6
The sun rose small and bright white in a pale blue sky streaked with pink and yellow clouds. The three women sat in the grass against the rock beside the cave and stared out over the valley. The trees shivered in the wind and the grass rippled as though it were a single living creature just beginning to stretch and wake up. Asha looked over at Nadira, seeing her clearly for the first time. She wore the same padded armor and blue tunic as the men who had ridden out the day before to face the dragon, and she held the same turbaned helmet in her lap.
Her thin black hair had been chopped short and it fluttered in the breeze around the edges of her face. Her eyes were dark and lidded, her mouth rested in a slight frown, and she slouched back against the rock with her legs splayed out crookedly in front of her. But she had long lashes and full lips and a graceful neck, and somewhere beneath all the dirt and the scowling Asha thought she could almost see the pretty young girl that the woman had once been. Almost.
Asha looked sharply to the west. “It’s coming.”
Nadira stood and drew her saber. The blade shone like silver in the morning light and Asha saw the fine lines swirling across the face of the steel like rippling water or spider silk twisting in the wind. A distant roar brought her gaze back to the far ridge and a dark undulating shape climbed into view. The dragon’s head rose up, framed by the fiery circle of the rising sun. It hissed, and then it dove down the slope to cross the valley.
“You might want to hide now, little sister,” Nadira muttered. Priya nodded and vanished into the dark hole in the earth.
“Here.” Asha scooped up her fresh opium paste with a flat wooden stick and smeared it liberally down both sides of the sword. “All right. This should do. Just cut it as deep as you can, and then get away from it. If we’re lucky, the dragon will collapse in a minute or so.”
“A minute can be a very long time on the battlefield,” Nadira said. “I’d rather not learn what it means to be disemboweled by a dragon, since it would be a memory I’d have to live with for a very long time.”
Asha nodded slowly. “That’s a good point. So, uhm, be careful, and good luck.”
“When the beast is down, then what?” Nadira asked.
“Then I’ll kill it.”
“With what? You have some poison? Some other sort of weapon?”
Asha stared at the monster slithering across the valley toward them. “I have something.” And then she knelt down and crawled backward into the tunnel, backing into the darkness just far enough to be well out of sight, but still able to see some portion of the field outside.
Nadira stood in front of the cave, her sword hanging at her side. “Hey, healer. Are you afraid of dying?” she asked.
“Sometimes,” Asha said, her voice echoing in the narrow cave. “Are you?”
“Always. Every day of my life.”
“Even after two thousand years? But you know you can’t die. Why be afraid?”
Nadira looked back over her shoulder. There was a nervous grin on her lips that flickered and died, and her mouth shook. Her eyes shivered and she said, “Because if I ever do die, then I’ll have to answer for everything I’ve done, for the sins of two thousand years. Tell me something. Do you believe in hell? Torment in the afterlife? Punishment after death?”
“No.”
Nadira’s lip trembled. “I do.” She blinked and swallowed, and managed a smile. Then she cleared her throat very loudly and squared her shoulders to face the beast. “Now, let’s see if I can slay a dragon. That’s something I’ve never killed before.”
Asha stared at the woman’s back, wondering what she could possibly say in response. And she was still staring when the golden dragon erupted up the hillside and blotted out the sky. The beast roared as it crashed down onto its scarlet claws and it snapped its whiskered jaws at the armored woman, but it pulled back before it made contact. It hovered over her, sniffing and snorting.
Nadira crouched, waiting.
The dragon swiped a set of claws at her and she leapt aside. It swung again and she leapt back. A third time the claws slashed at the woman and she raised her sword to meet the blow. The impact sent her to her knees and Asha saw Nadira sinking into the soft earth as the dragon bore down on her, but the saber did not break and neither did the woman.
Nadira twisted and rolled aside, letting the red claws slide off her blade, sending the dragon stumbling a half step to the side. She straightened up and held her sword out to one side, and then her hand began to turn. She rolled her hand at the wrist, faster and faster, whirling her saber into a singing disc that flashed in the morning light.
The dragon stared down, its ruby eyes fixed on the pulsing light on the spinning blade. The beast leaned down to hiss at her and Nadira leapt up to slash across its snout. A thin spatter of red flew across the ground and Asha felt her heart race into her throat as the dragon snapped its head away, squealing like a frightened pig. But the squeal deepened into a bloody roar and the dragon turned on its side and swept the field with its tail. Nadira ran toward the coming wave of golden scales and leapt high, but the dragon sent a rippling wave through its spine and its tail curled up to catch the woman in midair. The crash of armor on scales shrieked through air.
Nadira flipped and slammed to the ground on her back, gasping for breath. Slowly, she rolled over onto her stomach and pushed herself up on her hands and knees, and then the dragon struck. Its massive head darted as quickly as a viper’s and snatched the woman up in its silver fangs as its own blood ran down its snout.
“No!” Asha scrambled out of the cave and waved her arms in the air. “Let her go! Let her go! I’m right here! Come and get me, you snake!”
The beast screamed, its jaws opening wide to let Nadira drop to the ground as the dragon lurched forward, its steaming maw driving straight at Asha.
The herbalist ran along the rock face and felt the earth shudder as the dragon crashed into the stone wall. She ran among the boulders, her entire body electrified with adrenaline and terror, her eyes casting around wildly for shelter, for anything that might shield her from the beast, but the rocks were all too small and too far apart. There was nothing but trampled grass and slick dirt where the dragon had thrashed its way down the hill the night before. Asha bolted across the slope, looking for something, anything, that could save her.
The dragon leapt after her and slammed into the ground just behind her, sending a shockwave through the earth that hurled her off her feet. Asha slipped and tumbled head over heels, rolling and rolling down the steep hillside out of control, her arms wrapped around her head as the world whirled round and round.
Her feet struck a rock and she curling into a ball, one hand clutching her ankle just as her back struck a mound of earth and her body abruptly stopped moving. Asha lay on the ground, shivering. Her lungs would barely let her inhale and her heart was pounding so hard and fast that she couldn’t tell one beat from the next.
She opened her eyes and the world spun viciously to the left, and she nearly vomited. But she pushed herself up, blinking to clear her mind and gasping for air. She turned her head toward the hillside and saw a blur of movement, a cascade of green and brown and gray and gold coming toward her.
With painful slowness and deliberation, she crawled forward over the mound of earth that had caught her and tumbled down a small incline onto some tall dew-soaked grass just as another deep reverberation shook the earth under her and the clatter of falling stones filled the air. Asha rolled over and looked at the small landslide just beyond her feet.
The dragon’s bloody snout lay just beside her own muddy shoe. The rest of the creature lay somewhere behind the head, over the earthen mound and out of sight. It was staring at her with one huge ruby eye, but its eye did not follow her as she stood up. It did not focus on her as she drew the small golden needle from her bag, which had tangled around her neck and nearly choked her as she fell.
And the eye did not react when she plunged the needle straight into the bloody wound on the dragon’s nose.
