Not that I blamed her.
Brock groaned.
“Take it easy,” I told him. “I think it’s over.”
She didn’t stop. She expelled roaring flame for a full thirty seconds, smoke boiling up in front of her. The air between us was turning near opaque from smoke, haze, and heat shimmer.
As the inferno continued, and molten fury poured down the hillside, I had the time to realize how wrong this seemed. If Elhared was truly being reduced to ash in front of us, it showed a rather glaring oversight in a plan that otherwise had a sort of twisted elegance.
Would Elhared have gone head-to-head with a dragon and not expect to be toasted?
No, something was very, very, wrong with this.
Lucille finally ran out of flame. She collapsed, shaking the ground. I could barely see her through my watering eyes, a humped unmoving shadow through the smoke.
“Lucille!” I called out. “Are you all right?”
“Frank?” She groaned. “That. Took a lot out of me. I’m sorry. About your body.” I heard a wheezing exhale, then nothing.
“Lucille?”
No answer.
“Lucille!”
Instead of her voice, I heard my own voice chuckling. “No apologies necessary, Your Highness.”
I saw a glint of red though the smoke, moving toward the unmoving dragon. The fact that I’d seen this coming didn’t lessen the sinking in my gut. Of course if those blind dwarves from wherever had enchanted a dragon-slaying weapon they just might have anticipated the possibility of a little fire damage and acted accordingly.
“No.” I moved to run, to stop Elhared, but Brock still had a death grip on my ankle. “Let go!”
I looked down as I tried to kick myself free, and Brock stared up at me. In his free hand he held up a bloody dagger, hilt toward me. He spoke in a wet whisper. “Brock. Save. Princess.” He coughed up a gob of bloody phlegm. “Save . . . Princess . . .”
As I took the dagger, he let me go.
Elhared wasn’t paying any attention to me. He was moving toward Lucille at an unhurried pace now that the dragon was unconscious. “Enough distractions.”
Since a frontal assault worked so well last time, I ran around behind him, silently as I could.
Elhared continued addressing the unconscious dragon. “I am going to salvage this situation for once and for all. You should be happy that your throne will finally be occupied by someone worthy of it.”
Between the smoke and his continued talking, I was able to easily slip behind him. Bringing the dagger up to his neck was a little more difficult because of the size difference. I had to strain to reach, but it had the desired effect, and he stopped a stride short of Lucille’s neck.
“Elhared,” I said, “have I mentioned that you are an incredible asshole?”
“Occupational hazard, Francis. You don’t get to be a wizard, especially an old wizard, by being all warm and fuzzy.”
“Drop the sword. I won’t let you kill her.”
“Please! You’re a two-bit thief who’s never thought an inch beyond your own skin. I actually admire that about you. And if I were you, and I am, I would start thinking about who’s got that skin right now.”
“I mean it. Drop the sword!”
“Francis, stop the pretense, you aren’t going to kill your own body.” Dracheslayer rose to deliver the fatal blow to Lucille’s neck.
“Don’t call me Francis!” I screamed at him as I shoved the blade up under his jaw, right above the gorget. He went stiff, and Dracheslayer slipped from his hands, thudding to the ground between us and Lucille.
I dodged backward as he spun around to swing wildly at me. His other hand clutched the right side of his throat, where I’d buried the blade to the hilt. He stared at me with wide eyes as he staggered in my direction. He coughed up blood and managed to gurgle something that sounded like, “Wha?”
“You’re surprised?” I yelled at him. “You arrogant condescending dimwit! You’re actually surprised?!”
He took another swipe at me as he stumbled forward.
“You can’t imagine for a moment that you might be wrong about something?”
Elhared fell to his knees in front of me, bleeding my blood from my mouth. He clutched the hilt of the dagger and yanked it out of his neck.
“Blug,” he said.
“Of course I wasn’t going to let you kill her! But you couldn’t just drop the damn sword!”
He waved the dagger vaguely in my direction, clutching the open wound with his other hand as blood drenched his armor. “Glup,” he said, his lips foaming blood. “Thlop.”
“You idiot!” I slapped the dagger out of his hand. “You moron! Why’d you force me to do this?!”
He toppled face first into the ground at my feet. I kicked him, not caring about stubbing my toes on the plate mail. “Why did you try and kill her? Why did you pull something so stupid when someone had a knife to your neck?”
He might have groaned.
“Are you happy now? You got my damned body! Are you happy?” I kept kicking, leaving bloody boot prints on the armor. “Answer me, you sponge-brained conniving little prick!”
I don’t know how long I berated the wizard, but eventually Lucille groaned and belched out a small rolling cloud of sulfur smoke. I stopped and looked up at her. She regarded me with a half-lidded eye and said, “I think he’s dead.”
“But I’m not finished kicking him!”
I think she may have laughed at me.
“Thank you.” She groaned and closed her eyes. “You not only saved me, but you saved my kingdom.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You’re still a lowlife lying thief.”
I sighed. “I never said otherwise.” From the sound of her breathing, she had already slipped back into unconsciousness.
I stared at my corpse and said, “Damn it.”
