Dragon Hunters Chapter 4

“You left me there!”

“It didn’t seem to do me much good did it?”

Carit slumped onto a large stone doing his best to glare at the dragon hunter without seeming petulant. He had guessed that she, and her talon would be camped along the river with the rest of the talons. He was right and now he was sitting there trying to out fierce the most well-known dragon hunter in Naargas if not all of Duris.

“Why would you just leave me lying there on the floor?”

“Why should I have done anything else?”

“Because…” Carit started looking around at nothing while in his head, he looked for a good answer.

“Look boy. I have no idea who you are. What I do know is that a child walked into an alehouse and screamed. You didn’t say what you wanted and then proceeded to lay down for a nap.”

“I’m not a child.”

“Really? Then you must be the smallest dragon hunter in all of Duris and the only one I have ever seen faint at the sight of a drawn blade.”

“Why do I have to be a---”

“Because only dragon hunters go into alehouses anymore. Are you a dragon hunter boy?”

“No.”

“Then you are a child.”

“But I want to be.”

“What?” Iniuria almost dropped the newly acquired dagger she had been sharpening.

“I want to be a dragon hunter.”

She stared at the boy, not knowing what to say, then adjusted her grip on the dagger and continued sharpening, choosing to say nothing at all. Watching the boy using her peripheral vision she observed his struggle to make his mouth do more than just open and close while finding no words. His muddy brown hair, long enough to cover his ears and most of his eyes, had not been washed in days. To her mind he couldn’t be much older than… well she couldn’t say for sure. Some of his clothes were to small, obviously having outgrown them, while some were too large as though he had inherited them from someone or stolen them from someone else.

“You could teach me,” Carit said. If he could have mustered up more pleading in his tone he would have, but Carit was as prideful as he was desperate. Watching her scrape the blade over the stone was beginning to grate on him and he clenched his teeth, trying not to--- “and if you’d stop ruining that blade, maybe you could take a moment, look at me and tell me how I can become like you!”

Carit stood defiantly, waiting for the inevitable violence to come. He was reasonably sure that she wouldn’t kill him, but his habit of speaking before thinking almost always ended with the back of someone’s hand splitting his lip if not a closed fist swelling one of his eyes. Still, he stood there, waiting but all she did was stare at him with a confused look on her face. The violence did not come.

“I’m not ruining the blade.”

“Really? Because if you keep running that stone along the edge of it like that, you’re going to have a really nice butter knife before much longer.”

“And what would you know about it?”

“Well, now that you’re actually paying attention, why don’t you give it to me, and I’ll show you what I know.”

Studying the boy, trying to determine if he was boasting or not, Iniuria finally took a deep and contemplative breath then handed him the blade and stone. There was an anger in his eyes that she recognized as he took the blade from her almost reverently while ignoring the stone in her hand. Sitting back, her stone in hand she watched him pull a small satchel from under his oversized tunic, open it and pull out a long flattish stone. As though he had done so hundreds of times, he reached back into the satchel pulled out a long piece of leather and laid it across his thigh. Once in place he set the stone on the leather, and she could tell that it was to prevent the stone from slipping while he worked.

His hands disappeared, once again into the tunic and suddenly there was water from an old wineskin he had uncorked, being poured over the stone. With economical movements he began running the blade back and forth along the stone a section at a time. Working as though he had done it many times before, he flipped the blade over and worked the other side of the edge.

“Where did you learn to do that boy?”

“My name is Carit.”

“Where then, Carit?”

“My father. He was the town butcher and he taught me how to take care of the blades while he worked.”

“When did he die?”

“I didn’t say he—”

“Did he leave?”

“No.”

“Then when…Carit?”

“When the first of the dragons came; no one knew what was happening and when the first ones attacked the…”

“That why you want to kill dragons?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I kept my father’s tools and sharpen knives for the alehouse, and anyone that will either pay me or feed me.”

“I never said that I would do either.”

“I don’t want your money. I want---”

“You want to be a dragon hunter.”

Her blue eyes held his for more than three slow breaths and Carit had his answer. It occurred to him that the woman he had sought out was more than a hunter, more than a killer. The woman’s dark face, almost the color of charred wood, had softened, but he her decision was made and Carit knew, she would not help him.

“Here,” he said holding out the blade. Carit saw the beginnings of a sad smile on her face as she took it, then started returning his gear to the small satchel from where it came.

Running the blade along her arm she gasped. “This is the sharpest blade I have ever---”

“What you were doing would put an edge on it just not a very sharp one, and since most hunters need to stab more than slash, you all tend to worry more about the pointy end.”

“Dragon hide is too thick to slash at.”

“Yes, but what you don’t think about is that a sharpened edge will let you stab deeper. Not to mention that you will slice every muscle and blood tube along the way, not just push them aside.”

The sound of small stones being crunched under foot came from behind her. Iniuria sprang from her seat, spun around while stepping in front of Carit bearing the newly sharpened blade in her hand and at the ready. Standing there with his hands resting on his belt was the mysterious man from the back of the alehouse. His eyes narrowed when he looked at the blade as though he were studying it. A sly smile turned up the corner of his mouth and his eyes went from the blade to the boy. “I’ll teach you to hunt dragons boy.”