Dragon Thief (7 page)

The way she lay plastered against a towering sandstone boulder at the edge of the lake, however–the only boulder in sight–brought a sympathetic chuckle to his lips. Inelegant. Should he dare that word to her face? He’d probably lose a limb.

In a broad Telstroy Island accent, Kal murmured, “Y’know, old girl, one day we’ll laugh about that flight. You did good. Real good.”

With that, he untied their travel packs and tossed them down to a dry spot on a nearby grassy bank. Slipping down Tazi’s flank to a waist-deep landing in the rich, loamy muck, Kal loosened the saddle girth. After a dint of heaving and a welter of good-natured insults, he managed to draw the long strap that fastened around her mighty chest, out from beneath her body. Obeying the infallible instincts of a lifelong offender, he cast about for any spectators, before secreting their valuables and his Dragon Rider armour beneath a bed of rotten leaves in a hollow tree trunk. He retained a quintet of matched rubies for himself. Well, for supplies. Some instincts being nobler than others.

A low hump of wooded terrain hid the town from his view, but Kal estimated they were less than half a mile from the outer defensive wall. At the woodland’s edge, a melodious tinkling drew a brook to his notice. Ah. Before he scoured the town for likely victims–er, procured supplies–he should clean up and wash his clothing. No point in sneaking about if people could smell him coming from the next village.

He hurt. Everywhere.

Kal was snoozing blissfully in the sultry late afternoon sun, an hour later, when a breath of scorching air wafted across his bare torso.

“Where’s my food?” rumbled the Dragoness.

“Not me!” he yelped.

“Noooo … indeed not,” drawled Tazi, looking him over with an expression that made Kal uncertain whether she viewed him as meat upon a rack of bones, or harboured appetites of a less carnivorous nature.

“Talk about saving libidinous intentions for your Human form!” he protested, feeling his ears heat up to a fine scarlet. “Dragoness–look, you gave me the shivers. What do you need? Wait here while I raid the town on your behalf.”

“You shall go shopping like a gentleman.”

“Did you just swear at me?” Kal wagged his finger beneath her nose. “Naughty, naughty. Meat, I assume?”

“Beer,” said Tazi. “The thickest, most energy-rich beer you can find. Followed by a substantial course of meat.”

“How much beer, exactly?”

Her eye brightened as Kal returned the favour of looking her over. “A keg. No, a barrel.”

“A whole barrel of beer? Won’t you get drunk?”

“Dragons metabolise nutrients far faster and more efficiently than Humans, Kal. I’ll be fine. Beer is the quickest way to help me recover. It’s delicious, nutritious and rehydrating.”

Metabolise? Kal had never heard that word before. It had to be a Dragonish scientific term, he decided, mulling over her request. Beer? Dragons appreciated beer? Immediately, his dithering provoked a low growl of discontent from Tazithiel.

“Kal, you’ve done so much …” She gulped. What were those emotions coursing across her eyes? Melancholy? Fear? “I need food, fast. May I press you?”

“Consider me oppressed,” he said, and bit his lip.

“Consider my body depressed, but the rest of me, uplifted.” A handful of fangs flashed in a weak smile. “Kal, you dirty old thief. You stole our lives back.”

Kal paused in the act of pulling on his trousers. “I shall prize your accolade forever. And later, I shall indeed prove in copious detail, when you find that poor girl your Dragoness has mislaid somewhere between your roost and the Southern Archipelago … jumping Jeradians!” He dodged a playful curl of flame she fired at his knees. “On my way, post haste!”

T
HE CARTER PAUSED
to mop his forehead. “Where did you say you left your girlfriend, stranger?”

“My girl-fiend? Down there,” Kal waved expansively.

The carter grunted, clearly missing Kal’s excellent pun by the width of an Island. “I see no-one.”

“She’s hard to miss. Let me take it from here.”

“An entire barrel of beer?” The man squinted around the picturesque lake, which reflected the surrounding, rolling wooded hills common to the Archipelago’s northern reaches.

“My business is my business,” Kal pointed out, in as friendly a tone as the business end of a petulant wasp. “You’ve been paid. Handsomely.”

