Read The Hero and the Crown Online
Authors: Robin McKinley
pulled on her long gloves. Shining rather in the sunlight then and reeking of
pungent herbs, Aerin rode into the village.
“I am alone,” said Aerin; she would have liked to explain, not that she was here
without her father’s knowledge but that she was alone because she was dragon-
proof (she hoped) and didn’t need any help. But her courage rather failed her,
and she didn’t. In fact what the villagers saw as royal pride worked very well, and
they fell over themselves to stop appearing to believe that a first sol (even a half-
foreign one) couldn’t handle a dragon by herself (and if her mother really was a
witch, maybe there was some good in her being half a foreigner after all), and
several spoke at once, offering to show the way to where the dragon had made its
lair, all of them careful not to look again down the road behind her.
She was wondering how she could tell them delicately that she didn’t want
them hanging around to watch, since she wasn’t at all sure how graceful (or
effective) her first encounter with a real dragon was likely to be. But the villagers
who accompanied her to show her the way had no intention of getting anywhere
near the scene of the battle; a cornered dragon was not going to care what non-
combatant bystanders it happened to catch with an ill-aimed lash of fire. They
pointed the way, and then returned to their village to wait on events.
Aerin hung her sword round her waist, settled the spear into the crook of her
arm. Talat walked with his ears sharply forward, and when he snorted she smelled
it too: fire, and something else. It was a new smell, and it was the smell of a
creature that did not care if the meat it ate was fresh or not, and was not tidy
with the bones afterward. It was the smell of dragon.
Talat, after his warning snort, paced onward carefully. They came soon to a
little clearing with a hummock of rock at its edge. The hummock had a hole in it,
the upper edge of which was rimed with greasy smoke. The litter of past dragon
meals was scattered across the once green meadow, and it occurred to Aerin that
the footing would be worse for a horse’s hard hoofs than a dragon’s sinewy claws.
Talat halted, and they stood, Aerin gazing into the black hole in the hill. A
minute or two went by and she wondered, suddenly, how one got the dragon to
pay attention to one in the first place. Did she have to wake it up? Yell? Throw
water into the cave at it?
Just as her spear point sagged with doubt, the dragon hurtled out of its den and
straight at them: and it opened its mouth and blasted them with its fire—except
that Talat had never doubted, and was ready to step nimbly out of its way as
Aerin scrabbled with her spear and grabbed at Talat’s mane to keep from falling
off onto the dragon’s back. It spun round-it was about the height of Talat’s knees,
big for a dragon, and dreadfully quick on its yellow-clawed feet—and sprayed fire
at them again. This time, although Talat got them out of the worst of it, it licked
over her arm. She saw the fire wash over the spear handle and glance off her
elbow, but she did not feel it; and the knowledge that her ointment did
accomplish what it was meant to do gave her strength and cleared her mind. She
steadied the spear-butt and nudged Talat with one ankle; as he sidestepped and
as the dragon whirled round at them again, she threw her spear.
It wouldn’t have been a very good cast for a member of the thotor, or for a
seasoned dragon-hunter, but it served her purpose. It stuck in the dragon’s neck,
in the soft place between neck and shoulder where the scales were thin, and it
slowed the dragon down. It twitched and lashed its tail and roared at her, but she
knew she hadn’t given it a mortal wound; if she let it skulk off to its lair, it would
eventually heal and re-emerge, nastier than ever.
It bent itself around the wounded shoulder and tried to grip the spear in its
teeth, which were long and thin and sharp and not well suited for catching hold of
anything so smooth and hard and narrow as a spear shaft. Aerin dismounted and
pulled out her sword, and approached it warily. It ignored her, or appeared to, till
she was quite close; and then it snapped its long narrow head around at her again
and spat fire. It caught her squarely; and dragon fire had none of the friendliness
of a wood fire burning by the side of a river. The dragonfire pulled at her, seeking
her life; it clawed at her pale shining skin, and at the supple leather she wore; and
while the heat of it did not distress her, the heat of its malice did; and as the fire
passed over her and disappeared she stood still in shock, and stared straight
ahead of her, and did not move.
Aerin took half a dozen stiff steps forward, grasped the end of the spear and
forced the dragon to the ground, swung her sword up and down, and cut off the
dragon’s head.
Then there was an angry scream from Talat, and she whirled, the heat of the
dead dragon’s fresh-spilled blood rising as steam and clouding her vision: but she
saw dragonfire, and she saw Talat rear and strike with his forefeet.
She ran toward them and thought, Gods, help me, it had a mate; I forgot, often
there are two of them; and she chopped at the second dragon’s tail, and missed.
It swung around, breathing fire, and she felt the heat of it across her throat, and
then Talat struck at it again. It lashed her with its tail when it whirled to face the
horse again, and Aerin tripped and fell, and the dragon was on top of her at once,
the claws scrabbling at her leather tunic and the long teeth fumbling for her
throat. The smoke from its nostrils hurt her eyes. She yelled, frantically, and
squirmed under the dragon’s weight; and she heard something tear, and she
knew if she was caught in dragonfire again she would be burned.
Then Talat thumped into the dragon’s side with both hind feet, and the force of
the blow lifted them both—for the dragon’s claws were tangled in leather laces—
and dropped them heavily. The dragon coughed, but there was no fire; and Aerin
had fallen half on top of the thing. It raked her with its spiked tail, and something
else tore; and its teeth snapped together inches from her face. Her sword was too
long; she could not get it close enough for stabbing, and her shoulder was tiring.
She dropped the sword and struggled to reach her right boot top, where she had
a short dagger, but the dragon rolled, and she could not reach it.
