Chronicles of Carnezia (Book 1): Dragons of Dracona

Chapter 19: Dragon Tricks

Chapter 19: Dragon Tricks

            For the rest of that day and the following three days, we hadn’t got as far as I would have liked; I hadn’t had the chance to check the map as to how the road went even after all my time spent looking at it. There wasn’t much in the way of stopping either so I had to eat on the move and I didn’t like that idea very much, but with little choice I got on with it.

            As we hit one of the swerves in the road (from the little I could remember) and in the distance to my right there was one lonely looking hill. Frain started growling and seemed to constrict in on himself. His growling was sharp and rattled in my ears and his tail whipped about uncontrollably. Trying to calm him down, not knowing what from, and touching my hand where his spine had arched up I yelled. Frain had swung his head around and snapped his jaws down onto the part of my hand near my little finger. The serrated teeth encompassed in the jaws broke through the skin and fresh scarlet rivers dribbled down my wrist and dripped onto my lap.

            ‘Frain!’ I shouted in anger. As soon as I shouted his name, he released me and jumped off Aspen and ran off into the grass, I hoped it was just to hide. ‘Frain!’ I called but with worry and not rage.

            My hand still bleeding and quite heavily, I pressed it onto my stomach not caring that I was staining my clothes. ‘Here. Let me see,’ my unwanted companion said caringly and held his own hand out for me to show him my blood-coated one. Reluctantly, I placed mine gingerly on his palm. ‘It doesn’t look too bad. Maybe a few are a bit deeper but it won’t take long to heal.’

            ‘Ah!’ I gasped and yanked my hand away. ‘That hurts.’

            ‘Keep still. I’ll have to bandage it.’ For the next five minutes, I sat there and twitched every time the cloth or his hand would touch near the punctures. ‘There. You can take that off after a few days but it might not have healed by then,’ he explained. ‘They may leave some scarring but it should be healed by the time we get to Dracona.’

            ‘And how long will that take us?’ I asked in my frustration.

            He waved his finger in the air in front of him and went into a calculating mode. ‘I would say just over a week at the pace we are going but if we’re lucky then we can make it in just under.’

            That wasn’t much good news to me. ‘Can we get going then?’ Once again sounding as irritated as I felt.

            His reply was a modest nod in the direction we were heading and Aspen was soon galloping ahead as fast as he could but still comfortably.

            It took some time but eventually I realised that the reason why we were heading north-east was no longer with me. Stopping suddenly, I tried listening first but that didn’t do much good. Looking around, I still couldn’t spot him; then I heard him loud and clear. His chirping came from across the grass but it wasn’t his happy sounding self that appeared out of the verge. Kicking Aspen quite hard with my heels, we chased after him but it wasn’t easy when a dragon seemed to be fleeing. Fleeing? Dragons didn’t flee.

            ‘Frain! Stop.’ He stopped but before Aspen could, he clambered up and clung on tight to my front. ‘Erm...’ Aspen kept on galloping although I tried to rein him in. ‘Aspen, slow down!’ I shouted but I barely heard my own voice over another’s. It wasn’t really a voice but a loud, raucous roar. It came down from above and I looked up just in time to see the huge silhouette of a full grown dragon. It glided in and landed with the lightest thud for a creature of that size. Turning its horned, scaly head towards us, I could see a deep hatred glaring down at me and the dragon clung to my chest.