Tag Archives: dragons

Excerpt from Voice of the Dragon (a WIP)

Posted on by

For #LineByLineTime : “Illness”

“What’s wrong with them?” The king’s anxiety revealed its severity in his voice.

“Dragon fever,” his brother Frederick sighed. “Every dragon rider we’ve ever trained caught it. They get over it with plenty of care, but it makes them very sick.”

“But they are children! You said you weren’t going to train them yet!”

“I haven’t,” the dragonmaster groaned, rubbing his forehead. “But they rode the dragons themselves. I didn’t even know until Hannah told me about it. From what I understand, she sort of dragged Gerald along. Now they are both sick. We’ve never had patients this young. I don’t know how they will do.”

Frederick’s wife Alice elbowed him away from Hannah’s bed. “Out of my way, you men. We need to bathe the children to cool their fever. Go away and do something useful, like pray.”

“The dragons,” Hannah croaked, interrupting them.

“Yes, child, you have dragon fever. Lie still now, and I’ll cool your face a bit,” Alice said softly.

“Need the dragons. Take me,” the little girl insisted.

“Okay, okay,” Gerald grunted from the bed behind the dragonmaster’s wife. The adults stared as the lad struggled to sit up, his body shaky and his eyes unfocused. “Give me a minute.”

Frederick’s wife sprang to his side and pushed him back down. “You stay where you are! Neither of you are going anywhere! I am perfectly capable of taking care of you. I’ve been taking care of men with dragon fever for years. You lie still, now!”

Both children protested weakly, but Alice stood firm. She shooed the men out with no respect for her husband or the king. A couple of hours later she tucked the children between clean sheets and cleared away the soup she had almost forced down their throats.

“Now you two sleep. I’ll check on you in a few hours.” She bustled out of the room, her arms full of dirty linens.

Gerald obeyed, grateful for the clean dry sheets and warm soup. But he thought he had just closed his eyes when he awoke to Hannah’s stubborn shaking of his shoulder. “Wha-?” he groaned.

“Come on! We have to get out of here before she comes back! We have to get to the dragons!” Hannah let go his shoulder to hold on to the bed as her balance wavered.

“You’re fevered! We can’t go anywhere! You can’t even stand up!”

Hannah thumped his shoulder. “We have to get outside! The dragons will help us from there! Help me open the window!”

Exhausted and sore, Gerald thought seriously of just shoving the little pest through the window. Maybe then he could get some rest. He struggled up and held on to his mattress as he tried to focus. He could just make out the opening in the wall between the beds. He grabbed Hannah’s arm and they staggered together to it.

He found the latch by feel and pushed the window open, slumping over the sill as his energy gave out. He could feel himself falling back into the darkness in his mind just as the familiar sensation of a dragon’s tail wrapped around him and pulled him out before he could protest.

Excerpt: Voice of the Dragon

Posted on by

For #LineByLineTime : “Pogey Bait”

The kitchen door flew open before Hannah’s outstretched arms. Bestia squawked over the girl’s head as she bounced in the backpack. Mrs. Fredrick looked around , her eyes wide.

“What on earth, child?”

Hannah came to an abrupt halt, bouncing in place. Bestia squawked again and flapped her wings. She thumped the top of Hannah’s head with her chin in rebuke. Hannah stilled and offered a stroke of her hand in apology. Bestia calmed and rested her head on the girl’s.

“Now what has you bouncing that poor dragonet all about, girl?” the woman demanded.

“Gerald said you bought honey from the palace beekeeper! Will you make candy? Did you? Can I have some, pleeeease?” Hannah clasped her hands under her chin and stared at the Dragonmaster’s wife with her best begging expression.

“Tsk! I told that boy to keep his mouth shut about that. I’ll have everybody in the Dragonhold in here begging now. What makes you think you deserve candy, hmm?”

Hannah blinked and dropped to her knees. “Oh, Mrs. Fredrick, I don’t deserve any, I know, but I would be ever so grateful if you gave me some! I’ll do anything you ask! Anything!”

“That sweet tooth of yours will get you in trouble someday, Hannah. Never tell anybody what your weakness is. I could make you do something really nasty, the way you talk.”

