Chapter Two - The Knight
I was ready to draw my blade the second someone came into view. The hiding spot I'd picked was out of the way, but that didn't mean an attendant wouldn't step in for a smoke or something. I didn't want to kill anyone, but I couldn't afford to be seen. I needed to rest, but the odds that I'd be able to while looking out for anyone were slim. My nearly ten hour trek from one continent to the next was a mistake.
I closed his eyes for a moment, just a moment. I needed just a quick rest. Twenty-five seconds of sleep wouldn't be a problem, would it? No. I could afford that. I just needed to keep track of time. I opened my eyes again a moment later, feeling no more rested than I had been before. The idea that I could get any rest at all was likely a mistake. I should have known that.
I felt it when the train hit something on the rail. There shouldn't have been anything on the rail. I stood and nearly fell over when the train came to a sudden stop. That wasn't good in any way. I needed to move, to get off the train. I kept a firm grip on the hilt of my blade and slipped between the multitude of boxes in the train car.
They were fast. I counted six of them, all dressed in black. I could tell they were here for me. One of them slashed open the crate I was hiding behind, only to find me gone. I flicked on my flashlight, making him look up, smiled at him, then swung my sword and lopped his head clear off. I sprung from the ceiling of the train car and took out another one of them, bisecting him from right shoulder to left hip.
The other four rushed me immediately, but they weren’t difficult to kill. A severed head, a broken arm and impaled chest, a pair of legs kicked out from underneath a man I cut in half, and finally a simple impalement. When I was done, four more carcasses laid among the two that were already there.
I sheathed my sword and used a crate to brace myself when the train suddenly began to move again. Great. Whatever the found on the tracks must have been cleared off. Oh well. It just meant we’d get to wherever this train was going, finally. I didn’t even care what the destination was, I just wanted to be gone.
The train came to a more controlled stop somewhere. I could hear people outside, one of them mentioned a dragon. The outer door of the train car opened, and I ducked out of sight again. I had to decide whether or not I was going to hop off the train here - and potentially kill this man - or get off elsewhere.
“Can you believe this? Somebody dumped some mannequins back here!” The man picked up one of the limbs. “Good ones, too. This really looks like blood.”
Another man pulled himself into the train car and looked around at the bodies. “These aren’t mannequins, dumbass! Somebody greased these guys!” The second man pulled out a radio. “We’ve got… I don’t even know how many corpses in the eighth car, looks like they were chopped up, we need security here.”
Crap.
I got ready to draw my blade, but then I heard shouting from outside. The two that had gotten in the train car jumped out and went of to see what it was. There was cursing, and fighting. Dammit, the war hadn’t followed me, had it? I drew my sword and rushed out the car after the other two.
It was worse than I thought. It wasn’t the war that had followed me. It was him.
He was one hundred and forty feet tall, at least twice as long and I don’t know how wide. Colored bone white, with a great deal of blood splotched around his body, as if he painted himself with it. His eyes were solid black, with small white dot pupils that always looked like they were staring at me. His head was horned, like he’d been spawned by a demon rather than a dragon. Plumes of fire burst from his nose every time he took a breath. Across his left eye was a scar, though it was hard for me to believe he’d ever been injured in any way other than self-inflicted harm. Another scar adorned his stomach, this one larger, more recent.
I jumped upward and toward the nearest building. It had been quite some time since I saw this dragon. I’d been fourteen when he tracked me down and slaughtered my sister. How could he have found me now? Was he stalking me? What could he possibly want with this town?
The dragon lifted his head and opened his mouth, letting out a roar that I was too familiar with. I stood there, like I always had, just like that day. I couldn’t move.
Crap!
Nine Years Ago…
I dropped my dragon toy down the stairs and quickly stumbled after it. How could I do that? Stupid, stupid, stupid! Mom grabbed me by the arm and stopped me from falling on my face. “I thought I told you to go to bed, young man,” she said, a playful tone in her voice. Mom rarely ever reprimanded me, even when I did something wrong.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I said.
“So why were you playing in the hallway?”
“Because Circi wouldn’t let me play in our room.”
“Maybe because you and your sister need some sleep, sweetie.” She walked down to the landing halfway down the stairs and picked up my dragon, then tossed it to me. I fumbled with it for a second, but I didn’t drop it again. “Now go to bed, okay?”
