The newest, largest and most solidly built structures in Emath village were those pressing up against the perimeter.
The Wizard Serdic had expanded the perimeter twice in Dennis' memory—having created it the day Emath's prince and heir was born. When houses filled the space available to them, Serdic moved the spell which enclosed the dragons farther into the jungle.
As Emath grew, so did the two beasts which paced the perimeter on ceaseless guard.
"Where are they now, Chester?" Dennis asked in a whisper.
"One of them is coming toward us, Dennis," the robot replied—quietly also, but with a clarity which the youth found disturbing. Chester's precise words seemed more likely to arouse the guard beasts' interest than a slurred whisper would.
The perimeter was a location, not a thing. Dennis and his companion stood at the back of a three-story apartment block. The walls were half-timbered; their whitewashed plaster triangles gleamed softly in the starlight. Just in front of Dennis was a line of coarse grass stretching to either side in a gentle curve parallel with the buildings.
The hundred meters between that grass and the jungle was clear. The earth there had been trampled into dust—churned to mud in the rain—by the claws of dragons.
As Chester had warned, one of the dragons was snuffling into sight. Dennis froze. He took his hand off the hilt of his new sword because he was afraid he might rattle the blade in its scabbard.
The dragon walked on two legs, but there was nothing about it even remotely like a man. The creature's body and tail formed the cross-bar of a T supported by the legs. Its head was held close to the ground, so that its hips—eight feet in the air—were the highest point on the body when the dragon was walking normally. The legs folded upward like complex shears, then jabbed out claws-first for each strutting, birdlike step.
The head swung toward Dennis when the dragon was no more than twenty feet away. Its nostrils were set at the end of its flat muzzle. They wrinkled with the odor of the waiting youth. The eyes, gleams of black starlight, winked as they focused.
"Maybe we ought—" Dennis whispered to his companion as he edged toward the alley between this building and the next.
The dragon charged.
"Chester!" Dennis cried, flinging down his bag of provisions as he jumped between the dragon and his friend. The dragon's lower jaw dropped. Its finger-long teeth dripped ropes of digestive slime as the beast bellowed—
And collided with the invisible barrier.
Dirt sprayed. Serdic's barrier stopped nothing but the guard beasts themselves. When the dragon's head banged to an angry halt against nothing, its feet skidded in a wave of the pulverized earth of the trackway. The youth coughed and began spitting out a mouthful of the dust.
The dragon ambled away, scratching the side of its head with one of the sharp-clawed grasping arms that were normally folded alongside its chest. The creature seemed completely to have forgotten Dennis and his companion. The dragon's head and tail swung side to side, balancing the torso as the legs lifted in walking.
Chester picked up the bag of provisions. One of the sausages had spilled out. A tentacle raised it while the tip of another flicked dust precisely from the casing. "One does not learn the heart of a brave man," the robot murmured, "until his friend is attacked."
"I didn't even think of my sword," Dennis wheezed. He brushed his face with his hands but let tears and the lids clear the dust from his eyes. A sudden sneeze blew his nasal passages open and left him feeling much better, though his nose began to run.
Far on the other end of the perimeter, the second dragon bellowed in raucous triumph as it pounced on something—probably an unfortunate lizard which chose the wrong time to scuttle across the cleared strip.
The guard beasts were intended to keep the dangers of the jungle out of Emath—the tribes of scaly lizardfolk; rumored bands of human renegades, stalking the jungle trails in search of loot and always willing to pounce on an unprotected settlement; and bogeys still more frightful because no one in Emath had fully imagined them.
But the dragons were restrained rather than being controlled. They would attack anything they could get hold of, just as a pit trap would catch even the man who dug it. When the folk of Emath wanted to let traders from the jungle into their village, the wizard had to throw a separate barrier across the perimeter to prevent the guard beasts from rending the lizardfolk.
And no one from Emath could safely leave the village by land either; though that didn't matter, because nobody wanted to do that—
Until tonight.
Dennis slipped his sword a few inches up and down in its sheath, making sure that he could draw it easily. If he remembered to draw it in the next crisis, anyway.
"Are they..." Dennis said.
When Dennis paused to lick his lips, he found that they were still coated with the dirt the dragon had kicked over him. He spat with difficulty because of his dry mouth. "Will we be able to get across safely now, Chester?"
"Some men trust the moment, Dennis, and it goes well with them forever," the robot replied.
Chester still held the bag of provisions. If he was willing to do that, it would help his master run the next hundred yards.
"All right," Dennis whispered. "Let's go."
He leaped the line of grass that had survived the feet of both humans and monsters and began sprinting across the churned-up soil.
It was as difficult as running in shallow water. The soft dirt clung to his boots and spilled over their low tops. He was off-balance for running anyway, twisting his body to the left to hold his new sword and scabbard with both hands. Otherwise it would flop and trip him.
He hadn't thought of that when he took the sword.
