Alizon watched George go, unable to take her eyes from him. She stepped to the edge of the platform where she would have a better view. She did not want to watch, any more than she ever wanted to watch the sheep being eaten, but something within compelled her to do so. She did not know if it was a sense of guilty responsibility or a simple, sick, morbid fascination.
At the moment, she was not half sure that she didn’t want George to get thoroughly thrashed by Belch. Not killed, perhaps, but whacked a few good times with his tail.
Cherry stones. How dare he!
Suck on them? She thought not. As if she would ever let him!
A brief imagining of him lowering his head to her bare breast—taking her nipple into his warm, damp mouth—filled her mind, and her body responded, twisting and tightening deep inside.
Treacherous body! Treacherous thoughts! Bite him, Belch, bite him!
George crept down the slick stone stairs, his steps light and graceful despite his size. He was still wearing the old shirt he had found, with those silver hose and boots, and the black bands around his knees. He had tied back his long dark hair, and a thick shadow of beard covered his jaw. He carried his sword with ease and wore an expression she had not seen on his face before: one of angry determination. He looked as if he had a personal grudge against Belch—as if the dragon had eaten his own sister.
It was a surprising change from his usual demeanor. She felt a quickening of her heartbeat. Maybe this battle was not as pre-determined as she had thought.
Her hands tightened on the rail. Despite the dull sword, despite the false sleeping powder, might George kill the dragon after all?
He reached the bottom of the stairs, jumping onto Belch’s beach as if he belonged there and was looking forward to the upcoming fight. If he was afraid, she could see no sign of it.
He tossed his sword from hand to hand and stalked toward Belch. As he neared he got a good grip on the weapon’s haft with his right hand, and ten feet from the dragon he stood with feet wide apart, head lowered and a glower on his face.
Belch lay still.
“Candy-ass lizard,” Alizon heard him say.
Candy-ass? He could not mean the dragon’s arse was sweet, surely.
“Virgin-eater. You think you’re a tough guy, chomping little girls?”
Why was he talking to Belch? Alizon wondered. Why didn’t he just strike him?
“You’ve been ruling over this island for too long, lizard-breath. Saint George the Dragonslayer is here to send you back to Hell!” The odd man shook out his shoulders and snapped a sudden glare at his foe. “Well? Got nothing to say?” He strutted back and forth. “I thought not.”
Was he going to talk the dragon to death?
With a belligerent, wide-legged gait George stomped a circle around Belch’s prone body, stopping every few feet and eyeballing the beast as if he had caught it trying to sneak a piece of his French toast.
Strike him! Do something! she wanted to scream. The suspense was chafing her, making her crazy with impatience even as she was fascinated by George’s dawdling, wanting to see what odd thing he might do next.
Or wanted to see if Belch might strike first.
George inched closer. Near enough for Belch to whip his head to the side and take his leg off, if he so desired.
“Iguana,” George said, with a sneer.
He stepped over Belch’s foreleg, as big as George’s own thigh, and leaned up close to the beast’s half-closed eye.
“You’re nothing but an overgrown gecko.” He flicked a fingernail against one of Belch’s teeth that stuck out along the side of his mouth.
A gurgling sound came from the dragon’s gut. George jumped, then made a show of relaxing, shaking out his arms and stalking away from Belch, his back to the serpent as if it was not worth watching.
Belch’s eye opened.
Alizon bit down on a screech of warning.
George took a few practice swings at the air, then turned. As he did so, the eye shut again. He circled, coming around to the end of the dragon’s tail. Suddenly, with no warning, George ran at Belch: ran up his tail, over his ridged back, his footsteps light and quick, as if crossing thin ice, his balance neatly kept. He stopped only when he reached the dragon’s shoulders, standing there with feet apart and sword raised two-handed above his head.
Alizon’s breath caught in her throat.
Belch’s eyes opened.
George turned the sword around so that its point was facing down, ready to pierce Belch’s neck, but then he paused. He stood there, sword raised.
Now! Do something! Alizon screamed in her head, and she did not know if she meant the plea for Belch or his foe.
George’s shoulders heaved, his sword rising slightly for the downward, fatal plunge.
Alizon clenched the rail and whimpered deep in her throat.
The point of the blade came down, and in the same moment Belch shuddered and rolled. The blade skittered off the side of his armored neck, and George lost both aim and leverage. His feet danced on Belch’s hide, his body swaying and his arms flailing. He kept his balance and his footing, though, the look on his face one of wide-eyed, hard-jawed concentration.
Alizon felt her own jaw and neck strain against the impulse to shout his name.
Belch rolled onto his back, exposing his soft yellow underbelly. George’s feet slid and pranced on that smooth surface, then Belch erupted into a thrashing frenzy, rolling and bending and sweeping his tail.
George lost his footing, bounced off the dragon, and fell to all fours on the ground halfway down the beach. The stirred mist swirled over his hands and knees. Belch snapped his head toward him, jaws opening. George twisted out of the way, the dragon’s jaws slamming together where his torso had been a moment before.