I nodded, then turned around and started to walk to my room, but I stopped when I heard the front door rapidly open and close. I heard panicked voices. Dad was home! I bounced down the stairs and saw him arguing with Mom. What was going on? He pulled his sword and sheath off of his belt and placed them on the table, then grabbed a suitcase from the kitchen closet. What was going on?
“Dad?” I asked, stepping away from the stairs.
He grabbed me by the shoulders. “Cres, go wake your sister up, we have to leave now.”
“Why?”
“Don’t question me, Cres, we just need to go!”
Dad didn’t yell at me often. In fact, this was only the second time in my life that he had yelled at me. The first had been when I touched his sword the first time. Whatever was going on, this was serious.
I ran up the stairs and opened the door to my bedroom, which I shared with my older sister, Circi. She wasn’t a heavy sleeper, so it took me little time to wake her up. “Dad says we need to go,” I said, “he won’t say why.”
“Dad’s home?”
“Yeah. He says we need to leave. He sounded worried.”
The ground started to shake. What could be causing that? What was going on? I followed Circi downstairs and then she was pushing me back up the stairs. I only caught a glimpse, but I watched fire burst through the front door.
And I heard screams.
The ceiling suddenly caught on fire. I ducked, like I’d been taught in school. Why was everything burning? Where was this fire coming from? I followed Circi into the bedroom, where she opened the window and looked down. “Okay,” she said, turning back to me, “we need to jump, Cres.”
“But, Mom and Dad…”
“I’m sure they made it out, but we can’t get out downstairs, so we’ve gotta jump out the window, okay?”
“But we don’t have anything to land on!”
“I’ll go first, and I’ll catch you, but you’re gonna havta jump when I tell you, understand?”
I nodded, then watched as she climbed into the window, then jumped down. I quickly rushed to the window and looked out and down to see if she was okay. I didn’t want to think of the alternative. I watched her crawl out of the bush that Dad planted outside his study. Good. I didn’t want her to be hurt.
“Jump, Cres, now!”
I climbed into the window and took a deep breath. I just had to jump, that’s all. It wouldn’t be hard. I just had to jump.
The heat on my back made the decision for me. The fire had spread to the bedroom, and everything was burning up, popping, crackling. I let go of the sides of the window and felt gravity doing its work. I fell, and landed in the bush, just as Circi tried to catch me.
She pulled me out of the bush and brushed me off. It didn’t look like I had any cuts or anything, so I was okay. The smoke was billowing out of the first floor windows, and I could tell nothing on that floor would be exempt from the fire’s rampage. I hoped Mom and Dad got out before it got too bad.
Circi grabbed my hand and pulled me around the house, where we saw that it wasn’t just our house, but the majority of the neighborhood and the town, as well. There were fires everywhere, and not everyone was lucky enough to make it out of their homes. I saw more than one flaming corpse hanging half out an upstairs window.
“Circi! Cres!” Mom shouted from somewhere. I spotted her before Circi did, and Dad was there as well. They were running toward us. Time slowed to a crawl for just a moment as a giant foot came down in between my parents and me. I looked up and saw black eyes with white pupils staring down at me.
The eyes turned from me to my parents, and then a roughly half-circle shape appeared in the blackness underneath the eyes. The half-circle was red-orange, and then it opened further. The red-orange in the half-circle spread outward, in a cone-like shape. It grew, and grew, and grew, and then encompassed my mom and dad.
Heat spread from the cone, but I was frozen solid, watching my parents burn.
The fire shooting from the dragon’s mouth stopped almost as quickly as it began, and the dragon moved on, torching the rest of the town.
I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. I simply sat there, on my knees, looking at the charred remains of my parents. Hours passed, and I didn’t move.
I couldn’t move.
Present Day
That same dragon was standing in front of me yet again, staring at me yet again, scaring me yet again. Thanks to that roar, I just couldn’t move. I closed my eyes and tried to find something else to focus on. It wasn’t easy. No. Not just difficult. It was impossible. There was only one thing I could think of anywhere around me, and it was the dragon.
“You!” I shouted, hoping my voice sounded less like a frightened boy and more like a man who could actually fight a dragon. “Have you been following me?”
The dragon looked in my direction again, but didn’t say anything, or move, or do anything other than stare at me. It was like he was looking through me, somehow, like he knew something about me that I didn’t.
