The Mountain Journey

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. That’s why it was so terrible that morning. In most of the Realm, especially regions where dragons are common, they have watchtowers that are continuously manned, watching the skies for anything too large to be a bird. There are horses, specially bred for speed and endurance, with daring riders who will race outside the town to draw the dragon’s attention, and lead them away from the farms and buildings. In larger cities, they even have trained artillerists, with ballistae and catapults, who can knock a dragon out of the sky with a single well-aimed javelin or boulder.

But here in our valley, surrounded by mountains, where none of us had ever seen a real dragon before, we had none of these defenses. So when it did come, by the time the it was spotted, it was too late.

“Run, Sori!” I screamed, grabbing my sister roughly by the arm. She jumped, as if she’d been under a spell I’d broken. Her gaze, which had been fixed on the approaching beast, turned to look at me, and I saw the terror on her face. But her feet remained frozen in place.

“It’s a dragon, Leo”, she whispered.

“Move, Sori!”, I screamed again, hoping to shock her into action. “Move, move, move!”

The spell broken, she finally moved, and we raced away together, weaving and dodging our way through the other villagers. They, too, had spotted the incoming dragon, and were now caught up in a panic. Some of them were racing back to their houses to hide, some were dragging food or belongings behind them, some of them were frozen in place like Sori. We have to get away from the crowd, I thought to myself. We’re an easy target right now, just a giant mass of screaming people without plan or defense. But where to run?

I had to think fast. The village center was bound to be filled with even more panicked crowds. The grazing pastures were completely exposed, and the livestock were probably just as panicked as the people. The woods? They should provide good cover, and it would only take a quick sprint to get there.

“Not the woods”, Sori gasped, as she saw where I was pulling her. “The trees are all dry right now. Too flammable. Dragons know to burn down trees to scare out any hiding prey.”

That gave me pause. I might be better under pressure. But Sori was smarter. I’d be a fool to discount what she said.

“Where else?” I asked.

Sori’s mouth opened, but her answer was drowned out by the roar of the dragon behind us. So loud, it echoed over the screams of the villagers.

RAAAAWWWWWRRRR!

The sound was so loud, louder than even the combined screams of the villagers, echoing through the entire valley. My hands instinctively covered my ears, my teeth rattled from the noise. I couldn’t help myself; I turned my head around to look at the dragon.

The creature was larger than I had ever imagined. The dark brownish-black wings extended out nearly fifty feet, the shadows blanketing entire houses as it soared over them. As it landed, I could clearly see that it towered over even our tallest buildings. The neck, as thick as a large tree trunk, stretched into the sky, where it ended in a head the size of a large bull. And when the creature’s mouth opened, I could see teeth as long as my arm.

An inferno of fire burst forth from the dragon’s mouth, spraying over the buildings in the village center. The buildings were instantly alight, the morning air suddenly thick with black smoke and the smell of sulfur.

And though we had managed to get far enough away that I couldn’t see the people, I could hear them. When you hear them back-to-back, you can tell the difference between a scream of terror and a scream of pain. The scream of pain is louder, higher pitched, more desperate. That was the sound I heard coming from the village center.

I turned to Sori. “We need to get out of here. What’s the safest place from a dragon?”

Sori looked back at me, and I could see tears streaming down her face. But her voice was firm and confident.

“The river. The big rock piles on the shore. We can hide there. Dragons are drawn to movement. If we get there and stay still, we should be okay.”

“Got it”, I said. To get to the river, we’d have to cut back through town. We took off, running back through the streets and alleys, gasping for air.

The dragon lifted off into the air, circling overhead. It roared again, as loud as before, and I fell to the ground, screaming, my head tucked into my knees as I tried to block out the awful sound. Sori dropped to her knees next to me; through the fear, I was vaguely aware of her arms wrapping around my shoulders.

“Don’t move”, she whispered into my ear.

We waited, silent and unmoving, while the dragon circled above us.

“We need to get across the open fields to get to the river”, I said. “How do we do that?”

“Wait for it to land”, she responded. “Dragons are slowest when taking flight.”

I nodded. My eyes scanned the sky while my body remained perfectly still. The dragon was still circling. I could see the giant eyes scanning the village, like a hungry guest at a feast deciding which food to eat first. I could feel my heart racing in my chest. Every part of my mind wanted to take off running, as fast as I could, without looking back. But Sori was right, as long as we stayed quiet and still, those eyes were not lingering on us.

