Handbook for Dragon Slayers by Merrie Haskell

Author:Merrie Haskell [Haskell, Merrie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Ages 8 & Up
ISBN: 9780062208422
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

chapter 15

BY THE TIME I CAUGHT MY BREATH, THE DRAGON WAS gone—and so was everyone else. Both horses and their riders had plunged into the trees after the dragon.

“Swine!” I swore, shoving my pens back into the pouch. “Swine, swine, swine!” I jammed my crutch into my armpit and hobbled off as fast as I could go after them.

I wasn’t sure how long I walked. Time never seems to flow the same when you are late for something, and I was very late for something. Roars and screams rose from not so very far away, and the air filled with the acrid scent of smoke.

I entered a burned-out clearing from the west. On the south side of the clearing a cave mouth gaped. Joyeuse stood guard near a copse of trees at the far edge of the clearing, tensely scanning the sky.

It took me a moment to realize that the pile of silver at Joyeuse’s feet was Parz’s supine body.

Joyeuse gave a high-pitched whinny when she saw me.

My heart was in my throat, but I decided that Joyeuse was not the sort of horse who would guard a dead body. Or so I told myself in the long moments before I reached them, when each footstep seemed like the death toll of a church bell. Where was Judith? Where was Durendal?

“Parz?” I called, hurrying to him as fast as I could.

He was breathing, but unconscious.

“Good Lord!” I cried, chafing his hands and wrists as I inspected him for signs of damage.

Parz coughed, blood bubbling between his lips.

I nearly screamed in terror. My life in Alder Brook, far from any battlefront or disaster, had in no way prepared me for this kind of injury. I couldn’t think of how to stop him from coughing, but I could imagine the blood running back into his lungs and choking him. I slid my hands up underneath him and pushed, getting him over onto his side so the blood could drain from his mouth.

“Please don’t die, Parz,” I heard myself saying, and my voice was so strange. I realized I was crying. “Please, Parz. Please. You can’t die. Oh, I’m—” I paused for a sob, which I tried to stifle against my shoulder. “I’m being so silly, I’m speaking such nonsense. See how bad it is, for you to be trying to die on me like this? See what it’s doing to me? So. Just don’t die!”

Parz stopped coughing, and for a moment, I was horribly afraid he’d also stopped breathing. And I guess he had, for he was summoning together a great gob of blood. I yelped when he raised his head, turned it, and spit the blood gob out into the grass.

“You’re alive!” I shrieked.

“Think so,” he rasped. He looked around, his gaze barely focusing. “Where’s Judith?”

“I don’t know! Are you all right? What’s . . . Something’s broken, what’s broken?”

He looked thoughtful. “Everything,” he croaked, dropping his head back to the ground.

“Can you get onto Joyeuse’s back?”

“Not even,” he said, and groaned.

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