The Millennial Sword by Shannon Phillips

Author:Shannon Phillips [Phillips, Shannon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indie Author Project
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

Viv splashed to shore, and lay on the grass for a long minute, breathing sweet air and savoring the absence of immanent death. Then she cleaned both herself and her sword, as best she could, of the sticky black ichor. She felt as if she were almost going through an out-of-body experience: it seemed impossible to reconcile her sense of self with the reality she had just survived. She knew herself as a smart girl, friendly and practical and hard-working: someone who might make a good public relations executive someday. She did not know herself as a dragonslayer.

But there was still a child in jeopardy, so she forced herself to keep moving, even though her own actions felt strange and mechanical. She retraced her steps to the cave mouth. The grass there was crushed from the fight, and black with pools of dragon-blood. She avoided those, walking carefully to the edge of the wyrm’s burrow. It seemed to go straight back into the hillside, further than the light could reach. She went up to the edge of the blackness, and then into it, shuffling forward with her arms outstretched.

She nearly tripped over the boy, the small warm bulk of him curled into the back of the burrow. He did not wake when she shook him and called to him, so she stuck Excalibur under her arm and dragged him by his armpits out into the light.

He was very thin, and his elbows and knees were skinned, but she saw no other injury on him. He breathed deeply and evenly in his sleep. She guessed he must be under some sort of spell: maybe it would lift when she got him home.

She allowed herself, then and only then, to think about going home. Irusan had said: The only way back is the Sword Bridge. But she had seen no bridge at all.

She sat in thought for a long moment, formulating a plan, and when she had it clear in her mind she set about picking through the detritus of the battlefield, gathering up the wet and dirty scraps that used to be her coat. She stuffed them in the pockets of her jeans, where they hung down her sides and spilled out of her back hip pockets like some kind of pathetic attempt at a hula skirt. Then she tried lifting the sleeping child, and found that by maneuvering him over her shoulder, into a fireman’s carry, she could walk with him. Bearing the boy over her shoulder, and Excalibur clamped under her arm, she staggered back once more to the stream.

“Raabo!” she cried, as loud as she could, and heard the echoes in the hills. “Raabo! I have your rags, and I have your bones!”

The echoes died away. Viv eased the sleeping child to the grass and waited beneath the timeless sky. Finally, a wheedling voice answered: “You called on Raabo, your ladyship?”

Viv turned, and saw the little man behind her: he’d approached noiselessly somehow. He was not angry now, but obsequious, bobbing his head and smiling a fawning smile.

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