Handbook for Dragon Slayers (15 page)

She shook her head, and pointed at her leg. I assumed she'd broken it, and stooped awkwardly to feel her thigh, trying to assess the damage.

But instead of a break, I put my hand in something warm, wet, and sticky, and Judith screamed when I touched it.

The dragonets screamed back—great, honking bleats that filled the cavern till my head rang. I clapped my hands over my ears, shouting, “Can you walk?” while I tried to make sure the dragonets weren't advancing on us.

“I don't know!”

“Try! On the count of three!” We counted, and I levered her up. She leaned on me too hard, so I stuck the crutch in her right armpit and slid my shoulder under her left. I needed the crutch for stability as much as anything, and even leaning on me, Judith could provide that.

I still held the sword, which left no way to carry the lantern. We had to abandon it and make our way out of the cave in darkness, with the dragonets milling in the shadows behind us.

“No choice,” I grunted, taking the first dragging step forward toward the cave mouth.

“
Shhh
,” Judith hissed almost silently in my ear, and squeezed my ribs painfully.

We took another staggering, dragging, hopping step forward, then another. Judith grunted, and now I squeezed her ribs. She stopped grunting.

It seemed like the longest walk of my life, but I was sure that once we reached daylight, the worst would be over.

When we reached the cave's mouth, though, the worst was
far
from over.

The big dragon was back, circling overhead, its enormous wings sending gusts of air down that made my ears pop. It opened its mouth and bellowed out a stream of flame at Parz.

But Joyeuse and Durendal were both there now. Joyeuse made an unnatural sound of anger and Durendal's nostrils and eyes were wide with fear, but nonetheless, the mares turned sideways against the flame. They caught all of the dragon's fire with their bodies. When the flames hit, their bodies turned from silver and copper to glowing orange.

I only realized I was screaming when I ran out of breath. I felt ready to vomit, sick with grief and terror. I buried my face in my upper arm, unwilling to see the horses die so horribly.

But even as I hid my eyes, I realized that I wasn't hearing what I had expected to. There were no screams of anguish. I lowered my arm and found Joyeuse turning to track the dragon as it circled again, while Durendal pawed the air.

The horses and Parz were unburned. The mares' bodies and tack remained the orange-red of heated metal, but nothing was charred except the waterskins that we'd left tied to their saddles.

The dragon sent another flare at Parz, and again the horses turned to take it on their sides. A gout of flame licked underneath Joyeuse's belly, igniting the grass. But Durendal stomped her hoof, kicking up a shower of blue-green sparks that cleanly and quickly burned the grass out—and the fire was gone almost as soon as it started.

The dragon circled again, looking for a better angle of attack, I thought; the trees protected Parz on one side, and the horses protected him on the other. The treetops, however, would not
remain
cover if the dragon ignited them.

I thought for certain that this would be the dragon's next move; but it must have spotted Judith and me, for it landed in the clearing, facing us, touching down one delicate claw at a time as its great wings backstroked the air.

The dragon turned its long, snaky neck toward us, making a variety of hissing and popping noises, punctuated by low moans and high-pitched growls. It snapped enormous jaws at us.

I inched Judith leftward, trying to get us away from the cave's mouth so that the dragon could pass us and enter the cave.

The dragon snarled, and with the snarl came orange fire. It licked toward us, and I shrieked as the heat rolled over us. I buried my face in the crook of my arm.

Judith said, “Get behind me.”

“What? No, you're injured!”

“
Get behind me
,” she roared, shoving me back. The dragon vomited forth another great gout of fire, and, screaming, I buried my face in Judith's neck, even as I was terrified that she was cooking inside her shell of heated armor.

“Stop it!” I shouted, popping up behind Judith when the fire blast ceased. “We could have killed your babies and we didn't!”

“Tilda!” Judith cried. “What are you doing?”

“Just—just let us pass!” I said to the dragon. “And we'll leave you alone to get your babies!” I shouted over Judith's shoulder when the flame died away. “We don't want to hurt you! Not anymore!” I dived right, trying to pull Judith after me. She came, and we both hit the ground and rolled farther away.

