Dragons of Summer Tide (The Dragons of Hwandor) by Robert Barton Read Free Book Online Page B

could feel the wound to his leg Veer knew that he must get the wolf and dragon off of Shira so he hobbled to her side and rolled the dead lupine away from her. Almost gently he lifted the dragonet off of the girl and carried it some feet away and placed it on the ground where it couldn’t suddenly decide to hurt the girl. Looking at the two dragonets pulling at the body of the wolf which lay on top of the fallen baby dragon made Veer feel sorry for the animals and he bent and half lifted and half rolled the wolf off of the baby dragon. The two unharmed dragonets lay down and wrapped themselves around the body of the smaller dragonet. They looked to Veer as if they almost could feel love and were trying to help the injured dragon.
    Veer could feel the bite to his thigh and knew that he had to tend to it so he limped to the packs and found some strips of linen which had been rolled for bandages and a jar of a salve which he could tell, by the herbal smell, was for injuries. Unfastening his belt and trousers he lowered them to the ground as he sat down to tend to the pulsing injury on his thigh. He looked down at his bare leg and there was nothing unusual, no bite, no scratches, nothing. Veer sat there and stared at the place on his thigh where he could feel the pain of the injury. He remembered feeling the wolf bite into his leg during the battle. It must have been one of the wolves which fled because the wolves which he saw attack were all dead. This wolf must have come around to the side because he never saw the animal which had bitten him, but he had felt it. He could still feel the injury. But there was nothing there; his leg was untouched. Standing, he pulled his trousers back up and fastened everything in place once again.
    Now to get rid of these dead wolves and set the camp back to rights. Veer looked at the baby dragons around him and knew that he would have to be careful with those poisonous little beasts as he moved the injured ones away. Then he saw the human eyed dragon which was looking at him. He remembered how that dragonet had, just a few minutes ago, fought a wolf, a wolf more that twice its size, and won. He remembered how the dragon had stopped the wolf that had marked Veer as its intended victim. “Why, why would you do that?” Veer asked to the dragon lying on the ground in front of him. Veer glanced to where he had moved the dragon from Shira and saw that the little beast was slowly crawling toward the sleeping girl. “And why would you protect her?” The young man stood there feeling confused and noticed that the human eyed dragon was starting to try and crawl toward him. He felt his leg throb badly and winced from the pain of an injury that wasn’t there. He could see that the dragonet was only using three legs to try and move itself as it had suffered a bad bite to the thigh of a hind leg.
    Veer felt unusually sorry for the animal as he looked into its eyes. At that moment he knew that this little dragon would not bite him or try to hurt him in any way. Veer didn’t understand how he could be so sure that this venomous little serpentine beast would not turn on him, but he was certain. He picked up the salve and bandages and sat on the ground beside the dragonet and tended its wounds. As he applied the healing medicine to the bite he could feel the pain in his own leg begin to lessen just a bit. Next he moved to tend the injuries on the dragon that had been hurt protecting Shira. Scratches and small bites but nothing had seemed to be broken on either dragonet because the bones felt whole. Next he moved toward the little one which had been crushed under the falling wolf. This dragonet was the smallest and Veer was amazed that it could have killed a wolf even if it had died doing it. There was nothing he could do for that one but maybe bury it. But he noticed that it still seemed to be alive somehow. It was breathing shallow and slow, but still breathing. Veer looked at the two dragons which were