“No.” Pet crossed his arms. “A minute ago you said you needed my help to save Vendevorex. Just tell me what to do.”
“Fine,” Jandra said. No matter how much she loathed him at the moment, Pet was the only other person in the room. She had to take whatever help she could get. “We need to find a place to hide him.”
“How can we move him without injuring him further?”
“I don’t know,” Jandra said, looking at Vendevorex. He seemed to be sleeping restfully. His wounds had scabbed over and he no longer lost blood, but Jandra feared that moving him might injure him. “I’ve seen him heal himself before. He closed a cut on his cheek within minutes, but this…? I don’t know how he’s doing this. Our only hope is that it will take hours for him to heal and not days.”
“I’m not sure I see what the problem is,” Pet said. “You can turn us invisible, right?”
“If they bring ox-dogs, invisibility won’t help,” she answered, kneeling next to Vendevorex. She placed her fingers lightly on his brow. He was hot as a hearth. “Just sitting here talking won’t help anything either. Is there an armory in the castle?”
“Of course,” Pet said.
“Then we should go while the battle has paused,” she said as she stood up and wiped her hands on her dress. “The right weapons might make all the difference.”
“We’ve still got that sword,” Pet said. “And I bet the hallways are full of stuff.”
“Swords aren’t going to help. Neither of us is a match fighting a dragon hand-to-hand. But Bitterwood does well with a bow. If we were armed the same, firing from a position of invisibility, we’d stand a chance.”
“I don’t know,” Pet said. “Have you ever fired a bow? They aren’t as easy as they look. I practiced with them for a while, trying a trick where I could shoot an apple from the head of a volunteer.”
“Oh,” Jandra said, perking up. “So you know how to use one?”
Pet lowered his head, shaking it slowly. “I never had a second volunteer.”
“Dragons are bigger targets than apples.”
“True enough,” Pet nodded. “I don’t have a better idea. Let’s do it. The armory isn’t far. If we move invisibly, we can cut straight across the castle walls. We can make it there and back in five minutes.”
Pet held Jandra’s hand, guiding her across the main wall. She told him they couldn’t be seen but he wasn’t so sure. He could still see them. But he could see himself earlier as well, when Vendevorex had cloaked them with invisibility, and that time they had passed crowds of dragons without reaction.
This trip, they met no dragons who could have reacted to their presence. Their path was strewn with dead bodies, both of the attackers and defenders of the castle. Most had died engaged in combat with one another, but here and there arrows stuck from the bodies. Pet noted that most of the dragons Bitterwood had killed were shot from behind. For a supposed hero, Bitterwood wasn’t interested in taking chances. He was looking out for his own skin. Yet when Pet displayed the same concern for his own safety, he was labeled a coward.
The night had grown exceptionally dark. The moon had crawled from the sky hours ago. Soon it would be dawn. From outside the walls he could hear the distant shouts of dragons and the crying of children, human children. He peered over the wall as they moved but all he could make out of the surrounding village was dim shadows. Had the invaders turned their attack against the village? He hoped not. He knew quite a few of the village women; indeed, there were many fair-haired children of the village he suspected were his own. He hoped they would be all right. If he had Bitterwood’s skill in combat, he’d be out there now, saving the villagers. But he was no fighter. He was an acrobat, an artist, and actor. If there were some way to save the villagers by putting on a costume and reciting a dramatic monologue, he’d be the right man for the job.
They descended from the wall through the tower, moving toward the armory. They paused as they approached the door. From inside came torchlight and the scuffles of something moving around.
“Go ahead,” Jandra whispered. “They can’t see us. See who it is.”
He crept carefully forward peeking into the door. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw it was a human moving inside.
But as he exhaled the man reacted, spinning around toward the noise. It was Bitterwood and he fired an arrow toward the doorway before Pet could even blink. The arrow whizzed over his shoulder, barely missing his ear.
“Hey!” Pet shouted.
“Wait! It’s only us!” Jandra shouted, and the air before Pet sparked and swirled.
Bitterwood’s eyes grew wide. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?” he said. “You take a foolish gamble creeping up on me.”
“Don’t you bother to look where you’re shooting?” Pet said.
“I don’t always have that luxury,” Bitterwood said. “I’ve saved my life many times over by firing blindly.” Bitterwood shook his head, then leaned against the wall for support. “You should be grateful it’s been such a long night. Were I not so tired… Were I ten years younger… I wouldn’t have missed.”
“It doesn’t look like you miss often,” Jandra said. “It looks like you’ve killed all the dragons… on our side. Now that you’ve killed our defenders, would it be asking too much to kill some of the dragons attacking the castle?”
“There won’t be time,” Bitterwood said. “It will be morning soon. I strike at night.”
“Easier to hide when it’s dark, isn’t it, ‘hero?’” Pet said.
“Yes,” Bitterwood said. “Precisely.” He then returned to the work he’d been doing when they’d interrupted. The armory was in shambles, ransacked by the invaders, but some weapons remained. Bitterwood was gathering what arrows he could find from the clutter. Pet wondered if he should mention the arrows that had fallen from Bitterwood’s own quiver that still lay beneath the window in Chakthalla’s throne room.
“The legends say you only use arrows you make yourself,” Jandra said.
“Some legends also say I can fly,” Bitterwood said. “Fletching my arrows with dragon scales gives my attacks a greater psychological impact. Still, an arrow guided by a goose feather can do the job just as well.”
“Leave some arrows for us,” Pet said, finding a longbow leaning against the wall. “Lucky they didn’t take this. This is a good bow.”
“Not that lucky. Dragons are mediocre with bows, at best,” Bitterwood said. “The red and blue ones prefer to fight when flying, using a long spear held with their hind claws. The green ones sometimes use bows but they can’t hit the broadside of a barn. They’re only effective in mass attacks, not in attacking an individual target. I don’t think an earth-dragon can focus on distant objects as well as we can.” He handed Pet a handful of arrows. “If you have the guts to fight a dragon, a bow’s a good choice. Pick your target and don’t panic, and you can kill them before they ever get close.”
“I have the guts, old man,” Pet said.
“I doubt it,” Bitterwood said. “But I guess you’ll find out.”
Bitterwood placed the rest of the arrows he’d gathered into his quiver and walked past Pet and Jandra with no further word.
“Bastard,” Pet snarled as the archer vanished around the corner.
“I noticed he escaped with his teeth,” Jandra said.
Pet shrugged. “He’s an old guy a foot shorter than me. It wouldn’t be fair to fight him.”
“Not fair to you, maybe.”
“Would you stop taunting me? I’m not a-”
“We’d better get back,” Jandra said, cutting him off. “It can’t be long before morning.”
Almost as if it had heard her words, a cock began to crow in the distance.
After Jandra again made them invisible, Pet led her back up the tower to cross the wall leading to the throne room. The sky had brightened in the east since they had passed by minutes before. In the fields below he could see the enemy army, gathered together in a huge circle, and within the circle stood the villagers.
“What are they doing?” he asked, stopping to study the scene.