The week flew by. I met thousands of people (or so it seemed like) and would have met thousands more if it hadn’t been for the fact I kept flying away… and wouldn’t stay inside.
Not that I remembered any of their names, hardly.
//My name is Stone Walker,// the Ghost said. Seth and I had been waiting outside the Ghost fort for him to show up… if you can call it ‘showing up’. Almost invisible against the rock, and incredibly flat, he had crept down the wall in front of us and was now ‘sitting’ upside down in front of us. A few yards behind him ‘sat’ another Ghost, which I took to be his wife, with a baby Ghost clinging to her back.
I can’t say I was really thrilled with the idea of going into a fight with a female and a baby but… Ghosts did things their way.
//We are looking for a lair in this direction,// he said, waving a paw to the Northeast. We are hoping that you will help us. And, even if not, hopefully we should have some good hunting. The Prince, here, has been telling us of how you fight, and we have decided to work in support. Mostly we Ghosts, but we will have a couple of teams of Spearmen ready in case we find something. We work together well here in the mountains. I wouldn’t want to visit one of their plains forts.//
//So what do you want me to do?//
//What you do. Rise up, seek out the prey, and knock them down. Just don’t go too far too fast, so we can keep up with you on the ground. And don’t worry about them once they get there… we’ll take care of that part.//
The Ghost left… in what seemed proper Eagle manners to me, so I took off too. As I went up I looked out for my allies. The Spearmen were easy to spot… they had some large tents out on a couple of hillsides, with stacks of supplies in leather bags, and guards out all around.
The ghosts were harder. Of course, that was a lot of the point. We had created them, forced a brand new transformation, in order to fight the Dragons; and one of the big deals about them was that they be hard to see. Part of that was their flatness… they stuck right tight flat against the rocks they ‘walked’ on. But the rest of it was the ability that they shared with Trolls to change their fur to the color of whatever they were on.
I could see them, tho, if I tried hard. I don’t know, my ability to focus or something, but I could see these splotches against the rocks. And then, as I looked, scoping them out and following their direction of travel, I saw something else.
I stopped… well, we don’t stop, but you know what I mean… I stopped moving forward and just circled around. There, in front of me, was an enormous boulder and there, on the boulder, was a picture. A huge picture. Carved right on a boulder. It was a picture of a Dragon… and the mountains it flew in. Indeed, looking around, I could see pretty much the exact scene it was taken against.
I stared at the boulder for several more minutes, trying to figure out how it must have gotten like that, when I noticed that the Ghosts were moving past me and decided I had no real way of figuring out how it had gotten that way while still flying, and that I had Dragons to kill.
Not that they were easy to find! I don’t know if it was because of the work of the Ghosts or what, but we searched for a good three hours before I saw my first hint of a Dragon… and he was far, far away; far to far for my partners to ‘take care’ of any Dragon I knocked down, so I kept looking.
I did keep an eye out on him, however and, despite his having disappeared here and there several times, I was able to follow him. And he was coming closer. I started easing over in his direction… as did my ‘gang’. I even saw the Ghosts send a runner back to the Spearmen, who duly roused themselves and started moving their camp.
It was an hour after that that it really started to look like we would be able to attack this particular Dragon. He had caught himself a mountain goat and was eating it. He had noticed me, too, and kept glancing in my direction inbetween bites.
And now the Ghosts, themselves, had seen him. They were several miles away from him, across a valley, but his location, on a high ledge, made him visible for miles… especially for them, who were on a slope opposite.
I continued in his direction, hoping to get right overhead him, when, eventually, he got nervous and took off, flapping in my direction. I figured why tire myself out, and so I got into a thermal and started rising. Soon he was in my thermal, and rising too, and I decided it was time to attack.
I started my dive, and he saw me. For the first few seconds he just continued to rise into the thermal but then, when I started to get close, he did a side slip and plunge, gained speed, and looped back almost in my face, and forcing me to side slip and dodge… and then I immediately turned myself, to keep him off my tail.
When I turned back he was back in the thermal, staring over his shoulder at me as he turned. I swoop and turned to get back in the thermal myself, ending up at the opposite side of the thermal from him, and lower.
And I couldn’t afford to be lower, so I, carefully, flapped my way higher. As I did I kept one eye on him (as he kept circling and keeping an eye on me) and with the other I watched the Ghosts and, eventually, the Spearmen come up.
When I was just a little bit higher than him I decided to take another tack. I reversed my direction in the thermal, and circled over toward him.