He was taunting me.
I remembered that I had my sword drawn, the sword that had been my father’s. It had been the only thing spared when the house burned down that day. It was the only memento I had of my entire family.
The dragon stood on his hind legs and spread his wings. He roared once again, then flapped his wings and took off. The wind from his flapping wings nearly knocked me down, but I braced myself, and when the dragon was gone, I felt my heart rate return to normal.
I looked around the train yard and saw several warehouses on fire, with people dragging bodies out of them. So many dead, all thanks to that dragon, who may very well be following me.
Crap.
The sun was setting as I made my way through the Seles Plains, using the railroad tracks as my one and only guide. It’d be too difficult to see the tracks, soon, thanks to the clouds that were about to blot out any moonlight I’d potentially get. I looked around, hoping to find some place to rest for the night.
An arrow flew past my head. I drew my sword and prepared for the oncoming assault. My muscles tightened up, ready for the battle. The Plains Tribe always hunted in groups of six or eight. There would be two archers, one on either ridge surrounding me, and between two and four lancers. There’d be a single swordsman, who’d be the one to engage in single combat, and then finally one commander, who’d be kept out of the fight.
I looked to the ridges, but there was no one there. My eyes roamed downward and to the left, where I saw something that looked like a cave. The sun was almost down entirely, so my night vision would be kicking in soon, but for the moment, I could barely see the cave. I took one step off the tracks toward the cave, and another arrow nearly hit me in the back of the head. I spun around and held my blade ready.
I hadn’t been expecting a lone girl who didn’t even look a day older than me. “All the money you’ve got, and your fancy sword,” she said, ready to loose the arrow she was aiming at my head. She was clearly one of the Plains Tribe, going by her clothes and her war paint. The war paint was a recent addition to the Tribesmen, based more on old myths and legends than on whether or not it really frightened their targets. She was wearing a cloth skirt, a bikini top and a pair of combat boots that looked to be a size or two too big.
There was something odd about this girl, though. I’d met many Plains Tribe women, older and younger than this girl, and none of them seemed as… confident as she seemed to be. Something about this girl told me that if I didn’t comply, that arrow really would be in my face.
I slipped my sword back in the sheath and unclipped it from my belt, then knelt down and set it on the ground. As I did, my free hand went to the knife hidden and sheathed on my boot. I stood up and held the drawn knife in my hand, then tapped the side of the blade against my arm. “You sure I can’t block it with my knife?”
She smirked, then disappeared into a light puff of smoke. Now that was quite the trick. I knelt down again to grab my sword, and then I was suddenly looking up at her arrow pointing straight at my eye, that smirk still on her face. No wonder she seemed confident, she could move faster than anyone could see.
I just wasn’t too happy about an arrow in my face.
She said, “If you thought I’d missed you earlier, you’re wrong, I just prefer not to kill people when I can rob them.”
“You’re pretty good.”
“No, I’m pretty broke, and I need your money. Your sword would just be a bonus.”
“How do you do that?”
“This is a robbery, buddy, so I hope you understand that I’m not here to answer twenty questions.”
“I’m intrigued.”
“And I’m bored, so either gimme the money and the sword, or I’m just gonna leave.”
“Really? You’re trying to rob me, but if I don’t give you anything, you’re just going to walk away with me alive?”
“Y’know, that is actually a major hole in this story. Hrm… I guess I could kill you, but you could have a family somewhere expecting you. On the other hand, you’re walking the train tracks at night alone and you’re packing a sword, so odds are good you’re a loner, meaning I could grease you right here and now and nobody would ever know or probably even care.” She drew the arrow back further. I had little time to act. “Option one or option two?”
“Is there a three?”
“There’s barely a two.”
“No three?”
“Two’s disappearing as we speak.”
“I like three.”
“Option two has officially been taken off the list, so I guess you’re gonna get that arrow in the head you asked for.”
I slammed the knife into her foot and quickly grabbed for the arrow she was about to lose her grip on. I just barely managed to stop it from going into my eyeball and pulled the bow from her hands. “Yep, option three.” I stood up and smiled at her. “Works every time.”
I sat against the cave wall, carving the core out of an apple that I’d found discarded along the tracks. The girl was beside me, playing with her bow. I would have tied her up if I thought it would actually do anything. She was calm now, didn’t seem like she wanted to rob me anymore. Maybe she’d just been lonely.
