The Dragon Book (33 page)

“I’ve got more powerful tricks than that.” She matched his sneer. “Besides, it’ll be a dragon, not some psychopathic barbarian man of a woman.”

“She’s just …” He glanced over at the one-eyed warrior woman and grimaced. “Unrefined. Besides, what do you even need to kill Zeigfreid for?”

“A book.”

“A book.”

“You’ve got a better reason?”

“Lord and land,” he replied, puffing up as best he could. “The mandate of heaven and the command of the Order. Zeigfreid is the Devil’s work in His purest form and must be destroyed.”

Her eyebrow, cocked just high enough to be insulting, suggested that she wasn’t believing it. Either that, he thought, or she had actually seen what he looked like with his chest puffed out and was restraining laughter.

“I don’t believe you.”

Somehow, he thought, he should be less relieved at that than he was.

“Why not? I’m a very impressive … you know, I’m a pretty good Crusader vassal.”

“I’ve seen many of your people before,” she replied, “and I’ve heard the whole ‘mandate’ and ‘kill the heathen’ rhetoric before. They say it with conviction.” She reached and deflated his chest with a single jab of her finger. “You … not so much.”

Struggling hard to convince himself that her words were the reason for the sudden ache in his heart, he felt himself wither under her. He could feel her eye boring into him, regardless of the fact that he had turned away; which eye, he couldn’t be sure, partially due to having no desire to decide which one was more disturbing.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up and saw her smile. It was a pretty smile, he thought, unusually white, but rather pleasant against her dusky skin, dark hair, and dual-colored eyes.

“Not to mention,” she said, “there’s the whole ‘not killing me while I was unconscious’ thing. Not that I’m not grateful, but I doubt a Crusader, even a vassal, would pass up the opportunity to kill a heathen, even half of one.”

He found himself more comforted by her words, her touch, than he knew he should be. She was a heathen, after all, an enemy of God, a spiller of Crusader blood and slayer of godly men. Beyond that, she was a
sorceress
, a decrepit matriarch that stood for everything any good Kingdomer stood against.

She was an enemy. She was
his
enemy. She was
the
enemy.

Yet, when she asked, he found himself unable to stop from answering.

“What do you fight for, Nitz?”

“Fraumvilt,” he said with a sigh.

“What?”

“Fraumvilt,” he repeated, “my father’s mace.”

“You’re risking your life for a weapon?”

“Technically, I’m risking Maddy’s life. And it’s not for a weapon; it’s for Fraumvilt.”

“Look, regardless of whatever you might have heard about the Hashuni, we don’t actually have the innate gift to understand what in God’s name you’re talking about if you keep repeating the same word over and over. Who was your father that made his mace so special?”

Nitz grimaced. He was hoping to have kept it a secret, or at least, to have never mentioned it to a heathen in a position to kill him. For she was, he reminded himself, still a heathen; she would most certainly have heard of his father.

And yet, again, he found himself unable to resist answering.

“Kalintz.” The name fled off his tongue as he held his breath.

She blinked, and he breathed. That, he decided, was better than what he had expected.

“Kalintz …” she repeated.

“Kalintz.”

“
That
Kalintz?”

“That Kalintz.”

“Kalintz the Heavenly Killer?”

“Yes.”

“Kalintz, God’s Scourge of the South?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Kalintz the—”

“The Divine Destroyer, the Glorious Butcher, the Humble Murderer, and the Servile Slaughterer,” Nitz paused to cough, “as well as the Rapist From On High, toward the end of his life.”

He had expected her to use her magic on him, then, to freeze him or burn him or turn him into a toad or his genitals into squawking chickens. He had
hoped
that she would merely settle for turning Sir Leonard away from his current battle to break his neck quickly.

What he hadn’t expected was for her to scratch her head, swallow her jerky, and break wind.

“Dear me,” she said.