Hannah grinned. “Only you and Gerald know, I swear! And you won’t make me do anything truly awful, will you?”

“You’ll owe me until I think of something, how’s that? I’m too busy to have you underfoot today.” She turned away and reached into a bowl on the table. “Here. A piece for you. Take this one to Gerald. Make sure it gets to him, hear me? I’ll find out.” She raised an eyebrow as Bestia sniffed at the candy Hannah was about to shove in her mouth. “Think she wants a piece?”

“Don’ know,” Hannah mumbled around her treat. “Don’ thing she ‘ver had any.”

“Hmm. Why don’t we see?” She picked up a fragment of the crystallized honey and offered it on the palm of her hand to the tiny dragon.

Hannah turned her head to watch her companion wrap her tongue around the candy. The dragonet suddenly spat it across the room where it bounced off the wall and landed in the fireplace. It caramelized in the fire and quickly vanished. The dragonet flapped her wings and her tongue and made disgusted noises.

Both humans laughed heartily. “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that one stealing your candy, Hannah!”

Excerpt from “Voice of the Dragon”

Posted on by

( A Work in Progress)

Gerald thought he was having a nightmare as he felt a hand press over his mouth.

He prayed it was a nightmare as his eyes snapped open to see his stepbrother grinning down at him.

“You’ve been a bad boy,” the nightmare whispered. “Time for you to confess!”

Gerald tried to scream for help, but his stepbrother just pinched his nose closed until he felt darkness crowding back in. His stepbrother almost crushed his jaw as he whispered in the smaller boy’s ear. “Silence, wretch, or I’ll pound you ’til you wish you were dead! The archbishop has determined you are to be punished for shunning your confessions and the services. I’m going to enjoy every moment of it. He has promised I can wield the whip for part of it.”

His victim fell limp, too terrified to resist any longer. There was no help to be found. He didn’t even bother praying. God had abandoned him when his father died.

Hugo dragged his stepbrother outside through the open window. He paused and looked around. “Thomas! Henry? Where did you go? Cowards! They probably ran back to the archbishop, afraid of the dragons. As if they were any threat to a real man! Hah!”

He shoved Gerald before him, his big calloused hand still crushing Gerald’s jaw. “Move, piglet! There’s plenty of pain for you before dawn!”

Gerald struggled to breathe through the nostrils quickly swelling from Hugo’s pinch. His eyes were blurry and barely noticed a shadow on the flagstone beneath him before his ears registered a splash and he felt hot liquid on his bare feet.

Hugo jerked him to a halt as his expensive boots splashed in the dark puddle. “What the -? That had better not be dragon piss, or I’ll make you lick it off my boots!”

Gerald stumbled sideways as Hugo stepped back onto dry pavement. His tormentor paused again as a wet thump sounded behind them. Spinning them both around, he and Gerald both stared at the bloody head slowly rolling to a halt. There was another wet splash, and the body once attached to the head landed beside it. A whimper sounded above them. They both looked up.

Hugo’s hand shook as it fell away from Gerald’s mouth. “Thomas?” he whispered.

Thomas whimpered again as he swung slowly in the air, upside down at rooftop height, the Hordemaster’s tail tightly coiled around him, covering his mouth with the triangular tip. Sulfur tainted the air around them as the huge dragon bared his fangs and exhaled over them.

“The Hordemaster does not approve of kidnappers of children.” Gerald’s eyes finally moved from the Hordemaster’s giant fangs and focused on Hannah perched on the dragon’s head, silhouetted by moonlight. She leaned forward. “Henry tried to hit me. The dragons don’t like that. They don’t like to see any child hurt. Thomas hasn’t done anything, but he shouldn’t be here at all. Neither should you. You’ve hurt Gerald. You’re young, so the Hordemaster hasn’t decided what to do with you, but you will be punished. If you ever come back here, he might decide to eat you!”

Hugo screamed and shoved Gerald away as he ran. But he only managed a few feet before a scaly tail coiled around his feet, yanking him upside down and swinging him through the air. He screamed again and thrashed, but the tail did not loosen. Instead, it swung him with a loud thud against the rock wall of the dragons’ den. He fell silent and hung limply, unconscious.