Then Talat was there again, and he bit the dragon above its small red eye,
where the ear hole was; and the dragon twisted its neck to spout fire at him, but
it was still dazed by its fall, and only a little fire came out of its mouth. Talat
plunged his own face into the trickle of smoke and seized the dragon by the
nostrils and dragged its head back; and still farther back. Its forefeet and breast
came clear of the ground, and as the dragon thrashed, Aerin’s leg came free, and
she pulled the dagger from her boot and thrust it into the dragon’s scaleless
breast. The dragon shrieked, the noise muffled by Talat’s grip on its nose, and
Aerin stumbled away to pick up her sword.
Talat swung the dying dragon back and forth, and slashed at its body with one
forefoot, and the muscles of his heavy stallion’s neck ran with sweat and smudges
of ash. Aerin lifted up the sword and sliced the dragon’s belly open, and it
convulsed once, shuddered, and died. Talat dropped the body and stood with his
head down, shivering, and Aerin realized what she had done, and how little she
had known about what it would involve, and how near she had come to failure;
and her stomach rebelled, and she lost what remained of her breakfast over the
smoking mutilated corpse of the second dragon.
She walked a few steps away till she came to a tree and with her hands on its
bole she felt her way to the ground, and sat with her knees drawn up and her
head between them for a few minutes. Her head began to clear, and her
breathing slowed, and as she looked up and blinked vaguely at the leaves
overhead, she heard Talat’s hoofbeats behind her. She put out a hand, and he put
his bloody nose into it, and so they remained for several heartbeats more, and
then Aerin sighed and stood up. “Even dragons need water. Let’s look for a
stream.”
Again they were lucky, for there was one close at hand. Aerin carefully washed
Talat’s face, and discovered that most of the blood was dragon’s, although his
forelock was singed half away. “And to think I almost didn’t bother to put any
kenet on your head,” she murmured. “I thought it was going to be so easy.” She
pulled Talat’s saddle off to give him a proper bath, after which he climbed the
bank and found a nice scratchy bit of dirt and rolled vigorously, and stood up
again mud-colored. “Oh dear,” said Aerin. She splashed water on her face and
hands and then abruptly pulled off all her dragon-tainted clothing and
submerged. She came up again when she needed to breathe, chased Talat back
into the water to wash the mud off, and then brushed and rubbed him hard till
she was warm and dry with the work and he was at least no more than damp.
With much greater reluctance she tied together some dry brush and set fire to
it from her tinder box, and approached the dark foul-smelling hole in the rock.
She had to stoop to get inside the cave at all, and her torch guttered and tried to
go out. She had an impression of a shallow cave with irregular walls of rock and
dirt, and a pebbly floor; but she could not bear the smell, or the knowledge that
the grisly creatures she had just killed had lived here, and she jerked back outside
into the sunlight again, and dropped her torch, and stamped out the fire. She
didn’t think there were any eggs, or dragon kits. She’d have to hope there
weren’t.
She thought: I have to take the heads with me. The hunters always bring the
heads—and it does prove it without a lot of talking about it. I don’t think I can talk
about it. So she picked up her sword again and whacked off the second dragon’s
head, and then washed her sword and dagger in the stream, re-sheathed them,
and tied her spear behind the saddle. The dragons looked small now, motionless
and headless, little bigger and no more dangerous than rabbits; and the ugly
heads, with the long noses and sharp teeth, looked false, like masks in a monster-
play for the children during one of the City holidays, where part of the fun is to be
frightened—but not very much. Who could be frightened of a dragon?
I could, she thought.
She tied the heads in the heavy cloth she’d carried her leather suit in, and
mounted Talat, and they went slowly back to the village.
The villagers were all waiting, over a hundred of them, gathered at the edge of
town; the fields beyond the village were empty, and men and women in their
working clothes, looking odd in their idleness, all stood watching the path Aerin
and Talat had disappeared down only an hour ago. A murmur arose as the front
rank caught sight of them, and Talat raised his head and arched his neck, for he
remembered how it should be, coming home from battle and bearing news of
victory. The people pressed forward, and as Talat came out of the trees they
surrounded him, looking up at Aerin: Just the one girl and her fine horse, surely
they have not faced the dragon, for they are uninjured; and they were
embarrassed to hope for a sol’s burns, but they wished so sorely for the end of
the dragon.
“Lady?” one man said hesitantly. “Did you meet the dragon?”
Aerin realized that their silence was uncertainty; she had suddenly feared that
they would not accept even the gift of dragon-slaying from the daughter of a
witch woman, and she smiled in relief, and the villagers smiled back at her,
wonderingly. “Yes, I met your dragon; and its mate.” She reached behind her and
pulled at the cloth that held the heads, and the heads fell to the ground; one
rolled, and the villagers scattered before it as if it still had some power to do them
harm. Then they laughed a little sheepishly at themselves; and then everyone
turned as the boy who had announced Aerin’s arrival said, “Look!”
Seven horsemen were riding into the village as Aerin had ridden in. “You
weren’t supposed to get here till tomorrow,” she murmured, for she recognized
Gebeth and Mik and Orin, who were cousins of hers a few times removed and
members of her father’s court, and four of their men. Gebeth and Orin had been
on many dragon hunts before; they were loyal and reliable, and did not consider
dragon-hunting beneath them, for it was a thing that needed to be done, and a
service they could do for their king.
“Aerin-sol,” said Gebeth; his voice was surprised, respectful—for her father’s
sake, not hers—and disapproving. He would not scold her in front of the villagers,
but he would certainly give Arlbeth a highly colored tale later on.
“Gebeth,” she said. She watched with a certain ironic pleasure as he tried to
think of a way to ask her what she was doing here; and then Orin, behind him,
said something, and pointed to the ground where the small dragons’ heads lay in
the dust. Gebeth dropped his gaze from the unwelcome sight of his sovereign’s