I cut out a chunk of apple and threw it in my mouth. “What’s your name?” I asked.
She looked up from her bow in surprise. “What?”
“Your name,” I said, slipping another chunk of apple into my mouth. “Everybody’s got one.” I cut out one last chunk of the apple then tossed her the half I didn’t eat. “Mine’s Cres.”
She pulled her own knife - much bigger than my own, I noticed - and started taking chunks out of the apple. “Sarika.”
“Nice name.”
“It’s the only thing I remember from my mother. The last thing I heard her say.”
“What happened to her?”
She closed her eyes. This was painful to her, I could tell. “I was only five when it happened. We were crossing the ocean between Qinata and Seles. My father was rowing the boat, my mother holding onto me. I remember the water around the boat started to heat up, like… Like somebody turned on a stove burner and we were the ones boiling. I looked at my dad, and it was almost like he knew exactly what was coming.”
“How do you know?”
“The look on his face. He seemed… Resigned to it. Not even three seconds before it happened, he closed his eyes, and I watched a tear fall down his cheek. That was when the fire shot straight up, out of the ocean, and incinerated my dad. I grabbed for my mom, and she held me as close as she could. I started crying, and she whispered things in my ear. She tried to soothe me, but it didn’t help.”
She reached up and wiped tears from her face. “You don’t have to tell me anymore if you don’t want to.”
She shook her head. “No, I’ll tell you.” She took a deep breath and then continued: “Its head rose out of the water first, those eyes… Black as the night. Its scales were a kind of - “
“Bone white,” I finished for her, “with spots of blood all around him as if he painted himself with it.”
Sarika’s eyes were full-on watering now, and I could tell that mine would likely follow. “You’ve seen it, too? The white dragon?”
I nodded, slowly. “I was nine, he took everything from me. Destroyed my home.” I picked up my blade from beside me. “This is all I have left of my mother, my father and my sister.”
“It’s not just us he stole lives from, I’ve met a lot of people who’ve lost friends, loved ones and homes to the white dragon.” She unslung her quiver from over her shoulder and unzipped a special pocket. She pulled three arrows from the pocket, arrows with very unique heads. “These were given to me by a man who lost his children to the white dragon. He was no good with a bow, but he could make arrowheads.”
“And he gave them to you?”
She nodded. “I don’t rob people who’ve lost stuff to the white dragon.”
“Only three?”
“He said they came from a special kind of sword, the only sword that’s injured the white dragon. He only had enough material for three arrowheads.”
“You mean somebody’s stood in front of that beast and stopped pissing their pants long enough to hurt him?”
She nodded again. “It’s hard for me to believe, too, but I could tell he wasn’t lying.”
I took the arrows from her and examined the heads. They were plain, simple triangles with sharp points. The man clearly understood that whoever tried to kill this dragon with these arrows wouldn’t give two shits whether or not they had a special design. I tossed them back to her. “Does the dragon have a weak point or something?”
She shook her head. “Not unless you count the eyes, but I’m pretty sure he told me to aim there because they’re eyes.” She returned the arrows back to her special quiver pocket. “I only ever saw the white dragon one time after he murdered my parents. He was too far away for me to do anything, and I still wasn’t as good with my bow as I am now. I don’t remember where I was, but it was eight or nine years ago.”
I stared at the fire. She could have been there, my hometown. “I saw him today,” I said, my voice low. “He stared at me like he knew exactly who it was he was looking at. Like he’d made it his personal quest in life to track me down and hurt me.”
She whispered, “Sorry.”
I tossed the apple core at the fire, causing sparks to shoot out. Sarika pulled back a little. “It’s time I make it my quest to hurt him. I’m tired of running away from him.” I looked over at her. “I could use your help, seeing as you obviously know how to handle yourself in a fight.”
She nodded. “Nothing would make me happier than to see that bastard’s head lopped off.”
“Thank you, Sarika.”
“What few friends I have call me Sari,” she said.
“Thank you, Sari.”
“No, thank you for asking me for help. Nobody’s ever done that before.” She set her quiver down on the ground. “Now, do you mind if we start this quest tomorrow? I need some sleep.”
I choked back a laugh. I tossed some dirt on the fire to kill it, then closed my eyes so that I could get to sleep.