“You’re not …” He bit his tongue, unsure as to whether to continue, given his stroke of luck. “I mean, you’re not mad at me? You’re half—”

“So I was reminded, daily.” Armecia’s glower turned bitter. “By both sides of my family. My father’s, at least, had a reason to loathe me.” She turned a smile to him, just as pretty, he noted. “Suffice to say, I know that families aren’t always the blessing they’re supposed to be.”

“And I can see how a book would be worth fighting a dragon over.”

Armecia hummed at that, then reached out to take a piece of jerky.

“You know,” she said, “I think I like the way I said it better.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“But listen,” she began, “a dragon’s a big thing, isn’t it? It can be divided into many smaller pieces, enough, at least, so that we can both prove we killed it.”

“If we can ever fight it,” Nitz muttered, eyeing the dragon’s lair. “We can’t fight it in there.”

“Too dark,” Armecia agreed.

“And it doesn’t seem to want to come out.” He sighed as the battle between Maddy and Leonard roared into his view. “One would think he would at least come out to see what all the noise was about.”

“One would think …”

Armecia scratched her chin contemplatively, causing a twinge of resentment to fester in Nitz’s heart. How did
she
manage to look so much more intelligent doing it, he wondered.

“I think I’ve got an idea, though,” she replied. Glancing up at the fight, she barked out an order. “Lenny, stop fighting!”

Almost immediately, the knight lowered his severed arm as he stared at her with an incredulous expression. Such outrage, however, quickly shifted to agony as Maddy’s leather-bound fist came crashing into his jaw, sending him to the ground. While surprised, Nitz felt the need to call out as she raised her axe.

“Maddy, stop!” he shrieked. “Don’t kill him!”

“I feel we may have a difference of opinion of who takes orders from whom,” the woman replied, keeping her axe raised high. “But, just for humor’s sake, why shouldn’t I kill him?”

“We can use him to kill the dragon.” He glanced at Armecia. “That’s where you were going with this, right?”

“Right.”

“Right, Maddy!” he continued. “He can’t feel pain, anyway. He’s not alive.”

At this, the woman’s face shifted. The mass of scars became dejected, like a disappointed child. With a sigh, she shouldered her axe, bowed her head, and turned around, kicking at the earth.

“What’s the point, then …”

Nitz smiled to himself; usually, getting her to stop wasn’t that easy. That thought brought another realization to mind as he whirled toward Armecia.

“Wait a tick,” he grunted, “you said you couldn’t command him because he hadn’t had enough to smoke.”

“Hey, I lied about that, too! What a coincidence!”

“That’s not a coincidence, it’s just you being a b—”

“
As I was saying
,” she interrupted, “we need to bring the dragon out here. We can’t lure him out; we can’t annoy him out.”

“That’s not an accepted phrase in polite society, but pray tell, whatever do we do, then?”

The smile she flashed him this time, he decided, was not pretty.

“Smoke him out.”

ARMECIA looked down at the several bags piled into a rough amalgamation of burlap and green herb that resembled something like a malformed sheep. Apparently far more used to the intoxicating scent than Nitz, it was with a suspicious glare, rather than a nauseous one, that she turned to Sir Leonard.

“Is that all of it?”

The knight, for the first time since Armecia had bound him to her service, seemed less than happy to reply. His eyes were disturbingly clear and coherent; he stood frighteningly erect, his newly healed arm tense with restrained anger.

“Lenny,” she asked again, taking a slow step away from him, “is it all you’ve got?”

“It’s all I can spare,” he snapped. “But by all means, if you want to see me angry, take my last pouch.”

“I’d like to see you angry,” Maddy said with an unpleasant grin.

“Not now,” Nitz growled at her. He looked at Armecia intently, expressly avoiding the knight’s irate gaze. “A dragon’s a big thing. We’ll need every ounce we can get.”

“You’ll understand if I’m a little reluctant to force him.” The sorceress sighed but looked to her companion with a grimace, regardless. “Lenny, we need it.”

