General Fiction posted July 13, 2024 Chapters: 1 2 -3- 4... 


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Ohmie and the silver and red dragon
A chapter in the book Ol' Silver and Red

Ol' Silver and Red, ch 3

by Wayne Fowler


So far, Ohmie, actually Prince Waynard, lied to King Herb, declaring himself, the betrothed Prince of his daughter, Princess May, to be killed, struck by lightning. Ohmie then accepted a position of teacher to the crown prince, Shauconnery. It didn't take long for Ohmie and May to hit it off (become friends). While they were in the great hall, a dragon burst his way in. Ohmie sunk his dagger into its withers and leaped onto its back. The dragon then frantically escaped back to its mountain lair, Ohmie aboard.
Blado, Ohmie's friend from the land of Spewlunkia, quickly ran to inform Ohmie's father, King Jear, of the events concerning Ohmie and the dragon.
Princess May and Prince Shauconnery snuck themselves into the rescue party from King Herb's castle.
 
Ch 3
 
Since before the sudden appearance of Ol’ Silver and Red, dragon lore had been nothing more than that – lore and tales and fantasies of grandeur past, perplexity now covered the King’s face. No one alive had ever seen a dragon, let alone fought one. No one even knew where the behemoth might live. Traditional thought went mountainward, but where? The mountains were very big. And there were a lot of them. An army of horsemen would quickly find their horses at the end of their utility when confronted by the sheer walls of granite.

    But Princess May was insistent. As was little Prince Shauconnery. Both realize their affection for the red-headed teacher, their mentor, and their friend.

    No one noticed the new stable hand’s absence. No one except the horses, of course. They noticed that their feed wasn’t as timely or fresh and that their stalls weren’t quite as clean on the day that their favorite stable hand took the day off to run all the way to the Land Over the Rainbow to tell King Jear about his son’s disappearance.

    Ohmie was indeed Waynard. And the stable hand was Waynard’s friend and co-conspirator from Spewlunkia. He had remained with Ohmie, hiring on as a stable helper – Blado.

    Waynard was not of a mind to marry someone that didn’t want to marry him for himself. His plan had been to get to know Princess May, and for her to get to know him. It was he who had set up the meeting from the start. His father, King Jear, knew nothing about the event, only believing that his son was going on a quest of adventure, a rite of passage common to heirs of the crown.

    The stable boy, a gangly lad just coming into his growth spurt, was none other than King Jear’s nephew Blado, the son of Lord Foughtleroy. Blado was the Land Over the Rainbow’s best horseman, and second most adroit swordsman, bested only by the Crown Prince, Waynard, Ohmie for the present.

    King Jear had never seen a dragon either, but sent a troop to assist King Herb nonetheless.  Blado informed the men of Waynard’s hoax, swearing them to pact in the compact. To a man they all loved and honored both Waynard, or Ohmie, as well as Blado. Each one would gladly charge a platoon of dragons, real or magical, in defense or rescue of either one.

    They arrived at King Herb’s castle just as King Herb’s troop was departing in search of the dragon and Ohmie. King Herb had yet to know Ohmie to be Prince Waynard. Stable boy Blado, dressed in his fighting suit, went undetected by King Herb.

    Astonishingly, no one recognized May, dressed in borrowed armor, until shedding the armor for her more comfortable leatherwear at camp that evening. No one dared question her presence, or attempt to send her home. Prince Shauconnery appeared at breakfast the next morning, having spent the night just outside the light of the campfire. Being far too young to pursue dragons, he’d stealthily snuck from the castle, following the troupe at a distance.

    This was an unconventional posse, to be sure.

    Missing his Prince and Princess, King Herb arrived with another squad of fighters at the mountain’s granite base, the campsite of the two troops, a troop from each realm. They would rescue beloved Ohmie and avenge the dragon’s assault together.

+++

    Nineteen years old, Ohmie had arrived at King Herb’s castle as stout as a Redbud tree. Which wasn’t particularly stout at all, but he was strong and muscley, and broad of shoulder and back.  According to some, he’d grown taller since his arrival. If a horse needed picked up, he could squat under it and lift it about as easily as it could tote him, even though some said he appeared more a scholar than a lumberjack or stonecutter. Now, Ohmie wished he were a lumberjack or stonecutter.

    Holding onto the silver and red dragon’s neck with his legs was no trouble whatsoever – for the first few leagues, the first several moments. His immediate concern was to keep the knife blade solidly imbedded in the dragon, keeping it from wriggling loose. Next was to keep his seat. Dragon flight was not leisurely park-strolling.

    Besides the burning of his thighs, and ache in his lower back, his main concern was how long he could remain conscious. The term dragon’s breath had taken on new and somber meaning since he’d become a passenger. Every time the silver and red dragon careened his head around to try to singe him off with a blast of putrefied flaming smoke he nearly passed out. The noxious exhaust was debilitating – almost. He figured he had one, or at most two, such ordeals left in him. He just hoped the dragon didn’t know it.

    After about an hour of aimless flying about, somersaulting and pirouetting spin moves in attempts to unseat the unwelcome rider, the dragon flew upside-down over the mountain peaks trying to skim Ohmie off on the rocky and icy ridges. Ohmie held on with sure-handiness.

    Finally, the silver and red dragon began to tire. A fact that no human knew was that dragons, as powerful as they were, and as ferocious as they could be, were low on stamina. Ohmie had the creature beaten … if only he had a lance, or at least his sword. All he had, though, was his belt dagger that was presently wedged between two of the silver and red dragon’s iron-tough scales. Suitable for dealing with varmint, both the four, or two-legged sort, or for double-dealing game cheats, the blade represented little more than a petty annoyance to such a tough-hided creature.

    The dragon’s lair was deep inside Mount Nebo. Through a small, narrow crevice just below a crag outcropping, totally hidden from the ground, the silver and red dragon expertly dived. First though, he had to ascend a thousand feet above the mountain top. Ohmie thought his fingers would freeze in the bitterly arctic jet-stream air. He could no longer feel them and begged them not to let go. The dragon’s scales beneath his legs felt like an icy saddle, but then like fire as he clenched ever the more tightly. The dragon needed the momentum of the screaming descent in order to negotiate the cramped and virtually airless horizontal passageway that descended to an arcing fall, down a shaft that tapered to a funneling queue to another cave that opened into a monstrous, dragon-worthy cavern. Where the drop queued to the lower cave, the lower cave continued in the opposite direction, making an inverted T.

    The tunnel was narrow, so shallow and narrow that Ohmie had to hug the dragon’s neck to evade the jagged top and sides. So narrow that he had to release his leg grip of the dragon’s lower neck, letting his legs and feet hover behind as he held on with his burning arms and hands.

    The tunnel was airless, too airless for dragon wings to make flight, even if the tunnel was wide enough. But it wasn’t completely airless. Ohmie could breathe, though only just. He didn’t know that the dragon could barely make a flame.

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Image courtesy lyenochka and Flightrising.com
Ohmie: 19 y.o. Prince Waynard's nickname. He is mentoring Prince Shauconnery and Princess May after falsely declaring Waynard deceased. Ohmie is a Prince (but not heir to the throne) of neighboring Spewlunkia.
Prince Shauconnery: the youthful heir of King Herb in Calandria
Princess May: 16 y.o. firstborn of King Herb
King Herb: King of Calandria, the land within which Ol' Silver and Red has claimed for centuries.
Blado: friend of Prince Waynard (Ohmie) from the land of Spewlunkia
King Jear: King of Spewlunkia, Ohmie's father
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