Chapter Six

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Chapter Six

*****

Revaramek limped across the pasture long after the girl had donated her breakfast to the grass. He paused, shook his hind end, and then continued onwards with a hiss. Stupid wench. Stupid boots. Stupid balls. No, wait. He liked those. Just didn’t like that bossy harlot and her boots. Someone oughta toss her in a lake. Or a mud puddle. Or an outhouse. Or a burning outhouse.

The dragon tossed his head, growling. He was far too resplendent a creature to be bested in so humiliating a manner. It was insulting. And to think he’d only been in that compromising position because he was trying to help that cold-hearted harpy back to the ground. He’d show her. Why, that was the last time he’d ever expose himself to her.

Wait, that didn’t sound right.

Revaramek glanced at the assortment of shaggy, curly horned sheep huddled at the far corner of the pasture. At least they were still afraid of him. They were lucky he’d lost his appetite. He took a breath, and spat fire at them just to see them run. They bleated and scattered, sprinting along the uneven wooden fence hemming the pasture. Revaramek smiled. Their fear pleased him and made him feel a little better.

At least until he hopped over the fence, and jostled his sore jewels on landing. “ARRCK!” The dragon lifted a hind leg and shook it a few times, then lashed his tail. His sharp-webbed spines collided with the fence. Wooden beams blew apart, and an entire section of the barrier collapsed into the meadow, leaving a gaping hole. “Whoops.”

He’d just have to blame that on the girl. Preferably right before he dunked her in a mud puddle and then flew to a safe distance while she fumed.

Revaramek left the broken fence and vomit-scented pasture behind, walking a dirt path that lead towards the village. It was not long before he heard loud bleats and excited baas behind himself. He turned his head to gaze over his green and copper wings, back the way he’d come. The entire flock of sheep was streaming through the hole he’d made in the fence, then sprinting down the lane towards the marsh.

How unfortunate. He’d best blame that on the girl, too.

As he padded along the packed-earth path, he unfurled a single wing, gesturing with it as if in explanation. “You see, subjects, the girl’s gone mad. I humbly offered to fly her home, and upon arrival she kicked me in the testicles in a fit of rage.” He paused, sneered and shook his head, muttering to himself. “No, leave that part out.” He cleared his throat with a growl, then deepened his voice. “In a fit of mad rage, she kicked the fence down, and stomped off screaming obscenities. I heroically tried to stop the sheep from escaping, but in their misguided fear they fled from me. My deepest apologies.”

Yes, he liked that.

The simple road Revaramek followed ambled between pastures filled with grazing livestock, and fields planted with lines of crops. Many of the plants were laden with fruit of various shapes and sizes. Or were they vegetables? Revaramek never much quite understood the difference. Either way most of them were disgusting and he never understood why humans ate them. Further along were lower, wet areas the peasants had turned into rice paddies.

The village itself was built upon the flat summit of a small, gently sloped hill. Or at least it was the last time Revaramek paid it any attention. Since then it had long since spilled down the rest of the hill and into the area beyond it. Homes now dotted the hillside, some built of sod and others of wood, with thatched roofs. Sturdier looking buildings now lined the main road that ran through the village. At the hill’s summit, the village’s original homes and market had been joined by larger structures complete with colorful banners and watch towers. It seemed as though they’d upgraded to building their homes out of bigger sticks than before. Speaking of bigger sticks, a wall made of immense logs lashed together and cut into points now encircled the entire village.

At the end of the rutted path, a gateway in the wall stood open. A small outbuilding carved with decorative sigils stood nearby. Red and blue flags fluttered on either side of the gate. A half-dozen men wearing matching red and blue tabards over leather armor and with swords at their hips stood watch at the gateway. They all gaped at the dragon. Revaramek took their slack-jawed silence as awed fear.

“Greetings, subjects!” Revaramek flared his wings and held his head high. “Your awe is well-deserved, I assure you, and also well-appreciated. I am-”

“We know who you are!” A muffled voice rang out.

Oh, gods, not this again.

A man Revaremek assumed to be their commander stepped out of the guardhouse. Unlike the other guards, this man was covered in heavy plate armor, his face hidden by a pointed visor with several slits. The commander was so covered in metal that his every step was slow, and halting. Every movement brought with it a clanking, rattling sound that grated against Revaramek’s ears.

With noticeable effort, the man lifted an armored arm and curled his gauntlet-covered hand until only a single finger remained extended. Which he promptly pointed in the direction of a duck waddling along the nearest ditch.

