Handbook for Dragon Slayers (8 page)

This was less reassuring than she seemed to think, especially when I overheard their plan, which didn't seem to involve any sort of hanging back and was more a “march together into the jaws of death” sort of idea.

We packed up all our gear and loaded it onto the palfrey, then put out our campfire and started upstream alongside the Willows River. I rode with Parz—only because I refused to ride alone, and I would be too slow at walking—while Judith led the laden palfrey.

The mounts were still tired from the day before, but Parz's drooping horse began to pick up his pace. “Balmung knows a fight is coming,” Parz said. “See how excited he is?” The horse's ears swiveled forward and back as though listening to us.

“Balmung . . . why is that name familiar?”

I didn't have to look; I could hear the smile in Parz's voice. “Because that was the sword Siegfried used to slay Fafnir.”

I giggled. Saint Catherine, I giggled! I put it down to tiredness from sleeping on the ground, though I could not help but feel that I was most certainly not myself right now. Of course, I had left myself behind at Snail Castle. I could no longer be Mathilda, Princess of Alder Brook. I would now be Tilda, errant dragon slayer, or at least the scribe to one.

“So Balmung is accustomed to battle?”

“He's used to training with me, and he's used to practice melees, too. Now listen: If we get separated,” Parz said to me and Judith, “meet up at the next town up the Rhine. It's called Upper Folkstown.”

“Why would we get separated?” I asked, alarmed.

Parz's slightly crooked grin didn't look very real. “We won't! But we're going into battle, and it's just good to have a plan.”

We crested a hill and came to a crumbling tower standing in the midst of a field of browning grass.

“This is it,” Parz said, and unceremoniously slid me off his horse to the ground. I caught myself awkwardly with a grunt, but he was too distracted to notice.

Judith tied the palfrey to a tree, then took a spear from Parz. She stood by his right knee as he drew his sword. Together, they advanced on the tower.

I held my breath.

They moved ever more slowly as they approached, as though waiting for something to burst from the empty doorway. Parz's confusion was visible as no dragon leaped forth—he twitched and moved in the saddle half a dozen times, looking like he was going to step down. He couldn't take the horse into the tower with him, could he? The tower was too small for that.

I wondered if I should be taking notes for the
Handbook
.

Parz stood in his stirrups, about to dismount, when a sound like an eagle's shriek combined with a bear's roar filled the air. The palfrey tied next to me tossed its head, eyes rolling back, ears swiveling anxiously. I backed away from it, afraid of its hooves.

Balmung remained calm in comparison, merely freezing in his tracks. The horse didn't move a hair even when a creature the size of a large dog launched itself out of a hole in the roof of the tower and soared overhead.

“Get down here and fight me, dragon!” Parz shouted, waving his sword.

I squinted into the bright autumn sky. A real dragon! Green-and-brown-patterned scales, a long snaky neck, thick claws, narrow wings—yes, it was a dragon, all right. I'd never seen one in person before. I liked to think that was due to some level of wisdom on the part of my family—Cousin Ivo excepted.

The dragon circled once, twice, then bent its neck like a goose before giving off another honking, roaring scream and landing right in front of Judith and Parz. The dragon was small next to Balmung, but even a large, friendly hunting hound can be imposing. And this dragon wasn't friendly.

Parz screamed something wordless at the dragon as it advanced on them. Judith scrambled backward, staying out of reach of the dragon's mouth. Another roaring scream emerged from the dragon, and the palfrey beside me lost all control, thrashing against the knots that tied it to the tree. I moved farther away, worried it might trample me, torn between putting distance between me and the palfrey and watching the fight.

Parz fumbled in a pouch at his belt as Balmung shied from the dragon. Judith threw a spear, but the dragon ducked. The dragon opened its mouth and launched forward. Parz managed to free a lump of pitch and resin from his pouch and tossed the lump into the dragon's open mouth. The dragon swallowed!

Now Judith and Parz went into full retreat, getting distance while waiting for the dragon to ignite the pitch with its inner fire.

