The Champion *ON HOLD*

Chapter 9- Avery Meets a Dragon Rider

A/N: The picture on the side is a close representation of Leovar's dragon. It's not quite what my imagination conjured up, but its pretty close. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the newest installment of The Champion.

Avery finally pulled the horse up to a walk after she'd been in the forest a ways. Diesel and Koda were panting hard, sides heaving. She felt bad for making them run so hard, but she liked the idea of them getting snatched up by a dragon even less. The unicorn pranced to a dainty stop next to her and she looked down to see the white creature was putting almost all of her weight on her leg. Avery nodded approvingly and continued at a sedate walk, letting Gus cool down from the hard run.

She looked about her and found that there was less snow on the ground, probably due to the thick forest surrounding her. The trees caught most of the snow that fell. Avery pulled up her horse, then turned a bit in her saddle and dug around in one of the saddle bags. It didn't take long to find the map. She opened it and examined its contents. From what she could tell, she was on the East Road, facing southeast. According to the map, the road would sharply fork, one road branching off sharply north, the other staying in a rough, easterly direction, following a river. She figured that was where she needed to go.

The only problem was she had no idea what the scale on the map was. The fork could be twenty miles, or it could be two hundred miles away from her current location, she didn't know. Hell, she didn't even know if the damn thing was accurate or if some idiot was just spitballing. She sighed and hoped like hell it was accurate.

According to the map, if she followed the road to the east, it passed by a small lake labeled Lake Voth. That was where she needed to go. She folded up the map and tucked it into her tunic, figuring it would be easier to fish out when she needed it than having to dig in the saddle bags every time she needed to look at the map.

A glance at the sky through the trees told her it was getting close to dusk. Under the dense canopy it was much darker. What light there was threw long shadows across the road. She wished she had a flashlight. Because she was a paranoid person, she pulled her pistol and laid it across her lap, gripping it lightly with her right hand, holding onto the reins with her left. Her dogs seemed alert, but calm as they walked beside her. The unicorn didn't seem very much bothered by anything. In fact, it seemed more at ease out here in the cold than it did in the army camp.

A cold breeze ruffled her hair, reminding her that it was still damp from her bath earlier. She wished she had a hat, or a hood, something to keep her head warm. The last thing she needed was to get sick out here, where medicine seemed to be about as medieval as everyone else.

Avery was so tired. She had been awake for two days, essentially. It had been completely dark when she stumbled into this strange land, and here it had been close to late morning. It was now dusk and she was feeling jet lagged. A part of her thought about just stopping on the road and setting up her camp here, but she figured that would be a quick way to get herself mugged or killed, and quickly decided against it.

As her horse walked, she looked about in the trees for a break or a small clearing. She couldn't find anything promising. Diesel and Koda loped alongside her and wandered about, sniffing around and marking trees. She smiled at them and continued to search for a place to stop.

It was almost completely dark by the time Avery found a suitable place. She was practically falling asleep atop of the large horse. Yawning, she turned off the road into a small clearing. She hopped off the horse and groaned as her hips and thighs cramped up. Yeah, those were going to be sore in the morning. Wincing, she tied the large horse to a tree and began to rake snow with her shoes so that she had a fairly wide circle of cleared ground. She mounded up the snow on the side of the clearing that faced the road. It would act as a barrier between her and whoever travelled along the road. All they would see was a mound of snow, not uncommon in the winter.