Rasnake(10)

Pain that felt a lot like anguish followed in the wake of the realization, bursting the rush of joy he'd felt at seeing those wolves rush to Cecil, at thinking this is the one.

Fate tokens were never wrong; they never lied. Accurately reading them, however, was more than a little difficult, even for the experienced. Tallant reached up to curl his fingers around the smooth, warm, gray-blue stone into which his fate had been carved when he'd turned fifteen. That had been nearly twenty years ago.

Holding it tightly, he prayed silently, but fervently, for the answer to come to him.

They caught up to Cecil a few minutes later. Milton came up beside him. "Tallant—"

"Shut up," Cecil said, and for once Tallant was grateful for the rudeness. He didn't want to hear what Milton would say, because he couldn't see how it would be anything good. "Don't speak, don't move, don't even breathe, until I tell you. One wrong movement could get us all killed."

Milton and Tallant shut up and held still.

Cecil spoke to his wolves, who then ran off. Shooting Milton and Tallant a last warning look, he moved to the far end of the clearing.

The clearing was a disaster—broken trees, gouges in the earth, and stains from what could only be dragon blood. Milton's sword still smelled like the damned stuff. Tallant also realized that some of the trees had been scorched. Before he could actually form the question to which he fervently hoped the answer was no, he heard the tell-tale sounds of crashing, heavy breathing, growling wolves, and a pissed off dragon.

Tallant turned to Cecil, but stopped, remembering they were under orders not to breathe if they could help it. Regarding Cecil, Tallant decided he was nothing short of insane. Seemingly unconcerned about the dragon being led straight toward him by the wolves, Cecil drew an arrow and nocked it.

He whistled, quick and sharp. The wolves moved, lunged straight at the dragon, startling it, causing it to rear its ugly head up—and Cecil fired, sending one, two, three arrows flying toward it. More specifically, toward the heavy, bulbous sack in the curve of its throat, a little below the jaw. Tallant only really knew about dragons from stories, books, but anyone who knew even the slightest bit about dragons knew what that sack meant: fire.

They had been the most feared species of dragon on the continent, even in a time when just saying the word dragon was enough to make a person shudder. All dragons were bad, but the fire-breathers were a thousand times worse.

People had once worked tirelessly to rid the world of fire-breathers, and for a time it had almost seemed to be working. Fewer and fewer of them had appeared, and then the wards had gone up, and that should have been the end of it.

But it would seem the time behind the wards had given dragons plenty of time to regroup, because that was a mature male, and to judge by his scars, he'd survived several matings—including a recent one. At least it was a male; the gods alone would be able to save them if they came across a fire-breathing female during mating season.

Two of the three arrows found their mark. The dragon screamed as his fire-sack burst, the dark, viscous liquid inside spilling down his neck, his chest.

If he tried to breathe fire now, and if it worked at all, he would only wind up hurting himself.

Cecil threw his bow aside and drew his twin blades, then ran toward the dragon. Tallant could only stare, rapt, as Cecil fought. He worked in perfect time with the wolves; while they taunted and harassed the dragon, drawing its attention, Cecil slunk in close to slice open small vulnerable points, dancing away as the dragon rounded on him, waiting until the wolves once more attracted its attention, then going for another spot.

Blood polled everywhere across the forest floor where they fought, so copious in some place that it splashed up whenever Cecil or the wolves ran through it. Slowly, bit by bit, loss of blood and constant movement and fighting wore the dragon down. Seeming almost though it was going to sleep, the dragon stilled and bowed its head—

Cecil sprang, crying out as he drew a long dagger and thrust it through the dragon's bottommost right eye. He jerked back, whistling to the wolves, withdrawing to a safe distance as the dragon thrashed about in its death throes.

When the dragon finally lay still, and remained so, he turned toward Tallant and Milton. "You actually stayed out of my way and held still." He was sweaty, soaked in dragon blood, some of it his, but he looked in much better shape than Tallant and Milton had after their one fight.

"You and those wolves may as well be battle-bonded," Milton said, smiling. "That was incredible, Cecil." He held a hesitant hand out to the wolves, smile brightening when Bite sniffed it, then gave a brief lick.

Cecil scowled.

Tallant smothered a laugh. "Do you get a lot of fire breathers?"

"That's all we get," Cecil replied. "We think that after the wards went up, they had time to rebuild the numbers lost back in the day when people tried to eradicate them. It wouldn't have taken them long; one healthy female can get as many as three mates, and produce up to twenty eggs. Most of those will die, and the new females always eat a few of her brothers, but that still leaves roughly half the nest still alive. We figure five out of a nest of twenty survives to full maturity, and that's five too many."

He thrust his swords into the ground, then pulled out a strip of cloth. Retrieving one of the swords, he wiped it meticulously clean and sheathed it, then repeated the process with the second.