“The warrior is mine. There are a couple of others you can have. One appears to be a wizard of sorts,” she adds by way of encouragement.
Oh, you know how it is with wizards. Half an hour afterward you could do with another one, the dragon grumbles.
He spreads his wings and drops.
“They’re gaining!” screamed Rincewind. He bent even lower over his horse’s neck and groaned. Twoflower was trying to keep up while at the same time craning round to look at the flying beasts.
“You don’t understand!” screamed the tourist, above the terrible noise of the wingbeats. “All my life I’ve wanted to see dragons!”
“From the inside?” shouted Rincewind. “Shut up and ride!” He whipped at his horse with the reins and stared at the wood ahead, trying to drag it closer by sheer willpower. Under those trees they’d be safe. Under those trees no dragons could fly…
He heard the clap of wings before shadows folded around him. Instinctively he rolled in the saddle and felt the white-hot stab of pain as something sharp scored a line across his shoulders.
Behind him Hrun screamed, but it sounded more like a bellow of rage than a cry of pain. The barbarian had vaulted down into the heather and had drawn the black sword, Kring. He flourished it as one of the dragons curved in for another low pass.
“No bloody lizard does that to me!” he roared.
Rincewind leaned over and grabbed Twoflower’s reins.
“Come on!” he hissed.
“But, the dragons—” said Twoflower, entranced.
“Blast the—” began the wizard, and froze. Another dragon had peeled off from the circling dots overhead and was gliding toward them. Rincewind let go of Twoflower’s horse, swore bitterly, and spurred his own mount toward the trees, alone. He didn’t look back at the sudden commotion behind him and, when a shadow passed over him, merely gibbered weakly and tried to burrow into the horse’s mane.
Then, instead of the searing, piercing pain he had expected, there was a series of stinging blows as the terrified animal passed under the eaves of the wood. The wizard tried to hang on but another low branch, stouter than the others, knocked him out of the saddle. The last thing he heard before the flashing blue lights of unconsciousness closed in was a high reptilian scream of frustration, and the thrashing of talons in the treetops.
When he awoke a dragon was watching him; at least, it was staring in his general direction. Rincewind groaned and tried to dig his way into the moss with his shoulderblades, then gasped as the pain hit him.
Through the mists of agony and fear he looked back at the dragon.
The creature was hanging from a branch of a large dead oak tree, several hundred feet away. Its bronze-gold wings were tightly wrapped around its body but the long equine head turned this way and that at the end of a remarkably prehensile neck. It was scanning the forest.
It was also semitransparent. Although the sun glinted off its scales, Rincewind could clearly make out the outlines of the branches behind it.
On one of them a man was sitting, dwarfed by the hanging reptile. He appeared to be naked except for a pair of high boots, a tiny leather hold-all in the region of his groin, and a high-crested helmet. He was swinging a short sword back and forth idly, and stared out across the treetops with the air of one carrying out a tedious and unglamorous assignment.
A beetle began to crawl laboriously up Rincewind’s leg.
The wizard wondered how much damage a half-solid dragon could do. Would it only half-kill him? He decided not to stay and find out.
Moving on heels, fingertips and shoulder muscles, Rincewind wriggled sideways until foliage masked the oak and its occupants. Then he scrambled to his feet and hared off between the trees.
He had no destination in mind, no provisions, and no horse. But while he still had legs he could run. Ferns and brambles whipped at him, but he didn’t feel them at all.
When he had put about a mile between him and the dragon he stopped and collapsed against a tree, which then spoke to him.
“Psst,” it said.
Dreading what he might see, Rincewind let his gaze slide upward. It tried to fasten on innocuous bits of bark and leaf, but the scourge of curiosity forced it to leave them behind. Finally it fixed on a black sword thrust straight through the branch above Rincewind’s head.
“Don’t just stand there,” said the sword (in a voice like the sound of a finger dragged around the rim of a large empty wine glass). “Pull me out.”
“What?” said Rincewind, his chest still heaving.
“Pull me out,” repeated Kring. “It’s either that or I’ll be spending the next million years in a coal measure. Did I ever tell you about the time I was thrown into a lake up in the—”
“What happened to the others?” said Rincewind, still clutching the tree desperately.
“Oh, the dragons got them. And the horses. And that box thing. Me too, except that Hrun dropped me. What a stroke of luck for you.”
“Well—” began Rincewind. Kring ignored him.
“I expect you’ll be in a hurry to rescue them,” it added.