Robin McKinley - The Hero And The Crown

Aerin had meant to climb to the top of the castle and watch the glitter of their going till it disappeared into the trees beyond the City; but instead she waited, standing beside the messenger, whose hands were still over his face. When the last sound of the king’s company’s going faded he dropped his hands, as if till then he had been hoping for some reprieve; and he sighed. “Almost I missed them entirely,” he murmured, staring into the empty air. “And it was to no purpose. Better I had missed them, and not used my poor Lmoth so ill,” and his eyes turned to the horse he had ridden.

“Lmoth will be cared for well in our stables,” said Aerin, “and I will take you now to find food and a bed for yourself.”

The man’s eyes turned slowly toward her, and again she saw the dim flicker of hope. “I must return as soon as I may, at least with the message of the king’s charity for those of my folk left homeless or fearful.”

Aerin said, “Food first. It’s a long weary way you have come.” . He nodded, but his eyes did not leave her face.

Aerin said softly: “I will come with you when you ride home; but you know that already, don’t you?”

The hopeful gleam was now reflected in a smile, but a smile so faint that she would not have seen it at all if she had not, in her turn, hoped for it.

“Thank you, Aerin-sol, Dragon-Killer,” he said.

They rode out together that afternoon. Talat was fresh, and inclined to bounce; he did not heed the dragon spears attached to his saddle because he believed he knew everything he needed to know about dragons. It was a silent journey. They went as quickly as they dared push the horses—a little less quickly than the messenger liked, but Aerin knew she and Talat had a dragon before them, and Talat was old; and if he did not wish to remember it, then it was all the more important that Aerin remember it for him.

Their course was almost due north, but the mountains were steepest in that direction, so they went out of their way to take the easier path, and moved the swifter for it. At dawn on the third day a black cloud hung before them, near the horizon that the mountains made, although the sky overhead was clear; and by afternoon they were breathing air that had an acrid edge to it. The messenger’s head had sunk between his shoulders, and he did not raise his eyes from the path after they first saw the black cloud.

Talat picked his way carefully in the other horse’s wake. He was better-mannered now than he had been when he was young and the king’s war-horse; then the idea of following any other horse would have made him fret and sulk. Aerin left it to him, for she looked only at the cloud. When the messenger turned off to the left, while the cloud still hung before them, she said, “Wait.”

The man paused and looked back. His expression was dazed, as if hearing the word “Wait” had called him back a long distance.

“The dragon lies ahead; it is his signature we see in the sky. I go that way.”

The man opened his mouth, and the dazed expression cleared a little; but he closed his mouth again without saying anything.

“Go to your people and give them the king’s message,” Aerin said gently. “I will come to you later, as I can—or not.”

The man nodded, but still he sat, turned in his saddle to look at the king’s daughter, till Aerin edged Talat past him and down the path the man had left, straight toward the cloud.

She made camp that night by a stream black with ash; to boil water for malak she had first to strain it, and strain it again, through a corner of her blanket, for this was not a contingency she had planned for. “Although I suppose I should have,” she said to Talat, hanging the soggy bedding over a frame of branches by the fire in the hope that it might dry before she had to wrap herself in it. She’d had to strain water for Talat too, for he’d refused to drink the ashy stuff in the running stream, snorting and pawing at it, and tossing an offended head with flattened ears.

The campfire was less comfort than it should have been; the light glared, and hurt the eyes, and it seemed to smoke more than a small campfire should, and the smoke hung low to the ground and would not drift away, but clung to the throat and lungs. Aerin rolled herself in the still damp blanket and tried to sleep; but her dreams woke her, for she heard the dragon breathing, and it seemed to her that the earth beneath her thudded with the dragon’s heartbeat. Talat was restless too, and turned his head often to stare into the darkness, and shivered his skin as if he felt ash flakes brushing him.

Dawn came, and Aerin lay wide awake, watching the light broaden, and still she felt the earth tremble with the dragon’s pulse; and the light did not grow as bright as it should, but remained grey as twilight. She rolled her blanket, and left it and her cooking gear in the lee of a rock; and she rubbed Talat all over with kenet, and herself as well, and donned her greasy leather suit; and then she rubbed herself and her horse with kenet all over again, and even Talat was subdued by the grey light and the trembling ground and did not protest this deviation from the proper schedule. Aerin rubbed her spears with kenet, and checked that the rough suede grips were looped firmly in place; and she checked the clasp of her swordbelt and the lie of the short knife she carried in her right boot. Lastly she pulled on her gauntlets; the fingers felt as stiff as daggers.

Maur was waiting for them. They had spent the night separated from the dragon by no more than a knob of rock a little taller than Talat; and it was in the direction the dragon lay that Talat had so often looked during the dark hours. Or perhaps Maur had approached them from where it had lain yesterday and it was the weight of its footsteps Aerin had felt as its heartbeat as she lay awake by the smoky camp fire.

Perhaps the dragon was not so large as a mountain; but the heavy black cloud that clung around it made it larger than a mountain, and when it first caught sight of them it lifted its wings, briefly, and the sun disappeared, and a wind like a storm wind howled around them. Then it bowed its long neck to the ground, its nose pointed toward them, and its half-lidded red eyes stared straight at them.

Talat stopped as they rounded the protective stone shoulder, and threw up his head. Aerin was ready to dismount hastily if Maur was too much even for Talat’s courage, for he had not had the warning she had had, and at least till the night before he must have believed that they went to fight a dragon like other dragons. But he stood, feet planted, and stared back at the dragon, and Maur’s red eyes opened a little wider, and it began to grin a bit, and smoke seeped out between its teeth, which were as long as Talat’s legs. The smoke crawled along the ground toward them, and curled around Talat’s white ankles, and Talat stamped and shivered but did not move, and the dragon grinned a little more.

They were in a small cup of valley; or what remained of the valley with the dragon in it was small. There had been trees in the valley, and on the steep slopes around them, but there were no trees now. It was hard to see anything. The smoke was rising around them, and the valley was blackened; when a low rocky hillock moved toward them, Aerin realized suddenly that it was some of the dragon’s tail. Dragons sometimes stunned their prey with their tails when they did not care to expend the energy that breathing fire required, or didn’t feel the prey was worth it.

She loosened a dragon spear in its place, and drove Talat forward with her legs. He was only a little slow to respond. She lifted the spear and hurled it with all her strength at the dragon’s nearer eye.

Maur raised its head with a snap, and the spear bounced harmlessly off the horny ridge beneath its eye; and Talat lurched out of the way of the striking tail. The dragon’s head snaked around as Talat evaded the tail, and Talat dodged again, and fire sang past Aerin’s ear, fire like nothing either Talat or Aerin had ever seen before, any more than this dragon was like any other dragon they had seen. The fire was nearly white, like lightning, and it smelted hard and metallic; it smelled like the desert at noon, it smelled like a forest fire; and the blast of air that sheathed it was hotter than any Damarian forge.