We had landed under a bush. Judith slapped out some incidental fires on her body—mostly from a kerchief that had been tied around her arm. I sighed in relief. She was well enough to care about that little tiny fire.

The dragon sidled toward the cave entrance, still hissing and growling anytime Judith or I twitched. But neither of us was getting up, between her wound, my foot, and the fact that my crutch now lay in the dragon's path.

We watched in silence as the dragon turned and sang into the cave. A moment later, the last two dragonets zipped out. They flapped their wings fervently, trying to take flight. The larger dragon—their mother—tucked her nose underneath the chest of one of the dragonets, then flung it behind her and onto her back, between her wings.

She did the same thing with the other dragonet, and then she launched herself into the air.

The dragon circled once and flew away.

J
UDITH HAD BEEN ABLE TO RIDE AFTER THE DRAGON
left—but just barely. Parz refused to try to get on a horse, and I couldn't blame him; but when I suggested lashing two stout branches together to make a stretcher pulled by the horses, he said he thought walking would be the least painful option. But he couldn't make the distance, and in the end, we ended up devising the stretcher.

With any other horses, I might have given up long before we reached Wood Ash again; I might be living still in a forest clearing without them.

There was no bonesetter in Wood Ash, and the midwife who came to see about our injuries insisted on sending an appeal to Saint Disibod's Cloister for help with Parz and Judith. The cloister sent one of its famous healers, a Sister Hildegard, to assist us. Within the week, we were all in good enough shape to remove to Saint Disibod's proper.

All three of us ended up in the infirmary. Parz had broken ribs and a broken arm. Judith's wound was deep and had to be watched closely for infection.

I had emerged largely unscathed from the fight with the dragon, except I'd lost my eyebrows and eyelashes. But there was always the matter of my foot.

The infirmary was a marvel. It had a small, stream-fed fountain, lush plants grown in pots, and every kind of herb and gem and metal. The infirmarians constantly sang songs of Hildegard's devising that were supposed to aid in the healing of both spirit and mind.

Sister Hildegard began an intensive regimen with my foot right away. “This is not recent damage. This is an innate injury, developed in the womb,” Sister Hildegard said during the examination of my foot. “You'll forgive me if I stop calling you Lady Agilwarda, yes?”

“Um, just Agilwarda is fine,” I said.

“I was thinking more of calling you Mathilda,” Sister Hildegard said, and carefully placed my foot on the floor.

“Wh-why?”

The nun looked at me acutely, as though she saw through my flesh to the shape of my bones. “You're Mathilda of Alder Brook,” she said. “The lost princess.”

I gaped. “Yes,” I said cautiously. “I am Mathilda.”

Sister Hildegard smiled. Her white veil and wimple were almost blinding. “The cloister received word that you had gone missing. We have been praying for you daily, that you did not fall into villainous hands.”

“That's nice,” I said feebly, all good manners abandoning me.

“We're pleased to have you, and to help you. Now . . . I'll just go fetch flour, animal fat, and eggs.”

“To eat?”

Hildegard laughed. “No. They're for hardening bandages.” When she returned, she gave me a long, painful session of stretching, then heat treatments, and then followed it by wrapping my leg in bonesetter's bandages with a splint, and coating them in her mixture of items from the kitchen.

“When this dries, it will align your foot faster than just stretching alone,” she said.

“Am I—is my foot going to be normal?”

Hildegard shook her head. “If we had gotten to you when you were an infant, perhaps. But even so you will be able to walk a little better by the time your friends are healed from their injuries.”

T
HREE WEEKS LATER
, I no longer dreamed of a peaceful cloister life.

It turned out that at Saint Disibod's, I had no more time to attend to the
Handbook
than I would have had at Alder Brook—in fact, I had less time, between my treatments and the daily work of the cloister. And the interruptions to pray were near constant. I had made the mistake of telling Hildegard I was contemplating a life of religious devotion. Judith and Parz, as secular patients of the infirmary, were not expected to follow the nuns' schedule. I was awakened in the middle of the night to pray and read scripture. Then I was sent went back to bed, only to wake at dawn and begin needlework, which was hourly interrupted by prayer.

