The Beasts Above
One summer day, well past the noontide, Corlan was riding his
mount up the side of a mountain, the trail along the cliff barely wide enough
for them to pass, when he heard a familiar screech echoing through the desert canyon.
He turned in the saddle, glancing back over his brawny shoulder, whiskered chin
brushing his sweaty shirt. His eyes brightened as he gazed down the long,
ancient riverbed, searching for targets at the extreme range of his vision. He
examined the crest of the jagged hills there, then surveyed the bronze sky just
above them. With a scratch of his whiskers, he grinned.
A
dragon clan was approaching. He counted again. Eleven of them in a loose V formation.
Just when he believed he would never fill his quota, there they were! It would
be a good day, after all.
Corlan
pulled rein on his mount. Brushing his wind-swept hair out of his face and
keeping his eyes fixed on the clan, he reached behind the saddle for the
dragonslinger. Pulling the tubular weapon around to his lap, he next grabbed an
iron bolt, wrenching it from one of two quivers that hung from each side of his
mount. He loaded the bolt into the weapon’s barrel and screwed back the spring
lever to the third mark.
Squeezed
against the cliffs overlooking the barren canyon was not the best location,
Corlan knew. He had been heading for higher ground, to his usual place which
had better cover. Yet the dragons were already coming. Even so, he decided, from
this cliff he could easily pick a few of the aerial beasts out of the sky. He
could fill his monthly quota and be heading back to the city for a stout brew
and a good woman. After enough days of relaxation, he would return to the
Valley of Death once more.
He
set the weapon’s mark on the first dragon, a large gray-belly, and released the
spring. The iron bolt shot out into the canyon and struck the nearest winger
behind the base of the jaw, a weak point, ripping the beast out of the
formation.
As
he watched the dragon fall to the valley floor, a puff of dust forming when it
crashed, he smiled. No soft heart for
Corlan; he was only doing his job: saving the realm from the scourge of dragons.
That’s what he always told people. It wasn’t that he enjoyed culling the herd. Yet
he had admitted a few times, usually while drinking, that the work was pleasant
enough. He had a lot of time to think, sitting on the canyon’s edge, waiting
for dragons to fly past.
He
was less interested in explaining how he happened into this risky occupation. “Politics,”
he snarled at those who asked. “Mere social squabbling, all it was. Not at all what
people might assume.” What they might have assumed was that sometime in the
darker days of childhood he’d had an unpleasant encounter with a dragon, even a
small one. Thus, hatred for them would boil throughout his life until he could resist
no more and marched out to battle them. People would understand that; most
members of the Dragonslayer Guild told similar tales.
No,
for Corlan, it was different. He was new to the occupation. One day he had been
the grandson of a king, the next day an outcast making his way across the
battlefields of the realm. His father had taught him well the military arts. So
he had served any lord who offered him enough coin. He trained soldiers to
fight, then watched them die—thought Corlan, marking the next aerial beast.
As
a field captain, he had garnered some fame: the second Battle of Green Mountain
was a decisive victory. And the Battle of the Two Rivers, north of Bany,
decided a crucial border. For that, he had been handsomely rewarded by the Prince
of Nerk. The next war, however, did not go as well—
The
dragon’s scream shook him from his thoughts. Ripping the lead winger out of the
formation compelled its lieutenants to turn upon him with their full fury. Corlan
was ready, of course. Few men could keep their fear in check when dragons
swooped down. In fact, many a loincloth was soiled by the first encounter. Their
lives were measured in minutes—with a toasty end to regrets imagined and loves unfulfilled.
And yet, he often realized, he hadn’t much to live for anyway. He’d wasted most
of his thirty-eight years and saw nothing in his future, so he relished the
fight.
He
loaded the dragonslinger with a fresh bolt, ignoring how unprotected his
location was. The metal dart was the length of his arm and tipped with a
trident of barbs. For good measure, between the barbs was a capsule holding the
best poisons the wizards could create. Upon impact, the barbs cutting into the
flesh of the dragon, the capsule would burst and spill its toxin into the body
of the beast—in case the wound itself did not take down the creature.
As
he prepared to fire the weapon again, Corlan kneed his broad, muscular mount,
the ungainly hippor, into the shadows
of the cliffs where they would be safe a moment longer than if they were in
full view. The hippor grunted disagreement but complied. The quivers of iron
bolts that hung from each side clanged.
“Come
on, beasty! I’ve a gift for you!” he shouted at the next dragon trying to
locate him on the mountainside before giving a vain cry and turning away.
Corlan
scanned the clear sky, bronze sun nailed to the zenith. He measured the
distance with his trained eyes. He could rip a few more, he decided, thinking
of children that had been carried away and farmsteads burnt. The more dragons
dropping from the sky, the better. The better the ground, he thought. He
loathed stepping in dragon waste.
Pressing
his boot against the side of the cliff, Corlan dismounted, dropping to the dirt
beside the reddish-brown hippor, raising a reddish-brown cloud of dust. The hippor
yawned. Its broad throat opened for a moment, flashing its tusks before closing.
A snort from its nostrils sprayed the ground.
“You
keep doing that, Chug, and I’ll trade you for another!”
He
kicked some dirt over the toes of his boots to dry the mucus sprayed from the hippor’s
nose. Pulling a cloth from the saddlebag, he wiped his leg from knee to hip and
tossed the rag over the edge of the cliff. The wind blew it back at him. He
slapped the cloth down and trained his eyes again on the approaching dragons.
Corlan
expelled a hard breath as he screwed back the spring lever. He was tired of the
hippor. If only horses still existed.
