A Dragon at Worlds' End by Christopher Rowley Read Free Book Online

end. Relkin knew that he would have to operate on her at once and clean out the wound and dress it with Old Sugustus, or she would die.
    In the next moment, he realized that the girl also possessed a tail. The shock of this revelation made him grunt and sit back on his haunches. It was a sinuous brown tail, about four feet long, that projected through a slit in the girl's one-piece garment at the base of the spine. The tunic was fine work, made from animal skins neatly sewn together. The tail was undoubtedly part of her, with the same light brown skin, and ending in a tuft of black hair, exactly like the hair on her head.
    Relkin swallowed heavily and shifted back a foot or so.
    "By the old gods," he whispered. He stared at the tail, then tentatively reached out and touched it. It felt firm, exactly as he imagined her arm might feel. For some reason this discovery made him feel dizzy and he put out a hand to the side of the boat to hold himself steady. After a moment or two he recovered.
    He touched her shoulder. She continued to breathe slowly and softly, but she did not awaken. The tunic had been cut through across her shoulder blade and there was massive bruising. Something long and hard had struck her across that shoulder. He felt gingerly for broken bones, but detected nothing. Her head fell back. Her glossy hair was cut to shoulder length and braided.
    Struck by her beauty, Relkin felt a number of strange, untoward thoughts running in his mind. The tail was uncanny. It brought on strange feelings of unease. He found his palms were sweating. At last, he snapped himself out of the trance and stood up. The canoe was equipped with paddles; there were three in plain sight. He was drifting seaward, on a slow current. Time was wasting. He took up the nearest and started paddling to get the canoe's head turned around and pointed to the shore. It took a few strokes to get it in the right direction.
    Bazil was walking slowly along the shoreline, about two hundred feet away. At Relkin's wave, he increased his pace to catch up.
    Relkin paddled hard, first on one side and then the other. The river's current was running into the incoming tide, which was growing stronger, and this made it fairly easy to reach the shore.
    At last the canoe ground on sand. The dragon came down to the water's edge to heave it up onto the drier ground. His eyes popped as he looked inside.
    "Where does this girl come from?" said Bazil.
    "I don't know. I've never seen anything like her."
    "I should have expected it, I know. If anyone can find a female in complete wilderness, it would be you."
    There came an audible intake of breath into mighty lungs.
    Bazil had noticed the shocking, unusual attribute.
    "She have tail!" The big eyes had gone round. He clacked his jaws. "This is very sensible. Dragons always wonder how humans can live without tail."
    "She's hurt real bad, Baz."
    Bazil had just noticed the wound himself.
    "This dragon has eyes in the head, fool boy."
    "Then help me move her."
    "Where to? Where do you suggest?" Bazil clearly didn't think there was anywhere better than where they were.
    Relkin looked up and realized the truth of this. They were a long ways from anything remotely defensible. The boat would have to do.
    "I've got to cut those skins off and clean the wound, and then I've got to sew it up. We've got a little Old Sugustus, I think we can save her. I'm going to need a big fire, though. And we'll want to build a barrier around us, too."
    "She need to eat."
    "When she wakes up I expect she'll be hungry."
    "What do we do first?"
    "Got to make a fire. Need to heat the knife to cauterize the wound. Need to heat some water as hot as we can make it."
    "There's plenty of driftwood."
    Indeed, it took them little time to accumulate enough dried-out wood to get a fire blazing. Relkin pulled out some more dead branches a little farther upstream and dragged them down to the fire. It blazed high while he cut away the skin garment, revealing a slim