Dragon Talker (20 page)

“Well, aren’t you distracting?” Tail Biter, now that he could see Xeron, stayed at the bottom of the stairs, staring at him. “And I suppose I’m supposed to come to you. I tell you,” he teased, “the state of canines this season is outrageous.” He was happy to have a distraction. He hadn’t had time to really think about all that had happened over the last week and he wasn’t sure if he was ready to deal with it.

When he reached Tail Biter, he put his hand on the dog’s head, releasing the compulsion to find him. “Let’s see what you found.” Even as he said it, he wasn’t sure if he really wanted to know. Still, he followed Tail Biter to the stairs leading to the basement. “Really,” he said in disgust, “magic hidden in the basement. Are we as bad as the stories the peasants tell about us? Are we so predictable? For once, I’d like to see magic hidden right out in the open, or at least on a veranda.”

He hesitated at the top of the steps.
What am I looking for? And what would I do if I found it? More magic? Some books?
He paused at that. Books would be nice. “Aaaagh,” he shouted, startling Tail Biter, who looked back at him quizzically.

“Never mind me, Tail, I’m just wondering what the dragon I am doing, that’s all.”

Tail Biter didn’t lose the quizzical look.

“We’re here, let’s just keep going,” he said resignedly. He stopped, though, half way down the stairs, shouting, “Aaaagh…I’m not doing this.” Tail Biter looked at him, but he was talking to himself. “I am not going to keep reacting to Perante. To dragon’s breath with this place.” He took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. Returning his attention to Tail Biter he said, “I feel better now. How about you and me go for a long walk?” Tail Biter’s began wagging his tail and he beat Xeron back up the stairs even though he started at the bottom while Xeron was only half way down when they changed directions.

At the top of the stairs, Xeron knelt down on one knee and scratched Tail Biter behind the ear. “Let’s find someone who knows where we are so we can get out of here.”

Chapter 31

Yuri and Bernard walked quietly through the woods. There were plenty of winter berries to be found. In another two months, the birds that stayed for the winter would clear them out, but today, finding berries was easy work. Picking berries was Bernard’s job. Yuri had his bow out and was looking, and listening for a rabbit, deer, or boar. He was hoping to run into a deer or rabbit. He could handle a boar, but he was worried what Bernard would do.

Even as he thought it, he understood that a part of him wanted to run into a boar. He wanted that challenge, that danger. It was a danger he understood, one that didn’t involve magic, or dragons, or people. It would be Yuri versus the boar. He’d never faced one alone before. In the past, the idea of hunting a boar without his father around would have scared him. Very little scared him when he was with his father.

That’s me now,
he thought. I need to be that safety for Bernard. In a low voice, he called out, “How are you, Bernard?”

Twenty feet away, Bernard looked up from the bushes he was inspecting and waved his first two fingers, moving them from his heart out in front of him. Yuri had no idea what it meant, but since Bernard had a content look on his face, he figured it meant things were okay. He smiled and nodded his head, wondering what else they did differently at Bernard’s village than at his own.

Yuri’s smile disappeared as he watched the expression on Bernard change of one from contentment to concern. Yuri started walking towards him and broke into a run as he saw Bernard’s body tense and face contort in fear. As he was running, he saw it, the tusked boar that did not look like it had any interest in sharing his woods with this little boy.  

Bernard, no longer aware that Yuri was even around, started to run away from the boar. The boar took off after him. Without thinking, Yuri had pulled back the string, aimed, and let an arrow fly. If the boar would have been standing still, it would have been hit, but in his haste, Yuri didn’t lead the boar and the arrow stuck in the tree the boar had just ran past. As he was pulling another arrow from his quiver, the boar disappeared in the underbrush.

Yuri ran after it. He couldn’t see the boar, but he could see the path it was making through the undergrowth. Fueled by fear and his newly given strength, Yuri could tell he was gaining on the boar. What he wondered was would he be able to catch the boar before the boar caught up with Bernard. Boar tusks were deadly and Yuri had seen more than one dead wolf that proved it.

Every time the boar came into view, Yuri would raise up his bow, slowing down in the process, and try to aim at the boar. Each time, the boar disappeared in the bushes before he could take his shot. Frustrated and knowing he was losing ground, Yuri threw down his bow and started running as fast as he could without the encumbrance of the bow. He could see Bernard now, running about twenty feet in front of him.

