Unicorns and Dragons · Part 1

Unicorns and Dragons · Part 1 (1/2)
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The life of a caravan guard consists of stretches of boredom attentuated by the necessity of alertness, punctuated with frantic, life-threatening activity. I spent most of my time on the road training and keeping in combat form, so when the inevitable attack came, I could take out enough of the bandits with my fists and hooves to pick up a hearty slave bounty, or use my horn and just bring in the heads off the corpses. I had originally intended to be a knight, as I was one of those later sons of large noble houses. I had had disagreements of several kinds with my sponsor, however, finally culminating in me being tossed out with all the necessary training, but no armor, weapons, or title.

Mercenary work was the obvious career choice for me. It paid well, but I missed out on the perks of the nobility that I would have had were I dubbed knight. Merchants were the next step down the social ladder; they had money, money meant trade, trade meant caravans, and caravans meant bandits. That's where I came in. The weather had been horrible for the last two days. Solid, spattering, dark rain making it impossible to see even to the next hill. We were only three hours from Shastar, our final destination, when nightfall came.

It was difficult to keep to the road in the sliver of moonlight, but the owner wanted desperately to press on and spend the evening in the city rather than miserable out here. I couldn't blame him. I heard a ragged howl arise in the distance, some canine baying at what little moon remained. I swivelled my ears forward, catching the wolf's howl being half-cut-off and stifled, presumably by others near to that one. I tuned out the rain gradually, catching harsh whispers of orders of some kind, rasping sounds carrying through the rain to my aerial equine ears.

It was a wolf pack, most likely; lurking close to the city because of the weather but far enough away so that their criminal doings would not be noticed. I decided that I'd rather we were well-prepared for the upcoming ambush, slowed the caravan and warned the other guards. Personally, I took out my tower shield, strapping it lightly to an arm so that I could rid myself of it quickly. My fur is short, save at mane and tail, and gleaming white all over; in this darkness I made the only possible target for arrow fire. We walked on, waiting for the wolves to spring their ambush. They broke from the trees howling and screaming and waving their ill-made weapons.

Our five archers let loose a volley, dropping one. It was good shooting for such a night. I stepped out from the caravan; no missiles came towards me so I lowered the shield and picked out their pack leader. The wolves and dogs were mostly of mottled black and chocolate brown, their leader was a big, dirty white, some sort of polar wolf. I steadied myself, raised my power within me and initiated The Unicorn's Charge, an instant of speed carrying me the hundred yards to the pack before they could blink at the white blur.

Just before the magic of my charge began to falter, I slammed into the leading three wolves with my shield held crossways, splattering them away helpless and broken into the mud. I careened to a stop in the mud, getting my hooves under me directly in front of the pack leader. I was surrounded, so I tossed away my shield. It would only get in my way. He swung his sword at my head. I caught it in a spiral of my horn, took his wrist, and slammed him over my hip onto his back. He scrabbled in the mud with no purchase while I put my horn to his chest. "Surrender and tell them to drop their weapons, or you die," I said. He was brave enough to wait until I jabbed my horn in up to the first spiral.

Then he cried like a hyena, and begged his pack to drop their weapons. Their pack mentality made them obey, and it wasn't long before we had them tied up and guarded in one of the less full wagons. Three more hours and we entered Shastar, turned in our prisoners at the yellow Slavers Guild pavilion, and collected the bounty. We split it, and our pay, and went our separate ways in the city. Most of the others went straight to the guild of mercenaries for their first night in the city. The fame of Shastar's great baths drew me, however, and I decided to stay my week here in the Cerulean, the largest inn and bathing house in the entire city.

It sprawled several stories above and belowground, covering many acres. It was a castle of itself, devoted to many of the finer pleasures of life, and I planned not to leave it for the entire week. Though I was tired, I didn't want to sleep with all the grit and grime of the travel and fight on me. After I checked in and let a chunk of my money disappear, I stripped off my cuirbolli and sodden tabard, going to the nearest heated marble pool to soak. At this early morning hour I was able to find a room-sized bath and have it all to myself, leisurely awaiting service from those in the employ of the Cerulean.

