The Prince & The Page

The Dragon

The young Prince stood at the entrance to the Dragon's lair at the peak of the mountain. Rain lashed his face and dripped from his dark fringe into his eyes. His chain mail, soaking, seemed to be twice its usual weight. His teeth were rattling and his hands shaking from the cold.

Emyr had spent his life training for this moment, but he could not shake the dark tar of fear in his heart, as he unsheathed his sword breathlessly. To his left, his page Rheon stood, with a stern expression of concern. On his right, his lifelong rival clambered up to the cave entrance, the noble knight Tomos Morgan.

Emyr's hands were shaking; he put away the sword. He hated that Tomos was here, any cowardice on his part would be regaled viciously in future taunts from the older, strapping knight. Emyr was athletic, but much shorter, and their bodies were as different as those between a farmer and a bard. He wondered if height and muscle mattered when your opponent was a dragon. It probably made a difference, but not by much. And he supposed, arrogance was sure to be as much a deadly disadvantage as height was on his part.

The climb to the cave had been a difficult one, there had been much rain and Owain of Powys, the fourth knight in their party, had slipped and injured his leg; they had been forced to carry him up the mountain with them.

They had left Owain at a base camp below, and set off in the early hours of the morning, when there was just enough daylight to see the footholds as they scaled the rocky mountainside.

At the foot of the cave, Emyr began his magick. It was not common practice for a prince to study magecraft, especially one in line for the throne, however Emyr had come up short with regards to the traditional kingly virtues, and he had shown a natural talent for magicking since he was a young boy.

He had spent weeks rehearsing these two rituals, hundreds of times daily, but he had only been able to test the sleeping spell. The second spell, an earthquake ritual of his own concoction, should cause the cave to collapse on the beast, whereupon his knights, now just Tomos and Rheon, could kill the beast, by decapitation or by cutting out its heart.

Lord Llŷr, his father's cousin, and formerly his direct rival to the throne, had been privy to the construction of the plan, and had promptly indulged the details to the court, breaking his privy chamber oath in doing so. Lord Llŷr had mocked Emyr for a plan which ambushed the beast, instead of giving it a fair fight.

King Carwyn had demanded that if a fair fight were needed for a dragon, his noxious brother should be the first to volunteer one. Emyr and his knights had waited three weeks for Lord Llŷr's return, after he had set out reluctantly, on the King's orders. No word had been received of Llŷr's whereabouts since he set off. Emyr suspected he was hiding out in a tavern somewhere.

So it was agreed, Prince Emyr would subdue the dragon with his ritual magick, and the kingdom's best three knights would work together to kill the creature.

Politically, this satisfied the king, keeping his heir out of direct danger, and settling a squabble between the noble Houses of Morgan and Powys, who each believed the king favoured the other. The shared glory of such an endeavour would bring the boys together, and unite their Houses into allegiance, perhaps even securing a marriage out of it, as the House of Powys had many unmarried daughters.

The sleeping spell was a viscous potion, pre-prepared, which Emyr spread thickly across sticks of sage. He urged his companions to cover their faces, and wrapped a scarf tightly around his own. Then he lifted the potion-slathered sage into a bouquet, and Rheon lit his torch.

Emyr led the way into the cave, which smelled of damp moss and black granite.  There was a deathly silence only punctuated by the distant drip of water. The cave entrance was a large chamber which at least made the journey inside easier, but Emyr was alert to the continued clanking of their chain mail and armour, rupturing the unnatural silence.