dragon archives 05 - forever a dragon (2 page)

Fires were not allowed in private chambers, and Lleland pulled the quilt closer as he slept. A monster was stalking the edge of his dreams – a creature of the night that had long been held at bay, but was now determined to haunt Lleland once more. Outside his window the long, solemn cry of an owl broke through the silence, and the beast drew a little closer. Danger tracked Lleland as he slept, and he tossed restlessly through his dreams.

It was warm in the early summer sunshine, and Lleland looked up at Father as they walked along the streets of the city. There was no-one as strong or brave as Father, and the boy was proud to be at his side. They were on a secret mission to find the tortoiseshell comb that Mother had seen the previous day in the market. It would be a gift for her birthday. Lleland was excited to be part of the secret. Only six years old, there were not many things he knew that his mother did not. Usually, his parents were trying to keep secrets hidden from him. Secrets like the dragon that had been terrorizing the city. But Mother and Father were unable to prevent the older neighborhood children from frightening the younger ones with stories of the monstrous beast that stalked the streets from above. Lleland glanced up as they walked, but saw no horrible creatures. He still drew closer to Father, and Father wrapped a calloused hand around the boy’s shoulder. As long as Father was with him, there was nothing to fear.

When the dragon plunged from the sky, there was no warning. One moment the sun had been shining kindly on them, and the next, huge wings, black and terrible, blocked the light, casting the street into shadow as the beast landed on the hard dirt road a few feet away. People screamed and ran in terror, but the dragon blocked all escape for father and son. As black as the darkest night, from the dangerous horns that rose from its skull to the long, spiky tail that swished across the ground, it was truly a terrible sight to behold. Orange flames spewed from its mouth and licked along the dry ground, burning leaves and refuse which smoldered into ashes.

Lleland stared in horror, unable to move, until rough hands grabbed him and sent him flying through the air. “Leave my son be,” Father shouted at the dragon. “Take me.” Lleland slammed into an abandoned cart, his shoulder catching the rim of the wheel, before he slipped between the spokes. A nail tore his skin and a searing pain shot through his arm, but he clamped his lips against the cry that threatened to spill out. He would not be a baby. Blood poured from the open wound, and tears sprang into his eyes. A sob broke free and he squeezed his eyes shut against the panic that was settling in. When he opened them again, the dragon was looking at him, an amused expression on its beastly countenance. “Please,” Father pleaded, “spare the boy.”

The dragon turned back to Father. “Why? You would both be a tasty treat, and young flesh is always more tender.”

“He’s just a child. My only son. You’ve feasted in the city for days, so you can easily spare this one.” Lleland stared at Father in confusion. What did he mean, asking the dragon to spare him? Spare him from what?

“Your only son, hmm? And how will he feel, watching his father die?”

“Father?” Lleland said.

“Lleland! Run! Get away from here!”

“Enough!” Flames lit the air as the dragon roared. “I’ll spare the boy,” it said, “but he’ll watch as I kill you.”

“No! Spare him that!”

“Spare his life! Spare him suffering! Enough of your whining, human. You make me reconsider.”

“Close your eyes, son,” Father shouted. “You’re the man of the house now.” Lleland wrenched himself free of the wheel, ignoring the searing pain, and stumbling to his feet, ran towards his father.

“Father!” he screamed.

“No!” Father cried out. A heavy claw caught Lleland across the chest, the thick talons ripping his flesh, and sent him sprawling against the cart once more as blood poured from the gash. The dragon swung back and crashed his claws into Father’s back. He staggered and fell to his knees, his eyes on Lleland, imploring him to look away. The beast’s tail whipped around, smashing into Father and flinging him to the ground. Father cried out, but the sound was quickly cut off as talons swiped over his neck, staining the street with a spray of blood.

The dragon sank its claws into Father’s belly and ripped as a sickening sound filled the air. Entrails spilled onto the street as Lleland finally dragged his terrified gaze away. A sob rose in his chest and caught in his throat as he pressed his face against the rough planks of the cart. He could hear the dragon growling as it ripped his father apart, and he tried to block his ears as his stomach heaved convulsively, but the sounds continued unabated as the tears drenched Lleland’s tunic.

