Marie Brennan - A Natural History of Dragons

Bringing me along on the hunt was, of course, an offense for which he could be turned out with no references. I could have achieved the same by telling of his dalliances with the maid, though, and while I would not have done so, I led him to believe I would. You may think it dreadful of me, and I blush now to recall my blackmail, but I will not pretend I had such scruples then. Jim, I insisted, must bring me on the hunt.

Here the chilly distance between my mother and Mrs. Lewis served my purposes very well. Amanda told Mama that she had invited me to her house for an afternoon and evening, to be returned on the morrow, and Mama, little desirous of corresponding with her neighbor, gave permission without asking questions. Therefore, on the morning the hunt was to begin, Amanda stopped by our estate with a manservant, on the pretense that I would be spending a few days with her family.

A small distance down the road, we reined in, and I inclined my head at her from my saddle while her manservant looked on, mystified. “Thank you, Manda.”

Her eyes fairly danced. “You must tell me all about it when it’s over!”

“Certainly,” I replied, though I knew she would probably grow tired of the story in short order, unless I contrived to have a thrilling romance while on the hunt. Amanda’s taste in reading ran to sensational novels, not natural history.

I left her to deal with the manservant by whatever means she found appropriate, and rode by back ways to the field where the hunt was gathering. Jim was waiting for me by a sheltered spring, as we had arranged.

“I’ve told them you’re my cousin, here for a visit,” he said, handing over a stack of clothing. “It’s a madhouse down there—people in from all over. No one will think it strange if you join us.”

“I’ll be just a moment,” I told him, and shifted to a spot where he could not see me. Casting looks over my shoulder all the time in case he should have followed me, I changed out of my own riding habit and into the much rougher boy’s clothing he had brought me. (Words cannot express, I might add, how alien it was to wear trousers for the first time; I felt half naked. I have worn them on many occasions since—trousers being far more practical for dragon-chasing than skirts—but it took me many years to adjust.)

To his credit, Jim blushed when he saw me dressed so scandalously. He was a good lad. But he helped me bundle my hair up under a cap, and with it hidden, I believe I made a passable boy. I was not done growing then, and was all coltish arms and legs, with not much to speak of yet in the way of hips or breasts.

(And why is it, I ask you, that my editor should complain to me of such words when I have written several books discussing dragon anatomy and reproduction in far more frank terms? He will not wish to leave this aside in, I predict, but I shall make him. There are advantages to my age and status.)

The most startling part of the morning, though, came when Jim handed me a gun. He saw the look on my face and said, “You don’t know how to use one, do you?”

“Why should I?” was my reply, and said in a rather sharper tone than he deserved. After all, I was the one who had insisted on dressing in boy’s clothes; it was hardly fair that I should act the offended lady now.

He took it in stride. “Well, it’s pretty simple—you put the stock up against your shoulder, point it in the direction…” His voice trailed off. I suspect he, like I, was imagining the potential consequences of me actually firing a gun in the midst of a chaotic hunt.

“Let’s just leave it unloaded, shall we?” I asked, and he said, “Yes, let’s.”

Which was how I came to ride in the hunt for the wolf-drake, disguised as a boy, my hair under a cap and an unloaded rifle in my hand, on my mare Bossy, who had been rubbed all over with dust to conceal her glossy coat. Jim was right to call it a madhouse; despite Papa’s best efforts, it was a disorganized thing, with far too many people there. Few men wanted to miss their chance to hunt a wolf-drake.

The day was quite fine, and I could barely contain my excitement as we rode. The areas in which the wolf-drake had been sighted were not terribly far from our manor house, which was why Papa had moved so quickly to organize the hunt, but we still had some distance to go.

Our estate consisted mostly of rocky, hilly soil, suitable more for sheep than anything else, though we had some tenant farmers in the Tam River Valley; the manor house stood just on the north edge of that valley. If one were to ride east or west, the terrain was gentler, but our path led us north, where the land sloped up quickly into an area too steep to be worth clearing. There, pine trees still ruled, and in their shade the wolf-drake was said to be hiding.

I stuck to Jim’s side like a burr and affected to be shy, so as not to have to answer any more questions than necessary. I did not trust my voice to pass, even though I was clearly supposed to be a beardless boy. Jim served me well in this regard, talking enough that no one else could get a word in edgewise—though perhaps his nerves were the ones talking. He had reason enough to be worried.

We reached the northern woods a short time after noon, at which point the leaders began to organize the hunt. “Quick, head for Simpkin,” I said, urging Jim away from my father and other men who might know me.

I gathered, from the fragments of speech I overheard, that the preparations for this hunt had begun well in advance of today. We congregated some distance downwind of a copse of trees that gave off an undeniable stink of carrion; it seemed that Papa’s huntsmen had been placing carcasses there for several days, to lure the wolf-drake to a predetermined spot. Some brave souls had ventured forth that morning to examine the copse, and found signs that the creature lay within.

What followed was quite a confusing tangle to me, knowing nothing as I did of hunting. Men held wolfhounds and mastiffs on leashes, each dog muzzled so it would not bark and give our presence away. They seemed very uneasy to me; dogs that will hunt wolves without fear may still balk at approaching any sort of dragonkind. Nonetheless, their handlers chivvied and cuffed them to prearranged positions, through which I understood the wolf-drake was to be driven. An arc of local men was sent out with unlit torches, at a great distance from the wood; when the time came, they were to light their brands and approach the creature’s shelter, provoking it to flight.

This, at least, was the intention. Wolf-drakes are cunning beasts; no one could be certain that it would oblige us by fleeing into our trap. Thus the arrangement of riders, myself and Jim included, at other points in the area: if the creature bolted, we would have to chase it down.

Astute readers will correctly surmise that I would not have troubled to mention this last point had the hunt gone according to plan.

My first sight of the wolf-drake came as a furious blur of movement streaking out of the wood. I do not know what precisely the hounds had been intended to do at that moment, but they never had a chance to do it; the drake was upon them too quickly.

Rare as the species was, the hunters had underestimated reports of its speed. The creature leapt upon one of the mastiffs, and there was an abrupt, shocking spray of blood. The other dogs hesitated before rushing into the fight, and their delay undid all our careful plans; the lines of the hunt were broken, and now we gave chase.

I have always been a good rider, for in those days it was not uncommon for the daughters of country gentry to learn to sit a horse both sidesaddle and astride. Never in my rambles with Bossy around my family’s estate, however, had I experienced anything like this.