“I don’t have to like it, stranger.”

How to get rid of this fool? And where did one hide a svelte yet multi-tonne Dragoness who had to stand almost three times his height at the shoulder? Finally, the carter and his two burly assistants, clearly of greater brawn and lesser intelligence than the average barn door, hefted the oaken barrel to the rear of the cart, tipped it over with a flurry of grunts and curses, and rolled it down a plank to the ground. Kal had to execute a hasty dance-step to keep his boot from being crushed.

“All downhill from here, stranger,” said the carter. A meaty, gloved hand slapped his back so hard, Kal almost pitched over the barrel. “Three hundred tankards of my best black lightning. Go wild. Much as you can out here, anyways.”

Mocking laughter stung his ears as Kal set his back to the barrel and heaved it downslope, angrily trying to shut them out; to calculate what damage a barrel of potent root beer might wreak upon Tazithiel’s physiology. If he was nine sackweight–and there were one hundred sackweight to the old-fashioned Fra’aniorian tonne–how heavy was she in comparison? A hundred times heavier? Two hundred? For Kal knew black lightning had a jolt like a Dragonship war crossbow. One tankard was enough to sink a grown man beneath the table.

These Southerners loved their golden ales and rich beers, preferably brewed so strong that it flowed begrudgingly from the tankard, a treacly meal. Nutritious indeed. The men grew as barrel-chested as their beer barrels, bandy-legged man-mountains Kal would not have enjoyed meeting in battle.

Off with you!

The chabbik lizards harnessed to the beer-cart, bound for the town’s market, bolted.

Tazithiel? Kal chortled in delight, torn between casting about for his favourite Shapeshifter and the amusement of watching the thickset men lumbering after their cart as it slewed crazily down the track leading to the main road to town. Some said chabbik lizards were distant relatives of Dragons. With a half-dozen powerful lizards yoked pair by pair to the cart, they could certainly kick up the dust when they chose to.

The barrel! With a yelp, Kal bounded after the runaway beer.

* * * *

Five minutes later, Tazithiel burped happily, “Frothy!”

Kal could not believe his eyes. She had glugged the lot. Leave him a drop? Fat, ralti sheep-sized chance! Tossing the empty barrel aside, the muddied Dragoness blinked slowly. Her eyes already showed signs of returning to their usual fiery brilliance, but her head swayed alarmingly.

“Tazithiel?”

“Shwash good,” she slurred. “Gosh any more, you shecksy shtallion my funny Kallion?”

Oh no.
Hic!
Warm droplets of root beer splattered his cheek, while the reek of rancid alcohol almost choked him. Was the beer spoiled? How fast had three hundred tankards of alcohol pickled her system?

“Wheresh my meat?”

“Listen here–” Kal ducked a clumsy swipe of her paw. “Tazi! Islands’ sakes.”

“Islandsh shakes!”
Hic!
Her hiccough was so powerful, it knocked her six feet backward. “I’ll Islandsh shakes you, little moush. Sheep! Meat!”

Mouse? Aye! Kallion scampered back like the mouse he was in comparison to the Dragoness. “Listen to me, you great galumphing beast. You’re in no condition to go anywhere. Stay put. I’ll go fetch meat, alright?”

She tried three times to follow him, but in the end, Kal convinced Tazithiel to wait while he walked up to the farmer’s market in town to purchase enough meat to satisfy a starving Dragoness. All in a day’s work for a pad-footed skulker with an avowed preference for gloomy places. Being called sexy was a welcome fillip, but what on the Islands was a ‘stallion’? Had he heard right?

Stalking up the narrow track, Kal crested the hill to spy a road snaking away through the trees to a small town, fortified with earthen banks and low battlements, half a mile distant. Excellent. He would not even have to break a sweat. The independent resource acquisition specialist assessed his readiness for the mission. Plain mercenary’s sword at his belt, check. Hair brushed down to cover his distinctive, pointed Fra’aniorian ears, check. And he had teased Tazi about her pre-flight grooming. Bow-legged swagger in keeping with local habits, check. A professional like him had many items to conceal–daggers and throwing knives, coin, gems, poison, garrotte, climbing grapnel, lock picks … he checked everything rapidly but meticulously.

