It was a damn good thing they didn't breathe fire. Teeth and claws and muscles were bad enough.
He gritted his teeth and hauled himself upright against the sheltering rocks, swaying, trying to sort out the scene. It was a bloody mess, in all senses of the word: dragon blood and human blood and British swearing splashed all over the shattered forest trail.
Brian stared at a gash through his pants and into the meat beneath, twice as long as his finger and slowly flowing red. A dragon claw had just touched him lightly. He swung his right arm and winced when it refused to rise above his shoulder, either way. He spat, saw blood mixed with the dirt he cleared from his mouth, and hoped it came from a cut lip instead of from his lungs. At this point, he couldn't tell.
First priority: look for weapons. His kukri glittered in the sun, half-buried by leaves and dirt. He hobbled over to it and knelt down, one leg stiff to the side, rather than trying to bend over. The knife didn't seem damaged. Only thing that wasn't.
The dragon spasmed again, tail thrashing and rolling a boulder as big as a Volkswagen across the trail. He wondered if it had a supplemental brain to work the hindquarters, like some dinosaurs were thought to have. He'd better stay well clear of the carcass, anyway.
Next thing was, find David. The freeze-frame picture of an archer right underneath the dragon's jaw stuck in his mind.
Brian ran the videotape back in his brain, coordinating the trees that still stood among the ruins. The man had stood there, was knocked flying in that direction. Whatever was left of him should be under those fallen branches.
The kukri made a decent machete, lopping off the thinner limbs even with Brian's awkward, half-strength swings. He moved carefully, clearing and stacking in jerky spurts like a damaged robot and then resting whenever his head threatened to spin off and fall into the mess. The fraction of Brian's brain that still worked, kept nagging him against shifting the balance of the wreckage, against cutting flesh instead of wood.
Boot. Blue jeans. A broken bow, fiberglass, recurved, still clenched in a pale hand. Bloody shirt, both bright red human blood and the darker hematite of a dragon's. David.
David Dragon-Slayer.
He still lived. Brian ran practiced fingers over his head, prodding bruises and finding solid undamaged bone. The pulse felt strong, breathing regular. He pried back eyelids, found pupils dilated but matching.
Brian cut away more branches. He added to the list: dislocated elbow, cuts, scrapes, bruises. Not bad for a rookie, to use the Yank phrase. A quick jerk and the elbow slipped back into joint. It was best to do it while the poor sod was already out and save him the pain.
He'd have to ask about other damage when the kid woke up. The Summer Country didn't provide portable x-ray machines. Just hands and eyes and ears, the original diagnostic tools. Brian stood up, joint by aching joint, and spotted the familiar worn cloth of his backpack lying in the trail. It held water and bandages.
Cutting his pants away from the gash in his leg was hard. Wrapping gauze pad and Ace bandage around it was hard. Everything was hard with fingers that fumbled and shook, with joints that refused to work in the proper fashion, with muscles drained of glycogen and ATP and whatever other bloody chemicals the bloody scientists had decreed necessary for coordinated bloody movement.
When he limped back to David, the boy's eyes were open. He stared up at Brian and slowly blinked, then shook his head.
"I ran."
"You came back."
"I'm a coward."
"You're a brave man. Running away makes sense. Turning around and coming back is harder than staying to fight in the first place. Now shut up and see if everything still works. Try things gently, one piece at a time."
A broken branch stabbed the earth right next to David's shoulder and another poked the space between his thighs. Together, they propped up a limb thicker than a man's waist. Chance ruled again. Chance dropped the limb there and chance spared David from being skewered, and chance probably guided his arrows in the first place, both the shaft in the center of the dragon's eye and the later one that had missed Brian by a hand's span.
David slowly dragged himself out from under the brush-pile. He wiggled fingers and toes and sat up groggily. He groped around his right kneecap and winced. Brian helped him to his feet, and they both found their way to the comforting support of a tree-trunk.
David stared at the dragon, the monster hulk still twitching fitfully as different parts of it learned that they were dead. To Brian's weary eye, it looked as if the damned thing stretched clear over the horizon.
"Jesus Christ," David whispered.
"Himself and all the saints, as well. You killed it."
"Should I eat its heart or something?"
"If you want to spend the rest of the day puking, go ahead and try. This isn't Wagner, or some stupid fairy-tale. Dragon-flesh will make you sick."
They leaned against each other and the tree, with about enough strength left to ruffle a kitten's fur. Brian's vision blurred for an instant, narrowing to a tunnel before clearing, and he wondered vaguely how they were going to rescue Maureen and Jo if they couldn't even walk.
"Such a touching scene."
Brian jerked his head around at the words. Black spots swam across his sight at the sudden move.
It was Sean. Behind him stood the squat ogre shape of Dougal. Brian felt his hand turn numb, and the kukri thumped to the ground. His muscles froze with
