A Bronze Rising: A Short Night
#13 of A Bronze Rising
The Bronze waits the night to hear the little lord's response
Dragons are very capable of remaining still for very long periods of time. In fact, most large dragons hibernate for extended periods throughout their lives. The heart slows, breaths become deeper and more prolonged. The eye lids droop down but don't close entirely. I closed my water lids for comfort's sake, making the world blurry, but eliminating the need to blink every so often. I preferred to listen. My muscles relaxed, my body becoming still as stone, but feeling as though I were drifting slowly, perhaps rotating slowly through a vast loop. Time stretched out ahead of me, but I remained lucidly aware of my surroundings. Sometimes while doing this, I fancied myself a rock on a hill, watching the world and the creatures fly by, the trees reach up to the sky and then fall. The sensation of permanency was soothing. I could not imagine what it would be like to lead a mortal life, with death hanging over one's head, the only prize for a marathon of hardship and suffering. Not to say that I couldn't die or wouldn't die someday, but for me, that day lay centuries, perhaps millennia in the future. It was safe enough to consider myself immortal for the time being, even very old dragons often had the illusion of continuing forever... they usually went insane.
Resting as I was, it was not long before the sun set. The night then past with the same accelerated momentum. My scent should have repelled the local wildlife, but once a fox came sniffing about, scurrying from rock to rock in an orange blur. With a great amount of finesse, it hopped onto the back of my paw like it was nothing more than a strange, bronze boulder and leaped to a higher shelf, disappearing soon after. I felt where it had planted its paws on my skin until morning came.
With the light, I felt the urge to stand and stretch; an older dragon might have been able to remain days, months, even years in the trance. I yawned massively, spreading my wings until they brushed against trees to either side of the small hill. I hadn't slept, not truly, but the meditation had provided me with some rest. I supposed I was foolish for thinking the humans might arrive in the middle of the night, but then I hadn't wanted to be unprepared should the knight's men have interrogated Tobias and decided to ambush me rather than negotiate their surrender. I wondered what Sir Ronald thought of my terms. I hoped I had crafted them well, considering my knowledge of humans and the incomplete knowledge of the man Tobias was able to provide.
Sir Ronald had received this fiefdom as something of a joke apparently. He had disgraced himself in the war, something to do with being fooled by a spy and getting a lot of men killed... I didn't understand Tobias' description. At any rate, he retired early rather than face dishonorable discharge. Because he was a nobleman by birth, Sir Ronald was not the sort of man who can simply disappear or be gotten rid of, nor was he the sort to desire ambiguousness even after his incompetence had been demonstrated on the field. Thus he was appeased by being made lord of this frontier village. Apparently, he wasn't well pleased with his charge. He had little to no contact with the villagers and almost never left the estate except to go hunting in his own private woods where it was forbidden for others to walk on pain of losing their left hand. It was well known, even to those who weren't veterans, that Sir Ronald was a coward at heart. With these facts in mind, I had crafted the terms to the man who would become my subordinate or perish.
It was late in the morning when I heard them coming, heard the hoofbeats pummeling the earth and felt them through the pads in my feet. I had been looking for the little fox who had continued hanging about the area, but upon detecting the humans, I stood and walked back to the stony outcrop. I reclined my body for maximum display given the direction they would have to approach. I would be elevated for the interview, my long tail draping the distance from the shelf to the ground. I planted what I thought was a serene expression on my face and waited.
As I'd instructed, the party was small and on horseback. The first human I saw was Tobias, leading the others behind him. He was...