“Now you listen here!” The commander shook his finger, his armor rattled. “I am the Knight Commander of this Entryway, and I have been instructed by Council-”

“Who are you talking to?” Revaramek cocked his head.

“What?” The knight jerked his head around.

“He’s over there, Sir!” One of the guards piped up.

“Bring him here!” The commander waved his armored hand.

The dragon gazed into the ditch. “Who, the duck? You want the duck?”

“I most certainly do not!” The knight stomped his foot, metal clanking. “Your proposal both confuses and disgusts me! Now you listen here, you perverted monstrosity! I’ll not tolerate that sort of language!”

“Sir!” Two more guards ran up alongside the commander, grasping his arms. “He’s over here!” They pivoted the knight until he was once more pointing at the dragon.

“Oh. Right!” The knight cleared his throat and lifted a hand to his face. He fumbled with the visor, but with his stiff, gauntleted hands, managed nothing more than to further twist his helmet round. “Oh, beeswoggle. Well. As I was saying. We know who you are, and you’re not allowed in our city.”

“City?” Revaramek lifted his head, gazing through the gateway. It didn’t look that big to him. “It’s a city?”

“It is not!” The knight stomped again. “And how dare you call my beloved home something so foul! I’ve half a mind to give you a right thrashing.” He scrabbled at his waist, but only managed to unbuckle his scabbard and send it tumbling to the road. “Just…one moment…”

“He said ‘city’, Sir!”

“What?” The knight straightened, pivoting around to stare at the wrong guard.

“I’m over here, Sir!”

The other guards turned the commander in the right direction. “What was that, Soldier?”

“He said, ‘city’, Sir, not shitty!”

“It certainly isn’t, Lad! But I won’t have that barroom tongue.” He waved his arm and the motion made him stumble around to face someone else. “Now, drop and give twenty!”

“Me, Sir?”

“Who else! Now, point me back in the direction of that monster! And someone fetch my sword!”

The chastised guard took a few steps back, folded his arms, and began to count. “One, two, three…”

The other men spun the knight around until he was once more facing Revaramek. “Now, you listen here-”

“No! You listen, you clanking tea kettle!” Revaramek dropped his head and butted it against the knight’s chest. The impact knocked the armored man off his feet and onto the ground with a grating, metallic clatter. “I’m having a very bad day. I’ve been teased, insulted, belittled, laughed at, and kicked in the testicles! Twice!” He set his paw on the knight’s breastplate, and pushed down until the armor buckled. “I’m going to enter your shitty little village now, and unless you want me to violate the terms of our truce in spectacularly violent fashion, I suggest you stay far, far away from me.”

Revaramek took his paw off the man’s chest, only to grab him and roll him off the road. With a muffled cry and a lot of clanging, the knight rolled down the embankment at the side of the road and right into the kitchen. The duck quacked and took flight, and the knight flailed about in the muck. Most of the guards ran to assist the knight, though the one who’d been counting off his feigned pushups remained behind.

“Eighteen, nineteen, twenty.” He stepped aside and made a grand, sweeping gesture as if inviting the dragon in. “Dragon.”

 Revaramek smiled and strolled past the man. That was more like it. “Subject.”

Just beyond the gate, people scrambled out of the dragons way. Horses whinnied and bucked in stables, and workers hurried to keep the animals secure. Revaramek snorted. He wasn’t about to eat their horses. Horses were a little too lean for his taste. As he passed the stables, more people yelled at each other to take cover. A small market stood at a crossroads where the entry way he’d used met the town’s main thoroughfare. A half dozen stalls selling food and clothing were set up around the intersection. Flags and banners strung up overhead advertised the wares available.

When they saw him coming, a couple vendors pulled their stalls shuts and cowered inside. The innkeeper barged out of a nearby inn to see what the ruckus was. When he spotted the dragon, he screamed, turned around and ran back inside, slamming his door shut. Revaramek’s smile grew. That was more like it. He should have come to terrorize villages more often.

“Greetings, subjects!” The dragon let his wondrous, brassy voice ring out down the dirty street, wanting all the peasants to hear. No sense letting their fear get the best of them. “Yes, it is I! Your benevolent…” Wait. He’d probably better not say overlord, just in case Mirelle was around. “Protector! Come to…” Actually, what was he here for again? Mirelle said something about saving her village. Oh, surely the peasants would like the sound of that. “To save your village!”