But the last horse was dead more than a hundred years already. It had been kept
in a small pen on the palace grounds where the king thought it would be safe
from a starving citizenry. In the end, it was not safe. So the wizards used old
magic to create this new riding beast.
Three
of the dragons were circling overhead, locating their prey against the mountainside.
Corlan’s red and brown clothing merged into the reddish-brown cliffs. Even his
auburn hair helped him blend in. Yet their eyes were sharp. He wished then that
he’d reached his usual hunting spot where the overhanging rock protected him.
The
beasts screeched their displeasure. With boots planted in the dirt, he leaned
back against the hippor, urging it tighter against the cliff. He took his
stance, checking the bolt in the dragonslinger. He had another bolt leaning
against his knee, ready to load next.
The
grey-belly with teal throat stripes came in screaming, wings wide and talons drawn,
making a ridiculous spectacle—as though it was trying to frighten children all
the way in the city.
Corlan
sent the iron bolt through the dragon’s throat. The beast dropped from the sky,
falling past him and down to the valley floor. The iron bolt had cut clean
through the dragon’s neck and continued arching into the sky. Teal clouds of
glandular fluid from the dragon’s throat dissipated in the hot, dry air.
In
went the next iron bolt, the spring set, weapon aimed.
The
second dragon, a female grey-belly with splashes of orange on the tips of her pale
wings, came straight at him, likely upset about loosing her mate. He saw the
fluttering throat skin, heard the high-pitched cry before she expelled a burst of
noxious gas which, with a deliberate hiccough, ignited. The dragon’s subsequent
breath sent the fireball blazing at the cliff.
Corlan
crouched under the hippor’s large head. Flames exploded around him, splattering
against the cliff.
“Chug!”
Squealing,
the hippor bumbled forward, almost trampling him. Its bulbous rump and hairless
tail were aflame. Corlan swatted at the flames. There was nothing more he could
do. A canteen of water would not be enough and he needed the water for the
journey home.
“Now
do you hate dragons?”
Before
he could decide what else to do, the dragon charged the cliff again after making
an arc through the sky.
Corlan
shoved another iron bolt into the dragonslinger. His hands worked without
thought, pulling back the launch spring to its tightest mark. He raised the
weapon, aimed, and released the bolt, striking the dragon under its lower jaw,
close to the sweet spot.
Momentarily
distracted, the aerial beast crashed into the cliff, one sharp wingtip scraping
along the trail that hugged the rocks, nearly catching his boot.
Corlan
dove aside—as he glimpsed the hippor disappearing over the edge of the cliff,
its rear end burnt and smoldering.
In
the next instant, a large red-bull swooped up from below and snatched the fat
animal in its maw. The dragon sailed high into the sky with its treasure. With
a quick toss, the dragon caught the hippor in its mouth and bit off half,
letting the other half fall. Then the dragon dove and caught the second half, and
downed it in another gulp. Taking on the extra weight forced the dragon into a
lower course and it struggled to rise. The other dragons screamed but the red-bull
only belched in response.
The
formation turned away, continuing along the valley. They would not spare more time
or effort dealing with another pesky gamekeeper. Three already were lost on
this passage through the valley. Count yourselves lucky, thought Corlan,
breathing hard despite the reddish dust blowing off the cliffs.
“I
got greedy,” he mumbled, kneeling on the trail. He placed his hand inside one
of the footprints left by the hippor.
He
scanned the valley below for other dragons and thought of the stories he’d
heard in this tavern or that one. Travelers reported that beyond the mountains,
at the far end of the Valley of Death, long after it turned to the southwest,
lay the dragon nesting ground. A vast marsh, a sea of grass spotted with low
isles. On those isles dragons would settle during the cold season and mate.
After the cold season, their nests would be full of eggs. In the spring, they
would hatch. And he would meet them later in the Valley of Death.
If
only he could make his way there to the nesting ground and destroy their eggs
before they hatched. Then the entire realm would be safe for humankind—even for
the well-ensconced prince and his fashionable court. Certainly he would be
rewarded by the prince. Besides, the less Corlan had to step around dragon waste,
the better. He was already into his third pair of boots this year.
He
realized he had no beast to carry him and the remaining iron bolts down through
the mountains and back to the city. One quiver of bolts had fallen with the hippor
and the other had only three bolts remaining. He was done with hunting.
“Should’ve
waited,” he cursed.
He
was glad he was not any farther from the city. It would still be a hard journey
by foot.
“No
more Chug.” He clapped his hands to clear the dust.
After
brushing his sleeves, he blithely ran his fingers through his long, tangled
hair—almost as though he were about to step into the private chamber of a lady of
the Court whose attentions he had garnered in recent weeks. The lovely, blond
Petula, he sighed. Instead, he was only setting himself for the road home. It
seemed his life was nothing but roads: always going somewhere but never arriving.
His
boots had gotten scuffed and the snot of the hippor made every particle of dust
cling to them. He sat on a rock and pulled off his boots to clean them
properly. As he worked, he could hear the fading cries of the dragon clan winging
down the valley. The clans seemed smaller than usual this expedition, so
perhaps the efforts of the Guild were actually reducing their number.
When
the dragons were gone, he thought, he and his fellow guild members would be out
of employ. No more enjoying the prince’s favor. That mattered little. But no
more the admiration of the ladies at Court, either. That did matter. The ladies
loved bedding a dragonslayer. After all, he was the only true man at any Court gathering.
“Pity,”
he grunted, examining the results of his cleaning.
Rebooted,
Corlan set out at a brisk pace, the heavy dragonslinger resting against his shoulder.
The quiver of three bolts hung from his other shoulder. They would become
heavier the more he hiked, so he whistled a bawdy tune as he hiked the trail,
eager to return to the Burg once more.
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