Dragonheart (28 page)

Hearing the clash of arms and voices sounding from somewhere in the castle, she assumed that Hewe and his rebels were at the gates. But above this chaotic clamor came another sound. Rattling chains. Close by. Kara sought the sound out . . . and found Draco. He lay in the shadow of the great tower on the opposite side of the cistern from which she had just come. Heavy iron spikes driven into the courtyard stone secured the weighty webbing of chains and manacles that imprisoned him. His body heaved and rocked as well as it could under the confining restraints, making the chains quiver with a forlorn ring.

Two wild-maned, spear-wielding barbarians flanked him—Celts, like the other dragonslayer. Like the dragon, the two brutes shifted uneasily, hearing the noise of battle. But something else distracted them as well and Kara heard the sound even as she followed the dragonslayers’ gaze upward. It was the rhythmic, swift rasp of scraping blades. Kara’s heart listened and leapt with hope. For though that sound foretold inevitable death, it also meant that Bowen was yet alive. She saw him, even as the dragonslayers below did. in the tower—one of two shadowy figures dueling as they ascended the torchlit stairs.

Bowen and Einon rose up the stairs, their blades flashing furiously in the torchlight. They had heard the gate sentry’s alarum. They heard the fighting in the distance.

“My rebels are storming your castle.” Bowen grinned, driving Einon up the stairs.

“Pity you won’t live to see them fail.” Einon laughed and lunged, but Bowen parried and his sword plunged into Einon’s arm with a splash of blood. Einon staggered back into the open portal of the window and Bowen was immediately upon him. The blades crossed and Bowen pushed Einon back, leaning him over the sill. Over the boy’s shoulder, he could see Draco below, struggling in his chains.

“Listen to him squirm. Knight.” Einon sneered between the wedged blades. “It’s him you wound, not me!”

“Liar!” Bowen bent Einon farther back over the sill.

“Is this a lie?” The king held up his slashed arm. The blood had dried. The cut had closed over. Bowen staggered back and Einon charged, putting the knight on the defensive once more and driving him up the stairs.

The dragon writhed in his chains, muttering.

“Fool! Poor fool! It will do no good.”

“Quiet, dragon!” Tavis gripped his spear and looked to his brother. Trahern shrugged uneasily, obviously as mystified as he was. What was going on? A moment ago the dragon had shuddered and gasped and one of his legs had flared a fiery red as though it had been wounded. But neither of them had touched the beast. They had obeyed the king’s order, as demented as it was. All this mystery was very fraying on the nerves. The battle racket from the gates, the duel in the tower above, and now the antics of a dragon they were not allowed to kill. No amount of gold was worth this indignity. He and Trahern had decided. Come morning, they would take what gold was due them and leave. They would nursemaid no dragon.

Suddenly an armed body of the king’s men rushed across the courtyard, heading for the gates. Tavis looked to Trahern again. His brother shook his head, shrugged again, and spat, Tavis spat too. Come morning, they were gone.

These gate guards were a stubborn lot. They just would not die. Two of Hewe’s men were wounded and the odds were now four to three. Then he heard the clatter behind him. More soldiers coming. Oh, no! Don’t let it end here. Not like this. Boxed in and slaughtered, only three measly men away from flinging the gates open and the whole rebel army rushing in.

“Kill them!” the bear exhorted his men, and bashed at one with his sword. And the man went down. But not under his blade . . . with an arrow in his side. Another arrow slithered into another guard’s leg and he crumpled with a yelp. Before he hit the ground, an arrow had struck the upraised sword arm of the third guard, who went reeling back against the gate. This latter intervention spared Trev, at whom the guard had been aiming his sword, from being beheaded. The little man knew who his savior was before he even looked around. “A natural!”

Hewe looked too. Gilbert stood weaving in the courtyard, notching another arrow. “Well, you great lummox, don’t stand there gawking with that cyclops eye. Open the gates!” Gilbert groaned and sagged to his knees, but even kneeling, he continued to fire off arrows at the approaching soldiers, holding them at bay.

“Gilbert . . . Open the gates!” Hewe shouted to his men, running to the priest. The gates opened and the rebel force surged through them.

Tavis and Trahern spun from the clamoring at the gates to see the dragon, who was wildly straining in his chains, lamenting to himself.

“Stop, heart! Stop beating!”

