Mercedes Lackey - Sanctuary

Thinking now of nothing but the water, he broke into a trot, noting that for the first time he’d found a building that already had an enormous front entrance. Quite large enough for a dragon, actually—

Without thinking, he hurried toward that entrance, and the increasing dampness to the air as he neared made him move faster. From the scent, there was a lot of water there! Maybe as much as flowed beneath Sanctuary!

Then an angry hiss from the darkness made him stop for a moment, while his feet refused to move.

The hiss came again. And it wasn’t the hissing of steam escaping from a vent in the rock.

Slowly, never taking his eyes off that black rectangle of a door, he started to back away. His heart had started again, but now it was pounding, and he felt very much like a mouse that had inadvertently walked up to a cobra’s den. There was something moving in there, back in the deeper shadows. Something big. And he had a pretty good idea what it was—

Move slowly. Don’t run, or you tell it that you’re prey. Keep your eyes on it, and hope that it doesn’t decide you’re prey anyway.

It would be the height of irony if he had come through all he’d weathered so far, to be eaten by a wild dragon through his own inattention and carelessness.

If I get out of this one, I don’t think I’ll be telling the rest just how I discovered there were dragons living here.

He had managed to get about halfway back up the valley when the wild dragon inside that building made up its mind to charge him. Maybe it decided that it wasn’t going to let him get away. Maybe it thought he was going to bring back other humans—if it was a former Jousting dragon, it wouldn’t want to be caught again.

For whatever reason, he glanced back for a moment to see how far he was from the main canyon, and when he looked back, a thing that seemed to be all teeth and talons and three times the size of Avatre was bearing down on him.

Despite that he had thought he was ready to face an attack, he wasn’t.

All he could see was death with teeth as long as his arm, and eyes that held nothing but rage.

He couldn’t help himself; he screamed with fright, the sound was driven out of him, and his heart, which had been racing, now pounded like a madman’s drum. He ran backward as fast as he could go, still not daring to take his eyes off the beast. Bad decision; he tripped and fell and landed sprawling, and the dragon kept coming.

He scrambled in the fine sand, desperately trying to get to his feet without taking his eyes off the beast. “Get away!” he yelled shrilly, knowing the creature would never obey him, yet madly hoping for a miracle. “Get back! Back!”

It kept coming. He scrambled up, but he knew he could never get into cover quickly enough, and as the beast came close enough to rear back for a strike, he screamed, unashamedly—

Then felt himself shouldered aside as Avatre counter-charged.

He fell down, but this time he didn’t try to get up. She got within talon range of the wild dragon, swiveled to put her whole body between him and the other dragon, and put her head down, hissing defiance.

With a snort of astonishment, the other dragon, a green, skidded to a halt. He was much bigger than Avatre, but she caught him by surprise, and as she stood between him and Kiron, tearing at the sand with her talons, neck outstretched and hissing furiously, he backed up a pace, his neck stretching upward, eyes wide and shocked.

This was a strange dragon in his territory. A strange, young dragon, who should have given way to him. But she was defending the creature he had thought to make a meal of!

Kiron watched the wild dragon blinking at her as surprise turned to bewilderment. Wild—or now-wild, for although he didn’t recognize the beast, he thought that it probably was one of the Tian Jousting dragons. Most wild dragons avoided humans; they fought back with particularly nasty weapons, they didn’t taste as good as oryx or wild ass or ox, and there wasn’t as much meat on them. Wild dragons mostly didn’t see humans as worth the bother.

But a Jousting dragon would know the difference between an armed and an unarmed human, and a Jousting dragon wasn’t as good a hunter as a wild dragon. He’d settle for anything he could catch.

Poor thing, he was caught now in a war with his own instincts. Avatre was a youngster, and his instincts said she was off-limits to fighting. She was female, and that, too, cooled his aggression. But she was protecting the enemy—and standing between him and his next meal.

Kiron got to his feet again, and moved slowly, very slowly toward Avatre. This was not the time to startle her. She might turn around and lash out at him without knowing who she was striking at.

She glanced back at him briefly, and when the green male made no further move to attack, raised her head a little and turned it so she could watch both of them at the same time, though she was still hissing like a steam vent and kept most of her attention on the other dragon.

Kiron moved up beside her and put his hand on her shoulder. He’d never felt her so hot! She almost scorched his hand. He had the feeling that in this case he was going to be a lot safer on her back than on the ground. But he didn’t want her to crouch; that might give the other dragon a chance to attack. “Avatre,” he said quietly. “Leg.”

Without taking her eyes off the green male, Avatre slowly backed up a pace, then extended her foreleg for him to use as a step to vault up into her saddle. The moment he was in place, she straightened her neck, and still keeping her eyes on the other dragon, began to back up.

The male remained where he was, still looking thoroughly bewildered. Kiron, meanwhile, was losing no time in fishing for his restraining straps; he wanted to be buckled into place and quickly.

He hadn’t quite realized how frightened he’d been—and was!—until he tried to get the straps buckled and discovered that his hands were shaking so much he was having a hard time with that relatively simple task. He fought with the metal and leather, and it felt as if someone had glued all of his fingers together. They just wouldn’t work right—

Come on! he told himself, fiercely, feeling his heart pounding so hard he had to swallow around the pulse in his throat. If she has to fly for it—

But the straps were not cooperating, and neither were his hands. As Avatre reached the mouth of the side canyon, the green male suddenly made up his mind to charge again. And this time, instead of charging back, Avatre leaped for the sky.

And he only had one strap fastened.

With a yell, he grabbed for the front of the saddle and hung on for dear life, wedging his feet into the chest straps and clamping his legs hard against her sides. Forget the reins! She sideslipped and turned in the air with a lurch that sent his stomach where his heart had been, and put his heart in his throat. Fear ran through him like a bolt of lightning as he nearly came out of her saddle.

With tremendous wing surges, she threw herself upward. He clung like a flea on the nose of a racing camel, while she clawed for height. Height was her only hope if this green decided to challenge her after all. The only way that a smaller dragon could win against a larger was to have the height advantage.

But as he dared a glance down—in between trying to wedge himself more firmly into the saddle and trying not to be sick—he saw the green claw the ground, snort, and stare upward at them.

He wasn’t going to follow. Either he wasn’t that hungry, or he didn’t want to have to work that hard for his meal.

A couple of wingbeats later, Kiron saw him retire back into the building where he was making his den. So if he wasn’t going to pursue—time to get Avatre down before he fell out of her saddle!