The Dragon's Dagger

Chapter 20 Broken Trees and Burning Homes

Wearing again the mantle of a large, red-bearded man, Robert stalked into the ruined edge of Dreadwood, casually batting aside blackened, stillsmoldering trees with mighty arms that suffered no pain from the heat. He grabbed one large log up in his hand and heaved it away, smiling with evil pleasure as it smashed against another standing tree, its emberfilled inner core exploding into a shower of sparks. "Are you in here, little elf?" the dragon-turned-man bellowed, crunching through the hot area without the slightest regard for the minor fires.
No fire could ever harm Robert the Wretched.   "Do come out and play, Kelsenellenelvial Gil-Ravadry!" the dragon called. "Else I will have to burn down the rest of the forest."
There came no reply, not even the chirp of a bird in the ruined area. Robert's eyes narrowed, and he scanned the immediate region carefully, looking for some sign. He had hit the woods a third time, again with all his strength and fiery fury, and he had figured that Kelsey and his friends, including that puny impostor Gary Leger from Bretaigne, were probably already dead. Thinking about it now, though, with no sign of charred corpses anywhere about, the dragon believed that he might have erred in attacking so openly and in such a straightforward manner. Robert had let his fury get in the way of good sense, and now he was tired - too tired to spread dragon wings and search out the countryside, too tired to summon his killing breath anymore and lay waste to the rest of the forest.
He wasn't worried, though. Even in this human form, Robert knew that he was more than a match for the elf and his friends, was confident that they had nothing which could truly harm one as powerful as he.
The dragon continued his search for more than an hour, finally stumbling upon the tracks of a horse, and beside them the light bootprints of an elf, running northwest, back out of the woods the same way Kelsey and his friends had entered.
"So a few escaped," the dragon mused, thinking that they would not escape for long. Robert followed the trail right towards the edge of Dreadwood, saw that it continued on in the same direction, cutting a line across the rolling fields to the southern tip of Dvergamal. The dragon nodded; he had turned Kelsenellenelvial and his friends around, at least, and it seemed as though their numbers had been diminished.
Robert briefly considered a quick pursuit, but the sun hung low in the sky before him, and he was tired. He might spend the entire night searching, without luck, and then the morning would leave him more weary. "Running home," the dragon said, and his wicked smile returned tenfold, for Robert knew where "home" might be.
"How long can you keep that up, elf?" Geno asked, and the dwarf seemed more amused than concerned, watching Kelsey half running, half flying along the side of the fast-trotting pony. Behind the dwarf, Gerbil, bouncing wildly and wishing for his quadricycle, moaned in sympathy. "We will continue long past the sunset," the elf informed Geno. "And I will run as long as I must."
"Do you believe that the dragon will be following us?" Gerbil asked nervously, glancing back to the southeast. "They are reportedly stubborn, after all, but this one seems to have his nose pointed in many different directions all at once, if you know what I mean."
"Robert will be out in the morn, if not before," Kelsey replied. "We can only hope that he finds our trail and not that of our companions."
"Now there's something to hope for," Geno put in sarcastically, and just for the fun of it, the dwarf let the pony's bridle out a bit more, picked up the pace so that Kelsey, holding a rope attached to the mount's neck, was more flying than running.
Their camp was restless and nervous that night, with Kelsey pacing all the while, and Gerbil too nervous to even close his eyes. Geno, though, was soon snoring loudly, something that disturbed both the elf and the gnome more than a little. Having no luck either waking the dwarf or turning Geno's body over, Kelsey wound up splitting a small stick and pinching it over the dwarf's nose.
The three were moving again before any hint of dawn found the eastern horizon, with Kelsey constantly glancing back over his shoulder, as though he expected the dragon to swoop upon them at any time. This, of course, unnerved poor Gerbil more than a little, and the gnome finally just wrapped his arms as tightly as possible around the dwarf's waist and buried his face in Geno's back.
Dawn did little to brighten anyone's mood, for the three felt vulnerable indeed trotting across rolling and, for the most part, open hills under the light of day.