“I’ll stop it, if you don’t!” Trahern snarled testily.

“Then do it! Do it!”

This was too much. A dragon begging to be killed. Trahern edged back, glaring at the dragon in confused suspicion. Then at his brother, who seemed equally baffled. They both stared at the dragon again.

Though he could not move his head, the dragon’s eyes gazed up desperately at the tower. The brothers looked up too. The two duelists were now atop the tower, their clanging blades sparking against the night.

Bowen fiercely fought Einon, dodging building materials and scaffolding all the while. He also fought his doubts, trying to blot them out. He did not want to know how Einon’s wound had healed. He did not want to think of why Draco thrashed below. He did not want to remember Kara’s words, “It’s the heart, the heart.” It couldn’t be. It mustn’t be. There were logical answers for all these things. Answers that would come with Einon’s death.

There was no time for such speculation as Einon slashed wide at him and his blade cracked against the one wall of the room and broke in two. Bowen did not hesitate to seize the opportunity, feeling no remorse or mercy. Even though his doubts assailed him in the instant of his lunge, he knew the answer to them all. Einon’s death.

“Once you held this blade in sacred oath,” Bowen hissed in cold hate as he drove the blade home. “Which you broke. Now embrace it again.”

Deep into Einon’s heart the blade penetrated. The king buckled and gasped. But he did not fall! And then . . . he smiled . . . Smiled like he had in Bowen’s haunted dream . . . and as he did so Draco began to howl!

Stunned, Bowen staggered back, pulling his hand off the sword hilt as though it were cursed. Draco’s scream chilled his blood. So did the sight of Einon, still smiling, calmly pulling the sword from his chest. Bowen reeled back, dazed. Einon pointed the bloodstained sword at him. “Fool! You lost before you began. I am immortal!”

He laughed with malicious glee, eyes glinting like a madman, and charged. Bowen stumbled back through the debris as Einon cut and chopped at him in bloodthirsty abandon. The blade rippled his tunic as he swung himself onto some scaffolding. Einon’s frantic hacking sprayed wood chips everywhere as Bowen leapt away.

“Bowen!”

Kara was at the head of the stairs. She threw him the ax as he was still in midleap. Catching it, he landed and banged it against Einon’s slicing blade. The impact spun the king back through the clutter toward the edge of the tower. Bowen sent the ax flying. It shrieked through the air, just missing Einon’s head and burying itself in a heavy wooden window shutter, which whined on its hinges. Still off balance, Einon lashed clumsily at Bowen. Leaping beyond the thrust, the knight jumped on the low sill to yank the ax free. It wouldn’t budge.

Einon snarled a laugh and lunged. Bowen pushed off from the sill and, clinging to the broken ax pole, rode the shutter as it swung out over nothingness. Unable to stop his momentum, Einon spilled through the open window, hurtling into nothingness as well.

Clinging to the ax handle, Bowen watched the body spiral down, crashing through scaffolding, sending building materials careening, and plunging through the wooden roof of the cistern in an explosion of clutter and dust. Einon disappeared beneath the wreckage into the watery depths.

Kara ran to the window. Bowen smiled grimly at her. “So much for his immortality.”

But as the din of Einon’s descent dissipated, the agonized groans of Draco echoed clearly up above the noise of the rebel invasion. The knight looked down. The dragon’s body was glowing red torment!

“Draco!” Bowen screamed. But he wondered if the dragon could hear him over his own wails. His weight against the shutter would not allow it to swing back. He held his hand out to Kara for her to pull him back to safety. She reached out and almost had him when the ax embedded in the shutter suddenly gave.

“Bowen!” she cried as he slipped away from her. He dangled one-handed by the broken shaft. Then the blade unwedged itself completely from the wood and Bowen plummeted into the dark night.

Trahern feinted at the thrashing, moaning dragon with his spear, watching the red glow ripple wildly under his hide. “Enough, lizard! Or by God, king or no king, we’ll have your head!”

The dragon snorted a harmless bolt of flame the only place he could . . . directly in front of him. “The king’s in the drink, you dolt! Who do you think fell? He can’t stop you now!”

Trahern looked to his brother and both stared at the wreckage of the cistern in dumbfounded suspicion. “The king?”

Draco rattled his chains and, grimacing in pain, taunted them. “You want my head, lummox, then take it, don’t talk about it.”

