dragons who were always hunting him, and he was a precious thing too, the last of the Dragonhunters, bringing a responsibility that made the old couple weary. He knew his father disapproved of the way they raised him. To this day, Aldric seemed to begrudge them the fact they had seen Simon’s growing-up years. Simon still spent time with Denman now and then, but not today. There was no time.
Simon turned Norayiss, moving away from these old memories.
As he came up the hill and rejoined the road, he noticed there were no birds chirping in the trees. The world had been enveloped in a strange quiet. When he looked down at the horse’s hooves, they made no sound on the pavement; it was as if Simon had momentarily gone deaf.
He stopped his horse, worried.
And then …”the shadows began to shift. The ones on the left side of the road vanished and suddenly the shadows of the trees on the right side of the road began to stretch towards him. The darkness reached forward, like a set of black claws. It was as if someone had moved the sun to the wrong side of the sky.
Simon swallowed hard.
Then he noticed that the trees far off in the forest, near his home, were beginning to rustle as if tremendously agitated. The whole forest there was shaking. A great, immense thing was moving in those trees, or causing the trees to shudder somehow. And it was headed for his house.
He spurred Norayiss on.
The horse sped down the street and tore off into the forest. As he neared the castle, struck with panic, Simon realised he had only a small silver dagger for protection. He never dreamed he’d need body armour this close to home. He felt open; easy prey.
He took hold of the knife. Silver was the finest weapon against dragons, but it was the deathspell that killed them – and if it was a serpent on the attack, he had no idea which spell to use as they were specific to each dragon.
So which one was on the attack? There were hundreds of the beasts listed in the White Book of Saint George.
The horse dashed through the Ebony Hollow forest and Simon noticed with horror that the ground was rippling with beetles which were pouring out of the ground. Green-yellow insects wriggled from the earth and swarmed around the horse’s hooves.
This kind of warping of nature could only mean a dragon in their midst. But where?
As he thundered down the road to the castle, he found no sign of the killer, just Aldric and Alaythia outside in the field, brushing Valsephany. Simon felt calmer, thinking perhaps the serpent had merely been spying on them, and the idle talk he caught between his father and Alaythia relaxed him for an instant.
“It’s just really weird, what happened in Africa,” Alaythia was saying. “The brothers knew where we were, they were ready for us, they set a trap. And they knew how to trick me into coming in first. They knew we were coming into that village just at that time, and they knew exactly where we were.”
“Keep it down,” he heard Aldric say. “Simon’s coming. He doesn’t need to know all of this.”
“Listen, something’s happening,” Simon warned. “There’s something here—”
Suddenly, a set of claws snatched him around the shoulders from behind and hoisted him off the horse, into the air. He screamed, childishly, instantly hating himself for it, but he couldn’t see what had him.
He heard the beating of terrible wings, the smell and heat of rancid breath were everywhere.
“SIMON!” Alaythia screamed, and Simon suddenly saw her down below, firing small bolts of silver from a wrist device. They shot towards him, narrowly missing his ear. He heard a dart plunge into the beast that clutched him, but the animal made no reaction and Simon was carried further up, the pasture growing small far beneath him, and then he saw it twist away in a terrifying spin.
Simon’s head swirled from dizziness and he tried to see what it was that had taken him. But there was no way to see; it was behind him.
He heard his father’s rocket-arrows shooting up from below – Aldric must’ve got to his travel pack, left by the horse trough. The rockets hissed, whisking around the dragon, and Simon saw in the spinning world above Ebony Hollow the white flare of their passing.
“You want to get back to your father.” The serpent laughed. “I’ll make sure you do …”
The voice was pure terror. A female, breathing these threats with fearsome delight.
Simon clambered to get hold of the creature’s claws so he couldn’t be dropped.
“The question,” said the Serpentine beast, “is whether you go down in one piece …” And she dropped him, just enough so his stomach sickened, then snatched him back. “Or in many different, bleeding pieces …”
Suddenly, one of the rockets connected! A silver barb slammed into the dragon’s neck.
The creature was now streaming fireblood – sparks showered down on Simon from the injury, burning his skin in little pinpricks of agony. Green-yellow flames flickered lightly from the dragon’s wound. It was enough to get the creature to descend, but still the dragon held tight to Simon.
Now the creature let loose a massive torrent of flame and Simon felt a disgusted thrill at being with the dragon as the fire charged loose. It engulfed the upper part of the old castle and the wood tiles of the roof, knocking down stones in the walls from sheer force. On the second pass, the dragon set fire to the other side of the house, the Victorian wing made of oak and cedar.
Struggling, Simon could see the castle house returning to view, speeding towards him, and he realised the serpent planned to hurl him against the tower.
“We shall leave him something to remember you by,” she said in a husky growl, and Simon soared with her, past the field, past Alaythia and Aldric rushing to take aim, and then he saw the tower coming for him, closer, closer, closer—
SLAM! A second rocket-arrow burned into the creature and took it off course. Simon was dropped, clattering painfully to the sloping roof, then rolling in and out of the fire and plunging to the flat top of the stables.
He was all right.
He had the wind knocked out of him, but he would’ve been caught breathless anyway at the sight of the dragon above him, a green-yellow beast with long tendrils of many colours trailing behind its soaring body.
Another rocket hurtled past him and he saw it miss the serpent. The creature blurred into nothingness, cloaking itself in magic. He felt it swoop past again and snap at him, invisible jaws tearing at his shirt.
He looked up, catching his breath, and squinted, scarcely able to penetrate the beast’s magic enough to see it. But he could make it out as it was bleeding fire into the air. He saw the creature descend in the Ebony Hollow forest. It needed to recover its strength.
He looked down to see Aldric yelling at him from the pasture, “SUIT UP!”
Simon swung himself to safety off the stable roof and rushed for his travel pack hidden in the hay. In five minutes flat, they had retrieved their horses and were pursuing the dragon in full body armour, galloping at a raging speed.
“The Ashlover Serpent,” cried Aldric,
