Chapter 6

Rude Hosts

She looked at me, sighed, and said, “I think its best if you stay in the outskirts, at least for now.” I nodded reluctantly, turned my horse around, and walked it away from the wall. I heard the gate open behind me, but didn’t bother to look behind me. After I heard the gate close, I looked over my shoulder towards the gate. Near the wall, far from the gate, there was a small shack that was just high enough for me to try and jump over the wall.

I started trotting my horse away from the gate. I turned the corner around a house so that the guards wouldn’t see me dismount my horse. When I dismounted my horse, I looked around for some type of cloak. In a barrel outside the house I was next to, there was an old raggedy cloak that would suffice. I tied the horse to a pole right outside the house, though I knew that it would probably get stolen, and put the cloak on.

I then continued walking on the street like a normal citizen would. When I was as close to the shack as I could get as posing as a citizen, I walked to it and climbed on top of it. I leapt over the wall and landed pretty softly on the other side. I was well hidden by a tower wall. I walked to one end of the wall and saw an open area with several guards. I went to the other side of the tower wall and saw an empty, saddled Arabian horse and two guards guarding the building that the horse was next to.

I decided to have a little fun with the guards. I walked up with the cloak on, hiding my face. When I got to the small stair case that lead to that building, one of the guards put his hand on my shoulder and stopped me. He said, “No one is allowed in here except the captain and his guests.”

I chuckled under the hood of the cloak and back hand slapped them both at the same time. I quickly caught them before they fell to the ground so their armor wouldn’t crash against the street. I slowly lowered them to the ground before I rushed into the building. When I got into the building I took the cloak off and took a look around. The building was one big main hall with a door leading to a room behind it.

I noticed that there were two windows above the door that I would be able to reach. I jumped and caught the ledge of one of them and pulled my head up to see and hear what was going on in the next room. I saw Carrie, facing me, talking to the captain and two other men; all three weren’t looking in my direction.

“They destroyed our town and he is one of them!” yelled the guard captain.

“When he saved me, they tried to kill him. They hate him as much as they hate us, maybe even more,” replied Carrie as she stared at him intently. At that time, I had already pulled myself all the way up onto the window sill and I was sitting comfortably on it.

Silence had filled the room for several moments so I decided to add my input by saying, “You know she’s right. Dragons hate traitors and that’s what I am.”

The captain and the two other men turned around very quickly, and the captain yelled, “How the hell did you get past the guards?”

“I’m surprised that you were able to repel that attack. Your men are pretty clueless and don’t really keep a watchful eye,” I responded after a chuckle.

“So are we, believe me,” replied the captain as he chuckled. “Why should we believe you when you say the dragons hate you?”

I jumped off the window sill and landed kind of lopsided. After I regained my balance, I walked towards the Captain. He put his hand on his sword but stood there firm. I stopped, lifted up my arm to reveal a huge gash in my scales. I said, “This is a wound I got from a battle with a pure dragon. This is from his claw when he picked me up.”

“How do I know that’s not from a human sword?”

I took the sword from his sheath quickly and fit it in the wound. It hurt a lot more than I thought it would, but it proved my point. The blade was dwarfed by the wound and the thickness of the wound was several times the width of the blade. As I handed the blade back to him, I said, “That good enough for you?”

He nodded and said, “You are allowed to stay here, but any sign of betrayal or sabotage and we will kill you. Do you need any medication for that wound?”

“No, there are many remedies humans use that are poisonous to dragon.”

Carrie said, “He’s right. Most of the ingredients used in our medicines are poisonous to dragons, but I’m not a specialist on the poisons so I have no idea what is and what is not.”

I then said, “So how do you plan on defending this settlement?”

“Before you came, we were hoping for luck, but now that you’re here we can defend it by using your knowledge of your own people to find a way to kill them,” he replied.

“Why didn’t you just ask for that information? You have to wait until they get close. I mean they have to be so close they could pick you up. Then you aim for their neck and shoot. The close range mixed with the weaker neck scales makes it easier to kill a dragon than most think,” I responded.

“Oh,” said the captain completely surprised. He turned to one of the two men at his side and said, “Go tell that to every guard.” The man left quickly. The captain looked at me again, held out his hand, and said, “Glad to see we have some help. The name’s Captain Beringe.”

I shook his hand and replied, “We can’t stay here for long though. She needs to deliver a message to the southern Emerald Templars and I am her escort. This… fortress serves as a distraction so that we can make it to them without any more trouble.”

He looked at me for a while. He smiled and said, “Glad I could help. We will lend you two rested horses.

“However, we will need some rest, of course. I have been up for more than twenty four hours and most of them were spent fighting dragons so I am very exhausted.”

“We have a few rooms, but the beds are more floor mats. They are the soldier’s quarters that have died in the attacks, and the inn was destroyed during the first attack.”

“Any of them with do nicely will do nicely.”

“When would you like to be woken up?”

“In a few hours, we need to get out of here as soon as we can.”

He turned to the other guard and told him to lead us to a room. “Follow George to the room. It’s the best room of all of the rooms.”

George took us through a side door that lead into a long hallway. He took us to the second door on the right. I took a look around the room and only saw three badly shapened bags of cotton on the floor. I head Carrie say under her breath, “You've got to be kidding me.”

“Thank you, George,” I said to him. He bowed before he left the room and shut the door.

“These look like what my dog sleeps on back home,” Carrie said in utter disgust.

“This nation hasn’t been doing so well because the government is filled with power hungry, greedy, pompous asses. Let’s just try to make the best of it and get some shut eye while we can,” I said as I laid on one of the mats and sighed.