Aha. To his left, through a gap in the trees, Kal spied a farmer leading a brace of ralti sheep to market. Taller than a man but utterly docile, ralti sheep were legendary for being as dense as a hunk of rockwood but far tastier. He trotted ahead, aiming to catch the man before town. A swift swindle with his fake rubies would soon divest that man of–ouch! An image of a booming, fire-breathing Dragoness appeared in his mind, sharpening her talons upon his mendacious corpse. Freaking feral Dragons! Now she was his conscience? Could a man not enjoy a moment’s fun?

Alright, he’d pay with real coin. Disappointing. Aye, but he’d extract his satisfaction from Human-Tazi’s hide later. Kal rubbed his hands with glee.

Kal was a few hundred feet shy of the farmer as he approached the town gate, when the flock of ralti sheep–prime specimens which ought to sate even a Dragoness’ capacious paunch–began to bleat piteously, yanking at their halters and upsetting a vegetable cart.

“Hie!” yelled the man. “Settle down, you!”

The sheep bucked. The gate guards cursed the farmer. A crate of quails burst open in an explosion of feathers. But Kal’s laughter stopped in his throat as faint screams on the road behind him carried to his ears. He whirled. Horror clenched his stomach. Oh, raging plague-pox!

“Kal! Wait for me, Kal!”

The picture froze in his mind. Staggering down the road at a dangerous clip, clearly as drunk as a weasel half-drowned in ale, came his many-hued girl-fiend in all her be-muddied glory, scattering carts and flocks and families to the winds.

Kal wanted to fall about laughing. He wanted to whimper. What he did was charge toward the rampaging Dragoness, screaming, “Clear the road! Get off the road!” Thankfully, Tazithiel slewed off the cobblestones at that point, narrowly missing two families perched on their classic Southern chabbik-carts with their tall, ironbound wheels and driver’s box standing proud at the front. She seemed unable to coordinate her wings to actually fly. Kal was amazed the Indigo Dragoness could run at all. Had she gone feral? He would not know the signs, but he knew the lore. There were plenty of feral Dragons around Fra’anior, but the other Dragons protected Humans from the wild Dragonkind. Mostly. The results were not pretty when they failed.

“Kal!” Tazi spotted him, tried to wave a paw, and succeeded only in flattening a small stand of purple robber-berry bushes. Now she had smears of opalescent, violet juice across her muzzle and chest. She roared, “Wheresh my shmeat?”

She blasted out a fireball, probably meant for him, but she managed to miss Kal by at least two hundred feet. Nevertheless, his feet owned a brand of wisdom which had apparently become confused en route to the region above his shoulders. He skidded to a halt, and reversed course with the alacrity of a frightened hare.

A dozen steps later, untold tonnes of Shapeshifter Dragoness shook the ground right behind him. A massive paw scooped Kal up. Great Islands, an hour ago she had been flat on her belly!
Hic!
He bounced; Tazi caught him clumsily.

He shouted, “Don’t Dragons know the meaning of, ‘stay put’?”

The Indigo Dragoness tried to angle for the ralti sheep, but her sense of balance failed at the crucial instant, sending them hurtling into a stand of split-birch trees. Kal spat twigs and bitter berries out of his mouth.

Before he could blink, the Dragoness paused, took aim and pitched him at the nearest sheep, ordering, “Fessh it for me!”

Kal landed with the speed of a swooping falcon and the grace of a wet blanket.
Thump!
He clutched several handfuls of wool. The terrified sheep leaped at least three feet into the air, bleating to the world its knowledge of impending doom, before kicking up a storm of grass as it sprinted off. Bellowing nonsensical insults in Dragonish, Tazi pounded after. Kal found himself seated backward on the sheep, perfectly positioned to appreciate the Dragoness’ fury as her meal refused to stand still for the slaughter. Nor did Kal want to be still. He wanted to be far, far out of sight of the annoyed Shapeshifter, and was therefore thrilled that the sheep appeared to have attained a peak of velocity previously undiscovered by any four-footed, bleating denizen of the Islands.

