Free Jonah and the Last Great Dragon by M.E. Holley

while the dragons drove it on.
    As the serpent’s head slipped beneath the Thames, the Stinchcombe drake leaped away from its back and soared into the air. There was a wild roar of jubilation from above. The troopers and the dragons were ecstatic. As the rest of its body slid into the river, the monster’s blood turned the water a dirty greenish-brown. Stinchcombe swept down to the cobbles again while Isaac came pounding along the pavement.
    ‘Jonah! Are you all right, son?’
    Jonah gave a huge smile, clutching his side. ‘I’m fine. I think I’ll have some whopping bruises but I don’t care, solong as that thing’s gone!’
    Isaac whooped. ‘It’s gone OK. You were brilliant, son! That took a lot of grit.’
    Stinchcombe nodded his shining greenish head approvingly. ‘If you had not been so quick-witted, Master, Deerhurst’s rider might well have been killed.’
    Jonah felt his cheeks going red. ‘Thanks. But you were all fantastic.’ He turned to Isaac. ‘Is Ollie going to be all right?’
    ‘I think so, yes,’ Isaac said. ‘Max’s dragon took him to where the barriers have been set up. They had ambulances already waiting. Listen. You can hear the cheers.’
    Llandeilo, with Jack on his back, was now perched at the top of the steps leading up to the theatre. Newland, Brinsop and Bromyard were flying up and down the river, revelling in the shouts and cheers of the crowds who had massed at the barriers.
    ‘If Ollie were seriously hurt,’ Isaac said kindly to Jonah, ‘I doubt that people would sound like that.’
    Ffyrnig, who had put his great body down, very carefully, on to the walkway, opened his mouth in his familiar spike-toothed smile.
    ‘I think that went rather well, Jonah,’ he remarked.
    Jonah hobbled over to the Great Dragon and grinned up at him.
    ‘We’ve done it, Ffyrnig!’ He felt himself bubbling with excitement. ‘We’ve driven it into the Thames. It won’t come back, will it?’
    Ffyrnig stretched luxuriously so that the red-bronze scales rippled from his shoulders to his tail, glinting in the early evening sunlight.
    ‘I haven’t flown like that for – oh, hundreds of years. It
was
good to be back in an air battle again.’
    ‘Look at the sun on him,’ Jonah heard Jack say to Isaac.‘Magnificent or what? No wonder they made him the symbol of Wales.’
    Jonah translated and Ffyrnig shut his eyes with pleasure. Then he turned to Jonah. ‘Sorry, Jonah. You were saying…?’
    ‘I just wanted to know if you thought the hatchling might come back. After all, we didn’t actually destroy it.’
    ‘No, but it is badly hurt. I expect it will seek its lair in the ocean depths, far away from Britain. I don’t think it will surface here again for many years. I wonder what evil prompted it to swim up the Thames? There must be more devilry waking in the world than we thought.’ Ffyrnig swung round to look at Jonah. ‘And, Jonah, Jormungandr will have other hatchlings. Britain might not be safe from the Serpent, yet.’

Chapter 13
AN ABSENCE OF DEMONS
    The dragons were all ready to take to the air again. Deerhurst, now without a rider, had come back after Ollie had been taken to the hospital.
    ‘Right,’ Sam had said to the soldiers. ‘I think we had better go to Hyde Park, don’t you, and hope that there’s something for the dragons to fuel up on before we do anything else.’ He was relieved that Mordiford could get airborne. The wyvern was still in some pain from the nasty gash in his side but had told Jonah he was quite able to get to Hyde Park, thank you.
    ‘Do you honestly think a wyvern fusses over a little bit of blood? Eh, Master, eh?’ he growled, when Jonah asked if he was well enough to go on to Westminster. Then he half lowered an eyelid and made Jonah laugh. He had not realised that a dragon could wink.
    Jonah was hoping desperately that Saint Michael would be at the park or that there would be a message to tell him where the dragons were needed next. ‘I