Dragon Sweat Scroll 01

It was a game which Morgana delighted in playing. Any man who was good looking enough was welcome to share her bed and if he satisfied her, he was allowed to walk -- or stagger -- away from the tournament. There were few such winners though, and nailed along her broomstick handle were a growing collection of small shriveled objects which had once been the most treasured possessions of proud knights who had jousted in the lists of love with her: jousted, but not satisfied, and had forfeited their manhoods as the price of disappointing Morgana le Fay. Not for nothing had Morgana carefully studied the standard treatise on witch-mortal relationships, "The Male Eunuch And How To Make Him Into One."

Over the mountains but very far from over the hill, Morgana dipped the nose of her customised broom and gathered speed in the direction of Giant's Pass Castle. She knew a lot about many things. What she didn't know were how the fates were chuckling at the rendezvous they'd appointed for her.

Nor were the fates alone in chuckling. Hal was as near to heaven as he ever expected to be whilst still breathing, as far above his normal stinking life as a privy emptier as the King was above him. The King! Hal wouldn't have changed places with the Tiberian Emperor. The trees which had seemed so close had shrunk to the size of porcupine quills, the rushing mountain streams to silvery snail tracks. The entire length of Giant's Pass was his to look at in a single leisurely glance from over Chelinde's right shoulder as he thrust his cock into her with equal leisure.

With one sister already shagged he was now calm and relaxed enough to spin out the task of giving the other one long, steady strokes that had Chelinde sobbing in gratitude. Not that Hal wasn't grateful in his turn to Caelia for the way she was gently stroking his balls as he fucked her sister. It was exactly the kind of family support which helped families grow.

Hal changed his position slightly, grunting as he found a new angle at which to plunge into Chelinde's welcoming loins. Now he was looking over her left shoulder and could see the dragon's midday shadow almost directly below, skimming over cultivated fields as Josephine glided along the line of the valley. A minute more and she would be directly over the castle. A vision came into Hal's mind's eye, a vision in glorious detail, a vision of that bastard of a Master-At-Arms shouting and bullying everybody in sight and totally unaware that two of his daughters were being shagged directly above his head by one of the despised Shitbucket clan!

So inspired was Hal by the thought that he suddenly found himself on the short strokes, the net flexing like a rope bridge underneath a galloping horse and heaving Chelinde back up against him until his own back was thumping against Josephine's belly. Like a fiddler at a village dance Caelia instantly changed her own timing to meet Hal's new pace, scratching him frantically just behind his balls.

"Pull out and put down!"

The movement in the net instantly stopped. Three heads flicked over in gaping disbelief. Hal's brain simply refused to accept what he was seeing, a tall man in tight fitting leather clothes with long black hair streaming back from underneath a silvery helmet decorated with wings. Then Hal saw the arched eyebrows, the glittering eyes, the perfection of nose and mouth and knew he was looking at a woman -- he knew it even before his eyes were seeing the shapely curves of her breasts. A woman on a broom, as strange a broom as could be imagined but a broom, flying along as though it had every right to be in the sky with all the creatures which Odin had given a home there. A witch!

"Put down!"

The intruder appeared angry, her eyes apparently aimed directly at Hal. One of her hands jerked down towards the ground, as though indicating that she wanted Josephine to land. She also seemed to be having trouble steering her broom, wobbling from side to side, the handle of the brush gradually lifting higher as though it was uncomfortable at the dragon's slower pace. Hal had another sudden vision, of an accidental collision between Josephine and the witch. The dragon's wing might be damaged, or the net torn. He suddenly realized he was more terrified of the death drop below than of anything else, even a flying sorceress.

"Fuck off, you stupid witch!"

It was from there that things went very wrong very quickly. The witch aimed her hand at Hal with fingers extended. A flicker of light showed around them like a glimpse of summer lightning and Hal was writhing in agony, as if a thousand red hot needles were jabbing all over his body. As he screamed he heard the girls screaming too. Hal also heard Josephine bellow in pain.

Witches travel a lot on broomsticks but rarely use them as fighting platforms. Which is understandable. Just persuading a broomstick to fly from A to B with U on it is hard work enough, without trying to make the task more difficult by encouraging other broom jockeys to knock you off what is a pretty precarious perch to begin with. And so it had been aeons since most witches had encountered anything else in the sky which was a threat to them, the occasional bird strike excepted.

Had she known more about dragons, Morgana would not have been surprised by the way Josephine tilted her wings and instantly applied them as airbrakes. The witch would have known how maneuverable a dragon's light wing loading made it. Most of all she would have known that the last thing you do with an angry dragon is to get in front of it while still traveling in the same direction. Because that offers the dragon a simple nil deflection aiming solution right up your twigs.

