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With me securely tied, Devon took off the soft leather boots he wore—almost as flexible as going barefoot. He rolled his trousers right up his legs then waded into the cold water. Reaching what seemed to be a good spot, he crouched on a rock like a monkey, staring down into the crystal clear water, watching the darting shapes, waiting for a likely candidate.
When the moment came, his hands moved faster than I could see and emerged with a big struggling fish in his grasp.
“Always take the big beasts,” he said conversationally as he strode back to me to dump his catch in the basket. “Taking the little ones is just cruel. Leave them to grow big so you can hunt them another day.” He looked down at the fish in the basket and smiled. “This old man’s lived a life, and now he’ll fuel another.”
“Just because he’s old, doesn’t mean he hasn’t got more to offer.” I spoke without realizing that I wasn’t talking about fish.
Devon smiled. “True enough. But the younger generation has to have its time. Besides, I assume you do want to eat?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Well, then.”
He waded back to his rock. This time his target was feet away, and he sprang from the rock into the deeper part of the pool, pouncing like a hunting animal. In fact, there was something animal about the way he hunted full stop. No spear, no knife, just bare hands and his wits against those of the fish. When one struggled out of his grasp and swam off at speed, he sat in the water laughing merrily, slapping it with his hands.
“Swim for it, old timer! You earned it!”
But few got away from him. I hadn’t seen Devon fight—not properly—but watching him hunt the fish was a hint of what it might be like. He was patient, he was wily; he was quick and possessed of a wiry strength that made me think he’d grown up looking after himself. It was also clear that hunting was something he enjoyed more than the task of escorting an old man and his daughter to their fate in Latran.
This was the happiest I’d seen him; wild and free, part of nature.
Chapter Six
Somewhere in the Blue
The skies above the wilderness had always seemed to me a special shade of blue, and though the views from the mountains were spectacular, it was down in the lowlands where my heart lay and where those skies seemed at their biggest, broadest, and bluest.
But to some among the mercenaries, the sky now seemed a source of eyes, watching them from behind the clouds.
“Kimmel?” asked Buck, shortly.
The tracker shrugged as he stood back up. “Hard to say for sure. Could be. It’s the same sort of size.”
“The samesort ofsize?”
Another shrug. “I didn’t measure the last one. But judging by eye, I’d guess this is the same dragon.”
This time, there was more than one print, because it had rained yesterday afternoon leaving the grass soaked enough to hold the massive dragon prints for longer, though the stems were already starting to spring back.
“What’s it doing this far from the mountains?” wondered Buck, a rhetorical question but it still got an answer from Vorst.
“It’s hunting us.”
Vassek shook his head. “If it was hunting us, we’d be dead. We’re exposed out here, all it would have to do was drop.”
“Followingus then,” said Vorst.
“Why would a dragon follow us?” wondered Chico, nervously.
“Hoping we’ll lead it to easier prey,” judged Vorst with a shrug. “Like a hunting dog following the big bulls back to the herd so it can pick off a cow or a calf.”
I wasn’t sure if I would define many of these men as ‘the big bulls’ but it wasn’t a completely ridiculous suggestion. Or at least it wouldn’t be completely ridiculous if dragons killed humans, which they did not.
Or did they?
It had all seemed so certain when my father taught me about dragons when I was a little child. He’d spoken with such knowledge and authority, as only a parent can. But I felt a lot less sure out here under that big blue sky, knowing a dragon could be soaring somewhere above, so far away that it was no more than a speck to us, but all the while just waiting for its moment.
Yes, they didn’t attack humansusually, but never? What if a dragon got hungry? What if one was injured and needed something that didn’t run as fast as one of the lowland steers? What if one got mad because of the dragon hunt of Latran and Gaunt? Would they kill humans then?
