'You men stay here,' Ivor instructed the others. 'Shout if you see anything.'
He gestured at Filar and Maddock, and the three of them left the relative safety of the clearing for the unknown dangers of the brush.
'They're coming!' whispered Zyx with glee.
He was rather proud of his shrill, piping cry, fancying that it sounded a great deal like the bone-chilling call of the Uluu Thalongh. Since neither he nor Cirro had ever heard the bone-chilling call of the Uluu Thalongh, there was no one to disagree with him.
'How close are they?' Cirro wanted to know.
The mist dragon was covered from horn to claw in a thick layer of mud, and was therefore quite unable to see. He had been forced to rely on Zyx's convoluted directions to find the clearing, and considered it nothing shy of a miracle that he had arrived unscathed. Even more impressive, most of the stray branches Zyx had affixed to his body had survived the journey. So far, things were going smoothly.
'They're about a furlong away,' Zyx estimated. 'That gives you just enough time to get ready. Now remember: think tree.'
'Tree,' repeated Cirro without much enthusiasm. He drew himself up on his hind legs, propping himself with his tail for additional balance. He felt utterly ridiculous.
Zyx did not help matters, clucking his tongue disapprovingly. 'No, no! Your forelegs need to come up. Up! Like branches. There you are.'
Cirro had a sudden, pained vision of how he must appear. 'If you breathe a word of this to anyone, faerie dragon, I'll swallow you whole.'
'Dear Cirro, you're such a joker. Now be quiet. They're almost here. You remember what to do?'
Ivor expected their mysterious quarry to be camouflaged, but he couldn't have guessed how well. If Filar hadn't shouted, he would have walked right past it: an enormous tree, oddly misshapen by strange, grotesque bulges. The tree's appearance was alarming enough, but what caused Filar to cry out-and Ivor to leap back with a curse-was the sudden movement of a branch.
For a brief moment Ivor thought himself imagining things, but no-the branch was definitely reaching for him. Worse, the limb ended in what appeared to be a set of long, sharp teeth. Ivor staggered back in shock, his mind reeling.
All of that was strange enough, but what followed was stranger still. The tree shifted its immense bulk, and there came a crashing sound. Everyone-including the monstrous tree-looked around in confusion. Another crash, and the source of the sound became clear: the smaller branches of the tree were falling off. One by one they tore away from the trunk, plummeting to the ground far below. Filar had to leap back to avoid the leafy bombardment.
Faced with the sudden defection of its appendages, the monster seemed unsure of what to do. It withdrew a few paces, then hovered uncertainly, allowing the men to get a better look at it. Bereft of its treelike appearance, it was little more than an enormous column of mud. But it was a column of mud with eyes, teeth, and claws.
Ivor felt the blood drain from his face as he realized what he was looking at.
'It's…'he faltered.
'What?' Maddock prompted, his voice barely above a whisper. 'It's a mudman!'
The pronouncement was met with general consternation. 'But there's no such thing as a mudman!' Filar whimpered. 'No?' Ivor gestured wildly with his axe. 'What do you call that, then?'
Faced with an incontrovertible argument, Filar conceded the point. As for the mudman, it appeared to be reconsidering its options, for it had drawn back even farther and was engaged in a heated argument with a nearby branch. The creature was obviously quite mad.
'We'll have to kill it,' Ivor said in a low voice. 'We'll be sending for our families soon, and I'll not have a mudman around my boys.'
'Too right,' growled Maddock.
Their resolve hardened, the men advanced toward the inattentive creature. They would catch it unawares, and it would all be over before the mudman even knew what hit it.
By the time Zyx saw the weapon, it was already too late. The blade caught Cirro in the left haunch, biting easily through the dried mud. The mist dragon howled and wheeled around, his tail very nearly decapitating a large man with an axe. A third man, also with an axe, took a swing at Cirro's foreleg.
'No!' Zyx shrieked, 'Stop!'
He was seized with terror. Not for Cirro-the mist dragon was quite capable of scalding the humans to the bone. But that was precisely the problem.
'Cirro, please!' begged the tender-hearted faerie dragon. 'Don't hurt them! Oh, this won't do at all!' He flitted to and fro aike a confused bumblebee, wringing his forefeet in distress. 'Think, Zyx, think!'
Below, Cirro unfurled a wing, knocking all three humans to the ground.
'Get them away from me, Zyx!' he snarled. 'I'll do what I must!'
To demonstrate the point, the mist dragon slammed his tail into the ground, leaving a deep trough.
This display of strength should have sent any creature into headlong retreat-any sensible creature, that is. But the humans remained stubbornly in place, trading near-misses with the mud-caked dragon. One man hacked continually at Cirro's legs, his pitiful blade finding the occasional tender spot. Another took opportunistic swings witb his axe, catching the dragon on the move and thus adding force to his blows.
Cirro kept them at bay as best he could, blowing harmless clouds of steam to obscure their view. But eventually he would lose patience, and when that happened, the steam would become deadly.
There was only one thing to do. Zyx threw himself heroically into the path of the nearest human, preparing to blast the man's face with his bliss-inducing breath. But the faerie dragon's inexperience with humans proved costly, for the graceless creatures were quicker than they appeared. There was a blur of motion, and everything went dark. Zyx was caught.
'Unhand me, you filthy beast!' The tiny creature scowled defiantly at the three faces looming above, its lower jaw jutting forth in an almost comical gesture of bravado.
'What's this now?' Maddock muttered.
Even as he asked the question, he cast another wary glance at the mudman. The monster had withdrawn the moment its ally was captured, but it remained only a few paces away, watchful.
'It's a flying lizard,' Ivor declared.
His pronouncement provoked an indignant squeak from the captive.
'Lizard indeed!' said the creature. 'I happen to be a faerie dragon, and I'll have you know that it's very bad luck to catch one!'
'Eh?' Ivor blinked. 'Faerie dragon?'
At that, Filar let out a loud, expressive groan.
When his companions regarded him with bemused expressions, he explained, 'I've heard of them, right enough. My brother up on the coast had a run-in with one last spring. Caused him no end of headache. They spend all day playing practical jokes on whatever poor souls live nearby. Plague a man till he's mad, they will.' He shook his head ruefully. 'If we live here, we'll never be rid of the little vermin!'
'I say!' objected the diminutive dragon. 'Is that kind of language really necessary?'
Ivor ignored it. He hoisted his hand in Filar's direction and asked, 'You really think this thing is a faerie dragon?'
Filar shrugged. 'It's a talking lizard with wings. What else would it be?'
'Think it'll bother us?'
'Reckon so. It's in its nature.'
Ivor cursed violently. 'Just our luck, isn't it? Bet there isn't another one of these things for a thousand leagues!' He looked over the little pest in disgust, then opened his hand and shook it free. 'Be gone with ye, then,' he growled.
The dragon lingered a moment as though it would speak, but wisely thought better of it. Its tiny form darted through the trees and disappeared.
'You're just letting it go? ' Maddock cried. He had obviously envisioned a more permanent solution.
With a gesture, Ivor reminded him of the presence of the mudman. 'It's a big forest,' he said, 'and this place
