Margaret Weis - The Seventh Gate

They were downwind of the dragon. It shouldn’t be able to pick up their scent. Marit only wanted to get the creature in sight, to see if it had truly captured Alfred. If not—and she was hoping desperately it had not—then she could follow common sense and run.

No shame in running from such a powerful foe. Lord Xar was the only Patryn Marit had ever known who had fought a Labyrinth dragon and survived. And he never spoke of the battle; his face would darken whenever it was mentioned.

“The ancestors have mercy!” Hugh the Hand breathed.

Marit squeezed Hugh’s hand, cautioned him to keep quiet.

They could see the dragon easily now. Marit’s hope was dashed.

Standing propped up against the bole of a shattered tree was a tall and gangling man with a bald head—smeared with blood—dressed in the tattered remnants of what had once been breeches and a velvet frock coat. He had been in dragon form when they saw him during the battle. Certainly—by the destruction in the forest—he must have been in dragon form when he crashed headlong into the woods.

He was not in dragon form now. Either he was too weak to sustain the magical transformation or, perhaps, his enemy had used its own magic to reveal the Sartan’s true appearance.

Surprisingly, considering that his first reaction to any sort of danger was to faint dead away, Alfred was conscious. He was even managing to face this terrible foe with a certain amount of dignity, though this was rather impaired by the fact that he was nursing a broken arm and his face was gray and drawn with pain.

The dragon towered over its prey. Its head was huge, blunt-nosed and rounded, with rows of razorsharp teeth protruding from the lower jaw. The head was attached to a neck that seemed too thin to support it. The head swung back and forth—such constant oscillating motion could sometimes hypnotize hapless victims. Two small and cunning eyes, on either side of the head, moved independently of each other. The eyes could rotate in any direction, focus forward or backward as required, allowing the dragon to see everything around it.

Its two front legs were strong and powerful, with claw-like “hands,” which could lift and carry objects in flight. Enormous wings sprouted from the shoulders. The hind legs were muscular, used to push the dragon off the ground and into the air.

The tail was the deadliest part of the creature, however. The red dragon’s tail curled up and over the body. On the end was a bulbous stinger that injected venom into the victim, venom that could either kill or, in small doses, paralyze.

The tail flicked out near Alfred.

“This may burn a little,” the dragon said, “but it will keep you docile during our trip back to my cave.”

The tip of the stinger grazed Alfred on the cheek. He screamed; his body jerked. Marit clenched her hands tight, dug the nails into her flesh. Beside her, she could hear Hugh the Hand breathing hard, gulping for air.

“What do we do?” His face was covered with sweat. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Marit looked at the dragon. A limp and unresisting Alfred dangled from the creature’s front claws. The dragon carried the man carelessly, as a small child might carry a rag doll.

Unfortunately, the wretched Sartan was still conscious, his eyes open and wide with fear. That was the worst part of the dragon’s venom. It kept the victim paralyzed but conscious; feeling, knowing everything.

“Nothing,” Marit answered quietly.

Hugh the Hand glowered. “But we have to do something! We can’t let it fly off—”

Marit put her hand over the man’s mouth. He hadn’t spoken above a whisper, yet the dragon’s huge head was shifting swiftly toward them, its roving eyes searching the forest.

The baleful gaze raked across them, passed on. The dragon continued its search a bit longer; then, losing interest perhaps, it began to move.

It was walking.

Marit’s hopes rose.

The dragon was walking, not flying. It had begun to lumber through the forest, carrying Alfred in its claws. And now that the creature had turned toward her. Marit could see that it was injured. Not critically, but enough to keep it grounded. The membrane of one wing was torn, a gaping hole sliced through it.

Score one for Alfred, Marit said silently, then sighed. That wound would only make the dragon all the more furious. It would keep Alfred alive for a long, long time.

And he wouldn’t like it much.

She stood unmoving, silent, until the dragon was well out of eyesight and earshot. Every time Hugh the Hand would have spoken, Marit frowned, shook her head. When she could no longer hear any sound of the dragon crashing through the forest, she turned to Hugh.

“The dragons have excellent hearing. Remember that. You nearly got us killed.”

“Why didn’t we attack it?” he demanded. “The damn thing is hurt! With your magic—” He waved his hand, too angry to finish.

“With my magic, I could have done exactly nothing,” Marit retorted. “These dragons have their own magic, far more powerful than mine. Which it probably wouldn’t have even bothered to use! You saw its tail. That stinger moves fast, strikes like lightning. One touch and you’re paralyzed, helpless, just like Alfred.”

“So that’s it.” Hugh eyed her grimly. “We give up?”

“No, we don’t,” Marit said.

She turned her back on him so that he couldn’t see her face, couldn’t see how wonderful the words “give up” sounded. Resolutely, she began to make her way through the twisted trees, the flattened undergrowth.

“We’ll track it. The dragon said it was taking Alfred back to its cave. If we can find the dragon’s lair, we can rescue the Sartan.”

“What if it kills Alfred on the way?”

“It won’t,” Marit said. This was one thing she knew for a certainty. “Labyrinth dragons don’t kill their prey right off. They keep them for sport.”

The dragon’s trail was easy to follow. It mowed down everything in its path, never deviating from a straight route through the forest. Giant trees were uprooted with a blow from the massive tail. Scrub trees and brush were crushed beneath the large hind feet. Choke vines, trying to wrap their cutting tendrils around the dragon, realized too late what they had caught. The vines lay black and smoldering on the ground.

Hugh and Marit trudged along in the dragon’s devastating wake. The way had been made easier for them; the dragon cleared the path quite effectively. But they moved cautiously, at Marit’s insistence, although Hugh protested that with all the noise the dragon was making it wouldn’t be likely to hear them. And when the creature changed direction, began traveling upwind of them, Marit stopped to coat her body in foul-smelling mud from a bog. She forced Hugh to do the same.

“I saw a dragon destroy a Squatters’ village once,” Marit said, dabbing mud on her thighs, smearing it over her legs. “The beast was clever. It could have attacked the village, burned it, killed the inhabitants. But what sport is there in that? Instead, it captured two men alive—young men, strong. Then the dragon proceeded to torture them.

“We heard their screams—terrible screams. The screaming went on for two days. The headman decided to attack the dragon, rescue his people—or at least put them out of their misery. Haplo was with me,” she added softly. “We knew about the red dragons. We told the headman he was a fool, but he wouldn’t listen to us. Armed with weapons enhanced by magic, the warriors marched on the dragon’s lair.

“The dragon came out of its cave, carrying the still living bodies of its two victims—one in each clawed hand. The warriors fired rune-sped arrows at the dragon, arrows that cannot possibly miss their target. The dragon distorted the runes with its own magic. It didn’t stop the arrows; it simply slowed them down. The dragon caught the arrows—with the bodies of the two men.