Do, please, sit down and let me fight the dragon. Then you won't have to worry about being eaten, you know."
The Princess gave a small scream. "Alas? she said in a quavery voice.
"Behold my sad state! For now must I watch a bloody battle, and perhaps see my love slain before my eyes, and become a captive of this monster."
"This is ridiculous," said Shiara, and before I could stop her she marched over to stand between the dragon and the knight. I followed her, hoping I could get her out of trouble if I had to.
"Ah, save me!" the Princess said as we got closer. I wasn't sure whether she wanted to be saved from the dragon or from Shiara.
Shiara glared at her. "You shut up," she told the Princess. "You've caused enough trouble already."
"I say," said the knight. "If we're going to discuss politeness-" "We aren't," said Shiara. "We're going to discuss battles. Battles between dragons and knights. Why do you want to fight this dragon?"
"Knights are sworn to do battle with the beasts that ravage the fields, carry off innocent maidens, and generally make a nuisance of themselves," the knight said. He sounded as if he were reciting something, and he didn't look very pleased about the idea, but the Princess nodded approvingly.
"Well, this dragon isn't ravaging anything, and it doesn't even want your stupid princess," Shiara said.
"I do, too!" the dragon broke in. "If I'm not going to carry her off I could eat her, after all. And if I fought a knight no one could say I'm not a proper dragon, even if I don't have a princess."
"I really don't think that's a good idea," I said. "Princesses aren't all that common, after all."
"Besides, you promised me you wouldn't," Shiara said.
"I did not!" the dragon said. "I only said I wouldn't waste a perfectly good princess, and this one's not so great. Eating her wouldn't be much of a waste."
"I don't think that would be very polite," I said. "Especially when you've talked to her this long without bringing it up. You really ought to ease into these things gradually, you know."
"Are you sure?" the dragon said.
I nodded.
"Oh, all right," said the dragon. "I won't eat her, then. But couldn't I fight the knight anyway? Just for practice?"
"I say, that sounds like an excellent idea," the knight said, brightening perceptibly. "A sort of exercise for both of us."
"A tourney!" the Princess cried. "Oh, brave and clever, to think of such a thing!"
The knight looked pleased. So did the dragon. It nodded, then whispered to Shiara, "What's a tourney?"
"It's like a battle, only no one gets hurt. Usually."
"Not even a little?" the dragon said. The knight started looking worried again.
"Of course not? Shiara said to the dragon. "It's a show of skill."
"If you were trying to hurt each other, it wouldn't be a tourney," I added. Actually, it wasn't going to be a tourney anyway. There are very specific rules about what a tourney is, and a practice fight between a dragon and a knight just doesn't qualify. I decided not to say so.
"Oh, all right, then," the dragon grumbled. "I don't know why I'm letting you talk me into this. How do we start?"
9
In Which There Is a Fight, Sort of, and They Find Out Where They Are Going
The hardest part was getting the dragon and the knight to agree about rules. The Princess was no help at all. She kept talking about the marvelous tourneys she'd seen, and which knights had been wounded.
Whenever she did, the dragon would start looking at the knight, and pretty soon it would want to know why it couldn't bite off one of the knight's arms, or at least a hand. The knight would get worried, and the Princess would start crying, and Shiara and I would have to talk the dragon out of it. As soon as the dragon agreed, the Princess would cheer up and start talking about tourneys again.
Finally, Shiara told the Princess to shut up. It wasn't very polite, but it worked. Well, sort of. The Princess didn't stop talking, but as long as she was complaining about Shiara and not talking about tourneys we didn't have any more problems getting the dragon and the knight to agree.
When we finally decided on the rules, we had to draw a circle in the middle of the clearing for them to fight in. It was harder than it sounds. For one thing, a circle has to be pretty big if a dragon is going to fit inside it, even if it's a small dragon. Also, the moss in the Enchanted Forest grows awfully fast. By the time we finished drawing the circle, the first half of it had already disappeared. Shiara watched for a minute, then looked at the knight.
"Are you sure you have to have a circle to fight?" Shiara said.
"I really do think so," the knight said apologetically. "It wouldn't be a proper tourney without it, don't you see."
"I'm sick of proper dragons and proper princesses and proper tourneys," Shiara said under her breath. Fortunately, the dragon didn't hear her.
We started redrawing the circle, trying to make the line wider this time.
The knight scratched at the moss with his sword. Shiara used a stick.
So did I; I didn't think Mother would approve if I used the Sword of the Sleeping King to cut moss. Nightwitch and the dragon sort of dug at the ground. The Princess sat under a tree.
Eventually we finished, and the knight and the dragon stepped inside the circle. "Well, what are you waiting for?" Shiara demanded.
"Someone has to say, 'go,'" the knight said in a reasonable tone.
"Go!" I said quickly.
Shiara gave me a disgusted look, but she didn't say anything, because as soon as I shouted, the dragon and the knight got started. They were fairly evenly matched. The dragon was much larger, of course, and it had a very good sense of timing, but it didn't have much experience.
The knight was wearing armor, which helped, and he was obviously used to fighting, but he was a little awkward most of the time. They were both good at dodging, though, and they each managed to take three or four swings without hitting the other. The dragon was just starting to take another swipe at the knight when a little tree sprouted up in front of him and hit him in the nose.
I was surprised. I mean, even in the Enchanted Forest, trees don't usually grow that fast. The dragon was even more surprised than I was.
It sort of reared back, and its tail came around very fast to balance it.
Nightwitch was a little too close and had to scramble back out of the way.
"Hey, watch out!" Shiara said.
The dragon jumped and swung around, looking as if it expected another tree to pop up behind it. Its tail swung in the other direction, and the end of it caught the knight right in the middle of his chest plate as he was trying to back out of the way. The dragon yelped, the Princess screamed, and the knight fell over backward into the pool of water that my sword had made when the Princess had tried to take it.
Evidently the pool was a lot deeper than it looked, because the knight sank right out of sight. We all forgot about the fast-growing tree and leapt forward. The Princess was faster than either Shiara or I. By the time I got to the pool, she had hold of the knight. She wasn't quite strong enough to pull him out, but she wasn't letting go, either.
Shiara got to the pool about the same time I did, and together the three of us managed to get the knight out of the water. He was unconscious, and he had a large dent in his armor where the dragon's tail had hit him. The Princess checked to make sure he was still alive, and then she burst into tears.
"Alas! See now how sad is my fate! For my love has been grievously injured and I am without protection in this awful place. Ah, woe is me!"
"Is he dead?" asked the dragon from right behind me. I jumped. It peered curiously over my shoulder at the knight.
"Monster!" said the Princess. "Your base attempt to slay my love has failed! No second chance shall you have to harm him while I can stand between you! For if my love be slain, I care not whether I live or die, and thus I now defy you." She threw herself across the knight's chest.