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For my family
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One: The Heat of Battle
Chapter Two: Fields of Fire
Chapter Three: Of Serpents and Samurai
Chapter Four: The Dragonhunter’s Home Life
Chapter Five: A Home Life Destroyed
Chapter Six: How a Dragon Tracks its Prey
Chapter Seven: Hunting a Master of Dragons
Chapter Eight: The Ice Dragon
Chapter Nine: A Loneliness of a Great Ship
Chapter Ten: The Tiger Dragon
Chapter Eleven: Showdown at Sea
Chapter Twelve: The Contents of One Abandoned Dragon Ship
Chapter Thirteen: The Unknown St George
Chapter Fourteen: The Dragon of Japan
Chapter Fifteen: How the Other Half Lives
Chapter Sixteen: Culture Clash
Chapter Seventeen: A Traveller to the Orient
Chapter Eighteen: Light Without Heat
Chapter Nineteen: Heat Without Light
Chapter Twenty: Never go to Tokyo Without a Sword
Chapter Twenty-one: Beware of Falling Serpents
Chapter Twenty-two: The Doctor is Out
Chapter Twenty-three: Bullets of a Bullet Train
Chapter Twenty-four: Tricks of the Trade
Chapter Twenty-five: Fire that can Hide
Chapter Twenty-six: Where Tigers Lurk
Chapter Twenty-seven: A Tiger’s Eyes
Chapter Twenty-eight: City of a Billion Wonders
Chapter Twenth-nine: Secrets of Bombay
Chapter Thirty: Cornered Beast
Chapter Thirty-one: Enemies and Allies
Chapter Thirty-two: Where There’s Smoke
Chapter Thirty-three: No Suicide Missions
Chapter Thirty-four: Dragon Trapping
Chapter Thirty-five: Chamber of Horrors
Chapter Thirty-six: The Way a Fire Dies
Chapter Thirty-seven: Small Sacrifices
Epilogue: The Dying Embers of the Day
Keep Reading
Acknowledgments
Also by the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
CHAPTER ONE The Heat of Battle
There is only one thing you can count on with Evil.
Evil will do things you never counted on.
Simon St George hated that fact as much as he detested the African sun. The heat in Kenya was unbearable and the shadows the sun cast on the trail were hatefully dark, making it difficult to see if a serpent was ready to leap out of the tall grasses.
And they were hunting serpent. The possibility of a fiery death was always with him, and Simon found it sickening rather than exciting. His father was quite the opposite. Riding tall in the saddle ahead, Aldric St George steered his horse with a stern energy, a quiet thrill that a fight could come at any moment.
Aldric insisted on them both going on horseback for the ease of movement over the rough terrain, but looking back jealously at the car in his wake, Simon cursed his father’s old-fashioned ways and yearned for air conditioning.
Behind him, the battered Jeep spat rocks from its wheels, slowly rolling through the ragged country – a neglected dirt road amid long yellow grasses. Beside the worried Kenyan driver sat Alaythia Moore, the beautiful New York artist who lately looked a bit awestruck by the wilds of Africa.
Simon squinted back at her, the dirt on the windows making her nothing but a pretty shadow. He rode up alongside his father. “You think she’d rather be out here with us?”
Aldric focused his eyes on the trail. “Simon, keep your mind on the task at hand.”
“We’re miles from the African dragons,” said Simon. “We still have to get past the next two villages. I just thought she might be lonely in there.”
“It’s hot in the sun. Why the devil would she want to be out here?”
“For the company,” said Simon unhappily. Unless he was lecturing him, his British father was never much good at conversation. Simon wondered how Aldric and Alaythia spent their time alone. He figured they must always be planning strategy, going over the old scrolls and Books of Saint George, learning the Serpentine language better or designing new weaponry. Alaythia’s skills as a magician had grown tremendously over the past few months.
Simon turned as the Jeep pulled around them and Alaythia looked out. “You have to be sick of the sun by now,” she said to Aldric. “Why don’t you tether the horses to the back and get some shade in the Jeep?”