Gerald tracked the tail to the dragon it was attached to. The Hordemaster’s mate Caldea was gazing at his stepbrother as if wondering if he would make a decent meal. “Don’t eat him,” Gerald croaked. “He’d probably poison you.”

Torches and alarmed men swarmed the courtyard. “What is going on out here?” Frederick bellowed at the front of the crowd. “What – who is that? Who are those two? Why are the dragons holding them?” He grabbed the loose head by the hair and held it up away from him as it dripped. “Gerald! Hannah! Explain this!” But before they could, he waved the head at the men holding torches and swords. “Get this mess cleaned up before the flies descend!”

Excerpt from Voice of the Dragon

Posted on by

For #LineByLineTime : “Reverie”

Gerald stared out at the palace grounds from his perch on top of the dragon stables. The view was extensive from this height, but not as vast as seen from the back of a flying dragon. He sighed quietly, thinking of the Dragon Master’s words to him earlier that day.

“I know you’d like to fly with us on patrol, son, but you’re just not big enough. It takes muscle to control these dragons. You’re the youngest we’ve ever had sent to us, and even the full-grown lads had to work on building their bodies before we could even start to train them. You just have to wait and grow and learn what you can along the way. As it is, you’ll be ahead of many of the grown men we’ll get.”

Gerald remembered his argument. “But Hannah is smaller than me and she flies all the time!”

The Dragon Master had smiled kindly, if a little ruefully. “But she doesn’t control them, does she? She just goes wherever they decide to go.”

That was certainly true, Gerald thought. It didn’t bother Hannah at all to not be in control. Gerald hated not being in control. His whole life was controlled by others. He’d like to make the decisions about his life just once in a while.

A noise behind him made him turn his head just as Grunther thrust his scaly head over Gerald’s shoulder and settled its weight on the boy. Gerald froze. Normally when the young dragon got this close, he was snapping and huffing at him. But the dragon did not move, except to heave what sounded very much like a human sigh as he, too, stared out at the grounds.

Gerald dared to lay a hand on the dragon’s neck and stroked it slowly. The dragon’s jaw dipped to lay on Gerald’s chest, until a flight of dragons passed overhead. Grunther raised his chin and watched them until they were out of sight, then made a mournful sound and dropped his head again.

Enlightenment struck the boy. “You, too?” he whispered. It felt like a moment for whispers. “They told you that you were too young and small, too, didn’t they? You know just how I feel.” Grunther tilted his head just enough for his double-lidded eye to stare at Gerald for an instant before his breath gusted out in a sulfurous wind, and he dropped his head to lie across the boy’s chest again.

The human resumed stroking his companion and leaned his head against the creature he once feared. They were two of a kind after all, and understood each other. Gerald still regretted not being allowed to ride patrol yet, but at least now there was some company in his misery.

Voice of the Dragon: Excerpt

Posted on by

For #LineByLineTime : Creation

“What are you making?” Gerald twisted his head as he tried to make sense of what he was looking at.

Hannah laid fur over the leather and picked up an awl they used for making and mending harnesses for the dragons. “It’s a pouch to hold Bestia on my back. Since she can’t walk or fly, she can get around with me. It’s like the baby bags mothers use for little ones while they work. I just have to remember to leave a hole for her tail and two for her wings.” She grunted as she tried to drive the tool through both layers. “Gosh, this is tough material! Give me a hand here!”

Gerald had never sewn anything in his life and had not been taught to mend a harness yet, much less make it. When he said so, Hannah waved away his objections. “Just drive this through where I show you. You have bigger muscles than I do. I’ll thread the leather strip through. Go, start there!” She tapped her finger on the material and stared at him.

Gerald wasn’t sure if he felt flattered she thought him strong, or at least stronger than her, or annoyed at how she always bossed him around. He sighed and punched the needle through both layers. He grinned slightly as the little girl cheered and showed him where to put the next hole.

When they were finished, his hand and arm were sore and tired, but he could now see what Hannah had been describing. A backpack with straps lay before them. He helped Hannah fit it before they added straps across the front to secure it. “Bestia!” Hannah yelled, racing toward the hatchery. “We did it! I can carry you around now!” Gerald sighed again and ran after her, realizing he would have to place the little dragonette in the pack.

