When a dragon was weakened by magic, the new warriors could corner it and kill it. This was not a battle; it was slaughter. Murder. The men had been unlucky with Alpheratz, however. His mountain was one of the sacred places. It housed one of the ancient stones, the wells, where the Fount was so strong it could be seen with the naked eye. The mages had drawn on it so hard they had extinguished its ethereal blue glow. Even now, it remained shrouded in darkness. Draining it was something Alpheratz had not thought possible, and in his moment of distraction, the men had dealt him a great blow.
The mages and their warriors had thought he was finished, and grew overconfident. What little Fount remained had restored enough of his strength for one more act. He had allowed them near enough to touch him. One had laid his hand flat on Alpheratz’s snout and told his comrades a joke. They had not laughed however—the punch line had coincided with the brazen one being swallowed by flame, something the others experienced moments later. The memory made Alpheratz smile, but did little to quell the sorrow in his heart or the rage boiling his blood.
Perched on a rocky outcrop, Alpheratz watched the valley intently. He had never paid much attention to men until they started hunting and killing dragonkind. Then he had done his best to stay away from them. Fighting had never interested him much—except to win Nashira’s affections—but now he could think of nothing else. They had murdered her. Murdered his young.
A cluster of small buildings straddled a stream some way down the hill. Stone chimneys surrounded by golden thatch puffed smoke into the air. People had been wandering about earlier, but all seemed to be inside now. Contained. It would make what he planned all the easier.
His muscles were still wasted and his flame glands were shrivelled. He didn’t have the strength to chase them or to blast flame about with abandon. In their tiny houses, they would be easy prey. He waited for the light to fade a little more, giving him greater advantage with his superior eyes, then stretched his wings, allowing them to bite into the air and carry him down to the village below.
As he glided close, he squeezed his flame glands. At first, nothing happened. He worried that he had over-taxed them in the cavern. It took time for the glands to fill the bladders, but he had heard of those who had over-stressed their glands, damaging them beyond use. They had not lived long. There were only so many peaks where a dragon could dwell, and if you couldn’t defend yours, your life would be short.
He breathed a sigh of relief as he felt the glands compress and tasted the welcome flavour of the fluids as they sprayed from his mouth and ignited on contact with the air. The thatched roofs were dry and caught quickly. In his first pass, he set light to every building in that small hamlet. The smell of the smoke and the sensation of the heat as he passed over a second time were a joy. The screams that followed were music to his ears. The screams had stopped by his third pass, but still he revelled in the flight, the flames, the fury. When finally he stopped spraying the hamlet with flame, little remained. The fire was so intense that the village burned to ash in only a few minutes.
He landed to take a closer look at his work. It satisfied him deeply to see how easily man could be erased from the face of the land. In a single growing season, there would be nothing left to suggest people had lived here. Though it had been easier than he had expected, it had left him tired again. In his eagerness, he had reduced the animal pens to dust, and there was no nourishment to be had.
He needed to rebuild his strength, to feed regularly. He took to the air once more, looking for food this time, rather than vengeance, though the latter was never far from his mind. Menfolk had ventured too far into dragon country. They had killed his aerie-mate and their brood. Men would ever be his enemy. They would suffer. They would burn. They would learn their place in the world and never dare to test their betters again. He would drive them back to their little island in the middle of the great sea with such prejudice that they would never dare set foot in these hallowed lands again.
Alpheratz spotted a larger village in the distance, one with outlying farm buildings that would provide plenty to eat. He needed to be careful, though. A larger settlement might mean soldiers—perhaps magicians and their special warriors—and he was not yet ready to deal with that. He looked around again and saw a farm a distance away. Better. His target picked—a large barn that he hoped was filled with cattle or something else to sate his appetite—he swooped.
CHAPTER 4
Gill was out of breath by the time he reached the farm, well behind Jacques. The boy’s father, Alain, worked a small patch of land tucked into a bend of the river that ran through the limestone valley that was the Seigneury of Villerauvais. Upstream of the village, it was one of the most picturesque landholdings in Gill’s demesne, with a magnificent view of the village, the manor house, and the limestone crags, pastures, and lush green forests that surrounded them.
Jacques’s agitation had grown as they had neared the farm, and Alain’s expression when they arrived at his small house confirmed Gill’s impression that something serious was afoot. It seemed odd that after so long undisturbed, two events coincided on the same day. The world could be an unpredictable place, he thought. Perhaps he was just unlucky?
“Good afternoon, Alain,” Gill said.
“Good afternoon, m’Lord.”
Gill raised an eyebrow in surprise. Serious indeed, he thought. Other than dal Sason, he couldn’t remember the last time someone had called him “m’Lord.” “Your boy seemed rather in a state when he came to fetch me.”
“Run on and help your mother, Jacques,” Alain said. He watched the boy run off before turning his attention back to Gill. “Something I need to show you.”
Gill followed him along a dirt path between two small fields toward where Alain grazed his small herd of sheep. His curiosity grew with each step, and he was beginning to think that Lord Montpareil was not involved. In the centre of the pasture was a large, circular scorch mark, like the black stain left by bonfires on festival nights. Gill could see what looked like the charred remains of four, possibly five, sheep in the burnt patch.
“A little overdone, I’d have said,” Gill said. He grimaced when Alain didn’t react to the attempt at humour, but considering half of his flock had been lost, that was not surprising.
“Found them like that this morning,” Alain said, his eyes locked on the carcasses.
Gill’s vassals rarely sought his help, and considering what Jeanne had said, he felt he at least had to appear to be making an effort. He knelt by the burnt patch and touched it with his fingertips.
“Did you see anything?” Gill said.
“Nothing.”
The grass was burned to dust and there was little enough left of the sheep. It had been a hot fire, which would have needed lots of wood and taken some time to reach that temperature. It struck him as unlikely that Alain would not have noticed the effort required to create such a blaze. It was quiet there at night; you could hear the river and every insect. The fire could not have been built without making some noise, and that did not take into account rounding up and killing the sheep. Not to mention the fact that there didn’t seem to be any remnants of the fuel. No wood or coal.