Aldric smiled at her. “You mean step into the modern world?”
“Yes,” she said with exasperation. “You should’ve left the horses back at the ship.”
Alaythia, Simon thought, had just a touch of what he now recognised as New York attitude, with the slight hint of expectation that rich people carry around which she had yet to completely lose. (Her grandmother had left her a fair amount of money from a Manhattan property fortune, which had soon dwindled away on bad investments and charity donations.) She leaned out more, her beaded necklace clanging on the Jeep’s door. “Come on,” she prompted again. “Quit being the angry warrior and take a break in here.”
“We’ll see what you say when that jalopy gets a flat tyre or the transmission goes,” said Aldric. “We do things the St George way. We’re not going to drop traditions that have been handed down for centuries.”
Simon watched the two of them, surprised to see his father looking relaxed for a moment. That must have been the fifth time he’d smiled in the past two days – a record. Alaythia could bring that out in anyone, he thought.
“We’re coming up on the next village,” she said.
“This isn’t the way I remember it,” said the African driver and translator, as he slowed down and let the horses pass, staring at the settlement. “There should be more people out. It was a busy little place …”
Aldric looked alarmed as they neared the town, a sorry set of flat, boxy buildings in faded colours. A very old Ford sat in the high grass, ruined by time and hard rains, proof of Aldric’s claim that this was no place for motorcars.
And then beyond the junked car, a human skeleton lay in the grass.
“Halt,” Aldric said to his horse, Valsephany.
Simon stopped behind him, having a bit more difficulty with Norayiss, his own stallion.
The skeleton was clean and white, left out in the sun for a long time. Flies scarcely bothered with it. Simon noted with some disgust that an arm had been lost, most likely taken by scavengers, jackals perhaps. He’d seen the rot of death before, but hadn’t quite got used to it.
The skull gleamed, a horror made ordinary by the afternoon sun.
“What does it mean?” he asked his father.
“I’m not sure,” Aldric answered.
Aldric pulled a crossbow closer to him in the saddle, as did Simon. Alaythia had a rifle, its wooden stock covered in runic symbols. She held it closer, leaning out of the Jeep as the driver reluctantly drove it forward.
More death greeted them. Skeletons lined the twisting road, looking as if the people had fallen there in some attempt to escape the tiny town and no one had bothered to bury them. It was a strange sight and Simon felt queasy.
The path to the village became yet more riddled with skeletons and bones, and the horses’ hooves crunched over them as it was impossible to get round them. Large boulders sat on each side of the road and Simon noted with alarm that one of the huge rocks was smeared with blood.
Blood?
Two young boys ran towards the St Georges as they arrived. They were shouting something, terror in their eyes.
“Disease,” said the translator from the Jeep. “They’re yelling about disease. It is some terrible death let loose here.”
“What kind of disease?” Simon asked, suddenly wanting to turn and ride away.
“They don’t know,” said the translator. “Many diseases in Africa. This one works fast, they say. Many days at work. Many people dead. Many dying.”
“How many days?” Aldric asked.
“They want medicine,” the translator said. “They expect medicine from us.”
Simon looked at the African boys, feeling terrible, sensing the fear that swirled around them.
“We don’t have any medicine,” barked Aldric, sounding angry, and Simon recognised it as the way he always reacted when he couldn’t help. His father moved his horse onward as the boys ran alongside, pleading. “I need to know how many days since the sickness came,” he repeated to their driver.
The translator tried to get an answer. “They don’t know. They are children. They lost track of time …”
“Have there been any fires here?” asked Aldric.
The African translated. “No. No fires. Just a fire in the heart. Sickness of fire.”
Simon trailed Aldric, with the Jeep coming up behind them. The translator was becoming more agitated. “This sickness is not normal,” he said. “This death works too quickly. They should’ve got word to the last town we were in. No one did.”
Aldric kept moving.
“This is not right,” the translator yelled after him. “We should not go further; this is not right.”
“It is right …” said Aldric, “for what we’re looking for.”