The boar was closing in on Bernard. As Yuri closed in on the boar, he pulled his knife from the sheath on his belt without losing his stride, closing the distance quickly. Yuri screamed, “No!” as he saw Bernard fall to the ground. Bernard, who had tripped on a branch, crashed to the ground. He rolled over on his back to see the boar, head down, charging from only five feet away.

Frozen in fear, Bernard watched the boar close the final feet. He also saw Yuri right behind the boar. At the last second, Bernard raised his feet to kick at the boar’s head. The boar raised its head, and tusks, into his little legs, tearing through his pants and carving into his legs. Bernard screamed in pain. The blow rolled him over, snapping his leg, and through all the pain, he knew the boar was going to gore him in the back. He balled himself up and waited for the blow.

The searing pain to his back never came. Instead, he heard Yuri tackle the boar with a loud thud of clashing bodies. Yuri was too late to stop the first attack of the boar, catching up to the boar just as the boar was gouging Bernard’s legs. He did tackle the boar from behind, the force of his blow carrying both of them over Bernard’s small body.

Yuri had stabbed the boar in the side as he tackled it, but the boar had spun around in his grasp so it was able to kick at Yuri’s chest. He barely felt the blows through the dragon scales, though the boar was squirming in his grasp. A front hoof clipped Yuri above his left eye. Blood immediately blocked the vision in that eye. He let go, more out of shock than pain. Squinting, Yuri watched the boar, which was unsteady on its feet. Yuri could see it bleeding slowly from the wound in its side.  

It tried to circle around Yuri to get to Bernard, but Yuri kept blocking him.
If I still had my bow, this would already be over,
he thought. The knife in his hand was slick with blood, as was his hand. He switched the knife to his left hand and wiped the blood off his right hand on his pants, watching the boar the entire time. Returning the knife to his right hand, he turned it so the blade faced down, the dull side of the blade resting against his wrist.

“How are you doing, Bernard?” he asked.

Weakly, Bernard replied, “It hurts.”

Yuri didn’t dare turn his back to the boar, so he walked towards it instead. “Boar,” he shouted, “get lost!” The boar took a step back as Yuri approached, not sure what to make of him. Yuri kept walking. Yuri could tell the boar was having second thoughts. He ripped his shirt open, exposing the blue scales on his chest, yelling, “Come on!”

Yuri wasn’t sure if it was the wound, the shouting, or the scales, but the boar snorted once, turned, and ran into the underbrush. Yuri put the knife back in its sheath and ran to Bernard. “You’re safe now, Bernard. Let me take a look at those legs.”

Bernard was curled into a ball. At Yuri’s touch, he straightened a little. Seeing his left leg, Yuri was grateful to see only a few deep scratches, painful, but nothing too serious. Yuri winced at the sight of his right leg. Bernard’s lower leg was to the bone, a bone that was broken, and while his thigh wasn’t cut to the bone, he could see deep gouges in the muscle. Bernard’s skin was already white from loss of blood.

Yuri tore a strip off his shirt and wrapped it around Bernard’s thigh. It was soaked in blood immediately. Yuri threw off his jacket and took his shirt off. He ripped it in two, using half for the thigh wound and the other for the lower leg. “You’re going to be okay. I’m going to get you to help.” Yuri prayed that the old man they met on the road knew more about healing than he did.

Yuri wrapped Bernard in his coat. Bernard passed out from the pain when Yuri picked him up. Yuri felt the blood running from the wounds roll across his right hand as he carried Bernard, but he tried not to think about it. Between blaming himself for taking such a young boy out into the woods, Yuri offered encouragement as he headed back to the wagon, “Hang in there, little one.”

Yuri didn’t know if he should run or not. Running, he would get there faster, but that would also shake Bernard more than walking. Which was more important, time or stability? Fear took over. The fear of Bernard dying because he was too slow, the fear of carrying another dead child in his arms. “You’re going to make it,” he said, as he picked up his pace. As he ran, he tried to use the new strength of his arms to cushion Bernard from the impact of his steps. He did his best to raise and lower Bernard to counter the rise and fall of his own body as he ran.