I was watching only him, now, and he was completely focused on me. I think he had been waiting for me to make some move… probably hoping to just snatch me out of the air in one gulp. (I was, of course, too big for one gulp, but you know what I mean). It seemed to me he grinned as I came up (Dragons can’t really ‘grin’, of course, their months are too fixed for that) and I saw him ‘tense’ as I came up. I was only about ten yards higher than him and I wasn’t at all sure how much distance he could get with one big flap but, I had to take the risk.
Just as I got to him, I, myself, darted forward, slashing at his face with my talons. He obviously wasn’t expecting this but he whipped his face back in time and slip-stalled taking himself out of my reach.
But I ended up still on top, and came at him again, this time from over his left shoulder. And this time he did try to snap his head out at me… and we both partly succeeded… with my talons striking his face, and his face knocking me for a bit of loop.
And he nearly had me as I tried to recover, too. He looped his whole body amazingly and dove at me, and only the most arduous flapping and scratching got me out without his teeth sinking into my shoulder. And I kept the flapping up until I was, once again, above him. I did not want that to happen again!
He seemed to think he had gotten the best of the exchanges and continued to circle in the thermal. But I now knew what my role was and, once I had gotten a few yards above him, circled back.
Time and time and time again, now staying above him at all times, I circled against him and dashed out my talons, or flapped out my wings, or hovered just out of reach. And again and again he launched his head against me, trying to sink his teeth in my shoulder. But I kept myself just out of his range and neither of us really succeeded…
Except for two things. The first was that I noticed, after each exchange, that we got a little bit lower. The second was that we were getting into a pattern and…
He had just snapped at me, like he had done several times before, and I had flapped back and up, like I had done several time before, but this time after five or six flaps I tucked my wings in and lowered my beak and *dove* directly down at his wing and he had pulled his head back (thinking I was done) and he didn’t recover in time and I *hit* his wing, almost bouncing off but I reached out my talons and gripped and ripped and then spread out my wings and ripped more and then I was bouncing in his afterwash and he was screaming in pain in front of me.
I flapped up, desperately. If he had done an immediate turn about, like he had done several times already, I would have been done for. But, instead, he was alternately trying to flap, screaming, sideslipping, and trying to balance his glide.
And now I was above him, and ready to finish this fight. Again and again I snapped at him but now, with part of his wing shredded, he was seriously handicapped trying to respond. Gone was his ability to leap toward me with a mighty flap, the pain and the imbalance of flight distracted him and the lack of surface area combined with having to fight me off meant that we were, together, getting lower and lower.
And I was now concentrating over his other wing, almost panicking him. He knew, we both knew, that even a little damage to that wing would basically finish his ability to fight back.
As it turned out, I never did get to that wing. I just kept snapping at him over and over, and he kept loosing altitude. And, unbeknownst to him, I knew I had allies on the ground. Indeed I saw them, and they were spreading out all over the valley underneath me.
I think he eventually saw this, as he tried to make a break away into a small valley. But I was having none of that and got in front of him, forcing him back and down, forcing him to do a complete turn around back toward ‘our’ valley.
He then changed his tactics entirely and, I guess, decided to fight me on the ground. There were Spearmen all over (and Ghosts, but I don’t think he could see them) and he planned his landing to, basically, crash into one of them. I’m sure he was amazed when the Spearman, instead of trying to set himself and take the Dragon on the Spear (which might have worked but might also have given the Dragon a chance to take his head off with one bite) the Spearman instead backpedaled mightily, allowing the Dragon to land unopposed. The Dragon, landed, turned immediately sideways, no doubt intending to fight the both of us off simultaneously.
I, however, was busy rising above him. My job was done, and I was looking forward to some rest, and watching my allies at work.
The Spearman started shouting, singing really, at the Dragon and, keeping one eye on me, the Dragon turned back toward him. Then the Spearman, while still singing, stomped his feet and started making waving/poking motions with his spear. I imagine the Dragon was very confused… but I wasn’t, because I could see the Ghosts, three of them, creeping up on either side... one up a tree and two along the ground. From the size and all I thought they might even be a family.
If so, it was the son, up in the tree, who leapt first. And not for the neck, per se, which was what I had always heard. Instead he went directly for the head and, basically, clung there. It was left to the other two to race for the mid neck, and, quickly, reaching out with their talons and ripping.
The blood fountanined out much more forcefully than it had for my Dragon, but stopped just as abruptly. And the head (with the Small Ghost still riding on it) dropped to the ground.
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Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,
Von