taken — or perhaps it could tell Ethsharitic from the northern tongue. Valder had no idea what commands a northern dragon might obey; he had hoped tone alone would serve.
A fifteen-footer would be certain death for an unarmed man and more than a match for most fully equipped soldiers. Valder, however, reminded himself that he had a magic sword. He drew Wirikidor.
The sword looked and felt exactly as it always had. He hooked it on a tree branch near his side and tried to take his hand from the hilt.
The hilt adhered to his palm and would not come free. That meant that the sword did still have magic in it; this was more evidence for his one-foe-per-drawing theory.
Well, he told himself, a dragon is just one foe.
As he gripped the sword in his right hand, he suddenly realized that, surprised and still sleepy as he had been, he had done something very stupid. He should have used the crossbow first; a few well-placed quarrels might have sent the dragon in search of easier prey. He doubted that he would be able, while crouched in a treetop holding a sword, to cock, load, aim, and fire the crossbow.
He could, he thought, put the sword on his forehead or someplace while he loaded the bow — but even then, cocking it while wedged in a tree would not be easy, and he did have the sword ready here in his hand. A crossbow might seem more trustworthy than the mysterious enchantment on his blade, but he felt his nerve going as it was; better to attack while his courage held, with the weapon at hand. With that thought and no warning, he dove for the dragon’s throat, plummeting from his perch.
The dragon saw him coming and reared back, startled. Valder’s dive missed it entirely, and he landed on the forest floor. He managed to catch himself, turning his fall into a roll, so that he was not injured and was able to scramble up before the dragon could react.
The fall had knocked some of the wind out of him, however, and he was less than ideally steady on his feet. He could not organize his limbs and body sufficiently to attack, but instead held Wirikidor out before him, as if it were a magic talisman that would ward off the monster.
He had, in fact, hoped that the sword was exactly that, that it would defend him against the dragon of its own volition. His hopes were dashed. The dragon did not retreat, and Wirikidor did nothing in his defense. It wobbled in his unsteady hand as any other sword might, with no sign of the supernatural independence of movement it had displayed against two human foes.
Upon regaining its composure, the dragon stared at him for a moment, its long, arched neck bringing its golden eyes and needle-sharp fangs mere inches beyond Wirikidor’s blade. Valder stared back, the realization sinking in that Wirikidor was not going to save him by itself. He slashed at the dragon, trying desperately to put some strength behind the blow.
Moving with incredible speed, the monster pulled its head back out of the blow’s path, then struck at the blade with the full might of one of its huge foreclaws, obviously expecting to knock the sword out of Valder’s hand.
Ordinarily, the dragon’s blow would have done exactly that. This sword, however, was no ordinary one. This was Wirikidor. It was attached quite irremovably to Valder’s hand by its magic. That meant that when struck by the dragon’s irresistible blow it went flying off to one side, just as the dragon had intended — but that Valder’s hand went with it, dragging the rest of him along. That was not at all what the dragon had had in mind; it had knocked its dinner well out of its own reach.
Valder realized what had happened in time to turn his unexpected sideways lunge into a roll that carried him still further away. When he was in control of his actions again, he scrambled to his feet and wasted no time in dashing away from the dragon, aiming for the thickest woods, where, with any luck, the beast would not fit between the trees. He did not have much of a lead, but the monster had expected him to stand and fight, not to flee, so that it did not immediately pursue him.
Valder did not worry about details, but simply ran, hoping that the dragon would not follow, or would tire of the chase. He was prepared to turn at bay if necessary; since dragons were never noted for their stealth, he was sure he would be able to tell from the sound of the beast’s approach when the time had come to do so.
As it happened, it was several seconds, almost a full minute, before he heard the dragon crashing through the trees behind him. That gave him a significant head start. Furthermore, the underbrush slowed the monster far more than it slowed the man. Valder was able to maintain a diminishing lead for quite some distance, though he knew that the dragon’s speed was much greater than his own. As he ran, he prayed that the dragon would lose interest, that a hiding place would present itself, or that some other miracle would save him, since his damnable magic sword would not.
Wirikidor flapped about in his hand. He did not need to worry about dropping it, but only about keeping it from becoming entangled in something and slowing or stopping his headlong flight.
The ground was uneven, and Valder found himself running up a sun-dappled hillside. The upgrade slowed him somewhat; he imagined he could feel the dragon drawing nearer, though he told himself that the sounds of its advance were not growing louder. Yet.
Then he reached the hilltop and abruptly ran out of forest. He was charging down into a virtually treeless river valley, and directly ahead of him was a camp. He knew that it had to be a northern outpost of some sort, but the hissing of the dragon behind him convinced him not to stop or swerve. Instead he ran straight toward the half- dozen large gray tents and the handful of black-clad people gathered around the remains of the previous night’s cookfires.
He heard someone call an alarm, but not in time for anyone to block his path before he reached the first tent. He dodged around its far side, then turned and looked back.
The dragon had been charging after him, but now it slowed as it saw the tents and the people standing among them. Valder could guess what it was thinking. Why pursue one difficult meal when here were a dozen that weren’t running?
Indeed, the northerners were not running; instead soldiers were ducking into their tents after weapons, and the women — there were four or five women whom Valder took to be officers’ wives or perhaps camp followers, since they were not wearing the black-and-gray northern uniforms — were clustering behind a smoldering firepit.
The dragon approached slowly, as if it hoped to avoid frightening away its prey, while northern soldiers began to appear with cocked and loaded crossbows. An officer barked a command, and quarrels flew.
Valder decided not to wait around to see the battle’s outcome. So far the northerners had ignored him; he guessed that most had not even seen him, and others might not have realized he was an Ethsharite, despite his breastplate and green kilt. His luck could not last, however, once the dragon had been dealt with; he knew that. He began discreetly trotting past the tents, down toward the riverbank. He wished the sword were not naked in his hand, as it made him more conspicuous, but he could not spare the time to devise a means of hiding it.
Most of the first volley rattled off the dragon’s scales, but bolts struck home in its mouth and one eye. Valder heard it scream and glanced back to see it fleeing back up the hillside. A few soldiers, those who were not reloading their crossbows, were pursuing it, apparently not willing to leave a wounded dragon roaming the countryside; they were hindered by the slope and the tall grass that covered it. Valder had not even noticed that the grass was there when he had come down the hillside; he had never been very observant when fleeing in terror.
Valder knew he would not have followed a wounded dragon, under any circumstances; he would have been satisfied with driving it off. He was not about to complain, however, as every man who pursued the dragon meant one fewer available to pursue him.
He stumbled down the riverbank and into the water. The stream was twenty yards across, but muddy and slow-moving; he hoped it was shallow enough to wade. He was not eager to try and teach himself to swim while carrying a sword and a crossbow and wearing a breastplate.
The bottom was soft mud; his feet sank in, so that the water reached his hips rather than his knees. He could feel small slimy things brushing against his bare feet and legs as he slogged forward. He concentrated on making his way out into the stream and ignored the shouting, hissing, and other noises from the camp. He held Wirikidor before him, up out of the water; annoying as its behavior could be, the enchanted sword was still a valuable weapon, and he preferred not to strain its resistance to rust.
He felt his way forward for half a dozen paces, then stopped; the bottom was dropping off suddenly beneath his feet. He stepped back, then worked his way a few yards upstream before trying again.