But then…

AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!

Suddenly we were surrounded. A group of fleeing villagers had come down the same street where we hid. And they were not at all quiet or still.

Sori and I were both on our feet instantly. We had to get away from this crowd. Part of me wanted to do something, anything, to try to help these people. They were our neighbors and friends. But what could we do, in the midst of chaos? The crowd was racing into the field, the same field we would need to cross to get to the river. We were helpless. And we had caught the dragon’s eye.

I reached out and grabbed hold of the shirt of the closest person, a farmwife who lived a few houses away from us. She was carrying small infant in one hand, and holding the hand of her young daughter in the other. I yanked them back with all my strength, away from the direction of the crowd. Pulling them, we took off back through a small alley between a row of houses, now running north.

A streak of flame burst from the sky, incinerating the small enclave where we’d been hiding only moments ago. I could feel the heat radiating on my body. My nose was hit with the putrid smell of charred flesh, and I doubled over gagging. I could hear the young girl next vomiting next to me.

The dragon slowly descended from the sky, ready to feast on its newest victims. It was even larger up close. When it roared in triumph, the sounds shook the earth.

This was it. We were far closer to dragon than I wanted to be, but if Sori was right, this was the time to run.

“Now!”, I screamed. I took off running into the open field, sprinting towards the river. I didn’t look back at Sori or the woman and her kids- there was nothing I could do to help them move faster. I only hoped they were right behind me.

I felt the heat of the fireball on the back of my neck, as the dragon let out a burst of flame in our direction. We were obvious targets now. But we were far enough away that the flames didn’t burn us. And just as Sori had predicted, the dragon, now grounded, wasn’t as quick to give chase.

I ran. I gasped for air.

We rolled and tumbled down onto the banks of the river. My body banged against the rocks, and I knew I would have some ugly bruises tomorrow, but we were out of the dragon’s eyesight. Now was the time to hide.

“Quickly, quickly”, Sori whispered, pushing the woman and her children into the cracks between the rocks. “Stay still, stay quiet.”

“Stay still, stay quiet”, the little girl repeated, her voice trembling.

“That’s right”, Sori said, giving the family a quick smile.

The only thing left to do was hide ourselves. Sori was burrowing into another crevice further down the bank. I quickly scanned the rocks, and spotted a small space underneath a large boulder. I crawled towards it on my hands and knees, and quickly dug out as much loose dirt and sand as I could. I then curled myself into as small a ball as possible, and pressed my back up against the stone. In the distance, I could still hear the dragon’s roars echoing through our once beautiful valley.

***

We don’t really know how long the dragon stayed. I know we continued hiding long after we stopped hearing the roars, afraid that the dragon was still lurking in the village, or maybe that it might circle around and come back later. It was late afternoon by the time we started hearing other people again, and dared to make our way back to what remained of our village.

The entire northern street was gone. The wooden houses had burned away, and nothing remained but heaps of ashes. The community building, once the tallest building in the valley, had collapsed into a pile of loose stones. The fields, normally filled with sheep and green grazing grass, were barren. The small gardens outside the western end of the village had been burned, and with them the entire year’s crop. Everywhere I looked, I could see at something that had been destroyed.

I could also see the people. The survivors, now trudging through the ruins of what had once been our home. Some of them were openly weeping, others were still in shock. Most were calling out for loved ones, but for the most part, their cries went unanswered. Others had gone back to were their homes or businesses had once stood, and were helplessly digging through the rubble.

As we walked, I could see what was left of the woods. Just like Sori had predicted, the dragon had destroyed the trees.

Sori was quiet as we walked, meekly staring at her feet while I guided her, with that same expression of shock she’d had when we first spotted the dragon. Her clothes were ragged and filthy, the right sleeve of her sleeve of her shirt torn clean off at the shoulder, and her long blonde hair looked almost black with dirt and grime. I could only imagine what was going through her mind. She was brilliant and curious. The past few years, she’d been studying under the village scholars, and I knew she’d read all about dragons. But what did all that knowledge really mean, when today she’d faced a dragon for real?

But then, was I so different? I had faced plenty of dangers on my trips through the mountains. And as a guide, I’d been responsible not just for my own safety, but the safety of the people I was leading, the traders and surveyors and miners coming from the south. I knew how to pace myself at high altitudes, how to cross dangerous rivers, how to keep warm during freezing nights. I was prepared for all of the dangers of the mountains. I’d always imagined myself, if not invincible, then surely as brave and prepared as any man. But the dragon, that was something different. It was more terrifying than anything I’d ever seen. I had been as helpless and frightened as Sori.