Wild shouts alerted him. Kal glanced over his shoulder to see his woolly ride barrelling through the gates, right over an idiotic guard who had thought to stop the giant runaway sheep by holding out his hands. Shade. Suns-light. Clinging on for dear life, Kal rode his newest woolly friend into the busy town, racing between the log-cabin buildings so beloved of the South, bowling over dogs and poultry and shoppers with gay abandon.

Then, Tazithiel soared over the town’s gateposts. Horror clutched his chest with the force of a Dragon’s paw.

Her soaring lasted no longer than it took Kal to discover his breathing difficulties. Almost gracefully, her wings folded in two opposing directions and the seventy-foot Shapeshifter Dragoness corkscrewed onto the gable of a tailor’s establishment, rattled loose a roof-full of grey slate tiles, and employed the blacksmith’s shop next door to break her fall.

She vanished behind a corner, leaving Kal with an impression of splintered logs and fire billowing from a smashed furnace.

Please, let her be knocked unconscious. May a meteor lance from a clear sky to pound her proud head into submission. A furious roar rolled across the town as if thunder had struck at ground level, rattling windows, panicking the populace, and spurring the hapless bleater into one final spurt of effort. Kal, sheep-rider extraordinaire, burst upon the teeming marketplace.

Boom!

Tazithiel thundered around the corner, demolishing a business with her shoulder. A flick of her tail, and two houses on the opposite side of the road imploded. Lowering her jaw, the Indigo Dragoness sounded her battle-challenge.

GRRRAAAAARRRGGGHHH!

Kal’s best efforts had drawn a few peoples’ attention. Tazithiel levelled half of the stalls in the marketplace with the violence of her roar. Wood folded like age-thinned scrolleaf. Awnings, clothing and spices exploded into the air as though propelled by a flame set to the hydrogen sack of a Dragonship. Mid-bound, the gust caught Kal’s sheep and dumped it headfirst into the well beside a tavern, which until the instant of Tazithiel’s arrival, had been bustling with conversation and laughter.

The patrons froze. Kal found himself seated upon the sheep’s half-exposed, twitching rump, an idiot king surveying his subjects.

“Where ish he?” thundered the Dragoness, scanning the marketplace blearily.
Hic!
She stumbled several steps sideways, crushing a stall or three.

Kal picked his moment. He dived off the sheep, rolled smoothly to his feet and ducked behind the nearest table. Three startled faces–the beer-seller from before and his two drudges–gaped at him in amazement. Kal was not immune to temptation. Quite the opposite.

“Behold, my girlfriend,” he declaimed, “drunk as a sot on your beer–”

“Flee!” shouted the man.

His shout set off a stampede. Every citizen bar Kal seemed to know exactly what to do. In two breaths flat, he was the only person left in the entire outside courtyard of the tavern. There he knelt, impersonating a hapless prisoner bound for decapitation. The Indigo Dragoness’ gaze sought him out unerringly.

“Kashlion, my shnuggly-wuggly dearesht,” she burbled, for good measure, pointing him out with her foreclaw, “come to Ta … Taz … Tata.”

The thief’s nerve cracked. This much fiery affection beggared both belief and his desire for continued good health. He charged for the tavern door, but found the interior jammed with people. Lowering his head, Kal tried to imitate a tick burrowing into a warm armpit.

Two pairs of meaty hands seized his upper arms, and pitched Kal straight back outside. He bounced down a short flight of steps, tucking in his head to avoid injury. Injury came looking for him, however, in the form of an infuriated, alcohol-fuelled fireball, courtesy of his favourite Dragoness. Duck! Kal tipped a table with his foot. Flame shot past his upturned nose to engulf the tavern’s front porch. Saved by the table. He edged away from the blazing wood.

Crysglass cracked sharply. Kal realised the tavern’s patrons must be bailing out as fast as humanly possible. Wise move, because the Dragoness charged straight past him, shoved her muzzle through the doorway and flexed her shoulders to rip the entire roof off the building.