Alaythia offered the boys a rune-covered canteen of special water. “Drink, splash it on you,” she advised them. “It will protect you.”
Seeing they did not understand her, the translator took the canteen and used some of the water on himself, passing it to the children with a few hopeful words.
Simon looked back. The boys seemed sceptical, but they splashed the water on their skin and drank deeply all the same.
“There’s not enough water,” Aldric complained.
“It’s something,” she said, sounding annoyed. “The mixture is weakening in the sun, but it’ll help them if they aren’t already sick. Let them have it.”
“There’s not enough,” repeated Aldric in a grim tone, for they had reached the centre of town. He was staring ahead. Amid old, broken-down cars and trucks, there was a group of low, flat buildings. Through the open doors, Simon could see many people lying on beds. He stopped his horse and surveyed his surroundings.
He grimaced. The people were choking and gasping for air. Some men lay in doorways, lifting their arms weakly. And then Simon realised that every single person there had lost all their hair. The man in the doorway, the women gathering water at the well, the sick he could see in the beds – all were completely bald. It was jolting. Simon looked back. The boys who led them in had shaven heads, or so he had thought, but now he could tell that several of the other villagers, many of them children, had lost their hair as well.
“How long has this sickness been here?” Aldric demanded. “Ask this man.”
The translator got out of the car, keeping his distance as he questioned a man in a doorway. “Six days,” the translator reported. “One boy arrived in town and grew ill, and from the second day, it spread to everyone. Weakness overtakes you. You have no desire to live, no strength. There is …”only one mercy. There are five deaths every hour,” the translator choked on the words. “In another day, the entire town will be gone.”
Simon swallowed hard, the reality hitting him. He looked at Aldric, whose eyes burned with anger. Alaythia got out of the Jeep and moved towards the man, bringing him the last canteen.
“Alaythia, please,” Aldric said quietly. “You can still catch this disease. Let Simon help him; his blood is stronger than yours.”
Simon took the canteen from Alaythia, who moved back, looking helpless and angry. The boy gave the man a drink from the canteen.
“It won’t do much good now,” said Alaythia and she looked at the translator. “But tell him it’s strong medicine. He may believe it. It may help.” And indeed, the man’s eyes brightened as he took the drink.
“Now ask him if there has been anything else unusual,” Aldric ordered.
The man told them there had been thousands of vultures gathered on the veldt outside the town before the disease struck.
“Thousands?” asked Aldric.
“And jackals as well,” the translator explained. “Many scores of them.”
“Where did they gather?” asked Simon. He knew, as his father did, that where there were ripples in nature, there were dragons.
“I know the place,” said one of the boys who’d led them. “You bring some of that medicine to my mother and I will show you where the scavengers settled, miles up the road.”
Aldric looked to Simon, who held the canteen.
“No, not him,” said the boy, pointing to Simon. “The woman must bring it. My mother will not be seen by men in her state.”
As the translation came, Aldric nodded, understanding. Alaythia needed no prodding; she took the canteen from Simon and followed the boy past some buildings to the first of several large, plain-canvas tents on the edge of town. The tents were left over from an old UN operation and had been set up as quarantine early on, the boy explained through the translator, who hurried to keep up with Alaythia.
Vultures and jackals stood waiting a few metres away. They had been hidden by the buildings. Their eyes followed her with interest.
Alaythia took one look back at Aldric and Simon, and entered the tent behind the boy. She heard the translator follow her with a rustle of the tent flap.
Inside, decorated blankets lay on the floor. Masks were hanging on the walls, while the sweet smell of incense filled the tent. Two old women lay in cots on either side of the tent and their eyes begged for mercy.
A teenage boy knelt between them and he greeted the first boy with a weary nod. The translator stood back at the entryway, seeming to apologise for disturbing the elderly women and perhaps explaining the necessity.
“I have medicine,” said Alaythia, but she did not move closer to the women.
The translator helped them exchange words:
“What do you ask in return?” asked the second boy, suspicious.
“We’re looking for something,” Alaythia answered. “We need a guide. But you can have the medicine even if you don’t help us.”
