Alinore
The creature was long and muscled, with claws, fangs and horns bigger than any beast she had ever seen.
She was terrified and fascinated all at once.
It was not quite like the dragons she had seen depicted in paintings – it was leaner, fiercer and mightier than she ever could have ever imagined. Its body radiated heat and power.
The creature stared at her. Its forked tail flicked to one side.
The dragon lifted its snout and snarled: a low, menacing boom.
The gelding reared up, eyes rolling back in his head.
Alinore snatched at the reins, but they slid through her fingers and she tumbled from the saddle, landing with a thump on the hard ground.
‘Alinore!’ Cressyda screamed again.
The gelding charged off into the undergrowth, disappearing into darkness.
Alinore scrambled on to her hands and knees in time to see the dragon lifting its head, a bright, ominous redness pulsing in the webbed skin at its throat.
Fire. She flung herself to the side, tucking into a desperate roll just as a blaze roared past, turning the grass behind her into a wall of flickering flame.
Heat seared the chilled air and clouds of smoke billowed.
Gasping, Alinore clambered to her feet. She had always envisioned doing something like that in battle against an enemy – and even practised it as part of her training – but the reality was more frightening than she ever could have guessed.
The dragon growled, a low, deep rumble.
It darted forward and instinctively Alinore swung her sword high.
The tip of her blade hit its scaled shoulder, ricocheting off with a chink.
The force of the impact almost knocked the hilt from her hand and Alinore had to clutch it tightly, panting from the shock.
She had spent most of her training practising fighting against an imagined swordman – human-sized, predictable, flesh and bone.
Not this. Not a creature whose hide deflected steel like rain off stone, whose movements were too fast and too fluid.
The realization settled heavily in her gut: this was no sparring match. This was survival.
The dragon wheeled around, rising on to its haunches. The leathery wings on its back shuddered open, as if it was preparing to leap.
Alinore gulped, her throat dry, never taking her eyes off its curled, lithe form. She gripped the hilt of her sword with both hands and flicked it upwards as the dragon pounced.
Again, her blade rebounded off its scaled chest and she stumbled back, almost losing her footing.
The dragon turned and the forked end of its tail whipped around, slashing her left forearm.
She gasped, feeling blood ooze. Panic flared and though she tried to stamp it down, it flooded her body, turning to terror.
The dragon wanted to kill her.
If she lost, she would die.
The dragon thrashed its tail again and Alinore only just managed to spin away in time.
She feigned an attack to the left, then jabbed her sword right at the last moment, beating the dragon on the snout with the flat of her blade.
Shrieking, it spewed a thin stream of orange fire that shot too close to Alinore’s face, singeing her collar and throwing her off balance.
She stumbled again and the sword slipped from her grasp, clanging against a nearby rock.
The dragon leapt forward.
Alinore’s head smacked the ground, her whole body jarring with the impact.
Pain exploded at the base of her skull, blooming outward in waves that made her vision blur and her breath hitch.
A cry tore from her throat, raw and involuntary, before she collapsed fully, limbs splayed and trembling.
She lay still, gasping shallowly, the night spinning around her in a haze of sound and colour.
The dragon reared up, its wings unfurling. Two red eyes fixed upon her and fire glowed at its throat, surging up to its jaw.
It was ready to strike.
The knowledge of what was about to happen froze Alinore in place, every muscle locked by terror. Her breath caught, and her heartbeat seemed to stutter.
In that moment, her mind fled to safer ground, pulling her away from the sweltering heat surrounding her.
She thought of sparring with Prince Ottone: building her strength and developing her skills, his kind, open face smiling at her and correcting her stance again and again.
She thought of her childhood in Syonno Castle, playing games with Cressyda, whispering secrets and sharing everything together.
Lastly, and clearest of all, she thought of her father, tall and noble, with eyes that twinkled, recounting tales of glory and danger with a storyteller’s flair.
He had made the impossible seem conquerable, had made her believe she could one day stand in those same stories.
One tale rose above the others, her very favourite: the Battle of Rowlyn, when her father had described fighting a dragon just like this.
His words drifted into her head: ‘The trick is to strike the throat.’
The dragon’s chest expanded, ready to unleash a torrent of flame, and still she lay, caught between memory and oblivion. But her father’s words echoed louder now, urgent – strike the throat – and with that, something sparked deep within her.
‘No!’ screamed a voice. Even submerged in the hazy depths of her memory, she knew who it was – Cressyda.
A stone flew from the darkness, hitting the dragon’s cheek. It was a small, round pebble that bounced off the creature with a light ding, but it was distracting enough to grab the beast’s attention.
The dragon turned its head towards Cressyda.
Alinore saw her chance.
She lunged for her sword, adrenaline flooding her body.
Her fingers closed around the hilt, slick with dirt and sweat, and she scrambled to her feet.
Without hesitating, she twisted back towards the beast. It had begun to turn again, its head lowering, eyes gleaming with rekindled fury, but she was already moving.
With a cry that ripped from the deepest part of her, she drove the sword upwards in a fierce, two-handed thrust. The blade met resistance, then slid past the iron-hard scales and into the vulnerable web of flesh beneath the dragon’s throat.
A hot gush of blood, thick and steaming, burst as the creature let out a strangled, guttural roar.
Alinore screamed as boiling liquid spurted across her hands and chest. She staggered back, her skin blistering.
The dragon’s wings flared violently, buffeting the air around them, and it staggered, claws gouging furrows into the earth as it tried to wrench itself away. One talon slashed at Alinore’s shin, stripping back skin, and she fell, her legs buckling beneath her.
A pair of hands grasped hold of her shoulders and dragged her backwards. ‘Alinore?’ Cressyda was shouting in her ear over the roaring of the dragon. ‘Alinore, are you hurt?’
They collapsed against a boulder together, breathless and trembling, their eyes fixed on the beast before them.
The dragon thrashed violently, its massive body writhing, sending up a flurry of dust and ash.
Its wings flapped, striking the air, and its tail lashed out, tearing up stone and earth with each wild swipe.
A final, ragged screech echoed from its throat; then it crumpled.
Its head slammed against the ground with a deafening thud that sent tremors through the ridge, and blood gushed in torrents from its throat, hissing as it pooled on ground.
Then all was still.
Smoke churned upwards from the earth, thickening the air in a haze of grey. It swarmed around them, obscuring everything.
‘My sword!’ Alinore gasped. ‘I need it.’
She shook off Cressyda and lurched to her feet, ignoring the blood still trickling from her leg and the smarting sting of smoke on her wounds.
She must have her sword; without it, they were completely unarmed.
Through the smouldering fog, she saw a flash of silver where the dragon had fallen and she limped towards it, hands outstretched.
But impossibly, the dragon was gone. Its long, coiling form had vanished.
She stopped.
A breeze wafted the smoke from the ridge and the ashen mist lifted.
Alinore blinked, barely believing the sight before her.
A young woman lay in the pool of the dragon’s blood, her throat cut.
Black hair fanned around her head and her naked figure trembled as her life ebbed away.
At the sound of Alinore’s tread, her dark, familiar gaze focused, and the corners of her mouth lifted in something of a smile.
But then her body began to convulse, blood pulsing from the jagged wound at her neck, and without warning, she collapsed into tiny flakes of ash.
Alinore stumbled back, dizzy and sick. ‘That was … that was Princess Tiannie,’ she whispered.