Blood of Dragons

Lord Dargen turned to Hest. ‘I am going to bed. Take a candle and precede me, Bingtown Trader. When we go back to Chalced, perhaps I will make you my valet. I have never had a valet, but you appear well suited to the task. As long as you keep your hands to yourself.’

The men at the table roared with laughter. Fury burned in his heart but Hest bent his mouth in an approximation of an appreciative smile. Dismay that such a fate could await him warred with hatred for the man. Would it be much worse to be eaten by the dragon or drowned in the river? As he sheltered their candle from the wind on the way back to the deckhouse and his stateroom, he wished he had the courage to push the drunk overboard, even as his wiser self reminded him of how his companions would react to the loss of their leader.

Death was not far away. They knew it, the carrion eaters and blood drinkers, and they swarmed around her. Some did not wait, but darted forward to try for a chunk of her flesh or the opportunity to latch onto one of her wounds. She longed to shake them off, to dart her head down and make her predators her own meal, but she did not. Let them come. Tintaglia moved in silence, ignoring the swarms of small vampire worms and the fish that kept trying to take a bite of her. They might feed on her tonight; they would almost certainly feast on her tomorrow. But no human would draw her blood or slice her scales free; no human would lay her belly open and take her heart with bloody hands. No. If she could not escape them, she would at least ensure that they joined her in death.

She had taken some rest earlier in the day, if it could be called that. As evening fell, she had found a gap in the forest wall and crept back among the trees. She could not go far, but she had stiffly wound her aching body among the trunks and tree roots and, for a short time, closed her eyes.

And dreamed.

That had surprised her. Of late, when she found a place and a moment to sleep, exhaustion dragged her under into a dark cavern that could scarcely be called rest. More like a bite of death, she thought to herself. But that brief rest had brought her a gobbet of an idea. Some ancient ancestral memory had uncoiled in her mind and when she awoke, it awaited her. Ships had a vulnerable point. Every ship needed a rudder, be it a sweep or a steering oar. Destroy those, and neither vessel could manoeuvre well.

She had been stupid to flee them, to let them attack and chase her. The only times she had gained any blood from them were when she had lain in wait. But they had learned to anticipate those ambushes. She had attacked them when they were awake and alert, their arms ready to hand, and the light helping them to see. Now as she paced slowly and silently through the water back toward the ships, she hissed in silent satisfaction. The lights of the anchored vessels beckoned her, spilling a pale betrayal of their silhouettes onto the river’s face. But she would be almost invisible to them, a black shape in the black water.

She did not deceive herself. This was her last bid at survival. If she did not destroy or at least disable her foes tonight, she did not think she could live through another day of their harrying. The infection from her original wound seemed to have spread to all the minor injuries they had dealt her since then. She was not healing; daily her injuries worsened and she weakened. If she could only rest, make a kill, eat and rest, then perhaps she could muster the strength to plod on toward Kelsingra. Flight was beyond her now. She could scarcely move one wing, and the thought of springing into the air, snapping it open and beating her way up into the sky seemed no more than a long-ago dream.

They had moored their boats with their noses upstream. She would have to pass them as silently as possible, then turn and attack. She hoped to disable both ships and then flee before they could retaliate. It was not a dragon’s way of fighting, to strike and then run, but she was not living in ordinary times for dragons. She carried within her eggs that would mature and eventually be ready for laying. She had caught the scent of dragons on the one damaged vessel; there was a faint chance that there was a colony of viable dragons at Kelsingra. But it was hard to believe and until she knew, she felt that the fate of her race rested on her. If these stupid men so bent on killing her succeeded, they might well have eradicated dragons for ever.