Page 18 of Deadly Maiden

With the other horse breathing at my back, I creep up to his saddle, this Rorsyd’s, and lock my hand over the girth strap. The gelding twists and sweeps its head around to snort at then nuzzleme. Gingerly, I offer him my cupped hand. At least this animal is friendly.

“No. This is ridiculous. You saw the raven. We follow our instructions. We arrest her and take her to Tensorga. She’s at your stirrup. Do your duty, Rorsyd.”

“My duty is not to the petty instructions of minor lawgivers. My duty is to honor my ancestors and my vow. Move away, Davyd. I will question her, alone, and take her to Tensorga if it’s wise to do so.” His voice deepens, and a growl crackles along every syllable. “Girl, get one of the spare horses. Mount up.”

Girlsounds like an insult, but I look around and spy one of the strays near a copse of trees.

The faintest whisper warns of someone reacting, and I spin to look.

A blade downswings. With a grunt, Rorsyd shifts in the saddle to intersect it with his claws. There’s a ringing scrape then a flash of flung-aside metal.

The rearward enforcer spurs his horse closer, and I’m in the middle of what promises to become a swordfight with much stabbing and clashing of steel, and enough horseflesh to crush me to a pulp and break my bones, if I’m caught between them or a horse falls on me.

Seconds later and, from where I stand, teetering on my bootheels, Rorsyd seems to merely flex his massive shoulders to hurl first one man then the other off his horse, sending them yards skyward. They sprawl in a moonlit tangle of male screams and limbs, shiny cartwheeling blades, and I…

I am fucking well-satisfied.

My choice was wise.

Though groaning, the two enforcers lie mostly still. One half-rises to a knee then collapses.

“Get the horse.”

I swivel, ready to jog to it once I locate a horse, any horse, when a thundering rumble in the earth from the direction of that copse has me pausing. “What new monstrosity is this?”

“Something is coming,” Rorsyd murmurs, stating the obvious.

A jangle of metal, a neigh, and the drumming of horses galloping heralds a troop of five or six riders. They break around the left of that small forest and keep coming, straight for us.

“Fuck. More enforcers. Reinforcements. Very well then. If I must, I must.” He sighs, grumbling.

So damned ominous. I like it.

The felled sergeant raises a hand in greeting that flops down as these riders pass him.

And Rorsyd swells with copious mounds of strangely formed muscle. His skin morphs through a coruscation of colors from red to pink to blue, forming scales, locking legs into new morphologies, and settling on dark red and gold for his hide. His claws have become truly awesome sabers.

Then he screams.

It’s a terrifying noise that shafts ice to my heart and panics the mounts. They buck, rear, and flee. The new enforcers struggle to stay in the saddle, and most are thrown clear. Darkness sweeps outward, upward, obscuring the stars in the sky. Everything is torn loose, whirling, flipped, howling. Dust and dirt are whipped forth along with a hurricane of bodies.

The curve of his wing has done this.

I understand in the same instant I’m sucked into the air. My hair lashes about as I somersault. I land on my butt, skidding, my arms wrapped about my head. Instinctively, I guard my face.

Panting, stinging from the blows of sticks, dirt, and whatever else ran into me, I open my eyes and peek through my jumble of hair.

Rorsyd. Is. A. Dragon.

A moment later, in a blink of time, he collapses impossibly fast, and is a man again—crouching over, curled into himself, with that scream still reverberating.

Is that blood on his legs?

Stunned, ears ringing, and somewhat deaf, I look about me. Even the grass, for hundreds of yards, is wrecked.

In the distance, two horses trot in circles. Others are heading for the horizon. Rorsyd’s horse is here, in the slightly less-destroyed epicenter. He shakes his mane, totters. One other horse gets its legs beneath it and staggers upright. Men lie in crumpled heaps, legs in crooked shapes like poorly put-together jigsaw puzzles.

Has he killed them all? This field held ten or twenty living things. Now there is me, the horse I had my hand on, and Rorsyd, though he looks a bit crap.

---