But nothing happened. I realized: The dragon hadn't used any flame in this battle.

The dragon, slow and ungainly on the ground, took wing again, trumpeting its roar. The thrashing palfrey jerked its head desperately and succeeded in freeing itself from the tree. Before I could even try to catch the reins or say “Whoa!” the horse was gone.

With all of our belongings.

I hollered for it to come back. Neither Parz nor Judith seemed to notice me or the palfrey, intent as they were on the circling dragon above. Parz shook his sword skyward.

The dragon screeched again—and dived toward Balmung.

Balmung bolted; the last clear image I saw of Parz was the flash of pink from his open, shouting mouth in his pale face as he was carried off by his panicking horse.

Just when I thought that it might be over for Parz, the dragon slowed and turned.

“Judith!” I screamed. She was already running toward me. She didn't see the dragon behind her.

But the dragon wasn't going for Judith—the dragon was going for the palfrey, who had, in its terror, run around the edge of the clearing and now foolishly ran right at the dragon.

The dragon went in for the palfrey, landing on its back. Claws sank into saddle and bags, and the horse screamed. I screamed too.

Judith ran at me, flailing her arms. “Run!”

I turned, crutch under my arm, and made for the cover of the trees.

When Judith caught up with me, she looped her shoulder beneath mine, and we sped through the underbrush, going deeper and deeper into the forest.

“We should find Parz,” I tried to tell Judith.

“Are there birds in your head? Keep going.”

“I'm slowing you down—you could go back and find Parz without me!”

“
All kinds of birds
,” Judith said through clenched teeth. “Look, leaving you alone is out of the question, but even if it weren't, there's no way on earth I'm going anywhere near that dragon. Which is out of sight now. . . .” She slowed us to a walk.

I frowned. Judith was scared of the dragon, but she wasn't scared enough to leave Parz behind. But she
was
too scared to leave
me
behind, I realized. I was about to order her to go back to find Parz, then the pain in my foot and leg took away my breath.

My foot should theoretically have been thankful for the slower pace. But even the momentary respite triggered pain where, before, panic had erased it, and now it felt like I walked on daggers.

Judith was there immediately, trying to help me straighten, asking me where it hurt. I shook my head. Standing upright, I bit my knuckle and forced myself to take a step, then another, and another.

Once I got back up to a speedy walk, the keening pain flattened out into constant misery. It was better as long as I was moving.

“Do you see Parz behind us?” I asked after a moment. My voice was hoarse and raw from the earlier screaming and the current pain.

“He's nowhere to be seen. But don't worry—Balmung will keep him safe. That horse was running flat out. He'll be fine. We just have to do what he says, and meet up with him at the next town.”

“What if the dragon—”

“He
said
he'll catch up to us in the next town.”

I just nodded. Judith bit her lip. We kept on.

I
WAS LIMPING FAR WORSE THAN NORMAL BY THE TIME
we found a road, but I knew that if I stopped walking, it'd be nearly impossible to start again. I'd overtaxed my foot, and I was going to pay for it later.

Judith scanned the skies between tree branches as we walked. Eventually, she said, “I don't think it's flying after us.”

“I hope Parz and Balmung are all right.”

“I wonder how the palfrey is. Poor Felix.”

“That was his name?” I asked, and somehow, knowing his name was just
awful
. I blinked back tears. “That evil, evil dragon.”

Judith sniffled. “I hope Felix didn't suffer.”

“I hope not, too,” I said. “But either way, Felix is gone. Along with all of our belongings.” With our clothes, I realized, but more importantly, my writing box, the blank
Handbook
, and—

My stomach grumbled.

—and whatever food and coin we'd had among the three of us.

“Why didn't the pitch and resin ignite?” Judith moaned.

“The dragon didn't use any flame for the whole battle,” I said. “Isn't that odd?”