We didn’t even bother searching for our home. I could tell, from where the dragonfire had burned the land, that it was gone. Instead, we made our way towards the opposite end of the village, near what had previously been the gardens. Sori was looking for the place she came when she was sad.

But the library was also gone. It hadn’t burned as badly as some of the other buildings, but it was bad enough that the roof caved and the structure had collapsed.

Wordlessly, Sori knelt by the ground, and began aimlessly sifting through the ashes. I think she knew it was hopeless to find anything. All the books, and with them the knowledge passed down through generations of scholars, were gone.

Sori let out a gasp. I looked, and saw what she had in her hand. It looked like a human bone. I dropped to me knees, and working together, we began sifting through the pile of ashes again. After a few seconds, I felt something solid on my fingers. I grabbed hold, and pulled out the small amethyst necklace that Sori’s master had worn.

Sori stared at the small gemstone as I handed it over to her. I watched a single teardrop run down her cheek as took the necklace. Then, the drop became a trickle, and the trickle became a flood, and Sori was kneeling in the ruins of the library, sobbing.

Sori and I are very similar in our grief-we don’t want help or comfort. We just want to be alone for a little while with our feelings. It’s how we reacted when our father died. So, I turned and began walking, going even further away from the village. I wasn’t looking for anything. Mostly, I was still in shock myself. I was wondering if any of my own friends had managed to survive. I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings, and I almost walked right past it.

“Sori!” I called out. “Over here.”

It was a small, iron vault. Heavy, but not so heavy you couldn’t lift it, and the size of a small basket. Incredibly expensive, and more intricate than anything else we had in the village. Hell, most of us couldn’t even afford iron, and the nearest metalsmith’s village was a four-day journey. The scholars had saved up for several years to be able to afford one, and purchased it from one of the mining companies that had come through. And it worked. Half-buried in burnt earth, the vault remained unscathed. Something like this, I thought, is exactly where they might keep their most valuable items.

Sori gently opened unlatched the vault’s seal, and reached her hand inside. When her hand came out, I could see her holding three small books. I looked at the title of the book on top; it was The Ecologies of Dragons. It seemed the old scholar, in his last act, had tried to save the books that could help us understand what had happened.

***

That evening, the whole village gathered for a meeting with the Elders. Since the village center had been destroyed, we were gathered around a small fire built in the middle of a pasture, sitting on logs and the ground. That morning, there had been several hundred people living in our valley. This evening, there were only ninety people gathered around the fire.

The three remaining Elders stood in front of us. One of them was the man who had been my mentor ever since my father’s death. Known affectionately around the valley as the Old Ram, he’d been guiding through the mountain passes for nearly thirty years now. He had managed to survive by heading for mountain pass the second he spotted the dragon, and taking twenty people with him.

Hurn was alive as well. He wasn’t a full master yet, but now that Sori’s teacher was gone, Hurn was the only scholar left in the valley. Although not an Elder, his voice would carry great weight in the discussion.

And there was much to discuss. Loved ones needed to be buried. Homes and businesses needed to be rebuilt, and most the timber had been burned. While some food stockpiles had survived, enough to feed the depleted population through the autumn, the destroyed gardens and scattered livestock meant we had no way of feeding ourselves next year. Many of the people in the crowd, while they had survived, had injuries, more than Hurn and Sori would be able to treat immediately, and the medicine stockpiles had burned along with the books. It was suggested that we reach out to other villages for aid. But most of the other mountain communities lived like we did-barely surviving year to year, dependent on the trade, and occasionally charity, of the southerners coming through the mountains. It was doubtful they would even have the resources to share with us, even if they were willing to part with them.

As the evening wore on, the hopelessness of our situation, even after surviving the dragon attack, was beginning to sink in. Finally, the Old Ram, who had been growing more and more impatient as the evening went on, rose from his seat.

“I think it’s obvious what we need to do”, he said. “If we need help, and the other valleys can’t help us, then we need to go to those who can. We need to send someone south, to the great cities, to ask for aid. To the capital, if we must.”

This proclamation was met with a deadening silence. Other than the mountain guides like myself, most villagers had never even left our valley. Even a trip to another village would be daunting for someone untrained in navigating the mountains, especially in the spring, when the larger mountains still had snow on their peaks, and the rivers were at their highest. And even the guides had never left the mountains. There was only person in the village who had.

