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I studied her face. Maybe, for once, this was exactly what she said it was. A job that needed doing, one she thought we could manage.

Or was this intended to be one of her impossible tasks? Did she expect us to die fighting the dragon? But that would doom her own son. Surely she couldn’t hate us that much. Could she?

I supposed we were about to find out.

Chapter Nine

100,000 Tons of Gold, More or Less

“All right,” I said to Sunbeam. “What do you know about this dragon?”

We were trotting down the road to the Golden Bridge. Yudit was beside us, mounted on a stripy dun mare. The fog had dissipated as we drew away from the coast, and our newly acquired armor shone bright in the afternoon sunlight.

Gruoch lagged behind, ensconced in a barouche pulled by two fancy-looking geldings. She didn’t intend to participate in the proceedings, but wanted to watch from a safe distance. Ironically enough, considering her history, this was to ensure that we didn’t cheat.

When I told Sunbeam about our task, he insisted that he should serve as my steed. In fact, he very much wanted to accompany us to the Red Empire as well. I had more than a few misgivings about that. Sunbeam was no longer a young colt. The days when he had carried my father or mother into battle against Red Empire soldiers were long past, and he readily admitted to suffering from stiff joints, dyspepsia, and chronic halitosis. He’d insisted that his accumulated wisdom more than made up for his bad breath. I was more worried about the possibility that he might get hurt.

Besides, as fond as I was of Sunbeam, I was reluctant to subject myself to his advice on this particular journey. I had, after all, imagined it as a grand solo adventure, my chance to prove myself. It was bad enough that I had to put up with Yudit’s constant presence. But Sunbeam wore me down with arguments until I agreed to at least let him come and face the dragon with us. After that, I said, we’d see. Assuming neither of us ended up being chomped to bits and slowly digested in a dragon’s stomach.

And as long as the aging warhorse was coming along anyway, I wasn’t about to ignore whatever information he had to share about the dragon.

“It’s got eight heads,” Sunbeam said, “and it likes to bite. It’s covered in thick, tough scales, like metal plating. Very difficult to stab.”

A final fate in its intestinal tract sounded all too likely. Well, if I wanted to have a grand adventure, I supposed that dragon-slaying fit the classic definition. I just had to figure out how to be the slayer and not the slayee.

“It doesn’t breathe fire, though,” the horse went on, “so you’ve got that going for you, at least. Oh, and it can talk, but it’s kind of a numbskull.”

“What do you mean?”

“It thinks the Golden Bridge is actually made of gold. That’s why it’s roosting there. Assumed it was a big old hoard just lying out in the open.”

The Golden Bridge was a masterwork of construction, the crowning infrastructure achievement of my parents’ tenure as duke and duchess. It was massive, wide enough to march an army across, which was the original point of the thing. The ingeniously designed arch stretched for nearly half a mile over a wedge-shaped firth, a gap in Ecossia’s coastline that made the country look like a cake with one slice missing. Without the bridge, getting past the firth required either an awkward boat trip or an arduous detour.

It was not, however, made of gold. Setting aside the fact that building such a thing would surely require most of the existing gold in the world, it would sag under its own weight until it broke and sank. Gold is too soft to support itself that way. The Golden Bridge was made of iron. It had simply been painted gold to prevent corrosion. Well, gold-ish. Orange, really, because it was cheaper, and the bridge had cost quite enough already by the time they got around to painting it. If the dragon had been misled by the name, then it was a stupid dragon indeed.

“We have to be getting close, don’t we?” Yudit asked. “We’ve been riding for hours.”

“I think so.” The rolling, grassy hills kept the bridge out of sight, but I’d noticed that for the last mile or two those hills had been unusually devoid of sheep. At a guess, they’d either fled or been devoured.

Also, there was a large sign up ahead that read:

CAUTION!

Dragon on the Bridge

Not the Nice Kind That Likes Riddles

The Other Kind That Wants to Eat You

← 50 Miles to Next Crossing

I drew my sword in preparation. A good way back, Gruoch left her carriage and climbed a hill to get a better view. Servants scrambled after her. No doubt they were carrying refreshments and a comfy seat.

“Hope she enjoys the show,” I muttered.

“A violent deathmatch on a spring afternoon?” Sunbeam said. “For her, that’s like being groomed after a nice long gallop.”

We rounded a curve in the road, and there before us was the bridge, vaulting over the murky gray water to the distant shore. Less than a hundred feet past the abutment lay the dragon.