Lleland woke with a start, his heart racing furiously as tears streamed down his cheeks. The quilt was wrapped around him like a rope, and he tugged at it with a shaking hand, loosening its hold. The damp bedclothes made him shiver. His throat was raw, and he knew he must have screamed in his sleep, but no footsteps could be heard running towards his chamber. He could feel the ache in his shoulder from the nail, and the pain in his chest where it had been ripped by a dragon’s claws, but it was just the remnants of the dream. These wounds had long since healed.

Nearly thirty years had passed since that terrible day when Father was killed, and as a child Lleland had suffered from nightmares, waking sobbing night after night. As he learned to channel his fear and anger, the dreams had slowly subsided, and it had been a long time since the monster had shown itself. Something had brought the creature to the fore, and Lleland knew what it was. Drake. The dragon-slayer. He was surprised he hadn’t immediately recognized the name, since it was a Drake that had killed the beast. Lleland had never met the dragon-slayer, but when he ran his sword through the heart of the creature, killing him and ridding the city of the monster, his name had been on everyone’s lips, passed along the streets and around the marketplace, until even the smallest child could name their savior. Aaron Drake.

Lleland lay back against the quilt, trying to recover his breath. The latch on his window rattled as the wind blew against the glass panes. The new moon cast little light, and outside the window the sky was a relentless sea of black. Lleland stared into the darkness as his heart finally slowed its frantic beating, and the nausea in his belly began to subside.

Chapter 2

Lleland peered through the mist, narrowing his eyes as he focused on the painted post a hundred paces away. The sun had not yet risen, making it harder to see the four-inch-wide marker. He shifted his hand on the grip of his longbow and pulled the string back to his cheek, keeping the arrow loose between his fingers. The bow, made from the finest quality yew, resisted the draw, but Lleland had spent years training on this weapon, and his muscles easily overcame the bow’s resistance. He closed his eyes and shifted slightly to account for the faint stirring of a breeze, before opening his eyes again and letting his arrow fly. He reached for another and nocked it on the string, releasing it as the first found its mark. Six arrows sprang from the bow, and six soft thuds were heard as they hit the wooden stake. Lleland strode forward to examine his work, and grunted when he saw the six arrows in the post. Five were clustered around the thin red line that cut across the wood, but the sixth had hit near the base, away from the others. Lleland collected the arrows and measured out a hundred and fifty paces. On the horizon a faint smudge of light was growing, but cloud blotted out the sun, draining the color from the dawn landscape. The ground beneath Lleland’s boots was slick from the rain that had fallen overnight, and his breath hung in the cool damp air.

It was Sunday morning, the one day of the week that staff and students were free to follow their own pursuits following the pre-dawn service in the college chapel. Lleland had left the city and headed into the countryside, where the wide open fields provided an ideal place to hone his skill with the bow. The field and the forest which bordered it were all crown land, but commoners were tolerated, as long as they refrained from poaching, and other archers used the land to practise their skills as well. But on this silent dawn Lleland was alone, the distant church bells tolling the hour the only sound.

The first time Lleland had picked up a bow and arrow was just a year after his father’s death. It had been nothing more than a child’s toy, but with childish determination he had taught himself how to use the simple weapon. Each day, following his chores, he took his little bow and the sharpened sticks that served as arrows, and made his way to the green in front of the church where he tormented the cheeky squirrels and noisy blackbirds, using them as targets. Other neighborhood children had joined him at first, but they soon wearied of the game and wandered away, leaving Lleland alone. He didn’t mind – serious and determined, he wasn’t interested in the games of other children, and he grew used to his own company. Even Mother was too busy and weary to give him more than cursory attention. Only little Edith, barely more than a toddler, stayed with him, happy to play in the mud while he followed his own pursuits.

For the most part, the adults who hurried past the green gave Lleland little attention, but there was one man who would pause in his passage and watch young Lleland for a moment before continuing on his way. The man was not known to him, and Lleland paid no attention to this silent witness of his progress. Almost a year had passed when the man first approached him.