“That’s madness”, said one of the other Elders. “They’d never send us aid. It’s been four years since the Queen’s tax collectors last came. If they don’t even remember us when it’s time to take our money, why the hell would they care to rebuild our village? Besides, Hurn is the only one here who’s ever been outside the mountains. We can’t send our only scholar away, not while we’re trying to rebuild. Who else will watch the weather and treat our injuries?”

Everyone looked at Hurn. He had yet to speak at this gathering. As we watched, he continued his silence, sitting on his log, pondering, and staring into the fire.

“Well”, he said after a minute. “There’s a question we still haven’t answered here. Why did the dragon come?”

No one answered him. It seemed an odd question. Life in the mountains was hard. We never really questioned why. It simply was. You either got up in the morning to chop wood and tend to your flocks, or your family didn’t have warmth or food. And when things went wrong, you dealt with it and kept pushing forward.

“We’ve never seen a dragon here”, Hurn continued, unfazed. “Not a single one of us. Not even Elder Proth, and this is his seventy-fifth spring. Apprentice Sori, you’ve been studying ecology and living things. You probably know more about creatures and plants than I do. Tell me, why aren’t there dragons in the mountains?”

Beside me, Sori slowly stood. Her eyes darted around the gathering. She seemed unsure about being put on the spot.

“Well”, she stammered. “The thin air in the high altitudes makes it hard for them to fly because they’re so large. When it’s cold, it takes more energy for them to breathe fire. Also, valleys are closed ecosystems. If a dragon stays in a single valley, they’ll quickly eat all the prey, and the food source won’t replenish, so the dragon would need to keep moving valleys in order to find more food. Dragons usually prefer habitat near forests or grasslands, where they can forage over a large range.”

“Why does it matter?”, Elder Proth asked. “Who cares why the dragon came? It did. We have to deal with it.”

It was the Old Ram who answered.

“Last summer, the mining party came through saying there had been a dragon in the Silverfjord village, on the other side of the mountains. We dismissed it as nonsense. Then in autumn, the guides coming in from the Two Spears said they had seen a dragon, and we all believed it to be a tall tale from some wild boys breathing mountain air for too long. And only a few weeks ago, the monks returning from their winter pilgrimage at Arden-Vu told us that the village in Narelsbaerd, where they usually stopped, wasn’t there anymore. That’s too many instances.”

“The dragons are coming into the mountains”, Hurn said. “We need to know why. Because there is a very real chance they might return.”

Silence followed Hurn’s speech. We were all thinking the same thing. If a dragon came through again, our village would never survive.

Elder Proth spoke first. “Well, it’s still a moot point. We can’t have you leaving the valley. We need you here.”

“I agree”, Hurn said. “That’s why I propose we send Sori.”

I stopped breathing. Sori? She wasn’t even fully trained yet! I could see in the firelight, her eyes wide. She wasn’t used to being the center of attention, and now, the whole village was looking at her.

“I can handle the work here while she’s gone”, Hurn said. “And she’d need to go eventually anyways, to study at the Academy, just like I did. There’s only so much she can learn from me, especially with the library gone. And we need answers.”

“Then I would like to be the one to guide her.”

Now I was the one standing, with the whole village looking at me. Sori was looking at me, too. I think I’d caught her by surprise. Well, I’d even surprised myself. But I knew if she was going, I would be going with her.

“I know I’m young”, I said. “But I’ve been guiding for two summers now. I can get her safely to the Academy. Besides, we’re family. I should be with her to keep her safe.”

Proth looked at the Old Ram.

“What do you think, Ben? I know their kin. But is he really experienced enough to trust with one of our two remaining scholars?”

The Old Ram laughed. “Leo’s the only one who can do it. All the other guides are either dead, or out on trips, and it could be weeks before they get back And I’m too old. I can still guide some if needed. But all the way out of the mountains? No, it’s going to be him.”

“We still haven’t even decided we’re doing this!” Proth protested.

“We still need help from the other villages!” a voice called out from the crowd.

“I can still take a group out for aid”, the Old Ram bellowed. “I’m old, not dead. Robbidock or Snowy Creek. That wouldn’t be too far. We can send the two young ones south while I take everyone strong enough to make the trip for supplies.”

There was still plenty of argument that evening. But with Hurn and the Old Ram on the same side, I knew that the decision had been made. My sister and I were headed south.