“To save it from what?” An older woman with a blue shawl wrapped around her stared out at the dragon from the window of a dirty looking home.

“That’s a good question.” What had Mirelle said he had to save them from? Come to think of it, she’d never actually made that particularly clear. Or had she? On the walk to town, she’d rambled about bandits this and villages burning down that, but Revaramek was busy staring at her ass. “From being burned down! I think.”

“He’s come to burn down the village!” The old woman vanished into her house.

“What?” Revaramek jerked his head up, gold-tipped spines flared. “No! I’m not burning you down, you old bag!”

“Did you hear that?” Another man called out from the street corner, and soon all the huddled peasants were shouting at one another. “The truce is over!”

“He said he’s going to burn down Ms. Esmerelda!”

“And he called her an old bag!”

“That monster!”

“I never liked her anyway…”

“You shut it! That’s me old gran!”

“Guards, guards!” A younger woman clambered atop a stack of crates to raise her voice. “To arms!”

“No! That’s not why I’m here!”

 Revaramek spun around to try and address the woman, only for his tail to smash into the side of a vendor’s fruit stall. The wooden frame splintered with a loud crack, and the whole thing collapsed. Round red fruits spilled across the road, tumbling over the dragon’s paws. He tried to dance away from them and only ended up smashing a few of the fruits to paste beneath his weight. He turned away and his spiny tail webbing scythed through the support rope of the banners strung across the market place. They fluttered down and draped themselves across his head. Revaramek twisted around and the ropes tangled in one of his horns. He snarled, shredding one of them with his claws.

“He hates those banners!”

“Me old gran made those!”

“No wonder they’re rubbish!”

“Will you dirty peasants cease your yammering!” Revaramek jerked his head back and forth, the shredded banners fluttered after him. “I’m here to help you, damn it!” Why the hell hadn’t Mirelle warned him not to come here on his own? “I’m not going to burn anything down!”

 “He’s going to burn everything down!”

Revaramek snarled. “Is everyone in this town deaf?”

In frustration, Revaramek threw his head back to blast a stream of fire into the sky. Just as he realized that wasn’t going to help his cause, he also realized his fire ignited the end of the string of banners. The flames crackled across the flag, then quickly spread to the ropes still tangled and hanging from his horns. Revaramek squealed in a moment of panic, and threw his head back and forth, desperate to dislodge the burning rope before the fire reached his head. Flaming banners lashed around him and townsfolk scattered, screaming.

“Use the horse trough!” Another woman screamed at him. “Use the horse trough, you bloody idiot!”

As much as Revaramek disagreed with her assessment of his mental capacity, that sounded like a fantastic idea. A frantic glance soon revealed a large wooden trough sitting front of the nearby stable. The dragon bound to it, dropped onto his haunches, then hoisted up the trough and poured it all over his head, making sure the water ran over the charred ropes still clinging to him. With the fires extinguished, the dragon gave a sigh of relief, his wings drooping. Water ran down his pebbly scales and made muddy puddles upon the earthen lane beneath him. Only when his immediate relief faced did he notice how stagnant and foul the water smelt. There was another, underlying scent there as well.

The dragon sniffed at himself, then scrunched his muzzle. “Please tell me that’s just water.”

“Most of it.” A woman’s laughter echoed down the street. “Sometimes the drunkards from the inn piss in it, though.”

“Wonderful.” Revaramek shook himself, hissing. He wiped his eyes with his paws, groaning in distaste.

“You can all come out, now.” Another new voice spoke up, this one male, and gruffer than the others. “He’s done trying to burn himself down.”

Once Revaramek cleared his eyes, he flicked his flight membranes across his eyes and back a few times to ensure they were clean. He glanced up the street to where an unfamiliar woman stood along a male va’chaak. Mirelle had mentioned something about hiring one of the bipedal lizardfolk, hadn’t she? The dragon rose back to all fours, and padded towards the two of them, glancing back and forth.

“Are you two Mirelle’s underlings?”

“Underlings?” The woman giggled, glancing at the lizard.

The lizard shrugged his green and gray shoulders. “Friends.”

“If anything, you’re her underling, Mister Green and Grumpy.” The woman strode forward.

“I am not her underling!” The dragon tossed his head. Droplets of water flew from his scales. “And who the hell are you, anyway?”

