Handbook for Dragon Slayers (14 page)

Joyeuse had grown excited when I put on the armor, and she didn't lose the excitement now that I'd changed out of it. Every jingle of the mail had made her hop from foot to foot. I calmed her by petting her so-soft nose and feeding her apple slices.

Knowing how much a warhorse could eat, and faced with the destruction of entire vineyards at Upper Folkstown, I had been worried, early on, how much feeding the Wild Hunt horses would cost us. But much to our distress, neither of them wanted anything but the handful of fruit we gave them on a daily basis. At first, Parz had told us to be patient: horses in new situations often lost their appetites. But there was nothing about their attitudes that suggested they were uneasy, malcontent, or unsettled. Or hungry. They didn't like people, but they seemed to enjoy spending time with us. And they always ate apples and grapes when offered.

They never seemed to lose any weight or become fatigued. They both slept like normal horses, Parz assured us.

“Well, my friend,” I whispered, “do you want to go fight dragons?”

She struck a silver hoof against the wall.

“I'll take that as a yes.”

“Tilda?”

It was Judith. She pulled out Durendal's saddlebags, and I helped her dress.

The copper armor fit her perfectly, just as well as the silver had fit me. I frowned. Two sets of armor cut for girls? The Wild Hunt's leader was a woman, but . . . Not all girls were alike. Judith was broader, taller, and more buxom than me. How did her armor and my armor both fit so well?

“Magic armor, I guess,” I muttered.

“What?” she asked, smoothing the mail shirt over her hips.

“Nothing,” I said, not wanting to admit that I had tried the armor on; I was never going to wear it into battle, so it seemed vain and hopeless and, well, just silly. “Is it heavy?” I asked, even though I knew the answer: No, it wasn't heavy, it was perfect. When I'd worn the armor, I'd felt strong and safe in a way I'd never felt before.

“Not heavy at all,” Judith said, and then left the stall to execute a cartwheel. She looked as surprised as I did when she regained her feet. “I think I'm spoiled for all other armor.”

I gave a half twist of a smile, trying not to envy her. It wasn't that I wanted to fight in a battle. Far from it. The thought of facing down an opponent and being struck, and worse, striking back, actually nauseated me. It wasn't just my foot that held me back from fighting. It was my nature first; I couldn't imagine myself holding a sword with the intent to kill someone. Even a dragon.

I opened the stall door for Joyeuse—which was a joke, for at this point, the mares had proved that they only stayed in stalls as a courtesy to us.

Joyeuse and I went outside to wait for Parz, who disappeared into the stable. We had decided that, since Durendal had more or less chosen Judith, Parz would use Joyeuse to fight.

Parz came out clad in the silver armor, and I stared.

“I thought you wouldn't mind,” he said, forehead wrinkling, his charming sidelong smile fading.

“I don't. The armor fits you so well. . . .”

Parz plucked at the mail shirt. “As though it were made for me.” He came over, carrying the silver sword and silver belt. His mouth and brows were straight lines of seriousness.

“Will you gird me, Princess?” he asked, and knelt down to offer me the sword and belt.

I had seen my mother do this for various knights who owed our family service. She had done it for my father the day he left on his fateful pilgrimage. It was strange to do it now for Parz. But I did it.

I took the sword belt and bade him stand. I reached around his hips and girded the belt on him, saying, “With honor, and with bravery.” At this point, my mother would always kiss the knight on the cheek.

I hesitated. The thought of kissing Parz was enough to make me blush so hot that I might turn into a candle, so I just kissed the air beside his cheek. Even then, I couldn't look at him right away.

“Ready?” Judith asked, coming out of the stable, also holding a belt. For a moment, I thought she was going to ask me to gird her, too, but I had already done so in the stable, just with less formality and ritual.

But then I noticed this wasn't a belt, but rather a gem-studded girdle, one of the treasures from Joyeuse's baggage; threaded onto it were a silver dagger and a leather pouch. Judith grinned, girding the belt around my waist before I had a chance to react. She kissed my cheek and said, “The pouch holds two pens, a knife, and a horn of ink. We know better than to go into battle and leave our scribe unarmed!”