His response was twofold. First, he swept a long, angry glare over those assembled. It was with some lack of nerve that Nitz noticed how furious the man’s stare was when clear of throbbing red veins. Bright and angry blue, his glower instilled a chill in all of them, forcing even Maddy to quickly disguise a step backwards as a restless shift.

The tension emanating from his stare was palpable, the vision of what might occur frozen in their minds. What if, they wondered simultaneously, the thrill of battle and the lack of smoke was just enough to grant one of the two murderous souls inside him control of the body they fought over? What if, they thought as he reached for his belt, his hand shifted just a bit … past the belt buckle to the sword hanging at his hip?

And then, Sir Leonard dropped his pants.

In stark comparison to the way his stare had forced their attentions away, they were now horrifyingly riveted as the knight reached a gloved hand between his legs and rooted around for a moment. Then, producing a bag which he quickly brushed off and drew a small pinch of green from, he tossed it upon the heap with a snarl.

“This”—he ignored his lack of lower coverage to pull out a small piece of paper—“is the last of it.” Quickly rolling the cigarillo, he shoved it in his mouth and thrust it to Armecia. “The pants don’t go back on until you light it.”

“Yeah … sure.”

She snapped her fingers, conjuring a flame to the tip. Sparing only a moment to light the man’s roll, she turned her hand to the pile of weed before her. She narrowed her eyes and the flame became a large, angry billow, rolling from her fingers to sear the herb and send a cloud of acrid smoke roiling into the air. Nitz barely had time to put a hand over his mouth before she swept her other arm, conjuring a gust of wind that sent the cloud chasing down into the cavern’s mouth, a ghastly, reeking hound after the massive, fire-breathing rabbit.

“Now what?” Sir Lenny asked, apparently in no hurry to fulfill his promise.

“Now we—”

“Now we wait,” Armecia interrupted Nitz. “When the thing comes out, you distract it, Lenny, while Maddy or I kill it. Then we chop off its head, get my book, get some kind of whacky-stick—”

“Fraumvilt.”

“Right, whichever. After that, we bid each other farewell and go off to find some more herb.”

“What … just like that?” Nitz raised a brow.

“What, were you hoping we’d cuddle on its corpse afterwards?”

“Well”—he quickly cleared his throat—“I mean, what am I supposed to do during all this?”

“Read a book or something.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. You can cook us dinner after we do the fighting.”

“I can fight!” he said, wondering if it was because of a sense of humor or outright cruelty that God made his voice crack at that moment. Clearing his throat, he continued. “I mean, Maddy is the muscle. I’m usually the thinking man of the pair.”

“For one, you can scarcely be called a man yet,” she replied, her grin particularly irksome. “For two, the keyword in your prior statement is ‘
pair
.’ I’m the one that thought of this, so I get to take care of it.” She tapped her temple. “Not to mention that I can shoot ice out of my eyeball. Can you do that?”

“Well, I—”

“
Can
you?”

“Of course I can’t!”

“Then do what you can,” she retorted, before he could elaborate. Gesturing with her chin, she glanced to a nearby rock. “Tend to whoever happens to limp over there if something goes wrong.”

He found himself at a loss for words. Blunt as she might have been, she wasn’t entirely wrong; coming up with plans and needlework was typically his specialty, while bashing brains and occasionally making necklaces out of bits that fell off people was Maddy’s. Armecia’s specialty, apparently, was his combined with magic, rolled into one ominous, dusky-skinned package.

He would have liked to think that he could have proven his worth as a man of ideas by coming up with a better one right then and there. He would have settled for proving his worth as a man of wit by coming up with a sharp retort to hurl back at her … preferably one that would have made her so weak in the knees that she would have swooned at his feet, leaving him free to scoop her up in one arm and fight off the dragon with the other.

Yeah, that’s what would happen—
he sighed as he settled onto the rock—
and so long as I’m fantasizing, I’d like a harem.