raymore is a dragon hunter
Natalie Yacobson
Translator Natalia Lilienthal
© Natalie Yacobson, 2022
© Natalia Lilienthal, translation, 2022
ISBN 978-5-0059-4341-5
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
Dragons’ Attack
The dragons swooped down on the city again. Graymore sensed them at a distance. Before, their approach had aroused her excitement and she reached for her sword, but today she was angry. The dragon’s swoop ripped her from her magical dream.
She was dreaming about the most beautiful young man in the world. Or was he an elf? It was impossible to tell in the dream. It was as if he was composed of golden fire. Making love to him in the royal bed was like floating in the sky. Except that his kisses burned her lips, and his breath set the canopy on fire. Why is his breath fiery? He himself exudes golden light, but his sighs are full of the usual orange fire. Do elves breathe fire? The young man is definitely an elf! After all, his wings of light are folded behind him. But why are there scales sprouting in his skin?
«Who are you?» she asked. Her voice sounded in her sleep like an echo in a witch’s maze.
The young man did not answer, but a new wave of passion burst forth like dragon’s fire. A mischievous thought flashed through Graymore’s mind: What if he were a dragon-wizard himself, who’d taken on a seductive form and decided to seduce her for revenge? After all, she had defeated so many dragons in fair combat, or lured them into a trap! Could love for a dragon be subtle revenge on a princess who was born with the magical gift of a dragon-hunter?
If it weren’t for the scales and the fire, the young man of the dream could have been called an elf or a spirit of sunlight, about which so many stories were told. His kisses were magic!
The dragons had already taken their revenge on her by pulling her out of paradise. She had to wake up and come down to earth. In the figurative sense, of course! Waking up in the tallest tower of the castle was hardly what she had come to expect. The clouds were a stone’s throw away. Sometimes at night, Graymore could hear the songs of the spirits of the clouds. Perhaps the young man in the dream was one of them.
The sentries on the castle walls sounded the alarm. The sound of the alarm could not be ignored. Another ruler would have called a militia, but Graymore reached for the shirt of mail and weapons stacked in the corner of the bedroom. She always kept her weapons and warrior gear with her.
The dragons usually struck unexpectedly. Now their pelted skins gleamed in the sun like gemstone armor. How beautiful! Graymore had no time to marvel at the beauty of the monsters that attacked her capital. Suddenly the girl was twisted with pain. It was as if fire had swept through all her veins. This is normal! For a sorceress! The princess was considered a sorceress by everyone since she was a teenager because she reacted so sensitively to dragons. No sooner had they reached the borders of her country than she was on fire from within and ready to fight. The dragons’ proximity started a fire in her blood. So why did she oversleep today!
Silver, gold, copper, ruby red, emerald-green, and amber-yellow dragons flew over the city skyline like rainbow shards. They were all enormous flying monsters. The dragon swarms did not approach the city silently at all. The sky trembled with the flapping of their wings. And that thunderous roar was worth it!
«We shall avenge you, bewitched princess, who uses her magic to slay dragons like tin soldiers!» As if they wanted to shout, all they let out was a low growl.
A pack of them! Swords won’t help! Graymore could count more than a dozen mighty dragons in the sky, and she couldn’t see them all. The tower overlooked only the main square.
She must change her strategy! Instead of her chain-mail, Graymore donned a fur-trimmed pelerine and buttoned it up on her way to the fortress walls, where her best archers and cannoneers had gathered.
«Only don’t fire the cannons!» She warned. «Cannonballs will damage the capital, and a dragon is not so easy to hit on the fly.»
Most arrows missed their targets, and when they hit them they bounce off the scales of the dragons with ricochets.
«How could you defeat them if you couldn’t even penetrate their hide with a spear?» The archery commander asked.
«Well, I am enchanted!»
«And they?»
«It would seem that they are too!»
The spear thrown by one of the guards at the green dragon didn’t really do any damage to the dragon’s hide, but it boomeranged back and pierced through the guard who had thrown it.
The smell of blood and guts made everyone sick. This is worse than war! A single dragon attack could take an entire kingdom in an hour. The dragons were already beginning to breathe fire. The town hall and several palaces were ablaze. And dragons are treacherous! They want to smoke out all the humans or burn them. Graymore got the feeling that they wanted to lure her out of the castle alone, so the first thing they did was torch the buildings that were most valuable to her. One amber dragon squinted at her slyly, as if he’d been expecting her.
«I must get you to my lord!» As if he was informing her. «That’s who’ll take care of you!»
The yellow dragon charged toward the towers. Its claws almost caught Graymore, but she dodged them. The dragon grabbed one of the guards, realized his mistake, and threw his burden against the fortress wall. The unfortunate man crumbled. The shattered body was left a hideous mass of shards of bone and bloody bits of flesh. Dragons killed men with ease, but men could do no harm to dragons. The cannon fuses were lit again and again. The cannonballs fired from their embrasures couldn’t even muffle a dragon’s tail.
«We’ll never make it!» Graymore watched as an arrow from an apt archer ricocheted off the dragon’s hide, whistled back, and pierced the archer’s own eye.
Dragons are magical creatures. They can be dealt with not by force, but by magic. Graymore remembered the wonderful net she had woven from special threads and her own hair on the advice of an ancient wizard.
«Give me my net!» She shouted when she saw the commander-in-chief of her armies below, who was standing at the castle gate, unsure of what order to give to the assembled warriors. – Send a soldier on horseback to each end of the city, and have them climb the watchtowers at the corners of the city walls and stretch over the city the net I have woven for defense.»
The commander-in-chief did not want to believe in such a dubious undertaking, but what else could be done. The dragons flew too low, disoriented by the fact that no one could overpower them. They were catching and eating people alive, clawing through the windows of palaces and pulling young ladies out, then crushing their bodies like nuts. Graymore was their target. She could feel it.
The three dragons: red, green, and yellow conspired about something on the fly, rubbed their paws together contentedly, and dashed toward the wall where Graymore stood. It would have taken a minute for them to drag her away, but the net over the city had been stretched earlier. The dragons were caught. All of them!
They were beating at the bottom of the magical net, like caught fish. The net wouldn’t let them fly up, and it wouldn’t let them get away either. The dragons threatened Graymore with clawed paws.
«Cunning is my strategy!» She praised herself. Who else would praise you for your courage? The knights and archers were gloomily silent, until someone clever asked:
«What shall we do with them now?»
«Put them in the cellars,» Graymore commanded.
The cellar was already shaking from the aggression of the dragons they had captured. It was unlikely they would fight for her. She could brainwash them with enchantments. So far, that has not worked. Dragon scolding and cursing could be heard from the cellars.
«My lady, your dungeons are hell with dragon sparks! It’s as hot as an oven!»
Graymore