Chapter 14 #3
“We don’t know. You can’t exactly give one an eye test,” Edmund breathed against his hair. “They may be able to see motion but not details.”
The Dervish had had many things whispered against his hair, but never before details of draconic vision. Though he’s probably never whispered that in someone’s ear either …
No, wait, it’s Edmund. This may actually count as foreplay. The Dervish fought back a wild urge to laugh. The first time I’ve had a man in my arms in over a century, and it’s because there’s a dragon watching us.
A moment later, the dragon grunted, turned back to its rock, and resumed sunning itself.
The Dervish dropped his forehead against Edmund’s chest and exhaled. “Right,” he whispered, and tried to step back, only to discover that he had, in turning, somehow managed to wrap the reins around himself. He looked over his shoulder into a dark, disdainful eye.
Mules were probably not telepathic, but the Dervish was quite sure that he could hear Sweetness thinking, If there wasn’t a dragon here, I would bite you so hard, human.
“Um,” said Edmund softly, “if I move my arm here … and then you step there…”
“Do humans want a gnole to leave, come back later?”
“Oh, a gnole thinks she’s funny.”
“Not as funny as knife-man and book-man right now…”
With some careful twists, they managed to disentangle themselves. Large Francis extended a narrow leg and patted both Edmund and the Dervish gingerly on the back, which might have meant, I’m glad you’re all right, but might also have been, Can we go back and look at the dragon some more?
Twenty minutes of cautious travel later, freezing every time a twig snapped, Edmund relaxed enough to say, in a normal tone, “I think we’re far enough away now.”
“That thing was freakish,” the Dervish said. “I’d heard stories, but that skinny little neck and that huge body…” He shuddered theatrically.
“It-is-a-shame-we-could-not-get-closer.”
“A gnole thinks we got plenty close enough.”
“Oh-yes-for-safety’s-sake. Still…” If it was possible for a gigantic pillbug to look wistful, Large Francis managed.
They made a broad circle south of the road, or tried. Absent a compass, it was hard to tell. It did not take them long to cross the dragon’s trail. Broken branches edged the line where the dragon’s tail had been dragged through fallen leaves, churning up a thick line of wet soil.
“There’s a story that dragons taught humans agriculture,” Edmund said, hastily scribbling more notes. “They plowed up lines of dirt like this, and then plants grew up in rows behind them.”
“Is-that-true?” asked Francis, who had cranked up the music box as soon as they were well out of range.
“I can’t say it isn’t, but I doubt it. It’s just an old legend. There are lots of legends about dragons. Supposedly in the old days, villages would sacrifice maidens to them.”
“Don’t look at a gnole. A gnole is too stringy. Better eating on a human.”
“I knew a man who hunted them once,” the Dervish said, and was suddenly the focus of three sets of eyes. “Dragons, not maidens, I mean.”
“How does a human hunt that? A dragon was the size of a house!”
The Dervish tried to remember back. There had been a campfire and everyone sitting around it, the way they so often did.
Commander Sarkis had been sitting on a tree stump, with Angharad and the Dervish flanking him.
He remembered Sarkis’s profile as the man stared into the flame, saying, “Their hide is nearly a foot thick. Arrows are like beestings. The only real way to do it is on horseback, with spears. We’d take turns distracting the head while everyone else struck at the body.
You have to use the weight of the horse to really drive the spear in there.
But the dragon can whip that neck around in any direction, so you had to strike and then get out of there as fast as the horse could carry you, because it never stayed distracted long. ”
The memory was suddenly achingly clear. Sarkis had turned to him then, and said, “Next time we’ll just get Handsome here to distract the beast,” and had nudged him with an elbow.
Everyone had laughed, including the Dervish.
He’d had longer hair then, and he’d flipped it over his shoulder and said, “My dear dragon, why would you look at those barbaric horsemen when you could be looking at me?”
“That’s it,” the commander had said, “we’re getting out of the mercenary business and going into freelance dragonslaying.” He lifted his cup in a toast to the Dervish, and the Dervish returned it, feeling the old wash of respect and affection and delight in camaraderie …
And then the rage came boiling up and the Dervish remembered everything that stood between that time and this one, and that Sarkis had been the architect of his downfall. Damn him to the last hell. If he’s still in a sword, I hope his wielders cut him into mince and feed it to a dragon.
“Dervish?” asked Edmund worriedly. “Is something wrong?”
“Eh? What?”
“You, uh, slowed down.”
“Oh. So I have.” The Dervish quickened his step. “Right, so apparently you use horses…”
When he’d finished relaying the best way to slay dragons, Dog Violet shook her head. “What a gnole doesn’t understand is how a dragon eats. Tiny mouth, great big body.”
“It-does-seem-as-if-it-would-have-to-be-eating-constantly-to-survive.”
“No, no, quite the opposite,” Edmund said. “They’re like snakes, they eat one big meal at a time. Their jaw unhinges and their whole neck can expand enormously. Supposedly they can eat an entire deer in one bite.”
The Dervish compared his mass to that of a deer and did not particularly like the result. “Right,” he said, stretching his legs even further. “Let’s make sure we’re a long way away when it decides it’s hungry.”