Saorsha pleaded, “Please, Lucy. We must go meet him. He just wants to talk. Please come with us.”
“The red dragon,” Lucy paused, grasping for words. “That’s Fyremantle? The tax collector?”
Challie took her arm. “Lucy, you don’t have to go,” she said firmly, her dark eyes on the frightened elders. “They can handle this.”
A huge shadow swept over them, swift, dark, and laden with dragonfear. Lucy winced, and the others instinctively ducked as the dragon passed overhead. A hot, acrid wind, heavy with the scent of fire, blasted down around them. The dragon dipped lower. Its outswept wings glowed a fiery scarlet in the late sun. It soared out over the harbor, banked around, and came back. Lowering its head, it expelled a jet of golden fire over a fishing boat moored in the water. The boat caught fire instantly and burned to a cinder in a matter of moments. Any crew still onboard never had a chance.
Saorsha steadied her terrified pony and pulled him closer to Lucy. Her worn face looked ten years older, and the calm self-assurance she had worn with such aplomb was gone. Only her voice was steady as she reached out a hand to Lucy. “Please, come. If we don’t go talk to him, he will continue to burn things.”
Lucy looked at the flaming hulk slowly sinking into the water and climbed into the cart.
The dwarf rocked forward as if to pull her back. “Ulin’s coming. You could wait for him.”
But Saorsha snapped her reins and the pony leaped forward into the traces.
Lucy leaned back over the seat, and her voice raised to a shout. “He’s on a wooden boat, Challie, about to sail into a harbor under the nose of a dragon. I can’t wait!” Her last words were whirled away on the wind as the pony, cart, and passengers turned onto the road up the promontory.
Saorsha drove her poor pony hard almost to the top of the Rock, but the little animal was not accustomed to pulling three adults up a steep slope, and while it did its best, it finally stopped, unable to go another step. Saorsha climbed out, patted its heaving flanks, and tied it in the shade of a rock outcropping. She and Lucy hurried up the rest of the way on foot, and Mayor Efrim reluctantly followed.
The dragon, meanwhile, discovered a fishing boat that had just returned from a profitable day of fishing. Its crew had tied the boat to the dock and had been unloading the catch when the dragon arrived. Gleefully, the dragon landed on the wharf, smashing barrels, crates, rowboats, and anything else that got in its way. The fishing crew saw it coming. One or two jumped off the deck into the water, but the others stood rooted in dragonfear, too terrified to move as the lumbering monster approached them. It snatched the first man it reached, bit his head off, and swallowed the rest of him in two messy gulps. A thin scream ripped across the waterfront from the second man as the dragon grabbed him in its black claws. One by one, the dragon ate four men, then it scooped up huge mouthfuls of fish from the hold of the boat. When it couldn’t reach anymore, it tipped the boat upside down and poured the remaining fish into its ravenous maw. Satisfied, the dragon tossed the boat into a small warehouse, set it on fire, then sprang into the air and pulled itself upward on powerful wings. The downdraft of its flight blew objects and dust outward in a cloud of debris.
On the Rock, Saorsha, Lucy, and Mayor Efrim watched the dragon finish its meal and take to the sky. They stood in the open, exposed to view, and waited for the dragon to notice them. It spiraled up from the harbor leisurely and slowly circled the top of the Rock, its wedge-shaped head tilted down to watch them. When it was satisfied, it tucked in its wings and came down to land on the bare rock in front of the humans.
Lucy heard the creak of its massive wings and the heavy thud as its weight settled on the rock. She had never been this close to a dragon, and she never, ever, wanted to again. The terror of its presence overwhelmed her in waves of dark, roiling panic. She wanted to run, to hide from his merciless gaze. Her heart was pounding so hard that she could hear the blood rushing through her head. Her eyes squeezed shut, and her arms clutched each other. She sensed her turban was afraid also, for the edges of it that she could see faded to a dull, dingy tan. Its diamond eyes drew back into folds of the fabric.
“Fyremantle,” she heard Saorsha croak. “This is our new sheriff, Lucy Torkay.”
A deep, pitiless voice rumbled around her. “I hope this one is more accommodating than the last. Open your eyes, woman, and behold your master.”
It took every bit of self-control Lucy had to open her eyes and look up at the dragon. Although he was not as big as Malystryx, Lucy estimated he was over three hundred feet long from tip of dark red snout to the end of his massive tail. His reptile form was covered with scales the size of small shields and the color of brilliant vermilion. Sharp horns extended from his head just behind his smoky eyes, jutting back past his skull nearly ten feet. Wisps of smoke curled from his nostrils as he stared down unblinking at the three humans.
“I came to remind you,” the dragon rumbled, “that you have twelve days left. I will expect the taxes to be left here, where I will examine them before I leave. If you fail to pay the full amount, I will level this town.”
Lucy’s throat was sandy dry, and she had to swallow a few times before she could force words past her stiff tongue. “We are collecting the taxes as the law orders,” she said, “but this town is suffering. Couldn’t you allow them a little more time?”
The dragon’s massive head turned toward Saorsha and Mayor Efrim. A thundering chuckle rattled the air around them and fanned their faces with a stink like cremation. “You have not told her of my wrath or of the other towns I have obliterated.”
Neither elder could answer.
“You will pay the full amount,” the dragon snarled, “on time, and if you fail, this town will be wiped clean from the face of the earth.” He lowered his head until his nose was only a few feet away from Mayor Efrim’s chest. “If you run, little mayor, be assured I will find you.”
Turning swiftly, the dragon moved to the edge of the promontory, unfurled his batlike wings, and swept off into the sky. Lucy and the councilors threw themselves to the ground just as the huge tail swung over their heads.
They lay there trembling as the dragonfear slowly subsided. On the Rock, above the smoke and flame of the waterfront, the sentinels sounded the horn signaling the All Clear.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Light and warmth and wind blew away the stink of dragon and returned the Rock to normal. Slowly, cautiously, Lucy pushed herself upright and looked down at the town. The dragon was gone. Only the lingering smoke of the burned wreck and the crushed warehouse marked his visit. Saorsha was climbing to her feet, too. She offered a hand to the elderly mayor.
Anger boiled up in Lucy’s mind. Fed by indignation and the release from a hideous fear, her temper rose to a thunderclap. Her face flamed red-hot and her hands began to shake. The turban transformed to a crown shaped of spikes and hard, angular edges. She stood on the Rock and shook her fist at the sky where the red dragon had disappeared.
Mayor Efrim tried to pat her arm, but she would have none of it. Then she saw over the mayor’s shoulder a second column of smoke rising from somewhere close to the mouth of the harbor. Her stomach lurched in fear. “Oh, no,” she cried softly. “The Second Thoughts.” Turning her back on the elders, she bolted for the road.
Saorsha sighed bitterly as she watched the young woman run over the rim and disappear. “Efrim, what are we going to do?”
The sound of the warning horn reached out across the water to the Second Thoughts just as the dolphins began their turn toward the mouth of the harbor. The first blast brought everyone to the bow to see what the trouble could be. By the time the second clarion call warned the town of an imminent arrival, they had all spotted the red dragon approaching Flotsam.