that the princess
Dimity's
lather will make no trouble about annulling the old contract, out of gratitude for his child's life. Oh, this couldn't be better! All you have to do now is slay the dragon."

"I'm honored that you consented to let me come along to watch you at work," Prince Destino said as he and Amaryllis rode towards the mountains.

"It was my pleasure, my lord," Amaryllis replied.
Curse it anyway I
she thought.
If I'm going to die, I might as well take him with me. I refuse to let that cow Dimity get her claws back into him! She
sat a little taller in the saddle and tried not to think of how dragon fire was going to feel on the vast expanses of skin her scanty-though-spectacular armor left unprotected.

"Yonder lies the dragon's lair," said the prince, pointing to a yawning cavern at the foot of a mountain that was much too close for Amaryllis' peace of mind.

She knew she was going to die—she had told herself so over and over, in hopes that repetition would numb her to the awful fact—but somehow, now that the fact was becoming more and more irrefutable with every step her horse took, she simply could not face it. Maybe it was the fast-fading smudge of smoke she saw emanating from the cavern; maybe it was the sight of bleached bones and human skulls strewn at all-too-frequent intervals along the path; maybe it was the stench of carrion and cold, old reptile that clung in an ever-thickening cloud around this whole unhallowed place. Whatever
it
was, she could not bear
it

She felt another tiny drop of something warm and wet on the back of her hand. She knew that this time it was not drool, but a tear. It was joined by others, and others still, until by the time she and Prince Destino were within shouting distance of the dragon's lair her eyes were streaming while she fought to swallow her sobs.

She very nearly succeeded. Only one escaped. The prince turned at the sound and his eyes grew wide. "Why—why Amar, you're—you're
crying
?"

That was it. That was a word too much. Every single sob and moan and bleat of despair that the princess had been bottling up inside her demanded its freedom. What's more, every single one of them got it.

"Oh
my
goodness!" The prince was frantic. He pulled his horse up alongside of hers and with a great deal of fuss managed to haul her from the saddle to sit sideways across his lap. She buried her face against his shoulder and bawled. He regarded her dumbstruck for a while, then carefully pronounced, "I see it all, now. Oh, my dearest, how could I have been so blind? Not only are you bold of mien and strong of arm, you are also tender of heart. You fear that while you are in the process of slaying yon beast, some fatal harm might come to me before you had convinced it to be entirely dead. Such is the epic scope of your love! Well, don't you worry your pretty little head about it." He set her on her feet and reined his horse several paces away. "You go ahead and take care of business; I'll wait over here."

Still snivelling and wiping her nose on the back of her hand, Amaryllis went back to her horse to fetch her sword. She was no longer afraid of dying. At this moment the strongest emotion filling her bosom was the bitter realization that her old teacher, Talona the Terrible, had been right: It didn't pay to fake it. Thus armed with an unshakable who-gives-a-damn attitude, she entered the lair of the beast.

The dragon's cave stank worse on the inside; that was logical. The bones were thicker too. Amaryllis had not come away from Talona's school entirely ignorant; she knew how to hold her sword as she picked her way through the mounds of ribs and skulls and femurs. She tried to stalk her prey quietly, but the bones
would
rattle so, and whenever her sandalled foot touched one she could not restrain a little
Ick
! of disgust.

She thought she was finally getting used to stepping on the horrid things when she missed her footing on a particularly steep mound of skulls and fell flat on her rump in the midst of them. This time her reaction was no genteel, maidenly
Ick!;
it was a scream that dislodged several quarts of bats from the cavern roof.

The echoes of that shriek had not died down before Amaryllis heard a familiar voice inquire, "Are you
quite
done?" She blinked her eyes in the murk. Could it be—?

"Over here, stupid," came a second voice, also no stranger. Amaryllis could hardly believe what she saw. There on the cave floor, basking on a pile of gold and jewels fit to choke a basilisk, was her cousin Dimity. Not a sword's-length away lay the dragon. The dragon's
body
, that is. The monster's severed head was elsewhere, dangling from the hand of Talona the Terrible.

"What took you so long?" Dimity asked, tossing rubies into the air and letting them patter down on her satin skirts like a very expensive rain.

"You saved her!" Amaryllis cried. She ignored her cousin, focusing all her surprise (and a good measure of pique besides) on Talona. "You want the prince for yourself!"

"Hardly, child," the swordswoman replied, setting the grisly trophy aside. "You see, when you left my school, I realized that your father made me insert a rather nit-picky clause into our contract, stating that in case of the student's death, a pro rata share of the semester's tuition must be refunded. It never said a thing about whether you died at school or away. Since I'd told you to try your luck here in Egrel, I gave the girls a long weekend and came after you. Well, no sooner did I reach the capital than I heard of the dragon."

"And she knew you'd head right for it, like a fly to—"

"Shush, Dimity."

Princess Dimity shrugged. "Truth is truth. Everyone in the family knows that Amaryllis is desperate to get married, don't ask me why."

"I happen to like children," Amaryllis snapped. "I'd like to have several. Do you mind?"

"You can have all of mine, while you're at it," Dimity replied. "I don't much care for the sticky little things. In fact, that was the one part of marriage I was dreading. Oh, and the royal ceremonies, and dressing up all the time, and organizing banquets, and redecorating the castle, and—"

"We get the idea, my dear," Talona said. She turned to Amaryllis once more. "As I was saying, once I knew there was a dragon in the case, I was certain you'd go after it, whether or not you had a hope of killing it. You'd do it just to show me, wouldn't you?"

Amaryllis' head drooped. She nodded.

"I thought so." Talona was satisfied. "You have spirit, child; keep it. Just don't go letting it shove you into situations you lack the training to handle."

"I owe you my life," Amaryllis said. She didn't sound very happy about it.

"Pshaw!" said Talona. "By the time I found the dragon's lair, the hard work was done for me: The dragon lay steeped in a sleep so deep that it never knew when my sword came down on its neck. Just look at the size of the monster! If I had met it when it was fully awake, it might have been another story altogether; and not one I would have liked, I can tell you!"

"It… slept?" Amaryllis was puzzled. "But—"

"I did it," Dimity announced casually, standing up amid the heaps of treasure. "First I pretended to be the typical fraidy-cat princess and then, when the dumb beast thought it had nothing to fear from me, I managed to mix a little of Vorn's Sovereign Essence into its last meal." She reached into the silk pouch at her belt and withdrew the familiar yellow bottle. "Sent the monster straight to dreamland. Great stuff. A hundred and one uses. I never leave home without it."

Amaryllis didn't know whether to be appalled or revolted. "You
touched
the dragon's last meal? But it eats—it eats—"