Only slightly higher, twenty feet or more, was the shelf and cave. Here below the shelf were great, heaped mounds of brown-black gunk that reeked of sulfur and sewage. By luck, rain had dampened the odor, or it probably would have poisoned him.
"Well," grunted the barbarian, "bears don't dung up their caves. Why should dragons?"
Holding his nose, breathing shallowly, he cast about to the right and left and finally found a crack he could follow up to the shelf. He was actually in a hurry, he thought ruefully. Anything to escape this stink. A random thought intruded: now he knew why dragons moved their caves occasionally. Too bad he'd probably never tell anyone.
Picking over an older pile of dung bleached tan by wind and rain, he saw something glitter amidst the dried clumps. Kicking with his foot, he overturned a fluted helmet-with a brown-stained skull still inside. Ruellana's words about leaving the cave only as dragon shit came to mind and wouldn't go away.
Still, he had no choice but to persevere, ignoring the idiocy of what he was about to do. On shaky legs and trembling hands, Sunbright crawled up the crack and reached the fabled shelf.
And the yawning cave behind.
The cave mouth was tall enough to take a ship under full sail, wide enough to admit spread wings. After about twenty feet, the interior grew dark. From inside came twin smells, nauseating as they tried to overpower one another: a hot, brassy stink like rust burning off an iron pan, and the sweet, cloying, throat-gagging odor of rotting flesh. Holding his breath, the barbarian detected the faintest tiny hint of a sound, as of wood being sawed: snoring.
Shaking all over, Sunbright nearly sliced off his own ear clumsily drawing Harvester from its back scabbard. He took a step, then remembered to turn and wave at the puny orcs and men in the middle distance. They waved once, and hurried away.
Crouching in the icy rain, Sunbright admitted the cave would at least be warm and dry. Funny though, how the old legends never mentioned the heroes were afraid. Perhaps, then, he'd never become a legend. Just another skull in a heap of dragon dung.
And with those cheery thoughts, he walked in.
Advancing a short inch at a time, Sunbright had too much time to think. As a wilderness-trained hunter, he knew he could sneak through territory so not even foxes would scent him. But dragons were said to have acute senses, could even read minds. Supposedly they could hear a potential thief just thinking of robbery at fifty leagues. He didn't believe it, but that in itself wasn't much help.
Of course, he rattled in his head, he needn't actually slay the dragon. He had only to enter its cave and retrieve-steal-a big book with a ruby in the cover and get away safely.
Even if the dragon was asleep, the chances of his sneaking in successfully were remote at best. So… if he couldn't sneak in, or leave without the orcs hunting him down and flinging him back inside crippled, or kill the beast, what was left?
Not much.
He stopped, and waited, and wondered what to do. To advance and die seemed the only option.
So, how to die? Creeping like a rat? Or charging with sword outthrust and a battle cry ringing loud?
Would he be burned to a crisp, bitten in half, or simply be crushed by a scaled claw, like a demented mouse rushing a cat?
Then a rustle sounded behind him. And a voice.
"Sunbright! Wait!"
Chapter 11
The barbarian turned and squinted up to where something fluttered in the round, gray rim of outlined sky.
"Oh, it's you."
The raven cocked its feet, folded its wings, plunked to a landing, and clacked its black beak. "Stinks. Where are you bound?"
"Why should I tell you?" Sunbright's emotions were churning inside him, and anger boiled up. "Who failed to tell me when bandits were about to attack my party and ended up killing three of us?"
The bird tipped its head to present first one, then the other beady eye. "I can't know everything."
"You flew right over the road! You could have warned me!"
"I told you where to find that four-prong buck in the birches, did I not?"
The barbarian piffed. "A hunting dog could have done that! I expect a magic raven to reveal more than the weather!"
Ignoring the criticism, the bird pointed its beak toward the back of the cave. "Why?"
Sunbright sighed, anger winking out, despair returning. He related the story of the One King holding Greenwillow.
Oddly, the raven commented on what was, to Sunbright, an inconsequential thing. "A book? You're to retrieve a book? With a ruby set in the cover?"
"So what? All the treasure of the world might be in there, for all the good it will do me. What color are rubies, anyway?"
The bird muttered something that sounded to the barbarian like "damsys" then croaked, "Red. What do you know of this dragon, Wrathburn?"
"It's a big red dragon packed to the eyeballs with dung." And armor and bones, he added mentally. The young man cast a nervous glance over his shoulder, but heard only a tick in the snoring. At least the stink was lessening, or else he was adjusting to it. He'd probably smell like death and dragon till the day he died.
"Wrathburn…" The raven hopped, nailed a cockroach from the stone floor, and gulped it down with his head back. "Very strong, devilishly wicked, inordinately vain, as I recall. And not too bright."
"Bright? You mean its scales?"
"No, its intellect!" groused the raven. "You're an apt match for it."
"What?" Sunbright warily watched the darkness for hints of advancing dragon. With his luck, he'd get stomped on without ever being seen. "That doesn't sound very helpful. How about a soft spot, you know, a white scale where a knitting needle would penetrate? Near his tail, perhaps?"
The raven shook his beak. "Sorry, no. But Wrathburn does have a reputation for being vain. In a man, that's usually the most damning quality. More men have lost kingdoms to vanity than to any other vice. Remember the lesson you learned on the road from Dalekeva."
In a burst of feathers, the raven hopped into the air and plunged away, out the yawning cave mouth into the drizzle.
"Hey, wait! What lesson…?"
Sunbright clamped a hand over his mouth. Here he was shouting like an idiot in the marketplace while, within spitting distance, a dragon slept.
Or…
Silent, hardly breathing, he listened.
The snoring had stopped.
Desperately, Sunbright tried to think. The road from Dalekeva? Walking to Tinnainen? It had been a long road with many minor adventures. The only true danger he'd faced was when he and Greenwillow had bumped into patrols of orcs. Of course, he'd wanted to skulk through unseen, but she'd insisted the quick and sensible way was just to clutch their pass and march down the middle of the road…
A while later, Sunbright came swinging down a slope, sword at his shoulder, whistling jauntily. The floor of the cave was smooth from a dragon dragging its iron-hard belly scutes along the floor. The barbarian was guided by the flickering flame that welled from the nostrils of the dragon as it slept-or pretended to-and by the reflected light from the monstrous pile of gold, silver, gemstones, and other precious artifacts that made up the dragon's bed. Sunbright couldn't guess the treasure's value, but the hoard rose above his head in some places. The cave sprawled in many directions, the distances lost, but the treasure pile had been scooped out in the middle to make a resting place for the dragon, like a kitten in a pile of mittens.
The dragon was immense. Its head was longer than a rowboat, frilled with horns like stalactites, its neck like a stone bridge, its back like a low hill. Details were indistinct, but its scales seemed as big as a man's hand, overlaid so tightly they bristled outward. The beast's pointed ears drooped at the tips, and its nostrils were flame-blackened around the edges. Sunbright stopped and planted himself right in front of those nostrils and tried not to think about how hot they were.