Chapter 23 #2
“Now he’s my manservant.” She gave the ministry official her most winning smile. “Certainly that’s not against the rules, is it? His life and property are forfeit if Dirk wins, which he did, and he just chose to keep him alive. He’s a dragon, remember? He can do what he w—”
“You know I’ll have to change my report to reflect this. Tell that Dragon I loathe addendums.” He spat the word out with the same revulsion of a lady flicking out a fly that had fallen into her soup. “They make for very messy recordings and reflect poorly on my ability to be precise and succinct.”
“He’ll be more forthright in the future.”
“Where is Dirk the Dangerous, anyway? The Hero awaits.”
Millie glanced over her shoulder and found that the little blue luck dragon hadn’t moved from the gloom of the balcony archway. “Getting ready for his grand entrance, of course.”
The ministry official snorted and returned to his seat. Flipped back to the previous page in his chronicle and searched for an appropriate place to record this change in Sir Roger’s circumstance.
This particular DDP was proving stranger by the day.
First valets, now Heroes left alive and turned into manservants for the Dragon’s princess?
Sir Eustace had never heard of such a thing.
He needed another margarita, which unfortunately would have to wait until after this barbarian made his Rescue attempt.
“You may continue, Ivar the Bane. My deepest apologies for this interruption.”
“Manservant?” the barbarian roared without missing a beat. “Or rival?”
“Actually,” Sir Roger said, “I’m her—”
“It matters not. She will have no man in her life but me. You die with the dragon, along with that freakish handmaiden in the brown dress! No one should have shoulders bigger than mine, least of all a woman.”
Sir Roger and Millie glanced at Bradley, whose long dark curls curtained his face as he looked down at his brown robe. When the apprentice’s gaze rose, he found Sir Roger smothering a smile and Millie tittering.
“I know I need a haircut!” he signed angrily.
Their mirth was fleeting.
The green veins of the warhammer flared with light, and the Hero slammed his weapon against the tower once more.
The three clutched hard to the railing as they were pitched forward.
“You bumbling blockhead,” Millie shouted. “If you break down this tower, I’ll fall and there will be no ravishing!”
“I’ll catch you.” The Hero swung his warhammer again, and something in the workroom finally keeled over with a crash and a shatter. The pigeons in the attic had finally had enough, too, and pissily vacated through the vents in a shower of gray feathers.
“He cannot break down this tower,” Bradley signed frantically.
Not only was this tower ancient enough to be considered Architecture of Historical Significance, it held a wealth of magical knowledge and artifacts unheard of outside the College.
There were secrets here, old magic, even life from a bygone age.
And this elephantine horndog was going to ruin everything.
“I don’t suppose you want to offer him a position in your talent stable,” Sir Roger said. “You mentioned sensuality training.”
Millie whacked him in the arm. “Not the time, Sir Roger. And it’s Seduction 101, which requires subtlety, something this brute knows nothing about.”
Still gripping the railing to maintain her balance, the pirate aspirant whirled around. “Master Dirk!”
The little luck dragon’s cerulean scales had paled to aquamarine. “I take it back. I am not fighting that.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“Yes I do. Millie, as much as I want to see you fulfill your dreams of becoming a pirate, I like my guts, horns, and certainly my testicles exactly where they belong. Attached to my body!” Dirk sucked in a calming breath and smoothed down his feathers.
“Now please excuse me while I forfeit this fight with whatever dignity I have left. I wish you both many happy brutish babies.”
All three humans abandoned the railing to pig-pile the luck dragon against the floor with cries of, “No!” and “You did not just extort the Knightly Code of Conduct to back out now!”
Dirk wiggled and thrashed, summoning wind and water to blast his overprotective friends aside, but it was Millie who maintained her grip on his pearly horns and wrangled him around to face her.
“Forget about me, Dirk,” she said. “Is this how you want to give up on your dream, by surrendering without a fight whenever you come up against a daunting obstacle?”
Dirk thrust a claw in the barbarian’s direction. “That is one massive obstacle!”
