Chapter 6: Water Fire
SMACKING HIM ABOUT THE earholes with her bow to gain his attention, Yarimda yelled, “It’s too shallow for a dive! Pull up!”
Shallow? Curse it! His weak eyes were no good in situations like this.
Flaring his wings at the last second and adjusting toward where he saw a splodge of tan next to a darker splodge beneath the bright turquoise waters, Dragon landed clumsily, throwing up great white plumes of spray to either side. Poking his muzzle beneath the surface, he was shocked to find everything … clear. Crystal clear, from the rocky bottom to the school of silvery fish mobbing the Princesses, who were trying to swim to the surface while hampered by the weight of their clothing and armour.
The coverage must have saved them, because he saw crimson trailing like a ribbon from Inzashu’s shoulder. The fish loved that, but so far they could only tear at her armour. Instinctively, he pursed his lips and breathed forth his fire. Close, but not directly at them.
In fact, twizzling his neck, he drew a neat circle around their bodies. The silvery fish flitted away.
Azania hung limp in her sister’s arms!
Powering forward with wings and webbed paws pumping, he scooped them up and then breached again. Paddle for safety. He was not sure how to launch himself out of water; now was not the moment to experiment, despite the multiple pinpricks of pain from the fish nibbling at his wounds. They were only a hundred Dragon paces from the northern shore.
“Good work, Dragon!” Yarimda yelled.
Yardi smacked a fish off her grandmother’s arm. “Get off!”
Powering through the water, he surged up over several boulders and then up the bank, beginning to shake himself before realising that ninety-four year-old elders probably would not appreciate such a violent jolting. Majestic Dragon-battling grand-dams!
Gnarr! he approved. Good work, my Riders!
“What’s that?” Yardi asked as he placed the pair of Princesses upon a soft sandbank. Warm, creamy sand. Lovely. Especially since it came without carnivorous fish.
“I said, excellent work.”
Lifting her sister, Inzashu smacked her several times between the shoulders. With a choking cough, half of the river came flooding out. She gasped, heaved a ragged breath and bent over, hacking away. Azania was waterlogged but alive, which was the important part. All alive – they had beaten the odds!
Yardi and Yarimda unbuckled meantime.
The older woman hobbled around to his side, drawing her dagger. “Persistent, aren’t they?” she snorted, spearing at fish which were still stuck inside his wounds, trying to eat their way deeper.
Great. As holey as a moth-eaten carpet.
Yardi rushed around to his other flank to help out there. At the same time, Dragon glanced about for the Terror Clan Dragons. One lay slumped upon the far side of the river, his neck twisted at an impossible angle. Two had fallen into the river; both were surrounded by a boiling mass of white, which he belatedly realised was the toothy fish fighting one another to get at the feast. One was dead, but the other, the wing-bitten Dragon, was being eaten alive.
BWAA-HAA-HARRR!! he thundered over the river.
Worm! shrieked the stricken Dragon, thrashing around with his one working wing. The other had already been eaten away to the bone. Help me – we’ll defeat – aiee! Cowardly worm, don’t just … stand there!
The sight turned his stomach.
Call me Dragon! he thundered, spinning upon the sand to vent his spleen upon the unfortunate traitor. It’s the last thing you’ll ever do!
“Dragon!” Azania gasped.
“What?”
“You knocked Yarimda over – and, aren’t you going to go help him?”
“That cold-hearted coward? Help? What a vile, unthinkable idea. He’s getting the death he so richly deserves, attacking us in a trio. That, Princess –” he stabbed a talon toward the wailing, writhing Dragon “– that is called justice.”
Inzashu wept.
He stooped over the younger girl, indignant. “Come now, Princess. Does that beast not deserve the most horrible fate imaginable?”
“Aye, but that – that … oh, Dragon! Listen to him.”
It dawned upon him, from her reaction and the shadows in Azania’s eyes, that Humans did not prize suffering the same way Dragons did. What thrilled him – the sounds of a cowardly, defeated creature meeting a most befitting end – distressed his companions far beyond what he could bear to inflict. How had he never seen it this way before?
Was there only one path to honour? No.
With a slow nod, he said, “For your sakes, I shall end him.”
Rising, he coiled his legs and launched out over the waters, spreading his wings in a quick glide. In a moment, he hovered above the other Dragon, wondering if he could bring himself to act against everything he had been taught, what he had imbibed from his sire, dam and Clan – traditions and values which bound him so deeply, he realised. Was he that creature? That old Blitz the Devastator? Or could he be something new?
Please – PLEASE! the green begged shamefully.
It was not about right or wrong, so much as learning to value differences.
To kill now was disgraceful, but who else would ever know? If he cared so much for what other Dragons believed, why had he ever chosen to bear a black Princess upon his back and to declare her his Dragon Rider? Could he ever become himself if he followed their hidebound thinking?
A decision clarified in his mind. He breathed, May your soul find rest, brother.
The Dragon’s agonised eyes registered disbelief and … relief.
Pursing his lips, he directed a stream of white-hot fire down upon him, raising enormous clouds of boiling water and smoke, until the thrashing stopped. The remains of the body drifted away on the current. Back came the fish to finish the feast, those not already fried in the scalding water.