“Where did you get these?” I asked, peeking into the pouch.

“Parz and I sold the necklace he made out of the horsetail hairs to the innkeeper here.”

“Ready?” Parz asked. I didn't say anything at all, being too overcome by their thoughtfulness to speak. I just accepted his help into Joyeuse's saddle.

And then we were on our way to fight a dragon.

W
E TURNED OFF THE
road after a short league, onto a narrow path through a large stand of young, slender pines.

“This is it,” Parz said, catching sight of a half-burned, half-eaten carcass of a cow lying in a field.

“I'm going to dismount here, then,” I said. Parz helped me down from the horse and then climbed onto Joyeuse's back. She tossed her head a little, but settled in. I tried not to be jealous that she didn't buck him immediately off.

I busied myself with pulling out the
Handbook
and my new pen pouch, even as I wondered if this was a safe distance from which to view the fight.

The only hint we had of what was coming was the shadow that crossed the sun. The stink of sulfur stung my nose, and an undulating green-and-red-scaled wall passed overhead, almost close enough to touch. The wall slid from view, and I realized the wall was the passing belly of a great flying beast. A gigantic tail slid away over the trees, leaving behind only blue sky.

Dragon.

B
Y THE TIME
I
CAUGHT MY BREATH, THE DRAGON WAS
gone—and so was everyone else. Both horses and their riders had plunged into the trees after the dragon.

“Swine!” I swore, shoving my pens back into the pouch. “Swine, swine, swine!” I jammed my crutch into my armpit and hobbled off as fast as I could go after them.

I wasn't sure how long I walked. Time never seems to flow the same when you are late for something, and I was
very
late for something. Roars and screams rose from not so very far away, and the air filled with the acrid scent of smoke.

I entered a burned-out clearing from the west. On the south side of the clearing a cave mouth gaped. Joyeuse stood guard near a copse of trees at the far edge of the clearing, tensely scanning the sky.

It took me a moment to realize that the pile of silver at Joyeuse's feet was Parz's supine body.

Joyeuse gave a high-pitched whinny when she saw me.

My heart was in my throat, but I decided that Joyeuse was not the sort of horse who would guard a dead body. Or so I told myself in the long moments before I reached them, when each footstep seemed like the death toll of a church bell. Where was Judith? Where was Durendal?

“Parz?” I called, hurrying to him as fast as I could.

He was breathing, but unconscious.

“Good Lord!” I cried, chafing his hands and wrists as I inspected him for signs of damage.

Parz coughed, blood bubbling between his lips.

I nearly screamed in terror. My life in Alder Brook, far from any battlefront or disaster, had in no way prepared me for this kind of injury. I couldn't think of how to stop him from coughing, but I could imagine the blood running back into his lungs and choking him. I slid my hands up underneath him and pushed, getting him over onto his side so the blood could drain from his mouth.

“Please don't die, Parz,” I heard myself saying, and my voice was so strange. I realized I was crying. “Please, Parz. Please. You can't die. Oh, I'm—” I paused for a sob, which I tried to stifle against my shoulder. “I'm being so silly, I'm speaking such nonsense. See how bad it is, for you to be trying to die on me like this? See what it's doing to me? So. Just don't die!”

Parz stopped coughing, and for a moment, I was horribly afraid he'd also stopped breathing. And I guess he had, for he was summoning together a great gob of blood. I yelped when he raised his head, turned it, and spit the blood gob out into the grass.

“You're alive!” I shrieked.

“Think so,” he rasped. He looked around, his gaze barely focusing. “Where's Judith?”

“I don't know! Are you all right? What's . . . Something's broken, what's broken?”

He looked thoughtful. “Everything,” he croaked, dropping his head back to the ground.

“Can you get onto Joyeuse's back?”

“Not even,” he said, and groaned.

I ran my hands over his arms and legs, trying to figure out if anything
was
actually broken. I couldn't tell. I just didn't have the training. “I'm afraid I don't even know how to move you.”