“That’s a fine way to talk to someone who just helped you put yourself out while you were on fire.” The woman giggled again, shaking her head. Her braided, reddish-brown hair waved behind her. “You could at least thank me before I introduce myself.”

“Yes, thank you for directing me to the local piss trough.” Revaramek was hardly in the mood for niceties. “Now, I ask again. Who the hell are you two?”

The va’chaak stepped forward. He stood a head taller than the woman, with a head shaped not unlike Revaramek’s own. Without, of course, his magnificent horns and especially resplendent frills. In their place, the lizard had only smaller, less spiny frills with a bright red hue. The rest of his body was covered in scales of dark green and faint green, with a few golden spots on his nose. His scaly chest was bare, save for a variety of pouches and knives strapped around him.

“I’m Tavaat.” The lizard jerked his thumb at the woman. “This is-“

“Are you wearing trousers?” Revaramek stared at Tavaat.

He’d never seen a va’chaak wear human clothes, but Tavaat wore leather breeches that went halfway down his legs. A va’chaak’s more closely resembled a dragon’s hind limbs than those of a human. Though it had been a while since Revaramek had conversed with the lizard race, he could not recall them ever wearing anything but loincloths, decorative garments, and occasionally armor.

“Beka won’t let me go naked.” The lizard smirked at the woman who immediately punched him on the arm. He winced and rubbed his shoulder. “This is Beka.”

“I’d say it’s a pleasure dragon, but it’s not nice to lie to those you’ve just met.” She tugged on her green skirt, wobbled her legs, and bent forward.

Revaramek backed away. “If you’re going to be ill, keep it away from my paws. I already need a bath as it is!”

“Ill?” Beka straightened and laughed. “I’m not retching dragon, I’m curtsying! Or at least I’m trying. Fancy manners aren’t exactly my strong suit.”

“You haven’t kicked me in the balls yet, so you’re already an improvement over the last maiden.”

“Did she really?” Beka and Tavaat both laughed, with Beka flashing the dragon a wicked grin. “Oooh, you must have really pissed her off. No wonder she asked us to wait her for you.”

Revaramek curled his tail around a hind leg, grimacing inwardly. “She did what now?”

Beka tapped a finger against her chin. “I think her exact words were…” Then she trailed off when she spotted Tavaat shaking his head at her. “Nevermind, we’ll leave her exact words out. Suffice to say, she’s not very happy with you right now.”

“The feeling is mutual, I assure you.” Revaramek snarled, winding his hind leg tighter. “At least that explains why you didn’t lose your minds like the rest of the muck-farming rabble.” Revaramek flattened his wings against his back and glanced over them. As people gradually crept out of their hiding places, a few of the red and blue clothed guards were helping them pick up the pieces of the broken stall. Revaramek licked his nose and then called out to them. “Sorry about the damages! You can send your bill of repair to a woman named Mirelle.”

One of the townsfolk straightened up, staring at him with wide eyes. “Councilwoman Mirelle?”

Revaramek cocked his head. “I…don’t know?”

“Didn’t she tell you?” Beka giggled again. The sound was already starting to grate on the dragon.

“Tell me what?” Revaremek swung his head around, his spines half flared in confusion. His tail unwound from his limb. “We didn’t exactly have a heart to heart chat, you know.” He turned his gaze to Tavaat. “She did say something about hiring you?”

Tavaat nodded, flashing his teeth. “Yeah. For her tavern.”

“Our tavern now.” Beka grinned at the va’chaak.  

“I know.” The lizard laughed, his green and gray tail swishing behind him. “Hard to get used to the idea.”

Revaramek grit his teeth, resisting the urge to blast fire over them both and be done with it. “What are you two on about?”

“Mirelle can’t run the tavern right now, we’re running it for her. That’s what.”

“And why in an entire mountain of shit, should I care?” Raveremek snarled, gazing around. “Where even is she?” He flexed a wing forward, pointing with its talon towards the summit. “Up there?”

“Yes, up there.” A smile lit up Beka’s face. “That’s where she works now. In the council chamber.”

Revaramek’s belly sank into his hind paw. That didn’t sound good. “I…don’t suppose she’s their maid?”

“No, you scaly ass, she is not. As of this week, Mirelle’s a full-fledged council member.”

“Oh, Gods.” Revaramek hung his head. No wonder she knew so much about the truce.

“And that makes you…” Beka stroked forward and jabbed her finger against the dragon’s head, laughing. “Her underling.”