“You are looking for the Unseen,” said the boy, fearful.
“The vultures and jackals outside,” Alaythia said. “We want to know where they came from. There was a place they gathered on the first day …”and there would have been fire near there …”Do you know it?”
“What is there if you find it?”
“We are looking for two beasts. They are brothers and they work together. Very unusual. They are serpents but they look like men. They brought the disease to you …”They like to see suffering; they feed on it.”
One of the old women shifted in the bed and propped herself up on one elbow to get a look at Alaythia. But Alaythia’s own eyes were drawn to the flies that had gathered on the floor, rivers of them, hundreds, easing up from between the rugs. She began to tremble.
Outside, Simon had a bad feeling and began moving his horse towards the tent. Aldric followed. As soon as his eyes fell upon the masses of jackals and vultures gathering, Aldric knew. “The brothers. They’re here.”
Simon and Aldric spurred their horses towards the tent.
If they did not move quickly, there would be a new skeleton in the African sun.
CHAPTER TWO Fields of Fire
Inside the tent, Alaythia stared at the two old women muttering at her in an unfamiliar language and she saw the healing fluid in her canteen bubbling over, boiling. She dropped it as the metal burned her hand. The translator tried to catch it, but burned his own fingers. He yelped and fled from the tent, cradling his hand.
“Uncareful magician,” said one old woman, hissing in English. “We have long awaited you—”
“Moritam kettisem sedosica,” cried Alaythia, spell-chanting. “Do not cast your fire, dragon – I have taken the power of your skin; you will not be armoured against the flame.”
“Lies!” cried the other woman, her eyes wild.
“You will burn with me,” warned Alaythia.
The two old women lunged at her, lashing their claws as they transformed into African Tall Dragons, each of them four metres of fury. Alaythia fell back and lifted a huge wooden mask for a shield as the first dragon sunk its claws into it.
The two boys had already darted away and now they ran directly into Simon and Aldric still on horseback.
Alaythia scrambled out of the tent as the first dragon, a fearsome black-and-brown beast called Matiki, pounced upon her, sinking its teeth into her armoured back, flinging his long black braided mane.
Aldric fired a crossbow shot into the creature’s head. It did no harm, but Matiki dropped Alaythia, who rolled free as the dragon’s twin, Savagi, lurched from the tent, scrambling towards her on all fours. Simon and Aldric both shot at the beasts – landing arrows in their arms and necks. The dragons roared in pain and turned to assault the riders.
Perfect, Simon thought. We drew them from Alaythia.
But his joy was quickly lost as Savagi leaped into the air, landing upon his horse, clinging to its neck. A huge snout stared him in the eye, and if the serpent hadn’t wasted time roaring in anger, Simon might’ve been crunched in its fangs. But his crossbow had one bolt left – and he shot it into the monster’s throat.
Savagi screeched and tumbled back, somersaulting to land a few metres away.
Simon’s horse jostled backwards in the dust.
Matiki had turned on Aldric and risen, man-like, to his full height. He slashed his long muscular arms, trying to get at the knight who kept his horse moving and stabbed back at the beast with his sword.
Simon looked at Savagi’s terrible yellow eyes and knew what was coming. The serpent reared its head back, its black throat swelling up. It was about to throw fire.
“NOOO!” cried Matiki, and yelled at his brother in Dragontongue.
“Listen to your brother,” cried Alaythia, who understood their words. “I’ve cursed your armour; you cannot burn your way out—”
“We have kept our magic from raging,” cried Matiki to his brother. “We have come too far. We need no fire to kill these swine—”
But Savagi’s rage was too much. Fire shot from his jaws.
Simon ducked and turned his horse, but the blast of black-yellow flames burned his shielded back, scorched his hair and singed his horse’s mane. The animal screamed and gave in to fear, galloping away from the threat.
The flames roared over Simon and met the ground, flaring up in the yellow grass like a match to paraffin.
Alaythia scrambled for the well and climbed on top of it, and Aldric rode his horse clear as the fire spread across the parched ground. Some of the flames leaped on to Matiki and the dragon screeched in pain.
