Damsel
Chapter Seven
Coming across Eve’s name
burned into a fallow field was… interesting.
The horrifying art faced the
knights exactly as they came down out of an old earthworks to rejoin the
road. Some time, once upon a time ago,
Eve had playfully interjected, there was a great war in the valley of Axes and
the two raging queens—one a red head and the other a brewed blonde—refused to
agree on whose bridal gown was better and so the soldiers went at it, but for
too long, too savage, and they needed cover, so they built up the ground and…
“King Lorilander had no
queen, and the other of the last valley kings was Harthmond. There have never been any ruling queens at
all, according to Scripture, Eve. And
what is this further nonsense about them fighting over a wedding dress?”
“Well, I may not know the
history, but I don’t see how it’s any different from what nonsense you told me
the other day. I see that these are left
over from some battle, years before I was born, and there must be a story to
it, so then I made one. People pick the
one they like in the end, and don’t look at me like that, Cymen. That’s exactly
how it works, too, and you know it.”
Cymen shut his eyes. “You spin so many tales, we never know what
you’re really doing, or what you truly know, my Lady, and please excuse me for
venturing so far as to call you a liar, but at this point I figure I’d better
warn my men first.”
Flowing, florid script. Not hack-away, the way a peasant might. Or even worried-rushed, the way a king may
order. And did dragons even spell? The thing blazed wild as the wind picked up,
but then it was also a little pretty, rose-colored.
Cymen just sat on his horse,
which started to graze. “Oh, but then we
don’t know if it was the dragon, or the angry villagers, a jilted milkmaid, a
lumberjack who’s lost his life-savings to you or the Hood—”
“Or that bitch Marian.”
“…Or a Baron, or the
Commodore. The Maid Marian, really?”
“Well, we never ever
spoke. If we touched at all it would
have been through passing a man between ourselves, like a winecask.”
“Far too much
information. Please, Captain
Ruecross—” went Skun.
“No, the train of thought is
relevant.” Eve beamed and began to peer at
it sideways, “…could be King Richard, too.”
The gold knights sat higher
on their horses, and a spokesman went, “Why would that be? To Richard, we’re dead. And, only now it
occurs to me--does Richard aware that his ancestors have been competing with
the exact same group of knights for the Grail for a century?”
Eve averted her eyes and
chewed a thumbnail. “Oh, right, I was
the only one who’d lived through that fire.
How silly of me to forget.”
Cymen unhitched his sword
from across his wide back, held it out.
He raised it to about Eve’s elbow, and level with the horse’s eye… the
beast was more happy with it than she was, “I will finally admit that I detest
that sword! How pompous of you to claim
being a dragon-slayer when there haven’t been any seen around in more than four
score years! Well, there is the
one I saw, but we never left his romantic cave.”
Cymen said nothing as he
lined the long blade up with the head of his horse, the position of the sun, or
the road, or a ladybug clambering through the grass, Eve could hardly
guess. But whatever it was, altogether,
caused a shadow teased by the accented metal, warm, washing over its own hues
like smoke or soap water passing over glowing Chapel-glass.
Ricasse went from dying demon
to living cross once thus measured. Now,
thunder in the west, lightning broke clouds in the north, and the scream of
tortured man from behind.
“Oh, rapture!” Eve laughed
and threw open her arms.
Villagers raced fast down
into the earthworks. An army. On horseback, spread as far as the eye could
see. Galloping from under tree-cover, as
easily as deer—only Richard’s men of the Forest could do that. They held banners aloft, white with four red
crosses in each corner, and an ‘R’ in the middle, in case they should have
missed the first inkling.
Then a dragon with slender
wings stretched as wide as heaven and soaring down to outrace them all. Cymen was able to measure his blade against
the length of the beast in that moment, and Eve laughed at that too.
“Eve, get down and hide! I see it!
Put it out, damn you, I’ve seen it, already, mind! Dragon, there’s a real dragon here!”
The men picked her up and
raced away. Cymen rode up along the
length of the ‘E’, and then down between the branches of the ‘V’, so that Cymen
found himself trapped. From then on, it was
the horse’s instinct that drove him, wild and whinnying away from the rush of
flame that painted itself against the hillside.
All almost brown now, smearing against that canvas.
“Well don’t you just stand
there,” Eve said to the other men. “I
was only joking about the dragon!”
“You were?”
“It wasn’t… well, I don’t
know if the beast still cares for me or not, or if maybe I’d only fallen asleep
in that thicket of mushrooms at the edge of the Valley and dreamed that I’d
been licked so well all over, after it’d been so long? I didn’t want Cymen to think I was a novice
with no good lovers at all! Who would
give me something so nice? No, I
probably stole the necklace, there was a fat nobleman’s wife I’d crossed paths
with… In either case, who’s going to go asking a dragon for the truth? Why do you look so surprised that I get into
spore-snuff time and again—he’s either going to burn to death, or that savage
raptor is going to enjoy barbequed Ruecross!”
The men all explained that
they were more cautious of fire now, more than ever, after the last time. And then dragons breathed it, and they also
had such large bellies, with space for air and charred bits of things to eat if
an immortal person got desperate…
His horse’s name was
Chance. Eve learned this because Cymen’s
men gave to wincing and groaning when Cymen rode, on a chance, up and down the
swift angles of her name. Next, they
shouted, ‘Chance, Chance, Chance!’ when Cymen almost outraced the marauders,
caught imbetween the strange sport of putting the fire out and those who were
eager to meet it, lit.
Chance was an immortal,
well-bred beast. Eve realized that her
man wielded it with skill in and around the high red letters of her name. Chance, in the end, no matter how it was
guided, was unkind however, solely concerned with itself. It gave in to the elements of fate, bucked
and relinquished its rider in order to preserve itself, and then galloped away
in mindless pursuit of the next void in happenings, another gap in earthworks
that cut up the balding valley, to freedom.
Richard’s horsemen ran for
the scaped silly-goat, a flash of rich yellow up near the one horned
soldier—that one was the king, Eve had to be told, because few real people had
ever seen the elusive Richard. Cymen did
battle with the one man, so forced was he, and the sword play was amazing. The king’s men bore down upon the Knight of
Gafe, but his enormous sword kept each at bay with every thrust and swing—
“Eve, how crude of you to
narrate such. He could be killed!”
She went on, however. Richard was handsome with horns coming from
his helmet, she’d decided. At some point
his head flew off, no, just the helmet, how sad. And the entire army swarmed around them, like
flies on dung. That was bad because she
could no longer see.
The last of it she gathered
by running at it. The men yelled at her
for gaining better perspective, and she called them cowards. Was Cymen felled? No, it seemed not. But a golden dragon had alighted then, and
all of those souls in silver armor turned their pikes upon it. Bursts of flame and gurgling, all. Webbed wings lashing out and up, tail
whipping, winding, and it grabbed a man in each claw, flew up, twisted, exploded
in a show of wings and somersaulting legs and teeth. One chewed like jerky, the other snapped in
half, blood rained down as if natural weather.
“Axz? Hallooooo!” but perhaps he didn’t hear
her. Or, perhaps dragons didn’t even
speak in the first place? Bother.
Eve turned to find the warm
press of villagers on her. Their stink,
their rage, also cut down by the sudden filter of men through the crowd,
throwing shields and swords into it, knocking arrows from afar. Clay grabbed her hand and they ran through
what became tall grain, then corn, and dead-stopped at the edge of that, a
jagged stone cliff he cussed at her to take her broom and fly over.
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So nice of you to get Randitty today. Hope your read was a good one!