Ruins of Camelot (35 page)

T
he broken peak of Mount Skelter became increasingly prominent as the day wore on.  The dragon interrupted its flight three times, twice to eat and drink and once to empty its prodigious bowels.  This last, it did with surprising delicacy, instinctively hiding itself away in the shadows of a rocky cleft.  Gabriella stretched her limbs near the bend of a stream whilst Featherbolt preened on a nearby rock, his glossy feathers glinting in the waning sunlight.

The air had warmed throughout the day, melting the ground snow into a thin, icy crust and sending up great rafts of fog.  More often than not, the dragon flew through these purposely, banking its great wings and using the serpentine curl of its tail as a rudder.  Each time, Gabriella clung to the dragon's neck plate and squinted her eyes as the shock of grey dampness pulsed over them.  The fog banks grew thicker and broader as the day descended into evening so that eventually, they seemed to be flying over a rippling cloudscape, tinged with the light of the low sun.  For long stretches, Mount Skelter was the only visible landscape, pushing its craggy slopes and crumbled peak up out of the fog like an island.

Amazingly, the act of riding the dragon became monotonous.  The wax and weft of its mighty wings became like the rhythm of a metronome, like the ticking pendulum used by her old harpsichord instructor, a tiny, ancient lord with heavy spectacles and knuckly hands.  Gabriella had never been inclined to music despite her teacher's persistent efforts, but he had always been kind to her anyway, patting her dotingly on the shoulder and promising that, with practice, she would be a fine player someday.

"Don't give up, young Princess," he would say, holding back the pendulum with the first two fingers of his right hand and eyeing her gravely.  "If your hands stumble on the keys, do not give up.  The metronome will not stop, nor should you, lest it conquer you.  Are you going to let such a thing best you, Princess?  Keep playing even if you stumble a dozen times.  The point is not perfection, but perseverance.  Make the tempo your slave.  Only then will the music come."

The music had not come, unfortunately, but there was a deeper truth in the music teacher's words.  Gabriella had not known it at the time, but she had acted upon it in the years since. 
The point is not perfection,
she thought to herself,
but perseverance.  Don't give up, Princess.  Make the tempo your slave…

The thought of her old harpsichord teacher made her think of Darrick as a young man.  He'd never had the luxury of private teachers, never experienced the comforts that were so commonplace to royalty like her.  And yet in him had resided a nobility much deeper and truer than could be found in most of the lords she had ever known.

"Every boy I knew wanted to be brave Sir Lancelot," he had once confided in her, "I was one of them."

It seemed like years and decades ago.  Even now, she could barely remember the feeling of his touch.  He had treated her like a flower, like a delicate treasure, to be protected and cherished, loved in the intimate dark of a lifetime's nights.  That had not happened, of course.  Now the hands that he had caressed were chapped and rough.  The hair he had nuzzled in the quiet embrace of their few nights was now a tangled mat, tamed by a length of dirty leather.  Darrick's delicate flower had cast off her beauty and grown thorns.

"I'm sorry, my love," she said aloud, speaking into the rushing wind and fog.  "I'm sorry for everything that was taken away from you.  Your life… and the thing that you cared for even more.  Me.  I probably never really was the girl you believed me to be.  But now I fear that you would not even recognise who I have become.  I'm sorry."  She swallowed hard and frowned, her eyes glistening.  "I'm sorry… that you lost me."

The dragon soared on beneath her.  Night began to creep over the cloudy sky, turning the light a haunting pearly lavender.  The peak of Mount Skelter loomed before them now, huge and sprawling.  Beneath it, glimpsed occasionally through the sweeping fog, were the rock-edged foothills.  Gabriella sensed that they were very close to their destination.  Soon, the dragon would descend and land.  From there, she would travel the rest of the way on foot, meaning to enter the enemies' camp secretly, stealthily.  At that point, instinct would take over.

The dragon flew over a patchy bank of fog so low that tendrils of it curled up around them, reaching for them like thin fingers.  Gabriella watched this as if mesmerised.

Something lofted up out of the fog.  It moved with almost balletic grace, turning as it arced over the humps of the clouds.  Gabriella was too surprised by it to be afraid.  It looked, more than anything, like a large canvas bag stuffed with something dense, its mouth tied in a neat knot.  The shape traced a gentle parabola through the air on the dragon's right and then fell back, disappearing again into the fog.

"What was—" she began, but was interrupted by a violent explosion directly beneath her.

The dragon recoiled in mid-air, nearly throwing her from its back.  Something had stricken it and erupted into a cloud of thick, yellow powder.  Gabriella choked on the dust as it swirled up around her, blinding her.  A moment later, the dragon fell out of the yellow cloud, struggling to fly but clawing wildly at the air and writhing its long neck.  Gabriella clung to her mount, but the dragon's frantic movements made it very difficult.  The wings struggled to grasp the air.  Wind rushed up past them, and Gabriella realised with a sick jolt of fear that they were falling.

Another of the strange sacks arced up towards them, spinning lazily and trailing yellow dust.  It struck the dragon on the flank and exploded, coating the beast with more of the ugly powder.  The dragon lunged away in mid-air, its tail thrashing.  An instant later, the fog swept up over them, hiding everything in its seamless depths.  Gabriella clung frantically to the dragon, not even knowing which way was up.  The beast dropped through the ceiling of the fog, and the earth opened up beneath them, looking huge and close and unforgivably hard.