Trahern didn’t care whether the king was at the bottom of the cistern or not. He had had enough. Standing here being insulted by a mad dragon while brawls were going on all around him. Even now he heard the violent ruckus elsewhere in the castle. He was tired of being left out. He’d give this dragon something to glow about. Incensed, he jerked back his spear to strike. But Tavis was still suspicious and cautious.

“Steady, brother, steady!” He stepped forward to restrain Trahern.

“I’ll not be taunted by some slime-headed reptile!”

“Cowards!” mocked the dragon. “What sort of dragonslayers are you?” Both men whirled on him.

“I can best you even in chains.” The beast hissed a flash of flame. Tavis, almost in the line of fire, got his beard singed. And his cool head boiled. He wheeled on the dragon with a growl. The dragon smiled.

“That’s it, dolt, strike!”

Tavis’s spear drew back . . .

Thirty-Seven

THE PRICE OF VICTORY

“You are the last.”

Bowen did not fall far. A pulley rope was dangling from the tower and he managed to make a one-handed grab. The flesh tore from his hand and he felt like his arm would be yanked from his socket, but he held on. He also held on to the ax as he tangled his arms and legs about the line.

The line was weighted on the other end, but Bowen was heavier, and the rope rattled through the pulley, Bowen riding it down . . . down to Draco!

He could still see glowing patches of Draco’s wounded hide flare up and saw the dragon spray fire at the two giants, menacing him with spears. As the line sped down he heard their yells and Draco’s bellow. Another line of fire spewed out, nearly hitting one of the dragonslayers, who wheeled on the dragon. They were getting closer. Bowen was practically above them. They loomed closer and closer. There was more shouting, then one of the giants hoisted back his spear. Bowen swung the line into the wall, bracing his feet against it and pushing back out. The dragonslayer’s spear never came forward. Bowen swooped down upon him, the great ax slicing the dragonslayer’s throat.

Bowen hit the courtyard stones before the body fell in a swishing spray of blood. Wailing grief and rage, the other brute charged.

A mistake. Draco unleashed a huge fireball as the Celt stepped in front of him. Flame whooshed up the dragonslayer’s burly body, burning it to a crisp. His charred corpse collapsed on the stones in front of Bowen.

“Almost too late!” Bowen smiled at Draco as he ran up to him and smashed the ax down on his neck shackles. Once. Twice. Three times. The locks shattered!

“Too soon,” said Draco, stretching his free neck.

“What?” Bowen asked, and stood up. He heard someone behind him and whirled. It was Kara, breathless, in the stairwell door of the tower. She glanced curiously at Draco. She had heard him too.

“You should have let them do it,” Draco explained to the knight. “Now
you
must.”

“What?” Bowen repeated dully. His mind was in a fog. He didn’t understand. He didn’t want to understand. Again, he looked to Kara . . . silent and solemn as she moved toward them.

“Even as the heart binds Einon to me in life, it binds us in death.”

“That is not true.” It was a flat rejection.

“You’ve seen that it is! Through the heart we share each other’s pains and power. But in my half beats the life source. For Einon to die, I must.”

Bowen remembered that Kara had said this to him as well. “For Einon to die, Draco must.” He had refused to believe it then. He refused to believe it now. He wouldn’t believe it.

“No! Einon
is
dead!”

“He lives!”

Kara gasped. Bowmen turned to her. Why? Why, did she gasp? She saw. She knew.

“He’s dead! As soon as I free you, I’ll fish his broken battered body from the wreckage and show you!” He wheeled on Kara again, imploring her. “Tell him, Kara!”

“I . . . don’t . . . know . . .” Kara stammered uncertainly.

“You saw it!”

“I don’t know!”

“You saw it!”

“I know what I saw!” said the girl, confused tears in her eyes. “But I also know Draco . . . Perhaps Einon is not dead!”

“He lives!” came the dragon’s insistent hiss.

“Then I’ll kill him again!” Bowen swore hotly.

“No . . . You’ll kill me.”

Bowen felt desperate, afraid.

“Even if what you say is true, what does it matter? Don’t you hear it?” He gestured toward the battle noise. “Our rebels . . . our silly, sorry little band of rebels have stormed the castle. All on their own. For you! Alive or dead, Einon’s beaten. We’ve won.”

“You will never win until Einon’s evil is destroyed. If you cannot do it, then free me so I can.”

“I will not!”