A voice called out from behind me. “My Lady, please step away from that abominable creature.”
There was no possible way that could be who I thought it was. The universe just couldn’t be that cruel.
I turned around to face the speaker.
The universe was that cruel.
Running up the hillside, sword bared, was the ill-named Sir Forsythe the Good.
CHAPTER 29
I scrambled to get Dracheslayer even as I felt dread growing in the pit of my stomach. I was under no illusions about my ability in combat, even when I was still me. I had only won my confrontation with Elhared because the man had been pathologically overconfident. I had no hope against Sir Forsythe, who I had personally witnessed clear out a bar full of ruffians, each of whom was my better when it came to the whole fighting prowess thing. Having a real magic sword might have given me some advantage, but I strongly suspected I still needed to know how to wield it.
I held up Dracheslayer and did the one thing I could do.
I bluffed.
I leveled Dracheslayer in Sir Forsythe’s direction and tried to summon the voice of command I had used on the queen. “Halt your approach, or I will cut you down where you stand.”
And, in response, he stopped.
It was so unexpected that I almost dropped Dracheslayer in shock. Somehow I retained my composure . . .
Up until the point Sir Forsythe dropped to one knee and bowed his head. “My sincerest apologies, My Liege.”
The tip of Dracheslayer fell and buried itself in the ground by my feet. I tried to speak, but nothing came out. I stood there, open-mouthed, as paralyzed as if he’d run me through with his sword.
He reached up and removed his helmet, looked up at me and said, “The queen is dead. Long live the queen.”
I shook my head.
“No. Just . . . No.”
Ever have one of those moments when you suddenly realize that you have accidentally made yourself the nominal leader of one schism of a dark cult of evil?
Neither had I.
Apparently, in my improvised efforts to sow eno
ugh confusion for us to escape, I had said a few things that at least some of Queen Fiona’s former followers had taken to heart. At this point I barely remembered saying anything, but whatever it was had made an impression on Sir Forsythe. I supposed the Dark Lord tearing apart the ex-queen had granted me some credibility.
“I await your command, Your Highness.”
I took one hand off the hilt of Dracheslayer to rub my temple. “Just get up.”
Sir Forsythe stood.
“First thing, no one hurts my dragon. Got that?”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Second, if you want to serve your Dark Queen, get some healers over here.”
• • •
After that, things got a little complicated.
By dawn I had some good news. Both Brock and Lucille survived their injuries. Brock just had too much gut for a simple dagger to strike deep enough to hit anything vital. Once they stopped the bleeding he was all right.
When he woke up he blinked up at me and asked, “Did Brock save the princess?”
I thought of the dagger he’d handed me and smiled, a little weakly. “Yes. Princess Lucille wouldn’t be alive if it hadn’t been for you.”
“Good.” He leaned back and smiled.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Yes?”
“I see that you hooked up with the queen’s army after we split up.”
He looked a little sheepish. “Brock didn’t join officially. Found some armor during escape, but Brock then pressed into service.”
“Thought it was something like that.”
“Brock does not serve the Dark Lord.”
“Oh, like I’d hold that against anyone at this point. But I do have another question.”
“What?”
“Where’d those mares come from?”
It turned out that no one had actually had the bad sense to bring a bunch of in-season mares around a bunch of warhorses. Brock had helped the mares along. He spouted a long list of herbs and other ingredients, some of which he could only name in his native tongue, that when combined with a mare’s piss created a nearly irresistible equine aphrodisiac. Apparently all the ingredients were either in the supply tents or growing wild.
“Brock spent a lot of time with the women in the village. Brock learned much herbal lore.”
“I think I’ve said before, Brock is a surprising man.”
As for Lucille, dragons are notoriously hard to kill.
I watched the new day break from sitting on a rock next to Lucille. I still carried Dracheslayer because I didn’t trust anyone else with it around her. I’d shoved the point into the ground, and I rested my chin on the backs of my hands, folded over the hilt. I hadn’t sheathed it, and I knew it was a rotten way to treat a sword, but I had trouble summoning the energy to care.
Besides, it seemed I had an image to maintain if I wanted to keep control of the situation, and holding a glowing magic sword while seated next to a dragon was maintaining that image with the least amount of effort on my part.
Around the hillside below us, a small army had gathered, maybe a third of the troops’ original number. Most bore wounds that they’d sustained in their fight against the old queen’s faithful servants. I didn’t know how much of the original Grünwald army was left. I supposed it depended how many had been too close to the fissures that still radiated from the wrecked ritual space where Queen Fiona had met her messy end. However many there were, the remaining Grünwald faithful had retreated, probably to gather reinforcements.
“What a mess.”
“Don’t be hard on yourself.”
“Lucille, I promise I’ll hunt down Elhared’s book. We’ll get you back into your own body.”
“Um.”
“Um? What?”
“I . . . I’m sort of enjoying being a dragon.”
“You—what?”
“I know, I was terrified at first. It was all so strange. But, Frank, I can fly! I took on an army all by myself!”
“I see.”
“I never had . . . Oh, Frank. I’m sorry. Your body. I didn’t mean . . .”