Alizon keened in her throat. She did not want to see the first gout of blood. She did not want to see when George lost the first limb, or to see Belch tossing the knight’s carcass in the air like a half-eaten sheep, guts spilling out, head missing.
George gained his feet again, and he had kept his hold on his sword. Belch bellowed, and George echoed the sound, hollering the cry of a warrior and charging his opponent, running up the dragon’s foreleg, again finding his perch on the beast’s back.
The serpent bucked and thrashed from side to side, trying to dislodge him. George used his sword like a walking stick, digging its point into Belch’s hide to keep his balance. Then, when for a moment his footing was secure, he raised the blade again and this time struck deep into Belch’s neck.
The monster went wild, tossing and twisting, bellows of pain and rage reverberating off the walls and shaking the hollows of Alizon’s chest. The very fog seemed to take the shape of waves, shivering to the sound. George was thrown from the dragon’s back, his blade still protruding from Belch’s neck.
Alizon lost sight of him for a moment as a thick wave of mist rolled across the cave. Belch reared up onto his hind legs, stubby forelegs clawing toward the wound he could not reach, his cries throbbing through the air.
George rose up out of the fog and danced to the side as Belch came back down, the dragon’s body slamming against the ground. He stood gaping for long moments at the thrashing beast, as if unable to believe that he had caused it such pain; then he regained his wits and rushed forward, grabbing the blood-covered hilt of his sword and trying to tug it from the monster’s neck.
Belch yanked away as George pulled his blade free, but the sudden loosening caused him to lose both his balance and grip. The blood-slicked sword flew free, disappearing into the mist. Belch’s tail flashed round and thwacked against the back of George’s legs, buckling them, then the beast lunged for his fallen foe.
Once more, George rolled out of the way with a skin of air to spare. Next, in a move Alizon had never imagined, the knight arched his body and leapt in a single motion from flat on his back to standing crouched on his feet. Belch came at him again, and he sprang into the air, somersaulting over the beast’s head to land on the other side.
Alizon’s mouth dropped open.
Belch’s wound was oozing blood, but the gash was plainly more of an aggravation than a threat to the monster’s life. He bellowed in frustration as George continued to dance around him, his foe’s eyes flicking from him to the mist-covered ground.
“Mistress!” George shouted. “Where’s the sword? Can you see it?”
His calling to her surprised away Alizon’s ability to speak.
“Mistress!”
“To your right!” she cried at last, her voice hoarse, then clearing as it gained volume. “But I cannot see exactly where!”
The knight somersaulted and rolled, searching the ground as his foe stomped and snapped above him. He found the sword at last, and rose up with it, swinging at Belch’s head as the dragon swung his great jaws toward him.
Man and dragon connected, and George was swept off his feet, flying through the air and landing with a splash in the steaming water.
Belch galloped after him, his belly slapping the water and throwing up spray as he surged into his element. Alizon leaned over the rail, searching for sign of George, knowing the water was deep and Belch was swift within it. Her heart was racing.
Belch sank beneath the mist, and for a moment all was quiet, the white fog smoothing over the dying swirls of his passage.
Suddenly there was a gasp and a splash, and Alizon threw herself to the floor of the platform and stuck her head out around the corner of the low wall where it stopped at the stairs. Thirty feet below, under the platform, George was climbing the rocks out of the water.
He looked up and saw her, and a wild, half-crazed grin lit his face. Water slicked black streaks of hair down the sides of his cheeks, and his thin shirt was a ghost against his skin, warm tones and muscles visible through the fabric.
The mist swirled behind him.
“George!” She stretched out an arm, pointing.
He glanced over his shoulder, and when he looked back up at her the grin had gotten harder. He pulled himself up the rock wall by fingerholds, but not fast enough.
Belch flung himself from the water. George pressed himself into a depression in the wall just as the beast slammed across it. For a moment he was concealed beneath the dragon’s body; then Belch fell back, claws dragging at the rocks then slipping off, his body hitting the water with a boom followed by a deep, swallowing splash.
George climbed again, this time with fresh, frantic speed, his toes in their silver boots gripping at tiny ledges too small for Alizon to see from her vantage. Five feet from the supporting struts of the feeding platform he stopped, his hands searching for new holds that were not there, his body held slightly away from the wall as he balanced on precarious toeholds.
The mist swirled below, a splash echoing off the walls as Belch swam and circled—preparing to leap again.
George met Alizon’s eyes, his own filled with intensity and a hint of desperation.
She could not bear to watch him snatched off the wall like a tidbit of fresh flesh. Instead, she pulled back and yanked the lever that opened the trapdoor. She tore off her concealing robe, there being no time to consider the consequences of being now clad in only her burgundy gown. She twisted her robe diagonally into a bulky, awkward rope, cursing beneath her breath at there being no abandoned sheep tether to use.