Excerpt from WIP “Voice of the Dragons”

Posted on by

for #LineByLineTime : “Euphoria”

“Hurry! Hurry!” Hannah threw Gerald’s winter furs and boots at him over her shoulder as she dug furiously through his storage chest.

“Why? What?” Gerald stammered as he automatically pulled the furs on and stomped his feet into his boots. His eyes ran over the furs she already wore, her hood up and snugged. Bestia flapped her wings as the girl bounded out the door. The dragonette’s claws clutched the carrier straps on Hannah’s back and her tail wrapped tightly around her waist. She cawed shrilly as she twisted her head back to stare at Gerald as if urging him to follow.

Gerald dashed after Hannah, looking around frantically for someone, anyone! to explain what was happening. The courtyard outside the stables was empty. Everyone else was out flying or at the meal.

“What are we doing?” he yelled as he chased her around the building. He stumbled to a stop as he almost ran into the giant black dragon crouched just beyond the corner. “Th-that’s the Hordemaster!” he stuttered.

Hannah whirled around and beamed a smile at him. “Yes! Bestia’s father is going to show us how to fly today! Isn’t it great?”

Gerald’s jaw dropped. “But, but, Bestia can’t fly! Her wings…and neither of us has ever been on a dragon! Much less the Hordemaster! Only the Dragonlord is allowed to fly him!”

Hannah waved her hand. “We’re not flying him. We’re just riding him. He’s going to show Bestia and me how to exercise her wings and get stronger! He said you could come along. Are you coming or are you going to pass up this chance to touch the sky?”

“But, but how do we even mount him? He’s enormous!”

The Hordemaster rested his chin on the cobblestones. His fangs gleamed as his mouth stretched as if he smiled. Hannah giggled and ran over to drop a kiss on his scaled nose before scrambling up and over his head, slinging her leg between the spines on his shoulders. Straps looped through holes in the spines behind went over and around her and she quickly tightened them.

“Coming or staying? He won’t wait forever!” she yelled.

Gerald whimpered with indecision, but couldn’t bear to look a coward in front of a little girl. He stepped slowly up to the massive head and climbed carefully onto its nose. Before he could try to climb up to Hannah’s perch, he found himself sailing through the air as the dragon swung his head around to the spines behind the child. Gerald tried to remember to breathe again as he almost fell into the space open between the big pointed bones.

“Hurry! Get your straps tied! He’s ready to take off!”

Gerald almost screamed with terror as he felt muscles bunch beneath him. He snatched at the straps and gasped for air as he struggled to make himself safe before the beast exploded into the air with a roar. Huge wings snapped open and caught the wind. Gerald felt the Hordemaster’s lungs expand and his wings beat furiously.

“Woo-hoo!” Hannah screamed. “Higher! Higher!” Bestia squawked her best attempt at a dragon’s roar.

Gerald looked down cautiously and almost fainted. The castle and town were already shrinking into toy size. He dragged his eyes back up and realized he could see for miles, further than he had ever gazed even from his father’s tallest tower. He stared in wonder, his desperate breaths slowing as he took in the sight. The Hordemaster leveled his flight and began to glide in huge circles, riding the air currents. A low rumble shook Gerald’s bones.

“Bestia! Grab my wrists!” Hannah yelled. “It’s time!” She stretched her thin arms out and the dragonette grabbed her wrists over the fur sleeves. Both females leaned forward and the wind snapped the dragon’s wings into full expansion.

Gerald grabbed their straps as they began to rise from their perch, gliding just like the Hordemaster. “Look out!”

Hannah laughed. “We’re flying! We’re flying, Gerald! Bestia is flying! It’s wonderful!” Bestia tried to roar again, her joy obvious. The crippled dragonette was finally able to feel the wind carry her body.

Gerald found himself smiling. Their joy was so clear. He looked around, taking a deep breath. His fear blew away. He felt safe for the first time since he had come to the dragon-hold, which was strange since he was so high he could barely see the ground, he was freezing in the wind, and only thin leather straps kept him from a fatal fall. But he discovered he trusted the Hordemaster to keep him as safe as his daughter and Hannah. He let go of them and flung his arms up too. “We’re flying!”