Simon at last got his horse to stop its run. The fire was sweeping over the veldt plains, whipped up by an unnatural wind the dragons had brought on but could not control. Simon rode over to one of the old trucks, a rundown relief vehicle loaded with water. He opened its valves and water gushed from it, cutting off the fire from the village.
But the veldt beyond was burning wildly. The flames were soaring across the yellow grass with such speed it made Simon gasp.
With Alaythia in relative safety, Aldric pulled a trigger on his saddle. Darts spat from tiny guns mounted on the saddle and flew right into the African dragons, again and again. Like a machine gun, the device riddled the creatures with silver barbs. Savagi howled and leaped for Aldric, swiping his claws against Valsephany, but the horse was protected by armour, the steel plating merely scratched and mauled in a spray of sparks.
Still Savagi did not give up. Dodging Aldric’s sword, it managed to claw at him, nearly at his throat. Simon saw his father get struck below the neck. As he rode closer, Simon could see blood streaming from the cut and he was filled with fear. He reloaded and fired his crossbow, avoiding his father’s body and targeting the African dragon’s head with precision. The arrow hit and the creature rocked from it, but did not let go.
Alaythia screamed and fired her rifle at Matiki, keeping him at bay, preventing him from helping his brother.
Simon could hear Aldric snarling in pain and he wondered if he was going to witness his father’s death. But galloping closer, he could see Aldric moving his sword fast as ever. He was going to be all right.
Matiki squealed in delight as Savagi swung for Aldric, but the warrior slammed his hand against the wretched creature’s chest and called out its deathspell, the sacred words that would destroy a dragon. Quickly, Savagi broke clear before the spell could be finished. More fearsome than the knight’s sword was a deathspell.
Aldric cursed. A half-spell was little use. Savagi fell to the ground and snapped at Simon’s horse’s leg in passing. The serpent tore a chunk of muscle away and darted for cover.
Aldric punished him with a glancing blow to the shoulder from his silver sword.
The two dragons dived into the fire, screaming in pain, trying to escape.
“Go after them!” Aldric yelled.
How? thought Simon.
“They’re going through it – so are we!” said Aldric, and he urged his horse into the flames. Simon, on blind faith, followed his father’s lead and drove his horse through the wall of fire, knowing the other side would be clear.
And it was. The dragons had cleared a way for themselves – a passage in the fire. They ran and then galloped on all fours. Aldric and Simon rode after the creatures, walls of fire flashing by on either side.
The dragons had parted the raging fire on the African veldt using a desperate magic, for the flames could easily burn them as well as their enemies.
The horses were terrified, and Simon would have been too, but he kept his mind on the targets. He tried to take aim, but he was riding too fast, his crossbow shaking in the rush. He tried in vain to slow Norayiss, but the horse was wounded, terrified, and Simon could see no way out.
Ahead, the African dragons split up, making two passages through the flames.
Simon went left; Aldric went right. Simon saw his father ride after Matiki and he realised he couldn’t go back now. He would confront Savagi alone.
But the creature kept charging ahead down the trench.
Simon knew he had to try to take advantage. Attack it from behind. He had never ridden so fast. Down twists and turns he went as the African dragon fled before him through a maze of fire.
Blasting away with his crossbow, Simon looked around in panic for a way to escape this confrontation; he wasn’t ready for a dragon kill on his own. But his arrows cut into the dragon’s hide and Savagi now turned towards him, grinning pitilessly – the boy was his.
The cornered dragon leaped upon Simon, landing his great jaws directly on Simon’s crossbow, which the boy swung before him for protection. Again Simon fired the bow and the last bolt emptied from the chamber, snapping the dragon’s head back. A direct blow shattered teeth in the dragon’s jaws.
Savagi fell back upon the ground and stray flames caught on his skin and the exo-skeleton on his back. The dragon howled.
It turned, furious, and pulled at Simon, dragging him off the horse with shocking speed. His crossbow tumbled.