"Is that the witch's crow?" Geno asked a short while later. Kelsey turned his eyes back to the trail ahead to see the large black bird standing calmly on the grass, and to see the dwarf lifting a hammer for a throw, Geno's icy-blue eyes sparkling eagerly.
"Hold," Kelsey bade him, drawing a disappointed, even angry, look. "We do not know what news the bird brings."
"What lies it brings, you mean," Geno corrected, but he did bring his hammer back down, slowing the pony so that they might stop and speak with the bird.
"Dragon, dragon," the crow cackled. "Get away!" "We did," Geno answered dryly. "It could be that the bird means that the dragon is coming and that we should NOW get away," Gerbil intervened.
"Dragon, dragon, get away!" the crow cried and it flew off, cutting a fast track for a small but thick copse of trees not too far to the south. "I don't see any dragon," Geno huffed, looking back behind them. "By the time you saw Robert, Robert would see you," Kelsey warned. "And then it would be too late."
"Dragons are bigger than dwarfs," Geno argued.
"But they see better than eagles," Kelsey shot back. He was already heading for the south, tugging the rope so that the pony turned to follow.
From the shadows of the trees, they watched Robert's passage. The dragon came by incredibly low, barely twenty feet off the ground, his nostrils snuffling and his eyes as often turned down as ahead. The beating of his wings crackled and rolled like thunder, and the wind of his wake shivered the trees of the copse, though they were fully fifty yards away. "He's hunting," Geno remarked.
"Us," Gerbil added, and Kelsey nodded grimly. Both the dwarf and the gnome took some consolation in the fact that Robert had zipped by, and was already long out of sight, but Kelsey's expression remained grave. Geno looked around to the boughs of the trees. "I hope that crow is still about," the dwarf admitted. "When that dragon does not find us on the road ahead, he'll be sure to turn around."
Kelsey shook his head and began, to Geno and Gerbil's dismay, to lead the pony back out of the trees. "Robert will not be back," the elf assured them. "Not for some time."
Kelsey winced at his own words, though the claim seemed to brighten the moods of his two companions. They were safe enough for the time being, Kelsey sincerely believed, but he also believed that he knew the price of that security.
Like Kelsey, Robert was heading for Braemar.
The dragon sensed that the trail had gone cold, understood that the elf and his friends had probably turned aside and let him pass. He thought to turn about and hunt the group down, but other instincts argued against that move. Robert's hunger was up; his course had him speeding straight for Braemar.
He beat his wings more fiercely, climbed into the air, then stooped low again, gaining momentum, gaining speed. He forgot his weariness in those minutes, his dragon-hunger urging him on, urging him to begin the destruction.
Robert whipped past the first low foothills of Dver-gamal, cut in behind the closest mountain peaks so that the helpless folk of the village would have less warning. The sky about the mountains was heavy with dark clouds, but as far as the dragon could tell, it had not yet rained.
The thatched roofs and wooden planks of the houses would still be dry. Soon Robert saw the chimney smoke rising to meet the overcast, drifting lazily into the air above Braemar, and an anxious growl escaped the dragon's maw as he thought of how much thicker that smoke would soon become.
The lone bell in Braemar's small chapel began to ring; Robert's keen ears caught the cries of the distant villagers, rousing the town, calling out the approach of the dreaded wyrm. The dragon cut a sharp turn around a jutting wall of stone, leveled out with the town in sight, and began his swooping descent.
Arrows zipped out at him, bouncing harmlessly from his armored body.
Robert's snarl came again, for these were simple farm folk and miners, and not the clever gnomes of Gondabuggan. No metallic shields would come up to stop the dragon this time; no catapults would send stinging flak into the air to hinder Robert's passage.
Barely thirty feet up, he swooped over the edge of the town, loosing his fiery breath in a line that sent one, and then another, and then another, thatched roof up in flames. The dragon began his turn before he even passed beyond the cluster of houses, his great tail snapping about to clip the second floor of the spoke-lock, collapsing one corner of the building.
