One of the men pointed and said, "Here he comes."
"Coming to check us out, to see why we're running, I'm sure," the first mate responded lowly, so his voice wouldn't carry.
"He'll not attack, once he sees our flag, will he?" a man asked, brushing salt spray from his eye.
"Of course not. Once he sees our lily and skull design, he'll leave us be. No red would dare attack one of the Dark Queen's ships," the mate said. "Ah ha! there you are." He slid the correct key into the massive lock sealing the weapons locker and turned it. The lock popped open.
"By the gods, he's a big one," the crewman said with undisguised awe.
"Nay, he only looked big in the distance, on account of…" The first mate's voice trailed off as he glanced up and saw the dragon approaching on the wind. He stepped back and shouted up to the captain, "Sir, what kind of dragon is that? He looks awful big!"
"He's not one of ours," the captain answered.
His eyes still locked on the dragon, the first mate opened the locker with a sharp jerk on the handle. He stepped inside and began handing out crossbows and boxes of heavy quarrels.
The captain maintained his stand at the helm while sending the helmsman below to assist the first mate. He stood alone, the sharp sea spray dousing his hair, and muttered unheard curses into the wind, occasionally glancing back to check the progress of the dragon. As it drew closer, the dragon's wings seemed to spread out across all the sky, from horizon to horizon. Never before had Captain Farstar seen such a dragon, and he'd served in the Dark Queen's navy since before the Chaos War. He had heard of such dragons, new dragons from across the sea. Larger and more powerful than any dragons ever before encountered, they cared little whom they attacked or whom they destroyed.
The first mate ordered the sailors and soldiers of Donkaren to their posts. The captain, watching his crew moving as though in a daze, their eyes ever on the dragon, already knew his ship was lost. Still, he held to the wheel, hoping against hope. He drew his saber and glanced once more over his shoulder.
The dragon came in at mast-height. The scales of its underbelly were the color of desert rock-a dull burnt orange that seemed to radiate heat. Its bulk filled all the sky, its great shadow blocking out the sun, so that it seemed the ship had sailed into the Abyss. The dragon's wings robbed Donkaren of her wind, and her sails began to droop. She slowed. The sailors and soldiers along her rail stared up in fascinated horror, like nestlings hypnotized by the serpent approaching their nest. The dragon's great head, almost as large as the ship itself, snaked down to gaze at them in return. The dragon seemed almost to hover above them, to hang impossibly in the air, its wing tips dipping hissingly in the sea. The heat emanating from its body beat down on the crew's upturned faces like an unseen sun, drawing the moisture from their mouths and their eyes, drying ropes and rigging, stiffening salt-encrusted sails. Steam began to rise from the decks.
"Fire your weapons!" the captain shouted, but it seemed as though the sound of his voice was also sucked up by the intense heat of the dragon's body. "Damn your hides," he croaked. "Attack!"
The dragon's great head snapped around to stare at the captain at the sound of his voice. Captain Farstar stiffened, then staggered back as if from an unseen blow. The dragon's jaws parted.
The first mate had dragged his crossbow to his shoulder. His muscles felt numbed, paralyzed, like in a nightmare, every movement an agony. He sighted at the dragon's eye and pulled the trigger.
At that moment, the dragon breathed. A pillar of white hot liquid fire descended upon Captain Farstar and burst through the deck to the cabins below. Wood, canvas, rope, flesh, all erupted in flames or turned instantly to ash from the heat. The first mate watched his bolt rise toward the dragon's eye, trailing smoke. The fletching turned to ash without ever catching fire, and it veered off course, striking the dragon's neck and bouncing off its scales. As it fell, it burst into flame and was consumed before ever it reached water.
And then it was gone. The dragon vanished from overhead with a roar of wind. Fire leaped along the rigging. The ship's pitch seams began to bubble as flames raced below deck. Men dashed about, screaming, some of them alive with flame, others wild-eyed, crying, tears streaking their soot-stained faces. They abandoned the ship in droves, and those who could swam for the distant shore of the Isle of Cristyne. The dragon swooped over them and doused them in flame. The sea exploded in steam.
The first mate stood at the rail, an intense heat, burning through to the soles of his feet. He knew any moment the deck would collapse, but his only thought was to remain with the ship. "She's my ship now, my duty. I'm her captain, if only for a moment," he said aloud, to no one. A flaming yardarm crashed through the deck behind him, and roaring flames shot up through the hole. As the rigging burned through, the wind lifted the sails out to sea. Ghostly flaming sheets rising on the breeze, they shredded into tatters and wisps and fell with a hiss into the water. Donkaren began to settle as she burst her seams and let in the sea.
Then, the dragon came again, like a whirlwind, its huge wings thumping the air as it descended on the ship from above. As it dropped, it stretched out its claws and took the ship by the bow, staving in her sides with its massive talons. The dragon was much too large to settle on the ship, so it kept its wings moving, but still its massive weight dragged her down by the bow. Her stern rose into the air.
The first mate held to the door of the weapons locker to keep from sliding down the ship's sloping deck. The sea rushed up, dousing the flames but sending up a scalding steam. With a groaning hiss, she slipped below the waves, and the first mate, holding tight, went with her. The blue closed over his head. He released his hold and rolled in the sudden quiet of the sea, feeling her cool hands ease his burns.
As he slowly sank into the dark, the first mate saw the ship rising above him. He watched in awe as her blackened sides slid by him, massive, like the passing of a great whale. She rose to the silver surface overhead and burst free of the water, leaving it and taking to the air. Her passing pulled him up with her, and finally, he too breathed free air again.
He bobbed on the surface for a moment, then found a bit of wreckage and climbed wearily atop it. He noticed with some surprise that it was the door to the weapons locker. Exhausted, he rolled over and looked up at the darkening sky. There he saw the dragon, rising, Donkaren gripped firmly by the bow and streaming water out all her holes. Like some great bird of prey with a fish in its claws, the dragon flew slowly away to the west.
2
Lord Gunthar leaned forward in his chair and tapped a spoon against the silver cup set before his plate. He cleared his throat and smoothed his long gray mustaches, the symbol of his Solamnic heritage. The cup was engraved with kingfishers and roses, and the handle of the spoon was gilded with roses and stamped with a golden crown. These symbols matched the decorations on his antique armor, on his breastplate, the greaves on his legs, and the broad silver filigree binding his flowing silver locks. Rose, kingfisher, and crown were repeated in all the things around him-the back of the wooden chair in which he sat, the hilt of the ancient longsword hanging at his side, even the tapestry displayed behind him, with its scenes of knights astride dragons of silver thread and gold embroidery. One rode at the forefront of the battle, a great silver lance in his hand, his mustaches rippling in the wind of his speed. The knight on the tapestry looked like a younger version of Gunthar, for Lord Gunthar uth Wistan, Grand Master of the Knights of Solamnia, was old, his mustaches gray, the lines of care etched deeply in his weatherworn face. The hand that held the spoon and tapped the cup, the same hand that had once wielded a sword in battle, now shook slightly with the first signs of palsy.