Judith was quiet for a moment. “Odd,” she said, her voice breaking a little on the word. “Why wouldn't it have fire? It was such a strange little dragon—it wasn't very good at flying—it didn't seem quite . . . Oh, Tilda.” Judith's eyes welled with sudden tears. “I think we tried to kill a baby dragon.”

“Oh no,” I said, less out of sympathy for the dragon than for Judith. Judith had to help every baby everywhere, no matter what the circumstance. Human babies. Horse babies. Frog babies. That was how we had ended up with goats tromping on our heads in the middle of the night, once.

“Oh, Tilda,” Judith said again, and started to cry in earnest.

“That dragon might have been too young to have fire,” I said, “but it was clearly old enough to eat horses. And maybe people.”

“That's not its fault! That's just its
nature
,” Judith said. “Like how baby goats need to climb. No one teaches them that. They don't do it because they're good or evil. They just climb.”

I squinted, thinking on the nature of the dragons in the stories of the saints. Saints had no trouble knowing dragons were evil.

I kept looking behind us, hoping we'd spy Parz's grinning face, but we didn't. But we could not in earnestness consider going back. My foot could not have withstood it.

When we reached the wide Rhine, we turned upriver, hopefully toward Upper Folkstown.

“We should find a place to eat and rest,” Judith said.

“With what money?”

“I could sell my hair,” Judith said.

I considered, hands tapping the dullish eating knife at my belt. Hers wasn't very long, not reaching even to the middle of her back. She'd had a fever a few years ago, and it had been cut off then.

“We'll sell mine. More money.”

Judith's eyes went wide. “Your mother will be
so
angry if you do that. I can't let you.”

“Why will she be angry?” I asked.

“Well, she deplores women wearing false hair, for one thing—”

“That's because she deplores the fact that it's cut off of dead people, I think.”

“Yes, but. What are you going to do when you get back to Alder Brook with short hair? You'll have to buy some dead-people hair, then. And thus Princess Isobel will be angry.”

“I would think she'd rather we didn't starve, in the long run,” I said. Which would be true. My mother was a pragmatist in many ways. Judith wasn't wrong, though. My mother would also be angry, and the option of not wearing my hair in long braids wouldn't
be
an option, because that was not what princesses did.

I almost said, “Good thing I'm not going back to Alder Brook, then.” But I bit my tongue and handed Judith the knife.

“Are you
sure
?”

“Just go gently,” I said.

The knife was so dull, it took forever to saw through my thick braids, and each section of hair seemed to pull exceptionally hard before it was severed. I wished for my sharp little penknife, but that was yet another thing we'd lost with Felix the palfrey.

My head felt naked afterward, but I felt free, freer than I had when I'd turned my back on Alder Brook. I hefted the braids in my hands with some amazement. They reached the ground. “No wonder my scalp aches sometimes.”

Judith nodded, and we went into the town, which was a pretty jumble of newish wattle-and-daub houses dotted with older stone buildings.

The town was almost entirely empty, which was to be expected with all the ripe vineyards around. We could see distant dots moving among the terraced vines. It seemed like
everyone
was recruited for the harvest. We couldn't even find an alehouse that was open.

We knocked at the kitchen doors of all the largest houses and eventually found someone who wanted to buy my braids. We took part of our payment in dark bread, sausages, cheese, apples, and small ale.

The mistress of the house who bought our hair dispatched a maidservant to finish dealing with us. The maidservant said, “You're awful young to be here in Upper Folkstown during the grape harvest.”

“Seems like a very late harvest,” I said, not certain what she meant.

“It is,” the maidservant said with some pride. “But our valley is famous for our late harvest of grapes, which makes the most special, sweetest wine. Or—we were. Now get along. You'd best be to the next town before curfew.”

“Thanks, but we were looking to stay here—”

“No.” The maid's eyes were round and blue and a little blank. “You don't want to be anywhere
near
here tonight. Move along quick as you can. Before sunset. It's First Night.”

“What's First Night?”

The maid looked out over our heads at the vineyards that threaded the mountainsides. “The end of the world.”

She shut the door.

Judith and I stared at each other, then turned to leave.