Rhiana. Michele Hauf

into the pale grayness of the pre-dawn, one scaled paw studded with deadly talons rattled out a warning staccato. Indigo scales glinted even in the feeble light. All about, a heavy silence thickened the air. Not so much as a lap of seawater against the stones on the shore below could be heard.

      And then, from out of the dark void, the beast’s head swept forward. The size of two field oxen and rimmed in hard indigo scales and juts of deadly spines was the skull. The horns stabbing out from the temples were small, no longer than Rhiana’s forearm, but weapons she respected. Tusks at the corner of the mouth were but short picks spiking to the sides. ’Twas a rampant, young and wild, many decades of growth still required to reach the elder maxima’s size and docility.

      But no less dangerous to a man’s mortality.

      Thrusting back her shoulders and lifting her chin, Rhiana declared, “I am come! Let us begin this dance of will and strength.”

      The beast tilted its head, for a moment seeming to wonder at her words.

      Rhiana did know they could speak the mortal tongue no more than she could read their beastly thoughts. Yet, Amandine had told her the maxima had such ability.

      Focusing on the pattern of ridged scales between the eyes, shaped like an inverted cross, she readied her aim.

      A hiss of sage-tainted smoke billowed from the nostrils in a creepy fog. So sweet, their breath. Intoxicating, should one lose focus and succumb. Smoke dulled her senses, but she knew it had the same effect on her opponent.

      The beast drew up tall, its head rising as it stretched up its long neck.

      Rhiana anticipated its next move.

      Defiant in her stance, she merely smiled as the creature’s head lunged and the jaws opened wide. Deadly maws targeted her feeble size. A filigree of amber flame danced upon the air. One moment it formed a wisp of steam at the corners of the dragon’s tusk-pointed jaw, the next, it formed a rippling cacophony of heat and fire and evil that encompassed Rhiana’s body.

      Heat, smothering, yet intoxicatingly dreamy, wavered images of the world before her. Amber wall of stone on fire. Distorted crystal sky. A frenzied blotch of scale and fang behind the wall of flame.

      Standing amidst the fire Rhiana could not breathe. Her lungs expanded, then sealed up. Her chest felt bloated, stopped up. Her senses began to shut down. But she did not fear.

      Fire. ’Twas her vitae.

      As the last tendril of flame extinguished, Rhiana confidently raised her crossbow and sighted in her mark. The dragon, its head still lowered as if to attack, held its wide gold eyes at a level to her shoulders. Inverted cross in sight above the top of her bolt—perfect.

      She released the trigger. The heavy steel bolt hissed through the sky and landed the target. There, in the center of the beast’s skull, right between the eyes—the kill spot, a direct entrance to the brain through a fine seam in the skull. Cursed by Heaven for its fall from grace.

      Impact forced the creature up onto its powerful hind legs. The belly of soft, semipermeable violet scales glittered as the first beams of sunlight broke the horizon. Great pellicle wings scooped the air, the force of wind pushing Rhiana back a few steps. She marked her position. Fire did no harm, but a slap from a wildly flailing wing could push her over the edge.

      And then, it tumbled. Over the side of the cliff it soared with little grace. Once an elegant beast of flight, now it crashed upon the stones and boulders below with a bone- and scale-crunching sound that sifted up dust and caused the seabirds to cry out the death of its winged compatriot.

      A quick death, that.

      Rhiana, still standing her ground, waited for the calamity to settle. Breaths huffing, a smile formed.

      Swiping a palm across her face she nodded, and then propped the crossbow against her shoulder. “’Tis not a good day to be a dragon.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      The beast had landed the shore; its upper half, including the neck and skull, had plunged into the sea. No bones or scales to claim this day; the tide would carry away the carcass before nightfall.

      From within the blackness of the cave opening another heartbeat yet pulsed, but she did not sense the second had been wakened by the attack.

      A second? Truly, there was another.

      Was it the mate? The fallen dragon was female, evident in its bright coloring. It was the male that protected the eggs, and which was in need of dull gray scales. Never had Rhiana seen a dragon egg. Or a male, for that matter.

      Topside, after a perilous climb up the cliff face, Rhiana rushed across the open meadow to the forest and retrieved the thick wool cloak she’d secreted behind the twisted trunk of a burned-out oak stump. Swinging the cloak around her shoulders, she then followed the purlieu of the forest a league back to the battlement walls.

      The sun dashed a gold line across the horizon and even from a distance Rhiana heard a rooster crow the morn. Beads of dew danced at grass-tip blades like faery finery. The morning smelled fresh and salted with the slightest tang of sage.

      As she walked, she pulled the leather tie from her bound hair and shook it over her shoulder. True, dragon’s flame did little harm to her flesh and hair. But she hadn’t yet discovered a fabric that could withstand the heat, be it dragon flame or a simple hearth fire. The thin cambric tunic she wore beneath the scaled leather armor had burned away during her flaming, proving the wool cloak a necessity.

      This armor was remarkable. Fashioned by her stepfather Paul, the leather cuirass was more a tunic that covered chest, back and the tops of her shoulders and arms. Secured at the backs of her arms and down her torso with leather straps, the thin strips were stitched through with fine mail wire to allow malleable strength that couldn’t be burned away. As for the mail chausses, Rhiana had made them herself, utilizing double rings instead of the usual single ring method. Rarely did she wear but hose beneath them—heavier chamois braies were unnecessary—for the thick mail protected verily, even one’s modesty.

      Rhiana felt she might wear merely the armor, baring more flesh than any maiden should, for it would save on damaged clothing. But she must be cautious. Should she be spied in such attire, surely there would be a price to pay.

      All in St. Rénan knew of her industry. They had seen her tromping about in the armor and wielding her dagger. “She’s an odd one,” they’d mutter to themselves. “Always has been.” Why, some had mistaken her for a boy when younger, for her antics and attraction to all things muddy or slimy, and her frequent play with makeshift weapons.

      Yet, all in St. Rénan believed the real slayer who had been visiting the village two years earlier had taken down the dragon. A dragon Rhiana had slain. At the time, she hadn’t felt the need to correct perceptions, for she’d been so excited, the elation of the kill had far outweighed any glory the villagers might have bestowed. Instead, she’d gladly stood back while Amandine had collected his dragon’s purse from the hoard council as payment for his kill.

      Praise and acknowledgment mattered very little to Rhiana, only that her loved ones were kept safe. For without family, what had one left?

      The village walls were sixty feet high and fashioned from massive bricks shaped from the same ocher limestone that frilled the seashore. Four towers set at each direction of the compass punctuated the battlement walls, with wide parapet walks stretching between them all. The walls completely closed in the village, for it was small, yet growing, though none had chosen to build outside the walls for the dangers were real.

      Avoiding the drawbridge that crossed to St. Rénan’s barbican and main entrance gates, Rhiana skipped along the curtain wall to the north entrance, close to where the artillery stored dusty trebuchets and long-forgotten cannonballs. It was rarely used, for siege and battle were nonexistent.

      A narrow plank, no wider than two fists, stretched across the dry, yet deep, moat, attracting only the most deft and balanced.

      Steadying