I began to dream of a writing desk in a remote cave, far from any nuns or monks. With, perhaps, a mute servant to do all the heavy work, to bring me food and empty my privy pots, and to mix my ink.

What little time I spent in the library was excellent, though.

I got to look into a copy of a book by Pliny, one of the heathen natural philosophers I'd only heard of; I also found a bestiary that cataloged all species of serpent from basilisk to boa to dragon. But the most thrilling thing at Saint Disibod's was a book I'd never expected to read, Isidore of Seville's
Etymologiae
. It was supposed to contain practically everything that it was necessary to know about everything.

I paged through the volumes of
Etymologiae
eagerly, but with thoroughness. There were many fascinating subjects in it, including a note scrawled in the margins about how wearing specially gathered succory plants could turn you invisible.

My hand itched as the idea came to me: Wouldn't invisibility be a great tactic for fighting dragons? You could just sneak into their caves without them seeing you, and
slice-stab
: dead dragon. Like Siegfried hiding in the ditch at Drachenfels, but with much less mess.

The
Handbook
took shape only slowly, even though Sister Hildegard helped me with the organization of the book and the sorting of important information from random facts. She was no simple healer, being a fine musician and singer as well as a writer. We talked most often at night, when I found myself burning candles to read when I should have been sleeping, and after she finished her nightly rounds in the infirmary.

“What have you learned today?” she always asked, and I would tell her.

“What about invisibility?” I asked, and showed her what I'd copied down about succory plants.

She glanced at my copy, and rattled off six other ways to turn invisible.

“Wait, wait!” I cried, writing as fast as I could. “A tiny horn filled with turnsole . . . What was that about mistletoe? And fern seeds?”

She repeated herself patiently until I had written it all down. “Of course, dragons have excellent senses of smell,” Sister Hildegard said, watching me write
PLANTS WHICH CONFER INVISIBILITY
across the top of the list. “And excellent hearing as well.”

My pen faltered. “Invisibility isn't enough, then.”

“Perhaps not. What other ideas do you have?”

I shoved the useless invisibility list aside and flipped through the
Handbook
. “Most of the stories I find have some saint-in-the-making just defeat the dragon by being holy enough. Trying to make Parz holy isn't an entirely lost cause, but . . . Well, I'm beginning to think that dragons aren't all evil. Maybe. Do you know? Are they?”

“Are all hawks evil?”

“Of course not.”

“What have you observed of dragons that would make you believe they are evil, that you have not observed in a hawk?”

“I've not observed very much of dragons at all,” I said slowly, assembling my thoughts. “But from my direct observation, I have only seen dragons protecting their homes, or being good parents—protective, like a swan with her cygnets or a hen with her eggs.”

“I have observed the behavior of many animals,” Hildegard said. “And I've seen no instance where an animal acts from pure evil. But I have seen men who are selfish, men who rob the world of beauty and joy for the sake of pride and vanity, men who scorn duty to follow their own pleasure.”

I nodded, looking down at the book. I closed the cover softly and traced the binding. “Women, too,” I said softly. I cleared my throat. “Perhaps this handbook is folly.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Maybe we shouldn't be killing dragons at all. They're just animals, and we can't, or won't, even eat them. That's wasteful, and a sin.”

“When they threaten our crops and herds, what then?” Hildegard asked.

“Birds threatened our crops, and we put up scarecrows,” I said.

“What about when dragons threaten our maidens and children? Don't people require and deserve protection?”

“Sure,” I said, in agreement but frustrated. “But who can tell when it's a true threat? Who makes that call?”

“Well, isn't that part of being a dragon slayer? Like a knight who determines when to joust and when to leave the field. . . . Isn't there a measure of judgment in dragon slaying, as in all things?”