Two bath-kittens, yawning from naps, quickly came by to work me over with their scrub-brushes. They combed and brushed out my tail, scraped my hooves, stretched me out and punished every inch of my hide until the usual glossy white of my velvet-short fur had returned. They left me to soak just as quickly when I dismissed them, and I fell into a warm doze floating free. I awoke easily when the dragons entered. They weren't very quiet and fifteen dragons made quite a crowd, mostly greenish, two blacks, a mottled white and a big red. They closed the door behind them politely, stowed their towels, and started splashing amongst themselves.

Sixteen people in the room crowded things up, but I'm not prejuidiced against dragons of colour such as theirs, so I just sat back to watch and sweat in the heated bath. They bathed and horseplayed, rarely glancing at me as the interloper, daring me to disapprove. All of them except the mottled white and the smallest black had grace and skill about them, trained warriors. The white disdained the strained scale-on-scale tussling of the wrestling games, preferring to sit near the red and let the blue tiles of pool glitter and reflect the sun from his scales.

The red was a monster, relaxed as a cat in the water, seven feet tall at his bulging shoulder with two more feet of thick, whipcord neck before his sculpted, snakelike head. My eyes met his for a moment, slitted, reptilian, unblinking and I locked into them, until the black dragon obstructed my view. He was the smallest of the dragons, only some six feet tall from tip to tail. That still made him a foot taller than me sans horn, and he was looking to take advantage of it, swaggering over to me. I could smell the caustic stench of his breathing when he spoke. "Hey! Unicorn! What's your name!" he shouted, working himself up to his most belligerent pose.

I merely looked up at him from my reclined position. "I like to know whose balls I rip off and fuck down their throat!" The greens all laughed uproariously at this cleverness. I reached up and broke his little finger. He looked confused first, as the pain hit, and then indignant. He took a deep breath and reared back his head, telegraphing his intent to spit acid. I stepped up, locked his arm, and forced his head underwater where he could spit all the acid he wanted. While he flailed around and choked, the other fourteen rapidly unified against the common foe. I broke their charge by tossing the one I had into them.

One of the greens forgot that they were in an enclosed room and clouded me with chlorine gas, spillover hazing the room in green smog. The white and red staggered over to open the windows while I jumped spinning up out of the water to knock the green unconscious with a hoof to the side of the head. It was all he deserved for trying to poison a unicorn. The melee degenerated. They slowed down to attack me in twos and threes while I'd throw one against another and land punches until another group rescued the first. The larger black gave me a little trouble, taking a pounding and forcing me to dislocate his shoulder to calm him down.

The mottled white was cowering, dragging the fallen over to the side to make sure they didn't drown. The only one left was the red, stalking in towards me at the center of the pool. He was almost as fast as I was, and had a foot of reach on me. Every time he threw a punch and I blocked, it just blew right through and pounded me. I threw him twice, but he rolled lightly in the water and came to his feet unharmed, too fast for me to follow up. His style was brutally solid, taking my hits on his gut and chest without slowing down. He faked left once, and I raked the tip of my horn across his gut from my watery crouch, opening a line of dark red blood on darker red scales.

This gave him pause, pause enough to rumble in his deep, firey voice. "I am Syrin, unicorn. I would have the name of so fine a warrior." "My name is Luagha," I said, relaxing slightly. His eyes became incinerators, and it was clear that he intended to continue this to a conclusion. "It won't be your name for long," Syrin said, and advanced into another flurry of blows. We both blocked and took hits, his footwork hampered by the water more than mine. I went for a high punch to his head, but his snakelike neck eluded me, setting me up for a full-power slam into my chest that flew me up out of the water and across the pool.

I staggered up out of the water and launched myself hooves-first into his oncoming charge, bowling him over and back, knocking the wind out of him while we both lurched painfully to our feet. I stared at him transfixed as he walked up to me, fist reared back to strike. Though I strained to move my arms to block, somehow I couldn't, I was paralyzed in stance. I strove to break my lassitude, to no avail. Syrin noticed that I had stopped moving, halting his strike, and looked over to the mottled white dragon. I marshalled my will, trying to push my innately high resistance to such magics to break the spell, but nothing happened, the spell didn't even crack.