There were men down there, at least a dozen of them, all looking up, shouting and pointing.  They were near enough that Gabriella could see their individual faces.

The dragon writhed violently in mid-air, clapped its wings in a last, desperate attempt to capture the wind, and succeeded.  Its fall was arrested, transforming it into a hurtling swoop, but it was too late to pull up.  The stone-crested foothills rushed up beneath them, reaching for them, and Gabriella squeezed her eyes shut.

There was a whistling silence followed inexorably by a hard, deafening
whump
.  The dragon convulsed dreadfully beneath Gabriella, and she felt herself thrown free.  The wings whipped past her, smacked at her armour.  A moment later, she struck the ground herself.  She was rolling, skipping over the earth like a discus, her hair flying wildly and her armour clanging against the rocks.  Finally, she tumbled to a halt, eyes still closed, dazed and face down on the earth.

"This way," a rough voice called gleefully.  "It's down!  It's down!  Bring the nets!"

The rabble grew closer, calling and shouting commands, laughing raucously.  Gabriella moaned and tried to push herself upright.  A bolt of blinding pain seared up her left arm accompanied by a horrid, grinding sensation.  She fell back, crying out involuntarily.

The ground shuddered beneath her.  The dragon was getting up.  She heard it.  It thrashed and growled thickly, but there was something wrong with it.  It wheezed, and when it tried to roar, to bury its adversaries in gouts of blue flame, its throat produced only a choked hiss.

"Flame us through that, you great blowhard!" a voice laughed.  "Bring another bag of the Damproot powder!  Let's have one more dose for good measure!"

"Should we wheel the catapult over and fire it straight into the big lizard's kisser?" another voice suggested, and there was a round of hearty laughter and encouragement.

"It's rearing!" another shouted.  "More nets!  This is a big'n!"

There was a creak of straining rope and a shuddering thrash.  The dragon was fighting.  Gabriella struggled up again, using her right arm, and stumbled towards the sound.

"Mind the jaws!" a deep voice bellowed happily.  "He may not be able to roast us, but those teeth might still subtract a leg.  Stand fast!"

"Stop!" Gabriella cried, but her voice failed her.  Her chest ached from her fall, and the pain in her left arm spiked with every step.  "Leave him alone, you monsters!"  She descended the hill and spotted shapes moving in the fog.

"Wait," a voice called gruffly.  "What was that?"

"Someone approaches!"

Swords rang from scabbards as Gabriella stumbled into the shallow valley.  "Leave him be!" she shouted angrily.

Before her, the dragon lay imprisoned in a tangle of thick nets, each one edged with heavy iron balls, knotting the mass into an ugly prison.  The beast struggled and thrashed, trying desperately to flame but producing only dry, choked gusts.  Dozens of men clustered around the dragon, some poking it savagely with pikes, all wearing mismatched collections of armour and ragged beards.  Others gathered by a small, wheeled catapult.  A wagon loaded with more of the canvas powder bags stood nearby.

"You beasts!" Gabriella raged, forgetting the pain in her arm and dashing forwards.

"Whoever she is," one of the men growled, pointing a thick finger at Gabriella, "take her."

They fell upon her.  Acting purely on instinct, Gabriella unsheathed her sword.  She swung one-handed and felt the ringing clang of blade on metal.  A battle-axe caught her sword in its fork, and the man holding the axe gave it a hard twist.  The blade snapped off, leaving only the hilt in her fist.  She turned on the man, baring her teeth in blind anger and raising the hilt like a bludgeon.  He caught her wrist easily, laughing and showing a mouthful of rotten teeth.

"Look what we have here, men," the man bellowed, twisting Gabriella's wrist and forcing her to drop her broken sword.  "First a dragon, and now a she-warrior, armour and all!"

Gabriella struggled, broke away from the man, and swung at him wildly.  He caught her left forearm this time, and a jolt of crippling pain rammed up her arm.  A second later, the man's other fist struck her on the temple, driving her to her knees and making the world go swimmy before her eyes.  Blood immediately began to run down her cheek, hot in the winter air.  He still did not release her arm.  The broken bone grated excruciatingly, and she cried out with the pain of it.

"She's a feisty one," a nearby voice laughed wickedly.  "Can you handle her, Radnic?"

"Where did she come from?" another figure demanded, stepping forwards to peer at her.  "Are there others? 
A girl so young surely would not brave the wilderness alone
."

A much taller and darker man pushed past him.  He approached Gabriella, his eyes narrowed above a tangled, black beard.  When he knelt on one knee before her, she recoiled from him, not out of fear, but revulsion.  Even through the red mist of her pain, the man reeked of death.  His eyes were as empty as marbles.

"No," he said slowly, "she is the only one."

Gabriella's captor squeezed her forearm again, twisting it upright over her head.  "You know her?"

The leader shook his head thoughtfully.  "No.  But I smell vengeance upon her.  She has come alone, of her own volition."  And then, with a hint of amusement, he added, "She intends… to fight."

"What do we do with her, Brom?" the man behind him asked warily.  "Do we kill her?"

The leader, Brom, smiled evilly.  "Not yet," he growled.  "That would be a terrible waste.  Bring her.  She shall be my… guest."

A chorus of hoots and catcalls followed this, building to a raucous crescendo.

Gabriella gritted her teeth and pushed herself upright, fighting a wave of faintness.  Her captor still
held her broken forearm in a vis
e-like grip.

"Release me!" she commanded hoarsely.  "I am the Princess of Camelot.  My father is the King.  Obey my command!"