He shivered. “That's all right. Don't really want to move.”

I unclasped my cloak and threw it over Parz's body. I couldn't think of what else to do—he was shivering so hard, it seemed the right thing.

I bit my lip when I heard a distant roar and the screams of an angry horse. “Parz, where did Judith and Durendal go?”

“Judith—never—came out of—the cave,” he said, teeth chattering between each phrase.

I looked at the dark cave mouth. “Did you go in there with her?”

“Yeah. Came out—before the—dragon.”

“And then, what, you all fought the dragon?”

“Wasn't much of—a fight. Dragon was—so big.”

I had seen that for myself. The dragon heads mounted in Sir Kunibert's hall had ranged in size from a large dog's to a regular horse's. None of those dragons could have been close to the size of the great beast that had flown overhead earlier.

That flew overhead
now
.

The hum in the air from the noise of the dragon's wings shook me to the soles of my feet. Joyeuse stood beside me, and we watched as the dragon sidestepped into the cave, hissing and roaring the whole way.

I moaned. “Judith.”

I bent down and gave Parz the kiss on the cheek I'd failed to give him during the girding. “Quickly—anything I should know about using a sword?”

“The sharp part goes in the dragon,” he said. “Wait—” He grabbed my hand. “You can't go in the cave. Too dangerous.”

“I have to go.”

He struggled to rise. “You're going to undo my greatest act of chivalry if you get yourself killed.”

“What, rescuing me from Snail Castle?” I didn't have to push his shoulder very hard to get him to lie back down. “Surely you've done something more chivalrous than that.”

“Not . . . yet.”

“Stay down,” I told him. I ordered Joyeuse, “Guard Parz.”

The silver sword lay nearby. I snatched it up. Sword in one hand, crutch under my arm, I faced the dark mouth of the cave alone.

T
HE DRAGON BURST FORTH FROM THE CAVE'S
mouth, roaring the whole way. I fell backward as the creature winged up, over my head.

I had one glimpse of a small, dog-sized dragon on its back before it disappeared beyond the trees.

Was it carrying a . . . baby?

I stood up slowly, testing to make sure I hadn't injured something when I was bowled over. I noted with distant clarity that my hands were shaking. I resettled my crutch.

A human scream came echoing out of the cave. Judith's scream.

She was still alive!

“Judith?” I called.

No answer.

No answer, and no choice. I was no warrior, and yet . . . here I was, facing darkness with nothing but a sword.

I swallowed down my fear, and gripping my borrowed sword, I entered the cave.

I froze for a moment, blinded by the darkness after the bright autumn day, and afraid that I'd suddenly fall down a large hole in the floor if I tried to move forward in the dark.

But gradually my eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, and I could make out a faint, flickering light ahead. A lantern? Parz had a lantern; had he taken it into the cavern and left it behind?

For perhaps the only time in my life, I wished I were left-handed. Even though that would make scribe work nearly impossible, I would not now be in the position of trying to hold a sword in my distaff hand. My right arm was occupied with my crutch.

I shouldn't be here. I'm not a fighter. I'm certainly no dragon slayer
.

No. I wasn't a dragon slayer, but I was a princess, and one of my people was ahead of me, in the dark and alone.

I inched along the rough cave floor toward the flickering light, listening for anything, any sound from Judith, any dragonish noise. I stopped myself from calling her name no less than three times, but when I rounded a narrow curve and came out into a wide cave and saw her lying in a heap next to a lantern, I couldn't stop myself.

“Judith!”

Immediately, a hissing and spitting creature that waggled its neck like a goose came charging from the shadows. I lifted my sword before me, and it must have caught the light just right, because the dragonet darted away and back into the gloom. The shadows writhed and scales glimmered—and I realized there was more than one dragonet hiding in the dark.

Judith said nothing, and I feared the worst. I crept along to the lantern, not taking my eyes off the shadows from where the dragonet had come.

I didn't want to speak and risk the dragonets' attentions, so I nudged Judith with my toe.

She sat up immediately, and I breathed a sigh of relief. She'd only been playing dead. I pointed back the way I came.