In between his worry about Bernard, a small voice is Yuri’s head kept shouting, “This isn’t fair, this isn’t fair.” It made him want to quit running, curl up on the ground, and wait for someone older to come and take care of things. Looking down at Bernard, Yuri felt shame that he could even think that while this boy’s life was on the line, but he could. He did. And he ran on through it all.

Chapter 32

Hental, on his own mission, was smiling as he entered Selma’s hut, immediately asking, “How are the goats?”

“You tell me, Hental. Go outside, see how they are, and then come in for some tea.”

This was new. Normally, Selma would tell Hental how the goats were doing and what, if anything, he needed to watch for, like a sore leg or possible sickness. Hental shrugged his shoulders, said, “Okay,” and headed back outside.

Each sheep had two names: Selma’s given name and Hental’s nickname, usually much less flattering. Daisy, for example, a beautiful but dimwitted sheep, earned the moniker, Daisy Dumb as Rocks. Oak, a large male goat that was not impressed with Hental and usually ignored him, was called Dragon Butt. A few actually had nice names, the friendly goat Primrose was nicknamed Fuzzy Face, in recognition of both the goat’s soft fur and how much Hental did like rubbing her face when she came up and nuzzled him.

As soon as he entered the pen, he looked for Primrose, asking, “Where’s Fuzzy Face?” Normally, she would be the first goat to come up and check him out, both to say hi and to look for a carrot or some other snack Hental sometimes had. Oak was circling behind Hental, which he did when he was planning on head-butting Hental’s behind. “Back off, Dragon Butt. I see you,” Hental scolded, pointing at Oak.

He kept his finger pointing at Oak as he looked around the pen, as if holding him in place with his finger. Primrose was lying in a corner. “There you are,” Hental said as he started walking over. “What’s wrong with you? No greeting?” As he got closer, Hental realized something was wrong. The goat was breathing shallowly and there were spots of scabby red skin throughout her coat. Hental wasn’t sure if the hair fell out or she gnawed the hair off, but he knew it was bad.

He put his hand on Primrose’s head. As she raised it feebly, he said, “It’s going to be okay. I’ll take care of you.” He looked around to see if any of the other goats where acting like Primrose. All the other goats were up and about, except an older goat named Willow - Blindy to Hental due to the fact that its vision was failing. “Okay, you two need to be separated. First, he gently carried Primrose to a small pen next to the window of the hut. This location made it easier to listen to whatever goat was in this pen from the hut. When a goat was really ill, it would be in the hut.

As he got in the pen, he realized it hadn’t been used in a while. “Wait till I get some new hay.” Primrose lay down immediately, though, too tired to stand. Hental brought in some fresh hay, and when Primrose wouldn’t move to it, he picked her up and set her on it. “There. Now I’ll go get Blindy.” He brought in the second goat, setting it down in the new hay next to Primrose.

Hental looked around the little pen, thinking about what they needed and what he should do. “Water,” he said out loud, and went and brought a pail of water from the trough in the main pen. The goats, though, did not look like they had the strength to get up and go to the water so Hental cupped a little water in his hand and kneeled down in front of Primrose. He put his hand in front of her mouth, saying, “Here you go. Drink a little water.”

Primrose sniffed his hand and took a few licks of the water. “Good girl.” He rubbed her face with his free hand. As he did, he could feel the heat emanating from her nose. “A fever and scabs, what am I going to do with you, Fuzzy Face?” Primrose stopped drinking after a few licks and laid her head back down on the ground. Hental did the same thing with Willow, then headed back into the hut.

Selma had her back turned to the door and was gathering some items from a shelf on the wall. She turned, asking, “So how is our flock?” By her tone, Hental knew she had heard him talking to the sheep, or already knew that some were sick before he went out.

“Pretty good,” Hental replied, “but Fuzz…Primrose and Willow are sick.”

“What are their symptoms?”

Hental suddenly felt grown up, realizing he was having an adult conversation with Selma. He stood a little taller and tried to sound like one of the grownups in a village meeting. “Well, they are weak. Both of ‘em just want to lay down, and they’re missing wool, with scabs where they chewed it off.”