Paul Thompson - Sister of the Sword

They also looked quite tasty. Duranix’s stomach rumbled. His last meal had been a school of leaping sailfish two days ago, and he found his attention fixed by the prowling pigs.

Then came that feeling again, the sensation another dragon was near. A broad shadow flashed overhead. Acting purely on instinct, he sprang straight up at the shadow. He had only a glimpse of bright scales and slender wings before he slammed into the belly of another dragon.

The stranger bleated in surprise. Duranix knew immediately it was not Sthenn. He tried to disentangle himself but was firmly held by the other. Together they dropped from the sky and crashed into the forest. The spicy, resinous smell of fractured cedar filled the air.

Powerful clawed feet kicked at Duranix’s chest. Nothing like the vicious attacks he’d weathered from Sthenn, they still hurt. Tired, frustrated, and ravenously hungry, Duranix lost his temper. He seized the other dragon’s hind legs, reared, and flung him into the trees.

There was a glint of bright metal. The dragon hit the cedars and flattened them. Rolling over several times, the stranger came quickly to his feet.

Duranix blinked, his eyelids clicking down and up several times. The stranger was not a he but a she—a bronze dragon, smaller than himself.

She shook off the effects of the crash and faced him, back arched like an enormous wildcat, horns, spines, and barbels rigid with fright and fury. Extending her neck, she opened her jaws and hissed.

He was surprised, having expected her to loose a bolt of lightning. Assuming a passive stance, he relaxed his coiled muscles. “Greetings.” he said. “Who are you? What’s your name?”

“Greetings!” She growled angrily, deep in her throat. She was half Duranix’s weight and two-thirds his length. Thin, too, but well muscled. Her scales were bright and well buffed.

When he failed to get any further response, Duranix asked, slowly and deliberately, “What is your name?”

The female bronze finally lowered her back and raised her head. “Blusidar. Blusidar is my name.”

“I’m sorry I attacked you, Blusidar. I mistook you for an enemy. There is a green dragon in your territory, a creature of great evil. I’ve pursued him around the world to this spot. When you flew past me, I thought you were him.”

She stepped over broken tree stumps, carefully keeping her distance from the imposing stranger. “I see no dragon but you, and I did not see you till you struck.”

She was young, Duranix realized. Very young. Still, she was the first bronze dragon he’d encountered since the death of his mother and clutchmates many centuries ago. In his travels around familiar lands, he’d met other dragons: the loquacious brass Gilar, who dwelt in the far eastern desert, and the copper twins Suphenthrex and Salamantix, who lived on twin mountains northeast of the Valley of the Falls. Other dragons he had known had dwelt on the borders of the great savanna, but one by one, they’d been killed or driven off by Sthenn.

“This green dragon—his name is Sthenn—is here somewhere close by, hiding,” Duranix told Blusidar. “I wounded him in the sea and I tracked him ashore. You’re not safe with him here.”

She pondered that for a moment, then asked, “What? I am safe with you?”

“Certainly!” he said indignantly. She flinched when his voice rose. Schooling himself to calm, Duranix added, “What land is this? Who dwells here besides you?”

“This land is the land. I know no other,” Blusidar said. “Came you through the Zenzi ?” At his obvious lack of understanding, she explained, “Zenzi—walk on two legs, like birds, but have no feathers. So big.” She held her claw off the ground at about the same height as a human child.

“These Zenzi, do they use large boats to cross the sea?” he asked, and she nodded. “Then I saw them, fighting others or among themselves. Who are they?”

Haltingly, pushing the limits of her vocabulary, Blusidar told him about the Zenzi and this, her homeland.

It was an island, quite large, with a ring of blue stone mountains in the center. She was the only dragon on the island, though once there had been others. The Zenzi had confined the dragons to the island long, long ago.

“How is that possible?” Duranix demanded. “Creatures no bigger than humans imposing their will on dragons? I don’t believe it!”

“Not big dragons like me, you.” She cupped her foreclaws around an imaginary sphere. “ Vree-al .”

Duranix was startled. The sound Blusidar made was the one clutching females used to comfort their unhatched offspring.

She continued, relating an amazing tale that explained the weathered column he’d seen on the beach. Ages ago, the Zenzi had dumped fertile dragon eggs on this remote island. After hatching, the dragons grew up in isolation and ignorance, having no idea of the wider world beyond the shores of their island. Over time, a few had taken a chance and flown away, certain there must be more to their world than this island. None had ever returned, and the rest had lived and died here. Blusidar was the last.

“You go,” she said, finishing her story “This place is mine. You go back where you came.”

She seemed unmoved by the fact that Duranix’s very existence confirmed a wider world beyond her tiny island.

“I shall leave,” Duranix said, “but not until I find Sthenn. If I leave him here, he’ll kill you.”

Blusidar backed away, keeping her dagger-shaped pupils fixed on Duranix. “Then go soon. Too many dragons are trouble. Find your Green and go!”

She slipped between the closely growing trees and disappeared. Duranix advanced a few steps. Pigeons rose in a cloud from the trees, marking the fleeing bronze’s path.

Something hard jabbed his foreclaw. Duranix lifted his leg and saw a bright bronze scale embedded in the trunk of a shattered cedar. He worked it loose with his talons. One of Blusidar’s. Unlike his own scales, which were large, curved, and shaped like an acorn in silhouette, Blusidar’s were flatter and almost circular. The edges were smooth, another sign she was less than a century old. From the scale wafted the clean, bright smell he’d sensed while flying over the island.

The image of Blusidar staring fearfully up at him, knowing he was larger and stronger, yet facing him with foolish bravery, caused Duranix to close a powerful claw around the scale.

Here was one dragon Sthenn would not harm, he vowed. He would not allow it.

Dawn arrived in awesome silence. A light morning mist filled the low places below the walls of Yala-tene and hung over the clear waters of the Lake of the Falls. Despite the early hour, the parapets were lined with people—somber, gray-faced, as stony as the wall on which they stood.

On the valley floor, lines of horsemen were deployed in a great arc around the besieged town, from the rocky flats below the waterfall to the now empty ox pens on the north end of Yala-tene. In places the line was only a single rider deep, but they were there, armed and ready.

A small party of raiders rode out from their camp by the river, making straight for the western entrance to the town. In their wake came a dozen raiders on foot, four of them bearing a litter on their shoulders. Showing off their best horsemanship, the approaching raiders wheeled about just out of throwing range. The morning sun flashed off their purloined weapons and armor.

Four raiders put ram’s horns to their lips and blew a flat, wavering note that carried from one end of the valley to the other. A single man on a pale gray horse rode forth a few steps from the group, then stopped. Like most of the raiders, he was masked—his was an elaborate creation fashioned from the skull of some horned beast and adorned with leather flaps and paint. He removed his skull-mask, revealing a surprisingly youthful face and light brown hair.