I figured the white to be an archmagus at least to defeat my defenses like that, until I saw the long, white horsehair tangled about his fingers. He had used the law of sympathy to affect me, using my horsehair as a link to me to give his spell enough power. I hate shedding. "Let's kill him and dispose of the body, Syrin. I can hold him for long enough," the magedragon said. Syrin laughed a husky laugh. "Oh no, V'heress, this one we keep. He'll make a valuable slave." His voice was somewhat pained, so at least I had the satisfaction of knowing I'd hurt him. It seemed that my fate was going to be similar to those I had captured just last night.

It certainly explained what he meant when he said that I wouldn't have my name much longer. Syrin dispatched some of them to fetch their things quickly. They tied me and gagged me with rope and cloth while I was held in the grip of the spell, and then put me in their laundry bag to smuggle me out of the Cerulean. They held tight to the bag as they walked through the streets, so I couldn't struggle or shout. No one was going to hamper a gang of dragons such as these walking through the streets of Shastar. They let me out of the bag onto the carpeted floor of an expensive inn.

The decor was that special shade of yellow reserved by the Slavers Guild, and any hopes I had of an easy escape were put to rest when the ropes were replaced by manacles, chains, and a well-fashioned gag. Syrin's broad chest was now enclosed withing a yellow tabard with stripes of rank on the breast, and he wore a bright topaz signet ring on his left hand. This marked him not only as a slaver, but a Guildmaster as well. He easily wrestled me to my stomach, and locked the chain from the manacles about my wrists to the chain of the manacles about my ankles, hogtying me.

Crouched over me, still musky and wet from the Cerulean bath, he slithered his tail under me, encircling my chest, and flipped me to my knees. I could only kneel before him, back arched and chest puffed out to keep my wrists close enough to my ankles for the short chains. Syrin held the steel collar before my eyes for a time. It was plain, the locking mechanism built in, and hinged at the front. It had four rings welded cleanly to it for attachment purposes, and that was all. It had a simple clarity of function, even more so when Syrin slowly closed it about my neck. Syrin gazed down at me, pressing into my eyes with his. The lock caught, and as a slave I had no more name.

He laid me carefully on some cushions on my stomach, and covered me with a blanket. After taking the precaution of leashing my collar to a ring on the wall he slept, leaving me hogtied through the long day. After testing my bonds, I slept as well. Syrin fitted me to a bit and bridle when evening fell, a silver one fashioned with no beginning and no end. Such a crafted thing was proof against a unicorn, I couldn't remove it even had I my hands free. The Slavers Guild knew how to hold unicorns. The gang of dragons smuggled me out that night in one of their caravans, piled under blankets in Syrin's wagon and well-muffled so I could make no sound.

I spent the evening and the next day of travel either sitting up or lying down in Syrin's wagon. He had bound me with a locked leather belt around my waist to which my wrists were manacled so I would be comfortable on the journey, but hobbled my hooves together with very little chain so I couldn't run even if I managed to remove the collar which was chained to the side of the wagon. I was still wearing the bit and bridle, and the only way to remove that was to have someone remove it for me. My clothes, weapons, and armor were in a cubbyhole in the Cerulean. Escape was a pipe dream.

That evening, as they were making camp and tending to the rest of the slaves in the caravan, Syrin came into the wagon where I sat and took off the bridle so I could speak, even though it wasn't feeding time. "How are you feeling, slave?" he rumbled, a toothy grin on his face. "As well as might be expected." His glare began to intensify, so I quickly added, "Master." That satisfied him. "Good," he said, grabbing the chain that held my legs together and dragging me along the blankets, pushing me back so that I lay down. He straddled my waist, sitting on me, sliding his long, thick tail between my legs.

I had no idea what he was going to do to me, leaning over me, reaching with his clawed fingers for my chest. He cupped his hands over my flesh, and rubbed down with his scaled palms, making circles over my bruises, slowly adding the great strength of his huge frame. The powerful massage increased blood flow, bringing back faded pain and deep relief. Ordinarily the bruises from my fight against Syrin would have been healed by now, but being unable to move and exercise, and being magically bound with the bridle had slowed my recovery to a more normal rate.

Syrin's caress loosened my barrel, rubbing the taut horsehide over my stomach and waist, his muscles knotting to force their way through my nervousness at his touch. He was strong with me, but not rough, encircling my ar

Unicorns and Dragons · Part 1 (1/2)
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