Dennis was twenty yards out into the trackway when both the dragons sensed him. They hooted with thunderous delight. Though they were out of sight for the moment, hidden behind the curve of the buildings, Dennis could feel the ground shake as the beasts lurched from a shamble to a gallop.
Chester was hopping along beside him, suiting his pace to that of the floundering youth.
Normally Chester's tentacles glided just over the ground, curving as he stepped instead of lifting the way the jointed legs of animals would. On this surface, the robot hopped like a toad in thick dust. The strength of his silvery limbs was obviously sufficient to carry him safely clear of the dragons' rush.
When Dennis was halfway across the perimeter, he wished that he'd never started. When he was two strides further, he was sure that he was going to die.
The dragons moved in clouds of the dust their legs kicked up before them. Only their outthrust heads were visible as they strutted toward their human victim from either side.
Dennis' chest burned with the effort that would leave him ten yards short of the jungle when the beasts fell on him simultaneously like scissors with teeth. He'd have thrown the heavy sword away if he could have, but he didn't dare pause in order to draw the blade without cutting his leg off.
His panicked mind also considered fighting the beasts. The idea was so crazy that he would have laughed—if he'd had breath or laughter available. Each of the dragons weighed a half ton, and there were two of them...
"Not only a great lord may protect another!" Chester said.
"Help me, Chester!" Dennis cried.
Chester flung sausages high in the air to either side.
The dragons pivoted like dancers, the heads questing upward while their arms—clutched tight to that moment—snatched the linked sausages from the air with triple claws.
One of the beasts bugled in triumph. Its breath filled the air with the smell of fish and fish offal, the food the dragons got from their keeper to sustain them as they prowled their magical cage.
Dennis dived to safety. He lay in a thicket of flowers and brambles, sobbing with reaction and remembered fear.
Behind him, the dragons snarled at one another. They were too focused on the thrill of spiced meat to notice that their prey had escaped them.
"There is no more sausage, Dennis," said Chester. "There is bread only, now."
"That's all right," said Dennis, responding to the words as though they were a real apology rather than delicate way of getting him alert and mobile again. "I—thank you, friend."
"You are welcome, Dennis."
If Chester hadn't prodded him, he wouldn't have thought to ask for help; and without Chester distracting the guard beasts—
It was important to be able to do things himself. But it was real important to know when to ask for help.
The dragons were moving off in opposite directions, darting quick glances over their shoulders and growling at one another. Dennis started to get up. The thorns that gripped his clothes tore at the edge of his hand as he tried to push himself upright.
He couldn't see the vegetation that held him, though a large blossom brushed his cheek and breathed a rich purple scent into the air. He tried to pick away the vines clutching his right cuff. His left arm was entwined in a knot of brambles that anchored it as thoroughly as if he'd been tied.
"Chester—" Dennis began.
He tried to speak calmly. His mind churned with ghastly tales of trees that walked in the jungle, just out of sight of Emath, and of flowers that drank blood.
Something lanced through his cheek like hot iron.
Dennis screamed and jumped to his feet. The bramble jabs were nothing to the pain that spread from his cheek, encompassing him, devouring him—
The insect that had stung the youth buzzed away in the darkness, led by the perfume of another nightflower.
Dennis stumbled a few paces away from the bramble patch. The ground between two of the larger trees was reasonably clear. He had his left palm raised to his cheek. He wasn't quite touching the skin, but he could feel the heat from the injured part.
"Chester," he said, slurring the words because the side of his face was beginning to swell. "I'm all right, aren't I?"
"You are all right, Dennis," said the robot. "You will be better in a day.
"Perhaps," Chester added after a pause, "you should hold a wet compress to your cheek."
"I didn't bring any water," Dennis said in sudden concern. "You said there'd be water in the jungle, Chester."
"It is beginning to rain, Dennis."
As Dennis opened his mouth to argue, the first rush of big raindrops started to hammer down, making the leaves clatter.
Dennis looked up. A drop slapped the corner of his eye hard enough to hurt; but the rain was cooling things down, and that felt good after he'd sprinted away from the dragons in the humid atmosphere. Dust was pocking up from the trackway in miniature explosions. In a few minutes, the perimeter would a be a sea of mud—greasy and a deathtrap for anyone who tried to bolt across it.
Dennis shuddered. "Let's get out of here," he muttered, more to himself than to his companion.
Chester moved, a faint glimmer and a crackling of brush nearby. "There is a path here, Dennis," he said. "If you choose to follow it."
"Shouldn't I? Where does it go?"
"The path goes anywhere, Dennis," the robot said. "It goes away from Emath."
Dennis pursed his lips. The side of his face felt stiff already. "Sure," he said. "Let's go."
His cloak felt clammy as the rain plastered it to his shoulders. Maybe it'd be drier on the trail, protected by the canopy of leaves.
Dennis pushed through the undergrowth, guided by the glint of his companion's pointing limbs. He was a hero, after all, going off to seek adventure. That thought should keep him warm.