“No, don’t apologize. I’m the one who killed Elhared.”
“To save me.”
“I wasn’t going to let you die like that.”
“I’d give this up if it would get you back to normal.”
“I know.”
“It is a mess, isn’t it?”
Sir Forsythe approached us and bowed, and I marveled at how he had somehow come through the night with his plate mail polished and gleaming. “All the followers of the True Queen have been gathered and await your word. Your army is prepared to march on the False Prince at your command.”
I had no doubt about it.
There was some attraction to the idea. After all, Prince Dudley was still out there, and the royal bastard did try and kill me. However, it was appealing only in the abstract. Once I imagined the particulars—the bone-cleaving and bloodletting particulars—it lost most of its appeal. Not to mention, I didn’t think Prince Dudley ranked anywhere near the top fifteen things I cared about right now.
Then there were the practical problems with that idea. I really doubted that the whole Grünwald army had been present for the queen’s ritual. The whole cult of Nâtlac thing might have been an open secret, but it wasn’t that open. I didn’t know about it until it was too late. The queen had brought only the initiates here. The main body of the regular army was probably still out there and massing as we spoke.
Not to mention the Lendowyn militia Prince Dudley had hired away. Those troops weren’t motivated by religion. Swaying them required assets I didn’t have.
No. Attacking Grünwald with the queen’s own troops, while emotionally satisfying, would probably be suicide. And considering we still stood on Grünwald soil, the same could be said of staying here.
So, we only really had one option.
• • •
“Are you sure about this?” I asked Lucille.
“Just because I’m a dragon doesn’t mean I want to abandon my home and family.”
The words may have been upbeat, but I was beginning to understand the subtleties of her speech, and in the booming draconic voice I heard some of the same uncertainty I felt. Not that there was much we could do about it. Lucille was still injured, and while most of it was superficial, she wasn’t going to fly anywhere until her wings healed.
So, we walked across the border into Lendowyn.
Or, more precisely, Lucille walked and I rode on her back. Appearances again. If I was going to lead an invading army of evil into another country, riding the back of a dragon and holding a glowing red-and-black sword helped offset the fact that I was a petite young woman. It offered some clarity about who was in charge here.
Behind us, Brock and Sir Forsythe led two ragged columns of armed servants of the Dark Lord Nâtlac who had pledged to follow me. As we marched across the countryside, panic followed. I felt bad about that, farmers and shepherds abandoning their fields and flocks, but I really didn’t have much time to dawdle and reassure everyone. The army that followed me had only the provisions they’d carried out of Grünwald, and if I took too long to do what I’d come for, they’d start raping and pillaging the countryside just out of hunger and boredom.
Fortunately, the lack of any Lendowyn militia meant we could make good time. We were able to camp that night within sight of the lair where I had first met Lucille, less than a day’s march from Lendowyn Castle.
That night she asked me, “What about you? Are you sure about this?”
I’d been half asleep, lying in the crook of her forearm, resting my head against the side of her neck, which was more comfortable than it sounds. “Of course I am.”
“It’s asking a lot of you.”
“Not really. Besides, you pointed out that I’m legally you now. You said you didn’t want to abandon your home and family.”
She sighed.
I patted her neck. “It
won’t be any weirder than anything else we’ve been through. With the added bonus that I don’t think anyone will try to kill us.”
• • •
We had marched within sight of the castle before a contingent of Lendowyn’s defenses finally rode out to meet us. They were the king’s royal guard, so they were obliged to make a show of blocking our progress, but since there were only half a dozen of them, there was only so much they could do.
They made a brave stand, the lead man astride a white charger, a crimson cape blowing in the wind. He held up a hand as his mount came to a stop on the road ahead of us. “In the name of King Alfred of Lendowyn, halt.”
I probably surprised the guy by calling for my small army to stop.
I looked at the six men blocking our progress and decided that the Lendowyn treasury wasn’t that empty. The remainder of the royal guard was either setting up an ambush from cover, or had run away.
I slid off of Lucille’s back and walked toward the men blocking our path. Sir Forsythe and Brock started to follow me, but I held up my hand so they stayed back by Lucille.
I walked up to the guardsmen. The leader was the only man who had raised the visor on his helmet, so I could watch as his eyes widened in recognition.
“You’ve been looking for a princess,” I said. “And I think the king may want to talk to us.”
CHAPTER 30
The fact that I wore Princess Lucille’s body meant I easily got an audience with King Alfred the Strident and his royal court. The fact that I was backed by an army of a few hundred men meant that it was only slightly harder to include Lucille in that audience. King Alfred and his retainers received us in the courtyard of Lendowyn Castle, where Lucille and I explained exactly what had happened.
It was easier to convince them than I had expected. It helped that we still had Dracheslayer and that there were corroborating stories from all over the kingdom. No to mention that everyone admitted to being a bit creeped out by Elhared, and even the king mentioned in passing that “the sour old bastard was probably capable of anything.”
Of course, once the details had sorted themselves out, and everyone understood what had happened, the Lendowyn legal system reared its ugly head.