Free Battledragon by Christopher Rowley Page B

recalled with shame the disastrous attempt he had made some years before to desert and go wild with the Purple Green and the boy, hunting in the forests of Tunina. They had discovered that in a world of speedy elk and deer, two great multiton predators were simply too slow to survive. But here, in the ocean, the wyvern came into his own.
    A savage exultance filled him, intoxicating him with its euphoria. He drove himself forward through the waters, thrilling to the sensation of pressing aside the sea, the mighty sea. He rose to the surface and sucked in a giant breath of air and rolled over onto his back and continued to power along, but on the surface, looking up into the silvery night-born clouds. Snow was falling lightly, being whipped away over the water by an offshore wind.
    Suddenly, with painful clarity he visualized Relkin's face. He thought of the pain the boy would feel on learning of his desertion. He thought of the others, the dragons in the 109th, his close friends.
    They would forget him, said the new part of his mind. His destiny was to live wild and swim the sea.
    He would not forget them, said the older part of him, and he would live with shame that would grow and grow and consume his heart in the end.
    After all they'd been through, he couldn't abandon Relkin. And then he thought of their dream, to retire after their ten-year stint and take up the free land in Kenor. They'd have savings to buy a few draft animals and plenty of tools, and they'd clear good land and build a prosperous farm. In time he would fertilize the eggs and beget more wyverns for the villages of the Argonath. He would live a productive life and a comfortable one.
    The new part of him shouted its rejection of this human scheme. It demanded that he turn away from the land forever. Forget the men and their wars, none of it meant anything to a wyvern dragon hunting free along the shore.
    Except that there was a good reason the dragons served the legions, and for a moment a dark cloud obscured his thought; from the cloud projected the fangs and hateful malice of the great enemy. And then it was gone, for the new part of him refused to accept it. He would turn away from all of that.
    He swam on, thoughts quite blank, sometimes lying on his back and other times on his belly with his head down and his nose questing for the scent of prey. Slowly an unease spread through his euphoria, clouding it as effectively as the eight-arms' cloud of ink in the sea. All around him in the sea he felt this change, a wave of concern; creatures everywhere were dispersing away.
    And then he caught another odor, darker, heavier than that of most fish, a stench filled with terror. Instantly it brought back memories of a night when he was young and played truant from the village and swam in Blue Stone Bay.
    A great stern fish swam nearby, not the common kind mat grew to ten feet and five hundred pounds, but the very rare, terrifying giants known as white death, which could reach fifty feet and thirty tons.
    The unease he had felt had hardened into something considerably less pleasant
    On that occasion in his youth, he had been saved only by his good fortune in reaching the Bareback rocks a few seconds ahead of the monster that had pursued him. He had stood there shivering as the huge dorsal fin curved past the rocks and then sank into deeper water and vanished.
    It was a rare moment that a wyvern dragon felt fear of another animal. Bazil recalled the feeling of awe and rage when he'd stared into the face of an ogre at the Battle of Sprian's Ridge. The ogre stood fifteen feet high and weighed as much as Bazil or more, but there'd been no fear, no genuine terror, for in his hands Bazil had held the great sword Ecator, nine feet of shining steel and fit to cut down any living thing. There had never been a sword to match Ecator, and he loved the weapon more than any other brute thing in the world. Only now he had no great sword in his hand, but merely a tail sword, with