“But not undefeatable.”
“He has an enchanted warhammer!”
“And you are Dirk the Dangerous. Or was that all pretend?”
She released her grip on his horns, and the baby luck dragon wove a sinuous, uncomfortable figure-eight through the air.
Bradley snapped his fingers for their attention, and his signs were sharp and full of warning. “Don’t pressure him.” This was the little dragon’s chance to abandon his obsession with the Great Reds, to realize this price of discovery was too much for him to bear.
“I’m not pressuring him. He just needs to make the choice if his dream is worth following.” The princess regarded the luck dragon calmly, even as the tower quaked from another assault.
Dirk realized her chocolate-brown eyes reminded him of the water lily ponds at the College where he’d sometimes catch bullfrogs to play with when the other luck dragons ignored him.
A stop-gap measure against loneliness, the first of many before that fateful day in the rain by the lake.
Resolve bloomed in his chest, and a ripple of luck passed over his cerulean scales.
“Oberon the Oppressive fought on even when he was greatly outnumbered outside Blackburn Castle,” he answered stoutly. “I can do that, too.”
Bradley released a heavy sigh, earning him a reproachful look from everyone present.
He folded his arms across his chest, despite the gravitas of the gesture being undercut by the fact he was still seated upon the workroom floor where he’d pig-piled Dirk, his robe soaked through from the luck dragon’s defensive attack, and maintained his opinion.
“Though, I don’t know how to win,” the dragon admitted to Millie.
Millie pushed herself upright and straightened her clothes with an aggressive flounce. “Nor do I, and the best pirate captains understand their shortcomings and know when to delegate. That’s what a crew is for, after all.”
She turned to Sir Roger, who was in the middle of wringing the water from his shirt. “You knew what kind of barbarian he was at first glance. Have you ever fought such a creature in your roamings as a hedge knight?”
Sir Roger finished squeezing his shirt and flapped the wrinkles out. “Some. They’re strong and have great stamina, but they’re not strategists. They mostly stick to their preferred weapon and one or two primary attacks.”
And that preferred weapon and its primary attack made the tower shake once more. Shingles shot off the roof and plummeted towards the sand like meteors.
“Why won’t you break, stupid tower?” Ivar the Bane roared. “Alfalas will not be denied! And where is that dragon?”
When the tremors subsided, Millie retrieved her letter opener from where it had dropped from her hand when she’d steadied herself against the desk.
She thrust it into her belt. “One weapon. One or two attacks. That’s his weakness.
I’ve watched enough tourneys to know that the moment you become predictable in a fight—”
“You lose,” Sir Roger finished, eyes widening. A bewildered smile came to his lips. “You’re not like any princess I’ve ever met, miss.”
“And I won’t remain one if that lout breaks down the tower.” She thrust her finger at the trapdoor. “Go down to the training room. Master Dirk has incredible hearing, and you’ll coach him through the fight from one of the windows, old man.”
Had those words passed beyond another else’s lips, the hedge knight would’ve immediately struck those lips with his leather gauntlet and called for a duel, but he recognized these for the compliment they were. Still smiling, Sir Roger saluted with a fist clamped over his heart. “Yes, ma’am.”
As the hedge knight disappeared into the stairwell, his limp more of a skip with the aid of his cane, Millie turned to Bradley. “I believe those pancakes from this morning and the edible ink are still in the kitchen. Perhaps on the floor from all the ruckus, but still there.”
The apprentice had hoped the princess had forgotten about the pancakes and the ink (he certainly had, and was kicking himself now), but with a juggernaut barbarian trying to break down the tower, he was running out of options.
They’d been lucky with Lord Thespian, wiggled out of a confrontation with Sir Roger through extortion, but neither would work on that bonehead.
He was simply too stupid and single-minded to be swindled.
Hells of the deep, he had no choice but to help or see his friend’s testicles fried up in his own fat.
“Come,” he snarled, and dashed out of the workroom for the kitchen.