She leaned down through the trapdoor and wrapped her doffed garment in a single hitch around the nearest strut, its beam a triangle between wall and platform floor. There was not enough length to tie off the robe, so she held tight to her end and, lying on her side, pulled her knees up against a post of the stall to brace herself as she bent down through the trapdoor. The other end of her improvised rope dangled three feet beneath the strut.
“You won’t be able to hold me!” George shouted.
“I’ll have to!”
“I can find another way!” He looked over his shoulder, down at the water, and she had a sudden vision of him falling and being snapped out of the air like one of the sacrificial sheep.
“Don’t do it!” she screamed.
She could see him changing his posture, loosening his grip to allow himself to fall into the water, and then the mist below swept away for a moment, showing Belch’s nose and eyes above the water, plowing toward the wall like a ship before a storm.
“Shit!” George shouted. Then, with a quick look back at the dangling robe, he made his decision. Even as Belch left the water, George released the wall, springing up the two feet between his outstretched arms and the end of the robe.
Belch’s jaws clapped shut over empty space, and George’s feet kicked at the dragon’s snout as his hands found and seized the end of the robe.
As the lizard fell back, George’s weight came down on Alizon’s robe. Her knees banged once, hard, against the post, and then the world was awhirl as the garment yanked her through the trapdoor, swung her around and dropped her next to George. Her body slammed into his and rose quickly above it, the two of them hanging suspended at either end of her rolled-up robe, which was now wrapped around the beam.
Her slide stopped with a jerk as George found purchase and took some of his weight off the robe. She dangled against him, her lower belly against his face, her arms stretched above her as she held tight. If the man was to let go of his end, she would plummet to the steaming water below. She looked down, trying and failing to see his face past her breasts and the thick braid hanging down over her green gown.
“Hot damn, red hair!” she heard, and felt the words as his warm breath came through the wool over her belly. “I didn’t imagine red hair!”
“Devil in your eye! This is no time to speak of hair! We’re about to be devoured!”
“I’ll show you devouring.” He chewed lightly at her belly, through the layers of cloth. “Hot damn!”
She kneed him in the shoulder, then used him as a foothold as she tried to climb up the robe to the supporting beam just beyond her reach. He did not protest, but instead pressed a kiss against her loins as they rose past his mouth. She grabbed the beam, and in a delayed reaction to his touch felt a muscle-weakening wave go through her. She closed her eyes against it, and her grip slipped.
“No you don’t,” George said, his arm going around her waist. He was suddenly up beside her. “No falling into the soup.”
She opened her eyes, and for the first time since the night he had come to the mount, Alizon saw him without the intervening screen of wool and the confines of her hood. Her strength slipped again.
He gave her a shake. “Come on, no going faint with terror now.”
She stiffened. “I am not frightened, you lack-wit. My arms are not as strong as yours, is all.”
Belch bellowed down below and thrashed his tail in the water like an angry cat.
“Are they strong enough for you to hang on to my back?” He didn’t wait for an answer, using his mass to press and hold her against the cavern wall as he turned around, his back against her chest. “Hold tight.”
She wrapped her arms about his neck, her legs of their own will going around his waist. Her skirt hiked up her thighs as she did.
“Oh, baby,” he muttered.
“What?”
“Ger-on-i-mo!”
“What? What?” she screeched, clinging with all her strength to his strong neck and waist as he leapt upward, catching the edge of the trapdoor and then pulling them both up by brute strength. “Jesu save me!” she cried, hanging from his back, nothing between her and the long drop down.
Again Belch lunged from the water, and this time it was her own flesh that felt the wind of his snapping jaws. George was not fast enough to keep her hanging gown from catching in Belch’s teeth. As the dragon fell back, he jerked her with him, she in turn pulling George down. Her legs came free of George’s waist, her hands breaking their hold around his neck.
In a flash, George flipped back to catch a beam and the scruff of her gown both. The skirt of the gown gave way, ripping at the tears Belch’s teeth had rent, and then all at once Alizon was yanked upward. She found herself lying on George across the floor of the wooden platform, her bum naked to the cavern air.
Before she could move to conceal herself, George was up and had her stowed under one arm, leaping with his light grace into the safety of the tunnel. He set her down and with her hand firmly in his own dragged her at a run all down the tunnel, up the stairs, and into the kitchen.
They burst into the empty room, Alizon struggling both to catch her breath and to pull her torn gown and chemise over her backside. She reached for a hood that was not there, knowing it was too late but trying to hide herself anyway.
“Kee-rist!” George exclaimed, letting her go and digging both hands through his hair. It bunched in a wild, wet mess, most of it still held by the leather band at the back of his neck. “Damn! I don’t know whether to laugh or to faint!”
His eyes lit on her, and whatever confusion he felt burned away under an intensity that made her take a step back, her hands gripping her skirt behind her back.
“And you! Hot damn!”
Then he had her face between his hands, and without so much as a by-your-leave, he lowered his mouth to hers.