The Pirate's Legacy: New Horizons

Chapter 43 part 1: Out of the Frying Pan

"Demitri. Demitri, wake up!"

The lieutenant's loud voice more than the shaking jolted Demitri awake. " 'Tis dark, Yohan. What tiiiiime is it?" he yawned.

"It's the late dog watch."

Past midnight then, Demitri thought. The shaking stopped. He cracked open bleary eyes. As his vision adjusted to the darkness, he saw the disheveled appearance of his lieutenant and the wide grey eyes.

"Get up," Yohan said, his high-pitched voice strained. "The scouts found the dragon."

"Is it here?" Demitri threw the blanket off of him and sat up.

Yohan stepped back to give Demitri room to stand up. "No, but they found its location. It's a two-hour journey from here."

"Good. Bring them in here." Demitri fumbled around for his pants and socks. Yohan left with a flap of the tent entrance. He stuck his feet in his boots at the same time the entrance flapped open again, this time admitting two men, the regular scout Evander and Lawrence, a man with a shock of curly red hair who carried a dimly lit lantern. "Some light, good. Set it off to the side," said Demitri. He swept a hand over the bare ground at their feet. "Sit and tell me where is the dragon's location."

Once the three men sat, Evander reached forward and began rapidly drawing with his index figure a crude map on the ground. On Demitri's left side, the scout drew the village ruins in which they were stationed. Then, he moved right and drew a series of sparse trees that grew thicker as he went westward until the trees crashed into the tall and pointed arrowheads that represented an equally thick mountain range. A third into this range, Evander drew a cave with the fire rising from out of it.

"There it is, sir," said Evander. He pointed at the village ruins and moved his finger across the crude map straight to the cave. "It took us at least two hours northwest to get to the mountain range. If we went straight for the cave from where we are now, I'd say we can be there 'bout an hour tops." Evander glanced at his companion, Lawrence, who nodded his agreement.

Demitri reached back, toward the head of his bedroll where his saddle bag lay. From it, he took his leather-bound journal and a stick of graphite. Opening to a new page, he looked at the two scouts. "I need you to draw for me the exact location of the dragon's cave. The cave itself, its surroundings, every rock and mountain exactly." He handed the journal and graphite stick over to Evander. As he and Lawrence put their heads together to collaborate on the new map, Demitri extracted more tools from his saddle bag.

Before they had left the sanctuary, he had taken an astronomy chart. He opened up the old parchment on his lap. It had a large circle drawn upon it that showed the exact degrees and times of a full twenty-four hour day. Many black lines that went across the circle divided up the day in four separate parts that were in different shades of blue depending on the part of the day depicted. There were two types of twilight: the sunrise and the sunset. Demitri was more concerned about sunset. He calculated that sunset twilight in the winter lasted about three hours, one hour before and after sunset, and an hour for the actual event. They needed to attack the dragon within this space of time while the sun's trajectory underneath the ground disoriented the dragon's eyes.

"Sir, we're finished," said Evander.

Demitri set aside the astronomy chart and looked down at the journal that the scout placed carefully atop of his dirt drawing on the ground. Two entire pages contained the intricate map of the dragon's cave and its surroundings. The dragon's cave was situated at the base of a mountain surrounded by high cliffs and jutting shelves. These cliffs and shelves were a familiar motif throughout the area. Several roads and tunnels led to or passed by the cave.