Rogue Dragon Read Online Free PDF Page B

fall over the Master Huntsman’s face. “P’raps so, your High,” he muttered. Young Aëlorix looked at him, suddenly somber. Then someone started a song, and, one by one, everyone joined in.
The dragon I met in the morning,
    I followed him all the day.
    I'd waited since my borning,
    My dragon for to slay.
    “Getting there,” someone said. “There’s the island—”
The musics they grew tired.
    Their horns they sounded hoarse.
    But I with zeal was fired
    As I paced my dragon’s course.
    The archers fired a volley,
    My dragon for to turn.
    When I saw him turn in folly,
    My heart with joy did burn.
    It was hardly great music or good poetry, Jon-Joras thought, wryly. In fact, it was rather dreadful. But it had a swing and a beat to it. The Aëlorix cadet was singing lustily, beating his fists on his naked knees.
My dragon rushed on towards me.
    His talons ripped the air.
    My bosom swelled with wonder
    To see this sight so rare.
    My dragon roared like thunder,
    His mighty teeth all bare.
    My life cannot afford me
    More joy than I had there.
    I sighted on his crux-mark,
    His vital part to pierce—
    The rest of the words were lost to Jon-Joras in the babble of voices as the flyer put down in a clearing in the woods, not a great distance from the river. A small group of men was waiting for them; one of them, a tall stalwart fellow in his thirties, dressed in fine-spun, proved to be the tenant—the others were his sub-tenants. By his manner of speech he might almost have been a Gentleman himself, and, indeed, Jon-Joras had learned from the casual comments of the company, that he was the natural son of one.
    The bannermen were in the acts of fastening the colored wefts to the ends of their long poles when the low, rather mournful cry broke upon their ears. All heads went up, turned this way and that. They sniffed the wind like animals. “Not too far off,” Thuemorix muttered. “None too far off…”
    Roedeskant quickly got things in order; while he was doing so, Thuemorix repeated the instructions he had given Jon-Joras in the flyer. “Don’t fire until you’re told to,” he concluded, “if you are told to. And aim only at the crux of the X, remember that. If you hit it, you pierce the only nerve-ganglion that counts. Otherwise you can spend the rest of your life shooting into him, if he’d let you—Holy Father! Already!”
    He shouted. Lights glinted onto faceted eyes. Thuemorix shouted, Roedeskant flashed his arms, cymbals sounded and shawms blared. The dragon came hurtling out of the woods. The bannermen danced and waved to draw him to the right. He ignored them. Cymbals clashed, arrows flew. He ignored them. Bannermen and archers closed in towards him, running. The dragon, running swiftly, too, ignored them. He reared up upon his hind legs and the archers filled the hide of his belly with their barbs and this time he did not ignore them.
    Pivoting upon one great jointed column of a leg, he came pounding down upon the archers. “Oh, blood!” someone cried. “A rogue! A rogue! Rogue dragon!”
    The bannermen flew like deer, teasing their bright flags under his very snout. He roared. They downed their poles and fell, hidden, to the grass. The dragon did not stop, came charging on. Screams and turmoil in the grass.
    Blood upon the great clawed feet of the dragon.
    “Shoot free, shoot free!” Roedeskant shouted. “Any with a sight— shoot free!”
    Jon-Joras saw three men raise their guns, fire almost together. The dragon came on, the dragon came on, two more shots, then three, then four, the dragon came on. The archers held their ranks, firing their useless shafts. Not one turned to run. And the dragon, hissing, screaming, flanks and chest and sides and stomach bristling with arrows, bleeding, eyes flashing dreadful beauty, the dragon stooped upon the archers. His talons swept to right and left, his head darted down, came up, jaws grinding, head tossing through the reddened air.
    The son of Aëlorix fired