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Chapter Five

They rode through the lesser dragon hills for several hours. Hill after hill rose up from the ground and many times they saw dragons. Nancealia frequently said good morning to them and they always replied with “Good Morning”. Nancealia pointed out to Arnold that they best way to get along with most dragons is to be very polite. The mountains were getting closer and the were rising above their heads like tall peaks. Many dragons lived in those mountains, and few, other than adventurers and knights, ever came near them. They stopped for lunch at noon and after that continued on their way.
They were approaching another line of more mountainous hills. The ground began showing a few signs of scorching in places and the sheep and goats were getting far less numerous. Things were looking more grim and the lengthening shadows did not improve the look of the place. Finally they entered a long and somewhat narrow valley with many dragon cave entrances dotting the hills. After a while Nancealia stopped at the entrance to a cave.
“Active or Dormant?” asked Arnold.
“Dormant and an old friend of mine. We may be able to spend the night here. It will be better that spending it out in the open. I’ll check right now and see if we can stay.” Nancealia entered the cave.
“Greetings, Mratha,” they heard Nancealia’s voice say,
“Oh, Hello, is that you Nancealia?”
“Yes, I’m here with two friends of mine and Celticia, could we stay here tonight?”
“Well, I wouldn’t object, but Mortimor would.” She spoke the name Mortimor with a disdainful sniff, “He says I am too friendly with humans and that anybody that gets friendly with humans will be either be killed by them or expelled from the dragon colony. Also he is annoying and a bully.”
“Which cave is he in? I would like to pay him a visit.” asked Nancealia, her voice showing a slight twitch of annoyance in it.
“I was hoping that you would take care of him. He is at the first cave when you come into the valley, that one is usually uninhabited because that’s the one knights usually go to first.”
“Thank you.” Nancealia said and she was about to leave but before she left she turned and said “Does he breath fire?”
“Yes, not very hot fire, but it’s enough to terrify most of the younger dragons, he’s quite a bully and I am so glad you’re here to take care of him.”
“Well, I’ll do my best.”
As she stepped out of the cave Arnold said, “So we have a fire breathing dragon to fight. That should be exciting!”
“It should be. However, since we have all ready had a long ride and another fight with a dragon today I don’t think you should take an active part in this. Celticia and I can handle him in a short period of time, you’ll probably have another chance to fight a fire breathing dragon but not tonight.”
Arnold wanted to object to this but Nancealia stood firm and finally he and Schelsh agreed that they wouldn’t take part in the fight. Nancealia then led the way to the first dragon cave in the valley. Just before the entrance was the remains of a burned horse, which did not look too pleasant. Neither Arnold’s horse or Schelsh’s horse looked as though they would like to go nearer. Nancealia strapped her helmet on (it had been hanging on the side of her saddle.) and took of her cloak and laid it on the saddle. Then she dismounted. Celticia also put on her helmet and having drawn her sword, joined Nancealia.
Nancealia then walked forward to the front of the cave and drawing her sword shouted
“Mortimer, Dragon of the mountains, I declare you a foe and a menace and I plan to take your life.” All this was spoken very grandly and sounded impressive but Nancealia really didn’t have a foe to match the speech. Out of the cave came a short, and some what fat dragon. He was pale yellowish green, with dull red spikes and he had a mean look in his face.
He said, “Well, you insignificant person. I am going to roast you!” He shot out some flames but they were only slight flame bursts and and did not even reach the spot where Nancealia was standing, Even if they had, they wouldn’t have done any harm, for the moment the dragon had stopped speaking Nancealia sort of ran and sort of jumped and she was on Mortimer’s back before ten seconds had elapsed. Then the fight began!
Arnold and Schelsh noticed several other dragons coming out of their caves to watch, and they also noticed that most of them looked pleased, especially when Mratha called out, “Nancealia’s here.”
Arnold began to get the idea that Nancealia had a reputation among the dragons. The battle between Nancealia and Mortimer seemed more of a wrestling match than what he thought a fight with a fire breathing dragon would be. Mortimer obviously wanted to get Nancealia off himself so he tried rolling over. But this didn’t work because he couldn’t roll over faster than Nancealia could climb around him and as she was doing this she was thrusting her sword into weak spots. Mortimer was rather mad and frightened by now and he started to try to take off, but he couldn’t because Nancealia had, during the struggle, cut his wings so that they could not fly. He gave a howl of rage when he realized that he couldn’t fly and tried even harder to get at Nancealia. However she soon gave him a mortal wound and Mortimer lost the fight. The whole fight had lasted no more than fifteen minutes.
There was a loud cheer, led by Mratha, the other three humans joining in as did most of the dragons, for Mortimer had made himself very unpopular during his stay there. Nancealia made a grand bow and said that the dragons could dived the treasure amongst themselves. Whereupon a committee was formed for the dividing of the treasure and all of the dragons were quite happy with their shares, though the committee leaders had to report everything to the committee on the committees.