Hal felt Josephine's cough through the beastling's belly muscles. Just the one but it was more than enough. The spitball exploded directly on the back of the broomstick in a giant yellow unfolding petal surrounded by a ring of black smoke which instantly blew away. Fragments came flying back through the air towards Josephine, a burning unrolling bedroll, a saddlebag shedding a myriad of colored lights and smells as the lotions, potions and spells inside flared up. Then a coal dark figure with outstretched limbs whirling head over tail -- literally, head over tail. The giant tom cat slammed into the front of the net and hung there, claws fully extended, spitting with anger and green eyes blazing.

The broomstick itself was spiraling down leaving a thin trail of black smoke behind it. Keeping gravity at bay is never easy, even for the most strong-willed of witches. It's especially difficult to concentrate your mental powers while sitting on a bundle of burning twigs. Which was probably why the witch was dropping much faster than was safe and apparently heading straight for the castle walls.

So indeed was Josephine, her wings furled as she came swooping down after her prey. Her entire body had turned a vivid shade of red, a color Hal had only seen her display once before, when the wolves had attacked him. It meant that Josephine was spitting mad and furious with it.

In this case bad news could be described for her opponent as ending up with a choice between a high speed impact with several thousand tons of stone walls or jumping into the open sewer that was the moat. Even a witch has to make difficult decisions sometimes. But no one who witnessed the scene had anything but total admiration for Morgana's timing: her cat couldn't have fallen more neatly. The witch dropped off the broomstick while she was still twenty paces or so away from the outer edge of the moat, calculating exactly how far she would be flung by her forward speed. The stick hit the wall and splintered at exactly the same time as there was a disturbance on the moat's surface. It couldn't be described as a splash, not in that substance: more like a heavy stone being dropped into a cow pat.

"Oh, Odin!" Hal wailed in despair as a mud coated head emerged from the hideous depths of the moat. A witch, a powerful witch, a bad powerful witch, a bad powerful witch who was up to her neck in shit because of him. Things couldn't get any worse.

There was movement on the lowered drawbridge. It seemed like every soldier in the castle was streaming out along it, all carrying crossbows, the Master-At-Arms leading them. And beside him was the gangling figure of Will Spearshaker, an accusing arm pointing skywards at Josephine. An indication followed by the soldiers aiming their crossbows at her as the Master-At-Arms shook his fist in rage. Oh, Gods, now things couldn't get worse.

Josephine's wings began beating the air as she hovered low over the moat, apparently savoring her moment of victory over the bitch witch in the ditch. Hal rolled onto his back and thumped his fists against her belly.

"Fly, my lady, fly. Leave this accursed place and we'll never return."

Both of the girls began wailing in despair at the idea of being taken away from their home; if they thought they could find any mercy from their father by staying they had much higher hopes than Hal had. The cat seemed to be deeply unhappy as well, going berserk in its efforts to reach in far enough through the net to rip open the boy's face.

"Fly, Josephine, fly!"

The witch raised her hand and again there was a flicker of lightning that was somehow there and not there at the same time. The supernatural disturbance ran around the left front net rings and they had gone as if transformed into smoke rings. Hal actually saw the lashings fall clear, still tied and untouched, before the corner of the net fell open. Even as he tried to accept what had happened the right front rings vanished as well, the front of the belly net falling down as if to pitch them all into empty air.

Chelinde and Caelia screamed in fright, twisting around exactly as Hal was doing and clutching at the sagging net with hooked fingers. Hal screamed too, not only for fear but because the cat was still hanging on the opposite side of the net and now it had him within claw reach. The first slash took a deep bloody furrow out of the top of his leg, barely missing his balls. Hal was as terrified as he could be and more angry than he'd ever dreamed possible. He drew back his fist and drove it with every shred of strength in his body onto the tip of the cat's nose. There was a scream which was louder than Chelinde and Caelia combined and the cat was falling, turning, spreading its legs, slapping down into the weed speckled crust of the moat, disappearing from view, except for a black tail sticking straight up into the air. But the screams continued.

It was the witch, one hand clasped to her face and apparently in agony. It was if she'd been hit in the same way as her cat but Hal had no time to worry about either of them. Josephine was landing on the edge of the moat, letting the net fall slowly onto the grass. Hal hit the ground first, crawled out from under the net, looked up and saw the Master-At-Arms staring at his daughter's bare bodies hanging from the net before they tumbled down as well.

"Kill the little cunt!"

Only the front rank of the soldiers could aim at Hal because he was down so low, and they were hampered by having the Master-At-Arms and Will Spearshaker in front of them. Josephine coughed and spat, the Master-At-Arms burst into flames like a wax doll dropped into a fire and Will Spearshaker was running for the moat with his breeches burnt off and his chain mail glowing red. When he jumped into the mire a cloud of evil smelling steam shot up around his head. The other soldiers gaped at him, then at the calcinated remains of the Master-At-Arms and finally -- and reluctantly -- at the dragon again. There was an unmistakable air about them of warriors for the working day definitely deciding that it was quitting time.

Hal seized his chance: "Drop those crossbows, you bastards, or I'll flame mail the lot of you!"

THE END