When I took off the next morning I felt good about the new friends I had made. The Father had allowed all of the boys to ‘sleep over’ and they had talked late into the night. I think they would have liked me to say more, but I didn’t have that much to say. I was very careful, and they never did figure out exactly who I was. In some ways it made me miss who I was, staying with them, but in other ways I felt even more the huge gulf between us.
The morning was wet on the ground, but clear in the air, and flying was wonderful. The boys, and all the others from the wagons, came out to see my off, and waved until I was out of sight, or, at least, until their mothers called them to help get the wagons moving. I deliberately circled as near to them as I could, and stayed there until I was quite high, but them set down to deliberately travel.
When I wanted to I could move, and I was still relatively full from yesterday, so there was nothing holding me back. That night found me roosting in a tall tree in the foothills, just inches away from the real mountains. I roosted aways off the trail, so that no one might mistake me for something I wasn’t. It was a more boring night than the previous night, but I did get a little more sleep.
The next day following the trail was a little trickier than it had been, as I as trying to follow a narrow path in the mountains instead of a broad trail on the praries. But it was still doable, especially with the Dwarves that, themselves, seemed to be constantly moving up and down; sometimes on foot but mostly with wagons, narrow wagons that fit their trails.
About midday two things happened simultaneously. The first was that I saw, on the ground, a caravan that wasn’t like the Dwarves but instead seemed to be made up of a very mixed race group. The second, which didn’t give me time to examine the first as well as I would like, was a speck in the sky.
I had no doubt about what it was. Every scrap of knowledge that I had, from both my Eagle friends and the Farmer officials and my Father, told me that there were no Eagles here on ‘The Day’. So this must be a Dragon.
I climbed. If I was going to face a winged opponent I wanted to be above him. And it did look as if I was going to face him. He seemed to be winging in my direction.
I watched him as he came. At first, even for me, he was just a speck in the sky. But, rapidly, he began to resolve to my eyes. And as he did my anger grew.
I don’t know, to this day, if it was something instinctive, or if it was a result of those poems I had heard, years ago, but just the site of that Dragon caused an enormous anger to grow and grow in me. I liked to hunt, I had been even more eager to get into the hunt against the Beasts, but I was desperate, desperately angry, furious, almost blind, to attack, and kill, and eat, this Dragon.
It, on the other hand, seemed largely to be ignoring me, and concentrating on the path. They couldn’t see it, as it was very careful to take side valleys and stay below the horizon.’
But I could see it. I was high above it, and the group on the path, and it’s path didn’t’ hide it from me, largely. The group on the path could see me, as well, and had stopped and formed a defensive posture, in a semicircle against the cliff that ligned the path. Other groups, too, either formed their own posture or hurried to join with the large caravan.
I didn’t have too much time to spend watching them, though, as I was too busy watching the Dragon, and planning my attack. It was huge, of course, easily twice my weight and five or six times my length, counting the head to the tip of the tail.
And it looked rather well armored, as far as the body went. The neck was vulnerable, of course, but it was also incredibly flexible. Assuming that the Dragon saw me coming, and I didn’t know how I could avoid that, he could whip it about and snap at me with his mouth if I came against his neck. I knew I would have to get to the neck eventually, but I didn’t think it could be my first target.
The eyes, a favorite target of mine, would also be difficult for the same reason. So, that left…
He was getting near to where I knew it would have to turn soon, into a side canyon and then into the main canyon. But, to do that, it would have to climb. And, like me, that would make him vulnerable.
He started his climb, and I started my dive, from over his right shoulder. He saw me, as I knew he would, but he was half way up the hill side toward the side canyon, and was rather committed. He could turn and glide back down, or he could try to continue through and try to make it to the top before I got to him.
Which is what he did. He started flapping more vigorously, glancing frequently over his shoulder to watch me approach. I stayed centered, as well as I could, on his body directly behind his neck. This much have confused him… at my size it looked like nothing but a suicidal move on my part.
He easily reached the side canyon but, like me, his instincts argued against being the ‘underneath’ person in a fight, and he continued to claw for height. As I got closer and closer he started to try to move around a bit to try to shake me off, but that was very difficult as he was trying to climb at the same time. His head, too, whipped back and forth as I got closer and closer.
This was similar to chasing a goat, indeed a bit easier. I stayed on target, directly behind his neck, until the last possible second and then I snapped my wings open, snapped my talons out, and swerved, just barely, to one side. My wings and talons slowed me up just a fraction, and my swerve took me into… and then through… his left wing.
I had no attention to give to him after I was through, being far too busy trying not to hit the ground. Going through his wing membrane had slowed me signifigantly, but it had also put me into a tumble, and I saw the ground coming up fast against me, as it had that day at the cliff. But here, unlike there, I was uninjured, and I managed to swoop past the hill, arrowing down the side alley, until I could start to go back up.
The whole time I had been hearing screaming from behind me, far enough behind me to not worry about being suddenly attacked, and I finally had a chance to turn around and look. It, too, was coming down the side valley, but it wasn’t going to be in the air for long. It was flapping desperately but the lack of lift, and the imbalance because of the one wing, were taking him inexorably toward the ground. I circled up, and then back, arriving over the Dragon just as he crashed into several trees and slid down a scree..
I flew over and landed in a tree, watching him struggle, and curse. He turned toward me, reaching out his neck.. but he was too far down the scree. And then he started to try to fly. But with each flap he howled with pain as, indeed, his injury must be incredibly painful.
But what was I to do? My blood was raging, and I wanted to kill. Surely if I left him he would just heal and fly away! And besides, I wanted the kill.
I flew down, hovering over his head, snapping at him as he snapped at me. But I had the advantage of being still able to fly, and hovered just out of his reach, snapping at his face, scratching at his nostrils, flapping at his eyes.
Soon my efforts began to be rewarded, as blood began to cascade down his face and inside his nose, causing him to cough, sneeze, and shake his head from side to side… which made me even more able to attack him. Soon I was able to scratch one eyelid with a talon, and then pick at the opposite eye (when he flinched away), basically blinding him. I flapped off, circling quietly above. The Dragon, knowing its vulnerability, circled frantically itself. I knew they had a method do see without their eyes, but it didn’t seem to help him much here, as I circled just overhead and he was in agony. I bode my time, watched his movements and, when he circled just the wrong way, darted in toward his neck.
It was much harder than I had heard about when the Ghosts did it. I got a grip on what I thought was the right part of the neck, but I had to spend the next few minutes fighting his beak off. I gripped tighter and tighter but it didn’t seem to cut off his wind (of course, he did have a large neck) and, though I pecked at his neck whenever I had a chance, it didn’t seem to do any good for the longest time.
Then one time, right after he managed to get off a very painful peck at my shoulder, I managed to tear a little deeper into his neck… and I was rewarded by a fountain of blood, which quickly cut off.
I thought I had failed, as he kept at me for several more seconds before his eyes started glazing over. Taking advantage of the lull, I leapt in the air and went back to my tree, working on nursing my wounds and watching him die. His body continued to thrash about for the longest time, and then, finally, stilled.
//Well, Jonathon, that was pretty impressive.//
I whirled around. Standing on a ridge a dozen yards or so away, just out of the trees, was a line of people. Most were spearmen, holding the huge spears that gave them their name. But there, in the middle, was a Farmer… my brother, Seth.
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Von