Rhiana. Michele Hauf
her presence until it was too late. She simply had to follow it, and when it finally exhausted itself, make the killing shot.
“Can you come that?” she whispered.
A massive jut of stone concealed the dragon’s retreat. Megaliths dotted the top of this mountain, making childhood play exciting when the dragons were not in residence.
Rhiana trod up to the huge boulder and pressed her shoulders to it. Slipping along the slick stone wall she gained the corner round which the dragon had passed. She did no longer hear its shuffling steps and dragging wing.
Did it wait on the other side of the stone? Through all its struggles and noise, had the beast remarked her?
Whispering a prayer to St. Agatha’s veil, she drew up the crossbow. Closing her eyes, she listened. But her senses were drugged with the dragon’s anger. She could not fully concentrate on noise. And so, it was now or never.
Swinging around the corner, Rhiana drew the crossbow on target with a pair of human eyes.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A steel bolt—set between two intent eyes—aimed at Rhiana’s nose. She followed the weapon from glinting tip, down the crossbow stock, to a finger poised upon the trigger. Rain splattered the wooden shaft of the crossbow. Moonlight sparked in the very human eyes mirroring her own deadly gaze.
It took two breaths to realize she stood, not before a dragon, but a man wielding a crossbow. Where he had come from, she did not know.
“Stand down,” Rhiana demanded.
The man’s eyes narrowed and one dark, wet brow arched in defiance. “On my honor, my lady, you do not look like a dragon.”
“Neither do you resemble a fire-breathing beast. Lower your weapon, if you will.”
“You first.”
The man’s mail coif was pelted to his scalp by the increasingly heavy rain. And those eyes, she wagered they were blue, though she could not determine for the darkness.
Still she held her aim.
Avoiding looking at the tip of the bolt, Rhiana summed him up. Dressed head to toe in black leathers with steel spikes studding the coat of plates and his wrists. Broad-shouldered and tall as she, he must be a knight. But she did not recognize him as any from Lord Guiscard’s garrison.
“If you be honorable you would stand down first,” she sputtered in the pouring rain. “I must be on to the dragon!”
“It slipped down that tunnel.”
A nod of his head indicated the wall of stone to her left. Rhiana noticed the slit of blackness that must lead to the lower caves. She had never before remarked the tunnel. It had to be recent.
The muscles in her arms began to stretch and protest her position of aim, but she had no intention of backing down. Her thumb slipped from the trigger. Shivers, caused by the chill rain, echoed through her body. But her intentions were perfectly aimed.
“Are you not a knight?” she shouted against the heavy rainfall. “Pledged to serve your lord, and to protect women and children?”
That got him. The man slowly lowered his crossbow. The usual weapon, fashioned of hard wood with a steel band and fixings.
Stubble marked his narrow jaw. An angry nose, bent to the left, shouted of previous injuries. Completely soaked, the rain softened what Rhiana suspected would prove a rugged complexion. Not an entirely distasteful face.
Or it may be Rhiana was cold, wet and starting to hallucinate, for the air wavered with the cloying heather and the distinct odor of the dragon’s sage essence.
“You surprise me, my lady.” The man stepped back a few paces to stand beneath an oak tree. There the rain was half so strong, so Rhiana joined him, yet kept the crossbow waist level and pointed at him—ready. “The last thing I would have expected to find upon this mountain, besides dragons, is a woman wielding a weapon as if a warrior.”
Rhiana slicked a palm over her scaled armor. The dragon scales glimmered in the moon’s light.
“Who are you, sir? And why are you tramping about the forest with a weapon? Lord Guiscard looks unkindly on those who would hunt his deer and boar.”
“I am dragon hunting.”
Now he set the crossbow against the tree trunk, and crossed his arms over his chest. His gauntlets skittered over the rows of narrow steel studding his leather coat of plates. Rhiana had once fashioned the plated armor, but preferred chain mail, for she could shape it to fit a body exact.
Peering curiously at her, his gaze worked such a hypnotic fix upon her, she found herself stepping closer. Right up to him.
“I wasn’t sure if dragons had reinhabited the caves here at the seaside,” he said.
“Reinhabited? You’ve hunted here before?”
“Not me, no, but I’ve been told these caves are rich and attract the fire-breathers. I had thought to check for myself—with success! My shot to the beast’s belly was most effective in bringing it down.”
“Your shot?”
Gape-mouthed and stunned, Rhiana spun a look to the dark crevice where the dragon had disappeared, then back to the man. He had a fine opinion of something that was not his to claim.
“’Twas my bolt which felled the beast. An arrow to the belly penetrates merely fat. Nothing more than a bee sting to the creature. But to fly with a torn wing?”
“I beg to disagree, my lady.” He splayed a steel-plated gauntlet before him in explanation. “A deep wound to the belly on the younger rampants penetrates easily to the lower organs. My bolt was enough to disorient the dragon. It has been wounded, mayhap, seriously. Likely now it will be an easy track.”
Rhiana chuffed out laughter. “You plan to track the beast into its lair?”
“Of course.”
Cocky, self-important— Be this man a slayer? For only one trained and experienced would consider so dangerous a tactic.
Had Lord Guiscard held good on his claim he would call for a slayer? But that was only this morning when Rhiana had spoken to him. This man had not been summoned to St. Rénan.
“Be my guest,” she offered. “I shall stand in wait of your triumph.”
Only a fool would be so, well, foolish.
A nod, and tilt of his crossbow against his shoulder, and the man began to march toward the tunnel entry framed by the rain-slick megaliths. The lackwit planned to enter the cave, teeming with dragons. Nine of them, by Rhiana’s estimate. Of course, he could have no idea there was more than the one he claimed to have felled.
The idea of a stranger come to hunt dragons in her territory put up Rhiana’s hackles. And that he did not grant her the fell-shot?
“There are many more inside!” he called. He slapped a palm to the stone near the razor-slash entrance that could very well plummet to the very fires of hell. The gauntlet clanked dully against stone. “I guess a dozen.”
“Nine.” Rhiana stepped into the rain and tramped across the slick grass to join him. How did he know there were others? Fascination prompted her to learn more. “How long have you been here, sir?”
“Just arrived.”
Then how could he possibly have determined… “What be your name?”
He bowed grandly, palm to his chest. As he rose, he performed a sneaky, but chivalrous move by lifting one of Rhiana’s hands to his mouth.
She almost pulled away when she realized he planned to kiss it, but curiosity stayed her. It was a knight’s manner. Chivalry, and all that bother. He merely bussed her flesh with his closed mouth, wet with rain. Heat tendrils traveled up her arm, disturbing