Roland Ironheart's Arc

Chapter 7 of 5

The green dragon watched the castle for three days. It was bigger than the pink one. Its horns swept back like curved knives, and its red wings never fully folded. Roland stood on the wall and studied it. His three guards had trained to fight men and to hunt small beasts. They had no plan for a dragon striking the walls themselves. Timothy sat beside him, eyes fixed on the hills. "It's not hunting," Timothy said. "It's guarding." Roland frowned. "Guarding what?" Timothy pointed past the ridge, to a second castle Roland had never marked. Its towers wore black-and-white stripes. Panther banners hung from the walls. A man in mail paced the gate below, sword drawn, watching two other guards who stood stiff and afraid. "That one keeps guards who don't run," Timothy said. "The dragon keeps them there." Roland understood then. The green dragon did not serve him. It served the striped castle. The bearded commander down there had bound it to his gate. Any guard who fled, the dragon hunted down. Roland had drawn that dragon to his own door by accident. Before morning the next day, Timothy shook Roland awake. "It moved," he said. Roland ran to the wall. The green dragon had left the hills. It climbed the striped castle's tallest tower and stood on the peak. The bearded man came out onto the wall below it. He raised a whistle and blew one long note. The sound carried cold across the snow. "That's a call," Timothy said. "He's calling it home." Roland watched the dragon spread its wings at the whistle. It did not look at Roland's castle at all. It looked at the striped walls beneath it, waiting for the next order. The commander lowered the whistle and pointed his sword north, away from Roland. Roland felt his chest ease. The dragon was never his threat to fight. It belonged to another man's gate. His mistake had been to think it hunted him. It only guarded what its master pointed it toward. The woman climbed up beside them, sword ready. "Do we defend the wall?" she asked. "No," Roland said. "It's not coming here. It answers that whistle, not us." He watched the green dragon lift off the tower and glide back to the hills, settling on the nest to wait. The bearded commander turned and went inside his striped castle. The threat had a leash. Roland's walls were safe for now. But Roland saw something else. The commander down there kept his guards through fear. A dragon hunted anyone who ran. Roland had no dragon. He had only three people who chose to stay. "We can't win them with fear like he does," Roland told the woman. "We win them another way, or we lose them the first hard night." Timothy kept watching the whistle-man's gate. "He's afraid too," the boy said. "He just hides it better."