“Hey lad.” The man towered over Lleland, with broad shoulders and arms as thick as beams. “That’s a mighty small bow you have there. What do you plan to do with it?”

Lleland turned and stared defiantly at the man. “I’m going to be an archer!”

“Planning on going to war, are you?” the man said with a chuckle.

“No! I’m going to kill some dragons.”

The man was standing before the sun, and Lleland did not see the change in his expression, but he noticed the man’s form suddenly stiffen. “Dragons, eh? Not easy creatures to kill. Many have tried, but few have succeeded.”

“Aaron Drake killed a dragon.”

The man nodded. “So he did.” He took a step closer. “You’re going to need something bigger than that little bow if you want to follow in his footsteps. You need a longbow.”

“A longbow?”

“Aye. But you’ll need to build some strength in that puny chest of yours. I can help you, if you want.”

“You’ll teach me to use a longbow?” Longbows were huge weapons, as tall as a man, made with the strongest wood in the forest. It took a massive amount of strength to draw one – strength that took years to build.

“I will lad, as long as you’re prepared to do all I tell you, and not question my methods. Think you can do that?”

“Yes,” Lleland breathed.

“You’ll also have to work at it every day. I can show you what to do, but you must practice whenever you find a few spare moments.”

Lleland was astounded. “But I can’t use a longbow at home!”

The man laughed. “You’re not going to. Using the bow will only come after many years. In the meantime you need to build those muscles.”

“How?”

“With this.” The man held his staff towards Lleland. “This is a quarterstaff. You’re going to learn to fight with your own.”

“With a stick?” Lleland said scornfully.

“In the right hands this stick can become a dangerous weapon, lad. It’ll also build your strength so you can use a longbow. Are you prepared to learn with this, or am I wasting my time with you?”

Lleland stared at the man, then back at the staff in his hand. It was an inch and a half thick, straight as an arrow and taller than Lleland. “That will help me kill dragons?”

“If you work hard and train diligently.”

Lleland thought about that for a moment. “All right.”

The man ruffled the top of Lleland’s head. “Good lad,” he said. “My name’s Grimald. You can call me Grim.”

Grim lived outside of the city, in a small stone cottage in the center of the woods. As King’s Verderer, he looked after the forest, cutting back deadwood, counting the herds of deer that ranged through the forest, and tracking down poachers. The next day, Grim sought and gained the permission of Lleland’s mother to take him beyond the city gates for a few hours. When they reached the forest, he instructed the lad to help him find branches that would be suitable as a quarterstaff.

“About one inch thick, five feet long and as straight as a line,” he said.

It had taken most of the morning, but eventually they had found three that satisfied Grim. “We’ll strap them together to straighten them,” Grim explained, “and they must dry out. In the meantime you can help me build a fence.” Lleland had started to protest, but one look from Grim made him hold his tongue.

And so it was that each day, Lleland left the city and hurried to the cottage in the forest. For six weeks he dug, sawed and hammered the posts of a new fence, until one day Grim deemed that the rods they had collected were dry enough to be unbound. Lleland watched as Grim carefully removed the straps and inspected each staff, discarding one as too bent and a second as too brittle. The third, however, met with approval, and he handed it to Lleland, who received it as though it was the most precious item in the world. Bidding Lleland rise, he showed the boy how to balance the weight of the staff on his open hand, and the next stage of training began.

Day after day, Lleland had to balance the staff on his open palm as he twisted from his waist and slowly turned this way and that. The twist became a full rotation which increased in speed as he learned to maintain the balance of the staff. When Lleland was able to bend and circle without dropping his rod, Grim showed him how to place one hand at the quarter mark, the other at the half mark, and using the strength of his arms and momentum of the staff, turn it into a dangerous weapon. For hour upon hour he spun, hit and parried against his mortal enemy, the tree stump. More than a year passed before Grim deemed him ready to progress to a longbow. Lleland had chafed against the delay, but when Grim handed him his first longbow, made to his size, he was able to draw back the string without his muscles trembling at the effort.