Below him, the people were in a frenzy, rushing about with bows and spears, others running with buckets of water to fight the fires.
"Useless!" the proud dragon bellowed as the missiles continued to bounce away. Useless, too, were those battling the fires, their buckets a pitiful sight against the flames leaping high, so high, into the air. Already one of the houses was gutted, the fires dying low simply because their incredible intensity had consumed the thatch and wood fuel.
It took the huge wyrm a long while to bank enough to make a second pass, and this time, Braemar's defense proved more organized. Robert came in over a different section of town, from the west, finding no resistance as his breath consumed yet another farmhouse. As Robert passed the central area, his tail taking another swipe at the two-story structure, he met a wall of arrows and spears, fired nearly point-blank. Again, the dragon's sturdy armor deflected the brunt, but one missile nicked Robert's eye.   His roar split stones a mile away, deafened those near him, as he banked suddenly up into the air, then dropped to his haunches upon the ground. A second volley shot out at him from behind a long and low building, the Snoozing Sprite tavern. More than one arrow knifed into the dragon's mouth, and stuck there painfully, until Robert's breath came forth, disintegrating the missiles and lighting the corner of the building.
Despite the unexpected pain, the evil dragon hissed with pleasure when he heard the screams of several archers, when one man, engulfed in flames, came rolling out from behind the Snoozing Sprite.
Robert's continuing hiss was cut short, though, as a score of hardy villagers, accompanied by Kervin and his rugged dwarfs, charged out from another hiding spot, axes, hammers, swords and spears, even pitchforks and grass scythes, going to vicious work on the sitting dragon.
Robert snapped his tail about, launching a handful of enemies away. A lasso hooked about his foreclaw, and when the dragon instinctively jerked against it, he found that the thick rope was secured to a huge oak tree. A dwarfish hammer smashed the dragon's ankle. Robert lifted his foot and squashed the troublesome dwarf into the dirt.
But the sheer fury of the villagers' response had surprised the wyrm. While Robert crushed the poor dwarf, a dozen other weapons smashed hard into his armor plating. One great axe cut a slice through the lower portion of the dragon's leathery wing. Robert buffeted with the wing, sending the axe-man flying away.
The dragon's breath melted another man to his bones; Robert's tail whipped again, and three dwarfs flew through the air.
From the other end of the burning tavern came yet another volley of arrows, the whole group concentrating on the area of the dragon's face. Robert's rage multiplied; his thrashing sent more men and dwarfs spinning away. And then he set his wings to beating, leaped off the ground, forgetting about his hooked foreclaw.
The rope jerked him around, and he stumbled, crashing headlong into a stone house, smashing the place to tiny bits of rubble. Up leaped the outraged dragon, issuing another stone-splitting roar. He spun and tugged, and the great oak tore from the ground. Stubborn villagers came at him once more. Another volley of arrows sent stinging darts into his reptilian eyes.   Robert leaped into the air, his wings pounding furiously.   The ground ripped wide open as the tree was pulled along, its roots tearing free until Robert, tiring, turned his maw about and breathed again, disintegrating the thick rope.
A group of men fled screaming, and the shadow of the dragon covered them, Robert swooping low and snapping up more than one of them in his great maw.
All of Braemar would have been leveled and burned, every person in the town would surely have perished, except that the wyrm was tired. The defense had been stronger than Robert had anticipated, and since his last true rest, he had burned half a forest and had flown a hundred miles. He gave another roar, its tone triumphant, and soared away to find a mountain perch, confident that when he had rested, he would return and finish the town.
Good fortune was on the side of the village that day, for soon after the dragon attack, the low clouds opened up and sent heavy rains to quench the dragon fires, and to soak the remaining thatch and wood.
"Rain is no friend to a dragon," one villager remarked hopefully, but the encouraging words rang shallow in light of the destruction and the dead. From the empty window of another building, the glass blown out by the sheer thunderous force of the dragon's passage, Badenoch of Braemar and Baron Pwyll looked on helplessly.