DANTAR
For Dantar, the sight of the distant dragon was both exciting and terrifying. Although dragons seldom took an interest in human affairs, they were enormous and unpredictable, so humans had to take an interest in them. If
the dark, winged speck against the blue sky concluded that a few dozen burning warships would look pretty, it would not hesitate to plunge out of the sky and attack.
The weather seemed too good. In the epics that Dantar had read, great battles happened under cloudy skies, with lightning flashing in the background. On this day the sky was clear, the sea calm and the wind steady and predictable. It was as if the dragon had got the date for its attack wrong.
I’m fourteen and I should be at home, playing with the cat and doing homework, thought Dantar. Fourteen is a bad age to die. So is fifteen. Why am I here? My family is rich, I don’t need to work as a cabin boy on a warship.
Not a single member of the Invincible’s crew was below deck. Even Dantar and the three other cabin boys had been given light crossbows and told to fire at the dragon if it attacked. From the way his hands were shaking, Dantar doubted that he could hit even something the size of a ship.
All along the mid-deck the marines and sailors stood with their bows and crossbows ready, and on the forecastle and quarterdeck the artillery crews were standing by their ballistas and arbalests. If the dragon attacked it would be met with a cloud of iron bolts, arrows, firepots and arbalest lances.
Will it even notice? Dantar wondered.
Dantar was dressed as a very small sailor, and the sailors all wore white tunics over white trousers, so that they could be seen more easily if they fell overboard.
The ship was strangely quiet, and hardly anyone spoke. It was as if everyone aboard was preparing for death, because one puff of the dragon’s breath was all that was needed to destroy the ship.
The ship’s wizards and shapecasters were on the forecastle, their hands shimmering as they wove and shaped castings. They were a better defence than all the other weapons put together.
Air shapers could put turbulent winds under the dragon’s wings, and castings by the water shapers were the only shields against the firestorm of a dragon’s breath. The shapers wore robes that flowed like silk yet gleamed in the sunlight like polished steel. The cloth was indeed some sort of magical armour.
‘What’s a good age to die?’ Dantar asked aloud.
‘Maybe ninety?’ said Marko, the older youth standing next to him.
‘Sounds fair. I’m fourteen, so why can’t I come back in seventy-six years and face certain death?’
‘Because you’d be hanged for desertion.’
‘But I want to finish growing, meet girls, and get a deep voice. Instead I’m here.’
‘I’m here too.’
‘Aye, but you’re seventeen.’
Marko was everything that Dantar was not. Tall and blond, he was handsome enough to be in the king’s personal guard, and he already had a beard. When he smiled his face was strangely lop-sided, though, as if he were too sad to smile with the whole of his face. He was the closest thing to a friend that Dantar had on the ship.
Dantar thought that the best thing about his own body was that it was not much of a target. He was short, wiry and thin, and looked younger than his age. His black hair let him merge into shadows and hide, but if the entire ship got flamed, being good at hiding would not keep him alive.
About half of the people on the Invincible were new to the ship, and many of those had never met before they had come aboard. Dantar had been carrying a book when he had boarded the ship at Haldan, and Marko had come up to him and asked if he could borrow it when he had finished. Sailors who could read were rare, and for Dantar the ship seemed full of threatening strangers, so he was very relieved to have Marko as a friend.
‘Don’t worry, the dragon won’t attack,’ said Marko, who could hear Dantar’s teeth chattering.
‘So it’s going away?’ asked Dantar.
‘Just flying in circles. Dragons like to watch battles.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. Ask a dragon.’
Up on the quarterdeck, someone was shouting.
Dantar caught only a few words, mostly about lost surprise, lost advantage, and the cat being out of the bag.
‘The admiral’s spitting nails because the Savarians will be able to see the dragon circling,’ said Marko. ‘They’ll know it’s looking at something behind the enchanted fog.’
‘Us?’ said Dantar.
‘That’s it. Something has to be pretty impressive to catch a dragon’s attention, and our fleet qualifies as impressive. Oh no! Brace yourself.’
Dantar took that as a cue to look up at the sky. The distant shape had broken off its circling, folded back its wings, and was dropping like a stone.
‘The dragon’s building up speed before attacking,’ said Marko.
‘Why attack us? We’re not being rude or anything.’
‘Dragons always attack the stronger side just before a battle.’
‘So dragons like losers?’
‘No, no! It’s to show that no matter how powerful humans might think they are, dragons are way ahead.’
‘We know that already!’
‘Nothing to worry about, trust me.’
The dragon spread its wings and leveled out, then came in low, barely above mast height, cutting across the vanguard of the fleet. Dantar watched as the winged shape grew and grew, heading straight for the Invincible.
This is it. I wonder if fish like char-roasted human, Dantar thought as wings wider than most villages drove the huge body toward them.
Its mouth opened and fire glowed green deep within its throat. Each tooth was bigger than Dantar was tall, and it had a lot of teeth. Its scales were as bright as polished steel, and enormous eyes saw him yet looked through him. The sharp spines that fringed its face and its head crest were folded back. Dantar had read that dragons did that before attacking.
‘Steady! Steady!’ shouted the marshal-at-arms.
‘Wait for my word . . . Fire at will!’
The dragon’s head was squarely in the sighting notch of Dantar’s crossbow as he squeezed the release lever. The air in front of him went grey with arrows, crossbow bolts and arbalest lances. Fire pots from the ballistas burst in splashes of flame along the dragon’s body, then green flames gushed from between its jaws.
This is going to really hurt, thought Dantar.
The flames poured through the uppermost rigging of the Invincible, then the enormous underside of the dragon swept over the ship.
We didn’t even scratch it! thought Dantar.
Turning, he saw that the warship sailing next to them was smothered in flames, and the dragon was ascending again, driving upwards with ponderous flaps of its huge wings.
‘Reload and stand ready!’ shouted the marshal-at-arms.
The stricken ship was blazing from forecastle to quarterdeck, and other ships steered to avoid it. Sailors were already climbing the ratlines with douse cloths to combat the fires in the Invincible’s rigging.
‘All dousers, weapons down and get into the rigging!’ shouted the warden of fires. ‘All dousers, get up to the fires.’
Dantar and Marko clipped cloths dripping with seawater to their belts and scrambled up into the rigging. Dantar looked back to the inferno that was the Intrepid as he climbed.
‘Why don’t we stop to rescue survivors from the Intrepid?’ he cried.
‘Because everyone aboard is dead!’ replied Marko. ‘And because –’
A yellow fireball erupted from the Intrepid, splashing burning oil hundreds of feet out across the water.
‘And because barrels of lamp oil explode if you put them in a fire.’
‘I thought we were dead,’ said Dantar.
‘So did I.’
‘What? You said we would be all right!’
‘I lied. The dragon had us lined up, then it turned its head and flamed the flagship. Dragons never flame flagships.’
‘What do I say if some girl asks what I did when the dragon attacked? “Well, I peed my pants”.’
‘Did you?’
‘No, but it was a near thing.’