Dragon's Egg Read Online Free PDF Page B

Da bellowed. “Help mewith him, let’s get him to a bed.” Peder and Poll, the stable boys, ran forward, along with a few of the guests. Mella retreated into the kitchen as, with Roger leading the way, they carried Damien inside and up the stairs. His eyes were closed; blood dripped from his forehead. There was blood elsewhere, as well. Too much of it. He had on a leather coat with metal plates sewn into its length; the steel had been blackened as if with fire, and some of the plates were torn. Mella could too easily imagine the claws and teeth that could rip steel as though it were the thinnest, finest linen.
    Roger, white faced, ran down the stairs again and through the common room out into the yard. Mella was left alone in the kitchen. It was strangely quiet.
    I will return, and with more of my kind.
    The dragon must think she’d broken her word and sent Damien to kill it. She had to prove that it wasn’t so. If there were the slightest chance that the dragon had not left yet…
    Her gloves protecting her hands, she burrowed through the coals in the hearth to snatch up the egg. A crowd was gathering in the Inn’s yard, but no one noticed Mella as she ran. Bits of conversation trailed after her.
    â€œIt could not have been a dragon.”
    â€œIndeed it was, looks like it bit his leg clean off—”
    â€œâ€”dying now—”
    â€œBut did he kill it?”
    â€œWhere is it?”
    That was the question indeed, Mella thought, as she rounded the corner of the stable and ran straight into Roger.

Chapter Five
    M ella didn’t fall down, but she staggered back. Instinctively she hugged the egg close to her body to protect it. Roger, knocked against the stable wall, blinked at her. He had a saddlebag in one hand; he must have been sent to fetch something for Damien.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” He stared at her. “Where are you taking that—that thing? Wait!”
    No time, no time, Mella thought, and she dashed around him. He grabbed at her sleeve but missed.
    â€œThere’s a dragon out there! A true one! Wait!”
    Mella ran her fastest. The egg, clutched close to her stomach, was warm enough to fight the icy fear that seemed to seep out from her heart. Toolate. She would be too late. And it would not only be Damien who died. The Inn, the village, everyone she knew…
    Her heart was hammering against her ribs, and her breath was coming in huge, loud gasps by the time she left the main road for the side path. Her braid snagged on a branch, but she jerked it loose without looking back and kept going. Up the bank, over the stream to the cave, just as she had twice already that morning…
    No dragon.
    But there was a wide swath beaten through the undergrowth. A dead bush still smoldered. Black cinders crunched under Mella’s feet. With difficulty, holding the egg in one hand, she climbed over the trunk of a tree torn up from the earth, clods of soft dirt still clinging to its roots. Sliding awkwardly down the other side, she saw the dragon.
    He lay in a little clearing, his scales now dull and gray. The long neck snaked along the ground, the head half hidden in the grass. A spear was buried a foot deep in the breast.
    Mella stood on the edge of the clearing. She should have been glad. The dragon-slayer had succeeded. The beast that had threatened her and her family was dead.
    Dead like Gran. Dead like Lady.
    Blinking back tears, Mella made her way across the grass and knelt by the dragon’s head. Her hair had come loose from its braid and tumbled down around her face. Why should she feel grief? He had been so…alive, that was all. Beautiful, with those gray green scales and eyes like sunlight on the surface of a deep, dark well. Terrifying, but beautiful. And she had made him a promise.
    â€œI brought your egg,” she said aloud. “I didn’t tell him where to find you. I kept my word.”
    One of the dragon’s eyelids