All Foes

Начало книги

Killing the dragon was easy. I found it curled at the bottom of a gully, half-buried by leaves and the detritus of uncounted years. A skeleton clothed in ragged leather, only the gleam of eyes betraying the remnants of life, glinting open as I stumbled against its head. I looked deep into their darkness, and saw nothing but my own reflection.

Above I could hear the fool bellowing his challenges to an empty castle, a staggering construction of obsidian and ice well-suited for its role as an abode of evil. If evil lurked in the eyes of the decaying dragon wreck, beneath its mound of leaves, it was hidden by a film of age. I touched it, below that eye, dislodging tiny, dry scales, which pattered to the ground and lost themselves among the leaves.

Even monsters grow old. This creature, this emaciated coil of reptile, wings resembling the stripped trees of winter, did not react to my touch. I stood before it, a descendant of the race it had hunted to near-extinction, and it did not care. It was possible it did not even know what stood before it, that it was beyond recognising anything but the weight of time. I was stirred to pity. I am prone to pity, even for such as the fool above, with his shining armor and wealth and lack of heart. For myself, born with a mind above my station.

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